Freddie The Bastard
"You might think I'm a dreamer," sang John Lennon, "But I'm not the only one." He was right of course. Remember 60's pop combo Freddie and the Dreamers? They were dreamers. Except Freddie of course. He was a bastard. Freddie the Bastard they used to call him. The right people could call him that to his face because he liked it. If you weren't the right person, or he was just in a bad mood that night, you could find yourself with your lips stapled to the back of a horse. That's what happened to Nigel Beckenstand, the Dreamers' original bass player. Back then they were called "Bastard and the Dreamers", but you couldn't say "bastard" on the radio back then, so the name had to change.
When you watch archive footage of the Dreamers today, they look pretty happy. But they weren't. They were terrified of Freddie the Bastard, but they had to maintain the pretense. They were too scared to look scared. None of them could even play an instrument before Freddie made them join his band. They all learned overnight. They had hit after hit since they were too scared not to. He had a cannon in his front garden, and if any of the band made a mistake on stage, they would get fired out of it into the wall of the pub next door.
Freddie hit the headlines after eating the then Minister of Transport. In fact, he retains a place in the Guinness book of world records for most members of the British cabinet eaten by one man after polishing off the Education Secretary two years later. They didn't dare arrest him for it. Even the police were terrified of him.
Then one day the hits just stopped coming. For a while people kept buying his records anyway, in case he found out and stabbed them in the elbow like he did that nun one time, but it soon became clear that he had vanished, and a collective, if nervous, sigh of relief was heard around the country.
And where is he now? Nobody knows. Some say he's dead. Some say he fled the country. But others talk in half-whispers about strange doings in holiday camps and pubs around the UK, where rumours of a Freddie and the Dreamers reunion abound.
What a bastard.
Thursday, August 06, 2009
Silencio
One of the reasons for the waning of this blog is that Twitter and Facebook are much more suited to collecting my trivial everyday thoughts.
But today they are both down at the same time. What are the odds of that? Is someone carrying out a DOS attack on social networking sites? (Myspace seems to still be up, but who still uses that?) Is the world coming to an end resulting in thousands of users Tweeting about it at once? Or has my ISP messed up somehow?
Update: Well, it's not my ISP, since the Twitter status blog confirms that it's down. Facebook came back up for a minute, but seems to be knackered again. Overrun by refugees from Twitter, perhaps?
Update 2: Confirmed to be a Denial Of Service attack on Twitter.
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Dusty Old Blog
No, I have not died, nor been so assimilated by America that I can no longer communicate with the outside world. I can't say my life has been that interesting lately, however. You'd think that I'd have more to write about, having moved abroad and all, but it's only America. It's just like Britain really, except it's hotter where we are, and they drive on the other side of the road and stuff. Working from home, and having a small child to look after, means that I don't get out much. I can feel what few social skills I ever had slowly atrophying. Hopefully I can do something about that before too much time passes and I become a weird shut-in.
I think I might start blogging again though. All I seem to do at the moment, other that work and change nappies (they call them "diapers" here - weird!) is consume movies and music and video games, so I might as well write about those.
Tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
You May Think It's Funny, But It's Snot Aidan has been unwell this past week or so. He's picked up an ear infection and a nasty cold, causing him to produce surprisingly vast quantities of mucus and bogies so sticky they give previous world-record holder Toxteth O'Grady a run for his money. The gunk in his lungs also causes him to cough, often to the point where he is sick. I'm not talking about a wee dribble on the carpet either, but vast fountains of milky vomit, more often than not aimed directly at his dear old dad. Still, he's a Glaswegian lad, and so not one to let a little tactical chunder spoil his evening, normally grinning widely a few moments later as his father drips his way to the bedroom to change his clothes for the third time that day.
Babies that age tend to get these little infections quite frequently, we are assured, while their immune systems build up a database of common bugs and how to tackle them. Despite being regularly showered in infantile secretions, I felt certain that my highly-trained 33-year-old white blood cells would keep me safe and healthy. But of course, I am also in a new environment, surrounded by many variations of the common cold not often encountered in Glasgow, and am now paying the price for my immunological hubris.
In short, I feel like shite.
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Monday, March 23, 2009
I Play This Game Several Times a Night
The rules are as follows ...
Turn off the lights. Hold the baby firmly but gently, his head on your shoulder. Start walking, adopting a steady, regular pace, and a slight bounce. If your grip on the baby is correct he should jiggle slightly. Eventually he will fall asleep, but if you put him down now he will wake instantly. Instead, start counting to yourself, at a rate of one per step, where a step involves moving both legs. If he makes a sound or a voluntary movement, start counting again from the beginning. When you reach 120 you can put him down, and start counting to 30. If he wakes up in that time you may be able to get him back to sleep by rubbing his tummy and sushing. If not, pick him up and start again from the beginning. If you make it to 30, congratulations! The baby is asleep. You may now creep out very quietly and enjoy what remains of your evening, but keep the monitor handy since you may be called upon to play the game again.
Who knew sleep was so difficult?
Labels: parenthood
link | 1 comment(s) | links to this postSettling
I suppose I'm coping ok in my new environment, though I have only been here for a month, and so am still in that 'holiday' period. The novelty is keeping homesickness at bay, though I do wish that Google Street View hadn't chosen this week to launch in the UK, resulting in a slighly tipsy and maudlin hour spent clicking through my old hood.
Working from home hasn't been the minimum-productivity skivefest I feared it might, though I've had a few unpleasant episodes of cabin fever, and I do miss the peace of my morning train journey, cold and rain notwithstanding. For someone used to being able to nip across the road to Tesco at a moments notice, living in a place where driving is not optional is hard going.
So yeah, I'm here. Now what?
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Moved
Well, would you look at that? I appear to have emigrated, and am now a resident of them there United States! Goodness, how did that happen? I am a legal alien, which is quite cool and makes me feel like I'm David Bowie's character in The Man Who Fell To Earth, but then remember that song by Sting, which is substantially less cool, even though I'm not an Englishman. Nor am I in New York, but Allen, Texas.
I could bore you with the messy details of the move, but shant. It's probably much as you imagine, anyway. I've already blogged about the visa process, which is the most complicated part of the whole affair. The rest was just a matter of sorting out what to send off on a slow boat (clothes, DVDs, music, books), what to pack for the period until the slow boat arrives (five suitcases worth), and what to get rid of (everything else, either sold or given to charity). Oh, and saying goodbye to family and friends. That was no fun at all.
For now it feels like we are just visiting, and it hasn't quite sunk in that we can NEVER GO HOME AGAIN!
Friday, January 16, 2009
A Day In The Life
Recent travels and travails have left my Google Reader account straining at the gills with unglanced-at posts. Catching up on my lunch break, I see that Moosh has nominated today as a day-in-the-life day. I haven't done one of those in ages, so let's have a crack. I may end up not bothering to publish this if the rest of the day is deeply dull.
6.30am - The alarm goes off. Yesterday I received notification that my passport and visa would arrive today by courier some time between 8am and 6pm, so I set my alarm super early so I could get into work for 8. Fumbling to silence it before it woke the baby, I almost allowed myself to sink back into sleep, but managed to force myself out of bed for 6.45.
I fed and watered the cat, brushed my teeth, had a shower, got dressed and took the bin out, all without waking Rebecca and Aidan, woke R up briefly to say bye, and got out the door in time to see the 7.26 pull into the station. Tantalisingly close, I knew there was no chance of getting it, but thought there might be a 7.38, so sauntered over to look at the timetable and discover that there was, in fact, not such train. Rather than wait until 8 o'clock, I chose to take the bus. There was one already at the stop, and I had change, so I hopped on and asked for a "one-thirty" from the driver who looked at me like I was from Mars.
I hadn't had time to make lunch, and was paranoid about leaving the office in case the courier came while I was away, so after getting off the bus I popped into Marks and Sparks to buy a sandwich. I've been feeling a bit "meat-off" these past few days, so bought a cheapo egg mayonnaise sarnie before going into work. I was the first person in and got to turn on all the lights. I quite enjoy that, and the quiet of the place when I'm the only one in. Not enough to make me get up early unless I have to, though. I got myself some cereal from my stash in the kitchen, and went to my machine. I'd left a lengthy defrag and shrink process running on a VMWare image when I left the night before, and it had failed due to lack of disk space, so I deleted an old, unneeded image and kicked it off again while reading email and news, and started unreportably dull worky stuff once it had finished.
At about 9.30 a colleague brought over a large, black, plastic envelope and said that there was a guy at reception who needed to see my ID. Once authenticated, I tore it open, and as expected it contained my passport, containing a new visa sticker, and a large, heavy brown envelope, with instructions printed on it in large black letters indicating that it should not be opened or tampered with under any circumstances, and must be presented to the immigration officer when I enter the US. This attracted a bit of attention from various workmates who didn't know of my moving plans, so the cat is very definitely out of the bag now, even though it wasn't really a secret any more.
At about 11.00 the Friday cakes arrived, though as usual there were a fair number of savoury items from Greggs, and I consumed a sausage roll, thus making a mockery of my earlier advances towards vegetarianism. In my defense I suspect its actual meat content to have been pretty low. Now lunchtime is here, I am regretting having bothered to buy a sandwich, such, along with my usual monster bowl of Alpen, I'm really not hungry. I shall save it for later.
***
Around 3.20pm R phoned. She had been in town meeting some of the other mums from our NCT class earlier in the year, and was now heading over to Mono. Since I'd gotten into work early, I said I would come and meet her just after 4. At Mono I found her with Aidan sitting on her lap, looking quite happy. We split a veggie curry and strange carbonated elderflower drink. In the toilet I noticed a bit of graffiti that made me smile. Someone had written "This place would be better if... it wasn't so shite," but a second person had scored out the last part and replaced it with "it had a bouncy castle and the girl behind the bar with no smiles would kiss me." I'll miss that sweet, silly, and, yes, twee side of Glasgow, I think. It's not all neds and jakies. Just mostly.
I read for a bit while R took Aidan into Monorail to show our friend Russell who works in there, and then we bundled up and went back out into the damp evening. We had waited a bit too long, however, and rush-hour was in full swing, so on the way to the station we went into Tinderbox for coffee and Portuguese custard tarts. A, by now, was sound asleep, as is normal for him if he's outside and moving. When we were done we finished walking to Central Station, but it was still packed and the next train was not for another half hour. I was a bit nervous about A waking up and being pissed off, since he hadn't been fed in a while, and the taxi queue wasn't too bad, so we took one of those instead of struggling to get his stroller on a busy commuter train.
Back home, R folded up the stroller while I took Aidan upstairs. When I got in I sat down on the sofa to take his jacket off, but as I did so I felt a bolt of pain in my right knee, sufficient to make me yelp and use some choice language. I've been having trouble with that knee for a while now. It's ok while standing or walking, but if I sit with it bent for too long it stiffens up and gets sore, at which point it emits a loud "click" when straightened. Putting weight on it when bending down or getting up also hurts a fair bit. My doctor diagnosed inflammation behind the kneecap, though was at a loss to explain why I should be experiencing such a thing, and prescribed anti-inflammatories. They ease the symptoms a bit, but can't quite knock them out. In any case, it's never hurt as much as it did at that point, and for a while I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to walk on it. I handed Aidan off to Rebecca when she came in, and sat for a little while. The pain faded after about five minutes and I was able to get up without difficulty, but it definitely doesn't feel quite right, and putting weight on it hurts more than it ever did. If it still feels this way by Monday I am definitely going back to my doctor, even though I am convinced he fills himself full of Valium at the start of the working day, such is his distant, laissez-faire attitude to his patients.
I messed around on the internets for a while, and played with Aidan on the floor (getting down gingerly, but I was ok once I was there). At about eight-ish I took him into the bedroom and put his pyjamas on him. Then R came in, and gave him a feed in the dark in an effort to get him off to sleep. Sated, he dozed off in her lap. We didn't want to move him into his cot straight away, hoping that he would ultimately fall into a deep sleep that would see him through the night, or at least a few hours. His sleep patterns have been chaotic ever since we got back from the US. This is partly jet-lag, and partly because we allowed him to sleep in the bed with us while we were away. We knew we were fostering a bad habit, but when you're so tired you want to die and you know it will help him sleep through, it seems worth it. I crept out and fetched my laptop, and we had a look at flights for our move. We found a good deal on KLM, but are loathe to actually book anything until the missives are concluded on the flat and we can definitely put a date on it.
After a short time we put Aidan down in his cot and tip-toed away. In the living room I played with my DS for about half an hour, before I heard Aidan wake up and start crying over the baby monitor. Normally it takes several attempts to get him into a proper sleep. He will doze off for a while, then wake and start crying, or at least making a fuss. I can usually send him back off by picking him up and rocking him for a few minutes, as in this case.
Once back down, I went into the spare room/office and started writing the second part of this post, but I was interrupted by half-a-dozen restless-baby moments, and reading about the forthcoming remake of The Prisoner. I'm a massive fan of the original show, and was saddened to hear of Patrick McGoohan's death the other day. From first appearances, I fear that this remake will be... how can I put this?... a load of arse. I do like Ian McKellan (Though it appears that he will be Number 2 for the duration of the show, unlike the 1960's series where a different actor took the role each week.) but casting James Caviezel - Hollywood's most generic looking actor - as Number 6, a character who is supposed to represent personal individuality , is surely a mistake. I'll try to watch it with an open mind when it comes on, however.
Now, to bed. Hopefully that'll be Aidan down for a while. Or not. Every day is different.
Look at that - no posts for months, then three 1000-worders in a row. I suppose I've been keeping mum on certain things and it's caused a bit of a backlog that's now overflowing. Sorry about that. I expect the torrent will slow soon enough.
Labels: diary
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