dom.blog

Americans do not call paracetamol paracetamol. In fact, I’m not sure what they do call paracetamol is paracetamol – it was probably replaced by high fructose corn syrup in the 1980s. This is mere cultural curiosity until you end up sprawled over a hotel bed with an exploding head, conversations running through your head like the rants of drunken angels. (Do other people hear voices in their head when they’re ill, or is that just me?) At that point, you will long for Old World paracetamol like you never imagined.

That was the low of Chicago Part 3. On the plus side, I finally made like a tourist and rode the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier

Back in the UK, it became clear that it’s not just paracetamol keeping me rooted in this ridiculous (nay, charming) country \ continent. I mean, come on, wasn’t that Doctor Who finale just joyous and wonderful? And a mere 15 minutes later, Eurovision! As you can see, Josh and I both flew the flag for our respective fatherlands (well, loosely) although in the end Cascada were disappointingly flat, and I was forced to switch my support to Finland at the last moment. (Note: be sure to always watch Eurovision with uninitiated non-Europeans, so you can observe afresh the incredulity that this is a real thing.)

And talking of cross-cultural initiations: last week I had the pleasure of taking a gaggle of Americans (plus one German) to News Revue. Thankfully, a little bit of prep work on the UK’s political \ cultural scene (“most elderly male celebrities are now facing charges, most people don’t like Michael Gove”) paid dividends.

Also seen: Star Trek Into Darkness (fun aside from the one moment where he calls Earth on a communicator, which caused my inner nerd to wince) and The Match Box at the Tricycle, a one-woman play about the death of her child and, I think it’s safe to say, probably the emotionally heavier of the two despite not having ‘Into Darkness’ in its name.

And to think that at least two people I read are now blogging ‘every day in May’. It’s now May bank holiday and I still have to write about Easter, when Cat and Josh stayed over at The House of The Selves Selfs and Cat masterminded an incredible Sunday roast.

But my excuse for this laxness is my shuttling between London and Chicago for work, which (I am fairly sure) concludes with a final trip next week. There’s something rather nice about being in a city as a non-tourist, even though you see much less of all the touristy things, and obviously most residents don’t spend their nights in a downtown hotel room. So instead of impressive skyscrapers and Lake Michigan and all of that, I’ll illustrate Chicago with their elevated metro system – the L (get it?) – which is both Not As Good As The Underground (obviously) and pretty impressive in its own right:

Oh, and obviously the fact that on my first visit I met up with Jamie!

I actually had my first trip delayed by a day in order to go see The Book of Mormon, which is a strange thing to bring up in an email thread but well worth holding out for. This was my very belated Christmas present delivery to Cat and Josh, and it was – basically – super awesome. Biting and funny but with a surprisingly warm and feelgood ending, and songs that I’ve been listening to slightly too often ever since.

Also in April: a family afternoon on Knettishall Heath (who knew it had a silent K?) with Julie, Kieron and Daisy, a visit from Daryl with the requisite Indian takeaway, and this blog’s birthday At 9 years old, this means it’s reached the next level of child development:

Children of this age develop a sense of self and find it important to gain social acceptance and experience achievement. Friends become increasingly important. Secret codes, shared word meanings and made up languages, passwords and elaborate rituals are important ways to strengthen the bonds of friendship. Close friends are almost always of the same sex, although children in this age group are usually increasingly interested in peers of the opposite sex.

Be prepared to use all your “patience” skills if caring for children this age, as they tend to think that they do not need any adult care or supervision. Yet, when they are left to care for themselves, they are lonely, unhappy, and sometimes frightened.

Secret codes and elaborate rituals, eh?

Pop pop.

When flying alone, who you end up sitting next to on a plane can be critical for a pleasant ‘trapped in a metal box’ experience. I shudder to recall the guy next to me on one flight who decided to watch a film about a man trapped under some rocks slowly cutting his own limbs off, thus setting off my squeamishness so much so that I ended up wrapping part of my top around my head in a makeshift vision-obstructing headscarf. I probably looked odd, but then again, he should have stuck with Tangled like all right-thinking people.

Anyway, in the last few weeks I’ve had a number of aeroplane companions. The woman with the toddler kept apologising for his existence, even though he did nothing much beyond smiling, repeating ‘aeroplane’ in Bosnian and lending me his Elmo. (In return I showed him my Kindle, which caused some confusion, even when his mother repeatedly explained it was a ‘book’. For some reason this made me feel slightly guilty.) It also helped that he was incredibly cute, while his mum came out with some unintentionally prescient work-related comments to which I had to nod and think “pretty sure there’s a meeting about that” to myself.

Before that, there was the newly-wed couple of conservative Christians from… I want to say Minneapolis. Somewhere beginning with M. And at this juncture, I want to stress that they were so incredibly deeply lovely that I’m kinda sorry I’ll never see them again. Still, we managed to pack in just about every clichéd socio-economic-political-linguistic conversation you could think of into that one flight, much to the amusement of the cabin staff. We did the guns they own, the god they worship and the government they don’t. We did Hobbes, Locke, gay marriage and Nigel Farage. Abortion? Check. Death penalty? Covered. Why people say “could care less” instead of “couldn’t care less” – they actually agreed with me on this one. Best plane debate ever.

And before that, there was no-one. I don’t mean that in a “creation of the world in seven days” sense, just that half of the seats on the plane were empty. Which was somewhat troubling, because I thought that wasn’t really supposed to happen anymore. Especially when you’re flying over the Atlantic, for goodness sake. It just seems horribly wasteful, and I feel that unused plane seats should be given up to a good cause – filling them up with tea bags, perhaps, because it is still sadly difficult to get a decent cup of tea to avert the mid-afternoon office slump.

This post brought to you by ‘Yes, I’m still in Chicago and still too lazy to write a proper blog’. Proper updates to follow. Or maybe I really will get around to writing about metro systems. Because the L is rather cool, you know.