Utter Delight: A Spot of Bother by Mark Haddon

Reading is probably my biggest hobby. There's nothing better than going on a free holiday in the world of a good author. One of the reasons I love England so much is they've got charity shops filled with pristine second-hand books even in the smallest villages. Here's a book I picked up on my last London trip a few weeks ago.

Normally I wouldn't recommend a book that I haven't finished yet, but I can't help myself with this one. A Spot of Bother is just frickin' hilarious, and I can't recommend it enough.

Mark Haddon is the author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time; but I haven't read that one yet. I don't usually read the books that everyone is raving about, at least not until the furore has died down a bit. I'm funny that way. But I'll certainly pick up The Curious Incident from the library once I'm done with this one.

Welcome back, George Michael

George Michael is out of hospital and back where he belongs - his home in North London - and I'm so glad. I'm happiest for George himself of course, at 48 he's much too young to leave for unknown shores. I'm very happy for George's family and friends who came so horribly and frighteningly close to losing him. We can only imagine what unspeakable hell they've been through in the past month. And I'm glad for all his fans, who care for him too - albeit from a distance. Because we not only love his music, we love him as well!

Once again I am so proud of George. What a fighter he proved himself to be. Fighting to stay alive for weeks when things were as he said "touch and go". Fighting to regain his strength in the 10 days since he woke up from his induced coma, and making unbelievable progress - he was walking all by himself. It was a hard-fought battle, and from the look of him I'd say it's not yet completely won. But I'm confident victory will be his in the end, and he will make a full recovery.

On Friday, George gave a press conference outside his home. Walking to a spot between Christmas trees in front of his house, he took a few minutes to answer questions from the press. Oversized glasses shielded his face from too intrusive looks and protected him from the worst of the flash photography. A scarf was carefully draped around his neck, hiding the scar of the tracheotomy from sight.

He was reduced to gasping for breath when, talking about his ordeal, his emotions got the better of him. It was heartbreaking, and just like thousands of fans across the world I just wanted to hug him and hold him tight for a very long time. He looked so frail and gaunt. But not sad. Very emotional yes, but not sad. Clearly, he was very grateful he survived. So are we, George! Welcome back, dear George, we missed you.

The love of my life

After all my blogposts from yesteryear about my wedding jitters I think it's time a write a little bit about Mary, my wife. This year we celebrated our sixth wedding anniversary. In 2005 we finally tied the knot after spending our weekends together in her house or mine for ten long years. Nobody can accuse us of rushing into marriage!

This is the picture we used for the wedding invitations

A Flawless Wedding

This is the last of the blog posts of the blog I started a week before my wedding. I didn't keep a copy of the other posts, which I kinda regret now. I remember blogging the night before our wedding, all nervous and happy. And I posted a very short post on the morning of the wedding, just before the make-up girl came to work her magic on us!

I still love our wedding rings!

Only six days to go till "I do". Maria and I are getting more nervous by the day. It’s a big thing for both us. If you’re gay getting married is like the ultimate coming out and it turns out it’s not for the faint of heart. Only yesterday we were telling each other if we’d known what we were getting ourselves into we might at least have reconsidered or just been too terrified to go through with it.

Finding a treasure at the back of your closet.

Yesterday evening I got busy with the computer equivalent of cleaning out my closet. I was  looking for a pdf-file on how to write a book proposal. Yes, like countless others who write for a hobby I want to write a book. With real people in it!
But where to start? Then I remembered that I once downloaded a instruction how to write a book proposal. I did a quick search in 'My Documents' and came up empty. Note to self: when downloading important stuff it's generally best to change the file name into something searchable. A filename like WritingABookProposal won't cut it!

So there I was looking through all my files when I came upon some old stuff I wrote for my first blog. Once upon a time I had a blog for about 10 minutes. I was blogging in the days before my wedding, as it was a very stressful time and writing usually helps me clear my mind. Blogging wasn't quite as easy then as it is now with blogger.com, so it wasn't right for me. Yet!

Reading some of the old stuff helped me escape out of the dark hell hole I've been in these last few days. My inner critic, that nasty inner voice we all have, was making life difficult for me with sweet nothings like: "You're a loser and a waste of space. You can't do anything right. You can't write. You bring nothing good to this world". And so on. Thank God this time the voice stopped just short of telling me no-one would even notice if I was gone, let alone miss me. No wonder I was feeling quite depressed.

I'm so glad I kept some of the stuff I wrote earlier because I can see now I've come quite a long way. And also because it tells me that I've always wanted to write. It's what keeps me sane. But most of all I was happy because I actually liked most of what I wrote back then! So there, inner critic!

So for the next few day I'll be blogging some fun old stuff. Next up: an ode to George Michael I wrote in 2010, a few months before the infamous Snappy Snaps incident.

Thank God for cellphones

Today I talked to my brother. You'd think that was no big deal, but it is. It is! I thought I'd never hear my brother's voice again. I'm very happy right now, crying tears of happiness.

My brother lives in Nigeria, where I was born. When I visited Nigeria some ten years ago I got to meet my brother for the first time. I loved him on sight.
Huge cultural differences aside, we were so alike it was uncanny. We have the same build and we've inherited both our mother's temperament and intelligence. We're both headstrong and stubborn (that's a common trait of the Igbo-people, I believe). Whereas I was given the opportunity to get an advanced education, my brother was not so lucky. But it was obvious he was very smart.

For the duration of my visit, cultural differences weren't all that important. What mattered was being happy we'd found each other again when we'd both thought for so long the other was dead. It all changed when I got home again.
The Nigerian phone system is notoriously unreliable. And my brother didn't even own a phone which made things even more difficult. Being so far apart and having only email at our disposal - letters are routinely stolen in Nigeria - cultural differences were more difficult to ignore. After a few years I couldn't take it any more. I never stopped thinking about him, though.

And now we've spoken again, thanks to advances in technology. Phone lines in Nigeria are still bad, but now almost everybody owns a cell phone, even my brother.

I thought I would never hear his voice again. Sometimes it's wonderful to be wrong.

Delight: experiencing and overcoming 'technical difficulties'

These last few days were not easy with my stress disorder acting up big time, but today there is reason for rejoicing!
Why so happy? Well, I finally got our old HP Deskjet 720C printer to work with my new Windows 7 computer. 

When I bought my new computer we realised that our trusty HP Deskjet would have to go, as it wasn't an USB-printer. But it was still in fine working condition after years on the job and we didn't want to spend a lot of money to buy a printer of lesser quality. And we still had some prink cartridges left. Yes, the Dutch are known for being cheap for a reason.
Anyway, we bought a new cable to connect the old printer to an USB port and downloaded the new printer drivers and thought we'd be good to go. We thought wrong!

It took me hours and hours over the course of a few months to get the horrid thing working again. The euphemism for something like this is 'experiencing technical difficulties'. In reality it involved a lot of shouting, threatening to throw the blasted thing out of the window if it didn't start behaving right now and so on and me feeling stupid and a computer illiterate.

Today, after reading about countless solutions on computer help forums and applying a patch or two without result, I finally admitted defeat and disgustedly disconnected the thing. Then I thought let's give it one more try, connected it again and RESULT! I still don't know what the problem was exactly, or how I fixed it. But who cares, it's working!

I'm so happy! I've felt like such a failure for the last few days and it's so nice to feel good about myself again. Even if it is over something as insignificant as a printer.

Now shall I get started on the Dell 725 my dear wife picked up for a song (and now we know why!) which she can't get to work with her laptop? Nah, I’m going to rejoice some more!

Delight: Cat versus Christian Music

It's a sad day when you realise that your cat has better taste in music than you do. But when you put that fact to good use you could still end up with something delightful. I still giggle when I remember how I tricked our cat.

Our cat Faith is of course a fan of George Michael music; she especially loves the mixes. In my experience most cats love George, probably something to do with the colour of his voice. Faith however is not a fan of Christian Praise and Worship music. 

Don't know what praise music sounds like? Well, imagine the Christian equivalent of Euro summer hits. Think Macarena or Alejandro,  a simple chorus and a bit of a hook. In other words, praise music is not exactly at the high end of contemporary Christian music. Of course there are beautiful, complex worship songs, but they are far and few in between. 

Now I love praise music myself, the simple lyrics and melodies makes them perfect for singing your prayers.

Anyway, our Faith hates everything in the praise genre with a fiery passion. As soon as the first chorus hits her ears she is literally clawing at the door handle of our back door, loudly begging to be let out. Even if it's pouring out, she prefers the bad weather over the music. It's a bit insulting, really.

One day I got my own back, though. Faith sneaked in the wardrobe in our bedroom and made herself invisible as only cats can. You could hear her purring very loud, she was obviously having a great time sitting just out of reach on top of our clothes. No amount of begging could maker her leave her hiding place. Nothing worked, not even the promise of a cat  snack. 

Totally fed up, I resorted to a dirty trick. I placed one of my MP3-players with built-in speakers on a shelf in the wardrobe, put on some praise music and turned the volume way up. Then I sat down on the bed to wait. I didn't have long to wait. Not even enjoying the forbidden fruits of our wardrobe could entice Faith to listen to saccharine Christian pop. Within 5 minutes a thoroughly disgusted cat came charging out of the wardrobe. Praise be!

Delight: cats

Let's talk about Faith, the cutest cat in the world!
She is one of the biggest joys of my life. Every day she makes me laugh at least once, she's just so funny.
 
Faith is not named after the George Michael song, but after the other Vampire Slayer. mmmFaith. I can certainly see the resemblance. Although our Faith doesn't have superpowers and tends to run away from danger. Also, she's not fictional but very real. But they are both very, very cute.

This used to be our chair, but cats have a habit of reserving the best seat in the house for themselves.

She's such a diva!

She's a bit of flirt, isn't she? She loves posing for the camera.

She's far less fearsome than she likes to think she is.

Delight: In Treatment - season two

As far as I'm concerned, there's only one good way to watch a TV series: on DVD. No commercial breaks, no summer hiatus or reruns, just hour after hour of quality TV. This last month I've been enjoying season two of In Treatment. 

I tried season one and didn't much care for it. But season two blew me away. I never really got the charms of Gabriel Byrne before. I knew him only as the controller in Nikita/Assassin and the devil in End of Days. Both roles not exactly designed to stretch his acting capabilities a whole lot past 'coasting'. Imagine my surprise when I saw him flexing his acting muscles in 'In Treatment'. Who knew?

I'm not so sure Paul Weston is a great therapist. The endless talking through of transference and counter-transference issues, well, I don't know. Then again, I've never been through psycho-analysis so what do I know.

What I loved most about Paul were his eyes, Gabriel Byrne gave Paul wonderfully warm eyes. The empathy and love he feels for his patients is all in his eyes.

April's storyline affected me the most; I cried pretty much all through her sessions in week 4 and week 7. And I actually cheered out loud when Paul crossed  professional boundaries for her. I'm all for professionalism, but some things are just more important.
Also, April was so cute! That little round face with the big eyes. So adorable, I just wanted to pick her up and take her home. The character, not the actress of course.

Walter's storyline I found extremely moving too. I had no idea Mahoney was that good an actor, having seen him only in the odd episode of Frasier. Some of the reviews of this season at the time were sceptical about Walter's emotional breakthrough in episode 6, and his reaching out for Paul in his pain. Both rang totally true for me, I've been there. 

It's incredibly painful when the walls you've so carefully been building to shield you from your own pain come crashing down. No place left to hide.

Also his childlike reaching out for Paul was - in my mind at least - a wonderful acting choice. It's exactly what I longed to do when I got stuck in my own place of pain. It's about wanting to be connected I guess.

And poor Oliver! Whatever little mistakes my parents made with me, at least they sure as hell were proper adults. Which can't be said for Bess and Luke, trapped in lives they clearly didn't want. I felt sorry for them, but of course Oliver was the real victim here. None of it was his fault. But I'd like to think that in the 'In Treatment universe' Paul and Oliver enjoyed lots of lovely phone calls until Oliver made some new friends at school.

I also liked Mia's storyline. Hope Davis, what an amazing actress she is. Mia is not an easy character to like, with all her acting out. In the hands of a lesser actress she probably would've ended up a ridiculous and one-dimensional character. Hope Davis plays her with so much much compassion, that you can't help but feel sorry for this woman, so crushed by life. There but for the grace of God and all that.

Hope Davis shows us a glimpse now and then of the woman Mia could have been if she hadn't been so hurt by her parents. I especially loved the moment when Mia realised that Paul had kept the gift she gave him for all those years. That smile really transformed her face. Great acting.