Open Minded Parenting

I reckon I'm fairly liberal and open minded in general, but also in terms of parenting. I'm unsure which way round it is but I think, in order to parent A and K, one has to be, the alternative is just not worth thinking about.

Things can be a test at the best of times. That boy Z still sticks to K like some sort of extra strong glue and I have to to try to draw a line between allowing, disallowing and not being in a position to stamp my authority down anyhow. A has now started college and is busy trying out tobacco and God knows what else and I'm lucky to get more than "fine" as an answer to any question these days.

Their time with me consists of me providing food, money, shelter and of course power; power to juice up their laptops so they can be online and talking to their friends, the ones they've spent all day with.

There are the occasional moments when we come together in a meeting of interests but, truth be told, they're few and far between. The last one was going to see Muse about a month ago, when we all got into the moment and had a blast. The next? Who knows.

But, these are mostly the things that all parents have to deal with at some point. I do feel a little bit sorry for myself when I dwell on my theory that it's not only different for Dad of girls, but that's it's even more different for Dads who don't live with their daughters.

Everyone I talk to says that I shouldn't worry, that all daughters have a special bond with their father. Well yes, I know that and I've seen it, it's just that it takes a while, usually once they grow up and hit adulthood. Teenage girls and their mothers are as close as a President and his war winning army commander, that's just the way things are. Even when I was living with them I often felt like I was a male teacher in a girls' school who'd accidentally found some of the pupils having a slumber party.

These are just things I figure I have to deal with and get on with.

But yesterday my tolerance was pushed and tested to the very outer edge of of its limit. It was a casual phone conversation with K and went along the lines of:

"Hello Miss K, what are you up to?" said I.

"Well, I've got a whole list of jobs to do before Mum gets back from Sainsburys" she replied.

"Oh okay, that sounds nice, where's A then?"

"She's at work" she said.

"Oh yes, I'd forgotten about that." said I. A has started her first job, at a local garden centre on Sundays you see.

We had some more chat, about her new contact lenses and how she's getting on with them, detail that I'm sure won't interest you, and then she hit me with the bombshell.

It's hard to prepare a chap for a bombshell, particularly a surprising one like this. I thought I'd brought up A and K as well as I could, to be respectful and "normal", to operate within the parameters of decency and be content.

"And in a minute" she continued.

"In a minute I'm going to walk down to the shop"

All well and good, you're thinking. You'd be right, so far.

"And buy myself a.......

...........Pepsi"

"Buy yourself a what?" I asked incredulously.

She repeated the P word, one I'm reluctant even to type here.

"What? What's wrong with Coke?" I pleaded.

"Well it's just that Pepsi's got, kind of, well, a bit more bite to it" said K sheepishly, as sheepishly as she ever gets, which is not much.

I could tell that she was aware of my disappointment, though I did my best to disguise it. I've tried to teach them that life is about perspectives, opinions, more about different realities that right and wrong.

But I must admit I'm struggling to come to terms with this. A daughter of mine thinking that Pepsi is better tasting than Coke?

Whatever next?

RD is.....

...putting a status update in the wrong place.

...rather enjoying the speed and smoothness of Google Chrome, even compared to Firefox

...playing with another new bass pedal

...pining a bit

...singing Cheryl Cole's new song's chorus, thanks to PseudoRandom for telling me the words!

...learning and practicing some great sixteenth note fills

The Auf, The Guru, The Diaspora And The Sex Shop.

And so it came to pass last weekend that I found myself sitting in a workshop, a serious one. It was about the role of the diaspora in the rehabilitation and development of post war Sri Lanka and, being the serious minded person you know me for, I was primarily concerned about my choice of footwear for the thing.

I'd gone for my white Converse Jack Purcells, a nice variation on the more traditional and common Chuck Taylors that all the world and his wife, as well as their kids, are wearing these days. My worry; that I wouldn't be portraying a serious enough image to fit in, dissolved as soon as I saw the state of the other people there.

Scientists have established that if you took a sample of about a hundred academics only one of them would be trendy in his appearance, probably Academic Bro actually. If I owned a university I'd have some kind of dress code, one that didn't involve long gowns and hats that are only good for pigeons to land on.

My second major concern was the correct pronounciation of the word "diaspora". I mean, what's going on here? It's "dee ass porer", it's "die ass pora", it's "dee ass pourer", in fact it's any combination you can think of. These things should be sorted out when words are invented to avoid confusion.

Honestly, I really don't know how I came to be invited to this thing, but I was and it was a highly interesting day, with a bunch of quite diverse and thought provoking people. There was even a Professor there, giving a presentation that I found very informative.

I sat next to The Auf, a nervewracking position to be in. It was like going to a new school, being placed in the gifted and talented class because of a clerical error, then finding myself sitting next to the brightest kid in the room. Not only that but The Auf's mate, The Guru, was one of the people speaking.

At one point The Auf mistook my doodles for mind maps and thought I was busily making notes and taking it all in. I let it pass and then hastily started to do some mind maps to keep up the pretence.

At the end of it I found myself wandering the streets of London with The Auf and The Guru, heading to a bookshop the former was keen to investigate. You can imagine my consternation. As the fast living rock 'n' rolling type of chap that you know I was reluctant to be spotted by one of my fans walking with these two rather serious looking fellows.

The Guru, having just landed a few days earlier, was entirely unused to London life and spent much of his time strolling into the path of oncoming vehicles because he hadn't heard a horn, leaving shop doors wide open, that sort of thing. The Auf, having been here for a few years, has morphed into a Londoner of sorts. Of course he still dresses like one of the blokes in Machang going for an immigration interview, but apart from that he's more or less a cockney now.

We strolled, me feeling like I was auditioning for a weird film, them feeling, well, probably like they were auditioning for a weird film. At one point we stopped to take some pictures, doing that whole grabbing a passing stranger and asking him to take a picture then wondering if he might run off and nick the camera thing. Unfortunately I managed to look gay in one, putting across a slightly mincing impression that I hadn't intended.

After a visit to another bookshop, in which I found a little treasure of a book on drums and the other two bought all sorts of serious works, we parted company. I confess that I was surprised and startled, nay disappointed, by their intention and felt the need to leave, to distance myself from their frankly sordid influence over me.

A dinner invite, perhaps a non alcoholic drink, a museum or an art gallery would have been perfectly good for me. Maybe a meeting in a club to discuss some serious issues, perhaps more about the diaspora and its involvment with Sri Lanka would have interested me greatly.

But no. The Guru and The Auf, formerly my heroes and role models, had decided that they wanted to go and visit a.....................sex shop. I wasn't going to be part of this, sullying my own good reputation for the sake of seediness and dirty, filthy stuff.

Would you adam and eve it, as The cockney Auf would say. You just never know.

Fail

I saw this over at DD's place and it reminded me of a post I've been meaning to write for a while. I hear it a lot, from my kids and many others who are younger than me, a vastly growing group!

It's when someone makes a mistake and people tease and mock them and say something like:

"a ha ha.....fail!"

The "culprit" then feels suitably embarrassed, crawls into a nearby hole and is never seen again. It was a long time ago but I'm sure that we didn't tease people with this particular word and strain when I was younger. And, by younger, I'm talking about people in their twenties as well as teens.

You see, I'm a believer in failure. I'm a fan of it. I reckon all great bands and musicians make mistakes when they play live, that it's their ability and musical greatness that enables them to get out of things seamlessly, so seamlessly that often it's only the artistes and not the audience who even know what's happened.

It's the way a band fucks up and gets out of it successfully that shows they've pushed the boundaries, made mistakes and learned from them in the past.

A and K now mock me when I say things like this

"Oh here goes Dad, 'mistakes are good, it means we're pushing ourselves' blah, blah, blah" are the kind of things they say.

But I mean it.

Repetitive mistakes are a bit crap though. We must learn and improve.

I used to have a friend who boasted that she was always right. At the time I admired her for it, thinking that I'd love to be an always right person. Twenty odd years later I feel entirely different. Always right signifies a person who isn't stretching themselves, who isn't trying new things and is always operating within their own circle of safety.

In my humble O it's far better to be a person who's sometimes wrong, though I'd prefer not to be always wrong!

So I challenge you. The next time you hear someone say something like "ha ha ha...epic fail" just ask them what's wrong with that. The next time you're about to tease someone for "failing" themselves, just pause and think on it.

Failure is good.

If you don't believe me ask Michael Jordan:

The Sexiest Car Ever!

The Ferrari Dino that is.

RIP Tony Curtis, one of life's true geezers.

You've Got To Have A Dream

If you don't have a dream how are you going to make a dream come true?

So the song goes, though I think, if I was being picky, I'd say "how you gonna make a dream come true?" But I ain't no American fake gansta kid so we'll stick to the Queen's English in these parts.

The thing is I'm a firm and ardent believer in objectives, aims and goals. From work to drumming to even writing this blog I have objectives and goals. Often I lose sight or forget about them, sometimes for months, and lapse into a state of "being" in that specific area of my life, just existing on autopilot and wallowing in the current.

And that's where I also face a quandary.

Goals are good, objectives are obligatory and aims are all important. Yet I've realised that they can be barriers, barriers to enjoying the moment.

In recent years, while gigging, I've got into the habit of enjoying playing a song and looking down at my set list to try to mentally prepare myself for the next song. I'm sure it's something many musicians do. While playing one song I switch into "autodrummer" mode, which many might say is an oxymoronic term anyhow, and start to think of the groove, tempo and feel of the next song.

The result is that I'm better prepared for what's to come but that I also lose out on some of the enjoyment in playing that song that's going on at the time. It's a small scale example of the life quandary I'm referring to; that of being so focussed on what's in front of you, so set on achieving the target that we forget to relax and enjoy the now.

But how do we strike the balance? It seems to me that enjoying the now is pretty much in direct opposition to planning for the future.

In the drumming thing I've started to try to leave my glancing at the setlist thing to the last possible moment, to enjoy the current song as long as I can before I then look down and plan the next one.

Is that the answer?

And a merry weekend and a merry October to you out there!

I Hate Java Jones

"But why RD? I thought you were quite friendly with the old fellow?" I hear you asking.

Could it be because old Java's way too cool for school? He's slinky, like a cat, and cool, like a cucumber. Or a fridge. But he doesn't look like a fridge, unless Smeg now do a fridge that looks like Java, something that's quite likely.

Could it be the way he walks into bars, restaurants and the like and usually has a fleet of sexy women following in his wake?

Could it be because Chuck Norris seeks his counsel?

Well it could be any of the above, but it's not.

It's because I can be sitting there, well here actually, at my desk, casually pretending to work whilst in actuality I'm perusing the Lankanosphere and the drum world, which is distracting me from getting down to the serious business of writing a blog post about the state of the Lankan blog world, when I get an email from Mr Jones.

It's not just any email though. It's one with a link. It's not just any link either. It's this one.

It takes me to a blog, one with a collection of those gorgeous old postcards of the motherland.

There I was, feeling rather pleased about the fact that I'd booked a ticket only a few hours before for the New Year period. Then the link Java sent me made me go all yearning and whatsitcalled, all you know and whatever.

That's why I hate Java Jones.

Here's the link, one more time:

http://srilankamemories.blogspot.com/

Check it out. Tell them RD sent you, but that Java sent him.

Too Many Books Spoil The ?

Sadly and much to my dismay I couldn't think of a witty and clever rhyming word to chuck in the title. If I was prone to dressing in dark clothes and listening to Joy Division a lot I could have used the word "goth" and you'd have no doubt chuckled at my wordy dexterity. Nor am I a moth. or a cloth even, so we're left with a question mark. Feel free to submit a suggestion if you have one.

Reading is one of my most enjoyed activities. I do it voraciously and have done for many years. I read all sorts of things; books, both fiction and that other boring type, magazines, blogs and just about anything else you can think of that displays the written or the virtual word. There's rarely a point in my life when I don't have at least one fictional book, one non fictional one and a couple of magazines on the go.

My Kindle has been one of the best presents I've ever received, enabling me to carry around a huge volume of books wherever I go. Currently it has forty one of the virtual books on board and, according to those nice Amazon people, that means it will hold another thousand or more before it gives up the ghost.

Yet lately, say in the last month or so, I've been struggling to find that enthusiasm to read. I've munched my way through a few decent novels, Juliet Naked by Nick Hornby and Gypsy Boy by Mikey Walsh are two that were particularly memorable, but am now failing to feel that attraction, that can't put it down because I NEED to find out what happens next feeling that a good book instills.

As well as the Kindle I've got more than twenty proper books, those ones made out of paper, wood and the environment, waiting patiently on the shelves for me. The Chinaman is firmly placed at number one in that group, yet all I've done so far is read a couple of pages and thought that it sounds as fantastic as all you lot say it is.

I've been wondering why I've failed to find the big motivation to read. I don't think that lack of time is a viable excuse as I often read in bed or in those in between moments and I do get quite a lot of time alone, when C or the girls aren't around.

Earlier today I discovered something on the Kindle that I didn't realise it could do; collections. Yes I can make a collection, give it a name and then chuck books into it. Until my discovery I thought that all the books had to be listed individually, though I knew that they could be sorted in several different ways.

I played around with the feature for a bit, making a Terry Pratchett collection and bunging the TP books in there. Then, getting a bit more confident and serious about things, I made two more collections. One is called "Fiction Read" and the other called "Currently Reading". Why I called it "Fiction Read" instead of "Read Fiction" I'm not sure about, but it made sense at the time.

As time marches on I reckon I'll categorise a bit more, perhaps making a management collection, though I might call it "Mgmt" or even "Mgmnt" and maybe a self help section. I might throw in a "Fiction not read" and might get rid of the Terry P section as the principle of filing by author runs in contradiction to that of filing by genre. It seems that each book can only go in one collection so the five TP books I have, though read, nay devoured, are in the TP collection rather than the "Fiction read" one. I'm a rebel like that.

The thing is though, the "Currently Reading" collection has eleven, yes eleven titles in it. Four of them I'd class as self help, three I consider "Mgmnt" and four are firmly in the fiction category.

As I look at them I realise that there are too many, that's the crux of my problem, I'm spreading myself too thinly, with the result that I can't focus on one book. Compounding the problem is the fact that I'm quite enjoying every single one of them and therefore reluctant to put any on the back burner.

Do I persevere with the magnificent eleven, knowing that I may well end up not remembering any of them that well, or do I choose a few to put on the back burner and come back to later?

Vut too doo?

Some Friday Fear

And you thought your commute was tough!

Of Passion, Creativity, Work and Muse

One of the things I've been thinking about recently is these people who follow a passion and are lucky enough to do it for their livelihood.

As I watched the truly stunning performance by Muse at Wembley Stadium the other night I felt conscious that I was seeing three talented beyond belief musicians at the very top of their game doing something they love and gettting paid hugely for it in every way possible.

There are musicians, artistes, writers and vocational types like Doctors and teachers, many of whom have chosen to pursue the thing they love to make a living. Some of them succeed and become the Muses, the de Niros, the JK Rowlings and the, well, Gregory Houses of the world, making fortunes, gaining wordlwide recognition and of course doing lots of work for charity, though not talking about it.

Others, the vast majority, play in bands in pubs and clubs after work (something I know quite a lot about), write books and blogs or act in fringe theatre and spend most of their money to do it. We dream of that big break, yes even at my age, yet know it's unlikely to come.

Here in the UK the music scene is so stark that the only musicians making any money are the ones who suddenly wake up to find themselves in a famous band, often talented but rarely the most gifted and brilliant musicians around. A couple of rungs down the ladder we find the world of the top quality session guy. There are ten, perhaps twenty, amazingly good drummers here who get most of the work going.

They're the best around, hard working, with interpersonal skills that Bill Clinton would admire and they have the respect and admiration of all their fellow musicians. Despite all that, despite the fact they probably earn a "comfortable" living, few of them are truly well off in financial terms. Perhaps their richness is measured in their job satisfaction, perhaps they're less motivated by money than the guy playing drums in the Manic Street Preachers is.

So, excepting the rare millionaires, it does seem that for the rest of us we have to decide between following our passion and making some money. In my case I didn't even find my passion until I was thirty one. Until then I hadn't even sat behind a drum kit, let alone found out that I might be able to play a bit.

I often look at people who've been playing since they were young kids and feel a sense of envy. There are teenagers who've been playing the drums for longer than I have now, who are much better players at that young age than I will ever be. But then I realise that I've made that trade with the devil, I've tried to build a business, to make some money and live a certain kind of materialistic lifestyle. One that I do enjoy.

Had I found my passion when I was a kid I feel sure I would have tried to pursue it professionally. Then the chances are that I would have ended up as one of the thousands of penniless musos here. I'd have loved every single split second of my work, I'd have got more satisfaction out of it then a nymphomaniac porn star gets out of his job.

And I'd be struggling to pay the rent. I'd probably only have two or three pairs of designer jeans, maybe even a smaller engined BMW 3 series, that's how bad things would be.

But would I be happier?

I really think not.

But I admire the passion following chaps, I really do.

What about you?

Music, Excitement and Eid

Firstly I'd like to wish Eid Mubarak to all my Muslim readers. May it be a happy one.

I'm all excitement here, that butterfly in the stomach, there's too many good things happening to be excited about kind of thing.

Last night's Solskala gig was good, though the audience was small, and I don't mean that in a Sri Lankan average height was less than five foot sort of way. It was a club night in a highly trendy central London bar, with three other bands and a crowd who mostly looked like they'd just strolled in from a photoshoot for an Abercrombie and Fitch catalogue.

We were first on, always a precarious position, but we went down well and grooved hard and deeply. My first lesson last week with my new drum teacher has made me concentrate much harder when I play. Concentrate on the issue he pointed out to me about my groove. This is a slight bummer, my playing is better already but I'm at the conscious competence stage, during which I'm thinking about things, not yet flowing gracefully and naturally.

The relaxed and flow stage will come, as I practice more, I've just got to get through it. Still, the outward result is that my playing is better, even now.

The thing about these club gigs for originals bands, is the interesting variety of other music I get to see and hear. Some are great, some are terrible but, as a musician, albeit a drummer, they're always stimulating in some way or other.

Following us was a duo; a straight looking nerdy guy with glasses and the full Clark Kent look and a camper than a campsite singer with make up, effeminate clothing and dance moves that would have had Freddie Mercury and all the blokes in Village People drooling with admiration.

Clark played acoustic guitar, sang backing vox and took charge of all the effects while Freddie sang lead, danced like his life depended on it and rubbed his lycra at appropriate moments. They were like a cabaret act, with backing tapes and souped up versions of already well known songs. But they were fun.

One of the other bands was a bunch of well spoken posh Brit indi kids. They played slightly angsty indi rock and had a feel of well educated yet have no money, but only at the moment because we've all got loaded parents and are just pretending we don't have, about them. They were the kind of kids I'd quite like A or K to date, full of politeness, introducing themselves, shaking hands and being good eggs. Their music and vibe was fun and energetic, in a Coldplay on acid way, just not the sort of thing I'd opt to listen to.

I didn't hang around to watch the other band, for my need to get back was great.

The excitement builds as C is arriving tonight. I've tidied RD Towers, well P the cleaner has, and all is ready. And then tomorrow it's, yes, it's Muse at Wembley Stadium.

Oh lordy lord, things don't get much better for me. I'm going to Muse, at Wembley Stadium, with C, with A and with K.

So my weekend will be a top one.

Et vous?

Been A Long Time, Been A Long Time, Long Time...

Since those early days when I started blogging I don't think I've ever left a gap like this, during which I've had loads going on and just not felt like telling you about it. I apologise. Profusely and sincerely.

But it's made me see how these fellows blog daily for a long time and then suddenly stop, getting out of the habit and fading into the obscurity of real life and all that goes with it. I have no excuses, just that things have been going on, it's been busy at home, at work and at play. Yet strangely there's also been nothing going on and I've been bored too. How can that be? I don't know.

This week is a mental music one, mental in a busy way, not mental in a ranting about "a treason" and spitting while I rant way. The Breaks had a gig last Saturday, Solskala had a band practice on Sunday, to be followed by a gig tomorrow and on Saturday I'll be off to Wembley Stadium with the girls to see Muse. On top of those things I've started lessons with a new drum teacher, so have been hard at work practicing the things he gave me to do.

I decided that I needed to put my faith in a good teacher, to go to someone, tell him my objectives and aims, then let the person guide me and get me there. So I found a fairly well known teacher whose reputation came before him and am trying him out. The first lesson was a nerve wracking affair as he tested and appraised me to see where I am and if I was suitable for his instruction. Things look good thus far.

And while things in Lanka are going mental with the proposed 18th amendment I've been falling in love. Falling in love with my new phone that is. For some time I've observed iPhone users and felt nothing but scorn and derision as they bleat on about their latest apps and the way that their phone can remotely wipe the arse of their next neighbour just by pressing these two buttons.

I've seen people have their lives possessed by their phones, like an episode of Star Trek, as the phone starts to control them and run their day to day existence, from where they eat to where they shop to programming their TV to record episodes of the Gadget Show.

But my new HTC Desire is different. This one's got the weather on it, it's got apps, a torch and I've managed to get it to carry my diary. Hopefully my days of the old fashioned paper diary are numbered, not in a one to three hundred and sixty five way either. I've even managed to download a carrom app, though one plays with virtual cues rather than virtual fingers. No, I don't know.

The wedding last Friday was good. My gamble on the suit paid off. I looked good, even if I say it myself, but I failed dismally in my target of making the two mothers cry with my speech. It turned into less of a speech, more of a quick toast. It was okay though.

The Chinaman sits on my shelf waiting to be read, I must get a move on but books have become my latest best friend and worst enemy. I can't get enough of them and I can't get through them quickly enough. The Kindle proudly carries more than I care to count and the good old fashioned wooden shelves continue to fill, mostly with Sri Lankan books.

Is there a chance that the proposed 18th amendment won't get passed?

We'll see. We doubt it though.

Speak soon.

Getting Married In The Morning

Gosh it's been a long time since I last wrote a post, sorry about that. There's been a lot going on, not that that's any excuse of course.

So what's been happening in these parts?

I must confess, for I know I can trust you, that I found it quite hard to be back in London after the holiday in the motherland. The two weeks (almost) spent there, with C and the girls, was full of joyous laughter, fun and frolics. When we returned, without C, who stayed on and is now busily filming elephants in the jungles, I dropped the girls back at their place quite literally on the way back from the airport, then arrived at RD Towers entirely on my own.

The silence hit me like a herd of elephants flying out of a belfry in the dark stillness of a dodgy old horror film. No girls, no noise, no swans except for real ones, and no arguments. It took some getting used to. The hugely positive side is that the time together seems to have really helped my relationship with A. We're closer then before the holiday but I don't want to overthink it or get carried away.

After a couple of weeks life took over. There were the exam results, some band practices and a gig and there's more to come. Life has lapsed back into the regular things and, like all men, my search for the perfect pair of jeans and the ultimate pair of trainers continues with earnest.

Also there's a marriage happening, but calm down and panic not girls, it's not mine. It is Academic Bro's and, by the time you read this, I'll most probably be trying to put on my pristine new CK white shirt and tie and desperately trying to think of words and phrases to throw into the toast I've been asked to make.

Of course it's a toast that my Mum has asked me to make, not Academic Bro, so I hope he doesn't decide to have a read of my blog before his "I do" bit. I'll take the Monica Geller approach and aim to make people cry, that always keeps it in the memory. It's going to be a small wedding with just family present and my most important objectives are to make both mothers cry and to look good in the photographs.

As in any Sri Lankan parents' house there are some wedding pictures of the children on display and the one of Music Biz bro's wedding, that has been up for about ten years and will I'm sure be there for many more, shows me in what was not my best dressed day. At the time I'm sure I must have thought I looked good, something that astounds me now. Each time I look at the picture, placed proudly on top of my parents' TV, I see a baggy suit, a me who looks like a twat and I feel embarrassed.

For this wedding I'm determined to make amends. I want to look good in the pictures and I want fellows to look at the one that will surely be framed and displayed and gasp with admiration at my style and panache. So the suit is a la mode, the shirt is classic and the tie is trendy yet timeless. I'm taking a risk with the suit, it being thin, slim and black whereas I'm round, roundish and brown, but I reckon I'll pull it off.

There's lots more to tell you. I have a new phone, one of these HTC Desire android ones, and it's the dog's bollocks. It connects to Facebook, it has spirit levels, mail and maps. It's got Twitter and the net and all sorts of shiny things that you younger types take for granted. I reckon I'll just about have figured out how to work it by the time it's due for an upgrade. The main thing is that I no longer have iPhone envy. I can hold my weapon with pride, as long as I don't press the wrong part of the screen whilst doing so.

Oooh, ooooh, the other thing is I can read my blog on it. Which would be nice if I liked reading my blog, only I don't.

Happy birthday too to two of my favourite bloggers. Did you like the little "too to two" there? I think it was wholly grammatically correct. Today it's the birthday of Mr Kottu himself as well as good old, well even older now, DramaQueen, the funniest blogger by far. She's given us some valuable words of advice on the grand occasion here.

Happy birthday to them both, may their years and days be full of good things, perhaps a few rude ones too.

Bye then.

The Results Are In

Monday's was a restless tossing and turning type of night for me. There aren't many things that get me nervous these days but I can tell you that I went to bed shitting some majorly large bricks.

Why?

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning was the day for A to get her GCSE results and I thought I'd take it calmly in my stride, being all que sera sera about it and mellow. Instead I spent the evening feeling more preoccupied than a Samurdhi officer turning up at Mervyn Silva's office for a meeting only to realise that I'd forgotten to light my mosquito coils the night before. I kept waking up in the night and thinking

"Oh shit it's A's results tomorrow"

A's a bright kid but far brighter in the realms of performance, drama and art than she is in the more academic lines of maths, English and the sciences. The education system here does baffle me somewhat in that she was trying to get into college to study drama and arts and things yet needed to get sufficient grades in the sciences and more academic fields in order to do that.

And she's not really one of those swotty kinds like Dinidu or The Auf, fellows who I can imagine never even needed to swot for an exam because they'd worked so hard during the course in the first place.

The parent teacher evenings I've been to for A in the last couple of years have mostly comprised of each teacher telling me very diplomatically how A is a great kid, full of life and always trying to be funny (can you imagine that??) but that she needs to concentrate more on the work to get the grade she should.

Strangely enough my reports at the same age were pretty similar.

My trepidation was because A never really seemed to knuckle down and work. Had there been an exam on Facebook or MSN or how to convert one sort of music file into an iTunes file I'm sure she'd have passed with flying colours. There wasn't, well apart from ICT, and I worried about the consequences, about A getting into college and that I might have to send her to work in a mine or sweeping chimneys in Dickensian times.

A was going to school yesterday morning and under strict instructions to call both her mother and myself. I was as anxious as could be, jittery and drunk with nerves and starting the most weirdly inane conversations with people as an excuse to just talk.

At about nine in the morning I called her to see what was happening, she sighed and told me that she was going to school in about forty five minutes. She promised to call me and I hung up, wondered what to do and decided to continue being nervous.

About an hour later I got a call.

"It's your daughter" said my person, you know, the one who put the call through.

"Hi A" I said.

She was crying, something all men are fundamentally afraid of, something that didn't bode well.

"You won't believe it Dad" she said and my heart broke a little bit.

"I got As and Bs. I've done really well, I've got the grades for college and everything" she said through the tears.

"Wow, seriously?" I asked, possibly not my most sensible of replies but it seemed to do the job. I was filled with a sense of relief and relaxation, like the Samurdhi officer who gets a call from his wife as he's going into the meeting to say that she lit the coils even though he forgot.

She read them all out again, I think for both of us to be sure.

I asked for the exact grades. She got two As, five Bs, two Cs and a couple of Ds. Then she said, still through the tears, that she had to go, to see what all her friends had got. I congratulated her and told her nice things.

I'm stunned, in the best possible way.

I'm so, so proud.

Just thought I'd tell you.

Ride A White Swan

I can't recall exactly how long these swan boat things have been prowling on Beira lake but it must be over a year, maybe closer to two years. Either way I've had a strange fascination with them since I first set eyes on the chaps.

Each time I've been past the lake I've gazed at them and harboured a growing desire to go out on one. The very first time I spotted them I immediately thought that some bright spark had found a use for old VW Beetle bodies, they looked so similar in shape. I developed a need to prove or disprove the Beetle theory, to find out if they were old Beetle bodies or if the shape was just a similar one. You can see what I mean can't you?

On top of that I wanted to go out on one, to drift around the clean (?) waters of the lake while listening to the backdrop of the Colombo traffic and to feel slightly weird riding around in such a tacky and artificial creation with the beauty of Geoffrey Bawa's temple in the background. The idiosyncratically Sri Lankan juxtaposition of the two things has captured me for a while.

My problem was one of how to engineer a ride. My visual research indicated that they're usually out on the lake during the late afternoon before sundown and occupied by people with young kids or young romancing couples.

What to do? Young children I don't have and, with the best will in the world, I don't think myself and C would win any prizes if we were to attempt to portray a young and romantic holding hands and gazing into each other's eyes type of couple. Besides, I'd mentioned the swans to C several times and she never quite shared my enthusiasm. That's women for you I guess.

If I were to go out on my own I'd attract lots of those stares, the kind I often get here when I go out to eat on my own, and probably get arrested, so that option was eliminated. Therefore I was left with A and K as my main hope, well, my only hope.

It was a gamble. At their current ages of fourteen and sixteen I never know if they'll be bored stiff because something's too childish for them or because it's too adult for their liking. It's always one or the other, except when it's not.

We were staying on Slave Island so passed the swans a few times a day during our travels and I pointed them out to the girls at the first opportunity. To my surprise they weren't totally averse to the concept and, after about a week or continual enthusiasm nurturing and the most unsubtle of hinting, we grabbed a tri shaw and found ourselves standing by the lake late one afternoon.

It was just myself and the two girls and it becamse apparent that I was by far the most excited about the whole idea. To be fair the girls were quite into the concept too and we paid our fee and boarded the huge and rather lifelike swan.

Until that point I didn't know what type of propulsion was involved and I saw straight away that they're those pedelo things. There's a steering wheel in the middle of the thing and a seat on each side with pedals. So two people pedal and one sits in the middle and steers.

We were told quite sternly that we had half an hour out on the lake and so set off. K and I were doing the pedalling and A steered. The plan was to do ten minutes of steering each. As K and me pedalled A steered our particular swan (no 9 I think) towards the island. We went round the island in an anti clockwise direction, waving to a few other swan people and heading towards the pedestrian bridge thing.

As all of this was going on I was trying to examine the swan's body to figure out if the resemblance to a Beetle was just a similarity or if it was far more sinister than that. You'll be interested to know that I've concluded it's just coincidence, the swan's body is bigger and shaped just a bit differently. Shame though.

As we approached the bridge I had a last minute nervous thought; that it would be typically Lankan if they had made the swan's neck too tall to fit under the lowest section of the bridge. I envisaged a resounding smack as the poor swan's head hit the underside of the bridge, then I'd have to try to explain it to the staff and god knows how the lack of head might affect the swan's sea lakeworthiness.

It was a nerve tingling few minutes as we made it under the bridge and I realised my fears were unfounded. In my defence I think the clearance between the top of Mr Swan's head and the bridge was only about three or four feet, pretty close by some people's standards.

K and I were a bit knackered from the pedalling, it was hot, not because I'm unfit or anything, and I thought that, in the excitement and fervour, I might have overlooked the time and we were probably near the end of our half hour. I checked my watch to find that we'd only been pedalling for five minutes.

We pedalled on, swapping around at the pre agreed ten minute point. My excitement stayed up at dangerously high levels and the girls ended up loving it too. There was something liberating and childish about it.

At one point we raced against another swan, losing the race but only because I let it happen. K also figured out that we could go backwards so we spent some time experimenting with that, cruising around and attempting to steer while looking out of the back window.

Our time was up and we headed back to shore, disembarked and left, all three of us were tired and happy.

It's a funny old thing you know. The whole holiday was a highlight for me, to spend time with the girls in Sri Lanka with C as well is more or less my idea of perfection, only missing a drum kit or two. But this swan trip is something that makes me smile a bit extra every time I think of it. It was the three of us regressing a bit, forgetting about work, school, angst and stress and just being kids having pure and unadulterated fun.

Since we got back I've made the girls promise that we go on a swan next time too.

They'll probably hate it.

But I'll love it!

What Would You Have Done?

Every time I go to Sri Lanka, something that happens a lot these days, I fly with Sri Lankan Airlines.

Is it because of the fantastic customer service RD?

Is it because of the modern, clean and efficient fleet of aircraft RD?

Is it because they offer such brilliant value for money oh Rhythmic one?

Or is it due to the airline's amazing ability to always take off and land within twenty four hours of the stated take off and landing time?

No, piss off. It's none of those. It's because they are currently the only airline to fly direct from London to Colombo, despite the fact that an almost one hour stop at Male, which adds about two or three hours to the journey, is still strangely called direct.

My need to be highly efficient with my annual leave and maximise my time there it's become advantageous to get there in as short a time as possible. So it's my choice, but there's hardly an extensive menu from which to choose.

Since the divorce, that of Sri Lankan airlines and Emirates rather than my own one, things on the national carrier have got worse, in its weirdly idiosyncratic way. The in flight entertainment system is now a hit and miss affair, it's just stupid to expect one that works and even more stupid to expect anything to be done about a broken one should you encounter such. For most passengers mealtime would be far simpler if the printed menus actually said

"You'll get whatever we've got left"

instead of the delicious sounding descriptions of the meal choices that they tempt us with only to continually disappoint.

There are other gripes I have, but this post wasn't to talk about them, though one of my biggest feelings is one of having nowhere to go, no one to complain to on Sri Lankan, as there seems to be not a soul that actually cares.

I'd like to ask you what you would have done if you'd been faced with the situ I met last week. I was returning to London with A and K, my daughters. If you're good at maths you'd already have worked out that there were three of us.

These days I know that the only way to get the seating arrangement you want, though far from guaranteed, is to go online and reserve it. Waiting until you turn up at the airport to check in is pointless unless you're the type who has outriders and the power to stop Colombo traffic when you nip down to the shops for a new Aston Martin.

So, some weeks ago I'd reserved our seats online, for both the outbound and the return journeys. For the girls I'd booked a window seat with the accompanying aisle seat and for myself the window seat behind them, something we're all happy with. They like to sit together and watch movies and sleep and I get to be close to them, though that's far more for my peace of mind than it is for them.

When we checked in I was told that the seat next to me had been blocked, a good result especially considering the flight was almost full, and I looked forward to some space and some sleep, all aided by my trusty inflatable pillow.

We got on the plane, took our seats, then put them back and sat down. Things were looking good. Then I heard some angry voices, well one actually and it was coming from an Indian woman. I joined in with the rest of the aircraft (we had no choice) and listened to the conversation.

It seemed that she was travelling with her husband and two young kids of about three and seven and they had been allocated seats that weren't all together. The husband was with one child and she was with another one with a considerable distance between each pair. She was protesting that she needed to be seated with both the kids, as they were young and needed to be with their mother, for the whole flight.

I must admit that this somewhat irked me. I was brought up in an environment that had some roles of the sexes but was largely mixed and I've brought my kids up, as has their mother, in a situation in which either parent does what's necessary at the time. When they were young I changed nappies, fed them, stayed up in the night with them and generally did whatever I could.

When the Indian lady was shouting and huffing that both her kids needed to be with her I found that I had sympathy for a situation, that of her kids not getting what they were used to, but I didn't agree with the fundamentals of it.

Then it became apparent that they hadn't reserved any seats, they had just gone to check in and only at that stage asked about getting seats together. I, the smartarse regular Sri Lankan airlines flyer, still felt sympathy but now it was mixed with smugness and annoyance.

The crew were trying to help her, using their best attempts at extrapolating logic to figure out who they could ask to move in order to give the lady what she wanted. K, sitting in front of me, was about fourteen steps ahead of all the adults with her logic and had already worked out the easiest solution. She shared this with me and I told her to keep quiet, as it involved me moving to South Africa or something.

Some minutes elapsed and then the stewardess looked at me. I tried my best to avoid eye contact, something that she seemed to be very good at whenever anyone tried to get her attention later in the flight, but I failed with a level of success that was simply astounding.

"Excuse me sir but would you mind sitting over there and then this lady could have these two seats?"

She pointed to a seat that was a bit of a distance away. It was easily within sight of my kids but would have eliminated any possibility of conversation with them without a journey involving asking several other people to move. As K still suffers from travel sickness I was concerned about this.

Meanwhile in the background the Indian lady was creating merry hell, shouting all sorts of rubbish about splitting up families, telling them at the check in desk and then issuing the ultimate threat, that of never flying with Sri Lankan Airlines again. Surprisingly the crew didn't appear bothered about it.

Fortunately K's earlier comment to me had alerted me to the possibility of being asked to move and I had rehearsed my answer. My thinking, that is to say the answer in my head if it were wholly unedited, would have gone something like this:

"No, fuck off. I reserved my seats months ago and the facts that the lady didn't and that her beliefs/culture/lifestyle choices mean that her husband is incapable of looking after a child for a mere eleven hours or so do not make this my problem. And I don't get to spend as much time with my kids as I'd like to so I treasure times like this anyhow. And I want a window seat, I love this country and like to say goodbye to it when I leave."

Of course, being the polite Englishman when faced with a situation like this, the actual words that came out were:

"Look, I'd like to help the lady, but I reserved the seats a long time ago, so I'd rather not move as I want to be near my kids (pointing a whispy hand in the direction of A and K (whispy because I didn't want them to see or hear and then announce that they would be fine if I moved)) (I like brackets you know)"

I'd figured that my answer, without committing to a firm yes or no, would leave the onus on the stewardess. And genuinely I felt some sympathy for the Indian mother, not to be confused with an Indian mother.

The stewardess looked at me and I could hear her brain working, trying to figure out if I'd agreed to her request or not. It became apparent that she'd taken my retort as a negative one when she sloped off and thanked me. I felt all manly and assertive, like an American or a Sri Lankan in a queue, not British at all, and I found it distinctly uncomfortable. I just managed to suppress my desire to shout after her and tell her that it would be fine, that I'd sit on the wing if it helped, as long as I could have a blanket or something when it got cold.

Guilt was flooding all over me. I was swimming in the stuff. Splitting up families, having two seats to myself, it wasn't the Indian lady's fault that she didn't know to check in online, A and K would be more than happy to sit by themselves, call yourself a drummer. All these things were rushing through my mind. The call yourself a drummer bit wasn't to do with the situation at hand, it just occurs to me at regular intervals anyway, I just thought it's better to tell you the details.

Then I saw it, heading towards me. It was a gangly Indian youth, or perhaps I should say ganguly. Everything about him was floppy. His hair, his limbs, his clothes and even his bumfluff, of which there was a fair amount. He looked as though he'd just dipped his face in the glue vat at the Post It note factory then walked past a barber's shop at the end of a quiet day as they were sweeping the hair onto the pavement at the front.

He brought some things, settled himself in the seat next to me and said something to his mother a few seats away. There was that hint of BO, BO covered up by cheap deodorant. It took some investigation but eventually I confirmed that it was from him, not me. I breathed a sigh of relief, a shallow one.

That was the solution, to move the lad next to me and rearrange things so that the irate Indian lady finally got her three seats together.

As you'll have realised if you've read this far, these things play on me. Was I too selfish or was I just asserting myself to get what I was entitled to? Should I have let the lady have my seat or were my feelings about her attitude towards parental roles getting in the way?

So, my favourite reader.

What would you have done?

Colombo Pub Quiz - The Crak Squad Arrives

Many moons ago a bunch of people were sent to their bedrooms for a crime they didn't commit. Years later a few of them left their parents homes, the rest aren't allowed yet . Today, still hounded and harangued by their mothers, they survive in the depths of Colombo 7 as ad men, businessmen, documentary makers and, well kids.

I had a problem. No one else could help me and I knew I could find them.

I put the call out.

They came from far and wide. A band of mercenaries, nameless (apart from David Blacker) and answering to no one (except their wives, bosses, parents and people they felt a bit intimidated by) their mission was to win the Colombo pub quiz. A and K had insisted we went, even though we were flying back to London later that night.

I did a dummy run the previous week, entering a team that deliberately did badly, just to recce the scene, spot the weak areas and analyse the other teams. This time we meant business. We were the Crak Squad. There was:

Me, RD. - The "Hannibal" of the team. I made the calls, got people together, then largely sat in the background, pretending that I didn't know the answers to anything. My specialist subjects of drums, drummers and Superdry clothing are yet to come up I admit, but I'm ready.

C - Her. She kind of shouts when needed, when not needed, and scowls a lot. Useful in arguments and disputes. Her specialist subject is the workings of a woman's mind.

A and K - Deadly with their wit, intelligence and knowledge, after spending many of their recent years sitting in front of a TV honing their minds, particularly where things like cartoons and Hannah Monfuckingtana are concerned. K had spent much of the day "revising" by reading that day's newspapers. She was taking things seriously. They're particularly fond of David Blacker, a matter of some concern to me.

David Blacker - Brad Pitt regularly asks him for fashion and womanising advice, Errol Brown from Hot Chocolate often seeks his hair advice and The Stig goes to him for driving lessons. He was the first choice to play John McClane in Die Hard but, on his way to the first day's filming, the dashboard in his car melted so they got in Bruce Willis instead. Oh, and he's good in quizzes as he knows lots of stuff.

The Chinaman - No one knows why he's called this but he's definitely not Chinese. A mine of information on useless things, useless unless you want to enter a pub quiz or something. He plays bass, likes The Police and, with all those facts floating around in his head, should really write a book or two sometime.

RW - A friend of David Blacker's with a certified IQ of 327, though he maintains that the test was fixed and it should be 329. RW played that saxophone solo on Baker Street by Gerry Rafferty but forgot to fill in the form as he as leaving and so gets no royalties.

The others - There were more people, floating around and offering vital information at crucial times. They must not be forgotten. But I've kind of forgotten their names.

The quizmasters arrived and announced the week's categories. For the second week in a row my specialist subject hadn't come up but I remained quietly confident. There was a section called "cartoons" and, with A and K in the team, this was like having a section called "tattoos, football and what Posh Spice ate for breakfast" then remembering that David Beckham was a team member.

We started the quiz with the history section, a cornucopia of titillating puzzlers leaning towards the historic among us. I kept quiet, preferring to let others have some of the limelight for a change. The Chinaman was able to tell us that King George III was the King in charge when the Brits arrived in Sri Lanka and said it with a certain air of confidence that made me feel he looked good in the glowing evening light of the Barefoot garden.

The science round was a good opportunity for RW and K to prove their prowess in areas scientific. And that they did. There were questions about iron filings and magnets, about Moby Dick, the size of planets and the periodic table. It will surprise you but I wasn't so strong on this round. It mattered not as RW and K did their thing. K proving that she pays attention at school and RW proving that he should probably get out more.

The round entitled "buildings" was another goodish one for us. They showed us pictures of famous buildings around the world and had to identify them. I feigned dumbness here and pretended that I only knew the Petronas Towers picture. It seemed fair on the others.

There was a section called "Mervyn" with questions on Dr Mervyn Silva. I was rather pleased that I knew that the chap who had been had asked if the other people would tie him against a tree as punishment was a Samurdhi officer. If someone can tell me what that actually means I'd be grateful though.

After some debate we decided to play our joker in the cartoon section. I was confident on this, the others didn't share my feelings but went with it. They weren't to know about A and K's expertise in this area, not to mention my own, and we triumphed, scoring a complete ten points, which was doubled to twenty. I knew Johnny Bravo and Dexter's Laboratory myself even. That's how strong we were.

Things looked good as we entered the final round, that of movies, in the lead.

Well bugger me. The movies round showed us a bunch of screenshots of "foreign" language films and we had to name the film. I thought we were doomed but hadn't counted on David Blacker and RW's knowledge of obscure subtitled flicks. I was hoping that Christiane F would make an appearance but it didn't. Of course the definition of "foreign" is slightly subjective and there was some shouting when one of the answers was announced and one team thought that the particular film was in English and therefore not "foreign". I guess it all depends where you come from.

As the final round's scores were announced our team's were left until last. We needed to get more than two points to win the competition and walk off with the grand prize of several million of your Sri Lankan Rupees. The announcement came:

"Crak Squad..........






Seven points"

Yes!

There was whooping and ahollering aplenty as we ended up taking the prize, not to mention the esteem, honour and sheer prestige. A and K were seriously delighted and now think David Blacker's even more cool than before.

Like one of those boxers, or Murali even, retiring at their peak we paid our bills, accepted the congratulations and cheering and headed off into the night. Some hours later myself and A and K were on the Sri Lankan Airlines plane, trying to get the entertainment system to work and getting annoyed that there was no service from the aircrew.

Was it a dream? Were we really there?

No. Yes.

If you've got a quiz and if you know how to find them......

"Shit! I forgot to wear pants again"

'tis the Season To Be.......

All Rambutaned up.

A Warning About The Colombo Pub Quiz

The week has been dreamily good so far. Mostly. There have been a few mood swings, temper tantrums, hissy fits and hormonal issues, but overall I've managed to keep things under control. By and large the girls, A, K and C that is, have behaved themselves too.

It's nice for the girls to see people who they haven't seen for a couple of years and there has been the usual plethora of the "my how you've grown" noises hitting all their ears at frequent intervals.

Last night I persuaded them that it would be fun to enter a team in the Colombo Pub Quiz at Barefoot. I thought that the four of us would cover a few bases and the addition of a few more chaps, the kind who read newspapers, we might stand a vague chance.

As the quiz began I realised that it's a falsity, a word I'm not even sure exists. I'd expected a decent mix of questions about drums and drummers, perhaps a section on Kottu or the Sri Lankan blogging community, maybe a chunk of questions on rock and/or funk music and possibly, though unlikely, some qs on the current Superdry range of clothing. Simple ones like the price of T shirts and polo shirts, nothing too complicated. I'd even had a glance at the day's papers, well the headlines, in case weird things like current affairs and politics came up.

But bugger me. The first surprise was that there were other teams there. How unfair is that? There was no mention at all in the ads and blog posts about this quiz of competition against other people. Then, these people were serious. The type who read newspapers rather than just look at the pictures of people being tied against a tree by leading politicians. The sort of people who can identify black and white pictures of dead people. The sort who read The Economist and know proper stuff.

We kicked off and promptly lost the first round. We may have come second in it, but the details aren't really important. There wasn't a single, no, not even one, question about drummers, Superdry or blogging. It was specialist stuff like general knowledge, science, sports and whatnot.

As we progressed through the night our team didn't. We stayed bottom of the table until David Blacker turned up with his brain. The combination of him, A and K gained us quite a few points. I caught him and K discussing things earnestly and ignoring the rest of our team at one point. It was a prudent move of theirs.

K came up with the idea of writing little love notes to Jehan at the bottom of our set of answers to each round. It was hard work but effective, gaining us an extra point at one stage. I like to think I contributed significantly, in particular when one question involved naming the missing Teletubby and I knew the answer immediately.

We delayed playing our joker until the anagram round, thinking that we'd do well in it. But in another cruel twist they made them hard ones, names of Hollywood stars and a couple of directors all jumbled up. Bloody ridiculous, jumbling up the letters in a round like that.

The end result?

Well we didn't come last, missing it by two points. I reckon a team of David Blacker with A and K would do better and myself and C could just hover in the background, getting them drinks and food, maybe massaging their brains every now and again to keep things going.

But, the barbecue chicken wings on the Barefoot menu are pretty damn fab, the Lion lager was cold, the atmosphere was balmy, chilled and fun and the night was a fun one.

Tomorrow we hit the hill country for a few days. I'm looking forward to leaving the hustle and bustle and seeing all those greens, feeling that smokiness and the slightly cooler air. Then we'll be back for a few days and off to Londinium again.

It's nice coming from a country like this, really it is.