the bleak midwinter

Winter at last. The first morning that we woke up to snow last week, One of Two said, ‘You always said we’d take the bikes to school in the snow, daddy. Can we?’

It was true. Back in September, when we were happily bike riding to school in nothing but t-shirts and shorts, I used to quip that we’d do this all year, even in winter, even in ten inches of snow. It was another sad case of feeble dad humour. As winter has mildly progressed, bike riding to school has been sporadic. A day here or there, followed by juvenile whining and a renewed moratorium on getting to school by way of exercise.

So last Wednesday we awoke to a light covering of snow, and One of Two made her out-of-the-blue request. ‘Wee man,’ I said to Two of Two, ‘you up for it?’ ‘Yep,’ he said, and that was that. Decision taken. By two young fools and an idiot. They were, I’m sure, imagining riding through light snow on a beautiful morning under picture perfect blue skies. Me? I just plain wasn’t thinking. Morning autopilot. We togged up – and here I didn’t think to put them in snow trousers, there was only one hat between the two of them, and they were wearing thin woollen gloves – and headed out into the blizzard.

Headed out into the blizzard. There’s a bit of a clue there for even the least perceptive parent…

The prevailing wind on the road to school is at our backs, so I reckoned on an ok trip, despite the cold. A hundred yards along the road One of Two made the first intimation that all was not well. ‘I hate this, dad,’ she said, ‘can we take the car?’ If there is a point of no return on the morning trip to school, this was at least a mile before it. This was the ideal point of return. This was the antonym of point of no return. A huge placard was being held aloft by three angels clad in white and singing softly. ‘The Point Of Return,’ it read. ‘Come on,’ I said, ‘we’ll be fine.’ We rode on.

At the bottom of the long slow hill, and before we’d turned onto the long stretch of straight road that makes up the bulk of the journey, Two of Two tossed his bike into a snowdrift, and the pair of them downed tools and refused to go any further. ‘Well, sports fans,’ I said, ‘if we go back, you have to struggle back up that hill in a blizzard. Or we can keep going, turn the corner, we’ll have the wind at our backs and we’ll be there in no time.’ It was classic, 1916-esque, let’s send three hundred thousand troops into a quagmire to get gunned down and we’ll be in Berlin in time for tea and buns. Pip, pip! Clearly it’s no coincidence that General Haig and I share the same first name.

We turned the corner and met the full force of the blizzard head on. Prevailing wind my bloody arse! cried the spawn in desperation. One of them, can’t remember which, rode on determinedly into it and the die was cast. The next mile and a half took a long time. They were both freezing and miserable, they would take it in turns to have little indomitable bursts, forge ahead into the cold, before collapsing in a wailing heap because they were dying. Meanwhile, the other would be stopped still on the pavement, demanding that I abandon them at the side of the road to go back and get the car.

The previous night TPCKAM had read a page or two of Ray Mears to me, in particular the section on how easy it is to die of hypothermia. So there we were, stuck half way to school, unable to go back, too miserable to go ahead, the kids improperly dressed and glacial, and me feeling like the Useless Moron Dad From The Planet Muppet, on the verge of killing his kids.

There was no flash of lightning, no saviour stopped at the side of the road. The kids saved the day. They cried a bit, but in the end they accepted that there was nothing else for it but knuckling down and getting on with it, which they did. They broke the back of the trip, turned the corner at the end and the last few hundred yards they were chipper and upbeat and had a sense of achievement which they wouldn’t have had with sitting in a warm car, stuck in traffic for twenty minutes. The last five minutes of the trip they were cracking jokes about wanting us all to ride home and get the car. In the end we were so late arriving at school that there weren’t too many of the gigantic-4x4-driving diminutive mum brigade there to see us three hardy and foolish souls finally cross the finish line. But we’d made it, humour and health intact.

Kids dispatched, I turned round and rode home. As I struggled along, riding once again, somehow, into the teeth of the blizzard, a man stopped in his car to take a picture of me on his cell phone. Bloody paparrazi. They get everywhere. Although, it might just have been because I was wearing shorts.

Black Cat

Last week we took the kids to an exhibition of the work of Jozef Wilkon, one of Poland’s most outstanding illustrators, author of illustrations and graphic layouts for more than 160 books for children and adults. I took that description out a catalogue. I’d never heard of him before. Wasn’t just painting. In recent years Jozef – born in 1930 – has branched out into sculptures in wood and art. The highlight was his depiction of Noah's Ark, a faithful recreation of that classic children’s story of God’s mass genocide of everyone on the planet bar one do-gooding family.

The kids were bored of course. The second they walked in. There was nothing interactive, and this generation’s kids need interactive. They looked at the giant rhino for about fifteen seconds, and then started asking when we were going to leave. Nothing was moving, there were no televisions, they were bored. In the second room there was a magnificent display of wooden fish, suspended from the ceiling. You could look at it for half an hour and still be finding new idiosyncrasies in the intricacies of the carving and caricature. Although, obviously not if you have three children with you. (We had borrowed one for the afternoon, because we don’t have enough.) We moved on, continually fire-fighting the let’s-go-home talk.

In the final room there was a painting of a cat. Wasn’t really one for the kids, as the exhibition is presented, but by then they were so bored they didn’t notice. It is a black cat, standing straight up on its hind legs, as if human. The cat has human female breasts. At the bottom of the picture there are a couple of copulating locusts, or some other bug of locust-like quality. Presumably Jozef meant something by the copulating insects, but I’m glad to say I’ll never know. Anyway, I’m walking through this room, past the various paintings and sculptures. I glance at the cat for the first time, it blinks at me, I move on. I look back at the cat, assuming it’s one of those pictures that looks different depending on the angle. I can’t get it to blink at me again. I walk up to it and examine it more closely. It still doesn’t blink, and clearly is just a regular painting, without any blinking capabilities. I stand beside it, bending my head in a variety of directions. Nothing. I walk away from the cat, back round to where I first set eyes on it, and glance round. It doesn’t blink. Five times I walked along the stretch of carpet from which I’d first viewed the cat, wanting to see if I could repeat the peculiar set of circumstances which led me to think that the cat had blinked at me. I couldn’t. It refused to blink again.

There are four possible explanations to this mystery.

1. The picture of the cat is possessed by Satan, or some other more generic demon, and that at some point in the near future I’m going to find myself in a horror movie situation resulting in a lot of fear, huge amounts of screaming and large quantities of blood.

2. I was just imagining it.

3. I’m going nuts, which might explain all the ravens sitting on the telephone wires outside my office window.

4. Someone is intentionally messing with my head, in an Alfred Hitchcock movie type way…which might explain all the ravens sitting on telephone wires outside my office window.

Some part of me feels like I should go back in there, but the large breasted blinking cat’s got me nervous.

Upstairs from the ark and the children’s paintings and the felines-under-demonic-possession, was an exhibition of 21st century Polish art. The children were very excited about that. You can see their faces. ‘Yay! More paintings!’

It was modern art as you’d expect, all guarded by severe Polish uber-women, ready to strike at the first hint of anyone trying to touch any of the pieces, or at the first hint of anyone even remotely beginning to enjoy themselves. There were a few of the art installations presented by the medium of television. These naturally attracted the kids like chocolate. They sat enthralled, watching a man paint a picture, just because it was on tv. Had it been an actual man painting an actual picture, live and in person, they would have whined about being bored and attempted a quick incursion to the exits.

Modern art is as modern art does. Three giant canvases painted beige... “Untitled, 2006.” An enormous hand, with the fingers severed and hovering above it… “Anatomy of Beauty.” A woman’s face and head juxtaposed against a forest… “Coffin Portrait.” I could go on, except I can’t really remember any others. Not that I didn’t enjoy it, but I prefer a crowded 17th Century sea battle scene myself.

The kids’ complaining increased in intensity and finally we relented and took them off in search of cake. Our brief foray into the world of art was over, having not been entirely successful. As we walked out the large front doors, back into a chill January day in eastern Europe, I thought I could hear a low, evil feline snigger, a noise fated to crawl down anyone’s spine.

The cat was still watching…

Blooms On The Trees And The Mysterious Disappearance of LJ Frost

This is not a recent picture. You can tell that because there’s snow in it. I just thought I’d put it here to show everyone what winter used to be like before we completely screwed the planet up. They say that winter will arrive in eastern Europe some time next month, but by then it will be too late. It’s already spring. During the summer I’m this complete temperature junkie, permanently checking the 7-day forecast for cooler weather, but in the winter I usually switch off. But not this non-winter. Keep waiting for minus 20. Even checking the weather in Moscow, because it ain’t going to get freezing here if it ain’t freezing there.

We make the kids sit at the dinner table every night, fighting Two of Two and his urge to leg it the second he’s finished eating his tomato ketchup and whatever substance is lurking underneath it on that day. And every night, when he tries to run off, we say, “You can’t leave until everyone’s finished, you’re going to sit there and talk to us so you don’t become a weird teenager.” And he says… “I don’t care.” One of his new catchphrases. Very teenage. Already. The other night TPCKAM was giving him a bit of a lecture about the phrase, telling him he had to drop it. In classic unintended undermining of other parent mode, I chose the moment to tell TPCKAM about one of the phrases she overuses. The conversation went like this…

Me: While we’re on the subject, you’ve got to stop saying ‘It’s not rocket science.’

TPCKAM: Why? Do I say it a lot?

Me: All the time. Sorry, but you know…

TPCKAM: Thanks for telling me in front of the kids.

Me: You do it to everyone, usually when talking about the Blair government.

One of Two: Dad’s right.

TPCKAM: If I can’t say that, what am I going to say instead?

Two of Two: You can use the F-word, like Dad.

Enough said…

So it’s January and we’re going to school by bike some days. Not that the kids are happy about this. The other day, riding home into a little bit of a wind, there were objections all round. First One of Two stopped and complained about being tired. I couldn’t hear because of the traffic and rode on. Then Two of Two produced a hundred mile an hour whine which went along the lines of… “I’m tired, and I’ve had a hard day at school, and everyone blamed me for letting in four goals, and I’m miserable, and my legs are tired, and the wind’s in my face and that’s making me more tired, and I’m going to slow down and then you’re going to ride off and I’ll be lost and I’ll never see you again…”

I probably shouldn’t have laughed, but he got over it anyway. We rode on. One of Two caught up with us, tried to pass Two of Two, but he was weaving around like a drunk goalkeeper, and she couldn’t get past. She got off her bike, meticulously leant it up against a post, and stormed off to stand with her arms folded in a huff because the world was against her. Turning round, Two of Two noticed that his sister had downed tools and so he too got off his bike, laid it down in the middle of the pavement and sat on it. A wee boy. Miserable.

It was one of those moments that as a parent you want to be able to frame. Gloom, anger, hormones, resentment, antagonism, cold, wind, rain in the air, and all beside six lanes of fast moving traffic. I leant on my bike and laughed. I was still in the same position half and hour later when the doctors came.

We got home in the end. I was Kissinger rather than Nixon, and you know, I didn’t even use the F-word once. At some point even the most miserable kid realises that when they’re out on a bike and they get off in a huff, there’s no getting home until they get back on it.

It ain’t rocket science…

Things To Do On A Saturday in Warsaw...

The festives are over, life returns to normal. Sporadically a Thank You note arrives from someone’s children, which only serves to remind us that we never got our own children to write thank you notes. Meant to, the Christmas holidays seemed so long that it appeared inevitable that at some point we’d all have time to sit down and do them… yet the Thank You notes never happened.

Now that school has returned, I can go back to working on my movie script, The Monkfish Cowboy, which is in development with Dan Films. Despite the fact that I usually write serial killer books, and that Dan have in recent years made both Creep and Severance, Monkfish Cowboy is pretty straight romantic comedy, complete with comedy sidekicks and not a slasher or homicidal lunatic in sight.

Saturday morning, I dragged everyone out of bed by eight, and we went skating. The new family activity. Having learned to disengage myself from the sides, I’ve quickly got over the general excitement of being able to do something that I never thought myself capable of, and now I just look like a guy who can’t skate very well. I’ve thought of getting a big “I’ve only been doing this for a week” banner for my head, but that would just be stupid.

We came home, and TPCKAM took the kids for haircuts. This allowed me to do some work on Monkfish Cowboy. I’ve been tasked with examining the journey taken by my two romantic leads. Film people always talk of the journey that the characters take through a film, and by that they don’t mean the 12.35 from Paddington to Bath. I’ve also been asked to invest my male lead with ‘dynamic lethargy’. I didn’t quite manage that in the ninety minutes that the others were out of the house.

A couple of months ago our ambassador held a cocktail party for Michael Palin, who was on his way through Warsaw in the middle of his latest travel show. I nearly didn’t go, because I imagined I would just stand there like a complete lemon staring at the man in awe, before asking if he wouldn’t mind saying, ‘Listen, mate, strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government…’ the finest single line in all movie history. In the end I went. Didn’t talk to him for a while, mingled in that way that I hate, before our ambassador dragged me over to introduce me to Palin, which he did with the words, ‘Michael, this is Douglas, he’s one of your lot, he’s written a film script.’ And then he left me to it. ‘It’s a romantic comedy about monkfish,’ I said to an actual member of the actual Monty Python team. He laughed nervously and said, ‘Don’t tell me any more, that’s all I need to know.’ I suddenly realised that due to the paucity of the introduction, he had me pegged as a civil servant with a film script, and that he thought I was going to ask him to read it or give me advice or some other awful thing. Without blurting out hysterically that the script had been optioned, I managed to get across that it was in development with people who actually make films, and that he didn’t need to worry about me asking him to star in it. He visibly relaxed, but I felt like we never really recovered in our roles as a couple of guys standing at a cocktail party.

Apparently Michael Palin had a part in You’ve Got Mail, but he was left on the cutting room floor. If ever a movie needed Michael Palin. He said that Meg Ryan was really nice, which I just thought I’d mention because everyone thinks Meg Ryan’s awful since her brief stint on Parky.

On Saturday afternoon we went to an exhibition of the Terracotta Army in Warsaw’s oldest shopping mall. Despite the fact that it’s more of a detachment than an actual army, and that most of the soldiers on display are replicas – there are a few in glass cases which (presumably) are the real thing – it’s a fascinating display, kept the kids interested for up to fifteen minutes and made us all want to go and visit China. Or at least to have a no.37 with fried rice for dinner.

The kids then charged to the nearest toy shop to spend some of their Christmas money. Two of Two bought crap. It’s his inalienable right as a wee boy. One of Two bought a giant teddy bear. We waited for the official naming ceremony, hoping that it was going to be something cool. She has a giant dog called Angelberry, which is a cool name for a stuffed dog. However, all her other toys have names like Mrs Pink, and Miss Flower, and Happy and Giggles.

She named the giant teddy bear…Giggles. You’ve already got a Giggles, we said. Now I’ve got another one, she said. Giggles has taken his place at our dining table, place set and everything. Today I’m supposed to be teaching Giggles, the stuffed teddy, mathematics. To be fair to the lad Giggles, he’s picking it up a lot better than the kids.

Saturday wound down with the kids watching the newly arrived Biker Mice From Mars, an education in popular British culture, and probably more important than maths and learning about the Terracotta Army.

The day drifted to a conclusion. Patches chewed the wires, Giggles sat in a big fluffy motionless heap in the corner, and outside the first hint of summer ruffled the tops of the trees...