Family life, funnily enough
Crumbs, it’s taken me me far too long to get these together – and there’s still more to come – but here (password required) are some pictures of Christmas in Erie, including some sled action….
and one picture of a frozen Presque Isle, so I’ll stick that one up here so you can see it easily….
In Grandma’s snow as he liked to describe it, the little man got his first experience of deep snow and loved it from the outset.
It was of the crunchy type and so when you threw snowballs they broke apart. But nevertheless he loved doing it and shouted “snow fight!” each time, which we think was a personalized version of Spongebob’s “Snowballs Away!” cry, but couldn’t be sure. At least he has his own mind.
There will be more from Christmas up soon in the album area – we’ll let you know.
I cycled round the edge of Manhattan on Dec 30 which is something I’d been meaning to do before the end of the year (I rarely get to write about anything on the day it actually happens). I used my old Raleigh Highlander, which was given to me in England by my brother in law about 10 years ago and is still going strong, although the gears & brakes have been replaced. But it got me round the 32-odd miles.
One of the best books I read this year (admittedly not a particularly long list) called London Orbital by Ian Sinclair, which is more or less about his walk around the M25, the notorious motorway that encircles London. It prompted the title of this post and also drove me to want to do a circuit of Manhattan, albeit by bike.
Over the past five years or so the city has done a great job constructing the Manhattan Greenway development that has added many miles of cycle paths, some reclaimed from other paths, some entirely new. Cycling around Manhattan is something that some people do every weekend – or even more often. But this was my first time and it took me longer than I thought, about four hours. But if I hadn’t stopped to take so many of these pictures, I could have cut out 45 minutes, even at my relatively slow pace. The pictures highlighted here and a lot more besides can be found here.
I started at 16th Street and the West Side Highway and went clockwise. Despite living on the east side, it’s a force of habit to start there because when I used to have time to cycle a lot more than I do now, I lived much closer to the West Side Highway and the Hudson River Park (although back then that was when I first got here it didn’t really exist). The run up to George Washington Bridge was simple enough and I allowed myself what turned out to be the longest rest of the whole trip in Riverside Park.
But the ride is not quite circumnavigational – you still have to go on streets for part of the way, including going through Harlem, which was straightforward and well sign posted – the renovations going on along 120th Street in the Mount Morris Park area were quite something to see.
But after a fairly smooth ride down to about 80th street I got off the Greenway too early at 79th Street – I could have stayed on to 59th street and it meant I had to go right down to 23rd street on the streets, which was a pain. But I got back on after that and made my way down past the soon-to-be-closed Fulton Fish Market and the tourists at the South Street Seaport and Battery Park and back up the West Side to 16th Street, which while painful on my legs, was a pleasant ride along pretty much empty Hudson River Park.
Just before we head off to the snow-covered north – where we’re aiming to build our first snowman, this was last weekend at Chelsea Piers at a friends birthday party. There’s a few more in the December folder of the kids pictures (usual log-in required).
Its Manic Street Preachers week on BBC 6Music, the station I listen to more or less every day. Among other things, they have recordings of 7 songs from the Manics gig from the Astoria in London, in December 1994. Hard to think it was 10 years ago, but Ray and I were there. It turned out to be the final gig including Richey Edwards, who disappeared two months later and hasn’t been seen since, though of course nobody knew that at the time.
Anyway the concert footage shows what a good guitarist James Bradfield is and frankly how ropey Edwards was on rhythm guitar (though he never claimed he could play). You can barely hear Edwards most of the time because he was basically there to co-write the lyrics and look cool. Both of which he managed to pull off with some aplomb. I recall them smashing the equipment up a bit at the end of the gig and us standing around as the place emptied and there being debris strewn around the stage.
And they are one British band who I doubt I’ll ever see in New York or anywhere in America again after their experiences here in 1996 and 1999, which we witnessed. Seeing them pay a 30 min slot as one band among six at Wetlands in 1996 will always stick in the memory.
To augment his burgeoning football skills by actually playing on grass (as opposed to the hardwood floors of the gym) we took him up to Central Park the weekend before last. More pictures in the November section of the Kid’s albums.
This is an old’un, but a good’un that I just found again. It’s from a something called the Social Issues Research Centre in the UK. A few years back it published a report called Passport to the Pub: A guide to British pub etiquette. It was apparently commissioned to do so by the UK brewer’s association, so read into that what you care to. And I’ve since seen SIRC quoted defending the brewing industry whene the UK’s binge drinking problem is brought up, which it has been a fair bit this past year. Anyway, this is a section on pubs you find on housing estates and its reflects the somewhat toungue-in-cheek nature of the rest of the report, which is worth reading (if you have any interest in British pub culture):
Estate pubs tend to be functional rather than aesthetically pleasing. You will not find any pretty, quaint, old-fashioned estate pubs, for the obvious reason that most estates, and their pubs, were built after World War Two. The estate pub is usually a large building, and decidedly utilitarian in appearance, although it may well be hung about with banners and posters advertising forthcoming events or promotions. Do not be put off by the exterior. If you wanted a glossy-guidebook pub, you would not have come this far.
Estate pubs are not to everyoneÂ’s taste, but visitors with a genuine curiosity about British life and culture will find much to capture their interest. Most tourists do not have the opportunity to spend time in the homes of ordinary natives: the estate pub is as close as you will get to a behind-the-scenery perspective on Britain.
Advice: If you get into conversation with an estate-pub regular, you would be wise to refrain from commenting on the appearance or behaviour of other people in the pub, as you may well be talking to their uncle, cousin or mother-in-law!”
And here’s a classic example, the Lord Nelson in Union Street, Southwark, London SE1, which we passed on a trip there back in 2002:
A certain member of our household who’s just over three feet tall has been a huge fan of Jeopardy for more than a year now. In New York it comes on at 7pm, followed by Wheel of Fortune at 7.30pm, at which point the cry goes up – “what color is Vanna’s dress?!”
But anyway, back to Jeopardy. The winning streak of Ken Jennings – a “software engineer from Utah,” and boy does he looks like one – came to an end tonight. In 74 games in succession he had won $2,520,700, the highest amount ever won in a TV game show, not surpsingly.
But in doing so, he had become a fixture in one little boy’s life. Phrases such as “look at Ken’s hair!” and “what’s Ken wearing?” had been heard regularly at our place since he started his streak in June.
So from now on it’s back to wondering what color Vanna’s dress will be and whether or not Yolanda Vega will be bringing her own inimitable style to the NY Lottery draw in the break, or if it will be one of the other boring ones.
Ken, we salute you.
This time last year the top of the Premier League table looked like this:
Now the top of the league looks like this…
…but further down it looks like this:
At this point last year we still had Louis Saha, who was banging them in for us, but is now warming the bench and the treatment table at Old Trafford. But we didn’t have Andy Cole, Claus Jensen, or Tomasz Radzinski, all of which you’d think would make us a better team, because other than those – almost all positive – changes, it’s the same bunch.
But after Saturday’s abysmal showing at home to then-bottom club Blackburn, things can’t get worse before they get better; they need to get better fast. Simply playing up to the level we know they’re capable of would get us there with room to spare.
