a brooklyn lad

Billy sure does love his Uncle Albert.

Incidentally, Albert lives in Paris. Which is why we went there again. It’s not because we are so sophisticated we can’t go a year without a dipping a pied in Paris. Though I’d like it if you thought that.

Some cultural fun at (outside) La Louvre:

Albert, Billy & Lionel:

Lionel is Albert’s, you know, pal. In French Lionel is pronounced ‘Lee-on-el’. Not ‘Line-ol.’

‘Albeeerrr et Lee-on-el,’ sounds very French and romantic. I prefer to think of them as Bert & Lionel. Two old war pals nursing their pints of mild in a run down pub in Hull. In the sixties.

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Instead of spending our entire trip in my hometown this year, we went down south. I think my mum wants Heidi to know that the whole country isn’t as grim as it is up north. So, you know, we might move there.

Clovelly is a tourist village with a very steep decent to the ocean. Having had 10,000 consecutive days of rain, it was slippery too.

Heidi enjoys some local cuisine:

She has an irrational hatred of white pepper. Anything with the faintest whiff of it elicits this sort of response from her. Shame the English love their white pepper so much.

A waterfall:

I had to walk over a lot of pebbles to get to this waterfall. Billy had to be carried over a lot of pebbles to get to this waterfall.

A snap of the boy:

Tourists are encouraged to walk all the way down the beach, spend a few quid, then walk all the way back up again and bugger off home. If you can’t face the ascent on foot, you can take a 4WD back to the top. Heidi, who claims we need 30 minutes of heart pumping exercise per day made us walk up as fast as we could. I nearly vomited when we finally made it to the top.

Billy and my parents took the 4WD and by the time we reached them, Billy was a seasoned donkey rider:

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Nice to see Julie Burchill back in print, even though I struggled to make sense of a lot of this:

…sad indeed is the woman who sees fashion as a means of self-expression rather than an agent of social control.

The other week she wrote about her Christianity. In typical Julie Burchill style:

These days, many people reach out to faith “to find peace”. I had too much peace in my life already. In faith, I was looking to be troubled – on behalf of other people. Every film and pop starlet, trawling after a reason to exist, says, “I’m not religious – but I am spiritual”. I don’t have a spiritual bone in my body; but what I am, is religious.

I know my Dad will be thrilled to have her back on the scene.

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One of the few moments of sunshine during our trip home…

Castlefield is really quite nice when the sun is out.

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To supplement Billy’s dorky subway knowledge we took him for a ride on a bona fide steam train.

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My mum’s back garden.

Playground near my mum’s.

Field near my mum’s.

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We have returned.

One of the high points of our recent trip was when Andy, Theresa & kids came to visit. I used to live with Andy at university. I also lived with Theresa’s brother James, a sometimes commenter on this blog. Last time I saw them they had one very small baby. Now they have 3 very big kids:

Billy had the time of his life as the 4 of them tore through my mum’s house (we gave them way too many biscuits). When they left, Billy said: “that was a funny day.”

More Pics.

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Eeks, it’s been a while. We’ve been traveling, you see, and my brother’s got married and my mum’s computer is so damned slow I can’t cope with it. Anyway, here are some pics of our flight to Paris. We were upgraded.

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If we take a 2 or a 3 to an S to the C to an A to another S we can go to Rockaway Park Beach. If you are Billy, taking 10 trains so you can play in some sand is well worth it.

For me, the Diner out there almost made it worth it.

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