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.

Someone for Everyone

Familial disapproval and the scratching pens of potential future employers be hanged, I'll admit it: there's nothing I enjoy more than a good piss-up on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  We have friends in town this weekend, so, equipped with a good excuse and my Panama hat, I made my way to the old Walmer Castle in Ledbury Road.

There are a number of differences between British pubs and American bars.  For starters, the pub is a social event, where the bar tends to be primarily focussed on drinking.  But drinking IS a social event, you say.  True, but moreso the way they do it here.  A proper pub is as much about the meeting of new people and the enjoyment of the company of friends as it is about the drink.  The pub is traditionally the centre of social life here.  A good local and a love of talking bollocks all afternoon is as key to the enjoyment of London as is, say, a love of curry and an appreciation of high rates of taxation.

Another key difference between British pubs and American bars is the sense of community ownership of furniture.  I've seen fistfights break out in American watering holes over elbow rights to a table, or possession of a stool.  Here, a table is a shared commodity.  If you don't have enough people in your party to surround the table on which you've staked your claim, you're liable to find yourself sharing it with others.  Occasionally, these others are not people you'd normally choose to associate with.

Today, while half the population of Notting Hill rammed themselves, a stinking, seething, sweating mass, into the Castle, I stood outside with my mates around a convenient table.  We are fairly good-sized blokes, so it was somewhat surprising when a gangly chap in a 'Great Britain' shirt set his jug of Pimms down between the sweaty shoulders of my friend David and me and struck up a conversation.  He was clearly not much of a conversationalist, but I tend to be a nice guy in these situations and engage anyone, mainly because I'm not very good at going out by myself and meeting people, and there but for the grace of God and so forth.  It became clear in the first minute or so, though, that this was not someone we'd really find entertaining, and he had to go.  I'm also not good at ignoring people, so it was a while before he wandered off, and he returned a few times afterwards.

During halftime, we were joined at our table by a girl, also alone and socially awkward, and strangely, dressed very similarly to our new friend.  "Perfect," I thought, "let's get them together!"  And together they got.

We cheered them on from the sidelines as they found a comfy seat in the back of the pub (it had cleared out by this time, England having lost rather badly to Germany), where they spent a fair bit of time getting to know each other.  We thought our man had sealed the deal when the two of them exited together, still engrossed in amiable conversation.  I think his folding bicycle that turned her off, though, and she hastily made her way back into the bar.  Perhaps she'd mistaken his offer to take her for a ride on his bike to mean a spin on his Harley.  He loitered a bit until the bouncers asked him to remove his preposterous little Brompton from the front of the bar, and he rode off into the sunset, alone.  She's still there for all I know.

They might have been perfect for each other, but they'll never know.  I wonder if, in ten years, he will consider how his life might have turned out, or whether she will come to deeply regret her choice to leap from his hook and back into the murky pond.  I wonder if they will remember each other and, with the remembering, smile, just a little.  I wonder if they missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Butterfly Effect

A midday call between my boss in London and someone in Budapest runs over, causing my early morning call from New York with the same manager to start and finish late.  This causes me to miss my intended train from New York to Philadelphia.  The next train is delayed by 5 minutes, which results in my taxi arriving in the car park at the office in Philadelphia at precisely the same moment that a woman named Rosemary, on her way to her great aunt's funeral, eases her new Honda out of its parking spot and directly into the passenger door of my cab.

One cannot help but wonder at the staggering number of minor events around the world (and these are just the ones I know of) which conspired to leave poor Rosemary with a shredded bumper and airbags scrotal and shriveled.  Due to the split-second timing of events like this, given sufficient time, I could enumerate an endless number of factors that affected the timing of my journey and therefore contributed to this minor incident, from the number of vehicles on the Schuylkill Expressway to the friction caused by the specific configuration of the atoms on the rails over which my train passed.  Surely you can think of any number of similar situations in your own life - seemingly minor events which, aggregated, give rise to a significant event.  How did you meet your partner, for example?

But one must also realize that these coincidences did not actually cause the event; they merely acted as inputs to an incredibly complex system, producing a specific reality in which Rosemary's car is damaged.  This event itself probably had unknown knock on effects.

And this, I suppose, is how life really happens.  Every action produces a small change in a complex system, this change gives rise a specific reality immediately around it.  This reality combines with other realities produced by other small changes, giving rise to a broader reality which, in turn, combines with other broad realities which have been influenced by events elsewhere, and on and on and on, an endless dance of molecules and phone calls and automobile accidents.  If Rosemary's car is single pebble thrown into a pond, we live in a rain-rippled ocean.

Chaos theorists call this the "butterfly effect," positing that in a system as complex as weather, the flap of a butterfly's wing in one part of the world can, when combined with other specific small incidents, give rise to  dramatic shifts in the overall weather.  This is commonly misrepresented as a butterfly in Brazil "causing" a tornado in Texas.  That is, of course, an absurd oversimplification; but if one considers how small events are contributing factors to significant ones, one cannot but conclude that absolutely everything is interconnected in a way that we cannot understand, let alone predict.

The children are both in our bed, displaced by visiting grandparents.  I have been awake since two this morning, the jetlag playing its usual tricks with sleep and appetite.  I have moved downstairs to the couch to avoid waking the kids.  It's now four o'clock, and it's hot and sticky and I have opened the windows.  The sky is brightening and the birds are just warming up their morning cacophony.  I've spent some time writing this, you've just spent a few minutes reading it.  Our lives have both been altered in ways that we cannot comprehend.

Long Walk

On Saturday, my mate Clive and I went for a walk.  This phrase has a different meaning here - we didn't just go for a little stroll in the park, we hiked.  We slogged through a vile, squidgy mixture of mud and cow shit.  We panted our way up long, steep inclines.  We stopped at a few pubs, as you do, for refreshment and sustenance.

We have, by sections, been walking a trail called the North Downs Way, which runs about 150 miles from Farnham, west of London, out to Dover on the east coast.  While passing through a number of towns is unavoidable over such a long distance, much of it has been out in the open countryside, and it has provided me a view of this country which I'd never have acquired living in London.  On this section, we passed the 79 mile marker, a not insignificant accomplishment for an aging fattie like me.

Once outside of London, people are generally friendlier, the pace of life is generally a bit slower, and the landscape becomes almost unimaginably varied.  Deep silent pine forests end without warning on open, gently rolling fields, which in turn suddenly become steep slopes, the chalk rock slick underfoot at the first sign of damp.  The beauty of walking is that you never know what's around the next corner.  Sometimes, it's a 3,000 year old stone monument, sometimes a Norman church or a tiny pretty village.  A 13th century pub called the 'Dirty Habit'.  Eventually, this walk will bring us a glimpse of the sea and Dover's famous chalk cliffs.  Other times, it shows us the back of a petrol station, or an overgrown car lot, or a back street in a dirty little town populated by drunken chavs.  But regardless of what it brings, the road ahead always brings something new, something different from where you are now.

It was about midway through this 18km walk that we got to talking about birthdays, and it was at that point that I realized that I'm about 4 months shy of my 40th.  This should hardly have been a revelation; I know when my birthday is, I know in what year I was born, I can do math, albeit with that certain lack of precision common to those who spend their time thinking in shades of grey.  (Odd - in writing that, I remembered that I had a dream about slide rules last night.  I wonder what that means?).

I'm shocked.  How can I be almost 40?  When did this happen?  I can remember my grandparents in their 40's (I have a very young family).

From the standpoint of life and living, this milestone 14,610 days from the date of my birth is no more significant than any other day.  Life, like a walk, is made up of a progression of individual moments, each coming on the heels of the last, and each of these moments, whether today or ten years from now, should be anticipated and celebrated equally.

Today is my 14,463rd day.  Now where are my presents?