Labour: just like building your dream house

One of my favourite British TV shows, which I missed the most when we were in the US, is Grand Designs. (Gratifyingly it has become one of TLOML's favourites too.) Grand Designs follows interesting home builds - unusual restorations, eco-friendly new builds, and so on.

A Grand Design house (image pilfered from Channel 4)

Most weeks the people building their dream home liken it to labour. As in 'this house is our baby and building it is like giving birth.'

I have a new perspective on any use of birth as a metaphor. I now know that nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, is anything like giving birth. Giving birth alone is like giving birth, and it is like nothing else.

Having said that, I noted a couple of interesting parallels with the dream-home building process.

1. Naive optimism
The happy fools who are turning their grand designs into a home are always unrealistically optimistic. Kevin McCloud, the presenter, scoffs at their budget estimates and their idea of a reasonable timeframe. He is always right: in a dozen series I've never seen a home built on budget, or on time.

And yet the owners always think the impossible can be done, no contingency will be required, and the build will be weatherproof before winter. Just like I thought, when we arrived at the birth centre at 4pm, that I was very far along and would doubtless be delivering Lady P in an hour or so. (She arrived 8 hurt-y hours later) The same kind of naive optimism that lead me to ask the midwife, after a couple of pushes, 'do you think she'll be born on the next push?' (In the event I had about an hour of pushing ahead of me.)

2. Foolish pride
Often the owners decide to despatch with specialist support from professionals like project managers, quantity surveyors and even architects. And even when the windows arrive on site completely the wrong size, or the entire building team quits en masse, and Kevin McCloud raises his eyebrows and says 'Are you sure you can manage this build without help?' the foolhardy owners are too proud to admit defeat and hire in the experts.

Similarly, even when it became apparent that I had many hours of labour ahead of me, and the pain was hugely more than I had anticipated (for who could anticipate such pain?!), I bit my lip, banished thoughts of an epidural, and said to TLOML 'this pain is totally manageable'. Pure pride.

For what it's worth, I'm glad my optimism and pride won the day. Lady P was so alert, and calm, swimming up to meet us, and I felt pretty much 100% within a day or two of giving birth. So taking the natural (optimistic, prideful) path paid out for me. Still, if I'd know beforehand quite how much it would hurt and for how long, I wouldn't have been quite so bullish.

I'm like those chumps at the end of the Grand Designs episode, sitting in their dream home, laughing at the fact they went £100k over budget and they nearly had a nervous breakdown in the process, saying 'If I did it over again, I would do it just the same.'

They usually go on to add 'I'm not sure that I would do it again though.' That's where we differ... two weeks in and we're already confident we'll be doing this whole birth and newborn thing again some day. Only next time, I'll know how much pain to expect.

Transatlantic Television

This weekend Americans will consume 1.2 billion chicken wings.

No, that's not what they normally consume as a nation. It's at least 3 times the number of wings eaten on a normal weekend.

It's the Super Bowl: second biggest day of food consumption in the US after Thanksgiving. On Super Bowl Sunday Americans all over the land get together in large groups, to eat wings and dogs and chips, and watch the two league-winning football teams play for the title of Super Bowl champions. It's kind of a big deal. To the point where streets are quiet, because everyone is indoors watching. Even people who don't really care about football. (I know, because I was one).

Indeed, 'tis the season of outstanding televised events, of the sort that America does so very well.  I'm talking about the Super Bowl, the Oscars and the Globes, and I'd even throw in the Inauguration Ceremony too. All of these events are staged on a grand scale, fully star studded.

The Super Bowl on telly

By contrast, we have... what? The FA Cup Final? Easily 50% of the people I know don't watch that, or even really notice it's happening. And they don't have Beyonce singing at half time. The Baftas, similarly, is rather small scale and somewhat lower on glamour than the Oscars.

The best British TV event I can think of was the Royal Wedding. But we may have to wait another 30 years for such pageantry. And the Jubilee was just an afternoon of sheer misery, watching jaded TV presenters interviewing sodden jingoistic lunatics going on about how brilliant the Queen is. Lame.

The Diamond Jubilee on telly (image from BBC)

But that's all right. We do brilliantly at many other things. Like insightful radio shows, quality TV news, and good documentaries. And thanks to the joys of cable TV and the internet (and a rather useful proxy service that allows us to pretend we're in the US when we need to), we can have the best of both worlds. I pepper my diet of The Archers and BBC News 24 with E! red carpet coverage. And TLOML can enjoy the Super Bowl.

The only downside is that our wings won't be the real thing, and we won't be surrounded by cheering Americans. But since I got used to listening to Radio 4 on a sunny deck in Malibu, I'm sure TLOML can cope with watching the Superbowl in rainy old London.

A winning spirit

Last week I did a bit of work for Big Corp, assessing people for their geek qualities. It was like that time I went to Brazil and assessed geeks. Only this time I didn't go anywhere and the people I was interviewing were rather paler than their Brazilian peers.

I really enjoyed doing the assessments. What I liked about it was how nice they all were, even when they were told they didn't make the grade. Without exception they were smiley and pleasant, and took constructive criticism in a really positive way. Eager to learn and to improve, they agreed to work with their colleagues - some of whom had done better than them in the assessment - to fill the gaps I identified in their knowledge.

It was the exact opposite of the strops you sometimes see people throw on reality TV shows. Like that nutty Pink impersonator who went ballistic when she didn't make the cut on X-Factor.

The geeks I assessed were more like those lovely people on The Great British Bake Off, which seems to me to be the least competitive reality TV show ever made. (For those outside the UK: I'd explain the show but I think the name says it all). I love the way the baking rivals help each other out: one of them will scurry over to help another pick up the cakes she dropped on the way out of the oven, they shout encouragement to each other, and pass on tips. And they're humble, even self-deprecating, when the judges give them feedback.

TLOML laughs when we watch it: 'It's so British,' he says, 'They're so polite to each other.' When a Great British Bake Off contestant helps another rescue a dropped sponge, he says on an American competitive cooking show their competitor would be cackling with delight. When Great British Bake Off contestant says of their planned recipe, 'I hope it works, I'm a bit nervous', he reckons the American counterpart would say 'This is going to be awesome, it'll blow you guys away'.

I think he may be being a bit harsh on his compatriots. But there is something very sweetly, Britishly understated about this show. Maybe that's why it's been so phenomenally successful. It's a nice gentle ride of a show, basically.

I can see Bake Off TV taking off elsewhere, as so many British TV shows have done. But they'd need to inject a killer 'winning spirit' streak and a tonne of drama to the contestants first.

The Great 'No Cable' Experiment

As our time in Manhattan draws to a close, so too does the great 'no cable TV' experiment.

After our noses had stopped bleeding at the thought of our rent, we decided to save a few dollars each month and embrace the digital revolution. With the advent of live streaming services like Netflix and Hulu we could cut the chains that had bound us to Verizon for too long! What was the point of spending $100 a month on umpteen cable channels, when we really only watch about 3 of them?  And as New Yorkers apparently never stay in anyway, we'd probably rarely switch the telly on.

And so the experiment began. We signed up for a Hulu Plus account, and between that and Netflix we were spending about $15 per month on subscriptions. We made a small investment in an Apple TV, and an even smaller one in a 'bunny ears' TV aerial for the free stuff. Then we sat back and rubbed our hands together in smug self-congratulation.

Sadly the 'aren't we clever' bubble was soon burst. It turns out we watch quite a lot of TV. Most nights we will, at some point, curl up on the sofa and look for something amusing and reasonably current (30 Rock, Parks and Rec) or at least classic (Seinfeld). Annoyingly, Hulu Plus is usually a couple of weeks behind the series it does have, and sometimes whole shows disappear altogether. It also has an increasing number of ads, and unlike our old DVR service on Verizon, we can't fast forward through them. The Netflix selection is pretty woeful too.

Fortunately for our wallets and sanity, TLOML got me hooked on Battle Star Galactica. We watch a couple of episodes a week which is great. Otherwise we'd have to spend our nights in playing Gin Rummy (and I'm tired of losing) or watching old period dramas (I liked North and South fine the first time around, but once was enough).

There's a reason people pay for cable. Life with HBO is better.

I'm looking forward to getting home and signing up for a nice juicy Sky/ Virgin subscription so I can watch Test Match cricket and TLOML can still enjoy all the action from the NFL. In fact the best TV in the UK is free - BBC News 24, Grand Designs, One Born Every Minute. Ooof! I'm getting all misty-eyed just thinking about it. And I am reliably informed that Man Vs Food is now showing on an obscure Freeview channel too.

Yes, moving back to the UK will truly usher in a new age of cultural enrichment in our lives. And a lot more staying in....

Living with Martha

I returned home this week to find a shiny new copy of Martha Stewart Living, nestled in amongst the stack of Car & Driver and TIME magazines on our coffee table.

'Why are we still getting this?' I ask TLOML.
'Uh, maybe because you are still ordering it?' says he.
'I'm really so not. You are. You're obsessed with Martha Stewart.'

This has been a regular exchange ever since the Marthas started arriving to our Malibu place about six months ago. I know TLOML suspects me of subscribing. I did no such thing. I have enough on my plate pretending to read the Economist. I can't quite believe he would subscribe, but then again, he does like to eat well. So maybe he's behind it and just too embarrassed to admit it.

There's actually nothing to be ashamed of. It's a brilliant magazine. I enjoy shaking my head in wonder at the bit where Martha writes about her house and garden, for example, the challenge of finding the right sort of tree to plant on her personal 2 mile long avenue. And there are always a couple of shoots of incredibly attractive and functional families eating incredible meals in incredible settings (I mean literally, they are barely credible).

Then as a sop to the lonely lady reader who's, by now, salivating with bitter envy, they throw in a few affordable, Blue Peter-esque craft projects. Here's one of Martha's for making useful boxes out of, um, boxes.

And for the Americans who missed out, here's a classic Blue Peter craft project, just for context...

The first Martha arrived at Hallowe'en and sent me into a frenzy when I realized we had absolutely no plans to decorate the beach pad with neatly arranged pumpkins, or to bake tiny little sweets made to look like eyeballs for the local children. Shame on me! In the end we watched Paranormal Activity eating chips'n'salsa, which was not very Martha of us at all. (At least the sweets would have been wasted since we live on the road of death so no children came a'callin'.)

November came and went with a noticeable failure to bake any hams. At Christmas I developed elaborate plans to create a proper gingerbread house. I had a little technical drawing and even a paper mock-up of the house. I bought many tubes of coloured icing. The house was never built. Instead I baked gingerbread cookies in the shape of snowmen and TLOML and I drew their rude bits on in red icing. Again, not very Martha.

So if that was the best I could do living in a lovely flat with a good big kitchen... I fear Martha will not get much a look in in Rabbit Hutch Towers.

Naturally none of this history prevented me from reading the new one. A highlight was a piece in which Kevin Sharkey shared his 'no cook' party secrets. Any magazine that can make a 2 page feature out of 'put the doritos in a bowl' deserves some kudos. At last, a Martha edict I can obey! Or so I thought..

Sadly, with the phrase '...serve these goodies with napkins; mine are cocktail-size squares of linen with my monogram' Kevin lost me forever.

I must ask TLOML to cancel that subscription he denies taking out...

This is the news!

As I leave London I take a moment to consider the things I'll miss when I get back to New York (if I get the chance to miss anything between the amazing eating, drinking, shopping and cultural consumption NY offers...).

Always high on the list is the BBC. I love the BBC. Especially the news. It has gone a bit 'let's ask the man in the street' in recent years, but it's still pretty solid. As long as they have a Dimbleby kicking around and Jeremy Paxman doing the serious late show, I know I'm in good hands.

Here is Paxman savaging Michael Howard back in the day. Skip to minute 4 which is when Paxo gets all 'dog with a bone' on him.

...which leads me neatly to this brilliant spoof, of a Day Today anchor (the genius Chris Morris) being all terrifyingly Paxman-esque.

(For American readers, Peter Hanra-O'Hanrahan is loosely based on a well known BBC news reporter called Brian Hanrahan. Just because it's a silly name I think).

I never ever watch the news in the US. This is partly because they don't show nearly enough news about British by-elections, school dinner policies, and BA strikes. But also because the delivery of the news in in the US just a bit hyper. It rattles me.

Which is a nice excuse for me to post this final clip: another The Day Today spoof, this time of American news.

Side effects may include dry mouth, nausea and seizures...

....but what price 'feeling like myself again'?

In the US, if you sit and watch TV for an hour, you'll probably see at least three ads for prescription drugs. They usually start by suggesting you're terribly ill with some rather broad symptoms. For example, 'Feeling anxious and tense?' (Well yes, I think, I'm waiting for the judging on America's Next Top Model, of course I'm anxious!). Or 'Is tiredness holding you back?' (Indeed, that's the reason I've been lying on the sofa eating chips and salsa for the last hour... it isn't laziness at all...).

The ads baffle me for two reasons:
1. 'Ask your Doctor if it's right for you'. I can't imagine going to my slightly abrupt, average-of-12-minutes-per-consultation GP, and asking for a drug I like the look of. The NHS aren't really into self-diagnosis, and because you're not paying the Doctor for their services, they don't have to be polite about it either.

2. The side effects. I mean does anyone really see an ad for something which 'may cause bleeding, heart attacks or death' and think 'Oooh, I want some of that'?

For the benefits of my British readers, here are some examples pulled from YouTube.

Here's an ad about a drug which causes dry mouth, nausea and seizures but left this nice lady 'feeling like myself again'. Presumably she was a thirsty, fitting puker in her former life.

This ad turns the usual formula (sell hard, then warn of sideeffects) on its head. Instead it goes into lots of detail on side-effects, and then sells the drug - 'celebrex has never been taken off the market!' it trumpets. Seriously, that's the selling point.

We're going with Hulu Plus and Apple TV all the way in Rabbit Hutch Towers, so all those moving suggestions of illness and cures are a diversion I now miss. I feel better already!