Devenish

I realized yesterday that almost exactly a month has passed since my last post on this blog, and wondered how and why the time had gone in...and where? Always under time pressure, I have nevertheless been able to make the time to write at least once a week. 'It's therapy, like, you know...' So this post is long overdue, but it's also time-limited: I've given myself 30 minutes between chores, paid work (teaching prep), and real work (academic writing) to try to catch up before Christmas—as low-key as this festival is in Japan, for families at least. First, because most recent—Last In, First Out— the zarigani (crayfish) on the left. This is the close-to-'last man standing'—there's one other in a different tank, but I think that he'll go first—of the collection of 14 or 15 crayfish that Julian was given by a teacher at Seán's school, and which muggins here has had the job of feeding and cleaning for several weeks now (since the end of September, ...

Either I am a poor excuse for a father, or everyone else is lying to themselves and others about family life. (Or both, of course: I’ve been teaching enough basic logic recently to know that these are not mutually exclusive options, that both propositions can be true simultaneously, even if it is not especially likely in this conversational context.) Assuming the latter—at least for now, to maintain the illusions necessary to keep me from running away come Saturday morning—there are some home truths that could do with an airing. Click to play The first is this: weekends with children are really hard. As much as I love my kids, 48 hours at a stretch…is a stretch. Like Peter Cook in speaking of his intestines—though, in this particular clip the immortal line “I wish my intestines were shorter” is tragically omitted—I sincerely wish the same of my weekends. This desire is likely a reflection in part of my own childhood, when—from the age of 8—I had school six days a week, where my we...

Click to play. This week finds me in an interesting quasi-ethical dilemma, one that must be familiar to any parent of a disabled child, but which is new to me.* The quandary is only quasi-ethical because it does not materially affect our behavior or course or action—we will do the same thing either way—but rather pertains to our hopes for Justin: is it ever right to hope for the worse? Let me explain. On Friday, we will take him to a clinic for his condition to be assessed. If his physical and cognitive development is assessed as falling below a certain threshold relative to typically developing children, he will be entitled to additional state services, therapies and assistance, including a personal carer in his nursery; if he is deemed above the threshold, he will not receive these services. Since every child, however close to normal, must benefit from such assistance—as the Tesco slogan has it "Every little helps"—I have to wonder: what to wish for? (Benign administrati...

Click to play Other demands in the last couple of weeks, including a trip to Vietnam and the attendant preparations, forced me to postpone posting this set of pictures. Even now, I'll have to keep it short as I'm way behind on other chores and work priorities. Nevertheless, it's important to record what a good year it has been for Justin, and how lucky we have been that he is growing and developing so well. (Ayumi took him yesterday to Tsukaguchi hospital for his monthly checkup: developmentally, he scores 80 on a scale where the median typically-developing child is 100, and where the average Down's child score is 60. Given that he is only just one year old, this is really encouraging news.)  He also pulled himself up to a kneeling position beside the coffee table, and is gradually learning to drink using a straw. These may not be monumental achievements, but for us, they are milestones of a sort. Without wishing to tempt fate we should celebrate his good health and ...

It's Justin's birthday tomorrow, and this post will be developed to reflect and celebrate this anniversary, so much better than we could have anticipated just under a year ago when we were first told of his condition. Meantime, for various reasons I have had cause to think of birthdays towards the end of life, as well as the beginning, and of the consolations of age and experience ( The Autumn leaves have got you thinkin', about the first time that you fell... ). Physically, there are precious few of these, perhaps none: there is no upside of the loss of health and vitality. Intellectually and emotionally, things are not much better: growing old sucks, and pandering talk of greater wisdom and broadening perspective is just so much pap to help us keep down the bile of wasted time .

About 40-odd years ago, when I was little older than Sean is now, I took part in my first school play at Campbell, an English adaptation of Max Frisch's ,Biedermann und die Brandstifter' (The Fire Raisers. I was in the chorus, dressed as a fireman, and the shortest by a long way. My parents only identified me under an oversized helmet about half-way through the play, and then started to worry about my height). By coincidence—or perhaps not, it may be a perennial favourite among school drama teachers—it is the current school production running at Canadian Academy on Rokko Island, where we all go on Sundays for Sean and Julian to play football, and where I puff around a 5km running path with some of the other fathers. I was reminded of this last night, when Sean appeared on local tv and in the evening paper (see below), setting fire to stuff inside a public building.

There are many versions of what Mark Twain is supposed to have written concerning the misreporting of his demise, but this [left] appears to be the most authentic "The report of my death was an exaggeration." Less deadpan (!) are the words of the 'corpse' in this clip from Monty Python and the Holy Grail: " I'm not dead yet. " Words of hope. And so it is with Devenish. In spite of the trials and time pressures we experience as a family—like everyone else—we have a duty to look on the bright side and where possible to celebrate what is positive as well as to give time to problems, without being overwhelmed by them.

A time to remember...zonder paraplu. Michel Legrand: click to play .

Click to play. Though Devenish is now closed for business, there are still a few loose ends to tie up. And in compiling the complete music list for the site ("All the music"), I found this German version of Phil Coulter's song by Frank Viehweg, one of the stars of this blog. Enjoy: click to view

Last week, after so many years away, I returned with my family to Devenish island: here are some pictures, more to follow.

Postscript

Part II Having established the logical point that Shakespeare’s characterization of love could be mistaken, even while he ever writ, it is time to tackle the central challenge of demonstrating how and why Shakespeare is wrong about Love in this sonnet. This discussion will only be of value if I can somehow develop a proof, such that it is is more than a matter of subjective opinion, but rather an analytic truth: that is, I will need to show that if my intuitions and analysis are correct, then Shakespeare is wrong by logical necessity.

For anyone who cares, the Love and Death post will be completed next week. Meantime, we should celebrate the end of the rainy season in this part of Japan. Had it lasted one more week I might have lost the will to live (less melodramatically, the will to live on Rokko): after weeks of living in thick swirling cloud, the sunshine has broken through... Thanks too to Kayo and Nathan for a great end-of-rain barbecue!

It really is coming soon. Should have been now, but the distraction of gnat bites, plus the need to find 15 multiple choice questions on Child Language for a makeup midterm tomorrow morning, have combined to delay this effort for one or two more evenings. In the meantime, two trivial notices from a day spent taxiing children around Kobe: Click to play The first is that one insect bite may not be a bad thing—even if it's not John Donne's Flea —since the itch reminds you forcefully that you are human with a real body, and not a brain in a vat. (Or at least that you were human once—it's hard to exclude the possibility that you are now an envatted brain with a recollection of having been bitten. But then I realise that in my memory, I was much younger and fitter than this, and my flesh a good deal more perfect, so this itch must be real, for better or worse). The same principle as a hairshirt, I suppose, without the self-hatred. However, though one bite may be sobering, seve...

No, this isn't it—the last post, that is—but perhaps it should be. After Scott Walker, I thought it would be a while before stumbling across another great singer-songwriter. And then via Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush (duet) , another great talent is unearthed: Roy Harper in a 1978 Rockpalast live recording. There goes the next hour of my potential sleeping time..! ...She really needs to say: "I loved you once a long time ago, you know Where the winds on forgetmenots blow But I couldn't let myself go, not knowing what on earth there was to know. But I wish that I had, 'cause it makes me so sad, that I never had one of your children."

In the spirit of American soaps, this trailer is to announce that the next blog entry will probably be the last, more considered, piece before September. There may be other random picture updates, and family news, but that's about it until the autumn. The summer season is upon us, and I've just realised that I do have to write a new paper for a workshop on polarity emphasis in Ghent at the end of September—see Inishmacsaint—as well as finish the first chapter of the Vietnamese monograph. Not to mention teaching, and exams, and booking a ticket. All before the end of July. So, if after the end of this week, there is no more activity, it's not for want of material, but for lack of time... Up next then: why Shakespeare and Chomsky were wrong, and Elvis (or rather, Shroeder/MacFarland) may just have been right. To get in the mood, click to play .

Yesterday, while walking to my place of work (aka Starbucks in Okamoto) I saw a group of three Down Syndrome children in school uniform with their carers, waiting at the JR station. They were about 12 years old, and they seemed to be quite happy and—as we say in British English—'relatively together.' (It has not occurred to me before what a strange expression this is). It should have been a hopeful scene: instead, tears welled up; I had to turn away. Sometimes, realization does not so much dawn, as poke you in the eye. After nearly eight months, I believed until that moment that I had accepted Justin's condition, and moved on to work through a present and a future quite different from the one we had imagined before his birth. This belief was encouraged by the excellent physical progress he is making—he is only a month or so behind his typically-developing peers—and by his evident happiness and contentment: he really is a wonderful baby, and I love him quite as much as I d...

The reason I haven't followed up on Shakespeare yet—or even done the decent thing in posting family pictures, though here's one (!) to be going on with—is that I've been busy thinking about linguistics, for a change. If you're a linguist, or feeling masochistic please have a look at this , and give me your feedback (if you think it's worth it); if you're not, normal family service will resume shortly.

It was only a matter of time, perhaps, but it took me too long to discover that the English-speaking world has its own Brel: from Tim Hardin...to Scott Walker: click to play . The little clock's stopped ticking now We're swallowed in the stomached rue The only sound to tear the night Comes from the man upstairs

Click to play Do you have a 'Grasshopper Mind?' When I was around 12 years old, there was a recurrent advertisement—Japanese readers, think A/XA Direc t!—placed on the lower right column of the front page of the Daily Telegraph , one that caught my eye whenever I would pass it on the news agent's shelf. (At the time, I had no idea of the conservative politics of this paper, which I later shunned, and now accept as not much worse than the best British print journalism can offer, and a damn sight better than most—God protect us from the Daily Mail : all I knew then was that it was English politics and therefore moderately foreign: for the same reason—my xenophilia started early—I was attracted to the paper, and especially to its advertisements. I also read the Irish Times for good measure, but never the local papers, on either side of the sectarian divide, even though my own father had started his career as a journalist on the Belfast Telegraph , and would, I believe, h...

Click to play (Amazon—No YouTube Available) It's Julian's birthday today. Hard to credit that five years have gone by: a scrap of early middle age for me, an unremarkable quinquennium for the world, a whole lifetime for him. My raison d'être —these three children, each providing their own annual well-spaced milestone (January, June, November), measuring out our lives together. Birthdays mean more than presents and cake*, or the mere passing of time, as Yves Duteil points out in his beautiful song Les dates anniversaires : they connect us those we love, wherever they are, and remind us to look out at the passing countryside... J'ai un profond respect des dates anniversaires Ces portes que le Temps dispose autour de nous Pour ouvrir un instant nos coeurs à ses mystères Et permettre au passé de voyager vers nous. ... Il existe en tous cas dans les anniversaires Une part de magie qui fait surgir d'ailleurs Les visages ou les mots de ceux qui nous sont ch...

Click to play ...Salesman says this vacuum's guaranteed, it Could suck an ancient virus from the sea, It could put the dog out of a job, Could make the traffic stop, so Little thoughts can safely get across... It's the rules, it's the rules Guaranteed or not, it's the rules. Tragically Hip, The Rules (Phantom Power) This piece is a placeholder, and will disappear, I expect, whenever I have time to develop the previous post on life in Japan, and to expand on the second of the two 'little thoughts' I've had today that have nothing to do with reviewing linguistics abstracts, revising a syntax paper and trying to prepare three midterm examinations before next week. (Incidently, if you are a linguist reading this, please have a look at the Inishmacsaint piece, and let me know what you think; if you're not, you probably don't want to go there). It's Poets' Day, effectively the weekend in a couple of hours' time, from the time that ...

Click to play It's been over a week since the last post, and so there is a lot to catch up on. What I want to talk about in this post are cultural variation—those Japanese-English contrasts that have amazed or repelled me recently—in particular, in what is regarded as acceptable driving style and desirable living, and this is what I shall do, presently. But I know that what most people who read this want to hear about are the children—it is a family blog after all (in fact, for those interested in less domestic concerns, there are a few new posts on the Inishmacsaint blog). So, the first news is that the children are all fine. Everything is as dyfunctionally normal and ridiculously noisy, raucous and untidy as a family with three boys—one not yet even crawling—can be: despite the impression of cozy fraternal affection that may be suggested by certain photographs on this blog, Sean and Julian have now moved sibling rivalry and gratuitous bickering up to a level familiar only to...

Early Friday morning (4:50 am): View down through the clouds to Kobe Click to play Rows and flows of angel hair and ice cream castles in the air and feather canyons everywhere, I've looked at clouds that way. But now they only block the sun, they rain and they snow on everyone. So many things I would have done but clouds got in my way. It's been, as they say, a funny old day. Extremely quiet, as Sean is away on a five-day field trip with his elementary school to explore the delights of a typhoon-swept island just to the Southwest of Awaji-shima (which you would just be able to see if this picture was the type that allowed you to squint around to the right). Also, extremely wet, yet again, even in town (and almost certainly for Seán): after the last five weeks, if any Japanese person criticizes British weather in my presence, they can expect less than no sympathy at all, possibly a sharp kick—and it isn't even the so-called 'rainy season' yet. It is ...

Consider these pictures, taken last weekend at Kobe Kachoen (Bird and Flower Park) , our refuge from the miserable Sunday weather. The idea is that you get to interact with birds, and both of the older boys were able to feed and/or hold first owls, then toucans, then other smaller water-fowl. A larger selection of pictures can be found here , but what is most interesting is the following sequence of Julian feeding a toucan (the bird of choice of Guinness drinkers everywhere): Now it may be pure coincidence or a fevered imagination, but the psychologist in me sees a boy subconsciously imitating a bird: down-up-down (all that is missing is the fruit in Julian's mouth!). Parrot-fashion, if you don't mind awful puns. Mirror Neurons , anyone...?

Click to play (Ferré) It is no small irony that we can’t learn lessons from literature at that point in our lives when they might be most useful to us, and through such learning change things to avert future pain. I’m not talking Hamlet here, or Oedipus Rex —most of us do not, could not, live on such planes of extreme experience; rather, the bourgeois tragedies of everyday adolescence: missed chances, hesitant failure, lost love,  the symptoms of obstinate immaturity. It’s not that we can’t relate to it—what twelve year-old cannot understand Holden Caulfield in Catcher in the Rye, or the pre-teen protagonists of Kate DiCamillo’s equally wonderful stories The Tiger Rising and Because of Winn-Dixie (both triumphs of modern children’s literature, especially the latter). But it is one thing to empathise with a character, quite another to realize that the character is you—or at least a significant enough part of you that the shock of recognition almost seems physical.

Click to play On a lighter note, some video from last weekend's trip back to Hanshin Country House (site of the ' No Fear ' post several months ago. Sean was equally Gung-Ho about this experience, which must rank—per second—as the most expensive fairground attraction in Japan: 600 Yen for a circuit of just under a minute. And, though it wasn't particularly dangerous, I might have been happier if there had been some seat belts in the cars...like Justin's, maybe. Health and Safety would have a field day in this country!

Walking home last Monday evening. Click to play If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Lewis Carroll   Feeling damaged today by how accurately this quotation sums up my adult life to this point, and by the related observation that 'winning' is crucially different from merely 'coming first'. The consolation is the following, more whimsical—or should that be mimsical?—pun by the same author: No good fish goes anywhere without a porpoise.   Lewis Carroll Postscript: the soundtrack for this piece was to have been Underlying Depression, but life is much more nuanced than that, and we all need some more hope...

I'm coming to regret that I mentioned summer in the last post—the phrase "don't count your chickens..." comes forcefully to mind—for today (and yesterday, and tomorrow, they say) has been absolutely vile in many parts of Japan, certainly here in Kobe. Until this morning, walking up the hill to Kobe College, I hadn't realized that it was possible to get wet in two directions at once, the drenching rain meeting the soaking sweat halfway. This punishment continued pretty much unabated all day, the only consolation being the view from our bedroom window during a brief lull about an hour ago: looking down from above the cloud is miles (well, several hundred yards) better than sitting inside it. I hope that climatic conditions are more radiant and cheerful in Carnalea, Co, Down for my sister's birthday. Happy Birthday, Aislinn! I hope too that this post will serve in lieu of a card, and—in place of a present—find below a poor translation of a beautiful Dutch song b...

At Shiawase no mura (Happy Village) Wenn der Sommer nicht mehr weit ist,  Und der Himmel violett, Weiß ich, das das meine Zeit ist, Weil die Welt dann wieder breit ist, Satt, und ungeheuer fett... Click to play Being the sometimes exhausted parent of three children hardly leaves the energy to appreciate, much less realize, the potential of this great song by Konstantin Wecker, yet nearly thirty summers after I first heard it, it continues to move and inspire me as much as any other in his repertoire. And, as the weather on Rokko mountain oscillates from dense cloud to clear blue—this evening at 5pm, it was 23 degrees on the hill (28 on Rokko island earlier in the day), while yesterday evening after a beautiful day, you couldn't see more than 10 metres—it's clear that summer is on its way, and we mustn't hesitate. After a somewhat grim start to the week, reflected in the last post , I'm pleased to report that things have improved considerably in our small ...

I have an uneasy feeling that this post will have the flavour of a homily, which Google dictionary variously defines as: '1. A religious discourse that is intended primarily for spiritual edification rather than doctrinal instruction; a sermon; 2. A tedious moralizing discourse'. Perhaps it's that time of the week, more likely, the particular circumstances of my day: whatever the reason, I need to explore some more difficult subjects, if only— very selfishly —as a means of putting my own troubles in perspective; so, if this comes across as a sermon, too bad. Also, to the three, or five, or seventeen even, who may read this, you are scarcely a captive audience, you can (do) leave at any time...

Yesterday's view down the hill As I write this piece, with the wind tearing strips off the trees around the house, a terrific shaking and howling on the balcony outside, visibility down to the other side of the glass, and the realization that all of the children's books that were sitting on the window-sill are now just that bit softer and wrinklier than they were yesterday, I know that Spring is over as suddenly as she came —at least on Rokko mountain—and has been superceded by a prolonged storm with son et lumière atmospherics of the kind that would not be out of place in a Kirk Douglas disaster movie. The sakura scenes of the last post belong to another country, entirely.

Sakura at Kobe College I have been thinking a lot about love, recently. Not deliberately, nor intentionally, and certainly not to great effect. Instead, the thoughts extrude, cropping up unsolicited in more reasoned reflection, like Spring crocuses, or dandelions perhaps. It may be the season, which is not the cruellest month this year, but a welcome relief from so much snow on the mountain, and the huddling around the kotatsu in the mornings. Or it could be the discussion I heard on last week’s Start the Week , in which Andrew Marr’s interviewee was the author of a new book on the subject of other than romantic or erotic love—on varieties of agape . Or it might have been Julian asking me last week whether I loved him more than his older brother (How have I failed as a parent so far that he harbours such insecurity?). Most probably, these are all related phenomena, the warm breezes and chatter of the end of winter. I can’t express the sentiment better than Tom Waits, you should jus...