I was delighted to see this morning that Google UK had elected to celebrate the joys of paternity with the image above. I was surprised, however, on going to Google.com that no such celebration seemed to be in order. Having spent a chunk of my life living and working in the US, and being married to an American, cultural contrasts have always been of interest (“two nations separated by a common language”, hoods, bonnets, trunks, and boots, sidewalks and pavements and the completely different meanings if anyone were to say “I’m mad about my flat”) - but I always thought thought that the Brits were supposed to be the dour, reserved ones compared with the more exuberant Americans. So why the Googles are behaving counter-culturally is beyond me.
This is also a reminder that the holiday (vacation) season is upon us, and, along with that, the season of sand sculpture festivals around the world. The Queen (of England) has just visited our south coast to see, amongst other things, a gigantic sand sculpture of her even more gigantic home of Windsor Castle - she apparently remarked that it “looked just like the real thing” (which is, after all, largely built out of sandstone). And these days you don’t even have to be at the beach for such festivals - Berlin is not renowned for its coastal location and glorious beaches, yet it is right now the home of this year’s Sandsation and Philadelphia is celebrating its World Series champions, the Phillies, (currently heading up the National League East) with a sculpture in Franklin Park (scene of an Egyptian extravaganza a couple of years ago). If you were to visit one of India’s beaches, your enjoyment might be dampened but your health awareness raised by a sand sculpture warning on the threat of swine flu. All in all, the silly season is upon us - but then why not?
And, in preparation for relaxation on the beach, sand castle building and a general intimacy with granular materials, there’s a great book I would recommend that you take along …
[Phillies sculpture photo via creative commons license, Samjcohn’s flickr photostream]
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