Hallway, Tate Britain

Madeleine works hard to get out of bed.

Me: "Sometimes life is hard, kid."

Madeleine: "Yeah."

Me: "But then sometimes you get exactly what you want. Can you think of a time when that happened to me?"

Madeleine: "That time when you got the snake?"

Me:

Madeleine: "I saw Alex's snake 'Fang' eat a mouse yesterday and there was blood and everything and at the very end when only its tail was left it looked like Fang's tongue."

Me: "That's not exactly what I was thinking."

Madeleine: "Well, what were you thinking then?"

Me: "When you were born, silly."

Madeleine, at breakfast: "Whose eaten the biscuits?"

Me: "Um, that might have been me."

Madeleine: "Dad! You had three of them."

Me:

Madeleine: "Can I have one now? Just for fun?"

Me: "You know the answer to that one."

Madeleine takes a biscuit.

Me: "Madeleine put that down right now. I mean it."

Madeleine: "Aw, and you are supposed to be 'Mr Fun Guy.'"

Another British Sunset

This time over Mildmay Park in north London.

The kids buzzy about setting a World Record for the most children singing "Heads, fingers, feat and toes (feat and toes)," as part of their school media project (Stan and Silver: sorry I failed to mention for holiday planning purposes. .). Their school connected to five burough schools via modern telecoms including, presumably, a very loud bull-horn or two. Eitan shrugs when I ask how many children - "couple of thousand?" he guesses.

Madeleine: "Dad, just for fun, can me and Eitan have a mini ice cream thing?"

Me: "No."

Madeleine: "Ok. I'm getting one. You can have one, too."

Me: "Did I just say something or imagine it?"

Madeleine: "It's just for fun. Can I have two?"

Me:

Luca and Tobacco Salad

Eitan with Anthony's kitten "Luca."

Me: "I'm making dinner."

Madeleine: "Are you making tobacco salad?"

Me: "Taco salad, yes."

Madeleine: "Can I put it in the garbage bag and mash it up with my hands?"

Me: "We're not going to do that this time."

Madeleine: "That's not very nice."

Me: "Here, chuck that in the recycling bin."

Madeleine: "Bad, Dad, it's pure lettuce."

Me: "So?"

Madeleine: "But it is pure lettuce!"

Eitan, reading from the Code of Conduct: "It says here that at The Hampton School I am not allowed to have facial hair."

Me:

Eitan: "Unless it's for religious purposes. Also you can't dye your hair an unnatural colour."

Me: "Can your hair be a rat's nest?"

Eitan: "And you have to button the top button of your shirt . . . ."

Me: "And worse: you're going to have to wear a tie every day."

Eitan: "I was expecting that."

Me: "Remember the last time you wore a tie? Oh, the sweet tears!"

Eitan: "Well, I was just a kid then."

Raquel Welch, on live television, with a cat in her lap: "Would you like to stroke my pussy?"

Johny Carson: "Sure, move the cat."

She sued The Tonight Show and won.

Islington

We pay "Uncle" Anthony a family visit Sunday - Anto lives in Islington, the cool part of town, and has moved into a sweet apartment overlooking London's chimney tops. While Anthony from Australia where his family own a farm and wine vinyard, he also has an Italian passport so Sonnet and I quietly discuss beforehand: can he cook? 

Despite his once working at restaurant-club Soho House and now holding a gig where he tests the bar drinks, his culinary skills never put on offer. At least to us. So we are delighted by his mushroom risotto served with a nice red wine.  Anthony's business, Barmatrix, going great-guns and he now has 42 locations signed up and serviced by five employees. 

At some point, when Anthony was starting his business, I queried how many clients he required to break-even and the target was 15 or so.

Me: "Are you still happy with your haircut?"

Madeleine: "Yep."

Me: "Has anyone commented on it at school?"

Eitan: "Some kids in my class said she was weird."

Madeleine: "No, they didn't Eitan. They said I was 'a nutter.'"

Me: "And did you defend your sister?"

Madeleine: "No!"

Eitan: "I said 'she can do what she wants to do... '"

Cast Court

I am in the V&A the other day and aim to help raise some dough for this most wonderful museum. I spend the morning with Andrew and Leo who are part of the Corporate Development team reporting into the formidable Jane Lawson who I was with last month. While Jane is the Queen Bee with charm and gravitas, Leo down in the nitty gritty of things that need, well, money, including the Cast Court, pictured. (NB Unusually for a museum, the Cast Courts house a collection of copies mostly made in the 19th century. In a few cases, such as the late 15th century Lübeck relief of Christ washing the Apostles' feet, the original has been destroyed and the cast is unique record of a lost work.). We discuss my title and I am very happy to be the V&A's "Ambassador of Philanthropy" (a title they make up for me) or "Ambassador" for short.

The renovations part of the museum's FuturePlan 2 which will raise many £tens of millions from the Lottery and private donations. Perhaps the most exciting effort is The V&A Exhibition Road project which "will provide a purpose-built new gallery to present the V&A’s high-profile temporary exhibitions." The gallery will be below street level, with a new courtyard above for installations and events, overlooked by the V&A’s beautiful historic buildings. A new entrance from Exhibition Road will provide access to the courtyard, the new gallery, and the rest of the Museum. Leo tells me, with excitement, that it will be like Trafalgar Square.

If you are reading this, you will very likely be hit up for money.

February 29

This neat graph shows the date (in GMT) of the summer solstice (the moment the sun reaches it northernmost position in the sky, or the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere) through the years. As the summer solstice occurs on the same astronomical date each year (although changes may occur on much larger time scales), the graph basically shows the difference between real, astronomical time and the Gregorian calendar. Each year, the Gregorian calendar is approximately 0.26 day faster than the astronomical calendar, which is corrected by a leap day once every four years. This 4-year cycle is clearly visible in the graph. To compensate for the largest part of the remainder of the difference, there is no leap year in 1800, 1900, 2100, 2200, as can be clearly seen in the graph, too. Note that the summer solstice in 1800 and in 2200 are not on equal dates; this shows that the leap year compensation as describes before is not perfect and more complicated schemes are necessary to keep the Gregorian calendar synchronized over even longer time scales.

In the Gregorian calendar most years that are evenly divisible by 4 are leap years. In each leap year, the month of February has 29 days instead of 28. Adding an extra day to the calendar every four years compensates for the fact that a period of 365 days is shorter than a solar year by almost 6 hours. However, some exceptions to this rule are required since the duration of a solar year is slightly less than 365.25 days. Years that are evenly divisible by 100 are not leap years, unless they are also evenly divisible by 400, in which case they are leap years. For example, 1600 and 2000 were leap years, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not. Similarly, 2100, 2200, 2300, 2500, 2600, 2700, 2900 and 3000 will not be leap years, but 2400 and 2800 will be. By this rule, the average number of days per year will be 365 + 1/4 − 1/100 + 1/400 = 365.2425, which is 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 12 seconds.

The Gregorian calendar was designed to keep the vernal equinox on or close to March 21, so that the date of Easter (celebrated on the Sunday after the 14th day of the Moon—i.e. a full moon—that falls on or after March 21) remains correct with respect to the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox year is about 365.242374 days long (and increasing). The marginal difference of 0.000125 days between the Gregorian calendar average year and the actual year means that, in around 8,000 years, the calendar will be about one day behind where it is now. But in 8,000 years, the length of the vernal equinox year will have changed by an amount that cannot be accurately predicted. Therefore, the current Gregorian calendar suffices for practical purposes, and the correction suggested by John Herschel of making 4000 a non-leap year will probably not

be necessary.
Source: Calendopaedia - The Gregorian Calendar; graphic from Wikipedia

Self Portrait XVI

Sonnet And The Pooch

Sonnet and I spend the late afternoon in the park. The kids just old enough for me to think: one day it will again be only me and her.

Sunset, Richard Park

Aggie arrives to surprise the Shakespeares for an overnight at her place. God bless Aggie. She recently accepted a career job at Deloittes and her transition to London complete : from house cleaner to nanny to office job to office manager and now Deloittes, the largest private professional services organization in the world with 170,000 staff working in 150 countries, delivering audit, tax, consulting, enterprise risk and financial advisory services through its member firms. You go, girl. This allows Sonnet and me a weekend to ourselves and we begin at favorite Le Caprice with Todd and Jenn and Eli, who are in town for a wedding. Todd remains a partner at a large buy-out firm (and owns Dunkin Donuts, amongst other assets) while Eli a successful i banker at Morgan Stanley. We go back to those early, brow beaten, years where many of the best adventures lie.

"Nirvana when you are working so hard you could care less about dying."

--Gar Miller, Managing Director, Energy Group, First Boston, 1989 to me, Erik and John Delaney in the elevator

Style

Despite howls of protest, I drive into town with the kids and Aneta to meet Sonnet at the Royal Academy to see the mostly mediocre exhibition on British sculpture ("The show represents a unique view of the development of British sculpture, exploring what we mean by the terms British and sculpture by bringing the two together in a chronological series of strongly themed galleries, each making its own visual argument. . ."). Eitan, who races through the galleries with an aim to finish in five-minutes, back-tracks to find me and whispers: "There is an inappropriate art work in the next room" which makes me think with worry: It must be pretty bad. Turning the corner gallery, I find a wall display of "Page 3" girls, titties on flash display. The boy and I shuffle through the room while he covers his eyes and looks away - I like the redundancy. My suggestion that he might wake up one day to find a woman's breast the most interesting thing in the world receives horror and I tell him not to be too hard on himself should my prognostication hold true.

Otherwise, since I am with the kids yesterday, our day spent building a launch pad for model rockets, which I built 35 years ago with Todd. Now I have to buy the kit and revert to 1978 or '79.

Half Term

Before - During - After

Savoy

The majestic Savoy re-opens following a two-year make-over. Her 268 rooms offer panoramic views of the Thames across Savoy Place and the Thames Embankment. The renovations closed the hotel from December 2007 until October 2010 and cost £220 million or £120 more than budgeted when the Prince Alwaleed bought the property with the help of my friend Ramsey. The over-runs due mainly to structural upgrades - the hotel opened its doors, after all, in 1889 and lacked modern communications and safety features. The Savoy's American Bar famous to GIs on furlough during WWII - so much so, in fact, (as rumour notes) that the 50-meters running up the entrance the only road in Britain where the driver on the right-hand-side, American style. It is one of three places in London to have a properly prepared martini.

Sonnet and I took "high tea" at the Savoy on our first visit to London in May 1997. I do recall vividly the two Oscar Wildes lounging in the peacock's chaise longue marking new visitors and passing their pithy observations between themselves like fine little farts.

La Famiglia

Sonnet with Stan and Silver in Santa Fe, New Mexico, August 2010.

Oil

The world reacts to Libya's violence : oil prices at two-year highs and climbing. Brent Crude $107 a barrel this morning. Who benefits, I wonder? Libya produces 1.7 million barrels of oil per day, exporting 1.2 million barrels or 17th globally, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The UK makes 1.3 million barrels daily and exports 775,000 (After the Gulf, there is pressure to suspend deep water extraction from the North Sea, pictured). Britain ranks 20th. Number One is Russia at 9.5 million barrels daily. While Russia the top producer of oil, they are ranked #2 by exports after Saudi Arabia. Russia exports 5.4 million barrels per day while SA seven million. According to secret reports released by Wikileaks, Saudi Arabia may have exaggerated its crude oil reserves by 40% - if true, Saudi might not be able to control prices which has often been the country's role with the assumed largest oil caches.

Image from Getty

Me: "What do you think young people do when they are in love?"

Madeleine: "I don't know. Go to the toy store?"

One Aldwych

In the elevator.

The Golden Head

From the Tate Britain. Artist Andrew O'Connor's work, "The Golden Head," completed in 1905. Here is what the museum says: "O'Connor was an American sculptor who specialised in funerary and public monuments, and portrait busts. He lived in Paris from 1903 to 1914 where he came under the influence of Rodin and Dalou. This head is an idealised portrait of O'Connor's second wife Jessie, who was the model for many of his sculptures. A version of this head crowns the funerary figure in the monument to General Thomas in Sleepy Hollow cemetery, near Tarrytown, New York. This funerary figure is a seated female shown in an attitude of mourning and reflection."

Thames Grey

The Thames this morning from another direction, this time eastward. My shot taken with my mobile phone from Waterloo Bridge. To my right is the Southbank Center and in the distance, St Paul's, the Barbican and Canary Wharf. Damp. Moldy. Grey. Cold. These words come to mind.

Half Term Blues

The kids two days into their half-term break and even Rusty bored. Now, as I write, the Shakespears enjoy a "staring contest" at the dinner table (Sonnet working late). Yes, I want to holler at them to be quiet (makes sense to me at least) but instead I let them have their fun. How restrained. Madeleine notes sharply, "Eitan, you're just faking!" which makes me wonder: How does one fake a staring contest?

Me: "Ok, I want to see a book report over half term."

Madeleine: "You are always trying to ruin our break!"

Me: "How many pages? How about five?"

Eitan, Madeleine:

Sonnet: "Five is a bit long. How about two. Both sides of a page."

Me: "Two it is. Now I want it to be about a book you've read and no jacket covers, Madeleine."

Madeleine:

Me: "And, to help you out, maybe you want to form an argument. Like for Harry Potter, you could discuss whether Harry mature enough for the responsibilities of being a wizard."

Madeleine: "Of course he is."

Me: "Good, now put it on a piece of paper."

Madeleine: "I could just research it on the Internet."

Me: "That is what you won't be doing. Two pages, please."

Drivers License

Aunt Marcia recently found my long-lost California drivers license, gone since freshman year in college. I remember searching frantically for it. Those looking closely may notice my birth year, doctored using the "5" in "1530 Euclid Avenue." This got me into The Tunnel and the Palladium as well as all the alcohol I wished to consume. Marcia asks if Larry confiscated my license when I took the Bronxville family car? But that is for another story.