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Back To Earth
Getting up at 7:30 in the morning to blue sky and white pistes – and having to pack your bags.
All seven of them.
Skis, snowboards and boots included
Guess who’s doing the carrying?
Embarking on twelve hours of traveling – welcome to Intracontinental travel
Catching the shuttle train from Terminal A at Atlanta (where your plane got in) to terminal D (where your ongoing ticket says you’ll be boarding from), only to find at Terminal D that your ongoing flight will actually be leaving from Termainal A – two gates over from the one at which you arrived.
Welcome to Intracontinental travel
Returning to Terminal A, bemused kid at side, walking to the far side of the Gate to recharge your laptop at a wall-side plug… and running right into your wife.
And sleeping baby.
Which is a surprise
Because though you know they’re flying back from Florida today
You’re so casual in your relationship you didn’t ask each other which flight you were on.
Though evidently it’s the same one.
___________
Thinking your baby is happy to see you when he wakes up….
…When he’s actually just happy to see your laptop.
Which there’s now not much point charging up
As he will fight you to the death to play with it
On which subject,
It’s Good Friday and it’s Passover
Why are so many businessmen working on their laptops?
When they could be playing on them,
Instead?
___________
Finally starting one of the three novels I took on holiday with me
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
Until Noel has an explosion at 30,000 feet.
Just as we hit turbulence
Which may or may not be a coincidence
Posie says, from the middle seat, where Noel is sat on her lap
“I think it’s leaking on me.”
And grimaces
We ask the stewardess if we can be excused to the bathroom
She points to the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign.
And on cue, the plane rocks back and forth
Shaking Noel’s poop out the diaper with it
When the stewardess sits down again, I get up, holding the baby
It’s leaking alright
Posie follows me
To the bathroom
If you can call it that
The stewardess, sitting in the kitchen, implores us to return to our seats
As the turbulence shakes poop off Noel’s inside leg
We show her the baby
She grimaces
“Just be quick,” she says, and Posie enters the airplane toilet,
diapers, wipes, and emergency bag in hand
She returns to the seat five minutes later.
“That was probably the worst poop he’s ever had,” she says, dropping his soiled pair of best trousers into a plastic bag and tying a knot in the handles.
“And the sink was blocked.”
Neither of us venture to the back of the plane before it lands in Albany
Welcome back to parenthood
___________
Welcome Home
Driving in a convoy from Albany to Hunter, Campbell back with his mother – me back on my own
Listening to a Brian Lehrer Podcast on the Thruway
About the price of oil
And whether,
Now that it has hit $70 a barrel,
We should be subjecting oil companies to a ‘windfall tax”,
The most sanctimonious, patronizing, insulting, dishonest free-market libertarian it’s ever been my misfortune to hear justify the oil companies’ multi-billion dollar profits is polluting my iPod
I want to fast forward but I have to hear him through
Lehrer usually gives us the benefit of mildly likeable members of the political opposition
Maybe there are no likeable lobbyists for the oil industry
___________
Sleeping in on a Saturday morning
Reading Saturday
Writing up The Joy of Snow, before the thoughts leave my mind
Having a family fry-up
Sitting out on the deck
Enjoying the rites of spring
Before packing up the car again
It’s Easter
And we’re off to the InLaws
(Isn’t this meant to be a holiday?)
Feeling euphoric en route
The contentment of going away has finally sunk in
Even though I got home last night
Now I know why people go away for two weeks
Playing James’ Millionaires on the Thruway
Everybody wants to be happy
I feel like Fred Astaire
I know what I’m here for
I hope I’m not shooting my mouth off (again)
But I still think Tim Booth is one of the greatest lyricists the world has ever known
Everybody wants the same thing
It’s a beautiful day (again)
And it’s over by the time we reach the Jersey shore
175 miles away
__________
Welcome Home
Opening up my own wine again
Though our final bottle of Trimbach Pinot Gris seems off
And the Hosmer Pinot Noir is not as good as it tasted up in the Finger Lakes
Or rather, not as good as the Burgundies I sampled at a couple of recent industry tastings
Though the kids’ Grandma is in good health
And that is good
___________
Reading Saturday on Saturday night in bed
Going for a run on the boardwalk Sunday morning
Man it’s hot back at sea level
I haven’t been out running for ten days
And my left leg is banged up
My legs feel stiff as tree trunks
I’m pushing the jogging stroller part of the way
Which Posie does by rote, by the way
People smile as I run against them
Maybe Noel’s smiling at them
____________
My sister-in-law’s cooking
And inevitable bottles of Kendall Jackson Chardonnay
Fortunately, I brought a bottle of Trimbach Gewurztraminer with me
Unfortunately, it falls out the back of the car when I’m not looking
And smashes on the ground
Ever taken a $20 bill and torn it in half?
That’s what this feels like
Looks like I’m on the Kendall Jackson
Which is preferable to the McGuigan Merlot
Though not the Seven Deadly Zins
I’ve gotten good at this tasting game
You don’t need a glass
To taste
Just a mouthful
___________
Welcome Home
Football on the telly
No, I mean football
Salt Lake vs New York
Appropriately enough
The views of the Wasatch Mountains around the ground remind me what I’ve just left behind
And how I’d just read in the SLWeekly that Salt Lake has its own soccer stadium on its way
(Along with the usual accusations of corruption and bribery)
Which is just as well
Because they’re playing this match on a football field.
No, I mean football field.
You can’t make out the goal area for the 20 yard line
Or the half way line for the 50 yard line
And how anyone knows where the touch-in takes off is beyond me
But it doesn’t really matter
Because, even twelve years after the USA hosted the World Cup
The standard of MLS is below the English Fourth Division
I mean, Division 3
League Two
Or whatever they’re calling it this year
This year, the Metro Stars
Are called the Red Bulls
No bull
I look for the sponsorship of the drink company
I can’t see it
Would you really name your team Red Bull
If you weren’t sponsored by Red Bull?
_________
Half paying attention to the ball going off for another throw-in
Or a meaningless hoof down field
I read the Asbury Park Press
There’s a story about a local youth soccer team
And its Field Of Dreams
Which they won from the Red Bulls
This much is true:
The Red Bulls laid down sod over the Giants Stadium astroturf
And raffled it off after their first game of the season
Among a selection of youth teams
As long as each team bought fifteen seats each
The winning New Jersey teams bought sixty
I learn something from this story:
(Not only that the more raffle tickets you buy, the better your chance of winning an all-sod football field
And not only that the new New York team is still playing in New Jersey
In a stadium four times too big for its team’s boots, but that)
The Red Bulls president is Alexi Lalas
(Or was, American football teams change staff as rapidly as the English)
Yes, him of the 1994 USA World Cup team
And giant goatee
With whom I spent a most pleasant day
Twelve years ago
Two months ahead of the big tournament
Back before he knew he was on the squad
But when I had him marked as the USA’s likely media star
And sold a story on him to the TV show Passengers.
That was a great day out
Hanging with the hosts of the upcoming World Cup
Who were living in dorm rooms, and
Who couldn’t find a working TV between them
When their coach – the great Boris Milutinovic–
Sent them home to watch a European Cup game
Arsenal v. Feyenoord, if I remember correctly
(Though I might not)
And though the Red Bulls are not the Metro Stars
And certainly not the Cosmos
The kids from New Jersey not only won a free football field
But they got to watch the game alongside
Franz Beckenbauer
And Pele
Whose presence at Giants Stadium all these years on suggests they may believe
They still are the Cosmos
Alexi Lalas, for President… of the New York Red Bulls, no the Los Angeles Galaxy
__________
Fake Salt Lake vs New York Bull
Is followed by Bolton vs. Chelsea
And though I hate any English team that is not Crystal Palace
The difference in quality is more than embarrassing
It’s a distance of a cosmos
Or three
It’s the difference between park football played on American football fields
And the real thing
And though I still hate any English team that is not Palace
I learn that Campbell thinks all those Monday nights I played 5-a-side at Chelsea Piers
I was actually playing for Crystal Palace
Wow
That’s the kind of thing I dreamed of
When I was his age….
__________
Driving up the Turnpike on a Sunday night
With all the other tens of thousands of cars
Gas at $3 a gallon
Has not stopped any of us visiting
Our mothers
For the holiday
(Nor should it)
Reading Saturday on a Sunday night in bed
The arguments about the impending Iraq invasion
All the more poignant
Three years on
Though why is it that even the best of British literary novelists
– And yes, Martin Amis, I’m looking at you too –
Can not successfully conjure up a believable working class villain
Nor a plausible rock band
When did you last hear of a blues group from the UK getting a 15-month residency in the East Village?
Or any group, for that matter?
Though clearly I’m captivated
Or I wouldn’t have finished the book
In three days straight
________
Welcome Home
Back to work in Phoenicia
A new copy of the local paper
Announcing cuts in the School Budget.
Posters on Main Street shop windows
Announcing Levon Helm playing a benefit for our School District’s Music Program
Bringing his band to the High School
On a Saturday night
Which is pretty cool
Though when you get to thinking about how many musicians live up here
It’s a surprise more of them don’t get involved in the local public Schools
Unless, of course, they’re not sending their kids to the local public schools
Or don’t have kids
Or just don’t care
A placard at the fire station
Announcing
“In memoriam”
and the name of a departed veteran
A hand-painted sign outside a country lane
Announcing
“Welcome to earth”
and the name of a new baby.
A hand-painted bed sheet hung from the Rappling Tower
Announcing
“Welcome home”
and the name of a Soldier
fresh back from Iraq
Neither born nor died
Though from his young eyes
Maybe he feels he’s experienced both
A sign at the local gas station
announcing
“$3 a gallon”
We hope
This war was not about
Cheap oil
After all
Related Posts
Discussion
2 Comment(s)
19 April, 2006 at 5:18 pm
The Red Bulls, or New York Red Bull as they were when it was first announced, are most definitely now the property (at least in some sense) of Red Bull the drink corporation. Sponsorship gone mad?
And Alexi Lalas is now gone.
http://redbull.newyork.mlsnet.com/MLS/news/team_news.jsp?ymd=20060417&content_id=56643&vkey=pr_rbn&fext=.jsp&team=rbn
I wonder if the two changes are related.
A friend of mine who publishes a successful football ‘zine here in NYC was strangely denied a press pass this year, and he told me that Lalas was supportive but “it was a corporate thing”…
19 April, 2006 at 6:24 pm
Somewhere between me watching the game Sunday and writing up my post on Tuesday, Lalas either left or got the boot. The man struck me as more Californian in style than east coast and hopefully he will be happy with the Galaxy
This business about Red Bull sponsoring the New York Red Bulls is interesting because it’s actually quite hard to find the connection. Watching the ‘kickabout’ on Sunday I didn’t see any mention or image of the actual drink Red Bull, and at their web site, ditto. Is sponsorship now such that it’s merely enough to own the name of a team and we can then assume that everyone will play word association football?