Queue here for the pink bricks

We spent today at LegoLand. It was Fathers' Day, and it seemed like an apt place to spend it, with one Lego-crazed boy and two Lego-crazed wannabees (when they can just figure out how to put it all together...). It was a great day, and we had a blast, but that's not what I'm here to talk about.

Before we got there, I'd taken the concept of LegoLand pretty literally. I thought it was going to be a centre of tiny (and not so tiny) Lego models, and maybe a few places where you got to put together your own pale imitations instead. But no...LegoLand, as anyone who actually bothers to read about where they're going before they go would have known, is essentially a mini theme park. There's Lego galore, bien sur; but there are also log flumes and pirate ships and dinosaur rides and Vikings and diggers and car tracks and....

....and absolutely nothing that seems aimed towards girls. I'm not advocating gender-based play; to be honest, having grown up in a two-daughter household with toy garages and Scalectrix, and having bought our boys a toy kitchen for Christmas two years ago, I actually think it doesn't really occur to me. But you see the evidence around enough to know that gender-based play does exist: that for every Captain Hook walking the plank there must be a mermaid combing her hair; for every bumper car there's a hospital with a nurse in attendance; for every dinosaur there's a...a what? Betty Flintstone? Buggered if I know.

Anyway, it just struck me as curious. The conclusion we came to was that Lego's self-selecting; whether meaning to or not, it appeals more to boys, thus the activities were centered around more typical 'boy' interests, too. I've got no idea whether this is actually true or not, but it was weird to be presented with such a strong gender-based theme park. Who knew those even existed? Or are theme parks, by their very nature, more 'male'? And no, I'm not bringing Dollywood into this.

And, of course, there's Camus...

I was all set to write about Martin Amis tonight, but the footie's on in the background, and my mind keeps filling with that instead.

I could give a damn about formations and the offside rule and all that technical nonsense; but I've always loved football for that huge sense of people joining together and willing something to happen. I suppose it's not the game itself I love - if you could get the same effect from a tiddlywinks championship, I'd be all over that instead, I'm sure - but the way it connects people's brains. And of course, in my brain, it makes me think of writers. Two in particular.

The first is, of course, Nick Hornby. I devoured Fever Pitch when it first came out and in those early days, before the onslaught of earnest contemporary male writers, the book was astonishing for showing you the world through the prism of the fanatic. As a non-fanatic with a great love of communication and my mates, there's a segment near the beginning that I remember any time there's a major match on. Arsenal have won some significant championship (she says vaguely; half our books are in storage at the mo and I'm pretty sure Fever Pitch is not one of the chosen few hundred currently on the shelves). Hornby describes coming home and his answer phone (this being pre-mobiles) is flashing like a streaker at a cricket match, full of messages from ex-girlfriends and distant relatives and his Mum; all these people who saw the result at the end of the news and were moved to call the biggest fan they knew.

I *love* that sport can bring connection like that. And Hornby, of course, put it beautifully; which is why the book went on to be such a huge success.

***

The second is Roddy Doyle, who wrote an essay about Ireland's participation in the 1990 World Cup for an anthology, The Beautiful Game. The whole thing is lovely, but then near the end, he's describing David O'Leary taking a penalty kick:

'We had to score our last one....David O'Leary, a great player and a nice man...No one spoke. He placed the ball. It took him ages...the ball hit the net in a way that was gorgeous...I cried.'

Doyle goes on to ponder, wistfully, that there's nothing in his profession that captures that same emotion. Apparently O'Leary's wife, at home in Ireland, had been unable to watch her husband's penalty, so she'd gone out into the garden and their son had come running out to tell her the result. I'm paraphrasing here, but Doyle's point is, imagine that happening at the end of a novel:

'Ma, Ma! Da's after finishing the book!'

Say what?

Nearly three months have passed since we set sail* from the Emerald Isle; enough time to start to figure out what we've exported from our three years there. I've written before about wanting to hold onto our American positivity; with Ireland, what seems to have lasted is the language. Jonah, the only one of us to have ever truly passed as a native (despite his brother being the actual born-and-bred Gael), is starting to lose his Dub accent, which is both a shame and also a relief; it means he's hanging out with new buddies and absorbing their accents. A shame to be losing the accent, but a relief that he's not all alone in a corner of the classroom mourning his lost pals of the West.

Still, although an Irish accent isn't part of our family any more, it seems that certain words have crept in and are here to stay. I took the kids to buy new school shoes and runners last week; despite our best efforts, it's impossible to call the damn things 'trainers' when 'runners' is by far a more appropriate term for the footwear of a small boy.

Earlier this week, I had cause to teach Jonah when to use 'lashing' and when to use 'drizzling'; a distinction that made me giggle, because of course you'd need to know the word for a bloody great downpour in Ireland and a polite sniffle of rain in England. We're still inclined, as a family, to ask, 'Will I bring (the boys with me to the shop)?' rather than 'shall I take (the boys with me to the shop)?' Incremental differences, but they make me smile when I hear them. We seem to have slotted back into life in England with relatively few seams showing; but if you listen closely, the time overseas is there, embedded in our lexicon. Grand, so.


*oh, OK, it was RyanAir, but who the hell wants them in an opening sentence?

Don't need a ticket for my destination any more

Earlier in the month, I met up with a bunch of old friends. Because we live largely all over the place these days, there hadn't been a proper chance for everyone to get together for, as the Irish would say, the guts of six years.

The gang, it's probably worth pointing out, is all blokes (with a couple of exceptions) and I've never been treated in any other way than as one of the boys.Within three minutes of arriving in the bar, I'd been asked if I threw bigger tantrums than the kids; when I was going to 'do more pointless books', and teased about living in a place called The Old Shoe Shop: 'trust you, with your romanticised view of the countryside...'


Maybe there's something warped about being away for a long time and then meeting up again, but far from making me want to throw one of the tantrums they remembered so well, the whole evening had me grinning for a week.

These particular mates can say whatever they like; they've earned it. As unmarried, childless males they've bought books on parenting issues (and read them) because my name's in there. Several of them have talked me off a number of hysterical ledges. Others have travelled thousands of miles so that we can sit and chat. They remember my birthday; and when I got married, they threw me a stag party. There were shots, there was cross-dressing, and there was a lot of banter. It was ace. My point is, it's the sort of collective friendship that ends up being like a family. Slandered and libelled; it's part of what makes it great to be back home.






(This one is sort of in response to two memes. Alice asked me a while ago what my five favourite songs were, and even further ago than that, Laura tagged me for my favourite-ever song.)

Things I learned when out running last night

1. Eating a pork chop the size of your head an hour before you head out to your new running group isn't necessarily the best idea in the world. Even if it's from the local butcher. That lack of chemicals probably makes the protein harder to digest.

2. Iowever much I try to deny it, I'm obnoxiously competitive (yeah, yeah; cue amused shaking of heads from the rest of you who knew this already. Slow learner here). It's a GROUP RUN, Sarah. That doesn't mean you need to win. There is no 'winning'.

(This is the first time in 13 years of regular running that I've joined a running group; partly because we're new here, and it's an obvious way to get to know people/good routes; and partly because I've applied to run the London Marathon next year and so I'll damn well need to keep at it...)

3. If you have the build and pace of a Shetland pony, you should not try to overtake the racehorses. Or even the Shire horses. Muppet.

Vote, Vote, Vote for Nigel Barton

The last election I got really involved in was in 2004: the Kerry:Bush US Presidential campaign. After four years of (at best) accidental, (at worst) stolen Republican rule, everyone and anyone with a blue-beating heart was desperate for change. These were the pre-Obama days (although this was the campaign that first got him noticed nationally) and change wasn't as talismanic then as it became in 2008. Change back then just meant, 'not Bush'.

My fabulously hippy, island-dwelling, Bug-driving boss gave us all Election Day off on condition that we would spend it canvassing. This being the US, he was very carefully to be non-partisan in this suggestion; this being an independent publishing house in Seattle, it was an absolute shoo-in that every single one of us was off to fight for the Dems.

Being a foreigner in a desperate election is simultaneously liberating and disenfranchising. Liberating, in the way that many things about being the foreigner are liberating, you have a certain amount of emotional distance from the situation. But if you're living as a 'native' rather than a 'tourist', by which I mean, hanging out with the locals (rather than in some peculiar expat enclave); working; paying taxes; it's incredibly frustrating to want change and not be able to tangibly effect change. And yes, I mean 'effect', not 'affect', grammar nerds.

So I did what I could, and I did it as sincerely and as desperately as it could be done. I went to Nordstrom and bought the VOTE!!! t-shirt in case being confronted with my boobs was likely to sway anyone to the polls (this is pre-kids; said boobs were not unimpressive, if I say so myself). I called our local branch of the Democrat Party and offered my services. And I spent election day in the local office in a sterile office park, dialing my way through a list of numbers and asking each person if they'd voted today and who they'd voted for (none of the British squeamishness about this being 'too personal' a question).

It was a strange feeling; a sense of utter urgency, and a need to be DOING something, dammit. Americans, I think, are inherently more politicised than the British. Whether that has to do with British disinclination to talk about such things, or the American democracy (with a small d); but it was actually really energising to be around.

Everyone (well; everyone in our uber-liberal gang of pals in uber-liberal West Coast Seattle) was so desperate for a Democrat win that you could feel the vote being pulled there, inch by inch.
It was like a tug-of-war with a really stupid, but far-bigger-than-you person on the other side. And, to be honest, Kerry was never the best candidate for the Dems; he was essentially a spoiled rich kid just like Bush, and a bit dull. But he was the best of a mediocre bunch, and so we got behind him and we fought.

All of which brings me to how utterly, nerve-wrenchingly thrilling it is to be back in Britain for the first decent election it feels like we've had since (in my voting time, at least) 1997; and in reality, for absolutely ever. It does feel a bit like that 2004 campaign, in the sense that neither poor beleagured Gordy (though as the girl who always falls for the drummer in the band, he does have a certain appeal) or Slick Nick Clegg really have the Obama-appeal. The real emphasis for voting here is 'anyone but Cameron'. But that vitality, that sense of unity, the urgency of it all, and the huge amount of sheer energy it's bringing to the country, is really, really interesting. And it's good to be home for it, where I have a vote.

Now: fingers crossed, and off to the polls we go.

PS Nigel Barton is, in essence, Dennis Potter's alter ego. I know, I know; any excuse to slip in a reference to the Forest...

Games that are rough, that swallow you up

Lots of firsts this week, especially for the boys. Jonah went off for his first day at 'big school' yesterday. Well, the pre-school attached to 'big school', more accurately; but he went off in uniform, grey knee socks and the rest of it.

What is it about uniform that makes every child look like an evacuee? If I'd taken a picture in black and white, it would have looked straight out of the 1940s. Maybe it's something to do with the timelessness of it all, pulling us back through the wormhole.

Jonah went off without a backward glance, quite literally, but I found myself metaphorically looking through the railings and thinking of Roger McGough:

I wish I could remember my name
Mummy said it would come in useful.
Like wellies. When there's puddles.
Yellowwellies. I wish she was here.
I think my name is sewn on somewhere
Perhaps the teacher will read it for me.
Tea-cher. The one who makes the tea.

(from his glorious First Day at School. Gotta love me some Roger McGough).