Double Jeopardy

Last Sunday, I had the opportunity to drive down some roads that I’d never been down before. And I’m not saying that metaphorically – this isn’t a post about making life-changing decisions, choosing paths and the ilk. On a journey from Aber to Cardiff, a journey I must have made over a hundred times in the past 15 years, I put my faith in Google and took the roads MUCH less travelled.

Even on the ‘good’ roads, the 93 miles between my front door and the final destination in the South Wales valleys takes about two and a half hours, regardless of whether you take the scenic coastal route, or the scenic mountainous route. Cardiff exists on the opposite point of a geographical diamond to Aberystwyth – so you can either go over the top (slightly shorter distance, but small roads) or underneath (slightly longer distance, but more of the trip is on the motorway). Sunday, I decided to see what would happen if I went straight down the middle. Well, straight-ish. Mountains, rivers and pesky villages prevent me going as the red kite flies – but you get the picture: I tried a new route.

The 16-year-old boy in me loves this new route. Having just acquired his license, he loves the twists and turns, the blind corners and the ‘Dukes of Hazzard’ style one-lane bridges that are built at such a width and slope (apparently) to launch you OVER the oncoming traffic that you wouldn’t have been able to see anyway. Driving parts of this route is like IRL Mario Karts – but instead of banana skins, you have roadkill. And instead of stars and oil slicks, you have roadkill. Sometimes instead of road, you have roadkill. Good times.

However, the 40-year-old father of 1 and ½ in me thinks that Google is doing its best to thin the population by sending people on this route. Prone, as I am, to relate my life to out-dated television programs, I like to think of the 'adventure' in terms of classic game shows. For me, a child of the 70s, the whole trip is filled with round after round of Let’s Make a Deal type choices.

Replace Monty Hall with the Grim Reaper, and instead of holidays, cars or booby prizes, think death, death or death. Will you meet your maker behind Door Number 1 (the pimped-out neon green 1.0 litre fiesta driven by a cider-fuelled young man filled with angst about his future as a gay Welsh farmer), Door Number 2 (the impossibly slow and undeniably deadly senile old farmer who drives like he owns the road because (let’s face it) at some point, he probably did), or Door Number 3 (the self-centred BMW/Audi/Range Rover driver who assumes that his cash-filled air bags will save him if he has the inconvenience of meeting you head-on)? Rest assured that on this route, you’ll meet all three – several times. Your job is to drive defensively enough to be able to avoid them (and the wildlife, the potholes and the weather) long enough to survive. Oh, and, of course, to give your would-be assasins THAT look when you pass, ensuring that they learn the valuable lesson that only your self-righteous disappointment can teach. If you live, you win. Not only that, but you get to do it all again during the bonus round: The Return Journey (which, incidentally, is just like the rest of the game except that it’s dark, you can’t read the signs and your legs are prone to unpredictable spasms).

I love the fact that there are parts of this tiny country that I still haven’t seen. And I love the fact that, in the 21st century, there are still ways to get from one decently-sized city to another on a road that requires you to ford a river, cross a cattle grid and pull over because there is not enough room for you AND a bicycle to pass safely at speed. And, to be fair, you see a lot more of that countryside when you slow down, look up, turn off the sat-nav and think more about how well you’re getting from A to B, rather than how fast. ANd best of all, at this speed: no whammies!!

The Men in My Life

Two things I should probably explain about this post. Timing: I’d like to say that I am writing this three days after Father’s Day because I didn’t want to be too predictable. But the truth is that I played a game of football on Sunday and have been in a world of hurt every single moment since. My ears have finally stopped ringing and I can just about move my fingers again, so I thought I’d get this out there, delayed as it may be. The Title: I recently heard that at least three of my friends from high school thought I was gay, so I thought I’d play to their biggest fears (or disappointments?) and lure them here with some salacious homoerotic innuendo. Well, questions about the ambiguity of my sexuality aside, there have been a few men in my life that I am grateful to have been lucky enough to spend time with, and posts in this series will focus on trying my best to articulate my gratitude to them.

My Dad

Whether he believes it or not, my dad has been a powerful force of good in my life. I believe that he carries with him an extreme and unnecessary burden of guilt for what he considers to be the ‘failure’ of his first family, but my brother and I keep trying to assure him – with words and deeds – that he did a stand-up job. The simple fact is that marriage is hella difficult – and getting married in your late teens / early twenties during the 1960s could not have made that challenge any easier. I often try to compare the timeline of my parent’s lives with my own, and I’m amazed that they lasted as a couple as long as they did. My dad got married (I think) at age 21 or 22. He and my mom had my brother as soon as morally possible after that, and I followed 20 months after him. That means that my Dad became a father for the second time at age 24ish. And (we all know that I’m crap at math) that means that by the time he was the age that I am now, I was 16.

I think about two things. First of all, what kind of father would I have been at 24? The undeniable answer to that question is: SHIT. In fact, I would have been a shit father well into my mid-30s, and there is a strong possibility that I may yet prove to be one in my early 40s. But the fact is that at 24, I was JUST out of college, completely unglued, still very much a child in terms of my ability to exist in ‘The Real World’ and very very much an idiot who would have sucked at being responsible for any ONE else, much less any three. To be willing and able to support a family at that time in your life is nothing short of saintly sacrifice. Of course, I also remember that being a parent in Miami in the 70s was a different kettle of fish than perhaps it is now – I don’t intend to enlist my kids at 7am on a Sunday morning to clean up after any all-night crazy-ass raves by the pool. The other thing I think about is how well I’d handle having a 16-year-old (and an 18-year-old) child at this point in my life. I think I can answer this one a little more positively – part of me even thinks that having a 16-year-old now would be better (for them and for me) than having one at age 52, which is what age I'll be when my daughter will be a debutante. I won’t be nearly as cool or as able as my dad was when I was that age – and here’s the photo to prove it. That’s me, aged 18, just about to do myself an injury that would haunt me for the next 22 years. Did YOU know that if you don’t boogie-board properly, you can end up with your ankles wrapped backwards by your ears as the sea tosses you from side to side like a piece of kelp? That’s the lesson I learn in about 20 minutes after this picture was taken. Anyway... that's my dad!

Now, like every other human being on the planet who ever was or ever will be, my dad has made some monumental mistakes in his life. One of the first ones that I can remember was the very first meal he ever tried to cook my brother and me after separating from my mom. At that point in his single life, ‘cooking’ wasn’t one of his strongest suits, having previously had a wife who was a skilled homemaker. Dad had no concept of what it took to take things from raw to edible, and his first attempt at microwaving some hotdogs for us one night demonstrated that lack of knowledge perfectly. As the burnt-out solid logs of meat literally smouldered on the plate, I think all three of us began to understand the different roles we’d played in our family to that point; Dad’s was certainly not ‘cook’. Unlike the 1980 Enjoli perfume woman, he may have been able to bring home the bacon, but he could not, in fact, fry it up in the pan.

But, if I’m honest, I think that making mistakes – sometimes BIG ones – is part of what being a role model is about. No one is perfect; anyone that presents themselves as someone who is is either lying, or selling something (or both). No one lives their entire life without wishing they’d done at least one or two things differently. And, after the sometimes impossible platitudes with which we’re all meant to be guiding our life, which is the more useful lesson to learn: ‘never make a mistake,’ or ‘learn from the mistakes you make’?

Whatever Dad’s mistakes have been, it seems unbelievably pompous even to consider that I would need to ‘forgive’ him anything. He is a hard worker, an honest person and someone who cares deeply about doing right by himself, his family and his faith. He has a strong (sometimes ironic) sense of moral absoluteness, and can be commended for having values to which he tries his best to adhere – even if those values are often more conservative than my own. He has given me many gifts, from my scrawny chicken legs to my sense of humour, and I am grateful for them all. The other bits, the bits he sometimes seems so ashamed of, were lessons to me, too, and I cannot help but be selfishly grateful for the mistakes he has made (and has been able to recognise as such) so that he’s then been able to encourage and to enable me to avoid some (not all) of them.

If that is not what being a father is all about, then I don’t know what is – and my kids could do far worse than to have a father who tries as hard as he does to live, laugh, love and learn as best he knows how.

Patent Pending

In the spirit of Homer Simpson’s cry of ‘Patent Pending’ every time he ‘fixed’ a neighbour’s back in ‘Pokey Mom’ (Simpsons season 12, episode 10), I give to you my list of ‘Other Blogs I Wish I had Time to Write, but will Probably Just End Up as Entry Themes Here Instead’. With a catchy name like that, I say again: PATENT PENDING, suckas!!

These Questions Three

Listen - You Might Learn Something

Anyone with any rudimentary knowledge of Monty Python will remember the character of ‘Tim the Enchanter’ from The Holy Grail. An amazing scene, usually hailed for the ridiculous explosions, the extraordinary volume of spittle that John Cleese produces, and, of course, the description of ‘a creature so foul, so cruel, that no man yet has fought with it and lived.’ Unfortunately, despite watching the film countless times, my knowledge is wanting, and I unwittingly attributed the ‘bridge crossing’ scene (famously falling 'a-fowl' of the ongoing ‘African or European swallow’ debate) to Tim, rather than to the Bridgekeeper. So I’ve taken the blog title from there, and immediately demonstrated that I know nothing. Nevertheless, as a Blog Entry Theme (BET) it could be useful to discuss things I don’t understand. Like idiots who get film references wrong. Fucking tossers, the lot of ‘em.

So’s Your Face

This was going to be about things I should have said at the time, but didn’t. In all of my advancing years, I can think of exactly one occasion where someone said something, and I said something in reply that SHUT THEM UP. My brother and I were playing a pick-up game of basketball at the local Y when one of the other players made an unsavoury comment about my brothers aversion at the oppressively mainstream cultural conceit of soap. The thing is, this dude had two problems. First of all, he was a sweaty 350-pound hairy bastard who used his belly as a battering ram. Secondly, my brother was 10 times the baller this dude was and it showed; Fat Albert was getting schooled. So when Shamu quipped ‘I can’t guard him, he stinks’, my immediate and natural response was ‘So what? You’re fat. We all have issues. Get over it’. Argument settled: Macys 1, Fatzilla 0. This BET would be a record of all OTHER times in my life when I thought of exactly the right thing to say anywhere from 10 seconds to 10 years after I should have said them. The reference, of course, is to JD’s proposal in Scrubs that, as a comeback, ‘So’s your face always make sense’.

Ninety Percent Ross

I never count Mississippilessly.

Anyone that has spent more than a day in my company will know that I am borderline OBSESSED with Friends. I could (and have been known to) watch it all day – even repeats of the same episode that I watched EARLIER that day. It is, by far, my favourite television show of all time. Corny, yes. Cliche, yes. So what... so's your face! Anyway, it seems only natural that I’ve succumbed to the ‘What Friends Character are you Most Like?’ quiz on more than one occasion, desperately hoping that one configuration of my answers will point me in the area of Joey’s confident sexuality or Chandlers’ quick wit. Alas, no matter how I try to rig the results, I am always, ALWAYS Ross. So I’ve acquiesced to the fact that I am, probably, at least 90% Ross (geek, nerd, dork, pseudo-intellectual, often effeminate) and only 10% of the cooler stuff the others have to offer. This BET could focus on my best dinosaur-loving moments, choosing to accentuate the positive aspects of Nerdity, right? God, even I can hear his voice as I right that. Unagi!

Good Lord, Sugar!

I love watching ‘The Apprentice’. At times, it’s so cringe-worthy that my wife and I are both burying our faces in the sofa cushions because we cannot bear the shame we think the would-be Apprentices should be feeling. Last night’s episode was particularly entertaining for a couple of reasons, not the least of which was Lord Sugar’s declaration to Jim (by far my most favourtest Apprentice candidate EVER): “Son, what I've forgotten about bullshit, you haven't even learned yet.”

That got me thinking about some of the stuff I’ve learned, or remembered, in the last 18 months. Here’s the first 5 that came to mind:

1. Nature is kind. How else can you explain not only the survival but the dominance of a creature that is so utterly useless at birth? Human babies must be the most defenceless, most incapable and most delicious babies in the animal kingdom, surely? When we’re born, we know as close to nothing as I think you can get. We can’t feed ourselves, don’t lift our frickin’ heads for months and it’s usually about a year before we could even begin to wobble away from the worst predator EVER. To make it worse, we shit ourselves 4 or 5 times a day. Luckily, our uber-cerebral fully mature adults have conceived of a system whereby we capture that shit and let us carry it around with us, instead of teaching us how to squat in the woods like any respectable being. The fact that we make it to an age to reproduce is nothing short of a miracle. Take away the glass wall in this clip and you have a much gorier home movie:

2. You know a lot of crap. This is kind of tied into (1) in that we are born knowing sweet FA. Other than some very basic reflexes, babies have to learn how to do everything. Even the most natural of things (you’d think), like eating, is only mastered after some incredibly arduous negotiations between baby and boob.

3. We learn very, very quickly and without necessarily being ‘taught’. My daughter can now say the numbers 1-10 in order. I don’t think she understands ‘counting’ as a logical concept, but when she does, she’ll be ready. We taught her that. We counted her peas as she ate them. We counted the stairs as we climbed them. We counted her fingers and toes and had fun doing it. However, she can also say ‘what the fuck?’ pretty clearly and I’m sure we didn’t mean to teach her that.

4. Sleep is precious. This is one of those ‘you don’t miss it ‘til it’s gone’ things. I remember, as a younger man, being able to go 2 or three days in a row, weeks on end, without sleep. I did this the entire second trimester of my Freshman year at WSU, as I volunteered at the college radio station from 2-6 on Wednesday mornings, then went and did a shift in the dorm’s prep kitchen from 7-10 before going to lectures from 11-5. It was just the way things had to be, and it was no problem. Nowadays, anything less than 7 hours one night makes the next day very hard work indeed. When those 7 hours becomes 2-hour shifts between feeds for three or four months, the fatigue starts to build. The only way I can think to describe how it makes me feel is with this clip from the AMAZING 80s TV show, The Incredible Hulk. Replace the word ‘angry’ with ‘tired’ and you’ve got it.

5. ‘Stuff’ is overrated. I’m not sure when it is in our lives that we start to buy into the ‘I need expensive toys’ shtick, but I’m hoping to curtail it as much as possible. Last Christmas, our daughter’s favourite thing to play with (and it kept her occupied for HOURS) wasn’t the expensive toy, it was the BOX THE TOY CAME IN. Maybe that’s going back to (2) – maybe she just hasn’t learned to be disappointed yet. Give it time, cariad: if my track record is anything to go by, I’ll be very surprised if some of your first five words aren’t ‘Did you keep the receipt?’

I have no doubt that the learning – hers and mine – will continue. I mean, this is only 18 months in. I have yet to try to remember any of the really important and useful stuff, like math, science and how to eat an Oreo cookie. PROPERLY.

Wish I Was There: Fill 'er up!

A British friend of mine was recently sent back to the UK after seven years of coaching US college football. It’s a pretty sad story in itself – with all the makings of at least a good after-school special about how not to trust your friends and how not to book a U-haul to move all your shit from one one-horse town to another one-horse town (especially if your ability to reside in either town – regardless of its resident horse population – depends on a work visa) until you’ve signed a contract. Anyway, this friend of mine has had to up sticks and come back to the UK, leaving the nice life he’d built for himself there, including all of the standard ‘stuff’ one accumulates in seven years: a car, a lover, a dog (hopefully not the same as the lover), books, stereos, TVs, etc. We’ve chatted briefly since his unexpected exile from The Land of Opportunity (if you know the right people and they don’t then screw you over), and it got me thinking about some to the things I do miss about Home, and some of the things I don’t.

One of the things we landed on (perhaps not unsurprisingly as we could both easily be described as gentlemen who ‘enjoy their food’) was “unlimited refills on soft drinks in restaurants”. More specifically, we bemoaned at great length the absence of such a concept in restaurants in the UK. My experience so far has taught me that the only places to get free refills (legally) on your soft drink in the UK are Nando’s, TGI Fridays and Ruby Tuesday’s. They’ve cottoned on to the idea that that little gimmick which costs them next to nothing is a great draw for cola-swiggers like myself. Of course, at Nando’s it may have been a necessity, what with the ring-ripping volcano juice they put on some of their chicken – their wait staff would be run off their feet trying to douse mouth fires if they didn’t allow bravado-fuelled fools to help themselves. But the fact is that they have understood that it costs them nothing to offer this service, and people like me remember that they do. It’s worth noting, by the way, that the restaurant at Charlie’s Stores in Coed-y-Dinas, Wales, is NOT such a place. Even though they have made the decision to allow customers to serve themselves their own drinks initially, they have NOT taken the next step to allow free refills. I found this out at the expense of my own dignity during a very busy lunchtime there, where I took my quickly-emptied vessel back to the counter for a refill, only to be shouted down by the hairnet-wearing, greasy-haired inbred bucktoothed stable-boy who unceremoniously announced to everyone in that shop and the next three down the road that ‘YOU HAVE TO PAY FOR THAT, YOU KNOW?’. My response of ‘Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise. But why turn the machine to face me if you don’t expect me to use it?’ was met with very little compassion. I hope he used my £1.15 I then paid for a small Coke to buy some soap and/or some discretion.

OK, OK… I know. Free Coke refills isn’t the greatest export America has to offer. In fact, it could be one of their worst, judging by the immense girth of the average American waistline (which, according to some sources is now 40 inches, compared to 34.6 in 1979). I was shocked last time I was home to be taken to a Claim Jumpers restaurant that had done away with booths; I can only guess that it was because most people in the place wouldn’t have fit into a booth – they needed chairs that could be pushed back. And I mean WAY back. I’ll tell you what: it was very off-putting as I tried to plough my way through the 5-lb plate of deep-fried battered onion rings that I’d ordered as an appetizer. When in Rome, right…? Anyway – maybe giving people here in the UK unlimited access to liquefied tooth decay isn’t the way forward. But it is something I miss and will happily exploit when I go back home next time. Don’t worry, I’ll bring back some souvenirs – maybe some Hershey’s chocolate for you and a big ol’ case of Type 2 Diabetes for me..? Sorted.

TUnESDAY: Stupid is as Stupid Does

I can’t be the only one who’s ever thought about the ‘Soundtrack to My Life’. Many, many times – and at different stages in my life so far, I’ve reclined in the Lazy-Boy/rocking chair/camp seat/sofa and pondered (alone or with friends) about the specific selection of songs that would at once define my existence, articulate my decisions and inspire onlookers to greatness. So far, I’ve got the theme to ‘The Muppet Show’ and the old ‘Wesson Oil’ jingle. Suffice to say that either my soundtrack needs some work, or I do. With that in mind, today's TUnESDAY is all about soundtracks. Or, to be more specific, one of the great ones: the soundtrack to Forrest Gump.

It was a happy coincidence that both the weather and the television schedule were both so bleak on Sunday night that I even noticed that The Gump was on. As I’d already spent the lazy day exhausting my supply of un-viewed Friday Night Lights episodes, Forrest Gump’s appearance on the TV guide shone where perhaps on a more summery or entertaining evening it might have been overlooked. Say what you want about Tom Hanks the Oscar machine (return to roles like 'Volunteers' and 'The Money Pit' says I), this is a great film. I won’t go into any detailed review of the movie, but to say that the tale is set against some of the most iconic generation-defining songs ever to be released. It’s one of those movies where, as you’re watching it, you actually not only notice the songs, but you engage with them. They are more than just background noise or mood-setters; they are as integral to story as Bubba, or Lieutenant Dan or Jenny herself. For the most part, the songs are before my time – but they still manage to illicit strong emotions that connect me with the characters and their intertwined narratives. Maybe that’s down to the movie, maybe that’s down to the quality of the songs. My bet is that it’s an incredibly successful combination of the two.

I mean, check out these tracks; 32 songs and not a stinker amongst them (bear with me here, it's worth looking at):

"Hound Dog" performed by Elvis Presley
"Rebel Rouser" performed by Duane Eddy
"(I Don't Know Why) But I Do" performed by Clarence "Frogman" Henry
"Walk Right In" performed by The Rooftop Singers
"Land of 1000 Dances" performed by Wilson Pickett
"Blowin' in the Wind" performed by Joan Baez
"Fortunate Son" performed by Creedence Clearwater Revival
"I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)" performed by The Four Tops 
"Respect" performed by Aretha Frankli
"Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" performed by Bob Dylan
"Sloop John B" performed by Beach Boys
"California Dreamin'" performed by The Mamas & the Papas
"For What It's Worth" performed by Buffalo Springfield
"What the World Needs Now Is Love" performed by Jackie DeShannon
"Break on Through (To the Other Side)" performed by The Doors
"Mrs. Robinson" performed by Simon & Garfunkel
"Volunteers" performed by Jefferson Airplane
"Let's Get Together" performed by The Youngbloods
"San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" performed by Scott McKenzie
"Turn! Turn! Turn!" performed by The Byrds
"Medley: Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In" performed by The 5th Dimension
"Everybody's Talkin'" performed by Harry Nilsson
"Joy to the World" performed by Three Dog Night
"Stoned Love" performed by The Supremes
"Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" performed by B. J. Thomas
"Mr. President" performed by Randy Newman
"Sweet Home Alabama" performed by Lynyrd Skynyrd
"It Keeps You Runnin'" performed by The Doobie Brothers
"I've Got to Use My Imagination" performed by Gladys Knight & the Pips
"On the Road Again" performed by Willie Nelson
"Against the Wind" performed by Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band
"Forrest Gump Suite" composed and conducted by Alan Silvestri

What’s even better are that there are even more songs NOT on the ‘official’ soundtrack, but remain just as relevant:

"Lovesick Blues" - Hank Williams
"Sugar Shack" - Jimmy Gilmer And The Fireballs
"Hanky Panky" - Tommy James and The Shondells
"All Along the Watchtower" - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
"Soul Kitchen" - The Doors
"Hello, I Love You" - The Doors
"People Are Strange" - The Doors
"Love Her Madly" - The Doors
"Hey Joe" - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" - Pete Seeger
"Let's Work Together" - Canned Heat
"Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree" - Tony Orlando & Dawn
"Get Down Tonight" - KC & The Sunshine Band
"Free Bird" - Lynyrd Skynyrd
"Running On Empty" – Jackson Browne
"Go Your Own Way" performed by Fleetwood Mac

As far as soundtracks go, this one is hard to beat. Part of the problem, I think, is that movie soundtracks can get it SO right. Most of the time, neither the characters nor the demands on their time are anything close to realistic. Hard to imagine any time at all in a 2-hour cinematic classic being spent on what most of us spend most of our lives doing. Do we ever see Spartacus playing Yahtzee on his mobile while on the toilet (because that’s how I spent a good 20 minutes of my day yesterday)? At what point does Scarlet O’Hara pull up the marigolds and swish out the manky cat food bowl? And I’m pretty sure that not even the director’s cut of Titanic gives me any insight to Jack Dawson’s lengthy and on-going battles with HSBC’s ‘not-so-local’ local call centres. And yet these things -these totally un-remarkable things – consume a great deal of the average person’s life. I guess the trick is in not only remembering (or endeavouring in) the truly remarkable things, but also in celebrating the personal victories in our relatively mundane lives. As Uncle Walt teaches us, ‘…a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars.’ We are the grass, we are the stars and my soundtrack, Muppet Show and all, will be worth a listen someday. In some cases, I need to do get off of the Lazy Boy and do some things worth remembering. In other cases, I need to find the music to accompany the notable things I’ve already done. Until then, enjoy the music of the all-but-forgotten Forrest Gump. Thank you please.

Grads and Dads. Egads.

One time, when I was very young, my father experienced a simultaneous trifecta of personal achievements: he graduated from the University of Miami with a Master's Degree, celebrated his birthday AND got honoured for Fathers' Day. It was a happy day: not only did I get three times the gift-giving value out of my hard-earned allowance, but it burned in my brain the fact that all three of these really important days all happen sometime in the early part of June.

That's not to say that I always remember them - my dad and I have been exchanging last-minute Amazon gifts or vouchers almost every holiday for some time now. We tell ourselves (and each other) that it's WAY more practical than shipping over a real gift, what with all the EFFORT it takes to buy, wrap, label and post the stuff - but the truth is that it's just WAY easier to shop online and have some nameless person in a warehouse overseas do all that DOING on my behalf. Shame on me, I know. I can hear 'Cat's in the Cradle' whispering its guilt-laden lyrics with every click of my mouse. Holy crap... that's the perfect gift: a Harry Chapin complication album. I must get that for Dad. Would it be ironic or just plain lazy to buy it from Amazon?

At 66, Dad said this year that he's past the whole 'party and present' thing - which is great for two reasons. First of all, I'm not sure there's much left on Amazon that we haven't already bought for each other over the past 15 years since I moved abroad. We've done clothes, books, salad spinners, mini-choppers, popcorn poppers (air and oil) - what we haven't exchanged in household items probably isn't worth owning. It's also great because unless the Post Office now uses some kind of transporter-style particle transmission for its overseas letters, there's no way he got his card from us on time. I did sign my daughter's name with my left hand, though, so what it lacks in timeliness it makes up in predictable cuteness, right...? Right. So that's 'Dad' sorted. Ish.

Ozzy Osbourne: One of Birmingham's
most successful and coherent
exports.

As for Grads: with Aber's streets considerably less crowded, it's remarkable to note how different the place is without its students. Please understand - I love Aber as a student town. I loved it as a student, and I really enjoy it as a resident. However, it is nice to have a break. The streets - especially during the week - are so much cleaner, so much more manageable. The only real supermarket in town actually has food on its shelves. I can walk across campus and, for the most part, only encounter people who bathe regularly. The gym is empty and I can actually do a superset workout without getting interrupted by the narcissistic greased up valleys roid-monkey in his sweat-stained XXS wife-beater who spends a few minutes lifting between swigs on his protein shake and calls on his mobile (to his 'supplement' dealer, I guess). My eyes, ears and nose are grateful for the annual reprieve that hallmarks the summer holidays. I'll be just as glad to have them back in September, mind... especially as their seasonal replacements consist of either tattooed hordes of beach-hungry Brummies or van-fulls of socially-awkward Hasidic Jews.

So to the Dads, I say 'thank you'. We sons are notoriously ungrateful for your efforts and perhaps unsurprisingly silent in our expressions of whatever gratitude we are able to muster up. But, if that woeful song tells us anything, it tells us that we learned all that macho stoicism from you, so there! Of course, it also tells us that unless we recognise the tragedy in that cycle, we’re likely to repeat it – something I’m keen to avoid for the simple and selfish reason that I would like things to be different with my kid(s). So let’s work on that, shall we?

Grads: I say 'good luck', with only a tiny degree of 'good riddance'. The truth is that Aber would not be Aber without its students, and it's hard to hate those who ultimately add so much to the ethnic, social and economic well-being of this otherwise sleepy community. Aber needs its students and its students need the town. They're the perfect double-act and a great example of socio-economic symbiosis. Students are the Laurel to Aber’s Hardy. They’re the Tango to our Cash, the peanut butter to our jelly. They're also one of many reasons why I'm glad I live 12-miles out of town. And, to be clear: 12-miles from a tiny seaside resort town in the middle of nowhere is, technically, still the middle of nowhere.

Wish You Were Here: Prince Phillip

I hadn’t expected to write another ‘Wish You Were Here’ so soon, but after seeing this today, I can hardly resist. By way of preamble, I have to admit that I’ve never understood the American obsession with the British monarchy. I’ve never really gotten why we’d want it, why we always make comparisons to American ‘royal families’, or why – as evidenced this spring – thousands of us flock to England, adorned head-to-toe in obscenely distasteful arrangements of the Union Jack, lining the streets to cheer like loons every time one of them gets married (Y'all do remember that we fought a war to get rid of the British royals, right...?). My otherwise fiercely Welsh wife gets is: she’s a big fan of the royal family. I don’t get it…at least not the way she does. She sees majesty; I see immodesty. She sees regal bloodlines, I see political circumstance. She sees timeless grandeur, I see opulent irrelevance. There is only one thing about the Royal Family upon which we can both agree: Prince Phillip is the fucking shizzle. He, singlehandedly, almost makes the otherwise nauseating sea of pretention somewhat bearable.

As he turns 90 this week, we’ve all been asked to remember him as the remarkable figurehead of State that he’s been for the last 64 years. Phillip is the UK’s George W. Bush, saying the oddest things at the worst moments to all the wrong kinds of people. The difference (besides Phillip not being allowed anywhere near a political decision), is that where Dubya may just ramble on about things making absolutely no sense whatsoever, Phillip’s remarks always make sense – they’re just plain wrong. So wrong, in fact, that they’re freakin hilarious. Here are just a few... to a British student studying in China, 1986: ‘If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes.’ To the British Women’s Institute in 1961: ‘British women can’t cook’. And, among my personal faves, to a Scottish driving instructor, 1995: ‘How do you keep the natives off the booze long enough to pass the test?’

And, unlike in the States, where everyone tries equally hard either to deny, justify or villify GWB's inane ramblings, everyone here in the UK (including the Duke of Edinburgh himself) knows he's a sexist, racist, classist, beer-swigging, faux-pas making baffoon. YouTube is bursting with videos either of his real 'gaffes', or mock newsreels of things he probably would have said if he'd had the chance. Take this one, for isntance, from a popular news-based comedy show called 'Mock the Week':

Prince Phillip represents everything that I think is bad about a Royal Family. He’s obscenely wealthy purely by genetic happenstance (as opposed to merit), he’s completely out-of-touch with the subjects over whom he rules, he has absolutely no concept of appropriate social behaviour and is quite possibly the most politically incorrect person ever to have walked the earth. And he does it all knowing full well that he’s talking out of his ass, and that he’ll get away with it because he’s married to The Queen. He just doesn't give a shit. Because of all of that, he’s the most enjoyable Royal I can imagine. The Queen…? Who cares! God Save Prince Phillip, says I!

Read more of Prince Phillip's 'so awful they're funny' quotes here. Well worth a read, though be prepared to spit out your tea.

Reader Beware

For whatever reason, I've begin to come out of my blogging shell a bit. Maybe I'm the hermit crab of the blogosphere, and I've finally started to outgrow some aspects of Polite Blogging. As such, you may find that some more mature themes and devices start to find their way into my writing. If (when) it happens, it'll be a more honest blog, but it might also be way less civil. Don't worry, I'm not going to be reviewing my favourite pornography (not here anyway), or posting pictures of myself in various states of Weiner-like middle-aged undress. As far as I know, I have no nip-slip or unintentional upskirt episodes about which I should be aware and/or concerned about being released into the ether. But I feel like I'm starting to engage properly with this form of expression, and being 'engaged' means having opinions... and if there is one thing I have a shitload of, it's opinions. You might like some of them, you might not. But as I begin to pass from blogging eDolesecence into young eDulthood, my voice is likely to break at times. Then again, it might not. I might remain, eternally, in some kind of Justin Beiber-style social networking prepubesence. If Blog Immitates Life, it will be ages yet before I stumble awkwardly one New Year's Eve past the final, irreversible hurdle of timidity. Hopefully, like my companion that cold wintry night on the sofabed of a Oregon ski lodge, you will be equally ignorant in your expectations and just as forgiving in your judgement of my performance. But if my voice happens to mature and the content of this blog happens to venture into the vicinity of occasional vulgarities, don't say I didn't warn ya. I feel like even 'warning' you is a bit of a cop-out and slightly antiprophetic. But I also feel like the more 'America, fuck yeah!'s and 'I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast's I put on here without a disclaimer, the more guilty I feel. So this, here, is that disclaimer.

*In anticpation of the time in a few days or weeks when the predictable lull in my prolificacy returns, please pick an apology from here, and I'll promise to mean it. Start with 'I'm sorry I haven't blogged lately, but...'

• I'm too busy to blog.
• I'm not very busy, but can't be arsed to blog.
• I'm trapped under something heavy.
• My chickens have escaped and pecked me to death.

Wish You Were Here: Devil Doors

150 years of business - 10 years of news

There are many, many things I love about living in the UK (specifically, Devil’s Bridge, Aberystwyth and Wales in general). I love the fact that not everything is available all the time; 24/7 everything is not healthy. I love the fact that headlines in my very local paper include things like ‘sandwich stolen’ and ‘sheep in nappy causes problems on prom’. Lots of things around here make me smile contently, knowing that although I’ll always call Olympia ‘home’, I am exactly where I want to be. Having said that…

…some things about this fucking back-woods, coal-digging, banjo-playing timewarp of a country really wind me up. Some of them are pretty serious – others are seriously petty. Case of the latter in point: Devil Doors.

Devil Doors mock me

This British phenomenon is something my friend G and I noticed the first time we were here in 1992. Here’s the situation: two doors available, only one open. I don’t know how to put it any plainer than that. Imagine you’re in a hallway full of busy students (or shoppers, or commuters… take your pick of any human herd scenario) and, en masse, you approach a set of double doors. ‘Easy!’, you think, ‘one door will be open for people going in one direction, the other will be open for those wishing to travel in the opposite way. It’ll be like the God of Circulation intended: peaceful, non-confrontational and efficient co-existent mobilisation.’ You’d think that, and you’d be wrong! The hallway is jammed tight. People are pushing, shoving and cursing their way to and fro with unbelievable effort. What should have been a two-minute amble has turned into a ten-minute upstream struggle of salmonic proportions. Why? Is it because some unnatural force has put far too many people in that hallway? Maybe someone has dropped a folder and are causing a bit of traffic jam? Maybe there’s a fire and people are panicking! Nope, nope and nope.

doors the way God intended

The reason – the only reason – that this journey is anything other than the serene jaunt from A to B that it should have been is that only one of the doors is unlocked. A quick flip of the bolting mechanism as you forearm rip your way through the bottleneck (which, by the way, attracts the most incredulous of looks from witnesses who don’t seem to be able to grasp either the sense in what you’ve done or the audacity that allowed you to make such a bold move in the first place) and you’ve solved the problem for generations to come. Or, at least until the next day when the person in charge of Unlocking the Doors decides that it’s way too much effort to unlock both doors. Well, he/she has a point: it is twice the work. But they’re doors, for Christ’s sake… if they’re not unlocked, they may as well be walls and if the architects wanted walls instead of doors then they probably wouldn’t have put hinges on them in the first place.

Next time, I’ll talk about steps. But other than steps and doors, I really love it here. Oh, and the food. Don’t get me started on the food. Yeah, so: steps, doors and food. And TV. Steps, doors, food, and TV. I’m sure that’s all.

Puppets. Remind me to tell you about puppets.

Episode I: The Bantam Menace

This is what you get when you Google 'Star Wars chickens'.
You have been warned.

So a while ago, my wife received two chickens as a Christmas present. As a woman who could easily have populated Noah’s Ark with the pets we had pre-plus-one, the gift of two relatively low-maintenance birds who would provide us with fresh eggs seemed like a good idea. The only problem was that we were living with the wife’s parents at the time, and had plenty of work to do on our own house before we started working on one for the bok-boks. Luckily, the in-laws happen to reside on a large working farm (which also happened already to be the home of a dozen or so hens) so Freckles and Frosty* had a ready-made home, even if we did not.

Rhododendrons? We don't need no stinkin' rhododendrons.

Time passed and the refurbishment of our home eventually got to a point where we could move in. Then we started working on the lawn. The first thing we had to do was to remove several (as in 15 or so) humungous rhododendron bushes. I say ‘bushes’ because I think, technically, they remain bushes even though they were (in our case) the size of trees. One was covering about half of our lower back yard, while another 2 or three were taking up all of the space in the upper half. Upon clearing those out, we were left with two ginormous areas of land that hadn’t seen light for a few decades. One we decided to re-seed, the other we decided would be a perfect home for our orphaned egg layers. That was two years ago.

Finally, this spring, when we had enough time and money to do the job, we decided that it was time to bring the two omelette machines home to Rheidol View. I did what every modern weekend carpenter does: I scoured the internet for ideas on how to build a good coop! After a few hours surfing and probably several times that playing on Google Sketch Up (have I mentioned that I'm a total geek?), here is what we decided to build:

That sketch turned into me buying a shitload of wood, nails, chicken wire and a saw. The absence of any new power tools was a severe but necessary disapointment. On the island where all the forests were cut down a few hundred years ago, wood isn't the cheapest material going, and I needed a lot of it (see 'shitload', above) :

I don't know what the metric equivalent of 'shitload' is.

That wood got turned into a frame. This took a lot longer than I'd have liked, and there were far too many swear words and bloody knuckles than I'd anticipated. Turns out I'm a much better Google Sketchupper than I am a carpenter. Who'd have thunk it, right...?

If it's not a right angle, it's a wrong angle.

Surprisingly: much heavier when screwed together.

Adding nesting boxes and sides.

Nesting boxes for the Laying of the Eggs.

And after a lot of measuring, digging, stretching and a LA-LA-LOT more swearing, that frame (eventually) turned into this coop. And the rest of the wood and wiring got pushed, pulled, cut and banged together to make the fencing and door.

Using wood scraps and bad joinery adds to the charm, dontcha think?

Door from wood found in the garage. More charm!

Charm, charm charm. Bucket-loads** of the stuff.

You might be able to see in the corner of that last shot that we've even managed to get the chickens into the run. Now, the REAL adventure begins. Will they be happy? When will they start laying eggs? How will they react when the next two arrive in a month's time...? Stay tuned!

* I voted for 'Sweet and Sour', but was overruled. Unfairly, I think.
** Officially, 'bucket-loads' is only just a little less than 'shitloads'. Honestly. Google it. See if I care.

TUnESDAY: Noah and the Whale

Twinkie the Kid:
as American as
100% synthetic cream
and indestructable sponge cake.

In all honesty, this post is aimed more at anyone outside of the UK who might stumble across this blog. Not because I’m intentionally ignoring my British besties, but because if you have listened to a radio or been anywhere near a festival in the last two or three years, you will already be familiar with today’s TUnESDAY selection: Noah and the Whale.

Noah (and the aforementioned Whale) are, I guess, classified as an ‘indie folk’ band who got together in 2006 in Twickenham. Their first single release, 5 Years Time didn’t do much when it first played in 2007 – but when it was re-released in 2008 and flooded the playlists (see what I did there?) it got to #7 in the UK and just breeched the top 10 in Ireland. For a debut single, it sets a pretty good standard of what we might think to expect from NatW – bend your ears around it here.

The only single to come out of their second album was Blue Skies – but it only reached #95 in the UK. The band released the single as part of the album ‘The First Days of Spring’ which, apparently, also doubled as the title of a film made by the band. An interesting concept, and the film looks to be as powerful as the music that accompanies it. You can watch the trailer for the film here, and download the album (with movie) from iTunes.

More recently, the guys have released their third album and seem to be gathering followers at a steady pace. The first single from 2011’s ‘The Last Night on Earth’ was L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N. and, for my liking, was a bit too close to The Kink’s Lola. Nevertheless, it seemed honest enough and the appeal of the style and melody is hard to ignore. They’ve followed it up with ‘Tonight’s the Kind of Night’ – a more up-beat but still very folky tune… still a little bit of Lou Reed, though prettier and softer to be sure. I’m excited about Noah and his Whale; I think they have a sound that’s accessible and unique. I worry, though, that they may take themselves too seriously, and hope they have the good sense and artistic integrity not to sell out too much. I’ll be watching this space – hope you’ll join me!

Why Losing Sucks – and Why Everyone Should Do It At Least Once

If my daughter chooses to compete at something, I hope she loses. I don’t wish my daughter ever to suffer pain needlessly. But I hope she loses at least once in her life so that she can learn how to avoid it happening again.

Over the past week or so, the Welsh Macys took a trip up to Glasgow to see the cousins. Among the usual pleasantries of a spring break visit (BBQs, swimming pools and the Glasgow Science Centre), a conversation took place about the state of competition in UK schools. Now, growing up where I did in the States, competition was always encouraged. Having spent time in various primary and secondary schools around the country (because my dad worked for the FBC, not because we were on the lamb, or better yet, fulfilling my early childhood dream of touring the country as a Partridge-family style pop sensation) – I feel that I can speak somewhat authoritatively when I say competition was encouraged in school. You had all kinds of things to take part in that either you won, or you lost (or came somewhere in between). Spelling bees, science fairs, sports, choir – whatever. You name it, you were encouraged to be the best at it. I get the feeling from the conversation with my UK-based contemporaries that although some of the competitions were different (egg and spoon race, donkey derby, bog swimming and pin-the-tail-on-the-peasant), the end result was the same: somebody came first, somebody came last and lots of people were somewhere in the middle.

Nowadays, it seems, the world is scared of letting any child lose, for fear it might irreversibly damage their precious psyches. A friend of mine blogs about it in the US here, and the general consensus around the chips and dips on Saturday was that the UK is following suit. Gone are medals and ribbons and trophies, replaced by ‘participation awards’ and a painstakingly equal distribution of accolades for everyone who bothered to turn up. Interestingly, the consensus from the parents was also that such an environment was a disservice to the kids themselves – it was not in the best interest for their own children NOT to know how to lose. I couldn’t agree more. Everyone needs to learn how to learn from losing. It’s a skill that will ultimately allow kids to identify their priorities and to persevere in achieving their goals.

I don't consider myself to be that competitive, but I absolutely hate losing (did I just contradict myself?). The American football team I play for – hotly tipped to win it all this season - lost this Sunday to a team that has barely beaten teams we’ve swatted away like flies. I couldn’t play because I was in Glasgow. But even though I wasn’t there and didn’t participate, it made me sick to my stomach to think that we were beaten. And I know that it feels the same for my teammates. If we didn’t care about losing, then we probably didn’t care about winning – in which case, why play the game at all? But we did lose - so now what? How do we improve, does it mean enough to us to put the effort in to win next time? How realistic was our objective of winning in the first place, and had we done enough work to earn that victory against someone who also wanted what we wanted? In football, as in life, there isn't always enough of everything to go around. If you want some of what can only be made available to a few, then you have to earn it. If you want it, you have to win - and in order to win, you must do the work and take advantage of the opportunities that come your way. This is what only losing can properly teach us, and this is why everyone should lose at least once.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I don’t think everything is a competition, and I think that 'winning' can be defined in many ways. I beleive that there are many, many aspects in life where there is more than enough to go round and that everyone can have what they want without taking away from anyone else's ability to do the same. In those cases, it's more about our (often misguided) perceptions of need that create competition when there is none. I also believe that ‘just taking part’ is a worthwhile endeavour in some genuine competitions and, to go even further, it’s important to not to try to win every competition at every cost. Sometimes that other person needs to win more than you do, for different reasons – and you need to be able to see that. But in the things that matter enough to you, you need to care about winning. And nothing will teach you how much it means to win better than losing.