Clueless in the UK

The weather has been that bad, it really has. JK Rowling said in one of her online question & answers sessions that "we were having a Dementor driven summer this year" and she is right. It made heading back to California and Montana for almost four weeks seem like quite a smart move.  Anyway, every day the forecast says, "Rain for the next three days, but nice after that …" Every day! It never gets to the "nice after that"! 

BTW, Harry Potter 7 was amazing, especially considering I did not like Harry Potter 1 very much and so didn't read 2 through 6 until finally I had heard from Madeline and Sue too many times "Boy, the movie was missing so much important stuff from the book!"  So Harry Potter 2 thru 6 just got better and better, ending with the best of them all, the last.

At the end of school last year was Sports Day. Jason has been getting taller and faster and better at sports, and he won some races this time around. I think he can't believe it, he's so proud:

Madeline won every race she was in, something like 6, including two with me. Boy are we competitive, we Payne/Yehs. The first race with Madeline I fell on my ass trying to stop after having missed a "checkpoint" in the race - we still won but at times Madeline's feet were not touching the ground. No pictures I'm afraid.

Before we left for California we said goodbye to Vicky, the kids' Chinese tutor from our neighborhood. She was perfect for the kids for keeping their Chinese going, but unfortunately she had the poor manners to graduate from high school, and so she won't be living in our neighborhood anymore:

She also likes PCs running Windows, but there's only so much influence I can have over a teenage girl, a sign of things to come I assume. (At least she listened to me about not getting Vista …)

Half Moon Bay

Well, once in California we had to see Steve and the cousins, so off we went to Half Moon Bay for a BBQ lunch. Fantastic, and as you can see, quite gray, a lot like England. Perhaps we were trying to soften the transition, blah blah. We spent the whole day there on the beach, and we were pretty wiped by the time we got home. As you can see, we had no fun:

Lots of frisbee: 

Calvin and Jason both have natural forehand throws, pretty rare for frisbee: 

 

Let's pile on the dads:

Everything was fine until Colby lost his head:

but Madeline and Uncle Steve decided to make the most of it:  

The Ranch in Montana

On our friend's ranch in Montana we got treated to some entertaining storms in the late afternoon. These are my first attempts at shooting lightnings. The daytime one is about a 4 second exposure - the longest I could achieve at ISO 100, and F 22:

Some cloud formations, hard to capture I thought: 

The darker ones were a lot longer. Sadly I missed a fantastic shot because I had the lens wide-open and not properly focused. Still there's something nice about the coloring of this shot: 

This was taken after midnight: 

  

The main attractions at the ranch, besides cooking grand meals and all eating together, are the horses:

and the rope swing at a near-by lake. Madeline goes off the middle platform to get her height. The top platform is too scary for most, including me and Maddie, made more so by the fact that one of the mothers fell off it in spectacular fashion that first day …

Here Jason has an audience: 

This is just to show you that got in on the action as well. I love that thing:

At the beginning of the week we were there meals were for 35 or so people. Huge productions in their huge kitchen where very serious work is done at all times:

This next one was taken two years ago when we were there the first time but I think it captures the spirit: 

After the big meals made by the adults, the kids were split into two groups to do the cleaning up. Some of them got into the idea of "waiting on the adults" with water, desserts, clearing the plates, etc. They were very cute.

The innocent looking photograph needs a story. First the picture:

There are two main facial expressions in this shot. Towards the far end of the table the expressions are of hilarity, and this is because of what I said just before I took the picture. Those people are largely drunk at this time. The other dominant expression is that of shock and/or disapproval, and this is also because of what I said just before the shot. Basically, people were being a bit of a pain and I was behind the camera for a good thirty seconds trying to get the right shot. So finally I said, "OK! Everybody FUCKING SMILE!" Unfortunately, what I didn't realize was that during those 30 seconds while I was being the camera, Madeline had walked up right beside Sue waiting for me to take the shot … I think you'll agree that the facial expressions make complete sense at this point.

One unexpected treat on the last day on the ranch was Madeline got a chance to try riding a mini-bike:

I got in on the action as well:

Later Madeline and I were able to go off together, riding in one of the pastures. We didn't go nuts but it was still a great experience for her. It made me want to go out and … you know … get a ranch of our own.

Here's the last photo from the ranch, the last dinner, a smaller crowd. I was really hoping to catch the first planet in the sky (Venus) in the background. It wasn't until later that I worked out all the reasons why I couldn't get the planet in on the photo. You might be surprised to find that this photo has a 4 second exposure time:

This was the 4th attempt at the shot. The first three failed because nobody believed me when I said, "OK, keep still. The camera is going to flash, and then it's going to sit there, and then it's going to flash again, and then you need to wait a second. DON'T MOVE!" Finally the last one they really listened to me, and I think the result came out quite nicely.

So here's the deal on California

Last winter I went back for almost a week to our house in California. It was cold, drafty and dark (because … you know … it was winter time). I thought to myself, "This is cold, drafty and dark, but our place in London is warm, not drafty, and very dark …" I wasn't sure what I saw in our house in California. All the construction going on around it didn't help either.

However, going back in the summer changed everything. It was warm, sunny, the construction  on one side was largely complete, quite, well-located, relaxing. When we get back to California we'll fix the minor problems with the house and stay, or so I think right now anyway. And if we do, we'll have nice parties every month with all the money we're saving from not living in London anymore, and YOU'RE invited!

Here's the deal on London

London is a great place. There's a fair amount of nastiness going on but I assume it's just part of being in a big city. We have watched the evening news a few times lately and it's just like in the states, all negative, bad stuff that just makes you paranoid (or me, anyway). When you live in the burbs you can say to yourself, "This kinda stuff won't happen here" but when you live in the middle of a huge city, you kinda can't use that line on yourself anymore. Still, millions of people live here, I may as well be one of them.

Coming back in the middle of the summer was a little hard, with so many people still out of town doing their vacations. I am looking forward to school starting again. Then I can get back into my routine of drinking in the pub and picking up the kids after school, with the added twist that I brought my bullwhip back to London with me, and intend to take it to the Heath ;-) 

Well, we survived a trip to the South of France a couple of weeks ago. It was excellent in a number of ways, funny in others …

Evening Distraction

The first hotel in Antibes had a great location … uh … but that's about it. We didn't get the room we were told we'd get just the day before, which was warning number #1. Warning #2 was that the A/C in the room did not work. Then the fridge door fell off, and the bathroom garbage can wasn't properly attached, and we were pretty suspicious things weren't going to go well. So Sue walked down the street and found another hotel which had one room available, and we prepared to move there the following day - we just had to survive one night there.

That night at 10pm or thereabouts, our room was too hot, I had to open the bedroom window. I did what all people do when they open the window - looked down - and this particular time I was treated to a man and a woman having sex in the hotel's breakfast area. Score!! It was easy to see as long as I stood on one leg, bent slightly to the left, stood on the tippy toes …  I whispered to Sue what was going on, and she had to take a peak. After a minute she came back and said, "Another guy showed up and is just sitting there!" I thought, wow, those crazy French, boy do they know how to have fun, they are not shy about sex, he's just there keeping them compa — ohhhh …

For 30 long LONG minutes I stayed in bed, but finally … finally I couldn't take it anymore, I just had to know! So I got up and had another peak, and yes, a ménage à trois! I wasn't about to complain, to be honest, except … wait … that was the breakfast area … those were the tables and chairs we'd be using tomorrow … gross, man!

Then at 12:30am a spontaneous party started in the same place, and it was loud, no more sex, but loud and kept us awake until 2am. What a night! Boy was I going to give it to them in the morning.

It gets better, believe it or not

So the next morning I go downstairs to find one of the two brothers running this "family establishment" and ask him if I could have a word in private. I basically told him what happened, he was "shocked, simply shocked!" and I told him I was going back upstairs to pack and we could sort out the bill after he has had some time to think about it.

During that time he must have talked it over with his brother because when I came back downstairs to finish things with him, he had already come to the following conclusion: You made up the whole thing about the sex. I laughed and said, "Do you honestly think I am making this up?" He did. So I said, "How about I tell you exactly what happened …" and he said, "OK". This is all happening downstairs in a small lobby area (it was more like a B&B than a hotel, actually) and I said, "Would you like to do it in private?" and he said, "No, here is OK." and I looked around at a poor innocent by-stander sitting on the couch in the lobby with his laptop, and said, "OK."

I am not shy about describing various sex acts, and I just told him how it was in detail, and Sue happened to be coming back into the hotel as I was saying "as he was pumping her from behind, she was …" and Sue saw the poor guy on the couch looking rather uncomfortable about the whole thing.

In the end, the guy just ripped up our credit card information and off we went, no charge. He promised to investigate.

(I know what you're thinking: Jon, why no pictures!?)

Anyway, that whole incident put me in a very good mood after we had settled the bill without paying for the one night and moved into our new hotel. So funny, ridiculous, and entertaining all at once. Normally I am shy about demanding money back, etc., but apparently if you want to talk about sex, I don't have a problem with that at all!

But there's more to our trip than peep shows, so let's get on with it, shall we?

Our friends in Valbonne

Our friends The Chartiers from Jason's old day care in Palo Alto had moved to Valbonne a year or so ago, so we spent the first two days visiting with them. What a treat! They have a beautiful house in the hills, with views of the Alps and the Mediterranean Sea, and wild forest as their back yard.

Here we are enjoying a nice relaxing drink on the front porch of their house:

 

We went for a walk in those woods with our two and two of their three, discovering plants and bugs along the way. We all really enjoyed it: 

 

Jason with his friend Antoine - they used to go to daycare together in California a couple years back: 

 

Gourdon 

The next day we hooked up with the Chartiers again and they took us around to a few nice places. First, we drove to Gourdon, which is a Medieval village on a cliff, basically. We stopped to take a picture along the mountain roads:

 

 While in Gourdon we were gaga over the views, but the kids made straight for the candy store on the side of the road. French candy is better than British candy, or so we are told:

We had to include this picture of Marie Eve because she looks so nice and French in this picture:

We bought a number of items from this store and had them shipped home. It was a perfume store and it was … full of … you know … perfume. Jason, who is into making potions, was going gaga over all the little potion-sized bottles in that store:

Here's a shot which somehow manages to capture the beauty of this little village, looking down at a restaurant truly on the edge of the cliffs. There's something about the nerve, the gall, the utter disregard for what's stupid and dangerous that I love about a village on the edge of a cliff:

 

We took a brief hike at the top in the mountains/hills on our way to lunch in another village. This is a view of the Mediteranean Sea in the distance, probably Antibe in fact:

 

After a nice lunch, we separated from the Chartiers and headed off to Gorges du Loup and played in a river while we were waiting our chance to tour the Florian Confectionery. The river was nice, but we never did get that tour because they were overwhelmed with visitors at the same time we were there, and they all wanted the French translation:

 

That was a long day, as were most of our days on this trip. There's a lot to see and we wanted to see it. The kids, sometimes at each other's throats during the day, were very tired at night. While Sue and I were watching the last two episodes of "24" on our laptop, Jason and Madeline had fallen asleep like this:

Out cold … clearly not at each other's throats now, are they!?!?!?

Antibe Penisula and Les Grottes de St. Cezaine

Next day we were on our own and decided to hit the Antibe Penisula. We got a very special treat actually. We drove around for a while along the water's edge and then went inland just a bit before turning down a road we thought was heading towards the water again. This road got smaller and smaller as we went, finally with a brick wall on both sides, no wider than a single lane, dirt road. I wasn't sure if we'd even be able to turn around.

When we got to the end there was a small parking lot for about 3 cars so we backed in and walked down to the water, and hiked around near Cap Gros. It's hard to tell from the photos but it was incredibly windy, hard to stand up in fact, and very blue and dramatic looking:

Later we hung out at crescent shaped La Garoupe beach and had lunch. Nobody seemed to mind that I was trying to order in French - they were very friendly:

From there we took off for about an hour drive to Les Grottes de St. Cezaire, which is basically some underground caves with nice stalagmites and stalactites. There were lots of interesting shots but here are two of my favorites.

In this first one, the tour guide is playing the stalactites like a xylophone (very cool sounding) next to something which looks like a white skeleton which is actually stalactites and stalagmites meeting in the middle:

And this one is just our family shot inside the cave after everyone else left: 

The way home from Les Grottes was through some of the most winding, backward, one lane roads through the hills and small towns in the South of France. It was like being in the middle of nowhere, farms, paths, etc., but the GPS never led us astray as far … as we … know.

Nice

Next day we hung out in Nice in the morning. Our trusty GPS got us there and we walked around on the beach in the morning skipping rocks. The water was unbelievably blue, like Hawaii blue only more so, but it wasn't that warm that day so we didn't really go swimming. But we did get wet and play in the waves on the rocky beach:

Jason is in major face making mode whenever we take pictures: 

 

Monaco

I am currently being mocked here by some of our friends (ok, perhaps just one) because when she said, "Where are you going during the half-term?" I replied, "We're going to the South of France to visit Nice and Morocco." You can tell how involved I am in the planning when I don't even know it's Monaco, but you can tell something even more disturbing when you realize I didn't think there was anything wrong with a South of France trip that included Morocco.

When we finished lunch in Nice we asked the GPS to take us to Monaco and it refused, and just before Sue decided to throw the GPS out the window, I suggested that maybe Monaco is it's own sort of country or something. The GPS liked that idea very much and off we went!

I'll just say that I thought it was one of the coolest looking places to build a city/country/whatever I have ever seen. We also got very lucky with the weather, so the ocean was so blue and so nice, but really there's nothing bad to say about scenes like this. The water is probably hundreds of feet below us in this shot from the Prince Albert Garden:

 

Jason never misses an opportunity to be silly: 

 

 Sheer rock faces up against marinas full of high end yachts:

The guide book had bad things to say about Monaco which I thought was all rubbish. Even the apartment buildings look nice to me. And we couldn't leave without a shot of the Monaco Grand Prix track which had run just a few days before we got there:

 

Oh, and I think Sue will kill me of I forget to mention that we went to the Musee Oceonographique and had dinner at a creperie. To be honest, the best crepes we've had are still the ones across the street from our house in Hampstead. 

Cannes

Cannes just didn't do it for me. The beaches were so-so, the city was kinda yucky, "I've seen Monaco, Cannes is no Monaco." On the other hand I am not sure there is any sand in Monaco, so that kinda sucks a little bit I suppose, if you're into that kind of thing (and I am).

Like the Grand Prix in Monaco, we missed the Cannes Film Festival by just a couple of days. The kids got to try out the red carpet, and I am pleased with how discreet they were:

We took a "train/really-a-bus" tour around Cannes and I cannot recommend against this enough. It was slow, boring, and the city was exposed as its ugly self. OK - I admit it might be nice if we're there with no kids, enjoying the night life perhaps, as the tour books suggest. But, we got the kids, you see, and we see things through those glasses. Oh - but of course, I am just talking about myself. For all I know, Sue loved Cannes!

Anyway, the train tour took us to the top and we were able to get a couple of nice pictures. Here's the best one:

Sun Worshiping 

The one thing we saw wherever we went where there were beaches was these horrific sun worshipers. They were white people burned dark brown in a very deliberate manner. They were all over the place, and it was really quite horrible in my opinion. Naturally, I have a picture:

There were many more old, wrinkled women than men, and I found myself wondering how old some of them were. So I went up to one lady who looked to be about 65 years old and asked her in my best French how old she was, and she replied, "25 Euros". Can you believe it! I thought she looked at least 60! 

Madeline lost her last tooth the other day. She had been getting grief from her fellow classmates because she still believes in the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus. Her proof for believing in Santa Claus is this: we left for Manchester a few days before Christmas, but when we got back a few days after Christmas there were presents under the tree. That is just a small indication of Sue's love for her children ;-)

So, the morning after her last baby tooth pops out Madeline pops the question to Sue: is the Tooth Fairy real? Sue didn't want to talk about it then, but Madeline insisted and so Sue told her, and she was not happy about it! So I get an inkling something is going on when Sue comes downstairs and Madeline is still on the stairs sobbing quietly. So I headed over to Madeline to talk about it with her, while Sue was keeping Jason occupied some place else. I told her this:

Instead of being sad about it, think about how much your mother cared to make sure that she had something special for you for each of your twenty teeth! And guess what? 20 times I sneaked into your room to try to get that tooth out from under your pillow, and I can't even tell you how many times I freaked out because you rolled over, or opened yours eyes and looked at me and then went back to sleep! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!

By then she was laughing but not more than a few seconds went by before she asked me, "Is Santa Claus real?" ARGH!!!!!! Thinking quickly I said, "What do you think?" and she replied, "I think he is" and I just said, "Good!" because "Good!" is exactly what I was thinking at that moment!! But now we are thinking it's time to tell her the truth about that as well. Being able to tell her the truth about that will also enable me to get something off my chest I have wanted to do for years, ever since Madeline thought she must have been bad one year because Jason got more presents that she did: I just want her to know that it was just that we couldn't think of anything to get her that year!

Sue reminds me that Madeline is going to be having sex education next year, and we might want to let her know about Santa Claus before then … 

Jason and T-Ball

Jason is playing T-ball again this year, first time in London though. So in his first game he whacked the ball past everyone and he ran all around the bases for a home run. He did it again his second at bat. So now he wants to get a home run every time he comes up to the plate.

So anyway, his next game I am coaching first base, trying to help the team in the field not block first base for the runners. Jason comes up to bat, hits the ball hard and starts running as fast as he can! (It's so funny for me to remember this, I can barely type.) So, I am trying to get the kid playing first base to get out of the way so Jason doesn't collide with him, but Jason has his sights set on another home run! So when he sees the mess at first base I can see he makes a quick decision and decides, "Screw this!" and turns the corner about 15 feet in front of first base! He was running like a bat out of hell, determined to get to home plate no matter what! It was soooo funny.

So next time I saw him I said, "OK, if you hit the ball way out into the outfield you can run to second base and maybe third but normally we don't allow home runs in T-ball because it's too hard for the fielders to get the ball back in." His next at bat he nailed it really REALLY hard and it hit one of the parent coaches right in the gut out by shortstop. Jason was quite upset but hid it well and accepted the guy's apology for taking away "extra bases". 

---

The kids are so different from when we got here. It's tempting or easy to think that England has changed them, and there is probably some truth to that. But, the reality is more likely that they are just a year older.

Madeline is learning to care about other people better than before. Jason is becoming more independent, more confident and cocky. They are both learning a lot in school and even both seem to be liking it.

The school thing is getting interesting for Madeline because next year is her last year before she goes to secondary school. That's a big deal. You have to apply to secondary schools at age 11 (although she will be 10) and get accepted, like going to college. Sue is on top of this as usual, because we have to start this year for secondary school starting after next year. So Sue and I went to see one of the possible schools, and it was something else, it really did feel like a college to me. It felt like … one of those "boarding school" movies we've all seen "O Captain! My Captain!" hopefully without all the drama. (I didn't realize that poem was written for/about Lincoln …) The school we went to was over 300 years old started at the request of Queen Elizabeth, whom you might have heard of, in the 18th century ;-) Anyway, we'll see.

Football

Madeline is trying out for a serious girls football league in Hampstead. It's a competitive league coached by a former Lady Arsenal who played for the English national team against the likes of Mia Hamm. We'll see how it goes. Meanwhile her school has a new coach, a semi-professional or something, who said that Madeline was amazing. I think Madeline has been holding back because she is intimidated by the roughness of the boys of one of the local schools they play around here. But Madeline can kick, man, so hard, it's something to behold. And she is a super fast runner when she turns it on. She's everything I always wanted to be when I was her age … Should I be proud or envious? I think we all know the answer to that one … ;-) 

… however, this might get old pretty quickly … 

Of course, the weather never pans out like this. Instead, it starts out rainy, clears up a while, pours some more later, warms up, cools down, and on and on. Still, one likes to think that it builds character … when one is stuck with it, that is.

Piano

I just deleted four long paragraphs about how much I love learning how to use the pedal on the piano now. I never understood what was the deal with that right-most pedal on the piano, pressed and released at unintuitive times. I am starting to get it now and have been going crazy trying to apply it to my fourth piece, the first one with chords, you know, the exhausting one.

I will say this, just to piss off my father: the piano and drums have increasingly more in common with each other, as I introduce a third major limb into the mix, and I don't think I could have made this much progress with the pedal this quickly if I hadn't already trained my brain to handle hi-hats.

Wales 

I feel it's time to mention Wales, before we head on our next trip, which is the south of France. I remember doing Marimba, meeting with VCs, and - wait a second, I already talked about my Cannes screw-up.

Wales was a ton of fun. It was great because my sister and her family made the trip out to visit us for spring break.

So, we took the train from Euston to Manchester and then rented cars there. Sue and I had the GPS system, automatic transmission and about 100 miles of left side of the road driving experience; my sister Gill and her husband Greg had maps, a manual tranmission and each other ;-) The thing that impressed me the most was Greg didn't show any signs of stress about the whole driving thing. I realized at that moment that I am in fact a complete pussy and he is not.

The GPS was great, but, Sue and I "used it as a crutch" too much, according to my sister. And it's true that we lost confidence in it when it directed us down a long, winding road, a single lane wide with grass growing in the middle just to remind you how lost you are. We turned around in front of a local who must have been amazed, but perhaps not, and eventually found our way to our destination. The GPS had in fact been correct and was just trying to give us a nice, scenic short-cut, and it was just that didn't have confidence in our little device.

Meanwhile, just to prove how hip they were with the maps, we let my sister override the GPS on the way back to Manchester. We ended up going in exactly the wrong directory for about 10 miles, and I was immediately suspicious when the GPS never once said, "OK, you missed that road, go another 5 miles and you can hook back up then …" but instead said, "TURN AROUND YOU IDIOT!" at every possible exit on the highway. Still, they had their maps and their confidence so we let it continue for about 5 miles, which is about the time they figured it out as well. (But then it was 5 miles before the next exit to turn around, don't ya know?)

Anyway, back to Wales … Wales was very green:

 

Wales had some impressive looking mountains. I was amazed what 3500 feet can look and feel like! 

 

The kids took their surroundings very seriously indeed:

We hiked to the edge of the precipice:

(The ground was there a second ago, I swear it was!) 

 

 … and we ate, drank and played pool at pubs by night:

(Ah - the old double-chin pose - my favorite!)

We saw a very old and very awesome castle where Prince Charles was … whatever it is they do to princes when they're ready:

Saw low tide in action:

Here is the obligatory self-timer shot. I was going to say "Everyone Shot" but this was the day Aiden had a fever of 103 and his Mom kept him company back at the B&B: 

I have been putting off this blog entry for a while, because it is too hard to explain how much fun it was. It was just aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, sisters and brothers and cousins. We didn't have too much of it growing up, it is precious when we have it now…