Bleah.

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.