Robert plays with his toys.

I put Robert on his play area today, and he suddenly started interacting with it. He was knocking different hanging toys and watching the results. He had trouble getting the one to his right, but when he did, he squeaked with delight (more than once). He also played for ages. A real cheeful moment, especially after those first few unresponsive weeks.

Christmas carols.

I am not a religious person. I was brought up in a Christian society, but I have always found organised religion unsettles me. But like many people in the UK, I slip in and out of Christian celebrations like a thief in the night.

And so it was I found myself grudgingly trudging through Sawbridgeworth (a village where Kara's parents live) on my way to a caroll concert. I has visions of the internimable caroll practices at my secondary school, where the highlight was a tuneless rendition of the school dirge.

This though was surprisingly fun. Instead of a smattering of people, there were actually hundreds of people on the enclosed village green. The lyrics were projected onto a wall by a digital projector, and it was balmy for a christmas evening. I felt like I had stepped onto the set of a romantic comedy (probably by Richard Curtis), as the protaganists visit the local village festival, smiling children and all.

It also reminded me of the power of organised religion, especially when it invovled singing. Then again, this effect is also present at most big concerts, even when they involve such areilgious bands as The Rolling Stones.

On another note, Kara got me a book and a DVD that wern't on my Christmas list, but were absolutely brilliant choices. Great to be married to someone who knows you, except when you are doing something wrong. :)

My Sister's book is now available in UK

We interrupt this blog for a word from our sponsors.

My sister has written a Children's book based around Children travelling through time to World War 2 Britain. Obviously I am not the most objective reviewer, but it is a rollicking read, and is incredibly well researched (Annette has a PhD in History).

The book is now available in the UK on Amazon.co.uk at the following link:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dont-Know-Where-When-Snipesville/dp/0979476941

It is well worth a look.

Advert ends.

Andrew and Robert band photo (Andrew in "white album" phase look)

This video was taken an hour before the previous video. They are a pair, entitled "Why to have kids, and why not"

A cheerful video of Robert and Ethan

Robert and his cousin Ethan (a video not by me).

I used to be somebody!

More Robert videos..this time his eyes are open! Wow! The excitement!

Actually, this was really interesting as he was awake and not indicating he wanted fed for about half an hour, he was finally taking stock of his surroundings. I only caught him right at the end as his eyelids got heavy.

Getting out and about.

Today we went on a trip to town. This gave me a chance to use my new indispensable toy: the sling.

It's pictured here, but to stop screens cracking all over the world I've avoided using a picture of me (actually we forgot to take one).

It was a great trip, and the advantages of not having a push chair to haul about became quickly apparent. The only problem was that Robert does like to burrow himself into his winter outer clothes, so that he disappears from view, but we had this problem in the pram as well.

So we were able to have our weekly crossword and coffee session. SO here is photo of me having my cake and eating it.

Will the baby videos ever end?

Only when the novelty wears off.

My team gets mentioned on national television!

Ok, it was Channel Five and it was late at night, but the College league finally gets a full run down of results, and they mention my team...Anglia Ruskin Phantoms, we did lose, and I wasn't there (first college game missed in ten years), but it still was cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnGhrMDxcKk

Robert asleep (no time to video when awake)

Short video of Robert (take 3)

Why all parents are really boring

Never ask anybody about their specialist subject or hobby, unless you are really interested in it. I pity people who ask me about Teaching and American football, as this allows me to launch into one of my interminable soliloquies where I am in my element and the poor bugger who asked me is wishing to god that the earth would finally open and swallow him up.

So, that's the problems new parents have because they have a new all encompassing obsession, their little baby. As we are completely chemically addicted to our little charges, we are completely unable to realise that everybody else is just being polite.

I am no different. so here are more photos of Robert.

More baby pictures and videos.

Endless baby stuff is not random, but it's all in my head....unless it is over Robert, or his changing mat, or the floor.

Robert is home and here are some pictures to commerate the day.

More interesting is this photo:

This is Kara at the pub. The rather random bit is that she was already in the first stages of labour, her hindwaters had broken, she had started light contractions every few minutes, and had been at the birthing centre being monitored. Instead of sitting at home, she was desperate to meet with other NCT buddies (pregnant or recently pregnant women), for their weekly lunch. So the bar lady asked me when she was due, and refused to accept my repely of "about six hours".

I wondered why nobody ever does this, and then it hit me that this was all to do with the smoking ban. So an offshoot of this ban is that pregnant women can now sit in pubs to help take their mind off contractions. Of course the pub was completly empty apart from this group. A new pub focused demographic group has been born.

I defy anyone to find "going to pub" on anyones birthplan.

PS: Everyone was on soft drinks.

Video of Robert in room.

Introducing: Robert Laing

Kara gave birth last night at 1.25. Robert Laing weighed 7 pounds and 5 ounces. It was an emotional expereince and Kara coped amasingly well. Baby and Mother are doing well, although Mummy did lose quite a lot of blood right at the end, and is therefor quite weak (but still OK!).

I promised myself that I wouldn't take loads of pictures, but here is another (and maybe a video of Robert after I had to take him to his new room.

The Dark is Rising

Now I have seen some really bad films in my time. I used to sit through anything on BBC2 in the afternoon. Later, I would go and see films that friends wanted to go and see, which led me to see some prize turkeys.

But, with all this said, I try and believe that my film choosing ability is acceptable. I read Empire, I can make make basic connections between films, and I don't have any strange post modern ironic criteria jepordising my decisions.

So how in all that is cinematic did I manage to choose to go and see "The Dark is Rising"? This is without doubt the worst film I have seen in years. I chose to see it based on the fact that having missed Empire for the last couple of months I hadn't a clue what the other films would be like, and as this was a spur of the moment last chance for 25 years decsion, I hadn't had time to look into it and make an informed choice. Most of all though, I chose it because it had Christoper Ecclestone in it and he is an actor I put huge faith in: Doctor Who, Heroes, 28 Days later, Cracker, this man has a habit of choosing really fantastic parts in great dramas. And this was his next big project after leaving a succesful show.

Well that taught me. This was tripe, awful foul smelling tripe. And the worst bit was, Christopher Ecclestone was really awful as well, I mean really bad. But this was a film that took a whole load of good British actors who are still waiting for the call to do a Harry Potter film and spat them out. The acting was dialled in, the effects were half cut, the direction was sloppy, and the editing was really truly awful, and this is all meant to be based on a great kids novel.

Worst of all, I could have seen Stardust, which I had heard about on the Radio 4 film show, which was written by Neil Gaimen. It might also have been tosh, but at least it would have been pretensious tosh.

Bah!

Noooooooo! I bought Betamax again.

My parents bought a Sony Betamax video player. I have lived with the shame my entire life. Endless reiteration of the age old arguments: the better quality of the Beta tapes, the general relaibility and quality of the Sony recorders, didn't save us. One of the most traumatic days of my life, came at the start of a summer holiday. My mum drove me to the video store so that I could rent a load of holiday movies. When I went to the back of the store, where the Beta tapes were hidden, I found that they had been replaced by discount VHS tapes. The embarresment, the shame, the patronising looks from the staff, all these I had to contend with, and all because my parents hadn't thought their format choices through.

But VHS won the day, as did CD's and Sony actually helped to cement the DVD (one format only) revolution by including a player on the PS2. All was well.

A month ago I went into a Blockbuster in Hertfordshire and noticed they had both of the all new HD formats for rent. A few weeks later I bought a new TV when our old one sparked up and died. Once I watched a few hours of normal TV on the new telly, I decided that it was time to give it the format it needs to shine. As I already own an X-box 360 the only way I could afford to enjoy HD viewing pleasure was to buy an external HD drive it.

So, with my newfound HD-DVD player running I go back to Blockbuster to rent some movies to watch this half term, only to find they have stopped stocking HD-DVD's and now only stock Blue-ray. Arghhhhhhh! It's all happened again, to me, and this time it's my fault! I then took a look at the HD section of HMV and realised how many films are blue-ray only.

Now 24 hours later I have calmed down. I have come up with my list of reasons why it isn't so bad, and that I am not a technological outcast, destined to search garage sales and bargain bins for examples of the "dead" format I invested in. Here they are:

1) You couldn't play Beta on VHS. With HD-DVD I can still play them on DVD machines.

2)Nobody ever made a dual format tape recorder. There are dual format machines already available and in the years to come I can get one if Blue-ray wins the day.

3)The HD drive is still useful, I didd't have an upscaling DVD player before, so my old DVD's look better anyway.

But, the real thing that makes me happy, is that HD dvd and Blue-ray are BOTH Betamax. They just haven't sold enough PS3's or Xbox drives to get them into enough homes to make the formats truely viable. DVD only took hold because of the PS2, becasue until it came out they couldn't even settle on a universal encoding.

So I can watch this argument run, safe in the knowledge that we are probable all losers.

And deep down, I know that betamax was far better than VHS, it was all to do with.......

National Child Care Trust Classes and Wardrobes

I really wasn't looking forward to the NCT classes, that Kara had paid for in the early rash of over eager first pregnancy syndrome. We had already attended another antenatal course run by the goverment, and lthough it had been occasionally interesting, it hadn't taught Kara much as she is about as well read on this as it is possible to be. Also, there was very little socialising, as the classes were in the evening and everybody bolted for the door the minute the midwife stopped speaking.

In the end though, it was a really good course. Weel taught, with lots of activities for people with my kind of attention span. More importantly we met a bunch of really interesting folk, who hopefully will be some kind of support network in the coming months.

Meanwhile, on another baby related note the cot is nowcomplete and in the baby's room. This sentence alone is more frightening and odd than a Stephen King novel about haunted garden gnomes.

Bands with great bassists

All through the 80's I listened to Level 42, I was young, naive and desperatly in love with Mark King's right thumb. Now many people did many foolish things in the 80's, so I can live with the shame, but my real secret I have until now kept well hidden. In the wee small hours through the nineties, I would still put on Level 42 albums and dance around. Even though I had rebelled against the pop world and was now in the floppy haired indie gods grasp, I couldn't shake off the need to listen to great slap bass playing.

Now there was the Red hot chilie peppers, but I just somehow never bought into them, if anything they just wern't odd enough, I needed a band that hardly anyone else would like, and I could apreciate purely for the bass playing. No band was forthcoming, so I continued to secretly overdose on 'Lessons in Love' and 'The chinese way'.

So how, dear lords of indie, did I miss Soul coughing and Primus?

Les Claypoll of Primus is Mark King on acid, and the douple bass playing on Soul coughings albums is groovier than Jamiraquai at a late night exclusive jazz club. So now I have reached my thirties I can wax lyrical about great bassists of the 90's, even though I managed to miss them the first time around. And I have a whole bunch of Primus albums to work through.

If you like amazing bass playing hunt these out. Don't balme me though for the beat poetry (soul coughing) or just plain weidness (Primus) that you will find there.

Soul Coughing track of note: Casiotone nation

Primus track of note: John the fisherman.

Guitar Hero 2

It says random at the top, and that's what you are going to get. In this case my new toy, well the baby mobile and baby gym turned up at the same time, but I would sound far too soppy talking about them.

At £50 (that's $2356 on current exchange rates) this game was obviously a frivolous buy. But I don't care, as this has already obsessed me like only a great game can.

Playing rhythm karaoke versions of rocks great album tracks could be absolutely dreadful, images of me quietly trying to hide the offending game from guests, lest they laugh at me for making the consumer mistake of the century, came into my mind.

I was spared a major embarrassment though because it is great. Playing along to the tracks is intuitive, and most of all, and for the plagued by serious First Person Shooters Xbox360 this is unusual, the game is blindingly fun. I have already found myself jumping around the room to Killing in the Name Of and a host of other lesser none rock tunes. I even have the hair for it at the moment. Suddenly I was back on stage with Foolish Grin and fifteen years had dropped away. Well, without the smell of stale beer, or the endless bad sound checks.

Sad, immature, vaguely silly....absolutely, but I have played this obsessively, well, as obsessively as I can during term time, and the only problem is RSI I am developing in my index finger.

There, is that a good enough antidote to arty articles about the Tate.

The baby mobile by the way, has liquid and alternately rotating shapes, and music and lights, and colours and slidy bits, and, and, and, and, and I better go and sit down somewhere quiet until my gadget fetish calms down.

Sarah gets married.

What makes a great wedding? The answer that people often seem to have is to spend more money, and to spend it on increasingly stranger things. And somewhere in this mass of discussions and pure unadulterated justifiable consumerism the whole point gets rather lost.

Sarah, one of my best friends from UEA got married today, and it was a fantastic wedding because it relied on good natured people and a couple who just glowed with love for each other. They got driven to the reception in a Landrover, the food was solid rather than Haute cuisine, and they had a ceilidh instead of a wedding singer, but all these things were great because the people were just fantastic. Both families were bursting with energy and the guests all jumped themselves straight into the ceilidh.

Oh, and Sarah never stopped smiling all day, because it was what she wanted. I wish them all the best, but they really don't need it as John and Sarah are so right for each other.

On a side note, I got to wear my kilt. Woooo!

Great book shops.

I went to the children's bookstore in Muswell hill today, as it was the school's annual library book buy day. I hadn't gone to this place before and it was a very well stocked bookstore which was also fanatically neat and tidy. Although being much smaller than I expected, the books themselves were very well chosen, with none of the cheap and cheerful tie in rubbish that haunts major book shops.

It was a great shop for us to choose books for the school, as the selection available was so top notch, but the neatness bothered me. When I was young my parents would take me to Foyle's on the Charing Cross road. I loved Foyle's, which at the time claimed to be the biggest bookshop in the world (a claim that seems laughable in this days of Borders and Waterstones). Largest or not it was certainly the messiest. In it's labyrinthian interior there were piles of books everywhere and I always had the impression that nobody had a clue what books were there. They also had a Victorian way of selling you books which involved receipts and a cashier on a different floor from most the books. This shop had character even if it may or may not have contained the tome you were searching for, and the staff may or may not have helped you in your quest depending on their mood . I miss the way Foyle's was, it's now modernised and isn't the same. A little bit of me knows I'll never find a book shop where I will feel so at home.

A Little Englander missing a rose coloured past, or a slob with a pathological hatred of order, you decide.

Mercedes servicing.

A faulty key destroys my Smart Car alarm system. The cost of this is £370 to repair (mainly for door actuators, which are the bits that physically move the locks), but I can't put petrol in the car because the petrol cap is still locked as the actuator in this wasn't repaired (obviously they though my car would only need one more tank of petrol for the rest of it's life). So when I got the car serviced today I told the guy that I needed the actuator in the fuel cap replaced, he told me not to worry. When they give me the total for the service, I think it sounds high, so I look and see that they have charged me £45 to diagnose that......the actuator in the fuel cap needs replacing. They didn't replace it mind, just tried to charge me £45 for telling me what I had told them.

So we sort that out, with the help of a very nice customer care guy. This of course meant I wasn't closely following the next bit, which is when I get home, by boot won't shut properly and when I use the boot release button, it falls out of the dashboard. So another phonecall together.

Earlier this year I used a different Mercedes dealership to repair my windscreen wipers. When I got home it transpired they had forgotten to put my radiator grill back on (I didn't notice as it was parked up against a wall in the garage car park).

And these are the official (expensive) dealerships. Arghhhhhh!

A Smart car (not mine)

Spamalot at the Palace Theatre. A surreal day out in London part two.

I'm really embarrassed to say I went to this. Over the years I have been appalled at the number of West End shows using established brand names: Abba, Queen, Dirty dancing and various others. I have also always been suspicious of fans of TV shows going to see plays just because actor x was in show y. And yet, here I was watching a musical based on one of my favourite shows (Monty Python), starring Peter Davison (from Doctor Who). I felt positively dirty for doing this.

Having purchased a seat in the balcony of the palace theatre, so high up you should get an oxygen mask, and so steep you feel like at any moment you are going to tip to your death, I settled down to an enjoyable couple of hours. This is an odd one though, it has a great film script as a basis (which it lifts from liberally) and at least two cracking musical numbers ready to go (Knights of the Round Table and Always Look on the bright side of Life), and yet it didn't quite hit the mark.

The show as a spectacle is excellent. Everything from video projection, spiralling scenery and expensive trees, to dance set pieces, excellent special effects and rollicking musical hall song pastiches. There was a large live orchestra and the performance of the cast was to a very high standard but it just didn't work for one big reason. Harry Enfield once said that comedy songs just are not generally funny, and it was the songs I thought that let this down. Most of the numbers were designed to make fun of musical theatre, but this has been done before (The Producers), not forgetting that most musicals are high camp extravaganzas anyway. Southpark the Musical also did this, and I wonder why everybody lines up to kick a victim that is already down. The staging had a heavy American influence (maybe because Eric Idle lives there) which seemed at odds to the peculiarly English humour of the Pythons material.

Where the show did succeed was in managing to stage scenes from the film, the Black Knight, the bunny, the hand of god, which must have seemed impossible to stage. The cast were asked to sing, dance, and perform comedy all at the same time and they did so with real professionalism. Amy Field was an excellent singer, but it was her Character of 'The lady in the Lake' that got lumbered with most of the annoying pastiche duties.

Peter Davison has some of the same qualities of Graham Chapman, such as an ability to project a person just confused with the modern world, and so he seemed an inspired piece of casting for Arthur. He did a capable job of the comedy, and looked nimble enough in the dance routines (although his involvement was limited in these compared to everyone else). His singing though sounded a little like he was struggling, well, compared to all these young identikit uber-performers that made up the rest of the cast. Generally though he stood up well as the focus point of the story.

I did laugh, but less than when watching the film or reading the script. Do these first, before going to see this. I saw Les Miserables at the Palace theatre, and I would go to see this ahead of Spamalot. All in all I saw three films surreal films and a musical trying to be surreal today, but how can something be surreal when it is based on sketches we know so well? Right, I'm off to find a shrubbery.

Dali and film exhibition at the Tate Modern. A surreal day in London part one.

I so enjoyed this exhibition, that I went back for a second, more detailed, look. Dali has always interested me, along with other surrealists, especially Magritte. I was always able to impose my own stories on Dali paintings, and it was one of the few artists that my Dad and I agree on. There was a print of a Dali sketch hanging at home for many years and I was always fascinated by it.

The exhibition itself looked at Dali's association with film making. This was done by collecting a series of films, photos and paintings with cinematic links. The films were shown in gallery rooms converted into small cinemas. The films themsleves covered a wide time line of the Moustached ones career. Ranging from 1929 to 1975.

I went twice, because the first time I really didn't have time to sit and watch the films, and as this was really the point of the whole thing, that seemed a waste. The design of the cinema rooms didn't help the situation first time round as they seemed to discourage casual viewing. This time I found sapces on the floor at the front, so that I was actually able to see the screens, rather than the backs of peoples heads.

So after all that, what did I think of the films? My first general comment is Surrealist films are great in a gallery such as this, as you can almost join them at any point, and this allows you to have to fill in yourself the allready minimal plot. 'Un Chien Andalou' (1929) is a classic, with certain elements transcending the fim itself. I remember being told about the more gruesome parts of this film by an enthusiastic art student at school. That it was filmed in 1929 and can still shock me and make me laugh out loud is a testament to it's originality. The follow up film L'Age d'or (1930) had it's great surreal moments, and was far more technically adept as a film, but it slowed slightly in places. Again though, it was shocking (probably the most scary shooting on a film I have ever seen) and amusing (a Pythonesque moment as a series of unrelated items, including a priest are propelled out a bed room window onto the ground below). The final scenes though had a truly daring representation of Christ, and it is no surprise to me that the film was banned after only ten days or release. The fact that neo-nazis hated it, and it was banned for fifty years makes me warm to it more than it probably deserves. Cow on a bed anyone?

The making of the Dali segment of 'Spellbound' (1945) were interesting, but this was the start of Dali repeatedly trying to get himself links with Hollywood, a union that was bound to fail. Dali was hardly going to American mainstream tastes in the 1940s. As a result it was not surprising that many of these collaberations came to nothing; the Spellbound piece was heavily editied, a collaberation with Fritz Lang was abandoned by the studio, even a promising year spent working on story boards at Disney was abandoned. Although, having said that the now finished 'Destino' (1946 +2003) is fantastic, a recreation of Dali paintings as animations which is a visual feast. Disney should be congratulated for having completed this piece so many years after shelving it. Time though was yet again against me, and I was unable to view 'Impressions of Upper Mongolia' (1975) and 'Chaos' (1960) fully, although, like many made for TV movies I doubted their abilty to match the celluloid efforts.


The paintings were fascinating, and I was able to drift into scenes of strange lands, where nothing seems to fit properly. I also saw another great portrait of an actor playing Richard III. Now stop me if I digress, but I din't start the year expecting to see one great portrait of an actor playing Richard III and I end up seeing two. How does this happen? The portrait of Olivier playing the aforementioned character was striking with it's alternative angles of the famous actors face. Hogarth's portrait of Garrett playing the evil king was equally striking, aloutgh it relied more on the way Garrett appeared to be mid oration.

The Tate also shoehorned in pieces from the permanent collection, therefore I had my obligatory meeting with the Lobster Telephone, which I have now seen in so many locations that I do believe it is breeding.