Thursday, August 12, 2010

Famial Frippery

From time to time readers ask for more information about my kids. I try to keep such information at a minimum, lest this descend into some kind of weird soap opera along the lines of As The Stomach Turns or The Edge of Blight. But perhaps I have been too stringent.

It so happens that time will permit a quick update. Sir Harry and MI6 are pleased with some information I forwarded, and it will take some time to digest. Nothing dramatic, but a well-thought out response to the rain and mud catastrophe in Pakistan. I just called in some markers, and was able to fire off data on certain organizations that would ensure that monetary aid would actually get to those who needed it, rather than see it funnelled into ISI pockets, Islamic idiots or the Taliban. (The organizations are not necessarily mutually exclusive). Better to procure tents, blankets and fresh water than AK 47's, IED's or RPG's.

So...the kids.

Well, Victoria, the historian/actress and youngest daughter, has just left for London to present a paper on the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, the gathering that gave credence to the nation state. Her take on this is that another such meeting is desperately needed -- the nation state has become, in her opinion, a dubious entity. (Discuss among yourselves). After that she returns to New York, and some appearances in Law and Order, SVU, a TV show that employs her almost as much as her favourite, True Blood. I am rather partial to True Blood as well, a kind of Coronation Street on crack cocaine.

My eldest daughter, Isolde, is at the Manor at the present moment. She is a concert violinist, and is preparing for an appearance with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. She is doing the Tchaikovsky violin concerto, something she states is "a brute" and hence the preparation time. Isolde I have to watch closely. I know for a fact that Sir Harry sees her as ideal courier material, and being Sir Harry, will persist. I am dead set against this, but, not wishing to kill hope entirely, told Isolde that she could do this when Sir Harry gives her her very own Stradivarius.

Sir Harry didn't speak to me for two weeks.

I am glad to report that my youngest son, Mark, has finally outgrown his disturbing predilection to go down a snowy hill on two sticks. Mark was, at one time, being considered for the Canadian Olympic team until a broken leg put paid to that. (Not that I am against skiers. I once had a fantastic bar crawl with Nancy Green and Picabo Street in Salzburg, and then the guys joined us and -- but never mind.)

However, I knew Mark to be ferociously bright, and if you have a talent, then it should bloody well be used. Now Mark is at CERN and involved with the Large Hadron Collider. His last letter to me indicated that her was excited as hell. He was working on his PH.D and just had his thesis accepted, something involving non-locality and the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen Effect, or EPR as the cognoscenti would have it. More than that, had had had an opportunity to run his preliminary notes by Stephen Hawking when he visited the establishment. Apparently, Hawking had indicated that Mark's approach would fail, but then added that the reason it would fail was fascinating and that he should continue. His point, Mark wrote, was that defining a dead end was immeasurably beneficial to science, for then more promising avenues could be explored. Mark had then blurted out (he always had that habit) "Too bad the same can't be said for politics."

Hawking had then given him a penetrating look, then said softly, "Do let me see your finished paper."

My eldest son, Sebastian, has taken an entirely different route in life. Mark designs and makes clothes, using hemp as his primary material. He has shops in New York, London, Paris and Toronto, and is enormously successful. That may be because he designs clothes that people will actually wear. I myself have three skirts, two jumpers and one "little black (hemp) dress". Most recently, he has had a major coup in New York. He had initially run afoul of the law, in that hemp was viewed as marijuana. That was straightened out with the aid of Mayor Bloomberg, with a little help from myself, and now it turns out that Mark has just won a contract to supply the entire NYPD with hemp-based uniforms, clothing which the officers find far more comfortable and easy to wear than their present ones. What goes around, comes around.

So there we are, and that will be enough of that.

I leave you, however, with a kind of hemp cartoon from the British Magazine Punch sent to me by Mark. Outside a window, you see a gigantic beanstalk with Jack close by. His mother, through the open window, asks, "Well, Jack, are you going to climb it?"

"Hell, no, Ma, I'm going to smoke it!"

Rimshot.

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