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.