dom.blog

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.

One of the nice things about working for an international company is a valuable expansion to the worldwide network of sofas to crash on. Last weekend Chris from the Berlin office took advantage of ours, and we ended up on a cultural journey I like to call ‘From Manet to M&M World’ which also included a strange night out in Angel to see The Urban Voodoo Machine, a bloke with an awful mockney accent and a ‘reverse strip’. (Imagine what you think that means, and you’ve probably got it.)

I also had the dubious pleasure of introducing a German to First Capital Connect during the morning rush hour, which is a bit like flying unprepared celebrities out to the middle of famines for Comic Relief. By the time we had crammed ourselves into the fake compartments at the back, with the door that doesn’t open and the emergency ladder made of wood, his eyes were filled with pity, and I’m half-hoping for a €5 a month donation so that the villagers of Highbury might one day dig our own railway line.

In other news, the Book Club I nerdishly co-founded at work had its first successful gathering, reminding me why being in a book club is (a) awesome; and (b) clearly better than belonging to the rival FIFA gaming association.

On Friday Joshua turned 24, so we threw a retirement party where I got the song ‘I Am Europe’ firmly stuck in my head. Not even the music of Carmen could dislodge it yesterday, magnificent as it was, though the fact I can now compare operas I’ve seen at the Royal Albert Hall recently with a straight face should be some sort of cause for alarm. And then last night I went back to News Revue with a twist, for the latest run was directed by Kat, and very funny it was too.