Or, to put it another way...

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We can't all be victims, can we?

I do get angry. I try not to, but I am weak and I get very, very cross, especially when people disagree with me. It is a terrible failing, perhaps, but it might seem occasionally that it is born out a very real and sincerely held belief that I am right about everything. I promise that - on some level at least -  I do accept that other people are allowed to disagree with me and that they may even be correct to do so. What actually infuriates me is the possibility that they might be unable to concede the same point to me.

Take, for example, his holiness Pope Benedict XVI, who swept into the United Kingdom this week. Infallibility is in his job description, for Darwin's sake, so it's inevitable that he is going to upset people whilst he's lecturing to them about the evils of their atheism/homosexuality/feminism/AIDS prevention methods. To  make matters worse, his (literally) dogmatic approach to these issues has caused his opponents to adopt similarly uncompromising attitude, with 'militant atheist' Richard Dawkins now leading a cadre of hardline extremists. Both sides are now well dug in to increasingly entrenched positions.

The same thing has been happening politically here in the USA for years, of course, but the divisions have widened dramatically since the election of Barack Obama. Without a Republican president, the right has no responsible authority figure to keep it on the leash and so various unpleasant types like Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Glen Beck and the Tea Party movement have seized the opportunity to push their more extreme agenda. Last month Beck led a rally of, possibly, several hundred thousand people at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC - ostensibly to reclaim the civil rights movement for white, right-wing Christians.

What disturbs me most is that all sides, in all these conflicts, see themselves as the victims. The leaders, possibly, are overstating the perceived threat posed by their opponents so as to energise their base, but the effect on their supporters is dramatic. Here Tea Partiers are genuinely afraid that the gays and the Muslims and the socialists are coming for them. Liberals feel swamped, scared that the political system is being run by Big Money and Fox News. Muslim American citizens have to put up with the terrifying antics of half-wits like Terry Jones and his mooted Qu'ran burning, whilst the non-Muslims majority is largely horrified by the thought of a mosque at Ground Zero. In the US, atheism is a dirty word whilst in the UK blasphemy is still a criminal offence in Scotland and Northern Ireland. At the same time, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Pope does genuinely believe that his religion is under siege by the forces of "aggressive secularism".

I can't say how many of these myriad fears are justified, but it can't be true that all sides are simultaneously so greatly threatened. But this is the nature of the debate: polarising and utterly poisonous.

And I'm guilty of it myself - I read the news I want to read, because it reinforces the positions I've already decided to adopt. I forward on opinions and stories, but I only send them to friends that I know will be predisposed to like them too. And if I do get into a conversation with someone who thinks differently to me, I've already closed my brain down to the possibility that I might be persuaded.

But then, the only other option would be to get very, very angry.

St. David's Day

It turns out I am in an abusive relationship – with Texas. Our new home has showered us with friendship, generosity and hospitality and in return we are flaunting our sense of belonging… to Wales: red rugby shirts are being pressed into service for the national day. It’s a little like moving in with a new girlfriend and then throwing a party for your ex-wife’s birthday. Possibly. And as we are actually English, wilfully commemorating another nation’s holiday might seem like the height of churlishness. But to top it all, we wouldn’t dream of doing anything for St David’s Day if we were in Britain, let alone Wales itself. What’s going on?

Britishness is complicated, but more so for the English than for the other nations. The received wisdom would appear to be that, having had a thousand years or more in which to define themselves as being Not English, the Welsh, Scots and Irish contrived individual cultural identities in the 19th century, a period that saw the invention of, amongst other things, the kilt, and druids. The truth is that it is the English – or rather the Anglo Saxons – which defined themselves as being Not Celtic. The Welsh word ‘Cymry’, which those Celts took to describe themselves in post-Roman Britain, has some link to ‘community’ and means ‘fellow countrymen’. They called us ‘Saesneg’: the Saxons. The English word ‘Welsh’ comes from the Saxon description of the same people: ‘walha’, meaning ‘foreigners’ or ‘aliens’. The Welsh called themselves ‘Us’. We called them ‘Them’.

A 1,000 year old grudge match.

For some, these lines of demarcation are set in stone. But for us, personally, things have become a little blurred. Growing up in the ‘80s I had no real idea that I was English. As far as I knew, I was British; we were all British and any internal distinctions were negligible. When the rubgy came on, matches against the other Home Nations were just appetisers for the game that really mattered: playing France. It was only when I found myself suddenly living in Wales that I discovered that I was English – because the Welsh told me I was in no uncertain times. Rugby in Wales is a religion – no other sporting team in the world (apart from, possibly, the cricket teams of India and Pakistan) is so fervently and passionately supported. And the game that really matters to them is the match against England. Being English in Wales in February and March is to run the gauntlet, to live inside a crucible of ardent Welshness. Everyone is set against you – your colleagues, neighbours, random little old ladies: they are Cymry and you are not. Even Nature is on their side as the parks and verges explode with daffodils and the fields fill with leeks and lambs.

God help you if they actually win that game of rugby.

It’s fair to say that the thirteen years I spent in Wales reinforced my sense of English identity. But somewhere in the middle of all this our boys were born. You can argue that there’s not a drop of Welsh blood in either of them, but you can’t deny they have a claim on Welshness. They were obviously born in Wales. William (you can tell we thought he was English at the time) was born in Cardiff, but Christopher was born up Caerphilly Mountain which meant we had to drive to Ystrad Mynach to register him. If that doesn’t make you Welsh I don’t know what does. And of course they arrived at the end of February and the beginning of March respectively, just either side of St David’s Day. Critically – and this is the acid test – they qualify to play for Wales.

Undeniably, they have claim on a Welsh heritage even if we, their parents, do not. Whilst we lived there, it was easy enough for the schools to nurture this on our behalf. But now we are in America, there’s a definite sense that it is our job to ensure that they have access to this Welshness if they so wish. Some of my attempts at this have been laughable – does making them watch Ivor the Engine count? – but William got packed off to school in his jersey this morning, just like all the boys (and some of the girls) in Cardiff. It feels odd that it matters and I worry, in case I am actually doing this for my benefit and not his.

Weirdly, because this is also the time of year for Rodeo, Friday was ‘Dress Western’ day at school, which means that all the boys and girls wore they ‘duds’, i.e. dressed as cowboys. In a sense, this is just the Texan version of St David’s Day, and Rodeo is just the equivalent of rugby. Instead of daffodils, we have blue bonnets, or will in a few weeks. But there’s something missing here. Why does the Reliant Stadium full of Texans not feel more like the Millennium Stadium full of Welsh people? The difference, I think, is that to be English here is nothing more than a passing novelty in a nation of people that nearly all started off as something else. And our role in the creation of America is largely meaningless 200 years later on. Whereas in Wales, to be English is to be the thing that they are not, the very opposite of Cymry and our role in shaping and defining Them from the outside is still at the centre of our relationship with each other, after over a thousand years. Strangely, perhaps, I think this makes Wales an easier place to love but, then, we are back to abusive relationships aren't we?

Happy St David's Day to all our Welsh friends and, er, family. You'll be simultaneously appalled and delighted to know that I was cheering you all on against Scotland and France but not, of course, against England - better luck next year!

Time And (my) Relatives’ Dimensions in Space

A French Decimal Clock. I mean, really...

Ooh, the arbitrary nature of how we measure time. My eldest gives a little shout of triumph whenever he notices that the clock on the microwave happens to agree with that on the oven. This occurs more often than he thinks, as they are only out of synch by about twenty seconds, but this is obviously enough of a disparity to irk him. The poor boy has a sensitivity for such things, since even before we moved to America. One October, a couple of years ago, I tried to explain to him about how we were putting the clocks back. Whatever he thought we were doing, the idea terrified him so much that the colour drained from his face and he almost burst into tears. Time to him then was still something immutable and not to be jiggered about with.

But, boy, have we been jiggering about with it. Living six hours around the world is weird, as I have often remarked. Basically, I miss a lot of the cricket, never hear the Today programme and ‘Sailing By’ is now what Radio 4 plays at a quarter to seven to tell me it’s time to have a drink. We jigger about with time when we go home too, like we did this December for my sister’s wedding. The flight there was nothing more than a fractured nap and being in Britain for a week was mildly unsettling as my body clock drifted, failing to grip hold of GMT. Finally the flight back becomes an interminable afternoon of steady sunlight as the day stretches to make up time.

The source of all this confusion is the discrepancy between how we think we measure time, the tinny numbers and numerals on our wrists and screens, and how we instinctively measure it: the length of shadows, a quality of the light, the slow dance of sun and moon. If these sidereal rhythms weren’t already subordinate to our clocks and calendars, then today’s date would have utterly no significance whatsoever. But as it is, we have invented numbers to count the hours and then subdivided and then subdivided, again and again, into hypothetical fractions of seconds. We have named the days and the months and spent generations arguing about them. Perplexed as to why it doesn’t quite work we have to drop in leap days and seconds, all the while doggedly counting the years forwards from something that borders on mythology.

If this sounds like a grump, then I must earnestly say that it isn’t. I find all this fascinating and am delighted that days like this exist. If nothing else, they should make us see that Time, as we understand it in terms of TV schedules and decades, is another lie that we take for granted. Like the roads, like plumbing and wiring, it is another layer of infrastructure that we have invented. And, like all those things, it is delivered locally: 2010 has been going for about eight hours now in the Pacific and it’ll be nearly breakfast time in Britain by the time both hands point to 12 here in Houston.

And what am I going to do if I hear Big Ben at 6pm this evening? However arbitrary these counts and notches are, we submit to them utterly so that even our moods and emotions are manipulated by these imaginary numbers: a new year offers catharsis, a chance to think in longer terms. My status for today was going to be: “Hey you don’t call me at 6pm to wish me a Happy New Year and I won’t call you at 6am, deal?”. But in truth I will be torn – although arbitrary, these temporal divisions hold water because of mutual consensus and the collected belief of one’s friends and family count for a lot. So whilst you are all bonging and clinking and Auld Lang Syning in the UK, I might well be allowing the kids to experience some actual time travel.

Happy New Year!

It's not often that I can think of a status update these days, let alone three or four. But this morning I am spoilt for choice and so I'm going to mash these odds and ends together and pretend it constitutes enough substance for a Note. A bit like the White Album.

As you may have noticed, Notes have not been forthcoming lately. No? Well, one of you did, and moaned at me about it. To be honest there has been less incident and more normality. We have been settling, occupied by the everyday and (hooray!) not menaced by hurricanes. I may be wrong - the last six months might have been like a '24' marathon - but compared with the shock and awe of Ike and his ilk it has all felt very ordinary. And this is, I'm convinced, a Good Thing.

Of course we have been pole-axed by a Bad Thing this week. As you may have learnt from Laura, one of our kittens - part of our family for only a month - turns out to have an incurable and fatal condition which will run its course in the very near future. Poor little Mabli. In a week of enormous global catastrophes it is important to maintain some perspective, but this vignette of sadness is heart-breaking for us. The gulf between our expectations of a long and happy life for her and the brutal reality is crushing. She, at least, seems comfortable and, of course, is completely unaware. Such a beautiful little cat, even with gummy eyes and omoxycillin all around her chops; it has been a pleasure to look after her, even for this short time.

I've forgotten all the titbits I was going to mention now. It's raining today. The steady, not-to-be-fobbed-off sort of rain that falls and falls and falls until you forget it's there. In a day or two we will all be going about our business as usual, sans umbrellas, hanging out the laundry, none of us noticing that we are all soaking wet and that Downtown is gently eroding, sky scrapers washing away before our very eyes.

The Last Corner Before Home

There is a corner on the way to your home. You might not even be aware of it, but it is the last one before you turn into your street or road and see the lights of your own house. Before you quite reach it you can see the very beginnings of the road where you live curving out of sight but so close now that there is no more need for doubt - you are home at last.

I got that sensation twice yesterday in Cardiff and ended up walking past my house – my old house. Chris calls it ‘the Brown Door’ and has talked of it often whilst we have been abroad. The three of us were walking to the school and it is the way we had always walked so we were in sight of that corner before I could even ask him if he wanted to walk past it or go the other way. He said he wanted to see it and so we walked down our own road. Something made me keep to the far side, but we went slowly. William seemed oblivious but Chris and I lingered, trying to see inside. The hedge was trimmed, I noted grudgingly, but I was surprised to see the same pictures we had left hanging on the wall. The only difference I could see was a spray of foliage or something on the edge of the bay window. I picked Chris up and forced us on.

Later that night, after tea and biscuits with friends from school, I got sent out in to the wintry darkness to fetch the car. Again, my feet were making their own way and before I knew it I was there: the Last Corner Before Home, my hands reaching for my door keys as I turned into our old street. I checked myself. That sense of anticipation is a visceral thing. You feel it in your guts, in your chest. I stuffed my hands in my pockets and carried on, the moon a shining half-biscuit in the night sky, Venus warm and yellow, just above the familiar roof tops. Again I couldn’t do anything other than keep to the far side of the street. Again I went slowly, trying to see as much as I could through the unclosed curtains. There were lamps on this time and, walking the opposite direction from before I realised that the foliage I noticed was a Christmas tree in the corner where the television should have been. It is a comforting thought.

There is one more of these corners - a quarter of the way across the world if you can believe it. Tomorrow we are going to get on a plane and fly back to America. It will be warm and sunny (I hope) and I am looking forward to getting on with life there, becoming more established, growing roots like the ones we have enjoyed and been supported by in Cardiff. I am also hoping fervently that I get that feeling in my chest, in my guts as we reach the corner of ______ and _____. The unmistakable sensation that we are home again.

The Boy Who Came Back

Extraordinary scenes yesterday in Cardiff. On the last leg of our tour of the country we made good on our long-standing promise to W that he would be able to visit is his old school and see all his old friends once more. By the time we were on our way to Wales I had developed misgivings and doubts. I tried to hint that places and people could change and that this could be unsettling. I needn’t have bothered. If anything Cardiff was too familiar and (perhaps unsurprisingly after only 5 months) little seemed different. Either way, W was unconcerned – the reception he got was staggering.

It started in the playground. As we arrived, one half of his year group were outside and they rushed forwards delighted and bewildered shouting his name. ‘Where have you been?’ said one. ‘I haven’t seen you in ages!’ Almost immediately the questions stopped and they fell into an exhilarating game, chasing him around and around. W seemed transfigured, his face shining, his spirit unfettered. He was wearing a suit jacket that we had found in a supermarket (his Doctor Who jacket) and the tails flapped as he ran, looking back, laughing over his shoulder at the chasing pack, the soles of his sneakers flashing white.

The other class was waiting inside and I eventually got him to go in to the Victorian school buildings to find them. They were sat on the rug, about to have a story, when he barged in just ten or fifteen minutes before the end of the school day. The children erupted from the floor and fell upon him like a crashing wave, shouting his name, grabbing him. At the front is one old friend, and they hug each other as the crowd surrounds them, literally mobbing them. Those at the centre even try to hoist him up but after that doesn’t work they calm ever so slightly and make do with just touching him, manic grins on their faces. Those further back are straining forwards and there are strange haunted smiles from those too far away to reach. It’s a little like the end of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. W himself is laughing, eyes wide. The cut of the jacket’s shoulders make him look older and taller, more alien and stranger. They look at him as if he has returned from the dead. Some of the girls are just stroking him, as if trying to convince themselves he is real.

This class has lost several children - both before we left, and since. I remember friends leaving my school at a similar age and it is like a death – sometimes there’s no warning and a child just vanishes. They never return. But W is the Boy Who Came Back. Whatever the nothingness is into which their former classmates have vanished, he has returned. They are amazed, delighted, stupefied.

The teacher temporarily regains control and gets the class to sit back down so they can ask some questions. W leans nonchalantly back against a desk, occasionally ruffling the hair of some friend or other. He is so assured, so unfazed. Such attention would scare me now, let alone when I was 5 – he is merely glad to see them. Always on the verge of laughter, he waves away the forest of raised hands, the babble of competing questions with an easy smile: 'Now, now, one at a time..'

I don’t listen to the questions although I gather that they want to know what he got for Christmas; almost overwhelmed, I turn to C who has been curled up on my hip throughout most of this. He looks shell-shocked. Other teachers appear and begin talking to me, asking questions about Houston but I struggle to answer, as I have done all day: here in Cardiff, our Texas life seems an impossible fantasy, unreal and exotic.

Once the bell goes and they have all pulled on their coats and scarves, the class processes out with W, back into the playground to show him to their parents. In their wake I ask C how he’s doing.

‘Too much,’ he says.