Category: Uncategorized

I went to see Badly Drawn Boy last night at Webster Hall – it’s great to be able to walk to such gigs, even it is below freezing (someone else took some pictures, here). He is something of a contradiction, an anti-show man show man. After the first song, his second was an instrumental and he played a bunch of new things, all the time apologizing for playing new things, even though he’s got a new album out. Then he played a bunch of solo acoustic things, mostly old, which were fantastic, including The Shining.

A bit later, with the band back he played a couple of songs then walked off the stage and left the band to do some awkward jamming. He returned saying, “I hope you didn’t expect a costume change – I was having a cigarette in the cupboard.”

Then the penultimate song of his set was a quasi-Vegas style number called (I think) ‘To you from me,’ where he took the mike out of its stand and walked around the front of the stage shaking his hands and thanking the audience, which he appeared to do without being tongue in cheek about it, but he still made an unlikely crooner in his beanie hat and combat jacket.

January’s pictures had a sporting theme, as quite frankly, does every day of the week these days, as the lad has boundless energy, an interest in more or less every sport – at least all those that involve a ball – and subsequently, winters in New York City can be a bit of a challenge.

Thankfully Chelsea Piers had an open day and he was able to scratch his itches for football and basketball at least, while she also got in on the act

The big boy recently acquired this Horrid Henry book from his Mum’s recent quick trip to London and he’s finished in in about a week, reading a few pages here and there most nights.

It has 101 pages and is the first of what he calls “chapter books.” Naturally at 5 years and almost 4 months he’s justifiably proud of having finished it tonight. Especially so, when you have to explain what “conscientiously” and “multiplication” mean in the last five pages, but little else.

Having left New York yesterday where it was a high of 24°F (-4 C) and arrived in San Diego where it was 66° F (19 C) and been picked up in a stretch SUV limo (sorry, planet), I got into my room, stuck on BBC 6Music and it was playing Bowie’s Rebel Rebel and I saw this out my window…

….and I thought yeah, not bad.

So after five years and three months with kids and more than two and a half years with two, we finally succumbed to the emergency room yesterday afternoon, and inevitably, it was the younger one of the two that led us there.

For some reason, she pulled the piano bench over onto her foot. Off came the toenail, and blood appeared, so off to NYU hospital.

About five hours and six stitches later, the fearless one was back. We’ll see if this causes her to lose her nerve. I doubt it, somehow.

UPDATE: It was eight, not six stitches.

It’s a worth an hour of anyone’s time to watch the NY Times’ John F. Burns talking to Charlie Rose this week. Rose can be a fawning windbag at times (much of the time in fact) but thankfully Burns can talk, and do so intelligently.

Almost a shame he’s going to become the NY Times London bureau chief. Although London is hardly peripheral to the current power struggles in the world, his insights from the Middle East are invaluable.

And Burns, more than most journalists, understands Britain’s culpability in helping create the current situations with some shonky border drawing, to say the least, as well as the causes and likely consequences of the US government’s current actions.

Boy in bed much closer to 9 than normal tonight, though still the wrong side of the hour on a school night.

He’d been coloring in a few flags in his ‘World Flags’ binder him & Mom created last year. He was working on Italy and Portugal, last I saw.

Mom had read him a story or two but he requests the presence of Dad for one last question.

M: Dad

Dad: Yeah?

M: What’s Sweden’s second kit?

Dad: Is their first kit yellow?

M: Yeah

D: In that case it’s blue. Night.

M: Night.

These sorts of questions have been a theme since the World Cup.

Tonight it was Sweden, but it could be Sheffield Utd, Everton, Wycombe, England, or whatever team he has caught a glimpse of on the telly, in a magazine or in the matches he stages daily on the fertile pitch in his mind.

The Brick in Putney has certainly changed quite a bit since last time I was there – it even has its own website these days.

We had some good nights in there in the late 80s – I must pay it a visit when we’re next over.

Pictures from December, including Christmas here, usual password caveats apply, so if you need a password etc, get in touch.

This was a message the boy from New York City left for Santa at the Tom Ridge Environment Center on Presque Isle in Erie. The “pop up” of the peninsula refers to a map showing the peninsula in relief, with these wooden things that pop up when you press a button, indicating particular bits of interest, with which he’d just played.

Our captain, at least in rank if not in demeanor has gone to Wet Spam.

Six and a half years is a very long time for any footballer to stay at a club these days and given Luis Boa Morte was the last of Jean Tigana’s major signings to leave it means that the fantasy era of Van der Sar, Steed Malbranque and Louis Saha is now firmly over.

Boa came to Fulham when we were in the second division and was a key part of the teams that got us into the top division. We will miss his mercurial talent (that he only displayed infrequently this season, it has to be said) his slumped shoulders when something goes wrong, his emotional outbursts, tumbles, his speed down the wing and ability to turn it on for the big games.

A captain he ain’t. But he can be a hell of a player when he puts his crazy mind to it.

But he will always be remembered for scoring that goal against the lot from the Walham Green Dog Track up the road: