Sukareta

Tom has given us a couple of very sleepless nights. He seems to have developed wind problems that occur only in the wee hours of the morning. Consequently sleep is down to a couple of hours at best, so I hope to catch up a little this afternoon. Then again, maybe I wont.

Stephanie (our old boss in Japan) wrote to say that our applications for new work visas had gone in without a problem. Its cutting it very fine indeed though, since we are due to leave in seven weeks and the average visa turnover time is six weeks. Hope we dont have to do the South Korean thing again. Nice country but we just cant afford it.

If I may be permitted.........

I'm not going to post endless baby photos, but surely one is reasonable. This is Tom's first car ride, aged 5 days. Cute, ne?

Nannying

There's something else special about the Commonwealth. It doesn't include the United States. There are very few forums left where the views of the Superpower don't tend to dominate debate. The Commonwealth is one. It's useful and by no means anti-American to have such an arrangement, even if no-one really listens to what member states agree upon. Supposing they do agree upon anything. But they do like a good old sports jamborree.

I surprise myself a little whenever I agree with the views of The Ecomomist. Ostensibly a free-enterprise, pro-globalisation rag, I find the writing so erudite and the views so reasonably argued that, well, it is often hard to disagree. Of course I can and do differ over the Iraqi invasion, global warming and much besides, especially where a purist rationalist logic is relentlessly applied.

But I do like the manner in which its writers apply the principle of liberty to both the economic and the personal sphere of human activity. The latter has suffered an intermidable invasion from both the left and right of politics, with moralising conservatives and nanny-state social democrats seemingly in cahoots. Whether its drugs, alcohol, child-rearing, working, leisure or whatever, there is some wretched politician or social-botherer with a warning, injunction, ammendment or tedious unwanted lecture. Have they nothing better to do? Such as getting their own houses in order.

Yes, political leaders should lead, but the state should avoid, as much as possible, interfering with and in the personal lives of its citizens. There are places to educate and inform (otherwise known as schools) and if the state fails there, then there's very little chance of succeeding later.

Please leave the sermons for religious leaders.

Tadaima

Tom and Nadia came home last Friday. The pattern of broken sleep has begun, though its much easier at the moment since neither of us are working. Japan will be a different matter altogther.

I didn't know how I'd feel about becoming a father. Yes, I expected to be happy and proud and maybe a little nervous, but I didn't expect just how happy. It seems like such a natural direction to pursue. Giving up on the self can only be a good thing, surely.

We've been so busy that there's been no chance to catch up on the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. Naturally Australia is winning a truckload of medals, but the standard of competition is less than the Olympics. Not demeaning the performance and skill of the athletes, but the threat from the Seychelles, Trinidad and Tobago or the Isle of Man seems sigificantly less than that posed by say, the USA or Germany. And whenever has Scotland won medals at anything? Yet they are fourth in the rankings!

Still the Commonwealth is a nice old steamer that plies the calmer waters between the UN and the United States. Occasionally a Mugabe come along to rock the seas. Usually not. And perhaps, its still worth having a talking shop of sorts that has something, somewhere, in common. Even if that something has a colonial out-of-date twinge.

Tom Thumb

The last 48 hours have been exhausting and emotional. Around midnight of Sunday night, Nadia began getting more regular contractions. At 2am we were at the hospital and by 3.20am she was in full labour. Tom arrived at 7.20am.

Who can adequately describe the experience of labour and birth? Certainly not a bloke. I am, simply, in awe. Of everything about it. I am grateful. I am pinch-myself-is-this-really-happening disbelieving. I am astonished. I am so in love with my wife. I am so in love with my baby son.

slow autumns settling
leaves skip like drunken dancers,
my bundle arriving

Matte Iru

It may be a longish labour for Nadia. Yesterday she had a full checkup with a midwife and the prognosis for birth was: it could happen tonight, tomorrow or in three weeks! She continued to have contractions throughout the night and this morning. We are really both hoping that the boy comes very soon. I hate to see her in pain.

At the same time as all this has been happening, we have been hosting two Japanese friends, Chihiro and Rika. The timing couldn't be worse but its nobodies fault. Yesterday they went into Sydney alone and by all reports did well until they caught the wrong train home later on. A succession of phone calls and internet timetable checks later and things were righted. I picked them up much later wandering the streets near our house, lost in the darkness, drizzle and fog. It was like a scene from a thirties movie.

In the humid March air
come visitors from the Emporer,
invisibilities unfurling

Express Post?

We both had very little sleep last night. Nadia began getting regular and quite strong contractions from 11.30pm, the intervals of which we dutifully recorded on a scrap piece of paper. Finally at 4am, Nadia called a midwife at our local hospital, who seemed pretty adament that she was entering labour. Advice: Take two Panadol and try to sleep. Your baby will be on its way by the evening!

If the baby does come today sometime, it will be three weeks early! I was hoping for an early baby but this is well beyond what we expected. Could it be a 'false labour'? Only the unfurling of this day will tell.

What will I have to say tomorrow? I hope, a happy mother and a healthy baby!

Aki

March already. The skies colour and the tiniest of nips in the breeze are signalling the beginning of autumn, my favourite time. You can almost see the trees pondering the end of the party and the beginning of the cyclical reckonning. Not that it gets that cold in Australia, though these mountains are changeable and perverse at the best of times.

Our baby is coming in a mere month. Nadia thinks he has sunk lower into her pelvis and is assuming a classic 'presentation'. We had our last ante-natal class last night and I could see most of the participants droop at the sight of the babies 24 hour clock, a regime in which sleep assumes a sporadic nature. The baby appears to rule the roost, entirely.

Who is ever ready for their first child? We are reading books and accepting advice but there is a sense that everyone's experience is different.

A year or so ago (actually during a Japanese autumn) I wrote this haiku as part of a group letter. Worth reprinting? I don't know. You be the judge.

thinking of home
I storm the cupboards clutter
finding dry leaves