Strange Times

In the words of the esteemed thinker and philosopher Bradley Daniel, in some ways being a little baby has been the right place to be the last 2 months, as, if nothing else, it has spared Amelie from the hysteria that seems to have gripped the world since the start of September. I agree with his sentiment wholeheartedly. Not in my lifetime have I observed a time when journalists have been able to use so many long adjectives from their thesaurus. Markets are always "in turmoil" shares "crash", credit "crunches" and selling is "frenzied". Or to put it more prosaically, the stock market is back to where it was when labour came in 11 years ago - but that isn't very exciting so noone says that.

What is undeniable is that we are heading into a world recession. What is amusing is that leading politicians have been announcing the fact this week as if its a revelation - whereas its about as revelatory to most people as announcing that Sarah Palin is weak on foreign policy ( she might struggle to spell foreign policy in fact).

On the whole I am fairly sanguine about the whole thing. On the plus side my decision not to buy a house last year looks better every month. So does not putting the cash that would have been the deposit in an Icelandic bank. On the minus side that was because I put it in the stock market instead. On the plus side I invested widely ( balanced portfolio blah blah) on the down side every sector - and I mean every sector you can think of - is in the toilet presently. Still its not so bad, I don't need the money for a house deposit any time soon for obvious reasons (I am not certifiably insane for example) and I suspect that anyone who holds their nerve now will be amply rewarded in 3 years time. I'll go further, anyone with a chunk of cash who invests it now will be rich in 3 years- you read it here first.

Of course the other reason for being upbeat is that the our Gordon is an Economic superhero -the saviour of the world economy - man of the moment - thank god we have him to correct the problems caused by that hapless idiot who was Chancellor for the last decade - what was his name? Scottish guy...bit dour..

PS Keep praying that McCain doesn't win - I hear he's been "palin around" with an Alaskan Governor...(if you haven't followed the coverage that joke will not mean too much to you unfortunately..). He should have stuck to oven chips..

Peace In Our Time....

Its been a long six weeks since my last blog, which is surprising given how little has been going on. As you can see amelie and matty sleep all the time and basically you would hardly know we had a second child..............if only this were true....

To be fair the last 8 weeks with Amelie have been better than the first 8 weeks with Matty, mainly because of second child syndrome. This is where you simply cannot get as manically, frantically, eye poppingly stressed about things as you did the first time round. (We had our own room at casualty in Paris) The second reason things could have been worse is that Matty has been great with his little sister - and often very funny and sweet too. Highlights include telling us off for letting her cry, putting a cushion in her moses basket for her to lie on, singing to her when she gets upset and of course giving her her soubriquet of the moment - "Baby Mimi". Lets hope it lasts...

Apart from that the last 8 weeks have been pretty par for the course for a new offspring: not enough sleep, lots of nappies and a certain amount of irascibility, but still nice to have a little daughter.. with a big bruvver to look after her!

If nothing else having to adapt to two kids not one has at least taken my mind off the global conflagration in stocks and shares, the collapse of Western civilisation, the epoch making Presidential election and - most importantly of all - the Andrew Sachs/ Russell Brand affair , but I think all that is another article.

Baby Amelie

Here is an early picture of little Amelie who was born on 3rd September 2008. She is now home with her mum and is, without doing too much, causing a certain amount of havoc. She can already sleep right through, unfortunately its the day she sleeps right through - she then wakes up at about 11pm.

Being born on the 3rd confirms this week as the one every year where I will need to remortgage the house, as it is Ula's birthday on the 1st, Amelie's the 3rd and our wedding anniversary on the 4th. ...Ye Gods.

Her big bruvver is great at the moment and wants to "look after " Amelie - although this can sometimes result in slightly inappropriate behaviour such as trying to feed her toast and juice or climbing in the basket with her.

As Ula is still recovering my paternity leave is being spent acquainting myself with Matty's hectic social calendar. Yesterday was kindermusik in the morning, where a room full of mum's with toddlers, mum's with babies, and the odd Head of HR, encouraged the singing efforts of their little ones. This was followed yesterday afternoon by swimming and this morning by Tumbletots, which was basically 1 hour of pylometric circuit training with a 15kg weight (Matty). Its all go...

I will keep you up to date on the extended Brodie family as the weeks pass.

Golden Effort

Well after 17 days of excitement, drama, disappointment, and dodgy scoring (how do you beat a chinese boxer - answer - knock him out ) the Beijing Olympics is behind us and we can look forward to enjoying four years of Boris trying and failing to be statesmanlike. Fourth in the medal table was a fantastic effort and of course this became first if you look at the medal table for sitting down sports. Yessir noone can sit down like the British, although we do struggle a little when we have to get up (its the pies).

With this in mind I have been thinking of other sports we could nominate for Olympic inclusion which could raise our position above those pesky russians and start to challenge the yanks. first i think there is more to go at in the cycling. Frequently we had two finalists in the events and this means we could easily win a couple more golds if tandem racing was introduced. Dominoes was another early thought, together with shove hapenny and snakes and ladders. This of course takes us into the arena of the public house, and I thought we might do quite well if drinking is included in the Olympics. To be honest we might struggle to medal in the men's event against the might of Russia, Poland and Germany ("its a powerhouse team from Bavaria"), but we'd have a good change in the womens...

Anyway regulars to this blog, the challenge is laid down, what sitting down sports currently unrepresented at the Olympics can we propose for 2012?

Before leave the Olympics - a couple of things need to be said. One is about our dear friends Australia (did they make the top 10?) who started the (admittedly funny) joke about sitting down sports. When they made this jibe they declined to comment on a certain other country who also take part in yachting, rowing, and cycling - yes australia. The lesson here is simple - if you are going to go in for "rugby union" sports - ie ones that only a handful of countries do because they cost a lot of money - at least be good at them.

To be fair the aussies were very good in another sport that requires serious cash, namely swimming. (I mean the kenyans were nowhere in the pool and jamaica had a terrible time in the yngling.) We have learnt from them now though and have our own star, Rebecca Adlington, which means we have another sporting Becks - only this one is the real deal.

Final point - Britain is still the only nation on earth that feels bad about winning. Apparently when it became clear we were going to win almost all the cycling golds, there were some comments that it was too much and becoming embarassing. Can you imagine any other nation feeling that way? I can just see the Australian cricket captain saying how embarassed he is that they have thrashed everyone else for the last 15 years, or Roger Federer and Rafa Nadal apologising for hoovering up all the grand slams netween then for upteen years - or - we now go live to the track where the Jamaican athletic coach is ready to say sorry to the yanks for beating them 5 - 0 in the sprints... nope I don't think so either.

Oxford v Cambridge - Part 2

After Oxford, Cambridge was better. Smaller, more compact, with less of the modern architecture, or at least better hidden. We started with Kings College which was simply out of this world. I have never been charged £5 to walk around a small nondescript chapel before. Yes it had a Reubens and yes the exterior was magnificent, but you could see the exterior for nothing, and the Reubens wasn’t that good. So visitors tip if you are in Cambridge, take photos of Kings College from the river, and save yourself a fiver.

Part of the problem with Cambridge was we were a bit tired after a lot of sightseeing the previous few days, and the foreign students did not help. There were hundreds of them, in the chapel, in the gardens, in the lanes and on the bridges. This was a particular problem with Matty as teenagers can’t actually see small children in a pushchair, with their parents. Their responsibility chip phases you out, and as a result they kept tripping over Matty: and he got really really annoyed.

Now let me be clear. Matty, and I know I’m biased, is actually a very good little boy – 98% of the time. However when he throws a paddy, he throws a paddy, and this was a Beijing Olympic winning effort. He made so much noise when his mummy disappeared to the toilet that several Spanish teenage girls actually noticed him and starting making what they thought were child placating noises. Unfortunately they were more like the noise you make when you are offering a cat some milk and Matty gave their efforts short shrift. When Ula returned they were so relieved they clapped her!

We decided it was time for lunch. We left Jolka and Mirek to their sight seeing and went to a local café called Tatties – or should I say as they do “the World Famous Tatties”. Having travelled to many parts of the world and indeed lived in Paris, I couldn’t honestly recall a Parisian chef saying “mais oui these oysters and beef bourguignon are magnifique - but you should go to Tatties in Cambridge”, but perhaps I never asked the question.

I am not clear what you have to do to call yourself "World Famous", but on the basis of lunch at Tatties, my guess is it doesn’t involve a Michelin audit. There was nothing wrong with my baked potato and chilli but it tasted like I cooked it. The fresh coffee was more memorable; it tasted like burnt coal and was so bad it made me want to drink the house red, which tasted of nothing at all.

Still, Matty was placated and our Polish friends were happy on their return. They had seen London, Cambridge and Oxford in 4 days and taken about 3 billion photos (including one of my wine rack). In fact they had seen many things, although sadly the sun had not really been one of them.

Oxford v Cambridge - Part 1

Fresh from our London excursion the weekend promised new adventures as we prepared for the ultimate tourist double header, Oxford v Cambridge, the old enemies, university rivals and rowing adversaries through the ages. We were also hoping that the weather would start to give a passable impression of summer, but Jolka and Mirek not to be fooled, packed a couple of jumpers just in case.

We started with Oxford on Saturday. My hopes weren't high. I had been to Oxford many times but never to the University part, so it is fair to say I had not seen the best of the place. Emerging from an underpass smelling fragrantly of stale beer and urine to the main shopping street did nothing to dispel this impression. Here, things had clearly improved in the 7 years since my last visit. They had pedestrianised it. Unfortunately they had not been very committed about it. The council had concreted over the road and then pretty much considered the job done. No plants or greenery of any kind, no fountains or statues, just grey concrete blending into slightly worse for wear grey buildings, with only the occasional fast food wrapper to catch the eye. The suspicion that this lack of artefact was deliberate and based on a view that certain members of the local community might nick the plants and pee in the fountain did nothing to improve impressions.

Walking along the high street I started to worry about what our Polish visitors would think. I wondered what the Polish phrase was for – where the hell has he taken us? Then we turned up a side street signposted to the University, walked a little way and suddenly, we were in a different place. The transformation couldn’t have been more stunning. It was as if we had stepped through a rift in the space time continuum and ended up somewhere entirely different. Grey drab concrete was replaced by warm golden stone, cladding ancient edifices of beauty and charm. Looking through gilded iron gates into the colleges we could see immaculate lawns, bordered with dense shrubbery and lofty trees.

We spent a pleasant couple of hours just ambling around. We took in Trinity College and Christchurch (to get Matty’s name down) admired the library and University church and basically wandered about with our mouths open taking lots of photos. I heaved a huge inward sigh of relief. Mirek and Jolka were clearly having a great time; my fears had come to nought. It’s a pity though. Oxford could be one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, and parts of it can hold their head up with anywhere I have been. But those good parts are centuries old and the new doesn’t blend in – it’s just attached, like an unpleasant guest who has outstayed their welcome. It’s a shame, and with that thought I took our very pleasant guests to Blenheim palace.

Back after the break!

Its been a bit quiet from the Brodie blog over the passed few months as work went a little mental and I got out of the habit of keeping it up to date. However we are back now with an update on what we have been up to in the last month or so. Over the next few weeks I will try and fill in some of the gaps and also get some pictures on the blog as well.



To start off though here are some of the July highlights...