I am thoroughly disgusted with myself right now.
It's now day 7 of my vacation and I've done almost nothing. I've slept late, stayed up late, overate, drank too much and generally allowed everything from my brain southward to atrophy. I haven't shaved in days, and, including time spent filling the recycling bin with empty wine bottles and a forest's worth of cardboard, I've been outside for a total of perhaps three hours in the past week.
Part of the problem is Christmas. Christmas is a cozy affair here. We don't have family around and, with no work and no obligation to go anywhere visiting, there's little incentive to get dressed in the morning. We spent Boxing Day in our pajamas playing video games and eating frozen appetizers. EA Create for the Wii is strangely addictive, but last year's goat cheese and parma ham canapes are, um, not so much.
After allowing the children to eat porridge for dinner and spending an embarrassing number of hours flinging myself around the living room to Katy Perry in Let's Dance 2 (Caroline and I are becoming quite competitive), I think it may be time to pick myself up, take a shower and actually DO something.
The trouble is, what, exactly, to do? Interesting things to do with the kids invariably seem to thrust themselves unbidden at me at precisely the wrong moments, say, while on the way to work. Conversely, on those rare occasions when I actually have the time to do something with the children (like now), every one with children below the age of 21 seem to have packed up and gone skiing in France and the children's activities in the city are limited to selling matchsticks and filching tourist's wallets.
Out of sheer desperation we went to the movies yesterday. I say 'desperation' because I generally like to do inexpensive activities with the children. In my mind, the authenticity of any experience is inversely proportional to its cost. Thus, my stinginess makes me feel that I'm giving them a real-life adventure rather than feeding them a packaged, artificial experience. This is why I prefer dodgy little cafes to glittering linen-clothed restaurants and Budapest's rusty little amusement park to Disney's plastic princesses. And, since it's difficult to predict what the children will enjoy and what they won't, doing something inexpensive relieves the pressure to try to cajole them into having a good time. I'm sure they will come to hate me for it later.
The only activities that I can find that are both 'child friendly' and free are the Christmas light shows on various shopping streets in London and the tree in Trafalgar Square. We went to see the tree last year. To say that it was something of a let-down compared to the tree at Rockefeller Center would be entirely accurate, albeit a gross understatement. I suppose that misses the point, really: the tree is meant as a simple commemoration of Norway's gratitude for Britain's role in World War II, not as a display of wealth and status. Still, when you slog through miles of week-old slush because the councils can't get their shit together and clear the walkways after even a minor snowfall, you expect to be rewarded handsomely for your efforts.
The only child-suitable movie showing yesterday in the whole of Christendom was 'Arthur and the Great Adventure'. Now, I generally consider myself a pretty intelligent guy, but honestly, I could NOT figure this movie out. It seemed to be set in a town in the Midwest in the 1950's, but some of the main characters were British. One minor character might have been South African. The purpose of the Aborigines living in the forest and making random appearances with their magic telescope was not entirely clear. Equally unclear was Snoop Dogg's role as a sort of Rastafarian spiritual guide/petty thug with bad teeth. It might have made more sense if I'd seen the first one or had taken recreational pharmaceuticals beforehand. A number of people walked out. The kids seemed to enjoy it, but they were strangely subdued for a while afterwards. Perhaps they, like me, were grappling with the subtext of the overbearing father and misunderstood son between the main villain and his nasty-looking offspring. Or maybe they'd just had too much junk food.
Speaking of junk food, the best thing about going to the movies here is that you're allowed to bring your own food. Well, maybe not ALLOWED exactly, but everyone seems to do it. You know, come to think of it, I've never really SEEN anyone else bringing their own food, so maybe it's just us. In any case, we were out of popcorn, having used the last bag on a previous evening sofa-bound evening watching Polar Express, so we brought Nik Naks. Nik Naks are a South African snack that I discovered accidentally while babysitting for a friend a few months ago. Inactivity makes me both peckish and exploratory. I think he was miffed that I'd eaten them. Sorry, mate, but it's a good thing I found them when I did, as who knows what I'd have dredged up if I'd kept looking.
As far as I know, Nik Naks come in two flavors - Original Cheese (very similar to, if not exactly like, American Cheetos) and Fruit Chutney (very similar to, if not exactly like, American Cheetos that have spent too much time in the kitchen of a mediocre Brick Lane curry house). Funnily enough, Michele and I both gave each other a bag of Nik Naks for Christmas. (No, of COURSE that wasn't the only thing we gave each other. I got biltong, too.)
And so, the day begins. My children are stirring sleepily overhead. Soon they'll be dragging themselves out of bed, and we'll begin another round of 'What are we Doing Today?', a game I have grown accustomed to losing. Maybe I'll drag them to see the tree. At least it's outside and it's free.
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Happy Christmas
Sometimes my kids are so sweet they make me cry.
Caroline's letter to Santa, left next to the cookies, tied with a ribbon and marked 'don't read unless you are Santa'.
Dear Santa
Has any one said thank you for the presents? Probably not! Well, I am, right here on this letter. So "thank you for the presents and the things in my stocking you give me"
From
Caroline
P.S. I hope you like the cookies and milk.
Caroline's letter to Santa, left next to the cookies, tied with a ribbon and marked 'don't read unless you are Santa'.
Dear Santa
Has any one said thank you for the presents? Probably not! Well, I am, right here on this letter. So "thank you for the presents and the things in my stocking you give me"
From
Caroline
P.S. I hope you like the cookies and milk.
Sunday, December 5, 2010
The Sleepover
I had the oddest dream last night.
Having recently purchased a large hotel with only the vaguest idea how to run it, I make a tour of the cavernous kitchen and its mysterious gleaming steel appliances. I discover a massive Lavazza coffee machine on wheels behind the industrial dishwasher, but it only makes coffee one cup at a time, using single serving capsules. Without a real sense of certainty, I am obliged to provide breakfast not only for the throngs of hotel guests who all present themselves in the dining room simultaneously, but also for our own hoarde of houseguests, who hover around in the kitchen, demanding pancakes and French toast rather than the eggs, fried or scrambled that I offer. I must go to the grocery store to buy loaves of bread while at the same time instructing the kitchen staff, whom I have inherited from the previous owners and who appear to have been previously engaged in a non-culinary activity, like bricklaying or prizefighting, and who are even more bewildered than I at finding themselves manning a professional kitchen on a busy morning.
I wake at 5.30, my aging bladder recommending itself to my urgent attention. Relieved that my grueling hotel management experience has been only a dream, I stagger, squinting and sleep-drunk into the bathroom. I hear a noise downstairs. And I remember. It's...The Sleepover.
Yesterday was Caroline's birthday and, in keeping with a tradition we stupidly started a few years ago, we have invited several of her friends to sleep at our house. From a distance, this appears to be a fine idea - the girls entertain each other, they whisper and giggle and mince about. They brush each other's hair. One has hair that reaches nearly all the way to her waist, or rather, she HAD such hair when she arrived. Most of it can now be found in clumps on the living room floor. She looks as if she's lost a fight with a lawn mower. I suspect she will be bald soon.
Up close, a sleepover is a plan fraught with danger. For starters, there is the need to provide sufficient entertainment to keep an unusually large number of children with divergent interests occupied. Some parents resort to bowling or the cinema, but these are for the weak hearted, and we choose no such facile routes. Instead, we provide 'activities,' usually in form of some type of craft. Fortunately, Michele is very good at this sort of thing, and these entertainments are undertaken by the participants with a relish and gusto that I have seldom seen outside of a German beer hall. This year, the children made bracelets and necklaces. I thought it would be fun to offer up these adornments for sale at the next opportunity, but my suggestion was not well-received. If it were up to me, they'd be learning useful life skills at our parties, like coal mining or how to make a really spicy Bloody Mary.
Then there is the fact that 'sleepover' is an ironic misnomer. I suspect that "sleepover" is a tongue-in-cheek corruption of the original term, "sleep's over", but I really have no way of knowing. I do know, however, that there is no 'sleep' at a 'sleepover'. There is bickering and cattiness and the inevitable complaints of the sensible few whose efforts at the 'sleep' part are thwarted by those who possess a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for middle of the night inane chatter. What the hell do these people talk about? They're nine years old for Christ's sake - they can't possibly have had enough cumulative experience to have something to say for this long. Perhaps they just repeat themselves, or put random words together without any real attempt at meaning, like stringing popcorn.
The last I remember it was 1.00 this morning and they were still going; a symphony whose movements all begins with a whisper, rise to a crescendo of crashes and bangs of unknown origin and end, falling all in a heap at a sharp but unintelligible paternal reproach. In the brief interlude which follows, all is quiet. Then someone coughs and the cycle begins again. After a perfunctory 'last, absolutely final' warning to shut their pie holes and go to sleep, I drift off myself and, blissfully, paid them no further mind.
I lie awake, simultaneously anticipating and dreading the first undeniable 'someone's awake' noise from downstairs. I am pleasantly surprised that it does not come until well past 7.00. While the whoops and laughter drift up the steps, I nudge Michele and drag myself from the warm nest of blankets. It is time to make the pancakes.
I am a free-range sort of a cook: I normally have a number of things going at once so I need lots of space and to be able to move about unimpeded, catching things just before they burn or boil over. Sometimes I get it wrong, but usually it works out, and, to the best of my knowledge, my cooking has never made anyone sick. This space hungry approach to cooking, however, is incompatible with a house full of nine year olds, all of whom want to 'help'. But I don't really NEED any help, thanks. In fact, dear little ones, I genuinely suspect you'll be more of a hinderance than a help. But of course I can't say that, not to my precious daughter's friends. They might shun her if they really knew what an anal retentive prick she has for a father. I put on the best smile I can manage at 7.30 on a Sunday morning and allow them to stir the batter. "I'm next!" "No me!" "No, MEEE!" The batter slops out of the bowl and I can feel my blood pressure mounting. Deep breath. Don't yell. "Ok, girls, that's enough stirring." "But I didn't get a turn!" More disappointed noises. I chase them out. "If you want breakfast, get out of my kitchen. Go play. Somewhere else. Go on, out." "Where?" they ask. "The street?" I suggest helpfully.
Dragging their feet, they leave the kitchen. The bacon, in the oven to warm so that I can peel the paper thin slices apart more easily, has now been in for too long and has begun to harden. Muttering to myself like a Times Square vagrant, I dump it in the rubbish and start over. About a third of the way through the pancakes, the smoke detector goes off for no obvious reason. Perhaps the downstairs neighbor, roused by the noise of what must surely sound like a zoo full of elephants overhead, has lit a cigarette. The smoke detector is sensitive. Except, apparently, when the kitchen is actually FULL of smoke, as it was later when I absentmindedly left an empty pan on a hot burner while I daubed impotently at the two glasses of orange juice on my dining room carpet. Although our entire kitchen might be burning merrily without our taking much notice, it's nice to know that we'll have adequate warning if the neighbors ever burn their toast.
Most of the girls have now left. One remains, though, and she and Caroline are surreptitiously coloring each other's noses with Sharpies and putting fairy wings on our son, who protests violently but eventually capitulates at the prospect of being promoted to Caroline's 'best friend'. There is a great deal of banging and thumping and cries of 'stretch him, STRETCH him!' I have neither the energy nor the inclination to intervene. He enters the living room, his skin red and blotchy, his eyes like two bruises. I am surprised to be saying this, but I hope this is makeup.
"Maybe this is a dream, too?" I think hopefully. But no. Now I have to make them lunch.
Having recently purchased a large hotel with only the vaguest idea how to run it, I make a tour of the cavernous kitchen and its mysterious gleaming steel appliances. I discover a massive Lavazza coffee machine on wheels behind the industrial dishwasher, but it only makes coffee one cup at a time, using single serving capsules. Without a real sense of certainty, I am obliged to provide breakfast not only for the throngs of hotel guests who all present themselves in the dining room simultaneously, but also for our own hoarde of houseguests, who hover around in the kitchen, demanding pancakes and French toast rather than the eggs, fried or scrambled that I offer. I must go to the grocery store to buy loaves of bread while at the same time instructing the kitchen staff, whom I have inherited from the previous owners and who appear to have been previously engaged in a non-culinary activity, like bricklaying or prizefighting, and who are even more bewildered than I at finding themselves manning a professional kitchen on a busy morning.
I wake at 5.30, my aging bladder recommending itself to my urgent attention. Relieved that my grueling hotel management experience has been only a dream, I stagger, squinting and sleep-drunk into the bathroom. I hear a noise downstairs. And I remember. It's...The Sleepover.
Yesterday was Caroline's birthday and, in keeping with a tradition we stupidly started a few years ago, we have invited several of her friends to sleep at our house. From a distance, this appears to be a fine idea - the girls entertain each other, they whisper and giggle and mince about. They brush each other's hair. One has hair that reaches nearly all the way to her waist, or rather, she HAD such hair when she arrived. Most of it can now be found in clumps on the living room floor. She looks as if she's lost a fight with a lawn mower. I suspect she will be bald soon.
Up close, a sleepover is a plan fraught with danger. For starters, there is the need to provide sufficient entertainment to keep an unusually large number of children with divergent interests occupied. Some parents resort to bowling or the cinema, but these are for the weak hearted, and we choose no such facile routes. Instead, we provide 'activities,' usually in form of some type of craft. Fortunately, Michele is very good at this sort of thing, and these entertainments are undertaken by the participants with a relish and gusto that I have seldom seen outside of a German beer hall. This year, the children made bracelets and necklaces. I thought it would be fun to offer up these adornments for sale at the next opportunity, but my suggestion was not well-received. If it were up to me, they'd be learning useful life skills at our parties, like coal mining or how to make a really spicy Bloody Mary.
Then there is the fact that 'sleepover' is an ironic misnomer. I suspect that "sleepover" is a tongue-in-cheek corruption of the original term, "sleep's over", but I really have no way of knowing. I do know, however, that there is no 'sleep' at a 'sleepover'. There is bickering and cattiness and the inevitable complaints of the sensible few whose efforts at the 'sleep' part are thwarted by those who possess a seemingly inexhaustible capacity for middle of the night inane chatter. What the hell do these people talk about? They're nine years old for Christ's sake - they can't possibly have had enough cumulative experience to have something to say for this long. Perhaps they just repeat themselves, or put random words together without any real attempt at meaning, like stringing popcorn.
The last I remember it was 1.00 this morning and they were still going; a symphony whose movements all begins with a whisper, rise to a crescendo of crashes and bangs of unknown origin and end, falling all in a heap at a sharp but unintelligible paternal reproach. In the brief interlude which follows, all is quiet. Then someone coughs and the cycle begins again. After a perfunctory 'last, absolutely final' warning to shut their pie holes and go to sleep, I drift off myself and, blissfully, paid them no further mind.
I lie awake, simultaneously anticipating and dreading the first undeniable 'someone's awake' noise from downstairs. I am pleasantly surprised that it does not come until well past 7.00. While the whoops and laughter drift up the steps, I nudge Michele and drag myself from the warm nest of blankets. It is time to make the pancakes.
I am a free-range sort of a cook: I normally have a number of things going at once so I need lots of space and to be able to move about unimpeded, catching things just before they burn or boil over. Sometimes I get it wrong, but usually it works out, and, to the best of my knowledge, my cooking has never made anyone sick. This space hungry approach to cooking, however, is incompatible with a house full of nine year olds, all of whom want to 'help'. But I don't really NEED any help, thanks. In fact, dear little ones, I genuinely suspect you'll be more of a hinderance than a help. But of course I can't say that, not to my precious daughter's friends. They might shun her if they really knew what an anal retentive prick she has for a father. I put on the best smile I can manage at 7.30 on a Sunday morning and allow them to stir the batter. "I'm next!" "No me!" "No, MEEE!" The batter slops out of the bowl and I can feel my blood pressure mounting. Deep breath. Don't yell. "Ok, girls, that's enough stirring." "But I didn't get a turn!" More disappointed noises. I chase them out. "If you want breakfast, get out of my kitchen. Go play. Somewhere else. Go on, out." "Where?" they ask. "The street?" I suggest helpfully.
Dragging their feet, they leave the kitchen. The bacon, in the oven to warm so that I can peel the paper thin slices apart more easily, has now been in for too long and has begun to harden. Muttering to myself like a Times Square vagrant, I dump it in the rubbish and start over. About a third of the way through the pancakes, the smoke detector goes off for no obvious reason. Perhaps the downstairs neighbor, roused by the noise of what must surely sound like a zoo full of elephants overhead, has lit a cigarette. The smoke detector is sensitive. Except, apparently, when the kitchen is actually FULL of smoke, as it was later when I absentmindedly left an empty pan on a hot burner while I daubed impotently at the two glasses of orange juice on my dining room carpet. Although our entire kitchen might be burning merrily without our taking much notice, it's nice to know that we'll have adequate warning if the neighbors ever burn their toast.
Most of the girls have now left. One remains, though, and she and Caroline are surreptitiously coloring each other's noses with Sharpies and putting fairy wings on our son, who protests violently but eventually capitulates at the prospect of being promoted to Caroline's 'best friend'. There is a great deal of banging and thumping and cries of 'stretch him, STRETCH him!' I have neither the energy nor the inclination to intervene. He enters the living room, his skin red and blotchy, his eyes like two bruises. I am surprised to be saying this, but I hope this is makeup.
"Maybe this is a dream, too?" I think hopefully. But no. Now I have to make them lunch.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Traditions
One of the advantages of living in another country is that you can acquire new traditions while continuing to observe those of your own that you enjoy. November already blessed with two of my favorite traditions - bonfire night on November 5th and Thanksgiving on, er, the last Thursday in the month - now brings a new one, the start of Christmas Fair season.
A Christmas Fair is essentially a flea market with mulled wine. It's a forum for the locals to shed the detritus - used toys, old china, ruined books and so forth - that accumulates over the year, and it's an excuse for the adults to get together for a few glasses of Christmas cheer. It's delicious, the transition from November's immutable grey into the warm yellow light of a church hall, sloughing off frozen layers and unwinding a damp scarf, the exchange of good-natured insults with the fathers of your children's friends.
The Christmas Fair is the perfect way to bring out the festive spirit that has eluded me in recent years. It's simple, homey, and about as un-commercial as you can get. There's no shortage of ways to spend your money, but you're generally forking over 10 or 20p at a time, not ten and twenty pound notes, and you get mince pies and bits of candy for your hard-earned dosh. Santa visits and distributes largesse to the children, good and otherwise. The lady manning the toy stall let our children have a few extra things even though they didn't have the cash. There was a tombola, a raffle and a cake stall. It was a perfect way to spend the short November afternoon.
And now that the fireworks have died down, most of the Thanksgiving turkey is gone and the last vestiges of pumpkin pie scrubbed from the carpet, I'm finally ready for Christmas.
A Christmas Fair is essentially a flea market with mulled wine. It's a forum for the locals to shed the detritus - used toys, old china, ruined books and so forth - that accumulates over the year, and it's an excuse for the adults to get together for a few glasses of Christmas cheer. It's delicious, the transition from November's immutable grey into the warm yellow light of a church hall, sloughing off frozen layers and unwinding a damp scarf, the exchange of good-natured insults with the fathers of your children's friends.
The Christmas Fair is the perfect way to bring out the festive spirit that has eluded me in recent years. It's simple, homey, and about as un-commercial as you can get. There's no shortage of ways to spend your money, but you're generally forking over 10 or 20p at a time, not ten and twenty pound notes, and you get mince pies and bits of candy for your hard-earned dosh. Santa visits and distributes largesse to the children, good and otherwise. The lady manning the toy stall let our children have a few extra things even though they didn't have the cash. There was a tombola, a raffle and a cake stall. It was a perfect way to spend the short November afternoon.
And now that the fireworks have died down, most of the Thanksgiving turkey is gone and the last vestiges of pumpkin pie scrubbed from the carpet, I'm finally ready for Christmas.
Death's Headstone
I have always been fascinated by graveyards. Not in a morbid, creepy kind of way, but because they are full of things to stimulate the imagination - an explorer's ancient marker here, a soldier's broken angel there. Multiple generations of the same family buried in successive ranks over the course of several hundred years.
Caroline's Saturday afternoon gymnastics class is at a school at the far end of the planet, a good 30 minute walk from our house. No form of public transportation takes us close enough to bother. It is too far to walk home during her class, and there is little to do in the area but wait in the schoolyard and try not to look too suspicious. Most weeks, a friend with both a vehicle and a daughter in the class brings her back, but this week I had to hang around to take her home.
It has been extremely cold here lately - the temperature has been hovering around 0C (that's 32F for the dysmetric). That might not sound so cold to those used to Pennsylvania's appalling winters, but you also have to factor in the damp. There is a meteorological anomaly that occurs regularly here - a kind of freezing fog that permeates everything it touches, chilling you to the bone. If you've ever stepped into the freezing mist emanating from a walk-in freezer, you'll know what I mean.
Saturday, despite gloves and scarf and hat and five layers of clothing, was chilly, and after 30 minutes of sitting in the schoolyard at the pint-sized picnic tables reading 'Wolf Hall' (a very good book, by the way), I needed a walk to restore the circulation. Just beside the school is an ancient church, and in the churchyard, a cemetery. Some of the stones near the church entrance date from the late 1700's, so I assume the church is at least that old, unless they built the cemetery first, which seems unlikely.
After my initial excitement at finding two headstones from 1777, I was disappointed to discover that many of the other graves are no older than the mid-1800's, and most seem to be from 1940's and onward. Still, the graveyard stretched on and on and it was a grey, slightly misty day, the last quivering leaves rattling in the ancient oaks; it was just the sort of day for wandering in a quiet cemetery and having a good think, so wander and think I did.
As I was about to head back to the school and its cramped benches, I noticed one small white marble marker, unremarkable but for one of the surnames on it: De'ath.
Seriously. Someone named Death is buried in the cemetery next to the little school where my daughter has her gymnastics class.
Imagine going through life with that name dragging behind you like a length of chain. Oh, sure, it was probably cool around Halloween ("Hey, fellas, Death just called, he's coming to the party tonight, and he's got killer weed!"), but most of the time, I expect that it must've been something of a burden. ("I'm sorry, Mr. Death, we just don't think you're cut out to work in sales here at IBM." or "Do you, Death, take this woman?"). I'd have thought the poor guy would've changed his name. Maybe the apostrophe was added to soften it a bit. "No, it's pronounced De-AATH." In any case, I took a photo and had a good chuckle as I directed my frostbitten steps back toward the school.
Thanks, Death!
Caroline's Saturday afternoon gymnastics class is at a school at the far end of the planet, a good 30 minute walk from our house. No form of public transportation takes us close enough to bother. It is too far to walk home during her class, and there is little to do in the area but wait in the schoolyard and try not to look too suspicious. Most weeks, a friend with both a vehicle and a daughter in the class brings her back, but this week I had to hang around to take her home.
It has been extremely cold here lately - the temperature has been hovering around 0C (that's 32F for the dysmetric). That might not sound so cold to those used to Pennsylvania's appalling winters, but you also have to factor in the damp. There is a meteorological anomaly that occurs regularly here - a kind of freezing fog that permeates everything it touches, chilling you to the bone. If you've ever stepped into the freezing mist emanating from a walk-in freezer, you'll know what I mean.
Saturday, despite gloves and scarf and hat and five layers of clothing, was chilly, and after 30 minutes of sitting in the schoolyard at the pint-sized picnic tables reading 'Wolf Hall' (a very good book, by the way), I needed a walk to restore the circulation. Just beside the school is an ancient church, and in the churchyard, a cemetery. Some of the stones near the church entrance date from the late 1700's, so I assume the church is at least that old, unless they built the cemetery first, which seems unlikely.
After my initial excitement at finding two headstones from 1777, I was disappointed to discover that many of the other graves are no older than the mid-1800's, and most seem to be from 1940's and onward. Still, the graveyard stretched on and on and it was a grey, slightly misty day, the last quivering leaves rattling in the ancient oaks; it was just the sort of day for wandering in a quiet cemetery and having a good think, so wander and think I did.
As I was about to head back to the school and its cramped benches, I noticed one small white marble marker, unremarkable but for one of the surnames on it: De'ath.
Seriously. Someone named Death is buried in the cemetery next to the little school where my daughter has her gymnastics class.
Imagine going through life with that name dragging behind you like a length of chain. Oh, sure, it was probably cool around Halloween ("Hey, fellas, Death just called, he's coming to the party tonight, and he's got killer weed!"), but most of the time, I expect that it must've been something of a burden. ("I'm sorry, Mr. Death, we just don't think you're cut out to work in sales here at IBM." or "Do you, Death, take this woman?"). I'd have thought the poor guy would've changed his name. Maybe the apostrophe was added to soften it a bit. "No, it's pronounced De-AATH." In any case, I took a photo and had a good chuckle as I directed my frostbitten steps back toward the school.
Thanks, Death!
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Wills and Kate
As you probably know by now, the Royal Family today announced the engagement of Prince William, heir to the British monarchy, and Kate Middleton, soon to be heiress to 50% of the British Monarchy. Reactions were mixed, which is to say that the vast majority of people I spoke to were either totally ignorant of the goings on or completely apathetic about it. Some were ignorant until I told them, and then they were apathetic. This does not bode well for the spectacle of the wedding, but I'm sure the tourists will make up the numbers and I'll be right there with them.
Sky news interviewed friends of Wills today. I wonder what is required to qualify one to be a friend of the Prince. Good teeth and hair seem to be the main discernible qualities. I imagine the truly privileged like Wills and Harry and their friends are an appallingly vapid bunch, and that when they get together, the combined emotional maturity of the gathering to be something on par with a room full of Paris Hiltons. This is probably unfair, though. I don't actually know any of the truly privileged, so my judgement may be off. Somehow, I doubt it, though.
About 10 minutes after the announcement, a friend from my old neighborhood emailed me to marvel at the goings on. "Aren't the royals basically just bleeding the taxpayers dry?" he asked, quite reasonably. Actually, as it turns out, not exactly. Apparently, the Queen and the Prince of Wales (William's father) cost the UK taxpayers about £42M per year, well, according to Wikipedia, anyway. And they don't pay tax on some or all of their income. While £42M a year is nothing to sneeze at, even assuming this is true, I'd say they're a bargain - without the Queen, would anyone come here to visit? London's a somewhat grey, damp place with a soon-to-be 20% tax on pretty much everything. Surely the mere presence of a queen and all the trappings of the monarchy draw more than that a year in revenue.
Regardless, I hope that I'll get to see something of the wedding. I'm sure my name's already on the A list and they're deciding whether to seat me next to the Duke of Norfolk or the Earl of Essex. Decisions, decisions.
Sky news interviewed friends of Wills today. I wonder what is required to qualify one to be a friend of the Prince. Good teeth and hair seem to be the main discernible qualities. I imagine the truly privileged like Wills and Harry and their friends are an appallingly vapid bunch, and that when they get together, the combined emotional maturity of the gathering to be something on par with a room full of Paris Hiltons. This is probably unfair, though. I don't actually know any of the truly privileged, so my judgement may be off. Somehow, I doubt it, though.
About 10 minutes after the announcement, a friend from my old neighborhood emailed me to marvel at the goings on. "Aren't the royals basically just bleeding the taxpayers dry?" he asked, quite reasonably. Actually, as it turns out, not exactly. Apparently, the Queen and the Prince of Wales (William's father) cost the UK taxpayers about £42M per year, well, according to Wikipedia, anyway. And they don't pay tax on some or all of their income. While £42M a year is nothing to sneeze at, even assuming this is true, I'd say they're a bargain - without the Queen, would anyone come here to visit? London's a somewhat grey, damp place with a soon-to-be 20% tax on pretty much everything. Surely the mere presence of a queen and all the trappings of the monarchy draw more than that a year in revenue.
Regardless, I hope that I'll get to see something of the wedding. I'm sure my name's already on the A list and they're deciding whether to seat me next to the Duke of Norfolk or the Earl of Essex. Decisions, decisions.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Up in Flames
At this moment, there are fireworks out the front window, out the back window, and off in the distance in all directions. It's like living in Baghdad. Or inside a bag of microwave popcorn.
November 5th is Bonfire Night, a grand tradition that dates from 1606 when the members of Parliament passed a law calling for a public celebration of Guy Fawkes' failed attempt to blow them up the year before. (The Act also curried favor with King James by crediting him with guaranteeing continued peace and prosperity with the "plentiful progeny proceeding out of his royal loins"). The law was repealed about 200 years ago, but the the Brits love a good effigy burning, so on 5th November the populace still burn things in huge bonfires, and what they don't burn, they blow up.
This is my new favorite holiday.
Right now, there are at least five houses that I can see letting off fireworks. The one out the front to the left is practically a professional display. They have fast little ones, fairies streaking across the night sky. They have big thumping ones, the kind you feel in your chest. They have whistlers, and sparklers and big colorful bursts. They've been going on for about ten minutes, and it's just so cool to sit in your living room with a mug of tea, a fat Brazilian guy in an Elvis suit staggering his way tunelessly through "Viva Las Vegas" on X Factor and fireworks out the front window. You have to bear in mind, though, that we live in a pretty densely populated area, so I'm expecting one to come flying through the window at any minute. Some are so close that I can actually smell them. Bits of flaming debris are falling onto the roof of the house across the street.
The nice thing about fireworks in November is that they start early. It's dark here by 6, so we ate an early dinner and at 5.30, set out for the local park with Michael (Caroline is at a friend's birthday sleepover). It was a lovely evening, mild and cheery. The heat from the bonfire tightened our eyelips and dried our lips from a hundred yards away. We drank wine from plastic cups. We chatted with friends. We bought a kitschy light up toy for Michael, who ran around with his little mates. While the fireworks were going off he sat on my shoulders and marveled at them in his innocent little boy voice.
Caroline and the party girls went to the park, too, and we ran into them afterwards. It was odd, bumping into my daughter and her friends out on the town for the evening, watching her scamper off with them, grinning broadly, her parents forgotten.
She's growing up; growing out, molting again. She's already left behind the baby that slept on my chest, the toddler that never slept at all, the little girl in pigtails with holes in her smile. Now, a month shy of her ninth birthday, she's starting to shrug off her childish persona, starting to become a preteen. We had a long conversation today about how good food should be an experience involving all five senses, and she understood what I was talking about.
I love watching her metamorphosis, and I love how she's turning out, but every change is bittersweet.
November 5th is Bonfire Night, a grand tradition that dates from 1606 when the members of Parliament passed a law calling for a public celebration of Guy Fawkes' failed attempt to blow them up the year before. (The Act also curried favor with King James by crediting him with guaranteeing continued peace and prosperity with the "plentiful progeny proceeding out of his royal loins"). The law was repealed about 200 years ago, but the the Brits love a good effigy burning, so on 5th November the populace still burn things in huge bonfires, and what they don't burn, they blow up.
This is my new favorite holiday.
Right now, there are at least five houses that I can see letting off fireworks. The one out the front to the left is practically a professional display. They have fast little ones, fairies streaking across the night sky. They have big thumping ones, the kind you feel in your chest. They have whistlers, and sparklers and big colorful bursts. They've been going on for about ten minutes, and it's just so cool to sit in your living room with a mug of tea, a fat Brazilian guy in an Elvis suit staggering his way tunelessly through "Viva Las Vegas" on X Factor and fireworks out the front window. You have to bear in mind, though, that we live in a pretty densely populated area, so I'm expecting one to come flying through the window at any minute. Some are so close that I can actually smell them. Bits of flaming debris are falling onto the roof of the house across the street.
The nice thing about fireworks in November is that they start early. It's dark here by 6, so we ate an early dinner and at 5.30, set out for the local park with Michael (Caroline is at a friend's birthday sleepover). It was a lovely evening, mild and cheery. The heat from the bonfire tightened our eyelips and dried our lips from a hundred yards away. We drank wine from plastic cups. We chatted with friends. We bought a kitschy light up toy for Michael, who ran around with his little mates. While the fireworks were going off he sat on my shoulders and marveled at them in his innocent little boy voice.
Caroline and the party girls went to the park, too, and we ran into them afterwards. It was odd, bumping into my daughter and her friends out on the town for the evening, watching her scamper off with them, grinning broadly, her parents forgotten.
She's growing up; growing out, molting again. She's already left behind the baby that slept on my chest, the toddler that never slept at all, the little girl in pigtails with holes in her smile. Now, a month shy of her ninth birthday, she's starting to shrug off her childish persona, starting to become a preteen. We had a long conversation today about how good food should be an experience involving all five senses, and she understood what I was talking about.
I love watching her metamorphosis, and I love how she's turning out, but every change is bittersweet.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Trick or, oh sorry
Here, Halloween is an unusual experience.
The local conservation association circulated a flyer, printed on orange paper, to explain how it all works:
"Halloween: what is it?
Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the 31st of October, in which children dress up and go door to door collecting sweets."
Seriously. If you live in a country where Halloween is a given, consider yourself fortunate. There are many, many people here who simply do not understand the concept.
Take, for example, those who posted notices on their doors instructing Trick-or-Treaters to Kindly Piss Off, or something to that effect. Show me a house with a sign like that in the US and I'll show you a house where the owner will spend the next six months scraping dried egg off the vinyl siding and trying to ignore the odor of burnt dog shit outside his front door.
Last year, we encountered a lady who, after distributing sweets to most of the children at her door, decided that she'd handed out enough for one go and shooed the rest away, unrewarded for their efforts. Tonight, a woman handed a single Cadbury bar to our children and their friend and told them to "split this three ways" before slamming the door on them. The children still chorused "thank you" at the unlit doorway.
One very nice lady, an American judging from her accent, handed out Monster Munch crisps. Despite the appropriate name, I think these missed the mark, as I don't believe I've ever heard anyone offer trick-or-treaters a choice of "fiery hot, roast beef or pickled onion."
Halloween here is somewhat surreal and is still very much a word of mouth thing. And this, I think, underscores the major difference between Halloween here and in America.
In the States, you can't possibly NOT understand Halloween. It's been so oversold, so over-commercialized, so over-hyped, that you'd have to have lived under a rock or in an institution your entire life to have avoided it. Here, there are people who just honestly don't get it. They are taken aback every year by encounters on the street with short, oddly dressed people. They do not understand why children keep knocking on their door when they leave their outside light on. They require an explanation in the form of an orange flyer containing helpful instructions to either attract or repel oddly-dressed children on the eve of All Saint's Day.
Here, Halloween feels very much like it did when I was a kid, before Hallmark started flogging Halloween cards (HALLOWEEN CARDS, for Christ's sake. Think about that for a minute.), before the local Dollar Tree began stocking 50-pound bags of second tier candy like Phlegm Balls and Asbestos Chews. Halloween here feels a little edgy and vaguely dangerous. Halloween here is still a bit lawless, like it was before the adults back home started fussing about it and making up rules.
Here, children still dress in black, blissfully unaware of their American brethren's requirement to swaddle themselves in so much reflective material that they are visible from space. Here, children scramble from house to house, tripping over half-buried roots in the dark and crossing roads when and where they please. Here, children do not wear blinking trainers or carry flashlights. Here, parents do not chauffeur their cherished offspring about in belching SUVs, little Tyler and Taylor buckled into their 5-point safety harnesses like towheaded F-16 pilots watching Disney DVDs between houses. Here, the hospitals will not X-ray the children's candy.
Here, there are no set hours for Halloween. Here, people set off fireworks. Here, jack-o-lanterns are lit with actual candles and here, even the older children still dress up and say "Trick or Treat". Here, kids don't just shuffle up, open their sacks and shuffle away again. Here, people still laugh or act frightened when they open the door to a cadre of skeletons and witches and cats. Here, Halloween is still innocent, uncorrupted by meddling parents and officious busybodies.
Here, despite the cynicism of this chilly, expensive city gnawing away at your soul like a giant rat, Halloween still has a bit of wonder and magic about it. Here, Halloween is still pure.
Fiery Hot for me, please.
The local conservation association circulated a flyer, printed on orange paper, to explain how it all works:
"Halloween: what is it?
Halloween is a holiday celebrated on the 31st of October, in which children dress up and go door to door collecting sweets."
Seriously. If you live in a country where Halloween is a given, consider yourself fortunate. There are many, many people here who simply do not understand the concept.
Take, for example, those who posted notices on their doors instructing Trick-or-Treaters to Kindly Piss Off, or something to that effect. Show me a house with a sign like that in the US and I'll show you a house where the owner will spend the next six months scraping dried egg off the vinyl siding and trying to ignore the odor of burnt dog shit outside his front door.
Last year, we encountered a lady who, after distributing sweets to most of the children at her door, decided that she'd handed out enough for one go and shooed the rest away, unrewarded for their efforts. Tonight, a woman handed a single Cadbury bar to our children and their friend and told them to "split this three ways" before slamming the door on them. The children still chorused "thank you" at the unlit doorway.
One very nice lady, an American judging from her accent, handed out Monster Munch crisps. Despite the appropriate name, I think these missed the mark, as I don't believe I've ever heard anyone offer trick-or-treaters a choice of "fiery hot, roast beef or pickled onion."
Halloween here is somewhat surreal and is still very much a word of mouth thing. And this, I think, underscores the major difference between Halloween here and in America.
In the States, you can't possibly NOT understand Halloween. It's been so oversold, so over-commercialized, so over-hyped, that you'd have to have lived under a rock or in an institution your entire life to have avoided it. Here, there are people who just honestly don't get it. They are taken aback every year by encounters on the street with short, oddly dressed people. They do not understand why children keep knocking on their door when they leave their outside light on. They require an explanation in the form of an orange flyer containing helpful instructions to either attract or repel oddly-dressed children on the eve of All Saint's Day.
Here, Halloween feels very much like it did when I was a kid, before Hallmark started flogging Halloween cards (HALLOWEEN CARDS, for Christ's sake. Think about that for a minute.), before the local Dollar Tree began stocking 50-pound bags of second tier candy like Phlegm Balls and Asbestos Chews. Halloween here feels a little edgy and vaguely dangerous. Halloween here is still a bit lawless, like it was before the adults back home started fussing about it and making up rules.
Here, children still dress in black, blissfully unaware of their American brethren's requirement to swaddle themselves in so much reflective material that they are visible from space. Here, children scramble from house to house, tripping over half-buried roots in the dark and crossing roads when and where they please. Here, children do not wear blinking trainers or carry flashlights. Here, parents do not chauffeur their cherished offspring about in belching SUVs, little Tyler and Taylor buckled into their 5-point safety harnesses like towheaded F-16 pilots watching Disney DVDs between houses. Here, the hospitals will not X-ray the children's candy.
Here, there are no set hours for Halloween. Here, people set off fireworks. Here, jack-o-lanterns are lit with actual candles and here, even the older children still dress up and say "Trick or Treat". Here, kids don't just shuffle up, open their sacks and shuffle away again. Here, people still laugh or act frightened when they open the door to a cadre of skeletons and witches and cats. Here, Halloween is still innocent, uncorrupted by meddling parents and officious busybodies.
Here, despite the cynicism of this chilly, expensive city gnawing away at your soul like a giant rat, Halloween still has a bit of wonder and magic about it. Here, Halloween is still pure.
Fiery Hot for me, please.
Monday, October 25, 2010
The Cook and the Castle Builder
Having recently rolled my personal odometer over, I have begun to notice certain things which suggest that I am aging. Today, for example, I had an old man moment at work while listening to some snotty kid fresh off the grad program bang on about how his group had replaced "ten year old Solaris server infrastructure that was basically just dust! Huh, huh, huh!" I wanted to point out that those servers had performed more reliably and consistently than anything built since, that ten years isn't really all that long for what was at the time a massive investment, that it's bad form to laugh at your own jokes and that maybe it was time to pay to get his hair cut now that he's no longer living on the money he gets from his paper route and whatever small notes he can nick from his mother's purse. But of course saying those things would make me sound old and bitter. And that's because I am. So I plugged in my headphones and turned up the Talking Heads.
Well, I didn't really. But it struck me in that moment - this is a young man's game. This kid, with his spiky hair and his obnoxious mannerisms, he's the future of technology, as I was when I was his age. Now I'm just a dinosaur, and the best I can hope for is that I shall shortly be converted into petroleum and thereby provide at least some residual usefulness.
When I look around my floor at work - and it's a big floor, I can see probably three or four hundred people from my seat - I don't see many people over the age of, say, 50. Most of them are in offices. I am not. That gives me about ten years to either get promoted twice or get the hell out. But what would I do? I'm not particularly good at anything else (and I'm sure that some would argue that I'm not particularly good at this either...).
Frankly, I still can't decide what I'll be when I grow up. I enrolled in college as a Business Administration major. After reflection I switched to 'undecided' because I couldn't see myself spending my life behind a desk. I also did this to avoid calculus. So where have I been since graduation? Apart from the summer I spent in a construction job, I have been in exactly the place I was trying to avoid - behind a desk. Fortunately, I have not been called upon to use any calculus. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been bad, I'm just not sure it's what I'm meant to be doing. Trouble is, if it's not, I'm not entirely sure what is. I wonder whether anyone ever is sure, really.
When I was very young I wanted to build houses. This was probably down to having identified with Jason the Mason from Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day. At some point I wanted to be an archaeologist. When I was in third or fourth grade, I desperately wanted to become a teacher. I'd like to say that this aspiration was born of a desire to make the world a better place, but it wasn't. It was born of a desire to have the book with the answers printed in it in blue and to give out homework. This evolved into wanting to actually run a school. For about a year, I collected school supplies and labelled them "St. Ann's School"
As a teenager, I wanted to be a lawyer. I think I'd have made a good lawyer - I am both anal retentive and orally expulsive, a good combination for lawyering. When I was older, I wanted to be a chef. I worked in a succession of restaurants, first washing dishes, then as a prep cook, a pantry cook and finally, at eighteen, the sous chef in a sizable restaurant. I'm afraid I wasn't very good at it, but I enjoyed the hell out of myself. It was nothing at all like Ratatouille.
Later I wanted to work in theater. I'd spent a lot of time on and around the stage in high school, primarily as a means of avoiding class, but this prompted me to take a course in set construction at university, taught by a guy named Walt. I loved old Walt. He was shockingly overweight, perennially ill-tempered and an accomplished curmudgeon. His favorite expression of displeasure was "fuck 'em and feed 'em fish heads." I still say that.
I work in technology, but I am not a technologist, not really. Someone asked me the other day what processor my MacBook has. I have absolutely no idea, and really I couldn't care less. It works, and that is how I like my technology - working, and with as little intervention on my part as possible. Yes, I can still fix my computer when it breaks, I would just really rather not have to.
There are a fair few things I'd have liked to have done, and I do not think I am unique in this regard. But it's really a bit too late to go making drastic career changes. I don't know if I would have been any more suited to any of those things than I am to my job now. At twenty-one or twenty-two, you choose a life and you live it, and there's really no opportunity to go back and do it over.
So maybe it's too late for me. But what about the children? Michael wants to be a fireman and a castle builder. Caroline wants to be a cook and an artist and a scientist. Their aspirations will probably change over time, but I hope that I can be the sort of parent who encourages them to do what makes them happy, rather than what will make them prosperous.
But I do take comfort in the fact that in about fifteen years, that grad will be sitting at his desk, listening to his Brandon Flowers and feeling nostalgic, when some kid who is currently still eating his own boogers starts spewing about having just replaced some ancient piece of infrastructure, and he will have his very own old man moment. I'm just sorry I won't be there to see it. I'll be in an office. Or not.
Well, I didn't really. But it struck me in that moment - this is a young man's game. This kid, with his spiky hair and his obnoxious mannerisms, he's the future of technology, as I was when I was his age. Now I'm just a dinosaur, and the best I can hope for is that I shall shortly be converted into petroleum and thereby provide at least some residual usefulness.
When I look around my floor at work - and it's a big floor, I can see probably three or four hundred people from my seat - I don't see many people over the age of, say, 50. Most of them are in offices. I am not. That gives me about ten years to either get promoted twice or get the hell out. But what would I do? I'm not particularly good at anything else (and I'm sure that some would argue that I'm not particularly good at this either...).
Frankly, I still can't decide what I'll be when I grow up. I enrolled in college as a Business Administration major. After reflection I switched to 'undecided' because I couldn't see myself spending my life behind a desk. I also did this to avoid calculus. So where have I been since graduation? Apart from the summer I spent in a construction job, I have been in exactly the place I was trying to avoid - behind a desk. Fortunately, I have not been called upon to use any calculus. Don't get me wrong, it hasn't been bad, I'm just not sure it's what I'm meant to be doing. Trouble is, if it's not, I'm not entirely sure what is. I wonder whether anyone ever is sure, really.
When I was very young I wanted to build houses. This was probably down to having identified with Jason the Mason from Richard Scarry's What Do People Do All Day. At some point I wanted to be an archaeologist. When I was in third or fourth grade, I desperately wanted to become a teacher. I'd like to say that this aspiration was born of a desire to make the world a better place, but it wasn't. It was born of a desire to have the book with the answers printed in it in blue and to give out homework. This evolved into wanting to actually run a school. For about a year, I collected school supplies and labelled them "St. Ann's School"
As a teenager, I wanted to be a lawyer. I think I'd have made a good lawyer - I am both anal retentive and orally expulsive, a good combination for lawyering. When I was older, I wanted to be a chef. I worked in a succession of restaurants, first washing dishes, then as a prep cook, a pantry cook and finally, at eighteen, the sous chef in a sizable restaurant. I'm afraid I wasn't very good at it, but I enjoyed the hell out of myself. It was nothing at all like Ratatouille.
Later I wanted to work in theater. I'd spent a lot of time on and around the stage in high school, primarily as a means of avoiding class, but this prompted me to take a course in set construction at university, taught by a guy named Walt. I loved old Walt. He was shockingly overweight, perennially ill-tempered and an accomplished curmudgeon. His favorite expression of displeasure was "fuck 'em and feed 'em fish heads." I still say that.
I work in technology, but I am not a technologist, not really. Someone asked me the other day what processor my MacBook has. I have absolutely no idea, and really I couldn't care less. It works, and that is how I like my technology - working, and with as little intervention on my part as possible. Yes, I can still fix my computer when it breaks, I would just really rather not have to.
There are a fair few things I'd have liked to have done, and I do not think I am unique in this regard. But it's really a bit too late to go making drastic career changes. I don't know if I would have been any more suited to any of those things than I am to my job now. At twenty-one or twenty-two, you choose a life and you live it, and there's really no opportunity to go back and do it over.
So maybe it's too late for me. But what about the children? Michael wants to be a fireman and a castle builder. Caroline wants to be a cook and an artist and a scientist. Their aspirations will probably change over time, but I hope that I can be the sort of parent who encourages them to do what makes them happy, rather than what will make them prosperous.
But I do take comfort in the fact that in about fifteen years, that grad will be sitting at his desk, listening to his Brandon Flowers and feeling nostalgic, when some kid who is currently still eating his own boogers starts spewing about having just replaced some ancient piece of infrastructure, and he will have his very own old man moment. I'm just sorry I won't be there to see it. I'll be in an office. Or not.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
The Dream
It's just like the dream.
You know the one - the dream where you are walking the halls of your high school, those interminably long and dimly lit corridors, both sides lined with spotty teenagers in pastels, teased hair and Drakkar Noir. As you strut, you slowly realize that something is amiss. All the other kids - cool, rich, geeky, gay - their conversations stop mid-sentence, Valley Girl aphorisms half-formed on their lips. They are suspended in time, their spiky hair and leg warmers frozen as you pass. In the dream, you are naked. And everyone knows that you are naked. Their shock gives way to deep and abiding amusement. Your only salvation is to move.
You will never live this down. Never.
It's just like that, except in this dream, I am not naked. And it's not a dream. Instead, I am the only one wearing a costume. There is nothing worse than being the only one to show up to a fancy dress party in fancy dress. Or, rather, I suppose there are some worse things - being accidentally lobotomized, for example. Still. Wearing a costume at a party where you don't know anyone, and when everyone else is in their street clothes ranks as one of life's less pleasant experiences.
Poor Michele wore black lipstick and nail polish so she couldn't really hide, and her pointy black hat and fishnet stockings were anything but inconspicuous. At least I found an excuse to take off my white wig (the fine plastic hair was continually lodging between my molars, so when someone shattered a wine glass on the tile floor, I was only too happy to take the damned thing off and help clean up).
English people are not into Halloween. Maybe this is why I am so comfortable here. English people enjoy flat beer, billiards and lawn bowling. They build monuments to fallen World War One heroes. They wear poppies on Remembrance Day. They do not don ridiculous outfits simply because it is the end of October and they fancy a sweet. The English are an eminently sensible people, I think.
Michael enjoyed himself, though. He dressed as a wizard, with a Phillies shirt underneath. Everyone thought the pointy wizard's cap was part of the baseball uniform. For all I know, it is. Someone will probably correct me on this point.
When, oh when will Thanksgiving come?
You know the one - the dream where you are walking the halls of your high school, those interminably long and dimly lit corridors, both sides lined with spotty teenagers in pastels, teased hair and Drakkar Noir. As you strut, you slowly realize that something is amiss. All the other kids - cool, rich, geeky, gay - their conversations stop mid-sentence, Valley Girl aphorisms half-formed on their lips. They are suspended in time, their spiky hair and leg warmers frozen as you pass. In the dream, you are naked. And everyone knows that you are naked. Their shock gives way to deep and abiding amusement. Your only salvation is to move.
You will never live this down. Never.
It's just like that, except in this dream, I am not naked. And it's not a dream. Instead, I am the only one wearing a costume. There is nothing worse than being the only one to show up to a fancy dress party in fancy dress. Or, rather, I suppose there are some worse things - being accidentally lobotomized, for example. Still. Wearing a costume at a party where you don't know anyone, and when everyone else is in their street clothes ranks as one of life's less pleasant experiences.
Poor Michele wore black lipstick and nail polish so she couldn't really hide, and her pointy black hat and fishnet stockings were anything but inconspicuous. At least I found an excuse to take off my white wig (the fine plastic hair was continually lodging between my molars, so when someone shattered a wine glass on the tile floor, I was only too happy to take the damned thing off and help clean up).
English people are not into Halloween. Maybe this is why I am so comfortable here. English people enjoy flat beer, billiards and lawn bowling. They build monuments to fallen World War One heroes. They wear poppies on Remembrance Day. They do not don ridiculous outfits simply because it is the end of October and they fancy a sweet. The English are an eminently sensible people, I think.
Michael enjoyed himself, though. He dressed as a wizard, with a Phillies shirt underneath. Everyone thought the pointy wizard's cap was part of the baseball uniform. For all I know, it is. Someone will probably correct me on this point.
When, oh when will Thanksgiving come?
Fright Night
I hate Halloween.
I mean, it's fine if you're a kid and all, but the whole dressing up thing as an adult really stresses me out. Last year Michael went as a Vampireman - a fireman with vampire teeth. I thought that was pretty funny. But as an adult, you can't really get away with that sort of thing. I mean, they don't make fireman costumes for grownups. Oh, wait, I guess they do, but you have to spend the night with a bunch of burly guys who smell of smoke to get one.
We're going to our next door neighbors' hastily-arranged Halloween part tonight. I won't know anyone, as their daughter goes to a different school. This alone would be reason enough to feign swine flu, but I also learned today that it's fancy dress. I suppose I should have assumed this and started preparing earlier in the week, but I was in denial. So at 3.30 this afternoon, I set out to find something suitable to we.
The thing about dressing up for Halloween, for me at least, is that it has to be just the right sort of costume. The get-up can't be lame, but it also can't show that I've made a big effort. It has to be ironic without being obscure. It has to be funny without being obvious.
Last year, I was a chav angel. (As a reminder, a 'chav' is a young man or woman who mainly wears jogging outfits, drives a cheap little car with tinted windows and a loud stereo and has a seemingly unlimited supply of gleaming white sneakers. In general, a 40 year old can't be a chav, though somehow there are a surprising number of older men who seem to think that they can.) So for my costume last year I wore a track suit (well, sort of - I wore a pair of jogging bottoms and a hooded jacket that kind of matched) and a thick gold chain borrowed from Caroline's dress-up kit. To this, I added a homemade halo and a pair of aluminum foil-covered fairy wings, also borrowed from Caroline's dress-up kit. It was funny without being over the top and went well with Michele's she-devil wig.
You'd be surprised at the paucity of good halloween costumes here. I could have been a Big Bad Wolf for £25 (this had a lot of potential to be funny, but the costume manufacturer disappointingly went for scary instead of silly), or a Dracula for £19.99 (but I feared this would make me look like I was taking the whole thing far too seriously). So this year, I'm a has-been 80's hair band musician. I couldn't find a long blonde wig in the 45 minutes I had to shop, so instead I'm wearing a white one that makes me look like one of the guys from Nelson after a DIY dye job. The wig, a pair of ripped jeans (they're not meant to be ripped, I fell down and blew out the knee a few years ago), a white T-shirt (if I have one) and Michael's toy electric guitar comprise the extent of my effort this year.
Give me Thanksgiving any day. Yeah, you have to cook a big meal and it takes a week and a half to do the dishes, but at least the only thing getting dressed up is the turkey.
And that's as it should be.
I mean, it's fine if you're a kid and all, but the whole dressing up thing as an adult really stresses me out. Last year Michael went as a Vampireman - a fireman with vampire teeth. I thought that was pretty funny. But as an adult, you can't really get away with that sort of thing. I mean, they don't make fireman costumes for grownups. Oh, wait, I guess they do, but you have to spend the night with a bunch of burly guys who smell of smoke to get one.
We're going to our next door neighbors' hastily-arranged Halloween part tonight. I won't know anyone, as their daughter goes to a different school. This alone would be reason enough to feign swine flu, but I also learned today that it's fancy dress. I suppose I should have assumed this and started preparing earlier in the week, but I was in denial. So at 3.30 this afternoon, I set out to find something suitable to we.
The thing about dressing up for Halloween, for me at least, is that it has to be just the right sort of costume. The get-up can't be lame, but it also can't show that I've made a big effort. It has to be ironic without being obscure. It has to be funny without being obvious.
Last year, I was a chav angel. (As a reminder, a 'chav' is a young man or woman who mainly wears jogging outfits, drives a cheap little car with tinted windows and a loud stereo and has a seemingly unlimited supply of gleaming white sneakers. In general, a 40 year old can't be a chav, though somehow there are a surprising number of older men who seem to think that they can.) So for my costume last year I wore a track suit (well, sort of - I wore a pair of jogging bottoms and a hooded jacket that kind of matched) and a thick gold chain borrowed from Caroline's dress-up kit. To this, I added a homemade halo and a pair of aluminum foil-covered fairy wings, also borrowed from Caroline's dress-up kit. It was funny without being over the top and went well with Michele's she-devil wig.
You'd be surprised at the paucity of good halloween costumes here. I could have been a Big Bad Wolf for £25 (this had a lot of potential to be funny, but the costume manufacturer disappointingly went for scary instead of silly), or a Dracula for £19.99 (but I feared this would make me look like I was taking the whole thing far too seriously). So this year, I'm a has-been 80's hair band musician. I couldn't find a long blonde wig in the 45 minutes I had to shop, so instead I'm wearing a white one that makes me look like one of the guys from Nelson after a DIY dye job. The wig, a pair of ripped jeans (they're not meant to be ripped, I fell down and blew out the knee a few years ago), a white T-shirt (if I have one) and Michael's toy electric guitar comprise the extent of my effort this year.
Give me Thanksgiving any day. Yeah, you have to cook a big meal and it takes a week and a half to do the dishes, but at least the only thing getting dressed up is the turkey.
And that's as it should be.
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Uncommon
Today has been extraordinary. The weather is early-autumn golden delicious, and Michael, sick since Thursday, is finally feeling better. It was a perfect day to take the kids out to blow the dust off of them.
Wimbledon Common is a vast expanse of land about 15 minutes away, some wooded, some open, maintained for people to wander around on, ride their horses or air their dogs.
We brought a lunch of baguette, cheese and apples and hopped on the bus. In America, not having a car is one step away from living in a cardboard box and eating one's meals from the dumpster behind the McDonalds, but here, taking the bus is pretty standard practice. I am proud to say that I do not own a car, and, although there have been occasions when i've wished that I did, in general I am quite happy to live without one, un-American as that may seem.
We spent the afternoon on the Common, going in circles along trails beneath red and yellow canopies, and ate our lunch at the edge of a meadow, in the shade of an ancient oak.
Idyllic as this was at first, it is a fact that no matter where I am, and no matter how much open space there may be in my general vicinity, the minute I settle down in a nice corner of a field for a little rest, some tosser with a football will appear out of nowhere and start kicking the damned thing around right next to me. If no footballs are handy, there'll be a goddamn cricket test match or a Six Nations rugby tournament going on. Entire extended families will turn up with picnic coolers and cans of Tennant's Special Brew, cheering for their side. I could be on top of a mountain in Scotland eating my lunch and feeling one with nature and exceedingly grateful for not having fallen off, and some mouth breather in a Liverpool jersey will come striding along the ridge, football tucked under his arm, straight towards me.
I don't know why I attract people who don't appreciate the sublime beauty of sitting still, of relishing what may well be one of the last shortsleeve days until May, but I do attract them and this set includes my children.
I'd better go kick the ball around with them.
Wimbledon Common is a vast expanse of land about 15 minutes away, some wooded, some open, maintained for people to wander around on, ride their horses or air their dogs.
We brought a lunch of baguette, cheese and apples and hopped on the bus. In America, not having a car is one step away from living in a cardboard box and eating one's meals from the dumpster behind the McDonalds, but here, taking the bus is pretty standard practice. I am proud to say that I do not own a car, and, although there have been occasions when i've wished that I did, in general I am quite happy to live without one, un-American as that may seem.
We spent the afternoon on the Common, going in circles along trails beneath red and yellow canopies, and ate our lunch at the edge of a meadow, in the shade of an ancient oak.
Idyllic as this was at first, it is a fact that no matter where I am, and no matter how much open space there may be in my general vicinity, the minute I settle down in a nice corner of a field for a little rest, some tosser with a football will appear out of nowhere and start kicking the damned thing around right next to me. If no footballs are handy, there'll be a goddamn cricket test match or a Six Nations rugby tournament going on. Entire extended families will turn up with picnic coolers and cans of Tennant's Special Brew, cheering for their side. I could be on top of a mountain in Scotland eating my lunch and feeling one with nature and exceedingly grateful for not having fallen off, and some mouth breather in a Liverpool jersey will come striding along the ridge, football tucked under his arm, straight towards me.
I don't know why I attract people who don't appreciate the sublime beauty of sitting still, of relishing what may well be one of the last shortsleeve days until May, but I do attract them and this set includes my children.
I'd better go kick the ball around with them.
Friday, October 8, 2010
Childcare
"How's it going?" they all ask, in the hushed confidential tones ordinarily reserved for questions to which the response is "cancer" or "twenty five to life."
Michele has gone back to the US and I am on childcare duty. My friends, other parents, mostly, exhibit more concern than I would have expected. I'm not entirely sure who this concern is for: me or the children. They examine my offspring surreptitiously, checking for signs of neglect - dirty clothes, distended bellies, compound fractures - and finding none, smile warmly but with a touch of pleasant surprise.
There is an image, perpetuated by marketers of various cold remedies, laundry detergent and suchlike, of Dad as Incompetent Knucklehead. He gapes, uncomprehending, at the washer, the cooker or the iron like a farmer who's discovered an extraterrestrial space vehicle in his haystack. He feeds the children cake for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. The family dog, matted and mangy, stands atop the crumb-strewn dining table, gnawing his fleas and alternately licking the dishes and his anus while the sink overflows with plates and cutlery, the remnants of the meals cooked and frozen prior to mum's departure hardening on them like concrete.
I have always been offended by this image. I am more than capable of doing the laundry, the cooking and the ironing, thankyouverymuch (though the last, I must admit, is not my favourite), and I suspect a fair few other men are equally skilled in the domestic arts. Right? Uh, back me up here, fellas. Hello? Well, regardless, I'm offended by the image. Imagine the outcry if a Madison Avenue agency cooked up an ad campaign generalizing women as poor drivers.
So it's now been almost two weeks of just me and the kids. It's not been without its fractious moments. I swore in front of them once, not AT them, mind you, just NEAR them. It was a senseless moment, and I regret it still, even moreso because Michael, who can't hear me tell him to put his socks on until I've repeated myself at least twenty-seven times, suddenly develops bionic hearing when I drop the F-bomb. And I'm sure I've put him off tablets for life now, having forced him, with much crying and yelling and pouring water over him, to swallow half a Panadol for his fever. He always gets a fever when Michele's away. Always.
For the most part it's been fine, though I've had a significant amount of help from friends, who have kindly taken the children after school and fed them dinner, a favour, or rather a whole lot of favours, for which I am extremely grateful. But I get them to school on time in clean clothes, I work a full day from home, I pick them up from wherever they've been causing mayhem for the afternoon. They are showered, teeth brushed, stories read and into bed a bit later than usual, but still within the bounds of reason for respectable middle class children. I get them to where they need to be on the weekend, with the correct equipment. I make nutritious, if not entirely kid-friendly lunches every day (strangely, although my children like broccoli, eggs, milk and cheese individually, when presented in a beautiful golden-brown homemade quiche they're 'yucky'.) All in all, I think I've done an OK job.
But I'm ready to go back into the office now.
Michele has gone back to the US and I am on childcare duty. My friends, other parents, mostly, exhibit more concern than I would have expected. I'm not entirely sure who this concern is for: me or the children. They examine my offspring surreptitiously, checking for signs of neglect - dirty clothes, distended bellies, compound fractures - and finding none, smile warmly but with a touch of pleasant surprise.
There is an image, perpetuated by marketers of various cold remedies, laundry detergent and suchlike, of Dad as Incompetent Knucklehead. He gapes, uncomprehending, at the washer, the cooker or the iron like a farmer who's discovered an extraterrestrial space vehicle in his haystack. He feeds the children cake for breakfast. And lunch. And dinner. The family dog, matted and mangy, stands atop the crumb-strewn dining table, gnawing his fleas and alternately licking the dishes and his anus while the sink overflows with plates and cutlery, the remnants of the meals cooked and frozen prior to mum's departure hardening on them like concrete.
I have always been offended by this image. I am more than capable of doing the laundry, the cooking and the ironing, thankyouverymuch (though the last, I must admit, is not my favourite), and I suspect a fair few other men are equally skilled in the domestic arts. Right? Uh, back me up here, fellas. Hello? Well, regardless, I'm offended by the image. Imagine the outcry if a Madison Avenue agency cooked up an ad campaign generalizing women as poor drivers.
So it's now been almost two weeks of just me and the kids. It's not been without its fractious moments. I swore in front of them once, not AT them, mind you, just NEAR them. It was a senseless moment, and I regret it still, even moreso because Michael, who can't hear me tell him to put his socks on until I've repeated myself at least twenty-seven times, suddenly develops bionic hearing when I drop the F-bomb. And I'm sure I've put him off tablets for life now, having forced him, with much crying and yelling and pouring water over him, to swallow half a Panadol for his fever. He always gets a fever when Michele's away. Always.
For the most part it's been fine, though I've had a significant amount of help from friends, who have kindly taken the children after school and fed them dinner, a favour, or rather a whole lot of favours, for which I am extremely grateful. But I get them to school on time in clean clothes, I work a full day from home, I pick them up from wherever they've been causing mayhem for the afternoon. They are showered, teeth brushed, stories read and into bed a bit later than usual, but still within the bounds of reason for respectable middle class children. I get them to where they need to be on the weekend, with the correct equipment. I make nutritious, if not entirely kid-friendly lunches every day (strangely, although my children like broccoli, eggs, milk and cheese individually, when presented in a beautiful golden-brown homemade quiche they're 'yucky'.) All in all, I think I've done an OK job.
But I'm ready to go back into the office now.
Monday, September 27, 2010
A Lexical Celebration
The other day I had occasion to tell someone that I felt I was underutilized. Picking up on a Briticism I'd heard, I said I was "going spare." When I first heard this expression, I took it to mean that the speaker felt he had spare capacity. In fact, it means to go crazy with worry. Another definition I've seen suggests that it is a term for a promiscuous woman. I am neither, really.
And recently, I told someone who'd changed her mind a number of times that she'd been "waffling and prevaricating." I thought prevaricating meant more or less the same thing as vacillating, and I guess I was trying to be impressive by not using such a common word as vacillating. 'Prevaricating' in fact means 'deliberately misleading', a sentiment which I did not intend at all. I really must remember not to use big words unless I'm actually sure of their meaning. (I must also remember to apologize to the person whom I called indecisive and dishonest, but we're no longer on speaking terms, so that may have to wait for another day.)
I admit that I am occasionally overconfident in my speech and writing, but I think it's endearing. I also think writing should be colourful. Words are wonderful, and our language is a veritable treasure trove of them. English has, by some estimates, over 250,000 words. Counting multiple meanings of the same spelling, George W. Bush's mispronunciations and Bill Clinton's fungible definitions of 'is' the total comes in at over three quarters of a million.
The variety and depth and subtlety of meaning that can be achieved with our language is astounding. We should embrace words, celebrate them, fling them joyously about like rice at a wedding (well, like organic free range bird feed anyway).
Just try not to say 'prevaricate' when you mean 'vacillate'.
And recently, I told someone who'd changed her mind a number of times that she'd been "waffling and prevaricating." I thought prevaricating meant more or less the same thing as vacillating, and I guess I was trying to be impressive by not using such a common word as vacillating. 'Prevaricating' in fact means 'deliberately misleading', a sentiment which I did not intend at all. I really must remember not to use big words unless I'm actually sure of their meaning. (I must also remember to apologize to the person whom I called indecisive and dishonest, but we're no longer on speaking terms, so that may have to wait for another day.)
I admit that I am occasionally overconfident in my speech and writing, but I think it's endearing. I also think writing should be colourful. Words are wonderful, and our language is a veritable treasure trove of them. English has, by some estimates, over 250,000 words. Counting multiple meanings of the same spelling, George W. Bush's mispronunciations and Bill Clinton's fungible definitions of 'is' the total comes in at over three quarters of a million.
The variety and depth and subtlety of meaning that can be achieved with our language is astounding. We should embrace words, celebrate them, fling them joyously about like rice at a wedding (well, like organic free range bird feed anyway).
Just try not to say 'prevaricate' when you mean 'vacillate'.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Balancing Act
Some people believe that you can balance an egg on its end at the moment of the equinox. For us, that was about 3am on Thursday. I did not attempt any early morning egg balancing. This inconvenient celestial moment, unmarked by all but the most dedicated Druid, made Friday the first full day of autumn.
And autumnal it is. As if in response to the equatorial alignment of sun and earth, it's suddenly turned cold here in London.
The weather here can be deceptive, though. Today is Saturday, tennis day for Michael. When we left the house, it was bright and sunny, so I wore only a light sweater, my favorite grey one that I expect will just disintegrate one day. But here in the park, though the sun still shines merrily, it's chilly and blowy. We are entering the long, cold grey season, and I will miss the sunshine in an increasingly desperate way until that first glorious sunny, warm day that I know will come eventually. The cold makes you appreciate the warm.
Turns out that the egg balncing thing is just a lot of rubbish. If you know how, you can balance an egg on end at any time of the year. But you can only get sunshine on sunny days.
Enjoy them.
And autumnal it is. As if in response to the equatorial alignment of sun and earth, it's suddenly turned cold here in London.
The weather here can be deceptive, though. Today is Saturday, tennis day for Michael. When we left the house, it was bright and sunny, so I wore only a light sweater, my favorite grey one that I expect will just disintegrate one day. But here in the park, though the sun still shines merrily, it's chilly and blowy. We are entering the long, cold grey season, and I will miss the sunshine in an increasingly desperate way until that first glorious sunny, warm day that I know will come eventually. The cold makes you appreciate the warm.
Turns out that the egg balncing thing is just a lot of rubbish. If you know how, you can balance an egg on end at any time of the year. But you can only get sunshine on sunny days.
Enjoy them.
Friday, September 10, 2010
My First Album
Chill the Champers and break out the caviar, my band, Ritz Theatre, has finally put out its first album. It was several years in the making, but it's sure to be a hit. We called it 'Truth Has Beauty' because, well, truth does, and we thought that it sounded kind of cool.
Nah, that's a lot of crap. Anyone who knows me knows that I have almost no musical talent whatsoever. If you don't believe me, ask Maryann Miller, my first piano teacher. She pulled my hair so hard when I didn't practice that I've now gone bald in the back.
Actually, my friend Simon over at http://simbits.blogspot.com turned me on to this complete and utter waste of time (but isn't anything that's fun a waste of time by definition?)
1. Click here to go to a random Wikipedia article. The title of the article is your band's name.
2. Next, click here for a list of random quotations (and quite a few popups which will offer to sell you your credit score and deeply discounted Viagra. Also one which will apparently make a photo of you look like Barbie on Ecstasy after a 48-hour rave. Now THAT's a useful site.) The last quotation in the list is your album title. I took some liberties with mine, since it was overly long. Something about truth having beauty and frogs having warts or somesuch.
3. Finally, click here for a page of photos on Flickr that have been uploaded in the past 7 days. The third photo is your cover art.
4. (Optional) if you're a total geek who's sitting at home on a Friday night waiting for the Ocado guy to turn up because you can't be arsed getting yourself to the grocery store, break out your favourite image editor and whip up your cover. Even if you don't go to this pitiable extreme, I'd be interested to hear what your band and album title are. Why? I don't know. Maybe because I'm a geek who's sitting at home on a Friday night waiting for a grocery delivery.
'Ritz Theatre' is actually a kind of catchy name for a band, I think, though it seems unlikely to make it to the O2. It's certainly better than my second attempt, which would have had my band called 'Rikke Emma Niebuhr'. Take that, Björk. Rikke's album was titled 'What Children Take', and the photo was of, get this, a praying mantis - the female praying mantis cannibalizes her mate. How appropriate. It's on Wikipedia, so it must be true.
Cheers!
Sunday, September 5, 2010
20 Things I Learned While Travelling
We're home now. Reentry is my least favourite part of travelling. All the unpacking, and the laundry to be done. I've taken a break from moving things pointlessly between different parts of the house to capture some learnings from our trip to Switzerland and a little bit of France. Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/paulconroy/Switzerland.
1. Switzerland is cheap to get to, the train from the airport to the city is free for visitors, as is the public transport in the city. This is because ordinary people cannot actually afford to do anything once they arrive.
2. Geneva is a lovely city. The lake, the mountains and the city's architecture cooperate to produce a feeling of calm and well-being. Unless you want breakfast. Then it's just another ugly place to drag your children through.
3. A Citroen C3 is a reliable, economical vehicle. It gets good mileage and has adequate storage space. It has a top speed of 72, but much, much less on an uphill grade of any sort. I had to downshift to get up the near side of several of the country's more aggressive speed bumps.
4. Swiss bus drivers do not appreciate American tourists who make them late, even ones who have cute kids, smile a lot and say polite things in German.
5. Lake Geneva produces a surprising amount of sea glass, though Swiss children do not seem to have cottoned on the the hobby of collecting it. My children have taken advantage of their naivete and smuggled a large amount of it back to England.
6. Successfully skipping a rock on a lake is as much a function of strategic stone selection as it is of throwing technique. It's all in the wrist.
7. From a child's perspective, a day spent chucking rocks into a lake is as good as or better than one spent at more expensive pastimes such as sightseeing, or eating.
8. When parking the car in a gated lot, it is a good idea to read the payment instructions before attempting to exit. Payment is not always accepted at the exit gate, and the Swiss locals do not appreciate American tourists blocking the exit while trying to explain to the remote attendant's disembodied voice, in half-remembered high school French clouded by 25 years of disuse, why they haven't paid at the machine in the lobby.
9. Ice cream solves most problems. The ones it doesn't can always be addressed later with wine.
10. Pack half of what you think you need and leave half of that at home. Except when travelling with children, who manage to get filthy just sitting in the car.
11. Pack twice the amount of money you think you'll need, and then double that. Except when travelling in Switzerland, where you will really need to bring along a trailer full of Swiss francs.
12. The border crossings between Switzerland and France are disappointingly porous. We expected some sort of interrogation by men wearing mirrored sunglasses and peaked caps, or at least a 'Welcome to France' sign with a funny cartoon character made of cheese. Instead, we got a set of abandoned-looking sheds in the middle of the road and not even an Arretez-Vous! sign.
13. Evian is actually a place, and they do actually bottle water there.
14. "Hey Soul Sister" is my children's favourite song. Although Michael's changed the words to "Hey soul mister, I can't stand my sister".
15. Hannah Montana is televised just about everywhere.
16. Cartoons are much funnier when dubbed into other languages.
17. My children are more impressed by butterflies and snakes than by mountain vistas and fresh air.
18. Moss does NOT only grow on the north side of trees. That's just a load of bollocks.
19. I should really use sunblock.
20. 20 Questions is a great way to keep the kids occupied at a meal. They tend to lose track of the number of questions asked, so you can usually beat them.
1. Switzerland is cheap to get to, the train from the airport to the city is free for visitors, as is the public transport in the city. This is because ordinary people cannot actually afford to do anything once they arrive.
2. Geneva is a lovely city. The lake, the mountains and the city's architecture cooperate to produce a feeling of calm and well-being. Unless you want breakfast. Then it's just another ugly place to drag your children through.
3. A Citroen C3 is a reliable, economical vehicle. It gets good mileage and has adequate storage space. It has a top speed of 72, but much, much less on an uphill grade of any sort. I had to downshift to get up the near side of several of the country's more aggressive speed bumps.
4. Swiss bus drivers do not appreciate American tourists who make them late, even ones who have cute kids, smile a lot and say polite things in German.
5. Lake Geneva produces a surprising amount of sea glass, though Swiss children do not seem to have cottoned on the the hobby of collecting it. My children have taken advantage of their naivete and smuggled a large amount of it back to England.
6. Successfully skipping a rock on a lake is as much a function of strategic stone selection as it is of throwing technique. It's all in the wrist.
7. From a child's perspective, a day spent chucking rocks into a lake is as good as or better than one spent at more expensive pastimes such as sightseeing, or eating.
8. When parking the car in a gated lot, it is a good idea to read the payment instructions before attempting to exit. Payment is not always accepted at the exit gate, and the Swiss locals do not appreciate American tourists blocking the exit while trying to explain to the remote attendant's disembodied voice, in half-remembered high school French clouded by 25 years of disuse, why they haven't paid at the machine in the lobby.
9. Ice cream solves most problems. The ones it doesn't can always be addressed later with wine.
10. Pack half of what you think you need and leave half of that at home. Except when travelling with children, who manage to get filthy just sitting in the car.
11. Pack twice the amount of money you think you'll need, and then double that. Except when travelling in Switzerland, where you will really need to bring along a trailer full of Swiss francs.
12. The border crossings between Switzerland and France are disappointingly porous. We expected some sort of interrogation by men wearing mirrored sunglasses and peaked caps, or at least a 'Welcome to France' sign with a funny cartoon character made of cheese. Instead, we got a set of abandoned-looking sheds in the middle of the road and not even an Arretez-Vous! sign.
13. Evian is actually a place, and they do actually bottle water there.
14. "Hey Soul Sister" is my children's favourite song. Although Michael's changed the words to "Hey soul mister, I can't stand my sister".
15. Hannah Montana is televised just about everywhere.
16. Cartoons are much funnier when dubbed into other languages.
17. My children are more impressed by butterflies and snakes than by mountain vistas and fresh air.
18. Moss does NOT only grow on the north side of trees. That's just a load of bollocks.
19. I should really use sunblock.
20. 20 Questions is a great way to keep the kids occupied at a meal. They tend to lose track of the number of questions asked, so you can usually beat them.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Continental Breakfast
Continental Breakfast
I have recently been bitten by the travel bug. Om a whim (or, as some would say, because I've taken leave of my senses), I decided to take the family to Switzerland for the week. I remember now why travelling with children is, if not an outright bad idea, at least a less sane one than travelling as a couple or with friends. Children need to sleep. They need to eat regularly. They are not adventurous eaters. Their idea of a good time does not involve a leisurely lunch in a cafe with a nice bottle of Swiss wine (you didn't know there was such a thing, did you?). Michael is perpetually fidgeting and upsetting the glassware. Caroline won't eat croissants. There is nowhere to obtain a proper brekkie, even on Sunday. The children bicker. Constantly. Travelling with them, at least in a city, is an expensive, often unpleasant undertaking.
I say expensive, but actually 'exorbitant' would be more accurate here. I paid £25 for a panini, a croissant, an espresso and two glasses of milk today. London is pricey. Geneva is ludicrous.
On the upside, my French is getting better. I only screwed up once today that i know of anyway, ordering pineapple sorbet (ananas) instead of the banana ice cream (banan) that Michele wanted. Ah, well, say lah vee.
We leave the city tomorrow to drive to Yvoire, on the French side of Lake Geneva. We're meant to be staying in a 12th century castle. I booked online. The site was in French. There's a fair chance we'll be staying in a 1970's shed, but we'll see.
I have recently been bitten by the travel bug. Om a whim (or, as some would say, because I've taken leave of my senses), I decided to take the family to Switzerland for the week. I remember now why travelling with children is, if not an outright bad idea, at least a less sane one than travelling as a couple or with friends. Children need to sleep. They need to eat regularly. They are not adventurous eaters. Their idea of a good time does not involve a leisurely lunch in a cafe with a nice bottle of Swiss wine (you didn't know there was such a thing, did you?). Michael is perpetually fidgeting and upsetting the glassware. Caroline won't eat croissants. There is nowhere to obtain a proper brekkie, even on Sunday. The children bicker. Constantly. Travelling with them, at least in a city, is an expensive, often unpleasant undertaking.
I say expensive, but actually 'exorbitant' would be more accurate here. I paid £25 for a panini, a croissant, an espresso and two glasses of milk today. London is pricey. Geneva is ludicrous.
On the upside, my French is getting better. I only screwed up once today that i know of anyway, ordering pineapple sorbet (ananas) instead of the banana ice cream (banan) that Michele wanted. Ah, well, say lah vee.
We leave the city tomorrow to drive to Yvoire, on the French side of Lake Geneva. We're meant to be staying in a 12th century castle. I booked online. The site was in French. There's a fair chance we'll be staying in a 1970's shed, but we'll see.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Penultimate Day
I have often wondered why our language is so precice in some respects and so loose in others. Why do we have a word meaning 'second to last' while our words for emotions: love, sadness, pain, are abstract and subject to individual interpretation. We often qualify these words with references to experience to help the reader understand them: for example, 'pain like losing a best friend' as distinguished from 'pain like a broken leg'. But this seems an imperfect solution: there are people whom I miss, but I've never broken my leg.
English is an acquisitive and flexible language. Its complicated, seemingly lawless pronunciation and grammar stems from the fact that it borrows heavily from many other older languages, each with their own rules of syntax and pronunciation. But its complexity is its strength. It's the reason Cormac McCarthy can use the word 'nightsoil' to describe the sludge oozing from the end of a pipe. The word may not have a specific meaning to the reader, but no one reading it would think anything pleasant looking or sweet smelling was coming from that pipe.
I had occasion to think about pain yesterday. Michael, King of the Bumper Cars, woke with a stiff neck. As he lay in my arms, writhing in agony, I wished for a good word, universally understood, that Michael could use to describe the pain. Is it muscular? Skeletal? Nerve damage?
He's much better today, and maybe that's why our words for emotions and pain are so imprecise: these things pass, fading into recollections of situations and people, rather than recall of the physical pain or the emotion associated with them. Thank god, else life would quickly become unbearably painful indeed.
English is an acquisitive and flexible language. Its complicated, seemingly lawless pronunciation and grammar stems from the fact that it borrows heavily from many other older languages, each with their own rules of syntax and pronunciation. But its complexity is its strength. It's the reason Cormac McCarthy can use the word 'nightsoil' to describe the sludge oozing from the end of a pipe. The word may not have a specific meaning to the reader, but no one reading it would think anything pleasant looking or sweet smelling was coming from that pipe.
I had occasion to think about pain yesterday. Michael, King of the Bumper Cars, woke with a stiff neck. As he lay in my arms, writhing in agony, I wished for a good word, universally understood, that Michael could use to describe the pain. Is it muscular? Skeletal? Nerve damage?
He's much better today, and maybe that's why our words for emotions and pain are so imprecise: these things pass, fading into recollections of situations and people, rather than recall of the physical pain or the emotion associated with them. Thank god, else life would quickly become unbearably painful indeed.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
My New Favourite Drink
Fill a glass with ice. No, REALLY fill it. Now, crush up a couple of basil leaves with your fingers and put them in the glass with the ice. Add 1 part vodka and 2 parts lemonade and shake.
You might not think basil in a drink would be very good; I assure you, it is. Refreshing like a mojito, but about a third of the effort.
You might not think basil in a drink would be very good; I assure you, it is. Refreshing like a mojito, but about a third of the effort.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thanks to someone kind enough to maintain an open wireless access point, I am blogging, not from the beach, exactly, but from the beach house, anyway.
One of the benefits of being nearly 40 is that you grow to not really care. About the greying hair on your chest, about being more than stylishly overweight, about snoozing under the umbrella instead of frolicking in the water. The water, by the way is shocking and cold, but you get used to it. What choice is there, really?
The kids are having a wonderful time, and I love watching them enjoy themselves and each other so much. Michael falling off the boogie board while pretending to surf, Caroline with sand making her bathing suit bottoms droopy, in this, one of her last beautifully un-self conscious summers.
I have come back to the house to make lunch, since I don't like to eat at the beach, so just a short one for now.
One of the benefits of being nearly 40 is that you grow to not really care. About the greying hair on your chest, about being more than stylishly overweight, about snoozing under the umbrella instead of frolicking in the water. The water, by the way is shocking and cold, but you get used to it. What choice is there, really?
The kids are having a wonderful time, and I love watching them enjoy themselves and each other so much. Michael falling off the boogie board while pretending to surf, Caroline with sand making her bathing suit bottoms droopy, in this, one of her last beautifully un-self conscious summers.
I have come back to the house to make lunch, since I don't like to eat at the beach, so just a short one for now.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
One Day
I dislike endings, always have. The end of a good book can put me in a funk for days. Last night, I finished David Nicholls' One Day. I enjoyed it so much that I read all the way through it in, well, one day. It's Bridget Jones meets Anita Shreve and The Time Traveller's Wife. OK, maybe I go in for the chick lit a bit too much, but it's clever-funny, it's bittersweet and it's plausible. All good qualities, all qualities that I look for in a book. The trouble is, now I'm in a funk. I feel like I knew these people, the characters in this book. They made me laugh like good mates down the pub on a warm Sunday afternoon, but they left abruptly, while I was in the toilet.
The other problem, of course, is what to read next. I've got a week at the Shore coming up, and my book on oil politics and greed in the 21st century (The Squeeze, I recommend it as a way of answering the perennial question about why fuel prices are so high and why they sometimes swing wildly), while interesting and really well researched and written, seems a bit heavy to read on the beach. Having read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I could read the next installment in the Millenium series, The Girl Who Dropped Her Ice Cream Cone, or whatever it's called, but I'm not sure that's good beach material either as it requires paying attention. I can't tolerate Dan Brown's writing, his dialog is trite, his characters are two dimensional and lack any discernible, consistent motivation, his prose is awkward. I used to enjoy Tom Clancy, but he got to be rubbish too after the fourth or fifth book. Michele's reading the Twilight series, but we don't have the first book with us, and besides, I'm not really sure I could actually read a teen vampire book without, at some point, thinking, "Seriously, Paul. What the hell are you doing?"
I need something easy to read, with a good plot and a bit of humour, with characters I can identify with. Maybe I'll reread One Day.
The other problem, of course, is what to read next. I've got a week at the Shore coming up, and my book on oil politics and greed in the 21st century (The Squeeze, I recommend it as a way of answering the perennial question about why fuel prices are so high and why they sometimes swing wildly), while interesting and really well researched and written, seems a bit heavy to read on the beach. Having read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, I could read the next installment in the Millenium series, The Girl Who Dropped Her Ice Cream Cone, or whatever it's called, but I'm not sure that's good beach material either as it requires paying attention. I can't tolerate Dan Brown's writing, his dialog is trite, his characters are two dimensional and lack any discernible, consistent motivation, his prose is awkward. I used to enjoy Tom Clancy, but he got to be rubbish too after the fourth or fifth book. Michele's reading the Twilight series, but we don't have the first book with us, and besides, I'm not really sure I could actually read a teen vampire book without, at some point, thinking, "Seriously, Paul. What the hell are you doing?"
I need something easy to read, with a good plot and a bit of humour, with characters I can identify with. Maybe I'll reread One Day.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Beanz on Toast
It is Thursday and I have a small hangover.
Today is the first day of my vacation - I'm heading back to the US this afternoon for a week and a bit of reuniting with family and, hopefully, with some friends too.
Admittedly, in Michele's absence, I have not been looking after the house as I should. The mail is piling up, the tomato plants are nearly dead, the taxes remain undone. I haven't been home much these past few weeks, so, desperate for something to fill the void in my belly and quiet the hammering in my head, I was dismayed to find almost nothing edible in the fridge. As I'll be away for a while, and as today's rubbish collection day, I thought it would be a good idea to clean out the fridge before I go. It was not. If you've never scooped rotten tuna salad out of a tupperware container after a heavy night, don't; or if you must, at least don't do it before breakfast.
The fridge finally clean and the sink filled with plastic containers, bits of furry green mould still clinging to their sides, I confronted the next problem of the day - what to eat for breakfast. Since there was really nothing left after my cleaning binge (the top of the lettuce looked fine, but the black sludge in the bag suggested otherwise, and anyway, lettuce for breakfast isn't really my thing). Eyes watering, still gagging occasionally, I turned to the cabinet. And there, amid the packets of DeCecco fettuccine and the tins of anchovies left over from a dinner experiment gone horribly wrong, was a can of the best breakfast food on the planet: Heinz Beanz.
A uniquely British culinary experience, Beanz on toast is simple, healthy (well, if you don't slather the toast with great gobs of full fat butter as I do), tasty, and easily the best cure for a hangover short of a sauna and a full day's sleep. Salvation! Choirs of angels sang while a heavenly light shone down upon my cupboard.
I am now packed for my trip (everything fit into my backpack, with plenty of room to spare) and am waiting for an appropriate time to catch the tube out to the airport. I have recently acquired Gold status on Virgin Atlantic (my favourite airline), so I will be availing myself of the Virgin lounge in Heathrow. There are airline lounges and there are Airline Lounges. Virgin's is most definitely in the latter category. The free spa, with massages and haircuts, the tasty food, the chill-out music, the billiard table. The great long bar with an impressive number of vodka bottles. I am also hopeful that I will be bumped up from economy to upper, or at least premium. Surely there aren't that many elite status customers flying on a Thursday afternoon? We'll see.
I head back at stupid o'clock on the morning of the 14th, but if you're in the Poconos this weekend or the Jersey Shore Monday through Friday next week, drop me a line. I hope I get to see you.
Today is the first day of my vacation - I'm heading back to the US this afternoon for a week and a bit of reuniting with family and, hopefully, with some friends too.
Admittedly, in Michele's absence, I have not been looking after the house as I should. The mail is piling up, the tomato plants are nearly dead, the taxes remain undone. I haven't been home much these past few weeks, so, desperate for something to fill the void in my belly and quiet the hammering in my head, I was dismayed to find almost nothing edible in the fridge. As I'll be away for a while, and as today's rubbish collection day, I thought it would be a good idea to clean out the fridge before I go. It was not. If you've never scooped rotten tuna salad out of a tupperware container after a heavy night, don't; or if you must, at least don't do it before breakfast.
The fridge finally clean and the sink filled with plastic containers, bits of furry green mould still clinging to their sides, I confronted the next problem of the day - what to eat for breakfast. Since there was really nothing left after my cleaning binge (the top of the lettuce looked fine, but the black sludge in the bag suggested otherwise, and anyway, lettuce for breakfast isn't really my thing). Eyes watering, still gagging occasionally, I turned to the cabinet. And there, amid the packets of DeCecco fettuccine and the tins of anchovies left over from a dinner experiment gone horribly wrong, was a can of the best breakfast food on the planet: Heinz Beanz.
A uniquely British culinary experience, Beanz on toast is simple, healthy (well, if you don't slather the toast with great gobs of full fat butter as I do), tasty, and easily the best cure for a hangover short of a sauna and a full day's sleep. Salvation! Choirs of angels sang while a heavenly light shone down upon my cupboard.
I am now packed for my trip (everything fit into my backpack, with plenty of room to spare) and am waiting for an appropriate time to catch the tube out to the airport. I have recently acquired Gold status on Virgin Atlantic (my favourite airline), so I will be availing myself of the Virgin lounge in Heathrow. There are airline lounges and there are Airline Lounges. Virgin's is most definitely in the latter category. The free spa, with massages and haircuts, the tasty food, the chill-out music, the billiard table. The great long bar with an impressive number of vodka bottles. I am also hopeful that I will be bumped up from economy to upper, or at least premium. Surely there aren't that many elite status customers flying on a Thursday afternoon? We'll see.
I head back at stupid o'clock on the morning of the 14th, but if you're in the Poconos this weekend or the Jersey Shore Monday through Friday next week, drop me a line. I hope I get to see you.
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Floating
Tonight, I came home with my underwear in a bag, drenched, a cut on my knee and a bruise on my head. I very likely have also contracted some nasty disease like hepatitis or TB.
No, I was not a participant in an orgy at a fire station. My present dilapidated condition is the result of a charity event.
Every year, my company puts on a dragon boat race. A dragon boat is a vessel of Chinese origin, more a long board with sides than a boat, into which 16 inexperienced people who've been drinking beer for an hour or so stuff themselves and attempt to row as quickly as possible. The 'dragon' is a carved wooden dragon head and tail affixed loosely to either end of the boat. Given the narrowness of the craft, good weight distribution is, self-evidently, an critical success factor. Apparently our helmsman, purportedly an experienced, well-qualified dragon boat master, forgot one simple yet vital rule: you don't put all the fat bastards on the same side of the boat.
In hindsight, I suppose we should have realized this ourselves, given that our boat, when loaded, was roughly 4 centimeters off the water and listing unnervingly to the left, but by then it was too late. You can't really change positions in a dragon boat. You stay where you are. In fact, we were doing fine until, after rowing to the middle of the dock, our helmsman thought it would be a good idea to have us all bring our oars into the boat and practice some unusual exercise involving leaning forward and back rapidly. The boat, having no ballast other than the water it had taken on during previous races, did not respond well to this.
Normally, when sitting still, the entire crew lay their paddles flat on the water on either side of the boat to steady it. In our case, all the oars were inside the boat. The absence of any sort of stabilization, combined with the oversupply of fatties on the port side and the rocking motion caused by 16 people moving back and forth in a random, drunken fashion was enough to send the boat keel over gunwale (or whatever stupid boating expression would be appropriate to describe capsizing the damn thing).
If you've never made an unexpected exit from a low-sided canoe with 15 other people, let me say, I don't recommend it. Despite wearing a life vest and being a reasonably good swimmer, the unexpected plunge into the chilly water of the Millwall Dock, along with the effect of having numerous arms and legs churning the water around you, makes it very difficult to find your way up to the surface in any reasonable time. I'd strongly advise keeping a lungful of air handy at all times, since, once you're in the water, It's really too late to get one.
On being ungracefully dumped into the reeking Thames (it's slightly salty) and being kicked in the head several times, I managed to find which way was up and swam in that direction until my head met with the boat in a relatively unpleasant manner. At this point, I was unsure where I was relative to the boat and swam left. This direction, unfortunately, took me further under the boat, and by the time I realized this, I felt that I was nearly out of air.
Obviously, I did make it to the surface (else this would be a very short post indeed), and the whole ordeal probably lasted less than five seconds. I didn't see my life play itself out, I didn't see any bright lights, no angels or long-dead relatives came down the path of golden light to take me home.
You'd think that a traumatic experience such as this would warrant blankets and a nice hot cup of tea. Not so at the dragon boat race. You get schlepped back to shore by a guy in a motorboat (once he can be bothered to show up) and then yelled at because you're taking too long to help bail out the boat. Then you get back in and do it all over again. We came in fifth overall, which is not too bad considering we were cold and wet and miserable for the rest of the night.
It was great fun and I'll do it again next year. But now I really need a shower.
No, I was not a participant in an orgy at a fire station. My present dilapidated condition is the result of a charity event.
Every year, my company puts on a dragon boat race. A dragon boat is a vessel of Chinese origin, more a long board with sides than a boat, into which 16 inexperienced people who've been drinking beer for an hour or so stuff themselves and attempt to row as quickly as possible. The 'dragon' is a carved wooden dragon head and tail affixed loosely to either end of the boat. Given the narrowness of the craft, good weight distribution is, self-evidently, an critical success factor. Apparently our helmsman, purportedly an experienced, well-qualified dragon boat master, forgot one simple yet vital rule: you don't put all the fat bastards on the same side of the boat.
In hindsight, I suppose we should have realized this ourselves, given that our boat, when loaded, was roughly 4 centimeters off the water and listing unnervingly to the left, but by then it was too late. You can't really change positions in a dragon boat. You stay where you are. In fact, we were doing fine until, after rowing to the middle of the dock, our helmsman thought it would be a good idea to have us all bring our oars into the boat and practice some unusual exercise involving leaning forward and back rapidly. The boat, having no ballast other than the water it had taken on during previous races, did not respond well to this.
Normally, when sitting still, the entire crew lay their paddles flat on the water on either side of the boat to steady it. In our case, all the oars were inside the boat. The absence of any sort of stabilization, combined with the oversupply of fatties on the port side and the rocking motion caused by 16 people moving back and forth in a random, drunken fashion was enough to send the boat keel over gunwale (or whatever stupid boating expression would be appropriate to describe capsizing the damn thing).
If you've never made an unexpected exit from a low-sided canoe with 15 other people, let me say, I don't recommend it. Despite wearing a life vest and being a reasonably good swimmer, the unexpected plunge into the chilly water of the Millwall Dock, along with the effect of having numerous arms and legs churning the water around you, makes it very difficult to find your way up to the surface in any reasonable time. I'd strongly advise keeping a lungful of air handy at all times, since, once you're in the water, It's really too late to get one.
On being ungracefully dumped into the reeking Thames (it's slightly salty) and being kicked in the head several times, I managed to find which way was up and swam in that direction until my head met with the boat in a relatively unpleasant manner. At this point, I was unsure where I was relative to the boat and swam left. This direction, unfortunately, took me further under the boat, and by the time I realized this, I felt that I was nearly out of air.
Obviously, I did make it to the surface (else this would be a very short post indeed), and the whole ordeal probably lasted less than five seconds. I didn't see my life play itself out, I didn't see any bright lights, no angels or long-dead relatives came down the path of golden light to take me home.
You'd think that a traumatic experience such as this would warrant blankets and a nice hot cup of tea. Not so at the dragon boat race. You get schlepped back to shore by a guy in a motorboat (once he can be bothered to show up) and then yelled at because you're taking too long to help bail out the boat. Then you get back in and do it all over again. We came in fifth overall, which is not too bad considering we were cold and wet and miserable for the rest of the night.
It was great fun and I'll do it again next year. But now I really need a shower.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Think Outside the Box
I loathe this phrase; this, and "think creatively." I loathe them not because I don't think it's important to free associate and to challenge conventional thinking, but rather because the person speaking these words invariably does so in a discussion with someone who has already applied his hard-won knowledge of the complexities of a given problem to arrive at a "creative" and "outside the box" solution which is both realistic and addresses the complexities.
These words are simply another way of saying, "Despite the fact that you are an expert in this area and have spent quite a lot of time thinking about this problem, and despite the fact that I am blissfully ignorant of the realities of the situation, I don't like your idea and, because I don't like your idea, I insist that there must be a better one that accomplishes what I want and you're either too stupid or too lazy to have figured out already, though I'll be damned if I know what it is. Now, please go away and think about this some more and don't come back until you've found a way to do what I want cheaper, faster and with fewer people or I'll replace you with a hundred housebroken circus monkeys at half your pay."
These phrases are meant to be inspirational and motivational, to help us inadequate plebs pry ourselves up and out of the common ooze of our preconceptions and scale the lofty shining heights that only those chosen few, the Truly Inspired have attained. They are, rather, exasperating and condescending. They should be eviscerated from our collective vocabulary.
I am, however, forced to think creatively about what I'll do for the next few weeks. Per our family tradition, Michele and the kids have packed off back to the US for the summer, and I'm knocking around this suddenly-too-large city on my own. Normally, it takes a while for the ennui to set in - I usually spend a few weeks dissipating and eating takeaway curry at midnight in my underwear off an upturned laundry basket, but this summer's different. The house suddenly seems too big and empty. The front hallway, normally a riot of school-clothes and book-bags and homework folders and shoes and rollerblades and umbrellas is now almost pitifully neat. I've taken to hanging up my clothes and making the bed every morning. I tried to sleep in today but woke groggily from a dream at 8.00 and couldn't get back to sleep. My plans for the weekend consist of returning library books and then...absolutely nothing at all. I normally welcome some downtime and a bit of solitude, but I was actually excited when the window cleaners came around at breakfast, their deferential noises tripping oddly over the tightened springs of their Cockney accents.
Today is actually a lovely day, and I really should get out and enjoy it - there aren't many of these left - but doing what? My friends are all working or have other plans or have families to look after. Reading in the garden is a possibility, but I'm not sure I could do that all day. I could go to a park but the tube is shut. I've done all of the touristy stuff already. I could dust off my camera and wander around taking pictures, I suppose.
Oh, wait - the clouds have rolled in. I think I'll take a nap.
How's that for outside the box?
These words are simply another way of saying, "Despite the fact that you are an expert in this area and have spent quite a lot of time thinking about this problem, and despite the fact that I am blissfully ignorant of the realities of the situation, I don't like your idea and, because I don't like your idea, I insist that there must be a better one that accomplishes what I want and you're either too stupid or too lazy to have figured out already, though I'll be damned if I know what it is. Now, please go away and think about this some more and don't come back until you've found a way to do what I want cheaper, faster and with fewer people or I'll replace you with a hundred housebroken circus monkeys at half your pay."
These phrases are meant to be inspirational and motivational, to help us inadequate plebs pry ourselves up and out of the common ooze of our preconceptions and scale the lofty shining heights that only those chosen few, the Truly Inspired have attained. They are, rather, exasperating and condescending. They should be eviscerated from our collective vocabulary.
I am, however, forced to think creatively about what I'll do for the next few weeks. Per our family tradition, Michele and the kids have packed off back to the US for the summer, and I'm knocking around this suddenly-too-large city on my own. Normally, it takes a while for the ennui to set in - I usually spend a few weeks dissipating and eating takeaway curry at midnight in my underwear off an upturned laundry basket, but this summer's different. The house suddenly seems too big and empty. The front hallway, normally a riot of school-clothes and book-bags and homework folders and shoes and rollerblades and umbrellas is now almost pitifully neat. I've taken to hanging up my clothes and making the bed every morning. I tried to sleep in today but woke groggily from a dream at 8.00 and couldn't get back to sleep. My plans for the weekend consist of returning library books and then...absolutely nothing at all. I normally welcome some downtime and a bit of solitude, but I was actually excited when the window cleaners came around at breakfast, their deferential noises tripping oddly over the tightened springs of their Cockney accents.
Today is actually a lovely day, and I really should get out and enjoy it - there aren't many of these left - but doing what? My friends are all working or have other plans or have families to look after. Reading in the garden is a possibility, but I'm not sure I could do that all day. I could go to a park but the tube is shut. I've done all of the touristy stuff already. I could dust off my camera and wander around taking pictures, I suppose.
Oh, wait - the clouds have rolled in. I think I'll take a nap.
How's that for outside the box?
Sunday, July 18, 2010
Graduation Day
"You need to talk to your daughter," Michele informed me this morning. Sunday mornings are not, admittedly, my finest hour.
"Oh? Why?"
"She wants to run away."
That old chestnut. "Really?" I smirk.
"Yes. Apparently you yelled at her this morning and now she says she has to run away."
Those words, a knife in the heart; my smugness evaporates. Yes, we'd had an altercation over breakfast - she'd wanted her eggs sunny side up, I'd made them over easy, her tone was disrespectful, I'd made her apologize. But really. Running away?
I talked to Caroline, explained the importance of her learning to express what she wants in a way that isn't disrespectful, especially to the guy who'd just spent half an hour making your breakfast. Told her that the mature thing to do in such situations is to ask for feedback later about how the interaction could have been handled differently (obviously I used less management-speak). Explained what "mature" meant. Told her that, if she'd wanted her eggs sunny side up and knew that I was making eggs, she could have shown some ownership and told me what she wanted ahead of time instead of moaning about it later. Pointed out that her plan to run away was full of holes (where would she sleep? what would she eat?). Asked what I could have done differently, and we talked about that. In short, I made all of the logical, rational, paternalistic noises you'd expect someone to make in such a case.
But none of it really made either of us feel much better.
I've had an anxious knot in my stomach all day. Not because I think that she'll actually run away, but because I seem to be unable to get through to her as I used to. She says she understands what we talked about this morning, but she's still acting oddly. In fact, she has been for a few days, so I'm not convinced that her current behavior is entirely down to me, at least I'd prefer not to think so. But I don't know what it IS related to. Did something happen at school? One of her friends does, shall we say, like to stir things up a bit. But why, then, would she threaten to run away? She said recently that Michael gets more attention than she does. Could that be it? The last few days of every school term are difficult; between friends moving away, leaving others for the summer and just being really tired from the long school term, there are always more than the normal number of tears around this time.
Parenting-wise, we've had a relatively easy time of it so far. Both of the kids are healthy. They are remarkably well-behaved, reasonably well-socialized, and generally get along well with us and each other. I don't think either of them are afraid of me. So many of the photos I have taken of them at odd moments show them laughing and happy and just enjoying life. But people are complex, even at age eight, and something tells me that this is not the last time this sort of thing will happen. I fear that we're entering the preteen years, and with them the start of long rather unpleasant period of moodiness, anger and apathy (the kids will probably be hard to deal with, too).
I'm sure it's a period not without its rewards, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it.
"Oh? Why?"
"She wants to run away."
That old chestnut. "Really?" I smirk.
"Yes. Apparently you yelled at her this morning and now she says she has to run away."
Those words, a knife in the heart; my smugness evaporates. Yes, we'd had an altercation over breakfast - she'd wanted her eggs sunny side up, I'd made them over easy, her tone was disrespectful, I'd made her apologize. But really. Running away?
I talked to Caroline, explained the importance of her learning to express what she wants in a way that isn't disrespectful, especially to the guy who'd just spent half an hour making your breakfast. Told her that the mature thing to do in such situations is to ask for feedback later about how the interaction could have been handled differently (obviously I used less management-speak). Explained what "mature" meant. Told her that, if she'd wanted her eggs sunny side up and knew that I was making eggs, she could have shown some ownership and told me what she wanted ahead of time instead of moaning about it later. Pointed out that her plan to run away was full of holes (where would she sleep? what would she eat?). Asked what I could have done differently, and we talked about that. In short, I made all of the logical, rational, paternalistic noises you'd expect someone to make in such a case.
But none of it really made either of us feel much better.
I've had an anxious knot in my stomach all day. Not because I think that she'll actually run away, but because I seem to be unable to get through to her as I used to. She says she understands what we talked about this morning, but she's still acting oddly. In fact, she has been for a few days, so I'm not convinced that her current behavior is entirely down to me, at least I'd prefer not to think so. But I don't know what it IS related to. Did something happen at school? One of her friends does, shall we say, like to stir things up a bit. But why, then, would she threaten to run away? She said recently that Michael gets more attention than she does. Could that be it? The last few days of every school term are difficult; between friends moving away, leaving others for the summer and just being really tired from the long school term, there are always more than the normal number of tears around this time.
Parenting-wise, we've had a relatively easy time of it so far. Both of the kids are healthy. They are remarkably well-behaved, reasonably well-socialized, and generally get along well with us and each other. I don't think either of them are afraid of me. So many of the photos I have taken of them at odd moments show them laughing and happy and just enjoying life. But people are complex, even at age eight, and something tells me that this is not the last time this sort of thing will happen. I fear that we're entering the preteen years, and with them the start of long rather unpleasant period of moodiness, anger and apathy (the kids will probably be hard to deal with, too).
I'm sure it's a period not without its rewards, but I'm not exactly looking forward to it.
Saturday, July 17, 2010
Traditions
I have pointed out before how England is a land steeped in tradition. Kings and Queens and chopping off heads. Christmas Pantomimes. Transvestitism. Summer brings with it a very special, closely held tradition, the School Fete.
Just as every Panto must have a cross dresser, there are a number of stock elements at a School Fair. A BBQ. Pimm's. At least one bouncy castle. A stall selling used stuffed animals at hyperinflated prices. A raffle.
Our school is under construction (a project which, mercifully, is due to complete by the opening of the next school year in September), so our Fair this year was in a park near the school, a pretty Victorian flower garden called South Park Gardens. I am nominally a trustee of the school fundraising committee, though I must admit I've been too busy lately with work to contribute much. Which is just as well, really, because the whole affair went really well without my meddling and fretting over how much booze to order. Granted, it was smaller than last year's do (which involved about 30 stalls selling various things, a lady with candy floss and popcorn machines that tripped the school's circuit breakers at least seven times in the course of the day, and a bouncy castle guy who didn't turn up), but this year's was more intimate. The folks on the committee who ran it did a really good job, and I think it probably raised close to £1,000 for the school.
My job was to be the raffle master. This was not the not the doddle I'd expected. For starters, it was very windy, and the tickets kept threatening to blow out of the candy tin. Then, the PA system was not very loud, and people kept complaining that they couldn't hear me. Some were vicious in their attacks. Even my own daughter got in on it. "You need to talk louder daddy," she whined, "no one can hear you over there." Well, that's exactly the problem, isn't it? They're OVER THERE! The thing's turned up to 11, folks, maybe you could move a few feet closer, is that really too much to ask?
Then, there was the crowd of sweet little children arrayed in front of me. Probably blocking the sound from the speaker, the little blighters. "Pick me, pick me!" they screeched, pawing, candy-sticky, at the microphone. I'll pick ya. I'll pick you right up and...but I digress. And it went on for bloody ages. There must've been 50 prizes in the children's raffle. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that every ticket I pulled had a name written on the back which I had to decipher. Honestly, I don't know why I bothered, no one could hear me anyway. "Jane, um, what does that say, a hundred and ten yards? Oh, Lloyd! Jane Lloyd from year one," I'd shout into the microphone. "Is there a Jane from year one here? No? Jane?" Over and over and over. "Pick me, pick me!" "We can't hear you!" "Jane?"
And to make this even more fun, I kept picking the same names. Apparently, Jane from year one REALLY wanted a prize, so she bought at least a hundred tickets. I think everyone bought large numbers of tickets, because toward the end, I had to pull at least ten names every time to get a new one. I guess I was somewhat arbitrary with the rules, but giving all the prizes to the same five people didn't really seem fair to the little chocolate-mouthed littleuns arrayed around my legs scrunching their ticket stubs into sweaty little wads and praying to the raffle gods to win a wooden whistle or a Sponge Bob wall clock. After all, it was a fund raiser. Don't let that get around, though, or we'll have a scandal in our little school. Rafflegate, they'll call it, and I'll be vilified and pilloried and whatever else they do to you here. Maybe they'll chop off my head. I pulled Michael's name early on and thought it was funny. When I pulled Michele's name a while later I felt a little uncomfortable, but when Caroline's came up, I didn't even bother calling it - I just handed it to the lady helping me and moved on. Next time, I'm calling numbers only. If you get ten prizes, good on ya. That other kid crying bitterly in the corner should've bought more tickets.
My two raffles (children and adult) drawn, I proceeded to spend the rest of the evening drinking beer with the other dads and making a general nuisance of myself trying to help. I had more than my share of sausages, but when the Antipodean chap working the grill threw on his pork and steak at the end, though, I must admit I went a little overboard, food wise. When the whole thing broke up at about 10pm, I made myself useful by returning a punchbowl to a neighbor and we all agreed that it was a lovely affair.
And there's one more tradition packed away for another year.
Just as every Panto must have a cross dresser, there are a number of stock elements at a School Fair. A BBQ. Pimm's. At least one bouncy castle. A stall selling used stuffed animals at hyperinflated prices. A raffle.
Our school is under construction (a project which, mercifully, is due to complete by the opening of the next school year in September), so our Fair this year was in a park near the school, a pretty Victorian flower garden called South Park Gardens. I am nominally a trustee of the school fundraising committee, though I must admit I've been too busy lately with work to contribute much. Which is just as well, really, because the whole affair went really well without my meddling and fretting over how much booze to order. Granted, it was smaller than last year's do (which involved about 30 stalls selling various things, a lady with candy floss and popcorn machines that tripped the school's circuit breakers at least seven times in the course of the day, and a bouncy castle guy who didn't turn up), but this year's was more intimate. The folks on the committee who ran it did a really good job, and I think it probably raised close to £1,000 for the school.
My job was to be the raffle master. This was not the not the doddle I'd expected. For starters, it was very windy, and the tickets kept threatening to blow out of the candy tin. Then, the PA system was not very loud, and people kept complaining that they couldn't hear me. Some were vicious in their attacks. Even my own daughter got in on it. "You need to talk louder daddy," she whined, "no one can hear you over there." Well, that's exactly the problem, isn't it? They're OVER THERE! The thing's turned up to 11, folks, maybe you could move a few feet closer, is that really too much to ask?
Then, there was the crowd of sweet little children arrayed in front of me. Probably blocking the sound from the speaker, the little blighters. "Pick me, pick me!" they screeched, pawing, candy-sticky, at the microphone. I'll pick ya. I'll pick you right up and...but I digress. And it went on for bloody ages. There must've been 50 prizes in the children's raffle. This wouldn't have been so bad, except that every ticket I pulled had a name written on the back which I had to decipher. Honestly, I don't know why I bothered, no one could hear me anyway. "Jane, um, what does that say, a hundred and ten yards? Oh, Lloyd! Jane Lloyd from year one," I'd shout into the microphone. "Is there a Jane from year one here? No? Jane?" Over and over and over. "Pick me, pick me!" "We can't hear you!" "Jane?"
And to make this even more fun, I kept picking the same names. Apparently, Jane from year one REALLY wanted a prize, so she bought at least a hundred tickets. I think everyone bought large numbers of tickets, because toward the end, I had to pull at least ten names every time to get a new one. I guess I was somewhat arbitrary with the rules, but giving all the prizes to the same five people didn't really seem fair to the little chocolate-mouthed littleuns arrayed around my legs scrunching their ticket stubs into sweaty little wads and praying to the raffle gods to win a wooden whistle or a Sponge Bob wall clock. After all, it was a fund raiser. Don't let that get around, though, or we'll have a scandal in our little school. Rafflegate, they'll call it, and I'll be vilified and pilloried and whatever else they do to you here. Maybe they'll chop off my head. I pulled Michael's name early on and thought it was funny. When I pulled Michele's name a while later I felt a little uncomfortable, but when Caroline's came up, I didn't even bother calling it - I just handed it to the lady helping me and moved on. Next time, I'm calling numbers only. If you get ten prizes, good on ya. That other kid crying bitterly in the corner should've bought more tickets.
My two raffles (children and adult) drawn, I proceeded to spend the rest of the evening drinking beer with the other dads and making a general nuisance of myself trying to help. I had more than my share of sausages, but when the Antipodean chap working the grill threw on his pork and steak at the end, though, I must admit I went a little overboard, food wise. When the whole thing broke up at about 10pm, I made myself useful by returning a punchbowl to a neighbor and we all agreed that it was a lovely affair.
And there's one more tradition packed away for another year.
Hard Question
Six year old Michael shuffles home from school, hanging his head sadly.
"What's the matter Michael?"
"Mummy?" He turns his round face upwards to his mother, tears lap at the edges of his pale blue eyes. "Why is my willie bigger than everyone else's?"
The age of difficult questions has arrived. How to answer this. Michele settled on a combination of "God did it" and "Because you're American."
Last night I managed to get home early enough to see Michael to bed.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Michael?"
"My willie's fat." He spits the "fat" like an expletive. An expression of grave concern crosses his face.
"Is that a problem?"
"It's different from English willies."
"Oh? How?"
"They're thin. Mine's fat."
"Does that bother you?"
"Yes."
"Why?"
"It's scary." Hm. I didn't think it was THAT big.
"You know, Michael, every boy has one."
"Of course I know that." Duh, dad.
"And they're all different."
"Oh."
"And when you're older it won't really matter."
"Oh."
A long pause.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Michael?"
"Is YOUR willie big?"
"Um. It's the right size."
"It must be big."
"Why?"
"Because YOU'RE big. And you're American."
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Sweaty
I sat next to the devil on the train tonight. He was fanning himself with a copy of Friday's Metro. He turned to me and said, "My Christ, it's hot."
I am sitting and sweating. Still. The thing about this country is that it seems to get very sticky at night. It's not actually that hot out now, but man, is it humid.
I spent the evening at my friend Clive's. Clive made dinner, which included Spanish chorizo (I used to make fun of him for pronouncing it "choritho" until we went to Spain and I found out that's actually how it's pronounced) and Dutch Edam. He's a real citizen of the world. Thanks for dinner, mate. Too bad about Holland.
Now, my neck damp, I ponder whether to take a shower before bed. I almost never shower at night, but I sleep much better having done so. Crawling into bed clean and smooth is such a great start to the night.
The World Cup is over, and I can go back to not paying any attention to sport for the next four years. Ahh. Bliss. Maybe I'll take that shower now.
'Night.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Chocolate Milk
"Daddy?" Michael likes to lay on my bed while I dress for work and share with me whatever happens to be in his head. "Did you know, there are TWO ways to make chocolate milk."
"Um, no," I replied absently, fumbling with my tie. "What are the two ways?"
"Well, one way is to use the dusty stuff that you mix in with it, and the other..." he trailed off, distracted by some other momentous revelation in his head about the nature of the universe, or possibly by a bug.
"What's the other way, Michael?" I asked somewhat impatiently. I had to get to work. If I don't leave by 7.15, the tube's a nightmare, all elbows and armpits for 45 minutes.
"The other way what?" I'm sure conversations with Albert Einstein had a similar kind of flow.
"The other way to make chocolate milk?"
"Oh. You can mash up chocolate in milk."
I related this conversation to a friend afterwards, who told me that I should have immediately divorced him of the notion, since you can't POSSIBLY make chocolate milk out of chocolate and milk.
This morning, I lay in bed enjoying the relative quiet of an early Saturday morning and the makings of yet another glorious London summer day (it's been several weeks on the trot of nice weather here, we're due for the snapback soon) when Michael came bounding into the room, positively radiating 6-year-old exuberance.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Michael?" Both of my children still insist on prefacing every verbal interaction with a formal salutation, even if we've just had a conversation. Even if we're the only ones in the room. Even if we're looking directly at each other while sitting a foot apart. I used to find it endearing, but it's become old. I hope they outgrow it soon.
"I made something for you and Mommy!"
Sweet, but at 7am, it is not always an entirely desirable thing to have one's young children, feral and fiddly, making things.
"Great!" I replied through a pasted-on smile and with as much enthusiasm as I could muster given the early hour and my visions of strawberry pulp laced with cookie bits and honey oozing off the edge of the dining table onto the carpet. "What is it?" I was actually afraid of the answer.
"I'll whisper it to you." Oh, dear. "I'm making chocolate milk," he confided in a stage whisper from across the room. "I'm using my chocolate Easter bunny."
My mind immediately returned to my friend's admonition. I'd been too protective. Too sensitive to his feelings. I really should've given it to him straight. You can't make chocolate milk by mashing a 5 month old chocolate bunny into a cup of milk. You just can't. Now it was too late. He'd have to find out on his own.
He scampered off, arms flailing, calling for his sister's help. Moments later, the beeping of the microwave sent a wave of fear through my belly. Not wishing to be caught up in the inevitable tears that I knew would follow this epic chocolate milk fail, I did what any good father would do. I slid quietly out of bed, leaving Michele sleeping and blissfully ignorant of the disaster about to befall her, and took a nice long shower.
On my return, a tray containing half a plate of cold microwaved scrambled eggs and a cup of milk with mysterious brown bits floating in it awaited me.
A bit of background. I have been taught that when someone, particularly a child, gives you a gift, you accept it graciously, even if it's the ugliest thing you've ever seen. Even if it doesn't fit. Even if it's covered in mud and birdpoop. Even if it's cold scrambled eggs the texture of a month-old kitchen sponge and a cup of tepid milk, with chocolatey flotsam bobbing on top and an occasional air bubble liberated from milk chocolate imprisonment breaking the surface noxiously.
Not wishing to seem ungrateful, I necked down the eggs as quickly as possible, and chased them with the milk. Apart from the fact that the sacrificial bunny was a 'double crispy' one and that I hadn't expected the milk to be so, well, crispy, it was actually not bad. Sweet, decent amount of chocolateyness, not a bad flavor, and a pleasing sufficiency of chocolate sludge at the bottom.
Michael won't say exactly how he and Caroline made the chocolate milk, beyond alluding to the use of a microwave and various kitchen implements. I suspect he doesn't really remember, having since moved on to the God-like activity of creating new animal species like the rhinocerfish and the aliphant from a ball of sticky green gummystuff received at a birthday party, but that's OK, it's probably best not to dwell on the details anyway.
To all you naysaying grownups who dismiss as impractical those Lucy Ricardo-esque plans simply because they're unconventional, I say, let 'em try. If they fail, pick up the broken bits (and keep a bottle of carpet spray handy for the strawberry pulp). If they don't, you may get a nice breakfast treat. Encourage their creative side as well as their practical one. They may surprise you.
"Um, no," I replied absently, fumbling with my tie. "What are the two ways?"
"Well, one way is to use the dusty stuff that you mix in with it, and the other..." he trailed off, distracted by some other momentous revelation in his head about the nature of the universe, or possibly by a bug.
"What's the other way, Michael?" I asked somewhat impatiently. I had to get to work. If I don't leave by 7.15, the tube's a nightmare, all elbows and armpits for 45 minutes.
"The other way what?" I'm sure conversations with Albert Einstein had a similar kind of flow.
"The other way to make chocolate milk?"
"Oh. You can mash up chocolate in milk."
I related this conversation to a friend afterwards, who told me that I should have immediately divorced him of the notion, since you can't POSSIBLY make chocolate milk out of chocolate and milk.
This morning, I lay in bed enjoying the relative quiet of an early Saturday morning and the makings of yet another glorious London summer day (it's been several weeks on the trot of nice weather here, we're due for the snapback soon) when Michael came bounding into the room, positively radiating 6-year-old exuberance.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Michael?" Both of my children still insist on prefacing every verbal interaction with a formal salutation, even if we've just had a conversation. Even if we're the only ones in the room. Even if we're looking directly at each other while sitting a foot apart. I used to find it endearing, but it's become old. I hope they outgrow it soon.
"I made something for you and Mommy!"
Sweet, but at 7am, it is not always an entirely desirable thing to have one's young children, feral and fiddly, making things.
"Great!" I replied through a pasted-on smile and with as much enthusiasm as I could muster given the early hour and my visions of strawberry pulp laced with cookie bits and honey oozing off the edge of the dining table onto the carpet. "What is it?" I was actually afraid of the answer.
"I'll whisper it to you." Oh, dear. "I'm making chocolate milk," he confided in a stage whisper from across the room. "I'm using my chocolate Easter bunny."
My mind immediately returned to my friend's admonition. I'd been too protective. Too sensitive to his feelings. I really should've given it to him straight. You can't make chocolate milk by mashing a 5 month old chocolate bunny into a cup of milk. You just can't. Now it was too late. He'd have to find out on his own.
He scampered off, arms flailing, calling for his sister's help. Moments later, the beeping of the microwave sent a wave of fear through my belly. Not wishing to be caught up in the inevitable tears that I knew would follow this epic chocolate milk fail, I did what any good father would do. I slid quietly out of bed, leaving Michele sleeping and blissfully ignorant of the disaster about to befall her, and took a nice long shower.
On my return, a tray containing half a plate of cold microwaved scrambled eggs and a cup of milk with mysterious brown bits floating in it awaited me.
A bit of background. I have been taught that when someone, particularly a child, gives you a gift, you accept it graciously, even if it's the ugliest thing you've ever seen. Even if it doesn't fit. Even if it's covered in mud and birdpoop. Even if it's cold scrambled eggs the texture of a month-old kitchen sponge and a cup of tepid milk, with chocolatey flotsam bobbing on top and an occasional air bubble liberated from milk chocolate imprisonment breaking the surface noxiously.
Not wishing to seem ungrateful, I necked down the eggs as quickly as possible, and chased them with the milk. Apart from the fact that the sacrificial bunny was a 'double crispy' one and that I hadn't expected the milk to be so, well, crispy, it was actually not bad. Sweet, decent amount of chocolateyness, not a bad flavor, and a pleasing sufficiency of chocolate sludge at the bottom.
Michael won't say exactly how he and Caroline made the chocolate milk, beyond alluding to the use of a microwave and various kitchen implements. I suspect he doesn't really remember, having since moved on to the God-like activity of creating new animal species like the rhinocerfish and the aliphant from a ball of sticky green gummystuff received at a birthday party, but that's OK, it's probably best not to dwell on the details anyway.
To all you naysaying grownups who dismiss as impractical those Lucy Ricardo-esque plans simply because they're unconventional, I say, let 'em try. If they fail, pick up the broken bits (and keep a bottle of carpet spray handy for the strawberry pulp). If they don't, you may get a nice breakfast treat. Encourage their creative side as well as their practical one. They may surprise you.
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Bragging
A prerogative of being the author of this blog is that I have the right to brag unabashedly about my children. Normally, I try to do so subtly, but not today. The below were written by Caroline and Michael for inclusion in their school's Book Week 2010 publication.
The Gruffalo
By Michael
He has big orange eyes.
He has a big fat belly because he likes owl icecream.
He is greedy
Mom and Dad
By Caroline
You are the cookie crumble in my chocolate,
The sweetness in my lemonade,
The sunshine in Havertown,
And the beauty in the petunia.
You are the hotness in the summer,
The blue on my dress,
And the grey on the dolphin.
That is why I love you.
The Gruffalo
By Michael
He has big orange eyes.
He has a big fat belly because he likes owl icecream.
He is greedy
Mom and Dad
By Caroline
You are the cookie crumble in my chocolate,
The sweetness in my lemonade,
The sunshine in Havertown,
And the beauty in the petunia.
You are the hotness in the summer,
The blue on my dress,
And the grey on the dolphin.
That is why I love you.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Happy 4th!
Whether your drink's beer or wine, gin and tonic or vodka and soda, cheers! I hope you have a great 4th of July, and spare a thought for your poor expatriated friends who do not have tomorrow off...
Cooking With Children
Caroline has developed an interest in the culinary arts. This is not a sudden thing, it's been coming on for years. When she was small and we had a large kitchen, we used to make bread together. Well, I'd make the bread and she'd get all gooey. But it was fun, and over the years I've encouraged her to help in the kitchen. "Help," by the way, generally consists of spilling roughly half of the carefully measured flour on the floor and licking the beaters.
Lately, though, Caroline's interest has taken a more serious tone. She's been copying recipes from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (that's the one with a cover that looks like a red-and-white checked tablecloth from an Italian restaurant - it's a very useful cookbook, if you don't have it, go buy it now). Actually, she's not been copying recipes so much as copying the ingredients. The recipes are, apparently, "too boring". Not being much on following recipes myself, I say amen, sister.
A bit of background may be interesting here. And if not, too bad - it's my blog.
In England, the Saturday Market is a staple of ordinary life. In the US, you may have discovered the joys of the Farmer's Market. Here, the buying and selling of recently exhumed produce has been going on since at least the Norman invasion. Most towns have a small market area, ours is no exception. Next to the Wimbledon Library is an excellent fruit and veg stand. The guys who run it are friendly and knowledgeable (or at least they used to be; a new, younger, less committed crew seems to have taken over recently - I can only hope that Colin and Mick are just away on holiday), and I try to get there every Saturday. The stall is in the car park shared by the Library and the Alexandra pub (the wine bar upstairs is called "Smart Alex," a name that I think is really very clever).
Parked behind the veg stall on most Saturdays you can find the fish man. This is a chap in a van who drives the day's catch up from Hastings on the southeast coast, about two hours from London. Accustomed to the sanitary nature of my local Wegman's in the US, it took a fair bit of doing to overcome my initial compunction about buying my fish from a guy in bright yellow waders with an eyebrow ring, but eventually the lure (pardon the pun) of the sleek silver-skinned fish was too hard to resist. At Caroline's urging, we checked the fish man's stock. Normally we buy a couple of nice pieces of cod to fry up, but that's more a winter dish. As today was a really pleasant, warm day with a light breeze we wanted to cook out, so Caroline and I settled on two fat sea bass to throw on the grill.
While I filleted the sea bass, Caroline harvested a nice bunch of thyme from the plant outside the kitchen door. This plant came with the house, and it's getting old and quite woody, but it's still got some thyme left. Ha! Caroline was initially a little standoffish about the dead fish, but she quickly developed a morbid fascination with the eye, poking it repeatedly and marvelling at how squishy it was. She later moved on the the mouth, opening and closing it, and poking her finger inside. I am really pleased that she wasn't overly precious about it. I drew the line, though, when she eagerly tried to gouge the eye out with a spoon.
The fish now passably filleted (I'm not very good at it), we laid the two fish open on the counter, salted the flesh and laid pats of butter on top. Into one, Caroline put thinly sliced lemons and some of the thyme, and into the other, slices of lime, chillies and thyme. We closed them up and put them on a hot grill for about 20 minutes, turning them over after about 10. The fish was delish, and Caroline was, understandably, proud of her contribution to the meal.
But what was Michael doing while all this was going on, you ask? Why, making dessert, of course. While I was busy butchering the fish, Michael asked for the box of strawberries he'd picked out from the fruit stall. My hands covered in fish guts and not really paying him much attention, I pointed him to where they were in the fridge. These he took into the dining room, and, while I wasn't paying attention, he took along the mortar and pestle. He returned several times for more ingredients, arousing my suspicions, but by this time he'd been at it for a while and his enthusiasm for whatever project he happens to be involved in is as inevitable as a freight train. By the time I'd finished with the fish, he'd made a sort of trifle consisting of lemon, lime, strawberry, honey, a bit of jam and two cream cookies. It looked a lot like tomato sauce, but actually, was surprisingly good.
A few tense moments with the fish and a huge mess in the dining room from the trifle-making aside, it was actually a lot of fun cooking with the kids, and I fully intend to do it again. Just as soon as I can get some more strawberries.
Lately, though, Caroline's interest has taken a more serious tone. She's been copying recipes from the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook (that's the one with a cover that looks like a red-and-white checked tablecloth from an Italian restaurant - it's a very useful cookbook, if you don't have it, go buy it now). Actually, she's not been copying recipes so much as copying the ingredients. The recipes are, apparently, "too boring". Not being much on following recipes myself, I say amen, sister.
A bit of background may be interesting here. And if not, too bad - it's my blog.
In England, the Saturday Market is a staple of ordinary life. In the US, you may have discovered the joys of the Farmer's Market. Here, the buying and selling of recently exhumed produce has been going on since at least the Norman invasion. Most towns have a small market area, ours is no exception. Next to the Wimbledon Library is an excellent fruit and veg stand. The guys who run it are friendly and knowledgeable (or at least they used to be; a new, younger, less committed crew seems to have taken over recently - I can only hope that Colin and Mick are just away on holiday), and I try to get there every Saturday. The stall is in the car park shared by the Library and the Alexandra pub (the wine bar upstairs is called "Smart Alex," a name that I think is really very clever).
Parked behind the veg stall on most Saturdays you can find the fish man. This is a chap in a van who drives the day's catch up from Hastings on the southeast coast, about two hours from London. Accustomed to the sanitary nature of my local Wegman's in the US, it took a fair bit of doing to overcome my initial compunction about buying my fish from a guy in bright yellow waders with an eyebrow ring, but eventually the lure (pardon the pun) of the sleek silver-skinned fish was too hard to resist. At Caroline's urging, we checked the fish man's stock. Normally we buy a couple of nice pieces of cod to fry up, but that's more a winter dish. As today was a really pleasant, warm day with a light breeze we wanted to cook out, so Caroline and I settled on two fat sea bass to throw on the grill.
While I filleted the sea bass, Caroline harvested a nice bunch of thyme from the plant outside the kitchen door. This plant came with the house, and it's getting old and quite woody, but it's still got some thyme left. Ha! Caroline was initially a little standoffish about the dead fish, but she quickly developed a morbid fascination with the eye, poking it repeatedly and marvelling at how squishy it was. She later moved on the the mouth, opening and closing it, and poking her finger inside. I am really pleased that she wasn't overly precious about it. I drew the line, though, when she eagerly tried to gouge the eye out with a spoon.
The fish now passably filleted (I'm not very good at it), we laid the two fish open on the counter, salted the flesh and laid pats of butter on top. Into one, Caroline put thinly sliced lemons and some of the thyme, and into the other, slices of lime, chillies and thyme. We closed them up and put them on a hot grill for about 20 minutes, turning them over after about 10. The fish was delish, and Caroline was, understandably, proud of her contribution to the meal.
But what was Michael doing while all this was going on, you ask? Why, making dessert, of course. While I was busy butchering the fish, Michael asked for the box of strawberries he'd picked out from the fruit stall. My hands covered in fish guts and not really paying him much attention, I pointed him to where they were in the fridge. These he took into the dining room, and, while I wasn't paying attention, he took along the mortar and pestle. He returned several times for more ingredients, arousing my suspicions, but by this time he'd been at it for a while and his enthusiasm for whatever project he happens to be involved in is as inevitable as a freight train. By the time I'd finished with the fish, he'd made a sort of trifle consisting of lemon, lime, strawberry, honey, a bit of jam and two cream cookies. It looked a lot like tomato sauce, but actually, was surprisingly good.
A few tense moments with the fish and a huge mess in the dining room from the trifle-making aside, it was actually a lot of fun cooking with the kids, and I fully intend to do it again. Just as soon as I can get some more strawberries.
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