Evening Wear

Sonnet and I to James and Emily's 15th anniversary party where we see new friends from their son's summer Bar Mitzvah.  We are unprepared with a lyric, as required, and listen with delight to others  which are genuinely touching or hilarious or both. Since dress meant to be "somewhat OTT", I drape myself in Katie's African wrap.

Sonnet wears Silver's dress, a 1985 Norma Camali. Out of the picture are her gold slippers.

FB Sunday

Half-time pep talk

It is one cold morning to be on the pitch but the Barnes Eagles shrug off the weather and draw 1-1 with the Colne Valley Ladies FC, scoring the equaliser mid-way through the second half.  Madeleine almost knocks in the winner and there are several further chances for the victory. In the end, both sides celebrate a hard-fought competition and the Eagles rejoice against a team that beat them 2-nil when last time together.

Greyhound

Madeleine tries Vodka

And it's TGIF.  I return from Paris for a Friday night with my ladies while Eitan at swimming practice.  We have dinner and discuss stuff : Sonnet's run-through of the objects in La Moda, Madeleine's birthday gifts from school friends, the week end and so on and so forth.  I have been waiting for this evening all week and here it is.

Me: "So would you like to have Daniel over for a play .. . oh, shit, I'm not supposed suggest those things."
Madeleine: "Dad! It's OK anyway. I want to have Daniel, Peter and Sidique over."
Me: "Cool.  Can I wear my cow suit?"
Madeleine: "Oh, my God, Dad - you are not wearing a cow suit. I will rugby tackle you if you do."
Me: "How about vampire teeth. And red blood?"
Madeleine: "I am changing this conversation."
Me: "Next week then? It's all set."
Sonnet: "Don't listen to your Dad, Madeleine, he's just being silly."
Madeleine: "That's exactly what I am afraid of."

Paris Wheel

Place de la Concorde

When the conditions good, the camera disappears- this one with my mobile and it wouldn't be much better with the DSLR. The shot from Tuileries garden next to the Jeu de Paume, now closed for renovations; it is otherwise one of my favorite museums as it shows photographs and photographers and conveniently convenient to where I stay in the 8e. Also in the the Tuileries is the Musée de l'Orangerie which displays Claude Monet's large water lily paintings.

I contemplate a ride on the ferris wheel but decide it is equally pleasant in my sunset vista. Besides Sonnet not here so what's the fun in that ?

Madeleine Turns 11

Madeleine turns a year and we celebrate at Cool Sushi.  Her gift: A remote-control glider (when it arrives, I tell her it is a vacuum cleaner for her chores).  Madeleine is the love of my heart and the daughter I could only dream of.  I can never so 'no' to her.

Madeleine puts candles on a triple layer cake that is two layers since the dog got the middle layer

Deb And Dave

45 York Ave

Me: "Anything going on at school?"

Madeleine: "No."

Me: "More, please."

Madeleine: "Well, there are the cool kids in my class. .. "

Me: "Oh?"

Madeleine: "It's really annoying. Like, Eric, he is always playing with the year-sevens.  And all the girls are, like, in love with him."

Me: "He must be dreamy."

Madeleine: "I don't think so."

Me: "Are you one of the 'cool kids'"

Me: "There are the 'cool kids' and the 'uncool kids.'  I'm definitely not with the 'cool kids."

Me: "So you're with the 'uncool kids?'"

Madeleine: "Yeah, but we are the cool ones of the 'uncool kids'."

Me: "What about the uncool kids in the cool gang? Could they be one of the cool kids in the uncool gang?"

Madeleine: "We would never let them in. Fred wants to be in our gang but he's uncool and he hit me on the head with his backpack."

Sonnet: "I hope your not excluding anybody from something, are you Madeleine?"

Madeleine: "The cool kids are called 'the tree gang' because they are always lounging about in a tree."

Me:

Madeleine: "But they can't go too high because then they will get a signature."

Me: "That must be pretty cool."

Madeleine: "Yeah, unless you fall and break your arm or something."

Me: "Good point."

The Programmer

Dave with a ball chucker

Dave and Deb, who I have know since 7th grade, with us this week.  Dave a programmer for Intuit where he has been since '99. His skill rewarded with Intuit's mobile payment platform which may be the company's future. When not cracking code, he is doing Tai Chi - 1.5 hours every morning.  He is a calm dude who absorbs information - nothing goes by him.

Last night we see Mr Bean, otherwise known as Roan Atkinson, in the play 'Quartermaine's Terms' (Playbill: "a tragicomic play, humorous but ultimately moving account, of several years in the lives of seven teachers.")  I can see why Atkinson chose the part following Bean and Bond spoof "Johnny English" - Quartermaine allows him to be subtle.  Deb an actress and in seventh heaven.

Richmond Park, Mid Day

Pen Pond

Belly Laugh

Both kids have a wonderful sense of humor and it does not take much to get a laugh out of either. All the easier if it includes something gross but sometimes my subtle touch breaks through. Not. It's one of the most enjoyable things about their age.

School Work

Madeleine does her homework

The weekend rule, often forgotten or dismissed, is homework before television. Eitan uses homework to escape chores but then cedes the battle over Match Of The Day.  His choice.  Madeleine less interested in the boob tube preferring Harry Potter by Stephen Fry instead.  Hundreds of hours, all in. Will she or they ever outgrow the wizard's hold?

Amazon.co.uk: "How long does a Harry Potter recording take to make?"
Stephen Fry: "It tears the arse out of three days really."

Burns Supper

Lars multi tasks 

We join Mitch and Rachel who host a Scot themed party (Burns day, at our around 25 January, celebrates the Scottish poet) and hagus with whisky duly served to the guests. Today Scotland v. England in Six Nations rugby (England wins).

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,    (hurdies = buttocks)
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o' need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.
--Robert Burns

All In The Gang

San Ramon ca. '72

This photo on my parent's grand piano in Berkeley.  Johnny in the middle with the patches on his knees (his nick-name, from his sailor Dad, was 'bony nogg'n" since he fell down a lot as a kid; we collected salamanders and stole a shopping cart for the wheels).  Behind Johnny, his sister Rosy (white roller skates) and to the left, Vicky, whose father was the Chief of the Berkeley Fire Dept.  On the tricycle is Eric. I ate ant poison outside Eric's house and rushed to the hospital; his parent's never apologised nor said a word.

I am liking my style (far right) : over sized striped sweater, polo (fresh collar) and slightly baggy trousers+trainers.  It was all Grace.

The Hillbilly Cat

Katie sends a post card from Graceland, Tennessee.

Elvis's final years not pretty and I am glad to have missed his decline. The sheer wackiness of his final Southern style make him a curio in 2013 and yet the music remains killer. From '54's "That's All Right" (which still jams by today's standards) to '72's "Burning Love" with its boogie piano, horn-laden chorus and the final "hunka hunka burning love" - no wonder it went no. 2 on the Billboards (Elvis, BTW, had 18 no. 1 singles, tied for second with Mariah Carey, and behind the Beatles' 20).  By his death, The King had sold more than 600 million singles and albums (source: IMDb).

Elvis as far out on the edge as one could be. I wonder if people would notice him in today's over-exposed porno saturated world ? How fanciful his hips censored on the Ed Sullivan show.

"I'm no hillbilly singer."

--Elvis Presley

Weird Times

Here's one from business school - I'm not really sure what happened to this guy.  I do recall he wrote a weekly for the "Bottom Line" newspaper where yours, truly, the Chief Editor, a title I shared with two others, in our spare time.  The paper took in money from i banks and consultants who advertised jobs to the graduate students. I decided we, the editors, should get paid and so negotiated a contract with the Dean's office which gave us a healthy cut of the profits; I then raised the ad rates and we did something like $80K net, which covered most of our trip to Central Asia.

Me: "How was school today."
Eitan: "Fine, we are doing the planets."
Me: "Fun."
Eitan: "When the teacher said 'Uranus' every one was trying hard not to laugh."
Me: "Oh?"
Eitan: "He said, 'and since 2001 we've seen Uranus 200 times.' Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Me:
Eitan: "You must admit, it's pretty funny Dad."

Go, Man, Go

Richmond Park near the Ballet School, 2005

I make the blunder of suggesting a running date for Eitan with Zeno, the kid who won the borough x country championships and a footballer in the Surrey League who Eitan sees from time to time (Zeno's mom and I in a communication over a photo I took of the boys racing).  Eitan aghast : "Dad! I cannot believe you did that." I recognise immediately my mistake having been in 7th grade once myself. The two will pair off tomorrow in the Middlesex cross country finals. 

For the first time, last year, the number of world tourists surpassed one billion (says the OMT).  By 2030, it may be 1.8 B.  Europe is the most popular destination ttracting 537 million guests in 2012.  We are One Big Museum.

Belshazzar

Madeleine and Sonnet

I sit next to Madeleine in the living room and blog while she does her homework, which is a review of Belshazzar's Feast.  Before, Madeleine and I have dinner together as Eitan at swimming and Sonnet in Italy scouting for La Moda.  Madeleine and I talk about the usual stuff - school, lunch, friends - and somehow it has snuck up on me that this kid is becoming a young woman. 

Balshazzar's feast BTW a painting by Rembrandt that I have seen on many occasions at the National Gallery: Its source taken from the story of Belshazzar and the writing on the wall of in the Old Testament Book of Daniel (mildly terrifying).  Madeleine meanwhile examines the choral work on the same subject composed by Englishman William Walton in 1931.  My 6th grade, at Longfellow in Berkeley, we were counting our fingers.

Madeleine: "I never get why these old fashioned pieces have a long name so they torture you when you have to write it in class."

Mad Men

Lars and Puk last night

Madeleine's drama try-out goes well and she is satisfied with her performance. From there, it is Alex's birthday party - Madeleine reconnects with her Sheen Mount gang as though no time passed.  I know she misses her final year at SM but she also enjoys Emanuel and the initial shock-transition behind her.

Eitan bakes a banana raisin cake to sell to the neighbourhood.  Lars points out that he, and other neighbourhood Danes, unable to find a certain type of Danish whole grain bread - a hole in the market ? Eitan, for now, focuses on the sensuals.

Me: "How can you listen to that stuff on the radio? It's terrible."
Eitan: "No it's not."
Me, singing something I heard on Capital FM : "I know by your look that you gotta little crush.  The bulge in your pants it makes me wanna blush."
Eitan: "Ha! Ha! Ha!"
Me: "How can you stand it?"
Eitan: "I dunno. It's just good."

Annie Hall

Annie Hall, which I watched for the first time in jr. high, provided the first insights into an adult relationship. I saw it next at the Avon Theatre in Providence, Rhode Island (Midnight showing) and then again this afternoon with Eitan.  Annie's growth (contrasted to Alvy's stagnation) presents the movie's tension - she moves on leaving Alvy stricken.  I love California portrayed as a cultural wasteland ( yet such an inviting contrast to Manhattan).

The best scene in the movie BTW when Alvy and Annie Hall at a deli and she orders a pastrami on white bread with mayonnaise and tomato and lettuce. Woody Allen's eyes roll (my photo from the TV)

Alvy is invited to try cocaine.
Alvy: "I don't want to put a wad of white powder in my nose. There's the nasal membrane..."
Annie Hall: "You never want to try anything new, Alvy."
Alvy: "How can you say that? Whose idea was it? I said that you, I and that girl from your acting class should sleep together in a threesome."
Annie Hall: "Well, that's sick."
Alvy: "Yeah, I know it's sick, but it's new. You didn't say it couldn't be sick."

Czech Invasion

Kamila in town to see "the monuments" which means Top Shop, H&M, River Island - in short, Oxford Street to Westfield.

Madeleine tries out for a school scholarship in drama :  She must act a passage from The Dawn Treader in the The Chronicles of Narnia.  I ask if she is nervous? "My goal is not to throw up on stage" (she tells Sonnet).  Madeleine selected, with 19 children, from an applicant pool of 100 ; the top three earn the honors.

Sonnet: "Say 'break a leg' "
Kamila: "Why say that?"
Sonnet: "It is meant to bring good luck."
Kamila: "I hope you break both your legs."
Madeleine:

Lucerne

The Church of St. Leodega (completed 1639)

Friday, Friday, Friday.  Madeleine and I catch the bus, 6:50AM, to her school and I attire myself in running lycra to make good use of the return journey.  Unfortunately this includes about two miles via Wandsworth and grinding morning traffic and exhaust fumes; I seek relief on the Thames path and enjoy the last four miles in peace - a different world.

Madeleine and I always go for the upper deck (Silver's favorite).  This morning a young couple join the front row - he in a track suit+trainers;  she, perky and made up. My guess, : early 20s and first relationship. They are comfortable with each other, despite the hour : he makes silly statements and she provides comfort support.  It is this way the world round.

Me: "Why do kids hate museums?"
Madeleine: "I don't hate museums. I just don't like some of them."
Me: "Which ones do you like?"
Madeleine: "The V and A."
Me: "I hope so."
Madeleine:  "I like paintings with lots of color. Like David Hockney."
Sonnet: "Excellent."
Madeleine: "I don't like old fashioned paintings that are kind of dark and faded."
Sonnet: "Well, Madeleine, what will probably happen .. ."
Madeleine: "I know, I know - my tastes will change."
Sonnet: "Yes, they will."