Coach's Huddle

"Watch the through balls"

The Sheen Lions battle the Kingstonian Youth to a 3-3 draw which our side equalises with a minute to go on a free kick by Woo from 40 yards out, headed into the net by Luke. Joy! The game notable for the miserable weather and Sonnet and I soaked and cold by half-time. Eitan is selected 'Man Of The Match' (and now happily watches Manchester United vs. Manchester City as I blog). 

Aneta with us for the weekend and we catch up on her summer, spent at a Jewish camp in Western Massachusetts, and her other various travels in the US.  She is as agreeable as ever and always a good vibe to have around.

Sonnet takes Madeleine to the Richmond High Street for some Sunday afternoon shopping. And the passage of time rolls on.

Boo

Eitan out this afternoon in a "flash mob" (he hates it when I say this) when the teenagers text each other and meet an hour later. Today it's Kingston where they wander about, looking at shops, no money or at least limited funds. Maybe a snack then home.  Tonight he will hang out with his Sheen Mount crew but no trick-or-treating. Those days long gone.

Pre Candy

Madeleine spends the day with Sonnet at the V&A (last day of half-term break) finishing homework and hanging out with mom. Tonight she hits the block with Abby resurrecting the chicken-hat which, dear reader, was my long-running costume when the children were children and not so embarrassed by such things. And then they were.

Hallowe'en Pumpkins

Madeleine and Jack

We slip into Friday evening and it is my once favourite holiday, Halloween, before it become somehow commercial, even in the UK. Even in Tokyo.  I liked the unsettling nature of the transitional autumn heading into the dead zone of winter and what better way to celebrate than trick-or-treating? Usually I try to watch at least one scary movie to put me in the mood but now not so much. Maybe it is in line with my mood these days - who needs more death? In any case, our block doesn't receive much attention from the candy crowd as there are more elderly folks vs. families. No kid wants fruit in their bag.

4AM

Tokyo is really God damn big and sprawls for as far as the eye can see. But it never loses its vibrancy. Here are a few of the neighborhoods I visit:

Shinjuki, which is a large business, entertainment and shopping district centered around JR Shinjuku Station. It's the busiest train station in the world with 3.64 million passengers a day. Due East is Kabukicho, Asia's biggest red-light district.

Shibuya, a large shopping and entertainment district best known for the Shibuya crossing, which is the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. Estimates are that almost 1 million people cross the street here each day (2.18 million people use Shibuya station daily).

Tokyo Station Area (Marunouchi & Yaesu), which handles over a million passengers a day. It's Tokyo's intercity rail hub connecting Tokyo with the rest of Japan by Shinkansen (bullet train). More trains pass through Tokyo station each day than any other station in Japan. My hotel, the Shangra La, located nearby.

We also visit the Park Hyatt, where Lost In Translation filmed, and dine at Gonpachi made famous in Quentin Taratino's bloody Kill Bill.

Robataya

We enjoy a robata style dinner, which is similar to barbecue, where the food is skewered (often alive, brutal) and slow-grilled over hot charcoal. Traditionally the servings are a combination of seafoods and vegatables while we have shrimps, beef and .. fish. The ingredients displayed, and cooked, before us ("Like a puddle" our host helpfully tells us) interrupted by a traditional Japanese dinner chant complete with brusk clapping. Robataya is one of the best restaurants in Tokyo.

Tokyo

I arrive in Tokyo for business, meeting Thierry at the hotel and off we go.

It's my first visit Tokyo and the city is BIG - the most populous metropolitan area in the world with 37.8 million people. From the 33rd floor of my hotel, Tokyo just goes on forever.

Tokyo has eaten everything around it due, mainly, to the decision to build the Shinkansen (or "new trunk line"), a network of high-speed lines in Japan that opened in 1964 weeks before the Tokyo Olympics.

The Shinkansen owns 1,483 miles of lines with max speeds of 150-200 mph. It links most major cities on the main island, making Tokyo ever more important as the central force of the economy while weakening regional cities. By an odd quirk, employers pay for the commute time making a 2 hour one-way somehow tolerable or even desirable. Any case, it carries over 300 million passengers a year. It runs like a Swiss clock.

I watch the World Series, game 5, which is broadcast on Japanese television delayed for prime time (Giants beat KC, 5-0. There will be a Game 7). The commentary is in Japanese. I note that restaurants and bars are showing the game to locals who watch, enthralled. No surprise, either, since baseball introduced to Japan in 1872 by HOrace Wilson who taught at the Kaisei School in Tokyo and the first baseball team here was called the Shimbashi Athletic club in 1878.

España

Madeleine unpacks

Madeleine's half-term break takes her to Madrid, where she flies in Monday until last night when I scoop her up from T5 followed by a late dinner. She is a chatter box, filled with enthusiasm and good cheer. 

In Spain,  the school group stay in the Sierre de Gredos mountains: "very hot and sunny, mountains everywhere. Streams and lakes, too, along with forests". Madeleine bunks with nine other girls and gets maybe four hours of sleep despite the designated curfew of 23h30.  During the week, the kids horseback ride, hike, mountain bike, enjoy archery and visit Real Madrid football stadium. In addition, for us parents, there is an hour and a half of Spanish lessons per day (Madeleine groans). 

Madeleine tells me the best part of the trip was "playing 'Slender Man' at night, pitch black, through the forrest, with my friends." (Slender Man, dear readers, is when the Slender Man, dressed in dark clothes, try to capture the non Slender Men; once captured, the captured join the Slender Men or the chasing team. Or so I think).

I prepare for Tokyo tomorrow.

Minneapolis St Paul

Twin Cities with Mike and Gretchen

Sonnet is in Minneapolis St Paul for the opening of Italian Style (renamed from "The Glamour of Italian Fashion" for the Americans") at the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts.  Eitan joins her from some mother-teenager bonding, and are hosted by the Bransfords who roll out the red carpet.  Recall Mike and Gretchen part of our original ex pat group, post business school, who returned Homeland maybe ten years ago. Bill and Whitney join for the opening and it is a family affair.

As Madeleine has been in Spain this week, I am solo for several nights. I take advantage by catching up on work, a trip to Manhattan where I see Katie, and going to the Egon Schiele opening at the Courdault.

Any Given Sunday

On being a teenager

Eitan celebrates his freedom - half term! - watching football from dawn until dusk (right now it is the ever important match, Stoke v. Swansea). In between televised matches, The Sheen Lions take on KPR and win 3-2 on a nail-biter though the Lions outplayed their opponents.

Dear reader, Eitan began his club play with KPR and there are a handful of kids that I recall from Eitan's very first competitive run down the pitch with the Rangers. 

Sonnet and I go to yoga which is something I have not done in, like, three years - shocking, really, as yoga was once an important part of our routine. Back in the early days of our relationship, ca. 1993, Sonnet introduced me to Bikram yoga in North Beach - it was their second studio though now they can be found everywhere (though Bikram's system has come into question). I still can't do the balancing poses and I sweat like a maniac.

Me: "Why don't you you put on some NFL?"
Eitan: "Do I have to?"
Me: "Let's watch some real football."
Eitan: "Whatever."
Me: "Who do you think would win - the Baltimore Colts vs Man U in soccer or vice versa?"
Eitan: "Well it depends on who is playing. But, um, probably the Colts."
Me: "Manchester wouldn't make it through the fist quarter. Look at how big the players are."
Eitan: "It probably wouldn't be pretty."
Me: "I'll say."

School Press

Madeleine wraps up top place.

Friday night and everybody has been working hard. Since Sonnet out and Eitan at football practice, Madeleine and I have a date: Praline's And Cream ice cream+several episodes of "Modern Family." Doesn't matter that s/ we have seen every episode maybe more than twice, it is still funny and shows us what the 'normal' is. 

“I’ve always said that if my son thinks of me as one of his idiot friends, I’ve succeeded as a dad.”

--Phil Dunphy, Modern Family

Focus

I take Madeleine to her drama class in NW London where today she "goes over a script called 'The Accident'. I play a guy named Dillon, who is the director of the play. The play is a 'play within a play.' We had to perform the play without props and costumes as the the van (in the play) gets into an accident and loses all of the props and costumes.  Yep, that's it. That's what we did." Intriguing.

During the interim I visit Panzers in St John's Wood. Panzer has the lock on American food for homesick ex pats. Like me. I pick up Captain Crunch, Fruit Loops and Nestle chocolate chips for (maybe) chocolate chip cookies.

The kids are now officially on half-term break which means I find Eitan flat on his back on the couch, television on, dull lifeless look on his face. I join him.

Julian's Pot

Julian is a potter. He makes pottery in his studio in Dulwich. The pot on display, pictured, was made as part of a 2012 series of over-sized urns. In order to fire them, Julian found a special kiln in North England. Just getting the things there, and back, a challenge. Now one is on display at the Frieze Art Fair. Many years ago we introduced Julian to Scott who is on the acquisition committee of the Rhode Island School of Design museum - RISD commissioned a tea set.

Sonnet returns from Milan and Rotterdam where she gave a lecture at Palazzo Morando and attends a fashion conference at Erasmus University.  She has a five hour dinner with the conference speakers in a renovated train terminus in a gritty but up-and-coming part of Rotterdam. They discuss fashion, mega egos and prostitution (Sonnet tells me). Not my usual conversation about private equity.

Frieze Art Fair

Sonnet and I attend the opening of the Frieze Art Fair this week - Frieze on the serious art purchasing 

calendar and an international contemporary art fair that takes place every October in Regent's Park.  It features more than 170 contemporary art galleries and their works from Damian Hirst to Alberto Giacometto. But it is really the people watching that is most fun. There are a lot of French collectors for some reason and of course the Good and the Great, but also the artists and the strivers. Everybody dressed to impress and having a good time. 

Sunset at 30K

Modern life. In my absence, Madeleine runs the Wandsworth Borough 2K around Tooting Common for Years 7 and 8s. Our gal finishes third of 120 runners and first in her age group (Text to Sonnet: "I came first out of everybody!!!!"). The Shakespeares trial track teams in Wimbledon and Kingston (Madeleine wants the former, Eitan the latter. Of course).

In school news, Madeleine nails the never ending Tudors with a score of 97% on a mid-term exam while Eitan delivers results with top marks in biology, physics and chemistry. Even better, they bring their subjects to the dinner table.

Back In Action

Eitan plays midfield

I return from the West Coast and spend the weekend catching up with family, yard work and soccer which sees Eitan in only his second Sheen Lions match of the season. Pictured, vs Shelton, who is top of the league and a full head, on average, taller than the Lions who go down 3-1 (but in fairness should have drawn on a goal-line block and goal bar strike). Eitan scores the Lions goal.

California (San Francisco, Menlo Park, LA and Newport Beach) is filled with business meetings and friends including an evening with my Berkeley pals at Pizzaiola in a trendy neighbourhood in Oakland.  Everybody doing what they should be: Ivor overseeing major architecture projects in San Fran and the peninsula; Mike and Tyler representing the Winklevoss twins of FB fame; Debbie is a local theatre legend and Eric is the Associate Commissioner of the Pac 12. Secretly or openly we all wish for a Cal Rose Bowl but it ain't ever gonna happen.

Christian and Lisa show me a special evening in LA with a sunset drink at the Wilshire Hotel overlooking the Hollywood Hills, than a pre dinner cocktail at the LA County Museum of Art, followed by dinner at a local Terroni. Fabulous.

Newport is a strange alternative lifestyle: alternative for the rich and super rich. It keeps its beach culture but the harbour yachts stuff the gang planks. Surfers walk along the high street where I have coffee; the black Bentley driven by the housewife somehow out of place in the glorious sunshine.

I bring home a stack of comic books for Madeleine.

Almost 14

Eitan turns 14 (we celebrate early as I will be in Paris on the actual day).

How could Sonnet and I wish for anything more? Eitan has become an independent and confident young man while navigating his second year as a teenager.  And this has been a year of change. At school, he has a new form and friends; he has added new coursework in French while dropping design, technology and art. Hampton won the Surrey Cup. Momentarily, his social scene shifted towards crowd sourcing and the High Street (often leaving Sonnet and I perplexed) but now, in the new term, he has adopted a more focused approach towards his studies.

Eitan remains a quiet and thoughtful young man. He is rare to open up with us but we know he feels deeply about those things he holds dear: sport, school, friends and Manchester United. He also carries nostalgia linked, perhaps, to his dislike of letting go of things from his past. I recall he sadness at the last game with Elm Grove or his tears leaving Sheen Mount.

Mostly Eitan has remained true to a first vision I had of him as an infant. He is cautious to jump into new things but when he moves, it is with well studied conviction. He wants to please those around him and so sets high goals for himself. We watch as external feedback becomes less important to the standards he sets for himself.  It is our joy be along for the ride, wherever it may be going.

Field Trip, WWI

Chateau Wood Ypres 1917 by Frank Hurley

Eitan up at 4AM (Sunday) for an over-night field trip to Belgium to trace the route taken by an Australian WWI platoon on their way to fight at Passchendele (near Ypres). Tomorrow the boys will drive to the Somme where the trenches have been preserved. This followed by a visit to the British memorial at Thiepval and a British Cemetary. 

The Battle of Passchendaele was a campaign of the First World War, fought by the British and their allies against the German Empire. The battle took place on the Western Front, between July and November 1917, for control of the ridges south and east of the Belgiam city of Ypres in West Flanders , as part of a strategy decided by the Allies at conferences in November 1916 and May 1917.

 

Passchendael lay on the last ridge east of Ypres, five miles from a railway junction at Roeselare, which was a vital part of the supply system of the German Fourth Army. The next stage of the Allied strategy was an advance to Torhout-Couckelaere, to close the German-controlled railway running through Roeselare and Torhout, which did not take place until 1918. 

Further operations and a British supporting attack along the Belgian coast from Nieuwpoort, combined with an amphibious landing, were to have reached Bruges and then the Dutch frontier. The resistance of the German Fourth Army, unusually wet weather, the onset of winter and the diversion of British and French resources to Italy, following the Austro-German victory at the Battle of Caoretto (24 October – 19 November) allowed the Germans to avoid a general withdrawal, which had seemed inevitable to them in October. 

The campaign ended in November when the Canadian Corps captured Passchendaele. In 1918 the Battle of Lys and the Fifth Battle of Ypres were fought before the Allies occupied the Belgian coast and reached the Dutch frontier.

(source: Wiki)

Friday Night Scrabble

The Indian Summer continues which sees lovely autumnal weather, warm and friendly, easy to sit on a park bench and write some emails or in Green Park to make my calls.  In fact, this has been the driest September in 50 years.

I am with Madeleine for the club swimming sprint champs and our gal swims all the disciplines. Unfortunately no PBs but she is up for the task, swimming her little heart out (She says, "I didn't do that well but I don't think I could have swum any better"). I love the team camaraderie as the kids scream and wave their team mates along; from the stands, an occassional explosion from an enthusiastic parent livens things up.

Eitan seems to have let go of any feelings he had for swimming to concentrate on his football, athletics and school (update on Osgood Schlatter: Eitan back to training and hopes to play in the next week or two with his physio's permission).

Madeleine: "I tried to buy some spray paint with Williby but kids aren't allowed to buy spray paint. How come?"
Me: "Because they sniff it."
Madeleine: "Why do they do that?"
Me: "It makes them high."
Madeleine: "Doesn't it turn their nose all different sorts of colours like green and blue and red?"
Me: "Yes. It is one of the many hazards of sniffing paint."

Holocaust Memorial Museum

Riverside

Diana invites us to her home to meet Mike Abramowitz, who is the the Director of the Committee on Conscience, which conducts the genocide prevention efforts of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Diana and our friend Todd are on the museum's council. 

Before the Holocaust Museum, Mike was a reporter and editor for The Washington Post since 1985-06 and the White House correspondent for the Post from 2006-09 covering the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. No, I did not ask. 

I visited the Holocaust Museum in 1993 or 1994 around when it first opened, a truly moving experience. Of the many things I remember, the pile of discarded children's shoes remains in my mind's eye.

Madeleine: "What are you watching?"

Me: "The news."

Madeleine: "The news is boring."

Me: "I hope you didn't just say that."

Madeleine: "Can we watch something interesting like 'Modern Family' or something?"

Me: "You go, girl.'"

Adam 40

Madeleine, Dead Horse Point

We are at Adam's 40th birthday party last night in Notting Hill, which really is a lovely part of west London - in the 1980s it was run down and my friend Gilbert bought a house here for half a mil which is now worth maybe 20. Or 25. But I digress. 

Adam I met at Ben's bar mitzvah when he (Adam) had recently acquired Pushkin Press which publishes authors from around the world like Stefan Zweig, Marcel Ayme, Antal Szerb, Paul Moran and Yasushi Inoue (none of whom I have read dear reader). Often Adam translates these works into the English language for the first time. 

Before Pushkin, Adam was Publisher of Penguin Classics and best known perhaps for rediscovering the work of the German writer Hans Fallada, with the first English-language publication of Alone in Berlin. He is now excited about 'Fortune of France,' which chronicles over many fictional volumes the French religious wars in the age of the Tudors; it has sold more than five million copies but not in English. I immediately think of the Master And Commander series and may have to investigate.

For the record: Eitan is 5'7'' and Madeleine is 5'3''. I once took their height and weight every month or so up until 2010. I will plot it on a graph one day.

Football

I can't resist buying an American football.  It's been an unusual season - Eitan no football as he recovers from a growth spurt. He is being smart about it, resisting jumping into training or games that could set him back. It will come.

I reminisce of four or five years ago when went to the park at the crack of dawn to practise corner kicks and run drills. I worked him pretty hard, it was good for both of us.

Without afternoon swimming, I often come home to find him in the den, hunched over his books, intensely beavering away.

The Way Back Machine

Winter 2010

Yes, these kids grow up quickly and only yesterday it seems that Eitan and I played football together.

It is unseasonably warm for mid-September and tomorrow we may even have humidity and thundershowes.  Usually Indian Summer a bit later and a bit drier but I smile and sweat my way through it.  Sonnet meets me at my office and we walk home chit-chatting; at 45 we peek into the den to spy Eitan working away at his homework.

Bill and Martine arrive in London. Bill has cancer but nothing slows him down. He recently bought a condo in Arizona to play golf.  I love this about him.

Me: "How is Jack doing?" (Dad's note: Madeleine's friend Jack broke his femur playing rugby)
Madeleine: "We've had to move all our classes to the first floor since he can't climb the stairs."
Me: "Poor kid."
Madeleine: "It's like the second worse bone to break."
Me: "After your neck?"
Madeleine: "Your head. Or your back. Then you could be paralysed."
Me: "So true."

Berry Picking & Scotland

Sonnet, Madeleine and I head to Buckinghamshire to pick some fruit - mainly raspberries and plums but also sweet corn for corn chowder.  This is a nice family ritual.

Scotland's decision to leave the United Kingdom put to vote on Thursday and on every body's mind. The referendum question is rather simple, "Should Scotland be an independent country?", requires a rather simple 'yes' or 'no.'  All residents of Scotland 16 or over or about 4 million people can vote (about 800,000 Scots live in England and they largely won't participate nor the 6 million Scots who live in the US). Independence requires a simple majority.

Until last weekend, a yes-vote seemed improbable but then a poll put the majority at independent. Panic. David Cameron and Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband went north for the Hale Mary. Some open ended issues: currency, public expenditure, defence and North Sea oil.  It is a once in a lifetime, 100-year decision.

It would be shocking and tragic if Scotland broke from a union that has served Britain for 300 years.

Richmond Autumn

Everybody gets a little itch sometimes

We host a party for the Sheen Lions FB club and Sonnet makes several types of pasta while I handle the wine and beer (actually, Sonnet handles the wine and beer). The parents arrive first then the boys come stomping in, post practice, filled with energy and glee. Unfortunately Eitan has Osgood-Schlatter syndrome or when the bones growing faster than the muscles causing soreness in the knee and groin area. He is unable to play for now but things will take care of themselves in due course. No need to worry.

Sonnet asks me to tell the boys that dinner is ready and "to wash their hands." I deliver the message to blank or sniggering faces.

School Run

The train station to school

I suggest to Madeleine, on our walk to the train, that my blog might be coming to an end, but she is overwhelming in her support: "You've been doing it since we were kids!" Which makes me pause: are they not kids now? And that is the problem. Writing about them, which I always enjoy, is more complicated as, well, they are not just kids. Eitan and Madeleine's lives are filled, in a most favourable way, with friendships, relationships, embarrassments and the usual stuff of growing up. They would kill me if I wrote about it. 

Sonnet and I sit outside, Friday afternoon, in the South Kensington sunshine, scheming. 

Singapore

Skyline (photo from Planet Den)

I am in Singapore this week, flying out Sunday 11:30AM, arriving at the Changi Airport 7:20AM Monday morning. Brutal.

My day begins with a tour of Astorg-owned Linxens' manufacturing plant provided by the affable and knowledgable Ah-Ban, who has been with Lx for 20 years or from the company's earliest beginnings as Dupont Connector Systems.  Today, Linxens is the world's leading maker of connectors for smartcards with applications for your credit cards and the SIM cards connecting to your iPhone 6. The end product is shiny and industrial, covered in a plate of gold or platinum that you can see on your credit card chip, and delivered to OEMs in Asia and around the world. Linxens produces ca. 6 billion units a year with the Singapore plant accounting for about 4.5 billion. Talk about economies of scale.

Beyond the exhaustion of my flight, Singapore is a strange even surreal city which is perfectly manicured and organised like no other I have known. Unemployment is 2% and the skyline's growth, since my last visit in 2006, remarkable : it is literally a different place.

The skyscrapers have light displays. My hotel connects to an underground shopping mall complete with all the top glamour brands (jam packed at lunch, deserted by 7PM). The billboard ads are familiar: there's Charlise on Dior or Clooney for Nescafe and Kate doing Burberry.

It's a place where things are going on. Everyone wants to be rich and in a hurry to do so. So Western and so ... not.

Track Suit

I sit next to Madeleine, Saturday mid-day, and she looks over my shoulder as I write my blog. She tells me she is feeling "bored enough to be sitting here." Fair enough.  This morning she had a swimming workout and this afternoon she will hit Richmond with Marcus and maybe Molly. Madeleine says Richmond is about "food and shops. Whole Foods, Gourmet Burger Kitchen. Starbucks, Costa . .." She tells me it's easy to get to and fun.

Madeleine in her comfortable track bottoms which we Americans call "sweat pants". Of course, "pants' in England means nickers or underwear. I've gotten into trouble over that one.

On this photo Madeleine says "you can see my uneven toes."

Aneta Katie

Upper West Side

Well, the last we saw Aneta she was on her way to Western Mass to be a counsellor at a Jewish co-ed camp.  With mission accomplished, she now travels along the Eastern Seaboard visiting Washington DC and New York, or that's about as much as I can gather from my limited intel. Good times I'm sure. And to be young again.

Katie, meanwhile, goes strength to strength at the Op Ed Project. Here is a recent testimonial: "Before now, I never thought about becoming the CEO of a billion-dollar organization at 34. But here's to the OpEd Project and you, Michele, because--in this process--you've somehow taught me to become audacious and to stare down my own fears and go for it anyway."

Teenager In The House

So the kids are back to school.

Madeleine up this morning 5AM for swimming (dutiful mother Sonnet took her, then went back with a bacon-egg sandwich+juice box). Netball started yesterday. And Sonnet and I met her form teacher, Mr k, who has been teaching for 20 years and, prior, was a banker for which he apologises. Mr K seems pretty cool while Madeleine says he is slightly disorganised and often late. I note his hair uncombed and tie askew. We like him.

Meanwhile, Eitan refuses to tell us anything about his day. Par for the course I suppose. Unfortunately he has been sidelined from sports due to growth related injuries and pains so we are getting that checked out.  Yesterday, Eitan had an all-day team building exercise that would do any MBA program proud. Says Eitan, "whatever".

ND

Sunrise

I return to Paris Monday-Tuesday to catch up with l'equipe Astorg, who has had an active summer including three new investments before the August shut-down. The deals are interesting, too : Megadyne is the world's number-one manufacturer of polyurethane industrial belts; Sebia is the world leader in electrophoresis (a niche of in vitro diagnosis field) mainly for bone marrow cancers; and M7, a direct-to-home satellite Pay TV provider to almost three million households.

I do my usual early morning run which either goes Eiffel Tower (turn right) or Notre Dame (turn left). Both about 4 or 5 miles, 45 minutes. I then sit in the hotel lobby, drink coffee and read the newspapers (FT, Le Figaro). It is the quiet moment of my day.

Caterpillar

Zakkai handles an acronicta aceris

This little guy will eventually turn into a sycamore moth, found through most of Europe from Central England south to Morocco. Given the extraordinary larva, the moth is awfully boring - grey and dull to blend in with tree bark.  The caterpillar feeds on maples, mulberry and pedunculate oaks. Contrary to acronicta's  bright colours, it is not poisonous though I admit I'm a bit uncomfortable picking it up at first.

Cal opens the football season with a win over Northwestern which reminds me that Cal lost to Northwestern the last time Cal was in the Rose Bowl. That would have been 1959.

Alain

Alain is the Professor of Mathematical Modelling at Oxford U. and the Director of the Oxford Centre for Collaborative Applied Mathematics. His remit includes things like discrete and continuum mechanics, elasticity, plasticity; the application of mechanics and mathematics to biology; mathematical modelling in physics and engineering and Interesting and otherwise unclassifiable mathematical problems. Basically he gets to pick and choose the cool math shit he wants to do.

Alain is currently modelling how cardamine seeds are dispersed - the plant seed located on the tail of an organic coil that grows, builds tension, then dries and explodes, shooting the seed up to a foot from the flower. Alain is studying the cellular tissue mechanics. 

Alain is also mainly involved with Oxford's Cognitive Neuroscience Lab which recently entered a $100m partnership with Carnegie Mellon.

Zebulon update : A* in maths GSCE and will take the remainder this year; his game app, which he's programmed in his spare time, goes live this autumn.

Royal Regatta

Temple Island

We hike along the Thames at Henley with Nita, Alain and the three zeds.  Each summer the Henley Royal Regatta is held on Henley Reach, a naturally straight stretch starting at the Temple Island. The race became "Royal" in 1851 when Prince Albert became patron.

In 2002 I was invited to the Henley Regatta by George, an Englishman, and his work colleagues. His advice to me: "Eat a large breakfast." The drinking began at 10AM and did not stop until the last train to Paddington Station, 9:30PM.  The riverbanks lined with corporate booths and Pimms served freely like water. The Brits bathed in it. George, for his part, fell asleep behind a bush and wasn't seen for several days. Since England, nobody thought anything of it. We joke about it now, of course.

Rusty Gets The Boot

Despite his four years, the dog's instinct get the better of him and us. Rusty can heel and sit and roll-over and do other things on command but when he sees a moving object - squirrel, fox, deer - he's gone. Sonnet still has high hopes but that ship has sailed, if we ever had a chance.

Geek

Brace face

And happily it is Friday, the last Friday of the summer.

Madeleine, Willaby and Lizzy head to the Southbank skate park to spray paint their names and graffiti on the walls. It is also a way to support the park, which is under threat by developers who consider it an eye sore.  This was Madeleine's idea and initiative and, dear reader, I am impressed.

Post Box

Mortlake High St

I chat up two fellows who are stripping and painting a red mailbox, ubiquitous across the UK and one of the things this country known for, by tourists anyway, along with the red double-decker route master buses and red telephone booths, both long gone or ornamental. I learn there are 133,000 letter boxes across Britain and each painted on five-year cycles but usually it is ten; the guys I'm talking to cover the southwest of the Southeast or maybe 10,000 boxes ("job for life" one of them offers through gnarly teeth).  They can do about 40 in a week but "a proper job, stripping off the old paint and all" requires four hours "at the least, mate. This be serious business". Today it is a scrape and brush job.

Braces

Choppers

The inevitable upon us: braces. Our orthodontist, who does most of the Chelsea football club and Harry Potter, has been waiting eight years and now it's payback time as I pocket the invoice.  Eitan will go in Friday for "a fitting" and then 12 to 18 months of "brace face" (his term).

I had braces at 10 or 11 - the fabulously named Dr Wompler did the work - and I recall the rubber bands and all-night head gear that left your jaw aching in the morning. Ghastly stuff. Now there are a number of options from interior to exterior of mouth, clear or coloured style. . . the metal is glued to the teeth so no hooks or wires which made things very Frankenstein in my day.

Back To Work

The day of reckoning is here. Sonnet out the door to work at 8AM while I bike to my office shortly later, newspapers in hand, kids sound asleep.  Unlike yester-year, sans email, I am never that far behind so the catch-up not too bad - mostly it is getting used to, well, talking to people again.  That and reading the Financial Times.

Meanwhile the French celebrate summer's end by disbanding government. Prime Minister Manuel Valls says the new cabinet will be "consistent with the direction [the president] has set for the country." Consistency ? The country lurched from cook-the-rich in 2012 to a pro business in 2013 yet growth is flat and public spending now 56% GDP.

In the 1970s President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's tough love in reaction to the oil shocks rejected for Mitterrand's dreams of socialism and expansion. The chickens are coming home to roost.

One More From America

At the Met

We fight the jet lag but, happily, Monday (today) is a Bank Holiday which means a) we can sleep late and b) it is raining. I do the usual tidy-up on the backyard and Sonnet has a to-do list that fills up one page. We are still in August and not much will happen until September 1 when, like a dog kicked hard in the stomach, the UK snaps to and goes to work. 

Me: "When somebody calls your mobile, what do you say ?"

Madeleine: "Huh?"
Me: "When someone calls me, even though I see their picture, I always act like I don't know who it is. "
Madeleine: "Use the phone, like, for talking?"
Me: "So I say, 'Hello?' which gives the caller a chance to start the conversation. It's polite."
Madeleine: "I don't know. We just talk, I guess."
Me: "Does that mean you just launch right into it ? Like, 'did you do your homework?' or 'what time is class tomorrow ?' "
Madeleine:
Me: "When I was your age, and when your grandparents were your age, all every kid did was talk on the phone, every night, for hours. One phone line. It drove our parents crazy."
Madeleine: "What's a phone line?"
Me: "Life was pretty rough back then, I admit."

We Made It

Following 44 days covering 13 states, 7 national parks, 6 hikes, 25 family members, 27 friends, ca 4,000 car miles, 308 bike miles, 4 museums, one baseball game, a rodeo, 4 DQ visits, the world's once longest and steepest roller coaster , the original Starbucks, an outdoor sunset symphony, fireworks, Eero Saarinen, the best damn BBQ in the world, alpine slides, sushi, a museum "hack" at The Met, The Million Dollar Highway, Kinky Boots, Tavern On The Green, Frank Lloyd Wright,  the original Buffalo Wings, the world's largest waterfall, the Underground Railroad, the world's largest arch, the world's first cantilever bridge (Eads Bridge), Louis Sullivan and a Presidential Library.

A trip of a lifetime.

God Bless America.

Last Day Va-Ca

We spend our last day in Bronxville packing and organising for the overnight flight to London.

Larry prepares special photographs for an upcoming exhibition, Legacies, Landmarks and Achievements: Celebrating 350 Years ­– Eastchester, Tuckahoe, Bronxville, which opens Sept 4. 

His work celebrates Tuckahoe Marble which, from 1818 became a major marble producer for the world. Tuckahoe Marble was used to construct grand early nineteenth-century NYC Greek Revival buildings such as Federal Hall (1830), and Brooklyn Borough Hall (1840), the Italianate Stewart's "Marble Palace" (1846) - New York's first department store - and the Washington Memorial Arch in Washington Square. 

Tuckahoe Marble was the single most important white marble deposit in America until the latter part of the 1800's, at which time reliable access to the extensive high-quality marble deposits of southwestern Vermont - including Dorset -  was established. Quarrying of Tuckahoe Marble ceased in 1930.

The Met

Taking in some intelligence.

We see Duccio's 'Madonna and child,' which the Met acquired in 2009 for $46 million, their most costly purchase ever, raised in 48 hours, when the curator discovered it was coming to market. One can imagine the calls along 5th Avenue.

Prior to the 13th C, the Byzantines painted 2D 'cartoons' and religious icons with hardly any emotion. Duccio changed all that - his paintings put figures in architectural settings. He began to explore and investigate depth and space with a refined attention to emotion - in short, "Duccio is where Western art begins, " says Nick.

Madonna w Child

Monet or Manet?

Katie, Eitan and Ethan discuss Monet's 'haystacks'

Katie arranges a wonderful tour of The Met lead by a couple of guys from "Museum Hack" who shows us their favourite things including a 13 century Astrolabe which is an inclinometer historically used by astronomers, navigators and astrologers to tell time to within 15 minutes and determine latitudinal location using trigonometry (The West caught up with spring-driven clocks in the 16th century). According to our guide Ethan, these things were the ipods of the day.

We discuss Edouard Manet (who created "impressionism") and Claude Monet (the world's beloved impressionist). Our group breaks into teams and tasked to find their favourite Monet or Monet and defend it : Manet wins, 6-2 but, for the year, it is about even. 

Monet believed that by mixing fine colour strokes he was fooling the viewer's eye into seeing changing colours or intensities as the looker drew closer to the painting (Sauret took this to the next extreme; premise false btw).  Also: Manet's most famous paintings are of hookers and whores (black neck ribbon; he didn't have to pay them much) and fabulously engaging.

Hello New York

Metro-North to Grand Central Station

We say a sad good-bye to Dorset and Marcia and Larry's red house : VT-30 to US 7 N then the Saw Mill River Parkway to Bronxville, which is unmarked and impossible to find ("Just the way we want to keep it", notes Larry). On many an occasion I have sworn like a sailor lost in upstate NY or alongside a road awaiting Marcia to guide me in.

We unload for the last time - thank goodness - and head for pizza in neighbouring Eastchester and a restaurant straight from the Sopranos. We order pepperoni (Larry: "Best pizza anywhere").

From the road: Southern Vermont Arts Center, Manchester, VT; Bennington Museum, Bennington, Vt, Locust Grove Estate, Poughkeepsie, NY;  Mid Hudson's Children Museum, Poughkeepsie, NY;  Home of FDR and US Presidential Library, Hyde Park, NY, Elenore Roosevelt House, Hyde Park, NY. Henry A Wallace Visitor Center, Hyde Park, NY,

Scrabble Master

Eitan spells "pleonastic".

We go for a 4 mile hike on the moist Appalachian Trial whose trailhead off Rte 9 and straight up marble stones, into the trees, before levelling off and finally offering a view of the low rolling mountains and Bennington, Vermont. 

The hike notable for the return : Katie and Sonnet disappear.  Like really disappear. Several returning hikers have not seen them and I begin to worry, retracing our steps, until the end-point. No sign.

Turns out that Sonnet and Katie take a different path back, exiting three miles south of the car-park. I was ready to call the police.

Batten Kill

Batten Kill at Sunset

The Batten Kill River is a 59 mile-long river rising in Vermont that flows into New York and is a tributary of the Hudson River.  "Kill" means a creek, the name "Battenkill River" is pleonastic.

The mouth of the Batten Kill is in Easton, New York,  and the source of the river is in East Dorset, Vermont, not far from my photo, which captures the view from Larry and Marcia's property.  The area is protected and a special place in VT.

The house (purchased by the Lees in 1987) came with a taxidermied tiger, which Larry hoisted into a tree across the pond, unbeknownst to certain houseguests at the time. Marcia was awoken to screams of terror.

Op-Ed Off Site

Katie's fabulous team organise an off-site pow wow in Dorset, joining us for an early afternoon cocktail at Marcia and Larry's house.

"We - our leaders and the public - are not getting the information and ideas we need to make the best decisions. Our world conversation is currently an echo chamber that reproduces the same narrow range of (85% male) voices over and over. Even worse among academics: a May 2008 Rutgers University study found that 97% of op-eds by scholars in the Wall Street Journal are written by men. What is the cost to society when so many of our best minds and best ideas are left out? What could we accomplish if together we invested in our missing brain power?"
--From The Op-Ed website