Across the Pondlife is a look at life living as an expat in New England, USA. One of the prettiest places to grow up, we lived for five years in a clapboard house in the woods something that appealed to a 'Ma-Ingalls' wannabee with three kids under the age of five.
Stop! Rewind! Let's call this Uprooted. Trailing after Daddy with an eight-month-old, two-year-old and four-year-old. Here I was trying to raise a family, maintain my identity and stay sane! We landed on the tarmac of JFK late at night, in the middle of a hot New England summer, leaving behind everything and everyone we knew, to start our life in a house so old we could see through to the outside, with a petrified bat hanging from the rafters in a country where we knew no one!
Whilst managing to work as a doula and attempting to create some kind of 'earth-mothery-home-cooked-calm persona' after reading 'all the parenting books', writing Across the Pondlife was a tongue-in cheek attempt to try to stay sane and bring up relatively well-balanced children in the process.
There are a few successes and many failures, some poignant and sad moments, lots of swearing, some poetry and a couple of recipes, too, for good measure, as well as run-ins with a miscreant mouse, shitting racoons, a lot of festival camping in the rain and an eccentric German neighbour.