Mi Myseff amd Isolasion: daj 12

 Still a little of what Earth people call sick. It’s more mere exhaustion now. Probably all triggered by some bad nights of sleep. Or rather bad nights of lack of sleep.

The last few days I’ve been enthusing about what I’ve been watching, which I find very easy. I am a bit of nerd when it comes to movies. Sorry if that startled you.

It’s been so for a long time and started with a fascination for old and obscure horror and sci fi movies when I was a teen. If you press me for a favourite movie, I’ll say Fiend Without A Face, which is a British-produced 1950s sci-fi horror with invisible aliens. It is a great movie and as unintentionally silly as it sounds. But it is genuinely scary and has some surprisingly good special effects of the aliens when they finally become visible as brains propelled by their own spinal cords.

It’s not to be confused with The Brain From Planet Arous (1957), whose antagonist is a giant brain dangled from a thread. Don’t get me wrong, the latter is worth a watch, but more for how silly it is.

Fiend Without A Face. 

Meanwhile in the real, present-day world, things are still terrifying and a bit silly. Politically, the British government is fighting itself because, spoiler alert, there seems to be no way rush out of the EU cleanly. It was always going to take time, but the government has felt it has to rush it because people were told it would be quick, easy and instantly going to make the country wealthier. Once you’ve conned people, it’s very hard to uncon them.

The latest big fight is about the withdrawal agreement, which has had a comical history. The previous Prime Minister, Theresa May, spent a long time trying to get the government to vote for it. She tried several times and they kept saying no. Then with a few capitulations on both side, the next Prime Minister got it through, and scoffed at anyone who dare read the small print or vote against it. Now the same Prime Minister is saying it’s not very good. And instead of resigning for pushing through something that is no good, he wants to change an already signed agreement, which from a government would seem a thoroughly dishonest thing to do. But it’s dishonesty which has gotten us where we are, so why change now.

The toddler has taken to putting the tablet on the back of her scooter and pushing it around like some kind of mobile cinema. Which makes up for everything bad going on in the world.

Me Myseff and Isolation: day 8

 Week 2. The week that should not be.

Toddlers emulate us adults. It’s how they learn by copying us and trying to be like us. The downside is we realise, because we are always telling her what to do and being firm when she doesn’t do things, she has started doing the same with us. She has become very, very bossy. She orders us about and if we say no, she puts her finger to her lips and goes “Shhhh! The baby’s asleep.” This last part is not what we do, but it’s her own interpretation.

It isn’t helped that she watches a lot of Peppa Pig. Peppa is a very entitled, middle-class child that bosses everyone around and acts like the queen of knowledge. She’s a terrible role model, but she’s probably a very typical child.

Our toddler is also very quick to unleash her thermonuclear option, which is a kind of sonic bomb rendering all around her with momentary hearing loss. It’s a high-pitched scream channelled direct from Hades, but instead of an Earth-shattering growl, it’s an ear-piercing scream. A crystal clear ear-piercing scream thanks to her soprano genes. I’m worried it’ll form the basis of some superpower. I’ll be taking your ideas as to what her superhero/supervillain name will be. My thoughts are: Sopra-Noh! Ear Piercer. Siren. 

I have no drawing skills so I will not be making a graphic novel of any of these ideas, so feel free to steal.

If you do, after a while, she can team up with other similar super{hero/villain}s. Bari Tony, Alto Native, Bass Lynn, Ten Awe and of course Castrato, who has the most harrowing origin story of any supercharacter.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 7

Day 7. End of the first week. After today we are half-way through. 

We are greeted with the news that Sweden is now on the exemption list. I’d have expected to be more annoyed, but arbitrary rule changes are very much the norm these days. The rule is if you arrive from Saturday, no isolation. If you arrive before, you isolate for 2 weeks. I pity the chumps who land Friday night rather than Saturday morning, cos they gotta isolate while their slightly later friends are free. It does seem a little ridiculous.

What this means is that if we had stayed an extra week, we wouldn’t have to isolate next week. But as it stands we do. 

It’s a bit like we went on a 2 year thieving spree, and when we turned ourselves in, we got a 2 year sentence. But if we’d gone on a 3 year thieving spree, we wouldn’t have to give ourselves in because thieving suddenly wasn’t a crime anymore.

The news comes just as some of the surrounding countries seem poised for a second wave. However, Sweden might have achieved that fabled goal of herd immunity. Only time will tell. 

I think that phrase herd immunity might sound more attractive with a different collective noun. Very few humans want to be in a herd. No one wants to be cattle. Pack immunity, sounds better. As do Collective protection, Community immunity and local resistance.

Sad news, our robot vacuum cleaner – the one the toddler refers to as “the robot” – has reached that point in its life where the battery starts giving up. We hope it hasn’t got the electronic corona. Sometimes it goes for a few centimetres and then starts slowing down like it’s wheezing. It was just as the toddler started getting braver. A couple of times she even approached it as it slept and switched it on. She immediately ran away with that overjoyed / terrified scream, you almost never hear from adults.

Anyway, enough for now. It’s date night, and we’re watching Joker. Yeah, we do romance!

Me Myself and Isolation: day 6

Day 6. “Dag sex” in Swedish. Which is a whole other thing in Australian.

Toddler is putting face “highlighter” all over her hands and face. She now looks a bit like a friendly alien from a 1980s TV show. As I recall, the friendly ones were attractive and shiny and the bad ones scaly and warty. I’m warty.

"I have a specific set of skulls."

So in the UK, groups over six are to be banned from Monday. Unless they take place at work or in a pub or on public transport. Or, no doubt, at Dominic Cummins house. Dominic Cummins, who we referenced before, is the neurotic, self-important man behind the curtain of Boris Johnson’s Blizzard of Boz. Not to be confused with Tony Abbott, Britain’s new trade ambassador and former Australian PM, who is the Weasel of Oz. Or with Dominic Raab, the Gizzard of Owls. Or… I’ll stop.

I was a little unfair yesterday, presenting a very one-sided view of Brexit. Brexit is multifaceted and there are multiple opinions that lead to votes on either side. I’m happy to set the record straight with an analogy from other side. Brexit is like quitting your golf club membership because that is the thing stopping you from playing golf on every other golf club in the country. And the club you just quit will, of course, let you play for free still because you’re the coolest and they just want to hang out with you and they know you’ve still got it. In fact everyone will start paying you to play in their clubs because you are, like, really important and very soon you’ll be the most popular person in the world because the only thing holding you back was that stupid golf club membership!

Actually the toddler has been very contrary today. Resisting almost everything, but also insisting someone be involved in everything she wants to do. Although some of that was fun. But toddlers don’t seem to understand logic such as “you want to spin round and round, so why do I have to do it as well?” They have no concept that you don’t want to do what they want to do. And any suggestion that you might not want to can lead to screams. As I have said before, our child is half soprano and can scream at the top of anyone’s hearing. I sometimes wish I’d been to a few more death metal gigs when I was younger. I might not be able to hear those screams at all now.

On the plus side, I have a new phone. So it also means I can take pictures of me on my old phone. It also has an insane zoom, so you can take pictures of tiny things all the way across the room. I’m not sure why I’d want to, but it’s nice to have the option.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 5

 Day 5. “Undirt wah cat sank,” as they say in France.

The toddler is eating jelly and watching one of the many sleep-deprivation-conceived shows for kids. Honestly, young kids shows should mostly be categorised under “psychedelia.”

Baby Jake has LSD induced dreams interpreted by his older brother.

The other end of kids shows are more educational rather than make something like the way their brains work. The better ones can also be enjoyed by parents. There are a lot that cannot be. Peppa Pig is a better one. Every now and again, they’ll slip in a hint of something more adult or a reference to classic movies only us older parents would even get. They know a lot of parents are also stuck in the room when it’s playing.

See 3 mins in for some top refs.

But best of all is Hey Duggee. Hey Duggee sometimes seems like it’s aimed more at adults than kids. But kids still love it. I know people without kids who watch it. It is jam packed with references, parodies and well-crafted humour. It’s also one of the most inclusive kids shows ever.

News here is the usual confusion and buffoonery. The government has had to step back a bit on it’s attempts to reopen the country by banning gatherings of over 6 people in the face of an increase in cases. It’s also going back on an agreement it pushed very hard for and admitted that might mean breaking a little bit of the law. The latter is about Brexit. The easiest test for something being about Brexit is asking, “does this sound like something a 3rd world dictatorship would do?” Cos if yes, it’s most likely a Brexit thing.

For any non-Brits, Brexit is best explained as being like deciding to leaving a (lets say) golf club because you were persuaded that it would save money on fees only to realise you can’t then use the course now without paying each time which will be much more expensive in the long run. Plus, a little bit of you also wanted to leave because you had somehow thought if you left, the Muslim family at the end of the street would somehow move away if you did. There are no good analogies because it’s a complicated web of misinformation, ineptitude, duplicity and complacency. 

We’re still quarantined, but work is keeping us occupied. As is a toddler who is half soprano, so thus the loudest screams on anything remotely her size.

As you’ve been good, I’ll leave you with one of the greatest moments of children’s television in recent years: Hey Duggee – Stick Song. A treat for all those 90s kids who now have kids of their own.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 4

 Day #4.  (Day number four / day hash four / day pound four / day sharp four.)

The toddler is rolling her scooter over bubble wrap because just pressing it by hand won’t cut it anymore.

Yesterday got into some pretty murky theological areas. I realise I compared my child to Satan. Satan is the bringer of chaos, the sender of noise, the destroyer of all that is weak and fragile. So, that stands.

News comes in that the toddlers nanny on his mother’s side (mormor as the Swedish call it) has got some horrendous stomach bug. It’s not the corona, but it is not good. It doesn’t involve hospitalisation, but it does involve a lot of bathroomalisation. It explains why we all have slightly dodgy tummies. The fear is for us it’ll also go full Somme. [You might need to adjust this reference for your own region, by referring to the muddiest, messiest battle you know.]

Don’t worry. We’ll keep you informed of how this goes.

For general cleaning and the fun of it, we have a robot vacuum cleaner. It’s not one of the fancy ones and it’s not that smart. It has about 5 different programs, that it cycles through until a random point in time OR it has hit enough obstacles to give up on that one.

Somehow its programming means it spends most of it’s time under the chair, like a timid pet. Every now and again it emerges, usually with a ball. Under the sofa is a graveyard for balls, Lego pieces and anything else a child might want to throw or kick around. For that read “everything.”

 The toddler has a fascination / horror relationship with it. She wants it on and loves to see it move semi-randomly around the room. But, she is terrified of it. She will not stand on the floor when it’s moving. She’ll sit on a chair or stand on a step where it can’t get her. She might still scream with a mixture of fear and joy when it comes close. I hope she doesn’t pursue human relationships like that.

She’s very excited when the robot emerges with one of her toys. Sometimes she’ll be brave enough to run and get it, screaming the whole time. Others, she won’t dare. With three robots, I could probably keep the child herded in the other part of the house. Until she overcame her fear and hopped from robot to robot filled with revenge.

"Take me to your leader."

As for our self-isolation, no one has checked on us yet. Which brings us to Priti Patel, who sounds like a character in a satirical novel, is in fact a frequently inept, pandering, reactionary politician, like a character in a satirical novel. She’s the Secretary of State for the Home Department, meaning she’s in part responsible for things of State and indeed partly responsible for the state of things.

She has said, they monitor 1 in 5 people, which they do by calling them. Not sure this is the best thing to admit. Better keep us being good by not knowing the system rather than allowing people to think, “I ain’t getting calls, so I ain’t being tracked.”

Apparently I was right about one thing – they are mostly interested in the background noise. So never go anywhere where you can’t drown out the ambient noise with a recording of cats mewing, or a serial killer documentary or sounds of porn. But beware of having too many cats in the recording so that you sound like you are at a sanctuary, or that the documentary is at the point of an re-enactment so it sounds like you are killing someone, or that the porn sounds are too real and it sounds like you are actually having an orgy.

Anyway, so no call and apart from a lot of screams over the top of a droning robot, we’ve all still got it together.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 3

 Day, the 3. Already I’m reverting to old English (or ye olde Englishe as it’s known).

Back in the day, customs officials were keen to know did you have any illegal drugs or banned fruit. Now they want to know where you’ve been in the last 14 days. Which countries, in particular. If a country you have visited is not on the exemption list then you have to self-isolate. “Not on the exemption list” is effectively a double negative and, so, confusing. Much less confusing to say, “it’s on the inemption list.”

The UK government has a website, GOV.UK. And it certainly can govuk itself. 

Fair enough, a country like the UK, which loves itself some bureaucracy, is going to have a lot of forms and documents, but just a little thought could make things easier to navigate. It’s basically just a directory but organised how a civil servant would think. Something most people would describe as labyrinthine, a civil servant would call an in tray.

So even things I found yesterday, I can’t find today. There is a place to log in, but it’s not prominent on every page, you have to dig down and find the right page. The writing style is as dry and verbosely factual as you would expect.

Anyway, on one of these pages is a form to let the good people at Edge Case, Side Liners or Border Force (or whatever the customs people are calling themselves this year) know where you’ve been.

Sweden is on the inemption list. Countries come and go from the exemption list the same way that lockdown rules are relaxed and tightened. It’s the ebb and flow a country / world at sea.

Apparently, they do follow up on this. From some people I’ve heard that there was no checking. Emma is in some Swedish groups and people there have gotten automatic phone calls asking if they are at home. You answer “yes” and they’re happy, supposedly. Maybe they listen to the noise behind you. If it’s a lot of chatter and thumping bass, you might not be at home OR you are breaking the bo contact rules. If it’s the last 30 minutes of Netflix, you’re probably at home. They also do come visit, Emma heard. Some people have had several checks. So it seems that the checks are random or maybe based on some other factor such as age or how foreign your surname is. There’s no data on this.

MILK (Internet slang) - Man I'd Like to Know.

A hundred years ago, there was a similar pandemic, known popularly as The Spanish Flu. How much harder things were then. No internet. No YouTube. No Netflix. No way of remotely arranging food to be delivered unless you were wealthy enough to have a telephone or expendable servants. And even a few years ago, there were no affordable services delivering food or groceries unless you were house-ridden through age or sickness.

But now, it’s very easy to order groceries to be delivered. The biggest problem is that, in these times, the better ones will not have a delivery slot for quite a few days. Am*zon can deliver pretty quickly, but who likes giving money to an actual Bond villain. Of course, it means these delivery drivers are basically visiting all of the people deemed more likely to be sick and are now the potential spreaders. But, they seem to know this, and keep their distance. Leaving the boxes for you to empty at your door and only approaching to get the next one to you.

Self-isolation sounds like it’s a great excuse to not work. “I can’t work from home today, I’m self-isolating.” But, alas it actually means you have less things pulling you away from work. So, Monday morning is Monday morning. At home. Where it has been for months. And where it was for nearly two years before that (for me). 

There was the usual meeting in the people-panelled zoom room. And then getting back into doing whatever it is I do, after half a week of good old fashioned rest. I’m lucky in that what I can do can be done from home. I haven’t been laid off or been left without clients. Also, as an introvert, lockdowning and self-isolating are not as hard on me as they are others. I do count myself lucky. 

The toddler, however is an extrovert. She’s gregarious and so 2 weeks without daycare or other contact with fellow wee’uns is going to be the toughest part of this. But if Jesus can suffer 40 days and 40 nights in the wilderness with Satan, we can suffer 14 days and 14 nights in our living room with a toddler. Not that I comparing myself to Jesus. 

Ugh, day 3 and I’m already comparing myself to the messiah.

Me Myself and Isolation: day 2

 Day 2. Toddler is scooting across the lounge with a liberated coin next to her on the footrest.

On the behest of a more scientific friend, I have looked up some of the coronadata.

When it comes to this pandemic, there seem are more opinions flying around than actual data. Maybe that’s true of nearly everything nowadays. You’d think the internet would make it easier. After all, everything that ever happened is recorded somewhere on the internet. On the other hand, every lie ever told is also on the internet. Every opinion you have, no matter how ludicrous has a website, group or channel backing it up. It has never been so easy to be wrong.

In terms of Deaths, Sweden is doing better than the UK (meaning there are fewer of them, to clear up any confusion), but that is not saying much. However, it’s still up there in the top part. Their hope is that now it’s all done and dusted and a second wave won’t bother it. We’ll have to see. Its neighbours are much lower down the chart, but in Denmark, according to TV, you are much more likely to die of a serial killer than anything.

It’s odd that despite its high death rate, I have some trust Sweden’s science-led approach. Even though a lot of the science is up in the air and all we have is predictions, and when the dust has settled, we can see what went down. Definitely, I have more trust than in the UK’s response which seems to have been “try all the methods” and is much more spin-doctor-led.

I’ll have to look into what Denmark, Norway and Finland’s methodologies have been for dealing with the crisis, but that’s enough geomedical statistics for one day.

Day 2 and everything is A-OK

The rules for self isolation in England are that you absolutely must stay indoors (or your own garden) except for when you or your pet needs medical attention, if you have to go to court(!), or “to avoid injury or illness or to escape a risk of harm.” So, if the house is falling down or you are a character witness for your best friend accused of serial killing, then you can leave it.

You can also leave if you absolutely need some food you can’t arrange to be delivered in time, which we had to do on the first day due to a milk emergency that meant one of us had to go out under cover of mask to make sure we survived. Believe me. Somethings you can do without as an adult, but there are things without which children become unbearable monsters. Some of these can be bought from shops (such as milk or what ever the little things drink of choice is), others are unique items such as that one special soft toy (out of all the others that are somehow vastly inferior) or that one special blanket without which sleep is impossible except after an hour of tears and wailing.

There are some other specific exceptions / quirks. The people you are staying with do not need to self-isolate. Which is convenient but seems counter to how transmittable diseases work. Also if you are a child, and you have to change houses because it’s the turn of the other separated parent, then you can do that and continue your quarantine there. It doesn’t say whether you should hug your other parent or not when you arrive. It doesn’t say what you can do if you are leading a double life with two separate households.

Finally, you cannot change houses unless “there are exceptional circumstances in which it becomes impracticable [impossible] to remain at the original address.” This is very open and I guess includes your best friend / flat mate turning out to be a serial killer, crocodiles start living in the bathroom or demonic possession of the bedside tables. Feel free to share your own, and we’ll see which is the most likely. (Note: actual most likely are flooding and spousal abuse, but let’s not sully the mood.)

The big question I’m sure is on everybody’s mind is: do the authorities check up on you and your self isolation? Short answer: Apparently, yes. More on this in a later episode.

Did you know episode is an online version of a pisode? This is the state of comedy on day 2. Stay tuned.

The Cry in Creativity

Because I work part time from home and my girlfriend works full time from an office that isn't at home, I am at home with our child most of the time. This is a fact that still takes some people a few seconds to compute even in 2019.

Mostly men, but also women. I think some men consider their masculinity threatened by taking care of a child. It explains the wailings that ensued when Daniel Craig was seen out with his child in a baby carrier.

"Now pay attention, 007, standard-issue baby carrier holds
a sophisticated vomit projecting device capable of emitting a loud,
piercing sound at the slightest provocation."

It's related to why some men, who are generally not very good examples of men / humans, like to force on you the fact they have never changed a nappy (diaper) in their lives. Let me tell you, I have changed nappies and I have seen unimaginable horrors that would make those so-called men weep into their snowflaky imaginary machismo.

But this is not what I wanted to talk about. Rather I wanted to discuss a preconception I had when going into this whole endeavour of being a stay-at-home dad. (BTW, the proper term for this is Day-Instructing Live-in Father, or DILF. If you tell people about me, don't forget to say you think I'm a DILF.)

I had thought, any spare time I had outside of part-time working and looking after a baby would be great creative time. The first mistake was thinking there would be any time outside of part-time working and looking after a baby. Actually the first mistake was thinking there would be any time outside of looking after a baby.

Babies fortunately do sleep a lot. They need time to convert residual energy into height and save up for tantrums. But not so much time that you can fit a part-time job in. And certainly not enough to have creative time left over, so there has to some amount of working when the baby is awake. Now, this can work fine with some of aspects of my day job, but not with creative endeavours.

I should probably say that my part-time work is as a software developer. It is not exciting but pays okay and allows me to use that part of my brain that is good at problem solving. Now, some aspects of this job that are repetitive and not so taxing on the old noodle. These things you can do with a child around you, but things that require deep thought or focussed thinking, such as solving complex problems or writing, are not good to do when there is a child around.

Add caption: dqejefw89fjfwejdmnewnewkifewfowef89fyuowhnfewfjuiwfjksdfdsoicmnoew

Those of you who know little of the workings of children, should know that every child is programmed to do as much harm to itself as possible. They are constantly trying to top themselves. What stops them is you, luck and the fact they are not very good at anything yet. A baby on a high surface will try with all it's might (which is not much in the first few months) to throw itself off. If you have sharp objects lying around toddlers will find them. They will be attracted to them no matter what array of wonderful toys that are lying around. If you ever lose your rat poison or descaling solvents, no worries, let a one-year-old loose in the house and it will track them down in no time and have the lid off in slightly more.

Because of this, you can't go into deep-focus mode when a child is around. You'll come out of it and the little horror will be under the wardrobe or head-first in the toilet bowl.

So, creatively this has not been a good time. At least not in the sphere of written things. In the arena of children's songs, however, it has been amazing. Babies like singing. They are pretty terrible at it themselves, but they love it being done to them. And as I can't remember lyrics for toffee, I am always having to make up songs on the spot. I've created hundreds and hundreds of songs, all short and mostly based on things that are going on in that moment.

I've sung about toy cars, puddles, farts, dirty clothes, food, dogs, cows, hats, crying, socks, leaves, books, mucus, stuffed pigs that look like bears, spoons, vomit, coats, sheep that look like poodles, having you face wiped and lonely dinosaurs.

This is the sheep/poodle equivalent of "that dress."

There is a whole sub-genre of “poo songs” dedicated to praising, deriding or describing the more solid contents of nappies. And let me tell you, the range of colours, volumes, textures and density of what babies can produce would make many a “macho” snowflake weep into his deepest insecurities.

A little postscript:
Anyone who is worried that I am in any way resentful of the little horror taking up so much of my time, energy and pigmented hairs has never been a father to the greatest little thing that ever crawled, puked and pooped its way across God's fair Earth.

Slave to the Tradition

I’ve noticed that every year there’s more and more debate about one single aspect of Dutch culture. One figure of Dutch folklore who starts appearing at this time of the year in readiness for his big day. On December 5th, Sinterklaas, the grandfather of Santa Claus, leaves presents in kids shoes in a very similar fashion to his more internationally known offspring, who tends to go for stockings. Instead of the North Pole, he lives in Spain. Instead of a reindeer-drawn sleigh, he has a steamboat. Instead of elves he has a faithful black servant.

The debate about is always about Zwarte Piet (Black Pete) who historically was almost certainly a slave, but is portrayed more as a comedy sidekick. Is it racist, is what the debate is all about. With most people from outside the country saying yes, and many of those who grew up with it saying no.

It took me a few years to get used to it, and now, I must say, I barely flinch when I see a real live Zwarte Piet or a doll-like representation of him which looks exactly like a gollywog, which were dolls we got rid of in the UK quite a few years ago. At least I barely flinch visibly.

My point of view is this. Obviously history is history and the real Saint Nicholas quite possibly had a slave/servant/comedy sidekick who quite probably was black. I don’t have a problem that such a figure still exists in the folklore and has not been replaced by mythical elves or magical reindeer. I don’t have too much of a problem that he is portrayed as being somewhat wayward and a little crazy, slavery isn’t something to help keep up perfect mental health, and as such you should take what liberties you can. The only real problem I have is this, which is at the core of why it’s considered racist: Zwarte Piet can only be portrayed by a white man or woman in black face paint, curly wig and thick, red lips in the style of a minstrel show, something else we got rid of a long time ago.

For me it’s only this offensively stereotypical representation that is what makes my flesh cringe whenever I see it. I think everything else can be kept. Make him blue or say he can only be portrayed by black actors or I don’t know.

But the kids, of course, don’t see it. Piet is a very popular character, mostly because he gives out sweets and so forth. And those adults who grew up with it only to be told later on it’s racist often are quite offended by the suggestion. They make up alternative histories to explain why he’s black - from coming down the chimney. Presumably he scratched his lips all the way down as well and the soot made his hair go curly. It’s only natural to be so defensive of something you grew up with and never saw any offense in. It’s very similar to those Christians who when asked about dinosaurs and their omission from their holy book state that they are a test from God.

I’m pretty sure the debate will continue for a few years yet, but the fact is seems to get bigger implies it will come to a head. As someone who lived through similar issues in the UK some 20+ years ago, I can assure the people of the Netherlands, these sort of changes, although they cause a lot of grumbling and even resentment at the time, are generally looked back upon with an air of, “I’m glad we did that” and without the very fabric of society being any more than ruffled in one corner.

Lego What!?!

Lego have long since realised that the market for their products is broad and diverse, but nothing highlights this more for me than this...

The Lego Town Hall.

It's absolutely clear that no kid in his right mind is going to want to build a town hall. No way. Even for anyone under 57 this is going to be an odd choice unless they are a small-time evil genius with designs on town-domination. The only vaguely cool circumstance to buy and build a Lego town hall is if you have a huge aquarium and are recreating a post-environmental disaster scene. In fact the only people I really see as buying this are robbers who are planning a heist on a building that looks just like this. So I can only assume this is all part of a police sting operation, and people who buy it are automatically followed and suspected of criminal intent. If they have a huge aquarium, they can be assumed to be innocent, but anyone else is either a well-prepared robber or a low-achieving evil genius.

My only flaw in the plan is that any criminal planning a heist or take-over of a city district after an environmental apocalypse will fall through the net and will be free to carry out their dastardly scheme once civilisation as we know it has been all but destroyed. I fear for our future, sub-aquatic children

Going, Going, Gone to the Chapel

So I tied the knot. Got hitched. Clasped on the old ball and chain. Said goodbye to the single life. Threw away the little, black book. In short, I got married.

Many friends who have known me a long time have mentioned things I may have said some time in the past to the effect that in no way would I ever tie the knot, get hitched, etc. Well, I probably said something similar about Motown and muesli. It's fair to say some of my views have mellowed.

Our original plan was to tie the knot in a simple, cheap ceremony with only a couple of witnesses and a member of the local council trained in performing the relevant ceremony. But the best-laid plans o' well-laid mice often go quite agley. But ours went agley in the best possible way.

Firstly, you should know the Dutch allow keen but poor people to get hitched free of charge. Albeit on a Wednesday morning at 9 am and in the offices of the local council. You don't quite have to take a number and queue, but it isn't, on the surface, much more romantic.

Secondly, my parent's decided they would like to be there to finally absolve their responsibility for me. This meant the whole organisation needed stepping up a bit. Catherine spent a long time finding a dress that was suitable yet multipurpose and in her size; and I had to iron a shirt.

So, we had a small, efficient ceremony, attended by 4 witnesses, my parents and our official filmmaker. The registrar (or woman from the council) kindly did the whole thing in English so my parent's could follow and we could say, "I do." The Dutch equivalent is "Ja," which has the disadvantage of being such an everyday expression that it's hard to say with any true meaning. I have heard a "Ja" delivered with crippling sarcasm, but not during a wedding ceremony.

After the ceremony, we reconvened at our flat to celebrate with the cats and then threw the house open to a select few of our friends. Selected until we knew the house would be full, rather than to include everyone we would have liked, which would have filled most of the flats in the building.

We stopped inviting people not because we ran out of people we liked sufficiently, but because we realised we had reached the limits of our flat. But those we could invite and who could make it filled our place and made the whole day something much more special than we had ever planned. Seriously, you want to find out how awesome your friends are, get married.

Our flat thronged with friends, neighbours and their kids. In fact I'm sure the flat has never had so many children in it. I counted 7. They outnumbered the cats, and so it was apt that on the day when I did the thing I said I never would do, the things I said I'd never own and the things I said I'd never produce would square up and fight for territory. The cats, of course, won, because the cat's owners didn't have to leave.

After a few hours of fun, conversation, good company, bubbly alcohol and a splendid cake, the bride and groom were alone (apart from the cats) and performed their first act as a married couple. They went to Blokker to buy household wares. Who says I'm a changed man?

Magic Bean With Miffy

Seen at a local garden centre. I love it because the name doesn't in any way say kids growing educational toy to me. It's exactly the title of a free-wheeling, 1960s drug-culture comedy. Probably featuring a cameo of up-and-coming star Jack Nicholson

Travel: France 11-15/7/09: To See You... Nice

Having lived the French rural life for a good week or so, it was now time to sample the French millionaire lifestyle. This was several days of swimming in the pool, playing jou de boule, and being driven around in sports cars by rarely less than two women.

At night we played Werewolf as a pleaser of both children and adults. For those who don’t know Werewolf, it's a game where one or two people (unknown to the others) are werewolves and slowly pick off villagers one by one whilst villagers desperately burn each other at the stake trying to flush out the werewolves. It's a metaphor for politics, I believe. After this, I slept in a room that Sophie Marceau once lay naked in. Apparently.

We ate at restaurants right on the Mediterranean seafront. I mean literally right on the Mediterranean seafront. We jumped into the sea straight from the deck our table was on. It's a part of the world all girls wear bikinis and things like being in a wheelchair or merely shopping doesn't exempt you in any way.

The fourth day was Bastille Day; when the French celebrate the storming of the Bastille, an event which was a vital element in getting the French Revolution going. The Bastille, a notorious prison in Paris, very much represented state tyranny and so its storming has come to encapsulate and symbolise the liberation of the French people from oppression. Unfortunately the liberatees who represent the French people, in this case, were four forgers, two lunatics and an aristocratic pervert. The French are perfectly happy that these people are used to represent them; and not having seen any statistics, I couldn't say if this is or is not representational of French Society.

To celebrate this historic event, we went to the beach at Cannes. We went early to get a spot and swim. It was supercrazybusy. The whole of the south of France drove into Cannes that afternoon and were all picking out spots on the beach. Cannes is quite a long beach but soon you were lucky if you saw a patch of sand. There were thousands and thousands of people there. Possibly hundreds of thousands. And I was the whitest person there. I kid you not. I trudged up and down that beach trying to find people as or more ashen than I, but to no avail. This was a place for tanned bodies. There may well be pale people such as myself in Cannes, but they probably live in the sewer.

Bastille Day is traditionally celebrated with fireworks. Very much like the American 4th of July, a date that celebrates a similar event: when American citizens stormed Boston and rescued four barrels of Darjeeling, two of Oolong and a vat of Earl Grey. It seems freedom from oppression is frequently celebrated by a show of shock and awe.

At Cannes, where they have a few bob (i.e. they're rich), the magnificent firework display is accompanied by a lot of music broadcast from off shore. There were some real moments of awe with huge, well-choreographed explosions of gunpowder and glitter over the sea. The shock came mostly from fireworks that individuals and small groups were letting off on the beach. The French let off fireworks the way they drive. Like they want to die and take as many of les bâtards with them as possible.

Leaving Cannes was even slower than getting in because half of France was leaving it at exactly the same time. It took an hour and a half instead of about 20 minutes.

There are those who say U2 are a force for good. (Members of the band mainly.) But if proof was needed to the contrary, which is isn't, when it came time to leave, Bonio, The Side, Larry and Moe caused nothing but havoc. Two people missed flights thanks to their concert antics. I was dropped off super early to avoid the traffic from people leaving the scene of the crime. I believe this was actually called the Carbon Footprint Tour by the press. It certainly caused unnecessary trips and noise pollution. Many called it an egological disaster.

Again my flight was full of kids, but this time it affected me much less. Am I becoming immune? Maybe more tolerant? Or maybe a long holiday had relaxed me so much that even the combined horror of children and U2, could do nothing to destroy it. Peace out!

Travel: France 10/7/09: Nice To See You

"Revenge is sweet, chocolaty and frequently unnoticed by the recipient."

The morning of the last day of this leg of the trip was bright and early. After an encounter with the space centipede and 2 strong coffees, it was time to drive to Bordeaux again. This time to drop the car off with the rental company and for me to catch a flight to the next stage of the adventure.

The French don't seam to deal with money the same way the rest of Europe does. Apart from everyone still thinking in Francs and converting to Euros, it seems, they handle bank and credit cards very differently to how I'm used to. Several times I tried to pay with my credit card only to find I not only needed to sign, but also enter my PIN number. In fact sometimes I didn't even have to sign, but I always had to PIN. I do have a PIN number for my credit card, but I never use it and so don't remember it. So I had to see whether they would allow me to use my debit card, which I do know the PIN for because I absolutely need to use the PIN for it to work. Firstly I was surprised that I could use my debit card, because only a few years ago, only credit cards seemed to work outside of where you lived, and supraflabbergasted that I had to (a) sign the chit and (b) not use my PIN number. Several time this happened, and I was sure when I came home my bank was going to call me up and demand why I signed for the card I need to PIN for and PINned for the card I need to sign for, but no. The bank accepted it.

Because the French roads, particularly those around cities, are unpredictable trafficly, I had allowed plenty of time. I had two hours to kill before my plane left, which I did, in part, with the sandwiches my mum had made and a coffee some unknown barista made me. I had the coffee at the more reasonable looking of the coffee places at the smallish airport. The guy seemed so amenable despite being surrounded by screaming kids, I ended up being relatively generous with the tip.

Because I was there early and had time to relax and observe airport life. It was Jack Dee, I think who speculated that parents only take their kids to supermarkets so that they could spank them. I've noticed that parents bring their kids to airports so that they can shout at them over the longest possible distance.

The airport was lousy with Brits who were all heading back to the UK. I, however, was on my way to Nice, adventure playground of the rich.

Once it became time for my plane to start doing things, with no indication of such on the board, I became concerned. If it didn't start doing things soon, it would be late. Then, after a time, the signs changed to say that the flight was "Terminé" which the board translated as "Finished." I had a few score minutes to wonder what that really meant, before they found the actual word they meant: "Retardé." Indeed. (It means delayed.)

To stop rioting, they gave out free drink coupons. So, as I waited for l'avion retardé, I went back to the coffee place and gave the waiter my coupon. He took it and plonked a paper cup of coffee down gruffly in front of me. I felt dreadful that I'd over tipped him the earlier time. And to get my own back I decided to buy a pain-au-chocolate from elsewhere. (Revenge is sweet, chocolaty and frequently unnoticed by the recipient.)

It was during this drink I realised that my passport was missing. I panicked about all the places I could have left it, all the people who could have taken it, and what they were now doing with my identity. I was probably executing exiled Palestinians as we spoke. Then realised I must have left it when I got the voucher from the pretty, grumpy lady at the far end of the terminal. I was correct.

I got my pain-au-chocolate from Paul Pain-Au-Chocolate who make all the regular French pâtisserie things but with whole wheat flour so they can charge you 50% more. (This is on top of the 75% more for merely being situated at an airport.) I'm not sure why leaving the wheat "whole" costs more than removing part of it, but apparently it does.

Eventually, the boards started saying positive things. In fact, they said in the far left column...

NICE
BREST

...which cheered me up. Breasts are to men what shoes are to many women: Any mention of them, reference to them, or humorous suggestion as to their importance in life is very cheering indeed.

Apparently the delay was due to part or all of the plane being missing. The plane we got to replace it was a tatty, old thing with an engine that made a clunky sound as we boarded. What's more, it was full of kids. (The plane that is, not the engine.) Although, that wasn't a fault of the plane itself. To keep me from crying and shouting, I was given an International Herald Tribute. Nothing was given to the kid behind me who was not only a screamer but a kicker.

The good thing about the new plane was that it was bigger than the one we were originally supposed to have. It had six seats across instead of four. It meant lots of room (sideways, at least). In fact on my row, there was me by one window and on the other side by the other window was a lone child. Lone children are the best children on planes because they are always quiet and well behaved. Something about the presence of parents makes children jump up and down and scream the whole flight. Or it could be that children travelling alone are terrified into silence, in which case perhaps the solution is to send kids on different flights to their parents. Maybe a separate glider is towed behind the real plane with the kids on board like those baby boxes that get towed behind bikes.

As with the whole trip so far, I was photographing like I was a paparazzo and nature some knickerless starlet. Once in the air, I told myself to stop drooling and put the camera away. Just as I did a great set of mountains came thrusting over the horizon. Oh, yeah, nature, give me tectonic movement.

Nice airport is, like many airports in affluent seaside areas, created on reclaimed land so that it doesn't take up valuable real estate but can still be close to the town. As I believe is the norm in Nice, I was picked up and driven to where I was staying by two girls in a sports car. As they say, "Qui est le père?"

Travel: France 8-9/7/09: When Cows Fly

I'm always on the look out for ways to improve my schoolboy French. On a trip to L'Eclerc, I found a translation of a book I had recently finished; namely, "Le Chien Des Baskervilles." It was however aimed at persons "a partir de 10 ans" so was a little advanced, but at least the story was fresh in my head. I never finished it, so it puts it in the same category as all those other books I bought to help me with my French that proved too old for me: Cyrano de Bergerac, En attendant Godot, Les Men in Black.

Children are such adorable, inquisitive, little darlings, as I believe I have said before. A couple of specimens are kept down at the nearby farm and frequently escape and come over our way to be their adorable, inquisitive, little selves. The boy likes to be useful and is happy to help out with any manual labour you need doing especially if it involves throwing bricks about and getting muddy. The girl is a constant stream of questions:

"What are you doing here?"
"Why do you have that hat?"
"Why do you have girl's hair?"

These were three she asked me in rapid succession. They are innocuous now, if a little cutting on occasion, but how long before they become,

"What time do you call this?"
"Is that lipstick on your shirt?"
"What do you mean you invited your boss to tea on the same Sunday my parents are coming?"

...and suddenly your daughter is a 1970s sitcom wife.

For dinner one night we had mouclade, which is a huge pile of mussels cooked in a tasty sauce. It helped me to invent the latest food sensation – mussels individually wrapped in a little red seaweed ribbon. It's called "Moules en Rouge." I think it's a great idea, and if I were ever to open a restaurant, which is a bad idea, it would, so far, be the only thing on the menu.

The whole time we had been at my parents' place, we had been hearing about a missing cow. Country folk are often seem blasé about their animals. Especially when they go missing. I believe they figure that they're wondering around nearby. It's not like they're hitching their way to the big city. They usually get found by other passing country folk (who can look at a cow and know exactly whose it is) or return of their own volition because they are hungry or they miss the herd or their udders need emptying.

What surprised me most about it all was the revelation that cows can jump. I had heard tell of this before, but I'm starting to believe it. Apparently, those big docile things in that there field, ruminating and waiting for clouds so they have a good excuse to lie down, can, if they get the mood, take a big long run-up and jump over that hedge. And you don't want to be on the other side of that hedge when 800 kilos of flying bovine starts descending.

"There Ain't No Centre Clause"

The Dutch don't tend to overdo many things, so one wonders why they have two Christmases.

Last weekend, a bearded bishop came to Amsterdam attended by a huge parade of grinning Dutchmen in black face-paint. This was the arrival of Sinterklaas, a manifestation of Saint Nicolas, the patron saint of pretty much anyone and anywhere.

Every year, Sinterklaas arrives on a steam boat from Spain with his Moorish servant (called Piet). Because Piet is never actually portrayed by anyone with any Moorish blood, he always looks like a Dutchman who has been playing in the coal cellar where he found a very cheap wig. In fact he alarmingly resembles a character from a very cheap and offensive sketch show from 1972.

Right now, "Sint" and "Piet" (he's singular in the stories but appears manifold at parades, etc) are in the country, and getting ready for the big day. December 5th, also known as Sinterklaas, is when kids wake up to find gifts in their shoes left by the dynamic duo. There's also a ritual of wrapped presents accompanied by a small poem somewhat dissing the recipient. The presents, the foot-related receptacle, the old man with long, white beard is all very reminiscent of "our own" Christmas. Which is no accident. This is one seed of what we know as Christmas. Sinterklaas went to the US and got fat on Coca Cola; the shoe became a stocking; and the blacked-up Dutchmen became reindeers and elves. And these got added to the fir tree, holly and mistletoe from the original pagan Winter Solstice festival, bundled in with a wild stab at the birth-date of one famous errant rabbi to create the glorious celebration of consumerism that we today call "Christmas." And over the last few years, the Dutch have been increasingly celebrating Christmas (in the presents-and-overeating fashion of the movies) as well as their own earlier, modest festival.

This is, of course, yet another example of the world's culture being thrown into the American melting pot and reserved back to the rest of the world and ultimately its original culture. Pizza is another great example. It's a highly interesting phenomenon that is almost certainly propagated by the medium of film.

So the question I guess we all want to ask is this: who would win in a fight, Sinterklaas or Santa Claus?
• Well, Santa Claus is old, but Sinterklaas appears much older and frailer.
• However, Sinterklaas is quite lean and Santa Claus has been pouring in the Coca Cola for quite some years and is, well, a bit tubby.
• Santa Claus has a well-trained team of reindeer with the kinds of hooves that could kick a man all the way into the New Year; Whereas Sinterklaas has a huge army of Piets, who have large bags of stone-like sweets to throw at children.

There is no obvious winner on paper, but in my head the battle would be fierce and Manga-like. It will probably end with both parties being mortally wounded, leaving the way for a sequel. The real battle between Christmas and Winter Solstice: Jesus vs Sol. A heavyweight bout between the Son of God and the God of Sun. The so-called Rumble in the Wrapping Paper. I for one am looking forward to this.

Your Sinterklaas Correspondent, Piet Moor.

PS Here is what a Manga Christmas would look like (from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya by Nagaru Tanigawa and Noizi Ito). Happy Sinterklaas.

Travel: 1/6/09 pt2 – Somewhere above the Atlantic

Airlines still have not taken on board my idea of having a separate section for families with children, or making the children travel in the hold with pets. After all, smoking is banned and second-hand smoke doesn't shorten your life like having to deal with screaming kids does.

At the front of our section was a kid with a misshapen head who screamed even before the plane even took off. You can imagine how he was when the plane left the ground and the pressure swelled the air in his odd little ears to painful levels.

The choice of food on flights these days seems always to be "chicken or pasta." Which is an annoying choice. I mean, "how is the chicken prepared?" and "what's in the pasta?" Perhaps there really is no choice, just chicken pasta? It's like asking "4x4 or Hyundai?" or "White or electrical appliance?" Crazy. Anyway they ran out of chicken two people before me, so there was no need to choose.

Cath always avoids all this by playing the "lactose intolerant" card. I must admit "lactose intolerance" always makes me think of some old geezer sitting in a bar saying, "Ah, these lactoses, coming here and flooding our cornflakes! Why can't they go back to cowland?" Idiot! Everyone knows it's Cowtania.

After food, the crew announced the availability of "doody-free" items, implying both the chicken and the pasta contained "doody."

After this, there were the compulsory entertainment system problems. In my experience of long-haul flying, there is always one entertainment system problem per flight. This time it was an entire entertainment system failure. You never want to hear the word "failure" announced over the aircraft PA system, but that was exactly what happened. You just hoped and prayed they reset the right box or that the entertainment system wasn't directly linked to the flight control system. Liberal use of the word "failure" over an aircraft PA system is exactly the sort of thing to make your underpants entirely not "doody-free."

Travel 30/3/09 – Dallas, Texas; International Airspace

Today's news was full of massacres and drive-by shootings. It is a coincidence we are leaving the US. News of this ilk always confirms my European perception that in the US you are never more than 100m away from a crazy neighbour or colleague. And all of these crazy people have access to guns.

I may have mentioned the difficulties we had with booking the flight, well there was one other minor little thing that occurred when we tried to change details online, that I haven't mentioned. A small bug meant that I was forced to select a meal type from the "fussy eaters" list. Normally, you can leave this field set to "I'm not a fussy eater, I'll eat whatever crap you throw at me." But somehow, it forced me to select something more specific. Probably because we had selected lactose free for Cath, some screwy back-room logic meant I had to select something too.

The "fussy eaters" list is quite long these days, and includes religious fussiness (kosher, halal, etc), conscience fussiness (vegetarian, vegan) and allergic-related fussiness (lactose-free, gluten-free). And even sub categories of these. I chose "Asian Vegetarian" because Asian vegetarian meals can be pretty good. I know people who always chose a special meal because they get their food before everyone else and they figure it's had more attention than the ones everyone else gets. However, I prefer to get my food at the same time as everybody else and not feel that the rest of the plane is looking on at me with resentment. Even when they probably aren't.

When my meal arrived, way ahead of most other people's, it proclaimed "Your Special Meal" in bright letters. I felt like I was 8 and not very gifted. It also had scrawled on it some garbage like "The smell of a fresh meal... on your face." It made no sense and made me feel this was a meal for someone so "special" it didn't matter what you wrote on it.

The "fussy" part of the meal only replaces the main part of what they give you, the extra ancillary bits are the same as everybody else. Which is why Cath, having been singled out and handed a lactose-free meal, free from any products containing or related to cow's milk, she was offered a pot of ice cream. Ice cream! It's hard to get more lactose than ice cream. She declined.

Obviously as we are talking about flights, the subject once again comes up: children. Why, oh, why are they still allowed to run, shout and scream in the same section of the plane that the civilised, adult members of the world pay for? Why has no airline started using the hold for the purposes of housing the children on a flight? I'd use that airline.

I don't say it to be mean to the kids, I say it as a way to get some relative peace. You can fill the hold with balls so they enjoy it. All pets travel that way and Children are just pets that will one day grow up to become people. Children love screaming in enclosed spaces; so why not give them an even more enclosed space in which they can scream to their little hearts and lungs' content.

To shut out the little buggers, I watched my first ever episode of Gilligan's Island. Now I have a clue when Americans in the audience shout out "Gilligan's Island." It was cute, but definitely of its day. I snuggled back and tried to dream of being on a desert island surrounded by coconut trees and not a single screaming child for thousands of miles.

Travel: 13/7/08 – from Paris

Between checking out and catching our metro, we had time for a brief wander about and to grab a perfect pain au chocolat and a santé which is a tasty almond cookie. The metro took us back to the Gard du Nord where we connected with the Thalys. On the metro, two tramps were discussing the state of they world and giving their view on national politics. The main thrust of their debate was summed up by one of them by saying, "Sarkozy merde."

The trip back was uneventful, except for the fact the whole train seemed to be filled with kids. As you may know I am a strong proponent of there being separate compartments in planes for families with children (or for just the children) and I am now going to add international trains to the remit. I have nothing against children, I just think they should have their own compartment, like smokers and plague victims used to have.

Despite being one of the shortest trips ever, it was great to get away and see one of the world's great cities again. Plus to speak some of my appalling French. Or Revwah, mez anfants.