Dear Bigson
It is good to have you home, for a little while.
Yes it means your brother and sister have had to swap rooms, yes this tiny bungalow is now a mess with no room to swing a cat, but I enjoy your company and you make me laugh; when you're here and awake, anyway.
I like the way you remind me of things. Things like how, for a very long time in young adulthood, having the right dance moves is a must, a matter of personal pride and as important as hygeine.
It was really lucky that we had workmen outside the house today, at least from your point of view, because I had no idea where a pair of pliers might be. Then again, if you must sit in the bath and re-open the 3 year old piercing in your nipple by forcing one of my darning needles through until its stuck fast, then the sight of your 6' frame, soaking wet and wearing nothing but a towel at the waist, wandering up the side alley (face smiling, tit bleeding) to beg tools to finish the job is going to make me physically cringe and shudder, both in embarrassment and in thought of the pain.
I'm your mum and I can't help it. OK?
xx
P.S. No thanks, I don't want the needle to go back in the drawer now you're done. I don't want it back at all. Really.
Showing posts with label Diary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Diary. Show all posts
06 February 2007
08 February 2005
Grumble
Bought a book to read on the train yesterday - The Grumpy Old Men. LOVE em. Couldnt eat a whole one. Chuckling out loud at times, I realised one thing, I am a coward.
A coward at putting into print that which I hold to be true, for fear of offending someone else who, equally validly (if stupidly) holds other things true.
I started this blog to ramble madly and then tiptoed backwards into apologetics. Sad cow.
I think when I come back from my little trip this morning I shall begin with the age old supremely bleeping aggravating subject of TV adverts. Yeahhhhhhhhhhh............
A coward at putting into print that which I hold to be true, for fear of offending someone else who, equally validly (if stupidly) holds other things true.
I started this blog to ramble madly and then tiptoed backwards into apologetics. Sad cow.
I think when I come back from my little trip this morning I shall begin with the age old supremely bleeping aggravating subject of TV adverts. Yeahhhhhhhhhhh............
05 February 2005
Don't know what to say.
Not in the mood to be informative, opinionated, funny, chatty, anything.
Been listening to training tapes for the new business and the guy has likened just about every scenario to formula one driving. I'm OK with that, honestly, but I am beginning to recognise an element of burn-out in myself, all revved up all week with no place to go........well places to go for sure, but next week. Hiccups and hold-ups, I havent found a pace yet and its annoying the hell out of me.
I just don't seem to have managed to fit a life in amongst the anticipation.
One thing I know about myself - this guy warns against getting too eager, working too hard (how honest and unlike any MLM is that??), says to keep a happy pace to avoid 'crashing your car'.
So now I have this revelation about me - I dont crash, I have no intention of stopping, its just that my engine overheats. Flip, I can see the steam from here. Both scenarios can make an engine explode so I guess I am going to have to make a concerted effort to leave the vehicle and let it cool, or wander off in search of water, which in itself is flipping aggravating - I'm only in this state because my 'car' hasnt got far enough up the road already for my liking. Bugger bugger bugger bum.
I didnt know when I signed on that I was going to be 'high maintenance'. One thing is for sure, when I have a stream of downlines in this set up I will have an answer for everything: pre-formatted, smiley, enthusiastic and informative little notes ready to personalize. I may never have been a salesman like my upline, but boy have I been a trainer, wet nursed the most aggressive, incompetent, self employed go-getters imaginable and turned them into something akin to professionals without either of us drawing blood. Motivation should be my middle name.
Wow I found something to feel good about.
So, apart from the facts that:
So Ner. I feel better now.
Not in the mood to be informative, opinionated, funny, chatty, anything.
Been listening to training tapes for the new business and the guy has likened just about every scenario to formula one driving. I'm OK with that, honestly, but I am beginning to recognise an element of burn-out in myself, all revved up all week with no place to go........well places to go for sure, but next week. Hiccups and hold-ups, I havent found a pace yet and its annoying the hell out of me.
I just don't seem to have managed to fit a life in amongst the anticipation.
One thing I know about myself - this guy warns against getting too eager, working too hard (how honest and unlike any MLM is that??), says to keep a happy pace to avoid 'crashing your car'.
So now I have this revelation about me - I dont crash, I have no intention of stopping, its just that my engine overheats. Flip, I can see the steam from here. Both scenarios can make an engine explode so I guess I am going to have to make a concerted effort to leave the vehicle and let it cool, or wander off in search of water, which in itself is flipping aggravating - I'm only in this state because my 'car' hasnt got far enough up the road already for my liking. Bugger bugger bugger bum.
I didnt know when I signed on that I was going to be 'high maintenance'. One thing is for sure, when I have a stream of downlines in this set up I will have an answer for everything: pre-formatted, smiley, enthusiastic and informative little notes ready to personalize. I may never have been a salesman like my upline, but boy have I been a trainer, wet nursed the most aggressive, incompetent, self employed go-getters imaginable and turned them into something akin to professionals without either of us drawing blood. Motivation should be my middle name.
Wow I found something to feel good about.
So, apart from the facts that:
- I broke a tooth last night and have a smile like something off Nightmare On Elm Street with perfect timing for the big day on Monday
- I put weight on recently and only have/had one pair of really smart trousers that fit comfortably and the cat has just scratched huge thread-loops into the front of one leg
- I have one pair of smart-ish flat shoes fit for a training day doing who knows what and they're suede and dirty.
- I ran out of my favourite hair conditioner, the local Superdrug stopped selling it and I look like you could stuff a horsehair sofa with the mop on my head
- The kids are cheerfully trying to wind each other up / kill each other as I sit and write (Imogen has just begun a war of attrition, repetitively whining a little song to get up Lewis' nose, and I can see his fists twitching from here)
So Ner. I feel better now.
16 January 2005
All that stuff.
My Imogen, the youngest child at 8 years old, has gone through a two year period of thinking that 'kissing and all that stuff' is seriously yukky. If there's a happy ending kiss on the telly, even in a Barbie cartoon movie, she covers her eyes, cringes and asks to be told when its over. Walking home from school, the number of boys from her class that call across and wave is remarkable, all of them with sheepish grins, yet she waves back innocently without half the enthusiasm.
Anyhow, she has sorted her life out again.
She wants to be a teacher and a mummy and a pop star and an actress. She is also, she tells me, going to adopt a child so as to avoid all the kissing and getting married nonsense.
The joy of all this is that her little face frowns slightly and her squeaky little voice takes on a slightly serious tone, as if to say that this statement has been well considered and it is incredibly hard not to smile as she speaks.
I hope this blog is still here when she discovers boys!
Anyhow, she has sorted her life out again.
She wants to be a teacher and a mummy and a pop star and an actress. She is also, she tells me, going to adopt a child so as to avoid all the kissing and getting married nonsense.
The joy of all this is that her little face frowns slightly and her squeaky little voice takes on a slightly serious tone, as if to say that this statement has been well considered and it is incredibly hard not to smile as she speaks.
I hope this blog is still here when she discovers boys!
07 January 2005
About me 2 (end)
Southall in the late sixties wasn't a complete bed of roses. The full-on racist attacks were still a decade away, but there were various glaring cultural differences that stood out a mile and either caused amusement or needed careful handling.
We soon found out that the children were terrified of dogs, only ever having come across vicious wild ones I suppose, and were totally gobsmacked to see us stroke the head of our soppy old black Labrador, Alice, or lean down to let her kiss us. This was a real ice breaker, mum promising children that Alice wouldn't bite, whilst the dog sat silent but hopeful, waiting to make a new friend.
Most of the boys of that generation grew up to own the largest, soppiest, friendliest alsatians you could imagine, albeit kept on outsized choke chains which were never needed; the mere image and kudos of controlling a 'vicious beast' (even one which in reality would at worst lick a burglar to death) was still considerable, in their eyes, but that's jumping ahead.
The idea of external house decor was a new experience, as proud owners of houses painstakingly painted the entire frontage with colours to their liking, for example cerise pink brickwork and white on all the grouting. The bright colours were only available in gloss paint and gloss painted brickwork was quite a statement in itself.
The only real down side, apart from outside opinion, was that some of the more elderly gentlemen felt that the streets of London, if not paved with gold, were paved with prostitutes. Look at it this way; you come from a country were no decent single woman is ever seen outdoors un-chaperoned and is under no circumstances seen anywhere on the streets once dusk has fallen and well, wow, for a brief moment anyone with a taste for a bit on the side must have thought they had died and gone to heaven. It was rather embarrassing, walking home from Girl Guides in Uniform, with friends (we learned never to travel alone), only to have our concentration broken by a loud belch or a stilted 'Ello', from an asian pensioner who then proceeded to wink or make the universal sign for "How much?".
I soon learned that looking horrified and staring down at my feet in 'shame' got me a profuse apology; the poor old sod was almost as shocked and upset as me, at the thought that he had behaved inappropriately toward a 'good girl'. The shame wasn't really there, I was confident of my ability to run, the streets were well lit and the gentleman was always old, but I somehow knew they understood that as the proper behaviour of the sort of girl 'that didn't'. I often got a sideways glance at lots of head shaking and backward shuffling, with palms up and a look of absolute mortification. Those that knew a few stilted words of English ( and the older generation are always the last to learn) would do their best to repeatedly say sorry, although it sounded more like Sari and took a while to work out. This makes it sound like constant harassment, but it wasn't, you would only meet one or maybe two of them at most on the weekly walk home from the Church Hall, and then only half the year, when it was dark by 7 pm. It also reduced as time went on and the two societies began to understand each other.
On the other hand, girls that responded with a mouthful of abuse were just as likely to have a large walking stick waved at them and what must have been an equal torrent of disgust. I never did understand that, I thought perhaps it was outrage that a female should express any sort of aggressive opinion, but looking back now, it may have been that the 'gentleman' may have thought he had just been rather insultingly turned down for business by the sort of girl that wasn't supposed to be choosy.
I knew one boy who ran home in scout uniform with a nastily bruised stomach, kicked in the gut for refusing the offer of £5 for a particular service, but by then the racism was beginning to surface and as the offender happened to be a different colour to his near victim it was dealt with very quietly, the only change apparent to my young eyes being that from then on the boy in question always had a lift home from Scouts. That's sad and wrong, but understandable in a tinder box; too many on either side wanted an excuse to condemn an entire race. A couple of years later when a friend from church was beaten up by another 'friend' from the same youth group, kicked in the head when he was down so that the whole pupil of his eye was black for a fortnight, again it was dealt with privately through the church and between the families because one was white and one was asian, and by this time going out on a Monday meant you likely as not had to walk round dried blood puddles on corners outside pubs.
Apart from the infamous Southall race riots which happened when I was eighteen, I never actually witnessed any violence in the town. The race riots don't count. The leaders of the churches and mosques etc all got together and held a peace march but the violence that killed Blair Peach, a teacher who came by coach as part of the Anti Nazi league to face down a bunch of National Front supporters who had advertised they would be marching through Southall, was part and parcel of a clash between two outside forces with the Police stuck in the middle and cannot be taken as comment on the residents.
For the record I have no personal knowledge or opinion of how well or badly the police handled the job. I only know that the ordinary Southall people stayed indoors and if only the NF had turned up alone, without resistance, they would have marched down empty streets to no great effect at all, watched by enough police to make sure it was only a march. By memory, word got out about the ANL coming too, so I wouldn't be remotely surprised if both sides were gathering numbers and tooling up for a bundle ahead of the day. I had to go to Ealing for some reason in the early evening, I already travelled there to grammar school and had friends and the beginnings of a social life. I lived at the opposite end of Southall to the march, which was scheduled to be over a couple of hours before then and because I went directly to the station by bus, mum reluctantly let me go. Unfortunately the train was packed with college types, excitable girls with rampant hair and hippy skirts, all travelling home from, as they saw it, this important social turning point. However well meaning they were, they boiled down to left wing do-gooders who did more harm than good, but neither of us knew that at the time and I had a very uncomfortable journey under the disapproving and suspicious glares, once I had been obliged to admit that I hadn't been at the march at all, but indoors watching telly.
Just for information the violence I did witness was not technically in Southall at all, but on the other side of the Grand Union Canal in a residential area known as Heston. Blood was drawn between two young Sikhs, on a small bus stop down a quiet road, with much posturing, threats of revenge and reinforcements etc, because one had called the other 'a Paki'.
By the late eighties, two stops down the same bus route a shelter was regularly being used in broad daylight by young lads who would get cozy and then skin up joints, with a lazy glare at people who might actually want to catch a bus which described at once total indifference and a supreme confidence that they had every right to be 'about their business'.
Growing up in Southall? Those were the good old days.
We soon found out that the children were terrified of dogs, only ever having come across vicious wild ones I suppose, and were totally gobsmacked to see us stroke the head of our soppy old black Labrador, Alice, or lean down to let her kiss us. This was a real ice breaker, mum promising children that Alice wouldn't bite, whilst the dog sat silent but hopeful, waiting to make a new friend.
Most of the boys of that generation grew up to own the largest, soppiest, friendliest alsatians you could imagine, albeit kept on outsized choke chains which were never needed; the mere image and kudos of controlling a 'vicious beast' (even one which in reality would at worst lick a burglar to death) was still considerable, in their eyes, but that's jumping ahead.
The idea of external house decor was a new experience, as proud owners of houses painstakingly painted the entire frontage with colours to their liking, for example cerise pink brickwork and white on all the grouting. The bright colours were only available in gloss paint and gloss painted brickwork was quite a statement in itself.
The only real down side, apart from outside opinion, was that some of the more elderly gentlemen felt that the streets of London, if not paved with gold, were paved with prostitutes. Look at it this way; you come from a country were no decent single woman is ever seen outdoors un-chaperoned and is under no circumstances seen anywhere on the streets once dusk has fallen and well, wow, for a brief moment anyone with a taste for a bit on the side must have thought they had died and gone to heaven. It was rather embarrassing, walking home from Girl Guides in Uniform, with friends (we learned never to travel alone), only to have our concentration broken by a loud belch or a stilted 'Ello', from an asian pensioner who then proceeded to wink or make the universal sign for "How much?".
I soon learned that looking horrified and staring down at my feet in 'shame' got me a profuse apology; the poor old sod was almost as shocked and upset as me, at the thought that he had behaved inappropriately toward a 'good girl'. The shame wasn't really there, I was confident of my ability to run, the streets were well lit and the gentleman was always old, but I somehow knew they understood that as the proper behaviour of the sort of girl 'that didn't'. I often got a sideways glance at lots of head shaking and backward shuffling, with palms up and a look of absolute mortification. Those that knew a few stilted words of English ( and the older generation are always the last to learn) would do their best to repeatedly say sorry, although it sounded more like Sari and took a while to work out. This makes it sound like constant harassment, but it wasn't, you would only meet one or maybe two of them at most on the weekly walk home from the Church Hall, and then only half the year, when it was dark by 7 pm. It also reduced as time went on and the two societies began to understand each other.
On the other hand, girls that responded with a mouthful of abuse were just as likely to have a large walking stick waved at them and what must have been an equal torrent of disgust. I never did understand that, I thought perhaps it was outrage that a female should express any sort of aggressive opinion, but looking back now, it may have been that the 'gentleman' may have thought he had just been rather insultingly turned down for business by the sort of girl that wasn't supposed to be choosy.
I knew one boy who ran home in scout uniform with a nastily bruised stomach, kicked in the gut for refusing the offer of £5 for a particular service, but by then the racism was beginning to surface and as the offender happened to be a different colour to his near victim it was dealt with very quietly, the only change apparent to my young eyes being that from then on the boy in question always had a lift home from Scouts. That's sad and wrong, but understandable in a tinder box; too many on either side wanted an excuse to condemn an entire race. A couple of years later when a friend from church was beaten up by another 'friend' from the same youth group, kicked in the head when he was down so that the whole pupil of his eye was black for a fortnight, again it was dealt with privately through the church and between the families because one was white and one was asian, and by this time going out on a Monday meant you likely as not had to walk round dried blood puddles on corners outside pubs.
Apart from the infamous Southall race riots which happened when I was eighteen, I never actually witnessed any violence in the town. The race riots don't count. The leaders of the churches and mosques etc all got together and held a peace march but the violence that killed Blair Peach, a teacher who came by coach as part of the Anti Nazi league to face down a bunch of National Front supporters who had advertised they would be marching through Southall, was part and parcel of a clash between two outside forces with the Police stuck in the middle and cannot be taken as comment on the residents.
For the record I have no personal knowledge or opinion of how well or badly the police handled the job. I only know that the ordinary Southall people stayed indoors and if only the NF had turned up alone, without resistance, they would have marched down empty streets to no great effect at all, watched by enough police to make sure it was only a march. By memory, word got out about the ANL coming too, so I wouldn't be remotely surprised if both sides were gathering numbers and tooling up for a bundle ahead of the day. I had to go to Ealing for some reason in the early evening, I already travelled there to grammar school and had friends and the beginnings of a social life. I lived at the opposite end of Southall to the march, which was scheduled to be over a couple of hours before then and because I went directly to the station by bus, mum reluctantly let me go. Unfortunately the train was packed with college types, excitable girls with rampant hair and hippy skirts, all travelling home from, as they saw it, this important social turning point. However well meaning they were, they boiled down to left wing do-gooders who did more harm than good, but neither of us knew that at the time and I had a very uncomfortable journey under the disapproving and suspicious glares, once I had been obliged to admit that I hadn't been at the march at all, but indoors watching telly.
Just for information the violence I did witness was not technically in Southall at all, but on the other side of the Grand Union Canal in a residential area known as Heston. Blood was drawn between two young Sikhs, on a small bus stop down a quiet road, with much posturing, threats of revenge and reinforcements etc, because one had called the other 'a Paki'.
By the late eighties, two stops down the same bus route a shelter was regularly being used in broad daylight by young lads who would get cozy and then skin up joints, with a lazy glare at people who might actually want to catch a bus which described at once total indifference and a supreme confidence that they had every right to be 'about their business'.
Growing up in Southall? Those were the good old days.
06 January 2005
Aspergers - a gift?
I cut my younger son's hair over the Christmas holidays. Gary spotted electric trimmers going cheap in Woolworths and brought them home, so both he and Lewis ended up with really short cuts.
Lewis, the one with Aspergers (Special Needs Showdown - sorry you have to scroll down a bit there) was until recently known simply as a difficult child. This got me into the habit of giving him Christopher Robin style haircuts, short back and sides but really quite long on top, for social reasons. Putting it bluntly I used every means I had to inspire teachers to query whether there was a real child with a real heart in there after all. I'll try and find a piccy.
When we first cut his hair really short, even I had a shock, as Christopher Robin became Eminem, to look at. Fantastic. I'm praying for the base line I shaved in around his ears to grow out a bit before I have a chance to present him to the special needs experts who have never met him but have decided that he doesnt need a SEN statement. I'm sorry to say it but the look, on his face at any rate, screams 'problem child'.
Phrenology went out of fashion when the Nazis took a really big interest in it and because of that I dont think its ever been properly researched, but like any idea that sticks, however crass and offensive and obviously outdated many of the common impressions are, and in this case think of the condemnation of people whose eyes are supposedly 'too close together', there has to be a grain of truth in there somewhere for it ever to have got off the ground in the first place, instead of being laughed into oblivion.
We were watching a documentary on Pink. I dont go in for documentaries or pop extravaganzas, but for Pink I'll make an exception; I love her music and the way her mind works. Gary's sitting there beside me going "Shes ADHD she's ADHD" and looking at how she explained difficulties with her family, the kind of independent stuff she got up to at such a young age, hearing their completely different view, just as valid, I could see that he might have a point, but Gary being Gary wasnt really listening as it turned out; he had simply caught a good shot of the bridge of her nose. He has this armchair theory that perception differences linked to the frontal lobe of the brain might be magnified by bone growth. To be honest I cant imagine that MRI wouldnt have already confirmed that, if it were true, I mean presumably it would involve more extra bone growth than can be seen from the outside. How thick is a human skull, for that matter?
The lovely South African specialist that diagnosed Lewis' condition made a confession that made me feel a whole lot better. She said she had worked all over, yet had never seen as many cases of Aspergers anywhere outside of the UK.
This set me to considering that, until a couple of hundred years ago, we probably were a fairly inbred bunch of mongrels in the main, predominantly a Celtic/Anglo mix. Surrounded by sea and only ever absorbing invaders, I can see how the gene pool could become if not dangerously singular then at least heavily pocketed with rarified and specific skill sets or conditions. So maybe we DO have the highest number of Aspergers sufferers per capita in the world. All that does is add credence to another postulation that if you looked for adult presentation of the symptoms in our society, the two highest concentrations would be found in the upper classes and the prison population.
Think about it - what are the essential ingredients of either a genius or an atypical eccentric? Obsessive interest in a subject, intense creativity and a very high intelligence. Then add, more in some cases than others, indifference to social cues - a sort of 'being on another level'. Of course, stick the same mind into mainstream school (although teaching methods are at last making allowances), berate the child for disinterest in the full curriculum, ostracise him for being unable to notice the myriad social cues that contain such a hotbed, tell him off constantly for not performing to the impossible norm and he'll end up unfulfilled, lonely, with low self esteem and probably a lot of internalised rage. I'd bet anything that more people have gone through the judicial system since 1910 than in the hundred years before that and I'll bet that the resentment inspired by nationwide classroom schooling was a huge factor. I love learning curves.
To cap it all Lewis is horribly dyslexic. I ought to be panicked for him? Nah, so was Einstein.
P.S. Link to brilliant Aspergers site filched from a really useful blog: GJ Willis' Art Notes. Thanks Gail!
Lewis, the one with Aspergers (Special Needs Showdown - sorry you have to scroll down a bit there) was until recently known simply as a difficult child. This got me into the habit of giving him Christopher Robin style haircuts, short back and sides but really quite long on top, for social reasons. Putting it bluntly I used every means I had to inspire teachers to query whether there was a real child with a real heart in there after all. I'll try and find a piccy.
When we first cut his hair really short, even I had a shock, as Christopher Robin became Eminem, to look at. Fantastic. I'm praying for the base line I shaved in around his ears to grow out a bit before I have a chance to present him to the special needs experts who have never met him but have decided that he doesnt need a SEN statement. I'm sorry to say it but the look, on his face at any rate, screams 'problem child'.
Phrenology went out of fashion when the Nazis took a really big interest in it and because of that I dont think its ever been properly researched, but like any idea that sticks, however crass and offensive and obviously outdated many of the common impressions are, and in this case think of the condemnation of people whose eyes are supposedly 'too close together', there has to be a grain of truth in there somewhere for it ever to have got off the ground in the first place, instead of being laughed into oblivion.
We were watching a documentary on Pink. I dont go in for documentaries or pop extravaganzas, but for Pink I'll make an exception; I love her music and the way her mind works. Gary's sitting there beside me going "Shes ADHD she's ADHD" and looking at how she explained difficulties with her family, the kind of independent stuff she got up to at such a young age, hearing their completely different view, just as valid, I could see that he might have a point, but Gary being Gary wasnt really listening as it turned out; he had simply caught a good shot of the bridge of her nose. He has this armchair theory that perception differences linked to the frontal lobe of the brain might be magnified by bone growth. To be honest I cant imagine that MRI wouldnt have already confirmed that, if it were true, I mean presumably it would involve more extra bone growth than can be seen from the outside. How thick is a human skull, for that matter?
The lovely South African specialist that diagnosed Lewis' condition made a confession that made me feel a whole lot better. She said she had worked all over, yet had never seen as many cases of Aspergers anywhere outside of the UK.
This set me to considering that, until a couple of hundred years ago, we probably were a fairly inbred bunch of mongrels in the main, predominantly a Celtic/Anglo mix. Surrounded by sea and only ever absorbing invaders, I can see how the gene pool could become if not dangerously singular then at least heavily pocketed with rarified and specific skill sets or conditions. So maybe we DO have the highest number of Aspergers sufferers per capita in the world. All that does is add credence to another postulation that if you looked for adult presentation of the symptoms in our society, the two highest concentrations would be found in the upper classes and the prison population.
Think about it - what are the essential ingredients of either a genius or an atypical eccentric? Obsessive interest in a subject, intense creativity and a very high intelligence. Then add, more in some cases than others, indifference to social cues - a sort of 'being on another level'. Of course, stick the same mind into mainstream school (although teaching methods are at last making allowances), berate the child for disinterest in the full curriculum, ostracise him for being unable to notice the myriad social cues that contain such a hotbed, tell him off constantly for not performing to the impossible norm and he'll end up unfulfilled, lonely, with low self esteem and probably a lot of internalised rage. I'd bet anything that more people have gone through the judicial system since 1910 than in the hundred years before that and I'll bet that the resentment inspired by nationwide classroom schooling was a huge factor. I love learning curves.
To cap it all Lewis is horribly dyslexic. I ought to be panicked for him? Nah, so was Einstein.
P.S. Link to brilliant Aspergers site filched from a really useful blog: GJ Willis' Art Notes. Thanks Gail!
I sort of wish I hadn't started the 'about me' thing. I meant it to be a sweeping and generalised background to explain 'where my head is at', but the memories it has generated over the last couple of days could turn into a whole flaming book and I don't like the way my ego perks up and looks ready for action, like a dog that vaguely heard the word 'lead' or 'park' being mentioned, when I consider writing some more.
So this isn't that.
Generally speaking I like blue cheese. Mid summer, finding an exotic sandwich shop down some tourist-free backstreet or other, the idea of a baguette containing Stilton along with its other burgeoning, glistening fillings is enough to make me, well quite happy. Content.
Now, with the kids back at school and husband back at work, it has somehow lost its glamour. The first two weeks of January are traditionally, in our house at least, the time when the fridge has to be slowly relieved of all the still fresh foods that weren't completely consumed over the holidays and to that end (also because its a slightly tight month for cash) we buy only the basics; bread, milk and ingredients for 'proper dinners' such as mince.
So how exactly is this stuff supposed to get eaten? These dregs that no-one fancied enough to polish them off in the first place?
Here I am then, facing a near empty fridge, wondering whether to try and force down blue cheese on toast or a stilton and mayonnaise sandwich, or whether to go without altogether. Somehow, with a sliced loaf at my disposal instead of a warm, scented crusty baguette; with no grapes or bacon to soften the flavour, this is beginning to feel like purgatory. Even with all those things I doubt I could face it - Christmas, in this case, seems to have amounted to aversion therapy.
Back to just coffee, then.
So this isn't that.
Generally speaking I like blue cheese. Mid summer, finding an exotic sandwich shop down some tourist-free backstreet or other, the idea of a baguette containing Stilton along with its other burgeoning, glistening fillings is enough to make me, well quite happy. Content.
Now, with the kids back at school and husband back at work, it has somehow lost its glamour. The first two weeks of January are traditionally, in our house at least, the time when the fridge has to be slowly relieved of all the still fresh foods that weren't completely consumed over the holidays and to that end (also because its a slightly tight month for cash) we buy only the basics; bread, milk and ingredients for 'proper dinners' such as mince.
So how exactly is this stuff supposed to get eaten? These dregs that no-one fancied enough to polish them off in the first place?
Here I am then, facing a near empty fridge, wondering whether to try and force down blue cheese on toast or a stilton and mayonnaise sandwich, or whether to go without altogether. Somehow, with a sliced loaf at my disposal instead of a warm, scented crusty baguette; with no grapes or bacon to soften the flavour, this is beginning to feel like purgatory. Even with all those things I doubt I could face it - Christmas, in this case, seems to have amounted to aversion therapy.
Back to just coffee, then.
04 January 2005
About me 1
When I started this blog I was clueless, couldn't tell HTML from gobbledygook and just wanted somewhere to be occasionally silly, stretch the creative doodas and just get into the habit of writing.
Nosing around, I followed links and copied stuff and found myself resisting the urge to fill my basic single side column here with everything from a blogpet to a weather icon, just because I realised I could.
Now I'm getting into the swing of things, or at least edging my way towards understanding the basic sense of community on here and on the various supporting sites like blogexplosion ( see button) and starting to feel brave enough to leave comments at the nicer/funnier places I've found, it seems time (mostly for fear of return visits!) to paint myself into the scheme of things.
Born in Southall, West London, in a two-up two-down cottage with an outdoor loo and a tin bath hung on the wall in the back yard, I was there when Middlesex existed, when Southall wasn't part of Ealing and had its own town hall, and most of all before the rush of 'Asian' British citizens. To be honest, although it must have seemed like a mad and sudden influx to the adult population, one day I just had friends of different colours, same as I already had friends with different builds and different hair.
The Council moved us in 1967 when I was six so they could demolish the cottages, and granny came to live with us. She had only ever been just around the corner in the first place, and I thought her cottage was nicer than ours as it had an old cooking range and the outdoor toilet was built on, instead of being in the shed at the bottom of the yard like ours. Hers had a beautiful huge orange flowering of mould, the most exotic thing I had ever seen and I was only ever allowed to her toilet with a head full of dire warnings not to touch it, even though that seemed grossly unfair to a four or five year old. The adults kept removing, but to my delight it just kept coming back.
Ours had a load of scary wooden shelves filled with unspecific things, and spiders.
The new house had a back garden, 100 foot long and desperately overgrown. Instead of living across the road from Southall Park and the market, now we were quite literally across the road from the Grand Union Canal. There was only a steep drop and a towpath the other side of the tarmac road out front and for that we never had the power cuts that hit the rest of Southall in the seventies, because our electricity was on the same circuit as the essential street lights that stopped people accidentally driving into the filthy water.
Mum started work again once my youngest brother was born, and got a job with the IWA, the Indian Workers Association, doing the typing and correcting the English grammar as she went. Even though she was one of the most open minded people of her generation, I do seem to recall her feeling that one should speak slowly and clearly, as a sign of respect, if talking to someone who might not have a full grasp of the language. "Have - you - had - a - nice - day - dear - ?". Speaking clearly, it seemed, also meant upping the volume by a notch or two.
Its only now, looking back, that I realise my mother must have been obliged to defend her decisions, sometimes. For example, because of her work I ended up playing with two very nice girls who had clipped and proper English accents to rival that of the Royal Family, to be blunt, to my mind, they sounded like Ovalitinies, or the lady on the radio who did Listen With Mother. I remember one of them sobbing her heart out whilst I looked on helplessly, because she had been taunted and called a filthy wog, when she didn't even know what the word meant. "I looked it up in the dictionary, and it means Egyptian! Do they think I'm Egyptian?" I couldn't help, I heard of it, but didn't have the first clue what it meant.
I can't remember her name now, which shames me, but I can remember that she and her sister were "good intelligent girls, their father's a Doctor, and they have better manners and spoken English than the white children these days". As I say, my mother must have had to defend sending me to play with them. I didn't give a hoot whose dad did what, so that comment had stuck with me, as it had seemed important.
I still don't know the politics behind Southall becoming an asian enclave; maybe Ealing Council was in force by then and decided to shove their quota 'all in one place' and as near as possible to the next Borough, Hounslow, where the airport was, or to put it another way as close to 'not really being in Ealing at all' as it was possible to manage. Most whites that could, moved out. My mother complained, when another family tried to hide their airs and graces behind a veil of false reluctance at having to leave, that if they didn't want the town to fill up with asians, then why were they leaving? Why go, if you know it means that an asian family will have your old home? She wasn't so much angry at the airy fairy excuses used to mask fear, or feelings of insecurity, so much as browbeaten by it. It was like watching her lose people she had honestly thought more of than that, watching her faith in other people's good hearts and common sense take a proper knocking. Finally her attitude hardened; if they wanted to go they could jolly well get on with it, we, and Southall and life in general would be better off without them.
This is going to be longer than I realised, and the telly beckons, so more another time, perhaps.
Nosing around, I followed links and copied stuff and found myself resisting the urge to fill my basic single side column here with everything from a blogpet to a weather icon, just because I realised I could.
Now I'm getting into the swing of things, or at least edging my way towards understanding the basic sense of community on here and on the various supporting sites like blogexplosion ( see button) and starting to feel brave enough to leave comments at the nicer/funnier places I've found, it seems time (mostly for fear of return visits!) to paint myself into the scheme of things.
Born in Southall, West London, in a two-up two-down cottage with an outdoor loo and a tin bath hung on the wall in the back yard, I was there when Middlesex existed, when Southall wasn't part of Ealing and had its own town hall, and most of all before the rush of 'Asian' British citizens. To be honest, although it must have seemed like a mad and sudden influx to the adult population, one day I just had friends of different colours, same as I already had friends with different builds and different hair.
The Council moved us in 1967 when I was six so they could demolish the cottages, and granny came to live with us. She had only ever been just around the corner in the first place, and I thought her cottage was nicer than ours as it had an old cooking range and the outdoor toilet was built on, instead of being in the shed at the bottom of the yard like ours. Hers had a beautiful huge orange flowering of mould, the most exotic thing I had ever seen and I was only ever allowed to her toilet with a head full of dire warnings not to touch it, even though that seemed grossly unfair to a four or five year old. The adults kept removing, but to my delight it just kept coming back.
Ours had a load of scary wooden shelves filled with unspecific things, and spiders.
The new house had a back garden, 100 foot long and desperately overgrown. Instead of living across the road from Southall Park and the market, now we were quite literally across the road from the Grand Union Canal. There was only a steep drop and a towpath the other side of the tarmac road out front and for that we never had the power cuts that hit the rest of Southall in the seventies, because our electricity was on the same circuit as the essential street lights that stopped people accidentally driving into the filthy water.
Mum started work again once my youngest brother was born, and got a job with the IWA, the Indian Workers Association, doing the typing and correcting the English grammar as she went. Even though she was one of the most open minded people of her generation, I do seem to recall her feeling that one should speak slowly and clearly, as a sign of respect, if talking to someone who might not have a full grasp of the language. "Have - you - had - a - nice - day - dear - ?". Speaking clearly, it seemed, also meant upping the volume by a notch or two.
Its only now, looking back, that I realise my mother must have been obliged to defend her decisions, sometimes. For example, because of her work I ended up playing with two very nice girls who had clipped and proper English accents to rival that of the Royal Family, to be blunt, to my mind, they sounded like Ovalitinies, or the lady on the radio who did Listen With Mother. I remember one of them sobbing her heart out whilst I looked on helplessly, because she had been taunted and called a filthy wog, when she didn't even know what the word meant. "I looked it up in the dictionary, and it means Egyptian! Do they think I'm Egyptian?" I couldn't help, I heard of it, but didn't have the first clue what it meant.
I can't remember her name now, which shames me, but I can remember that she and her sister were "good intelligent girls, their father's a Doctor, and they have better manners and spoken English than the white children these days". As I say, my mother must have had to defend sending me to play with them. I didn't give a hoot whose dad did what, so that comment had stuck with me, as it had seemed important.
I still don't know the politics behind Southall becoming an asian enclave; maybe Ealing Council was in force by then and decided to shove their quota 'all in one place' and as near as possible to the next Borough, Hounslow, where the airport was, or to put it another way as close to 'not really being in Ealing at all' as it was possible to manage. Most whites that could, moved out. My mother complained, when another family tried to hide their airs and graces behind a veil of false reluctance at having to leave, that if they didn't want the town to fill up with asians, then why were they leaving? Why go, if you know it means that an asian family will have your old home? She wasn't so much angry at the airy fairy excuses used to mask fear, or feelings of insecurity, so much as browbeaten by it. It was like watching her lose people she had honestly thought more of than that, watching her faith in other people's good hearts and common sense take a proper knocking. Finally her attitude hardened; if they wanted to go they could jolly well get on with it, we, and Southall and life in general would be better off without them.
This is going to be longer than I realised, and the telly beckons, so more another time, perhaps.
03 January 2005
Coooeee!
Anyone out there want to offer to pay me for churning out my own personal and distinct version of twaddle?
Anyone?
No, thought not.
Shame really, I could spout with an air of tongue-in-cheek authority on any subject you care to mention. All it takes is enough time in Google and Jeeves to quote a few authorities and form a temporary opinion of my own. Peanuts. When I say air however, I do mean air as in vapid and intangible; or at least above ground, ie without foundation. All smoke and mirrors, me.
But all is not lost (what, did she just say that? Is she going to start using words like 'aplenty', or worse still, 'galore' and turn into a dead end small town journalist making stories out of ten people queuing at the Town Hall? Dear God no, shoot her now and save her good name). Seriously, I have found another website that has taken my full attention for the last 36 hours or so, as it allows and even encourages people to write poetry, as well as short stories and whole novels if the fancy takes you.
Poetry, or rather my poetry is, I feel, something to be produced like childhood or holiday photo albums, only if someone else specifically suggests it. It is not something I would start spouting or churning out within a hundred miles of here without some sort of recognition of skill prior to the event, but that too is available at FanStory.com. The whole concept is that everyone who submits work for dissection also does their best to make valid and honest comments about everybody else's work.
It can backfire a little, particularly if you are a hound for constructive criticism. High praise such as 'Some of your verses are truly excellent' only makes me frustrated. If I do have the potential for excellence, then before I can let my head swell up I want someone with a greater knowledge (cant be hard to find?) to do me a real favour and tell me which verses fell short of the mark, and exactly why, otherwise I'll never improve.
Then again, I am already shy of awarding anything less than 3 stars out of a possible 5 to other contributors, when the idea is to try and keep 1s and 5s to a minimum but to speak honestly for anything else. Already I am bypassing the efforts that make me feel more like they need marking in red pen with a large "See Me After Class" at the bottom because:
a) I don't feel competent to be that much of a critic, I mean who am I for flips sake? God?
b) I gave a 3 to a guy with a brilliant concept who had presented a heavy and thought provoking subject in a dancy little rhythm, way too light and bouncy for the content. I said so, in the nicest words I could think of, praising both elements as distinct items. The response I got back (in public, mind) was "What Ever"! If you don't want the bloody criticism don't bloody ask for it!
Sodding Philistine. I read his bio thinking that just maybe I had piqued some poor spotty, angst ridden teenager, but no he was a fully adult man with a family and a very high opinion of himself. Weirdo. Still that sort of thing smarts a bit, and cant inspire anyone to offer honest assistance where it is most needed, for fear of stroppy little hitlers spitting back.
Well thats where I've been. I stuck in an old piece of work from the darkest dustiest recess of My Documents, then wrote two for competitions, which were complete in no time because I always find it easier to be industrious under instruction. A quatrain at least this long; a poem about or including this picture; much easier than waiting for inspiration. Catch 22 I then discovered, was that you can only post two new items each day.
Each of those pieces are up for criticism for a month now, during which they have to acquire so many favourable critiques (fifteen?) in order to move across to a more permanent spot, or something. I havent really read it all, but I do know that what has kept me creeping back in there every so often today, was the urge to see if I had received any more good reviews.
Knowing my addiction to email and my ability to be a total workaholic as long as it involves a keyboard and screen, perhaps signing up to something else where I can constantly wonder if I've 'got mail' is not such a clever idea; particularly if you were to ask my husband.
Anyone out there want to offer to pay me for churning out my own personal and distinct version of twaddle?
Anyone?
No, thought not.
Shame really, I could spout with an air of tongue-in-cheek authority on any subject you care to mention. All it takes is enough time in Google and Jeeves to quote a few authorities and form a temporary opinion of my own. Peanuts. When I say air however, I do mean air as in vapid and intangible; or at least above ground, ie without foundation. All smoke and mirrors, me.
But all is not lost (what, did she just say that? Is she going to start using words like 'aplenty', or worse still, 'galore' and turn into a dead end small town journalist making stories out of ten people queuing at the Town Hall? Dear God no, shoot her now and save her good name). Seriously, I have found another website that has taken my full attention for the last 36 hours or so, as it allows and even encourages people to write poetry, as well as short stories and whole novels if the fancy takes you.
Poetry, or rather my poetry is, I feel, something to be produced like childhood or holiday photo albums, only if someone else specifically suggests it. It is not something I would start spouting or churning out within a hundred miles of here without some sort of recognition of skill prior to the event, but that too is available at FanStory.com. The whole concept is that everyone who submits work for dissection also does their best to make valid and honest comments about everybody else's work.
It can backfire a little, particularly if you are a hound for constructive criticism. High praise such as 'Some of your verses are truly excellent' only makes me frustrated. If I do have the potential for excellence, then before I can let my head swell up I want someone with a greater knowledge (cant be hard to find?) to do me a real favour and tell me which verses fell short of the mark, and exactly why, otherwise I'll never improve.
Then again, I am already shy of awarding anything less than 3 stars out of a possible 5 to other contributors, when the idea is to try and keep 1s and 5s to a minimum but to speak honestly for anything else. Already I am bypassing the efforts that make me feel more like they need marking in red pen with a large "See Me After Class" at the bottom because:
a) I don't feel competent to be that much of a critic, I mean who am I for flips sake? God?
b) I gave a 3 to a guy with a brilliant concept who had presented a heavy and thought provoking subject in a dancy little rhythm, way too light and bouncy for the content. I said so, in the nicest words I could think of, praising both elements as distinct items. The response I got back (in public, mind) was "What Ever"! If you don't want the bloody criticism don't bloody ask for it!
Sodding Philistine. I read his bio thinking that just maybe I had piqued some poor spotty, angst ridden teenager, but no he was a fully adult man with a family and a very high opinion of himself. Weirdo. Still that sort of thing smarts a bit, and cant inspire anyone to offer honest assistance where it is most needed, for fear of stroppy little hitlers spitting back.
Well thats where I've been. I stuck in an old piece of work from the darkest dustiest recess of My Documents, then wrote two for competitions, which were complete in no time because I always find it easier to be industrious under instruction. A quatrain at least this long; a poem about or including this picture; much easier than waiting for inspiration. Catch 22 I then discovered, was that you can only post two new items each day.
Each of those pieces are up for criticism for a month now, during which they have to acquire so many favourable critiques (fifteen?) in order to move across to a more permanent spot, or something. I havent really read it all, but I do know that what has kept me creeping back in there every so often today, was the urge to see if I had received any more good reviews.
Knowing my addiction to email and my ability to be a total workaholic as long as it involves a keyboard and screen, perhaps signing up to something else where I can constantly wonder if I've 'got mail' is not such a clever idea; particularly if you were to ask my husband.
26 December 2004
Total waste of time
After the sense of cameraderie engendered by the Grumpy Old Men Christmas Special, I felt a certain sense of anticipation regarding the feminine offering, from the Grumpy Old Women. I even considered that it might be acknowledged to be the better programme through the choice of times; the 'wimmins' one was, after all, scheduled for Christmas Day itself.
What a blatant dissappointment. I struggled through over half of it, desperately scrabbling for something to relate to, before I gave up and switched channels. Perhaps it was an effort to stress things in order to make them funny, but it seemed that every time I felt a twinge of recognition at some situation, most of the interviewees would take the story to the Nth degree, shooting sisterhood in the foot by trying to label us all as pathetic over-hassled creatures bewailing our lot as the voluntary and total slaves of the rest of the family.
Here then, is my own personal take on a stress free Christmas.
Preparation - gifts
What a blatant dissappointment. I struggled through over half of it, desperately scrabbling for something to relate to, before I gave up and switched channels. Perhaps it was an effort to stress things in order to make them funny, but it seemed that every time I felt a twinge of recognition at some situation, most of the interviewees would take the story to the Nth degree, shooting sisterhood in the foot by trying to label us all as pathetic over-hassled creatures bewailing our lot as the voluntary and total slaves of the rest of the family.
Here then, is my own personal take on a stress free Christmas.
Preparation - gifts
- Children have no right to tell you what they want and then expect it. They have a right to tell you what they hope for. If you can only get one decent thing on their wish list, mark that one as from you, and mark the rest as coming from Father Christmas. This has a double purpose as it also makes the relatives who send money very valuable. If your ten year old didnt get this year's 'must have' then a card with a fiver inside instantly changes from a boring dissappointment to collectors heaven, as each takes him or her one step further toward buying the hoped for item in the January sales.
- Its all right for pets to be delivered late on Christmas Eve - its a secret but Santa has to do it that way to stop them peeing & pooping all over the sleigh and chewing up the other stuff when he does the proper run.
- In our house Santa delivers stockings to the bedrooms, in which everything, even a satsuma, is individually wrapped, with lots of sellotape. No chocolate, yet. If the contents of the bedroom stocking offer some food, something to fiddle with, are not going to make your kids more hyperactive than they already are and are designed to be as awkward as possible to open then you stand a chance of making it to the living room first, possibly even dressed and caffeined up.
- Have a lock on the living room door. Children are amazingly good about having a proper breakfast, or going to wash their faces whilst you down your first coffee, if they know that compliance speeds the moment when they find out what else Santa brought. Have a grand opening, when you are awake and ready.
- Dont expect anything you remotely want as a gift, unless you give up on dropping hints and give your partner your own wish list, in print. If it contains more items than you could expect to get then the element of surprise remains. Make it your responsibility to liaise with each other's relatives on this. You can be totally specific about everything but jewellery.
- Do the pre-shopping phone calls. Ask people, or their partners, what sort of thing they might be hoping for. Partners are always a little vague if there isnt a list in that household but at least the idea of 'something arty-crafty' steers you away from the scarves. It also trains the men into keeping mental lists because if you start in early November you will find that males are more likely to put their minds to it for a relative who wants to know, than they are on their own behalf or for the sake of their beloved. Its a matter of form.
Food
- Where did you get your desire for 'home made' this or that? If you got it from a telly programme or a magazine, forget it; mentally tear it up and throw it away. We children of the sixties and seventies were brought up on artificially coloured and flavoured everything, so one day of convenience treats isn't going to kill the new generation, is probably going to cost less than buying all the ingredients separately and will look and probably taste a whole lot better. If you want to be really unhealthy just keep a duster of caster sugar to one side. Homemade sugary treats are distinguishable by the burnt bits and the fact that the sugar on top is also all over the serving plate.
- If you got it from memories of Christmas baking with your own mother, then remember its a childhood memory and this is what you should consider passing on with one or at most two items offered on the Christmas table. The most lopsided cake or mince pie is accepted with coos and oohs if little Georgina (or preferably George, lets break some stereotyping here for the next generation) helped, or better still 'iced it all by him/herself'. Who cares if they get smuggled into pockets and then into the bin? Your child will either retain memories like yours, or will grow up loving to cook, in which case that’s half the hell of Christmas converted to a joy, for them.
- Get as many of the nibbles as possible from a pound shop or scoop and weigh. Who cares if the box turns out to contain 80% packaging; wedge it on the window ledge or side table and display it as a box and not with the contents tipped out on a plate. After a good Christmas dinner and too many sherries you'll be after the carbs to soak acid, not sugary sweets anyhow and if you're not, then none of your unfortunately invited guests will give a hoot that they have never come across the brand name before.
- Use generic turkey gravy granules, but make it up using the water off the inevitable sprouts, which is enough to make it taste home-made-ish.
- Never ever have people round for dinner on Christmas day if you can possibly avoid it - be the Boxing Day host instead, and turn cold turkey, egg and chips into a family tradition. 'The oven just isn't big enough' is a perfectly valid excuse that will hit a chord with everyone. Of course it does, otherwise they wouldn’t be looking to get invited somewhere in the first place. An even better one is ‘Come on Boxing Day, when we can get the kids lunches out of the way first’. You will be a much better hostess when there’s minimal work and you can join in. Of course people who find themselves unavoidably alone are different, provided there’s not some glaring flaw in their character that instantly explains the solitude. If someone is hell to live with on a wet Wednesday in June they are going to be even more of a trial at Christmas, even if the person happens to be your sibling.
- Buy a turkey crown. Let the bits you wouldn’t touch on your Christmas turkey be ready removed for the burger industry or whatever secondary income stream they use it for and make do with roasting only the white and easily carved meat. It comes out of the oven looking distinctly turkey shaped, for the benefit of the purists.
- Never carve at table. Let the children see the roast looking huge and glamorous because they are the only ones that will be impressed by it, then carve and serve in the kitchen, before the veggies come out. The best compliment you can give your dinner companions is a hot meal. I positively hate going to houses where the man shows off, sharpening the carving knife and slowly slicing the meat at table. It just means it'll be another half an hour before everyone has passed the spuds, gravy etc round and you can actually start eating. Oh yummy, a stone cold meal fit for the cat, thank you so very much.
- People have very strong feelings about stuffing; they either love it or hate it. Even if you do a fancy chestnut one, do it as balls or slices, so that it doesn’t seep into the other items on the plate if one person happens to think it tastes absolutely foul.
- Mashed swede is heaven sent. Do it an hour in advance so its not taking up a ring on the hob when things go crazy, and shove it in a glass bowl covered in cling film with a few pinholes. Make it buttery and moist (even adding a bit of kettle water during the mashing can make it look creamier), then shove it in the microwave for 3 or 4 minutes until its steaming. People either love it or find it completely tasteless, and if its tasteless to you, well then you wont mind scraping it off your turkey, will you, because it wont have upset the flavour. A modest blob of piping hot swede holds the heat for ages and is brilliant for making sure the plate and the meat stay warm to the table.
Decorations
- Designer decorations are for those with no families. For everyone else I recommend my favourite style – colour-blind, a.k.a. ‘done for the children’. If its sparkly, shove it up, complete with balloons; crash, bang, done.
- Trees should not be indoors dying. If you love the smell of pine that much, then doubtless you constantly use pine air freshener and pine disinfectant. Clear off to the kitchen and sniff it. Otherwise buy the pure oil, or incense sticks. Get a good quality plastic tree that actually fits the living room, has room at the top for a star or fairy and a good solid base. If your hankering for a real tree stems from some sort of middle class one-upmanship where it is your social circle that has deemed it a ‘must have’ item, then turn the tables and play the conservation card, guaranteed to impress all your friends who keep muttering that they really should use the bicycle more often, really wish the recycling centre had better parking, etc.
Last hint – stop playing the game. Stop thinking the day is about anything outside of religion besides having a good time. If you love a real tree but also love to whinge all year about hoovering up the needles, love to produce home cooking but love to moan about being an unappreciated galley slave all day, then either simplify or shut up, you’re spoiling the party!
25 December 2004
Well now a post made on Christmas morning might seem a little extreme, but hey ho, Santa brought me a new keyboard so I am having to test it out!
The old one, new just under two years ago is worn down so that the keys look like old stone steps, smooth and dipped and completely devoid of any indication of the letter they represent. I almost learned to touch type once but still 'i's and 'o's, 'r's and 't's interchange far too regularly when I pick up speed.
My daughter Imogen, aged seven, has made my day so far. I love her to bits, but have no idea where I got her from - she's either a genetic throw back or a leap forward. Her father took an interest in the present buying, but as he had to work right up to Christmas Eve but also spent half the year it seems, this year, away on courses, he shopped in another town and on his own. I watched her shoulders visibly sag for all of two seconds when she opened a present this morning to find a diary (the third she owns now, I believe) before she made the appropriate squeaky high pitched cooing noise and declared it was wonderful! How many seven year olds have manners like that, particularly ones that were not consciously taught at home? Her older brother by eighteen months, Lewis, has Aspergers and is rather more straightforward about things. If something is acceptable but not end-of-the-world amazing it is politely unwrapped, put down and kneeled on, to get to the next parcel. Something miraculous happened today however, as he has recently cottoned on that he is, finally, good at something other than computers; 'being sarcastic'. This has caused him to double his efforts and I marvel that the day is noticeably lacking in what he considers to be wit, so far. "Ooh, lovely, not", "Cor who got you that, the crap fairy?"
We bought him a computer game and he is happy; gone to his room and his computer. Silence.
I am off to play whatever my girl wants to play now, one of the craft kits she got, or dolls, or bedroom-rearranging to show off the new things (yes she's like that, incredibly girly, it must have been a dormant gene), then to start washing up from breakfast so theres room to start making lunch.
Merry Christmas!
The old one, new just under two years ago is worn down so that the keys look like old stone steps, smooth and dipped and completely devoid of any indication of the letter they represent. I almost learned to touch type once but still 'i's and 'o's, 'r's and 't's interchange far too regularly when I pick up speed.
My daughter Imogen, aged seven, has made my day so far. I love her to bits, but have no idea where I got her from - she's either a genetic throw back or a leap forward. Her father took an interest in the present buying, but as he had to work right up to Christmas Eve but also spent half the year it seems, this year, away on courses, he shopped in another town and on his own. I watched her shoulders visibly sag for all of two seconds when she opened a present this morning to find a diary (the third she owns now, I believe) before she made the appropriate squeaky high pitched cooing noise and declared it was wonderful! How many seven year olds have manners like that, particularly ones that were not consciously taught at home? Her older brother by eighteen months, Lewis, has Aspergers and is rather more straightforward about things. If something is acceptable but not end-of-the-world amazing it is politely unwrapped, put down and kneeled on, to get to the next parcel. Something miraculous happened today however, as he has recently cottoned on that he is, finally, good at something other than computers; 'being sarcastic'. This has caused him to double his efforts and I marvel that the day is noticeably lacking in what he considers to be wit, so far. "Ooh, lovely, not", "Cor who got you that, the crap fairy?"
We bought him a computer game and he is happy; gone to his room and his computer. Silence.
I am off to play whatever my girl wants to play now, one of the craft kits she got, or dolls, or bedroom-rearranging to show off the new things (yes she's like that, incredibly girly, it must have been a dormant gene), then to start washing up from breakfast so theres room to start making lunch.
Merry Christmas!
21 December 2004
erm, ooer
Ok my first blog knowingly written for an audience. Not because of the comments on here (what comments on where?) but because friends are mentioning things like the delay between blogs, of late, which presumably means that things are being read.
Well here it is, my version of being stage struck and tongue tied - which is to rattle off any old rubbish at an alarming rate of knots to fill the creeping internal sense of silence, and panic. Maybe I should have gone into radio. I do after all know very well how to twitter idiotically with the best masters of 'filling the gap between records' - although that shows my age. I doubt that even hospital radio has a seat-of-the-pants show anymore, I suspect everything is meticulously scripted from the playlist to the number of seconds in the gaps in between, with marginal room for ad-libbing. Isnt that why Chris Evans was so popular? Because he did his own thing? He was hysterically funny and succesful until eventually even he ran out of twitter and failed to notice his own dissatisfaction, or at least to correctly apportion blame for it, and started a downward spiral of pissing people off.
I could claim that as good enough reason never to 'go in to radio' but then again it may be that the man simply had an artistic depression of the kind that geniuses are allowed, albeit one that ought to have involved a lot of apologising later on. Spike Milligan suffered terribly with what-the-hell-am-i-doing-and-why-are-they-laughing-itis but as he could to a certain extent control whether and when he performed fo the public, it was conducted behind closed doors. I should imagine he effed and blustered and was just as caustic, if not moreso, but privately, with the comfort and balance provided by dissapproving friends rather than the giggles and titters of a bored public looking for someone else to be the bad boy in class.
Good grief. Two minutes bypassing the brain en route to the keys and I have just about mentally compared the Ginger One to George Best. In fact, probably all it would take to get Mr B Piper back on TV and therefore back in the good books of the media in general (and, baaah, who else I wonder?) would be a documentary-interview in which he admitted he had been an arsehole and pleaded that the fame and wealth and confusion at being so popular had thrown him off balance. He would come out as mature and fallible and therefore forgiveable. Kill the 'cocky' impression he once gave in one fell swoop. Heck he could even knock Beckham back off the top spot - being rude to people in public isnt bonking around in public, even though our ginger friend did more than enough of that, but he humiliated an unknown wife and a series of semi-vaguely-heard-of girlfriends and didnt shatter some plastic-perfect illusion that he had willingly conspired with the media to establish.
There then, all that because I didnt know what to say. Thank God I didnt rummage down the old document files for something I wrote last year. Or maybe not.
Well here it is, my version of being stage struck and tongue tied - which is to rattle off any old rubbish at an alarming rate of knots to fill the creeping internal sense of silence, and panic. Maybe I should have gone into radio. I do after all know very well how to twitter idiotically with the best masters of 'filling the gap between records' - although that shows my age. I doubt that even hospital radio has a seat-of-the-pants show anymore, I suspect everything is meticulously scripted from the playlist to the number of seconds in the gaps in between, with marginal room for ad-libbing. Isnt that why Chris Evans was so popular? Because he did his own thing? He was hysterically funny and succesful until eventually even he ran out of twitter and failed to notice his own dissatisfaction, or at least to correctly apportion blame for it, and started a downward spiral of pissing people off.
I could claim that as good enough reason never to 'go in to radio' but then again it may be that the man simply had an artistic depression of the kind that geniuses are allowed, albeit one that ought to have involved a lot of apologising later on. Spike Milligan suffered terribly with what-the-hell-am-i-doing-and-why-are-they-laughing-itis but as he could to a certain extent control whether and when he performed fo the public, it was conducted behind closed doors. I should imagine he effed and blustered and was just as caustic, if not moreso, but privately, with the comfort and balance provided by dissapproving friends rather than the giggles and titters of a bored public looking for someone else to be the bad boy in class.
Good grief. Two minutes bypassing the brain en route to the keys and I have just about mentally compared the Ginger One to George Best. In fact, probably all it would take to get Mr B Piper back on TV and therefore back in the good books of the media in general (and, baaah, who else I wonder?) would be a documentary-interview in which he admitted he had been an arsehole and pleaded that the fame and wealth and confusion at being so popular had thrown him off balance. He would come out as mature and fallible and therefore forgiveable. Kill the 'cocky' impression he once gave in one fell swoop. Heck he could even knock Beckham back off the top spot - being rude to people in public isnt bonking around in public, even though our ginger friend did more than enough of that, but he humiliated an unknown wife and a series of semi-vaguely-heard-of girlfriends and didnt shatter some plastic-perfect illusion that he had willingly conspired with the media to establish.
There then, all that because I didnt know what to say. Thank God I didnt rummage down the old document files for something I wrote last year. Or maybe not.
12 December 2004
menopausal butterfly?
I seem to be more aggressive, or less tolerant, recently and its a situation that has developed slowly and evenly, not one that can be brushed away as a bad mood or a bad month. Now I am far enough along the learning curve to look back and see, it seems to have crept up on me progressively.
Even with real stresses, fears, possibilities, I have handled worse news differently in the past, so whilst these things are showing up examples of my reduced submissiveness and new need for action, they are not the root cause of it.
Is it mortality? Doubtful, I have already looked that in the eye.
Is it the slow decrease of oestrogen - therefore the surfacing of the effects of my natural testosterone? This is the most likely cause and a great comfort, my reason being this:
With or without menstrual hormones, I will never produce as much testosterone as the weakest most feminine male. This new aggression, this new desire to go from A to B and be annoyed by obstacles in between, rather than attentive to them or interested in them, will only ever be a productive, female-controlled shadow of the attitude the men in my life have displayed ever since their balls dropped.
Regardless of what my fading milch-cow side says, regardless of what my partner would like me to believe, I am not turning into a short tempered harridan, I am simply, finally, being taken out of the 'nurturing cycle' and given just enough cards to join the game that men have played all their lives. Time my nearest and dearest got a small return on their own vision of the world, time at last for something akin to a partnership, I am waking up.
I think I am in the training ground for becoming a matriarch. Have you ever noticed how, as old men get milder, its the women that rule the roost, that get the respect, that the family turns to? There is a saying at Eton, I am told, school for the elite, that in order to lead you must first learn to serve; thats their reason for the fagging system. I suddenly get the feeling that being female, moreso in a bad situations at times, has been the best training ground for moving on to lead, one that precious few men will come near to experiencing .
I have often seen things wrong in my life and gone on through the pain to guilt, to a need to forgive and keep hoping, to make allowances, put up with it 'because'. I begin to see that not as 'me', but as a hormonal by-product similar to the one, after childbirth, where you can sleep through a bomb going off but wake instantly if the newborn's breathing changes. It wasnt my character, it was chemicals, given for a season and a reason. Time to get back to the real me.
I dont know if I'll lose that completely, because I dont know who I am, but I am remembering. It is strange that I cant feel so apologetic any more. I think I am going to have fun.
Even with real stresses, fears, possibilities, I have handled worse news differently in the past, so whilst these things are showing up examples of my reduced submissiveness and new need for action, they are not the root cause of it.
Is it mortality? Doubtful, I have already looked that in the eye.
Is it the slow decrease of oestrogen - therefore the surfacing of the effects of my natural testosterone? This is the most likely cause and a great comfort, my reason being this:
With or without menstrual hormones, I will never produce as much testosterone as the weakest most feminine male. This new aggression, this new desire to go from A to B and be annoyed by obstacles in between, rather than attentive to them or interested in them, will only ever be a productive, female-controlled shadow of the attitude the men in my life have displayed ever since their balls dropped.
Regardless of what my fading milch-cow side says, regardless of what my partner would like me to believe, I am not turning into a short tempered harridan, I am simply, finally, being taken out of the 'nurturing cycle' and given just enough cards to join the game that men have played all their lives. Time my nearest and dearest got a small return on their own vision of the world, time at last for something akin to a partnership, I am waking up.
I think I am in the training ground for becoming a matriarch. Have you ever noticed how, as old men get milder, its the women that rule the roost, that get the respect, that the family turns to? There is a saying at Eton, I am told, school for the elite, that in order to lead you must first learn to serve; thats their reason for the fagging system. I suddenly get the feeling that being female, moreso in a bad situations at times, has been the best training ground for moving on to lead, one that precious few men will come near to experiencing .
I have often seen things wrong in my life and gone on through the pain to guilt, to a need to forgive and keep hoping, to make allowances, put up with it 'because'. I begin to see that not as 'me', but as a hormonal by-product similar to the one, after childbirth, where you can sleep through a bomb going off but wake instantly if the newborn's breathing changes. It wasnt my character, it was chemicals, given for a season and a reason. Time to get back to the real me.
I dont know if I'll lose that completely, because I dont know who I am, but I am remembering. It is strange that I cant feel so apologetic any more. I think I am going to have fun.
02 December 2004
Metamorphosis
A couple of friends recommended the following sites today, which cheered me up immensely:
1. www.lhj.com. You can sign up for free, upload a photo of yourself and try some different hair styles and colours. Most of them look ridiculous, of course.
2. http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/Transformer/
No sign-up necessary and you get to see how you look as an old person, a baby, a monkey, the opposite sex
Both brilliant fun, but as I have just learned, not to be discussed or played with in the company of an '8 Year Old Daughter':
8YOD (pausing to watch an advert): Ooh mummy do you want your hair to go straight? Theres this thing on telly
Me: No thanks love, see all the dry frizzy bits would stick out even more
8YOD: Oh no, I think you'd look pretty, and if you put on that wrinkle removing cream you'd look even prettier
Me: You are 8, arent you???
8YOD: Yes and Lewis is 10, what, you dont know the ages of your own children?
Me: No, look, I'm wrinkly, I forget things
8YOD: Oh yes and your brain gets smaller doesnt it.............when it gets the wrinkles..........
1. www.lhj.com. You can sign up for free, upload a photo of yourself and try some different hair styles and colours. Most of them look ridiculous, of course.
2. http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~morph/Transformer/
No sign-up necessary and you get to see how you look as an old person, a baby, a monkey, the opposite sex
Both brilliant fun, but as I have just learned, not to be discussed or played with in the company of an '8 Year Old Daughter':
8YOD (pausing to watch an advert): Ooh mummy do you want your hair to go straight? Theres this thing on telly
Me: No thanks love, see all the dry frizzy bits would stick out even more
8YOD: Oh no, I think you'd look pretty, and if you put on that wrinkle removing cream you'd look even prettier
Me: You are 8, arent you???
8YOD: Yes and Lewis is 10, what, you dont know the ages of your own children?
Me: No, look, I'm wrinkly, I forget things
8YOD: Oh yes and your brain gets smaller doesnt it.............when it gets the wrinkles..........
27 November 2004
Dear Diary I have miserably failed at my first ever effort at NaNoWriMo and having started as a cathartic exorcism of life-suck-itis , it had in any case become its own creature which demanded a story line to wrap around the observations and was therefore falling apart well before the pre-cold grumps (PCS?) and the final welcome realisation that my growing xenophobia and murderous tendencies were safely rooted in something real that involved having a temperature.
To cut a long story short, I failed to cut a short story long, having quit with the sniffles. Things have dried up a good deal in two days and I now only have the residual cough - not quite one to rival Alf Garnett's bronchial thundering (remember him) but enough to make my dear other half cast me occasional disapproving sideways glances, particularly when I roll a ciggie. DH (Darling Husband) doesn’t smoke, never has and never will and all good luck to him, however, as he met and wooed me after the filthy weed already had its claws in my psyche, twelve years is a long time for him to tick and tut as if its something he feels I choose to do against his better judgement.
So, do I finish the ‘book’? A couple of dear friends have read the story so far and seem quite enthusiastically involved, but then I could easily suspect said friends of emphasising their encouragement to the expense of the hammering and vicious literary critique that I had really hoped for, albeit that I would prefer such dissection to come from people whose opinions would not crush me into the dirt.
Based on the original concept of NaNoWriMo (never mind the quality, count the length) it would be reasonable to assume that my own effort is so much dire hogwash and worthy only of attaining a place on the winners list, something that I have already failed to do.
I also have some real office work coming my way at last, having lost my last home working contract a couple of months ago when one of the company Directors went personally bankrupt and then did a runner with the money.
In between I have looked at becoming an MLM rep (desperate times) and sort of agreed to join a couple. Top site for survival in this state was (is) run by Caroline Tresman and has an excellent home workers forum where one may ask advice, give advice, spurn advice and generally get hot under the collar in support of or disdain at other people’s opinions, if that’s what really rocks your boat.
All next week I am doing some background admin for a new IT Online learning site; a breath of fresh air because all the courses are bang up to date and, by UK standards, very, very cheap. After that I have a longer, project based contract coming up.
Well there you go, my first post with links. Which means I’ll probably read it tomorrow and decide to scrap the whole thing as appearing contrived. Hey ho.
Tags: NaNoWriMo, AlfGarnett, Homeworking
To cut a long story short, I failed to cut a short story long, having quit with the sniffles. Things have dried up a good deal in two days and I now only have the residual cough - not quite one to rival Alf Garnett's bronchial thundering (remember him) but enough to make my dear other half cast me occasional disapproving sideways glances, particularly when I roll a ciggie. DH (Darling Husband) doesn’t smoke, never has and never will and all good luck to him, however, as he met and wooed me after the filthy weed already had its claws in my psyche, twelve years is a long time for him to tick and tut as if its something he feels I choose to do against his better judgement.
So, do I finish the ‘book’? A couple of dear friends have read the story so far and seem quite enthusiastically involved, but then I could easily suspect said friends of emphasising their encouragement to the expense of the hammering and vicious literary critique that I had really hoped for, albeit that I would prefer such dissection to come from people whose opinions would not crush me into the dirt.
Based on the original concept of NaNoWriMo (never mind the quality, count the length) it would be reasonable to assume that my own effort is so much dire hogwash and worthy only of attaining a place on the winners list, something that I have already failed to do.
I also have some real office work coming my way at last, having lost my last home working contract a couple of months ago when one of the company Directors went personally bankrupt and then did a runner with the money.
In between I have looked at becoming an MLM rep (desperate times) and sort of agreed to join a couple. Top site for survival in this state was (is) run by Caroline Tresman and has an excellent home workers forum where one may ask advice, give advice, spurn advice and generally get hot under the collar in support of or disdain at other people’s opinions, if that’s what really rocks your boat.
All next week I am doing some background admin for a new IT Online learning site; a breath of fresh air because all the courses are bang up to date and, by UK standards, very, very cheap. After that I have a longer, project based contract coming up.
Well there you go, my first post with links. Which means I’ll probably read it tomorrow and decide to scrap the whole thing as appearing contrived. Hey ho.
Tags: NaNoWriMo, AlfGarnett, Homeworking
25 November 2004
A blow by blow account
OK well, given that this seems to be turning into some sort of not-so-personal diary I should explain that I am writing this in the middle of a good old fashioned British cold. I say 'cold', but then not being male I accept that I am hormonally challenged and that this causes me to labour under certain misconceptions; I do appreciate that testosterone levels have a direct bearing on ones ability to experience or distinguish 'flu' and to run off to bed with a teddy bear and a bell for room service.
Whatever it is this suffering could turn out to be a good thing, as with the weather totally upside down and doing its own thing it may mean I am to be spared another UK tradition - the Christmas Day Flu, the one where, as mum, you end up trying to stuff a turkey and stir vegetables from as great a distance as possible whilst trying to only breath over your left shoulder, or alternatively looking like something out of a Black Adder episode, with frequently changed and secretly inserted clumps of cotton wool / loo roll / cat hair wedged up your nose. Joke, (well only the cat hair).
Over the last two weeks I have progressed through the 'just let me push my forehead into your doorframe and apply pressure to the back of my head, so I can sort of cough without exploding' sinus head and the 'its amazing but you CAN sleep face down with your head hanging over the edge of the bed' streaming bit, to the 'who shoved a pound of sherbert up my nose and why do I look like Quasimodo?' stage.
Trust the flipping sun to be shining, too. I ought to be amazed and full of joy that the weather has allowed roses to continue to bloom in November, moreso as I live on a hill by the sea where all signs of life start later and finish earlier than they do even at the bottom of the slope, due to the gusting salty winds which can have you looking like a fisherman's friend before you can say 'Ooh Arr'. Thats my excuse anyhow, and I'm sticking to it.
Sunshine and sherbert sinuses do NOT go together, one tiny golden ray hitting your skin seems to inspire a cataclysmic reaction, as if one whole side of the face frantically tries to bunch itself up and run for cover inside the eye socket until the offending light is removed; its very painful. 100 Watt bulbs dont do this, only sunshine and annoyingly it works irrespective of the state of your windows; dust, dirt, nicotine and the most over indulgent swathes of net curtain have no filtering effect whatsoever, sadly removing any excuse for putting up with such otherwise offensive decor. Maybe I should try mud.
Right, I am off to tot up the end-of-the-month spare cash and see if I can afford to behave like royalty and send a taxi to collect the children from school this afternoon, then I am going to say 'stuff it' to the housework and do the male (aka sensible?) thing and find a darkened room. Please God, may I not come back to this post in a week or so and decide that I should have just done that in the first place.
Good 'ere, innit.
Tags: Cold, Flu
Whatever it is this suffering could turn out to be a good thing, as with the weather totally upside down and doing its own thing it may mean I am to be spared another UK tradition - the Christmas Day Flu, the one where, as mum, you end up trying to stuff a turkey and stir vegetables from as great a distance as possible whilst trying to only breath over your left shoulder, or alternatively looking like something out of a Black Adder episode, with frequently changed and secretly inserted clumps of cotton wool / loo roll / cat hair wedged up your nose. Joke, (well only the cat hair).
Over the last two weeks I have progressed through the 'just let me push my forehead into your doorframe and apply pressure to the back of my head, so I can sort of cough without exploding' sinus head and the 'its amazing but you CAN sleep face down with your head hanging over the edge of the bed' streaming bit, to the 'who shoved a pound of sherbert up my nose and why do I look like Quasimodo?' stage.
Trust the flipping sun to be shining, too. I ought to be amazed and full of joy that the weather has allowed roses to continue to bloom in November, moreso as I live on a hill by the sea where all signs of life start later and finish earlier than they do even at the bottom of the slope, due to the gusting salty winds which can have you looking like a fisherman's friend before you can say 'Ooh Arr'. Thats my excuse anyhow, and I'm sticking to it.
Sunshine and sherbert sinuses do NOT go together, one tiny golden ray hitting your skin seems to inspire a cataclysmic reaction, as if one whole side of the face frantically tries to bunch itself up and run for cover inside the eye socket until the offending light is removed; its very painful. 100 Watt bulbs dont do this, only sunshine and annoyingly it works irrespective of the state of your windows; dust, dirt, nicotine and the most over indulgent swathes of net curtain have no filtering effect whatsoever, sadly removing any excuse for putting up with such otherwise offensive decor. Maybe I should try mud.
Right, I am off to tot up the end-of-the-month spare cash and see if I can afford to behave like royalty and send a taxi to collect the children from school this afternoon, then I am going to say 'stuff it' to the housework and do the male (aka sensible?) thing and find a darkened room. Please God, may I not come back to this post in a week or so and decide that I should have just done that in the first place.
Good 'ere, innit.
Tags: Cold, Flu
05 November 2004
Oooer!
My first blog. I have a blog, I am a blogger. The question now is why? Who on earth would want to be my bloggee, or the blogged - is this just an exercise in blatant egotistical waffling? Will nobody ever view my site, or will someone skim past and tell me to blog off?
I'm sure I'll find a use for this, it seemed so logical, such a brilliant idea, as I signed on, but now that I'm here I am at a loss. Bloggin' 'eck.
Off to work out how to do this now..........here goes nothing
I'm sure I'll find a use for this, it seemed so logical, such a brilliant idea, as I signed on, but now that I'm here I am at a loss. Bloggin' 'eck.
Off to work out how to do this now..........here goes nothing
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