Level Crossings

It's not uncommon to have accidents at level crossings in Argentina. Drivers routinely ignore the lights and barriers, treating the level crossing as you would a crossroads. Well, the way you would a crossroads in the countryside. Where there are no cars around.  

Or they stall while jumping the barriers, like this. All credit to the hero:

You see things like this happening all the time, to be fair. 

This is the crossing just around the corner from our place in Martinez. Me, I like the fact that the barrier hasn't been repaired, after it was broken about 3 months ago by a truck trying to speed under it, and getting the timing wrong. 

Patched up with a bit of string, a nail and some common sense, it now sort of flops down on the road, exhausted, and scraps around a bit. 

You will notice that it doesn't cover the whole road, giving ample opportunity for people to choose to drive around it. Assuming, that is, that you ignore the fact that a loud bell is ringing. Oh, and that a train is coming. 

Which is of course what this dude on the bike - now in the middle opposite - did.

It would, I think, be really really embarrassing to be killed at a level crossing. How would your partner feel telling people? How would your friends keep a straight face at your funeral? 

It's not like you don't know the risks. It's a level crossing. Even without the barriers and the warning signal, you still have to be too stupid to remember to look out for the massive loud train charging towards you.  

Here lies Dougal. He was run over by a train, after he couldn't wait about fifteen seconds to cross the lines and continue doing absolutely nothing with his day, he jumped the barriers, ignoring the warning signal and then - perhaps worst of all - couldn't even run fast enough. He leaves a very embarrassed wife and children who will never know the truth. And no, his insurance doesn't cover him for... that. What a tool. 

I'll keep my phone camera ready for future idiocy. It shouldn't be long. 

Homesickness

I can't tell you how homesick I get sometimes. 

Taken on the street in Glasgow.  

Identity Crisis

Dougal: The Saga Continues...

In Starbucks again. Following the recent entry - the trials of being a Dougal - I knew my Starbucks success wouldn't last.

Having finally - after 4 years of mispronounced Tukals, Dukals and Googles - had my name both spelt and called correctly last week, I'm back on more familiar turf.

Well. Sort of.

Same waitress, same service, same smile. TOTALLY different name. In fact, your guess is as good as mine as to what the frothy cappuccino she thinks my name is.

Judge for yourself. The B stands for bebida (maybe?). The hieroglyphics beneath, that's your Dougal right there.

Maybe I'm now so well know as Tukal that they have their own shorthand for me: TxL

Answers on a postcard to the usual address.

Argentine Wedding Invite

Famous for their late nights, the Argentines. This is a wedding invite our babysitter, Claudia, had last weekend. She was invited for the reception from 1am: 

We look forward to seeing you from 1am at the Club... 

Hair cut

I looked in the mirror and a
complete stranger stared back at me. 

I've finally found a good hairdressers. Yes, not barbers, I'm over them. Hair dressers, where they dress my hair.

It looks identical, costs about the same, but I get a free coffee and Juan Pablo and I talk shopping and style, rather than football and the weather in Scotland, which after 3 years had become tiresome with Carlos Roberto. Also I'd don't have to listen to the Claudio Cannigia got his hair cut as a kid here anecdote ever again.

However, Juan Pablo took me to a place I didn't know I needed to go.

He said something, mumbled, with the inflection of a question, in a language I speak but occassionally do not understand. Rather than ruin the myth that I was fluent in his mother tongue, I simply nodded agreement.

Upon which he took the trimmer and comb that was taking my back and sides from Bushy Clowhead to Military No2, and applied the same treatment to my... eyebrows.

A veritable avalanche of clippings fell to the floor, and with it my illusions of youth.

He stood back, looked in the mirror, and proclaimed - Si, dale, mucho mejor. 

I would have felt almost miffed that I was being treated as some kind of an old age pensioner who has out of control facial hair until I arrived home. On opening the door, Katie took one look at me, gazed to the heavens, and said, as if years of praying were suddenly being rewarded:

- Oh thank God! Someone's trimmed your eyebrows!

Dougal

I have been called Dougal for as long as I can remember. If anyone should be used to being called Dougal, surely it's me. Regular readers will know this is an issue for me, not least as a parent selecting your own babies' name.

But even now, 34 years in, I am still surprised how this name - when communicated to others - has caused the widest range of responses: fascination, hilarity and sometime outright denial. And that was in the UK. In Scotland, even, from where I clearly hail. From teacher's laughing as they read the class list at school, to the name-badge humilation of conferences as I paraded, recently, as Doogkal Surpuchan, to being introduced to an entire assembly by the Head of Drama as Fergal Dougalson, I reckon I've covered the based of humiliation pretty well.

I am aware that it's no John or Mark, but I also don't think I deserve the treatment I sometimes recieve, After all, I'm not called - and yes, these are all real, cause I googled Dumbest Names Of All Time:
- Picabo (yes, that skier)
- Eagle-Eye (yes, the singer)
- Loser or Winner (twins, inspired!)
- Storm (Swedish, genderless)
- Moon Unit (Frank Zappa's kid)

Nevertheless, after 31 years of abuse in an English speaking country, imagine how this translates to Latin America, and to Argentina. Argentines - who are generally called Juan, Diego or María - are never ones to tread lightly around people's feelings, and seem to take particular delight in their incredulity that someone could possibly be called something so clearly a) unpronouncable and b) silly sounding, or c) not Juan or Diego. Or María.

Never is this more apparent than in Starbucks. Now, if ever there was a place to lose your identity in a global latte-sphere then surely to capitalism Starbucks is where you're safe?

Moon Unit tells another white lie. 

Far from it.

All those friendly, carefully considered homely Starbucks touches that you lot get to enjoy - like the writing of your name on the side of the styrofoam cup? - are the enemy of Dougal.

Your conversation goes like this:
- Hi, what would you like? 
- A regular latte, please. 
- Name?
- Mary. 
- Thank you, that'll be expensive. 
- That's fine, thanks. 

Before you are even aware you're waiting, you hear your name called out, confidently, like an old friend. Your coffee arrives swiftly, piping hot, with a smile, and a little Mary written neatly in black marker on the side.

Mine arrives luke warm to sniggers from the staff, who cower sheepishly like schoolgirl bullies behind the coffee machine, pulling straws for who has to shout out my name. And in that time I have answered to the following:

- Dukal? Doo-call. 
- Dugal? Duck-al
- Toogal. Come on, at least give me some credit. That's not even phonetically likely, is it.
- D...D...Er... Diego? Translation being the least bad option. Although this is a little racist, I'll take it. I mean, Salmans don't get called Simon in the UK, do they?
- Tukal. Rhymes with Doo-call. As in Tukal, the Turkish drug dealer.  

I'd long since given up and have been calling myself Juan. But today, half asleep and not really concentrating, she asked, Nombre? I said Dougal. And would you know it, like I'd entered a parallel world where all of you lot live, seemingly seconds later a Dougal was called for, as if I was in Ayrshire, and a coffee was served, with a smile.

Maybe this was a turning point.

But in the negative column, this happened, the memory of which brings me right back down to earth.

Last month, a supply teacher arrived. In the morning in the staff room, I politely introduced myself:

- Hola, como estás? I said.

- Hola, she replied, soy Marialena Milagros de las Paz.

- Soy Dougal.

Judging by her reaction, I mentally re-ran the conversation, because based on her expression I had accidently said Shitforbrains.

- Sorry, she said.

I actually wasn't sure if this was the English version of Sorry, as in Sorry, can you say that again, or if she was actually saying, Sorry, that's a terrible name, as her intonation inferred.      

To cover both eventualities, I said, That's fine. It's quite a rare name. I'm from Scotland. Much like the way Basil Fawlty explains all of Manuel's behaviour.

- No, sorry, say again. 

- Dougal. 

- Doo-kal?

- No. Dougal. Rhymes with Google.

- No, I'm still not getting it. 

- You really aren't are you. Dou-gal.

- Ah, Doodle. 

- No, you see, you just made a totally different sound. Dougal. 

- Doodle. 

- No. With a 'g'.

- Oh! Google.

- Do you work in Starbucks? 

Toddler: Nighttime Independence

Leah, 3, now sleeps in her own bed. This is great, being more independent and all of that. To encourage this whole independence thing I've been trying to teach her the time.

Not "Hey, Daddy, it's ten to nine, get your ass out of bed!" time. More accurately, I've been trying to teach her Time Appropriacy: What Activity Is Appropriate At What Hour.

Finally, after using enough Ketamine
to sedate a horse, they got their
sleepy angel 'money shot'. 

I've seen those Toddler Alarm Clocks for sale in the UK/US or in countries where parents have everything, and they look quite cute, but I can't believe for a second they work. Everything for parents is marketed around sleep and relaxation, and how many parents have you met - ever - who have said: Oh, the first few months were tough for sure. But now, when he wakes up in the night, he just looks to see whether his little freakish sleeping space bunny clock is lit up like an acid trip, and now we don't hear another peep, do we?

Toddlers may still be illiterate, unable to do their shoes laces and a freakin' liability on transport, but there hasn't been an electrical gadget yet that they can't strip down and re-program into Spanish in an unguarded minute.

Dark = Sleepy Time
Light = Wakey Time

Doesn't seem too much to ask from someone who's picked up two languages quicker than I have. OK, it's winter and doesn't get light till around 9am, but you'd think she'd get the gist.

It's not working.

Last weekend, just after we'd had breakfast, we played a couple of jigsaw puzzles (I say 'we', I was watching the FA Cup Final), when Leah turned round and said, "I want bathtime with Mummy tonight" and trotted off to get herself changed.

If only that freaky redrum kid in
The Shining had a Toddler Alarm Clock.
Maybe it would have all ended well.

Moreover, she's become a night-time wanderer. Well, wanderer is a bit much. So far she either heads up to Maia's room where she starts reading her a story. Which Maia doesn't appreciate at the best of times, and definitely not at 217am.

Or, she sneaks in to our room and stands, silently, an eyebrows' breadth from my face and just, sort of waits... till I wake up.... with that strange sensation that something's not quite right before suddenty realising that a person is blinking into my eyes.

You know, the way the kid in The Shining would.