Here Comes the Sun!

Here comes the sun (doo-do-do-do),
Here comes the sun and I said,
It's alright.
 -- "Here comes the sun", The Beatles

That's a song that just seems to make you feel so summery. Something else that makes you feel summery is, of course, the sun.

A lunch break well spent

We hadn't seen much of our beloved giant ball of gas in May, as the usual spring sunshine was replaced by rain, clouds, and cold temperatures.

However it now looks like summer is finally here, with Switzerland spending the last few days basked in glorious sunshine with temperatures in the mid-twenties. What a relief to finally be able to leave the house without wearing a coat!

I'm lucky that I work fairly close to the lake, so today I popped down to Vidy to have a little picnic in the sun. It was a great way to spend a lunch break, although it did get a little warm wearing a shirt and trousers.

Whilst sat relaxing during my break I began to think of all the things we can do now that summer is here (hopefully to stay for the next couple of months). We can all look forward to picnicing and barbecuing as often as possible, as well as strolling down by the lake, swimming, and so many other outdoor activities.

It also means it will be much easier to think of things to do with Lydia - there's only so many cakes a little girl can bake (see Little Chef) before she starts to go stir crazy from being stuck inside.

Here comes the sun - about time too!

Father's Day surprise

I had no idea that Sunday 2nd June was Father's Day here in Switerland. In England, it's mid-June and that timing always sticks in my head.

So when Lydia came to say hello to me on Sunday morning, I was surprised to see her carrying a present for me (see picture below).

She made it herself, along with some small amount of help from her maman, using green and white paint as well as posing in the photos themselves.

It was a very nice surprise, accompanied by a big hug from my cheeky little princess, and made it a very happy father's day.

Little Chef

I don't mean the motorway service station that peddles distinctly average food to weary travellers.

The Little Chef, in this instance, is Lydia.

She has got into the habit of "helping" us when we are busy preparing meals in the kitchen, the point where she will say, "attend Daddy, je vais t'aider" (wait Daddy, I'm going to help you), then head off to her room to get her stool to stand on.

Of course, at her age the amount of help she can offer is debatable, and would more accurately be referred to as hindrance. Still, it's a nice gesture on her part to want to help us out.

As it was particularly rainy this weekend, I had a little think about what inside activities we could do, and I decided to get Lydia to make a chocolate cake (which actually came out more like biscuits or brownies).

I put an apron on and when Lydia saw this she immediately rushed off to her room and came back with her own apron (a play accessory we got from IKEA). Once she was properly dressed, we got to work on the cake.

I weighed out the sugar, flour, cocoa powder, milk and softened butter and put them in separate bowls, then got Lydia to tip each one into a big mixing bowl. She was very attentive and was careful to tip the bowls so that nothing fell on the floor.

Once this was in place, we mixed it all up using wooden spoons, although a fair amount of it was eaten before we managed to put it into the cake tray! It tasted delicious, and the fact that there were no eggs meant we didn't have to worry about Lydia eating raw cake mix. She loved it!

We popped it in the oven for about 45 minutes, then waited for it to cool down before tasting the finished product. It was nice, but I think I preferred eating the mixture before it was cooked!

At least all this means I have definitely found a rainy day activity that Lydia enjoys.

Instilling Britishness

It's not easy being the sole English/British element of Lydia's daily life as she grows up in Switzerland. All day she is surrounded by French: my wife and her family and friends; the crèche she attends twice a week; the TV and most of her books, and of course everyone else she meets or interacts with in the outside world. Well, it's what you would expect really, given that we live in a French-speaking area of Switzerland.

So, the enormous task of instilling the British spirit into my daughter, from the traditional stiff-upper-lip and politeness to discussing the weather and standing patiently in queues, is all down to me. I am responsible for making sure Lydia knows her heritage, and that at least some of my own upbringing rubs off on her. I think my parents did a pretty good job in raising me, so if I can be at least half as good a parent to Lydia then I will be happy.

But how can you make sure the British influence is present in such a francophonic environment?

Well, it isn't easy. During the week I only see Lydia in the evenings after work, usually for around of 2 hours before she goes to bed. I try to spend the whole time engaged in conversation, asking her questions and prompting her responses in English.

I'm trying to teach her the difference between French and English, to help her understand why I don't use the same words as my wife, and to explain that her Daddy comes from a different country entirely. I think she has started to grasp the fact that England is not in Switzerland, and she knows that she has to get on an airplane when we want to go to see her Nanny and Grandad. When I ask her where Nanny and Grandad live, she says "England", so at least that's a start.

I have just recently started to try a new technique, working on the British identity. For her 2nd birthday a couple of weeks ago, Lydia was given a chalkboard by my parents, and we have spent a fair bit of time drawing different objects, kind of a guessing game for her to play. Whilst doing this the other day I doodled a castle, and then drew the Union Jack flag (bottom-left in the photo).

Lydia asked me, "C'est quoi?" (what's that?), and I replied that it was called the "Union Jack", and that it is the flag of the United Kingdom, where her Nanny and Grandad live. She seemed to grasp this idea quite well, as when we looked at the photo on my phone a couple of days later she said, "ça, c'est Nanny and Grandad". Step 1 complete.

We are already working hard on the politeness side of things, making sure Lydia says "please" and "thank you" when she wants something. This is part of normal growing up, but I can count it as part of her semi-British upbringing.

As she grows up I will start bringing in mini history lessons, discussing the rich tapestry of British history. When she is a little bit older I also plan to take her to some of the museums in London, as the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum are fascinating places to spend the day. OK so this isn't entirely focused on Britain, but everything is written in English so at least she will get to practise that.

One thing is for sure, I will do whatever I can to make sure Lydia knows she is part-English, and that she understands where her Daddy comes from.

Laugh of the Week

We were stood in the checkout queue at our local supermarket, our groceries edging forward on the conveyor as the till lady began scanning our items. My wife walked to the end of the till to start bagging up, while I waited in the queue with Lydia in my arms; not necessarily by choice but more out of necessity, as Lydia would never wait patiently in line without either grabbing at whatever she can reach or wandering off in search of adventure.

Lydia has, for some time now, shown a willingness to be polite to those around her, and regularly says a cheery "Bonjour!" to strangers walking by. This is not a social faux-pas in Switzerland, where politeness has long been part of the Swiss way of life, nor is it a worrying lack of awareness of "stranger-danger" in a world where this seems to be such a prevalent theme. Instead, it is simply Lydia's way of interacting with others as she continues her voyage of discovery in life.

So, as we inched our way forwards at the checkout and said "Bonjour" to the till lady, I fully expected Lydia to give the same greeting, given that children of her age are so inclined to copy those around them. What I did not expect, however, was that "bonjour" was not the only word she would say...

She followed her cheery greeting with the very English question, "How are you today?". Both Chris and I looked at each other and at Lydia in surprise, as we had never heard her ask this to anyone before that moment. The till lady, not being an English-speaker, simply replied "bonjour" and went back to scanning our groceries.

We laughed, Lydia laughed, and then carried on with our day. We are so used to hearing direct repetition of words and phrases that we say often, but I honestly don't remember asking the same question to Lydia. I will often ask, after returning home from work, questions along the lines of "how are you?" or "how was your day?", but it seems that in this case Lydia has managed to repeat my question and combine it with a reference to today.

To me, this is a clear sign that Lydia is really beginning to understand language a little better; she is almost constantly talking these days, and although she still has her own language - I call it "Lydian" - most of what she says is now composed of real words. Unfortunately for my English family, the majority of the real words are French, and I would estimate that only about 25% of what she says involves English words.

That's perhaps one of the reasons why we were so surprised to hear this little, unprompted English phrase coming out of the mouth of our little monkey, and why we found it so funny.

Funny and true!

I saw this picture shared on Facebook today and it made me smile:

English translation:
"Étre un bébé" = Being a baby
"Selon..." = according to...
"...ma mère" = my mother
"...mon père" = my father
"...mes grands-parents" = my grandparents
"...mes voisins" = my neighbours
"En rêve" = in dreams
"En réalité" = in reality

Swisscom App just got better!

Back in February I wrote an article recommending the Swisscom TV smartphone app as a very useful addition to the life of someone with both (see For Anyone with Swisscom TV). Well, the app just got better.

In addition to all the handy features I mentioned before, the latest version also allows you to use your mobile device as a remote control by pairing it with your Swisscom TV box. Fantastic!

No more worries about losing the remote control, batteries dying, etc. Now, you simply need to open the app on your phone, browse the channels (which you can also search through by entering categories or keywords) and switch your TV on to whatever you want to watch.

Whether the kids have hidden it, the missus has lost it or the dog has swallowed it, searching for the remote is an almost daily occurrence for some people. That's where Swisscom TV's app comes in handy - as no one ever seems to misplace their phone these days (they follow us wherever we go), you'll always be able to operate your TV without having to stand up and press buttons on the box. Very, very useful.

Add to this the fact that Swisscom TV also lets you "rewind" back 30 hours, giving you a chance to watch programmes that you missed and forgot to record, and it's clear to see their service offerings are getting better and better.

Once again, as in my last article, I heartily recommend the Swisscom TV app to those with Swisscom TV and a smartphone.

I am not receiving any money or discount from Swisscom for promoting their services in this article; however, if someone from Swisscom happens to read this then I would certainly not turn down any offers!

Holiday Update

I posted a while back about the fact that we were undecided about what to do for a holiday this year (see Holiday Planning). I was leaning towards staying in Switzerland to keep the cost down, but still harboured hope that we could go somewhere with a beach to make sure we had a "proper" summer holiday. For me, a beach is a key ingredient of a real summer holiday, so our search always kept this in mind.

The camp site's swimming pool

After much deliberation and searching, we came across a camp site in the Aigues-Mortes area in the south of France, which is next to the Mediterranean Sea and therefore guarantees a beach-assisted holiday. We plan to go with some friends to the camp site that promises to be child friendly, and has lots of activities for kids to do.

It has a huge swimming pool area, plenty of playgrounds, entertainment, a bakery and a restaurant plus loads more facilities to help enjoy our stay. We'll be staying in a little cottage with it's own terrace area, that should be ideal for meals and evening drinks to wind the day down.

We'll be driving to get there in a journey that should take around 5 hours to complete. We have never before undertaken such a mammoth drive with Lydia as a passenger, and given that she oftens complains when a trip takes longer than half an hour, this would seem somewhat foolhardy on our part.

We plan to leave in the early hours of the morning in the hope that Lydia will sleep in the car, but fortunately my in-laws bought us a portable DVD player to keep Lydia occupied on our recent flight to England, and it can be attached to the back of a head rest in the car for the passengers to view, so this - with any luck - will entertain a restless Lydia during the trip.

I have already recorded a few episodes of In the Night Garden, Postman Pat and T'Choupi - all Lydia's favourite TV shows - onto DVDs, to make sure we are well prepared for any eventualities. I'll also try to get some music on there and some children's music videos (there are loads on YouTube), as that will no doubt help Lydia forget about that she is stuck in a car for such an extended period of time.

Aside from the slight hesitancy over the long drive to get to the camp site, I'm now really looking forward to going on holiday, and hopefully getting some sun in the south of France. The fact that there will be a beach involved only makes it better. I can already see us having a BBQ next to our little cottage, playing bowls on the lawn and generally having a great time as a little family.

I can't wait to see Lydia exploring the sandy beach and getting her toes wet in the sea... She has experienced this before during our trip to Cornwall in England last year (see Holiday in Cornwall), and she wasn't a big fan of sand at the time, but now that she is a bit older, bigger and more worldly, she might get a taste for building sand castles with her daddy.

A Cake fit for a Princess!

Well, we did it. We actually managed to bake a cake that a) looked pretty good, and b) was edible.

To my knowledge, no one who ate a bite of cake ended up either in hospital or face down in the toilet for several hours, and no police officers called on our door to arrest us for attempted bakery (i.e. pre-meditated mass poisoning), so on all accounts it could be considered a pretty good first attempt.

I wrote last week about my trepidation as we braced ourselves to plunge into a world of sugar frosting and cake-carving chaos (see To Bake, or not to Bake...). I really was not looking forward to the task, given our complete lack of experience in baking anything other than pre-made mixtures of bog-standard "cake-in-a-box" goodies.

As it turns out, I need not have been so worried.

We had already decided to make a cake in the form of one of Lydia's favourite CBeebies characters, IgglePiggle from In the Night Garden. IgglePiggle is a more or less man-shaped creature who is entirely blue from head to toe, save for some sprouty bits of red hair, and completely naked. This meant we didn't have to fiddle around with multiple colours or worry about different layers. In essence, it meant making a blue cake and sticking some hair on it.

The Night Garden is a strange forest world populated by characters called IgglePiggle, Upsy Daisy, Makka Pakka, the Tombleboos and many other bizarre things. To be honest, I'm not really a fan of In the Night Garden. For me, it's a little too much like the Teletubbies in that it's main characters are weird creatures that cannot speak properly or even say anything other than their own name. Each episode is also incredibly dull as they seem to do the same thing every time. However, Lydia loves it and gets excited at the sight of Makka Pakka pushing his odd little tricycle around or Upsy Daisy "singing" into her megaphone, so it seemed like a good choice for the cake.

Just before the end of last week, I raised the possibility to Chris of making a simple cake and then shaping an IgglePiggle out of marzipan (or icing) to sit on top. Fortunately for both of us, she agreed with this idea and we set about making the cake on Saturday afternoon, the day before Lydia's birthday, while my parents kept the little monkey busy.

I made the cake itself earlier in the day, using a simple Victoria Sponge Cake recipe I found on the Internet. I actually made two cakes and sandwiched them together with a layer of jam and some home-made buttercream, before coating the top and sides of the double-decker cake with more buttercream.

Chris had been to a specialist baking goods shop in Lausanne on Friday and picked up some white, blue and red packs of ready to roll icing. Using my watching mum's advice, we carefully rolled out the white icing and placed it over the top of our cake, then carefully folded the sides down and chopped off the jagged corners.

The making of IgglePiggle

Having made our simple cake, we then took on the task of making IgglePiggle.

This was the toughest part as we were using blue icing instead of marzipan, which is very fiddly to shape without cracking. Eventually, we managed to piece IgglePiggle together on top of the cake, sitting down clutching his red towel. We added some cubes made out of more blue icing and drew Lydia's name onto them (in edible ink).

Finally we rolled out a red ribbon to go around the cake and added a red star with a 2 on the front (Lydia's age), then hid the cake in our room where Lydia's curious eyes wouldn't find it.

The finished cake

When all the guests were gathered in our living room on Sunday, with Lydia - in full princess regalia - sat comfortably on the sofa, we brought the cake round and sang "Joyeux Anniversaire". To my delight, not only did she join in with the song and look happy doing so, but she also recognised IgglePiggle straight away. Phew!

It was great that Lydia liked her cake, and that it looked like what it was supposed to look like. At the end of the party, there was still more than half the cake left over and I hadn't bought any party bags to hand out to the guests, so the cake has formed part of my daily diet ever since.

I think it should be finished by this time next week.

Just for those who don't know who IgglePiggle is, this is him (left) compared to our version (right):

OK, so it isn't perfect, but I'm pretty proud of it!

To Bake, or not to Bake...

...that is the question.

This particular question could reasonably be re-phrased as "to burn the flat down, or not to burn the flat down", given my lack of baking experience and general uselessness in the kitchen.

My past attempts at MasterCheffery have seen me make such gaffs as setting fire to oven gloves, melting a spatula into a wok, and burning rice (complete with actual flames). This coming from someone who's proudest culinary creation is chocolate scrambled eggs, a concoction borne from a fridge with nothing but eggs and chocolate milk whilst backpacking around Australia.
 It's not that I don't want to cook; in fact, I quite enjoy having a go at a new recipe and new techniques, or new foods that I've never cooked before. I'm just not very good at it.

Every now and then I manage to make something edible, and on rarer occasions something quite tasty. Such examples include Gordon Ramsay's Shepherd's Pie, and Jamie Oliver's vegetable stir fry. I also once made a big meal of Indian food back (see Her First Mothers' Day) and cooked Christmas Turkey Dinner (see I Wish it Could be Christmas Everyday), so I do get it right sometimes.

The reason I'm thinking about baking is because Lydia's 2nd birthday is coming up this weekend. Last year she was too young to really understand anything about what a birthday actually is, and in fact cried when we brought out the birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to her. That took some of the gloss off the celebrations, but you can't really expect a 1 year old to be ecstaticly excited about a birthday party.


This year, she is probably still too young to really grasp what all the fuss is about, but hopefully she will be a bit happier on the day. We won't have a big party with 40+ people this time, so she shouldn't be too overwhelmed, and we've been practising singing happy birthday with her for the last few weeks in preparation for the big moment.

Having worked on steeling Lydia's nerve for her birthday celebrations, our thoughts now turn to the centre piece - the birthday cake.

There are a lot of people out there know how to bake, but I am not one of them. My culinary "skills" stretch only to main courses, or occasionally starters, and bakery has never really grabbed my interest. I prefer salty snacks (like crisps and nuts) to sweet treats, but I don't think the candles would stand up properly in a pile of Walkers cheese and onion flavour crisps. A good Shepherd's Pie would probably hold the candles well, but not really appropriate for a child's birthday party.

And so, a cake must be baked, and there's only two people who can do it - me and my wife, Chris.

We've got a general theme for the cake, based on a kids' TV show she likes, but we lack the know-how to actually put it together. I've found what is supposed to be a foolproof sponge cake recipe on the Internet, and I have no doubt that the "foolproof" claim will be strongly put to the test this weekend.

Chris has gone in search of food colouring in the right colours, while I have researched how to decorate a cake. It all looks very complicated, and I honestly have no idea if we will be able to pull this off. The sponge cake base seems straightforward enough, but certain items like self-raising flour don't seem to be available in the Migros supermarket chain here. Chris has substituted this for normal flour and a raising-agent called "levure", which is typically used in baking here. It'll mean adjusting the recipe and keeping our fingers crossed.

It could go either way: it might be a stunning success that we'll look back on in years to come with fond memories, or it might be a complete disaster that results in stomachs being pumped in hospital.

My parents will be flying over tonight so they'll be here for the birthday girl's big weekend, and it'll be their job to keep her busy while we get cracking with the cake.

We will know by tea-time tomorrow if we've been successful or not. Please, everyone out there in Internet-land, keep your fingers crossed for us this weekend.

If all else fails, the local bakery / patisserie is open on Sunday mornings so we do have a backup plan.