Libmonster ID: IN-30
Author(s) of the publication: Miranda Ingram with Alexander Anichkin


Vita is inexhaustibly thrilled by the traditions of her new English life. It starts each morning as she runs to open the front door to see if the bottles we put out the night before are miraculously full of milk again. Then she waits at the window to see the postman pedaling up the drive on his bicycle. Benedict likes best the weekly adventure of watching the garbage men fling our rubbish into their enormous truck. Then we kick through the autumn leaves across the field to the village playschool, "my English detsky sad," as Vita calls it, where she is only slightly bemused that while her new friends can sing one of her favorite nursery rhymes, "The Grand Old Duke of York," they don't know the words to her other favorite: "Ulibka," or "Smile."

Most fun of all is the stroll to the local family-friendly pub for Sunday lunch on oak tables in front of a roaring open fire. While it is exciting for Vita and Benedict ? and Sasha ? little do they realize that this is a brave new world for me, too.

The England I left behind was a London of wine bars and alternative theater, after-work drinking and impromptu all-night dinner parties. Saturdays were for nursing hangovers rather than stuffing toddlers into supermarket carts and buying the family groceries. Sunday meant a long lie-in buried under a forest of newsprint, not a trip to the nearby playground.

This is the biggest culture shock on returning home: I have never been a mother in England before. Suddenly the size of the garden and the quality of the local education determined our house hunting rather than the need to squeeze into the most happening place in the heart of the capital. I have interviewed members of the school committee there, chatted to other mothers at picking-up time and put an add in the village post office for a child minder ? all people I barely knew existed in the England I left behind. Fumbling about in this new England as blindly as any foreigner it comes as a shock to realize I haven't yet found out where the nearest cinema is or sampled any local wine bars.

Of course the nature of weekends changes with parenthood wherever you are in the world, and old Fleet Street colleagues who stayed here are now likewise rushing home to relieve nannies rather than hammering on the doors of El Vino at pub-opening time.

But had I not been away I would have moved more imperceptibly from one England to another. The world I used to know still exists of course, but it is peopled by a new generation who would find the concept of taking the day off to attend the school nativity play as incredible as I would once have done.

It's a bit of a jolt to realize that the person who boarded a one-way flight to Sheremetyevo at the beginning of the decade never did return.


© elib.org.in

Permanent link to this publication:

https://elib.org.in/m/articles/view/Educating-Vita-Parenthood-in-England-Comes-as-Culture-Shock

Similar publications: LIndia LWorld Y G


Publisher:

India OnlineContacts and other materials (articles, photo, files etc)

Author's official page at Libmonster: https://elib.org.in/Libmonster

Find other author's materials at: Libmonster (all the World)GoogleYandex

Permanent link for scientific papers (for citations):

Miranda Ingram with Alexander Anichkin, Educating Vita: Parenthood in England Comes as Culture Shock // Delhi: India (ELIB.ORG.IN). Updated: 19.09.2017. URL: https://elib.org.in/m/articles/view/Educating-Vita-Parenthood-in-England-Comes-as-Culture-Shock (date of access: 08.12.2024).

Found source (search robot):


Publication author(s) - Miranda Ingram with Alexander Anichkin:

Miranda Ingram with Alexander Anichkin → other publications, search: Libmonster IndiaLibmonster WorldGoogleYandex

Comments:



Reviews of professional authors
Order by: 
Per page: 
 
  • There are no comments yet
Related topics
Publisher
India Online
Delhi, India
993 views rating
19.09.2017 (2637 days ago)
0 subscribers
Rating
0 votes
Related Articles
ETHNOREGIONALISM VERSUS MUSLIM COMMUNITY IN BRITISH INDIA
141 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
FIGHTING TACTICS IN THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (FIRST HALF OF THE 1920s)
141 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
THE MANY-FACED HINDUTVA
141 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
AGVAN DORZHIEV'S ACTIVITIES IN THE IRKUTSK PROVINCE (1907-1908)
142 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
TANTRISM IN TIBETAN BUDDHISM
142 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
DANGEROUS SIMILARITY, OR THE PROBLEM OF KINSHIP OF" TWO ANCESTORS " - LAO TZU AND BUDDHA
143 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
THE MANY-FACED HINDUTVA
143 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
"THE SOVEREIGN'S EYE" (SPIES) IN ANCIENT INDIA (ACCORDING TO THE ARTHASHASTRA OF KAUTILYA)
143 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
"SRI KALACHAKRA LAGHU TANTRA RAJA HRIDAYA" - AN EXTRACT OF THE KALACHAKRA TEACHING. OPENING OF TWO EARLY EDITIONS OF THE TIBETAN TRANSLATION OF THE MONUMENT
143 days ago · From Kahri Jamma
PYOTR MIKHAILOVICH SHASTITKO (1923-2009)
144 days ago · From Kahri Jamma

New publications:

Popular with readers:

News from other countries:

ELIB.ORG.IN - Indian Digital Library

Create your author's collection of articles, books, author's works, biographies, photographic documents, files. Save forever your author's legacy in digital form. Click here to register as an author.
Library Partners

Educating Vita: Parenthood in England Comes as Culture Shock
 

Editorial Contacts
Chat for Authors: IN LIVE: We are in social networks:

About · News · For Advertisers

Indian Digital Library ® All rights reserved.
2023-2024, ELIB.ORG.IN is a part of Libmonster, international library network (open map)
Preserving the Indian heritage


LIBMONSTER NETWORK ONE WORLD - ONE LIBRARY

US-Great Britain Sweden Serbia
Russia Belarus Ukraine Kazakhstan Moldova Tajikistan Estonia Russia-2 Belarus-2

Create and store your author's collection at Libmonster: articles, books, studies. Libmonster will spread your heritage all over the world (through a network of affiliates, partner libraries, search engines, social networks). You will be able to share a link to your profile with colleagues, students, readers and other interested parties, in order to acquaint them with your copyright heritage. Once you register, you have more than 100 tools at your disposal to build your own author collection. It's free: it was, it is, and it always will be.

Download app for Android