Quotidian

Doomed.

We are coming out of the dark.

A gazillion snowdrops are bursting forth from ancient soil, and promptly getting mashed to bits by trainers. The ducks and the humans are looking friskier.

Still cold afternoons remind me of that Tennyson verse:

          Twilight and evening bell,
          And after that the dark!
          And may there be no sadness or farewell,
          When I embark.

February is a pretty useless month, except for eating pancakes and catching up on movies missed in the parenting line of duty. 

I recently turned on 'Life in a Day', the world's first crowd-sourced movie, which is freely available on YouTube. I approached this movie gingerly, because I feared it would be 90 long minutes of people looking really smug while skydiving.

Back in 2010 when there was a call for footage, I considered sending something in. But I didn't on the assumption that Ridley Scott and Kevin Macdonald wouldn't appreciate clips of kids being whimsical and failing to blow out candles in spite of repeated instruction. In hindsight, I couldn't have been more wrong on this point. 

It turns out that 'Life in a Day' is awesome and totally unpretentious - one of the most uplifting films I've seen. And regular readers (hello Mom!) will know that my tendencies towards cynicism and cake enthusiasm prevent me from getting uplifted easily.

Like it says on the tin, the film is about all the quotidian wonder and pedestrian joy contained in one earthling day. 

One of my favourite clips in the film involves a guy who is travelling around the world by bicycle. He weathers many disasters, like being repeatedly knocked over by truckers. But he always gets back in the saddle, sometimes after a few days in hospital.

The path less truckered by. 

How I would love to embark on a similarly crazy journey. Occasional trucker maulage seems such a small price to pay for pure freedom, unfettered by stuff.

So should dispatches from the land of mañana ever stop, you will know that I have given up silly material trappings like a coffee press and clean socks, and donned my bicycle wings. 

Wave to me from the open road, unless you are a trucker, in which case keep those hands at ten and two.  

May there be no sadness or farewell when I embark.

Let an umbrella be your smile

An asset, not a monkey for your back. 

Chaos HQ marched around with umbrellas last Sunday* to kick off Refugee Week, a collaborative effort to highlight the positive contributions of asylum-seekers to Britain.

We brolly-paraded for two reasons. Firstly out of a moral conviction best captured by Pete Postlethwaite in Brassed Off: 'If this lot were seals or whales you'd be up in arms but they're not are they? They're just ordinary, honest human beings and not one of them with an ounce of bloody hope left.'

Secondly, we suspected it might rain. It did.

I recently met a nice lady at the park who reminded me of Britain's historical commitment to sanctuary. We small-talked about children, crap weather and other bog standard things. Then she quietly told me that she was born in Prague and came to Britain at the age of seven via the Kindertransport rescue mission. This humanitarian movement saved thousands of continental Jewish children by resettling them in Britain just before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Bridge over troubled water. 

No matter how much I read about such things, to actually meet someone who was part of it was a very moving experience. She wishes, she said, that she could have seen her parents through adult eyes.

The man who kicked off our umbrella march along the Thames captured the mood perfectly when he said: 'We are proud to be British. We are proud to protect refugees. We are proud to be refugees.'

I was reminded of the words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Gogol Bordello: 'Remember, remember always, that all of us, and you and I especially, are descended from immigrants.'

One nation, united under a rain-cloud. 

Right now you can find posters up in the underground that helpfully point out that many British cultural staples - fish and chips, M&S, the Mini, the Milibands (delete as appropriate depending on your political and lifestyle leanings) - come from immigrant stock.

A very useful reminder to counter the constant printed downpour of negativity on the subject of immigration.

The kingdom belongs to such as these. 

So be proud this week and every week to support refugees - as British a thing as understated tea and royal bunting.**

Show your support even if you're little - like my pair of short migrants, who slept through the event in spite of a very boisterous drum core. And be welcoming even if your fellow humans are a little different from you.

Consider it theoretical karma in case you ever have to rely on the kindness of strangers.

We are all foreigners, somewhere.

*You can find great photo coverage of the event here.
**Actually, what on earth is bunting?

Mama culpa

Dear Mom,

I'm sorry. Years late, I know. Perhaps it will bring you comfort to know that your granddaughters are currently locked in a vicious intergalactic war with no exit strategy. I'll explain.

As Ana sees it, her little sister is Zuul, destroyer of worlds, habitat-thief and crowing monster. She is like the evil penguin in The Wrong Trousers, the one who takes all of Gromit's stuff and then convinces the Wallace - allegedly the responsible household adult - to behave like a complete tit and a bit of a criminal.

From Ali's perspective, Ana (who is actually just a giant hairball in need of vigorous hair-pulling) should adopt a more relaxed attitude. Ana's toys need a lot of breaking, because they are more fun broken, especially balloons. And if you rip the pages out of books, you get to make up your own story, right? Crowing to high heaven helps to drive this point home.

THIS IS SPARTA!!!

Their perspectives are clinically insane and totally irreconcilable. There is simply no way to communicate to them in Babish, their native tongue, that 'favourite' is a pretty dumb word to include in the same paragraph as 'I love you both more than the cosmos and would gladly go under a bus for you tomorrow - yes both of you - if only you would just stop squabbling about who gets to push me under.'

You see, all I really want is a little quiet. And to sit down. And for the bickering to go out with the tide, or on the breeze, or with the rubbish - I'm not picky about how it leaves. I suspect you know this feeling well.

Mom, I am guessing that you had a pretty relaxing life before my sister and I landed from Mars. Maybe you didn't enjoy separating claws from scalps on a daily basis for a decade and a half. Maybe the necessity to always have TWO OF EVERYTHING ALL OF THE TIME because we were too primitive to share ANYTHING drove you completely batty and left you with little option but to ABuse the CApslock FunCTION. Maybe as you went to bed each night, just the thought of waking up in the morning made you feel profoundly beat, because you knew we'd be up by 6 and locked back into our demented prizeless tussle by 6:15.

Keep your friends close and your frenemies closer. 

It's a sick cosmic joke really: kids do the most damage to their captors in the early years before they are even capable of forming memories. It's a watertight defense - better than insanity and innocence put together. Which is why prior to having kids I never even realized that I owed you such a huge apology for all the million awful things I surely did to you in my pre-school years that I can't even remember.

Mom, I wish I could return to you the years of lost sleep and peace. However, rest assured that your revenge is currently being enacted by two very talented horsetoddlers of the apocolypse. Their dedication to the job is admirable, and you'd be proud to know that they have both been nominated for a Nihilist of the Year Award - they are currently trying to out-campaign each other, Miliband-style. They are clearly worth every fruit shoot you (or Zuul) paid them, and more.

'Would I fire my sister? No, but I'd sell her for ice cream in a Night Garden minute.'

Take solice in this: your years of exhaustion paved the way for a great life-long friendship - seriously - Tanta is my best friend. She is not even paying me to say that, although she will certainly dash off and pen something even nicer about me, and then we'll be stuck in a bitter flying compliments war that could last for weeks - who knows, maybe years. But seriously, I haven't clawed her scalp in over a decade and I don't know what I'd do without a friend like her. Or you.

With much love and thanks on this and every Mothers' Day.

Mama

*Not that I know what the word means. Seriously, is it Greek?

Directive's cut

Ana is enchanted with WALL-E. She lives on a spaceship with EVE (a renamed snowman toy), boot and plant. Together, they are determined to carry out DIRECTIVE. Upon a mountain of very cute past contenders, it is in fact the very cutest thing she has ever done.

Coming down to the ground.

I am a WALL-ite too, having now watched the flick with her eleventy-hundred times. When I see WALL-E and EVE dance in space, propelled by a fire extinguisher, music and their own laughter, it strikes me as the most wonderful and romantic piece of cinema on record. And the film even features pizza plants - who doesn't want one of those?

Nothing compares to Ana's beloved robot, but these four come next in my mind:

1. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (1983). For the Anglo-American dinner party sketch (with no balls), featuring the Grim Reaper and fatal salmon mousse. 
2. Lilo and Stitch (2002). Because I essentially live with both a Lilo and a Stitch, which serves as a daily reminder that ohana means family, and family means no one gets left behind (or forgotten). 
3. The Fifth Element (1997). Luc Besson, Mila Jovavich, a bunch of aliens and Bruce Willis. What's not to love? 
4. The Milagro Beanfield War (1988). About a magical lost corner of the world, featuring a pig called Lupita, and the notion that nobody would do nothing if they knew what they were in for.  

Clearly, with two kids movies in the list, I need to get out to the cinema more. Thanks to Kate Takes 5 (of television fame - congratulations) for another great listography idea.