Julie's Boggle

It doesn’t seem like that long ago that we were charting the arrival of Jon’s first teeth, and here we are again…  at the very start of Jess’s teething journey while Jon, thankfully, has finally got all of his milk teeth through and won’t be suffering further teething pains for a little while.

I feel slightly wistful at the sight of these small bony ridges pushing their way up through Jess’s smooth pink gum.  It feels like the end of her being a little baby – and my last baby at that.  Soon that gummy infant smile will include two little white teeth, and I’m sure they will look equally cute, but it signifies the beginning of so many changes…

I’m pleased to report that these two showed up without too much trouble (although Jess is currently not enjoying the rest of their travel through her gum), and she’s already using them to good purpose with various items of finger food.  Mum is less impressed that Jess occasionally finds them a useful way of signalling that she’s had enough breast-feeding, now please take it away and leave me alone, thank you.

Even the most cursory read of the last post will reveal that we do a LOT of walking to college and back.

In the little map above, I’ve drawn in the 5 main routes for getting us from home (A) to college (B).

To start with, we kept trying different approaches in the hopes that they would prove faster – but however you want to cut it, the long and short of it (or maybe just the “long”!) is that with Durham’s tricky landscape and the river to cross, there’s never going to be a direct route.

Of all of them, we tend to use (1) the most often.  This is a lovely walk taking in a tree-lined avenue along the river bank.  The pros of it are that it is reasonably direct, and it’s very pretty.  Cons are that there is a flight of stairs to navigate to get from the bridge down to the river path (and of course I’m hardly ever without the pushchair), and at night time, there’s a stretch along the river which is can’t-see-your-hand-in-front-of-your-face black…

For walking at night or early in the morning when the streets are quiet, (2) is the best.  Pros are that there are no stairs.  Cons are that the streets on the west of the bridge are hectically busy during the day and the council are in the middle of an intensive lot of roadworks on these same streets.  (Scheduled to be finished in 2011.) As a result, pedestrians tend to be channelled into narrow, hard-to-navigate walkways and the going can be tortuously slow.

(Central Durham is full of mysterious little alleyways containing flights of stairs up or down.  Adventurous students have discovered one of these just east of the bridge that can lop off the top bit of route (2) if you don’t mind a lot of steps and have a torch to see your way when it’s dark!)

At times when (2) is going to be busy and steps are undesirable (e.g. when pushing a sleeping baby), (3) is a good route.  Lengthier, and lacking pavements for the first bit, but generally smooth and uncomplicated.  (4) takes in the other side of the river and, with some detouring, is also step-free but it’s altogether far too close to the water for comfort when walking with an unrestrained 3-year-old!

(5) uses an unpaved path through the heavily forested riverside.  Scenic, but with some nasty stairs to get back onto the road.  Lastly, there’s a variation on (5) that I haven’t drawn in because we’ve only taken it once.  It is more direct, and unencumbered students use it to make quite good time.  It involves a public footpath which goes through an old cemetery and then runs beside the town’s allotments.  Not a great route for pushchairs – quite steep in places and very muddy after every rain shower.

My best time with the pushchair is 16 minutes on the college-bound journey.  The way home can take longer because the worst of all the up-hills is on the homeward journey in all the routes except (3).  Referred to as “Cardiac Hill” by some of the students, it’s definitely a challenge that lets you feel you’re burning off some of the excesses of the last meal!

In case you’re thinking that this looks like a real drag, I should mention that (i) all the walks are very pretty, (ii) you always get to your destination glowing pinkly no matter how chilly it is outside, and (iii) having done it regularly for the last 6 weeks, I’m definitely finding it easier these days!

As we approach mid-term “Reading Week” (no, it is not half-term because it is not, and I repeat not, a holiday ) I thought it might be time to jot down some notes on the new routines we’ve adapted to now that our family includes a full-time student.

Since Cranmer is a college primarily for students going into the ordained ministry, there’s a big focus on Community – particularly eating together and worshipping/praying together.  To foster this spirit, the Anglican ordinands are all required to attend morning prayer in the chapel at 08h30 each weekday, eat at the college at least 8 times during the week, and attend an afternoon/evening prayer service at least 3 times a week.

Fitting this into our daily life has meant that we come away with a week where no two days are the same.  All in all, not a bad thing, and I find the pleasantly busy and enjoyable days fly by.  For those who have an interest in how we’ve arranged things, here’s a sample week:

Monday:
Breakfast at the college at 08h00 (for which we need to leave home with Jon and Jess in the pushchair at 07h45), then Tom heads off to chapel.  In between lectures, Tom spends his time in his shared office or carrell (university jargon), and he eats lunch at the college every day.  Tom’s Mondays are pretty full, including afternoon prayer at 16h30, and I often walk in with the children to have supper together at the college at 18h15.

Tuesday:
Breakfast for us all at the college again (Tuesday’s breakfasts aren’t as exciting as Monday’s “continental” spread, but we get by with our standard fare of cereal that we would have had at home.)  At 10h00 on Tuesdays, ACCESS (the group of college spouses) have their coffee mornings usually at the home of someone in the group, to which I go with Jon and Jess.

For Tom it’s another full day ending with the much-loved “Gin with the warden” before supper.  On Tuesdays they do a special family meal and many spouses and children come in for that;  it’s followed by an evening communion service to which everyone is encouraged to go.  At the moment, Tom and I are taking turns to go to these, while the other goes home with the kids (usually in a big group with others who live next door) to do the bedtime routine.  Drinks at our local pub are a popular way to end the evening.

Wednesday:
Breakfast at home today so we can move the alarm a few minutes later.  Tom dashes off to chapel at 08h15.  For us at home, it’s just a few hours before Jon needs to be at nursery (12h15), and the morning seems to fly by with Jess feeds, Jess’s lunch, prep for Jon’s and my lunch, eating lunch, grabbing everything and out the door by 12h00!

The time after dropping Jon seems to go just as quickly and by 14h30 I need to be waking Jess to feed her before racing out in the car to get Jon at 15h15. We’re home by 15h30 and then if I’ve got supper to prepare, I start that early as it takes forever with my two little distractions underfoot.

Tom’s Wednesdays are a bit freer lecture-wise and, if I can, I try to drag him home a bit earlier than his usual 17h45 finish especially if I need to head out straight after supper.  And that’s because  Wednesday evenings are reserved for ACCESS (the spouses’ group).  They have a varied and interesting program from movie nights to cheese & wine evenings, and it’s a great mid-week break for me while Tom does the baby-sitting.  Yay!

Thursday:
Thursday and Friday mornings are tight as Jon’s nursery starts at 08h40 and the traffic is quite bad at that time of day.  We have breakfast at home, then Tom does as much as he can to help with getting us out the door, before he has to rush off.  I have a 10 minute window after Tom leaves which is usually consumed with finding Jon’s shoes, brushing his teeth and dragging him and Jess out to the car.

The ACCESS group run a bible study on Thursday mornings and it handily meets in the house next-door.  They often have baby-sitting laid on so I can leave Jess for a while.

On Thursday lunchtimes, Jess and I usually join Tom for lunch at college at 12h45.  (Well, Jess just watches from the pushchair, often grizzling a bit because it’s past her bedtime but she won’t go to sleep.)  It’s a quick walk home after that, to have time to give Jess an hour’s nap before it’s the pre-nursery-run feed-time again.

Depending on what leftovers we have around and how lazy I feel, we might eat at the college again on Thursday.  It’s a little tricky because we have to tell them the day before if we want to have supper there, so I need to be organised and remember to talk to Tom if I feel that I’m not up for cooking myself.

On Thursdays, there’s an optional late evening Compline service at 21h00 in the chapel which Tom rather enjoys going to.  The port and cheese laid on afterwards might have something to do with its popularity.

Friday:
Another nursery morning and this time with nothing scheduled for me except minding and feeding Jess.  (And I’ve put the first two hours of this time for volunteering at Jon’s nursery if they need help.)  We tend to have lunch at the college on Fridays too, although the timing isn’t as good because Tom only gets out of his last lecture at 13h05.

Jon doesn’t really do daytime “naps” more than once a week, so after picking him up from nursery at 15h15, I’ll often plan in a shopping trip to help fill the afternoon, particularly if it’s raining.  If the weather’s good, I let him off from his “quiet time” so he can play with the other kids from the ‘Thill (our complex is called “Brass Thill”) in the large communal courtyard/parking area.

Tom usually goes to the second of the week’s afternoon prayer services on Friday, taking him up to his quota of three if he’s been to the Tuesday evening one as well.

On Friday evenings, the Cranmer dining room is closed so we’d have to eat at the main St John’s dining room if we felt like eating in.  So far we haven’t run the gauntlet of finding out how we’d book ourselves in to eat a meal there, so Friday nights tend to be quiet nights at home.

And then it’s the weekend.  Whew!