....so sad!

I used to think it was me and her against the world and then one day I found out it was her and the world against me.

Evelyn and I had a very big and very serious chat about how much I don't like changing poopy daipers last night and she asked if it would make me happy if she used a potty. I advised her that it would make me very happy indeed and she had a practice while I read her her bedtime story.

This morning I sat her on her potty this morning while she watched TV and I went into the kitchen for a cup of java. About 5 minutes later she told me she had had a weewee in her potty and profferred the potty with contents as a sign of proof. There it was a little yelloow puddle in her pink potty. This is a first! I am so happy, this is the beginning of the end of what must have been tonnes of smelly landfill and morning change gag reflexes. Soon she won't be pissing and pooping everywhere like a Labour government Chancellor and life will be a paradise filled with the music of flushing toilets.

On another note I woke up this morning feeling somewhat slow and disconnected. After much rumination I concluded that aliens had landed on my terrace dressed as the Blendtec man and extracted my brain through a syringe with a long tube on the end and that after examination they put it through the standard procedure and squirted it back into my head through the other ear. Then I remembered that I had started my new job.

Santa has just left the house. Or so it would seem. On a plate on the floor under the tree there are a few crumbs from a mince pie, the stump of a carrot and an empty glass. Evelyn's presents lie under the bejewelled plastic fern that holds so much magic, hope and promise to children and children at heart. Evelyn and I went carol singing tonight, I sang, she danced

I received a series of cryptic text messages from my estranged wife Laura on Wednesday, so I called and she told me that she had given up the legal battle to leave the UK with our daughter. A fax arrived at my solicitor's office as it was closing for the night. My solicitors, solicitor's clerks, barristers, attorneys at law and Queen's Counsel, for there are many and on both sides of the Atlantic, were all left dumbfounded, as was I. At Laura's request, I went over and we had a chat with Evelyn and tried to explain what was going to happen, I'm not sure what she understood. Laura had told her what was occurring previously, but when I was there, she was capering about the apartment on all fours, yelping and pretending to be a puppy. Laura was tearful and without the malice and bile I have become used to over the last eighteen months. Laura had already left for the airport when I picked up Evelyn the following morning from Laura's mother, who has been here since August and I became a single parent.

Evelyn was ordered to be returned to the UK in July at the orders of the Canadian courts and Laura came with her, the final hearing for leave to remove was to be in January. My legal counsel were passionate about our case for refusal and felt that we were in with a fighting chance of success despite the UK's traditionally outrageous bias towards maternal preferences over domicile.

There are a few legal loose ends to be tied up over agreed contact and holidays, but these are just routine. We will all then have to settle in to the new phases in our lives.

When I was in Canada in May 2009 on vacation with my wife and daughter and staying at the in-laws, plans were already underway to present me with the surprise divorce petition which has now been struck out. A few weeks later I discovered by e-mail that I was separated and five days later, discovered that the woman I loved had asked through the courts for a divorce, full custody of our daughter, approximately two thirds of my net income and a freeze on the bank account which had my the final deposit for an apartment I had bought off plan, effectively meaning that I would lose it. As if that wasn't enough I was told that Laura would rather see me in court than allow me the unaccompanied access to my child that I had had since her birth. I tried at the time to get them to see what they were doing, to try to do this the decent way, to allow some dignity and respect. They wanted my daughter, my money and my assets. I say they, as I don't believe that Laura was the sole architect of this, responsibility must also be borne by her mother, who seeks and sought to control everything, and her lawyer who seemed to have obtained her qualifications from watching daytime TV. It was the wrong thing to do, it would have been a wrong thing to do if I had not prevailed in the courts. Somehow they don't seem to understand that the responsibility for what has passed is their own. Laura could have done this so differently, I did the only thing I could.

I often wondered how Laura thought she was going to explain what she had done to Evelyn when she is old enough to ask questions.

And now we are here and my daughter is living with me permanently. I have missed out on a year of watching her grow up, with what contact I had spoilt by my estranged wife's mother, lost perhaps £150,000 in cash and assets and who knows how many years of my life. Laura has no doubt suffered too. My daughter has been denied the loving home with a mummy and daddy that she deserved and lost a year's worth of real contact with her father. I must do my best to be the best father I can be and make up for the distance of my daughter's mother. I must ensure that the contact she has with her mother and her mother's family is better than I was given and see what I can do to heal the wounds that have lain open too long. I want Evelyn to grow up happy and I'll do whatever it takes.

Thus ends one chapter in all of our lives and hopefully the next will bring peace, civility and respect to everyone. I hope Laura and her family find serenity and I'll do what I can to help them share in the joy of Evelyn's life.

Merry Christmas one and all!

Around the corner I have a friend,

In this great city that has no end,

Yet the days go by and weeks rush on,

And before I know it, a year is gone.

And I never see my old friends face,

For life is a swift and terrible race,

He knows I like him just as well,

As in the days when I rang his bell.

And he rang mine but we were younger then,

And now we are busy, tired men.

Tired of playing a foolish game,

Tired of trying to make a name.

"Tomorrow" I say! "I will call on Jim

Just to show that I'm thinking of him",

But tomorrow comes and tomorrow goes,

And distance between us grows and grows.

Around the corner, yet miles away,

"Here's a telegram sir," "Jim died today."

And that's what we get and deserve in the end.

Around the corner, a vanished friend.

- Around the Corner by Charles Hanson Towne.

......................What are you feeling right now?

How is it that for Subway to make a roll taste OK they have to put 5000 ingedients and 300 sauces into them whereas patisserie Paul will make something spectacular by opening a demibaguette buttering it and inserting a single thin slice of ham paired with a single thin slice of cheese?



The French just know bread and no other nation has ever really come close in this regard. Had Napoleon opened a chain of brasseries he would have had no need of military campaigns, world domination would have been a surety, we would all have been spared the high street blight which is Greggs and Emma Hamilton would have lived happily ever after. And how is it that the French have patisserie Paul and the British have Greggs? I ask you, we won the War of the Third Coalition! After Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo all of the patisserie Pauls in Paris should have been moved to London and all of the Greggs should have been moved to Paris, that would have taught them a lesson!



I love patisserie Paul, I love the understated shop frontages which would not be offensive anywhere, the wonderful cakes and tarts, the quiche, the baguettes, the staff, it is one of the few chains that there are just not enough of. Why isn't there one on Bishopsgate?

On Friday June 5th the night before Laura was supposed to come back from Canada I received an e-mail from her wherein she announced that she would not be coming back from Toronto with our baby and had started 'separation' proceedings. For separation proceedings read divorce, equalisation of property, by which means, she wants half of the assets that I have accumulated from hard work before we met while I get half of the ZERO she has accumulated in a lifetime of excuses, and all sorts of other monies she somehow feels she is entitled to. There was no warning, no conversation, no explanation, no "I'm sorry but this isn't working." Just an e-mail stating she had started 'separation proceedings', she couldn't even be honest about that. At the same time as I was shopping buying treats and things for her and our baby, she was in court with a thick carpet of lies that she had woven from a very thin thread of truth. The last words she said to me before I received her missive was 'Love you too, miss you'. I never credited her with the capacity for deceit, treachery, mendacity, venality and spite that she has displayed with such sly artfulness.

Our home life had actually been very good over the last year. I shall probably never know what dark mental dances she had in April and May as she schemed the assassination of our marriage. It's sad. I loved her with all my heart and truly wanted her eyes to be the last I saw before I closed mine for the final time.

In the book of my own life I turned the page honestly believing we would both live happily ever and found the rest of the leaves torn away by the person to whom I had entrusted it.



In the last two days, I have spoken to two old friends. One has been dieing for years but is too stubborn to give in. To hear his voice, is to hear the fragility of his heart and I fear that every beat will be its last. The other has always seemed as strong as an ox, but has been given two years to live by his doctors.


"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee."

John Donne - Devotions upon Emergent Occasions, no. 17 (Meditation) 1624

Easter Eggs and travel.

About three weeks ago I flew out to be with Laura and the baby who are spending some time in Toronto. They're staying there for a bit and I'm here in London alone. I'm looking forward to the return of those few distilled moments of perfect content and stillness that are bestowed upon me when my little baby falls asleep in my arms after her last bottle of milk of the night. I really miss them both, so I thought I'd tell my daughter a little Easter story, and here it is:

Sorry I can’t be with you for a little while, but your daddy has to be in England right now.

In the land where our people come from, thousands of years ago, there were no televisions, no books, no cars and life was much simpler. In the day the worked and hunted and farmed and by night they sat around their fires trying to keep warm.

They believed that the seasons were controlled by gods and goddesses and that the goddess of Spring was Eostre which is where our word for Easter comes from. They knew that the days grow shorter and colder in the winter and longer and warmer in summer. Spring starts when the day is longer than the night, it is warmer and the flowers start to bloom and lots of baby animals are born. The land that seemed so cold and lifeless in the winter seemed to burst into life, just like an egg hatching and the hares, which are like big bunny rabbits that were running around so madly in March settled down and all the baby hares were born. They believed that the hares would help Eostre bring in the Spring and they gave each other eggs to celebrate its arrival.

Even though our people no longer live that simple life and they no longer remember the reasons why we still celebrate Easter and the coming of spring, they still think of the Easter Bunny and give each other Easter Eggs. I have an Easter egg for you here which I’ll give you when you come back. I can’t wait to see you again. I love you so very much.

When I flew out to Toronto, I departed from Heathrow Terminal 5. Despite the terrible press surrounding the opening debacle it feels very much like a proper airport in the same way that Terminal 4 feels very much like an abbatoir.

I lunched at Wagamama there and, as usual, had the Chicken Kare Lomen, which is a spicy curry soup and their superb White Chocolate Ginger Cheesecake. The curry soup was only 50% successful, it tasted wonderful but unfortunately, I was unable to squeeze out a fart in the multifaith prayer room. That small opportunity to show my contempt for all religions thwarted, I went to board the plane. I like to think that it was perhaps because of my innate purity and godliness that on handing my passport over to the flight attendant, I was upgraded to business class.

Today I had two comments from pals that are miffed with the absence of anything fresh on my blog. So I thought I might get on and write one.

New stuff: I have finally relented and got an IPhone and I have to say it is possibly the best invention since the mobile phone, MP3 player, Play Station Portable, Internet radio, pocket TV, PDA or maybe all of these things put together. It still doesn't stop me from loathing Apple's personal computers, but if they stick to this portable media stuff they will rule the world. I am worried about it's fragility in a way that I haven't really been about any previous mobile phone. It somehow just seems more personal. The bazillion applications that are on it keep me constantly occupied with news, podcasts, strategy games, books, music. With one of these devices the western world need never trouble itself with time for introspective thought or mental tranquility.





In recent years, well the last two in the UK anyway, I have oft lamented the absence of real seasons. But this year it will be different instead of the grey and rainy season and the very grey and very rainy season, we will have had the "February was 'king freezing!" season. On Tuesday February 3rd I was actually told to work from home. How morose I was, as I beavered away testing the Internet, discussed some reconciliation application bugs with my baby daughter and worked out that if only I didn't have to pay tax for all the people that get to do this every day and all the people in government that might as well do this every day what a happy and less overdrawn chap I would be. This is the first time that weather has ever prevented me from getting to work.
This was the sort of event that I craved every winter as a child when I saw the first white puffs falling in the morning, my nose pressed against the window pane, rubbing away the condensation to see the snowflakes melting against the glass and laying a thin white velvet sheet over the garden. Please don't stop, just another few inches, two feet of snow and they will surely close the school. But it never happened, well not until now. But now I have a taste for it. Once a year, just for a day or so, I could live with a repeat experience.






On to a less pleasant matter. The British Government recently banned Dutch MP Geert Wilders, the maker of the film Fitna, from entering the UK as it was felt that his presence would cause outrage among Muslims living here.

Having watched the film, I think it is sensationalist, but nowhere near as sensationalist as say..... blowing up London buses or flying planes into the World Trade Center. I think perhaps the Muslims that are offended by this film should ask themselves what they really find offensive about it and direct their angst against the fundamentalists that support just the sort of actions which Geert Wilders highlights in his film.

One of my dearest and closest friends, Anas, is a Muslim. One of the things that makes him such a great guy is that his warmth, humanity, decency and honesty come before his religion or any other beliefs. If only everyone was like that.

A big week.

It was my lovely baby daughter's first birthday on Monday, a year ago she was handed to me by a nurse 00:33 after a really difficult birth. Eyes closed and crying. I can't remember which one of us that was, could have been all three of us I suppose. A year later she is an inquisitive child full of laughter and with a marvellous generosity of spirit. As she was born in England at 00:33 and we are in Canada where 00:33 GMT is 19:33 EST, and is the product of not only my demonstrably superior sperm, but also my beautiful Canadian wife's DNA and gestative care, she got two birthday parties. One on Sunday with her cousins where her emergence into the cold dry post-natal world was toasted at 7:30pm and another the following day.

She took her first few unaided steps today. So not only has she had a lot of loot from friends and relatives as birthday presents, she has also learned to walk. A big week indeed.

In other less important news, the United States of America have, for the first time in 8 years, elected a president who is not an asshole. Barack Obama, has, throughout his election campaign, acted as a statesman, a gentleman and an inspirational man of great vision. I truly hope he lives up to the great expectations that the whole world has for him. Lewis Hamilton has also won the F1 drivers championship, so perhaps the white liberal middle class pricks at the BBC can stop blaming absolutely everything bad that happens in the world on white on black racism. The BBC do not recognise races other than white and black, where white just includes Caucasians and Sir Trevor MacDonald, while black includes North Africans, sub-Saharan Africans (all tribes), Asians (oriental and from the Indian subcontinent), native Americans, Eskimos, non-Jewish Semites, indigenous Australasians, people from every island in the Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Arctic and Indian Oceans and visitors from other galaxies.

Airport Security

I was just checking in online for an Air Canada flight to Toronto and I think their taking the security questions a bit far.

It's the third question that concerns me. "Do you have anything in your hand baggage which is sharp or pointed or any item that could be adapted to cause an injury to another person?" I was thinking about taking a magazine on board, but as Jason Bourne used one as a cosh in The Bourne Supremacy and even an amateur could give you a vicious paper cut with one, I now doubt whether any reading material is allowed on-board.

My SLR is also a no-no as it has a long strap and could be employed as a very expensive, single use mace. More or less anything can used to cause an injury by a malevolent person. Perhaps I should turn up chattel free and naked, as clothes could in theory be used to smother the unwitting fellow traveller.

Or maybe the governments and the dicks that works for them are just taking themselves and their own cleverness a little too seriously.

Don't forget to vote America!

Except all you people in the Jesusland states in the middle, you don't go worryin' yer purdy little heads about it!

Food

Laura and the baby are in Canada at the moment, the washing machine needed a few days relaxation. I am just cooking myself a roast pork joint (with lovely crisp crackling), roast potatoes, runner beans and brussels sprouts which I shall wash down with a little Sauv blanc. While unpacking the shopping earlier I came across this:

I bought it for Laura, but she won't eat it. Probably for the best. I don't want her getting a taste for Authentic Jamaican Cock Flavour Soup.

Last assignment in Amsterdam.....

Due to a merger at work, there is a lot of re-organisation and unfortunately, it looks like I have spent my last trip in Amsterdam for the foreseeable future. I love this city and would love to live in it.

Arriving on Wednesday night, the hotel welcomed me, as always with a little present. No-one has ever used this word combination to me before.

"Your present is cheese" seems also to some up what I believe were the unspoken words of the important person in my command chain who made the decision that I should look after some big budget stuff in London, rather than the small budget stuff Amsterdam where I am generally far more content. Laura wants to give him a kick in the Edams.

On Thursday night I had a few drinks with some colleagues in Amstelveen, a few more at De Bekeerde Suster in the old centre of town and a few more at Bourbon Street with some of the hotel staff after they finished work. These are places I will miss, as I will Castell, which you must visit if ever you are in the city. I've eaten here a dozen or so times this year. Their prime rib is superb and the meat falls from the bones on their ribs by giving it a hard stare. The last time I went their my palate had an orgasm.

Whilst on a postprandial stroll through the market in Amstelveen on Friday I noticed this:

I've used a Dremel before but never an ass blow case electric grinder.

After boarding the Fokker 50 at Amsterdam Schiphol to fly home to London City on Friday it all went wrong. London City was closed and all of the passengers from the 16:10 flight to City were herded on to the 18:15 to Heathrow. KLM staff in Amsterdam very kindly lied about our luggage coming on the flight with us and KLM staff in London lied about it being delivered to our home addresses on Saturday.

'The Flying Dutchman' was until recently the name of the KLM frequent flyer programme. As anyone acquainted with the legend knows, the Flying Dutchman is a ship doomed to sail the oceans for eternity. Much it would seem, like my luggage.

Stating the obvious

Back in January I wrote an article on the Eskimo and the BBC website has finally caught up with me and done the same. Apparently, the Eskimo have 37 words for snow. Unsurprising when you think about how much of it they have and the preeminence of this substance in their lives. Less known is that they have no word for beer, for which we, in England are blessed with thousands of words. No wonder then that while they invented ice fishing, we invented the worldwide web that has enabled us to order a curry online and a couple of bottles of Kingfisher to wash it down.

Attention Deficit Disorder

I have just started watching Pink The Series it is the first 'TV' series I have seen that was written from the outset for web broadcast. I get it via the Vuze network in HD but it's also available via YouTube. The production quality is superb, the acting, great, in a film noir comic style. It's about a female yogic gym addicted assassin in her late thirties or early forties who has agreed to do a series of government hits in return for being released from prison, which she wants to do so she can find a nice man to have a baby with as she's worried about her biological clock ticking. Each webisode segues between a scene in the present where our heroine Natalie Cross is either topping someone or being disappointed about the dearth of worthwhile boyfriend material and a flashback to her childhood with daddy teaching her to shoot, track, knife fight. For reasons I don't truly understand she reminds me of my friend Amanda.

The downside to this series and the reason that I probably won't continue to watch it is that each episode is about three minutes long once the initial commercial, credits and title sequence have been subtracted. So a series each episode of which is the same duration as a standard commercial break. A new episode is released once per week. On this basis it would take about three months to air an episode of Dexter and over twenty seven years to see the whole of the Sopranos. Life is just too short. I think I'll have a beer with Amanda instead, once down the pub, she always stays for more than three minutes and is, in general, much less likely to kill anyone.

Sarah Palin, 'doencha' just love her?

Err...... no! What a terribly cynical ploy by the GOP to capture the popular vote of the idiocracy which is the United States. As if being a Republican isn't bad enough on its own, she is a young earth creationist and an anti-abortion zealot who hadn't left North America until her VP candidacy appeared. If McCain gets in and dies of old age, this vacuous bint could be leader of the free world. But it's OK for the Jesus crowd because she knows where Russia is located and can kill and cook a moose. Really! If that's all that's required they should install Crodocile Dundee in the Whitehouse immediately!

You just don't see this in the UK....

I snapped this window display in a shop in Amstelveen last week. You just would not get this in the UK. You will note the two little boys are having a laugh, drinking what looks to be whisky and smoking a big fat cigar. This sort of thing makes me really angry, it is not the smoking drinking thing, which is fine, it's that French and obviously gay moustache the kid has drawn on his upper lip. Next thing you know Charles Aznavour will be touring schools and singing Village people numbers. This sort of thing must be stamped out, we should not be encouraging our children to be French, it's just not natural.

A big thank you must go to my pal Joe. It was Joe who introduced me to the phenomenal Hopes and Fears album by Keane ; The Killers' Hot Fuss ; the TV series Flight of the Conchords, The Riches and most recently the excellent Breaking Bad.

I am missing Evelyn and Laura. Laura will look about the same when I see her next, Evelyn has grown substantially and just had her first spoon or two of non-boob food and I am missing out on all this.

The Scottish Parliament (the one in Westminster)

I read an article from the taxpayers alliance today, it summed up my thoughts on this government. The Labour Party's Scottish Presbyterian Leadership has decided that they haven't had any positive press recently and are going for the eco-idiot demographic with proposals to ban supermarket plastic bags that people use as bin liners. Leadership or incentives to switch to biodegradable bags has not occurred to them. They can make some new laws and any chance to make some new laws and look strong and clever, must never be missed.

They sense the opportunity for more legislation and another way to make England more closely aligned to the moral values of tax funded champagne glitterati of New Labour.

The machinations of thought are already conjuring dreams of a Plastic Bag Tzar, a raft of news plastic bag laws that will put a halt to the evil supermarkets giving away free plastic bags that end up in land fill and force people to buy plastic bin liners that will end up in land fill.

As if there isn't anything more pressing going on in a country where no-one can afford a home, where immigration is running at +500,000 per annum, where the hospitals can't cope and the schools pump out illiterate children with qualifications that mean nothing because every year the exams are made easier to keep the statistics sweet.


They truly are vacuous parasites, spending their time and my money dreaming up new ways to piss me off.

No starter for me thank you.

I found this on the menu at the Corner Thai a hop, skip and a jump from Leidseplein. I think the translator must have opened his Thai-English dictionary at the section marked Synonyms.

Missing Laura and Evelyn. When Evelyn was just born she would curl up into a little ball on my chest and fall asleep. She's growing so quickly that I foolishly worry she'll be too big to do that when I see her next and I'll have missed out on all that early dadhood. We should all be back together in 3 weeks or so.

I have to change the photos of them I keep in my wallet, copies of their passport shots, they both look like they were taken at a police line up.

This is not a Drill

I have just finished reading "This Is Not a Drill" the funny and occasionally moving sequel to Paul Carter's "Don't Tell Mum I Work On The Rigs, She Thinks I'm a Piano Player in a Whorehouse" and thought I'd share a couple of quotes from it with you.......

'.....he's so scary. Apart from being a big man, Miguel has a face that looks like it's been set on fire a couple of times and put out with a cricket bat.'

'.....there are two things every man should hear in his lifetime: "I'm pregnant" and "We have the building surrounded".'