Archive for March, 2007
Amy and I were going through her nighttime routine. Despite all my efforts to persuade her otherwise she insisted that she wanted to wear a nightie rather than pyjamas. It was a pretty miserable night outside and I was worried she’d wake up freezing once the heating had gone off.
Most of the nightdresses were in the wash but I managed to find a solitary one hiding in the corner of her wardrobe drawer. Amy saw my selection and was horrified.
“But it’s got no sleeves Daddy!†she protested “my arms will get coldâ€.
Kerry was walking past the door and threw in the suggestion that she could wear her pyjama top to cover her arms. Amy enthusiastically slipped it on over her nightie.
“Now give me the pyjama bottoms please†she demanded briskly. “I don’t want my legs to get cold too.â€
It was a victory of a sort I suppose.
One Love Ricky Gervais in Kenya for Comic Relief. Make sure you stick with it past 2 minutes.
Today was Amy’s baby ballet concert. This basically translates into sitting in a theatre watching thirty preschoolers run around randomly, occasionally make a half hearted token effort to follow what the dance teacher is doing. I had been really looking forward to it, but it fell dramatically short of my expectations.
The show was split between four different classes, each one getting about 15 minutes of stage time. To start the concert off all four of the groups came on at the same time and were encouraged to wave at the audience. Amy looked confused and scared, as did most of the other kids. Each one was searching the audience for their parents, and when the music stopped there was a chorus of bewildered sobbing from the wings, like the cries of the wounded in no-mans-land after the guns had stopped.
Things got better after that, but I’m pretty convinced that Amy didn’t enjoy herself all that much. Of course I could be wrong; Kerry, her mum, and my own mother say they think she had a good time. And when I asked Amy herself she told me she had a nice time, although she didn’t say it with much conviction.
For me a big part of the problem was that instead of dancing just for fun, Amy was dancing for an audience. It’s a bit like the difference between a homemade rag doll and a plastic Barbie; a lot of the innocence had been extracted. The children were being asked to dance for our entertainment rather than their own. Of course I could be analyzing the whole thing a little too much, Kerry certainly would say I was. But still, it put me off.
I’ve become a little tired of the whole ballet thing anyway, I think I’d much rather her do gymnastics or music of some sort. Something a little less, I don’t know, girly.
I did manage to get some enjoyment out of the evening however. On the way home Amy became more and more insistent that she needed to pee and she needed it now. We pulled over to the side of the road and I attempted to free her from her cardigan, leotard, tights and knickers, squat her down to have a wee, and then pull all her clothes back on in the right order. To even further complicate the procedure I tried to do it as quickly as possible as it was cold, dark, and damp outside.
The first two stages went smoothly enough, I striped her down and dangled her in my patented two handed swing hold - 99% guaranteed not to get urine on either your child’s or your own shoes. The redressing was slightly more problematic and I forgot the whole tights part of the equation. I was then treated to the sight of Amy waddling around the pavement in fits of laughter, the legs of her tights round her ankles and the crotch hooked up inside her leotard. Better than a bunch of girls in tutus pretending to be fairies any day.
I think I have mentioned before that Greg and Deb on the Web was the first blog I ever read. I stumbled across it via a review site and it quickly became a regular part of my day. Eventually I realized that Deb had her own site too, and so Toast Ambassador became part of my regular blog round.
For a long time Greg and Deb had a mysterious aura for me. I remember peering at Greg’s tiny Flickr icon, squinting my eyes and trying to make out what he looked like. They held the status of celebrity in my consciousness. When I eventually made my own blog, the fact that they read it used to keep me going when otherwise I may have petered out in apathy.
Soon Greg and I started to exchange a few emails, and then we exchanged some food parcels. Pretty soon we had a go at web chatting and before I knew it Greg and Deb’s status had switched from minor celebrities to major friends.
So last November we bit the bullet and invited ourselves round to stay. It was a pretty big risk, it’s one thing to be able to maintain a conversation for an hour on a webcam, but another to sit in someone’s house for three days. Nearly everyone I spoke with about the trip invariably asked if I was worried that they might murder us while we slept; or even that they might propose deviant sexual acts, but we weren’t at all. The main thing we were worried about was awkward silences big enough to drive ten ton trucks through.
But there weren’t any. In fact within the first hour of being with them I knew that we hadn’t made a mistake coming, and the rest of the weekend only confirmed that. We talked, laughed, ate and played. We saw the worlds weirdest tourist attraction, had a go at driving on the wrong side of the road, and had a tour of the capital of Wisconsin. We asked several bazillion questions, received several bazillion gracious answers, and bored them both silly with sentences that began “That’s a bit different, In England we…”.
Allie and Julia, their kids, were an absolute delight to be around and put up with being dragged around all over the place. We know that Amy would have just loved their company and would have had a whale of a time if we had been brave enough to have attempted the 9 hour plane journey with her and her brother.
The only negative thing about the trip was that we had to leave knowing that once more there would be three and a half thousand miles between us and them. They need to move to Huddersfield so we can invite them to dinner every week. I’ll even cook toad-in-the-hole.
Ask any three year old in the US what sound a frog makes, and pretty much nine kids out of ten will tell you “ribbit, ribbit”. Ask the same question in Britain and you would probably get fifty percent in the ribbit camp, and the other fifty believing that croak, croak is the correct answer.
The truth is that a frog’s call is very specific to its own particular species, each different genus has its own particular song - from meep meep, through keywa, keywa, all the way down to bowrp.
The Pacific Treefrog is found throughout western USA, including California. When the early sound engineers of Hollywood needed some atmospheric frog song to add to a movie they simply set off to the local pond with a tape recorder in hand. There they would record the Pacific tree frogs distinctive call - Ribbit, ribbit; slap a label on the tape reading “Frogs” and the job was a good’un. In this way, the American public soon began to automatically associate a ribbit with a frog, regardless of species.
Conversely over in jolly old England the most prevalent frog is the European Common Frog, whose call is more of a croak. Therefore explaining our tendency to assign that particular noise with all frogs. The prevalence of American films and programs in our media has ensured that the ribbit has a place in our consciousness too.
The Bermuda Triangle is all very well and good, but it is hardly a boon to mankind. I’m sure giant squid surfacing and dragging passing shipping into Davy Jones’ locker is very exciting if you are into that sort of thing, but give me Yorkshire’s Rhubarb Triangle any day of the week.
Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield mark the corners of the world famous Rhubarb Triangle (what do you mean you’ve never heard of it). Throughout the area the plant is grown in special forcing sheds and kept in perpetual darkness in order to enhance the flavor - a bit like veal, only with vegetables.
Rhubarb’s finest hour was in the second world war, where due to rationing children were often given a sprig along with a bag of sugar in lieu of sweets or chocolate. The plant was also frequently used to cut with more scarce fruits in order to bulk up recipes. There was even a factory in Bradford which produced wooden replica raspberry pips to place in rhubarb jam to fool the public that they were getting the pure stuff.
Unfortunately I learnt all this too late to attend the annual Wakefield Rhubarb festival. But I shall be their next year - waving my rhubarb stick above my head with pride.
As you know Kerry and I have flown over from England to spend a few days with Geg and Deb. Most people from the UK have a pretty good idea of what goes on in the USA as American TV and films is extremely prevalent on our screens. In addition both Kerry and I have been in the States before so we knew what to expect. There still have been a few culture shocks for us however.
In order to get into a shop, restaurant, hotel, or public building in the US you have to pull the door open, in the UK you would push it. I understand the rational for this, it makes things a lot safer in case of a fire. What it doesn’t do however is make things a lot safer for the visiting Englishman who subconsciously assumes the door will open. I have spent the last four days walking into doors.
While I love the service culture in America, sometimes it becomes a little overwhelming. In England when you order a meal you basically get what you are given. There is none of this “How would you like your eggs sir?” or “Can I refill your coffee sir?” or “Sir would you like to do that in the restroom instead?”. No, you just get whatever egg the cook feels like making and a coffee which, once it’s gone, will only be refilled if you fork out more cash.
Sometimes the options can get a little overwhelming. It had taken Kerry and I three days to work out the secret code for how we like our eggs is “over hard” and we were more than a little proud of our new cultural knowledge. We entered the diner full of pomp and swagger, confident that this time we wouldn’t be reduced to bumbling Hugh Grant like figures when asked the dreaded egg question. And all went swimmingly, Kerry was first up and performed admirably under the pressure. But the real masterstroke came when I suddenly changed my mind and decided to have scrambled instead. Such improvisational dexterity can only be the hallmark of a real pro.
And then they asked us how we wanted our toast and all our confidence was shattered in one cruel blow. Toast for the sake of god ! What on earth are the codes for that? We tried some guesses - “Crunchy over crust”, “Butter side down”, and “With the burnt bits scraped off please ” but the waiter just looked at us blankly. Our only consolation is that like 65% of the rest of the US he probably thought our accent was Australian so we didn’t bring our nation into disrepute.
We have also been asked for proof of our age nearly every time we have been into a bar. The first time it happened we assumed it was an attempt to make us feel unwelcome, as the request came from an incredibly surly bartender. However we were subsequently asked by a number of bouncers and barmen who appeared much more friendly and willing to help . Back home you are unlikely to be asked for identification once you reach about seventeen, so it was all rather exciting and flattering. Every time it happened to us we told ourselves that it wasn’t a cultural thing, it was just we looked incredibly vibrant youthful.
But we’ve had a really great time so far, especially with Greg and Deb. They have been most genial hosts, and have bent over backwards for us. The kids keeps us entertained too, and are fantastically well behaved despite what their parents say. We’ve been looking forward to this trip for a long time, and now that we are at the Lee family’s house and they have made us so welcome, we are incredibly grateful that we’ve made such cool friends, no matter how strangely we met.
In the days of the industrial revolution mill workers worked long tortuous shifts of up to fifteen hours a day. To keep the workers’ stamina up through these grueling sessions the mill owners introduced the tea-break. An invigorating cup of tea with added sugar for energy.
Unfortunately the earthenware mugs they drunk from frequently cracked due to the high temperature of the tea. As a solution to this milk was introduced to the mixture in order to cool the liquid.
This can be taken to extremes however. Back when I used to work with adults with learning difficulties it always used to puzzle me why my clients over a certain age used to make incredibly milky tea and coffee. Whenever they brewed up they regularly filled more than half the cup with milk before adding water. I later found out that in the bad old days of
institutions, people with learning difficulties were forced to have their tea this way as a blanket strategy to prevent any scaldings.
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