Vegas baby!

In preparation for the move down under, I’ve been brushing up on my knowledge of Australia’s third most populous city. Originally named Edenglassie (a wonderfully misguided portmanteau of Edinburgh and Glasgow) Brisbane was renamed in 1826 after Major-General Sir Thomas MakDougall Brisbane, the then Governor of New South Wales.

Nowadays the city is known colloquially as either “Brissie” or “Bris Vegas”, the latter seemingly used affectionately, disparagingly and occasionally a curious blend of the two.

I was dissapointed not to find either of these nicknames mentioned on visitbrisbane.com.au the city council’s latest attempt to lure tourists to the Queensland capital and the originator of the dubious “Australia’s New World City” tag line. Whilst lacking in this area, the site is goldmine for fans of amateurish grammar, shocking spelling and bloated, flowery copy.

I’m sure you can find plenty of examples for yourselves but this one sentence illustrates beautifully my problem with the site:

The ever-busy barristers fill the air with an irresistible temptation that is hard to escape and the mix of welcome visitors and the business set create a lively thoroughfare through the Queen Street Mall – Queensland’s largest retail precinct with over 700 specialty shops, restaurant, cinemas and live music. http://www.visitbrisbane.com.au/Travel/Destination-Maps.aspx

I don’t know, maybe members of Brisbane’s legal profession really are moonlighting as drug dealers and prostitutes, but I suspect what they were trying to get across is that “hey, the coffee smells good!” As for the rest of the sentence, I don’t think even the writer knows what’s going on. I imagine the first draft went something like  “urrr…people…shops?”

My attempt to alert the visitbrisbane people to the error of their ways didn’t extend beyond a sarcastic tweet bemoaning the apparent shortage of proofreaders in Brisbane and mentioning the site’s URL . I was delighted to receive a tweeted reply thanking me and I replied, in turn, with a slightly more detailed critique.

A week later and they have not corrected a single mistake.

Hopping mad

A lot can change in 4 months. Back in July, Casper was doing passable impressions of a cat. These days, he’s behaving much more like a dog – walking on all fours, carrying things about in his mouth, and occasionally trying to bite the postman.

Meanwhile, the unending quest to elicit a smile from the mouth of my son has led me to attempt increasingly bonkers strategies. The latest method involves me bouncing around like a kangaroo, stopping periodically to look nervously from side to side and making skippy-like noises

Casper clearly thinks this is hilarious. Mind you, he hasn’t been following the news from Australia like I have.

Jazz Dad is back

You’ve probably noticed that it’s been quiet around here for the last few months. The life of a Jazz Dad, it turns out, ain’t all beer and skittles. Which isn’t to say things have been especially arduous (or lacking in beer for that matter) I just went through a busy few weeks of minimal sleep and maximum work responsibility and winded up breaking the blogging habbit.

Well I’m here today to tell you that the Jazz Dad Chronicles will no longer lie discarded on a dusty shelf at the back of the internet. This weekend I’m leaving my lucrative role as customer service team leader to embark on a new career, as a stay at home parent  in Australia’s “New World City” of Brisbane.

To mark this event I will be relaunching the blog, complete with a cliched reference to my new country of residence and a picture of a koala or something like that. No worries!

A little bit like getting a cat

In one of my first entries I recalled the evening when, a few weeks into his life, Deb came to the conclusion that Casper was nothing like a cat.

Well you can understand my delight upon discovering that, now he can drag himself about (using what the paediatricians call a ‘commando crawl’), he will chase objects i dangle in front of him – a bit like a kitten.

Repetitive Soothing Injury

I actually wrote the following post quite a few weeks ago but left it  sitting in my drafts in the hope that the blog-fairy would sprinkle it with magic dust and publish it for me. Clearly that didn’t happen and whilst I’ve deleted every other pathetic attempt from my drafts, I thought this one deserved an airing. Enjoy.

You probably know that babies cry. They cry when they’re hungry, they cry when they need changing and they cry when they’re tired. They also, it transpires, cry for no other reason than because they can. Now I’ve no real problem with this, for I too do a number of things for no better reason than because I can. I ride my bike without holding the handlebars, I jump in the air and click my heels and I use the word ‘cunt’ frequently. All for no good reason whatsoever.

But sometimes, despite my innate appreciation of pointless behaviour, I can just do without the tears and the screams. I’ve discovered that simply throwing (well, placing) the little fella over my shoulder and moving in a rhythmic fashion, frequently has the desired affect. Occasionally I can get away with just rocking from side to side but at other times I must energetically waltz through the flat, singing Cliff FUCKING Richard’s Mistletoe and CUNTING Wine. (It seems that songs in 3/4 are more effective and for some unfathomable reason it’s always the first song in waltz time i can think of when I’m under pressure.)

In addition to the obvious mental strain I’m under (as evidenced by the aforementioned singing of Cliff Richard songs) about a month ago I began experiencing  pains in my left arm and shoulder. For days on end I yelped and moaned like a wounded dog heroically endured the pain until Deb The Wife booked me an appointment with Deb The Physio.

Three trips out to leafy Chingford and several unusual stretching exercises  later, I feel pretty much myself again. I’ve even managed to stop myself from singing Cliff FUCKING Richard.

Time Flies…

…when you’re not doing a great deal.

Oh don’t get me wrong, I’m not neglecting my fatherly duties or anything. My weekends are crammed full of bloody nice family fun and I fit more quality time into my pre-work routine than I would have ever imagined possible.

It’s the rest of the time I struggle with. As the number of people I stalk  follow on Twitter steadily increases, so too does the number of links I follow. The more I read, the less time I have to write and worse, as my reading broadens it dawns on me how little I have to say. It sometimes seems that nearly every thought I’m ever likely to have is not only unoriginal but has been expounded multiple times throughout teh interwebs. 

I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start following fewer Twiterers and see if that makes a difference.

Meh.

Breakfast Disastrophy!

As I opened the cupboard my heart sank. ‘Oh no! There’s no marmalade!’ I whined.

‘Well then why don’t you have Vegemite or cornflakes instead?’ suggested Deb.

I paused for a moment. ‘That’s a bit like you saying “there’s no custard!” and me saying “why don’t you have gravy or a Twix instead?” isn’t it?’

I opted for the cornflakes option. I’ve nothing against Vegemite but it’s no substitute for Tiptree Tawny.

Neglecting My Baby

No not my real baby, stupid.

This one. The one you’re reading at this very moment.

Actually thinking about it, it’s probably not a good idea to start treating  my blog like a baby. It could attract the wrong sort of attention from Social Services. Or, like, hamper my efforts to build a lasting relationship with my flesh and blood child or something or whatever.

Anyway as I was saying, I know I’m doing it and I just wanted to acknowledge the fact and apologise if, for some crazy reason, this has inconvenienced you.

Rest assured, I will be blogging in full effect once i’ve got this gig out of the way. (Promotional assitance, attendance and alcoholic drinks all gleefully accepted)

Community Policing FAIL

As I absent-mindedly picked up the “Safer Queensbridge” pamphlet I found on the coffee table, nothing could prepare me for the stupidity I was about to encounter.

It’s good news for cyclists visiting Broadway Market; cycle theft has been slashed by a simple, yet effective operation by the Queensbridge Safer Neighbourhoods Team.

Sergeant Chris Scott explains: “In the past, cycle thefts have averaged about 30 per month. We have tried other things, but this time we designed a warning card to attach to the handlebars of cycles in our hotspots, such as the market.”

The cards not only warned criminals that the team are patrolling the area, but they also incorporated security advice for the owner. “We needed to let the public know their bikes are at risk, people will then lock up more securely and won’t take any chances.”

Thefts fell to 12 incidents in November 2008, and were down to just two cases by early February 2009.

http://www.teamhackney.org/pj36572_queensbridge_news.pdf

Now I’m not an expert on crime statistics but it’s conceivable that November’s figure is low when compared to the monthly average due to fewer people using bikes, compared to a summer month like August. Surely they shouldn’t be talking up any achievements without also quoting  the figures for November of the previous year? And where are the figures for December and January?

As for the boast that “thefts were down to just two cases by early February” well, where do I start? Hmmmm…Oh look! A photo of Broadway Market in early February:

#FAIL

Watch with Jazz Dad

One of the major benefits of becoming a Dad is that I now have a genuine excuse for watching kids TV. In the past, I would have to take copious amounts of drugs and stay up all night to catch the early morning broadcasts, lest people think me strange. Now, despite not having a TV, Casper and I are able to work our way through the CBeebies’ oeuvre at our leisure on the iPlayer.

The first programme we watched was the Koala Brothers, a British made show about a bunch of anthropomorphic animals living in the Australian outback. Voiced mainly by radio’s Jonathan ‘Jono’ Coleman, this at least promised a  hint of amusement as I encouraged Casper to laugh at how the animals all talk like his mum.

Sadly he didn’t seem to get the joke and after two episodes I tired of the dreary cheerfulness and the Postman Pat-like stop-motion-tedium-plus-pointless-message formula. Not to mention my inner hippy found the prospect of two  dimwitted koalas, constantly flying aimlessly about the outback in their biplane looking for equally dimwitted animals in need of assistance, curiously out of step with the environmentally conscious times we live in.

That said, it redeemed itself slightly by having a theme tune that sounds like Let’s Dance To Joy Division by The Wombats, only much, much better.

Next up was Sesame Tree. Now you might be wondering, as I did, how a little known regional kids TV show can get away with a having a name that’s just two characters (the letters S and T!) short of the most famous children’s TV show  in the world ever without getting sued.

Well the answer is, they can’t. Sesame Tree is in fact a Sesame Street co-produced, Muppet based attempt to get the pre-schoolers of the theoretically post-sectarian Northern Ireland used to the idea of getting on with each other. A noble ambition, but one that’s destined to fail as soon as the kids realise just how dull and lifeless the contemporary material is compared with the archive footage of classic Sesame Street moments and start pining for the 1970s.

By the time I came to press the play button for Timmy Time, my enthusiasm for kids TV had taken a severe kicking and my expectations were set correspondingly low. I knew next to nothing about the programme I was about to watch, except that the main character looked curiously familiar, so I prepared for the worst.

But then the theme tune started and, so taken with the ludicrous joyfulness of the whole thing did I become, that instead of cringing at the thought of a grown man crammed into a vocal booth singing about a “little lamb with a lot to learn”, I started grinning and felt all warm inside. The vast array of bouncing animals, the infectious melody and the life-affirming lyrics seemed designed to restore my faith in the wonder of kids TV. I was smitten.

The premise of Timmy Time is simple. Each episode  follows Timmy (cousin to Aardman Animation’s Shaun the Sheep, hence the similarity) as he and the other little anthropomorphic animals, under the supervision of an adult stork and owl, attend nursery school. As with most Aardman animals, none of the characters speak and so everything is conveyed by gesture, facial expression, clever camera work and sound. Fans of Furry culture will be delighted to learn that Finlay the fox speaks exclusively in ‘yifs’.

As the series progresses we learn that Timmy is a fairly typical little boy. He likes football and hip hop and jigsaws and the colour blue. He doesn’t like being told what to do or being considerate of other people but that’s ok, that’s what he’s at nursery school for, like you didn’t know that already.

The production values are every bit as high as you’d expect from Aardman and the though they’ve clearly got one eye on the merchandising, they manage still to meld entertainment and education seamlessly. Deb and I  enjoy the show so much that we have now abandoned any premise of watching it with Casper and now wait til he’s in bed to catch up on the latest installment. He’s a bit too young for TV anyway.