Gone for a soldier

I took the boy up to The Mall on Sunday to watch the annual march of civil war re-enactors. No, not the civil war that I grew up with, but that older one - Cavaliers v. Roundheads. I've been living in London for over a decade - but I'd never heard of this gathering (fourth Sunday of every January) which commemorates the execution of King Charles and the brief establishment of republican government in England. I couldn't tell if they were celebrating or commiserating (though some of them were laying a wreath) - but since I suppose there were some for both camps, they'd chosen to draw a veil over the old rivalries.

Buddy loves his knights, so I assumed he'd like some of these 17th century blokes who stand somewhere in between knights of old and modern soldiers in terms of uniforms. And since I'd been away for work for a couple of days, I thought I'd take him into town for a bit of treat.

When we arrived at Green Park station, it seemed a little more crowded than I'd anticipated and as we walked through the park I could see hordes of people around Buckingham Palace. Turns out it was changing of the guard time (I didn't even know they did it in the winter, but they do - every other day instead of daily in the warmer months). We hit The Mall just in time to see the guards arriving in all good pomp and playing a suitably militaristic tune.

The boy was enthralled.

And although he enjoyed it when one of the re-enactors showed him how a match lock worked, he wasn't as excited by the civil war stuff as I thought he might be.

We followed the march all the way down to Horse Guards Parade, but he lost interest as they milled around before ostensibly forming a square. (Inadvertently, and despite the steward's advice we managed to line up between opposing armies).

But he got excited again when he dashed into the museum of the household cavalry. I refused to pay for entry, as I've already had more than a lifetime's share of regimental museums touring around with his father and I wouldn't have wanted the Vol-in-Law to miss out on the opportunity. I had to literally drag him away from the displays.

He was intrigued by those standing guard as well, though he didn't want to pose with the sentry as many tourists do.

I couldn't quite understand why he was so interested a couple of bored squaddies, when there was a whole history parade going on outside with many of the members of the civil war society ready - eager even - to be nice and explain stuff.

But then I thought - even a three year old can tell the difference between a serving soldier and some middle aged, slightly nerdy, history buffs. And those household cavalry types are pretty intriguing. We saw some at the Wimbledon stables open day a few months ago - and those tall young fellows with their polished breastplates, snug uniforms and their thigh-high shiny boots...the boy could hardly tear his eyes away and to be honest, I had trouble looking elsewhere, too. Those uniforms were designed to make the girls swoon and the boys sign up.

And it looks like they've found a potential recruit.

I heard the call of Cthulu or how I cooked me up a mess of squid

Growing up listening to national public radio there was sometimes a spoof spot with a furrin type chef with some kind of Adriatic accent who would answer your questions about cookery and entertaining. And no matter what the question, the answer was always squid.

Q: I'm hosting a children's party for 10 five-year-olds, what do you suggest serving?

A: eh-squid, keeds love-a the eh-squid

Indeed.

I do love squid. I'm not a huge fan of deep-fried or breaded calamari, but I'm often in the mood for squid. Partly, if I'm honest, for the shock value. And the more closely it resembles the original animal, the better.

But I've never prepped it from scratch. I've bought some processed squid from Portugese delis over the year (you can get frozen stuffed squid!) and I've been known to use tinned octopus on pizza. In fact, I've never once taken any animal from corpse to plate. Unless you count shrimp from the Gulf, which I don't.

But this week I saw a show with Jamie Oliver -- Suppers to Save Our Seas as part of the Fish Fight series about choosing more sustainable fish resources. One of his top 10 alternative fish choices was squid. He started with the cleaned body, did some scoring, added some lime juice, popped it on the grill - and blammo - easy squid. Out loud I said "Hey, maybe we should get some squid."

Buddy latched onto this instantly. "Squid! Squid! Squid!" he said. For a boy who won't eat anything unless it's breaded, I took this as a hopeful sign that maybe we could expand his palate. I mentioned the squid idea to the Vol-in-Law and he was almost equally enthusiastic. But I know he does actually eat squid.

So over the week there have been casual mentions of the squid thing and last night the boy asked if we were having squid for dinner. Wow! So I promised we'd go shopping for squid today. And he reminded me when I picked him up for nursery. And we did..

At the grocery store, they only had the one squid. A giant looking thing, that I'm pretty sure took down the Nautilus. I was starting to chicken out on the squid idea.

"Do you really want a squid?" I said.

"Yes, yes, yes!! Squid!"

So...look away now if you're on the squeamish side.

Squid unwrapped

I looked up instructions on squid butchery. Each step was described as easy. It wasn't. But honestly, it probably was easier than cleaning a regular fish. It's just that when I pulled and twisted the head, the guts didn't automatically all come out. Extra knife work was required.

And there were other surprises, too. For example, never did I dream that I'd overhear a conversation from our bedroom that went like this:

Daddy, look at this!

Is that from the squid?

Yeah!

There was an awesome bit of cartilage - looked like a bit of clear plastic. The boy was intrigued.

I forgot to take pictures of the cleaned, skinned squid tube - but here's the final product. And it was tasty.

Squid sauteed in olive oil with peppers and garlic. Fresh parsley. Served over linguine.

But you know what? The boy only nibbled a tiny corner from a bit of squid and then only because we made him.

Keeds love-a the eh-squid? Not around here they don't

The wrong kind of BBQ

I work in a building that sees a steady stream of politicians. And the great thing about politicos is that they're never backwards about coming forwards. So a single word exchanged in the ladies' led to "Oh, is that an American accent? Where are you from?"

"Tennessee."

"Staying long?"

"Been here 15 years so far."

"Ah, the thing I remember about Tennessee are the BBQd ribs with all that lovely sauce."

Instant reaction: bristle. Was just about to explain that that I'm from Middle (or when I'm thinking about it differently East) Tennessee and our BBQ is usually pulled pork. And ribs are really associated more with the West Tennessee BBQ tradition, when I heard the door close on her way out.

Just as well, really - wasn't sure if she was ready to hear about the socio-bbq map of the Southern US and prairie states.

Reaffirming the patriarchy

Last night I took the boy swimming, so we were a little late home. The Vol-in-Law was still in the salt mine of paper marking, so I turned on the tv and told Buddy that I was going to start making dinner.

"No!" he told me sternly. "Only Daddy tells you to make dinner."

What???

"Buddy, I can autonomously choose to..." my voice trailed away and silently finished with "make dinner for the menfolk."

It's true that kids say the durndest things, but where do they get this stuff? It's not like he doesn't come from a long and distinguished line of working women. From a "pop star" of the turn of the century to small business owners and factory workers and artists, his female progenitors have been hard workers and money makers - and I'm not even sure I've got enough fingers to count the degrees and certificates held by his grandmothers.

How do you even counter this stuff? Am I destined to have that resigned look that you often see in women who live in a household of men? I don't want to spend the rest of my life living in a frat house.

And that's not all. One of things he'll say regularly is "I got a penis. Daddy got a penis. You not got a penis. Ha, ha, ha." Bloody hell. Did Freud ever describe penis hubris?

Fireman Sam can't save the day this time

Fan Fiction is a great tradition of the Net. Taking well known series from television or film and writing additional stories in line with the characters and setting. I've never done any fan fiction before, but the Vol-in-Law and I have always speculated on the back stories of the characters in Fireman Sam - a cartoon set in the Welsh Valleys in the tiny village of Pontypandy. It features the eponymous Fireman Sam, naughty (and fatherless) Norman Price, his mother Dilys and their extended families and co-workers. There's other Fireman Sam fan fiction on the net, but this story sees our characters imagined 10 years on.

-0-

Dylis sat in the courtroom with silent tears running down her face. She’d always feared it would come to this, but had hoped that her love for her boy would see him right in the end. Norman’s bright red hair had always been her secret pride, a legacy from his father, but now it hung lanky and dull over his face. The boy who, for whatever his faults, had always been full of the spark of life, a fire in his eyes, now stood defeated in the dock waiting to be taken down. Mummy’s little treasure, as she’d called him, didn’t look much of a prize now.

The solicitor hurried past on her way out. She had told Dylis to expect a custodial sentence, but Dyllis had let her hope triumph over sense. He wasn’t a youthful offender anymore, at 19 he’d be treated as an adult.

No one took much notice of Dylis in the long bus ride from the Crown Court in Swansea to the village of Pontypandy. She was just another old woman, clutching a plastic bag, bundled up in an old raincoat to keep out the rain of the valleys. She stared out the rain speckled windows as the bus strained against the steep hill roads.

A string of minor infractions, small fires set here and there, escalating to more serious events over the years had left him with a criminal record. His father may not have ever acknowledged Norman, but he had intervened on his behalf countless times. He’d put out countless fires for his son, literal and metaphorical. He had fixed his mistakes, covered for him, and tried to make things right. But maybe if he could have taken a stronger role, a guiding hand for the boy as Norman had been growing up things would have been different.

But that was never going to happen. She would still remember his shocked expression when she’d told him that the single night they’d shared had had repercussions. She felt foolish for letting him talk her into keeping it a secret for all these years. Maybe if she’d made him face up to his responsibilities then, things would have turned out differently. She could see now that he would never have made the offer of marriage that she’d hoped for, but he could have acknowledged the boy, surely. But she’d wanted to keep him sweet, to see how reasonable she could be and perhaps he’d see, one day, that they could have something more. Most of all, she feared that he’d leave Pontypandy for some bigger place.

Dylis knew she’d been no beauty even in those days. What few charms she’d been born with had faded away as she cared for her mother in her final years in that little flat above the shop while she’d kept that going, too. When her mother had finally slipped away, Dylis began to think of finding a new life for herself. But then there had been Norman on his way.

Norman’s father had been young, much younger than she. He’d just returned from Cardiff and there had been rumours of a failed romance. Apparently she had been some dark eyed beauty who had left for London, a boy from the valleys, no matter how handsome, had not been enough for her. In those long summer days after he’d returned and her mother had died, Dylis had been in the habits of taking long walks in the hills - grieving and planning what she might do next.

She’d found him on his own in an old stone and wood cabin, near the mountain rescue station. He was already a little drunk and had offered her a can of cider she’d remembered selling to him. They drank and chatted quietly as he’d tended the fire in the little hearth. After a little more cider, they’d begun to laugh together - laugh at their own misfortunes. She told him how she wanted to leave the valley, but didn’t know how. He told her about the girl who’d broken his heart. A moment of kindness, as she’d reached out to brush her fingers over his bright red hair, turned quickly to a moment of madness. He’d reached for her then tumbling her down against the old mattress. She’d accepted his fumbled embraces with fervour. She’d let herself hope it might be the beginning of her new life. But his pained apologies the next day had extinguished that spark.

That old cabin had long since burned down. No one had proof, but they’d all suspected Norman. Dylis had always wondered if it had been his father who’d struck the match. He’d been able to get to the scene fast enough.

Her steps from the bus stop to the shop were slow and heavy. Her brother had been minding it for her while she was at court, and he was eager enough to get away from it now. Those villagers who still came in to the shop eyed the Price family with silent pity. “Poor Dilys,” she could almost hear them say “left to raise that handful of a boy on her own with no man at her side.”

The bell on the shop door jangled, and she looked up. He was still handsome, though his red hair had faded a little with age and was now streaked with silver. He was still tall and firm of frame, and the uniform of fire chief suited him. His face with etched with worry. He had always cared for Norman in his own way.

“He’s been sent down for three years. My little treasure in prison.” she sobbed.

“I gave a good report for the sentencing recommendation. He’s a good boy at heart,” he told her.

She stared at him, her accusation plain to read in her eyes.

“Great Fires of London,” he swore. “I did what I could, Dilys.”

“Did you? Even though I never told him you were his father, he always felt close to you. Always wanted to be like you, a fireman. He just wanted your attention. Even what he did this time, burning down the fire station was just to be closer to Fireman Sam.”

Putting democracy in the cross hairs

I roused from a late afternoon rest to see Twitter declaring the Rep Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona had been assassinated. Then I saw that maybe she wasn't dead. But quite a few other people were. Tragic. Absolutely tragic on so many levels. It need almost go without saying that murder is horrible. And mass murder is vile. But there's something particularly tragic about the slaying of people who were participating in our democracy - as representatives, as aides, as supporters and I dare say as dissenters. Without a doubt among those killed and injured will be someone who disagreed with the politics of Representative Giffords and was there to let her know. To spray bullets on such a gathering is an attack on orderly, peaceful representative democracy. To kill the chance of ordinary people getting close to their representatives. I hope that everyone injured in today's shooting recovers quickly.

But what I also saw on Twitter was quick condemnation of Sarah Palin and rhetoric which borrows heavily from text of Guns n' Ammo. Yep, Ms Palin is certainly one to rouse emotions. I'm not a fan of her approach generally and I disagree with her on pretty much every political stand she takes. But she didn't pull the trigger. Yes, apparently she put Rep Giffords in the cross hairs on her website. In retrospect, it seems more than inappropriate. But a target seat is still a target seat. Everyone uses language like that. Everyone talks about picking off vulnerable opponents and some talk of political hit lists. I don't know how common cross-hairs are for political maps, but I wouldn't be surprised to see flames and bulls-eyes. Maybe we need a slightly different discourse. And we mustn't tolerate anything which goes further than this.

It takes a nut job to actually carry even extreme rhetoric to action. But sadly there's no lack of people who are willing to step up to the plate. From the recent assassination in Pakistan, to the stabbing of Stephen Timms. Call for violent action loud enough and often enough, even in the guise of metaphor, and someone will hear the call.

For sure, politics is a rough sport. And I wouldn't for a second wish to curtail freedom of speech. But surely we can all do more to counter aggressive, violent speech. To shun it. To repudiate it. To not tolerate or cosset it. No matter whom it's targeted against, as it lowers the tone for all of us. And that includes harsh responses, labelling Sarah Palin a murderer and demanding retribution.

And a similar post from a local politician I've met.

Sara Bedford blogs as well.

Bad haircut

Bad haircut, originally uploaded by London looks.

I know a lot of people give their small children home haircuts. Especially for boys. It's not supposed to be hard.

I have a long history of giving very bad haircuts. Disastrous haircuts. Too short. Uneven. Reminiscent of mange. Most of these unhappy experiments have had my brother as the victim. Once my husband. No one else has been so foolish to come near me when I'm wielding scissors.

When I was pregnant, I made the Vol-in-Law promise that he would never ever let me near my own child's head with shears. It was for the best really, I said.

Buddy was a bald baby and didn't have a lot of hair for a very long time, so it was easy for me to keep my resolution and my husband to keep his promise. The boy's first several haircuts were given by a relative and a brilliant Polish hairdresser who seems to have now moved on from giving haircuts to children.

Last summer, I had a go. We have a hair-clipping set that my brother had left here. And I didn't do a bad job. I didn't do a good job, but it wasn't shameful. Buddy sits quietly enough if you worked quickly.

This past week though, I tried again. And I'm afraid I returned to old form. A very bad haircut indeed.

I think we're going to need professional help.

Update: Hair Repair

After posting this, the Vol-in-Law took Buddy down to the barber's for a little repair job.

"Get your coat on, you're going to get your hair cut, Buddy."

"Where are we going?"

"To the barber shop. A man's going to cut your hair."

"What man?"

"The barber, he's a like a hair doctor. He's going to fix your hair."

"Mommy's not going to cut my hair?"

"No, she's more like the hair butcher."

He came back a little while later like this:

With gel in his hair. (I'm not too crazy about that) and informing us that only men could cut his hair. He thought a moment before adding. "But not Daddy."

This woman's work

Scene of the crime, originally uploaded by London looks.

The Vol-in-Law is a squeamish sort of chap. He puts it down to being raised vegetarian. Whatever. Anyway his squeamishness means that corpse removal duty falls to me. And this is a regular job. Our cat Fancy has a respectable kill rate.

Fortunately for me, she leaves beautiful corpses. Or at least intact ones anyway, with maybe just a nibble or two from the tail. I don't really mind picking up these dead critters with a plastic bag and disposing of them. I'm not really freaked out by mice.

But we all have our limits. I mean RATS do freak me out. I screamed like a little kid when I walked out of our back door one day and saw a rat. I'm shuddering in remembrance.

I haven't seen a rat in a long time (thankfully!). But yesterday's New Year's gift of a dead mouse was enormous. It was really big. It was the size of a hamster. And as far as I'm concerned, hamster is just a little too close to rat. But I womanned up and dealt with it.

Buddy, isn't so squeamish. "I like it when Fancy kills a mouse," he said yesterday. But he did call his dad to deal with the thing.

"You need to call your mom," he said. "Mouse disposal is woman's work."

Buddy at three and a half is starting to be aware of gender distinctions and the difference between girls and boys. He questioned his father over what women did (rodent removal) and what did boys and men do? What sort of animal did males deal with?

"Your mother deals with the small animals. But if we see any wolves, it will be our job to get rid of it."

Yes. I can see that. Wolves roaming the streets of London. Not this century. (Though I note that he said nothing of foxes which are a regularly seen beastie.)

But the boy was excited and started planning his toolkit. "We need knives and hammers and swords!" he exclaimed.

A rare film review post

I don't much care for film. Sad but true. Most movies could easily be packed into one hour, and so they should be. And it would be cheaper if they were on tv. So they should be. I mostly find films too long.

But Christmas is the season for watching movies, I guess. So this year I've relented and watched a few on DVD.

1. The Toy Story set:

I bought Buddy a box set of the Toy Story movies. I watched the first one. Meh. Napped through the second. And watched the third. Brilliant. Dang if that wasn't one of the most well-constructed, sentimental, and perfectly paced films I've seen in a long time. Funny, too.

This broke our one-family Disney boycott (for their support of more restrictive copyright laws).

2. In Bruges

After we went to Bruges (that's in Belgium), people kept telling me I should see In Bruges - a tale of two hit men hanging out in (yeah, you guessed it Bruges). Even people who know I don't like films told me to see this. When I saw the DVD going for cheap in a supermarket, I bought it and just finally got around to watching it. It finishes up pretty gory and there is certainly some silliness in props and plots, but boy does it capture Bruges. It was like a video memory of our little trip to Bruges - if we'd gone as Mr Pink and the rest of the Reservoir Dogs crew.

And it was well worth it for just for the Belgian joke (I won't spoil it) and a hilarious case of mistaken identity. If you've ever been to Bruges, I highly recommend this film - it'll remind you of all the precious moments you spent in the old town. Like - oh look - a gun fight where we had lunch or awww a suicide/murder moment where we stopped and let Buddy play. He had such a lovely time on that slide.

Things to do in London with time on your hands

The writing has been on the wall for some time. It was in red, in parentheses and had minus signs out in front. The public sector purse has run dry. The money's all gone. It was fun while it lasted, but like a sailor on shore leave we blew through it all on fripperies and whores (i.e. consultants)*.

Of course, it's not actually as bad as all that. Projected spending cuts are only taking us back a few years in terms of public sector spending. And let's face it, when certain regions of the UK have over 70% of their GDP as public sector spending something is seriously unbalanced. It isn't sustainable.

But where I work, and I work on the public pound, they are taking an axe to the payroll. I haven't had my P45 (pink slip) yet, but let's just say I don't see where I fit in the new organisation. Which is a shame, as I'm doing some really good work and I am excellent value for money (I would say that, wouldn't I). That doesn't mean things can't change or that there maybe still isn't a place for me where I work, but it does mean that I'm not there for just any job. No individual is indispensable, but staying on the same path isn't the only way to achieve what you want.

So what will I do with time on my hands:

1. I will take a step back from public life to concentrate on spending more time with my family. And I mean that with depth of sincerity of any politician...

2. I will become a kitten farmer**. When we were in the market for a new cat, I couldn't believe how much a regular old cat went for in London. Or how hard it is to get a cat from a shelter. We had to go through a RIGOROUS interview process and pay for the privilege before we got our (excellent) cat from Battersea. All I have to do is drive to the regions and pick up a breeding pair and in a matter of a couple of months, I'll be raking in the cash. Plus, there will be an infinite array of cute kittens which I shall capture on video and post to my blog for advertising revenue. I hear that the Internet loves kittehs.




3. I will become a reality tv star. With more and more channels all the time, there's more and more need for reality tv. And I'm more than ready. The Vol-in-Law thinks we may be a bit boring for a reality show, but I don't think so. I'm sure we'll learn to play up for the camera. And we have a cute kid who I can teach some cute catch phrases - he's already saying "Watchyou talkin' bout?" and "Go on, go on" - two catch phrases that have worked well in sit-coms. Plus, all those kittens!

4. I will finally take the plunge and pursue my dream career of country music star. I will not let my lack of musical talent hold me back. I will be wearing a lot of fringe and beaded shirts and exotic skin cowboy boots. Oh yeah.

5. I will market my skills elsewhere. My passion for better governance is unabated. And since I love what I do and love working with a lot of the people that I work with - the passionate and inspired ones anyway - both inside and outside my current organisation, I want to keep on doing that. And I'll find a way.

__________
* actually that isn't entirely true - there was some genuine improvement as measured by the targets and PIs which were determined centrally as well as some good local stuff, too. But this performance was often bought at a high price without much in the way of sustainability if the money's all gone.

** an ethical kitten farmer, not a news-at-6 type kitten farmer.

He wants to be bad

I used to be a performance management guru. No. Really. Anyway, one of the things that I really stressed was communicating performance expectations. You can't expect people to perform to a certain standard unless you tell them what that standard is. Too often there's an un-communicated ideal, and it's really no surprise when people fail to live up to that.

But I'm not saying that it's easy to articulate that, as managers or teachers or team members we often don't know exactly what we want. Or as parents. For the boy, on a day to day basis, it's hard for me to remember to spell out exactly what kind of behavior I want. But yesterday, I did and I was rewarded with a good boy.

The boy had been begging to see Peppa Pig's Party, a play for children staged in a central London theatre. Peppa Pig is a popular cartoon in the UK, featuring a precocious little piggie and her little brother George, Mommy Pig, Daddy Pig and a array of friends (Suzie Sheep, Pedro Pony, Danny Dog). If you haven't seen it, here's a nice bootleg clip from YouTube.

It was heavily advertised on buses and even a flier on the door to his nursery. I made some vague promises about going to see it, but the boy knows our track record on such things and continued to make a fuss. I finally caved in and bought tickets for the 28th of December (and just as well I did, as only seats with 'limited view' were still available). I showed him the ticket receipt. I marked it on the calendar. I think he was almost as excited about Peppa Pig as he was about Christmas in general.

The night before, I was set out my expectations. That we had to get out on time so we could pick up our tickets at the box office. And that this meant he had to get dressed without argument (a common problem). He had to be very good and not run off while we were in town. And that during the performance he had to stay seated and be quiet.

The next morning he begged to get dressed. He stuck with me through complicated Underground line changes. He stayed seated on the train. We arrived slightly ahead of schedule and picked up our ticket. He didn't run off when we got to Piccadilly Circus, although he did check out the map (his latest obsession). He did ask for a light up toy they were selling at a concession stand, but since he'd behaved so well through our labrynthian travels through the many stairs of the grand old subterranean Criterion Theatre.

We got to our seats so early, I thought there might be trouble, but the Peppa Pig spinner I bought for him kept him occupied for the half hour we waited for the show to start. Ridiculous amount of money well spent.

He sat quietly throughout the performance. A little too quietly perhaps, as there were many calls for audience participation and when I was singing and clapping he told me to stop. "Shhh, mommy quiet," and he held a finger over his mouth. And "Stop singing,".

Afterwards he asked for a Krispy Kreme donut when I stopped into a local store for some ibuprofen. (The performance was good but it was loud.) He was good in the bookstore and good on the long-ish walk to Green Park (a station from which we could travel without complicated underground changes). He had a tiny melt-down in Fortnum and Mason's (a luxury food and hamper store) which meant we didn't buy any over-priced fruit candy or Turkish delight which I'd had my eye on. But we had a lovely time opening all the sample pots of select teas and smelling the darjeeling.

We had a brief little wander through Green Park, feeding the pigeons with the leftover from my donut (too sweet and icky). And when the donut was all gone, we turned on the spinner and they took off with a woosh. It turns out that pigeons are very scared indeed of small boys wielding Peppa Pig light up spinners.

For a three and half year old boy on a big day out in town on the busy streets of London he behaved incredibly well. And I told him so. And later on that night, I told his dad, too in his hearing about how impressed I was. But that's when his conduct took a turn for the worse. He was clearly upset by this. It's as if he doesn't mind being good when it suits him, but he'd rather have the reputation of a bad boy. Can't imagine where he gets that.

Christmas lies

ATTENTION: BIG CHRISTMAS SPOILER - if you're an under 8

I was never sure how I was going to handle the whole Santa Claus thing with a child. I like Santa as a concept in "Yes, Virginia there is a Santa Claus" kindness in people's hearts kind of way. But I don't like Santa in the "We must all tip toe around this great fiction and go to great lengths to preserve this collective lie or else it will ruin Christmas" kind of way.

It's clear that the nursery the boy attends has gone to some great lengths to fill their heads with tales. The boy has come back talking of "Father Christmas" and if he's coming and when he's coming and nothing at all of Santa. I have indulged in a little bit of "maybe Santa will bring it" when he pesters me over some longed-for toy.

Of course, I did issue some big whoppers this Christmas. One in particular over the Fisher Price Imaginext Space Shuttle that's been heavily advertised over the past several months. I did buy him the space shuttle, but unfortunately the boy spotted it and wanted it straight away. "Sorry," I said. "That's a present for another boy, but maybe you'll get one. Maybe Santa will bring it." There were a lot of tears, but eventually the boy gave up. "That's for another boy," he said a bit forlornly and eventually stopped mentioning it at all.

Except when I asked him what he was getting for me. "What do you think Mommy wants?" I asked. "A white space rocket," he replied confidently.

On Christmas morning the Space Shuttle was opened and I snapped the moment of reveal. I may be reading too much into it, but I think something on his face isn't just the joy of receiving the longed for toy. I think there's a bit of "I knew it! This was for me all along."

The biggest lie of all

I did tell another Santa related lie at Christmas. This was on a trip into town. We were riding the Underground. The boy loves to sit on the flip down seats on the Northern Line. And near the flip down seats by the sliding doors is the passenger alarm. It's red, it has a pull down handle and it must be down right near irresistible to a little lad.

Here's what happens if you pull the passenger alarm. The train stops. The driver must leave the driving box at the front and traverse the length of the train to investigate and re-set the alarm. And then he/she must weave back through all the cars and people and their luggage to get the train moving again. It causes delay. It makes the driver grumpy. It makes the passengers grumpy. You may be fined, and you might well be subject to some kind of withering announcement over the train loud speakers. And you will definitely be the subject of some under-breath mutterings of a most unpleasant nature.

But the boy didn't know all that. All the boy knew was that it was an interesting looking contraption which begged tactile exploration.

"Hey, Buddy - don't touch that!" I lurched forward and covered it with my hands. As he was trying to pry my fingers away, we were attracting the horrified stares of our fellow passengers who all wished to get to their destinations without any further delay.

"Why?"

"Well, uh - because..." and I faltered. If I told him that it would make the train stop would that just make it a more attractive proposition? Would he just long to pull it even more? All that power, making the train stop. I could see the worried looks around me as fellow Londoners understood my predicament.

"Because if you pull that, Santa will DIE."

Ice to the eskimos

ice lit up, originally uploaded by London looks.

This morning I accepted a package from a failed delivery to a neighbour's house. Normally I'm happy to do this, but today it was against my better judgment given that package was HUGE and took up a substantial portion of my tiny house's entrance way. I had fears of it lingering in our house over Christmas.

The box said it was an 'air cooler' a little portable air conditioner, but obviously what was inside the box had to be different. After all, we've had record cold lately and although today was the first in a while that it's been above freezing for a bit, I'd hardly say it was tropical. I relented because it was probably somebody's Christmas present or a whole bunch of Christmas presents and I'd have hated for it to go back to depot turning me into the Grinch who stole Christmas.

Thankfully my good deed was rewarded when a few hours later my neighbour (who, this being London I would not have been able to pick out of a line up) arrived to pick up his giant parcel. He was surprised by the size and told me "I ordered this one because our house is very hot."

I must have looked at him strangely. "It's hot in our house," he explained "it's not good for me."

OK. Merry Christmas, I said.

It really was an air conditioner. Ordered in December and apparently to be used in December in the snowiest coldest December in London in living memory.

I was imagining that they're running some kind of marijuana/cannabis farm inside their terraced house to produce such heat. Otherwise, just open a window, my friend.

TizzyLeaks

Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks and its most visible champion, is under house arrest on a beautiful country estate in the east of England. He's wanted for questioning in Sweden in relation to complaints of sexual assault.

In my day to day work life, I'm a proponent of open government. More open data, more open governance, more open, more open, more open. But clearly there are limits*. But where those limits are is not clear. People like Julian Assange and other open government activists are playing an important role in campaigning for more openness. They are muck-rakers and there can't be significant change without stirring up a little muck.

But how much muck is too much? And oughtn't there be a little discrimination in the muck that's stirred? When millions of cables are released, there's no way either the leakers or the publishers of leaks can have read them all or made a decision about the value, importance or rightness of releasing the information. My natural instinct, even as a proponent of openness, was that this was wrong because it lacked thought. And wikileaks has a history of publishing data without sensitivity, failing to redact individual names, even in cases where being identified might mean death.

Having listened to an interview with Julian Assange this morning on BBC Radio 4, I can see how the organisation is, as ever, a reflection of its leadership. Mr Assange apparently lacks discretion or sensitivity.

I don't know the details or the truth of the allegations of sexual assault. But I do know this: Julian Assange is a prick. A prick either without much sense of irony or a supreme sense of irony (my organisations does not encourage leaks, he says - and that organisation is called, ummm - WikiLeaks). When Mr Assange and his legal representatives complained of his personal information being leaked by the Swedish prosecutors, I had to do a double take.

But his claims this morning that having to be electronically tagged as part of his bail conditions was 'emasculating', really took my breath away. Yes, that's right - the primary concern here is his healthy sense of masculinity. And he seems to dismiss the seriousness of the allegations by suggesting this is all just a big misunderstanding - that his alleged victims were in a 'tizzy'. Silly women. Clearly, they must be confused, don't they know what a privilege it is to be assanged? After all, many other women have been very 'generous' to him. How many we don't know, as a "gentleman doesn't tell." As one Tweeter observed, a gentleman may not tell or count, but a gentleman DOES wear a condom when requested.

All heroes, perhaps especially revolutionary heroes, are necessarily flawed characters. It does take an enormous sense of self to take audacious risks like those Mr Assange has taken. I still believe that openness is important and work to support it every day, but I can't help but think that the more the founder of WikiLeaks exposes himself, the less helpful he is to the cause of openness.

___

*and yes I do recognise the irony of preaching openness from a pseudonymous blog. But this isn't a secret blog, it's just an approach I take to help me keep my work and personal lives a little separate.

Frosty's on his way

We went out in the garden today with grand aspirations of snow man. It was pretty cold out there, so we settled for a squat, evil snow robot instead.

But even though freezing conditions and more snow are predicted for the coming week meaning that Frosty the evil robot snowman might have lasted til Christmas or beyond - his life, as well as his stature was short. "Let's kick him!" the boy said. But I held off the tide of destruction just long enough to grab the camera to give our creation some digital posterity.

Then we (well, mostly the boy) threw snowballs.

This one didn't get me:

But this one did:

snowy walk

snowy walk, originally uploaded by London looks.

The heavens opened and dumped a truck load of snow on London. Again. The perfect day for staying home or perhaps only venturing as far as the local cafe. But we had agreed to meet the boy's grandparents at the Imperial War Museum. Since they'd come down all the way from Scotland* it seemed churlish to cancel.

Actually the Underground was running ok and the boy was a little trooper through the snow. And he loved seeing the rockets and planes and tanks and stuff.

___
*not sure how they're going to dig their way back into Scotland

Tech-monster

The boy has a natural sense of curiosity that we wish to foster and nurture. But there are limits to what we will encourage. These are experiments where we've had to draw the line. Although sadly, lines were drawn too late.

1. Plastic forks AND crayons in printers
2. CDs jammed into a PC drive
3. Two DVDs at once into a combi TV-DVD player*
4. Milk on a laptop keyboard
...and the latest...
5. Poker chips in a wii disc drive**

*when we finally bought a new and multi-region DVD on the cheap and hooked it up to the tv-dvd combi machine it took great offense at being supplanted and coughed up both the jammed DVDs - a minor tech miracle.

** UPDATE: After one failed attempt to fix the wii - I gave it one last try and it seems to be working. Turns out there are about 8 screws in a wii console that you really don't need at all.

The Cowboy Knight

The Cowboy Knight, originally uploaded by London looks.

It's the nursery's Christmas party today, and they demanded that the children arrive in 'fancy dress' (American translation: costume). I knew I had two costumes I could pull together at short notice - cowboy and knight. I could have done pirate,too - but that would have taken ironing - so that was immediately ruled out.

I asked the boy "Do you want to be a cowboy or a knight?"

His response: A cowboy knight.

Well, of course.

Never mind that he looks a bit like he's headed to a costume ball of a white supremacy group raising money for 2nd Amendment rights protection, I'm sure it will be a lovely Christmas party.

As you are not

Thanks to the wonders of Twitter, I caught the story about the little boy who dressed as Daphne before it made the headlines. When there were 20 comments on the blog, not 15,000. And they were all supportive.

My initial response was to be positive, too. If the kid wants to be Daphne - then what do I care? But then I thought, hey - wait a minute. The boy was having second thoughts and the mom was pushing him to go ahead and do it. She's thinking tolerance and "accept me as I am"- but part of a parent's job, too is helping children to traverse the minefield of cultural expectations. To know when it's worth going with the flow and when it's worth saying 'screw you'. Or whichever choice of vocabulary you want your five your old to use on such occasions.

And my next thoughts were since when does Daphne wear a pink dress? And pink boots? Eh? Since when? And since when is Daphne's hair the color of a traffic cone? Only through

the wonders of Google image search did I realise that this woman had dressed her child in the live action film version of Daphne, not the purple frocked, cuban heel wearing Daphne (sexy, yet deceptively practical). Tsk, tsk. What kind of message is that to give to a five year old? That old school Scooby is to be disregarded, passed over? Where is this woman's respect for the classics? I asked my boy whether that was a boy or a girl - and he instantly identified

the child in the picture as a boy - but though he's watched far, far, far too much Scooby for a middle class parent to admit comfortably - he did not recognise this as a Daphne costume. He said 'pumpkin hair' - when I asked what the boy was wearing.

But more disturbing than all of that is the sexualisation of the whole debate. A little boy wants to be Daphne and people are worried that he'll be gay or people are worried that people will be worried that he's gay. Hello, he's five. I don't care whether sexual preferences are innate, partly innate or partly acculturated or if you can turn gay by wearing a pink dress, five is too young to be even thinking about stuff like that. Why are we sexualising kids so young? My son sometimes wears my shoes and says "I'm mommy." It means nothing. At least nothing sexual anyway. And if it did, it's likely that he'd become a lesbian - as I wear nothing but flats and shoes with plenty of toe room. Comfort is everything.

Like the boy in the blog post, my boy also loves Scooby. Sometimes he pretends to be Scooby, sometimes Fred - and yes, sometimes Daphne. I don't make a big deal out of it. It's just pretend. But I have noted that he never pretends to be Velma or Shaggy, the two characters I've always closely identified with. Kids may not pick up on the sex thing, but they sure as heck can start picking out status stuff early. He's an Alpha type, I reckon. And the sweetest thing is that he doesn't realise yet what his mom and dad are really like. If my husband wants to be Shaggy or I want to be Velma as we play along with the boy - we're reassigned as Fred or Daphne. The well-groomed, well-dressed, popular types. We're gonna come a long way down in his eyes one day - and it may be soon.

But I also thought about my own son and his costume preferences. He likes being a pirate or a knight. Really anything that carries a weapon. Is this an indication of what he'll be when he grows up? Probably. He's clearly headed for a life of crime or maybe a brilliant career as a corporate raider.

Stand and deliver...

Time out

The clocks went back last night in the UK, so perhaps I did get to sleep in just a little bit before the three year old stomped into our bedroom and threw himself into our bed, and said "Wakey, wakey". He twitched the curtains above our head to let in a smidgeon of damp, gray light.

Daylight savings have been controversial for a number of years and the rhetoric is ramping up. A growing lobby is urging that the UK should go to double summer time in the summer and GMT +1 in the winter. A permanent shift of an hour. Folks are even saying a change would combat global warming. (I'm unconvinced).

Euro-sceptics will have noticed this would put us on exactly the same time as Brussels. A conspiracy of closer alignment by fiat rather than treaty.

The Scottish contingency and farmers have been vociferously protesting against the double summer time idea. Let's dismiss the farmers first and out of hand, because farmers raise more complaints than heads of cattle or bushels of wheat.

But the Scots may have a point. It's darker up there in the winter and in the summer is stays light quite late enough already. A +1 shift would mean it would be dark til mid-morning in the winter. Which you don't need a policy review to know would suck.

Personally, I'm against the change. I hate, hate, hate getting up in the dark and this would mean more days of getting up in the dark. And since, I - you know - work. I still wouldn't get to take advantage of more daylight in the winter as I'd be - you know - working. But most people I know here in London are in favor of the change.

A modest proposal

If folks in London want to change so much, let 'em. Let northerly parts of the UK like Scotland or Northern Ireland or westerly bits like Wales stay on GMT or BST in the summer. You see, that would work. Devolution of the clock. An overthrow of the tyranny of time.

I grew up in a state with roughly 10-15% of the population of the UK. And we had two time zones - Eastern in East Tennessee and Central and Middle and West Tennessee. It didn't result in perpetual confusion. It was fine.

You know it makes sense.