mccullochblog

Happy Birthday, Dad.

My dad would have been 78 years-old today. 

I find it quite impossible to digest that it's already been a year since the last time I saw him face-to-face. 

On September 24th last year, Emma and I spoiled dad with a really good birthday.

We'd made the trip back to England especially to be there for the big day. Emma's parents were there with my mum too. And we were doubly excited at being three months pregnant at the time.

In this picture Dad's about to tear into some handkerchiefs from Emma's mother (we McCullochs are big fans of handkerchiefs).

A minute later he opened up the large, framed photograph (also on his lap) of Emma and I on our wedding day that he'd been complaining about not having for a while. That picture is hanging up in mum's flat these days.

After the fantastic birthday dinner that Emma's mum cooked, we all had a slice of a gigantic chocolate cake from Thornton's, and then we played Trivial Pursuit.

True to form, Dad entirely ignored which team he was on, and called out the answers to whichever question he fancied answering. 

"Dad! That's not your question!"

"Robert...it's not your turn!"

He didn't care. He had a big smile on his face all night.

He seemed to revel in the fun of breaking the rules. He was the same with Scrabble...always suggesting words for other players (to my brother's eternal outrage!) or pretending he was himself outraged about someone leaving a double-word score up for grabs.

Well, we didn't play Trivial Pursuit tonight, but Emma and I marked Dad's birthday today in a way of which I think he would have approved: with a Chinese dinner!

Dad lived in Singapore for a number of years in his youth and he obviously developed a love of Chinese food while he was there. 

I think he would have devoured our feast of walnut prawns, stir fry beef, chinese vegetables and hot-and-sour soup tonight. In fact, we plan on marking his birthday Chinese-style next year too.

Happy Birthday, Dad!

Food, Glorious Food!

Can you imagine how utterly crazy it must be to be a five-month-old baby discovering the world? Take a stroll along some leafy streets, for example.

To you and I...trees on a sunny day. 

To William: "Wooah! Amazing swaying brilliantly-bright gigantic rustling lifeforms in front of a huge, blindingly bright even-more-gigantic big thing (the sky) higher up!" 

The looks on his face as he experiences life's surprises for the first time are just delightful. 

Yesterday a squirrel scrambled noisily and unexpectedly around a tree trunk about five feet from where William and I were walking. My reaction: "Woah, that was surprising."

William's reaction: "OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT, DADDY? IT WAS LIKE A TINY LITTLE SMALL HUMAN THING WITH A FURRY CURLY THING COME OUT OF ITS POO-END! AND IT WAS CLIMBING UP ONE OF THOSE BRILLIANTLY-BRIGHT GIGANTIC RUSTLING LIFEFORMS!

Suffice to say, William's first encounter with that delightful stuff we call 'food' was similarly entertaining. Here his is tucking into a few spoonfuls of rice cereal mixed with mum's milk (his sole other food to date!).

Random Videos From the Trip to Europe: Part Three

How to Smoke a Fish

One of the things I love about my brother is his incredible passion for life. There's very little he does in half measures, which goes some way to introducing this video.

Ron recently decided to create at his home in southern England an outdoor cooking area, which includes a 'smokery'. Having never seen a smokery before, I was quite impressed by the brick and flint construction, and naturally greatly encouraged its use for our family barbecue last Sunday.

What's key for you to understand before you watch this video, I think, is that 'smoking' your food is not quite as straightforward as starting a fire and putting a few items on a stick. 

You'll get the full story from the video, but listen out for some key quotes including "it looks a bit red", "the fish feels cold, is that right?" and "maybe you want to lower them closer to the flames, babe."

Random Videos From the Trip to Europe: Part Two

Dutch Windmills in Action

Based on my blogs posts of the past two weeks, you might think Emma, William and I only went to the UK for our hols, but no, there was more! 

We decided to take William back to his Dutch roots too (he's named after my Dutch grandpa Willem Frederik Sinoo), and what better way to get to know Holland than with a trip to Kinderdijk, home of the UNESCO World Heritage Site...and lots of windmills.

We Dutch (that's half of me, and one quarter of William) are understandably proud of our windmills, and I like to think this little montage captures the majesty of these beautiful and majestic work horses of the Dutch countryside....as well as the fact that it's darn windy in Holland a lot of the time.

Random Videos from the trip to Europe: Part One

A Tribute to Bench Tributes

As you'll have seen from the occasional Facebook album, I love taking pictures. We have a dozen or more of my photographs enlarged and framed around the house, and about three dozen more albums bending shelves in our utility room.

No matter how much I love the power of the still image, I have to concede that there's something wonderful about video. Whether it's those grainy old images that my dad recorded in the 70s and 80s, or stuff I've captured on one of my Flips, video captures moments and places in time uniquely (albeit imperfectly, as my camera skills will show). 

This little montage is a perfect example. I was strolling along Bournemouth sea front one day last week (William strapped to me, hence occasionally baby sound effects) and almost every 50 feet I happened upon another bench dedicated to someone or other. 

After about six benches, I got the idea of recording a little video of each one, and then splicing it together with some of the views those departed souls would have enjoyed before a bench took their place on the sea front.

A Tale of Two Britains: Part Two

This Bejeweled Nation.

When I lived in London in my twenties, it never occurred to me to take ‘A’ roads to any place more than fifteen miles away. I couldn’t get anywhere quickly on A-roads (the rarely-straight, single-lane byways that connect Britain’s towns) and in my twenties, I didn’t want to go anywhere slowly.

Ten years on, it’s ironic that those A-roads provided the perfect way for Emma, William and me to unwind, explore and enjoy the finest scenery, most stunning architecture and mind-blowing history Britain has to offer.

Like the Septuagenarian motorists I used to get stuck behind and lambaste in the 90s, we happily tootled around the countryside averaging under 30-miles-per hour.

We drove through wooded Wiltshire; stopped in for outstanding pub meals in stunning hamlets in Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire; explored the dreaming spires of the City of Oxford, toured the grandeur of Blenheim Palace and lost ourselves in the country lanes and oh-so-photogenic villages of the Cotswolds. Then we reverentially circled Stonehenge en route to the south coast before finally letting Admiral Nelson, Henry VIII, the White Cliffs of Dover and the waves of Britain’s maritime history wash over us at Portsmouth historic dockyard.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the Britain you need to go and visit if you don’t already live there (and maybe if you DO live there too!)

Yes, for all the criticism I heaped on dear old Blighty in my last blog post; there isn’t another country in the world that can boast Britain’s unique combination of history, culture, architecture and nature.

And it is this stereotypically-quaint, historic Britain of which we Brits are all so proud.

And why not? Don’t Britons have a right to “Lord it” a bit over their cousins across the Atlantic? After all, Britain’s first University was founded half a century before Christopher Columbus had even been born!

So okay (as this trip reminded me), the British can be defensive, a bit prudish, quirky, and just a little bit pompous, but if you’d been fighting back invading hordes of Vikings, Romans, Normans and Germans for a couple of millennia, you’d probably be a bit uptight too!