Snapper

Eitan shoots away at Kew; skull courtesy of Aunt Martine for the early Halloween. I'm up at dawn to do my power-walk, check email and listen to the Stereophonics. Power walking, for the record, is not a replacement to running but easier on the bod. Afterwards I shuttle the kiddies to school bumping into the usual suspects on the way. It's a good community vibe and the children chat about who knows what? while the parents compare notes on nits or the moment's passing subject. Today Eitan has Spanish which he looks forward to. "I also speak Italian!" he exclaims.

Shai

Shai is a friend from Columbia Business School though we met in London. Before CBS Shai procured weapons for the Israeli government. Now, he invests in clean-tech for Sir Richard Branson. He is a serious guy. This morning I sit in Madeleine's class and smile as Mrs. Reynolds takes the children through their steps. The kids are asked to draw the various ways they got to school - walk, scooter, car, plane - which are then used to create a pictorial. We compare which methods are most popular, counting the totals and the differences. Mrs Reynolds explains that a pictorial is an easy way to see the difference between things. From there, it's indoor pe then lunch. Fun!

"I brushed my teeth with gun powder!"
Eitan uses my sodium bicarbonate toothpaste

"It just takes me longer to chew!"
Madeleine wales, always the last at the dinner table

"Chips! Cookies! Chocolate! Sweeties! Coffee cake!"
Belt Eitan and Madeleine when asked their favorite school lunch

Sunday at Kew

Yesterday morning we meet Shai and Ada Weiss and their boys Yuval and Ynon. Photo of Madeleine at Climbers and Creepers, an indoor play area which, among other things, has a living bee-hive where the insects enter and exit via a system of see-through tubing. C&C is experience oriented which means the kids run amok and here I chase Madeleine to her delight and my exhaustion. Otherwise Kew is the temporary home to 32 Henry Moore bronzes which spread across the grounds like something from the Beatles' "Yellow Submarine." Several years ago Sonnet and I visited Moore's work at a sculpture garden in West Yorkshire which was by itself cool but the scale and farm-like setting made it more so. Any case, the kids love climbing in and out of the sculptures which seem to welcome their participation.

"The secret of life is to have a task, something you devote your entire life to, something you bring everything to, every minute of the day for the rest of your life. And the most important thing is, it must be something you cannot possibly do. "

and

"To know one thing, you must know the opposite. "
Henry Moore (1898-1986, England)

Poppy

This is Camilla's dog Poppy, which the family picked up Sunday morning. Camilla has been anticipating the family addition for some time and Paul has prepared her for this new responsibilty with a play-game offering pointers on pet care. Very 21st century. Madeleine is jealous (of course) but we have promised her an animal when she is a teen-ager. Madeleine is saving her allowance. Coincidentally, Poppy is a dead-wringer for Paul in the back seat driving home from Natalie and Justin's dinner party late Saturday night.

Augghh!

England football defeats Estonia 3-nil. England rugby defeats France 14-9. But Cal, number two in the country, can't get their business done against unranked Oregon State in Berkeley. Worse, top team LSU is upset by Kentucky so if the Bears had won... we would have been Number One for the fist time in six decades. Well of course the season is not over and a Rose Bowl appearance is still a possibility (we haven't been there since '59) but Cal is out of the hunt for the best team in the nation and the Championship Bowl in January. I am resigned to a sense of inevitability but thought we would have another week or two before our history came crashing down on the Bad News Bears. One Boiler Maker please!

But wait: the Bears fight back! In one minute Cal scores, recovers the ball and moves to Oregon's 12! But red shirt freshman quarterback Riley doesn't throw the ball away! He takes a sack! the clock runs out - no equalising field goal or game-winning touchdown! Stunning. Fuck. I'm bitter and going to bed with a head ache.

Cone

Photo from the La Veta, CO, country store (elevation 7,100 feet) in July. I walk the kids to football at Palewell Park and Eitan and I discuss cement. He's curious to know what it's made of and why it "sticks" (there is construction work on Vicarage Road as the Victorian water pipes are replaced). Madeleine is in the first group so Eitan and I play tennis - he's keen to learn and why not? From there, I watch Madeleine hustle back-and-forth during a mini-tournament: No goals from her but not for want of effort. Eitan jumps onto the pitch following Madeleine, who is picked up by Sonnet to go to "performance class" in Richmond- acting and singing lessons with her fellow blue Jaye's. Eitan's group plays other teams and he is no longer the best kid on the field now that he is one of the youngest. Still, he's skillful and thoughtful with the ball and the new grouping raises his game.

This is a BIG day for sports: England versus France in the semi-finals of World Cup Rugby; England versus Estonia in a European Cup qualifier and #2 Cal versus Oregon at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley. All are key games but the rugby has captured the country's attention since England are World Champs from '03 (the rugby cup is played every four years). France is the better and bigger team but England pulled off an upset against Australia last weekend so who knows? Personally a Bears defeat would be a greater set back as Cal has not been ranked like this since the early 1950s. Enjoy it while it lasts, I say.

Maxïmo Park

Last night Sonnet and I catch the utterly cool Maxïmo Park, whose name comes from Maximo Gomez Park, a Havana meeting place for Cuban revolutionaries. Despite this, the band formed in in the Midlands' Newcastle. Their 2005 release "A Certain Trigger" was one of the best Brit-pop albums of that year and rose quickly on the charts. Last night's show was energetic.

Madeleine is still fixated on global warming and asks: "will it kill the rain deer?" (her thoughts on Christmas).

This pretty much sums it up:
"The Nobel Committee's recognition of Vice President Gore shines a bright light on the most inconvenient truth of all -- the selection of George Bush as president has endangered the peace and prosperity of the entire planet,"
John Edwards, the 2008 White House contender

Franz West

While we are on modern art, I've been invited to Franz West's opening at Place Vendome in Paris next week. West was born in Vienna in 1947 and here is what he as to say from artseensoho.com:

"Early On I realized that the purely visual experience of an artwork was somehow insufficient. I wanted to go beyond the purely optical and include tactical qualities as well. My works aren't things one just looks at, but things that the viewer is invited to handle. There have been many theories of art that try to break down the border between art and the world, but I don't find such attempts to be particularly meaningful. Art remains art. I really see my work as quite compatible with the l'art pour 'lart philosophy. One may think that I try to bring the art object out into the world since my works sometimes appear to have a practical function, but really it's the other way around: things in the world can, under certain special circumstances, enter the realm of art. And, in fact, once they have entered this realm they are art."

Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen

In Dusseldorf yesterday I visit the Kunstsammlung, which houses art from the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. A mediocre collection is housed in a spectacular building, which opened in 1986 - pictured. Before, the art was located in the small castle Schloss Jägerhof in the Hofgarten (Central Park of Düsseldorf) but soon outgrew its space. The museum consists of two wings: K20 (twentieth century with deep point on classic modern art) and K21 (artwork beginning from the 1980s). The U.S. is represented with work from Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Andy Warhol. Photographers include Andreas Gursky (who I love), Candida Hofer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth and Jeff Wal. A nifty display on moving film is exhibiting but I found this rather shallow excluding one display of five reels showing different stories with antagonising words: "Jill climbs the electrical tower." "The tower maintains 240,000 volts." "Jill drinks vodka" and so on.

Last night watching "March of the Penguins" I tell Madeleine they are all goners due to global warming. This morning Madeleine tells Sonnet that we have to stop driving our car "because we are going to kill Santa and the penguins!"

Brixton

Sonnet and I catch the Editors last night at the Brixton Academy - pictured (Christian and I saw them recently at San Francisco's Fillmore). The concert is sold out and probably the biggest the band has played. Matching the moment is loud- very loud- rock and roll snatching influences from Joy Division and The Cure. Our date begins at a cool gastro-pub underneath the rail tracks and we watch the interesting people sail by including blacks, the ubber cool and down-and-outs, models and beggars - in other words, this is an up-and-coming part of London and still raw. 


Brixton's ethnic mix is striking and African-Carib. Unlike whitie, the brothers live their lives on the street corner talking, selling, hustling, smoking and gossiping. Our block has no similar gathering point unless you count the school drop. Brixton has no public space yet masses of people making a cramped, urban feel. The neighborhood is famous for its riots in the '80s, jerk chicken and weekend markets where one can buy halal meat, a pink wig or just about anything.

Master Eitan

Eitan rides a donkey at Tia and Stephen's farm. Unlike horse fur, donkey fur is not waterproof and so donkeys must find shelter when it rains. Donkeys have larger ears, pictured, than horses to hear the distant calls of fellow donkeys, and to help cool the donkey's blood. I also learn that a mule is the offspring of a male donkey and a female horse (the reverse, the offspring of a male horse and a female donkey, is called a hinny). A female mule is called a "molly." A jackass, a burro and a donkey are different names for the same beast. And there, my Equus-loving friends, you have it.

Madeleine continues to bring things to school for show-and-tell but really, I think, to receive some attention from head teacher Mrs. Reynolds. Items rejected include my passport, mom's pearls and other decorative bobbles, Thomas Pynchin's "Gravity's Rainbow" (that was this morning), clocks, walke-talkies and other items which somehow match her code. Today Sonnet decides enough-is-enough and we lay down some rules: Monday's only. Madeleine cries, whines and begs to take something today and I relent, telling her that if she presents a reasonable argument we may allow her an extra day. A condition, however, is that she must write her position on a piece of paper. We shall see where it goes.

Bendigo

This is Bendigo, Nathan's dog on the farm. Bendigo is a cross between greyhound and dear hound - a breed popular with groundskeepers in the early 19th century. Nathan figures the dog can make 40 mph on the trot - he's certainly lean enough. As for the name Bendigo: In 1851, Mrs Margaret Kennedy and Mrs Farrell, wives of two farmhands from the Ravenswood sheep run, found gold in the Bendigo creek. Word of the discovery spread quickly and soon after the township of Sandhurst was established. By the 1880s, the city was considered the richest in the world due to the size of the local goldfields and many dogs across the Commonwealth got the name "Bendigo."

We watch Sir David Attenborough's acclaimed series on the oceans "The Blue Planet."
Madeleine sees a killer whale eat a seal: "Dad, why does stuff have to be so mean to stuff?"

Madeleine: "What can lightening do to a fish?"

Eitan, seeing a wave: "Surfers would most definitely like that tunnel."

Eitan, listening to the tides on the t.v. show: "It sounds a bit like Connecticut."
And a little later: "No, definitely not Connecticut."

Sack of Potatoes

Nathan tosses gleeful, unrelenting, Madeleine: "Again! Again!" she shouts. Dana and Nathan are the kids' God Parents - we have known Dana twelve years from New York and Columbia; she has lived in London the past eight or so. We spend Sunday with Nathan's mum and step-father at their 17th century farm house aptly named "Sunnyside Farm", which is warm and cozy and perfect for an overcast fall day. We and the kids pick decorative gourds and blackberries (last of summer), ride donkeys and horseplay for most of the afternoon. For lunch with champagne, Tia makes a thick English stew with multi-grain bread. Everybody is sad to leave and Eitan hugs Nathan good-bye.

Ass

Major-General Gerald Cavendish Grosvenor, the sixth Duke of Westminster, is Britain's third richest with an inherited fortune of £7 billion, according to the Sunday Times Rich List (he trails only Russian robber-baron Abramovich and Lakshmi Mitall, the steel magnate). The Duke is also Major-General of the Territorial Army, and likes to be called "Your Grace." The General's fortune comes from his property and 156,000 acres of land in Britain including 300 acres in Mayfair and Belgravia. He also owns large estates in Lancashire, Scotland and Cheshire, home to his family seat, Eaton Hall. Gerald's assets have an estimated worth of £11 billion and turnover of £508 million in 2006. Ain't it grande?

The Legend of Pappy Waldorf

Cal moves up a spot to Number 2 on the NCAA football rankings, the highest the Bears have been since, my dad points out, the days of Pappy Waldorf. So who is Pappy Waldorf, and when were those Golden Days?

Pappy began his major college career as head football coach at Oklahoma A&M from 1929 to 1933. In his five seasons at Oklahoma A&M Waldorf went 34-10-7, won three Missourie Valley Conference championships, and never lost to arch-rival Oklahoma. In 1932, Waldorf was also promoted to Director of Athletics at the school. Nevertheless, in 1934, Waldorf was coaxed north to Kansas State, to replace Bo McMillin as football coach. Although Waldorf only coached K-State for one season, 1934, it was a remarkable year, as Kansas State captured the Big Six Conference championship – the first Big Six title in football for the school.

In 1935, Waldorf moved again, to Northwestern, where he would remain head coach until 1946. In his very first season at Northwestern, he was named college football's first national coach of the year. In his second season, he took Northwestern to the Big Ten Conference crown. His 12-year mark at Northwestern was 49-45-7. While at Northwestern, Waldorf also convinced future legend Otto Graham to try out for football.

As head football coach at Cal from 1947-1956 and where Pappy's life becomes interesting, he revived the program and established a 67-32-4 record. His teams were undefeated for three seasons, 1949-1951, winning three Pacific Coast Conference titles, and qualifying for three consecutive Rose Bowls. Waldorf also posted a 7-1-2 record against Stanford. After retiring from Cal in 1956, he joined the San Francisco 49ers head of personnel and scouting, remaining with the team until 1972.

Photo from the Cal website.

Kate and Wills - Back On

We are are all pleased and relieved - especially the paparazzi - that the Prince has finally returned to his senses and picked up his relationship with Kate Middleton, who has stolen Britain's heart with her down-to-earth style and rugged good looks (they broke up, dear reader, in April). On the balance, Wils is fast losing his hair, has no career prospects whatsoever and doesn't seem particularly involved in charities or world travel. He's frequently pictured stumbling from Boujis or some other Mayfair nightclub and even the dreadful Harry is making ground on him. So all I can say is: "Thank God for you, Kate" who single-handidly restores some dignity to this situation.

I fly to Bad Homborg then Hannover yesterday, returning to London and my blog today. Meetings go well with the fall-like weather and I have dinner at Titus- one of best in Lower Saxony. It has been a while since I have had foie gras but man do we indulge last night in what becomes a five course meal with three different wines by dessert. This alone makes the trip worthwhile but everything else makes it better.

Wilfie and Bertie

The boys before football at Palewell Common. Saturday morning, rain or shine, hot or cold, us dads are out there on the pitch drinking coffee, comparing property values and talking about the boys' prospects. It's all about us, you see - never mind those playing. Wilfie, on the left, is destined to be a world-class rugby player. He's only five yet twice the size of Madeleine who herself is a big kid. Brother Bertie is a gentle natured soul with a mean tackle which has been known to make a boy cry. Eitan and Bertie have known each since Montessori at St Mary's in Mortlake.

"They say football is a matter of life and death - but it's more important than that."
Bill Shankly, footballer and manager for Scotland

“Me having no education. I had to use my brains"

“Aim for the sky and you'll reach the ceiling. Aim for the ceiling and you'll stay on the floor.”
Bill Shankly

Texas Funny

A man walks into the produce section of his local supermarket and asks to buy a half head of lettuce. The boy working in the department tells him that they only sell whole heads of lettuce. The man insists that the boy ask his manager about the matter.
Walking into the back room, the boy says to the manager, "Some butthead wants to buy a half head of lettuce." As he finishes his sentence, he turns to find the man standing behind him, so he ads, "And this gentleman kindly offered to buy the other half."

The manager approves the deal and the man goes his way.
Later the manager says to the boy, "I was impressed with the way you got yourself out of that situation earlier. We like people who think on their feet here. Where are you from, son?"
"Texas, sir", the boy replies.
"Well, why did you leave Texas?", the manager asks.
The boy says, "Sir, there's nothing but whores and football players down there."
"Really?", said the manager. "My wife is from Texas."
Replies the boy. "Who'd she play for?"
--Joke from Dale West

Happy Graduation!

Sonnet's cousin Molly, center pictured, surrounded by her family at her graduation from Denver University where she studied International Affairs. On the far right is husband Tim, who everybody calls "Tim Bob" (don't ask me why). They enjoy their honeymoon year. Bravo and bravo!

This morning I am up with Sonnet at the crack of dawn to swim some laps at the Richmond pool. I think I am a better swimmer today than 20 years ago - at least my technique has improved. I now try to stretch my stroke as far as it can go, and use force underneath my body feeling the water. These sound like obvious things but when I was younger it was all about turn-over. Many times gold medalist Matt Biondi took six or seven strokes per 25 yards whereas I was around 18. Any dummy can do that math. Still, my freestyle took me to Junior and Senior Nationals and of course Norcal and the high-school swimming championships. College was less satisfying but I had my moments at Brown too.

Madeleine gives me a ferocious hug last night and says: "I wish I could do this all the time" and when I tell her she can, Madeleine notes "I'm so happy you are my dad." She dampers the feel-good mood by telling me she once hated me "but I changed my mind" she says. And thank goodness for that!

Monday

I start my day in Richmond Park doing a power walk and checking emails. It is dark in the mornings now - the earth's tilt, as at last week, ensures equal parts day and night. Sonnet heads to the V&A to take down her exhibit and return the Costume Gallery to its permanent collection. She's a bit wispy about this I think. I and the kids head for school and I assist Eitan's teacher with her in-school chores - mainly filing and sorting. I also assist the kids with their reading and today, gulp, they are introduced to multiplication. Man, try explaining this to a seven year old! It strikes me that the girls have an easier time grasping the concept of a times table simply because they appear to have a greater ability to focus. I give encouragement and examples, which is like throwing a chair of the titanic at this stage. Practice will make perfect and we all have faith that the lads will come through.

Eitan, after I inform him that he "will be in Big Trouble, mister" if he ever says "Blah! Blah! Blah!" to Natasha again, writes: "Blah! Blah! Blah!" on three pieces of paper which he shows Sonnet during a cross exchange. I must say we are both gob-smacked by this cunning.

More sports excitement: Cal to be ranked No. 3 in the nation following its win over the Oregon Ducks Saturday. The Women's World Cup is won by Germany, who defeat Brazil 2-0. The German ladies did not allow one goal throughout the tournement. The NY Mets collapse on the last day of the baseball season, losing 8-1 to Florida and so fail to win the Division Title or advance to the playoffs. Three weeks ago they were seven games up. The Mets' slide is compared to the '62 Phillies, who proved equally impotent in the home stretch.