Posted 12:21 PM by Paul
Vive Le Weekend


Particularly good night out yesterday. I went south to Tunbridge Wells for a curry with Mark, Chris and Steve O'Connor, the Baltimore man who has come over to help fix our railways and a friend of his who was over on holiday. Steve may be with us until about 2050.

It was good to get around a table groaning with Indian food, talk bollocks and drink too much wine. The early part of the night was spent talking about the Hutton Report. Chris, is normally on the side of anyone who is having a go at the Government and can't say Tony Blair without a slight hiss. However, he took a dim view of the BBC. The way he sees it the Beeb has for too long dressed up speculation and opinion as news. He has a point and many of us have noticed that they have got a little sloppy in their natural desire to meet the demands of 24 hour news. But all in all it seems that a majority of people think that the BBC got it mainly right and the Government at the very least exaggerated Iraq's military capability. After all they had no navy and a tiny airforce and a bunch of Soviet missiles that didn't work so it always seemed that they were no big threat. Much of the rest of the night was spend talking about how much we loved New York which often confuses Americans not from the Big Apple as they often hate it.

I ended up getting a taxi with Chris all the way from the smart spa town of Tunbridge Wells (worth a visit in summer) to the village of East Peckham in rural Kent where he lives. His place is small but pleasant and apparently was never an Oast House (English place for drying hops) at all, but was built as a folly about 50 years ago. I spent a comfortable night crashed out on a mattress but kept reaching out to touch Heather who was of course 40 miles away in London. Chris prepared a traditional English breakfast of fried eggs, sausage and bacon in the morning which helped soak up the alcohol. Luckily he finished cooking just in time for a power cut following the gales which raged through the night. He then took a series of calls from mates in the horse racing fraternity, which seemed to involve racing tips. His village is a quintessential bit of England and could be used as a set for a film about the 30s starring Gwyneth Paltrow. Ancient church and village pub overlooking the green. It occurred to me that we should go there to watch the cricket in summer dressed as asylum seekers and gypsies to test the views of the more illiberal members of the local community. But perhaps I shouldn't be so cynical. Kent has always felt the immediate effects of any Government policy right or wrong concerning the free movement of Labour. East Peckham was pleasant but the cab ride drive the night before through Tonbridge (not to be confused with Tunbridge Wells) was quite grim. DIY sheds and mock Tudor houses with winking burglar alarms in serried ranks on either side of dual carriageways bathed in sodium light. Mark was planning to go to Whitstable, a quaint village by the coast, the next day with his wife Vivian. I have always meant to take the kids around the time of the Oyster Festival so they could play on the beach and watch me gorge myself on shellfish. Emily calls this kind of stuff "Daddy's scary food"

Spend the rest of the day reading Mark Steele's brilliant and very funny history of the French Revolution VIVE LA REVOLUTION! on the sofa and helped Emily with her homework of writing a short poem about why you need to avoid lions or they might eat you.

Homework! Not 7 yet and she has homework. Back in the 60s we only started working after school hours when we were 10 in preparation for the 11 plus examination which determined whether you went to a better equipped and posher grammar school or a rougher secondary modern. I went to the former, my brother Dave went to the latter. It sounded like San Quentin. His stories of random violence and psychotic freak teachers and pupils certainly had the effect of encouraging me to work to go to a far far better place. Alice also had homework but just needed a bit of help finding "muscles" in the Hutchinson's Encyclopedia for a piece she was writing.
She did an excellent piece of work and I cooked them mashed potatoes with melted cheese on top. Emily also had a fried egg. She loves eggs.

If I sound proud of the kids, it's because I am. I look at them both and feel that I am the luckiest man alive. It's good to be home with a gale blowing outside and a fire in the grate. Alice and Emily are now watching The Amanda Show, an excellent American comedy show for kids and they are off to bed. Then we are ordering an Indian meal delivered to our door and will settle down to watch the first series of Twin Peaks on DVD.

Vive Le Weekend!