Panacea

Is there anything Christmas can't cure? Apart from indigestion, obviously. We went to Birmingham for Christmas to stay with my sister. Writing down the whole thing as one long best bit would be perfectly acceptable, I think. Much kinder to the attention spans of both audience and writer to do snippets.

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"My like flying," F tells me as we cruise from Munich towards Birmingham. She's by a window to my right, gazing adoringly at the face of Tristan from Tinkerbell on the iPad, eating M&Ms from a box with a light-up fan on top of it. It's about half-past ten at night, later than she's been up in the last year, and she shows no sign of flagging.

To my left, V has C buckled to her lap. C is fast asleep. She has screamed herself into this state over the first half of the flight, and is now comfortable. Only if V holds her still-whiplashed spine at an awkward angle, mind you, which also precludes V reaching any of the (vile) airline food we've been served.

Appropriately, I'm somewhere in the middle of their two states. Comfortable but not too comfortable, unable to read or relax as I usually might when travelling, not too tired but not too perky either. Also between countries.

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I get reverse culture shock. There's a strong urge to run in to Aldi and ask for things in Swedish.
- Kan jag få lite Marmite, as if that might get me anything other than odd looks and odder spread.

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"Uncle Poo Poo!" cousin S screams at me. I feign hurt shock, and she howls with laughter.

"Uncle Poo Poo!" F screams at me as well, laughing even before I react.

"I'm your daddy, not your uncle," I tell her sternly.

"Daddy Poo Poo!" both girls scream together. Then they drape blankets over their heads and pretend to be spooks until I go into cardiac arrest and have to be revived. This is done by the two of them jumping up and down on my chest, in the time-honoured manner.

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The Disney Store, Birmingham's Bullring shopping centre, early Christmas Eve. A bored shop assistant twirls a blue lightsaber and tries to avoid having to interact with any children. Hostile, hunched parents claw at piles of Big Hero Six figurines with sullen, frantic looks.

"Daddy! Look at this!" shouts F, who has found a Tinkerbell dressing gown. Or plate set. Or cuddly doll - I forget what it was exactly. Any sense of wonder is instantly banished by the news that mummy has bought what she came for, and we have a jolly good sulk for the next forty minutes.

Which is good, because we all get lost in the Bullring. V isn't sure of the way back to the bus stop, or not sure enough of it to prevent us all going in to the train station to ask at the info desk. There's a good pack of us, V, F, C, me, Farmor, Uncle P and cousins S and D. Riding on a double decker bus just to get here was the big draw, and that's been a big success.

The thrill starts to wear thin as we trek round and round Birmingham International, being sent in contradictory directions by various helpdesks and then by some joker in the street so determined to help he hangs up an incoming phonecall half way through the incomprehensible preamble to his actual attempt to send us in the right way. By the time we get there (thanks, Google maps), C is cranky and over-hungry, and only the application of Millie's Cookies stops F going fully postal.

Everyone has a long nap when we get home. Except the grown-ups, of course, there's too much wrapping and cooking and eating and catching up and waking children up from naps again to be done.

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"That is where Tristan lives! And that one is Tinkerbell's house!" F tells me. The homes in question are a pair of treestumps in the woods near Auntie R's house. We knock on them, but because it's three o' clock in the afternoon and the moon is up, F explains to me that the fairies must be asleep.

"We'll have to call again tomorrow when it's early," I tell her. "Come on, let's go home!"

Her face falls. "My not want to go home! My want to stay here!"

"I mean home to Auntie R's house," I tell her, and she lights up again, trots along happily for about three metres, then tells me her feet are tired and she's forgotten how to walk and can she have a piggy back.

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0300. F shunts me over the edge of the bed with both feet, using her mother as a bracing point. I manage to push myself back in by pushing off the inflatable Peppa Pig bed that F was loaned on arrival. F shunned it on the grounds that she's nearly three and can still throw incomprehensible tantrums until her wishes are acceded to. On the other side of the bed, C wakes up and shouts "Hi!" at V.

It's Christmas Eve. Nobody gets to sleep. F attempted to get me to go to bed when I tucked her in earlier in the evening on the grounds that Santa wouldn't bring me presents if I wasn't asleep. I hope that's not true, or I'm not getting anything off tonight's meagre slumber.

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C gets to play with Cousin H, who is about six months older than her and has just learned to walk.

"Dah?" says Cousin H, asking permission to poke C on the nose.

"Go on then," I tell her. "Gently."

Uncle M and I watch as the two tiny girls stroke each other's faces and babble at each other. C is thriving in an atmosphere of dozens of happy relatives, more desperate than ever to start walking and talking. Cousin H is clearly very interested in playing with such a small and manageable person,

We must have been like this as kids, at some point, I think, looking at my siblings P, T and R. Too small to know exactly what we were doing, but still forging relationships that last a lifetime. I'm quite tempted to go and poke their noses too.

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F opens her second present.

There is a three-fold process that plays out over her face. First, the realisation that this is a big doll, of the kind she loves playing babies with. Then that it is a Tinkerbell doll, and then that it is her Tinkerbell doll. Surprise, delight and pride chase after each other. Then she flings herself full-length on V and shouts "Thank you mummy!" before ignoring almost everything else other than the new Tink for the next two hours.

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When it comes to bedtime, I gently explain to F that in five minutes, it's time to go to bed. I'm reluctant, because she's probably going to have an explosive tantrum, especially because she's missed her usual afternoon snooze to watch Frozen with Cousin S.

Instead, she runs to the stairs and starts climbing, so keen to go and sleep she doesn't say goodbye to anyone. I have to bring her back to say proper goodbyes - we're leaving at 0230 in the morning, this is her last look at the assembled cousins and aunties and uncles and grandparents.

Cousins S, D and H get extra big hugs. Everyone else gets a cheery if general wave, and then she's gone, tired but very pleased with herself, carting her Tinkerbell up the stairs in one hand and dragging Bunbun in the other.

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The evenings are filled with Christmas games, teams and solo but always competitive. Mastermind, with proper specialist subjects (I get a mere one point on Space Marine Chapters, because I thought I'd chosen Space Marine Chapter Masters and panicked under pressure). Pass the Pud, with angry discussions about rules. Port. Chilli nuts. Stollen. Stupidly brilliant family jokes and rotten puns.

It's exhausting and stressful, but all in the right ways. There is no time to fret about car crashes or get into tired arguments about who didn't pack what in which changing bag or wonder what kind of job I'll be doing next month. It's all just pork crackling and wine glasses and wrapping paper and changing nappies and breaking up childish squabbles and eating the last mints and just being together as a huge, sprawling, happy family.

Bliss.

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"Isn't it nice to get home again?" I say, after we stumble in through the door of our flat. Eleven hours of delayed flights, trying to change both girls nappies in an airport toilet in Brussels with twenty minutes before the gate closes, endlessly popping ears and the final discovery that the baggage people didn't think we really wanted our pram at the other end. It really is nice to get home again.

F looks with some pleasure at her forgotten toys and room, then slumps on the sofa.

"No. My want to go back to Birmingland," she says. Well, you can book the flights, then, I decide.

Then we all develop the inevitable compilations of colds and coughs that international travel brings. I know I'm the only one equipped to actually have the genuine article, but the whole family gets so pathetic when we get colds that it really is a pandemic of Manflu. A Bloke Death, if you will.

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0530 the following morning.

"Paaba! Hiya! Upp!" C says clearly and distinctly. She's been lying and thinking about this for about fifteen minutes, and the look on her face when I obediently come and pick her up is priceless. It's a toothless grin about a foot wide, accompanied by delighted hand-jiggling.

Good, she can talk.

Yule

Christmas looms, unyielding. At six in the morning, I am often woken by F wandering in and asking if we can open the advent calendar door now. C likes the baubles on the tree and swipes at them like a cat if placed near enough. Outside, the streets are full of glowing chevrons, lit-up stars, jangling nets of lights and Gothenburg's traditional windy drizzle. Come January, it'll just be the drizzle.

We are better, as a family, than a fortnight ago. The car crash has receded. Both girls are fine, bar occasional screams in the night. No more than they'd have anyway, I think. V's whiplash is down to an inconvenient pain, worse when she laughs. My thumb can oppose once again, and therefore often does. You get used to doing things one-handed quite often with a baby in the house. Doing it with only one hand was quite the challenge.

Second-hand, I heard the account of the driver of the other car. He was on his way to work, of course, not speeding much by his own reckoning. Because he was in a hurry (his work was important, clearly, although not so much that turning up drunk was going to be an issue), he was indicating to other drivers that they should move aside by flashing full beam headlights at them. And then ramming them if they didn't? It's incredible, that this is his official, sober and collected statement. "I was driving really badly, officer, but it's okay - I was doing it deliberately."

We're going to Birmingham tomorrow, four hours of flights via Munich. C has been fighting our renewed attempts to get her to sleep through the night with an intense vigour. If I shift position by more than 2cm in the bed at 0400, she immediately gasps with delight and says "hi!" in a loud voice, indicating that I should leap to her side, feed her and then play bouncing games for two hours. At 0400, I generally have other ideas. C is not a fan of other ideas, they aren't hers and don't suit.

F is excited about the pending flight. "I love going on planes!" she told me earlier. "Hairclip Tinkerbell is coming with me when we go to Birmingland."

(Hairclip Tinkerbell is exactly what she sounds like, a hairclip featuring a Tinkerbell figurine. Tinkerbell remains foremost in F's hopes and dreams right now, and seeing her playing with a hairclip in lieu of more official ranges of toys has influenced our choice of Christmas presents somewhat. Particularly as it's a hairclip V found lying on the floor outside, brought home and washed.)

Last time we flew, F was just over one year old. We dreaded it so much that the actual event was a halcyon moment entirely free of our expected worries and seen in hindsight as full of clinking cocktail glasses and snappily dressed hilarity, like something from a Cary Grant film.

Tomorrow we have to change in an unfamiliar airport with one child apiece, whilst suffering from some kind of combination cold and nausea bug. We depart at 1900 for a midnight arrival, to maximise the sleep disturbance. I hope C loves going on planes too, for all our sakes.


Thank-you, in passing, for all the good wishes expressed on Facebook and elsewhere, it is much appreciated! Thanks also for continuing to read this blog, and I hope you all have excellent Christmasses. Christmassi? Christmatrix? Yeah, I like that last one, we'll go with that.

Crashing

We spin out of control. There is no slow down of time, just a frantic scrabble and blur outside the windscreen. The lights of the lorry I was overtaking, then the barrier on the central reservation. Things slam into the car from outside. The wheel and I wrestle. I am screaming "No No No", F is crying, C is screaming, V is cradling her in the back seat.

We aren't spinning any more.

We are in the middle of the motorway, facing back the way we came. Shocked traffic is coming to a halt behind us. There is a wrecked car not far behind us, a sprinkle of smashed parts all over the tarmac throwing long shadows in the headlights of the stopped cars.

We are okay. Are we okay? There is red stuff on V's face, F's legs. People are running up, alien silhouettes in the stark light. I can't open my door. C is still screaming.

We can all talk. My thumb hurts. F wants to know if the car crashed. V is shaking and crying. A Danish man is asking if I'm okay in heavily accented Swedish, a nurse called Elin has come to see if we're okay. Everything smells of petrol.

A fat man in his middle age, eyes wider than an owl's, rushes up. The Danish truckers flank him.

- It's all my fault! Who was in the car? Children? he asks.

- Yes, two, I tell him. He grabs my hand, clutches and shakes it, then backs away. His face is caving in, swallowing itself in misery. The Danes follow him.

We are okay. So we sit and wait for the emergency services. People sporadically come to make weird attempts at small talk. The first Dane asks about living in Sweden, he's thinking about moving there. A man in red and yellow overalls tells me twice how lucky we were. I know, I think. I was screaming no because I thought that was it for us, for my family, and I didn't want it to end like that. It wouldn't have been fair.

F rides with me in the ambulance. They are taking us to the nearest town, Varberg. The last I see of the tangled car, as I step out over a blood-like pool of oil, is C being cradled in the arms of a fireman. Her round face is lit up with the flashing blues of the ambulances. She looks interested.

F is interested too, the ambulance is exciting.

"Was the crash my fault," she asks me, still worried about the fruit salad incident earlier in the evening.

"No! Not at all, it wasn't you at all," I tell her.

"Was it your fault, daddy? Because you were driving and you aren't very good at it."

"Don't talk to the police later, okay?" I say.

It wasn't my fault. That owl-eyed idiot was drunk, the Danes saw him throwing a flask into the ditch. I was driving at the speed limit to overtake a lorry, doing 110 in the outside lane, and there was no warning, to time to evade, just a blaze of light and a crunch and shove and terror.

The policeman tells us in the emergency ward, where we're being checked for minor injuries, that they'd already had reports of him driving like a lunatic before he hit us. He's been arrested, he had insurance, we will hear more from them all shortly.

This is our society, one where it is okay to build and buy and drive cars capable of easily exceeding our legal speed limits. Where the only thing preventing you turning that car into something as lethal and indescriminate as an automatic weapon is a polite expectance that you will be responsible. Where we could collectively decide that is not okay, but we'd rather protect the rights of the rich to have expensive toys.

Life in the West regularly sickens me. Sweden, with it's more active Socialist government, is a vast improvement on my experience of the UK, a country governed by the rich for the rich, where money is the defining characteristic of self-worth, societal value and use, where our elected government (and make no mistake, we elected them, they are our fault) would rather bomb foreign countries than look after the infrastructure of their own. Pathetic.

Excuse me venting, I am extremely angry. Also scared, relieved, amazed and surprised. F and C are perfectly alright, a little shaken up but now moving straight on to the next adventure. I have a big red plaster cast on my left hand (F chose the colour for me), with torn ligaments in the thumb. All that red stuff in the car turned out to be raspberries, scattered by the collision. It feels vaguely inappropriate to find this as funny as I do.

We have to get a taxi home at midnight, the hospital can't help us with transport. So at 1230, we are driving back over the scene of the crash. I watch as the skidmarks roll past and try not to wince every time cars overtake us.

I am alive. All four of us are. Phew. Roll on Christmas.

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V wanted to write something too - here's her take on the accident:


I usually don't write very personal things on my FB page but this will be the exception.

Last night my family and I endes up in a car accident on the big E6 high way between Varberg and Gothenburg. We are all very lucky to be able to talk about it.

About 19:00 last night my husband, my two small children and I were on our way home after a day of major christmas shopping for all the kids in the family... The car came out of nowhere...

My husband had just over taken a big lorry when we saw a bright light coming through the back window and then *bang* we got hit from behind and started spinning, hiting the rail, I leant over my youngest daughter's car seat who was next to me in the back, and I could see everything in slow motion. - My husband desperatly trying to get the car under control and my oldest daughter flung around in her car seat in the front passenger seat. I was convinced that we would not make it.

The car stopped and there was a moment of utter silence, then I heard my youngest starting to scream, I could then also hear my oldest starting to cry followed by my Husband checking how everyone was doing - door flung open and I could hear lots of voices asking us if we were hurt, how the babies were doing and lot of bright lights, the driver of the lorry, a Danish lorry driver started covering us with sleeping bags to keep out the cold when... a man turned up by my husband repatedly saying "Det var mitt fel! Jag körde för fort!" (It was all my fault! I was going to fast!) All very surreal - the man tried to shake my husbands hand. 

When the man walked back to his car the Danish lorry driver said we were very lucky and that the man had been drinking and speeding (drinking while driving too)

This is the point I want to make - Drunk driving. Such a respectless thing to do. Your not only putting your own life in jeopardy but also everyone on the same road. It doesn't matter if you're a very safe driver if others aren't. 

Back to Hell

Ah, Ullared!

Such a name, brimming with promise and redolent of exotic spice. Like distant Samarkand or Marrakesh, a thumming hub of commerce where merchants vend their wares with a flourish, producing magical lanterns or bales of finest silk from the tea-scented depths of their vibrantly-coloured tents, ready to haggle over an ivory chess set or a crystal hookah as they match wits with equally cunning customers.

A mad scrum of pensioners with trolleys. Cut-price velour tracksuits and bulk-buy crates of deoderant, fought for tooth and nail by families driven psychotic by the low-ceilinged fluorescent lights and smell of over-heated diner kebab. An endless maze of aisles. The lowest circle of hell, the one Virgil chickened out of showing Dante round.

For two hours, I lay at the bottom of the slide in the children's play area, cradling C as she angrily tried to get away and follow F. Every two minutes, F would first throw Bunbun down to me and then crash into my thigh moments later, cackling like a fiend. Similarly dead-eyed parents littered the nearby benches. When the zombie apocalpse begins, it will start in some urine-streaked ball pool, where the border between half-life and brain death is already so weak.

We needed Christmas presents, so we borrowed Mormor's car and made the two-hour drive out. Ullared is nestled in a set of low wooded hills out in the countryside. The view from the Lekland window, when not obscured by screaming toddlers, was something like the landscape in Deliverance.

Returning to the carpark at five thirty, we discovered the battery in the car was dead. Had I left the lights on? I was pretty sure not, cars are such hostile territory to me I'm more than usually careful about my dealings with them. Was it the arctic gale howling over the carpark, freezing the acid? Was it the sheer perversity of Ullared, determined to keep us there forever in obediance to F's wishes? She wanted us to sleep in the playroom, and cried when we said no.

V found a man who could recharge the batteries with a portable generator, five minutes before he would have gone home for the day. The cost was her stress levels, already high after I'd asked to keep the time spent shopping shorter than optimum.

That set the mood for the drive home, V and I mostly silent except to growl unreasonably at each other about food (I don't count hotdogs from a crap grill as dinner, but I'd also forgotten to pack enough hot water for C's third bottle, so my bargaining position was a little weak).

Swedish cars are mirror images of a normal UK car. Whenever I change gear, I automatically punch the door next to me first, groping for a stick that isn't there. I mutter a constant mantra of 'drive on the right, drive on the right' as I go, terrified that I will forget. After F, sitting in her child seat up front next to me, tries to fill my ear with unwanted fruit salad on a narrow corner, I lock down totally into a driving trance, eyes and mind only for the road.

About half an hour later, a drunk man ploughs into the back of the car at 200 kph.