Unthinking the Unthinkable

I had a teacher for A-Level General Studies who did little to dispel the stereotype of the left-leaning educationalist. Hairy about the face, sandaled about the feet, he was an earnest and engaged fellow. Archetypal Guardianista though he may have seemed to be, my strongest memory of him was his telling us that he only ever read newspapers with a right-wing slant, the better to whet his convictions by testing them against those of others.

I think of him often on Twitter, the beauty and the danger of which is that, with its infinitely customisable timeline, it allows one to slip into a groupthink mentality, where opposing views seem those of a minority.

So it was that I have seen nothing but unconditional disgust and condemnation at the foul comments made by Cornwall councillor Collin Brewer. I struggle even to paraphrase what he said, so abhorrent and callous were his stigmatising of children with disabilities as “burdens” and the parallels he drew with putting down animals.

Incredibly, this all came to light prior to the recent local elections; having previously apologised and indicated that he would not stand, Mr Brewer has, in fact, been re-elected to his position – although he faces continuing pressure to resign. From where I stand, it seems inconceivable that anyone would vote for him, but as tempting as it would be to dismiss his supporters out of hand, I think there is more at issue here than an offensive lone voice on the fringes.

A part of me thinks that it speaks volumes that Mr Brewer felt able to make his comments in the first place, and did not suffer an immediate and career-ending backlash as a result. His remarks, after all, are in many ways a logical extension of the current public debate in which financial cost and contribution trump all. Increasingly, we seem to be hearing, you are entitled only to take out what you have put in. The hard-working taxpayer is encouraged to believe that s/he is central to this policy and that changes to the social security system are designed to shake off an overwhelming burden of spongers, scroungers and shirkers.

Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation published earlier this week indicated a sharp rise in people believing, essentially, that poverty is caused by the poor; for whatever reason, the fabled lazy, feckless, fraudulent recipient of benefits is becoming an ever-more entrenched figure in public opinion.

Against this backdrop, is it any wonder that people may start to be seduced by what comes across as “tough but fair” hard talking from the likes of Mr Brewer? After all, the Government is considering changes to welfare which would mean a cap on child benefit after a family’s first two children, leaving a stark choice for those who find themselves unexpectedly pregnant with a third. Is it such a leap to extend the same thought process to the sick, the ill and the dependant? I would say not, but that forcing people to make decisions in a context of withdrawn funding and hate-filled talk of “burdens”, is the stuff of nightmares.

We are encouraged in so many ways to believe that we are agents of our own fate. We are consumers of all sorts, not least of services once seen as simple entitlements: healthcare, education, even policing. Personally I remain convinced that this is essentially an illusion of choice; worse, that it breaks the link of obligation which underlies the social contract of taxes paid and services received and tends to drive those with sufficient resources to seek elsewhere and resent what is perceived as subsidies to those undeserving and less well-off.

I have another problem with this narrative of choice. If we are entirely free to choose the shape and substance of our lives, then – as I am trying to inculcate, with little success, into my children – we are wholly to blame when things go wrong. There is little room for the concept which probably has an impressive name in German philosophy, but which is generally known as “shit happens”. Prudence and precaution can only go so far in warding off misadventure, and it is disingenuous to suggest otherwise. It may be seductive to look at anyone requiring a greater than average level of support and blame their choices for leading them to the position they’re in, but it is illogical, inhumane and deeply short-sighted.

Suspicion and fear are innate in all of us, of course, but pointing the finger at others makes us no more secure. I want those with public voices to say, loudly and often, that human lives should never have to compete on balance sheets with public toilets or rubbish collections. Perhaps the most chilling thing about this is the idea that Mr Brewer thought he might be praised for saying the unsayable, for speaking out bravely for reason and fact against wishy-washy emotion. No, no and no. This isn’t about difficult choices. This is no choice at all.

Beyond this, though, I want to hear them countering the myths and facing down the lies about welfare spending, not allowing them to become received wisdom. I don’t want my children to grow up in a society where cash is hoarded under the mattress and the door is never opened to those in need. A lot of decent, good people are being won over by this brand of hard talk – and it terrifies me.

Dave’s Army

There are not many skills I brought from my previous job which are any help now that I spend my days playing trains, changing nappies and being a smile in an anorak at the school gate. Those years spent honing a curt – yet kind – nod to indicate things needed to be tidied up? Pulling rank to hit a deadline? No. I live in a perma-mess, and arrive at school, day after day, trailing children like flags from the pushchair, just as the bell rings.

The capacity to maintain a straight face and an encouraging tone of voice while listening to a dubious Good Idea remains, though. It’s surprising how many similarities there are between a client who thinks he has found an instant solution to all his problems and a small child off on a frolic of his own in some beatific world of dreams.

It is with this one remaining transferable skill (assuming – perhaps wrongly – that there is no call for playing trains, changing nappies, or indeed smiling in anoraks, at Westminster) that I respond to the proposal in yesterday Queen’s Speech that we all, in our own way, adopt the proud mantle of Defender of the Borders. A kind of Dave’s Army, if you will, turning signposts the wrong way and scanning the shores for suspicious looking arrivals (oh no, sorry, that was Hartlepool)

Without having seen the proposals in detail, it’s hard to know exactly how it’s envisaged that this will work. The general idea, as far as I can tell, seems to be that wherever nasty furriners pop up to scrounge avail themselves of any kind of service or amenity, their residence status should be checked by the person dispensing it. The initial suggestion is that this would apply to private landlords and medical professionals, but the obvious extension would be teachers, advisers – hell (possibly wrong word) even clergy. What simpler way to stop someone from taking advantage of a benefit to which they are not entitled than scuppering them at source?

The problem is (adopting the gentle tone of voice in which I explain to my son that it’s a little late for his father to become a professional footballer and make us wealthy beyond our wildest dreams) that it just wouldn’t work.

Immigration law is fiendishly complex, governed by legislation, regulations, treaties and charters both domestic and international. If even the Government can’t pin down whether an obvious undesirable such as Abu Qatada is legally entitled to remain, it seems a bit rich to suggest that a hard-pressed nurse in A&E ought to be able to make a snap decision. Who, actually, will be deemed to be entitled and how is it to be proven? At the very least it would need some kind of sooper-dooper, infallibly efficient system spitting out red, green and amber cards each time an individual’s circumstance changes. Perhaps that’s it. Finances and track record alike indicate that the Government would have no problem in commissioning and operating that kind of database. Don’t they?

Even with fail-safe, up-to-the-minute identity documents (carried at all times, by all who need them), there are an awful lot of questions. Will front-line service providers (I can’t even get my head around the idea of how this could apply to private landlords, so will stick to the easier to grasp notion of healthcare) be fully trained and given appropriate refresher courses each time the law changes? Will they have their contracts updated to include a new duty to check entitlement before providing care? What will the consequences be if they fail, and who is to do the enforcing? How will they know whom to challenge, and will they be indemnified against a claim for racial discrimination if they decide simply to play it safe and ask every patient with an accent or a non-white face? Similarly, I assume the Government will put in place indemnity insurance to protect those who wrongly turn away someone who then dies – surely an inevitability.

It couldn’t work, and even in not-working it would cost a fortune. A naive observer may suggest that putting money directly into the beleaguered Border Agency, would perhaps yield better results in terms of monitoring who is here and on what terms. A cynic may suggest that the Government knows perfectly well that this idea is a non-starter, but, in these UKIP-flavoured days, is throwing a crust to those who are encouraged to believe that uncontrolled immigration lies at the root of all our ills.

Me? I think that the Government is acting unforgivably in proposing that everyone, in Michael Gove’s words, should play a role in upholding immigration law. One person’s patriotic Captain Mainwaring is another’s racist vigilante, and in an environment where suspicion and resentment are officially endorsed, tragedy is likely to ensue. I may nit-pick at the practicalities of the proposal, but I despise the tone of the debate.

Skipping Time

It is, finally, and very belatedly, spring.

So belatedly, in fact, that we seem to have jumped over spring and landed straight into early summer.

Royal blue skies, blossom-heavy trees, plants bursting and tumbling into new growth, as if desperate to make up for opportunitiy missed.

Setting out in the morning for school with the slightest of chills on our cheeks, but walking home in the afternoons bare-armed and clamouring for paddling pools and ice creams.

Children in the garden, running in the streets, laughing and throwing faces up to catch the sun, no longer muffled and huddled against cold and wind.

Watching my big boy yesterday, daft on sunshine and warmth, gambolling around the drive like an overgrown, uniform-clad lamb.

Skipping, for sheer delight.

A clench of the heart at his carefree joy. The ghost of a thought, then guilt for that ghost, that this time next year he may be too old for skipping. The fear that he will skip at school, and be mocked by those lofty in the conviction that their skipping time is done.

Skipping time.

The Cost of Everything…

It is probably a sign that my children watch too much TV (clue: they do), but I suspect I will remember their growing-up at least in part through the programmes they watched. There is still a little nostalgia for the evenings when the older two were very young, and would snuggle, pyjama’ed, to watch In the Night Garden. Even the two year old disdains it now, sadly, as I desperately try to filter CBBC or CITV to keep the post Iggle-Piggle world out a bit longer.

More welcome is the gradual jettisoning of anthropomorphised do-gooders (yes, I’m looking at you, Thomas the Tank Engine) and the discovery of new programmes with a bit more meat – or, in the case of the utterly brilliant Horrible Histories, blood and guts – to them. The latest obsession is Trade Your Way to the USA, in which teams of children compete to earn the most money in sales challenges.

As an introduction to the world of finance, I think it has many advantages over the family of china pig money boxes which I remember from the 1980s. We did try to make money, of course. It’s just that it always involved sponsorship and Good Causes. I honestly don’t think that the idea of trying to make money for myself by anything other than doing chores around the house ever occurred to me. My children, inspired as much by the miniature lemonade tycoonness of the HSBC adverts as by Trade Your Way, have already grasped (at the ages of 5 and 7 respectively) the concept that you can make money by buying cheap and selling high. And by having a father with plenty of Air Miles, obviously.

I’m slightly surprised how much I like Trade Your Way, or, more precisely, how much I like that they like it.The idea of children learning about entrepreneurship while still in the Infants ought not to sit easily with the apple-pie childhood I want them to enjoy, but I think it’s a good thing. I have no idea what they will become in life once the sad shortage of positions as princesses or knights becomes clear to them, but I think they already have a head start on their mother, who would have been able to tell you what “balance sheet” was in four languages before she would actually have been able to read one.

Besides, we are all business folk now, aren’t we? Over the past few years we have become acclimatised to talk of debts and deficits; budgets and shortfalls. UK PLC is struggling, and we are all engaged in a kind of national Trade Your Way (Back) to the AAA. The problem for me is that the current government, for all its invocations of housewifely thrift, feels less like an heir to the grocer’s daughter, than a team from The Apprentice, jangling with buzzwords and zeal and schemes to get rich (or less poor) quick.

Take Maria Miller’s call today to the Arts world to “demonstrate the healthy dividends that our investment continues to pay”. Fair enough, perhaps, when money is tight, and had her speech been couched more as “well, it’s a new hip for Granny or some subsidised statues”, I doubt it would have attracted much attention. It’s more the application of brute business logic to intangible value which jars.

I may apply her logic to the children. After all, it’s a tough world out there, and perhaps we need to give some serious consideration as to who will pay greater dividends from our investment. No2 has a worrying propensity for dolls, so an expensive degree could be likely to be wasted. No3 is left-handed. Will he struggle and be held back. Or will it add a touch of genius? Decisions, decisions.

The idea that a household doesn’t work as a metaphor for a nation’s economy has been pointed out by many, but surely running a country exactly as one would a sales department is equally problematic. Superficially it’s attractive, but I would prefer those in charge to include all their capital, whether financial, cultural or even human, in their accounts. Oh, and to remember who is actually entitled to those dividends.

Life before school

Poor old Liz Truss, tied up in knots again.

Her interview in the Daily Mail, with the headline quote that British toddler in nursery are “running around with no sense of purpose” has been widely lampooned, with Twitter gleefully competing to see who could deliver the best sound bite as to toddlers’ often all-too-firm sense of purpose.

It is easy to laugh, and I was self-righteously snarking along with the best of them. Of *course* toddlers run around with apparently little aim. They are colliding – quite literally – minute by minute with new surroundings, experiences and ideas. From one day to the next, things prompt different reactions and thoughts and demand speedy and often chaotic exploration. It’s the reason why small children are so delightfully exhausting.

My two eldest children were at nursery from a few months old. Although we had some issues with the place which, together with several other factors, eventually led to me leaving work to look after the children at home, the books and development charts which the nursery staff completed showed that there was thoughtful consideration behind the apparent mayhem which sometimes greeted us on drop-off and pick-up. Nurseries and childminders are already subject to Ofsted regulation, and any setting in which children were literally just allowed to riot for hours behind a locked door would struggle to continue to operate. If Liz Truss has observed mobs of unruly toddlers, surely her correct response should be to ask why the existing framework isn’t being implemented?

Behind the sniggering, though, the article chills me. It is entirely of a piece with the sense I get from much government policy which suggests, implicitly, that children are a menace and a nuisance, and that we ought to go further even than the Victorians in trying to ensure that they are neither seen nor heard till they can make some kind of valuable contribution.

A 2 year old is not a miniature version of the child she will be at 4. My own 2 year old is little short of a barbarian – he is rough, inattentive, often unruly and incredibly obstinate. Were he still to be so by the time he starts school, I would worry – but I have confidence that the long slog of installing some kind of civilisation into him will pay off, not because I enforce the behaviour I wish to see, but because we model and encourage and cajole – and, sometimes, judiciously ignore. Surely insisting that very small children display a given set of conduct before they are actually ready to do so is setting even more up to be pathologised with a diagnosis of behavioural problems?

Of course, some children start school with no social skills and unable to sit still, but all, or most of them? Ironically, this was one of the issues which Sure Start and the universal preschool place for 3 year olds (now extended in disadvantaged areas to even younger children) were aimed at tackling. Another reason to hope that they don’t fall victim to the education-as-childcare-for-working-parents trend. For my money, they are a much better way to ensure most children, whatever their background, enter Reception ready to learn than rows of nappy-clad bottoms learning by rote.

*update*
I’ve been thinking about this since I posted yesterday. I’m aware that the article in the Daily Mail gave a slant to Liz Truss’s comments which made them easier to mock. My concern remains, though, that policy is being mooted on the basis of a few visits by an individual, no on research showing, for example, that children who attend nursery do demonstrably worse at school (which, I would suggest, would be hard to find.)

Stay at home kids

Being, as we are, high on pretension and low on cash, we are past masters at teaching our children the value of the Annual Membership.

From a small local museum up to one of the twin shibboleths of English Heritage or National Trust ( never – horrors! – at the same time), we have becoming experts at producing a laminated card magician-like from our wallets, and crafting a family day out from little more than a damp ruin, frugal sandwiches and a car full of wellies.

Naturally, our children have been known to rebel. In an effort to reconcile them to their parents’ stinginess, and distract them from the thoughts of ten-pin-bowling, cinema trips or football matches apparently enjoyed by their peers, we try to help them relate to what they’re seeing, and  repopulate our surroundings for them with the children who once lived there for real. Dynastic child-brides and infant rulers if we’re at an old castle; gorgeous mini-me’s in diminutive adult dress if we’re in a gallery or stately home (“Is that really a boy, mum? In a dress?!!!”) and, saddest of all, tiny miners and skivvies when we visit their absolute favourite, Beamish.

It reinforces to me how recent our concept of “childhood” is. The recreated school at Beamish (along with my own grandparents) is a reminder that even when compulsory education was introduced, relatively recently, children would leave the (rather forbidding-looking) classroom in their early teens to find a job and leave childhood behind.

My eldest son, who is seven, has just discovered the Famous Five series, and is devouring adventure after adventure enjoyed by children with apparently minimal supervision and endless school holidays. He is yet to become as obsessed as I remember being (trying to persuade the mother of a friend to take down the mock-Tudor panelling in her suburban 30s semi to find the smugglers’ passage I was sure lay behind) although I am sure that it is only a matter of time.

So far, so smugly middle-class. Much as I like to think of Enid Blyton as capturing the halcyon days of a golden period of childhood, I know that she hopelessly romanticises both the time and freedom enjoyed by her comfortably-off characters (although my dad, a miner’s son, recollects long summers spent happily exploring the countryside around his Durham  village home – although without meeting any kidnappers, or smugglers, unfortunately).

Whatever freedom there was for children, has, for most, disappeared these days. What is left to distinguish them from adults is their time: the hours after school, the half-terms, the long holidays, in which to play and dream and read and be bored. Although not an immediate reason for me giving up work, I am grateful now that my children have a lot of time at home, where they don’t have to deal with the interactions with others which seem to take up almost as much energy as their lessons. They love school, but by Fridays and – especially – the end of the term, they are exhausted.

I’ve been mulling this over for a while, but Michael Gove’s comments yesterday proposing longer school days and shorter holidays have made me think even more. My initial response was to reject what he suggests, although I think that on reflection there probably is an argument to be made to spread term time more evenly across the year, perhaps, as one tweet which I read suggested, with 6×6 week blocks, interspersed with more, but shorter, holidays than at present. The autumn term is (with apologies for the pun) interminable; the last few weeks of the summer term too often feel like a slow run down to the long, long holidays.

I can’t agree, though, that a reduction in the amount of time off overall would be a good thing. I  feel that children ideally need some time to recuperate and just to be – not continually structured and socialised. Additionally, although I’m not a teacher, many of my family are, and I know how hard they work and how drained they are at the end of term. As with the proposals for longer days, I think there are two (political) factors at play – the pressure to help working parents, and the public belief, too often pandered to, that teachers work the same hours at their pupils.

By all means support schools in offering high quality, affordable (hell, even subsidised) wrap around care which makes it easier on both parents and children where working hours clash with the school envelope. Just don’t conflate education with childcare, and don’t extend lesson time at the cost of what children actually learn.

Doubtless teachers could come in earlier and stay later to supervise children, but when, then, would they do their preparation and marking, and what would be the knock-on effect to the quality of education? It’s a cheap shot, but there are no proposals that I’m aware of to require hospital doctors to hang around after their shifts to make beds and prepare their patients’ breakfasts; nor politicians to return to their offices after debates to do a spot of dusting and save the taxpayer the expense of parliamentary cleaners, though in each case they doubtless could do so. Teachers, as the name suggests, teach – and even those who remain unswervably convinced that they have a cushy number should perhaps pause to wonder whether it would be in children’s best interests to sit at their desks, at a very young age, for hours longer than at present, being crammed with facts like so many little battery chickens.

The more paranoid part of me also raises an eyebrow at extending school days explicitly  to accommodate parental working patterns. Given the recent rhetoric around the desirability of “hard-working” (ie, dual income) families, am I wrong to be nervous about the implications of tying educational provision so closely to a family’s circumstances? How, too, does this tie in with the recent announcement to withdraw even what limited financial assistance there was available for working parents of school-age children?

As always, it’s hard to distinguish between a knee-jerk reaction to a threat to the status quo (after all, we are, most of us, deeply conservative by nature especially where our children are concerned) and a genuine opposition to a proposed change which seems deeply flawed. I just hope that in this Gradgrind-like climate of facts, function and financial considerations, our children are allowed to be just that for as long as possible.

Big Girl Pants

I had a meeting today. If you knew me well, you would be able to tell that I’d had a meeting today, because I have mascara on, and I’m not wearing an anorak.

It’s seven and a half years since I first went on maternity leave; almost four since I left (paid) work altogether. Three children and a million buggy miles later, I sometimes think that I have worn away almost to the point of transparency. Or, perhaps, invisibility. Being a stay at home mum, for me, has meant that I see the world almost exclusively through a prism of parenthood. More than that, though, parenthood has become a kind of shield, by which I fear I try to deflect the world’s attention.

I used to be a solicitor, in a relatively glitzy world. I suppose that I wore a uniform of kinds even back then: smart suit, straightened hair, show-off handbag and clicking heels. Along with fancy offices and conspicuously late hours, it was shorthand for “impressive and important”, although I’m not sure whether it was ourselves, each other or the clients we were trying to convince. Clothes do that. They confer confidence and identity so easily.

There’s no-one to impress these days, though, and I have gradually retreated into a wardrobe which is practical, functional and, frankly, boring. Boots made for walking; coats made for downpours; jumpers and jeans misshapen with the balled-up snotty hankies of myriad winter snuffles.

In large part, I think it’s down to comfort and laziness. When the only other adults I see in the course of a normal week are equally shrouded against the elements in a reliably inclement playground, there seems to be little point in spending effort and money choosing and co-ordinating a look. I’m not consciously trying to convey any message with my appearance, although doubtless I still do.

Beneath this, though, is a retreat of a different kind: a leaching away of courage and identity, an inability to decide what suits me even when time and money allow. Allowing myself to slump into generic mumsiness has blunted my perceptions of what and who else I am.

The last few months have seen me start to move, tentatively, back into the field of work. I have loved having a few years to dedicate solely to my little family, but as they start to grow up, the need to earn money, keep busy and (if I’m honest) use my brain again is becoming overwhelming. It’s surprising me, though, how hard a step it is to move out of my little domestic sphere and into the world of grown-ups again, where interactions have nothing to do with babies, children or the minutiae of running a home.

Just as my shape has changed, so too has the landscape of work: the door back into my previous career is firmly bolted, so the challenge is to find a new fit which accommodates family needs together with my CV. I find myself grubbing around to gather some confidence in my professional skills and abilities, just as I stand despairing at my wardrobe when the anorak is off the menu and I have to scare up a presentable outfit.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting. It is just, in all senses, a massive move out of the comfortable shell I’ve been hiding in. New clothes are required, but under them I first need a pair of Big Girl Pants to hold me in, hold me up and disguise my wobbles. All of them.

Powered by Linky Tools

Click here to enter your link and view this Linky Tools list...

/code>

Some of the Questions I Have Been Asked Today

Where is the tractor?

Is there snow in heaven?

What is a typo?

What is “floating island of death” spelt backwards?

How do you spell “floating” backwards?

Are there sweets in heaven?

Why?

Why do A & B have brown skin when their mummy has white skin?

Who would you rather be out of The Lord of the Rings?

Who am I like the most out of The Lord of the Rings? (“Eowyn”) Why am I not more like Galadriel?

When is the Queen’s birthday?

What is the square root of 86?

Where is Spennymoor?

Can teenagers have babies?

How many days is it till our holiday?

Is it dark in heaven?

Is Spennymoor near Glasgow?

Have you heard of Bob Murphy? (Marley)

Is Gimli in heaven?

Is County Durham where you count?

Where do they all go at the end of The Lord of the Rings?

Where is the nee-naw?

What number would you be if you could choose?

Do you have different skin in Spennymoor?

What’s the biggest number ever?

What do they talk in Japan?

Why?

Do you know what a grammar is?

Why the tractor?

Questions I Have Asked Today

Is it bedtime yet?

Picture Perfect

Tomorrow is World Book Day (at my children’s school, at least) and we have finally settled on costumes after I convinced them that anything Hobbit- or Lord of the Rings-related just wasn’t going to happen (unless they were prepared to be Gollum, and go naked but for a dirty teatowel).

No1, who has discovered The Famous Five, is, happily, to be Julian (ie, himself, but with binoculars and an empty can of ginger beer if I remember to buy and drink one). No2, in a triumph of persistence over parental scruples, is a composite modern-day fairy (ie, wearing as much pink as she can apply to her person), with a mere passing nod to the Fun Day Fairies series.

Standing in line at the haberdashers this morning to buy ribbon and plastic flowers in a last-minute attempt to Make An Effort, I was surrounded by other women with the slightly panicked facial expressions reminiscent of holidaymakers who have wandered away from the tour guide and lost their way in the souk. We rolled our eyes and “pshaw”ed at each other in sympathy and mutual recognition of our plight.

Among us, though, were the professionals; those who needed no phrase book to navigate the racks of ribbon, bales (rolls?) of fabric, and the mysteries of the pattern drawers. I distinctly heard one lady discussing with her friend the fact that she had rejected several potential costume choices on the basis that they didn’t offer enough opportunity for creativity. Lucky, lucky child, who will be the most authentic Snow White this side of the Atlantic Ocean. If I had recognised the mother as one from our schoolgates, I would have been keeping No2 at home tomorrow for fear that she would expire with envy.

After the years that I failed to remember Halloween costumes for nursery, the time that my frankly amateur attempt to make a Dennis the Menace jumper for a then-4-year-old No1 was rejected on the morning of its debut in favour of a skanky pirate costume from the bottom of the dressing up box, and the disaster of a family wedding when my baby daughter looked as though she had been dressed by Dobby the house elf, I have long resigned myself to the fact that my parenting skills fall short in the “Apparel” department. Within the boundaries of affordability and decency (No2 would, given free rein, dress herself in the manner of a small Bet Lynch), what my children are going to wear doesn’t really matter tremendously to me.

If this sounds like a back-handed boast, it isn’t meant to. I am genuinely befuddled by those who spend a fortune on children’s clothes (partly because I am blessed with children who grow like Baby Bio’d knotweed, and sprint through sizes at an indecent rate) but it doesn’t keep me awake at night. Hand-me-downs and bargains appeal for all sorts of reasons, although sooner or later, principles notwithstanding, I know that I will stop calling the tune – while continuing to pay the piper, naturally.

I was musing about this earlier, in connection with the fact that we don’t, as a family, take many photographs, and I think that both things come, in part, because I don’t “see” my world in images. I wish I did, actually. It doesn’t come naturally to me to frame a memory in a picture, and while I do try to take snapshots when it occurs to me, I almost always remember with a jolt at the end of a special day that we didn’t get a single decent photo as a souvenir. I bet the lady I overheard this morning has albums documenting occasions throughout the lives of her children – birthdays, holidays, Halloween, Christmas – and I bet that an element of her prepares for the occasions with a view to the photos she would never forget to take.

I think in the past I may have felt, horribly snobbishly, that dressing with an eye to the camera was a shallow way of going about things. Now, though, I feel differently: perhaps the costumes and the outfits are just props which prompt memories to be recorded which would otherwise be forgotten. It’s not so much about remembering what the child wore when she was 5; more remembering who she was at the time. I know that I will never be able to sew for toffee, and I know that my daughter (who already has an interest in clothes which goes way beyond mine) will need to find her fashion inspiration elsewhere, but the lack of photo taking is definitely something I intend to rectify. As soon as I remember where the camera is.

 

It’s oh so quiet…

I’m in a difficult place at the moment. I have a deep-seated need to be right, which is – naturally – the counterpoint to an utter hatred of being proved wrong. I find myself, two weeks into my Lenten resolutions, having to reconcile the two – and the fence is an uncomfortable place to sit.

As I thought might be the case, the giving-up-wine has wobbled somewhat. In my defence, it was only one night; the third time in 2 and a half years that Mr Book and I went out together in the evening, and it took an unedifyingly small struggle for me to decide that I wanted to share a bottle of wine with him after all, dammit. My weak will-power and I are back on the wagon, though, and there’s still a month to go.

I have, however, stuck faithfully to my no-Twitter rule. Herein lies my dilemma. I knew that I spent too much time glued to my Tweetbot app, thumb curved claw-like to refresh, and refresh, and refresh. In all my Twitapologetics I have undoubtedly been sincere and even right: it connected me to the outside world at a time when I was housebound and rather lonely, it kept me up-to-date with current affairs and campaigns, it was stimulating and fun and challenging.

The nagging little voice in my head who whispered that I was spending too much time reading other people’s thoughts, that it was taking my attention away from my children and my everyday also had a point, though, and I’m forced to admit that it was a good one.

What has really surprised me is how much more relaxed I am. I had been increasingly feeling that Twitter’s incessant voices and calls for attention were starting to crush me with the weight of injustice and misery I read about by the hour every day, and that even when I wasn’t on Twitter, I was preoccupied and stressed by the things I’d been reading. Doubtless, it was my fault for giving in to my bleeding-heart-liberal tendencies when choosing whom to follow, but the simple fact remains that I was feeling overwhelmed, and I’m not sure to what purpose. I have tried to convince myself that an extended break from Twitter will allow me to reculer pour mieux sauter, but if I am being scrupulously honest with myself I have to admit that there was precious little sauteing going on in the first place, but rather a prolonged stewing with dubious results.

Perhaps coincidentally, I’ve also turned away from my beloved Radios 4 and 5 in favour of music, and find myself for the first time in very many years not having a clue what is going on beyond the confines of my little family and immediate surrounds.

I can’t quite reconcile myself to a prospect of extended ostrich-dom beyond the end of Lent, seductive though it is. A head in the sand is even less productive than one in a book. It maybe I just need to rethink “productive”…