Winter comes early to Durham

Winter has come early to Durham (late November 2010). We've had epic, blanketing amounts of snow over the weekend, and again today. Proper seasons, not like them in that there London...

To their huge credit (though this is not quite how Liam saw it), his school - Blue Coat Junior, in Newton Hall - defied the snow to insist on opening, when pretty much every other school in the city closed. Most of the staff live locally, it seems. We got there OK in the morning, by bus, to learn that only two other kids had made it from Liam's class.

But when it came to collect him, Valeria and I ended up walking the mile or so in a full-on blizzard... It reminded us of the Shackleton DVD we watched recently. Paraphrasing Sir Ernest somewhat: "TO BLUE COAT JUNIOR SCHOOL! FIVE HUNDRED METRES A DAY!" But Valeria did look very cute in the snowstorm...

Daddy also made two snowmen to greet those trekking up our road... And Liam made a couple of creditable snow angels in our front garden... Round the back of Country Hall, about a 10 minute trudge from our house, there are a couple of agreeably steep and long hillsides for sledging.


Liam took a while to feel comfortable with having a go, but loved it after one run. Hopefully you can open the film of one go...

Two out of three ain't bad...

I've written elsewhere about Liam's complex relationship with football. All right, all right, about MY complex relationship with 'Liam and football'.

Like most football-mad Dads I had hoped my only son would similarly love the beautiful game, and we'd share that bond forever: replica shirts for birthdays, bunking off work/school to go to away games in Europe, having someone to confide in about my fears re: Arsenal's options in goalkeepers, etc etc... But I'm starting to accept the reality that Fate has dealt me. My name is Graham, and my son is utterly indifferent to football.

With hindsight, alarm bells should have been ringing from the outset. There is an infamous passage in the family video of Liam's first ever birthday, when he staggers over to the TV showing an Arsenal match (highlights admittedly, but still...). Liam takes one look at the screen, one look at Daddy, and switches off the telly. At the time, I put it down to his playful experimentation with cause-and-effect. Now...? I can barely watch the footage without wincing inside.

And yet, with a ball at his feet, Liam had shown reasonable promise: look at these pictures, taken when he was four. Check out the Cruyff-esque command of the ball at his feet, as if he is surveying the positions adopted by his team-mates; why, in the next picture, he's even trying a prototype drag-back. The main picture at the top, meanwhile, suggests an emerging thunder to his shooting. (We'll overlook the bottle of fruit juice in his hand below which, while technically not covered in detail in the FIFA rulebook, is probably frowned upon...) More recently, Liam's form with a football has been patchy. There is the elegance of this strike of a foam ball on his birthday... ... but see how he's leaning back as he approaches this ball in a square in Barcelona - that could go anywhere (well, if it wasn't made of iron and secured to the pavement, but you know what I mean).

As for going to see live games, to enthuse him with the raw emotion of the crowd, and that sense of affiliation with a common tribe, and the artistic spectacle of the game in all its glory... Well, up here in the North East, I'm at a bit of a disadvantage on that front, with a choice between Sunderland, Newcastle and Middlesbrough (and Hartlepool United and Darlington, OK, but talk about digging your own grave!).

To date, Liam has been three times to a live game: Sunderland twice, and at no stage in any of the 270 minutes he has witnessed first-hand did even so much as a hint of a possibility of a monkey's being given cross his cherubic little face... So that approach was doomed.

The end of the dream came quickly this year, in two quite desperate episodes. The first was one Saturday afternoon, when he was doing his drawing on our table and I was working o the laptop listening to 5 Live's commmentary of Arsenal away at Bolton. We were 1-0 with eight minutes to go, when we scored a second.

"YEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! COME ON!!!!" I cried, punching the air.

"What? What is it, Daddy?"

"Liam, Arsenal have just scored, we're going to win", I explained, hoping subtly and subliminally to make that connection in his formative mid: Arsenal scoring = extreme happiness (YOU SHOULD TRY IT, SON!)

Liam's answer? "Dad, I don't care".

It was difficult to see a way back from that. But the final moment - almost certainly, although there is always hope - came during the World Cup this year, when Liam asked, "why does it have to last A WHOLE MONTH?!" I mean, the one gene you want to pass on...! But no, I have to face facts: it just doesn't look like it's happened.

So - one down. But, there is hope: Liam has always been a creative little boy, he's good at drawing and making stuff, and when he was five he came home from school with "his first real six-string". Talk about an emerging Seasick Steve-style commitment to the blues in its purest form!

It got better when, later that night, just before bedtime, he gave his debut performance, singing a medley of the classics, while displaying his virtuousity in switching effortlessly between guitar styles... (Watch for his face at the end, when he tries to get his head around some of the more peculiar edicts of punk rock.)



Then, when I came home from, well, see the previous post, I learned that Liam is now taking guitar lessons at school. He promptly got out his real axe, and started to set up. Amazed, and bursting with joy, I asked him waht he was doing.

"E Minor" came the reply.

Glasses off, eyes dabbed for the best part of half an hour I think.

And so this is what I'm clinging to, his not-yet-confirmed-but-surely-latent love of music. When we're both on the table doing our thing - him drawing, me probably some bloody deadline or other - and I've got the music on, his head nods sub-consciously along, and he has a clear preference for noisy guitars. As he once put it, albeit - I think - with a bit of help from me - "I like the ones where you can't hear what he's singing over the guitars".

Not sure I could put it better myself.

Now, I worked in a song reference in the title, but to be honest I'm not sure what should be the third of the Vital Trinity: football, music, and....? Any ideas?

Liam loses first baby tooth!

Eeeeeee, it's a never-ending, 24-hour media frenzy where news travels around the world and back again in a nanosecond.

While I was out in India recruiting students, back in Durham Liam lost his first baby tooth while eating an apple, on Monday 17th May 2010.

Yet, even though I was in India (New Delhi, to be precise), and it was 2.02am, Liam and Mummy got on Skype to show me, and I could take a photo of said gap in said boy's said mouth via Skype via my laptop... and in about 10 minutes could broadcast said gap to anyone, anywhere.

Head-spinning. And yet mundane at the same time.

Anyway, here it is...

He does seem very proud of it, doesn't he?

Summer 2009 bike rides

In May 2009, Liam rode his bike without stabilisers for the first time - see the footage of this definitive rite of passage here - and throughout the summer of 2009, he and Daddy went off for long bike rides around Durham, finding parts of Newton Hall and Nevilles Cross that you just can't reach by car...

In these two pictures, we are somewhere down by the railway track toward Newcastle, having crossed a footbridge between the Newton Hall housing estate and a load of fields behind Crook Hall.

As you can see from the top picture, we went 'off-road' a lot, cycling through woods and down footpaths. The path we were on curves left and slopes downward , giving both of us a real buzz.

In the other picture, Liam is heading down a path by Framwellgate High School.

These were fantastic times we spent together; a real father-son experience. Watching him bomb down paths, holding his arm as we negotiated to the other side of busy main roads, even pushing him up the hills...

Play date with Nathalie and Leona

Liam had a play-date/ lunch on Saturday 1st August with his friend from school, Nathalie, her sister and their Dad, Jochen.

Nathalie goes to Liam's school, and I don't think I'm embarassing our son when I suggest that she is probably the first girl he ever took a real shine to, a couple of years back.

They became King Liam and Queen Nathalie of Durham for the day, along with Princess Leona, making and designing these crowns - and don't they make a regal couple?!

Liam's 6th birthday

Technically, he turned 6 on June 15th, but we combined his party with that of his school friend, Matthew Harrison, for Saturday.

It was a blazing hot day (you need to set that description within the parameters of what is meteorologically possible in the North East of England - in other words, it was 22 degrees outside), and it was a great party.

There was a jungle theme at both boys' request (hence the masks and cake) and several girls who turned up in costume (respect due to Natalie's Mum for her two).

The kids first coloured in their animal masks (Liam is the tiger)...

... then they played lots of games upstairs (the pictures show Liam's team having a meditative pause shortly before the Find-the-Chopped-Up-Christmas-Card-Jigsaw-Challenge, Liam dropping his toy frog in the box fractionally before Matthew Dixon in the Toy-Frog-Relay, and Liam doing the Lions' Roar)...

Then they retired downstairs for masses of food, and wrecked a pinata to close.

Finally, here is his cake, another masterpiece from Valeria...

... and film of Liam blowing out his candles - "in one!", as he sought to impress upon all those in his presence. Be warned, the angle of the camerman shifts (idiotically) at the end! Doh.

And, right at the end, a very rare picture of all of us together...

Liam rides his bike without stabilisers!

It's a defining moment for any parent: the first time your child rides their bike without stabilisers. And, yesterday, April 19th 2009 at the age of 5 and three-quarters, Liam did it.

We had expected him to take to it, as he had been completely without fear on his tricycle aged 2 - see the report at the end here - but we were also fearful of him falling off the instant we let go the saddle, and being traumatised, primarily by a sense of failure (he can be quite hard on himself when things don't go according to plan).

We had a few practices in the back garden (2-3 minutes tops), then moved to the park on Park House Road for the showdown with destiny!

And, of course, Liam being Liam, as soon as we let go he was off! The first film below is, literally, only his 2nd ever try - a creditable effort, the unorthodox 'controlled stop' technique notwithstanding!

As you can see in the later film (below), he had become so blase about the whole thing he could admonish his own father for not keeping up!

Also, out of nowhere, spontaneously, and not - we hope - driven by our seething ambitions for the boy (which amount to him being happy whatever he wants to do), he said, "I want to make you proud!"

Which we both were, of course.

Messing about with the sofa

These first shots were taken one afternoon when liam decided to entertain himself by falling backwards onto the sofa - as you can appreciate, there are a fair few takes involved here!

On his way (above); The 'Point of no return' (below)!

Brace yourself! (below)

"Again!" (below)

Liam's 5th birthday

Liam turned 5 in June, and here are the pictures.

The first couple are of the prezzie-unwrapping ceremony on the morning itself. He got some dinosaurs, some dragons, some books... Unfortunately, the poor little fella was ill on the day itself, so he couldn't really enjoy them at the time, but he has more than made up for lost time since!

We got round to having the actual birthday party a few days later, due to a variety of complex scheduling permutations - not only from us, but from potential guests and their Mums and Dads (ee, it were a lot simpler in my youth) compounded, as ever, by the thrillingly uncertain North East weather! Anyway, it took place on the 24th. (Interesting: Liam isn't particularly aware of what day of the week it is, let alone the date, and so even special ones pertaining to him like the date of his birth carry little weight - when do kids start to understand this? - and so we got away with the slight delay.)

We held the party at the splendid Broom House Farm just outside the village of Witton Gilbert, which itself is just outside Durham. It is one of those farms that has successfully re-organised itself as a kids' daytrip adventure, with a great little coffee house, and - for the monkeys' delight - a sandpit; a 'maze' made out of hay bales (pictured) that tends to get used as an assault course, as the hay bales only come up to the kids' waist, thus rendering the 'maze' aspect less than taxing; a wooden castle high(ish - for 5 year olds, anyway) on a mound of earth, and - genius investment - a really very good indeed adventure trail with zip wires and rope bridges and slides set in the gorgeous woods at the bottom of their fields. It's excellent. We love this picture of Liam (note his birthday dinosaur T-shirt) with Nathalie, and Sasha.

Here are some more pictures of the fun and games Liam and his friends - Nathalie, Xavier, Alex, Kienan, Sasha, Matthew, Zosia, Charlie, Katy, Finn and James - had on the Adventure Trail, with parents in tow!
Valeria had arranged everything, including a fantastic Stegosaurus pinata, which proved to be sturdy enough to withstand the best efforts of Liam and his fellow extras from "Lord of the Flies 2"! We love the excitement on the kids' faces in these shots, and the look of, er, shall we say 'determination' [the polite word] on Liam's face as he sets about it. ['Savagery' might be another!]

When they had all run themselves ragged, we herded them back into the coffee house, for some yum organic sausage sandwiches, home-made bramble jam sandwiches, crisps - and the token, perennially overlooked sticks of vegetable! It was a good spread.

Then came the highlight: worked on by Mum and her best friend Ann for the best part of a week, involving the studious sculpting of sponge, the meticulous mixing of icing sugar and colourings, and the attentive application of various body parts, to make - brace yourselves for the shock - a dinosaur cake! That is all made by Valeria's fair hand. Now, come on, admit you're impressed! Here's a great picture of Liam blowing out the candles.

The whole thing proved a triumph, and Liam had a brilliant time.

The last birthday moment came when Daddy returned from a trip back to The Netherlands (to give a paper at a seminar at the University of Tilburg) with a present of a bag of ace-looking marbles from good Rotterdam friends Ed, Puk, Morris and Nina: here is Liam rolling them down the bath (which makes a hell of a racket).