Tagged!

I’ve been tagged. Now, it’s very naughty of Reluctant Memsahib to tag me, as she knows full well that I’m on blogging sabbatical. I don’t really like tags, but this one got me thinking, and once I get thinking, wittering is only a small step further on. The tag invites me to witter on about what I’ve been reading, listening to, watching and surfing in the past few days, and I couldn't resist it.

Reading: I’m in a book club, and we’re doing Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Haven’t finished it yet, and can’t decide whether I like it or not. I can see that it is funny and well-written, but you need to have chemistry with a book, as with a person, and I'm not sure it and I have exchanged glances across a crowded room yet. I have also read Just for you, Blue Kangaroo every day, and sometimes more than once a day, since Christmas. It’s just as well I like the story, as 3-yo does, obviously. A lot. A big lot. Considerably more than me, actually. Pity there isn't another one in the series called Enough is enough, Blue Kangaroo.

Listening to: Alas, I hardly listen to anything these days (no Radio 4, you see) apart from the cd of choice in the car, which at the moment is some ghastly Winnie the Pooh compilation. I only ever hear the first track, at the end of which 3-yo insists “that one again, that one again”. On the school run, I claim that it is the boys’ turn, and then we have Radio Disney which is a mind-numbing experience, but I have to take my respite where I can. 'Listening to' is not where it is happening for me in this particular chapter of life.

Watching: I have to confess to watching almost no American tv at all, and because I don’t want to sound smug and superior, 'not wrong, just different' being my philosophy and all, I’d better not go on about it, but really, it isn’t good. I’m sorry, I’m not going to pretend. The only show that Husband and I do enjoy is Family Guy, which is like a ruder and darker version of The Simpsons. Hilarious. On BBC America, I watch Matt Frei giving an hour of news at 9.00pm (it’s like having the old Nine O’Clock News back again – oh joy). I am particularly enjoying the fact that the journalist they’ve sent off to Antarctica to track the Japanese whaling fleet is called Jonah Fisher. Marvellous BBC humour. No-one has made any reference to it, but it's just there as a shared joke. When I think of what I miss from Britain, it all tends to be the lovely gentleness and understatement of the place, like that joke for example. Or leafy green lanes, the fountain-like chatter of ladies meeting in tea shops, the soft colours of bluebells and cow parsely, the fine art of conversing without saying what you mean. Intriguingly, the programmes I enjoy most on BBC America are Top Gear and Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares. But that probably says more about the selection on offer than my homeward yearnings.

Last, but not least, surfing: Well, there are the blogs, of course. I love you all. Then there’s Weatherbug.com, which I like at times of the year when we have extreme weather. Just how hot/cold is it today? In the last week, we’ve had temperatures down to -13 celsius. This actually makes very little difference to life, as buildings and cars are well heated, and you only ever have to walk between them for 30 seconds. Most people wouldn’t actually bother with a coat if they were going to the supermarket. Nonetheless, I like to think that when we return to Britain, and people are complaining of the cold, I’ll be able to be reverse-smug and say “oh yes, well of course we got used to temperatures of -13 celsius when we lived in America.”.

Then there are the news pages, which keep me in touch with world news when I’ve missed Matt Frei at 9 o’clock, or deserted him for recorded Jeremy Clarkson or Gordon Ramsey (sorry, Matt, don’t take it personally). I watched a lot of BBC news online after the BA flight from Beijing crash landed at Heathrow. Plane crashes are always gruesomely fascinating, but I followed the aftermath of this one with particular interest, as I was at primary school with Peter Berkhill, the pilot. I emailed a friend, to ask if it was indeed him, and she confirmed that it was. We pondered together how the names of primary school co-pupils are forever etched on one’s memory (and I know I’ve spelt his name wrong – just don't want to turn up in too many google searches). The story is a little tarnished by the fact that I got excited when I watched the flight crew arrive at the press conference in BA’s headquarters amidst cheering ranks of BA staff, thinking to myself “yes, yes, I recognize him, that’s him, that’s Peter Berkhill, definitely him”, only to discover when they were introduced, that I’d been looking at senior first officer Tom Coward.

I'm passing the tag on to Laurie, Elsie Button, Dumdad and Ms Wiz.