Happy Birthday, Michael

Occasionally, like David Byrne, I am forced to ask myself, "How did I get here?"
Today, for example.  I find myself at the dining room table holding a Meteor Mud encrusted Build-A-Bear gift card in one hand and a dozen or so wet Martians in the other.  It's a little surreal.  Come to think of it, I have to wonder whether something can be a little surreal.  I think that's like being a little pregnant.  Either it's surreal or it isn't.  In this case, it was.

You see, today is Michael's sixth birthday.  Traditionally, we have one of these around this time every year.  We opted to celebrate this auspicious occasion at Wacky Warehouse, which sounds about as Wacky as it actually is.  Wacky Warehouse is situated on the second floor of a rather seedy pub called Kiss Me Hardy, the origin of which name I have yet to establish.  The pub itself, and the attendant piggyback Wackiness, are located in a rather dismal shopping plaza, alongside a weed- and rubbish-choked watercourse which oozes alongside the main road.

The pub is also located next to a drive-thru Burger King.  This may seem an insignificant and superfluous detail to my American friends who are accustomed to such conveniences, but I assure you, it is neither insignificant nor taken for granted.  The drive-thru is quite a novelty here.  I am aware of only two drive-thru fast food restaurants - one on the A3 between here and Southampton, and the Burger King next to Wacky Warehouse.  Our neighbor says that he will occasionally drive his 5 year old daughter through the drive-thru several times of an evening because she's so enamoured of the whole thing.  I'm not sure what will happen to her when she grows up.  I hope she'll be OK.

Today was an absolutely gorgeous day, weather wise.  The sun hung in a cloudless turquoise sky, and a cool breeze and low humidity kept the temperature comfortably in the mid 20's (low 70's for the Fahrenheit users).  Just a perfect day to be outside.  Or it would have been, except Wacky Warehouse, as its name implies, does not shine its Wacky light on the great outdoors.  And of course, like most places here, it's not air conditioned, which meant it was hot as hell inside.  Add to this the surly staff and the fact that our party room, with its solid cinderblock walls and not a soft surface in sight, was reminiscent of a Cold War era fallout shelter, and you can imagine just how sweaty and sticky the two hours were.

I have concluded that I have but one job at my children's  birthdays - I am a punching bag for the 10 minutes or so between the end of the meal and the arrival of the cake and ice creams.  It always starts off so well.  The children, after playing on the climbing frame for an hour or so (one of our guests found herself hung upside down by her ankles in the 'protective' netting), make their way into the bomb shelter to enjoy their rations of processed reformed chicken or mealy, granular pizza.  They were relatively subdued, munching away, talking quietly.  Occasionally belching.  But then, there's always one.  Always one kid who, having finished their meal and becoming bored with wiping their leftover fries on the floor and dropping them into their neighbour's lunchbox, thinks it'll be a hoot to sneak up behind me, smack my bottom with all their little six-year-old might and then run back to their seat.

I actually don't mind this at all.  It's a fun little game.  The instigator leads off from her seat, I pretend that I don't know what's happening until she gets a few paces away from me and then I spin round, growling, and she runs squealing with delight back to her seat.  This advance, growl, squeal, retreat cycle continues until the 17 other children, emboldened by the fact that I haven't yet eaten the inventor of this game, decide that it's just not as much fun to watch and join in. This on its own wouldn't be so bad, but there's always that one kid who runs full tilt, head down and fist extended, directly into my crotch.  That's when things get ugly.  Because he doesn't just do this once.  Oh, no.  He does this again and again, backs up with his fist still stuck out like the big gun on a Panzer and takes another run.  I'm going to start wearing a cup to children's parties.

Last year we had a Batman party at home for Michael.  It was great fun.  I played the role of the Riddler.  I wore a mask and the greenest outfit I had (a green T-shirt and a pair of shorts which had once been brown but had faded to a neglected colorless nothingness that might have passed for green in the days of black and white television and booming sales of acid).  The kids threw water balloons at me (water balloons which, I might add, I myself had to make.  It's a good thing those kids are cute).  If you've never had a bunch of five-year-olds throwing water balloons at you, you really haven't lived.  The funny thing is that none of them had the arm to actually make those balloons break on me.  They all bounced off me and broke on the ground, ironically wetting the kids more than they did me.  Everyone agreed, though, that it was the best party ever.

And so it is that I find myself scraping off the table a puttlylike substance that Michael received from our soon-to-be-former friends.  This gloop is part of a Martian making kit, which features multiple canisters of this puttystuff, some sort of coloured gel and the need to time things so as to allow the gel to set.  This was not how I'd imagined my life turning out.  When we talked about moving to London in 1999 BC (Before Children), I envisioned myself living in a somewhat edgy yet fashionable part of the city.  Travelling to the Continent every weekend.  Wearing black.  I hadn't factored in children and the changes and responsibilities they bring.  But it's all good.  I don't really look good in black anyway, and who needs mussels in Belgium when you've got Wacky Pizza.

Happy sixth birthday, Michael.  You and your sister are everything to me.  I'm so proud of you, and I'm so fortunate that you're my son.  I hope that you feel loved and valued, because you are, more than you can comprehend.

Thanks, Volcano!

We are stranded.  Not "Lost" stranded, nor even "Gilligan's Island" stranded, but stranded on holiday stranded.  This is really not a bad way to be stranded.  It beats being stranded in, say, Thailand with the tanks rolling in.  But it's still an odd thing to live through.

We were meant to fly back last night.  As you may be aware, Mother Nature, or God, or Fate had other plans.  The volcano with the utterly unpronounceable name (AY-yah-fyah-lah-YOH-kuul) continues to spew ashes and, apparently, random phonemes, into the upper atmosphere, causing untold chaos for travellers and American television journalists.


Many people don't understand why a volcano in Iceland would have such a devastating effect on international air travel.  After all, what's a bit of smoke to a jet?  Isn't this just another example of the nanny society trying to overprotect us?  


Actually, it turns out that it isn't.  Volcanic ash is basically full of glass particles.  When that glass gets sucked into a jet engine, it melts and oozes through it.  The cold air being sucked into the engine then cools the glass, hardening it and causing the engine to stop working.  


A jet without an engine is like a, well, like a jet without an engine.  I flew a glider once.  It was fun, and you can fly around for hours if you have enough money.  But it was also very light and had a tremendous wingspan.  It carried two people and had no upper class section.  It was made of Fiberglas.  In short, it was made to fly without an engine.  A 777, well-designed though it may be, is not.


So it's with good reason that we're stranded.  And actually, I'm grateful.  Being stuck here allows me to spend more time with people that really matter to me - family and friends, people I haven't seen in ages.  On this trip, I've been able to catch up with a few of those who I really missed while in London, and doing so has made me realize just how important it is to stay in touch with those people.  It's also made me realize, though, that relationships, the really good ones, are stronger than time and distance.


Thanks to everyone who's carved the time out of their busy lives to spend time catching up.  And thanks to YOU, Eyjafjallajokull.  Long may we mispronounce your name.

The Happiest Place on Earth, Explained

I recently wrote about the only place in London where people actually smile at me, and a few days later realized why this is.  It's because of the kids.

Our house faces the street.  We have the top two floors of a three story Victorian townhouse.  With its 12-foot ceilings, ornate plasterwork and finicky plumbing, it's quite a grand place in a shabby chic sort of way.  A feature of these townhouses is a bay window in front.  Or maybe it's a bow window. I don't know, anyway, it's three windows which stick out of the front of the house, affording a 270 degree view.  And from this window, on most mornings, Caroline and Michael wave and blow kisses and make faces at me for as long as they can as I walk to the tube station.  If I stretch my neck right as I start along the footpath I mentioned earlier, I can just see them between two branches of the tree in front of the house, still waving madly.  This, of course, makes me smile, which apparently causes others on the path to smile back.  Hm.  I may be on to something here.

Speaking of children, one thing I always tell those who are about to have kids is that the first few years are really hard, but it gets easier and more rewarding as time goes by.  Yesterday, we reached another milestone in the children's development - the Children's Table.  We went to see a play (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang at the New Wimbledon Theatre - it was surprisingly well done, and I highly recommend it as a day out with kids in London) with three other families and afterwards, out to a very noisy Italian restaurant for dinner.

There were 16 of us - 8 adults and 8 children.  The restaurant couldn't fit us all at one table, so they laid two tables for 8 each.  The kids gravitated to one and the adults to the other.  I expected disaster as the children at the kids table ranged from 4 to 8, but it all went surprisingly well.  The kids had a great time doing kid stuff without adult intervention, and the grownups were able to actually carry on a conversation without constantly interrupting themselves to stop the kids blowing bubbles in their drinks.
Caroline got into a tiff with her friends over something (hopefully not a boy, but she won't tell us...) and spent the last half hour or so sulking in the corner, but otherwise it was a fine evening.  Friends with young children, take heart!  You too will soon have a peaceful meal!

I have to say, though, that these rites of passage are bittersweet.  The fact that the kids can order their own food and fend for themselves at the dinner table is gratifying in that it allows me to commune with other adults, but it also means that the children are growing up and acquiring the skills that will make them fully independent at some point in the not too distant future.  When they were babies, I wished they'd just grow UP already, but now they aren't and I wish they'd just STOP growing UP already.  Ah, well, as long as they keep making faces at the window, it's all OK.

The Happiest Place on Earth

There is a common misconception, brought about by a large number of dollars spent on branding, advertising and marketing, that Disney Land and all its spawn are the 'Happiest Place on Earth'. In fact, the happiest spot on the planet is about 10 meters from my front door, and I'll challenge any of those mouse-lovers to prove me wrong.

Allow me to explain.

London is a miserable place. Well, actually, the people are miserable. Not the ones I know, of course, but the vast majority of the population. It's not their fault. Misery is an institution here. Ever since the year God-knows-when, when Romans had their slaves row up the Thames for the first time, debarked their vessels and said, "Veni specto pluvia!", which roughly translated, means, "Sweet Mother of God, this rain sucks!", successive generations of Britons have had to go about their daily business in cold, wet clothes. Eventually, the damp seeped into the pores and became encoded in the DNA. So people here can't help being miserable; they're genetically predisposed to be so.

Close your eyes. Wait, keep them open, or you won't be able to read the rest of this. Imagine a sidewalk in London. The sidewalk is empty. Now imagine a man appears, striding in your direction. You can predict two things about the immediate future. 1) the man heading in your direction will change course for no discernible reason other than to place himself directly in your path. 2) he will ram his shoulder into yours as you pass.

This sort of aggressive apathy is pervasive throughout the city. Everywhere, that is, except for a footpath about 10 meters from my front door. This footpath, no more than 30 meters long, passing narrowly between the bland faces of the two least remarkable houses in a street full of unremarkable houses, is truly the happiest place on earth. It is here that the small courtesy is still observed of waiting for an oncoming pedestrian to pass through a narrow space. And it is here that the rarest of flowers can be found - the smile of another human.

I've been smiled at, said "Good morning" to, waited for, on that short stretch of pavement connecting my street with the next one over. I cannot fathom why this should be. There is nothing special about this path. It is not pretty; in fact, it is fairly ugly. I know women who won't walk alone through it at night. There are weeds and high walls and the odd steaming mound of freshly laid poo. And yet, people smile at me and say good morning. It's almost as if I'm not in London at all, but in some Utopian dream, where people are actually nice to each other.

Or maybe I'm in Denver.

Take that, you Mouseketeers.

Wii Don't Like Sports

I am not athletic.

There, I've said it. If you've known me for more than 5 minutes, you're saying, "Well, of COURSE not!" I played a little racquetball with friends in college. I do a bit of walking, though I spend at least as much time in the pub afterwards as doing the actual walk, and the walk is really more of a leisurely stroll anyway. I went running once and made it up the street to a neighbor's house, where I spent the rest of the evening watching football and eating chips before walking home. Yes, despite brief flirtations with the sporting life, I remain firmly committed to the sofa.

You see, sports are hard. There's sweating, and sore muscles, and showering with other men afterwards. Shudder. And then there's the whole coordination thing, which still eludes me.

The kids got a Wii for Christmas. Santa really brought it, but the old sod spent our money to buy it. There are no games for the Wii that don't involve some degree of hand-eye coordination. They also require a generous amount of imagination to turn a 6-inch oblong bit of plastic into a golf club or a baseball bat, or some obscure piece of martial arts equipment.

I really have always failed to grasp the point of the Wii; it's unrealistic, involves a considerable outlay of cash, and doesn't serve drinks. It's a lot like Disney in this regard. However, the kids wanted one, and, since we weren't going back to the US for Christmas, old Saint Nick-Your-Wallet kindly obliged.

Since the weather was generally foul over the break, we spent a great deal of time playing the Wii. We bowled, shot ducks, played baseball. We actually had a lot of laughs with the kids, though the children tend to be better than I at most of these things.

The Wii comes with its own religion. The blurb for WiiConnect24, which is basically a marketing term for "we're going to connect to the Internet and download shit you don't want while you're asleep. Sweet dreams!" contains the following pious passage:

"WiiConnect24 delivers new content even while users are sleeping or not at home, presenting “new experiences that anyone can enjoy every day”, and laying the foundation for a lifestyle in which everyone in the family can relate to Wii on a daily basis."

'Laying the foundation for a lifestyle in which everyone in the family can relate to Wii on a daily basis.' Huh?  I'm not sure which is more disturbing: 'relating to Wii on a daily basis' or referring to the thing as if it's a deity. Relating to your wife? Sure. Relating to Vishnu? OK, if that's your thing. Relating to Wii?  Anh, maybe not so much.

One of the many sacrifices one can make at to Wii is the purchase of a gimcrack called the 'Wii Fit Plus Balance Board'. This is a spring-loaded bit of plastic which lays on the floor and politely informs you that you could stand to lose a stone or two.

Actually, it's not polite at all. When I step on it, it says "Ohhh". Sometimes I like to jump on it, you know, just to see if I can really hurt it.  I can't, but the Balance Board retaliates by making my on-screen character appear overweight and sleepy.  Actually, that's not far wrong.

In spite of our mutual dislike, I'm pleased to say that through this somewhat unpleasant houseguest I have found a game at which I truly excel. It's called Zensa, and is based on an ancient Zen exercise intended to focus the mind and train the student to ignore outside distractions. This modern adaptation, about which hundreds of generations of Zen masters are surely stirring in their urns, requires the player to sit on the Balance Board and be absolutely still for 3 minutes.

At remaining completely motionless, I am a champion. If there's a Zenza event in the 2012 Olympics, I'll be well ready for it.

So long, 2009. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

I wasn't sorry to see the back of 2008. 2009's been an even more interesting year. By 'interesting', I mean 'shite'. But the more well-balanced of my friends tell me that it's always a worthwhile exercise to focus on the long term; so here, in the waning hours of the last year of the decade, is my brief, off-the-top-of-my-head inventory of the ten years just passed.

- Y2K-related disasters: 0
- Children: 2
- Houses bought: 1
- Houses sold: 1
- Cars: 6
- Moves: 3
- International moves: 1
- Jobs lost: 1
- Jobs found: 1
- Dirty diapers changed: ~4,000
- Kitchens remodeled: 1
- Kitchens I wish I could remodel: 1 (the current one)
- Countries visited: 11
- Grandparents lost: 1
- Hours commuting: ~6,000
- Blog posts: 111
- Photos: 27,198
- Fender benders: 1 (today)
- Facebook friends: 333

I guess the Noughties haven't been all good, but they haven't been all bad either. I suppose that in any period of time, there will be highs and lows, but on average, things have a way of balancing themselves out.

I hope that you have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2010.




First there was the recession-induced belt-tightening. Then I lost my job. I found it again pretty quickly, but there was a pretty touchy eight-week period.

Christmas Traditions

When a country's been around as long as England has, it's bound to acquire a few traditions which appear, to the uninitiated, somewhat peculiar.

Christmas provides a bountiful harvest of historical oddities. Mince pies sound like a much better idea than they actually are. Wassailing involves making a sacrifice of toasted bread to an apple tree. The Christmas pantomime.

At first glance, the panto seems a quaint but lovable tradition, endured with grudging good humor, much like the monarchy or our Electoral College. In actual fact, everyone looks forward to its arrival, though no one will admit this.

To the untrained observer, a pantomime is just a bad musical, loosely based on a well-known children's story, containing a high concentration of inside jokes and acted out by people who were almost famous once. But, as with so many things, one must look deeper to understand pantomime's true nature. It's actually a shockingly bad musical, loosely based on a well-known children's story, containing a high concentration of inside jokes and acted out by people who were almost famous once.

There are a few stock items which must be included in each and every pantomime. To wit:

- A villain, who must be booed each time he appears on stage

- At least one sob story, for which the audience must express adequate sympathy

- A buffoon who plays the part of a narrator/MC. He greets the audience each time he appears on stage, and the audience must respond appropriately.

- A transvestite

Aladdin is the panto show this year at the Wimbledon Theatre. Having seen one pantomime several years ago, I really felt no compulsion to attend another, despite having gone native with many other things. At least I didn't want to attend until I learned that the genie was to be played by none other than Pamela Anderson. Yes, the Baywatch beauty has arrived in our fair city, in all her peroxide- and silicone-enhanced glory. I'll leave it to the professional critics to dissect her performance, but suffice to say, it included about as much giggling, jiggling and Tommy Lee wisecracks as you'd expect.

As odd as the panto tradition is, though, I must admit that we harbor a few zinging oddities in our house, particularly with regard to the existence of Father Christmas. Not since the Piltdown Man has an utter fabrication been so painstakingly crafted and lovingly upheld. In our house, the Santa presents are wrapped in special paper. Santa has special gift tags. The children must never, ever, be allowed to see either the Santa paper or the tags in our closets. Michele and I had an argument tonight over whose name was to be attached to the Wii - ours or Santa's.

I don't think I'd have such an issue with the old chap, were it not for two things:

1 - I never believed in Santa as a child. My disbelief was a handy thing when, in second grade, Sister Joanne Whatshername told the class the truth about Santa Claus. I exchanged a knowing, dry-eyed glance with the only other non-believer in the class. We were vindicated. And a little relieved.

2 - The fat bastard gets the credit for the good presents. We give our kids socks and underwear, Santa gives them Nintendos and guitars. No wonder he gets a special plate for his cookies.

I have to admit, though, that it's kind of fun, perpetrating this lie. The children clearly enjoy the myth, it does no harm as far as I can tell, and, in bad years, we can call Santa a piker.

I showed Caroline how to check Santa's progress on NORAD's website tonight. She gazed in wonder at the Google Earth mash-up pinpointing Santa's location. She counted down the seconds and called out the locations as he moved from city to city, wide-eyed and mispronouncing Lithuania and Belarus.

Someday she won't believe in Father Christmas. Someday she'll have her heart broken. Someday she'll know all about sex and war and toxic debt.

But not tonight.

Tonight's Christmas Eve. Tonight Santa's coming. Tonight, everything's OK.

Merry Christmas.