Eitan prepares gift bags for his party: hamburger yo-yo, check. Chocolate and sour sweats, check. A stretchy man and party popper, check, check, check. He is wearing his new sweater from Sonnet. The boys arrive shortly and the Big Strategy to take the little animals to the park for football and a good fagging out. Unfortunately it is raining.
The British High Street has been hit hard by the recession though perhaps not has bad as it could be. Overall the retail economy's second quarter 2010 down 3.6% off the corresponding period of '09 while 2009 annual sales down 7.8% from '08 (The Blue Book 2006 reports that this sector added gross value of £127,520 million to the UK economy in 2004). The collapse of car sales the downward driver: -33.8 in Q2 '10 and -21.1% in '09 (British Retail consortium). Interestingly, I recieve a call from a German friend at Nord Bank who may lend to the McLaren Group, famous for its fast cars. McLaren will launch the MP4 in April, 2011, for a cool £170,000. Nord Bank wants the pre-sales since the company is cagey about the figures. To lend a hand, I call dealers in London, Manchester and Birmingham posing as a HNWI ("high net worth individual," dear reader). How nice to get call-backs within moments of my message! While the salesmen will not tell me their order book one fellow does offer helpfully: "it is fantastic!" To secure my MP4 by 2012, I am asked to show an "expression of interest" by giving McLaren fifteen grand. Opportunity does not come on the cheap.
Madeleine reads "Horrid Henry's Big Bad Book" and Eitan starts "Dune," which I reread this summer for the third time. It is my favorite sci-fi and important to have a fingered copy, here, which I found in my parent's house this summer.
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I remember sitting at the John D. Rockefeller library (known as the "Rock," which was initially nick-named the "John," until a hasty response from the President's office) as a Freshmen reading desktop graffiti from the graduating class before my arrival or '84. And even more strangely: scribbled messages from years way before that. College was hard-fought, new and my own little Idaho - the thought that others had done similar or perhaps even the same thing before me un-nerving somehow.
In the past 24 hours we have celebrated two yuful birthdays: Katie yesterday and Eitan, who turns ten, today.
The boy's celebration begins last night as ManU's Javier Hernandez scores a dramatic game-winner against Valenzia in the final minutes of the all important Champions League qualifier. Sonnet, I and Joseph, who is over for dinner, hear him yelp - way past his bedtime, I might point out, but I figure the kid deserves a bone every now and again. He almost loses the privilege on the way to swimming practice as he and Madeleine fight in the back seat (Eitan denies wrong-doing but Nathanial points out helpfully: "You can see the bite marks on Madeleine's arm").
This morning Sonnet, per tradition, makes Eitan breakfast in bed. Beforehand he is in our bedroom as Sonnet readies herself for work and we have a discussion about our favorite books. Since mine may be Churchill's World War II memoirs, whose six volumes I read in two months when I was 24, we discuss Europe - thanks to Churchill, history is more compelling than any fiction I know. Eitan a rapt listener. Madeleine in her bedroom listening to Harry Potter with one thing on her mind. Guess. Tonight, per Eitan's request, we will go to Wagamama's noodle restaurant. He takes his classmates crisps - one bag each. Football slumber party Saturday.
Yep, a good day for us all.
Girls just want to have fun. This shot of Catherine and Sonnet taken Thursday, August 24, 1996, at a party hosted by Ivor and Alison before our wedding. Catherine the Maid of Honour (Definition: A Maid of Honour was a maiden, meaning that she was unmarried, and was usually young. Lady Jane Grey, for example, served as a Maid of Honour to Queen Catherine Parr in about 1546-48, when Jane was only about ten to twelve years old). I think Catherine a bit more modern than the day's title suggests.
Saturday early morning, Sonnet takes Madeleine to swimming practice in her black Lycras - tomorrow she will run the Windsor Half Marathon. I fire up my Blackberry and Eitan wanders into the bedroom: "Can I watch football highlights on Sky Sports?" he implores. I suggest he finish his homework since we have an hour before soccer practice and he leaves dejectedly. I find him a few moments later here, at the kitchen table, actually doing his homework. A small victory. I pour myself some cereal and we discuss last night's parents disco party at the school's Tim Bernard Lee hall - he is mortified when I show him a couple of my moves. The thought of adults dancing too much information. We then have a game of humming songs trying to identify the others and finally, I recall, he should be finishing his geometry.
Madeleine snaps my new trainers and her idea to give me the candles for our shoot.
Katie returns to NYC following a visit to Stanford where her Op-Ed Project has entered a partnership. On her flight are Mike and David on their way to the Big Apple for work. They share a taxi, pictured.
Given these times, we need Hunter S Thompson more than ever. Where is the outrage voiced by my generation? Is there outrage or will that come when the debts come due .. The opening of the "The Great Shark Hunt," published in 1979, one of the most powerful I can recall with Thompson typing on New Year's eve and contemplating jumping from a Midtown skyscraper. He dares us to read. Thompson probably most famous for his "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" and "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72" where he skewered the political elite while making it all sound fun, if not surreal, on the edge. He was friends with Allen Ginsberg and William S Boroughs and other Beats; he briefly lived in Aspen and ran for sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado, in '70 on the "freak power" ticket which promoted decriminalising drugs and re-naming Aspen "Fat City" (he shaved his head and referred to his opponent as "my long-haired opponent", as the Republican candidate had a crew cut). Thompson created "Gonzo journalism," a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is also known, of course, for his unrepentant lifelong use of alcohol (morning constitutional: Bloody Mary), LSD, mescaline, and cocaine. He loved firearms. He owned a long-standing hatred of Richard Nixon and, more recently, George W. Bush and the other political riff raff and villains who asserted their dreadfulness on us via government. Thompson was 67 when he took his life.
I have a surprisingly good time painting the door frame which requires caulking, filling and sanding out the imperfections then priming and, finally .. painting.
Natasha and Giuseppe stop by to take the kids for a walk. Alphie joins. Since leaving us when Sonnet began her work sabbatical, Natasha has taken a job working with special needs children at a local school (she has a masters degree in psychology with her thesis published). Giuseppe has recently joined Deutsche Bank in IT. As we know, Madeleine has dogs-on-the-brain and seeing Alphie raises us to Defcon 3.
Last night I return to bed, pitch dark, and hear that horrible sound all eye-glass wearers dread: the crunch underfoot. My '50s style retro tortoise shells irreparably damaged but Madeleine makes an effort to secure the snapped leg with duck-tape, modelled. It don't quite work but I love her for it.
