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 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.

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.

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.