Category Archives: Family

The Reason Why I Don’t Go Out Much Nowdays

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At the beginning of this week I received an email informing me that The Streets concert, which I had bought tickets for the day they were released, has been cancelled, due to the singer leaving the band. We were quite disappointed about this, this being one of the few bands we wish to see live.

Not to be too put off by ths news, we looked forward, instead, to a Linton Kwesi Johnson gig, tickets to which I got for Jo’s birthday. Unfortunately, we couldn’t get a babysitter in time, which meant that Jo and our friend Chris went instead, leaving me happily at home to take care of Freya.

I got a telephone call about an hour after Jo’s departure, informing me that the concert had changed date to next Sunday. This actually didn’t turn out as bad as it sounds, though, since Jo and I have time to get a babysitter sorted for that date, and Jo and Chris could spend all evening, until 4am, drinking Gin and Tonic.

Still undeterred, we went to town today to see James Hollingworth, a Swedish musician known from the 70’s for creating some absolute masterpieces. Anything that is entitled “The elk are demonstrating”, “I am a toothbrush”, and “Ebert” (with the immortal opening lyrics, “Hello, what’s your name? My name is Ebert and I’ve got a frog in my pocket”) deserves to been seen live, and we were looking forward to all three of us being entertained on this rainy afternoon.

Surprise, surprise: there was no concert. We had completely messed up the dates, and James was probably somewhere miles away drinking tea and eating dainty biscuits, because he is scheduled to play next weekend.

If I were to be pessimistic about the whole thing, I could add that our friends from London went back on Tuesday, Wolves lost 3-1 on Friday night, and I start work tomorrow (after a year of paternity leave), but I won’t.

About Chip, Sam And Indigo

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Chip, Sam and Indigo went back to England earlier on, having spent four days with us in the north, and three days in Stockholm.

Chip (Freya’s godfather) had really gone to town with Freya’s birthday presents, with my personal favourite being a Peppa Pig DVD boxset. He had even bought Jo and me a present each, mine being a particularly wicked t-shirt with a print of a Commodore 64.

This was the first time that we’d met Sam and her five year-old daughter, Indigo (who shares the same birthday date as our beloved Freya), although we’d virtually seen her, thanks to Skype.

Sam seems to compliment Chip in certain ways, most noticeably in A Tai Chi symbol stylee: she is a fantastic milkless coffee black, he an unsightly pasty white. They share a similarity in height, and, to some extent, personality, both being laid-back, understanding and kind. Sam does have issues with Chip’s total inability to use time effectively. He has managed to survive this exceedingly irritating trait for two decades, with friends choosing to elevate his dithering to an endless list of humurous tales, which have almost become folklore.

Sam, on the other hand, has taken Chip’s problem to hand, which is extremely interesting to see. Now he is the one becoming frustrated (and, on occasion, has the vaccuous look of Ozzy Ozbourne, being led by the hand). Sweet, sweet karma.

Indigo is a sensitive, vibrant five year-old, with a penchant for being a rascal to Chip, and an angel with Freya. They got on like the proverbial house on fire, and were even seen nuzzling each other on the sofa like cats. It was a truly great experience for them both to have an intimate week with each other.

Freya was also seen warming to Chip, climbing onto his chest and sticking her finger into his navel. We have no idea how Chip felt about it (he did mention his bell-button was a sensitive spot), but Jo and I see this as a ten on the progress-o-meter.

Summer Holidays: The One With Freya’s Birthday

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Freya is two years old today. Luckily it’s been fantastic weather, which has allowed us to have cake-eating and present-opening in the garden.

Although we have been explaining to her what her birthday is about, she didn’t quite seem to grasp the enormity and strangeness of receiving the amount of presents she did. We were about ten people all together, which made for a fair few surprises in tantalising wrapping, and she largely ignored the whole event, leaving Jo and I to unveil her gifts.

Jo seemed to think that it was not actually the presents that were the problem, but the actual wrapping paper. Once she had got past that mental boundary, she could show an interest in what she was given.

Chip had done his bit (and a lot more) by bringing a shed-full of (really nice) presents, as well as a two-metre inflatable heart that we hung from a nearby tree.

All in all it was a very enjoyable and successful day, though Jo, Jo’s mum and I were thouroughly exhausted by the end of the day, with all the preparation (and baking and washing-up) that such an occassion involves.

Summer Holidays: The One With Peppe

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You know, writing a blog ( known in today’s vernacular as ‘blogging’) is no easy task. Although it may appear to the untrained eye that I write the first thing that comes into my head without even glancing for bad punctuation, grammar use or syntactic errors, I actually don’t.

But even disregarding the technical aspect of ‘blogging’ (blogging! What will they think of next?), there is more to making it look like a random assortment of the twenty-five letters of the alphabet (I never use ‘z’ out of principal, except back there, but that was for explanatory purposes, and except for the word ‘pizzle‘, which simply demands to be used, to the point of becoming hackneyed).

Sometimes the most difficult part of writing is not the words, or word structure, or knowing what to write: it’s flow.

I can spend an eternity writing the opening sentence, deleting it, rewriting it, realising I’m going to hit a dead-end, sit thinking about it with pen in hand, get frustrated, then forget the whole idea and go and get really drunk. This was nearly one of those situations, and only exists because of this rather long aside.

Hobnobbing with the elite

Anyway, the original point of this entry was going to be that last Saturday I met Peppe Eng ( a well-known Swedish sports journalist/commentator who has become even more well-known due to a recent appearence on some celebrity ‘learn different dance styles every week and embarrass yourself on national TV by showing that you dance like a pelican with a stick up its arse’ dance show/competition), and that Inger performed two short dance routines with him; however, in getting this entry together I ended up, after every failed attempt and deletion, going to play my latest PS2 acquisition, a psychedelic Beatmania game, Frequency.

Three or four days of tapping shoulder buttons in progressively anarchic and near impossible combinations has led to me seeing the game when I close my eyelids. A sure sign, then, that this game rocks.

I was particularly chuffed with this purchase because it’s an old game, sought after by the cognoscenti, and I got it brand-spankling new for a tenner at some Toys R Us style shop.

Although ten pounds of good quality LSD would get you extremely fucked for a very long time, this is a good second choice, with the added benefit that your friends get also get arsed for the same money. Like Rez, this game is a work of art.

Oh, did I mention that I met Peppe Eng?

Summer Holidays: At The Hospital

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Jo woke up at 6.30 this morning, crying in pain from what I first thought was a headache.

She suffers from the occasional migraine, but this was significantly worse than anything I have seen her experience. She, herself, admitted that giving birth without any pain-killers was nothing compared to this particular pain (!).

Luckily, Jo’s mum was at hand to call an ambulance (a more normal occurence when living in the countryside, one-hundred kilometres from the nearest hospital) and after an hour’s speed-ride, we got to spend seven hours in a room with Jo constantly in pain.

These five-hundred minutes of nothingness (for Inger, Freya and me, that is) were interspersed with doctors’ and nurses’ visits, giving Jo morphine, taking her away for various x-rays and scans, and, as Freya and I got to see, taking brain fluid from near Jo’s spine.

Freya, as usual, seemed in her element, just thankful, I suppose, to be in Mum’s, Dad’s and mormor’s presence. I went to the local toy-shop after about five hours (not knowing how long we would be there) and bought her a toy doctor’s kit, and a 4cm tall Barbapapa.

Jo was given a clean bill of health at around 7pm (no tumour or hemorrhaging). It is possible, the doctor said, that this was a particularly unusual form of migraine, coupled with a cramp-induced headache. Whatever it was, I just hope it is as frequent as it is unusual.