The male line

Dot writes:

these pictures were taken on Sunday.

The direct male line of the Jorgensens - three firstborn sons:

Hugh’s first go on a swing. He approached it seriously and without frivolity.

Recent Hugh Photos

Ken writes (with additions by Dot):

Here are some recent photos of Hugh.

This one was taken in the room we stayed in while Dot went to the Leeds conference.

In the bath. Isn’t he beautiful?

On the deck of the ferry to Wales for Dot’s Leeds conference.

Here Hugh is playing on the living-room floor in our new flat.

Foolish Ken

Ken writes: I thought I’d give myself a DIY haircut this morning. It’s not difficult and it saves money. I’ve done it several times already. I have a pair of clippers and affix a no. 8 (one inch) attachment to it and buzz buzz buzz. Nothing simpler.

But it shouldn’t be attempted when you’re still feeling sleepy. That is what I learned this morning. I buzzed a big chunk off before I realised I hadn’t fixed the no. 8 attachment on and, well there was no going back.

The result.

I guess I could pretend that:
a) I lost a bet…
b) I’m protesting China’s use of the veto on sanctions against the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe…
c) I’m trying to hide my premature baldness…

but I know there’s no concealing the fact that

I am a numpty!

Happy birthday

Dot writes: it’s my birthday today. Last year my thirtieth birthday was comically, masochistically awful. It was a Friday. I went into work. On the way from the station to my office I got utterly soaked in exceptionally heavy rain and I then spent the morning drying off, with my sodden shoes propped against the heater and my sopping skirt spread over the arms of my office chair. I spoke to no-one all day apart from one of the secretaries (and of course my beloved Ken, in the evening, but let’s not spoil the impression of gloom and misery). I allowed myself to leave early (about four) and went and bought my first pair of maternity jeans. The maternity jeans were rather cheap and always prone to fall down.

This year, the weather is beautiful - blue skies and only a smattering of grey ominous clouds. My darling Hugh greeted me with a perfectly formed little present in his nappy and has not yet been sick on me today. Ken and his Dad have both given me excellent presents, including (from Ken) a recording of the BBC radio series with Flight of the Conchords (New Zealand’s fourth most popular folk-parody band). We are planning an outing to Avondale House in Co. Wicklow, which is a very Dot kind of outing. Happy day!

Outside Day

ken writes: Hugh was born 36 weeks ago today. He was 37 weeks six days in gestation, less two weeks at the start that don’t count, so today he has been ‘outside’ for one day more than he was inside.

Well done Hugh and Dot!

Ken writes:

I’ve just chanced across an interesting statement by Geoffrey Sampson, a linguist whose views on language I rate very highly, on why he’s a Christian. It is very interesting and contains provocative comparisons like the following.

Does that mean that non-believers cannot be good people? Of course it does not; many are. But they are like people who live off inherited wealth without maintaining or increasing it: it works fine for a while, but it will not last indefinitely.

Heresy

Dot writes: this is a post liable to be misunderstood, and its argument is this: when we hear somebody unexpectedly reveal themselves as a global warming sceptic, we react rather as people in previous centuries must have done to heresy. I’m not talking a fifteenth-century reaction (burning), more an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century one (social embarrassment, distress, a sudden realisation that this person is one of Them). Attitudes to global warming and the need to reduce carbon emissions really are, I think, comparable to a religious orthodoxy. We accept the information on authority because very few of us are qualified to think it out for ourselves. The belief marks out a social grouping and tends to be connected to a set of political attitudes that don’t follow from it automatically. The belief is associated with virtue and being the Right Sort of Person. Lip-service is carefully payed to it by people who in fact don’t do much about it (e.g. the Labour party). It would take a monastic level of dedication to follow the message properly.

Now for the misunderstanding. By highlighting the parallel between global warming scepticism and heresy I make it sound as though I am myself a global warming sceptic. I should point out here that I’m not (I should also say that those of my nearest and dearest who have expressed the heresy are not therefore banished from my affections - in fact I got over the surprise pretty quickly, and its effect was chiefly to tell me not to assume that everyone of good sense shares my views). But I think this very likelihood of misunderstanding says something rather interesting about heresy. First, if you talk about something these days in terms of ‘orthodoxy’ and ‘heresy’ the rhetoric is weighted in favour of the heresy. There’s an assumption that an ‘orthodoxy’ is a wrong and reactionary belief unquestioningly held - a curious development given the etymology of the word (’right teaching’) - and that a heretic is a bold, admirable free-thinker. This has to go back to Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and the protestant take on the reformation: Wyclif et al were the goodies. I find it pleasing that the admiration of heresy that is so entrenched in modern secularism has such a solid foundation in the Christian churches.

Second, talking about orthodoxy and heresy seems to have a trivialising effect. After all, these days most people think that it doesn’t really matter whether or not you believe in transubstantiation or the Trinity or hell. Do I believe in hell myself? It seems likely that the main factor in whether someone is a Christian or not is their background and social environment: in that case, can I believe that the penalty for not being a Christian is hell? Similarly, the orthodoxy/heresy element of attitudes towards global warming highlights the element of social identification. Republicans seem more likely to be climate change deniers than Democrats; university types like Ken and me seem more likely to be eco-conscious than car salesmen or builders. But, if global warming is really happening and is really attributable to human actions, the penalty really is hell: death and suffering on an enormous scale. It matters what you believe.

Whinging

ken writes: When I whinge, it is, as I would like to put it, the thought that counts. I mean, I don’t just whinge for the sake of it. It matters what I am whinging about. The content of the whinging, the complaint, is part of the point. It is the whole point.

Or so I thought. Hugh whinges. For example, I have noticed that when he is put to bed, he cries for a bit, of course, but then he stops crying and vocalises. He babbles in a distinctly whinging tone of voice, as if to say, ‘nobody listens to what I want…’ But what can he be whinging about? What can his complaint be? What is left of ‘nobody listens to what I want…’ if you subtract ‘nobody’ and ‘listens’ and ‘to’ etc.?

The only explanation that seems right to me is that it isn’t the thought that counts, but that whinging vocalising is a bodily expression of complaint just as crying is a bodily expression of discomfort and unhappiness. This is very strange.

Taking stock

Dot writes: on Saturday I bought, largely for the title, a book called Hugh Fearlessly Eats it All. It’s by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and the title is his nickname, but I liked it because of my own Hugh, whose eating becomes less and less fearful. On Friday he had almost a whole jar of spaghetti bolognese. (I make home-made babyfood for him, but we get a little help from Hipp sometimes.) For the first time, I tried heating it up to a moderately acceptable warmth (i.e. more than just off-cold). At the first spoonful he gave a dramatic shudder and flung out his little hands in surprise. But then he opened his mouth enthusiastically for more. This is a big thing not just because it was warm but because at first Hugh only really liked fruit and refused red meat recipes altogether.

Now Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s nickname refers to his approach to delicacies such as fried calf’s brains, which do not entice me greatly (though I do see the moral argument that if you’re going to eat animals at all you should eat the whole lot). However, I have been feeling quite inspired by what he has to say about eating less but better meat, choosing organic and free-range, and about avoiding the bland imported vegetables sold in supermarkets. It’s not that the message is new, but it coincides with a feeling that it’s time to renovate our approach to shopping and cooking, in order to be healthier, to waste less, and to enjoy our food more. As readers of this blog will know, we’ve been thinking recently about how we can be more environmentally friendly,* plus there was a feature in the dear old Guardian the other day about food planning (domestic economy, indeed) which was full of the sort of sensible advice we ought not to need to be given: plan your meals so you don’t buy things you will throw away; shop for perishables frequently so they don’t go off; make one day’s meal around a core of what’s left over from the ingredients of yesterday’s etc etc.

Ken’s Dad is over at the moment from New Zealand, so I have been showing off the new, domestic goddess Dot. On Friday I bought plaice (fresh, in Bray) and vegetables from a stall and executed a surprisingly successful recreation of the dish of white fish, cream and capers that our friend Chris made for us recently. On Saturday I bought a free-range chicken and served it roast with some more vegetables. On Sunday we had takeaway because we weren’t sure who would be where when. I must say, it was much less nice than the food I had cooked myself on the previous two nights. Today I am making stock with the chicken carcass. Dinner won’t be very exciting because I didn’t shop today (apart from some new swimming trunks for Hugh) but I am very impressed with myself for making stock. Real cooks make stock. Unfortunately I’ve just realised I have no bottles to store it in. But we’ll think of something.

Our childminder is away this week and I seriously owe Ken after spending one week writing my paper and the next at a conference, so all this home-focused stuff is part of a bout of Prawn-minding. This is a vision of the home-maker I could be if only I weren’t pursuing my brilliant career (and could sustain the energy for being so organised and creative beyond the first pleasurable binge…)

* I hate the phrase ‘environmentally friendly’. It makes me think of air freshener. But I couldn’t think of a good alternative.

Joy of wireless

Dot writes: I’m posting this mostly because I can. I’m in the lounge of Hinsley Hall in Leeds, which is the place Leeds Tourist Information Centre found us to stay while I attend the International Medieval Congress, and which turns out to be some sort of ecumenical Christian conference centre. It has rooms named after Aelred of Rievaulx and Hilda of Whitby; as a medievalist I find this pleasing. Anyhow, my paper is written, and I think the core of it is reasonably good (though I never really know until I present them whether my papers are any good), and now I have only to track down the Anglo-Saxonists’ meal this evening and not drink too much to drive back and breastfeed Hugh afterwards.

The other night I dreamt I had to sit the General Paper and I was writing an essay on ‘the pig in world literature’. I wasn’t doing well managing the time and I couldn’t read what I had written in the first part of the paper because my handwriting was that terribly loopy arcaded kind in thick pen, and also I seemed to have put coloured stickers all over it. I wonder a) what this all means (I don’t understand my own work, perhaps) and b) what one could in fact say about the pig in world literature?