Onderweg (Lost in Vertaling)

So, we’re all back in Japan now. (The linguistically minded will notice this is signalled by the comma after so, (,) my nod at an unfortunate habit of many Japanese writer of English [sic]). And I’ve survived two long-distance flights as sole guardian of three children (two under 5). I’m expected to say “survived”, because travelling long distances with small children is generally assumed to be a form of self-inflicted middle-class purgatory—or limbo perhaps, given the altitudes involved. In point of fact it was extremely easy and relatively painless, at least once we had managed to get […the eight pieces of luggage and sleeping baby from the rooftop parking (for car rental returns), through the drenching rain via a long line at Emirates check-in desk, through security with its infant-formula tasting sessions, past the near interminable maze of duty free, champagne bars, and supercar lottery concessions… ] to the departure gate. All without the benefit of hand-luggage trolleys or baby buggies. That British airports refuse to provide these conveniences, and also feel they have to charge a £1 deposit for larger carts that don’t run smoothly and anyroad can’t be found when you really need them, when airports in other countries provide these in good order for free, is one more strike against them; a plague on all their terminals! As I said though, the journey itself was fine, a good deal more pleasurable than a family trip to IKEA or Meadowhell on a rainy Saturday (if you’re not from South Yorkshire, pick your own hideous shopping mall). The older children were great, variously asleep or engrossed in the ICE entertainment system with 140 movies plus video games and internet, with only minor bickering, and Justin was his usual brilliant self, cheerfully clugging and cawing—his version of cooing—when not feeding contentedly, looking around or dozing. All in all, as good as it could be. We only started to pay for this good behaviour on arrival, with children bouncing off the walls from 1-3am, jetlagged, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as the saying has it (though where this saying comes from is a mystery, and apparently to Answers.com too—cats indeed!).


No, the problem of long-distance flying with children is not the children, but the immense amount of time it affords for: (i) reflection on how you managed to end up here at this time of life, ferrying three small children into a country from which several nations have only recently been organizing evacuation flights; (ii) reminiscence on past flights (which in turn makes recursive calls on memories of other journeys in more care-free decades); and regret about all the bad judgment calls in the meantime. These three Rs are no doubt induced—or at least exacerbated—by low lighting, reduced oxygen levels, and several glasses of the poor quality Sauvignon Blanc that was used to chase away the more dreadful Budweiser (“Sorry, our Asahi is not yet chilled, will this do?”) and they are so much harder to elude on a nine-hour flight than on the ground, when the mundane requirements of daily life—crossing the road safely, passing the time of day, shopping, work even (!)—helpfully impinge, offering distraction from more existential concerns. But on a plane with kids, there is just nowhere to hide from the echoes of roads not taken. Without children, that extra after-dinner liqueur that would offer a few hours of pleasantly blank, dreamless stupour, but with responsibility for feeding bottles and nappies/diapers, temporary oblivion is hardly a wise option. Instead, you sit on the night watch, and listen to nostalgic music selections and comedy sketches that you had forgotten about years ago. And this is where the real damage starts…*

Click to play Brahms’ Third Symphony and Woody Allen’s Moose Sketch, just two of the several pieces that neatly pulled off the knotted scabs on my emotional memory—melted a burning hole in the containment vessel, if you will—and left me wondering where all the time had gone…

The title of this piece, Onderweg, is significant. It means en route—curious that there isn’t a native expression. Wikipedia informs me—which I didn’t know—that it serves as the Dutch translation for Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. But it’s also the title of an  addictive pop number from 2000 by the Breda-born singer Abel, a song about reminiscence and lost time (Het is al lang verleden tijd...), whose video features an exceptionally beautiful woman in the grey morning and evening of a Randstad commute. The song would be a brilliant example of its genre were it not for the singer-songwriter’s uncanny resemblance—physiognomically and auditorily—to a bleating goat. One can’t have everything…

and then there's this wonderful parody: click to play.

Finally, it should be noticed that I have got through this whole piece with only passing mention of the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown in the North. This negligence, like the initial comma, most accurately relects the awful normality of life here in Kansai. If a sizeable chunk of the Northern Irish coastline, from Cushendun to Derry, say, had been swept into the sea, killing several hundred people and leaving thousands homeless, I'd like to believe that people in Belfast would still be mobilized in a series of personal relief efforts, and would talk of nothing else. Life would not go on as before. The fact that life in Kobe is exactly as I left it a month ago is as comforting as it is chilling: this is not stoicism, as Western journalists and politicos would have it; it is insouciance, bordering on callous indifference.

Ceci n'est pas un désastre

*The damage is best summed up in an Yves Duteil song Et puis voilà que tu reviens from the album L'écritoire. There's no Youtube version, unfortunately, but it's worth the 89 pence purchase price.