One Daily Positive - Week 21 Visiting the family

Most of the comments I get on these posts are about how busy I am, organised and always have something to do. It's the only way I get through the week. I'm on my own 24/7. I've done the parenting raising 5 kids, had a carer, that I may return to one day. But for now and especially during lockdown I need to have a purpose when I get up in the mornings or I just wouldn't get up.

I feel the need to add 'all whilst practising social distancing, I wore gloves to hand over/drop gifts at a distance also'

138 Sunday After a lie in, I mowed the front lawn and weeded the garden and did some more pruning of the fir trees. The garden waste bin is almost full again. I cooked a full roast beef dinner. Foolishly I left the rest of the beef to cool before putting it in the fridge, the cat got to it, I shouted at the cat, she panicked knocking it to the floor and the dog snaffled it up. Sat in the garden writing letters and sorting out birthday gifts.

139 Monday Finished writing letters, dropped a parcel at the post office and chose new carpets to be fitted in the next 2 weeks. I finished off my papier mache chickens and sat and watched TV. After dinner I  met up with Natalie @plutoniumsocks on the common for a beer and a chat, 2ms apart of course. Both our dogs were very well behaved.

140 Tuesday Took Bob up the Malvern Hills again, this time far away from the sheep. Except we bumped into cattle and that scared him even more.Cleaned the windows and did some weeding in the front garden, read a little, watched TV, had a bath and bed.

141 Wednesday I spent the day weeding the front garden, the lawn and re establishing the borders. I had to soak the ground as it was like concrete and lugged rockery stones from the back garden. It took me all day. Checked in with the biscuit tin basher next door as I hadn't seen or even heard her all day, she was fine.

142 Thursday Time for the food shop, drove down to the retail park to do it so I could pick up a few extra bits for 2b, 4b and mums birthdays in June. I went to M&S, I got as far as the meat aisle, joined the queue to pay and left. They had 37 of the 40 allowed people in the store, one woman was queuing with her adult daughter for a mango and a packet of percy pig sweets, everyone else ignored the arrows and seemed to think a silly smile and tip toeing past was ok. In poundstretcher a guy bargred past me, I asked him if he could give me chance to get out the way and he told me I was overreacting and he was wearing a mask and gloves. I asked him not top embarrass himself further and he shut up. Came home, super stressed, did nothing all afternoon, until I decided to walk to the corner shop to buy the rest of the stuff I needed for the week, a very pleasant experience at Londis, always has been. My neighbour and 4 month baby (social distance) came round to the garden for a chat and cheered me up, I then fixed the squeaky gate much to the neighbours delight, put up a new clothes line and raked the remaining pebbles out of the lawn. Biscuit tin basher failed to make an appearance, still no sign of her at 11pm when I went to bed.

143 Friday Woke in the morning to message from biscuit tin basher, slightly annoyed she diodn't think to tell me she was going out, especially as she'd been so grateful I'd checked in on her the night before. I took a long drive to the Forest of Dean to drop some gifts with child 2 and family and see our grandchild, it's been 12 weeks. It's also my great nephews 1st birthday in June so I dropped his present off as they live in the same village. The sat in a friends garden and she made me tea. Drove back via the motorway to give the car a good drive and make sure there are no faults detected as I only have 30 days to identify any.

144 Saturday Up at 4am, cat started shouting for food at 5.30am, she attacked dog at 6am so I got up and fed them. Back to bed and sleep till midday, then spending the rest of the day sorting through Dad's papers, watching TV, blogging and walking Bob.

On the blog this week:

My Sunday Photo: The worlds smallest theatre

Feeling vulnerable

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Where are all the expats?

I've written before about meeting other expats when you move abroad and let me tell you it's not easy.

In the past 2 weeks we've met people who are moving to Dubai and they seem to be under the impression, like many before them and like many more to come, that they'll step off the plane and there will be someone stood there with a sign that reads

'Expats this way'

There's also an assumption from people who've never lived abroad that you just need to go and find the expat groups to make friends, it's easy.

Well that's easier said than done, because unless you work for an all British company (or company of your nationality) or you live in a compound that your company own. There is no such thing as an expat society.

In South Africa there were pockets of British expats and people would ask us why we chose to live in Centurion and not Lone Hill for example where the other British people lived. But when you looked into it, you realised they knew 3 or 4 other British people who just happened to live in that area, so it became a myth that, that was the British expat area. In Dubai only 21% of the population are locals, therefore everyone else is an expat and yes, we are all expats here because you can not obtain citizenship here and besides we call ourselves expats, not because we are British but because we are expatriated from our birth country for a period of time and will be returning one day, we are not migrants in search of work or immigrants who are never returning to our home country.

When we moved to South Africa, my husband was the only British employee of the company, in Dubai he is one of 2 or 3 and those other people have relocated here from other countries also. Just because they are British doesn't mean we are going to have anything in common and they have young children and their social lives and interests are very different from ours.

There are of course many other nationalities that my husband works with and we do socialise with them from time to time, but they are all much younger than us, mainly single or with small kids. Just because you're all living abroad doesn't necessarily mean you've got anything else in common.

I've been blogging recently about being bored and feeling lonely, I do have some friends here in Dubai and I quite often take the first step in arranging to meet up with others that I've formed an online friendship with. You have to remember that Dubai is a city and with city life comes traffic (lots of it) people work, have school runs etc and just popping round someones house or meeting up for coffee can quite often be a logistical nightmare here.

When we first moved abroad I joined every group going. I took advice from other expats and joined in with everything. There are numerous blog posts about joining a gym, searching face book for local groups, joining specific world wide expat groups, volunteering at your local school etc, but sometimes that is easier said than done.

In South Africa security was a big issue and meeting people online wasn't the best idea, however I did find some volunteer groups that I met life long friends through. Language can often be a big hurdle when it comes to meeting people and even now, the WhatsApp group still converse in Afrikaans from time to time, which excludes me from the conversation. It's not intentional, it just happens.

I find Dubai to be quite superficial, it's all about networking, whose husband can help who and what school your child is at, what job you do, handbag you carry and shoes you wear play a big part in making friends.

Of course that is a fairly sweeping statement to be making, but over the past few weeks, I've revisited the online expat groups throughout their websites and on facebook. Unfortunately these groups either meet in the evenings in bars as they are made up of people who work out here, or they're coffee mornings for 'Mums and tots' although I don't have any children living at home it doesn't mean to say I wouldn't have anything in common with some of these women, but I think it might look a bit dodgy if I turned up at one of their breast feeding support groups.

I've applied to join face book groups that look appealing but their community groups based on where you live and as I don't live in those estates I've been denied access to them. I do visit dog parks and play centres with my dog, I chat with my neighbours when I walk the dog several times a day and there's an open day at the local leisure centre soon I'll go along to.

There was a coffee morning near by this week, advertised as a British speaking group, 15 people attending and local. I thought I'd go along, so I went to register my interest to discover the only confirmed attendees were 15 Asian men, going by their profile pictures.

So you see it's not as easy as you think to just go and find the expat groups, but if anyone does know where these group of people are hiding, will they please let me know.

Are you a good social media role model to your children?

How to be a good social media model to your children

I almost think teaching kids to be savvy online now has almost passed. I don't mean just letting them have accounts and not supervising them in the use of what to and what not to post, but in regards to how they use it with their friends. We've all posted photo's we regret, drunken nights out etc but I've also seen comments from concerned parents about some of the harmless stuff such as endless selfies and how silly their child looks with pursed lips.

I've been on the interent as a full time hobby, tweeting, facebooking, blogging etc for over 8 years, I own an iPhone and MacBook air, I share personal moments, photo’s, thoughts and feelings on a daily basis. I tell you how family behavior affects me but I no longer tell you what that behavior is/was anymore.

Many times I've written an update or a blog post and ended up deleting it for fear of reprocussions, not because I’m worried about offending anyone, I just hate the back handed way people think they can hide behind a screen and say what ever the hell they want.

The 4 boys all have social media accounts and use them differently, I find my kids aged 18-27 use them in different ways and rarely post anything on the main timeline, in fact when I consider how many friends children I have on facebook it is rare that they actually post anything, they comment on peoples posts and share ‘motivational’ crap but rarely share what they're up to, but are happy to respond to messages with details when you ask them about a party, girlfriend or if they want to let off steam about their mum or dad…lol.

My children didn’t grow up with social media, they grew up with a mum who used social media, the youngest had instant access to the internet, he's 18 now but was in boarding private school from year 2 and at 4 years younger than the next sibling he had almost instant access to it, where as the eldest went thorugh school without it being around to any great extent and the demand for mobile phones still being seen as a privilidge and not a right of passage, having left school, college then home by 2007, he's not really got into it, the middle 2 entered their teens through the normal route but left their teens and entered into adult hood with every piece of technology going although they use it very differently, one mainly for gaming, the other the same as I do.

Hubby has only recently started using facebook, he trusts my decsions in regards to meeting total strangers, but the reality is its my kids that keep the closer eye on me when I'm using social media, offering advice, questioning my decisions, asking me to remove images and blog posts because their friends are on here and it could embarrass them, half the time my kids think I'm a bit stupid and when it comes to social media and I do have to remind them from time to time of the number of tweets, responses, comments and blog hits I get and how long it has all been running.

I haven't been the best social media role model for my children over the years, having gone for tweet ups with virtual strangers, but I've always met people in broad day light in busy areas, such as cafes or pubs and I've always let others know where I'm going who with and when to expect me home. In most cases I've met up with people after exchanging messages, exchanging phone numbers and having Skype calls. On one occasion my then teenage son, sauntered past a local pub with his mates to 'check' on me.

I've met people at football matches at half time for a drink, gone to places I'd never have been, events etc and in 2015 I flew from Dubai to Canada to stay with a women I met on twitter. We've had complete strangers come and stay at our homes in South Africa, Dubai and the UK, but we've never had a bad experience to date. 

There have of course been some meet ups that haven't gone as well as I'd have hoped for, with someone being completely different in real life to how they've come across on social media, my kids have been a good judge of character and nearly every one we knew in South Africa we'd met online and we became real life fiends, who one of the kids have stayed with when they went back to South Africa to visit their friends. 

I am of course still cautious when making friends on social media, I've sent private messages to my kids when I think something they've posted online could upset someone, especially family members, but it's more likely that the kids will message me with 'muuuuuum, what were you thinking? take that post/picture down.

Are you a good social media model to your kids? 

Are your kids savvy online?