It's been a couple of months since the last Kids, And Why You Shouldn't Eat More Than One For Breakfast. Speculation has understandably been rife as to the reason for the gap, and there have been all sorts of wild reports in the press. If you believe everything you read in the papers, here are the top five Reasons For Two Months of Inactivity From Scotland's Premier Blogging Super-Genius:
5. I had a bad motorcycle accident and have been recuperating at my farm in northern Poland.
4. I've been spending all my time finishing off the upcoming blockbuster novel, The Haunting of Barney Thomson, due for release in September 2007.
3. I had a classic rock star 'lost weekend', binge drinking with my grunge junky buddies in LA, before checking into the Betty Ford.
2. I was sent on a posting to Afghanistan, under the new Foreign Office money-saving policy, where they just send the spouse but not the officer.
1. I disappeared into the same temporal rift in space time that allowed those two mysterious crows to materialise in our attic a few months ago.
Well, some of the above is true, although it was my mobile phone which disappeared into the rift in space-time. However, the principal reason for two months of inactivity was that in the middle of March I went to Las Vegas and married Jennifer Lopez.
It didn't work out.
And so, here we all are, in Poland in May. Thirty degrees, not a breath of wind. Summer has arrived with its suffocating pillow of heat. The Gollum that I am, I spend my days in dark, shadowy corners, holding out for winter. Only seven months to go, if it comes at all.
We've done a fair bit of travelling recently. Some of the great European capitals. Berlin, London, Paris, Millport. Went to Berlin to see Bob Dylan. The family, while quite happily hopping aboard the train for the ride to Germany, all refused to attend the concert. Bob was ok. New to my Dylan addiction that I am, it was the first time I'd seen him. Stories are legion of Bob giving awful concerts, due to boredom or drink or lack of rehearsal. Equally, they say he can be mesmerizing. Sadly, in Berlin he was neither. He was ok. He stood there under his hat and croaked his way through sixteen songs, old and new. So, in the six months or so since my addiction became manifest, I've bought 18 albums, read the 750 page biography and seen him in concert. My family are regarding me strangely, but at least I have so far stopped myself writing him a letter starting, "Dear Bob, I'm not weird or anything, but I listen to your music ALL DAY. Would you like to read one of my books where lots of people get murdered?..."
The rest of the time we chalked off the sites of Berlin in three days. It took just a five minute stroll through Checkpoint Charlie to have 'Oliver's Army' in my head for the rest of the weekend. Must happen to everyone. We seemed to spend a lot of our time in Dunkin' Donuts, in that usual way that you do with kids. 'We'll trade you a trip to the Reichstag for a strawberry frosted with sprinkles...'
I took Two of Two to London to see a doctor about headaches. The wee man has suffered from migraines for a few years. Every so often it gets really bad, we get it checked out, we get told it's migraines, he lives with it. The Polish are a hypochondriac lot; that and the doctors all see the diplomatic community coming and start referring you all over the place in a self-perpetuating cycle of medical check-ups. The third guy in said, yep, probably migraines, but still, get an MRI, a catscan and a full frontal lobotomy just to make sure. And stick some leeches on his forehead for the time being just in case. So we fixed up an appointment in London to talk to someone we could take seriously. We saw a wonderful man who came straight out of the Hollywood book of English brain consultants. Grey-haired, bit of a wry laugh, glint in the eye, gentle sense of humour. He's got migraines, he said. Don't get his head opened up.
Thus comforted, we spent a classic father/son day wandering the streets of London. Ate ice cream, took a pedalo out on the lake in Regents Park, ate pizza, looked for toilets. He wanted burgers and war. So we visited Burger King and the Imperial War Museum. The burgers were fine. He walked into the Museum, immediately presented with that wonderful and eye-opening display of tanks and submarines and aircraft that whacks you in the face the minute you walk in, and said... 'I'm bored.' We never got to experience the trenches.
TPCKAM and I managed a weekend alone in Paris, to watch an amateur stage production of Il Est Toujours Minuit Pour Barney Thomson, which was great fun. That aside, we spent two days wandering the streets of Paris, enjoying being able to sit and have a coffee or wander around a small art gallery, without two wee faces looking up at us, demanding ice cream, a toilet, doughnuts or saying, 'Dad, Dad, we're bored, we want to do something mental to make you shout at us.'
Millport was Millport. It doesn't change. There didn't even seem to be any Poles there. They can't have found it yet. One of Two got sick and spent her two days sitting on the toilet. Two of Two got back to his grandmas before getting sick, and then proceeded to break all records for child vomitting in a ten hour period. Seriously, if there are records for that kind of thing, and it being a competitive world, there ought to be - the Nestle Child Vomitting Championships, brought to you in association with Domino's Pizza - he would be in with a shout. I doubt a body could physically vomit more than he managed to. And, of course, he started at ten in the evening, so he and I had a long, long sleepless night. Nowt worse than your kid being sick, and not being able to do anything about it. At two in the morning he started blaming me for his ails, because I was making him drink water every time. Perfect logic. He was throwing the water up, so if I wasn't making him drink it, then he wouldn't be being sick. It was ALL MY FAULT. So I didn't make him drink water the next time. Ten minutes later he threw up pure bile. Thereafter he drank water and removed me from his line of fire. He was still being sick the next day, and it took six days before he was back to the hundred mile and hour dervish that he usually is. Whatever it was, it was vicious. We're blaming Tony Blair.
The travels continue. Next up, a night in Krakow, a long weekend in Barcelona and two weeks at a Bhuddist paragliding retreat in Bhutan.
Only six more weeks of school before two months summer holidays, which is very exciting...
