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.

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?

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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.
 

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.