Holidays! Finally. Dagis finishes up by sending F home with a fresh set of heavy colds, and the cheery Jul announcement that we may all have lice by now.
As my school term finished with a national test, the relentlessly depressing grey of the Gothenburg winter suddenly bloomed into festive market season. Glittering stars everywhere, musical neon windmills and whalesong tree decorations in Brunsparken, Santa hats for all. Tomte hats, sorry. Although tomtarna are also the elfish helpers here, which I find confusing even if they do wear the same hats.
"Is Santa coming to visit you at Christmas, F?"
"Yeah."
"What's he going to do?"
"Bing pents. Feya vill ha en car." F's Swinglish is more and more fluent. I can't tell if she's trying to say the Swedish - jag vill ha (I want to have) or the rather more oracular English "I will have", but the end result is likely the same.
-
We have tickets for the Opera's Luciatorget. Well, I'm getting in because I'm performing. F and V have seats as a result. Let's say tickets, it's easier.
I'm reading a translation of a classic Swedish Jul poem, Tomten. Not technically Santa or any of his elves in this context, but an older sprite rather like a house elf. The one Coke stole the whole Santa look from, in fact. We don't have them in the UK, so there's no equivalent. This has made the translation difficult. So difficult in fact that the original translator has basically given up in places, and abandoned niceties like rhyme or actual meaning. I spent four hours trying to improve on it the previous night.
While I stand in the wings, theatre staff dancing round me in polar bear costumes, V is dancing an entirely different dance in the auditorium. F is high on gingerbread, handed out free in the lobby beforehand, and sits still for about three minutes before wanting to run all round the theatre shouting excitedly. When I see them after the show, F is still doing this (although it rapidly degenerates into crying because the queue for the saffron buns is too long) and V looks like she's run a marathon.
I get my chance the following day, during Hagakyrkans Lucia concert. Actual tickets this time, courtesy of Mormor, who won them in a lotto at the christmas market where we accidentally stole the wheel of cheese. Long story, obviously.
Haga is the church we were married in, it's got a lovely old-fashioned wooden interior. The pews have little doors at the ends. F likes little doors. You can say "bye bye!" to pappa and close them behind you, then shout "hej hej!" when you come back in. A breezy church lady whisks past us smiling and stops, as though incidentally, to mention that there's a fully loaded creche room just off the nave where you can take restless children. I'm sure it's coincidence. I'm sure F didn't open the pew door into her shin.
When the lights dim and the candles come up, and the ethereal choir of white-gowned children float down the aisle singing Santa Lucia, F stills and points, and silently bobs about to get a good view of the Lucia Train as it passes. I am an embodiment of glowing paternal pride. Fifteen seconds later she's screaming in the face of a toddler in the pew behind her, who has dropped his toy cow next to her and has the temerity to want it back. We spend the rest of the concert driving wooden cars up and down the wheelchair access ramp out back.
-
V has booked us an overnight boat trip to Denmark to mark the beginning of her holidays! It's the middle of the week, the ferry is nearly empty, and F has the rule of the play area.
Although the plastic slide and Harry Potter Lego display are big favourites, the main attraction is the skiing arcade game in the middle of the games room. F stands on the skis, slapping the flashing buttons and saying Oo. Until mummy pays for her to have a go, then she skidaddles dismissively. V dutifully attempts the race in her stead and comes 5th. Out of five.
The ferry marks F's most conscious introduction to restaurant eating yet. She is very impressed with the buffet. You can see her thinking 'I get to choose what I want? And I don't have to eat the rest?' Mainly salad with a token sausage, followed by a large tub of Mr Whippy from the ice cream station, then.
After the ferry comes the swimming. The hotel in Frederikshamn has a huge pirate-themed water park, complete with tropical thunder storms, an outdoor whirlpool and a giant waterslide you ride inflatable rafts down. Also, because luck is fickle, two coachloads of teenagers trying to pull each other in the bubble spa.
F plays very happily for two hours in the kids area, which features a spurting whale fountain that looks cute until you realise it's hopelessly beached and not going to live long. We try her in the shallows of the wave pool, but by then she's tired, and an ill-timed thunderous wave storm puts her off.
She shares our hotel room very happily. Also all of mummy's chips in the restaurant. We were worried she'd be restless, but she's all played out after the water park and ferry trip. This does mean we have to go to bed at 1900 too. It's been a while since I did that; after an hour of sleep, I get up and go and read downstairs in the lobby (Brian Aldiss, Greybeard, very good) until I'm tired enough to sleep properly.
The morning after she eschews more swimming for lying in the cot between our beds, watching Cars on the iPad and eating cashews from a can. Between that, the breakfast buffet and the Julbord on the ferry home, she settles into a hotel lifestyle pretty fast.
Two days later, I'm kicked off the computer. "Pappa go kitchen. Cook! Feya hungy," she tells me. This is mostly a ruse so she can play on my spinning office chair, but she follows it up by standing in the kitchen door and setting out the menu.
"Ish ingers! Peas! Vill ha glass a milk." Sweets to follow, easy on the going easy. Have it sent up to the penthouse, put it on my bill.
-
Currently, with the official Swedish Christmas now three and a half hours away, we are sprawled on the floor after a day of cleaning. Well, V is. I'm helpfully writing about it instead. F's main present is being assembled, and the screws don't fit properly. Glue bottles, assorted ratchets and impatience are accumulating around us, under the fixed stares of a half-dozen painted tomtar. The pastry crust on my mince pie is as ragged as our tempers, there are two kilos of meatballs to fry tomorrow morning before the family arrives and there's nowhere left to hang any washing.
Ho ho ho.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Eat Your Heart Out, Peter Pan
Slowly, we sink into the depths of winter.
Around half four on a cold, if not bitterly so, saturday, F and I are playing at Plikta, the big playpark in Slottskogen. The light is gone, so the park is floodlit and increasinly deserted. Occasional joggers go by, helicopters sometimes rush overhead on the way to the nearby hospital (which F loves) and the usual muffled city noises fill the night.
But the park itself feels somwhat chill. Too much blackness and not enough children running about playing - a playpark can be sinister in such conditions. F is not done with the swings yet, however, so I hold on a little longer.
She won't wear her gloves, although her hands are pink and cold. It's not below freezing, quite a mild night compared to the rest of the week in fact, even if the rising night makes it seem colder. We are, however, the last people there.
Playgroup is a mixed blessing, I have been thinking. F has breakfast and dinner with us during the week, but little more than that. She is tired by the end of a week of dagis. Midweek she's pretty happy to arrive there, reciting the names of her teachers and friends. She waved me off before I had a chance to last week, rushing off to push a toy pram about without a lookback.
But by Thursday or Friday, the smiles are faded, replaced with the blank look of someone who knows she can't do much to change the day ahead and will have to suffer through it. Saturday and Sunday are good, we can catch up and play. Then on Monday she looks mournful when we leave her again. She tried to climb the bars of the sandpit the other morning, in fact, giving us a desperate sad smile as she asked us to come and play with her this time.
Oh, wee lady, you just wait until school starts. Or a job. I often hear my fellow European immigrants complaining that Swedish schools don't get children ready fast enough, that they let them play for too long. Bloody Protestant work ethic, it makes me think. Why not just get them to stitch shoes if you're so hell-bent on getting them industrious? Let them play. Plenty of time to work later, and having nine-to-five daycare away from the family is quite work enough when you aren't even two.
Anyway - this is why I've stayed longer than I meant to at Plikta, and why we're the last ones at the roundabout in the gathered dusk.
Good old parental guilt, it's a highly horsepowered engine. F at this moment is eschewing the various equipment of the park and has settled on a good old-fashioned slope, which she is practising running up and down. But as she turns her back on the floodlight pole at the top of the slope, she becomes first dismayed, then angry.
"Pappa! Pappa! No! NoaaAA!"
"What is it, lovely? What's the matter?"
"Feya vill noha sadow!" she wails dramatically, pointing and hopping from foot to foot. "Pappa tah bot!"
She's doing this because stretched out in front of her, stark and deep, is her shadow. And she wants none of it, and because she can't shake it off, she'd like me to take it away. At least she's given up on the moon for the moment, not that this is an easier ask.
Much as I'd like to remove them, life is full of shadows. I settle for getting her to turn back to the light, so at least the apparent pit at her feet is not distressing her, and then we go home and have pasta.
Around half four on a cold, if not bitterly so, saturday, F and I are playing at Plikta, the big playpark in Slottskogen. The light is gone, so the park is floodlit and increasinly deserted. Occasional joggers go by, helicopters sometimes rush overhead on the way to the nearby hospital (which F loves) and the usual muffled city noises fill the night.
But the park itself feels somwhat chill. Too much blackness and not enough children running about playing - a playpark can be sinister in such conditions. F is not done with the swings yet, however, so I hold on a little longer.
She won't wear her gloves, although her hands are pink and cold. It's not below freezing, quite a mild night compared to the rest of the week in fact, even if the rising night makes it seem colder. We are, however, the last people there.
Playgroup is a mixed blessing, I have been thinking. F has breakfast and dinner with us during the week, but little more than that. She is tired by the end of a week of dagis. Midweek she's pretty happy to arrive there, reciting the names of her teachers and friends. She waved me off before I had a chance to last week, rushing off to push a toy pram about without a lookback.
But by Thursday or Friday, the smiles are faded, replaced with the blank look of someone who knows she can't do much to change the day ahead and will have to suffer through it. Saturday and Sunday are good, we can catch up and play. Then on Monday she looks mournful when we leave her again. She tried to climb the bars of the sandpit the other morning, in fact, giving us a desperate sad smile as she asked us to come and play with her this time.
Oh, wee lady, you just wait until school starts. Or a job. I often hear my fellow European immigrants complaining that Swedish schools don't get children ready fast enough, that they let them play for too long. Bloody Protestant work ethic, it makes me think. Why not just get them to stitch shoes if you're so hell-bent on getting them industrious? Let them play. Plenty of time to work later, and having nine-to-five daycare away from the family is quite work enough when you aren't even two.
Anyway - this is why I've stayed longer than I meant to at Plikta, and why we're the last ones at the roundabout in the gathered dusk.
Good old parental guilt, it's a highly horsepowered engine. F at this moment is eschewing the various equipment of the park and has settled on a good old-fashioned slope, which she is practising running up and down. But as she turns her back on the floodlight pole at the top of the slope, she becomes first dismayed, then angry.
"Pappa! Pappa! No! NoaaAA!"
"What is it, lovely? What's the matter?"
"Feya vill noha sadow!" she wails dramatically, pointing and hopping from foot to foot. "Pappa tah bot!"
She's doing this because stretched out in front of her, stark and deep, is her shadow. And she wants none of it, and because she can't shake it off, she'd like me to take it away. At least she's given up on the moon for the moment, not that this is an easier ask.
Much as I'd like to remove them, life is full of shadows. I settle for getting her to turn back to the light, so at least the apparent pit at her feet is not distressing her, and then we go home and have pasta.
Monday, December 1, 2014
Det är Årstiden
Christmas is coming.
Glowing stars hang in the windows. Red candles and tableclothes adorn the kitchen. Two large crates of faux pine branches, Viennese baubles and tomte-themed placemats lurk in the corners of the room, ready to take pride of place towards the other end of advent. I have Pa Rupapum Pum repeating on me like an auditory turkey curry.
Several years back, V bought me a musical stocking. It has a jingle-belled Rudolph, who wiggles and sings 'Merry Christmas' when you press the button in his arm. Not the 'Merry Christmas' you and I know and love, a version that goes to the tune of Lulu's 'Shout'. It has lyrics like 'Don't forget the milk and cookies, don't forget to bring all the presents to my house now', truly capturing the modern spirit of Christmas yours for only £7.99, order now for an free mince pie themed coaster set.
F knows how to turn it on. Shout? I certainly tried. Still can't drown the bloody thing out.
Advent calendars are far too boring and normal for Sweden. We've nailed a doll to the wall. It's got lots of pockets and loops on it, one for every day of Advent, which can be filled with appropriate goodies. It's a great thing, a new Christmas tradition for the family. V and I were very over-excited as we filled it and hung it up.
F is also very excited, although also quite cross.
"Car!" she said, spotting a nice red plastic racing car tied to pocket number one with green ribbon. "Tack Nissa!" and then she ran about playing with it very cheerfully.
She came back within five minutes. "Plane!" she said, spotting a nice plastic biplane. V and I chuckled indulgently to each other at her avarice, and then explained Advent again.
"No, you only get one pocket a day. The plane is for another time."
Good old 'another time'. With 'not right now' and 'maybe later', the principle hours of the Neverland Clock. F was appropriately appalled at this chronological invention and had a suitable tantrum at being balked, only soothed when she got to run the racing car over Daddy's face for a bit.
The doll is called Nissa. Later on, after the fifteen minutes of low winter sun gave way to icy darkness, we began to realise that it's all very well having snug and cozy lights through the flat. But the flickering candles also give Nissa a sinister cast. like a vaguely Yuleish Slender Man. Twice I've caught myself checking she isn't getting taller.
Or nearer. Uh-oh ho ho.
Glowing stars hang in the windows. Red candles and tableclothes adorn the kitchen. Two large crates of faux pine branches, Viennese baubles and tomte-themed placemats lurk in the corners of the room, ready to take pride of place towards the other end of advent. I have Pa Rupapum Pum repeating on me like an auditory turkey curry.
Several years back, V bought me a musical stocking. It has a jingle-belled Rudolph, who wiggles and sings 'Merry Christmas' when you press the button in his arm. Not the 'Merry Christmas' you and I know and love, a version that goes to the tune of Lulu's 'Shout'. It has lyrics like 'Don't forget the milk and cookies, don't forget to bring all the presents to my house now', truly capturing the modern spirit of Christmas yours for only £7.99, order now for an free mince pie themed coaster set.
F knows how to turn it on. Shout? I certainly tried. Still can't drown the bloody thing out.
Advent calendars are far too boring and normal for Sweden. We've nailed a doll to the wall. It's got lots of pockets and loops on it, one for every day of Advent, which can be filled with appropriate goodies. It's a great thing, a new Christmas tradition for the family. V and I were very over-excited as we filled it and hung it up.
F is also very excited, although also quite cross.
"Car!" she said, spotting a nice red plastic racing car tied to pocket number one with green ribbon. "Tack Nissa!" and then she ran about playing with it very cheerfully.
She came back within five minutes. "Plane!" she said, spotting a nice plastic biplane. V and I chuckled indulgently to each other at her avarice, and then explained Advent again.
"No, you only get one pocket a day. The plane is for another time."
Good old 'another time'. With 'not right now' and 'maybe later', the principle hours of the Neverland Clock. F was appropriately appalled at this chronological invention and had a suitable tantrum at being balked, only soothed when she got to run the racing car over Daddy's face for a bit.
The doll is called Nissa. Later on, after the fifteen minutes of low winter sun gave way to icy darkness, we began to realise that it's all very well having snug and cozy lights through the flat. But the flickering candles also give Nissa a sinister cast. like a vaguely Yuleish Slender Man. Twice I've caught myself checking she isn't getting taller.
Or nearer. Uh-oh ho ho.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Meanwhile in Stockholm
Two days of voice work on the other side of the country.
It took three months after getting the job to nail down tiny details like when it might happen, how much I might get paid and if travel was included. Fair enough, production schedules can be tricky and budgets aren't always controlled by the people giving you the job. It took them fifteen minutes to send me a Non-Disclosure Agreement after the job offer, mind. Good to know where their priorities lie. 1 = Corporate Liability, 50+ = Pay The Actor Scum.
Making sure all the travel costs were minimal, both for our budgets and theirs after they finally admitted they could pay some expenses, meant travelling at 0400 and sleeping in a hostel. Not done that in a while. I was fairly nervous about it, despite the place having a good reputation online. Lots of things have good reputations online. I probably have a good reputation online. It means nothing.
I was worried I might not be safe sleeping there. I needn't have. I didn't get any sleep.
Yes, there was some vomit in the communal sink where the american teenagers had overindulged. Yes, I forgot the code to my room door when I got up to pee in the night and got let back in by a very angry south american guy. Yes, the Portuguese backpackers who arrived at 0400 needed to have a good old laugh about how much noise they were making. And the one in the bunk opposite me snored violently all night. As the thin sun slithered in through the net curtains that morning, it lit up the flabby naked buttocks his sheet had fallen off, at which point I decided enough was enough and left.
There were also long hours of nothing to do. Stockholm's a good city to visit, but expensive. And the best way to not spend money is to wander about looking at things, although November isn't exactly the cheeriest time to see them. The Riddarholm Church is amazing, but it's also shut at 0830. If you've just spent five hours drinking lots of water to save your voice and lots of coffee to stay energised, then you have to spend lots of money I didn't have to use the pay-to-pee loos. Or the free but stinking ammoniac pissoirs in the street, which look like old fashioned guard duty boxes. Maybe they once were, your guards could stay out longer that way whilst getting their bearskin hats fumigated for free into the bargain.
I got some english money from my lovely aunt M for my birthday, which was luckily still in my wallet. I converted it at the station and spend the Friday night at the cinema. I watched 'Fury', which was a by-the-numbers war film. Apparently, war is hell and makes good men do bad things. Who knew? The interminable climax came after about fifty minutes of SS men getting dismembered graphically by machinegun fire. Heroic Brad Pitt (Spoilers!) dies when a grenade gets him. Whereas all the nazi cannonfodder got burst to smithereens by such explosives, Post-Death Brad looks little the worse for wear, just a little tatty round the edges. As though he's merely been smothered in his sleep by the heavy hand of symbolism.
The job was good, despite all this. Eight hours of highly-appreciated shouting in a booth for a computer game, which I'm still not really at liberty to discuss thanks to the NDA. The high was probably being told to make the line "Yes! Smell my musk of strength" sound 'more like Hitler'. I think that's how Shakespeare imagined it when he wrote it.
The low was still those buttocks winking in the early dawn. Dammit, I can't get them out of my head.
It took three months after getting the job to nail down tiny details like when it might happen, how much I might get paid and if travel was included. Fair enough, production schedules can be tricky and budgets aren't always controlled by the people giving you the job. It took them fifteen minutes to send me a Non-Disclosure Agreement after the job offer, mind. Good to know where their priorities lie. 1 = Corporate Liability, 50+ = Pay The Actor Scum.
Making sure all the travel costs were minimal, both for our budgets and theirs after they finally admitted they could pay some expenses, meant travelling at 0400 and sleeping in a hostel. Not done that in a while. I was fairly nervous about it, despite the place having a good reputation online. Lots of things have good reputations online. I probably have a good reputation online. It means nothing.
I was worried I might not be safe sleeping there. I needn't have. I didn't get any sleep.
Yes, there was some vomit in the communal sink where the american teenagers had overindulged. Yes, I forgot the code to my room door when I got up to pee in the night and got let back in by a very angry south american guy. Yes, the Portuguese backpackers who arrived at 0400 needed to have a good old laugh about how much noise they were making. And the one in the bunk opposite me snored violently all night. As the thin sun slithered in through the net curtains that morning, it lit up the flabby naked buttocks his sheet had fallen off, at which point I decided enough was enough and left.
There were also long hours of nothing to do. Stockholm's a good city to visit, but expensive. And the best way to not spend money is to wander about looking at things, although November isn't exactly the cheeriest time to see them. The Riddarholm Church is amazing, but it's also shut at 0830. If you've just spent five hours drinking lots of water to save your voice and lots of coffee to stay energised, then you have to spend lots of money I didn't have to use the pay-to-pee loos. Or the free but stinking ammoniac pissoirs in the street, which look like old fashioned guard duty boxes. Maybe they once were, your guards could stay out longer that way whilst getting their bearskin hats fumigated for free into the bargain.
I got some english money from my lovely aunt M for my birthday, which was luckily still in my wallet. I converted it at the station and spend the Friday night at the cinema. I watched 'Fury', which was a by-the-numbers war film. Apparently, war is hell and makes good men do bad things. Who knew? The interminable climax came after about fifty minutes of SS men getting dismembered graphically by machinegun fire. Heroic Brad Pitt (Spoilers!) dies when a grenade gets him. Whereas all the nazi cannonfodder got burst to smithereens by such explosives, Post-Death Brad looks little the worse for wear, just a little tatty round the edges. As though he's merely been smothered in his sleep by the heavy hand of symbolism.
The job was good, despite all this. Eight hours of highly-appreciated shouting in a booth for a computer game, which I'm still not really at liberty to discuss thanks to the NDA. The high was probably being told to make the line "Yes! Smell my musk of strength" sound 'more like Hitler'. I think that's how Shakespeare imagined it when he wrote it.
The low was still those buttocks winking in the early dawn. Dammit, I can't get them out of my head.
Sunday, November 23, 2014
No NO No
Thirty five minutes of sheer tantrum this morning.
Putting on a bib with breakfast has never been a problem before. Suddenly it was. It was a dealbreaker, a total infringement of everything F held dear and good. How dare we? How could we? It was just too much.
V ended up putting F in her room to cool off for a bit. After five mintes, she screamed slowly back into view round the edge of the door, pushing a bag of old clothes in front of her. Look! she seemed to say. Look how angry I am! I'm so angry, I'm pushing this bag of old clothes! YOU MADE ME DO THIS!
She managed to sustain this level of fury for half an hour more before gradually deciding that it had never really happened. She refused to back down from her stance on bibs, or stop crying when reasoned with, but we found common ground in toy cars eventually. Then when she realised she was still hungry, breakfast was achieved with total normalcy, including happy bib use. All friends again now.
She's throwing between one and three of these meltdowns a day, although this was the longest one with the least provocation so far. It's not easy for her, I guess. She can say what she wants and has moods and opinions, and it's frustrating her when we don't go along with these for intelligible reasons.
Same goes for us, though. Why did she take against the bib this morning? No idea. Why can't I help her rebuild the demolished block tower she's just asked me to help make? No idea. Why isn't this apple quite right? No idea. Maybe she's just so infuriated with so many things, these straws are shattering the spine of the next queued camel when it becomes available.
So "yes"becomes "YESH!", "no" becomes "NOOA!", and her eyes screw up and her face goes red and her cheeks puff out like some Shogunate era wind god and we're just going to have to weather the storm until she learns how to explain herself better. Or ask nicely, because that might also work.
Ha. In about ten years, I'm sure this will all seem like a beautiful memory.
Putting on a bib with breakfast has never been a problem before. Suddenly it was. It was a dealbreaker, a total infringement of everything F held dear and good. How dare we? How could we? It was just too much.
V ended up putting F in her room to cool off for a bit. After five mintes, she screamed slowly back into view round the edge of the door, pushing a bag of old clothes in front of her. Look! she seemed to say. Look how angry I am! I'm so angry, I'm pushing this bag of old clothes! YOU MADE ME DO THIS!
She managed to sustain this level of fury for half an hour more before gradually deciding that it had never really happened. She refused to back down from her stance on bibs, or stop crying when reasoned with, but we found common ground in toy cars eventually. Then when she realised she was still hungry, breakfast was achieved with total normalcy, including happy bib use. All friends again now.
She's throwing between one and three of these meltdowns a day, although this was the longest one with the least provocation so far. It's not easy for her, I guess. She can say what she wants and has moods and opinions, and it's frustrating her when we don't go along with these for intelligible reasons.
Same goes for us, though. Why did she take against the bib this morning? No idea. Why can't I help her rebuild the demolished block tower she's just asked me to help make? No idea. Why isn't this apple quite right? No idea. Maybe she's just so infuriated with so many things, these straws are shattering the spine of the next queued camel when it becomes available.
So "yes"becomes "YESH!", "no" becomes "NOOA!", and her eyes screw up and her face goes red and her cheeks puff out like some Shogunate era wind god and we're just going to have to weather the storm until she learns how to explain herself better. Or ask nicely, because that might also work.
Ha. In about ten years, I'm sure this will all seem like a beautiful memory.
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Older and Wiser
A jolly morning of housework. I like our kitchen lino, it's got one of those usefully dirt-concealing patterns. The down side to this is that you don't realise how much it needs a clean as quickly as you ought. What, for example, is artistic swirl and what is the micron-thick remains of a raisin.
It was my birthday yesterday.
"Do you know what today is?" V asked F, in the appropriate tones of hushed awe my nativity commands.
Blank look, shaken head.
"It's daddy's birthday! It's daddy's birthday today," V said.
F took this on board and nodded slowly and wisely. "Feya ha berday too," she said. And then claimed the present V suggested she give to me as her own. A tantrum was averted by tactical iPad deloyment.
F wanted burgers for dinner on Sunday. "Where are we going to get those from?" I asked her. She pointed to the cupboards.
"Pappa cook," she said. Right.
A month ago, she would say please when asking for things with only a tiny prompt. Now we just get a big cheeky grin and a very emphatic single nod.
"What do you say?"
"Pappa, get more cumcumber, put here."
"You can have more cucumber, but you have to say please!"
"Yes." Nod nod.
"Can you say please, then?"
Nod.
"Well, you can have more cucumber when you've said it then."
Tantrum.
Which isn't to say it's all tantrums. By no means - F is currently about as angelic at going to bed as I can imagine she ever will be. If you tell her it's bedtime in ten minutes time, ten minutes later she takes you to help brush her teeth and then goes to her room of her own accord. Something tells me we've got about twenty minutes before she starts deciding on her own deadlines for this, though.
I'm taking my monday evening drama group.
"But how old are you, though, really?" asks E, a bossy thirteen-year-old. This has somehow become the moment's teaching point, my age.
"How old do you think I am?" I ask, a foolish Scorpio to the last.
"Fifty?" suggests A.
"Fifty three?" thinks G.
Oh how I hate you all, you glossy teenage bullies.
I go home and get a doughnut with a candle in it from my lovely wife, and watch an extremely entertaining rubbish film (Hercules - The Legend Begins, a lot better than you'd expect, because the inverse would be impossible).
-
It was my birthday yesterday.
"Do you know what today is?" V asked F, in the appropriate tones of hushed awe my nativity commands.
Blank look, shaken head.
"It's daddy's birthday! It's daddy's birthday today," V said.
F took this on board and nodded slowly and wisely. "Feya ha berday too," she said. And then claimed the present V suggested she give to me as her own. A tantrum was averted by tactical iPad deloyment.
F wanted burgers for dinner on Sunday. "Where are we going to get those from?" I asked her. She pointed to the cupboards.
"Pappa cook," she said. Right.
A month ago, she would say please when asking for things with only a tiny prompt. Now we just get a big cheeky grin and a very emphatic single nod.
"What do you say?"
"Pappa, get more cumcumber, put here."
"You can have more cucumber, but you have to say please!"
"Yes." Nod nod.
"Can you say please, then?"
Nod.
"Well, you can have more cucumber when you've said it then."
Tantrum.
Which isn't to say it's all tantrums. By no means - F is currently about as angelic at going to bed as I can imagine she ever will be. If you tell her it's bedtime in ten minutes time, ten minutes later she takes you to help brush her teeth and then goes to her room of her own accord. Something tells me we've got about twenty minutes before she starts deciding on her own deadlines for this, though.
-
I'm taking my monday evening drama group.
"But how old are you, though, really?" asks E, a bossy thirteen-year-old. This has somehow become the moment's teaching point, my age.
"How old do you think I am?" I ask, a foolish Scorpio to the last.
"Fifty?" suggests A.
"Fifty three?" thinks G.
Oh how I hate you all, you glossy teenage bullies.
I go home and get a doughnut with a candle in it from my lovely wife, and watch an extremely entertaining rubbish film (Hercules - The Legend Begins, a lot better than you'd expect, because the inverse would be impossible).
Friday, October 31, 2014
On a Stick
Walking home from Dagis now has the added excitement of being dark, as the clocks have gone back now. She walks along with me sometimes, holding my hand and pointing at things.
"Lights on," she said, pointing at the streetlights.
"Yes they are," I agreed.
"Moon!" she said, pointing down a street at a wintery crescent just over the top of Skansen Kronan.
"Yes it is!" I said. "It's just over the hill, look!"
She pointed at it. "Freja get moon," she said.
"It's very far away, sweetie," I said, cringing mildly because I'd called her 'sweetie' again, which I try not to because it's a revolting word.
"Pick up," she told me. I did. "Freja get moon," she repeated, reaching again.
She certainly knows what she wants, F. If only I was a bit taller.
"Lights on," she said, pointing at the streetlights.
"Yes they are," I agreed.
"Moon!" she said, pointing down a street at a wintery crescent just over the top of Skansen Kronan.
"Yes it is!" I said. "It's just over the hill, look!"
She pointed at it. "Freja get moon," she said.
"It's very far away, sweetie," I said, cringing mildly because I'd called her 'sweetie' again, which I try not to because it's a revolting word.
She certainly knows what she wants, F. If only I was a bit taller.
Wednesday, October 29, 2014
Deflection
Bit of a pause since my last post. This has been due to a combination of family illnesses and adapting to regular school sessions. F's immune system seems vastly improved after two months of relentless viral exposure. Mine and V's seem to have burnt out. I'm trying a new respiratory system that extracts oxygen from mucus instead of air. V gets back from work, shattered, and collapses face down on the sofa, surfacing occasionally to cough.
All the same, I've made progress. I got promoted to a higher level of SFI after a fortnight. C+ is good. The class can mostly make reasonable conversation with each other in Swedish, so it feels like I'm practising a lot more. I followed the entire violent argument over where the Muslims should get to say their prayers in our feedback session today quite well.
'Not by the toilets, please' was their request, but apparently they have a place set aside and when the guy asking was reminded of this in rather blunt terms by a Bulgarian, one of his fellows started a very shouty tirade that ended in a lot of macho posturing round the computer bench. You know the sort, two muscular young men bunching their deltoids at each other, looking like they might start a pushing match without ever quite daring to go past that point.
Last week we went to the Volvo factory. It's very big. They make 160 lorries every day and a half. Their cafeteria is an indoor jungle. Everybody was too in awe of the robot delivery system to start miniature religious wars.
At home, F talks. You can have a conversation with her, pretty much. Subject Verb Object, I've learnt in school. F is on board with this. "Daddy get cookie," for example. Or "TV on please." Or the heartrending plea, on being told it was time to go to daycare, "Nooo, Feja stay hemm. Play. Mumma och Pappa play too. Yes please," with a single big nod on the 'yes' for emphasis.
"It's time to get out of the bath soon."
"Nooo."
"Well, you can pour the bottle out three more times, and then it's time to get out. Okay?"
Slight frown, shifty look.
F is currently playing 'pouring the bottle out', which you might think you can work out the rules for. There's a bottle, a floaty plastic ring and a toy plastic glass involved, a three-way pouring system and a target to hit. V and I had ringside seats, but even after ten minutes I wasn't totally sure how the scoring worked. All I knew was we were on no account to try and join in.
Holding up three fingers to count down her last three plays with, F seemed quite happy with the arrangement. And then suddenly the whole pouring thing got a lot more complex. Bottle, glass, glass, bottle, like she was channelling Tommy Cooper. The final pouring of the bottle into the ring got delayed and delayed - the glass wasn't quite full enough, or the ring had mysteriously floated round behind her back.
There's subtle and subtle. This was the kind of very obvious subtle which is extremely amusing to watch, where F is so convinced she's being crafty that she starts looking a bit smug. She slightly blew it when she grabbed my hand and tried to pull my fingers back up, saying "Two!" at the same time so I knew we were counting up again now. That made it pretty much impossible not to laugh outright, which rather undercut any attempt at being stoic and immovable in the face of massive diversion tactics.
Obviously when she eventually poured the bottle out there was a massive tantrum. That's just bedtime for you, though. Slightly less of an affectionate family moment when you're tucking up something that sounds like a hurricane wind blowing over the mouth of a recorder whilst being kicked in the face. But only slightly.
All the same, I've made progress. I got promoted to a higher level of SFI after a fortnight. C+ is good. The class can mostly make reasonable conversation with each other in Swedish, so it feels like I'm practising a lot more. I followed the entire violent argument over where the Muslims should get to say their prayers in our feedback session today quite well.
'Not by the toilets, please' was their request, but apparently they have a place set aside and when the guy asking was reminded of this in rather blunt terms by a Bulgarian, one of his fellows started a very shouty tirade that ended in a lot of macho posturing round the computer bench. You know the sort, two muscular young men bunching their deltoids at each other, looking like they might start a pushing match without ever quite daring to go past that point.
Last week we went to the Volvo factory. It's very big. They make 160 lorries every day and a half. Their cafeteria is an indoor jungle. Everybody was too in awe of the robot delivery system to start miniature religious wars.
At home, F talks. You can have a conversation with her, pretty much. Subject Verb Object, I've learnt in school. F is on board with this. "Daddy get cookie," for example. Or "TV on please." Or the heartrending plea, on being told it was time to go to daycare, "Nooo, Feja stay hemm. Play. Mumma och Pappa play too. Yes please," with a single big nod on the 'yes' for emphasis.
-
"It's time to get out of the bath soon."
"Nooo."
"Well, you can pour the bottle out three more times, and then it's time to get out. Okay?"
Slight frown, shifty look.
F is currently playing 'pouring the bottle out', which you might think you can work out the rules for. There's a bottle, a floaty plastic ring and a toy plastic glass involved, a three-way pouring system and a target to hit. V and I had ringside seats, but even after ten minutes I wasn't totally sure how the scoring worked. All I knew was we were on no account to try and join in.
Holding up three fingers to count down her last three plays with, F seemed quite happy with the arrangement. And then suddenly the whole pouring thing got a lot more complex. Bottle, glass, glass, bottle, like she was channelling Tommy Cooper. The final pouring of the bottle into the ring got delayed and delayed - the glass wasn't quite full enough, or the ring had mysteriously floated round behind her back.
There's subtle and subtle. This was the kind of very obvious subtle which is extremely amusing to watch, where F is so convinced she's being crafty that she starts looking a bit smug. She slightly blew it when she grabbed my hand and tried to pull my fingers back up, saying "Two!" at the same time so I knew we were counting up again now. That made it pretty much impossible not to laugh outright, which rather undercut any attempt at being stoic and immovable in the face of massive diversion tactics.
Obviously when she eventually poured the bottle out there was a massive tantrum. That's just bedtime for you, though. Slightly less of an affectionate family moment when you're tucking up something that sounds like a hurricane wind blowing over the mouth of a recorder whilst being kicked in the face. But only slightly.
Saturday, September 27, 2014
Back to School
I got back into SFI this week.
Nice to be out of the house a bit more. Even lurching over a grey and pockmarked hotel carpark, still semi-crippled by whatever weird viral thing has gripped my joints this week, through the autumn's icy rain. Fresh air and a sense of progress, no bad thing.
My school is on the fourth floor of the hotel building, an especially glamorous place called the Hotel Mektagon. If the name didn't sound like a race of murderous robots, the glossy black lobby and austere Nordic staff might make you feel you'd wandered into a sci-fi set. I half expect Tom Cruise to burst explosively out of the lifts at any second, firing improbable handguns at security guards dressed in cumbersome chunks of plastic wheely bin.
Funny how adults regress in school. Thirties and forties, most of my class. Everyone behaves like teenagers, sloping in late, giggling in corners with their mates or making 'you're fit, miss' type remarks to our Norwegian teacher. You can tell who was a class joker, a swot or a rebel. Or at least who fancied themselves as such. I guess our mental pictures of ourselves don't really change that much from teenage days.
Quick disclaimer - I'm not making any passes at the Norwegian Teacher, just before my wife gets paranoid. I'm a swot. And a lazy one, still - I keep my head down, quickly do the exercises and then try and look busy so I don't get set any new ones.
Occasionally I get a little down about being an immigrant. It's tough being away from home, friends, family and all the familiar things I grew up with. It's tough not being able to understand people very well or finding employment on the other side of the language barrier.
Sitting with my 80% Syrian classmates makes me pretty much suck it up and get over myself, though.
Yes, we have an overbearing, overpriviledged and massively underexperienced bunch of politicians in the UK right now. Full of jobs for the old boys, ministers filling the portfolio for I Knew Him At Eton And He's A Good Egg. Incompetent wankers though they may be, they're at least an elected government. We've only ourselves to blame.
These guys are fleeing from a civil war that's been tearing up their country for over three years. Some of them speak halting but competent Swedish after only a few months, and they had a whole new alphabet to learn to go with it. I've been feeling sorry for myself because I don't have a regular job other than dishwasher operation (entirely through my own life choices, I might add). Jeez. For my next performance, the interpretive dance piece Awakening With Rose Appreciation.
People in school keep asking me what the British think of Syria and Syrians. This made me realise, cringingly, that I knew very little about Syria or its current conflict.
"What do you think of Assad?" someone asked. Knowing he's either a politician but also possibly a Middle Eastern secret service, I tried to keep my remarks fairly non-judgemental. I don't know which side of the war these guys are refugees from. I don't know how many sides there might actually be.
As I educate myself (starting from Wikipedia and moving outwards), it's embarrassing to find how little I know. And worse, to find how pointed some of the remarks I took for lighthearted jokes might really be. "You think anyone with a beard is a fanatic, yes?" someone wryly said, pointing at mine. I don't, personally. I know people who do.
Being bombed by a country that once trained him as a doctor is probably doing little to persuade President al-Assad that his conspiracy theories of foreign manipulation are false. Listening to Cameron preach about extended campaigns in Iraq and anywhere guilty by proximity doesn't do so much for mine.
While they make their speeches, a pleasant middle-aged man asks me to translate a letter from the Swedish Embassy in Ankara for him. It's in English and Turkish, neither of which he speaks, so he wants it in Swedish. It says his wife can pick up documents allowing her to come to Sweden. He's pleased.
I rather feel I have some priorities in my life to examine.
Nice to be out of the house a bit more. Even lurching over a grey and pockmarked hotel carpark, still semi-crippled by whatever weird viral thing has gripped my joints this week, through the autumn's icy rain. Fresh air and a sense of progress, no bad thing.
My school is on the fourth floor of the hotel building, an especially glamorous place called the Hotel Mektagon. If the name didn't sound like a race of murderous robots, the glossy black lobby and austere Nordic staff might make you feel you'd wandered into a sci-fi set. I half expect Tom Cruise to burst explosively out of the lifts at any second, firing improbable handguns at security guards dressed in cumbersome chunks of plastic wheely bin.
Funny how adults regress in school. Thirties and forties, most of my class. Everyone behaves like teenagers, sloping in late, giggling in corners with their mates or making 'you're fit, miss' type remarks to our Norwegian teacher. You can tell who was a class joker, a swot or a rebel. Or at least who fancied themselves as such. I guess our mental pictures of ourselves don't really change that much from teenage days.
Quick disclaimer - I'm not making any passes at the Norwegian Teacher, just before my wife gets paranoid. I'm a swot. And a lazy one, still - I keep my head down, quickly do the exercises and then try and look busy so I don't get set any new ones.
Occasionally I get a little down about being an immigrant. It's tough being away from home, friends, family and all the familiar things I grew up with. It's tough not being able to understand people very well or finding employment on the other side of the language barrier.
Sitting with my 80% Syrian classmates makes me pretty much suck it up and get over myself, though.
Yes, we have an overbearing, overpriviledged and massively underexperienced bunch of politicians in the UK right now. Full of jobs for the old boys, ministers filling the portfolio for I Knew Him At Eton And He's A Good Egg. Incompetent wankers though they may be, they're at least an elected government. We've only ourselves to blame.
These guys are fleeing from a civil war that's been tearing up their country for over three years. Some of them speak halting but competent Swedish after only a few months, and they had a whole new alphabet to learn to go with it. I've been feeling sorry for myself because I don't have a regular job other than dishwasher operation (entirely through my own life choices, I might add). Jeez. For my next performance, the interpretive dance piece Awakening With Rose Appreciation.
People in school keep asking me what the British think of Syria and Syrians. This made me realise, cringingly, that I knew very little about Syria or its current conflict.
"What do you think of Assad?" someone asked. Knowing he's either a politician but also possibly a Middle Eastern secret service, I tried to keep my remarks fairly non-judgemental. I don't know which side of the war these guys are refugees from. I don't know how many sides there might actually be.
As I educate myself (starting from Wikipedia and moving outwards), it's embarrassing to find how little I know. And worse, to find how pointed some of the remarks I took for lighthearted jokes might really be. "You think anyone with a beard is a fanatic, yes?" someone wryly said, pointing at mine. I don't, personally. I know people who do.
Being bombed by a country that once trained him as a doctor is probably doing little to persuade President al-Assad that his conspiracy theories of foreign manipulation are false. Listening to Cameron preach about extended campaigns in Iraq and anywhere guilty by proximity doesn't do so much for mine.
While they make their speeches, a pleasant middle-aged man asks me to translate a letter from the Swedish Embassy in Ankara for him. It's in English and Turkish, neither of which he speaks, so he wants it in Swedish. It says his wife can pick up documents allowing her to come to Sweden. He's pleased.
I rather feel I have some priorities in my life to examine.
Wednesday, September 24, 2014
Lurgy
F's favourite toy is BunBun.
BunBun is a stuffed rabbit her godmother L gave her when she was born. Through some mysterious process of elimination, BunBun became pretty much the only stuffed toy F plays with. She's not really into stuffed toys generally, she prefers cars and lego right now. But BunBun goes everywhere with her. BunBun has her own chair, gets to share F's food, goes to Dagis with her, sleeps with her at night (or else) and has had to be physically prevented on occasion from sharing baths.
BunBun is, as a result, filthy.
Nearly two years of being dragged over playground floors or rubbed into breakfast cereal turned BunBun from a nice fluffy beige to stinky kind of grey. With occasional blue paint dots, god knows from where. But having taken on board that BunBun doesn't like getting wet, F point blank and screamingly refused to let her go and wash.
Mummy had a plan. Buy a second, identical BunBun from the toyshop down the road. Then we could swap them round while original BunBun hung out to dry.
Of course this didn't work. New Imposter BunBun was the wrong colour and scent, still being fluffy, beige and not smelling like a shoe. I'm not stupid, F seemed to say, thrusting this pod-person version away angrily. Get me the real deal.
I tell you this story so I can segue into another, which is that I've finally collected the full Big Five of infantile secretions. Poo, wee, dribble and nasal mucus I've had in spades for ages. Now my Spotted Guide is complete with the long-awaited addition of vomit.
I don't know what kind of vomit bug only strikes at night, punctually at eleven o' clock every night for half a week. F caught it, presumably from the plague pit that masquerades as Dagis. She stopped eating during the day, pretty much, which is extremely unlike her. And then started spewing what little she'd had over her sheets in the night.
Ironically, PseudoBunBun caught it first, which wasn't a problem. Then Original BunBun the following night, and even F agreed that sick was a smell too far for the poor creature. So come that midnight, having just mopped the flat (I'd tried to carry F through to the bathroom when I heard the sickup begin, which resulted in something like a Marx Brothers soda siphon gag being played out through our hallway. Plenty of gagging, anyway), I found myself washing BunBun by hand in the sink.
It's a morbid process, hand washing a beloved soft toy. Wringing the tiny furry creature out in the bubbles felt like disposing of an unnecessary cat, per some villainous landlord in a Victorian melodrama. My moustache isn't really the right variety for twirling, sadly, otherwise I'd have been doing that as I hung the macabre bodies out to dry on a makeshift gibbet. "Hang! Hang!" F said, pointing at them the following day. Good that she got into the spirit of things.
Half a week later, F is totally well again. Or well enough to cheerfully catch a new cold from Dagis, anyway. She's doing catch up eating (two hours of breakfast today, remarkably) and ruthlessly putting us through our paces. We're both zonked out, it's our turn with the bug. No vomiting for us, just exhaustion and (for me at least) a bizarre collection of muscle aches and pains that leave me creeping round the flat pathetically.
Both BunBuns remain clean and well.
*Late footnote - V read this and felt I hadn't done her role in the whole Regurge Crisis sufficient justice. This is true, I didn't mention her at all for some reason. Maybe because she spent most of it actually covered head-to-foot in sick whilst rocking a howling toddler and I didn't want to remind her of those dark times?
BunBun is a stuffed rabbit her godmother L gave her when she was born. Through some mysterious process of elimination, BunBun became pretty much the only stuffed toy F plays with. She's not really into stuffed toys generally, she prefers cars and lego right now. But BunBun goes everywhere with her. BunBun has her own chair, gets to share F's food, goes to Dagis with her, sleeps with her at night (or else) and has had to be physically prevented on occasion from sharing baths.
BunBun is, as a result, filthy.
Nearly two years of being dragged over playground floors or rubbed into breakfast cereal turned BunBun from a nice fluffy beige to stinky kind of grey. With occasional blue paint dots, god knows from where. But having taken on board that BunBun doesn't like getting wet, F point blank and screamingly refused to let her go and wash.
Mummy had a plan. Buy a second, identical BunBun from the toyshop down the road. Then we could swap them round while original BunBun hung out to dry.
Of course this didn't work. New Imposter BunBun was the wrong colour and scent, still being fluffy, beige and not smelling like a shoe. I'm not stupid, F seemed to say, thrusting this pod-person version away angrily. Get me the real deal.
I tell you this story so I can segue into another, which is that I've finally collected the full Big Five of infantile secretions. Poo, wee, dribble and nasal mucus I've had in spades for ages. Now my Spotted Guide is complete with the long-awaited addition of vomit.
I don't know what kind of vomit bug only strikes at night, punctually at eleven o' clock every night for half a week. F caught it, presumably from the plague pit that masquerades as Dagis. She stopped eating during the day, pretty much, which is extremely unlike her. And then started spewing what little she'd had over her sheets in the night.
Ironically, PseudoBunBun caught it first, which wasn't a problem. Then Original BunBun the following night, and even F agreed that sick was a smell too far for the poor creature. So come that midnight, having just mopped the flat (I'd tried to carry F through to the bathroom when I heard the sickup begin, which resulted in something like a Marx Brothers soda siphon gag being played out through our hallway. Plenty of gagging, anyway), I found myself washing BunBun by hand in the sink.
It's a morbid process, hand washing a beloved soft toy. Wringing the tiny furry creature out in the bubbles felt like disposing of an unnecessary cat, per some villainous landlord in a Victorian melodrama. My moustache isn't really the right variety for twirling, sadly, otherwise I'd have been doing that as I hung the macabre bodies out to dry on a makeshift gibbet. "Hang! Hang!" F said, pointing at them the following day. Good that she got into the spirit of things.
Half a week later, F is totally well again. Or well enough to cheerfully catch a new cold from Dagis, anyway. She's doing catch up eating (two hours of breakfast today, remarkably) and ruthlessly putting us through our paces. We're both zonked out, it's our turn with the bug. No vomiting for us, just exhaustion and (for me at least) a bizarre collection of muscle aches and pains that leave me creeping round the flat pathetically.
Both BunBuns remain clean and well.
*Late footnote - V read this and felt I hadn't done her role in the whole Regurge Crisis sufficient justice. This is true, I didn't mention her at all for some reason. Maybe because she spent most of it actually covered head-to-foot in sick whilst rocking a howling toddler and I didn't want to remind her of those dark times?
Friday, September 12, 2014
Fishy
Cultural milestone time.
Some swedes eat rotten fish. We had some friends round for a haggis supper the other night. As they ate it, expressing surprise that it wasn't quite as weird and unique as they hoped (no legs? why does it taste so edible? where are all the yards and yards of glistening offal we were promised?), it was suggested that I ought to be introduced to this charming custom with all due haste.
There's a general election here in Sweden at the moment. You put coloured bits of paper in envelopes to express your choice. I didn't get as many votes as my wife, I'm not yet trusted to help pick out a government yet, just local mayors and county bigwigs. This is probably because I hadn't eaten enough surströmming.
We got invited to a pickled fish party the following week, luckily. Following my indoctrination, I'd describe it as bearable.
Most things are bearable if you smother them in enough cheese and potatoes. Possible exceptions include oil spills, Strictly Come Dancing and David Cameron. But slushy fish, pink, ripe and fizzling slightly in its briney tin, is no different. You can tell it must be delicious because of the way the flies cluster round the table.
Joking apart, once you get past the smell, it's no worse than (say) jellyfish. Or barbecued mealy worms. Or the pickled eggs that you find on a dusty top shelf at the chippy, the ones full of rust-coloured vinegar where the lid has corroded on to the jar with the strength of a good weld. Or any of the other odd things I've eaten.
I could get past the smell because my cold hadn't passed. I got passed the flavour because it's not unpleasant, actually, and because it's better than the medicinal aquavit you wash it down with. The texture is weird, though. Like a thousand tastebuds screaming out in pain and then suddenly silent.
F liked the flatbread, the potatoes, the sour cream and the meatballs she ate instead very much. She demurred an opportunity to eat the fish, quite forcibly.
You know, I enjoyed the second (cheese and onion laden) helping? Years from now, I shall share a plate with whatever prime minister I've just ushered into power. Then, dressed as crayfish, we'll drink herbal shots and sing Santa Lucia round the Stång, as a wicker goat burns gently in the background. See? My cultural integration is complete.
Some swedes eat rotten fish. We had some friends round for a haggis supper the other night. As they ate it, expressing surprise that it wasn't quite as weird and unique as they hoped (no legs? why does it taste so edible? where are all the yards and yards of glistening offal we were promised?), it was suggested that I ought to be introduced to this charming custom with all due haste.
There's a general election here in Sweden at the moment. You put coloured bits of paper in envelopes to express your choice. I didn't get as many votes as my wife, I'm not yet trusted to help pick out a government yet, just local mayors and county bigwigs. This is probably because I hadn't eaten enough surströmming.
 |
| Your democratic right. |
We got invited to a pickled fish party the following week, luckily. Following my indoctrination, I'd describe it as bearable.
Most things are bearable if you smother them in enough cheese and potatoes. Possible exceptions include oil spills, Strictly Come Dancing and David Cameron. But slushy fish, pink, ripe and fizzling slightly in its briney tin, is no different. You can tell it must be delicious because of the way the flies cluster round the table.
Joking apart, once you get past the smell, it's no worse than (say) jellyfish. Or barbecued mealy worms. Or the pickled eggs that you find on a dusty top shelf at the chippy, the ones full of rust-coloured vinegar where the lid has corroded on to the jar with the strength of a good weld. Or any of the other odd things I've eaten.
I could get past the smell because my cold hadn't passed. I got passed the flavour because it's not unpleasant, actually, and because it's better than the medicinal aquavit you wash it down with. The texture is weird, though. Like a thousand tastebuds screaming out in pain and then suddenly silent.
F liked the flatbread, the potatoes, the sour cream and the meatballs she ate instead very much. She demurred an opportunity to eat the fish, quite forcibly.
You know, I enjoyed the second (cheese and onion laden) helping? Years from now, I shall share a plate with whatever prime minister I've just ushered into power. Then, dressed as crayfish, we'll drink herbal shots and sing Santa Lucia round the Stång, as a wicker goat burns gently in the background. See? My cultural integration is complete.
Monday, September 8, 2014
Independence Day
"Pappa! Pappa. kom, piggup," F calls through in the mornings now. And she refers to things as "min!" when she doesn't want you to take them off her. Rubbish goes in the Bi, anything even vaguely boat-shaped can be played with as if it were a Boa, if it's hot and she's hungry she'd like an I Keem.
Two weeks of part-time daycare, and she's talking all the time. Dagis seems to suit her. I told her she'd be going this morning, and she said "Woohoo! Cooka," because there's a big toy cooker there that's her current favourite.
Not that there haven't been hiccups. The first day, she came back with a vast blue smudge on her cheek where she'd run full tilt into the corner of a bench. Then last week she was ill. Or at least 'ill' in daycare terms, which means if she's running any sort of fever, even 0.2 degrees of one, she has to stay home and not come back until there's been a whole fever-free day.
Wow, I got used to her being away fast, I realised as I resentfully settled down on the sofa with her. Fever? Other than the lime green jelly pouring out of her nose, you'd never have known it. "Pappa! Kom play!" every five minutes, and she'd take my hand and lead over me to the relevant patch of floor. F doesn't exactly want me to help with playing, just be nearby while she does it. In this respect, she holds true and close to her mother's views on my utility when shopping or doing DIY.
I was only on the sofa, I hasten to add, because I had her cold and fever too. Otherwise I'd have been springing about, constructing scalable forts out of letters of the alphabet and boiling deliciously healthy vegetables with a free hand. Doubtless.
It's still odd, though. There's a lot of residual guilt washing about as I sit at home, looking for work. Or writing. Or, frankly, lying face down in bed for an hour and a half, trying desperately to recover the sleep I've lost in the last two years.
Do birds feel like this, after they've kicked the chicks exhaustedly over the nest edge? Like, I'm so tired, I want to just eat a couple of worms and then give hibernation a shot but oh god! I haven't pre-sterilised the grub for dinner and what if they meet an owl and look at this place, there is fluff and sticks everywhere!
And worst, what the hell am I going to do with all this empty time?
Two weeks of part-time daycare, and she's talking all the time. Dagis seems to suit her. I told her she'd be going this morning, and she said "Woohoo! Cooka," because there's a big toy cooker there that's her current favourite.
Not that there haven't been hiccups. The first day, she came back with a vast blue smudge on her cheek where she'd run full tilt into the corner of a bench. Then last week she was ill. Or at least 'ill' in daycare terms, which means if she's running any sort of fever, even 0.2 degrees of one, she has to stay home and not come back until there's been a whole fever-free day.
Wow, I got used to her being away fast, I realised as I resentfully settled down on the sofa with her. Fever? Other than the lime green jelly pouring out of her nose, you'd never have known it. "Pappa! Kom play!" every five minutes, and she'd take my hand and lead over me to the relevant patch of floor. F doesn't exactly want me to help with playing, just be nearby while she does it. In this respect, she holds true and close to her mother's views on my utility when shopping or doing DIY.
I was only on the sofa, I hasten to add, because I had her cold and fever too. Otherwise I'd have been springing about, constructing scalable forts out of letters of the alphabet and boiling deliciously healthy vegetables with a free hand. Doubtless.
It's still odd, though. There's a lot of residual guilt washing about as I sit at home, looking for work. Or writing. Or, frankly, lying face down in bed for an hour and a half, trying desperately to recover the sleep I've lost in the last two years.
Do birds feel like this, after they've kicked the chicks exhaustedly over the nest edge? Like, I'm so tired, I want to just eat a couple of worms and then give hibernation a shot but oh god! I haven't pre-sterilised the grub for dinner and what if they meet an owl and look at this place, there is fluff and sticks everywhere!
And worst, what the hell am I going to do with all this empty time?
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Nest Vacancy
F has started daycare. For the first time in I don't even know how long, I have a morning where I'm at home by myself with no particular tasks in hand.
Bliss! I can sleep in! I can read the internet without being handed toy planes! I lounge in my hammock on the balcony, drinking coffee in the autumn sun! (For it is immediately autumn here, the baking summer has disintegrated like the pony tails I attempt to put F into. Red berries on the trees outside and vast electrical storms have taken over) At last, a few short fragile hours of rest!
I go and hoover the bathroom.
Ah, how the mighty are fallen in the midst of battle. Routine is an inevitable doom, I suppose. Quickly I find that I can't sleep, because I'm too used to getting up and pottering round the house, doing my scattered version of housework. It's a lot easier and faster without F helping, so I can then sit and relax afterwards. Even then, I'm wondering what she's up to at Dagis and rather missing playing the pirate boat game with the kitchen sink from the dolls' house.
(That's where you tip it on its side and pretend it's a pirate boat, if you're wondering. The lookout smurf has to shout 'Look Out!' and point at the dangerous toy cars so you can sail round them. I feel there is a movie spin-off in it.)
Yesterday, V and I took F to see her dagis for the first time. It's a tiny one at the far end of Haga, just fifteen kids or so, but perfectly situated for us. And good for class sizes and adult attention and so on. F got out of the pram and ran enthusiastically away from us, waving bye bye with one hand as she started waving hej hej to the nearest boy.
We didn't see her for half an hour as we sat through the tour and intro talk. She popped her head round the door and smiled at us near the end. That didn't last. She bellowed like a wounded Brian Blessed when we told her it was time to go.
Funny - I'm bone weary at the moment. A few weeks back, I would have given my eyeteeth and thrown my eyes in as a sweetener for a morning off. But after year and a half of parental duty, I'm so inured to it that I can't quite switch off. Nothing that a bit of practice won't cure, I expect. I shall get on to that as soon as the dishwasher is empty and the smurfs are back in their pen.
Bliss! I can sleep in! I can read the internet without being handed toy planes! I lounge in my hammock on the balcony, drinking coffee in the autumn sun! (For it is immediately autumn here, the baking summer has disintegrated like the pony tails I attempt to put F into. Red berries on the trees outside and vast electrical storms have taken over) At last, a few short fragile hours of rest!
I go and hoover the bathroom.
Ah, how the mighty are fallen in the midst of battle. Routine is an inevitable doom, I suppose. Quickly I find that I can't sleep, because I'm too used to getting up and pottering round the house, doing my scattered version of housework. It's a lot easier and faster without F helping, so I can then sit and relax afterwards. Even then, I'm wondering what she's up to at Dagis and rather missing playing the pirate boat game with the kitchen sink from the dolls' house.
(That's where you tip it on its side and pretend it's a pirate boat, if you're wondering. The lookout smurf has to shout 'Look Out!' and point at the dangerous toy cars so you can sail round them. I feel there is a movie spin-off in it.)
Yesterday, V and I took F to see her dagis for the first time. It's a tiny one at the far end of Haga, just fifteen kids or so, but perfectly situated for us. And good for class sizes and adult attention and so on. F got out of the pram and ran enthusiastically away from us, waving bye bye with one hand as she started waving hej hej to the nearest boy.
We didn't see her for half an hour as we sat through the tour and intro talk. She popped her head round the door and smiled at us near the end. That didn't last. She bellowed like a wounded Brian Blessed when we told her it was time to go.
Funny - I'm bone weary at the moment. A few weeks back, I would have given my eyeteeth and thrown my eyes in as a sweetener for a morning off. But after year and a half of parental duty, I'm so inured to it that I can't quite switch off. Nothing that a bit of practice won't cure, I expect. I shall get on to that as soon as the dishwasher is empty and the smurfs are back in their pen.
Thursday, August 21, 2014
What Larks
I got a short notice voice job last night and duly warned the guy I might have to bring F along. It's not really ideal for anyone, having her tottering round the studio outside.
Not that the guys at the studio I do most of my work at aren't great with her, on the couple of occasions she's come along. They aren't primarily there to provide childcare, however, and it's not terribly professional of me to ask them to do it. F's happy enough with strangers at the moment, which is horribly alarming for V and me, but she gets cranky and impatient after about fifteen minutes of anything. Which means after fifteen minutes, my takes adopt the higher pitch associated with a forced smile, because I'm trying to ignore my wailing daughter hammering the other side of the glass door to the booth.
Short notice meant I didn't realise I was agreeing to work for a studio I occasionally do stuff for in Stockholm, however.
My contact's name is the same as one of the local sound engineers, so I'm not totally incompetent for getting confused. When he called this morning, though, it was quickly apparent I was in the wrong city. Luckily V's theatre has a studio that wasn't being used, so I managed to arrange using it at lunchtime, so V could keep an eye on F.
Epic failures followed. When I arrived, with half an hour spare to set up and make sure I could manage Skype connections with Stockholm, F was asleep. Ten minutes later, when V got called into an unexpected but unavoidable meeting, she wasn't. I also had
So that was good.
V managed to escape for three frantic minutes, in which she connected me to the internet, suggested putting F in the adjoining music booth so I could watch her through the window, wished me luck, apologised and legged it.
The music room was full of exciting instruments, so looked like a good bet. It had two doors, the outer one of which I couldn't close because only V had a key, and locking F in seemed a bit extreme. One door would probably be fine, and I could keep an eye on her.
Half way through my first take, I kept an eye on her as she opened the door, weeping loudly at the abandonment she'd been put through. Her siren wail moved rapidly down the corridor outside and off into the theatre basement. It wasn't a particularly clean take, all in all.
Once I'd called them back, the clients were very understanding and happy for me to postpone a little. Miserably, I strapped F into her pram and put it in the music room, handing her a recorder and some sleigh bells before leaving her again. I waved and cooed through the window, but she wasn't buying it.
I got the clear after four takes, about ten minutes worth or so, and ran through to console F. Who was very quickly fine and over it, as far as I could see. Especially after parental guilt scored her classy bakery down on the canal. She must have forgiven me, she fed me prawns from her sandwich. After she'd sucked the juice out of them, of course, and I wasn't allowed any chocolate cake. She's probably okay, I figure.
I wasn't, I still feel like a hollow and worthless shell of a man. It's all very well, Larkin making his clear and accurate observations about parenting. He never pointed out the sheer force of fuck-up feedback. I locked my daughter in another room while she was crying! So I could mouth cheerful corporate banalities for money! I am a Monster!
I'll get over it, because, well, I'm over-dramatising it all as usual and anyway, that's what you do. Get on with it and try not to tear too much of the paper from over your cracks in the process. And anyway, F made me read an IKEA catalogue to her yesterday lunchtime, so we're probably about even overall.
Not that the guys at the studio I do most of my work at aren't great with her, on the couple of occasions she's come along. They aren't primarily there to provide childcare, however, and it's not terribly professional of me to ask them to do it. F's happy enough with strangers at the moment, which is horribly alarming for V and me, but she gets cranky and impatient after about fifteen minutes of anything. Which means after fifteen minutes, my takes adopt the higher pitch associated with a forced smile, because I'm trying to ignore my wailing daughter hammering the other side of the glass door to the booth.
Short notice meant I didn't realise I was agreeing to work for a studio I occasionally do stuff for in Stockholm, however.
My contact's name is the same as one of the local sound engineers, so I'm not totally incompetent for getting confused. When he called this morning, though, it was quickly apparent I was in the wrong city. Luckily V's theatre has a studio that wasn't being used, so I managed to arrange using it at lunchtime, so V could keep an eye on F.
Epic failures followed. When I arrived, with half an hour spare to set up and make sure I could manage Skype connections with Stockholm, F was asleep. Ten minutes later, when V got called into an unexpected but unavoidable meeting, she wasn't. I also had
- No script, because the email I'd been sent hadn't turned up for no obvious reason
- No Skype, because there hadn't been time to connect my laptop to the internet and I couldn't work the sound desk to get their Mac speakers playing
- Both arms full of baby
So that was good.
V managed to escape for three frantic minutes, in which she connected me to the internet, suggested putting F in the adjoining music booth so I could watch her through the window, wished me luck, apologised and legged it.
The music room was full of exciting instruments, so looked like a good bet. It had two doors, the outer one of which I couldn't close because only V had a key, and locking F in seemed a bit extreme. One door would probably be fine, and I could keep an eye on her.
Half way through my first take, I kept an eye on her as she opened the door, weeping loudly at the abandonment she'd been put through. Her siren wail moved rapidly down the corridor outside and off into the theatre basement. It wasn't a particularly clean take, all in all.
Once I'd called them back, the clients were very understanding and happy for me to postpone a little. Miserably, I strapped F into her pram and put it in the music room, handing her a recorder and some sleigh bells before leaving her again. I waved and cooed through the window, but she wasn't buying it.
I got the clear after four takes, about ten minutes worth or so, and ran through to console F. Who was very quickly fine and over it, as far as I could see. Especially after parental guilt scored her classy bakery down on the canal. She must have forgiven me, she fed me prawns from her sandwich. After she'd sucked the juice out of them, of course, and I wasn't allowed any chocolate cake. She's probably okay, I figure.
I wasn't, I still feel like a hollow and worthless shell of a man. It's all very well, Larkin making his clear and accurate observations about parenting. He never pointed out the sheer force of fuck-up feedback. I locked my daughter in another room while she was crying! So I could mouth cheerful corporate banalities for money! I am a Monster!
I'll get over it, because, well, I'm over-dramatising it all as usual and anyway, that's what you do. Get on with it and try not to tear too much of the paper from over your cracks in the process. And anyway, F made me read an IKEA catalogue to her yesterday lunchtime, so we're probably about even overall.
Sunday, August 17, 2014
Boxing Match
There is no limit to the amount of excitement one can glean from the humble cardboard box.
A plane, a bed, a boat, some form of car, a postbox, a racetrack. A seesaw, if not entirely deliberately. Less imaginatively (but no less gleefully) a place to explode out of screaming, like a moll in a gangster's cake.
I'd plumb forgotten what fun boxes are. Two years of annual house moves had rather jaded my view of boxes. I could take or leave them. F has thankfully reinvigorated my love affair with their possibilities. A whole hour of this afternoon vanished inside one today. Then we tried finger painting.
Not so successful - too tired to engage, and F is also amazingly fastidious about keeping her hands clean. "Oh no!" she said, holding up a dripping red palm and looking horrified. It's not her first impression of a murderer, either. Tears followed shortly after. I guess we should have stayed in the box.
She says "Oh no!" a lot at the moment. It means something has gone awry and needs fixing. Food falling on the floor, cars rolling over the edge of things, lego farmers not staying upright when rammed with a tractor, F herself toppling over, mummy or daddy not doing as they're told. Crumbs, just crumbs in general, are "Oh no!" when observed. When I hear it, it's usually a summons to action in some form. Now and again it's just narrative for whatever scrapes her tiny plastic Peppa Pig is being put through, but you can't take that on trust.
There is a slight hint of the storm to F at the moment. She's not been well, with a nasty cough for a week or so. It's kept her awake at night and she's not been eating as well as she usually does. The days find her tired and temperamental.
Or is it just the approaching monsoon season of the Terrible Twos? She's point blank refused to have a bath for the last two days, something she's usually a big fan of. Trying to scrape a yelling and paint-spattered infant into the tub, as we did today, is quite the feat of stamina. F beat us. Also a white jumper and two duck-shaped flannels.
Generally, any attempt to balk her increasingly clearly-manifested will result in outright fury now. F will tell me what she wants to eat, and when. If I don't agree that half an hour after breakfast is the right time for a large handful of pretzel sticks, for example, I'd better have a pretty good reason to back it up.
Our current fix-all no-you-can't-eat-that-now excuse is 'We're saving it for later'. F accepts it as tolerable. We had a bag of crisps the other night, and after eating some, we put the rest 'away for later' (i.e. we were going to eat them once she was asleep). Grudgingly, F took this at face value and left to play in her room. Mummy rustled the bag, to pinch a final one, and was immediately confronted by a screaming personification of moral outrage, tears in her eyes, accusing finger pointing at the bag.
Oh good. She can smell our lies. I can feel the next few years getting increasingly complicated, and it feels like migraine.
A plane, a bed, a boat, some form of car, a postbox, a racetrack. A seesaw, if not entirely deliberately. Less imaginatively (but no less gleefully) a place to explode out of screaming, like a moll in a gangster's cake.
I'd plumb forgotten what fun boxes are. Two years of annual house moves had rather jaded my view of boxes. I could take or leave them. F has thankfully reinvigorated my love affair with their possibilities. A whole hour of this afternoon vanished inside one today. Then we tried finger painting.
Not so successful - too tired to engage, and F is also amazingly fastidious about keeping her hands clean. "Oh no!" she said, holding up a dripping red palm and looking horrified. It's not her first impression of a murderer, either. Tears followed shortly after. I guess we should have stayed in the box.
She says "Oh no!" a lot at the moment. It means something has gone awry and needs fixing. Food falling on the floor, cars rolling over the edge of things, lego farmers not staying upright when rammed with a tractor, F herself toppling over, mummy or daddy not doing as they're told. Crumbs, just crumbs in general, are "Oh no!" when observed. When I hear it, it's usually a summons to action in some form. Now and again it's just narrative for whatever scrapes her tiny plastic Peppa Pig is being put through, but you can't take that on trust.
There is a slight hint of the storm to F at the moment. She's not been well, with a nasty cough for a week or so. It's kept her awake at night and she's not been eating as well as she usually does. The days find her tired and temperamental.
Or is it just the approaching monsoon season of the Terrible Twos? She's point blank refused to have a bath for the last two days, something she's usually a big fan of. Trying to scrape a yelling and paint-spattered infant into the tub, as we did today, is quite the feat of stamina. F beat us. Also a white jumper and two duck-shaped flannels.
Generally, any attempt to balk her increasingly clearly-manifested will result in outright fury now. F will tell me what she wants to eat, and when. If I don't agree that half an hour after breakfast is the right time for a large handful of pretzel sticks, for example, I'd better have a pretty good reason to back it up.
Our current fix-all no-you-can't-eat-that-now excuse is 'We're saving it for later'. F accepts it as tolerable. We had a bag of crisps the other night, and after eating some, we put the rest 'away for later' (i.e. we were going to eat them once she was asleep). Grudgingly, F took this at face value and left to play in her room. Mummy rustled the bag, to pinch a final one, and was immediately confronted by a screaming personification of moral outrage, tears in her eyes, accusing finger pointing at the bag.
Oh good. She can smell our lies. I can feel the next few years getting increasingly complicated, and it feels like migraine.
Sunday, August 10, 2014
Poop Poop
Hot summer, this one. Sweden has been basking in temperatures of thirty plus, if by basking you mean 'having massive forest fires'. We had sweaty nappy rashes instead.
The best cure for a big red bottom is to let the owner run about airing it. This meant a certain amount of involuntary potty training. F has an idea about potties. She knows you sit on one. Sometimes she tries to scootch it along as if it has wheels, sometimes she pulls it apart to investigate the subtle inner workings. Sometimes she takes Bunbun (now the settled name for her beloved plushy bunny), shoves her face first into the bowl and then sits on top. So we have a way to go.
Much of this way seems paved with poop. Parenthood generally seems to be.
I haven't written much about poop lately. Sadly, this isn't because my life is no longer saturated in it. It's just since F started doing adult-flavour ones, it's harder to sit and write about them with the same level of insouciant bonhomie I like to promolgate in this blog. Wit fails me, all I can think of it fatuous comparisons to chemical spills.
'Gong farmer' came low on my teenage list of dream jobs. Low it remains.
I have scraped handfuls of nutty slack off my parents' conservatory floor. Even with a nappy on, muddy algal sludge still managed to ooze round a loose corner to be smeared over my trouser legs during what I thought was an unusually affectionate hug. There was something that looked like a chocolate-coated pear under our balcony table. It wasn't.
The nappy rash is much better. I suppose that means having to hunt for landmines round our flat every so often was worth it. I don't know what produces more heartsink, the conversation that goes
J - Do you need a nappy change?
F - (reeking) Nuh.
or this one
F - (proudly pointing to her tummy and running up to me) Poop poop poop poop poop!
So far, she only runs to me with this diagnostic. Both of us are proud that we've at least taught our daughter this much on potty matters. Some of us may be prouder than others.
The best cure for a big red bottom is to let the owner run about airing it. This meant a certain amount of involuntary potty training. F has an idea about potties. She knows you sit on one. Sometimes she tries to scootch it along as if it has wheels, sometimes she pulls it apart to investigate the subtle inner workings. Sometimes she takes Bunbun (now the settled name for her beloved plushy bunny), shoves her face first into the bowl and then sits on top. So we have a way to go.
Much of this way seems paved with poop. Parenthood generally seems to be.
I haven't written much about poop lately. Sadly, this isn't because my life is no longer saturated in it. It's just since F started doing adult-flavour ones, it's harder to sit and write about them with the same level of insouciant bonhomie I like to promolgate in this blog. Wit fails me, all I can think of it fatuous comparisons to chemical spills.
'Gong farmer' came low on my teenage list of dream jobs. Low it remains.
I have scraped handfuls of nutty slack off my parents' conservatory floor. Even with a nappy on, muddy algal sludge still managed to ooze round a loose corner to be smeared over my trouser legs during what I thought was an unusually affectionate hug. There was something that looked like a chocolate-coated pear under our balcony table. It wasn't.
The nappy rash is much better. I suppose that means having to hunt for landmines round our flat every so often was worth it. I don't know what produces more heartsink, the conversation that goes
J - Do you need a nappy change?
F - (reeking) Nuh.
or this one
F - (proudly pointing to her tummy and running up to me) Poop poop poop poop poop!
So far, she only runs to me with this diagnostic. Both of us are proud that we've at least taught our daughter this much on potty matters. Some of us may be prouder than others.
Monday, July 21, 2014
Holidays
Was it really over two years since we last went on holiday together? My, how the time flies when you're shackled to the hard reality of househusbandry and full-time employment.
We stayed in Dunkeld, where my folks live. It's a very lovely part of Perthshire, on the river Tay. For F, of course, this was a whole wealth of firsts. From flying to foreigners, gardens to gloaming - rather than attempt some kind of exhaustive, blow-by-blow retrospective, here is a short and disordered smattering of F's First Holiday in Scotland.
V and I are understandably tense on the plane. Ryanair don't do comfort, F has never experienced ear popping, it will be horrible for everyone if she takes against it.
She babbles excitedly all the way through the airport, says 'nyyeeeow' when we take off and then sleeps through the landing. What a waste of six hours of high-quality parental stress.
F gets to sleep in my old crib, one that Farfar made himself. It has a carved elephant and pig to watch you sleeping, and a side that flips down for easy baby access. When told this is where she'll be sleeping, F hurls her beloved bunny in, pats the mattress with both hands to assess bounciness and then chortles happily.
A few days later when she's cranky, I put F in for an afternoon nap. Much against her wishes - there's a five minute period of screaming, yelling and knocking noises as she tries to shake her way free. Then there's a short quiet pause followed by a loud clatter, a big thump and a long yell.
F has worked the latches and opened the side of the cot, it turns out, tipping herself out in the process. She's more shocked than hurt, much like V and me are. Good - now we can be anxious when she's asleep too. The cot gets turned with the flapping side against the wall and tied up with garden string for good measure.
Up at Rumbling Bridge, F paddles her feet in a chilly Scottish river and learns to throw stones into deep pools, ploomp. It's a beautiful afternoon, sun slanting through the trees into the dark brown water, midges weaving about as I carry F over rocks and under boughs to the safest places to dunk her feet. Farfar and Farmor are there too, it's very peaceful and happy.
Cousin S wants the green plastic golf club F has just dropped to be kept hidden. I ask why. "Actually, Uncle J," she says, "I just don't want her to play with it." I ask why again, but that's all the answer I'm getting right now.
Actually, S and F get on very well, sitting and mixing mud pies together in the garden or just running about on the lawn together. F is quite taken with her tall blond cousin, she follows behind copying her and giggling when acknowledged.
Gardens aren't new to F. Having one on tap, so to speak, is. It's a popular move. First thing after breakfast, she goes to the back door and says "run run run run run" until you let her out and chase her round the lawn. Two weeks of this gives her newfound motor confidence, she's trying out tiptoeing and stamping for the first time before we leave. The latter not just in the context of tantrums, amazingly, just stamping her right foot only on the floor for fun.
Old college friends N and J, with their families, come over for a day to catch up. Insofar as spending an afternoon giving children of various sizes and ages piggybacks all round Dunkeld is catching up. I think I exhanged a record of three sentences with N, one of which was 'great to see you, bye!'
F takes V's chocolate ice cream cone off her, to add to her collection. She's just eaten the last bit of mine. Her own is half-eaten and half-molten, flowing in luxurious pools over her face, hands and table setting. Cafe customers on the tables round us are turning to look, because F is not quiet in her appreciation of a good thing. There's a few disapproving faces, fusty old Scots muttering about messy children. Stuff 'em. Anyone who begrudges someone loud enjoyment of a first chocolate ice cream cone needs a good dowsing in sticky gloop.
There's a Medieval Festival at Dunfermline Abbey. With jousting! Once somebody's suggested it to me, I insist on making everyone go. Look, it wasn't my idea. If you don't want to spend a stickily hot afternoon being jostled by overweight re-enactors in jerkins, don't let me have wind of it in the first place, that's my advice.
I've never seen live jousting, despite having worked as a show knight at one of London's worst available medieval experiences. Sadly, this is rubbish, being more of a kid-friendly joust-themed knockabout, with somersaulting men-at-arms and exploding lances. F likes the horses for about five minutes, then we go and run around on lawns instead. Even I have to admit it's better.
Farfar and I go for a walk up Birnam Hill. It's a hot day, close and almost thundery in the way that Scottish hills do so well. You walk up the steep hills as though ascending into a furnace, and reach seemingly endless seas of bright green bracken.
Farfar has a mission - somewhere in the neck-deep ferns are some mysterious stones marked with cup-and-ring shaped depressions. Nobody knows their origins. Stone age? Pictish? Yithian cult? A Ponaptic fragment? I know which I favour.
If nobody knows their origins, it's perhaps because the map isn't very clear on their location either. Wading about in the bracken with big brown shield bugs pinging off our faces is great fun, if rather fruitless. We don't find all the mystery rocks, just the cup-marked ones (no rings). But we do find great swathes of juicy bilberries, which we pick until our water bottle is filled. So fruitful in some ways, I suppose.
After that, we join the ladies in a local hotel Spa for an afternoon of swimming. F likes swimming. I swoosh her about while V goes for a massage and Farmor goes jogging. Healthy.
As a treat, Farfar and Farmor buy F a ticket to see Peppa Pig's Big Splash, a live action puppet show in Perth. I sit in the foyer while V takes her in. I'm the only bloke in my age group present, although the place is packed out with mums and grandparents. This says something sad about the UK's approach to parenting, I think, but I'm too tired to think what. I'm also too glad not to be watching more Peppa Pig. F sits through both halves entranced, then we run round and round in circles on Perth's North Inch park for an hour. Which is how F approximates picnic behaviour.
V and I take a day to ourselves and stay in a decently cheap hotel in Edinburgh for a night. While we potter round shops, take in a tour of the historical Mary King's Close, get rained on and drink gin, F eats her own weight in pasta with Farfar and Farmor and blithely ignores the absence of her fretting parents as usual.
This is the first day we've had to ourselves for what, a year? I forget. Too long. It's almost like a first date, although without the same level of half-wittedly tentative conversational gambits. Having your first child already weighing on our minds is quite enough to make us half-witted anyway. We spend a fair bit of time at the hotel that evening looking at baby pictures of F and cooing, because we miss her.
She looks taller when we get back. Even if that's technically true, it's still ridiculous.
-
She sleeps through the takeoff on the way home. So do I - we were up at three to get to the airport, only to discover we'd set alarms on our Swedish phones and were actually up at two. Goddamn GMT.
F is clearly delighted to be home, even though she's had a fantastic time on holiday. And she has grown in the last two weeks, both in actual height (she can now reach the lightswitches to turn them both on and off), confidence and mastery of speech.
As is traditional with holidays, this one had an elastically long first week where everything stretched out ahead of us endlessly, then a frantic short second one where everything was suddenly over. And then we're home, everything back to routine normal.
Or as close to it as we get, at least. This is F's new favourite game she's developed out of nowhere, a game called Bake The Smurf. Cramming mummy and baby smurf head first into a cooker is normal. It must be. It's my baby playing it.
We stayed in Dunkeld, where my folks live. It's a very lovely part of Perthshire, on the river Tay. For F, of course, this was a whole wealth of firsts. From flying to foreigners, gardens to gloaming - rather than attempt some kind of exhaustive, blow-by-blow retrospective, here is a short and disordered smattering of F's First Holiday in Scotland.
-
V and I are understandably tense on the plane. Ryanair don't do comfort, F has never experienced ear popping, it will be horrible for everyone if she takes against it.
She babbles excitedly all the way through the airport, says 'nyyeeeow' when we take off and then sleeps through the landing. What a waste of six hours of high-quality parental stress.
-
A few days later when she's cranky, I put F in for an afternoon nap. Much against her wishes - there's a five minute period of screaming, yelling and knocking noises as she tries to shake her way free. Then there's a short quiet pause followed by a loud clatter, a big thump and a long yell.
F has worked the latches and opened the side of the cot, it turns out, tipping herself out in the process. She's more shocked than hurt, much like V and me are. Good - now we can be anxious when she's asleep too. The cot gets turned with the flapping side against the wall and tied up with garden string for good measure.
-
Up at Rumbling Bridge, F paddles her feet in a chilly Scottish river and learns to throw stones into deep pools, ploomp. It's a beautiful afternoon, sun slanting through the trees into the dark brown water, midges weaving about as I carry F over rocks and under boughs to the safest places to dunk her feet. Farfar and Farmor are there too, it's very peaceful and happy.
-
Cousin S wants the green plastic golf club F has just dropped to be kept hidden. I ask why. "Actually, Uncle J," she says, "I just don't want her to play with it." I ask why again, but that's all the answer I'm getting right now.
Actually, S and F get on very well, sitting and mixing mud pies together in the garden or just running about on the lawn together. F is quite taken with her tall blond cousin, she follows behind copying her and giggling when acknowledged.
-
Gardens aren't new to F. Having one on tap, so to speak, is. It's a popular move. First thing after breakfast, she goes to the back door and says "run run run run run" until you let her out and chase her round the lawn. Two weeks of this gives her newfound motor confidence, she's trying out tiptoeing and stamping for the first time before we leave. The latter not just in the context of tantrums, amazingly, just stamping her right foot only on the floor for fun.
-
Old college friends N and J, with their families, come over for a day to catch up. Insofar as spending an afternoon giving children of various sizes and ages piggybacks all round Dunkeld is catching up. I think I exhanged a record of three sentences with N, one of which was 'great to see you, bye!'
-
F takes V's chocolate ice cream cone off her, to add to her collection. She's just eaten the last bit of mine. Her own is half-eaten and half-molten, flowing in luxurious pools over her face, hands and table setting. Cafe customers on the tables round us are turning to look, because F is not quiet in her appreciation of a good thing. There's a few disapproving faces, fusty old Scots muttering about messy children. Stuff 'em. Anyone who begrudges someone loud enjoyment of a first chocolate ice cream cone needs a good dowsing in sticky gloop.
-
There's a Medieval Festival at Dunfermline Abbey. With jousting! Once somebody's suggested it to me, I insist on making everyone go. Look, it wasn't my idea. If you don't want to spend a stickily hot afternoon being jostled by overweight re-enactors in jerkins, don't let me have wind of it in the first place, that's my advice.
I've never seen live jousting, despite having worked as a show knight at one of London's worst available medieval experiences. Sadly, this is rubbish, being more of a kid-friendly joust-themed knockabout, with somersaulting men-at-arms and exploding lances. F likes the horses for about five minutes, then we go and run around on lawns instead. Even I have to admit it's better.
-
Farfar and I go for a walk up Birnam Hill. It's a hot day, close and almost thundery in the way that Scottish hills do so well. You walk up the steep hills as though ascending into a furnace, and reach seemingly endless seas of bright green bracken.
Farfar has a mission - somewhere in the neck-deep ferns are some mysterious stones marked with cup-and-ring shaped depressions. Nobody knows their origins. Stone age? Pictish? Yithian cult? A Ponaptic fragment? I know which I favour.
If nobody knows their origins, it's perhaps because the map isn't very clear on their location either. Wading about in the bracken with big brown shield bugs pinging off our faces is great fun, if rather fruitless. We don't find all the mystery rocks, just the cup-marked ones (no rings). But we do find great swathes of juicy bilberries, which we pick until our water bottle is filled. So fruitful in some ways, I suppose.
After that, we join the ladies in a local hotel Spa for an afternoon of swimming. F likes swimming. I swoosh her about while V goes for a massage and Farmor goes jogging. Healthy.
-
As a treat, Farfar and Farmor buy F a ticket to see Peppa Pig's Big Splash, a live action puppet show in Perth. I sit in the foyer while V takes her in. I'm the only bloke in my age group present, although the place is packed out with mums and grandparents. This says something sad about the UK's approach to parenting, I think, but I'm too tired to think what. I'm also too glad not to be watching more Peppa Pig. F sits through both halves entranced, then we run round and round in circles on Perth's North Inch park for an hour. Which is how F approximates picnic behaviour.
-
V and I take a day to ourselves and stay in a decently cheap hotel in Edinburgh for a night. While we potter round shops, take in a tour of the historical Mary King's Close, get rained on and drink gin, F eats her own weight in pasta with Farfar and Farmor and blithely ignores the absence of her fretting parents as usual.
This is the first day we've had to ourselves for what, a year? I forget. Too long. It's almost like a first date, although without the same level of half-wittedly tentative conversational gambits. Having your first child already weighing on our minds is quite enough to make us half-witted anyway. We spend a fair bit of time at the hotel that evening looking at baby pictures of F and cooing, because we miss her.
She looks taller when we get back. Even if that's technically true, it's still ridiculous.
-
She sleeps through the takeoff on the way home. So do I - we were up at three to get to the airport, only to discover we'd set alarms on our Swedish phones and were actually up at two. Goddamn GMT.
F is clearly delighted to be home, even though she's had a fantastic time on holiday. And she has grown in the last two weeks, both in actual height (she can now reach the lightswitches to turn them both on and off), confidence and mastery of speech.
As is traditional with holidays, this one had an elastically long first week where everything stretched out ahead of us endlessly, then a frantic short second one where everything was suddenly over. And then we're home, everything back to routine normal.
Or as close to it as we get, at least. This is F's new favourite game she's developed out of nowhere, a game called Bake The Smurf. Cramming mummy and baby smurf head first into a cooker is normal. It must be. It's my baby playing it.
 |
| Smurfia Plath |
Thursday, July 3, 2014
Faustus Act 1 Sc 3.76
During the heights of the Cold War, a top US agent working behind Iron Curtain managed to get himself captured. The KGB agents who took him were determined to get their money's worth for the time and trouble spent bringing him in. He was taken to a euphemistically-named Debriefing Centre somewhere in the Urals and tortured extensively for months. His name (or code name, at any rate, the stuff I read wasn't entirely sure) was John G Franklin.
Franklin managed to resist his torture, somehow. Conventional methods (insofar as torture can ever be considered conventional) weren't going to do it. But the KGB didn't give up. Instead, they worked with what they knew of Franklin, or his working persona at least - that of a typical family business man. Using that, they devised a new approach.
They released him into a carefully monitered labyrinth, specially built under the Urals. It had no entrance or exit, just the appearance of such. Although there were places he could rest, feed or relieve himself, reaching them required significant feats of nearly-superhuman endurance. Constant white noise, undercut with sudden violent blasts of sound, was present in every chamber, along with harshly artificial overhead lighting.
Everywhere he looked, Franklin was presented with the reminders of freedom that he no longer enjoyed. Pictures of smiling, happy people in expensive clothes, eating and drinking impossibly luscious food. None of this was the masterstroke in the Russian plan, however. That was to harness explosives to Franklin's chest with thick and indestrucible webbing, explaining to him that entering the wrong room at the wrong time, or exposing the explosives to the 'wrong stimuli' would cause an instant and unpleasant death.
Unless, of course, he cooperated. Which he did after only two days.
It may not seem like a particularly remarkable form of torture to you now, in an age where waterboarding, sensory deprivation and so forth are more widely known. Which goes to show you how ahead of its time it was - the KGB's methods were so widely adopted and expanded upon that they're now universally acknowledged. The influences they've had on modern culture are far wider than previously accepted. Books, games, even architecture.
I myself have had firsthand experience of this. Only today, I went round Ullared's massive indoor retail outlet for seven straight hours with V in full-throated shopping frenzy mode and F in a pram.
If that place wasn't devised by insane torturers expressly trying to damage, if not entirely quash, the human spirit of any entering it, then I don't know insane torturers. An eternity of aisles crammed with a random assortment of things you think you might like but probably could be forced to admit you don't need, all at low low prices. Queues for everything! Queues for food, queues for changing rooms, queues for loos. Queues to get into the queues! My blood runs cold even now on thinking on it! Ahahahahahahahaaa!
Franklin, if you ever existed beyond a pointlessly long run-up to this venting of anguish after a long, long day, then my hat would be off to you. I called the KGB about six hours ago and offered to tell them everything. They were very politely confused in their rejection of my offer, but I think they're just being coy. I shall call them back now and try again.
Franklin managed to resist his torture, somehow. Conventional methods (insofar as torture can ever be considered conventional) weren't going to do it. But the KGB didn't give up. Instead, they worked with what they knew of Franklin, or his working persona at least - that of a typical family business man. Using that, they devised a new approach.
They released him into a carefully monitered labyrinth, specially built under the Urals. It had no entrance or exit, just the appearance of such. Although there were places he could rest, feed or relieve himself, reaching them required significant feats of nearly-superhuman endurance. Constant white noise, undercut with sudden violent blasts of sound, was present in every chamber, along with harshly artificial overhead lighting.
Everywhere he looked, Franklin was presented with the reminders of freedom that he no longer enjoyed. Pictures of smiling, happy people in expensive clothes, eating and drinking impossibly luscious food. None of this was the masterstroke in the Russian plan, however. That was to harness explosives to Franklin's chest with thick and indestrucible webbing, explaining to him that entering the wrong room at the wrong time, or exposing the explosives to the 'wrong stimuli' would cause an instant and unpleasant death.
Unless, of course, he cooperated. Which he did after only two days.
It may not seem like a particularly remarkable form of torture to you now, in an age where waterboarding, sensory deprivation and so forth are more widely known. Which goes to show you how ahead of its time it was - the KGB's methods were so widely adopted and expanded upon that they're now universally acknowledged. The influences they've had on modern culture are far wider than previously accepted. Books, games, even architecture.
I myself have had firsthand experience of this. Only today, I went round Ullared's massive indoor retail outlet for seven straight hours with V in full-throated shopping frenzy mode and F in a pram.
If that place wasn't devised by insane torturers expressly trying to damage, if not entirely quash, the human spirit of any entering it, then I don't know insane torturers. An eternity of aisles crammed with a random assortment of things you think you might like but probably could be forced to admit you don't need, all at low low prices. Queues for everything! Queues for food, queues for changing rooms, queues for loos. Queues to get into the queues! My blood runs cold even now on thinking on it! Ahahahahahahahaaa!
Franklin, if you ever existed beyond a pointlessly long run-up to this venting of anguish after a long, long day, then my hat would be off to you. I called the KGB about six hours ago and offered to tell them everything. They were very politely confused in their rejection of my offer, but I think they're just being coy. I shall call them back now and try again.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Priorities
Cutlery is no longer the mystery it once was; F ate her porridge ambidexterously today, a spoon in each hand. "Cha cha cha cha cha," she said said later, heading towards me over the carpet. In one hand, she had a toy plastic knife, and she was stabbing it up and down like a psycho in a shower.
Rather than disturbing, I thought it was cute. In itself, this is a little disturbing, I suppose, in that if she really was a pyscho in a shower I would still be tipping my head to one side and saying awww by way of explaining her behaviour to the police.
It was cute to me because I'm fairly fluent in Freyish. I knew she was saying 'chop chop chop' because that's what you do with knives. To vegetables. Not Daddy, we've had that chat. "Are you allowed to do that?" is a coded sentence intended to supply the answer "no". It's currently 80% effective. Although she's started throwing the tv remote away from herself when we come into the room, as though she was never anything to do with it in the first place.
Godfather B was here over last weekend. Having someone else in the house makes you rather more aware of how peculiar you get as a parent. To me, F's cat, bird, dog and elephant noises are easily distinguished*. To the passing stranger, they all sound kind of like 'eep'. From an external perspective, I could admit it looks slightly odd to spend lots of time in playparks putting large handfuls of woodchips into the springs under the seesaw. F has always done this. I hope one day to learn why. I tried it myself today, I must admit it does pass the time.
Catching up with friends J and A yesterday, we both agreed parenting deforms the mind. I say catching up, I really mean exchanging fourteen or fifteen disjointed sentences over the course of about three hours, usually as we rushed past each other at the playpark en route to hurling ourselves in the way of some incoming disaster or other. I brought coffee and baked goods, and got more sand in me than either.
But that's sort of normal, is the point. Breaking off half way through a sentence to run across a patio and knock a cigarette butt out of baby's tiny hands is perfectly acceptable behaviour, if a little abrupt. Most people can accept that. To me, there's no difference between that and breaking off the same, resumed sentence five minutes later to attend to F's question of "gna gna da blah blah da" instead of whoever I'm with.
Not understanding what she's asking doesn't matter. From my skewed perspective, it's just more important.
-
F has learnt a new game today, one I remember from Giles Brandreth's book 'I'm a hearty, harmless sort really! Why don't people like me more?'
Rolling on the Floor
For 2+ players
You Will Need:
A floor
A blanket
Place the blanket square on the floor. The leader shouts 'Roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll!" and lies on the blanket, rocking and rolling back and forwards. Everyone else must join in laughing hysterically, or the leader earns a free massive tantrum. The winner is the first person to break something they'd forgotten was in their pockets, e.g. a phone or their keys. Play continues indefinitely. What fun!
-
It's nearly the holidays. Bring it.
*Which reminds me of a family joke, much beloved of my dad when we were kids. What's the difference between a weasel and a stoat? A weasel is weasily distinguished, whilst a stoat is stoatally different.
Rather than disturbing, I thought it was cute. In itself, this is a little disturbing, I suppose, in that if she really was a pyscho in a shower I would still be tipping my head to one side and saying awww by way of explaining her behaviour to the police.
It was cute to me because I'm fairly fluent in Freyish. I knew she was saying 'chop chop chop' because that's what you do with knives. To vegetables. Not Daddy, we've had that chat. "Are you allowed to do that?" is a coded sentence intended to supply the answer "no". It's currently 80% effective. Although she's started throwing the tv remote away from herself when we come into the room, as though she was never anything to do with it in the first place.
Godfather B was here over last weekend. Having someone else in the house makes you rather more aware of how peculiar you get as a parent. To me, F's cat, bird, dog and elephant noises are easily distinguished*. To the passing stranger, they all sound kind of like 'eep'. From an external perspective, I could admit it looks slightly odd to spend lots of time in playparks putting large handfuls of woodchips into the springs under the seesaw. F has always done this. I hope one day to learn why. I tried it myself today, I must admit it does pass the time.
Catching up with friends J and A yesterday, we both agreed parenting deforms the mind. I say catching up, I really mean exchanging fourteen or fifteen disjointed sentences over the course of about three hours, usually as we rushed past each other at the playpark en route to hurling ourselves in the way of some incoming disaster or other. I brought coffee and baked goods, and got more sand in me than either.
But that's sort of normal, is the point. Breaking off half way through a sentence to run across a patio and knock a cigarette butt out of baby's tiny hands is perfectly acceptable behaviour, if a little abrupt. Most people can accept that. To me, there's no difference between that and breaking off the same, resumed sentence five minutes later to attend to F's question of "gna gna da blah blah da" instead of whoever I'm with.
Not understanding what she's asking doesn't matter. From my skewed perspective, it's just more important.
-
F has learnt a new game today, one I remember from Giles Brandreth's book 'I'm a hearty, harmless sort really! Why don't people like me more?'
Rolling on the Floor
For 2+ players
You Will Need:
A floor
A blanket
Place the blanket square on the floor. The leader shouts 'Roll roll roll roll roll roll roll roll!" and lies on the blanket, rocking and rolling back and forwards. Everyone else must join in laughing hysterically, or the leader earns a free massive tantrum. The winner is the first person to break something they'd forgotten was in their pockets, e.g. a phone or their keys. Play continues indefinitely. What fun!
-
It's nearly the holidays. Bring it.
*Which reminds me of a family joke, much beloved of my dad when we were kids. What's the difference between a weasel and a stoat? A weasel is weasily distinguished, whilst a stoat is stoatally different.
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Filmstar - 3/3
Last chance, this.
Not just because it's the last day of filming, but also because my confidence is severely dented right now. Unless I can actually prove to myself I can still deliver clean takes regardless whatever ridiculous pressure I'm under, I will quite seriously consider whether or not I will keep on trying to be an actor.
Enough eventually gets to be enough, after all. I pull in a bit of decent extra pocket money from my voice work, no reason to stop that. Although F has deep pockets, and it never goes far. But stage and film work? Next to none these days. There are long gaps on my CV. Casting people can't vault long gaps on an acting CV. Purblind morons* that they are, they assume it means you've turned crap.
So last night, despite being in a rather shell-shocked state, my wife helped me run my lines for nearly two hours. She's rather more OCD than I am. She doesn't let approximations slip in. She doesn't take three successive perfect deliveries as a sign that it's good enough. She's a wonderful coach, and I wouldn't have managed to get this done without her. I also slightly want to punch her and then go to sleep. Tough luck, Hogg, you don't always get what you want.
So our first shoot of the day is in a packaging warehouse. True to form, the director has picked a loud environment full of curious employees in which the set is constantly being moved. Although to be fair, this lot express their curiosity with the occasional sideways glance as they robotically load boxes into other boxes, perhaps because their boss is babysitting us.
There are a lot of heavy goods, oil drums, loosely stacked pallets and speeding forklift trucks around. Everybody is required to wear high visibility jackets and protective gear. Not me, I'm not really a person. I'm just a talking puppet with shit hair. After putting the hi-vi waistcoat on, I get told to take it off and carry sandbags, because the production assistant has called in sick.
Forty to fifty takes later, my confidence is entirely restored. Okay, it's taken us forever and a half, but it wasn't my fault this time. Two or three fluffed takes, yes. But by god, I know these lines. I can say them backwards. I just did. Four fluffed takes.
No, I'm not the limiting factor today. And from a couple of quiet remarks made by the lighting chief, even if it was clear to one and all I couldn't cope yesterday, it seems like I might not have been the worst offender after all. A slim hair, I'd say, but apparently the camera equipment is still ahead of me.
Full of mounting triumph, I hit the ground running at the next shoot. We're now in a container facility in a different part of the docks. Towers of multi-coloured giant lego blocks loom in all directions. I am asked to emerge from one, glide confidently across a stretch of open ground and finish with a backdrop of bustling loading cranes at work.
Predictably, the set is full of gigantic lorries. They keep stealing our containers. Ever seen a container-shifting forklift? I hadn't. By god, they're an intimidating sight. The fork is the same width as the average two-lane road. Half the time, it has something the size of a caravan dangling loosely from its jaws. The whole monstrous contraption looks like something Ripley would use to ensure Aliens never had any sequels. I wish she had.
Bored with the comparitive ease of trying to get a clean take in our shifting scenery, the director decides to up the ante. I am now to glide confidently across a stretch of open ground, leap jauntily on to one of these uberforklifts, pat it on the side as one would a docile horse and then disappear heroically into the sunset as it drives off, oblivious to the corrugated container wobbling two storeys above my head or the fact that I'm desperately clinging on to the side of an accelerating tractor.
I mean, okay, they only go about fifteen miles an hour or so at the absolute most, it's hardly Extreme Forklift Surfing. All the same, the tires are taller than my head, which I incidentally note would fit neatly into the gaps between the treads. And this isn't even part of the scheduled scene.
For some reason (insane bravado), I do this entirely unplanned and un-safety-checked stunt anyway. I nail it in four takes flat before it can do the same to me, and I feel like a king amonst men. Damocles, specifically.
It's plain sailing after that. Up and down an office lobby, filled with the ebb and flow of rubbernecking deskjockeys. For three hours, because the cardboard box towers I'm supposed to carry for this composite scene haven't been built yet, so I have to wait about for the crew to rig them together from gaffer tape and optimism. I retain my lines throughout, although my deliveries get tired, bored and irritable before the end.
- You're looking very red and sweaty, can you do something about it? the director asks me.
"The red is sunburn, the sweat is sunblock," I say tartly.
- Well, you looked kind of angry in your last take. Smile more for this one.
So I do. Because I'm imagining a series of tractors driving over his head.
Look, I just want to reiterate to any starry-eyed wannabes out there - this is not an atypical day of filming. This is just how it is. I'm writing about it to let off steam, and that includes a certain amount of bitchy whining, hyperbole and bruised ego. That given, everything here is entirely factual. I got paid for it, that's how I know, otherwise I'd assume I made it up to make people laugh.
At the end of the day, the director is pleased. The memories of my bad lines have phased out in the static joy of a wrap. Okay, I have to point out to him that there are four blocks of voice over text that he's forgotten to record. But that just means he gets to announce that it's a wrap twice. Extra value, right?
I haven't seen F for three days, because I've been leaving before she gets up and getting home after she's asleep. She grins when she sees me, points me out to mummy, then goes back to ripping up her envelope. I get a brief punishment tantrum when I try to pick her up as mummy goes out for a well-deserved drinks night with work colleagues, but my absence is soon forgiven. She runs up and down on the carpet, practising jumping on me with excited screams.
Honour, mental stability and pride in my work are all restored. I will not give up acting, not today. I'm Hogg-headed that way.
*If you're a casting director, I didn't write this. Someone else made me do it. Please give me a job. Even a chance at one. I'll do anything.
Not just because it's the last day of filming, but also because my confidence is severely dented right now. Unless I can actually prove to myself I can still deliver clean takes regardless whatever ridiculous pressure I'm under, I will quite seriously consider whether or not I will keep on trying to be an actor.
Enough eventually gets to be enough, after all. I pull in a bit of decent extra pocket money from my voice work, no reason to stop that. Although F has deep pockets, and it never goes far. But stage and film work? Next to none these days. There are long gaps on my CV. Casting people can't vault long gaps on an acting CV. Purblind morons* that they are, they assume it means you've turned crap.
So last night, despite being in a rather shell-shocked state, my wife helped me run my lines for nearly two hours. She's rather more OCD than I am. She doesn't let approximations slip in. She doesn't take three successive perfect deliveries as a sign that it's good enough. She's a wonderful coach, and I wouldn't have managed to get this done without her. I also slightly want to punch her and then go to sleep. Tough luck, Hogg, you don't always get what you want.
So our first shoot of the day is in a packaging warehouse. True to form, the director has picked a loud environment full of curious employees in which the set is constantly being moved. Although to be fair, this lot express their curiosity with the occasional sideways glance as they robotically load boxes into other boxes, perhaps because their boss is babysitting us.
There are a lot of heavy goods, oil drums, loosely stacked pallets and speeding forklift trucks around. Everybody is required to wear high visibility jackets and protective gear. Not me, I'm not really a person. I'm just a talking puppet with shit hair. After putting the hi-vi waistcoat on, I get told to take it off and carry sandbags, because the production assistant has called in sick.
Forty to fifty takes later, my confidence is entirely restored. Okay, it's taken us forever and a half, but it wasn't my fault this time. Two or three fluffed takes, yes. But by god, I know these lines. I can say them backwards. I just did. Four fluffed takes.
No, I'm not the limiting factor today. And from a couple of quiet remarks made by the lighting chief, even if it was clear to one and all I couldn't cope yesterday, it seems like I might not have been the worst offender after all. A slim hair, I'd say, but apparently the camera equipment is still ahead of me.
Full of mounting triumph, I hit the ground running at the next shoot. We're now in a container facility in a different part of the docks. Towers of multi-coloured giant lego blocks loom in all directions. I am asked to emerge from one, glide confidently across a stretch of open ground and finish with a backdrop of bustling loading cranes at work.
Predictably, the set is full of gigantic lorries. They keep stealing our containers. Ever seen a container-shifting forklift? I hadn't. By god, they're an intimidating sight. The fork is the same width as the average two-lane road. Half the time, it has something the size of a caravan dangling loosely from its jaws. The whole monstrous contraption looks like something Ripley would use to ensure Aliens never had any sequels. I wish she had.
Bored with the comparitive ease of trying to get a clean take in our shifting scenery, the director decides to up the ante. I am now to glide confidently across a stretch of open ground, leap jauntily on to one of these uberforklifts, pat it on the side as one would a docile horse and then disappear heroically into the sunset as it drives off, oblivious to the corrugated container wobbling two storeys above my head or the fact that I'm desperately clinging on to the side of an accelerating tractor.
I mean, okay, they only go about fifteen miles an hour or so at the absolute most, it's hardly Extreme Forklift Surfing. All the same, the tires are taller than my head, which I incidentally note would fit neatly into the gaps between the treads. And this isn't even part of the scheduled scene.
For some reason (insane bravado), I do this entirely unplanned and un-safety-checked stunt anyway. I nail it in four takes flat before it can do the same to me, and I feel like a king amonst men. Damocles, specifically.
It's plain sailing after that. Up and down an office lobby, filled with the ebb and flow of rubbernecking deskjockeys. For three hours, because the cardboard box towers I'm supposed to carry for this composite scene haven't been built yet, so I have to wait about for the crew to rig them together from gaffer tape and optimism. I retain my lines throughout, although my deliveries get tired, bored and irritable before the end.
- You're looking very red and sweaty, can you do something about it? the director asks me.
"The red is sunburn, the sweat is sunblock," I say tartly.
- Well, you looked kind of angry in your last take. Smile more for this one.
So I do. Because I'm imagining a series of tractors driving over his head.
Look, I just want to reiterate to any starry-eyed wannabes out there - this is not an atypical day of filming. This is just how it is. I'm writing about it to let off steam, and that includes a certain amount of bitchy whining, hyperbole and bruised ego. That given, everything here is entirely factual. I got paid for it, that's how I know, otherwise I'd assume I made it up to make people laugh.
At the end of the day, the director is pleased. The memories of my bad lines have phased out in the static joy of a wrap. Okay, I have to point out to him that there are four blocks of voice over text that he's forgotten to record. But that just means he gets to announce that it's a wrap twice. Extra value, right?
I haven't seen F for three days, because I've been leaving before she gets up and getting home after she's asleep. She grins when she sees me, points me out to mummy, then goes back to ripping up her envelope. I get a brief punishment tantrum when I try to pick her up as mummy goes out for a well-deserved drinks night with work colleagues, but my absence is soon forgiven. She runs up and down on the carpet, practising jumping on me with excited screams.
Honour, mental stability and pride in my work are all restored. I will not give up acting, not today. I'm Hogg-headed that way.
*If you're a casting director, I didn't write this. Someone else made me do it. Please give me a job. Even a chance at one. I'll do anything.
Friday, June 13, 2014
Filmstar - 2/3
The Norwegian border is lovely at this time of year. - Ah, smell that! the DoP says as we slide out of the minivan at 0800. We all do.
It's somewhere between rapeseed pollen, manure, diesel exhaust, decaying horseflesh and dogshit, I judge. The DoP immediately catches flack for making us all inhale the cloying stench. But it's not his fault, there's really no escape from it here at border control.
The first scene today is outside another busy workplace. I strut my stuff outside the glass windows of a customs office, with a row of pasty white truckers staring out at me like doped cows. Some of them even chew, cud-like. Snus, probably.
My costume came home with me the day before. Giving an actor charge of their own costume is unusual in the acting world, we're tooself-centered focussed on our craft to handle details like that well. So I left my shoes at home and had to dash back on the tram to get them before we even set off.
Bodes well, that. At least my confidence in my lines is better today. I've been drilling all the way up, at least when I wasn't nodding like a dashboard ornament, dazed by the 0500 start.
Although it's cool, clammy and cloudy when we start, by midday the sun is starting to blister through the overhanging drizzle. So far, we've got one scene. It's taken three hours - the first one for setting up equipment and watching the director stride about choosing frames, the next two for takes. After a conservative forty or so of these, my line-learning is peeling like the cloud cover. I'm better than the day before, but still confusing words and stumbling.
Forty takes doesn't help anyone. It's not all down to me, it's a broad mix of sound, lighting, camera, background movement, unexpected lawnmowers, abrupt changes of direction and hair failures. I look bizzare, I think, my hair is in the awkward half-way house between long and short where I have strange curled coils spiralling sideways away over each ear. Apparently the client liked it. An embittered part of me suspects production just didn't want to spring for a trip to a hairdresser. In my grey waistcoat, shirt sleeves and a full can of hairspray, I look like someone has electrocuted The Mentalist.
Anyway - forty takes. Yesterday left me rattled. You don't want to be the limiting factor on the production line, and I very much feel like I am. All my lines are about customs. Is there a difference between customs compliance and customs clearance? How many synonyms for 'enable' can you fit in a single PR-packed paragraph? How more secure is your core business score if you ensure you're insured in your core? What does any of what I'm saying even mean?
We don't have lunch, we need to catch the light.
Four hours later, I'm in shock. The ball has been dropped, and I'm the butterfingers.
On the northern side of the border, we've been performing to another herd of truckers. This time, I'm walking along a strip of asphalt along the end of a lorry bay. I follow the curb for a bit, then veer diagonally across towards the parked big rigs on the other side. I must time my delivery so I vanish between two cabs after asking a rhetorical questions (something balanced and informative along the lines of 'but why is the company in question just so bloody good at everything it does?').
The sun is baking down. Specifically, it is baking my eyes. From two directions, because even though I'm walking into direct sunlight, the director scuffles along next to the camera, holding a reflector screen that bounces anything missing my retinas back up my nose to scorch the underside of my sockets.
The trucks keep driving away, so the marks I'm supposed to hit change after every second take or so. My timing keeps getting off, so I deliver the rhetorical question, then cover three to four metres of road holding the same querulous eyebrow aloft in order to sustain the question.
The director then decides he wants to get a take where I deliver the lines as a truck passes behind me. He is irritated that this puts me off my stride, partly because I wasn't expecting it as I didn't understand the conversation where it was explained to me, partly because I've been nearly blindsided by a forty ton lorry. We don't ask any truckers to help, of course, so we just have to wing the timing on this. Fine, I'm winging everything by this point, lines, facial expressions, breathing, the lot. All I'm really doing is walking and talking simultaneously. Who knew it was so hard?
My brain is caught under a trio of magnifying glasses - trucker scorn, directorial ire and personal shame that my lines are falling apart. The lone banana propping up my blood sugar gives out at around three o' clock, and that's it. By the final takes, on the directorial command -Varsågod! all I can produce is blinking and spluttering.
There is no clean take of this scene. Before stomping off into a nearby ditch in a weakly contained fit of temper, the director tells the DoP to get closeups of my hands and feet in the scene, so they can use them as cutaways to splice together something functional.
We then spend the last filming slot of the day trying to get a take of a single sentence with a lorry driving past. You think there'd be plenty around, but the director has picked a stretch of motorway just on the other side of the customs pitstop. Rather than steaming along the tarmac, they all pull in to declare their goods some five hundred metres away. The few that do steam past don't have anything on the back. This spoils the artistic composition of the shot, it is alleged. Almost as much as, say, a well-steamed actor wilting into his grey serge three-piece.
The director seems oblivious to the logistics at work, however, and we keep trying. After thirty minutes of shots of skeletal lorries, he has a mild change of heart, and decides that he'll settle for a lorry that's leaving the truck stop, on the other side of the verge we're filming on.
But he doesn't give up hope of the original plan. For the next half hour, our production assistant (also our wardrobe mistress, runner, makeup artist, casting agent, extra wrangler, boom operator and floor manager) keeps a meercat-like watch on the incoming traffic. On the shout 'there's one!', we all sprint to our marks in the grass on the relevant side of the verge, hoping to set up, start shooting and time the shot right before the truck gets away.
The final moments of this deathmarch involve the director tromping back into the customs bay, plonking me down in the middle of the road and trying to get a clean take of my lines before I get hit by the next departing truck.
We do not succeed.
We go home with two scenes unbagged. Never before have I screwed up this much. In film terms, my face is Three Colours: Red, and only some of it is sunburn.
Nobody talks in the van. We're all too tired and cross, packing the BK meals we eventually get for our 1700 lunch into our grumpy faces. When we arrive back in Gothenburg, the director tells me to get some rest tonight, but spend a couple of hours running lines whilst moving around and multitasking first.
I go home. Still wearing my costume, because there's been no time or place to change.
Okay, everyone has a bad day now and again. Sometimes two in a row. But I can't really put the blame solely on the difficult conditions or the perhaps rather unreasonable hours. Turns out I just didn't know those lines well enough.
I've always had trouble learning stuff well. Innate slapdashery tends to makes me approximate at the best of times. Getting older makes it no easier - it takes so long to bed things in I run out of time. Sometimes they go in wrong as well. And it's not like I've got more free time suddenly, or extra energy to pour into this like I need. Two bad days in a row, both linked to my mnemonic limitations. Another day like this, and I'd fire myself. Even one would probably get you kicked off a film set or high-profile TV job.
A buck has stopped in my chest somewhere, and I'm wondering whether I'm really capable of this any more.
It's somewhere between rapeseed pollen, manure, diesel exhaust, decaying horseflesh and dogshit, I judge. The DoP immediately catches flack for making us all inhale the cloying stench. But it's not his fault, there's really no escape from it here at border control.
The first scene today is outside another busy workplace. I strut my stuff outside the glass windows of a customs office, with a row of pasty white truckers staring out at me like doped cows. Some of them even chew, cud-like. Snus, probably.
My costume came home with me the day before. Giving an actor charge of their own costume is unusual in the acting world, we're too
Bodes well, that. At least my confidence in my lines is better today. I've been drilling all the way up, at least when I wasn't nodding like a dashboard ornament, dazed by the 0500 start.
Although it's cool, clammy and cloudy when we start, by midday the sun is starting to blister through the overhanging drizzle. So far, we've got one scene. It's taken three hours - the first one for setting up equipment and watching the director stride about choosing frames, the next two for takes. After a conservative forty or so of these, my line-learning is peeling like the cloud cover. I'm better than the day before, but still confusing words and stumbling.
Forty takes doesn't help anyone. It's not all down to me, it's a broad mix of sound, lighting, camera, background movement, unexpected lawnmowers, abrupt changes of direction and hair failures. I look bizzare, I think, my hair is in the awkward half-way house between long and short where I have strange curled coils spiralling sideways away over each ear. Apparently the client liked it. An embittered part of me suspects production just didn't want to spring for a trip to a hairdresser. In my grey waistcoat, shirt sleeves and a full can of hairspray, I look like someone has electrocuted The Mentalist.
Anyway - forty takes. Yesterday left me rattled. You don't want to be the limiting factor on the production line, and I very much feel like I am. All my lines are about customs. Is there a difference between customs compliance and customs clearance? How many synonyms for 'enable' can you fit in a single PR-packed paragraph? How more secure is your core business score if you ensure you're insured in your core? What does any of what I'm saying even mean?
We don't have lunch, we need to catch the light.
Four hours later, I'm in shock. The ball has been dropped, and I'm the butterfingers.
On the northern side of the border, we've been performing to another herd of truckers. This time, I'm walking along a strip of asphalt along the end of a lorry bay. I follow the curb for a bit, then veer diagonally across towards the parked big rigs on the other side. I must time my delivery so I vanish between two cabs after asking a rhetorical questions (something balanced and informative along the lines of 'but why is the company in question just so bloody good at everything it does?').
The sun is baking down. Specifically, it is baking my eyes. From two directions, because even though I'm walking into direct sunlight, the director scuffles along next to the camera, holding a reflector screen that bounces anything missing my retinas back up my nose to scorch the underside of my sockets.
The trucks keep driving away, so the marks I'm supposed to hit change after every second take or so. My timing keeps getting off, so I deliver the rhetorical question, then cover three to four metres of road holding the same querulous eyebrow aloft in order to sustain the question.
The director then decides he wants to get a take where I deliver the lines as a truck passes behind me. He is irritated that this puts me off my stride, partly because I wasn't expecting it as I didn't understand the conversation where it was explained to me, partly because I've been nearly blindsided by a forty ton lorry. We don't ask any truckers to help, of course, so we just have to wing the timing on this. Fine, I'm winging everything by this point, lines, facial expressions, breathing, the lot. All I'm really doing is walking and talking simultaneously. Who knew it was so hard?
My brain is caught under a trio of magnifying glasses - trucker scorn, directorial ire and personal shame that my lines are falling apart. The lone banana propping up my blood sugar gives out at around three o' clock, and that's it. By the final takes, on the directorial command -Varsågod! all I can produce is blinking and spluttering.
There is no clean take of this scene. Before stomping off into a nearby ditch in a weakly contained fit of temper, the director tells the DoP to get closeups of my hands and feet in the scene, so they can use them as cutaways to splice together something functional.
We then spend the last filming slot of the day trying to get a take of a single sentence with a lorry driving past. You think there'd be plenty around, but the director has picked a stretch of motorway just on the other side of the customs pitstop. Rather than steaming along the tarmac, they all pull in to declare their goods some five hundred metres away. The few that do steam past don't have anything on the back. This spoils the artistic composition of the shot, it is alleged. Almost as much as, say, a well-steamed actor wilting into his grey serge three-piece.
The director seems oblivious to the logistics at work, however, and we keep trying. After thirty minutes of shots of skeletal lorries, he has a mild change of heart, and decides that he'll settle for a lorry that's leaving the truck stop, on the other side of the verge we're filming on.
But he doesn't give up hope of the original plan. For the next half hour, our production assistant (also our wardrobe mistress, runner, makeup artist, casting agent, extra wrangler, boom operator and floor manager) keeps a meercat-like watch on the incoming traffic. On the shout 'there's one!', we all sprint to our marks in the grass on the relevant side of the verge, hoping to set up, start shooting and time the shot right before the truck gets away.
The final moments of this deathmarch involve the director tromping back into the customs bay, plonking me down in the middle of the road and trying to get a clean take of my lines before I get hit by the next departing truck.
We do not succeed.
We go home with two scenes unbagged. Never before have I screwed up this much. In film terms, my face is Three Colours: Red, and only some of it is sunburn.
Nobody talks in the van. We're all too tired and cross, packing the BK meals we eventually get for our 1700 lunch into our grumpy faces. When we arrive back in Gothenburg, the director tells me to get some rest tonight, but spend a couple of hours running lines whilst moving around and multitasking first.
I go home. Still wearing my costume, because there's been no time or place to change.
Okay, everyone has a bad day now and again. Sometimes two in a row. But I can't really put the blame solely on the difficult conditions or the perhaps rather unreasonable hours. Turns out I just didn't know those lines well enough.
I've always had trouble learning stuff well. Innate slapdashery tends to makes me approximate at the best of times. Getting older makes it no easier - it takes so long to bed things in I run out of time. Sometimes they go in wrong as well. And it's not like I've got more free time suddenly, or extra energy to pour into this like I need. Two bad days in a row, both linked to my mnemonic limitations. Another day like this, and I'd fire myself. Even one would probably get you kicked off a film set or high-profile TV job.
A buck has stopped in my chest somewhere, and I'm wondering whether I'm really capable of this any more.
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Filmstar - I/3
A short break from being a stay-at-home dad this week. I'm doing some film work, a short corporate ident thing.
Learning lines. Hate it. Drudge work at its worst, it's never over. Every time I think 'ah yes! I can recite this speech three times in a row with no mistakes now, that ought to do it!', I discover that in fact I'll need to actually act during the recital. It's a right bugger.
Worst of all, nobody pays you to learn lines. They pay you to have your lines learnt, fair enough. For stage rehearsals, the time you spend working on scenes helps you learn plenty. But if you want to get properly off-book and ready to actually work on your acting, you need to put in the time at home, out of hours.
There is no excuse for not doing it. Not one. Not convincingly. Not ever.
So I was really busy over the weekend with various family-related activities, my hayfever has been really acting up, I didn't get a final script until the day before we started filming, I can't stride round the flat proclaiming my lines in the evenings because it might wake F, I had to go out drinking with my brothers-in-law the night before because we've been trying to do that for two years and finally managed to arrange it and, well, and I'm getting old and my memory is fraying.
All true. All useless.
Come the afternoon of the first day of filming, I'm in an office block somewhere in the docks on Hisingen island. The people who work here (it's their company we're working for) have been roped in as extras, because that way we can use their offices during the workday. So we're filming as they try and work - very convincing, but not especially great because they need to use photocopiers, talk to each other and generally stand about gawping in a way that actual extras get fired for.
It's not been a great start to the day. We're two hours over schedule because some of the camera equipment is faulty, and because the camera guy discovered he can't walk his steady-cam rig backwards up a flight of stairs whilst filming me. The radio mics aren't very good, they pick up a more of my clothing rustling than my lines. They gaffer it to my chest hair to counter this. Every extra in the room winces when they realise it doesn't work and rip it off again. It's stiflingly hot outside. People keep having to repeat direction to me in various languages, because they know I understand a minimal amount of Swedish and I'm stubbornly trying to speak as much as I can.
But I'm mildly hungover, very tired, out of practice at camera acting (over a year since I last filmed anything) and more than usually confused.
And I don't know my lines well enough.
We do about forty takes of a scene where I walk along a corridor, spouting eulogies on the corporate support team, then vanish behind a glass screen. I have to keep talking behind the screen, on which various computer graphics will appear, then emerge at the other side, still talking, stride confidently to a globe and spin it. And then talk some more as the camera zooms into the globe for more SFX.
And I can't. I can't get there. I learnt the lines, but in chunks that don't turn out to coincide with what the director wants because my script was just words, no scenes or stage direction. I can usually reach the glass screen, but emerge confidently? No. Even if I manage it, the globe has been gaffered to the table it's on, and if I spin it too hard, it falls off. This always happens, because I'm so glad to get there I clutch at the damn thing like I'm falling down a lift shaft.
Pressure mounts.
My brain counters this by dismounting. Increasingly, I can't get down the corridor to the screen without a fluff or a stumble. The extras start whispering to each other in disbelief, it seems to me, that we need another take. The director lets me rely on my script behind the glass, then eventually takes kicks that crutch away and does it himself.
We get there, eventually, but I'm rattled. The last scene of the day goes much better, but I suspect that's only because everyone's too tired to care.
At the end of the day, the DoP drives home with my clothes in his car before I can get changed. The film crew is only four people, and I'm counting myself as one of them, because I end up helping the director carry lighting boxes, booms and cables down to their cars. My lift home turns out to be an attempt to convince me to help drive the van to Norway tomorrow, after we stop at the van hire place. I plead illiteracy of the left-hand-drive, and wiggle out of it.
F is asleep before I'm home. I'm shattered, so I watch TV with V for a bit and hit the hay after a bit of half-arsed line-running before bed. People still tend to think acting is glamourous. To which I say glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour BATMAN, partly because this is basically an entirely typical day of screen work (even if I work at the lower end of the glamour spectrum at the best of times) and partly because I'm exhausted and my brain is fucked.
Learning lines. Hate it. Drudge work at its worst, it's never over. Every time I think 'ah yes! I can recite this speech three times in a row with no mistakes now, that ought to do it!', I discover that in fact I'll need to actually act during the recital. It's a right bugger.
Worst of all, nobody pays you to learn lines. They pay you to have your lines learnt, fair enough. For stage rehearsals, the time you spend working on scenes helps you learn plenty. But if you want to get properly off-book and ready to actually work on your acting, you need to put in the time at home, out of hours.
There is no excuse for not doing it. Not one. Not convincingly. Not ever.
So I was really busy over the weekend with various family-related activities, my hayfever has been really acting up, I didn't get a final script until the day before we started filming, I can't stride round the flat proclaiming my lines in the evenings because it might wake F, I had to go out drinking with my brothers-in-law the night before because we've been trying to do that for two years and finally managed to arrange it and, well, and I'm getting old and my memory is fraying.
All true. All useless.
Come the afternoon of the first day of filming, I'm in an office block somewhere in the docks on Hisingen island. The people who work here (it's their company we're working for) have been roped in as extras, because that way we can use their offices during the workday. So we're filming as they try and work - very convincing, but not especially great because they need to use photocopiers, talk to each other and generally stand about gawping in a way that actual extras get fired for.
It's not been a great start to the day. We're two hours over schedule because some of the camera equipment is faulty, and because the camera guy discovered he can't walk his steady-cam rig backwards up a flight of stairs whilst filming me. The radio mics aren't very good, they pick up a more of my clothing rustling than my lines. They gaffer it to my chest hair to counter this. Every extra in the room winces when they realise it doesn't work and rip it off again. It's stiflingly hot outside. People keep having to repeat direction to me in various languages, because they know I understand a minimal amount of Swedish and I'm stubbornly trying to speak as much as I can.
But I'm mildly hungover, very tired, out of practice at camera acting (over a year since I last filmed anything) and more than usually confused.
And I don't know my lines well enough.
We do about forty takes of a scene where I walk along a corridor, spouting eulogies on the corporate support team, then vanish behind a glass screen. I have to keep talking behind the screen, on which various computer graphics will appear, then emerge at the other side, still talking, stride confidently to a globe and spin it. And then talk some more as the camera zooms into the globe for more SFX.
And I can't. I can't get there. I learnt the lines, but in chunks that don't turn out to coincide with what the director wants because my script was just words, no scenes or stage direction. I can usually reach the glass screen, but emerge confidently? No. Even if I manage it, the globe has been gaffered to the table it's on, and if I spin it too hard, it falls off. This always happens, because I'm so glad to get there I clutch at the damn thing like I'm falling down a lift shaft.
Pressure mounts.
My brain counters this by dismounting. Increasingly, I can't get down the corridor to the screen without a fluff or a stumble. The extras start whispering to each other in disbelief, it seems to me, that we need another take. The director lets me rely on my script behind the glass, then eventually takes kicks that crutch away and does it himself.
We get there, eventually, but I'm rattled. The last scene of the day goes much better, but I suspect that's only because everyone's too tired to care.
At the end of the day, the DoP drives home with my clothes in his car before I can get changed. The film crew is only four people, and I'm counting myself as one of them, because I end up helping the director carry lighting boxes, booms and cables down to their cars. My lift home turns out to be an attempt to convince me to help drive the van to Norway tomorrow, after we stop at the van hire place. I plead illiteracy of the left-hand-drive, and wiggle out of it.
F is asleep before I'm home. I'm shattered, so I watch TV with V for a bit and hit the hay after a bit of half-arsed line-running before bed. People still tend to think acting is glamourous. To which I say glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour glamour BATMAN, partly because this is basically an entirely typical day of screen work (even if I work at the lower end of the glamour spectrum at the best of times) and partly because I'm exhausted and my brain is fucked.
Saturday, May 31, 2014
Command
F isn't very well again, she's got some cold or other. Twin green streaks from her nostrils, mild fever, a bit shivery. Nothing serious. So she's been curled up on the sofa with me watching The Little Mermaid in Swedish. Den Lilla Sjöjungfrun - The Small Lake Maiden, according to Google Translate. No cigar.
At some point (around Triton's destruction of Ariel's collection, iirc. Not that I was watching avidly or anything), she got bored and wandered off. A few minutes later, she appeared again in front of the TV, holding a plastic matching shape from one of her toys, a green star with Donald Duck on it, and started waving it at me and then the TV.
This is a surrogate for the tv remote, which she grudgingly concedes she's not allowed. The Duck is her new favourite - waving it in front of my line of vision is an indication I should put Donald on. No alternatives are acceptable.
It's hard getting used to having a tiny person who understands what's going on and knows what she wants. We were out for a walk a few afternoons back, wondering what to do after eating lunch. "I bet she'd like some carrot cake somewhere," I said to V, on my way to suggesting fika somewhere later on.
"Car ca'?" said F immediately, perking up and then throwing a massive tantrum because we then walked past a cafe she knows sells it instead of taking her in.
Being raised bilingual has this disadvantage, that we won't have a secret language. My parents used French until we started secondary school. F doesn't speak French. Nor does V. And I'm not sure what I can do to that language counts as speech, exactly. We can spell things out, I guess, but that won't last forever. I mean, it took our old labrador Rocket about two weeks to work out what W-A-L-K meant, and he was thick as a post. Adorable too, but even so.
She still doesn't speak much, mostly using single words and pointing. Or clinging to whatever surface is available if she doesn't agree with whatever course of action you've just suggested. Trying to prise a 12.6 kg baby from your facial hair in an attempt to put her on the changing table is increasingly quite a feat. She can virtually pull a headstand in midair to avoid being put on the floor. It's like trying to push repelling magnets together.
Her newest control method for parents is to grab your finger and then put it on what she wants. Particularly on the iPad, where even though she knows how to do a jigsaw puzzle by dragging and dropping pieces, she knows it's faster if you do it for her.
I dreamt of dusting last night. I fear for my mental health, the war on housework is taking a toll. And I would take lakes of burning fire and demonic hayforks over matching socks. In fact, a classical hell holds no sway with me. An infinite pile of near-identical once-black socks, that would get the old fear of death going. There's probably a pun about emperilling your mortal sole in it for those with a penchant for such things.
Ah well. You should always follow your dreams, I suppose. Back to work for me.
More Recent Frejish: -
Murmur - put the The Little Mermaid on, Daddy
Pra' - I will now consume your expensive restaurant prawns, Mummy
Mor peeth - More please, although you only get the 'peeth' by prompting and witholding at the moment
Gum - Strawberries, hence, I like this food. Short for Jordgubbar, I think. Not to be confused with
Gom - Gollum
At some point (around Triton's destruction of Ariel's collection, iirc. Not that I was watching avidly or anything), she got bored and wandered off. A few minutes later, she appeared again in front of the TV, holding a plastic matching shape from one of her toys, a green star with Donald Duck on it, and started waving it at me and then the TV.
This is a surrogate for the tv remote, which she grudgingly concedes she's not allowed. The Duck is her new favourite - waving it in front of my line of vision is an indication I should put Donald on. No alternatives are acceptable.
It's hard getting used to having a tiny person who understands what's going on and knows what she wants. We were out for a walk a few afternoons back, wondering what to do after eating lunch. "I bet she'd like some carrot cake somewhere," I said to V, on my way to suggesting fika somewhere later on.
"Car ca'?" said F immediately, perking up and then throwing a massive tantrum because we then walked past a cafe she knows sells it instead of taking her in.
Being raised bilingual has this disadvantage, that we won't have a secret language. My parents used French until we started secondary school. F doesn't speak French. Nor does V. And I'm not sure what I can do to that language counts as speech, exactly. We can spell things out, I guess, but that won't last forever. I mean, it took our old labrador Rocket about two weeks to work out what W-A-L-K meant, and he was thick as a post. Adorable too, but even so.
She still doesn't speak much, mostly using single words and pointing. Or clinging to whatever surface is available if she doesn't agree with whatever course of action you've just suggested. Trying to prise a 12.6 kg baby from your facial hair in an attempt to put her on the changing table is increasingly quite a feat. She can virtually pull a headstand in midair to avoid being put on the floor. It's like trying to push repelling magnets together.
Her newest control method for parents is to grab your finger and then put it on what she wants. Particularly on the iPad, where even though she knows how to do a jigsaw puzzle by dragging and dropping pieces, she knows it's faster if you do it for her.
-
I dreamt of dusting last night. I fear for my mental health, the war on housework is taking a toll. And I would take lakes of burning fire and demonic hayforks over matching socks. In fact, a classical hell holds no sway with me. An infinite pile of near-identical once-black socks, that would get the old fear of death going. There's probably a pun about emperilling your mortal sole in it for those with a penchant for such things.
Ah well. You should always follow your dreams, I suppose. Back to work for me.
-
More Recent Frejish: -
Murmur - put the The Little Mermaid on, Daddy
Pra' - I will now consume your expensive restaurant prawns, Mummy
Mor peeth - More please, although you only get the 'peeth' by prompting and witholding at the moment
Gum - Strawberries, hence, I like this food. Short for Jordgubbar, I think. Not to be confused with
Gom - Gollum
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Walk On
This has been an exhausting month. Hence the lower than usual number of blog posts, I guess. Nobody is likely to read 'o god I'm so tired' over and over again.
F can walk. Also climb, run, and spin on the spot until she falls over whilst chanting 'go go go!' About two months ago, F would only walk if she could hold on to both my hands and use me as a giant walking machine. I'm convinced that the popularity of giant walking machines in sci-fi harks back to our childhood memories of being walked about by a seemingly omnipotent parental figure, as a passing note*. But back then, I'd have given my eyeteeth to get a reprise from perpetually zimmering her round the world.
She started walking properly around a month ago, roughly. And in a few short weeks, this is now how she gets everywhere. She can stand upright from prone unaided, occasionally with a bumped head and a sorrowful look. I'd never have thought this would be more tiring, more nerve-wracking and more trouble than being constantly called upon to ferry her about. Which I still am, of course - walking is all well and good for fifteen minutes or so, then you need a horsey ride. Or a lift over a wall, or up a slide, or something, and god help your dad if he doesn't deliver pronto.
But if all the backache is a bit better now, thanks, the mental torment of walking into a room to find her teetering upright on the edge of the sofa and clearly contemplating a stage dive on to the corner of the coffee table is much much worse. I know I can't fling myself four metres accurately in the split second it will take her to topple. I also know I will almost certainly try if she does. And almost certainly make things worse, of course.
There was one blissful afternoon a few weeks back, at a friend's outdoor birthday party, when F first exhibited the independence that comes with independent motive ability. Once we arrived, she instantly buggered off to play with her friend's toys and relatives and left me feeling a bit spare. It reminded me of the teenage parties I'd gone to with girlfriends who weren't all that keen to remain such. "Take my coat, see you in five hours," that kind of vibe.
Once I'd relaxed, it was great. F would swan past riding a toy car or clutching a ball from time to time. From the safety of a deckchair, I could monitor her whereabouts and rescue her if she was wandering too far off. In a nice safe enclosed garden area, this was fine. Somehow, in the comfines of our flat, it's not - she gets out of eyeshot all the time.
I need to get used to this. I can't. There's a razor's edge between concerned parenting and becoming a one-man Nanny State, and it's a razor I'm slowly sawing myself in half on.
Bra adverts (bradverts?) irritate the hell out of me. They aren't marketing anything I'm likely to buy, and yet they're entirely designed to grab my poor, libidinous male attention. Manttention, if we're coining new words today. It's hardly difficult to get the lizard in my hindbrain to blink, so to speak, so it's inordinately aggravating to have that reflex manipulated by some lazy creative design nob lounging about in his relaxed penthouse office somewhere in Shoreditch.
Nothing about them really makes sense to me. If they want to sell to women, why have all the models got such provocative poses? If they want to sell to men, why are the models still wearing the bras? I 'm familiar with some of the theories touted about to explain this. That women apparently like to buy stuff they see on successful/attractive looking women and that men will basically buy rotting meat if you lean some on a partly-clad woman. But it all strikes me as the kind of reasoning put about by people, mostly men, who need to justify spending their client's budget by hanging out at underwear model shoots.
I am doubly annoyed that such ads work well enough that it annoys my wife when my hapless gaze falters on them. I'm trebly annoyed when they almost have my daughter's name printed over the pouting tresses of some artlessly posed harlot in a two-piece. Thanks very much, bra manufacterer Freya, for the awful dints you've delivered to my parental peace of mind with your recent carpet bombing of Gothenburg's tram stops. It's been the mental equivalent of a pogo stick to the balls every hundred yards on a daily basis for over a fortnight.
We took F to Liseberg, the local Alton Towers Analogue, today. Today was Swedish Mothers' Day, and was lovely sunny weather. Sunny weather does to Swedes what a swift kick to the bike does to wasps - they come seething out in an agitated state, determined to get satisfaction.
Even if I hadn't had the mental equivalent of a pogo stick to the balls every hundred yards on a daily basis for over a fortnight, after a month of being slowly sawn in half by giant razor, taking your speed freak and strong-willed daughter to an amusement park for the first time in her life was going to be a shattering event. Not for the first time, I am reminded that parenthood is the brick wall that just keeps on hitting.
*In my current, depleted state, if I was a mech, I'd be an Urbanmech. Bonus nerd points if you understand why this is funny.
F can walk. Also climb, run, and spin on the spot until she falls over whilst chanting 'go go go!' About two months ago, F would only walk if she could hold on to both my hands and use me as a giant walking machine. I'm convinced that the popularity of giant walking machines in sci-fi harks back to our childhood memories of being walked about by a seemingly omnipotent parental figure, as a passing note*. But back then, I'd have given my eyeteeth to get a reprise from perpetually zimmering her round the world.
She started walking properly around a month ago, roughly. And in a few short weeks, this is now how she gets everywhere. She can stand upright from prone unaided, occasionally with a bumped head and a sorrowful look. I'd never have thought this would be more tiring, more nerve-wracking and more trouble than being constantly called upon to ferry her about. Which I still am, of course - walking is all well and good for fifteen minutes or so, then you need a horsey ride. Or a lift over a wall, or up a slide, or something, and god help your dad if he doesn't deliver pronto.
But if all the backache is a bit better now, thanks, the mental torment of walking into a room to find her teetering upright on the edge of the sofa and clearly contemplating a stage dive on to the corner of the coffee table is much much worse. I know I can't fling myself four metres accurately in the split second it will take her to topple. I also know I will almost certainly try if she does. And almost certainly make things worse, of course.
There was one blissful afternoon a few weeks back, at a friend's outdoor birthday party, when F first exhibited the independence that comes with independent motive ability. Once we arrived, she instantly buggered off to play with her friend's toys and relatives and left me feeling a bit spare. It reminded me of the teenage parties I'd gone to with girlfriends who weren't all that keen to remain such. "Take my coat, see you in five hours," that kind of vibe.
Once I'd relaxed, it was great. F would swan past riding a toy car or clutching a ball from time to time. From the safety of a deckchair, I could monitor her whereabouts and rescue her if she was wandering too far off. In a nice safe enclosed garden area, this was fine. Somehow, in the comfines of our flat, it's not - she gets out of eyeshot all the time.
I need to get used to this. I can't. There's a razor's edge between concerned parenting and becoming a one-man Nanny State, and it's a razor I'm slowly sawing myself in half on.
-
Bra adverts (bradverts?) irritate the hell out of me. They aren't marketing anything I'm likely to buy, and yet they're entirely designed to grab my poor, libidinous male attention. Manttention, if we're coining new words today. It's hardly difficult to get the lizard in my hindbrain to blink, so to speak, so it's inordinately aggravating to have that reflex manipulated by some lazy creative design nob lounging about in his relaxed penthouse office somewhere in Shoreditch.
Nothing about them really makes sense to me. If they want to sell to women, why have all the models got such provocative poses? If they want to sell to men, why are the models still wearing the bras? I 'm familiar with some of the theories touted about to explain this. That women apparently like to buy stuff they see on successful/attractive looking women and that men will basically buy rotting meat if you lean some on a partly-clad woman. But it all strikes me as the kind of reasoning put about by people, mostly men, who need to justify spending their client's budget by hanging out at underwear model shoots.
I am doubly annoyed that such ads work well enough that it annoys my wife when my hapless gaze falters on them. I'm trebly annoyed when they almost have my daughter's name printed over the pouting tresses of some artlessly posed harlot in a two-piece. Thanks very much, bra manufacterer Freya, for the awful dints you've delivered to my parental peace of mind with your recent carpet bombing of Gothenburg's tram stops. It's been the mental equivalent of a pogo stick to the balls every hundred yards on a daily basis for over a fortnight.
-
Even if I hadn't had the mental equivalent of a pogo stick to the balls every hundred yards on a daily basis for over a fortnight, after a month of being slowly sawn in half by giant razor, taking your speed freak and strong-willed daughter to an amusement park for the first time in her life was going to be a shattering event. Not for the first time, I am reminded that parenthood is the brick wall that just keeps on hitting.
*In my current, depleted state, if I was a mech, I'd be an Urbanmech. Bonus nerd points if you understand why this is funny.
Friday, May 16, 2014
Feeding Time
F's Sausage 'n' Pasta
Ingredients
2-3 frankfurter-style sausages, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 medium onion, chopped or sliced
Olive oil for frying
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2 mushrooms, finely diced
1 carton of chopped tomatoes (390g or similar)
2 tbsp white wine (there's a kind in Sweden that's for cooking and has no alcohol in it, but whatever)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 vegetable stock cube
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 dl hot water
1/2 can of sweetcorn (about 75g)
Pasta, as much as you like
Method
1. Put Peppa Pig on.
2. Take F back into the sitting room to watch Peppa Pig.
3. Fry the onions until soft in a large pan over a medium heat.
4. Repeat step 2.
5. Add the sausages (really any kind of sausage would do, I think) and continue to fry until they've gone good and brown. Or until you need to repeat step 2 again. Or until you need to explain to F why hot things mustn't be touched.
6. Add the garlic and mushrooms, fry a little longer whilst stirring.
7. Put the water in a little jug and mix in the stock cube. If you've just discovered the mushrooms in the fridge have sprouted white hair, as I did this morning, you can crumble in some dried mushrooms too. Chanterelles are good.
8. Remove the glass tumbler you left on your desk last night from F's possession and explain why crying isn't going to get it back.
9. To the pan, add the chopped tomatoes, white wine, vinegar, thyme, oregano and paprika. Once this is boiling, which won't take long, stir in the tomato paste and the stock.
10. Pick F up, show her what you're cooking, explain it isn't ready yet and repeat step 2.
11. While you're repeating step 2, change the channel, because PP's theme song is probably giving you what feels like a brain tumour by now.
12. Reduce the sauce for at least ten minutes, until it's got a nice syrupy gloss to it. You can cook the pasta at the same time, depending on how long your pasta takes. Fusili and penne work well. You can also change nappies or remember that there are no clean toddler tumblers to hand and do some washing up.
13. Just before serving, stir in the sweetcorn. F doesn't like it cooked, nor do I.
14. Be aware as you serve that there is now at least one stuffed toy placed somewhere near your feet.
15. Pour the sauce over the pasta, slice some fresh cucumber or salady stuff to go with it, em-bib F and lay the table. By the time you've done that, it'll be cool enough to eat.
Serves 2 with at least one portion for leftovers, probably more if I didn't eat such large helpings. So probably 4 overall. For the complete experience, F suggests holding a fork in one hand and taking 45 minutes to pick out and eat individual corn niblets with the other.
And you should of course be wearing your new white cotton dress, because tomatoes.
Ingredients
2-3 frankfurter-style sausages, chopped into bite-sized pieces
1 medium onion, chopped or sliced
Olive oil for frying
2 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
2 mushrooms, finely diced
1 carton of chopped tomatoes (390g or similar)
2 tbsp white wine (there's a kind in Sweden that's for cooking and has no alcohol in it, but whatever)
1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp oregano
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1 vegetable stock cube
1 tbsp tomato paste
1 dl hot water
1/2 can of sweetcorn (about 75g)
Pasta, as much as you like
Method
1. Put Peppa Pig on.
2. Take F back into the sitting room to watch Peppa Pig.
3. Fry the onions until soft in a large pan over a medium heat.
4. Repeat step 2.
5. Add the sausages (really any kind of sausage would do, I think) and continue to fry until they've gone good and brown. Or until you need to repeat step 2 again. Or until you need to explain to F why hot things mustn't be touched.
6. Add the garlic and mushrooms, fry a little longer whilst stirring.
7. Put the water in a little jug and mix in the stock cube. If you've just discovered the mushrooms in the fridge have sprouted white hair, as I did this morning, you can crumble in some dried mushrooms too. Chanterelles are good.
8. Remove the glass tumbler you left on your desk last night from F's possession and explain why crying isn't going to get it back.
9. To the pan, add the chopped tomatoes, white wine, vinegar, thyme, oregano and paprika. Once this is boiling, which won't take long, stir in the tomato paste and the stock.
10. Pick F up, show her what you're cooking, explain it isn't ready yet and repeat step 2.
11. While you're repeating step 2, change the channel, because PP's theme song is probably giving you what feels like a brain tumour by now.
12. Reduce the sauce for at least ten minutes, until it's got a nice syrupy gloss to it. You can cook the pasta at the same time, depending on how long your pasta takes. Fusili and penne work well. You can also change nappies or remember that there are no clean toddler tumblers to hand and do some washing up.
13. Just before serving, stir in the sweetcorn. F doesn't like it cooked, nor do I.
14. Be aware as you serve that there is now at least one stuffed toy placed somewhere near your feet.
15. Pour the sauce over the pasta, slice some fresh cucumber or salady stuff to go with it, em-bib F and lay the table. By the time you've done that, it'll be cool enough to eat.
Serves 2 with at least one portion for leftovers, probably more if I didn't eat such large helpings. So probably 4 overall. For the complete experience, F suggests holding a fork in one hand and taking 45 minutes to pick out and eat individual corn niblets with the other.
And you should of course be wearing your new white cotton dress, because tomatoes.
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