Fenland witters

i'ma left wing Big Society collaborator.

2012-01-17T12:46:00.000-08:00

I am both betraying my political beliefs, and not betraying them, at the same time.
I want, desperately, for the stupid "Big Society" idea to fail, hideously, so that all the cuts affecting my childrens' education and life will end. I want the disabled not to be penalised. I want the NHS not to be clawing back pennies by pushing me onto cheaper (and less effective) medication. I want my library to stay open. I want to march on Downing Street with a machete and get Camerons' head off of his shoulders, but not before i've got to Gove and given him a VERY strict detention that also involves slight (for which read: fatal) electrocution. I am angry! Angry that my kids playing fields can be sold off for Free Schools, that schools are forced to become Academies, that their supposedly "ringfenced" budgets are nothing of the kind. Angry that all my local librarians have been laid off. Angry that my bus services have been cut by 50%. Angry that my local hospital is now privatised, and I can't get to the other one because there's no sodding bus. Angry that my local MP never says anything, at all, unless it's to placidly back up Cameron and wax lyrical about how lovely everything is. Angry that planning laws will wreck my local area. Oh, I could go on.
But my anger gets me nowhere. Letters to my MP, complaints to my council, get me nowhere. The Conservatives are in charge. They don't listen.
So i'm a collaborator. I'm due to have my head shaved. I'm part of the sodding Big Society. I'm volunteering. Unless I do, the school teacher has to listen to 30 kids read a week, and she clearly cannot. So 2 days a week, I do. Unless I volunteer to run the Storytime at the local library, it will close (the librarians having been kicked into retirement by machines and an evil Council). So I will do it. Unless a volunteer delivers the books from the library to the housebound, they won't read. So I will do it.
I am doing the jobs of people who should be paid to do them. I am not getting paid. I'm just doing it because I want the services to stay, because I am a lefty. But by God i'm cross about it.
I say to myself that this is as good a way as any to pave the way back to work when daughter hits school running next September. I'm probably going to swap from Secondary to Primary teaching. The classroom experience is good for me and it's good for the kids to have another adult there who is also a teacher. Alright, I knew more about Napoleonic warfare than phonics, but my class control is still great. But the teacher, who almsot snapped my arm off with sheer relief when I offered, should have more help anyway. She shouldn't be facing the prospect of even larger class sizes, with less help. The library shouldn't have to be ending services to children, particularly in an area with some of the poorest Early Years educational attainment in the UK. It shouldn't have to rely on volunteers.
I'm a collaborator, and the good my collaboration will do me as I re-enter the world of work is nothing compared to the meaness I feel at actually having to help these total bastards of a government out.
And my house is never tidy, because i'm always out. That bit, I can live with.

Wake me when it's over, but record the good bits for me.

2011-12-23T13:31:00.000-08:00

Well, the good things thus far about the festive season are these:

The kids and I can stay in pj's till noon and eat our breakfast at 10am. This suits all of us so much more than having to shovel down cereal at 7am and be out of the house by 8 with me shouting "Come ON! Eat the toast on the way! What do you mean? Bike one handed!"
I reckon i've done the whole gift giving shebang for pretty much under 150 quid for everyone, which is 2 kids, husband, my mum and dad, in(out)laws, and various odd friends. This is because I am a cheapskate that refuses to buy her kids anything at all labelly or expensive until they are puce with the lack of it at 13 years. I've done it all at charity shops, carboots, Boyes,or in my kitchen.
It's not as bad as it sounds, really. Best buys were a vintage Silvercross pram for dolls for £1.50, A scooter for a quid, and a completely unused, still sealed Science Museum Microscope with slides for £1.50. Trust me, the kids are getting 30 plus presents each this year. Husband has a fetching Lumberjack shirt, lots of CD's and DVD's, and the obligatory socks and pants, the only things i've actually purchased new. For obvious reasons. Both sets of grandparents are getting 10 prints of the kids, and a box full of piccallili, chutney, lemon curd, walnuts, pickled onions, and homebrew wine. Friends have wine or chutney. Cost is negligible, most of the fruit and veg is either homegrown or foraged. Biggest cost is time and vinegar.
Existential conversations about why Santa / Father Christmas has two names. Is it, as son posits, because he has to split himself in two for the different hemispheres? I must stop letting him look at atlases.
The fact that I actually made the nativity play this year. Even though, really, it wasn't very good.
The fact that daughter nabbed the part of Mary for her pre-school production because "real" Mary was ill. Her every step across the stage was filled with triumph and spite and made me search her room for little voodoo Christy-Lees' (the "real" Mary).

And then there's the shit. There's more of the shit.

Yes, we were having a family Xmas. Yes, for the first time we'd said it was at OUR house, so we wouldn't have to drive, LIKE THE LAST 3 YEARS. Because, you know, the kids like to play with their toys and not be wrenched from them to drive cross country, and I like to have a drink, goddamit. But then it appeared that nobody wanted to drive. I gave a silent joyous "hallejuyah" and prepared to enjoy my day in pajamas with me, mine. Until the in-laws said they were coming. Let me just say that they turned up at 8 AM last time and stayed till 9PM. This made me a bit cross, because I like to be dressed to greet guests, and more than that, Xmas morning present opening and brief fleeting gratitude from the kids is MY PRESERVE: having been the one who wiped their arses all year. Back off, Out-Law. Not this time. I'm locking the door till noon, and i'm only opening it when i've had a pint of sloe gin and am teetering on the edge of ignoring / attacking any stupid right wing ideas that might / inevitably emerge over lunch. You can see where this will end up.
They've already started comparing present sizes. It does not matter that I explain that worth is not related to size. No. The Biggest is the best. There will be tears, rows, weeping.
GO TO BED. YES. NOW. Jesus Christ, if threats and texts to Santa don't work now, they won't tommorrow. And they will wake up at 4, be grumpy by noon, just as the outlaws arrive and there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.
Stop saying "I want". No, really.
I know what i'm getting. My kids told me because they are pathologically unable to keep a secret. And whilst I do need new slippers, my world is not on fire. A tiny bit of me wanted to say "And you're getting......."
Cheese. I'll eat it. All. My arse will be big(ger) and it will be my own fault for watching the Dr Who Special on repeat with a WHOLE blue goats cheese, whilst kids sleep, husband has passed out through a combination of drunkeness and food.

Oh, and I forgot to by Paracetomol.

Buy the teacher booze.

2011-12-14T11:59:00.000-08:00

This year is the first year i've been on the parental end of teacher present buying. I know it is traditional to moan and whine about how you never did it, what's the world coming to and so on, but there is actually no law that says your 4 year old can't like and appreciate his teacher, and in fact, I loved every, single, crappy, or boozy gift I was ever given.
Of course, as a secondary teacher, mine were often less handmade, and more boozy, which helped, but I can honestly say that everything was appreciated. Here are some tips and hints on teacher present buying, from the perspective of a teacher. I'll start with some of the best gifts ever, that I got. You'll note that none of them cost much.
Top Ten gifts received by me, as teacher.

Absolutely best ever gift: a letter from a student thanking me and saying how i'd helped. Also copied to the Head. Thankyou X.
A huge hunk of cheddar. Probably shoplifted from Morrisons on the way in, and lobbed over with a "Ere you are Miss". Much appreciated by me and the staff party, and a lovely thought from a pupil not much taken with thought for anyone.
A fridge magnet made by a Year 7 student, consisting of a slab of plastic stuck onto a magnet with "You are my best teacher" written on it in Tippex. I kept this for years until it fell apart.
Some really large pajamas (my maternity leave co-incided with Xmas) from my form group, along with a note that said "My mum says these will be handy even after pregnancy, because you stay fat and the weight never comes off".
A sparkly, really, really sparkly pink fake cubic zircona keyring in the shape of a letter "M". Because my name was "Miss".
Any wine. Really.
Home made biscuits wrapped up in paper which had a picture of me on it. Year 7's can be cruel. Yes, my heels were high and my suits severe, but I really didn't think my butt was that big. Biscuits were lovely, I ate them anyway, despite the pictoral evidence, picture stayed on my wall in class for years.
Pens. Especially red ones.
Bath stuff. Yes, I know it's a cliche, but I could keep my bath going for half the year on my Xmas booty and I really appreciated each and every smelly. Although I admit the luminescent ones with no ingredient list went to the PTA raffle. Buy small, cheap, but good and hypo allergenic.
A set of socks to be kept in my drawer because one very observant tutee noticed I always forgot to have spares, and after walking to school from the train station I often had wet feet till break. Ditto tights.

So, you see, nowt over a fiver, and the top gift was free. I still have the card my form gave me as I left the school.

So, a few tips.

Cheap.
Personal. Yes, let them draw the card / gift. This year we made the cards and let son (4) write in them. I've seen some lovely plain baubles that would be great decorated by your kid. Letters are fab. Something the kid has made is NOT second best, it's the tops!
Useful. I say to you again: Pens. You have no idea how many pens teachers get through. And how tight the person with the key to the stationary cupboard is.
Self pleasuring. Your teacher is knackered. Anything that involves a small bit of joy for them is heaven. So yes, bubble bath, scented candles, food, wine, chocolate.
Genuine. Don't fake it. Don't feel you have to. I never ever expected anything from any of the kids, and every gift was a bonus. I do not subscribe to PTA's that ask for donations for presents. I don't think every teacher deserves one, I know not every parent can afford it. Think simple. Free, cheap, personal, if the kid themself wants to.

So, what has sons teacher got? A small scented candle, a homemade card, and some hair bobbles "because she has really long hair". She'll use the gifts, but the real gift is the fact that son wanted to get her something, and was desperate to write in her card all by himself. I'll tell her that, and that's the present, really. He likes her.

Leave God out of it please! He's 4!

2011-12-10T05:12:00.001-08:00

I am a devout atheist. I don't believe in a higher power and I don't believe that morality is exclusively the preserve of the religious. I would vastly prefer not to be having conversations like this with my 4 year old.
"Why don't we go to the church and see Jesus?"
"Jesus isn't in the church. He's just a man who died a long long time ago that some people think was magical. We don't go because I don't believe that a magical man made the world. We have visited churches, because they are beautiful, but I don't want to go to listen to the vicar talk."
"But the baby was magic and they all worship him. Mrs (blank ) said."
"Well, the baby probably did actually exist, and some people might have worshipped him, but most probably he was just ordinary and then people just started to believe he was magic, and that's why they built the churches."
"What will happen if we can't go to the church?"
"Nothing"
"But everyone else is! I'll be the only one!"
"No, you won't"
"Yes, it's on Friday!"

And lo, I had not read the letter in the bottom of the book bag which informed me that the whole class is attending church on Friday. Just an assumption there, that we all won't mind. Well, I do mind, I mind a fair bit. I mind enormously that the story of Christmas is taught as real, to a bunch of 4 year olds who don't have the ability to understand metaphor. I mind enormously that they'll be taken to church, which will also tell them it's real and really happened, and that a baby is the only thing that can "save" you from an unspecified state. I mind enormously that the link between church and state is such that schools are still obliged to peddle religion. I mind that schooling is not secular, as it is in France. I mind that we still have unelected Lords in the House just because they are Bishops. I mind that these people can pass or deny laws that might affect me on the basis of a faith that now only a small percent of the population actually adheres to. I mind that i'll look mean and he'll stand out of I choose to withdraw him. So he'll have to go and i'll have to spend weeks answering questions about a largely imagined God dreamt up by Church, and end up drawing a diagram of the Big Bang and having to read the bit of the Bill Bryson book that explains it to me in response.4 is, I think, a little young for me to be explaining that Christmas is a midwinter celebration, that we celebrate it for other reasons too, and that the church merely hijacked it at this point to stamp out any last remaining vestiges of paganism and con people into going to church instead, in much the same way they allowed Sheela-Na-Gigs and Green Men to be carved into roof beams. I've just told him that it's a story, just a story. And now both kids are playing their own version, in which Mary has a lot of Disney Princess dress up shoes and Jesus is a sort of super baby that can fly. Mixed in with a reprise of his performance as an Innkeeper, which was Niro-esque in brevity and scowling. To me, this isn't a lot more far fetched that telling children that they are born in sin and need to be saved. School, butt out of my (non) religious life.

SAD and Mad

2011-12-09T12:07:00.001-08:00

Absence makes the heart grow fonder. But really, the reason i've been away for a while isn't just because i'm a lazy arse, it's because I'm SAD. Seasonally Affectively Dumb. I won't say Depressed, because i'm not, but I am dumb.
For those of us with a dodgy thyroid, or those of us without one, the months hugging either side of the shortest day can seem like one big, dreary Wednesday, with added dumbness thrown in. Even those of you with perfectly functioning butterfly glands may find yourself being weary and teary this time of year, and considering buying one of those SAD lamps that purport to sort you right out. The reason is that your thyroid, even your healthy one,slows down in the Winter months, and for most people, this will mean that your TSH (thyroid Stimulating Hormone) will kick in, and tell your thyroid to produce more of T4 and T3 to make you feel better. For most people this works. If your thyroid has packed up, it won't. You'll be stuck with your replacement dose of artificial T4 (and if you are lucky, like me, T3), and you'll be on a hiding to nothing to get the GP to up it for the Winter, leaving you with a grotty few months ahead.

How does this affect me? Well, round about end of October, I started to feel sluggish. Then came the jerking limbs, dropping things (7 mugs in one week, almost one child), joint pain. The random forgetting. And I do mean forgetting. Like having my 4 year old point out it was a school day (and bless him for it). Bad circulation, Reynauds syndrome in hands and feet (believe me, this is not fun. Your fingers and Toes go blue, then white, then hurt LIKE FUCK when they get blood back in them again), and feeling cold, cold cold. As the thyroid person feels the cold more than most, Winter is not a nice time. I'm the one with 4 quilts and ten jumpers on. In the lounge. When, by November, I was starting to go to bed at 8pm again, I decided to be naughty. I upped my dose without asking the GP or having a blood test. And lo! 3 weeks in, I feel "normal" again (or what passes for it here). There are lots of scholarly papers with titles like "Thyroid hormone fluctation in Male Sea Bass during Di-urnal Blah..." and a few papers from GP's saying they have found that their patients benefit from a dose increase, but most of the evidence is basically anecdotal. Because thyroid disease isn't really money-making, it attracts no big funding, it's not glamourous ( basic premise is that women get fat, hairless, moan a lot and feel crappy: no big dying gracefully, no big showbiz names with it, unless you count Davina Macall, which I don't, and it only happens to women anyway, so sod it).

So if you have a SAD feeling, my advice is to get your thyroid checked out. And if you already have a dodgy thyroid and feel worse, take a sneaky bit more. I can do this easily because my dosage allows me half a pack extra every month, but if you don't have this leeway, please do pop along to your GP and mention it. But for those of you with thyroid issues, crappy GP's and no sympathetic ear (which is a lot of us), here are some tips for getting through the Winter.

Eat small, often. Keep portions low on sugar but with energy giving properties. Porridge is great. You're aiming for a stove effect in your tum.
See some sunshine. Any sun, even that piss-poor grey thing peeking through the cloud, helps your thyroid produce stuff.
Keep extremties covered. I cannot explain how painful Reynauds' is to a non sufferer. When my fingers and toes have "gone" I can take a hammer to them and not feel it. But when the blood comes back, trust me, if the Inquisistion could have tapped that feeling, they would. I have thermal gloves covered by woollen gloves, and handwarmers (99p from Boyes!). Alongside snow boots and thermal socks. This does not make me the most glam mum on the school run, especially when combined with my fluffy old lady hat (also 99p from Boyes!) but hey, I can feel me toes and walk! A mum who cannot feel her toes is liable to criminally embaress her child.
Flu jab! If, like me, you have autoimmune thyroid disease, your immune system is shot and a big dose of flu will just increase thryoid antibody activity. If they offer it, take it.
Selenium. Helps decrease antibody activity and it's worth it.
Take your medication at night. Bit controversial this one. Standard advice is to take meds first thing, and then leave 45 mins before drinking or eating. For me this is hard anyway (picture me, rising at 6am, policing the cereal arguments, forcing recalcitrant children into clothing, all WITHOUT FOOD OR COFFEE, nope, doesn't work), but I have found that taking it at night helps enormously with the morning "fug" before the meds kick in, and that fug is always worse in the Winter. I concede though, that as I eat my tea at 4.30 with the kids, I can go to bed on an empty tum and absorb the meds effectively. If you go to bed having eaten at 8 or 9pm, this is not for you.
Get a big calendar, and round about September write on it in big letters IT'S YOUR THYROID, YOU'RE NOT JUST GETTING OLDER. Which is what I thought, because i'm nearly 40.

Normal service has been resumed, back to rants about dog poo and MP's later on this week.

Where have all the toilets gone?

2011-11-10T11:58:00.000-08:00

There are certain times in your life when you are pressingly aware of needing a public toilet immediately. When you are pregnant (although it is apparently still legal to pee in the street when enciente, although I believe the bit about a policeman havign to offer you his hat is made up), when you are elderly, when you are in the company of any child under the age of 6, and when you have had children and your pelvic floor is in the basement. So, for a woman, pretty much 85% of your entire life is spent saying to yourself or a child "just hold on! Let's look for a John Lewis!"

Because there are no public toilets anymore. When living in London, this did not affect me, as public toilets were for drugs and sex, and there were a lot of John Lewis and cafes. Now I am rural, the lack of loos is much more obvious, because there are no shops open on the high street, none with loos you'd use, anyway (although I suspect the man in the hardware shop with the large array of knives in would let you use his, i'm just not sure he'd let you out again), and the library isn't open when you need a pee (although they are most obliging when they are). Luckily for me, I live in a small town (no, really, it is. A Town. It has a library, and a charity shop. See, town) which is richly endowed with 2 public toilets. They both have those utterly horrible metal contraptions that pretend to be seats (and the kids hate: "It's COLD! MY BUM IS COLD NOW!"), but they are there. I am grateful to them at least 4 times a week. And whilst they may suggest that some girls in town are of loose morals and one boy, too, they are clean and the graffitti is so badly written as to be unreadable phonetically by my 4 year old.

However, these little rooms of ease are under threat. Fenland District Council, in its' infinite wisdom, has decided to cut the budget by closing down a large percentage of them (reported here). Now, I appreciate that cuts are being made. But I also appreciate that this is a council that recently approved of a 25% hike in pay for themselves (although it's been stopped: apparently the manner in which they approved it was unethical, so it's been shelved, temporarily, until they can presumably decide on how to do it ethically, but nar nar anyway), and, hilariously, has also been in the news, yet again, for the Peegate scandal.

If you are going to cut public toilet provison, please do make sure that your council members, and crucially, Mayor, are not elderly, with pea sized bladders. Or your Mayor and two councillors might get reported in the Daily Fail for weeing behind bushes and exposing themselves.

Big Price Drop: use your market!

2011-11-03T13:16:00.000-07:00

(Note,: this was written and saved prior to posting, hence the weird time lapse thingy)
I noticed that Tesco, and indeed, all supermarkets, are in the news for the wrong reasons. Now, i'm no fan of Tesco, but people are always telling me that they are so much cheaper than local shops, so it's better the devil that is a large conglomerate. It's something that deeply concerns me, as planning permission has recently been given for an out-of-town large scale Tesco where I live. This would mean 16 Tesco within a 20 mile radius, alongside one small Sainsbury's and one Co-Op. I use the Co-Op and local market. The local market is twice weekly, Tuesdays and Fridays. Otherwise, there's a market in the neighbouring town on Saturdays, and chaps selling stuff from their front gardens. I worry intensely that when the Tesco comes, the market will go. Along with the hardware shop, bakers, and corner shop. And then, I will be at the mercy of Tesco, only Tesco. The Co-op have already stated they will close, along with the other shop that I use attached to the petrol station, which has released a statement saying they will close.
So what difference will it make to me, if my weekly shop has to be done at Tesco? Fisrtly, let's look at why their "Big Price Drop" is in the news this week. The naughty buggers have been, get this, raising prices on products, then dropping them, so they can say they've dropped prices, but actually, secretly, have not. Now, "Supermarkets in huge profit at expense of shopper" is not headline news to me, and I am the sort of person who works out the price ratio in BOGOF's, but yes, it's sneaky. And a lie. But my real concern is that, once there is nothing but a swathe of Tesco from end to end of the country, what then? Where will my choice be once the one in my town is open? I won't have one. I will be at the mercy of the remaining supermarket, my garden being mainly taken up by chickens, and as any fule kno, chickens and veg growing do not go hand in hand. Although I could, of course, eat the chickens.
So, this week, here is my weekly shop, price compared with Tesco.
This week, we'll be eating:
Sunday: Roast chicken, broccoli, carrots, parsnips, and potatoes.
Monday: Lunch: sweetcorn fritters Dinner:Leftover Chicken pie and veg
Tuesday: Lunch: Tuna melts and salad Dinner: Cottage pie and peas
Wednesday: Lunch: homemade pizza with salami and salad, Dinner:Toad-in the hole, onion gravy, mash and peas
Thursday: Lunch: Jacket spuds and cheesy spinach and mushroom Dinner: Pork Stroganoff and rice
Fri: Lunch: homemade falafel, hummus,and pitta Dinner:Kedgeree
Snacks: flapjacks and fruit.
My shopping list is this:
Chocolate milk powder (I know, I know.....), Tinned sweetcorn, Plain crisps, Rice,Self Raising flour
Cheddar cheese, Feta cheese,tinned chickpeas,plain yoghurt,potatoes,carrots,spinach,parsnip,celery
2 courgette, 2 peppers, mushrooms,apples,pears,tangerines,cucumber,lettuce, 10 fat sausages, 1 chicken, 500g beef mince, 500g pork loin, 1 smoked kipper, butter, .

I will use from my storecupboard the eggs from the chooks, frozen peas, oats, doings for flapjacks, salami, tuna, lentils for the cottage pie (mixed with mince, makes it stretch, I can make 2 and freeze 1),and bread/ pizza dough, which I make myself.

I'll buy the veg, fish and meat from the market and everything else from the Co-Op. Of course, this shop does not include cleaning products and tea, coffee, etc. Those I buy from a wholesalers in bulk. I can't be arsed to work out whether homemade bread works out cheaper, I suspect not, but is IS nicer and therefore we eat a lot of it. You can see the evidence on my arse.

So how does it all add up?

Chicken: From Dave the Butcher, (at March Quality Meats) the chicken is sourced by him, it's fat and juicy, it's 4.99. I know they roast beautifully, I love his quality. There's never anything like that "meat tray" smell you get in supermarket chickens. And it's big. I reckoned that it equates to the Tesco "Fresh Whole Chicken 1.60kg" at 4 quid, which is their least battery like offering that isn't "finest". My chicken is bigger, at 2kg, so I reckon that's about odds even.
Sausages: Now, I won't eat crap sausages. I eat good meat content sausages. So I reckon Tesco "finest" are about equal to Daves. Tescos' are £2.28 for 6. 6 is no good in this household, we need 10. Dave wins, with his 10 prize winning sausages at £2.70. And they are nicer.
500g beef mince: Again, i'm going to compare Tesco Finest with Dave. Because I know, from experience, the difference between Tesco cheap and "finest". It's about a pint of fat. And I know that Dave basically minces a bit of beef. I've seen him do it. Tesco charge £2.90. Dave charges £2.98 for mince i've seen being made.
Pork Loin: Tesco is £4.50 per 500g. Dave is £4.20.
Smoked kipper: Tesco:£2.50 per 500g. Fish counter at the market is £3.20.
Meat and fish can be slightly more expensive. But the quality is amazingly different. In Tesco, you get what is packed. Even at the counter. At the butchers, you get what you ask for. That fatty bit for long stewing, that nice marbled bit for roasting. And they know their meat, where it comes from, how to cook it. And you can get chops with kidneys on, as extra, for nowt.

Tinned goods and dry goods are much of a muchness. The Nisa and Co-op are pretty much the same on sweetcorn, chickpeas and feta. In fact the corner shop, which is a Nisa, is by far and away the winner on plain yoghurt, beating Tesco by 25p.
Cheese I get from the butchers. Again, a slab of cheddar is 10p cheaper than Tesco and equivalent in make up.
But by far and away the winner in terms of quality AND price is the market. Every single veg I buy from the market is both cheaper, fresher, and of better quality than any I have ever purchased from Tesco. Not only that, but it is far and away greener. It's sourced locally, and in some cases, grown by the bloke with the stall. It has no plastic shrinkwrap on it (Tesco: does your broccoli need that? Really?), it is not packaged. It is handed to you in brown paper bags. You can buy bulk (sacks of potatoes and carrots) or tiny. You buy what you need, so you save yourself money and landfill. If you buy from a market, you don't buy excess vegetables or fruit because they are in the bag. there's less to sit in your salad crisper going off. You buy to need: only what you will cook. Plus, the market ladies and gents can tell you where the stuff came from and whether it's been treated with anything. Usually, the answer is no. Of course, the peppers from Tesco last longer. But frankly, there's something frightening about a pepper that lasts for 4 months. What shit has that been sprayed with? I actively want my veg to decompose when it is not fresh. If you are only buying what you need, you don't need to worry about things melting into brown goo in your fridge. Market veg work out at an astonishing 41 % cheaper.

In summary, the Tesco website shows me that for battery, intensively farmed, lower quality produce, my weekly shop comes in at 70 odd quid, whereas my market shop comes in at around 60, purely on the basis that vegetables are actually really cheap. It also has significantly less packing, less air and road miles, and more "green" points. It's greener because there is less waste, you buy what you need. It's economic for the same reasons. It's better because you shop locally, support jobs locally, support local producers without screwing them over for profit, and you get the added bonus of actually talking to people who live where you live, maybe having a chat while you feel up the broccoli. You get to tell the butcher what you want next week. He'll buy you in some bits. I've asked him for some chicken livers next week, he'll get them. You get bones for your dog or stock, free. You get a chat and recipes, maybe a freebie asking you to test his barbecue rub. You get to be part of a community.

And that's the rub. Shopping where you live, supporting local businesses is key to keeping where you live a NICE place to live. Of course i'm aware that not everyone has time to shop at markets in the week. But rather than moan that that is why we need Tesco et al, why not moan that that is why we need more weekend markets? They ARE cheaper. You buy into a lie when you think otherwise. Their only stranglehold is "convinience", and that is why they pay premium rates for real estate in towns and villages where there ARE thriving small stores and markets. Look! The shop is bright at night and shiny! It MUST be more convinient! No, not really. Which is nicer, spending 2 hours driving to and trawling round a huge Tesco express and ending up paying over the odds for poor quality produce and loads of shit you don't need, or spending an hour at a market on a Saturday morning teaching your kids how to shop, then going and doing something else?

I know what I want. A shame our town council take the silver for the opposite, instead of investing in the town they already have.

And sadly, so did the people of Somersham. But they still got a Tesco. Thanks to their council. And so will we.

I urge anyone who is facing the supermarketisation of their village or town to visit this website, Tescopoly. There is hope: communities CAN stop Tesco, and other supermarkets from killing their towns. (It helps if you don't live in Fenland: the developers paradise). Supermarkets are developing exponentially, abusing the planning system (and this is going to get worse) and wiping out competition. Use your market.

Do you deserve 25% more?

2011-10-21T11:45:00.000-07:00

I've been away for a bit. Frankly, i've been trying to figure out how to shave pennies and pounds off of my budgets and trying to help son through the first half term of school. There are lots of things I could have done with 25% more of. Time. There is never enough of it. Somehow the hours between 6-8 am and 4-7 pm vanish in a haze of , in the morning, shouting "Come ON! Get UP! Eat THIS! Get DRESSED!", and in the evening, of urging a tired boy to eat something, read something, go to bed.

Money. Of course, money. Imagine what an extra 25% of your current income could buy. I'm ok for food, mostly, but there are no savings in this household, merely a complex system of robbing Peter to pay Paul. And extra 25% would allow me to put by for the kids, pay off debts, inch back towards the black. Buy the kids shoes without panicking that both of them need them at once. 25% more petrol: more family visits, more friend visits. Heck, just ONE friend visit. I was mortified earlier this month to naysay a trip to London, but as it would have cost nigh on 2 weeks worth of shopping, I just could not do it.
25% is a LOT.
A 25% increase in wages, in anyones' book, is like a dream for most, unless you are a banker. Or, as it turns out, a Cambridgeshire County Councillor. This week, they universally voted, with a few notable exceptions (Steve Tierney, a Conservative who has the odd flash of conscience and a few Lib Dems trying to look as if they were still independent of their masters), to increase their pay allowance by 25%. And on top of this, the expenses, the allowances (SRA's: special Responsibility Allowances, can amount to thousands and thousands more per year, and not all the "responsibilities" are ones you or I would recognise as being useful. How useful, exactly, is a memeber with responsibility for the environment who actively promotes a huge out of town Tesco?) and extras also go up by 25%. This at the same time as public sector workers in Cambridgeshire face pay freezes, cuts and job losses (450 and counting). There are cuts to the police, the fire service (whole stations going), the buses, the provision of elderly and juvenile care. Librarians replaced by machines, if you are lucky and haven't lost your library altogether. The total amount spent on allowances will shoot up by £166,000 to £929,000. Just imagine what that increase could have done to the cuts. Made them far less "necessary" for starters.
Of course, the Conservative stalwarts are edging out and sneering that if you "pay peanuts you get monkeys", neatly leaving aside the fact that if you pay them, you get totally self seeking shits. Fenland Leader, the Bunter-like Alan Melton, gave a hilarious speech in which he bemoaned the fact that without these raises, as in the past, apparently, the Council would be full of "teachers using days off, and unionists", as opposed, presumably, to the fat pigs at the trough we now get. We all know how evil teachers are..... He is not worried about the letter writers and tweeters apparently. Here is his speech, in part, in blue, naturally.
“I will vote in favour and I am not worried about the plethora of letter writers going to appear in Cambridgeshire Times next week,” he said.
“Neither am I concerned about the vociferous and anonymous tweeters without the guts to stand up and say what they think to your face.

Cllr Alan Melton giving his speech at Shire Hall. (I would have gone to the protest outside, but the buses no longer take me anywhere useful, since their cuts.Presumably Alan plans to keep us all in our villages if we don't own cars. Maybe we should all be disenfranchised too, eh? Oh, hang on, I am, practically. Labour candidates? Hellooo? )

“The people I will answer to are my electorate and as I long as they are satisfied I am doing a good job I will continue to stand. I’m proud of my record and I can stand by that record.”
Cllr Melton said he had been a councillor for 30 years, had won 13 elections and “yes I draw from the public purse. I have never tried to hide that and I am totally open and transparent.”
I'm not anonymous, Alan. Come see me and explain your worth.

Ah, Alan. Poor Alan. So poverty stricken that he apparently has to rely on his wifes' wage to survive. I suppose it must take quite a bit to pay for all those extensions to his house, but there was me assuming that the average Council Leaders wage was liveable on. I've tried to pinpoint exactly how much Mr Melton bags pa., but it seems strangely difficult to get hold of the information. Some council leaders bag upwards of 250K pa, others 80K. I've heard whispers of around 139K in this instance, which hardly means he is reduced to eating dog biscuits. If he's having to ask his wife for money, what is he spending it on? Land buying, so he's ready for all the development he's planning, presumably. Or maybe just pies.

Either way, what seems apparent here is not just that the Council are woefully out of step with what the ordinary members of the UK are suffering, but that they don't actually care. Any Council with a teeny tiny modicum of common sense might have delayed any pay rise until, say, they weren't suffering some of the highest unemployment levels or food price rises in 15 years. Any Council with any sense might have thought twice about moaning in public about how dreadfully off the poor councillors are. Whilst laying off more council workers.

What's also a real point here in Fenland is that it shows just how complacent the Conservative stranglehold is. They know full well that they can do anything they bloody well please. And now with the pay award, they'll be the only ones with any money to print off any election leaflets, pay hustings and so on. What is equally pathetic is how Labour have done precisely nothing. They make no effort to field candidates, they don't make mileage out of the sheer crassness of their opposistion, nothing, nada. They have given us up to die. Sacrificed us to Melton, the piemaker of Fenland.

And what is sad is that it can be done differently. Islington Council, never a terribly poor Council, has undertaken to pay a fair wage. It's highest paid worker will never be paid more than 10 times the wage of its' lowest. Furthermore, it's undertaken to pay a living wage to the lowest paid of £8.30 per hour.

If you live locally, or even if you don't, a petition is available from Saturday to protest against this rise. Please do sign it.
http://epetition.cambridgeshire.public-i.tv/epetition_core/view/remuneration

Other peoples kids love my house

2011-10-07T12:27:00.000-07:00

At some point over the Summer holiday, it became apparent that my house was simply the best house on the street. It has a big flashing beacon above it,visible only to those between 3-12, that advertises the fact that we have a) chickens and b) a soft soap mother inside. From August onwards, every knock at the door was a kid. Sometimes 2 or 3. Sometimes with kids that even the kids I knew didn't know. ("Who's he?" "Dunno. He's got a bike") In the (few) sunny days we had, i'd let them in. They'd play in the garden, bounce on the trampoline, eat all my ice pops, and basically make my 4 year old feel really cool. He'd show off to them and they'd ignore him.

When school started, it thinned. Now we are down to a hardcore of 4 kids who love this house. They play beautifully with my two, and can while away several hours with a handdrawn treasure map and the garden. But things have changed.

Firstly, it's school nights. Secondly, he's 4. Thirdly, I don't want him up till 8pm playing kerbie. And yes, he IS asking because he sees you do it (even though you are 6). And lastly, don't you have to go home and eat, or something? Turns out, no. The weekend just gone, we had 6 kids, from the street, from 11am until 8pm, at a barbecue we had for friends. Of course, we fed them. Because they didn't go! And nobody came for them. Son thinks it's great, but i'm wondering.

How can a parent allow a child out for that long, round someones house, without actually meeting me? How can they not ask them home? How can they not? And if they cannot do that, how can I send them away?

I'm thinking back to a time when I was about 13, and in a state at home. I had a friend whose mother was probably sick to the back teeth of me mooching about being grim and sad, but she nonetheless fed me, let me stay till hometime, and never hassled me. It was like a little snapshot of how families were. I would watch the mum and dad chat and talk to each other happily. I'd be amazed at the meals. So big! So home cooked! So not a Findus Crispy pancake! I loved them. I wanted to be adopted. I'm pretty sure I went as far as asking. In short, they were a lifeline. So i'm not about to turn away a few kids who want to be here rather than there. But I am thinking ground rules. I'd quite like to hear from anyone who has the problem, to see what you think of these:
My house, my rules
You get it out, you tidy it up
You're only in the rooms i say so, and NEVER in mine
Monday-Thursday, my kids bedtime is your time to go. I know you stay up later. I don't care.
You eat, you wash up with me.
If I say go, you go.
You give me your parents phone numbers.

I'm loathe to rush round the houses of the parents and insist on meeting them, but I do wonder if I shouldn't try to see them. But I fret i'll get me head kicked in. Reading back I sound judgemental. Maybe i'm out of time. Maybe everything has reverted back to goalposts for jumpers and everyone playing in the street. Give 'em a jam sandwich and send 'em off all day. Am I being precious? I'd really like an opinion.

I'm happy, i'm happy, and i'll punch the man who says I'm not

2011-10-06T11:53:00.000-07:00

Well, who knew that starting school could take so long. Now son is onto his full days I may actually get some time to witter. That's when i'm not punching people. Here is a list of people i'd quite like to punch this week.

In first place, David Cameron, for having that stupid smug kidney bean shaped face as he tells us we're all in it together, and then lifts the ban on champagne at the Tory Party Conference.
In second place, Michael Gove, just because. Cats' arse mouth, limp fish hands, totally empty brain.
In third place, the horrible gaggle of mothers round the school entrance who stand around fatly, smoking, and after dropping their kids off in a hurried manner, all retreat to a corner to bitch loudly and horribly about anyone who isn't in their gang. (Usually me). Whilst this might have frightened me as a timid 12 year old, now it just makes me sad for their kids, and them. Mostly their kids, because:
In fourth place: the mother of the boy who headbutted mine,for being that sort of mother and bringing up that sort of boy. Poor boy. Mine just looked astonished, because he doesn't know what a headbutt is. (I witnessed it: I was waiting to pick him up), but hers looked like he knew exactly what one was, and how to use one, which is pretty sad in a reception aged child. I was middle class enough to insist that my son be moved away from said child though. I'm not that sympathetic.
In fifth place: HMRC for telling us we owe them 6K, even though it was their fault. With nary an apology. We still have to pay it, even though it was their error. Nice job. I'd like a job like that. Hello Sir, that thing I did for you? I did it wrong, you owe me 6K. Thanks for that. Of course, it's easier to go after us, than, say, Vodafone, with their big, legal tax hideewees.
In sixth place: The council, who, not content with cutting us to a bus that goes nowhere useful every two hours, now want to cut that bus even further, so I will be forever trapped in the village (fucks sake, it's a VILLAGE people! Yes, I know you were brought up here, but a pub and a cross eyed dog doesn't make it a TOWN) with the bitchy mums who are all related. And they are all related.

On the other hand, son had a glowing report from his first parents evening, and is reported to be a well behaved charming individual, with a big house point collection. Beam. And daughter is now at playgroup a whole day, and this means I have a (semi) whole day from 10-2 to do things in. Beam. I will not clean the loo. I will not. 2 mornings a week I am volunteering at the school, my first foray back into a classroom since 2007, hopefully with Year 6. So some good bits out of the past few weeks. I'm with Ivor Cutler.

Bullace, Sloe, gin and Tories.

2011-09-14T12:45:00.000-07:00

I am avoiding a "my son went to school" post because I would cry. I am not even posting a picture of him looking like a shrunken person in a uniform way too big, being all brave. I am leaving that till I feel able to cope without weeping. Suffice to say that this week, instead, I turn to Mothers Solace (aka Mothers Ruin), gin. And a jolly good reason for gin, the Tories (aka as a Mothers Ruin).

The soon-to-be-built on land at the rear of my house is my foraging ground. Last week, I rooted round the old drove road and picked up a good 3 ice-cream tubs of sloes and bullace. Apparently, the bullace has a sweeter taste, but really, they are much of a muchness. I have seen bullace that are red and orange, but most are basically sloe like. That is to say, small, purple/bluish (with a blueberry lustre tinged with darker shades), slightly larger than a big blueberry, but more ovoid, and with a lovely blue bloom on until rubbed. If your sloe find has thorns and is a shrub sort of size, with fruit close to the branch (and usually, the thorns: buggerit), then it's a sloe. If your find is small tree sized, and thornless, with the berries in more of a cluster, then it's a bullace. You can usually find them alongside each other and in any good sized hedgerow. Some purists say you should wait until the first frost to pick, arguing that a sloe gin or brandy made with frosted sloes or bullace is of a deeper palate. I say, bugger that, it's got to mature anyway for months, and I need it in time for Christmas, i'm buggered if I can afford many Xmas presents this year, a small bottle of Bullace gin is your lot. So, I pop them in the freezer overnight and purchase a great huge bottle of cheap gin. I am not bothering with "posh" gin, although some people will tell you it matters. For me, the taste of fruit and sugar means I can overlook the quality of gin.

Next, get yourself a bucket with a lid, a big pickle jar, or if you are me, a MASSIVE plastic jar which once held over 1,000 gherkins (thoroughly washed and sterilised. Don't ask,it was once one of daughters eating jags). For every 75cl of gin, add 500 g of sloes or bullace, and 250g of sugar. Some people like more, some less, taste it in a month and add more if you want. Smoosh the defrosted berries with the sugar with the end of a rolling pin. Add the gin. Lid on, and shake. Shove it in a dark cupboard. For the first week or so, shake it every day. Then every week. When it's ready (when the sugar has gone, it's a nice gloopy texture and dark colour), decant it carefully through a jelly bag into your chosen bottle. Give it to someone you like or drink it yourself.

Where do the Tories fit in? Well, their recent "leaked" (for which, read : judiciously thrown out info to test the waters) documents on plans to woo female voters make me need a gin quicker than mine is maturing. Shorten the Summer holidays? For why? To urge mums back to work. It annoys employers. No need to ask *them* to change, natch. Fiddle about with benefits a bit more? Why not just give back the ones you've nicked? Or, how's this? How about you stop thieving money from the comprehensives to pay for "Free" schools, so every child can get a fair whack? How about you stop shutting down reading schemes, Bookstart, libraries, Surestart? How about you stop slicing school bus services? How about you stop cutting to the bone those public sector jobs that women actually do? How about you stop presiding over one of the biggest periods of female unemployment since the 1980s? How about you explain what is happening to those women who now no longer get child benefit, and thus to NI payments that were linked to that? How about not penalising women who are carers, or mothers of the disabled? How about not shutting or cutting to the bone special needs services? Or services for the elderly? (It's mums who care for kids and elderly relatives, after all). And it goes on..... and on.... Tories. The party of really hating women and thinking that they're too thick to notice. Pour yourself a gin and have a think. If you were one of those women who voted them in, take a look. Better off? Thought not. Every woman is allowed an error. Well do I remember my mum voting for Thatcher because she thought she'd be better off under a woman. Nope. A Tory is a Tory, and even the women are men. Raise your glasses to a clearer sight next election. Before it's too late.

The long walk to school.

2011-09-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

I live in the metaphorical big toe of the village/town. (I say it's a village, people who were born here say it's a TOWN). I am as far as you can be from where anything else is. My walk to school/playgroup/ a corner shop with something in it takes 40 minutes (what IS IT with the only "handy shop" by me? 2 copies of the Daily Mail and some year old packets of oregano is NOT A SHOP). And that is with one kid on a bike and another yardarmed into a buggy. Without those handy wheels, it's an hour.

And so I have been pondering the value (or hell) of the walk to school/playgroup.

I like it. In fact, I love it. Not only are my kids not going to turn into those little fattie kids that get out of the cars being driven up to the schoolgate by HUMAN DUVETS WITH EYES (Yep, that's what some of 'em look like), but I actively enjoy the walk. It is more than a walk. It is a period in the day that is, once we are out of the doors, (and we get there with much ravening and shouting) is a pause of quiet, of conversation, of wondering. We know the seasons. We spot the insects, the individual snail, the errant poppy. We know when each tree is budding, dropping, or letting growing something we can half-inch and eat. We spot the same people every day, the postman (or lady, and she is a lady), the lorry drivers, the tractor driver (we are rural), the same Suzuki GSX and Yamaha RX, at the same time every day. It gives us a sense of motion, of belonging, of, for the kids, security. This will happen, this is where I am , I know where I live.

More than that, it's when we chat. We discuss why red and black ants don't get along, why we don't have rings like Saturn, why a GSX is better (or not) than an RX. It's when thinsg pop up, who said what, why he/she is worrying, why do we do this not this? And it gives me leave to answer while we get to the wall that both children MUST walk on. It is on the walk to school that a "Mum, here is a flower for you" can happen. Or a sudden stop while they both look at an aeroplane, and I marvel at them.

On the walk, we discuss the hideous deaths that can await the unwary child on a ROAD. We stop,look, listen and then DO IT AGAIN because this is Fenland, and people drive crazy. Son has learnt to bike, daughter to scoot. They have both perfected the walk-semi-run that was the mark of my childhood with my nan, an epic fast walker. (My other half remarks that I am the fastest walker known to man). We overtake slow people.

Of course, the way back home when they're both knackered, is utterly, utterly, shit and 70 minutes of screaming, yelling nightmare that is onyl alleviated by the administration of flapjacks every 50 yards.

Pre-School Detox, here we come, and no, it's not wee i'm drinking.

2011-09-03T01:29:00.000-07:00

Oh, but i've been a lazy arse this holiday. Laying in until 7, letting the kids stay up till 8pm. Lolling round in pajamas until lunchtime, and sitting chewing the fat with friends while their and mine ran round screaming, flinging mud. Sometimes with an unreasonably early glass of wine. So this week is detox week. Detox from that enjoyable lack of time pressure, and practice hauling me and mine out of bed again, shovelling breakfast down them and shouting "Come ON! COME ON!". Back to the grind and no drinking on a schoolnight. Because i'll have to be up at 6 and out of the house by 8 which is no fun with a hangover, even a mild one (although i've never tried it still drunk.....) Plus, (whisper it) the 6 weeks off the 8 mile round walk to playgroup and back twice, sometimes 4 times a day, along with generous self servings of wine has resulted in my arse being not only lazy but bigger.
So, it's probably a good thing i'll be back to spending the whole day walking back and forth in drizzle soon. But really, what am I going to drink? Non alcoholic beer is shit, just as calorific with no pay-off in fun. And I hate fake alcohol drinks, as much as I hate that vegetarian bacon that pretends to be bacon. Just don't even pretend, because we all know you really, really, want to get drunk/ eat pig. You can't fake it. So I have decided on proper detox drinking, drinking stuff that will not only taste nicer than non-alcoholic wine or beer, but will actually detox me by helping me. Alright, some have sugar in, but hey, I can't have NO FUN AT ALL.

First up is mint and lemonbalm cordial. This is delicious with tonic water and would probably be really, really lovely with gin, so i've made enough to last me out my month in purgatory,leaving some over for a gin fest afterwards. It is simplicity itself to make.

Get yourself 50g of mint and lemonbalm. I did 30 g mint, 20 lemonbalm. Smoosh it up with 300g of white sugar with a pestle and mortar if you are feeling like you'd need a PROPER drink DAMMIT, or use a processor till you get mint/sugar pesto. Pour over 300 ml of boiling water, stir, leave till cold. Then sieve out the minty stuff, leaving you with a liquid in a pan, stir till any remaining sugar is gone, then bring to the boil for 2 minutes. Bottle, and cool. Add to tonic water and drink. Lovely. Lasts for a month in the fridge. My nan, and most similar recipes, added green food colouring, because, in truth, the cordial without it looks like wee, but I didn't have any, and I don't care what I drink. It's doing me good. Mint is great for stomach calming and menstrual pain, as well as being handy for stopping wind. Fab! And the lemonbalm is anti-viral, lowers blood pressure, and acts as a calming herb, being slightly soporific. It's also noted for its' anti-histamine properties., If , like me, you are hypothyroid, note that lemonbalm is known to reduce TSH levels, and as such, can be handy on those days when you know your synthetic thyroxine just isn't doing its' job. And when you're done, don't throw away the green mush, which will have some sugar granules in it, most likely. Use it for a facial mask and then scrub, as mint and lemonbalm are good skin toners, and the sugar will be a gentle scrub. There, i've saved you money, and given you the chance to trick people into thinking you're drinking wee.

Next up is Tangerine Barley Water.This is packed with vitamin C and also has the added benefit of barley, which not only lowers cholesterol, but helps weight loss (apparently). Drinking barley water is an old cure for skin problems. It contains a lot of selenium (which is good news for autoimmune disease sufferers, as selenium is indicated in helping to reduce the severity of autoimmune attacks), and pretty much all your niacin requirements for a day. This drink tastes yummy with tonic water or plain water, and I imagine would make a lovely variation of the gimlet.........Ah. Gin. How I miss you and it's only been a few days.
This recipe makes a slightly concentrated version of barley water, so you don't need to use much. It keeps for a month after bottling, and all the usual precauations apply with regard to bottling stuff. Don't kill yourself with bad hygiene.

You will need 3 juicy tangerines, 1 juicy lemon. Take off the zest and put it into a bowl. Then squeeze all the juice into another bowl, and strain to remove pith and pips. Meanwhile, boil up 85g of pearl barley, boil for 2 mins, drain. Add 1 pint of clean water, bring to boil, and add thr zest. Simmer for 45 minutes. I like to add a cardomon pod to the water too, but this is optional. Then, you want that barley water, so strain it into a pan, and don't , like I did the first time, tip it down the sink in an idiot moment. Add 300g of sugar to it, dissolve. Then add the juice from your tangerines and lemons, bring to the boil, boil for 2 minutes, and bottle. Easy!

And it doesn't look as much like wee.

So, I embrace the sober life, for a few weeks at least, and if I don't lose some of my arse I shall be most put out.

School shoes made of fairy gold, only black

2011-08-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

How criminally stupid am I that I didn't click to the fact that son will not only need new school shoes now his feet have grown, and Big School beckons, but also shoes to wear out of school. It had clean vanished from my head. I don't know what I was imagining he'd wear at weekends. Maybe the wellies, or Buzz Lightyear slippers. Leastways, even with my cheapskate buying techniques, the Back to School spend has been, well, expensive. I've purchased the minimum, but the minimum is a lot. Despite the school being a comprehensive, so no boater buying, the polo shirts and fleeces add up. Then there's the water bottle, the lunchbox (HOW much for a box?), the bag, the PE kit. All in all, I reckon i've spent the best part of 100 quid, putting me at about average, according to research. And that was before shoes.

The shoes that small boys (and girls) wear are not made as mortal shoes. No, they are made from the finest unicorn skin, heeled in Griffin scales and modelled so as to gift the wearer with the power to fly. As they slip on the shoes, they become magically endowed with the power to make money vanish from the moth eaten purses of parents. "Oh Mummy!" the bairns do cry, "these shoes are magnificent! Surely I will be top of the (overlarge and underfunded) class in these shiny and most drearily coloured feet coverings! Please buy them anon!" And Lo! The parent doth unclasp the purse, and wearily part with the best part of 50 quid for a pair of black Startrites. Before walking the walk of shame to the cheap shoe shop, to buy some trainers, for weekends, that are made, verily, from no natural substance, and will not repel rain. But are 10 quid.

If his feet grow before he's had a good 3 months out of them, i'll weep.

And here's some artefacts we found earlier.....

2011-08-20T04:01:00.000-07:00

This week I've had the pleasure of finding out a little more about the archaeology at the bottom of my garden. Thankfully, I didn't have to have that annoying Mr Robinson in, I merely exercised my rights as a nosy bolshy person and invited a consultant round for a cuppa. The consultant in question was a Mr Rob Bourne, of CGMS, a firm that works for developers, handling the pesky archaeology requirements before huge swathes of teeny tiny executive homes can be hoisted up.He conducts the evaluation reports for the County Council and reports back, to say whether there is anything there worth looking at or not. You can see the interview with him here. http://chatteris.shapeyourplace.org/2011/08/18/archaeologist-reveals-the-secrets-of-the-tithe-barn/ It was eye opening in more ways than one.

Firstly, I discovered a little about the planning process. What amazed me about it is the sheer hugely deadening grey aspect of it. It is impenetrable unless you are a) a planner and b) a councillor who is essentially, a planner or developer (and oddly, Fenland is awash with them), or c) a nosy bolshy person who won't shut up until it's explained to you. The whole system of planning is based around a "need to know" attitude which basically means that unless you ask, and ask again, and then ask again, crossly and with threats, you won't find out. If I hadn't asked and asked again about the evaluation dig at Tithe Road, i'd have been told nothing, and known nothing about it. Because I harassed people, I have now been told that i'll be mailed the evaluation report by the nice Mr Bourn. Anyone can read it apparently, but first you have to know it's there. And then there's the whole maze of applications, developers, people in peoples' pockets and so on and so on. You need a mind with the tenacity of a starving Jack Russell in a warrent o keep at it. Luckily, I don't have much to do of an evening.

Secondly, I found that the system of recording finds, and deciding whether something is worth digging or not is tenuous. I've no doubt that Mr Bourne was a nice man with the interests of everyone at heart, but the fact remians that a consultant employed by the developers is not the most partisan of people to write a report about the findings. Whilst I trusted him, I do wonder if this system is open to abuse. Of course it ruddy is. Luckily, Mr Bourne has flagged up finds and is recommending further excavation in the case of Tithe.

Thirdly, where does all this stuff go? So much is found, so much, then, vanishes again. Every build has an evaluation dig. Every dig has a report. (or at least, *should*, despite Mr Melton's protest), but where do they end up? In the realms of grey literature. Processed somewhere and stashed away in the archives, unasked for, unpublicised, unwanted by anyone, least of all the planners. There they sit, in Cambridgeshire or wherever archives, full of tasty info about the history of where YOU live, and nobody knows they are there, unless they are nosy and bolshy enough to ask. Sensing a theme here?

Fourthly: There's a huge amount out there! I recommend to you a visit to the Heritage Gateway, here, and if you are Cambridgeshire, search the Cambridge Historical Environment database. You will be astonished by the huge amount of STUFF found on your doorstep. In Chatteris alone, there are Roman encampments, Bronze Age canoes, shields, urns, barrows, Iron age barrows and burial grounds, coin hoardes, medieval settlements sites, Roman farms, it goes on and on. Over 1116 reports and records that you can access. Of course, you'd need to be nosy and.... you see. You need to know this stuff. Because most of these reports come from evaluation digs, prior to toytown houses popping up.

Fifthly (is fifthly even a word? It just sounds wrong, doesn't it?) This week I have learnt so much. I'm treading on history. Much more than I ever suspected. Why don't we know about it? Why don't we have fabbier, fatter local museums that know about this? If I can spend 2 hours reading through this stuff and build up a rich picture of where I live in history, why can't you? Because you have to be.....
You have to be in the know. You have to be a pain in the bum. So go, go to your local planners. Ask about developments. Keep an eye out for those yellow signs on lamposts conviniently located above normal eyelevel that tell you a major development is coming. Read the boring notices in the back of the local paper. Go to council meetings. Harass people for reports.
I now know that the site for major development at the back of my house has 3 settlements, Bronze, Iron, and Roman, alongside a glacial feature that was in all likelihood water filled for the majority of the year. There are bones, postholes and eveidence of longterm settlement. All over the fields there's ridge and furrow, possibly one barrow. The settlements lay where the road will go, and for this reason the consultant has intimated to me that his evaluation report will ask for mitigation to pursue an extensive excavation. Now it's in the hands of the developers as to when. If they choose, they can do it all at once, and then be able to "sell on" a "clean" site that has it all done. Or, they can choose to develop up to the sites, sell the houses, and do the dig at the last minute. So we could get a dig this year, or in ten years, when presumably they will be hoping i've moved by then. Either way, those who are interested will have to be nosy...etc etc to keep an eye on it.

Here's the political bit. Leaving aside the HUGE ALAN MELTON BOO BOO that he has been using a private email address to conduct Fenland business, and most especially, that this Freedom of Information Act request has stated that, because of this, info about Melton and development cannot be released (, oh yes, more of that next post, and you can see the application for the FOI here), politically archaeology and development are both in this together with the localism bill. The localism bill plays fast and loose with planning, making it easier than ever for developers and nasty fat little councillors to make their bucks and ruin communities, and whilst it *says* it gives locals a voice, it really does not. You can comment on websites, surely, but there's not much you can do.And we do need to do something. The East of England Development plan, and the Fenland section in particular, sanctions MASSIVE development of the Fens.(17,000 houses in ten years) The report, which can be accsessed here, details the major housing expansion in the area, and asks to comment. If you are local, please do. But do more than that. Ring and ask them about how they are addressing the "locals" section of all this. If there is anything you read that concerns you, contact them. In other words, be nosy, annoyed and persistant. Email is easy to ignore.

And in terms of the archaeology? Southport group report recommended a number of moves that would enable archaeology and the developers to, in trendy report speak, "enable" each other. (You see what I did there? Do you feel warm and cuddly now?). It's a good report with some good ideas, and the main thrust of it seems to me to be goodhearted, and sensible, placing the onus on public participation and publication, getting the info out there. It's worth a read. And anyone local who is interested in putting some of those ideas into place in the Fens, particularly around major new developments that are coming, is welcome to mail me and we'll sort something out.

Council brief summary of Chatteris history. Pretty basic.
Heritage gateway: ruddy fab

I begin the long kiss goodbye to my view

2011-08-06T13:10:00.000-07:00

At the end of my garden, there are fields. Lots of them. A flat eye view all the way to Ely. I love them. This week they have given me 10lbs of blackberries and the same again of wild plums. In the Autumn they give me sloes, hips and crabapples. The view encompasses an old Medieval Tithe Barn, a working farm, and as much as any human eye can take in, it being the Fens. Sometimes the landscape is more Kansas than Cambridge. I watch flocks of crows, seagulls, and the odd Red Kite circle round the fields. There's a pair of Barn Owls in the barn, as there should be. I've seen hares, rabbits, lots of voles and mice, and an abundance of wild flowers that love the drainage ditches, lillies, marsh plants and marginals. We use the field edges to walk to the park, so much nicer than going roadways, and to ramble, daily, insect spotting. Son makes believe he is "off roading" on a Honda, daughter is in a jungle. Horses thunder by the end of the garden, people stop off the footpath to pick blackberries and chuck weeds at my hens. It is one of a few footpaths in farming country, in a town seriously deproved of green space. (Crazy: so rural, yet so hard up for it: it's the farmers). And it is going, all going, to build the supposedly essential 1,000 new homes. I am incensed, upset, angry, tearful, and worst of all, utterly, utterly hidebound. There is nothing, nothing, I can do. It's done. It's in the Fenland Development plan. The "consultation" on it was a derisory 2 hours of a display board in a community centre, unadvertised, for 2 hours one weekday. The letters to residents were sent out over Christmas, when we were mostly away. I will attend all the meetings I can, and shout as much as I can, but councillor after councillor has told me, "This will happen".

So, it's a case of how it will happen. The plan shows the usual uniform array of toytown houses, crushed into a space which would be reasonable for half the amount of houses, and with the usual exec homes and about 2 housing associations ones chucked in the margins. The green credentials appear to rest on "green corridors" (for which read :pathways that the development corp will soon shuck off responsibility for, and will soon descend to teen fumbling areas). The supposed play area is where the fields flood every year, for 3 months. There are no regulations to stop paving over gardens, the green space is risible, and the risk of run off, in a below sea level area, to my mind, high. Although not according to the planners. This amount of extra houses (and people) gives us, in return, a few shopping units, a redirected bus route, a primary school (no increase in intake to an already overcrowded secondary though), and a vague promise from the developers to donate some money to the town. Added to this, the policing levels are being cut, the Fire service is being cut, the bus service has already been halved, and the GP and school systems are already overloaded. But hey, there will be a ruddy big Tesco out of town.

I have seriously never lived in an area with a worse, more shortsighted, self gratifying council in my life, and this is REALLY saying something, considering I used to live in Hackney. The Councils response so far has mostly been about the increase in council tax money they'll be getting. Which just about says it all. And considering our esteemed leader, Mr Alan Melton, is only just above the level of an amoeba when it comes to doing anything except line his pockets, I was naturally concerned when I saw diggers this week. A lot of diggers. Digging trenches. My first thought was "ARGGGH! Surely the permissions hasn't been granted yet?" and the second was "Where's the archaeology?" This was very important as a second thought, as Mr Melton was widely acclaimed/ laughed at/ spat on last month for his name calling of archaeologists ("Bunny Huggers") and declamation that he would, as leader, do away with all of those silly rules about preserving the rights of archaeologists to dig prior to development. (I blogged it here) So, I took up my keyboard and phone and did some digging of my own.

And lo, it is a real dig. They are doing the Bunny Hugging digging in my back garden. And whilst I will regret, deeply, the loss of my view and wild places, (although it's not over yet, Melton) I am pleased that it's going ahead properly and we'll get a chance to dig deep on a large plot of , I hope, serious worth. Bronze Age, Iron age, Roman, a 10th Century manor house, and more. I am hoping to interview one of the archaeologists soon about it all. Watch this space for that. And take a look at the pictures of a part of England that is going.

Glut here, lack there.

2011-08-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

We are now officially struggling. I'm over my comfort debt threshold (which, truthfully, is 1p in debt, but practically, it means we are 1,500 overdrawn and I fret, I fret). I'm down to the knuckle in terms of what I can spend every week on food, and having to budget in advance for uniform buys and even bus fares. I hate it. A year ago we were flush, I didn't have to think, now I do, every day. I pick away every day at the thought that perhaps I should work too. But I don't want to. Not because I don't *want* to, but because this is son's first year of school, and daughters year of playgroup. I want so much to spend it helping him through it by having tea done for him when gets in, knackered, and shuffling him to bed, happy,through that first year. I know from experience how he chats on the way home from anywhere, and what a kid downlaod time that is. I wouldn't miss it for the world: everything rises up on that long walk home. Who said what, what's bothering him, the lifecycle of earwigs. That's for me, not a childminder, if I can at all help it. And daughter: she never had that one on one time that son had before her noisy arrival. I want this year of time with my daughter before she goes to school, to focus solely on her during the day, to know her a bit more, away from her brother. (This is easier said than done. Being so close, together, they have no need of me and have developed a hive mind). I will cut, cut, cut again to the bone to be at home this year. Not that there are any jobs that suit, anyway.
And to that end, I am foraging and scrimping. The fields at the end of my garden, (soon to be home to 1,000 homes instead of the wheat, Roman remains, Iron age settlements,and wildlife it currently supports) are blessed with loads of blackberries and wild plums,one crabapple, one wild pear, and lots of damson and sloe along the hedgerows. Nobody else seems to pick them, the berries lay heavy on the branch. Just me and kids. It's a true blessing for us, it will furnish us with jam, chutney and soft fruit through the winter, if I get can my vinegar knowledge hat on. This week (and last!) I have collected 10lbs of blackberries, 14 lbs of plums, and 8 dustbin liners of straw leftover after the balers had been and gone. The straw will bed the chickens, the soft fruit has already made 8 pots of plum chutney and 6 bottles of plum ketchup, one blackberry and plum slump, and lots of snacks. However, a dent has not been made. So I intend to make Plum and blackberry chilli chutney, bottle plums and pears, make blackberry wine, and freeze a raft of fruit. The fact remains though, that chutney and preserves will not feed us all Winter, and we will get sick of our runner beans before long. Even the rampant courgettes won't sustain us. I can pot and preserve as much as I like, it won't really help (The chickens must be nervous....) Basically, it is the eighties. I'm poor again, and all I can do is batten down the hatches, love the kids, and hope they don't notice. In a few more months I may be waiting in line at the new Tesco, asking for work. (sob). Or maybe i'll be picketting it. Hope springs.

So, to that end, here's a recipe for spicy plum chutney, which is DELISH with blue cheese and a cracker. This should be made, and left for 4 weeks, or up to 2 years before eating. It's gorgeous, and not at all plummy. It's what I want and hope my kids will be: a lovely fruity, diverse thing born out of adversity.
Ingredients:
1.5kg plums, stoned and quartered or more, depending on size
Handful blackberries
6 shallots, finely chopped
700g dried fruit (I used dried apricots and sultanas)
600g sugar (I used half jam making sugar and half brown)
500ml vinegar (I used cider vinegar, but rice vinegar is also nice)
1 lemon, sliced into 8 slices, then finely chopped. (This adds pectin)
And the spices:
4 sliced cloves garlic
Thumb sized piece of ginger, chopped
Some people stop here, but I also added:
10 black peppecorns
7 juniper berries
1 teaspoon coriander powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon salt
3 black cardamons, whole (remove after cooking)
2 sticks lemongrass, bashed (remove after cooking)
6 birdseye red chillies, in muslin, whole (remove after cooking)
You can add or subtract spices as you like, I like a fairly hot chutney, and the black cardamons are my secret ingredient, they add a smoky touch to the end product, being quite unlike the green.I'm cooking up a batch as we speak (pictured, top), that has more blackberries, less plums, and star anise in.

Basically, add all the ingredients, bring to boil, then simmer for about 4-5 hours, until you have a nice thick, reduced mixture that parts like the red sea when you draw a spoon across the bottom of the pan. Then cool slightly before pouring into warmed jars (I bake my jars at gas 3 for 10 minutes to sterilise), and sealing. Put them in a dark cupboard and forget about them for 4 weeks, then distribute and eat. I can't tell you how much this makes as I used a hodge podge of old jars, it made 2 large and 4 small the last two times though! Never underestimate how much chutney reduces. I urge you to try your hand at chutney. Nicer than jam, and more useful to the late night snacker. It makes cheese on toast a grand meal. (The picture, right, shows Plum chilli chutney, Plum ketchup, and plum and ginger chutney, and the brownish round fluff you can see at the far left is a hens' arse.)

I skipped sports day, and i'm glad

2011-07-09T10:49:00.000-07:00

Son is in the midst of preparing for Big School. This means that on his playgroup mornings, he gets taken over to roam the school library, and chat to his new teacher-to-be, to prove she is not a monster. He has been refreshingly blase about his, even to the point of grumbling that the library doesn't have a motorbike encyclopaedia, or even a Hayes manual of a Kawasaki Ninja *sigh*, but one thing he came home completely perplexed about was Sports Day. Well meaning playgroup ladies took the rising receptions over to watch the various children pelt about in the heat, drop eggs from a spoon and mostly, lose. After witnessing this Olympics of Fenland, his only response was that there were too many people running. To his mind, competition only really exists when it's against a sibling. Why run against others when there is no sibling to cry at losing? If you want to practise best, fast running, you can do that alone. You don't need to do it in a field and maybe lose.
I was, needless to say, hopelessly crap at running. All kinds. Sprinting was out because my overdeveloped chest necessitated more sports bra than Marks and Spencers in the 80's had yet envisioned, plus I couldn't run. Cross Country would have been better if the aptly named "Miss Quick" had not sent us out in navy blue pants to run through snow laden fields, while she followed on the roads as best she could, clad in a puffa jacket, on a moped. Hockey was cold legs being beaten with a stick. Shot putt, I won the acclamation of everyone. Nobody had ever seen a girl throw the bloody thing upright, and then stand still as it descended, to fall on her head and concuss her. Still, I got to sit the rest of sports day out with the ambulance people. High jump is hilarious when you are 5 foot. Long jump is just a run into a cat litter tray. I could swim, for ages, but not properly (how can this be? Swimming teacher after swimming teacher would moan at me. I got my badge for swimming a mile, 2 miles. But apparently it was still wrong because I stuck my head up too much. It was the EIGHTIES. I had a FRINGE!) Tennis, Badminton, rubbish. Javelin, they didn't let me near. Rounders? Yes, please. I'll be fielder. I'll go as....far.....as......I......can and have a fag. Netball? Nah. The apogee of my sporting prowess at school came aged 5, when, annoyed by Mrs Lines attempts to get me into my leotard, which was itchy and entirely flammable, I ran, nude, out of the changing room and ran my entire first sports day in the nude, leaving them with nowhere to pin the red ribbon for coming first in the roly-poly race. It is the only race I have ever won, and all it earnt me was a ribbon and a smacked arse from an angry mother. Sports at school was laothsome, dreadful, angst ridden crap more about the ones would could catch/throw/leap with their eyes shut lording it over the ones who couldn't, especially if they were pudgy academics (like me), than any sense of real sportsmanship.
Was I therefore an obese monster? No. I did sport, I just did the ones I liked. I biked 6 miles a day, 4 times a day, to muck out a horse and ride it, twice a day, before and after school. On my weekends, I 3 day evented. I did pretty well. I enjoyed it, I was actually pretty fit. What did I get for PE? E's, F's. PE at school is about as useful as a Tory Minister at a morality lecture. It sucks. It does nothing for teamwork, nothing for self esteem, and nothing for the kids who are not any good at it. Of course, there's the argument that everyone needs to learn how to lose, but really, did I need to learn to lose 4 periods a week, for all those years? In the end I bunked every lesson and sneaked into the library instead. Now, I am not saying that sport is not a great and wonderful thing , if you are good at it. I look on in awe at son as he catches balls and leaps from branch to branch with a sure limbed dexterity that I have never had. He is naturally quick, agile, and co-ordinated. Is he mine? He will have a ball, literally. He can already tackle me to the ground. This is the boy that I lectured for 35 minutes about how the first time he rode his bike without stabilisers, he might fall, but he must get back up and try again, only to see him cycle off and within 20 minutes start kicking wheelies. How is he of my loins? Daughter, on the other hand, is mine. She still sits down to come down stairs. She cannot catch, run straight, or jump properly, and neither does she care. Yet. Because by Year 7, she will. She will be (although I plead no, no) the last to be picked. The team captain will sigh as they begrudgingly say her name, the last option against the kid in callipers. That was me. It was beyond crappy.

And this is why I applaud the school in somewhere or other that made the Daily Mail on Thursday for telling it's kids that sports day was optional. Of course, the Daily Mail are spitting bits of Empire about it, but hey, it's a damn good idea, as far as i'm concerned. Why not let the kids who couldn't give a stuff about running do something else? Running isn't a vital life skill, like reading, or adding. Bullying people into it doesn't make it fun. Lord alone knows I had to do enough bullying into it myself, as form tutor. In year 7, it went like this:
me: "Who wants to run the 100/200/400/800/ etc etc?"
Kids: "Me! Me! Me! Miss, me!"
By year 9, it was like this.
Me: "Who wants to run the 100 metres? Anyone? Come on?"
Kids: " "
And how I laughed as I tried to get them to run the 800m. In the end I had to bribe them and threaten them. How did this happen? Through a mixture of PE and hormones.The ones that were good at PE enjoyed it. The ones that were not, didn't. Plus, they had to contend with bits bulging, skin erupting, classmates taunting and, for girls, the hideous clipboard with monthly information recorded. What actually was there to like about PE if you didn't excel at it? And yet, the girls in my form who hated PE were almsot universally members of the street dance club, which met to thunder it's way round my classroom and never put the desks back properly every lunchtime. I had one form tutee who was a whiz at golf, another who was excellent at bowling. None of these are offered at school. PE doesn't have to be about winning and losing and humiliation. It can and should be about doing something you enjoy, in small groups, or large. It doesn't have to be competative to be useful in building team skills. It's only the winners who insist that competition is best.

So, if your kid is wetting the bed pre-sports day, and throwing a tin of Scotch Broth down the loo pretending they've been sick (yes, that was me: the giveaway was the Scotch Broth smelt far worse than actual sick), then let 'em off. Write them a sick note. Do some sport they like instead, with them.

IF YOU ARE FROM WIMBLINGTON;
*Alert* Lady from Wimblington: I lost your mail and now cannot find your blog. Please send it to me again!

A risky kid is a happy kid.

2011-07-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

I cannot watch Michael Gove on television because a) he has a mouth like a cat's bum and b) everything that comes out of it is unmitigated shit that makes me want to destroy my television. Neither can I listen to him on the radio, as even though I can't actually see him, I can still hear him doing his posh spitty boy talking and spouting errant nonsense that he dresses up as policy. The newspapers are usually safe, although they do enjoy printing huge headshots of the man that make him look like Matt Smiths' newest nemesis. So it was, that perusing the Guardians Education section this morning, I came across this article about Health and Safety in schools. And this, on the BBC.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-14000093 And now I find myself in a quandry. Because despite, with every fibre of my being detesting the odious little man, I am in agreement with him here. Oh god, I had to hairball that sentence out.

It is very true that the Health and Safety requirements for basic school trips are disproportionate. On taking 10 students from the History club to an underground nuclear bunker (helpfully signposted "secret nuclear bunker" to help us find it), I well remember the sheaves of paperwork and tedious write ups that allowed us to take them on a mini-bus and explore a site that was preparing for the end of the human world. The hideous room that showed them the exactly how the government was calculating deaths from nuclear war, suicide tablets, and the entrance corridor that turned a corner so as to enable the hoardes of ordinary folk who didn't want to die and were invading, to be mown down by government forces, may have given them nightmares, and in fact made one of them quite panicky. But really, walking round a museum (albeit an underground one) is not a high risk activity. Children who go to History club (aka "geek club") are pretty much risk averse and more into re-enacting the telemark skiers with little play men and dice than taking risks. It really would have made life easier if I could just have written their names down on an excursion list and driven off.

On the other hand, one field trip that found me standing neck high in flowing, freezing water trying to measure how quickly the floating orange came past me was certainly less fun, and more risky. In the first instance, taking a bus load of year 11's to the Norfolk coast in February is going to be problematic. Not only had manay of them never seen a beach and hence, went crazy ("No! Come back! The water is cold! And the locals have never seen a bunch of youths of many hues running amok!"), but much of it was genuinely risky. Wading rivers, climbing, and measuring wave force in freezing water was pretty horrible, and did need those forms. A useful form would also have been one that covered the teacher for lapse in duty due to lack of sleep, as the whole 4 days saw about 2 hours of rest for me, and much standing sentry between dorms, shouting and being stern. So yes, in some instances, the fuss is necessary, and it would be a good thing to allow common sense to triumph. Provided that the schools are not then going to be sued to buggery by angry parents if anything does go wrong. I notice that Gove has made no comments to this effect.

I also think it's part of a wider issue. We do cocoon our children. And whilst it's perfectly easy for me to go all nostalgia: Spangles, out till tea, no mobiles, etc etc, it's also true to say that the world is different now. I was allowed out all day alone from an early age, with the company of the dog and some sandwiches, but this was less to do with the world being safer, and more to do with the attitude of my parents and the media. There is no more child centered crime than there has ever been, but there is more reporting. I dare say that there are fewer accidents now. No longer do we have those eerie ads telling us not to swim in quarries, or climb up electricity pylons to get a frisbee, because far fewer kids are roaming around free with a couple of soggy sarnies in a bag, a frisbee, and a dog, like I was. Out of my window at the moment, I can see some 11 plus kids on bikes on the grass, and their parents in the front gardens. I can't see any kids wandering through the corn fields at the back of the gardens, which I certainly would have been at their age. I see few children under 11 out front. I see fewer kids at the park, and more walking around plugged into those annoying beepy nintendos. At 4. I see a lot of parents with medicated hand gels, a lot who drive rather than walk, a lot who panic. And this is why a little risk is necessary.

I remember panicking when, at nearly term with daughter, I coudln't move quickly enough to get to the big slide, as son, then 14 months, was teetering at the edge. He was fine. It was a turning point. As soon as daughter arrived, the sterilising that sons' implements had undergone was abandoned. Daughter scavenged for his scraps, stuffing whole carrot sticks that had been on the floor into her gummy mouth. I called it baby-led weaning. I let him climb as high as he dared. One mother remonstrated with me for allowing him a knife, a real one, at 18 months. He was fine. How sharp is a cutlery knife anyway? Take a breath. Yes, I covered the plug sockets, but I didn't clamp down the cupboards. I encouraged him to use the stairs. He ate bugs, worms, caterpillars, and once, something unidentifiable from behind the radiator. Sometimes both of them go to bed dirty. They kiss the chickens and cart them about. They play out front and on the paths. They made a den in the ditch at the end of the garden. At the park, they plunge off of the top of climbing frames, and use slides and swings in ways they were not intended to be used. And all this is good. Risk assessment is a valuable life skill in a child. So is determination and bloodymindedness. I have casually shouted "Just get up" across a park, to horrified stares, and seen daughter just climb up again. I've turned round to see son balancing, one footed, on his bike saddle. I've not stopped him. A bump is sometimes worth it. (And, i've noticed, a bump is always worse with an audience..... alone, daughter can plummet from the slide and get up and climb again. If she sees you watching her plummet, it's a Bette Davis death scene.)

So yes, introduce a bit more risk. Let students set potassium going. Let kids go kayaking without the teacher having to fill in 50 pages of pointless crap. But also, make risk play more available. Don't close footpaths in favour of farmers (endemic in Fenland). Make more footpaths. Build more parks (and no, a "park" is not a small, fenced in area with two baby swings and a slide I could step over). Build parks with wild spaces, with trees, with dens, and ropes. Build climbing frames, balance games. Make some places wild. Give kids places to go where they can be risky. Skate parks, ramps, bike tracks. When you build housing estates, build in green space. When you have empty town centre buildings, make a youth club. Give organisations that allow youth to explore, the space, time and money, to do it. Make roads safer. Introduce better local speed limits, so kids can bike. Make bike lanes, run road safety courses. Ah, I see. All these things, the parks, the adventure playgrounds, the clubs, these are the things that are gone, or going. These are the things the Councils have been given carte blanche to cut. The playing fields are sold. The youth clubs all gone. Parks? In some areas now you have to pay, others, they are gone, too much maintenence. Or the land is worth more. I have been bamboozled. Briefly, I thought I may agree with Gove. But now I see that it's a sop. Bigging up risk at school, because all the facilities for risk out of school, have gone, or are going. He almost had me there.

For locals: If you have noticed any loss of upkeep in your park, please contact me.

A rabbit stew, archaeology and Melton

2011-07-01T12:31:00.000-07:00

Disclaimer: I am not, and have never been an archaeologist, although I did have a boyfriend as one once and spent a weekend at Sutton Hoo with him in the rain, as the archaeologist fiercely guarded their marmite rations, being glad I wasn't an archaeologist,before trashing my car on the way home. What follows is a personal, not professional, opinion about what a total dickwad the leader of Fenland Council is. Also, after typing "archaeology" a lot of times, my fingers hurt and I forget how to spell it. This is why I studied History instead.

You may not have come across Alan Melton. You may have missed out on the furore of last week, as Alan Melton, he of the portly jowls and job of top dog Councillor of Fenland, described archaeologist as "bunny huggers", and declaimed that he would rip up the planning regulations of Fenland, making the legal requirement to allow archaeologist access a thing of the past. He gave this speech (full text here) to a bunch of developers and builders at an awards ceremony. The whole thing is worth a read, if you enjoy pompous self congratulatory paragraphs that read like a bad AS level essay, but the salient points that were picked up by the press, and lots of other very angry people were (excerpt)

"Unemployment and state dependency could be greatly reduced if the construction industry is allowed to grow. GDP would start to improve significantly, and tax revenues would increase.
This is the message we in local government will be taking to the Local Government Conference later this month and to the Conservative Party Conference in October.
Of course, there are some local changes that we can make to make development easier. We are constantly reviewing our procedures.
I can announce tonight, that from the 1st July. A requirement for an archaeological dig/survey will not be required. The requirement will no longer feature at pre-app. Or form part of the committee agenda.
With one exception, in local known historical areas, such as next to a 1000 year old church.
The bunny huggers won’t like this, but if they wish to inspect a site, they can do it when the footings are being dug out"

So, let's see. He says, quite clearly, in a statement of intent, to a bunch of developers and builders, that they won't need to bother about pesky old bunny hugging bearded archaeologists trying to dig trenches where they want to throw up paper thin walled houses with a garden that a umbrella won't open up in. From July 1st. It's quite clear, isn't it? He then goes onto say that......

"Of course we shall seek to be sustainable and practical, but we won’t dwell too much on the scriptures of the new religion.
I don’t believe that polar bears will be floating down the Nene in my life time or indeed my children’s.
I think we all need more convincing about some of the conflicting stories that are constantly peddled.
And as a bricklayer by trade, I regret the constant use of timber on our public buildings, and although it looks good when initially fitted, (and ticks a box),
Within 12 months looks as if it needs a coat of creosote.
DAB’s as we know them will be a thing of the past; we will be flexible, particularly around our smaller settlements, where we shall encourage organic growth."

So, on top of not bothering about any old Iron Age roundhouses that have the temerity to be lying underneath the newly planned Melton Close, global warming is all so much codswallop (Er, Alan? We live in the FENS. Like, below sea level? Do you want to rethink that statement? Hands up we're all stood behind Alan when the sea level rises! We can use him as a raft! He's quite big enough), and the DAB's (development area boundaries: they stop people from building wherever they like and are particularly important in smaller areas such as villages) are to be swept away on a tide of organic growth, presuming the river Nene doesn't rise first, as Alan says it won't anyway. "Organic". Wonder what that means. Maybe, willy nilly? Whoever wants to shuck up a big house? Wherever? Details, Alan, details.

And did you notice the clue there? Yes, Alan is a bricklayer! Although he's being disingenous here. He's a big schnozzle in the building trade. He has his own building company. He has interests in development and aggregates. How strange then, that he should want to sweep away any contraints on planning. Oh, no. Wait a goddarned minute........I've been had! Is it the tiniest bit possible that Alan isn't that arsed about my interests, or those of Fenland? Hmmm, let me think.

So, cue a flurry of angry archaeologists, a mention in the broadsheets, and a radio interview, a facebook page, me on the local Shape your Place, 32 leading archaeologists all pointing out that Alan would be breaking the law, Alan countering that it's only European law anyway, and blathering on about Eric Pickles, before someone, and Eric Pickles, quite clearly told him to shut up, before writing this speech for him. It's been written by someone who can put together a decent sentence, and is a sort of "sorry", if you call raising your hands up and saying "Well, I only meant to cause a debate, and anyway, those archaeologists said I was fat" an apology.It's the sort of apology I get from my 4 year old, before he is sent to his room again. Why Sir, you must think me an idiot, because your first speech showed clear intent and did not mention the word "debate" at all! Maybe where you said there would be no need to have any archaeologists after July 1st, a little demon was in your mouth and garbled up all your words, because you were REALLY saying, "gosh, those archaeologists chaps, I could really sit down and have a discussion with them."

It would have been better if he had. Because, as any fule kno, digging on a site does not "hold up" development any more than the person drawing the plans for the houses "holds up" development. It is part of the process, simple as that and is taken into account when developing. It's simply that some people would rather not do it. They'd rather whack up houses quick march and don't want the risk of finding a site underneath them. And, fair play, it might well be a risk. Why? Because the Fens are unique, chock full of pre-history sites that are nowhere else in the UK. The water preserves with remarkable clarity the earliest of sites. Take here, Must Farm at Whittlesey. Described as a "Pompeii" of the Bronze age, a routine dig before the area was quarried revealed finds that make up one of the biggest Bronze Age hoardes ever found. But hey, it held up the quarry! Damn those Bronze agers! It's even more important that digs take place in Fenland than ever, as since the last archaeological survey was completed in the late 80's, a huge number of sites have vanished, been ploughed and harried away. The nature of the black peat and the fertile soil of the fens means they are intensively farmed, and precedence is given to farmers, not sites. Hence, the sites on farmland are vanishing. The sites in developed areas are perhaps the only ones that we can get a good look at.

I don't know of anyone who would begrudge a dig that could enrich our knowledge of the area. No-one apart from Alan. And the rest of Fenland Council, who must have given the nod to the original speech and then had the sheer stupidity not to realise that information is viral now. Alan, even in the Fens people can use that nettyinter, and root out what their councillors are actually saying. The Council are evidently standing by him and hoping it will all blow over. It has before. Alan's a bit of a lad, thrown out once before for accepting gifts and then blurting info that was meant to be private out to the papers. And they let him back. So to my mind, both Alan and the Council are equally culpable. Oh, and the idiots that voted him in again. Possibly they are the voters with big plots waiting to be developed. Well, there's a weather eye on you now.

And ABC of bees in the garden.

2011-06-24T12:10:00.000-07:00

I am too angry at the moment to talk about the vanishing of any sort of social conscience amongst members of the government, and so instead will blah on about bees, and their vanishing. This film is available to view online, and is a compelling documentary about the vanishing of bees, and the implications of their demise. Approximately 3 quarters of the plants in Europe require pollination from bees, butterflies, moths, bats or hoverflies to bear fruit, and later, seed. Many species of plant are in a symbiotic relationship with one particular type of bee, and without the bee, and only that bee, there is no plant. Without bees, in short, the prospect for succesful crops and fruit is very bleak. No-one seems quite sure of the cause. It could be varoa virus, mites, monoculture of crops,changes in weather, beekeeping practises, pesticides, or mobile phone masts, or all of it. Either way, it's odds on it's our fault. The bees will not have been planning their own destruction. My own feeling is that it's bound to be a combination of things. The vast monoculture swathes of oilseed rape in my own area must be wearing to a bee, and combined with everything else, it's no wonder the creatures are knackered. It's a measure of the straits they're in that when son discovered a swarm earlier this Spring, a quick phone call to local bee keepers evinced 8 phonecalls desperate for the swarm within 10 minutes, there was practically a fisticuffs over them. Keepers are losing hives, and grieving.
It's not just hive bees either, even though most of the fuss in the media centres on honeybees. The solitary bees and bumble bees are affected too. Bumble bees (those furry min chinook helicopters of the insect world) are popping off just as quickly, and the variety of bumblebees in the UK has sharply declined. There are 24 varieties in the UK, and all are suffering. 2 are extinct in the last few years, another 6 are on the at risk list. Because they don't produce commercial amounts of honey, their demise hasn't hit the headlines. For me, a Summer without these drunken fliers , lazily buzzing like crazy and bapping into me and the windows isn't a Summer. I will never forget the moment I was summoned by son to "look at my new pet!", only to find him stroking a massive sleepy just woken up Bumblebee, with both of them enjoying the experience. The Bumblebee Conservation trust is a mine of information and will give you the info to go and identify what's in your garden, as well as advising on how to encourage them in.

But the best thing you can do is to plant some stuff. Not posh flowers, not fancy flowers. Many of these have negligible nectar, and are useless for the bumbles. What bumbles need is old flowers: old fashioned, cottage garden and wild flowers. Big flowers, tasty flowers, with lots of nectar, open, easy access petals, and they need them from early on after they wake in early Spring , thorugh till September and beyond. Here is a list of plants they adore. This year, my borders were sown, early on in February, with seeds of these annuals and perennials, all adored by bumblebees and other pollinating insects. In a nice ABC vein, I now have a border brimming with Aquilegia, Bugloss, Borage, Cosmos, Deadnettle, Everlasting pea, Foxglove, Geranium, Hyssop (also keeps off cats), Lupin, Marshmallow, Poppies, Rosemary, Sage, Snapdragon, Thyme, Wisteria, and more. The Bugloss in particular has been a joy, surrounded constantly by bees and hoverflies, and producing a neverending bunch of flowers that start off pink and change to blue, then purple as the nectar diminishes (see pic above,with happy hoverfly). Basically, the cottage gardeners were onto something. They knew their stuff.

If you want to do something extra, provide a nesting site. You don't need to buy a bee house. You can knock one up yourself out of wood, canes, pretty much anything. Again, the Bumblebee conservation society has some plans for you. But the most important thing you can do, perhaps, is tell your kids about them. Bees are important, lovely things. Teach your children to love bees and leave them alone. Observe, don't squash. Be still, don't flap. They're not wasps (which are EVIL), they're useful little things that add colour, sound and beauty to any garden. (See here for my children explaining the difference between bees and wasps). Buy local honey, seed your grass verges with bee friendly flowers. Tell your neighbours to let that hive be for the Summer, don't use pest control. Don't use pesticides. Use that patch in the shade where nowt grows for a bumble house. Make a little space in your garden for bees, they need it. Your garden is better for bees in it.

And my next post, i'll write about how to help your local Conservative MP become extinct.

Why teachers darn well need to retire

2011-06-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

It's a bit of a moot point, since I never intend to return to teaching while Gove is alive (evil cackle, strokes cat, plans, plans), but if I were, I would now be expected to work until I were 68 to claim my now reduced pension. Leaving aside the argument that we're all younger now, we all live longer now, people want to work, etc etc, here is one simple fact. If teachers work till they are 68, then the youth of today will soon be getting re-aquainted with the traditions of laying out corpses, and CPR will creep onto the curriculum, as a blind necessity. "Sir! Sir! Ms. Kirby has collapsed! Kyle is giving her CPR by the whiteboard, but we think she's weed herself and Skler is vidding her on her iphone! Come quick!". Oh yes, it will happen. Because if ever there was a job, (although firemen also fits, really) that is manifestly not suited to past 60, it is teaching. Here's a few reasons why.

You know how annoying it is to listen to your own kids whine? Times that, by 35 + per class (Gove has just removed the maximum class size agreement, lovely man, and so now we will all be teaching to even more kids in even more out of date classrooms), by 6 per day, 5 days per week, less holidays, for 40 plus years. Expect to see some major Falling Down moments.

Memory: you need to recall a LOT as a teacher. Aside from having to know pretty much all of human history from 1066-1978 in my subject, I also had to learn the kids. Sure, I attempted to learn every kids name and remember their own traits, strengths and weaknesses. But it was HARD. Here come parents evening, and I have the name Keisha in front of me as next up. Thinks, thinks, "Keisha: big hair, too much make-up, smokes at lunchtime, poor spelling, talks too much, sits by the door, never does homework, confuses Right Wing with Left Wing and whilst strongly supportive of Martin Luther King in Year 8, has since let slip that Hitler was "Right about the Jews". Note to self: avoid talking about this with parents, as they seem rather odd and are large. Handed in a nice coursework piece directly downloaded from the internet, 48% in mock, possible grade C if she pulls her finger out and stops reapplying lipstick and listens" All this in 30 seconds. I could do that then because I was still under 35 and hadn't yet had the lack of sleep known as kids. I would struggle now. I would definately struggle at past 60. At past 60, I probably would't even be able to pronounce the names on my register. I sometimes struggled at 30. Yes, I mean you Ozibamwamwye.

Classroom presence. At 30, you are OLD. At 68, you'll be DEAD. 13 year olds in my class were amazed, as, as a precursor to explaining hyperinflation in Weimar Germany, I regaled them with tales of what things cost when I was their age. They flatly refused to believe that a packet of crisps EVER cost 5p until I told them that this was 34 years ago. Then they were, like, "oh, yeah, that's like, so long ago. Did you have the decimals then?" Imagine their respect for you when you are as aged as the dinosaurs. And imagine how madly removed they would seem from you, as the teacher. They'd be like little aliens. Christ, I had to ask them what "bare good" meant, and was it BEAR or BARE, and they actually looked as if they pitied me. It might not seem important, but it is, because a crucial part of teaching well is about making connections that can bring a subject alive. Hence, when discussing the use Elizabeth I made of portraiture, we also looked at media images of modern rulers and celebrities.I knew who the celebrities were. The age gap at 68 is too big. The points of reference are too disparate. X Factor and Preparation H.

It's fucking knackering. The job starts at 7.30 in most secondary schools, ends at teaching last lesson, in theory, by 4, prepping and out the door, excluding meetings, by 5, followed by a few hours marking and prepping at home, probably a day every weekend, holidays during coursework and exam season, meeting with parents, year meetings, subject meetings, coursework moderation, mocks, parents evenings. Standing on your feet pretty much all day (you can't teach sitting down now. It's not like my school days, teachers cannot sit at a desk and set exercises while nipping out for a fag now. It's all leaping around to interactive whiteboards and walking between desks). Not to mention the intellectual tiredness engendered by teaching 6 lessons a day and having to remember it all. I am tired just thinking about it.

Sodding have some respect. Teaching is not a job for the faint hearted or less than committed. It's a rare teacher that teaches for 40 years, and they bloody deserve to retire when they want to, on a decent sodding pension. It's a low paid job compared to other equivalently qualified positions, it demands vocation and care. They are not just teaching, although that's hard enough, they are cheering your kid on on Sports day, running after school clubs, being kept up all night on school trips, picking up naughty kids from the corner shop for shoplifting, mopping up blood, listening to stories, helping, drying tears, stopping fights, building confidence, doing the same assembly EVERY YEAR, saying the play was brilliant when it wasn't, watching out for bruises, buying shirts for the kid that comes in grubby, and telling jokes to make the form group smile. Many teachers work themselves into the ground and thank the lord for their pension, which is now being reduced for them. This particularly affects women, who have taken career breaks to raise children, and will now have to have an average pension, instead of final salary. For many women teachers, this has halved their pension. Teachers now face working longer, for less. You may say, fair enough, I have to. But this is mean spirited. These people teach your children because they want to. How will teaching attract graduates now? 4 years of study and debt, no teacher training funding, for what? A low salary, a reduced pension, and working till 68. What graduate with a decent degree will choose to go into teaching now? If I were in the same posistion again, I would not.

And the argument against final salary pensions for teachers is disingenous. The government pretends that they are bankrupting us, but in fact the latest ONS stats show that the pension bill from public sector pensions is falling. The majority of public sector pensions are small, because the majority of public sector employees are women, and low paid. The average public sector pension is less than 4K pa. The average public sector wage is less than 16Kpa. The average teaching wage, after 5 years is 29K. The average teaching pension is 10K. Compare this with the bank bonuses meted out this April, of 75K plus. Or the tax breaks given to large companies by Osbourne.

Now go up to your childs' teacher and say you support their strike.

Barbecue widowhood and weight gain.

2011-06-17T12:21:00.000-07:00

Well, I am a barbecue widow this weekend. Husband is finally realising his dream (and that of approximately 85% of men) and trying to make a go of cooking huge chunks of meat over a large grill.So he's off to Stowmarket Food Festival as Bubba Grills UK, (see here for where else he's going, I lose track) to punt his ribs and flash his pork butt at people, hoping against hope that they will love his vinegar based sauces and actually allow him to make some money out of meat and fire. I am praying too, as setting up a new business, not to mention a catering one, is not cheap, folks, not at all. And while he is out flaming things and worrying that we'll be eating the leftovers all week, I am the one doing what I always do, Monday-Friday, namely get kids up, deal with kids all day, put kids to bed. Only now I do it on Saturday and Sunday too. (Truth be told, it is mostly me that deals with the kids Saturday and Sunday anyway, but at least I get to stand in the kitchen cooking with the radio on while he plays the annoying dinosaur game, and I get to go to the loo alone while he distracts them).
The only real difference is in the evenings. I am used to either fiddling on the PC or sewing machine once the kids are in bed, not just because I like it, but because husband likes to watch unmitigated crap on TV. We have no real mid-ground here, aside from the History Channel, and even I, as an ex-history teacher, can have too much of Hitler and Tony Robinson. I cannot watch anything involving cops and cameras, I detest talent shows and live scenes of nonentities caterwauling/dancing/doing whatever, and we can't watch the news because we argue. Newsnight has been known to reduce us to mean silence with each other for over a week, but that's my fault for marrying a Tory. There is some mild agreement on cookery shows, but only in that we both agree we can never, ever watch Masterchef without wanting to punch those blokes whilst saying to them "Punching doesn't get tougher than THIS". But when he is absent, oh yes......
Now, now is the time I can watch costume drama without havng to explain which period things are in or him pointing out the cars are actually wrong. I can watch as MUCH CARY GRANT as I like (which is a lot), and admire handsome vampires without having to hear that really, they wouldn't be able to do that. I can cook meat-free meals (husband always looks up from a meat-free plate with a sad little face) and eat nothing but pudding for my tea. And herein lies my weight gain. Or at least, it will by the end of the Barbecue Season. Because last weekend, all I ate for my post-kids bed tea was jam roly poly, a 'la Hairy Bikers. Tonight, I have dined on Lemon Pond Pudding, a'la my nan. Next weekend, I fully intend to eat Eve's Pudding all night. Because normally, I can't be bothered to do a pudding. Nobody in my family eats them. They all eat cheese instead. Nary a sweet tooth or suet love between them. It seems greedy to knock a pudding up, just for me. But as there's no-one around but me this weekend, I don't care. Here is a recipe for Lemon Pond Pudding, and jolly good it is too. I can't show you a photo, because I ate it all. You can also use oranges instead of lemons.

You will need lots of eggs and arm strength for this, if, like me, you are blender or mixer less. I have plenty of eggs, thanks to my hens, and tonight used the monster shown in the photo, proud possessor of 3 yolks. Poor Boo-Boo, that must have hurt.

4 eggs, separated.
5 tablespoons lemon juice
zest of one lemon
30g soft butter
300g caster sugar
4 tablespoons plain flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
350ml milk
Oven at Gas 4, no idea about electric.

Beat the egg yolks, lemon juice, lemon zest, and butter together until it is as thick as you can get it. Then gradually add the sugar, flour, salt and milk until you have a thick batter. In a separate bowl, beat egg whites until stiff. This took me sodding ages by hand and made me swear to fork out for a mixer again. Fold this into the other mixture. You want to retain some air in it all. Cook in a shallow dish, in a tary of hot water, or Bain Marie, as proper cooks say, for between 45-60 minutes. You are aiming for a fluffy sponge on top, and a lovely lemony pond underneath. Eat it. All. Now I am off to watch "North by Northwest" and burp.

Pretend that you are calm, and you are calm.

2011-06-11T12:52:00.000-07:00

When I was teaching, I had as a mentor a veritable dinosaur of the Secondary system, a teacher who had been teaching for over 25 years and was, amazingly, still not weeping every weekday morning. He gave me much advice, some of which I had to disregard if I wanted to keep my job, and one bit which stuck with me, because it worked. He told me never to loose my temper, even with a class of 35 Year 9's, last lesson, and that before I lost my temper, the best thing to do was to act loosing your temper. Because once you've lost it, you're not in control. But whilst you are acting loosing your temper, you get all the benefits of the shock and awe response, but you can also add little Bette Davies touches that will add to your mystique and legend, and you will be in control. So, before the Year 9's tip you over the edge, pause, and go scenery chewing crazy, stop them in their tracks, and then calmly switch into neutral and carry on. Pretend you haven't done it. You will only ever have to do this with each class once or twice a term. Particularly if, as I did, you misjudge quite how much slamming a door can take and the pane of glass falls out and smashes everywhere. They never played up again.

What has this to do with my usual blurbs, which are usually about parenting, eating, hens, with the occaisional Conservative hate mail? Well, I have of late been losing my rag. It comes in cycles, and I have found that when son develops a new skill, daughter will quickly develop a rival skill or whine to compete. I have weeks that go like this:

son: "Mum, MUM, MUUUM! Look at me do this!" (recites entire Quentin Blake book at me without looking at pages, just holding it above his head)

daughter: "MUM! Mummmmeeeee! Look! Look! I can do this!" (does inexplicable Haka like dance with ugly toy dog she got for her birthday before throwing it at son)

son: "Nooooo! I was READING! You are a stupid stinky bum head!" (sings stinky bum head song repatedly)

daughter: "I am NOT you are and that is not reading it is STINKY like your BUM!"

Slight pause while both of them decide whether to cry to gain most attention or fight. Fight. Pause while they examine themselves for wounds, as wounds command high Mum Attention points, especially if there is blood. Hence, son has stopped screaming if daughter attempts to scratch or bite him, as the end result of the scratch or bite is more pleasing than actually stopping it would be. All this while I am on the loo, trying to have a poo. Now, I have had a few moments of late where I have flared up at this, and ended up shouting the mum equivalent of "stinky poo bum" at them, and we all end up shouting, weeping and feeling bad. I did try to separate and calm them, using the divide and conquer rule, but this fails as it only adds to their sense of injustice, and whilst moments before they were mortal enemies, once in their respective rooms, they become allies, cruelly separated by their Nazi of a mother, and tap the dividing wall, whispering messages to each other. I fully expect to see a Poster of a Honda Fireblade on his side and a pony on hers hiding an escape route. Thing is, they just annoy me. They know how to do it really well, and which whiny voice is going to get the most response the quickest, like they have a little ipod of whines in their heads and they're there thinkg "Hmm, it's almost teatime, and I want some attention. Shall I go for the feeble voiced, weak sounding whine and plead for a snack? Or shall I revert to baby speak, and introduce a sad sob effect, implying I have been abandoned, and then ask for a biscuit?" And I am, by 4pm, cooking, end of tethered, and very liable to explode easily. It couldn't go on.

So I decided to go back to my teaching books. I re-read the very useful "Getting the Buggers to Behave" and various other tomes and I can honestly say that I'll be able to make them behave beautifully when they are 11+ in a classroom setting. But really, it's my old mentors advice that has been useful. And not only in acting mad, but in acting calm too. I decided to reverse things and pretend to be calm when I wasn't. I have spent all week pretending calm and responding calmly, acting calmly when really I wanted to yell. I've been anticipating flare ups and out-calming them. I have been unruffled by the fights, I have NOT yelled. And it has totally freaked them out. Initially wrongfooted by my zen-like responses, they were flustered. But then they calmed down. They've had a good week. And so have I. I am calmer. Maybe there's something in Zen and all that, because by pretending calmness, it has actually, in part, descended upon me. Of course, it helps that I have earplugs.

I am alone! So alone! Oh well...

2011-06-03T13:01:00.001-07:00

I've been silent for weeks as a)i've been making the most of family time and b) any spare time has been spent harassing local councillors about local issues re: ANOTHER FUCKING TESCO. I will get onto the Tesco (I have to sick the word up) but for now, this is a quick post to say that rest assured, many, many posts will be coming your way very shortly. Why? Because for the forseeable my evenings will not be spent in sofa tv watching with spouse (me: "Is this some sodding camera and cop thing again?" him: "Yes, it's good, look the fucker is..." Me: "i'm going to bed with my big fiction book of murder"), or concerned conversation with spouse (him: "Do you think every boy is like that?" me: "yes"), but alone. I will be alone because husband is off barbecuing, baking, frying, whatever you do with ribs and half a pig. He's at Bjorn Again, he's at food festivals, he's at fairs, he's at concerts, music festivals and a 4th of July celebration. He's pushing the power of the rib to people and thoroughly enjoying preaching the pork to meat eaters. He's tossing them, basting them, doing all sorts of things at all sorts of festivals for weeks on end while I do not attend. I do not attend because 3 and 4 years olds get bored pretty quick at country shows and do not find barbecues that interesting for, like, 4 days. So we stay home, and eat salad. If he ever makes it big and does Glasto, then we'll go. Me, i've got weeks worth of Bogart films stacked up, a stash of pear cider and some good books. My intention is to spend the lone evenings reading, sewing, watching bad sci-fi and writing increasngly psycho letters to the council/MP, and blogging, oh yes.I will need patience in buckets, not for when he's gone, but for when he gets back. For it is then that the kids start reacting. Some time end July. He has a week off. Then flat out till September. He still has a day job.
I let him go. I encourage it, provide balm. Because he's going to be knackered, the family will recover some time in October. He's going to be grumpy, the kids are going to wonder about the bearded man who wants to read them stories, and they will be SICK of me.But, he wants to be head of his own thing. He wants to have a job he likes, and a timetable that will, eventually, be family friendly (so in 4 years time he might be able to take the kids to school while I do the rest), and that I applaud. But, I don't even like ribs. And i'm going to be very, very bored of reading a Suzuki GSX manual to son as a bedtime story.
Good job I have a big fucking Tesco opening near me soon. And a planning permission for 1,000 homes. That should give me direction for my barbecue widow anger. Oh yes.
Note to people: Sane(r) Sheridan will be back soon.

Lovage and lager.

2011-05-14T12:08:00.000-07:00

This week, I am too angry about the Conservative plans to ruin education to speak of them. I am also tired of arbitrating child disputes ("His leg is on MY BIT of the sofa!" "No, your ARM came over my bit!" etc. etc.) to even try to summon up some will to be topical. So I retreat, as I do in real life, to my garden.

When we moved into this house, I acknowledged that the back garden would be home to large plastic toys, trampolines, and battered, footballed plants and chickens. Plus husbands' van, car and implements. It's 250 foot of brave, hardy flowers and scared grass. But the front garden is MINE. I inherited gravel. It was two different colours (pink and white) admittedly, with a few sad shrubs, and it was north rather than south facing. It gets the sun afternoon and evenings, meaning I can prop a chair there and watch the world go by. It is 40ft square of MINE. I killed/demolished the following: boring red shrub, terrible sharp grasses that were pretending to be pampas, and some sad looking weilegias. In their place, I have let the forget-me-nots and lupins seed like mad, planted lavender, aquilegia, geranium, and mints. I fancied an old fashioned herb plot, so in went Rosemary, Sage, Hyssop (puts cats off) , Catmint (attracts cats), (cat stalemate) Rue, Fennel, Valerian, and Feverfew, all of which clump, self seed and look after themselves. I also added Angelica and Lovage. I had no idea what they did, what they were for, or indeed, what they looked like. I only knew they were old herbs that even the Elizabethans had used. Angelica was a sweetener pre-sugar, and I knew that the Romans had planted Lovage here. I knew this because I used to do 2 lessons a year with my year 7's cooking Roman food to Roman recipes (honey buns, YES. Fermented fish gut sauce, NO). I could never find any Lovage in the shops.

And lo, this spring, they emerged. Within 4 weeks, they were easily the biggest things in the garden. Now, the Angelica has overtaken the Lovage in height, easily 6 foot tall and 3 foot wide with huge football sized flowers, magnificent segmented leaves. It is an impressive plant. Cow Parselys' huge inbred cousin. The Lovage is smaller, only 4 foot tall, but it has yet to put up its' flower spike. It is a lovely, green/blue color, and no less impressive for its' modesty. I love them. People ask all the time what they are. They assume they are exotic, foreign. No, merely old outdated, unfashionable elderly plants. I love them for it. But I have no idea what to do with them. Just like particular relatives.

I have yet to find a use for Angelica. BUT: Lovage is more approachable. Early appearing (March! the earliest leaves you can find), and late leaving (November last year), it is a hardworking herb. The flowers are scented, leaving caper like buds which can be eaten. It has many uses. Medicinally it acts as a mild antiseptic when made into a solution. It makes a tea which is a mild diuretic (makes you wee) and is a liver tonic. It freezes well. You eat the leaves, like any herb, but you can also blanch and eat the young stalks, like asparagus. All this I found from the few references in my tomes. I found NO recipes. NO description of actual taste. The only recipes I had were from my edition of Apicus, the Roman who blighted my year 7 cookery class. So, when it emerged this Spring, I trod towards it warily. I picked a bunch (reckless! I only needed, like, 2 leaves), and retreated to the kitchen with the kids.

"Here, kids, squash these leaves and sniff them".

"EEEEWWWWW! It MINGS!

"Ewwww, you are trying to make me sniff CELERY!" (Celery is the DEVILS WORK in this house. Not only is it stringy and crunchy at the same time, it doesn't even taste of anything except horrid, as daughter says. This was going to be a tough sell.)

In taste it resembles a peppery celery, with a lemony chilli aftertaste, mixed with what I can only describe as a smoked mint. I think it would lend itself enormously to barbecue rubs in place of the ubiquitous celery salt. I have tried it in tzatziki (fabulous), minestrone soup (excellent) and in salads (fab). A little goes a LONG way, it is so strong you only need a teaspoon in a vat of soup to flavour it with celery inplace of 4 stalks of the real stuff. Once the leaves get old (round about now till Autumn) you need the merest smidgeon of them, in salads just crush them and wipe the bowl. That's how powerful they are. The scent remains on your hands the way garlic does. Frankly, after chopping a load, my hand stank. But in a good way.

I think i'll be using it in earthy type dishes; it'll suit green lentils and potatoes. So far i've added it to minestrone in place of the actual celery, and here it has worked beautifully, saving my kids the hassle of fishing the bits of celery out, without tasting too strongly. I have found a Sophie Grigson recipe for Lovage soup which I will try out soon. If any of you live nearby and want to try, come get some. Otherwise, if you have a patch that's empty, shade, part shade, any sort of soil, I urge you to grab a Lovage plant. And the lager? That's for me, now. I'm a lot calmer after typing herb love, and may be able to sup a few pints without resorting to smashing my local Conservative club (they won, again. Nobody here votes, apart from farmers and elderly people who do well out of them. The rest of us, the young and middle aged of the village, will just have to wait till we are 80 to get anything, seeing as all the youth clubs, day centres, toddler groups, and Surestart have gone. 80 is the average age of the local council). No, stop. Lager. And Lovage. Till next post. Herb it.

Let myself go? Or go for myself?

2011-05-04T04:47:00.000-07:00

I have been pondering my make-up bag. Or rather, what is left of it. My mascara has given up the ghost, past even the "add a little water and shake hopefully" stage. I own two eyeshadows from my wedding last year, and one face powder from same. One liquid eyeliner, currently still working if you shake it hard enough and add water. No foundation. I was too tight to buy something full sized that I never wear normally, so I begged little taster pots from the heavily dragged up ladies in John Lewis cosmetics department in Cambridge for the wedding day. I moisturise with leftover baby lotion and E45. I use only oilatum soap to wash my face and nothing else. I do not tone. I do not scrub. I have no ungents, no salts, no hair accessories. I no longer dye my hair (see previous posts as to why: i'm BALDING!), and thanks to my thyroid, have no body hair to speak of that needs tweaking, trimming or waxing. In short I am an ad man's nightmare. Whenever I respond to the YouGov surveys on buying patterns for womens products, they always ask if i'm sure. Yes, I am basically, economically, not a woman. Apart from tampons. And yes, I do resent paying for them, but I simply am not prepared to do the rag/mooncup thing.

Flashback to aged 19. My make up bag contained cheap everything, but a lot of it. Tons, oodles, of eyeliners for that just-got-up-frankly-scary look. Lipsticks. Pink hair dye. A lot of attention was paid to matching eyes to tights or leggings, which were lurid.

Onto late 20's- late 30's. The work years. Proper foundation, eyeliner, nude lipsticks. But most of all suits with killer heels to give me enogh height to reach the top of the blackboard. And be taller than Year 7's. But I always put it on, because even when you are re-enacting the Battle of Hastings, control in the classroom is much easier if your nose is not shiny. The vicious gossip of Year 9 girls is a big incentive to look reasonable. At this point I was spending a fortune on Weleda organic stuff that made not one jot of difference to my skin. I wore suits that were natty and had an extensive wardrobe just for going out (as opposed to now, in which I have an extensive wardrobe for walking to playgroup, which is the same as the wardrobe I have for going out the two times I have been out since kids).

So what did it? Why stop now? Kids, of course. Now, it's them first, a barrage of "Get dressed! YES now! Put the chickens DOWN!" and arguing the toss about the sartorial desirability of wellies and tutu with daughter whilst son tries to sneak out without cleaning his teeth and pick the chickens up again. I run through the shower, whizz the teeth, blob the saddened mascara on, and i'm off. I only do the mascara to make it look like i've got eyes. My night time regime is to wash my face and then go to bed, thankfully, sometimes remembering to scrape the old mascara off. Now I spend nothing. My shampoo is Alberto Balsam. My moisturiser is what is left over from the baby lotion stock I failed to use on daughter. (Wonder if I can use Sudocrem?) I have had the same lipbalm for years ( a big pot of vaseline. Not glam, but neverending).
Is it slummy? Nobody cares. Kids don't . Husband doesn't notice the difference, he's frankly grateful for any romantic attention and wouldn't care if I looked like Prince William. If I smelt, it would be a problem, but i'm clean. My skin is, apart from hormones, better. Who loses out? Make up companies, is about it. I am really no different, only older. But maybe I am wrong. Maybe I should spurn the jeans and t-shirts and rush out and get a Kate-A-Like dress so I can be Be-Yoo-Ti-ful and snag a Royal. Maybe I should spend the housekeeping on lipstick and skincare and not beer and playmobil. But maybe, just maybe, I'm right. Maybe (whisper it) women do not need to have a bathroom full of ungents to be women. Maybe they don't need to spend the equivalent of the GDP of Burma to be pretty. Next time you are having an angsty moment about leaving the house without a full face on, and looking Kate-licious, take a look at the mums on the school run. I bet you, 50% of them are wearing minimal makeup, applied in a rush, and possibly even a pajama top under that coat. I draw the line at slippers, mind.

Below are some of the natural, cheap, cheap, cheap things I do. I have uber-sensitive skin, a result of thyroid medication, and anything with parabens in, I avoid, as they can exacerbate the condition. So, I do it myself, as it is pretty much impossibel to buy anything paraben free without spending a million pounds. They all work, I promise. Although you should avoid the last if you have a strawberry allergy.

Top cheapo money saving body-scrub: Olive oil, rock salt. Bit of essential oil if you fancy it. Can be kept in a jar by the bath for ages, and is very cheap. The Sanctuary chareg a fortune for this. It costs pence.

Top cheapo bathiness niceness: Oats. That's it. Shove some in a little muslin bag (or baby muslin), let it run in the tap, leave it in the bath. Lovely softness to the skin will result. Also great for excema.

Top cheapo facemask: Tumeric and oats. Soak oats in milk till they go squidgy. Add tumeric, 1/2 teaspoon. Spread on face. Look like monster. Wash off, with nice clean face underneath.

Top cheapo all round skin thing: 1000mg of Evening Primrose oil every night. This is the best way to better skin and hair. From inside. Although don't use me as an example because I have no hair and my skin is dreadful. But if I didn't take this, i'd be worse.

Top cheapo body moisturiser: Shea butter. Not the posh expensive stuff, the big block of pure stuff you can pick up wholesale. You can source the stuff at 15 quid a litre if you look, and a litre will last, as mine did, with a daily whoosh of it all over, for just over a year. (I'm 5ft tall. If you're 6ft, reduce that time. I am quite broad, mind). Better than little poncy pots of spenny smellies.

Top cheapo hair deep conditioner: an egg, a tablespoon of olive oil, 1/2 a cucumber, blended in a blender, bunged on hair, clingfilmed head. Leave for 15 mins. Rinse off with tepid water (you do NOT want to be washing scrambled egg out of your hair), and lovely soft shiny hair is the result.

Top cheapo facial moisturiser: One tablespoon each of Olive oil, coconut oil, vegetable oil. Two tablespoons of mashed/blended strawberries. Mix together, pop into a little pot, and leave it in the fridge for about 24 hours. It will keep for about 2 weeks, it really does work beautifully on your face. Unless you have a strawberry allergy.

A peaceful poo. Sort of.

2011-05-03T09:07:00.001-07:00

In the past 4.5 years, I have managed to go to the loo, by myself, about 20 times. I am counting within that the time in hospital with ds and dd, post birth, when they were too little to move and a midwife sat with them while I staggered off and did a painful wee, the few times i've been out without the children, and my hen night and wedding days. Aside from that, I am always joined by two small people who seem to enjoy disrupting my attempt at a peace evacuation, and this had led me to patent my "Waiting Till the Last Minute Then Placating Them With Sweets" method, which at least allows me to do it in silence, if not alone, as they chew. If they haven't got a sweet to chew on, I can place a good bet on one of the following happening:

A fight. As soon as I am mid-movement, one of them will hit the other, safe in the knowledge that I can't get them.

One of them will suddenly say "I need a poo" and say this, increasing in pitch until I have finished. It's really relaxing.

They will ask questions about anatomy that I am really not ready to answer yet.

They will want to look at my final result and discuss whether it will get down the pan or not (charming, I know, but an obsession since an unfortunate episode onboard a Calais Ferry, where a large lady left behind a deposit we tried, and failed, to flush away, resulting in flooding that my son has never, ever, forgotten. )

One of them will insist on spraying deoderant and comment on stinkiness. Weirdly, they don't do this with their father, possibly because they can't get up the stairs without a mask when he's on board.

They never, ever, come to think of it, go into the bathroom with their father. Wise children.
All of this was having an effect on me in terms of lack of privacy. I don't want to have to Derren Brown with the tampons. I don't want to have a 4 year old saying "don't strain, mummy" in my ear. I want to sit on the loo and read my way through Second World War books, like husband. Some of you may be sneering, and saying, shut the door, you fool. Be strict. I have tried this. I have locked the door. I have explained about privacy. Son and daughter now get privacy. I am ordered to leave the room, and am summoned back by a stately "I've been!" to do the job. I , on the other hand, do not get the same rights. If the doors are locked, it's no holds barred fighting, shouting, screaming, yelling, weeping, in much the same way that being on the telephone transforms them into little beasts of a high decibel level. It's even harder to poo when it sounds like a massacre outside the locked door, and you hear one of them shouting "Please, Mummy, he's really hurting me".

So I was astonished yesterday morning to find an empty bathroom confronting me. No-one followed me upstairs. No-one stood outside the door. They just waved me off. In retrospect, I should have realised. Because now the ante is upped. Now it's not all about how they can annoy me for 5 minutes as I poo, it's about what they can do in the five minutes while I poo. Here (see picture) is the result of the first private poo I have had in this house. Yes, five minutes to get the chair, open the cupboard, get the paints out and give the toy cars a very interesting paint job. It's a one off, I thought. This morning, again, alone, I descended the stairs to find an entire packet of Shreddies inside my children (well, about 2/3 of a pack. 1/3 was trodden into the rug). This afternoon, I came downstairs to find them frozen, mid opening of the Cupboard of Joy, full of forbidden treats that MIL brings over and I confiscate, to ration out over the next Millenium.
Frankly, i'll have to be at work to get a peaceful poo.

Ask your MP for a lift.

2011-04-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

When you live rurally, it can feel as if you are forgotten by the London-ite government. So it's nice to see that our local Fenland MP, Steve Barclay, is here to fight our corner. As a (currently Stay-At-home-Mum: gotta have those capitals, it IS a job, you know) secondary teacher, I am extremely concerned that the students of Fenland have some of the lowest attainment, and aspirations in the UK. Few of them go to college or university. Many of them leave with few qualifications. The last review, in Dec 2010 concluded that things were still in vast need of improvement. Here's the Fenland Citizens take on it. So I was overjoyed to read on Mr Barclays' blog that, as a first in the family to university, and now a successful legal chap and Conservative MP, he is very keen to encourage more Fenland teens into tertiary education. Here is is on the subject, doesn't he sound real? And as if he cares, like, a lot? http://www.stevebarclay.net/ (click on campaigns)
It's interesting that he talks about apprenticeships as being the way forward. Interesting because this is the party line, and there are, of course, many more things that impact on students here much more keenly than the lack of apprenticeships, that he hasn't mentioned.

Like the increase in tuition fees, that will affect Fenland students (all students in fact), particularly harshly, Fenland being one of the areas in the UK with low income, and high unemployment. Families are highly unlikely to encourage students into tertiary education if the debt they will come out with amounts to three times as much as they earn in a year. But Mr Barclay, with his huge personal earnings and lack of comprehension about the local area has presumably missed this fact. Maybe he thinks the loans are a good idea. I would think so. The Conservative party stands to do rather well out of the changes in HE.

The reduction of the Building Schools for the Future fund from Cromwell school, Chatteris, leaving it overcrowded, oversubscribed, and with 1,500 students stuck in a building built in the 1920's. And of course, the complete removal of it from many other schools across the country.

The changing of the curriculum to enforce the 5 core subjects, something which is manifestly suited to the independent sector and selective schools. Hence,local schools will slide down the tables. Students here are suited best by a curriculum which offers GNVQ, NVQ, as well as GCSE and the usual AS/A2 routes. The schools here know it, yet they will soon be forced into the Bacc, against independents and selectives that have been priming for it for years. This would be ok, if there were sufficient college places, technical colleges and sixth forms in the area. But there are not. And places in those remaining, and funding for them, are being squeezed. Plans to extend the College of West Anglia further into Fenland, are, as ever, hot air. Currently students in my home town have to travel to Wisbech or Cambridge. Fine, if you have a car or kind parents. Bugger off if not, because, well, the buses. See after.

The establishment of Free schools, funded from the central education budget, thus taking away funds from comprehensives. Funding that was supposedly ringfenced, pre election. Free schools, under the banner of freedom, will essentially be selective, with personal guidelines on selection that are nothing like comprehensives. I think we all know what will happen here. Middle class parents, faced with the comps and Goves' little meany face squealing about them (just DON'T LOOK AT HIM! No, really, don't, it'll make you boak) and too knackered by the economy to pay private fees, will plump for Free schools for their Kates and Williams and thus create yet another tier in the education system. SEN students, students with projected lower attainment, and those from the wrong sort of background, won't get into them. This is already the case in many academies (wait for an explosion of them, too), and faith schools. I know whereof I speak: I have taught in both, in London, and lo! even though surrounding the schools there were estates (and not of the leafy kind) and deprivation, inside the faith schools there were no SEN, no poor, just a lot of kids of parents who had suddenly found God and faith at the last minute. And what happens to the local schools? The good kids with pushy parents leave, the SEN and leftovers get bunched together, funding dwindles along with numbers, and results, and there we have it. Why don't they just call us all Morlocks and be done with it.

The loss of the EMA for all but the poorest of the poor, and then with conditions. The EMA may not seem very vital to those who have not needed it, and indeed, some who have had it, but round here, with low earnings commonplace, the EMA was a real lifeline in allowing students to stay on. It provided money for buses to college, for equipment. For the Tories to say that it wasn't necessary is a lie: not just disingenous, a LIE. I have taught many many students for whom the EMA was vital, allowing them to stay on and study in the face of parents who were not supportive, allowing them to bus to college, allowing them to pay for project equipment. Paper, pens, books, all of these are very expensive when you are 17 and you can't nick them from Westminster.( And hey, books? It should be that the schools and towns and villages should have libraries, but guess what...... no stautory provision for school libraries (despite Clegg having it as an aim, prior to Camerons' back pasage becoming his home), less libraries all round, in fact. Please check yours is still there).It is very clear, that in taking the EMA away, they are shoring up the tiered education system they so, so want to return to. Brideshead, floaty boatered men only need apply. Aren't the rest of you down a pit or something? We what? Well, a factory then. In other words, oiks need not apply. If you haven't got the money to 4X4 it to college, naff off. (And you won't be able to get a bus there. There are none left: see my next blog)

A cut, in real terms to education funding. A cut that would be entirely unecessary if they were to, say, make Vodaphone pay some tax. Or even make Osbourne pay his moral fair share. But, no. So, teachers, tell you what, you work for longer, for less money, and less pension. And some of you, we'll lay off. Quite a few of you, actually. And don't even ask about Teaching Assistants. Even the Lollipop lady has had it.

Special schools? Really, we need them? You wouldn't know it from the rate they are vanishing. SEN statements? Hmm, be ready to see them go.Now it will be up to YOU, as a parent to sort it, provided of course, the council agrees, now it's all been handily devolved. And good luck to you in Fenland, where unless you are elderly and a farmer, they basically look blankly into the middle distance behind you and pretend they are deaf. Transport to Special school? Gone. Pupil Referral Units? *puff* vanished. Read here. Parent liason posts: whoosh. In short, if you have a "problem" child, don't live here.

Transport, in fact, to ANY school out of catchment, gone. This may seem reasonable until you live rurally, and catchments are nonsense. If you cannot get into your catchment school in my town (Chatteris), you must go to Ramsey, or Neale Wade. The school in Chatteris is small. It cannot take all the applicants from Chatteris. Some must therefore go to school outside of catchment. But now, the Council does not have to pay for it, under the brave new world of ConDem. Especially if you have a lovely, all tory Council like ours (who votes these people in? Seriously? I haven't met ANYONE who voted for them). So now we have a situation in town where all students at Ramsey school, have been denied transport to school. Notice given: 4 weeks. Parents? Angry, upset. Students? Angry, upset. Schools? Angry, upset. Council? Couldn't give one. A bunch of parents got together to lobby the Council and pointed out, quite reasonably, that 4 weeks notice of a change of this magnitude was NOT compatible with, say, REAL LIFE where parents need to work the hours of school pick up and drop off, or might not be able to find a job, buy a car and so on in 4 weeks. It says a great deal about the Council and this government that all it takes, to alter 10 years worth of school bus service is, well, 4 weeks notice and a government that won't tell them off. Will applaud them, in fact. As I write, the parents have lobbied and made a nuisance of themselves to such an extent (and good on them) that they have secured a temporary reprieve until the end of the academic year. After September, expect parents who dare to have children who couldn't fit into the local school to be up the creek without a paddle. Wait a minute....I know someone with a car.......

So, I am a little sceptical of Mr Barclay. But you may not think this all amounts to anything. I managed in my day, you might huff. I don't see why they shouldn't pay for the bus themselves. I didn't need paying to go to school. Huff puff. Course not. But think about it. I, Like Steve, was the first in my family to go to uni, even, in fact, to finish school. My parents had no cash. In fact, they were very badly off, under the last Tory government, inches away from repossession, my father having the misfortune to work in an industry that Thatcher decided she would like to smash into tiny bits. I went to uni because I got a grant. If i'd have had to pay anything like the amount students now will have to, I would not have gone. People who are well off to start off with do not grasp the fear that a debt that high can strike. If I had come from a nice family with decent amounts of money, I'd maybe think that much debt was ok. But if I came from a nice family where that proposed debt per year was the annual earning of my father, I might think twice. That's what it's like in Fenland. I don't think Mr Barclays' dad worked in an onion packing plant.

Likewise, if I owned a socking great 4x4 and lved in a big pile outside of town, in a nice bit, I might not see that people do, actually, need buses. Contrary to Steves' belief, aired in the local rag, that buses here are empty, I have never been on one that is. Possibly he just doesn't notice people whose incomes are under 40K pa. Because I regularly see students, the elderly, and yes, workers, on the bus. The bus whose service has been halved. The buses that can take students from one town to the other now don't exist at all. This is fine, maybe. Maybe you have a car. But maybe you don't. Maybe your mum can give you a lift to college and back. Or maybe she is at work. So maybe, now, you are a bit stuffed, having to take 2 buses to college, and back, the whole journey taking over an hour each way and costing you a small fortune, which you now don't even have the EMA for. If you miss the bus, that's it for 3 hours. And,( here's the funny bit) if your last lecture is after 4, you can't get back home again! The bus has stopped running! Hilarious! So much fun in the Winter, walking over 30 miles. (The ghost of Tebbit wails weakly: on your bike! In Fenland winds? ) If you want an even bigger laugh, just take a look at the whole run of bus timetables for the area (read my next blog: as I take a bus to March and fail to get home again, ever). Maybe, here's an idea, you should email Steve and ask him for a lift. stephen.barclay.mp@parliament.uk If you see him, stick your thumb out.

Knick Knack Paddywhack

2011-04-26T11:56:00.000-07:00

Me: "What was all that paddying about then?"

Daughter:" It wasn't really about the biscuit, I just needed to say that" (for an hour, apparently, in increasingly higher pitches)

Me: "What was it really about, then?"

Daughter: "It could be anything, really".

I am envious of the sheer joy of the tantrum. How I long to do what she does: just pick a subject, any subject. The slightest slight, the merest askew look, and just roll, roll with it, until the yells and screams and whines have attained their own music and you've forgotten what it actually was all about. How much nicer you must feel when you've stopped. I can see her, enjoying the stopping of it. It is like she is trying on emotions, for size, for later, for adulthood. And of course, that is in a sense exactly what they are doing. How can a child who is happy and looked after truly know "sad"? My refusing to read the damn stupid Charlie and Lola book is not a reason to be sad. Losing a limb or having me burn the book, possibly. But there they are, trying on emotions, seeing how they fit. I once caught daughter in front of the mirror, doing a "sad face" and trying to cry, for no reason whatsoever. Then, suddenly, you're all meant to stop this nonsense, and stop being emotional and behave. This is school. Then you are a teenager, and for a brief flowering, it's suddenly allowed again, everyone expects you to be an emotional see-saw, so you are. Weeping because, in my case, that one out of the Psychadelic Furs was married, or because you were never ever going to get a Lippizaner stallion. Days spent, later, holed up in my room (which I was not allowed, NOT FAIR to paint black), wallowing in misery, listening to the Smiths and inflicting it on everyone else too. Losing my temper when my dad said I looked like Max Wall in my Goth get-up. Crying because some greasy fringed boy with the only motorbike (and thus, only way out) of the village didn't like me. But really, it could have been anything.

Same sort of time in your life, I suppose. Aged 2 to 4, you are trying out being without your mum, trying boundaries. Will she run after me if I sprint off? If she says "Right, that's it, i'm GOING?", how far will she really go? Round the corner? (If you are me, round the corner and then HIDE. Freaks 'em out. They certainly stop yelling). Screaming for attention. Now. And then, teens, not much different. Suddenly awkward again, only with the opposite sex also pointing out you're awkward, and preparing to leave your mum a bit more. You don't get to do it as an adult (with the notable exception of the year I was on a weird contraceptive pill that sent me into hormone overdrive, that was interesting. And the year my thyroid went hyperactive. That was tantrummy AND hallucinatory. People with back to front knees and faces. Which annoyed me.)Hopefully, by the time my two are teens my standard response of ignore, ignore, ignore, then say "What was that all about then?" whilst barely looking up from my sewing/paper/pint will work then, too. I will also know that the biscuit/boy/popstar/teacher isn't the real reason, either. Sometimes,we all just need to yell.

He's been out from 7am till 6pm. How will he stay in a classroom?

2011-04-17T10:47:00.000-07:00

Son is due to start school in September (this is provided we get the school we need, but that's another blog). He's a bright boy. He's sharp, funny, and keen to read, pretty much can already. But, but but.
But: he spends all day, every day, outside. He needs 2 walks a day like a dog. He needs outside air and exercise, like, constantly. If he doesn't get it, he's like a sad gorilla I saw in London Zoo, pawing at the patio door and pacing. He needs outside. I need him to be outside. He runs, he jumps, he climbs, he's happy. He spent all day today in the garden, or out in the park. Even ate his lunch and tea outside. Inside is for bed. The bedtime story is a motorbike manual (Honda Fireblade, since you ask. It's quite a dull read for me).
But: he learns through doing. He's a boy. He wants to know how something works, he takes it apart, puts it together. Takes it apart, puts it together. Learns that insects don't take apart. Learns to observe. He learns, in short, by trying something himself, NOT by listening. If he learnt by listening, I wouldn't have to say everything 4 times.
But:he frets about noise and space. He, like many, many boys, like quiet, space, and time. He will take himself off to his room, for peace. He will avoid noisy, crowded environments. He likes familiarity. On returning from holiday, or even playgroup, he checks everything is as he left it. All rooms. His dad does it too. I don't know how he will get up the nerve to push himself forward at school when he can't even go on the trampoline if someone else is on it.
But: he tires. He is ready for bed at 7. So ready. Sometimes earlier.
But: he likes girls, and girls things, and dancing, and drawing, and imaginative games.
So? But school doesn't cater for boys like this. School, is all day, more or less INDOORS. Sitting, stuck. School is the death of playing with girls for boys. School is small voices lost in too big a class size. (I taught 35 per class, 40 one year. This primary is 25.) Son doesn't like playgroup when it's full (20 kids) because of the noise and sheer kidfullness. School is peer pressure. School is a long, long day for a 4.5 year old, and homework besides. School is learning by listening. School is not designed for active boys.
How do I know? I saw hoardes of boys at age 11 who were already faliures, already bored, already not engaged. Already examined and written off. As a secondary teacher it was obvious to me that boys learn differently. Most do not excel in the usual classroom setting of sitting, listening. As a result, I would pitch my lessons every two or three weeks to include oral and physical learners. Hard, with history, you might think. No, not really. Want to get how Norman England was controlled over to boys? Make the class desks into Britain, add towns and props. Now variously sack and burn some of them (I really did do this: we burnt little models of the principal towns William sacked. And little model sheep, too). Re-enact Hastings in the playground (again, I would advise ensuring that you hand control of the English army to a boy who will actually DO AS HE IS TOLD, rather than try to win). Build a mott and bailey. Get out and look for medieval ditches. Get them to present a show on UK vs Germany in THE AIR WAR. Cook some ration recipes. It's not hard, but it does take effort. We do not school young children well in the UK. Exams? That young? Why, they must be useful, right? Wrong. Useful for league tables, not for schools. I would automatically disregard SATS results at age 11. Within a year of secondary they were null and void, of no earthly use. So why do it? OFSTED. Stick 'em in a classroom all day, why not. Why not? Why not do as Finland and Sweden do, make the school day shorter, more intense, and outside a lot more. Their results don't suffer, in fact they are better than ours, and don't show the boy/girl discrepancy ours do. Why not, in fact, follow a whole lot of Europe and put them into school later? Why not? Ah, work. Mums must work. They must work, now, or lose their benefits. Funny how the Conservatives would seem to promise most for mums but deliver least. Now mums must practically deliver the baby and hand it over, chuck it over the childcare fence, wave it goodbye. No, school for them, soon as, and work for mums.

But how silly it is. Boys do not even physically develop the ability to fine hold a pencil until 6. Yet they are expected to learn to use it. Son can identify all letters, small words, all phonics. Yet, he can't hold a pencil and control it. They lack fine agility, they develop slowly with regard to fine concentration skills. But, they must be benchmarked, and labelled and boxed. My good friend got told at her last parents evening that her son had settled well, he was now like "all the others". Well, what a great aim. Assimilation. Submission. Loss of boyness. No. She's my friend, so she nearly punched the teacher. And yet, it's not their fault. It's the system. The system which is now worse: more guidelines, more strictures. Less ability to teach interestingly. Longer school days, longer hours. Thanks, tories, you are totally ensuring I never go back to teaching.
I will give it a year. Maybe i'll teach my own.

Princesses: what do they actually do, actually?

2011-04-01T12:20:00.000-07:00

I inherited a house that was gender specific. When I say I inherited it, I mean that I paid a ridiculously inflated price for a 3 bedroomed semi-detached that we'll be paying off for 25 years after the Fens have vanished beneath the Wash. But I did inherit the paint jobs that were within it, and have sensibly decided to put off painting anything until the kids are past the smearing bodily fluids and else on the walls stage. The paint I inherited was, in my bedroom, dull white. Liveable. For years, probably. In the same way that you don't notice the pile of crap at the bottom of the stairs if you leave it there long enough and start automatically stepping over it like it's another actual step, after a while you don't notice the dirty dull walls and the requisite squashed mosquitos (Believe me, you live in the Fens, there will always be squashed mosquitos). The paint in the second biggest bedroom was Boys blue. The paint in the tiny bedroom was one shade off of neon pink. I could have put son into the tiny pink room, but as older sibling, and at that time, the one who could walk, he got first dibs. Daughter ended up pink. Pink walls, Pink, pink carpet, and white fitted cupboards with pink fittings.

At first, I tried to downsize the pink. I got a red and orange duvet for the cot-bed. Green shelves. It just looked like Tinkerbell had taken acid and invited that boss eyed Linda woman from those changing rooms programmes in, when she was drunk. There is no getting away from this much pink. I ignored it, even though when the sun hit the room of a morning it burnt your retinas. But then, daughter hit the pink stage. Now everything must be pink. Make me pink bunting mummy, make me pink curtains. I must wear my pink pajamas. I must have my pink Sleeping Beauty on the bed. Say WHAT? Go back a bit there. Sleeping Beauty? We have never seen the film. We have never seen ANY Disney Princess film. How can you know which one is which? Are they beaming Disney direct into your brain? Is there a chip in there? Why have they all got such lobotomised expressions? And what happened to Cinderella? She used to be strawberry, red really, and now she's peroxide? ( See pictures: one from the 1950's film, where she is officially "Titian" and one from now, where she looks like, well, any blonde idiot) And HOW DO YOU KNOW WHICH ONE SHE IS?

Sobbing, I admit defeat. Yes, have a Princess lunchbox, then, damn you. My defiance of the stupid Disney Princess, in fact any Princess nonsense has failed. Those books I read you, daughter, that featured feisty girls, and nary a pink idiot in sight, did they mean nothing? For Gods' sake, Mog the cat is a better role model than Cinderella! Mog has some oompf about her! Mog refuses to eat the fish and holds out for eggs. Mog doesn't fret about a dress. And Sophie, well, she has dinner with a tiger and goes out for tea in her nightie (possibly because the Tiger is in fact a figment of her mothers imagination, the excuse she gives Daddy about tea not being ready because she has been at the gin and left Sophie in front of Waybaloo, or is that just me?) So we go through a turgid week of reading Cinderella, Disney style as a bedtime story. We purchase a Princess doll with pocket money. I dress daughter in flouncy dresses. I wait.

And then. We are playing "Princesses" with the frankly simple looking Rapunzel doll and the dollshouse crew, who are wooden, have their faces scratched off and hair cut, and look like weird Bagpuss crossed with "Saw" bit part actors. When she suddenly says "What do Princesses do?"

"What do you mean? All the time?"

"No, after they do the marrying, what do they do?"

"Well, the stories stop then"

"What do real Princesses do?"

(Do not mention reality, which is basically : They get super thin despite being surrounded by Fortnums food, pop several out and be miserable, apart from when they smile opening things.And then they die.)

"Well, Princesses don't really do a lot, apart from meet people who like Princesses and wear dresses. What do you think they should do?"

"Fight dragons and be doctors to people and then have tea and do sliding on the slide, and then be friends with the dragon and have a ride".

"Well, that seems very sensible to me, and I bet real princesses would like to do that. Shall we just play something else?"

"Yes. (chucks Rapunzel, picks up manky Baby Anabel). Let's feed her to a dragon".

We go onto re-enact Andromeda and so forth. No more Princess. Rapunzel is still where she was thrown. And that, I hope, is that. Just to be safe, as a reality check, I have a tea towel from the local pound shop which shows the two badly fabric printed beaming faces of Kate and William, in all their glory, only, on a tea towel, and looking a bit weird. Although even the best photos can't disguise the fact that he's going on top, looking more like his dad every day and that she knows it. I heave a sigh of relief. For now.

Swearing. And more swearing.

2011-03-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

I have been quiet, because i've been test driving new medication. More of that another day. For now, a big sweary rant. I'm not big on swearing. Whilst I went through my 2 sweary phases (once at 4, when my mother uttered the incredibly stupid phrase "When you hear me swear, then you can swear", which led to nigh on a week of stalking and then a whole 24 hours of happy blue air and a very cross mum, and phase 2 was my "bad girl" teen year(s), which basically amounted to saying "bloody" a lot and listening to the Smiths), I don't really swear now, unless I stub a toe and the kids are not around. When they are around, which is always, I generally resort to "cornflakes" which has some pleasing consonants, or "Ruddy Ugger". I do slip up though. Son is my Dog Poo radar on the way to playgroup, scooting ahead of the buggy and shouting "Bloody Dog Poo!", pointing. But mostly, we are a swear free zone, although Husband is not as sweet as me, and often gets a kick. As a teacher, I hated hearing students swear, and they did, a lot. Often 5 words out of every 10, and with increasing severity, with a word like "Innit" or "bare" at the end. I was hazy on what the C-word was until i'd read Tery Southern at university (eagerly) and leaving aside its' Chaucerian pedigree, I find it a pretty worrying word to be out of a 14 year olds mouth. As a vile form tutor, if I ever caught one of my flock turning the air blue, I would high them to my classroom and there force them to turn the pages of my ancient and large dictionary, until they concocted a juicy phrase that was sans swearing, and rather more intelligent sounding. My pet with swearing was not, and is not, the word per se, but the hugely lazy attitude of saying the same thing again and again for effect. Your brains, I would lecture, are humungous. Why use the same pathetic words everyone else does? Why eff and blind when you can patronise and insult? It was a badge of pride when I heard a year 8 of my form call his neighbour a cretinous globule. Now, of course, I tell my children not to swear. This was not a problem, because they did not know what swearing was, only that some words were new to them. This was until son came home from playgroup proudly declaiming that (nameless child) says "fuck" a lot, and that is very, very naughty. Of course, he had figured out that by saying the word in parentheses, as it were, and always being careful to mention (nameless childs) name, he was blameless. I let it ride, but pointed out that (nameless child) was very naughty, and made mental note never, ever to invite him round. All this was well and good. Until last week. When, pushing the buggy loaded with scooters, bags, books, Baby Annabel, various motorbike models in (the kids don't use, it no, but I still need it to push round the retinue of crap they trail round with), we met that most charming of floods, the going-home-from-secondary school flood. And, of course, the aural flowering of Effs and Blinds, and C's. Sons ears pricked: "That boy is NAUGHTY, mummy! He said...." Yelp from me. Child/youth in question hears this, and proceeds to Eff and Blind more vigourously, to the joy of his friends. I size him up. Year 9, at most, bit fat, trying for a laugh from his mates, wears glasses. I put best teacher voice on and politely ask him to stop swearing in front of my children. He does not, bouyed up by it all. I ask him again to stop. He does not. By now, they are all at it. My children are actually getting scared. I take out my phone, take their picture, and while they are all expressing anger at this terrible infringement of their rights, I point out that I know where one of them lives, his mum has always been perfectly pleasant to me, she will doubtless identify the rest of them, and be burned by shame at the idiocy of her offspring. Furthermore, the area we are traversing through is a sheltered housing area, full of elderly people who do not want to be frightened by a bunch of hormonal teenagers whose one brain cell has not caught up with their mouths. One of the kids says "Leave her alone". There are murmured "sorry" noises. They scuttle off. Today, they walked by the house, as the kids were playing in the front garden. Son was shock still, waiting to see if they would be naughty. They all said hello, quietly, and one of them said "I like your scooter" to him. All it took was a word. And not a rude one.

no smoke with out fire or ire

2011-03-12T11:42:00.000-08:00

I am blessed with an alchemist as a neighbour. He firmly believes that metal will burn, he seeks the jewel within a stack of burning metal. He thinks plastic burns. He has a great huge round circle of scorched earth at the rear of his property that regularly piles up with wood, carpet, old plastic chairs, anything, anything, tyres, anything. And then he burns it. As we walk past, son, who is just 4, remarks "But metal doesn't burn and plastic just smells!" Quite. And pollutes. After one of his huge plastic chair burning fests I wondered if the chickens would survive (I needen't have bothered: in the end of days, my chickens will be there. The kids can't kill them, the kids leftovers can't kill them, plastic fumes merely make them stronger.Expect an Uber Chicken Superhero any day now). I contacted the council after an American friend pointed out that in the USA, that man would have been drenched in USA fireman hose and fined to extinction. Here, it's a cycle of 3 polite letters, after which they send a mild mannered bloke out to see the bonfire and have a quiet discussion. Meanwhile tons of plastic nastiness has been exhumed into the air, and my chickens.

It made me think of the current smoking pallaver. Son and daughter are both deeply, deeply interested in smoking. Why do people do it? All fags are "smokers", every person smoking we pass means a full five minutes of nose flapping and saying "it STINKS!" They both profess to hate it . "Bob must stop! Or his baby will DIE! But why is he?" and so on. They know it is bad. They know it stinks. I walk past people smoking with them and know both will pass flapping their hand saying "it SMELLS! That lady/man STINKS!" and whilst slightly embarressing, it's the better sort of chagrin. But, beneath it all is an absolute fascination as to why people do bad things. Both kids are compelled by it, why someone might put a burning thing in their mouth. I am keen to encourage disgust at the habit, although it can never truly insulate the child. I was a vehemant anti-smoker, born of having two smokers as parents in the 70's. Imagine: sending your kid to the shop for fags now. Imagine smoking as you drive with two kids in the back seat. Imagine parties full of people smoking, smoking, while you wear exceptionally flammable party dresses in polyester at nibbles tray height. My whole childhood was smoke ridden. I transported home textbooks of lungs to show them. I said I never would. But, I did. Because, if it's normal, when you are a kid, it's normal somewhere in your psyche.

And so I smoked. And not. And smoked. And not.
Before I was an ex-smoker (which I have been, with varying succes, for periods of 1 month to 7 years) I could never see that it was advertised. It passed me by. I just smoked, is all. It wasn't until I had kids that the issue of where and how they were in shops hit me. My kids are canny, they noticed that the fags were by the till sweets. That's two issues, sweets, and fags by the till. Both kids have commented that "smokers" are by the sweets. It never occured to me that the packaging was beyond adult. As an adult, I always figured that i'd go for my brand,whatever, the proposed ban on cig packaging may have seemed like overkill. But as a parent, the fascination with the colored packs behind the checkout, alongside the sweets IS my concern, and a plain package is one thing that this government could do that I would agree with. (Bet they don't though: too much Tory tobacco money). To have them for sale, with colours, by sweets, makes them normal. Put them under the counter, no colours. Not normal.Those that want, can have. Those that haven't noticed, don't notice.

I would love for my kids to grow up where fags are under the counter. I love that they point out smokers, and people who spit. I love that they find that nasty. I don't think my mum, my friends who smoke and others would mind in the least picking up plain packets. I wouldn't. I would just be happy that one more reason to smoke had been taken away.

My days are numbered.

2011-03-04T10:28:00.001-08:00

I was always beyond crap at maths. Forced into a set that was higher than my level at 11, forced to take it early because, taking English Lit and English Lang early, I was evidently just pretending to find numbers scarily meaningless, and forced to fail O Level. Then forced to fail GCSE a record 6 times. Yes, 6. Finally, entirely lacking in confidence, and needing the magic C grade to become a teacher despite having a degree and a postgraduate degree, (because, you know, marking history essays means you need to be able to balance algebraic equations) I enrolled in an evening class with no hope whatsoever once I saw the class, who were (maths coming up) 70% disaffected East London youth, 20% employees forced onto the course, and 10% sadly numerically deficient weirdos. (I just did those percentages on my fingers). Luckily for me, the teacher was a genius with one arm, a drink problem and a haphazard knowledge of the bars of Camden as well as a bit of an idea about fractions. We got on. I finally "got" algebra after a mammoth drinking session and many scribbled beermats. I got a B. Then I became a teacher and I never used maths again. Ever. It doesn't come into Napoleonic Warfare much.

But the last months has been maths hell. This is because the children are horrible little beasts who cannot bear the thought of the other one having a teeny tiny bit more than them. This is the reason that other peoples' children run out of playgroup screaming "mummy!" with a look of delight on their faces and mine comes out to face his sister and ask "Has she had anything?" while she blurts triumphantly "I had a BISCUIT!", the having of the biscuit that he did not have being far tastier than the actual biscuit was. And so it is, that this month I have been mostly measuring. Drink depths, slices of pizza, any foodstuff at all. Measuring with a stopwatch who was fastest, who went furthest, who made the longest play-dough sausage. The distance jumped, the height reached. Who is tallest (she's always going to lose). Who ate the most, or the least. They lay there at night shout-whispering to each other "I'M going to go to sleep first!" "No, I AM!" It reached its' apogee this week when I was called upon to judge who had done the biggest poo. It was at that point that I flipped and did something terrible to the tape measures and rulers. Since then, I have been given the top tip that one child cuts the cake/pizza, and the other gets first choice of slices. This works until you realise that you need a tally chart to keep track of who has done the choosing/cutting, at which point they fight over it. My cousins' wife, who also did the remarkably rash thing of having children too close together, reminded me that this competativeness is what drove her now noticeably good young adults to succeed and do well. Unfortunately for me, my two couldn't care less about competing to do well. But who's got the biggest poo, well, that's a competition they've GOT to win.

And then more numbers for me. This time, the numbers of my blood test. My last visit to the endocrinologist went something like this:
Me: I know that my TSH is surpressed and so it comes "under" the average range, but i'm feeling quite well now, could you leave me alone?
Endo: What? Have you been reading? Numbers? Don't worry your head about them? Of course, now go away and leave me alone to get back to the more interesting diabetics.
End result: endo writes a letter to my GP clearly stating that I am surpressed and overmedicated and cuts my dose by 50mg. Apparently, people my height and weight should only be on such- a-such amount. Well, here's the thing. I am not a whizz at maths, I agree, but even I can see that a range of permissable blood readings must be taken from a wide range of people and is, even then, only a guide to the possible healthy readings. It is natural and likely that some people will be both above and below that range and be healthy. I am one of them. But as a result of the pathetically inadequate endo, I am now undermedicated, barely able to keep my eyes open and having tremors, weird hair loss again and all the other less lovely hypothyroid thingies. A phonecall to the hospital results in my finding out he is on holiday. For four weeks. I'm to be seen at the end of March. This time, I am taking with me my old , weighty, GCSE maths textbook, and will carefully point out the chapter on averages and ranges to him, before using it to beat him soundly around the head. Failing that, perhaps he would like to come to my house and see quite how difficult it is to measure 4 million things a day when you can't string a senetence together and need a nap every 5 minutes. We could measure his ego.

I'm elderly today, and wheezy, and boy are they taking advantage.

2011-02-04T04:46:00.000-08:00

When I were a nipper, I was in and out of hospital constantly with asthma. Being the age I am, treatment then was not the snazzy nebulisers of today, oh no, it was a little tent they puffed full of oxygen, plonked you in it, and hoped for the best (has she gone red again yet? Or still blue?) Then it was inhalers of brutal inefficiency, which necessitated you puncturing capsules full of foul steroid powder, and inhaling it. Yes, inhaling powder. How much fun is that for a 4 year old? I spent weeks off of school, watching black and white movies on BBC2, wheezing on the sofa eating toast, and honestly, quite enjoying myself once I could breathe enough again. My asthma faded as I hit my twenties, and even the plane trees and pollution of London didn't make it come back.

Sons' treatment is flasher: two puffers of space age design, and a nebuliser when needed that makes swooshy noises, on loan from the Health Visitor. He also has preventative powders that you mix with ice-cream (hey, what a hardship:kid, I was inhaling POWDER into my lungs) that have staved off any serious attacks. I still watch him like a hawk as soon as he gets the sniffles though.

I don't pay as much attention to myself. On Wednesday night, I woke up at about 2am feeling wheezy. I thought this was odd, sneaked into sons room and had a few puffs of his salbutomol. Ok. By lunchtime on Thursday, i'd rung the doctors to ask for an appointment. How foolish, of course there were none until 2014. But I'm not breathing very well, I said. Maybe someone could ring me back to tell me how much of my sons medicine I could neck? They duly did. As much as I wanted, apparently, and they'd see me the next morning. Even though I couldn't breathe very well, like, now? I gave up. I carried on playing with the kids, who by now had worked out that going up and down the stairs took me ages, so were running upstairs to fight each other, reasoning that it was a good five minutes worth of whacking before I got there. Husband rang me. Hearing me gasp "no, i'm fine, just a bit breathless", he ignored the pleas from me that I was doing....wheeze....fine....just cooking....fishfingers.... and drove home. In-laws arrived, I was whisked to hospital, arriving with blue lips and 70% oxygen, and after 6 nebulisers and a foul pink steroid drink, eventually released home again with a bumper pack of drugs and a strict ticking off for the GP's surgery. It appears I have adult onset asthma again. Apparently, many childhood sufferers have clear periods, only for it to return in middle age. Crap.

So, today, after a careful tip-toeing around this morning, and a gleeful son who was not taken to playgroup (it being a 3 mile walk. Not happening today), the kids have gotten over their disappointment that I wasn't actually staying in hospital ("Then I could have seen you with a mask on and it would have been cool!"), and initially, been very caring. Played quietly, sat on the sofa and read, and been considerate children. For about an hour. Then it started. "DON'T SHOUT! MUMMY IS POORLY! OR I WILL HIT YOU!" "NO, I WILL HIT YOU!" (runs upstairs to do so, remembering wheezy ascent of yesterday. They are still safe). Noises of violence from upstairs. I turn up "Cash in the Attic" louder.Then they argue about who is going to give me my puffer. Son takes his puffer. Daughter cries, she is the only one without a puffer. She wants poorly lungs too. Pretend to give daughter puffer. Son points out that medicine is only for real poorly people, not pretend, and now she will die. Weeping. 95th cup of tea of the day. My hands are trembly and the steroids are making me weird. Shall we all have spaghetti for lunch? Realise that I am like an elderly person. I can't walk far, I am wheezy, I am not safe to hold a hot teacup and the kids are running rings round me. Reasoning this, I ring up the in-laws and say they can take the kids out for the afternoon. There's really no difference.

The difference of three hours.

2011-01-31T12:05:00.001-08:00

Life with kids, staying at home, can be repetative. Hell, what am I saying, it IS repetative. But it occured to me today that despite this, there is a massive difference between hours of the day. Anyone with small children knows this. Children, like werewolves with the moon, are subject to the ebbs and flows of the hourly clock. Their last meal, the waking hour, the tired hour. And so are we. For me, the three hours in the day that most illustrate the breadth of my day are these:
The Happy hour.
All children have one. This is when the equation of energy+food+time / energy + food+time of parent is at it's most balanced and = 0. For me, this is the days when there is no playgroup, between 10 and 11. At around 10, they are eating, dressing, the breakfast has kicked in and they are playing happily, not yet bored, angry and cross with each other. They are a clean slate, keen, eager, interested and happy to play with each other. I have time to play with them. This is the hour to learn, where they will absorb anything and retain it, the hour they are not naughty and the pre-breakfast shouting has been forgotten. After 11, they are hungry again, and the cycle repeats.
The Misery hour.
This is where the equation is tipped. For me it's 3.45 - 4.45 pm, that hour before dinner where they have no energy, they're tired, they need food, i need to cook it and have no time, and they are WAILING. This is when they use whatever is to hand to hit each other, steal each others toys out of spite, and come running past me as I cook screaming "Muuuuum! She's doing it again! So I HIT HER!", as I try to judge which wails are anger and which might be the result of said blunt object whilst mashing potato. Then 15 minutes of plea bargaining about food, as I know they need it, they don't want it, they want whatever I ahven;t cooked, but I know that within 15 minutes of eating approximately a third of the plate, they will humanise again. You can see it happening. Like a vampire who's had a drink of the red stuff, they start talking in a vague civilised manner as the carbs hit home and the tummies fill. From then on until they sleep, it's diminishing returns, but at least the energy bit of the equation is sorted.
The Peace hour.
7.15-8.15. Mine. They are in bed. I am on my bed, reading. Husband is not yet at home. This hour, is mine, before I am up and cooking again. If he comes home early and wants dinner, I feel like killing him.

Like little animals. If they were see-through you'd see a little line in their tummies marked "Shout below this line". As soon as the food level dips, it's dog eat dog and they will fight over a cheddar biscuit they've found down the back of the sofa to the death. As soon as the attention level from me dips, a little light flashes in their brain which tells them "I am being abandoned! I will have to live on cheddars from the back of the sofa! and lightning like, they will fling themselves at each other or my legs. This is why whenever the phone rings, I go to the toilet, as it gives me 3 minutes before they get to me.

Once they are teenagers, and able to eat their own bodyweight from the fridge without asking, and desperate to NOT have your attention ("Leave me ALONE! God!"), and in bed all day, listening to impenetrable music, I might find it easier. The equation there seems to be food+gadgets+headphones+sleep / money +food+ blind eye from parents = only 4 rows a week, from memory. Oh joy.

I'm back, cross, and need a drink.

2011-01-28T10:51:00.000-08:00

I left off writing for a few weeks, month, schmonth, whatever, because I was pure and simple worn to smithereens by illness, the illness of children, Christmas, weather, relatives, relatives again, weather again, illness again, husband being in Florida while I was in the Fens, kids that never, ever say please despite the elephant story (see here), and feeling like I needed to SORT THIS FAMILY OUT before I went potty. So this week, the husbandless one, has been a mummy-boot camp week. Why choose now? Because, you know, it's easier to do it with one parent.

Really. With two parents, or at least, this two, I am always "bad cop". Daddy gets to waltz off in the morning, and listen to Radio 4 in his car for an hour, while I am shouting "YES, you need to clean them in the mornings!", smelling the breath, sending them back, and forcing unsightly cereal down them. I moan all day, I pick up the points all day, then daddy waltzes back in just before bedtime, hypes them all up and is just the most bestest parent ever. I do get a bit sick of it, can you tell? At weekends, the little rules I spend ALL WEEK being mean about, little rules like saying "please" "thankyou" not treating me like a servant, not eating sweets before meals and so on, go out of the window because daddy is a complete soft touch. And yet conversely, he is much more liable to fly off the handle at the constant whining than I am, because he doesn't have to listen to it all week, and has yet to develop the whining deaf ear I have, or learnt to choose his battles (you know: it's 4.30, dinner is half an hour away, the kids are wretched, whiny, fighting. Now is not, I repeat, not, father, the time to have a conversation about getting your feet off the sofa). So yes, it's easier with just me. And you know, maybe i'll get to be good cop for a bit too.
So far, I have been hideous.Here are my main fights.

I have re-introduced the rules that were in existance before Christmas about eating. Simply, they are, try everything on your plate, no afters with no effort, and no sweets apart from twice a week at my stipulated times. Snacks before meals? Fruit. No, not the truckload of biscuits and sweets that Mother-In-Law shows up with 4 times a week, waving in front of you 10 minutes before dinner, no. And yes, I have had a word. 15,000 times, in fact. How is it going? 2 days of weeping, pushing away food and staring sadly at the cupboard of MIL love. I'm not giving in. So they'll lose a little weight.
Bedtimes are real. For me and you. I prefer mine to be a lot further away from yours than you want it to be. You can play your organ and screech "Welcome to the Dangerzone" down it, you're not coming out of your room. And you, madam, can throw as many Sylvanians at the door as you like. I don't like them anyway. I will be reading in my bedroom, going "la, la, la".
I like the word "please". But just shouting "PLEASE, then!" does not have the same effect. I want to hear "Please may I?" I'm an arse, but I can dream.
Water is nicer than juice. Of course it's not, but you've got to drink it. Because I said so.
Would it be possible, do you think, to have under 10 playthings out at once? Maybe put some away when you've finsihed, rather than simply tip new toy on top of old, in an attempt to create archaeological layers that would baffle that one who used to be Baldrick?
TV and PC is down to 45 minutes morning and 45 mins pm, IF you've been out and about in the meantime. Play with the mountain of stuff you got for Xmas. I will play with you, I promise, if you promise it won't be Sylvanians or little army men. Playmobil it is then. I like Playmobil, it fits in my hoover lovely. Actually, this is the only successful thing so far. I like playing with my kids, I just like it more when they are nice and well behaved and i'm not just a skivvy.

And my target is to not shout. I found after xmas the whole house was getting shouty as a result of too much stuff, plus, daughter hit her twos for real,and spent much of the holiday having Bette Davies style paddies, for 45 minutes at a time, at the base of the stairs for maximum annoyance because I wouldn't undress her sodding stupid Barbie AGAIN. Son hit his first hormone rush (boys get their first testosterone rush at around 4, this is what makes them suddenly shouty, angry and liable to want to be really boy-like all of a sudden. Steve Biddulph is good on this.) It's time to draw breath and redirect my parenting energies. Hence my absence for a bit. I needed to drink wine and stare at tv of an evening instead of type.
Let's see how we are in a few days.

Bet he'll be glad to get back to work. A stream of consciousness Xmas.

2010-12-28T13:19:00.000-08:00

Xmas Eve: frantic children believing a lie that YOU (and I ) endorse so we can have a (huge) whisky and blame a fictional figure. Her sack is bigger. No, it's not. It's just a different pillowcase. How will he get in? We don't even have a fireplace. Oh, that magic key shit. No, he won't go into your room if you leave the sack downstairs. I agree, it IS creepy. I did my sack (ooer) on Ebay for a measley tenner each child. Can I drink the rest of the whisky?

Xmas Day:Yes, it's 5am. Oh well. Let's all rip open everything in a random way that makes identifying gift tags redundant. And do it quickly ,before we have to get dressed and stuff everything into the the car to travel to the relative du jour. They won! Now our holiday is just like a playgroup day! Get dressed! Quick! We're on a timetable! Again! Stuff evry single toy into the boot. Arrive. Open more toys. Frantic children being so surrounded by gifts that they end up hitting each other for the sake of familiar fun. Eating (you, not the kids. They live on Jelly Tots.) The main cook saying "I'm really not that hungry, you're not, when you've spent all day cooking" (sigh, nose down, trough). Drinking (only one of you. One of you has to drive back from the relatives du Jour). Task Arguing. "YOU put them to bed, I spent all day being SOBER". "No YOU, it was YOUR PARENTS, I NEEDED Lager". Slumping in front of diabolical TV, asking "Who got run over in Eastenders this year?" before passing out, dressed. One of you makes it to bed. Did I get a present? Oh, bless, it's jewellery far too fragile for my everyday existence, from tesco points. The gift of love.

Boxing day: The Other Lot. The ones that didn't get the kids on Xmas day. Its MORE FUN than Xmas day, even though the kids are knackered. Oh, ANOTHER EFFING DINNER. Yep, we could all do with another 3 courses. And more packaging, for our bonfire the size of the house. Can I watch my recorded Dr Who now? No? Oh. What's that you say? Daughter is weird? Well, yes. Oh, sweaty wierd. Ill weird. Initially, this means a glad token of being able to usher out the Other Lot early.By 10pm, it's clear it's the usual Xmas virus. Yes, the floor is lovely in here. Just give me a duvet and the calpol dispenser. I'll sleep on a rug in her bedroom.

Oh, still. Still every 3 hours, 3 days in. Days are spent on the sofa watching The Wizard of Oz. My God, Glindas' hands are big. Start spotting disenfranchised height challenged people not being proper Munchkins. After 8 viewings, root for a Witch Wins version. Lions and Tigers and Bears, oh Sod it. I'll run in front of her toting a jug of gin, she'd follow then, and sod Toto. Son is less enamoured. Stupid little poeple, why are they giving her a lollipop and what are those monkeys doing with wings? Can we go OUT?

Here's the rub, Husband is on holiday. He thinks, (laugh) that this is a HOLIDAY! No, you cannot sit and watch the History Channel. No, you cannot lie in. Here's an idea, why not take the not-sick kid out? And LEAVE ME ALONE?

Phew. Now I can watch the Stupid Wizard of the Stupid Arsing Oz again, with sick kid. And wine.

Oh, wait. Everyone is almost well. You''ll cook dinner? I would be happy, but I know this is just a lovely way of standing in the kitchen for 6 hours and leaving every single sodding pan dirty for the poor other sods to wash up. Can't I cook? Oh. I must sit down (read: deal with kids). I cooked the other day. But I WANT TO COOK LIKE YOU DO. Not the actual recipe. That is neither here nor there. I want to take 4 hours on a tomato sauce, with a glass in hand, without having to wipe a childs arse in the meantime.

The kids are "I want Daddy to do it". Fine. Daddy gets all the good bits. I notice it's never Daddy who gets to wipe bums. Still, the sheen is off. He's been off for days. The kids are having philosophical debates as to the nature of a minute, due to his "In a minute" responses. My minutes are minutes. Not so his. And you know, kids don't really like watching the history channel, and I don't want them seeing the holocaust episodes, really, so, if you don't mind, can you go back to work? Because, I might kill you otherwise, and you will go crazy, and I will weep, because you have no conception of how I run this. Go.

We all love Xmas.

Bad mother misses Nativity.

2010-12-21T00:13:00.000-08:00

And it was his first ever one. Bad brained mother here was just downright empty headed about it and flummoxed by the Medieval system of school security. Unable to process the arcane rituals of gate openings, I was stymied by the blockade and, being 5ft, unable to scale the walls, clutching daughter and the Phil and Teds. Here is how it begins.

I drop son off to the usual playgroup entrance. I access this through the left-hand school gate, Gate A, which is open for the 8.50 drop-off,(Otherwise closed for the 11.50 pick-up, open again at 3pm. Guarded by Cerebrus in the meantime) walk across the school grounds and say "See you at the Nativity!". I then walk into "town" (this is in speechmarks because really, 2 charity shops and a bakery do not make a town). I walk through the Town school gate,Gate B, open for the 8.50 drop-off, but closed for the 11.50 pick-up, open again at 3pm. Otherwise, guarded by Orcs and an all-seeing eye. Gate A saves me a long walk, as Gate C, near to the playgroup and open for the 11.50 pick-up and 3pm pick-up, otherwise closed and guarded by sundry demons, is a mile and half around the town away. So my walk to playgroup in the morning is 2.5 miles, on the way back it is 4 miles. The politics of the Gate are arcane and not open to reason. A friend with SPD and heavily pregnant was not allowed to spare herself the walk at the 11.50 pick up, and was forced to walk the 1.5 extra miles. The Gates cannot be opened. I walked her boy rather than see her struggle. The Gate protects the kids, it must not be breached. Mexico border controls are more lenient than this.

Anyway, I then return, after whiling away an hour in the library with daughter, to Gate C, for the 11.15 performance of Nativity, starring son as shepherd, and many varied carols that bear no relation to ones you might know. Gate C is locked. I ring friend, who is in hall. "Help! Gate C is locked! I can't fling my Phil and Teds over the fence! Can you get someone to open it?" No. Nobody will open it. I must run.

I do not run. Apart from a brief period in the early 90's, which was really all about snaring some unworthwhile bloke, when I went to the gym 3 times a week, I have never run. Never. I may jog, I may speed walk with a double buggy, but I do not run. Until now. Strapping a screaming daughter into the buggy "NOOOOOO! I want to WALKKKKKK!", I pound the pavements, swerving people on mobility buggies and cursing their wheels, run, run, until I reach Gate A, which is open, all the Orcs being inside watching the Nativity that I AM MISSING. I screech to a halt in the school reception and demand to be let into the hall. Obviously, I am bright purple, sweating, about to have a heart attack, and clutching a puce angry daughter. I look insane. The Head comes out as the scretary has evidently pressed the panic button. They let me in. As soon as daughter sees the stage and bright lights she exhibits her (thankfully present) anti-X-Factor genes and screams. We go out again. I find crumb sodden old dummy from last month in bottom of my bag, shove it in and return to see the last song being sung and son looking bored in a tea towel. All the other mums are looking at me. They all have cars. Son asks why I was late. "The Orcs were not at the gates", I tell him. And he just accepts it.

Later, I get the DVD. Sons head is obscured by Marys' voluminous headress throughout.

4 years ago, I stopped working.

2010-12-17T13:25:00.000-08:00

Not literally. I mean, my arms and legs still go (althought my thyroid could do with some work), and I still (just about) string a sentence together. So, yes, I still work. But I don't WORK. This time, 4 years ago, I said goodbye to my form group, fellow teachers, and GCSE/AS/A2 students, saying "See you in a year!", and waddled out that door, heavily pregnant, and never went back. I've been at home, with kid(s) ever since. For a while, post son, I said I was going back. 6 months in, I tried to read a book about Napoleonic warfare, and the new syllabus, and failed. My brain hurt. I visited childminders in our neck of East London, fully intending to leave my little bundle with them and return to work. The fact that I wouldn't have left a dog with them decided me. (Amongst the gems were a woman with 6 dogs, one who said she wouldn't take me because I was ethnically wrong, and another who stood smoking on the doorstep saying she "only did it outside" in such a manner that I wondered what it was she did outside, as it could have been any number of things, including soliciting).

We moved. We moved far, and cheap. We moved far and cheap enough so that we could manage on one wage for a few years. Just as well ,as along came surpise daughter. (Yep, really. 6 months in surprise. You know when they say breastfeeding is not a contraceptive? They are right). But what was happening to me? In the (admittedly brief) interim between children, I struggled. I had been a 5.30 am riser, who went to work, worked all day, came back, planned, did some more work, then went to the pub. I was a good, committed teacher and a big socialiser. My love of subject (history and polictics) ,was such that I spent weekends campaigning, visiting musuems, and husband and I courted on the IWW battlefields, in trenches. I loved my job. I loved watching my class set up as the League of Nations, and do a better job than they did. I loved it. I loved my form group. I loved my work. And now, I didn't have it. What was I?

Well, to some of my friends, I was a big wash out, a let-down. Someone who had "wasted" their education. To others, I simply wasn't down the pub anymore, and slipped away. To one, I had "let myself down". I should be being MORE, being a job, an ambition, a dream. What could I say? Yes, I had a half finished novel, but waking up 5 times a night does for that. Yes, I loved my work, but was that all I was? And most importantly, is that all that matters? No.

I can honestly say it took over a year. Over a year to not be upset by my demotion, for, let's be frank, that is what it is. You had a bank account, it had stuff going in, now, it doesn't. You have to ask for money, or set up a joint account. You had a timetable, now you don't, your day is dictated by breastfeeding, weaning, potty training. (See previous posts for how I cope with this: effectively, I just teach a subject a week to them, it gives me a timetable and a focus). You used to have lunchbreaks and piss alone. Now you don't. Ever. (I still don' know what to do on "lady" days. I distract them with a trick.)You used to have a status, now you are "just" a mum. You used to have a purpose, now you are "just" a mum. You used to have targets, discernable results, now the only result comes when they are 18 and not a serial killer. Yet. There's time. It takes time. It took a gut wrench instinct to say "I want to be at home", as every fibre of my intellect screamed that no, I was a working woman, but all my mum fibres said "sod it". I fought it, but I settled. I have seen every first. I have cooked a gazillion refused meals. I wipe up wee. I wipe bums. I read "Peepo" 8 times in a row. But I am still a teacher. I explain sunlight, rainbows. I explain why they need to go to bed. I am lawmaker. I am a scary monster. I am the builder of sofa cushion rafts. I am the one they hate. Until they fall over. I am the bad cop mum who says "What do you say? How do you ask nicely?" when good cop dad can waltz in from work and be fun. I am the dispenser of Savlon. I am a mum. I am not a worker.

And yet. I am. I am there, the whole time. So much that they get bored of me. I am up at 6 sometimes sooner, bed early, for the night shift. I know i'll be up at least twice, for wees, lost toys, wonky duvets. It's work, but the results you want are different. It's not attainment based, it's happiness based. Can I help my son and daughter be happy? Can I make their days at home, with me, a privilige? Can I make them into nice people? Funny people? Tolerable people? When I shout, can I say "sorry"? Can I make them able to enter school, secure in the knowledge that when they come home and ask for fishfingers and mash, I really know they are asking for a hug? It seems like nothing, sometimes, this stay at home lark. But when, as I did today, you hear you son say to the searching playgroup lady, sending him out to be picked up, "My mummy is over there, she ALWAYS is", it does seem worth it, as well as a life sentence. Or am I just justifying my choice? So hard to know. I just know, I'm glad i've done it. Although I wish it had a ruddy wage and some respect. It's a life skill, a diversifiable skill, a transferable skill to be able to find the bedtime teddy when it goes missing. (In the drawer, in a tupperware box. Of course.)

Make do and Mend.

2010-12-10T07:37:00.000-08:00

Well, I've spent the last few nights snipping and sewing stuff from the little scraps I've had lying around, and some of the pillowcases I obsessively collect for 10p from the local Sally Army ("It's only 10P!!!! I MUST have it!") I whizzed up some bunting for daughters room to brighten it up a bit (must snip that thread!), using pillowcases for some of the flags and bias tape, and some leftover quilt patches for the rest.

I snipped at the shrunken jumper to fashion it into a bag. It's not quite done, some applique to do, but it is a bag from a jumper, albeit an odd shaped one due to the armholes, but a bag nonetheless. I've mended my jeans and even saved all the little itty itty bits from my cutting mat for stuffing toys. I'm being tight, i'm mending and making do. It's partly part of my year of thrift (see previous posts about not buying any new clothes for a year: nearly there!) , and partly because I've been inspired, again, by my Nan, now passed on, whose sewing box I inherited in April but only recently picked up.

It is GORGEOUS. Not to look at, just your standard wooden box, one knob missing. Butinside there is a wealth of making-do. Alongside the box, I got a tub of crochet hooks, a tin of ribbons and ric-rac, a tin of elastic and fastenings, and a tub of needles and scissors. Nothing was ever thrown away by my nan. Every ribbon from every present was tucked away. Every sequin that came off saved. The cotton reels alone are amazing, some of them are wooden, and wound with silk thread that was made in Britain. But this little envelope I found truly amazing. A little selection of nylon and silk thread in stocking colours, wound round card, with their own matches attached to melt the threads together. Imagine. Not throwing away a stocking, but darning it and melting it, and using them till they dropped. Last night I took a leaf out of my nan's book and what I couldn't mend from my mending pile, I unwound or cut into patches for later, some old trousers are earmarked for a doorstop. God, even the words "mending pile" sound great, but kind of 1950's. Inspired by my Nan, and by how easy it was to not buy any clothes this year, I am going to do it again this coming year. A bit early for New Years Resolutions, I know, but really, one purchase of snowboots in a year was actually quite easy, once i'd gotten over the thrill of spending. And this year, I promise, will be even better. This year I will not only buy secondhand (my limit was £5.00 a week), I will REFASHION. Take a look at this lady, who did a dress a day, from charity shop jobs, every day for a year. Now if that isn't inspiring enough to get me to learn how to seam, nothing is. I WILL learn how to hem properly, I WILL use my nan's thread to sew up a storm from a size 20 charity shop dress, and I WILL, (maybe) learn to crochet).

And check out the "Mend and Make Do" thread on Netmums, where ladies are going crazy on their machines.

The power of a lullaby: and what to do when your child is choking.

2010-12-06T05:36:00.000-08:00

Lullabies and choking are not connected, maybe, but this weekend, they were.

When son was little, I sang and sang, he was a super colic baby and did nothing but scream for 4 months. The singing was often less to do with soothing and more to do with drowning the noise out. The only was he would settle (settle, not sleep, Lord no, not for 16 months....) was by flinging him about to Frank Zappa telling him not to eat yellow snow or wailing Little Green Rosetta, which lasts for 8 very long minutes. I'm not even the Zappa fan in this house. (That said, he is a great Pixies singer now, so i'm getting my return). He would allow me put him in the bouncy chair if I sang "Let's go fly a Kite" from Mary Poppins constantly, on occaision allowing a segway to "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang". But daughter was different. Whether it wa second child so-soon-after status or not, she would always pop down for a nap and go to sleep beautifully (even though she still wakes up for a "chat" at 4am). I would sing her a lullaby every night feeding her to sleep. I know I wasn't meant to, but hey, both mine self weaned no problem at 15 months. (smug). Our verse of choice was "My Bonny" (click here for a wiki about the song, and see above for the chap in question, Bonnie Prince Charlie) and every night we'd go through 4 rounds of it. Even now, at 2 and a half, it retains a massive power. It literally knocks her out. I can sing it in the middle of the day and her eyes go sleepy. It it so intrinsically linked in her mind to sleep that it sends some sort of "Sleeeep" message to her cortex and off she goes. How I wish I had one of these for son. He does still sing "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" though.

How does this relate to choking? On Friday I put them both to bed at 7pm with nary a bother and absolutely no sign of any illness at all. I spent the evening sewing and quaffing a nice wine. At 11pm, we heard a barking noise from daughters room, and as husband shot upstairs, we found her choking, making that croupy noise and gasping for air. My first thought was that she'd swallowed something from her dolls house. We rushed her downstairs and I called 99, I am really not au fait as to how to cope with small 2 year olds choking, my first aid is all about teenagers. By the time they arrived it was clear she could breathe, but badly, and the medics took one look at her and slapped her back in particular places, and dislodged some almighty globule of mucus. Splat. Daughter was in receipt of one of the worlds fastest acting colds. As she returned to a normal colour, we could see that her eyes were gunky, her nose was blocked and her throat was raw. Poor wee thing. Plus, she was surrounded by medics, stressed parents who were also a little embaressed that it was just mucus and panic, and grandparents who had sped over at breakneck pace. Cue screaming and some obviously healthy lungs. Medics said goodbye, rather reluctantly, as we sent them off to Peterborough at chucking out time. I took daughter to bed. And here is where the lullaby does it's stuff. Nurofen, a nightlight and "my Bonny" and whack she was away, despite all the excitement.

And now for the choking bit.

I knew how to do a Heimlich on an older child, from my teaching training. But toddlers and babies are different. Firstly, if the child is breathing even slightly, as daughter was (ie, if they can make a noise), then do NOT slap their back . It could dislodge anything and send it further down. The correct technique for toddlers and babies is completely different to adult techniques. Here's a link to a baby example. For toddlers, or small children like my daughter (who at 2, is still in 12-18 month clothes), lay them over your knee face down rather than your arm as shown by this gent. I am off to find a Red Cross class that deals with kids first aid. So that I won't have to call out the ambulance unless it's really needed, and I'll be able to cope until they get here if they are.

NO! When little boys get hormones.

2010-12-02T02:34:00.001-08:00

I attended son's playgroup parents evening last week. According to them, he is learning to stand up for himself, after a shy start, and is as good as the proverbial golden child. I retreated, gobsmacked. At home, he doesn't have to stand up for himself, because he is too busy lording it over his sister. He is not in the least bit shy, and he certainly isn't good. he is Omen like in his ability to predict what will annoy most. So far this week, he has cut his sisters hair (again, so she looks like something from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest), taken to smacking her on the head when he thinks I'm not looking (despite my telling him, with alittle artistic licence, that it hurts your brain, in retrospect, this is possibly encouraging him), waited till she's set up her entire doll's house and then driven his motorbike and army men through it ("what? What? they're just having a smash-up party!"), lied ("I DID NOT eat the gingerbread!" Here's a hint, wipe the gingerbread mush off of your face before you deny it), smashed his room up when sent to it, and scribbled biro over the bath. Which to be fair, was hardly noticeable alongside all the grime and rust from skanky bath toys. All of this accompanied by a point blank refusal to sit on the naughty step. (Look at him in this pic, I thought he was bad at 2, but boy, I was wrong).

He is rising 4, and I'm wondering if this sudden bout of sheer stubborn naughtiness is a hormone surge. At around aged 4, boys experience the first of many (ARRRGH) hormone surges, which increase aggressiveness, energy levels and urge to engage in boisterous play (launching himself at husband as soon as he gets in from work screaming "fight me!"), and reduce their ability to concentrate. Luckily for us mums, this first surge lasts about a year (a YEAR?) and then fades until about aged 7. Steve Biddulphs' book "Raising Boys" is very informative on this. I can glance across to son at any given point in the day and he will be engaged in transmuting his sisters carefully thought out narrative with the farm animals into a farm armageddon. Yes, a definate hormone surge. Only a few months ago he was gentle thing. Now he is a maniac. So what to do?

I'm trialling the 1,2,3 method. It's meant to work well with boys and children with autistic spectrum disorders, because the rules are simple and do not allow for much negotiation. Now son is older, I often find myself embroiled in negotiating with the boy rather than stating what he should do. As a teacher, it's a cardinal rule: you earn the right to negotiate, it's not a given. Yet here I was, involved in some high table UN debate with a 3 year old. 1,2,3 it was. Basically, it's an old teaching trick but it works, hopefully. State to the child that they get 3 warnings only and on "3" , what the consequence will be. As son will now no longer sit on the step without running off it to where I am and mooning at me (yes, really), my "3" consequence is for him to be put in his bedroom without his favourite toy motorbikes for 5 minutes, then 5 again if he hasn't calmed down and apologised. Then, you clearly get to "3". Here's an example from this morning.

Daughter is screaming, with real tears. Son has hold of the toy she had, and she haltingly (but with glee) stammers out that son hit her on the head. I know she's egging it a bit, she's gone all Bette Davis, but hey, he did hit her. Son admits it.

"Say sorry to your sister and give her the toy back"

"No! I don't want to!"

(Holding up finger, speaking calmly) "That's one. Can you please say sorry and give the toy back."

"NOOOOOOO! it's MINE! (stamping feet)"

"That's 2. Can you please say sorry and give the toy back. It is not nice to hit on heads, or snatch".

"No!" (throws toy).

"That's 3. To your room, please". March him upstairs. Remove motorbikes. Much wailing and screaming. After 5 minutes he is still lobbing stuff about. Tell him he has another 5 minutes. Go back in after that, he is forlorn on the bed.

"Why did I put you in your room?"

"Because I whacked her and now her brain might hurt". (near enough).

"So what are you going to do?"

Gives sister cuddle, has a cuddle, carries on until next outburst approximately an hour later.

By the end of the day I usually only have to get to 2, or sometimes even 1. It does seem to be working, but as with everything, consistancy is key. I know I am doing it religiously, as daughter was telling her dollshouse crew off in the same manner.

Other pointers for the angry boy parents out there.

Firstly, accept that he will get angry. Example: yesterday, I told him not to take food from the fridge without permission. He denied he was (still clutching the chicken leg). I asked him to put it back, he got angry. After the 1, 2, 3 scene, we had a chat about why he got angry. "Because I really wanted the chicken but you said no", and discussed what could be done instead of getting angry. "You could have asked me nicely for a snack, couldn't you?" and so on. Make it clear that everyone gets angry, but that there are often other options.

Praise the gentle. Really go overboard. "Oh son, the way you are stroking the chicken gently is lovely, they really like that" etc etc. Praise nice behaviour to the high heavens.

Go rough. Make an assault course of cushions, play boys games (yes, there will be killing in them), and encourage LOTS of walking, running. Get out everyday. Get messy. Be a boy for a bit. And, if there is a man on the scene, a daddy, uncle, whatever, rough play. I simply don't get the rolling around bit, but they do and they love it. It's a very important bit of male whatever. I know it hypes 'em up before bedtime, if, like me, the man arrives home just before bed, but hey, go to bed 15 minutes later.

Get your man model to model being gentle. And if your man model shouts (mine does at times) make him say SORRY. Little men will copy the big ones.

Get some man on boy time. Send them off to do tasks. Boys often learn by DOING at this age, and a morning with the man sweeping snow or hammering will work wonders. And get him to praise, praise praise while he's doing it.

Now, i'm off to do my counting again, as I can just hear a yell......

Conservatives smash childhood dreams shocker, and a cushion.

2010-12-01T12:36:00.000-08:00

When I was little (or young, i'm still pretty little, height wise at least), I was desperate to be a showjumper like Harvey Smith, then I went through a phase of being a librarian and forcing mum to take books out all the time while I stamped them and fined her (none of my childhood books are untouched), and finally, a teacher phase, bossing my sister around and criticising her efforts. "NO! Do this NOW! No, no, don't cry, Mum will come, here is a biscuit".) And you know, apart from the showjumping, I DID do that. I was a childrens librarian for years, and then retrained as a teacher, which I loved, for years. I did what I wanted to do. Son is obsessed with levers, gears, mechanics. My dad is an engineer, In Law dad is an engineer, there is a clear obsessional path for him. Daughter is currently limited to doing whatever pees son off most. But whatever they want to do, I will say, "You CAN do it". Because really, they're bright, they're funny, they have drive, they can. Even if he still wants to be a policeman.

Except they can't. We will never, never, never have enough money to pay for degrees for our kids. Read that again. NEVER. This country now has the most expensive education in the world. Kids that are bright, from less well off families, will never get to University. The Conservative blurb may say "It's merely a debt...." blah blah" , but people who have no money do NOT get into debt. Imagine being an 18 year old from a poor background, and being told that your debt on leaving will be 40K, 3 years work for your dad. You wouldn't countenance it. Of course, it's probably different, if , like David Cameron, you are worth 19 million and you think this makes you Middle Class. I won't even mention Clegg, nobody can hear him from the cavernous recesses of Camerons passage anyway. Cameron just excuses any noise as being "something he ate".

This is what this government wants: education for the elite, the ones who a 40K debt means nothing to. Their dads earn it in a few months. I was the first person in my family to get to University, indeed, even finish school. I managed because I had no fees, and a grant. I repaid that generosity by doing public sector work for years. The State helped me, I help the state. I believed in the State. I put something back. They more than got their moneys worth from me, from the teaching in the East End alone, believe me. ("No, pupil, I cannot come and pick you up from Budgens for shoplifting. I am not your mother. I am your teacher. Oh. Alright. She's with you. And caught shoplifting. I'm on my way.")

No more. This week we learned that the local (and only) secondary school has lost it's Building Schools for the Future money. 9 million. This was to provide for more space and facilities. The school was built in 1938 for 500 students. It now has 1,350. The money has gone. Not needed, says the government. Not needed , says local bigwig Martin Curtis, and minister for children, no less, who also said that "screaming and shouting" won't do anything. Fine. We'll all just accept it then, shall we? And the fact that you've just more or less told our kids that they're worth much less to this government than the kids of the small enclave of wealthy Free school parents. And the 1,000 homes you've just agreed will be built here, to add to our hugely overcrowded school and village with no facilities and schools that are too small. ( Strange that all the local Conservative councillors are so keen on the idea, possibly it has something to do with the huge links to the building trade many of them have. ) This government sucks big time.

The students round here already perform terribly. Fenland has the lowest tertiary education take up of ANY English area. It has the lowest parental tertiary take up. It is a rural, on the land work, area. And a safe, very safe, Tory seat. Nobody votes, apart from the landowners, and me. Everyone else is too apathetic, working on the land they don't own, or in the middle of the Fens picking leeks for minimum wage, for 14 hours, while the voting goes on. So why should the local MP Mr Steve Barclay care? He doesn't. He went to Rugby. He is a golden boy who replies to my letters with the party line and never holds a surgery in my village, knowing full well there is no bus on earth that will get me, my kids and my hatred to his actual surgery. So i've written to him. (Again. See previous posts to hear about my effort to build up enough asinine replies that I can furnish my chicken coop with them. And they can shit on him. I know it's childish.) Would he like to come and tell my son that his local schools are falling to bits, with the government sanction? Would he like to come and explain why my kids will never get to tertiary education? Would he buggery. He goes to the opening of a crisp packet, but he won't come here.

And because i've made myself really cross again, here's a picture of some stuff I sewed last night: a taggie for an upcoming baby (NOT mine, dear me NO), a pot stand, and a pink(ish) cushion for daughters room. I'm getting into the swing of the machine now. I even wound a bobbin. (clap, clap, clap) Once I get good enough, I may even attempt to sew a tiny mannikin of our MP as a pincushion.

We bunked off and made gingerbread

2010-11-29T09:26:00.000-08:00

It was snowing this morning. So much snowing, in fact, that the 45 minute walk to playgroup and back again appealed about as much as kissing Michael Gove. Still, I tried. We dressed in 4 billion layers each, and walked with arms and legs swaddled in thermals to the buggy, which a) daughter refused to get in and b) wouldn't go in the snow anyway. Both children are born for the sunnier climes of South America or Spain, not rural Fenland, much to Yorkshire husbands disgust. By the time we had struggled down the road, buggy veering from left to right as I failed to discover the wheel lock, with my best impression of bad mother voice shrieking "Come ON! It's just a bit of snow!" whilst son wailed despondantly "It's getting in my EYES! My EEEEYYYYES!", I realised that this was not going to happen. For one, I couldn't really shout "Come ON!" for an hour in a blizzard, and secondly, daughter had flung herself from the buggy into the snow and was weeping. We turned back and happily plunged into the house again.

By 10.30 we had eaten all the crumpets and were shouting at each other. So we made gingerbread. This is simply the best gingerbread ever, it is exceptionally more-ish and, if you don't mind your kids getting dental caries for the sake of an hours peace, the kids will eat all of it if you let them. It's another wet/dry recipe, my absolute favourite type as they are virtually idiot and chidl proof. You will need:

Dry stuff: 225g plain flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 tsp bicarb, 1 and 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Sift.

Wet stuff: 55g butter, 115g soft brown sugar, 115g black treacle. Melt all together and leave to cool a bit. + (1 tbsp milk if needed for dough).

Mix it all together, until it turns into a dough. If it's too sticky and tough, add a bit of milk. Roll out to 5mm thickness and cut out shapes. I usually get about 25-30 assorted snails, squirrels and stars from this. Bake at gas mark 5 for 10-15 minutes, but a lot depends on the shape of the biscuit. Eat. All of them.

Whilst they were eating, I finally decided to crack on with using the sewing machine, which has been sitting and intimidating me. Having forced MIL to wind me lots of bobbins (I simply cannot do that yet), I grasped the nettle and a big stack of the cheap vintage pillowcases I keep buying because they are 10p, and decided to make some skirts for daughter, who thankfully doesn't care what she looks like yet, being 2. she will be in pillowcase outfits until she comes weeping to me and shows me photos of all her friends in Reebok or whatever, and even then i'll still moan.

So I chopped the top and end off of one fetching pillowcase featuring cars and bikes (she WILL not be girly, not if it's up to me. No pink here!) until it was a good skirt length. Then I turned it wrong side out, and straight stitched a pocket for elastic. At the bottom, I took a leftover bit of binding and sewed it around the hem, turned it right side out, and then sewed it around again. Wonky stitching covered. For skirt 2 I chose a green pillowcase, did the same thing, but this time without the binding edge and some ribbon instead, once i'd gotten the hang of sewing straighter.

Both skirts are very wonky and very amateur, but they took an hour of gingerbread eating and broke my machine virginity, so i'll always love them.

It's MY 30 Minutes, damn you!

2010-11-27T09:56:00.000-08:00

I think the thing I miss most about smoking (and I've already come to the conclusion that I am always going to be a smoker, even If I am not smoking), is not the nicotine, but the 3 minutes. It was 3 minutes standing outside, usually, with the most interesting people. I would take a breather (even though I wasn't, I was inhaling), and have 3 minutes away from whatever I was doing. I'd chat about something frivolous. When alone, my first and favourite fag was the one when I got home from work. I was never a first-thing smoker, I always went all day, but my first cig when I got in, before I started the marking, was just the best. On the balcony, 3 minutes just letting go of it all, breathing the commute into the air and starting the day again.

Of course, as soon as I realised I was pregnant with son, I stopped and didn't even notice, really. The observant ones will be saying, well, if you didn't have one till 6pm anyway, you're not addicted. Well, I was. But to the minutes, not the fags. I didn't notice pre-son, because I was busy, and my evenings were mine. I just replaced the evening cig with a devilish cake. Job done. It was only after son, and then daughter, that I realised that I was addicted, to my 3 minutes outside without any of them. Because ever since son was born, Jan 2007, I haven't ever had more than 30 minutes alone. Not ever. I poo in company: "Mummy, don't strain. Do you want a book? Stella has weed on the bed". I suppose there was a brief moment, as they took daughet to weigh her post labour, before 15 month old son and husband arrived as visitors, but I can't remember it. I spend my entire day, 6am, sometimes earlier, till 7.30,. with company of the most demanding type. I never have 3 minutes to nip outside and go "ahhhhh".

It was only as the nights are drawing in, and husband has been getting in earlier, at 7.30ish as opposed to 8, that I have felt the terrible urge to yell. 7.30 till 8 was MINE! It was me, sitting on the bed, reading, blissfully. Let me put you in the picture. 7 is bedtime. It starts at 6.30. We read, we argue about teeth, we threaten that there will be no stories if teeth are not cleaned, we resort to headlock. We read that stupid Bog Baby book 3 times, sing "My Bonnie" and then that is one down. She is out like a light, to gather her strength before she rises at 3am to demand that I straighten her duvet. Now. Boy has "Cops and Robbers" (at least Ahlberg is interesting) and no song. But he decrees I must stay upstairs till he is "actually asleep" which leads to lots of "Mummy? I am not asleep? Are you here?" and so I have taken to reading a book, yes a BOOK upstairs while he dozes off, before going down and doing husbands tea. I sound 1950's, but there is revolution in my veins.

That half hour is MINE! Without it, as I discovered when husband rocked up at 7.25 and prevented kid to bedding, and lost me my half hour, I am crazy enough to consider murder. Or a fag, again.

Easy peasy pie child pacifier banana cakes

2010-11-23T06:06:00.000-08:00

It is 2 in the afternoon. A walk to the park in freezing polar wind resulted in increased snottiness and wails of "My feeeeeet!" from daughter, who is genetically designed to live in San Tropez, not the Fens, where there is no tree windbreak effect. Lunch was wrong, just wrong, the quiche being one with "bits in". The "bits" were lovely last week, but this week they are disgusting. Shrek is now rubbish, apart from that bit where he farts. The hobby horse has been converted into a weapon. Whatever one has, the other must have, or die in the attempt. It goes like this:

"I love my Princess Joanna, she is better than YOUR stupid army man"

"No, she is not. I love my army man, he is cool, look, he can jump"

"I want the army man"

"No. Give me Princess Joanna"

"No." (picks up weapon, which is, nearest to hand, a small Roary the Racing Car).

"But I want her." (edges to sofa, reaches underneath for debris he knows to be there, it's probably sharp and unhygienic, result!)

War.

By 3pm, I am exhausted from shouting and referee work. The Scottish refs have it easy. Rather death threats from Celtic fans than being shut in this house for much longer. The only way out, the only way to bring peace, is to bake.

For some reason, even the most aggressive fight will cease when I shout I am baking. I have rules: you must share, you must not throw, and you must wash your hands, as a token gesture, even though I know you will pick your nose halfway through and eat raw egg. The prospect of licking the bowl out and eating cake often forces them to work together in some sort of entente, like France and England, being nice to eat other whilst quickly trying to eat as much of the cake mix as they can on the quiet. My own personal rule is that whatever cake we make must be prepared on the wet/dry basis, where you have one bowl of dry, one bowl of wet, then slap it all together.

These cakey muffiny things are quite the easiest and tastiest, and it matters not one jot of they turn out somewhat dense, as the banana provides an excuse for this.

You will need:

Dry bowl: 250 g Self-raising

1 tsp baking powder

1tsp bicarb

cinnamon

nutmeg

115 g caster sugar (or brown if you like things heavier).

Sift all this.

Wet bowl:

75g melted butter

vanilla extract

2 eggs, beaten

125 ml milk

3 small or 2 medium black and squishy bananas, squished.

Mix! Bake at Gas 5 for 25 minutes. You can muffin or fairy cake them, makes no odds.

Eat them watching the fart bit in Shrek.

Go in and watch them sleeping.

2010-11-19T12:02:00.001-08:00

When you've told them, over 4 hundred million billion willion times to say "please" and they still say "get me". Yes, i've actually chopped the poo in half to get it down the loo. No, I don't know if it will be ok in the sewers. Who has pulled the chair out from under the daughter? There is much bleeding, and wailing, and lying ("But I DIDN'T!!!!" "Er, I saw you?"). There is a chunk of hair in the bedroom, and the so-called safety scissors are gone. The food goes to the chickens, again, who are fat, and no, you cannot have a biscuit. A Jaffa cake IS a biscuit, actually. Alright, it's a cake-biscuit. Do not run to Grandma saying "What have you got for me now?" (I told her, to STOP BUYING STUFF!). Array of interesting scribble all over the wall. And a damp patch there. And there. 4 toilet rolls and a toy dog are down the toilet. I am not sure if they have been weed on. No-one knows. The chicken poo trodden into the rug is no-ones fault again. That dastardly fairy of chaos, was it? or the pair of you, in wellies? What is stinking behind the sofa? It cannot be identified. The hair is tangled, my dear, because you put a great glop of icing in it. No, it is not nice to sing songs about willlies in front of people. I don't care what Daddy does. No, leave it alone. Put the chickens down. Down, I said. Well, if you will pick them up like that. Go and change. No, it is sub-zero out there, not the bathing pants. I don't know where the playmobil gun is. Where? You don't put things up there! No, I told you last time. Get the vaseline. Sneeze. Again. Good. No, let me wash it. You hate me. At 3. Well, I don't know what you will think by 13. You'll probably explode. Who hit who first? You can't both have done it at the same time exactly. Right. Right. Off to bed now. NOW! No, we don't have red toothpaste. It's blue. Just BRUSH YOUR TEETH. I will read both of you the same story in separate rooms. I promise. Christ, this story sucks. Yes, I am still upstairs. Yes. Go to sleep. You've already had some water. Oh. Go and wee then. No, a tiny dribble does not constitute an entire outfit change. The Toy Story ones are in the wash. Yes, they are. No, you are wearing a bedtime nappy. You are. Go to sleep. Sleep.

glug, glug, glug. Ahhhhhh. Now, go back upstairs, and watch them sleeping. Go on. It's designed that they look cute, you refill your love tanks, and they can go on being 3 or whatever tommorrow. A survival tactic. for them and you. Sneak up now.

The picture shows son passed out on the Naughty Step. Sheer exhaustion. And daughter whacked out in the buggy.

Kids need quiet, and aloneness.

2010-11-13T09:11:00.000-08:00

The value of quiet for children is something I have been pondering lately, and lo, in the Guardian the other day, Friday I think, Libby Brookes mentioned that there has been little research into thevlaue of being alone and quiet in children, as opposed to the mountains of research about kids and socialisation. Nobody ever talks about how, sometimes, kids like being quiet, and alone.

I've been thinking about it because son is due to go to school in Spetember next year, and I'm wondering how he will cope. He doesn't mind playgroup (3 mornings a week) but "It's very busy and I just like to be quiet sometimes". I fret about how he will do in a class of 30, full on, all day. I know him. He goes to his room / the garden/ the shed and just natters on to himself, making little bubbles of worlds and arranging things to his pleasure, if you poke you head in he says "not yet", he LIKES aloneness, it's his time to play with his imagination. He dislikes playgroup by the end of the week for the noise, the hustle, the "Now we will do painting". Often, on a Friday, he will say "Is it the weekend? Can I be quiet now?". i worry about how he will be in a big class. He does not speak up, not because he is shy, but because it overwhelms him. It is pointless to him. Waiting for a question to be answered in a room of 30, he may as well dream the answer himself. And it would be better.

Thinking of my own temperment and childhood, I was similar. I took myself off to the shed, to the swing, anywhere, and later, with a book. I disliked the enforced jollity of activities at playgroup, and later, school. Daughter, I worry less about. She does not fret. She smites. Go her. At toddler group, she merely said "I don't like it, they don't play properly, let's have a snack and go". She too, will happily go off and doodle away the while rearranging her dolls house into some sort of bordello with her brothers army men, or "reading" the books to make the endings better. For one, Cinderella gets a motorbike.

I think that the school day for a four year old must seem endless. I am told, often, that I should send mine to playgroup more, to ready them for school. What? They have 18 years of it! Let them while away the hours chasing chickens, building grass cutting dens. Let them go off to the bottom of the garden and transform the tree into a motorbike. A Kawasaki Ninja, to be precise. Let them lay on the (damp) grass for 30 minutes and come in and say "I saw a giant, but he was ok, but the clouds were mostly animals today". Playgroup does not do this. Nor does school. Children do this, alone, and themselves, because they are.

You know, i'm edging towards home schooling. More fun. More play. More time to be themselves. I know from experience that a lesson is that long because there are 30 kids there. one on one, I could teach it in 15 minutes. We could have a morning of school, and an afternoon of play, of being alone, of doing nothin, or judo, or swimming, but nothing is sometimes the best of all. Because when my kids are doing nothing, they are always doing something more imaginative and hilarious than I could have dreamed up.

What are the poppies for, Mum?

2010-11-12T12:13:00.001-08:00

Son, 3, asked me this yesterday, as we walked past the memorial in my home village. It has flags flapping around the cross, in readiness for Sunday. Some of them are Polish, one is American (I live in the land of the airbase). A whole Scheme of Work flashed through my head, from the days when I was teaching the answer to this question to year 9 students. Them, I could stun into immediate submission by showing them, in lesson one, a full 20 minutes of pictures, film and reportage from the Front. That is why. But I can't show a 3 year old that. So what do I say?

That rememberance is about the people, not the war. So when we got home, the photo album came out and I showed him the pictures of my great grans' family, all of them lined up for a group shot. Then the pictures of her brothers, in Uniform, raring to go away,leave that life of shepherding and farm work, get a suit (a free one!) and see the foreign shores. Only one, of 7, came back, 2 boys in one battle. Leaving a depopulated village, women without husbands, brothers, fiancees, or any prospect of one. "They left to fight a war with another country" I said. "It wasn't their war, but they went to help, but they got killed".

Deflecting questions about how, exactly, (mud, guns, drowning, who knows? Only that it was at Mons, and Ypres). I used an analogy about how sometimes, if people are fighting, they sometimes ask for help. If you believe that the person needs help, you help them, and soldiers do it because it is their job. I didn't mention conscription. I mentioned how, when my nan died, we lit candles for her, to remember, and that poppies helped people to remember soldiers who have died. Who are brothers, and daddies. I didn't mention how some wars are not virtuous, how men died for little pay and no reason. I mentioned only that we should remember them, so we don't fight again. I didn't mention how it hasn't worked yet, but only that we should do it, in the hope that it does work.

I will take them to the ceremony on Sunday. They don't, thankfully, have anyone specific to remember in their living memory, as my Brother-in-law came out of Afghanistan alive. But they can think about my great grans brothers, who left a life of shepherding, and farming, and did not come back. And, as every year I taught it, I was moved by the sudden anger and disbelief of my year 9's, who usually didn't care about anything much more than their XBox, I hope that my two will grow up utterly indignant about the wars fought in our name and the losses they resulted in.

In my nans photo albums there are 6 photos of war graves, in France. They are my Great Grans brothers. She never made it to France, but my grandad went and took the photos for her. They are what she had, a known resting place. So many did not. In my pre-kids days, husband and I took our holidays in Belgium and France, trudging the cemetaries, walking the Menin ridge, marking the front lines as we went, noting the piles of shells French and Belgian farmers left by the roadside for collection, even now. The large cemetaries are too huge to contemplate, your eye is stunned by the mass of white rectangles. And then you realise that some rectangles name 2, 3 even more, and the walls behind note even more. Imagine them all standing. And then the next cemetary, and the next. Chinese workers are shoved to the side, Indian soldiers given side rooms. And still, still, many more lie lost and unidentified. Someones son, brother, lover, husband.

In Britain, we are privilged, in one way, not to have these markers on our landscape. But, we have no daily reminder of the loss. In Arnhem, husband and I spent a day walking the route of the Market Garden assault, eventually fetching up at the cemetary. All the way there, there are markers of which soldier held the front, which soldiers were valiant, but fell. It's pitted into the pavement, in metal. Schoolchildren are given dedicated graves to tend, and hold a yearly service of thanks. In France, schools have a gravesite each to tend and look after. It was fought on their soil, they see. We do not. We have the odd white rectangle sent home to country churchyards. We forget, and we should not.

Give your kid a camera, a real one.

2010-11-06T13:55:00.000-07:00

I walk about with my camera all the time, it's my third eye. I sometimes think my own eyes see things through a square. For me, it's a way of seeing the little things that are beautiful or moving, seeing the small picture helps me to see the big one. When i've had a day of being moaned at ("NOT THOSE FISHFINGERS! The OTHER ONES!" "Oh, you mean the fish cakes." "I just cut a little bit of hair off!" Daughter sobbing, holding clump, says otherwise, you know the drill), and it's hard to see the wood for the screaming, I like to take a minute and look through a lens. So son and daughter are used to being snapped (although, if I get his "photo face" one more time I will scream), and son kept agitating for a camera. I looked at those big kiddy style ones that add cartoons and so on, but frankly, the picture quality is beyond dreadful. And why should kids have a "kid" version of everything? It's like saying "you are small and wouldn't be able to use a real one", when in fact, they can. Why should something have to be big and unbreakable, and have "fun" elements? Kids, given half the chance, will look after things that are delicate with care 95% of the time, and the other 5% of the time, they're just doing it on purpose. Why should a kid need "amusing" elements to a camera, when a camera is already fun enough, if the person looking through the lens is fun?

As I proved by digging out my old digital camera, an old kodak Easyshare model. It's small enough for his hands, it's a point and click, and away we went.He was careful, carrying it with the wrist strap. He took to it quickly. After asking "What should I photo, Mummy?" and receiving the reply "Anything that you think is beautiful, interesting, or silly! Anything you like!", we went for a walk. I now have snaps of the following, a window into the mind of a 3 year old boy. The tally is: 3 dead worm photos, 1 photo of dog poo, 4 trucks, 3 lamposts, 4 patches of nettles, 1 berberis berry, 1 of his sister (note she is less interesting than dead worms), 1 bike, 1 of a brick wall for "it is patterny", 1 of his new snowboots, and a staged shot of his sisters toy dog about to fall off a cliff. As well as being fun, and educational, it was really lovely to see him so engaged in his surroundings, and he has claimed the camera as his now. Interestingly, he clicked onto the zoom without being told, and preferred the viewfinder to liveshoot, so I am hopeful I may have a David Bailey who can support me in my old age.

So don't buy an expensive kid camera. Buy a real, cheap one, and let them click away. Look at life through your kids' lens.

I wish there was grey hair dye.

2010-11-03T12:49:00.000-07:00

I am going grey. What little hair I have, where it has grown in again, has grown in grey. I am salt and pepper. I have more grey than my mum. But it is not grey ENOUGH. I want more grey. Total grey. I don't want to dye what I have left to my natural brown. I daren't, in case it falls out more, for one, and also because, dammit, grey is what happens and I don't want to be dying it forever in an effort to look younger than my 38 years. Just as I accept my lack of hair and what is left of my boobs after feeding two kids, I want to accept grey. But I want it to hurry up. Half measures look rubbish. And grey can look cool. (Pus, my grey hair is thicker than my brown, and I need all the help I can get).

Grey is old. My great gran and my nan had fabulous pearly white hair. But grey can be young too. Women with autoimmune conditions, like myself, often go grey earlier. Regrown hair from hair loss is often grey. But where are the grey, younger women? Do they all dye? Do they all hide? I can only remember one example, a teacher at the school where I last worked, who had that steely grey hair you sometimes get, cut snappyand short, and my, it was hot. But, aside from Judy Dench and Helen Mirren, where are the women who are grey in media? And where are the young ones? Google grey hair and you get loads of stuff to cover it, prevent it, deal with the agony of it, but NOTHING about how to just go grey and say "stuff it". George Clooney can be grey and sexy, but Nicole Kidman goes out with a bit of grey showing and she gets slaughtered. Whole blogs about how dreadful she looks. Dreadful? She's NICOLE KIDMAN! Hello! What a slut, hey?

So, just like my trouble finding women with balding bits and bald heads, or really short hair (you may recall, Servalan from Blakes 7 was just about the only one I found....), now I am also another taboo on top of looking a bit like a lesbian. I'm an OLD looking one.

Oh, no wait, I just found this one of Jamie Lee Curtis. She looks great. Now all I have to do is get her body and i'll be fine. And for those who say, "Where's the political sniping this post?" I say to you: Alistair Darling. As long as my eyebrows go grey too.

Sod politics, i'm lovin' the eggs!

2010-10-30T07:23:00.001-07:00

I just can't bring myself to blog about politics at the mo, although it has been comsuming me, in a bad way, so much so that I cannot watch the news in case one of THEMcomes on. So before I start on my true, egg blog, here is a task for my 2 readers for next week. Bear with me. I have set myself the task of writing one outraged letter a week to my local MP, the Conservative Stephen Barclay, whose blondish, young-ish, Tory mug can be seen every week in our local rag, grinning as he watches the scythe of cuts ruin the Fens (further), pretending to care. It is my intention to gather as many of his asinine replies on House of Commons paper ("I share with you some concerns, but policy....all in this together.... a council matter.....central office....blah blah blah")as possible, and then with a final flourish, use them all to bed down the hens so they can shit all over him. Maybe he'd like to come to a photo shoot for that. So, pick an issue, any issue, and i'll do it in next weeks letter. Challenge!

So, with the politics/chicken poop link nicely done, I can get down to the egg lovin'.

It is now about 2 months since the 3 brown hens came into our garden (and dug most of it up). I am SO CONVERTED. I will never eat an egg that's not from a free range happy hen ever again. I get 3 , super huge, super tasty, super yellow yolked eggs per day. And they ask for so little in return. A scoop of pellets, a clean out once a week, and whatever scraps you have left over. Mine are in their nice run for the mornings, and out all afternoon. I do this because I'm out in the mornings with playgroup, and I fear for predators, but in the afternoons, they charge about the garden with the kids. They peck at the grass, eat all the weeds (goosegarass, dandelion, all gone!), eat all the pests (slug eggs, grubs, leatherjackets), try to get in to watch tv, and make themselves little dustbaths everywhere. They rummage through the gravel, chase flies, and play football with tomatoes. One is so placid she sits on the trampoline with son and allows herself to be carted around. They all nestle together under the Canna lillies and cluck. And then trot merrily back into the coop all by themselves when the dusk draws in. At which point I don the rubber gloves, pick up the poo, and say goodnight to them, knowing that in the morning, the kids will charge down to the coop with breakfast for the hens (leftover cereal is OBSESSING them), and come back with 3 warm eggs.

They are utterly charming. Everyone who has met them has gone, "Oh! Funny!" and then said "They're big, aren't they?" and that's the thing. When you buy eggs, or think of battery hens, you don't think of how big a hen actually is, or what a hen likes doing. You don't have a picture in your mind of how a hen lays. You don't know what a hen eats. The eggs from batteries are from hens who cannot run, or even stand up. They have yellow yolks because of colouring in pellets, not because of the greens and insects they've eaten. They're not sometimes ovoid rather than oval, or speckley or not, with SUPER STRONG shells, like mine are, because those chickens lead an unhappy, uniform existance, with no joy whatsoever. Find someone with hens, eat a fresh that day egg from a happy hen, and then watch the hen for a bit. Scratching about. Doing a happy triumphant cluck that that huge egg is finally out. Watch them queue to use the nesting box in the mornings (that cracks me up). Watch as one of them finds a juicy leatherjacker grub from underneath what was your bulb patch, and run off with it with others in pursuit. Realise that they are funny, bright creatures, and need a bit more than a box to live in, if they're to produce eggs for your box. Respect to the hen.

A few things i've discovered if you're thinking about hens in your garden.

Cheap! After the initial cost of coop, woodshavings are cheap, a sack of pellets lasts ages, and if they free range, they don't eat that much anyway, as they're filling up on grubs and weeds.
They don't wreck the garden that much. They eat weeds, pests. They WILL scratch up seedlings, and they WILL strip a bush of berries, so protect seedlings and any berries you want to eat. If it's muddy, you might want to keep them off the lawn. But they'll be great for clearing ground and veg patches before the Spring.
They actually do make clucking noises when laying.
Chicken poo picking up isn't as bad as nappies was.
Don't panic about kids and chickens. A few simple rules: wash hands afterwards, don't chase, don't pick up if they don't want it will suffice. I researched hygiene, kids anc chickens online beforehand, and really, if you wash hands, and don't actually smear the poo over stuff you're fine. More danger of getting something from the dog poo on paths.
Get some hens! And write cross letters to your MP!

A freezer week: use up those unidentifiables!

2010-10-22T05:17:00.000-07:00

Now we have been earmarked to be poor for the rest of our lives, by dint of not being born a Tory grandee landowning family, I have been thinking of ways to minimise our weekly shop and cut, cut, cut. I've been tight as Osbourne on Xmas presents, ebaying like mad and carbooting to raise funds, which are strictly controlled this year. If I was any good at it, i'd be making presents, not buying. As it is, there is a cap on spending in this house.

I already meal plan like a modern day Beeton, only without all the 5 course meals and servants. I make a weekly plan and do not deviate from it. We are a snack free, treat free house. We splurge on fruit. We buy seasonally from the old geezer down the road, who grows it himself. The chooks provide 3 eggs a day, we eat a LOT of eggs. They eat the scraps. But still, I feel, we eat too much meat. So i've cut down on the expensive cuts, and buy the cheaper stew friendly ones. I eke out a chicken to 3 or 4 meals, and I make stock. At the end of every week, husband gets a curry made from any veg that are looking sad. But I still overcook. I still make too many portions. For example, we had cauliflower cheese as a side last week. Nobody in my family loves it so much that they'll eat a whole cauli. So half gets frozen. In an attempt to cut right back and empty that freezer, last week I took a good hard look inside that chest freezer and was amazed.

Meat: mince, 1/2 pork loin, 2 chicken breasts, bacon.

Cooked meals: 1 portion chilli, 1 bolognaise, 1 chicken stew, 1 cauliflower cheese, 4 homemade fishcakes, 10 homemade chicken nuggets, 2 portions lamb curry, 4 portions marinanded ribs.

Veg: frozen sweetcorn, bananas, blackberries x 1 million, peas, lemongrass, chillis, chopped leeks

sundries: enough ends of loaves of bread to feed an army.

That is more than enough, I saw, to feed us this week. So all I bought this week were fresh veg from the market, and tinned tomatoes and dried chickpeas/ lentils. And this is what we had.

Monday: minced beef pasties with leeks and sweetcorn and chickpea relish.

Tuesday: Fishcakes and cauli cheese with broccoli.

Weds: kids had nuggets, we had the curry.

Thursday: Kids had bolognaise, we had chilli.

Friday: Kids had chicken stew, we will have ribs and salad. And wine. A lot of it. I've been inside a lot this week.

Also managed a bread pudding using chooks eggs and the arse ends of bread from the freezer. Total expense on shopping this week was probably less than a tenner. Plus, I didn't have to cook per se, I only microwaved and defrosted, and it was LOVELY. Instead, I stood in the kitchen pretending to cook, standing by the microwave and reading while the kids waited. Ha!

Theme your weeks with toddlers and stay sane(r).

2010-10-17T12:24:00.000-07:00

I regularly post on Netmums, and other "mummy" sites, I use it as a way to connect with other Stay at Home Mums (we deserve capital letters! And a pay packet, come to it. ) Recently, i've mentioned how I approach a week with my two, who are 3 and 2, and had lovely positive feedback, so I thought i'd blog it. One of the most difficult transisitions from working to staying at home was the lack of structure. I found that, at work, teaching, i'd measure my success through results, lesson attention or any number of other measurable outcomes. At home, what do you get? Nobody says "Yes, you met that outcome!", there is nothing to give structure to your week unless you make it. To keep me sane, I decided to approach my week with son and daughter in a more structured way.

I get a theme. Sometimes they are suggested by son or daughter, sometimes externally. In the past we have had boat, dinosaur, baby, flower and vegetable weeks. Every Sunday, we think of a theme. Last Sunday was "Autumn". So this week, we gathered leaves of different colours, and used them to make collages of bonfires and leaf prints. We walked the footpaths and took photos of the walk, and compared them with Summer photos. We gathered conkers, and sloes. We made autum and halloween masks from papier mache. We read books on Autumn from the library, spotted evergreen and decidouous trees, and gathered beech nuts. In our discussions, questions came up I had to research: Why do some trees lose leaves not others? Why is it darker at bedtime now? and so on. It makes me plan the way I used to plan lessons.

This weeks theme, decided by daughter, is HAIR. Unpreposessing, at first. But she's really aware at the mo of hair. Readers will be aware that I am almsot bald due to medical complaints. Daughter has the only flowing locks in the house. She spent Saturday with family friends with hair, the Mummy had hair,the daughter had hair, I do not have hair. So, hair it is. So, it's Rapunzel, Micheal Finnegan, animals that moult, and the various uses of hair through history, as walling, bedding and quilt stuffing. Animals that grow and lose hair, animals without hair, porcupines: are quills hair? Why is some short, some long, men have short hair, ladies do not, and why some ladies have it or not. And why, what I have, is growing in grey. Amd what is it anyway? I wish I had a microscope. I think we'll use soem chicken feathers to make prints and collages, we'll take a trip to the barbers and have a haircut, and we'll see what happens when we plait Stellas hair wet and leave it overnight.

If you are bored of your routine with your under 4, I urge you to think of a theme, or get them to, and see what a week you have. My whole working life, i've never answered as many questions as now. When you focus and choose to direct the questions of your children as a SAHM, you are not making an easy life for yourself. Tonight, I looked up why the moon controls tides. This for a 3 year old who wanted to know why little magnets made no difference. "What if there were more magnets and the moon moved away a bit on its' line?" Er, hang on a minute. This weekly focus is less about them, and more about me. Kids are sponges, brain sponges. All we do is wet the sponge.

And the quilt? Yep, still going. It's too BIG (single bed size), I sew so slow, and I am positively , never, ever sewing another one by hand ever again. I do not think it will be finished for Xmas, even if i do finish the quilting, the binding will drive me spare. Sons' birthday is in January, and so maybe by then.....

It's that time of year again: indoor games for 3's and under

2010-10-16T12:54:00.001-07:00

The weather is against us once more. When it's not pelting down, we still go outside and ramble. It's still good for foraging (sloes and crabapples, rosehips and mushrooms), but i'm gearing up for the Winter. Being inside with a 2 year old and a 3 year old can be akin to being in a state penitentiary with no time off for good behaviour, and the days can be long, long, long. So how to get through? Standard mothers helps during this long period of drabness obviously include the useful playdough and craft buckets, but boy, playdough does my HEAD IN after about 10 minutes. (The picture to left is son, at about 18 months, INSIDE when I was also INSIDE with a 4 month old. How fun is that? Not much. Look at how gross his nose is.) And really, it's not all that much fun, for 5 months of the year. Sure, you can buy Moon Sand and board games, but Moon Sand gets everywhere and board games just don't do it for my 3 year old. "MUUUUM! Stella is hiding the dice again!" Now son is getting a tad older, he can play imaginative role playing games or playmobil, and will, for hours, play at being a shopkeeper or librarian, but after 60 minutes this palls with me and daughter generally resorts to trashing the aforementioned shop/library. So for those times when role playing and playmobil are just too much, try these.

Baking: Muffins and biscuits. In the next few weeks, i'll be posting my gingerbread recipes, useful for tree decorations and stuffing your face. Baking makes a mess, sure, but you do get to watch them lick the bowl.
Painting: Yes, painting is icky and you clean up a lot after. But try this: get a wee bouncy ball, roll it in paint, and then stick a sheet of paper inside a biscuit tin and let them go hell for leather banging the ball around (lid on!) and see the patterns it makes. Or paint on mirrors, patio doors, or, even, the bath. Then wash it all off afterwards.
Dressing up: You don't need special outfits. Mum and Dad clothes are fine. Get them all in a heap and demand outfits of a certain colour or style. Let them be "Mum" or "Dad" and listen as they parrot back your catchphrases to you.
Assault courses: Take all the cushions off the seetee, the matresses off the beds. Use the whole lounge floor. It's not a lounge, it's an ASSAULT COURSE!Plus, you can see all the crap under the cushions, ignore it, and then put them back again. It feels great.
Dens: the best way not to see your kids for at least an hour. Pull out the seetee, get that sheet attached, and give them lunch in the den.
Hunt the object/Colour/Shape: Get yourself a prize bag of biscuits or something. Dole out prizes for the first one to find something ....BLUE! Then.......ROUND! and after a few minutes send them to find something very hard to find and eat some biscuits yourself.
Memory testing: Remember that bit in the Krypton Factor where contestants would watch a video clip and then answer questions on it? (No? You are TOO young.) Well, now do it to your kids. Watch a bit of Dumbo or whatever, and ask memory questions about it, rewinding to check the answers. What colour hat is Mrs Dumbo wearing.......
Get yourself a roll of plain wallpaper, get a kid to lie on it, draw round them, and then spend a few minutes drawing on features before "dressing it". Always goes down a storm with my two, particularly if the person is drawn in an anatomically correct style.
Pretend cleaning: for some reason my two are kept amused for up to 30 minutes by being given a sprayer full of water and a cloth. Result: damp, slightly cleaner house, and a chance to have a cuppa.
Being sick: they are the doctors, the stuffed toys the patients, and you are really, really ill and can do nothing except lie down and direct things from the sofa. Remarkably, this often means a lie down for me for up to 20 minutes. Result! If you really want to get gruesome, you can cut a hole in the most knackered and loathed cuddly toy and tell them to dissect it and have an operation. Trust me, they will LOVE this.
Hide and Seek: pushing the limits with this one, I can hide in some places for 20 minutes with a book. They never, ever, look in the bath. Not even when i've hidden there for the 20 minutes beforehand. There will be a place with the properties of a cloaking device in your house too, and you must find it.
Stair death toll: there is endless, and I mean endless fun to be had from flinging toys down the stairs. Hear my daughter as she "does" Baby Boo Boo Puppy the raggy dogs' voice as he plummets down the stairs. Followed by son mouthing "Heeeeelp Meee" as he flings poor Makka Pakka down. Also useful to re-enact the physics test of "What is heavier: a pound of feathers or pound of something else?".In other words, what flings down fastest. Trust me, they love this, and all you have to do is provide a lot of flinging stuff and sit and drink tea. And pick it all up afterwards.

Oh, there are more, but you get my drift. This is all about minimizing the time spent going "ARRRGGGH! When is it Spring?" and instead buying you time to have a cuppa/snifter. Being in with kids doesn't have to be terrible, it can be fun. You just have to allow them to mess up things a little, and really, it's fun to mess things up. Bet you, if you start off stair flinging, you'll get into it. There ARE things you want to fling. Just like a 3 year old. And how they LOVE seeing you do it.

When mummies shout.

2010-10-03T07:46:00.001-07:00

Most days, even the 5am start days, I am pretty calm. For a mum of a 2 and 3 year old. I do my fair share of semi-yelling "Come on! Come ON!" when i'm flapping out the house to playgroup. I do a lot of deep breathing. But usually, I use the "1,2,3" method, and it works. I say "That is the first time i'm warning you, that's 1". "Now, that's 2" and on "3" it's off to their thinking spot (usually their rooms) for 5 minutes or until they are ready to talk, usually quicker than that, sometimes longer. Most days, for most things, I don't have to go beyond "2" until the afternoon grumps arrive.

But something bad has been going down in our house. I feel poorly. Daughter has the night terrors, so I am up between 4 and 10 times a night. Son is sniffly and needs tissues all night. Daughter has reached the contrary "no!" stage, son has his first testosterone surges and / or behaviour picked up from playgroup. Suddenly, I have two boundary testers, 2 and 3 going on 13. And i'm tired. My mum is having a heart bypass, I'm hating my new medication, and I am this far from constantly vibrating with tension. So, I managed to get them out of the house, and son to playgroup with no major trauma. I managed to sit through toddler group with contrary daughter ("do you want to go on the rocker?" "No". "Do you want to try the slide?" "No." "Do you want to do some painting?" "No". You get the gist), without throttling anyone. We all got back home without being too damp and only one collywobble on the way. But lunch was the straw. The last one. Alright, I know I make food and the chickens eat most of it. I know kids are fussy. I know son in particular is antsy about "wet" food and wants it all "dry". But today, the sandwiches were wrong, oh so wrong, with a tiny smidgeon of mayonnaise on. Cue squalling and weeping worthy of Bernhardt at her best, and then copycat wailing from daughter "And my yoghurt has BITS in!". Did I do "1,2,3"? No. I YELLED. I WAILED. I actually threw the sandwiches away with a flourish, and screaming "DON'T EAT IT THEN!" waltzed upstairs and sat on the loo. I could hear them both, being silent. Then they cried. Then they remonstrated with each other. "Mummy is cross because you didn't eat your yoghurt!" "No, it was your sandwiches!" etc etc. Then they crept, actually crept upstairs and said sorry meekly. Unprompted (thud as I hit the carpet in amazement). They still didn't eat the sandwiches, mind. We all ate crisps instead and felt better.

Do I feel bad about it?Should I be weeping? Kids are little, we shouldn't yell. An adult yelling is probably pretty scary. But I think that once in a while, it does no harm to lose it in a mild way. They should see that adults can have bad days too, and be upset and angry. They should see that the constant carping can whittle away my sanity. And decide which damn sandwiches they want before getting me to make them. They should see, also, that adults can be cross and say sorry. I apologised for shouting, I explained I was tired and in a bad mood. I then used it as a way of pointing out to them why I don't like it when they yell at each other / me/ the world. And then they forgot it and started to argue about who had the Ducati model and who got the Cagiva, before settling it with violence. 1, 2...........

The brand before the brain

2010-10-03T07:00:00.001-07:00

On Friday, son (3) came home from playgroup saying Ben 10 was "coolio" and he wanted Ben 10 for Christmas. He has never seen Ben 10, and only glancingly seen some adverts that haven't been whipped away quick enough after Humpf or something equally innocuous has finished. "I think you'll like something else better" I said. "Maybe a 2 wheeler scooter?" "YEAH! The sparks one!" What sparks one? Oh, that sparks one. How long does it take a brand to be recognised by a 3 year old? About 20 seconds, apparently. And i'm a mean mummy TV policer. I don't buy branded clothing for myself, I don't buy branded food, I am mean all round. So it has intrigued me that, since starting playgroup, son has become brand aware.

How? Kids go into playgroup with branded lunchboxes, Timmy, Thomas, Roary, Ben 10. They wear branded t-shirts,(all the above plus Disney). The girls sport hideous, hideous, pink Disney Princess outfits. (Take note daughter: this will not be you. Thankfully, she has already shorn the hair and disfigured the Snow White doll, so there's hope). A lot of marketing goes on directly targeted at kids. Read this article to recognise the full horror. Research shows that young pre-schoolers cannot tell the difference between adverts and reality, and are especially open to brand suggestion. So, short of no tv at all, what can you do? I believe that, as we are in a media world, kids need to learn how to manage their tv and PC viewing and learn what is real, what is selling, and what is entertainment. I can cope with "pester power", but I don't want my kids branded. I don't want them to be able to recognise brands even I don't. But already, a quick recce of my kids rooms and the house, apart from the toys, shows a brand awareness. When shopping, the kids clamour for the cereal with the charcaters on. Daughter wanted the Princess pants for her first set of pants. She's never seen a Disney Princess movie, but her older friend has. When teaching, I saw young girls with playboy pencil cases. Toddlers wear Tommy Hilfinger tops. It's everywhere, and it's damaging, I think. This may well be our last "brand free" year or two in our house.

What can you do? I'd like suggestions. Here's what I do so far.

I buy second hand, brand free kids clothes.

I don't wear brands myself

I buy generic food, and grow my own. "Finest" is just a fine package.

I explain the cost of something, and that the drawing and branding just mean it's "more pennies".

I explain that brands are "all the same" and that YOU are different, individual, wouldn't you rather be you? So we decorate our lunchboxes etc.

I say people like individual gifts, not "everyone" gifts. Let's make our own.

I encourage individuality in clothing. As an ex indie chick, I love it! It means that son has gone out wearing his superhero cape, wellies, and long johns, but hey! Daughter loves leggings and legwarmers and nighties.

We thrift. We make an outfit. I show how you can get more for your pennies.

But they are 2 and 3. When they are 6 and 7, it will be harder. This year, their stocking fillers are all ebay second handers. When they are older, will this still be possible? It worries me. My kids are MY kids, but also their own people. I want them to have a strong sense of what a brand is, and why they don't need them, before they reach school, so that they are more able to withstand the peer pressure and must-haves. ( At some point I will blog on just how worried I am about "Free schools" and the possibility for branding there. In the USA, schools are affiliated to Pepsi, or Coke. Really.) Of course, it has ever been thus, but back when I was a nipper, my yearnings were for slip on shoes and pedal pushers in maroon burgundy, not fly trainers and Ipods. Girls wore orange, red and the aforementiond burgundy, not just pink. Lego was for both sexes. Things are different now. The ELC does everything in blue and pink. Brands are everywhere. Kids of 8 have Facebooks pages, and can see all the ads. Of course parents have a responsibility, but even the meanest parent (me: no tv apart from 1.5 policed hours, no PC apart from the ever excellent Boowa and Kwala, and that is in the lounge, and will be for EVERMORE. You hear me, one day teen kids? It's never going to happen, that PC and TV in your room!) Navigating this branded world is so confusing for a toddler preschooler. How can we ensure that we teach that branded is not best? Please do comment.

Reading:

Eric Schlosser: "Fast Food Nation"

Naomi Klein: "No Logo"

website:

Pink stinks

Thyroid disease: the silent majority.

2010-10-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

Because I am a woman with thyroid disease, I am not necessarily crazy. Because I am a woman with thryoid disease, I am still capable of holding a job, or staying at home, without being driven crazy. Because I am a woman with thyroid disease, I am not necessarily over or under eating. I am normal, I am just ILL DAMN YOU. Look, the woman on the right is happy, because back then, you just got a pig thyroid and it worked.

Yes, it's a visit to those crazy endocrinologists. Hey, how about this, you endo guys. (They say, in their big swanky offices). Why don't we, just for a laugh, get ourselves put in charge of an almost wholly female disease, and be mostly male ourselves. Then let's hone our patronising gland till it is as big as an airship. Then, after our patients, driven to us by misery, aftera torturous referral "service", turn up, let's discount everything they read, know, and feel, in favour of a sodding blood test. And oh, let's make the test we pick the most useless, generally unhappy making one. And when they visit, we can point to the test and say "We know best. We are men, we have never had this disease, but we went to medical school. We recieve visits from drug companies that give us golfing weekends, and this dictates our drug preference. We will not allow any other drug, because then people might start thinking we are soft. We are the endocrinologists, men who really don't like women that much".

How long did it take to get diagnosed? 10 years. How ill was I to get taken seriously? Nearly dead. How ill am I now? I am ok, but I have niggles that are not taken care of by my one and only choice of prescriptive drug. I thought i'd see if I could have another. Bad idea. Your (healthy) thyroid gives out hormones called T1, 2, 3, and 4. When your thyroid has gone kaput, you get given replacement hormone. But only 1, T4. The others can go hang. According to the British Thyroid Association (men), this is just dandy and fine. (So what were the other 3 horones for then, exactly? Window dressing? A trick of biology?). So, here I am facing a life with only 1 hormone out of 4 replaced on a daily basis until I DIE. You know, it doesn't work for me. I don't absorb it. I'm on a MEGA dose. And yes, dumb endo, I do take the tablets "properly" (did he think I didn't know how to take them? Gave them to the cat instead?) I still have thyroid symptoms. But, the designated test shows i'm hyper, not hypo, according to the dumbfuck endo. My TSH is 0.02, my T4 is 16. It took me years on a mega dose to reach a T4 that good. Good is 18-24. So, I say, "I've been hyper. I was skinny, eating for England, panicky, not sleeping, pooing 7 times a day and manic. Now, i'm not eating, gaining, backed up, my hair is falling out, i'm practically dead in the water, i'm NOT hyper." I point this out. Endo says, I quote "But you wouldn't know if you were hyper". I say "I would, I just told you". "But he moved on. "Having a surpressed TSH will kill your heart" "Only if I have symptoms, I don't". "It will ruin your bones" "Research says not" "Have you been reading on the internet?" "Well, yes. I have a lifelong condition that i'd like to know about. I'm not an idiot. I can read abstracts and articles from Medline as well as you do (or don't). I know there are alternatives. I know I can have a dessicated thyroid as treatment instead of T4 only. It will give me T1,2, 3 and 4, and might just make me able to function again. How about it?" "Well, it's unstable". "Well, my generic T4 is unstable. You just told me I could have a named brand on prescription, because some generics are unstable. What's the difference?" (silence). Result, a reduced dose, no hope of a new medication, and an anger that makes me boil. My last chance is my GP who may, just may, agree to do a "named person" prescription for the terrible substance that is not golf-weekend giving pharmaceutical thyroxine but natural. What are the chances of that happening? Nil. Excuse me while I venture out into the online world of prescription free pharmacies. I am 38. I am not prepared to stick with one medication, that does not work, for the rest of my life because the NHS says so. Think of any other illness that has no choice of treatment.Find me just one.

Why does this happen? Because 99.9 % of people affected by thryoid disease are women. Because there's no money in providing another option. Because generic thyroxine is cheaper than natural, and it's the only one they're prepared to give out free. Because sadly, it's seen as ok for women to remain at a below par level of wellness,because it's "as good as we can get you" (yes, really, I was told that). Or because it's easy to say "Well, it's your age" (I'm 38!) or "having children takes it out of you" (so that's 50% of the population written off, is it? There was me thinking it was my THYROID). And the one female endo, who you might have expected to be a little better, also diagnosed me as being hyper. She has super powers, because she did this through the wall without even seeing me. Wow! Women unite. So I will see my Gp on Monday, to persuade him to allow a trial of dessicated thryoid, which I will have to pay for, and source, and that's IF he says yes to my trying. If he doesn't, i'll be buying it without a prescription, and dosing myself. I won't be alone. There is a whole subculture of women, tired with being fobbed off doing it, at their own expense, because they couldn't face another 20 years ona drug that doesn't make you better than "i'm coping, just". How wrong is that?

It makes me angry. 1 in 50 women has this disease, yet there's no publicity, getting diagnosed is a nightmare, it affects fertility, pregnancy, menopause. It accounts for depression, Post-natal depression, and myriad health related problems. Yet it is consistantly undertreated, women are not, for the most part even given their results properly, if the correct tests are taken (I was told "who's the doctor, you or me?" and "you don't need to know the numbers, that's for me". "Have you been reading?" "You're within range, that's all you need to know" Except I wasn't. For 10 years. ). The NHS would rather fund anti-depressants, and weight clinics, when a little extra throught to the cause of the problem would eradicate the problems for many many women. could this be something to do with the way drug companies work with the NHS? Possibly. Definately something to do with the fact that it's women affected, and sadly, when you're feeling unwell, you are very unlikely to confront the doctor, and they know it. Women: get your angry pants on. If you have thyroid disease, here are a few pointers to getting treated properly.

1. Get the results. Get TSH, T4, T3, and TPO antibodies tested. Get the numbers. If they won't give them, say you'll go to Data Protection. They're yours. You own that data. Then get the ranges for the numbers.

2. Find someone to help you interpret them. Me, i'll do it. Or the thyroid mums thread on Netmums, or the Thyroid UK website will help.

3. Go in armed and dangerous. Insist on taking the meds and upping them until you are at TSH of around 1 and T4 of around 18-22, and feel well.

4. Take selenium, for antibodies.

5. If you are trying for a baby, tell your GP. Your TSH needs to be at around 1, or the change of miscarriage is MUCH higher.

6. If you are pregnant, likewise. You will need to increase meds whenever, GPs will say by 25%, rubbish, less for some, more for others. Test every 4-6 weeks.

7. After a while, they will say "it's a yearly test for you". Ok, but if you feel crook, GO BACK.

8. Menopause will most likely come earlier, be nastier, and will need dose adjustment. Get your angry pants back on, now you are not only an annoying sick woman, but you're old, and will be treated even worse.

9. Safety in numbers. If you can't get heard, take a friend or partner. And if you still can't get heard, change Gp's. I've been through 10. In 4 years.

10. Read. Learn. I can guarentee that by reading one book, you'll know more than your GP does. He learnt it all in 10 minutes at med school. And then forgot it.

Books.

Mary Shomon: Living Well with Hypothyroidism. A fab book.

B Peatfield: Your thyroid and how to keep it healthy, the great thryoid scandal. This is by a guy who was actually done by the BMA for daring to suggest that dessicated thyroid might be ok for some people.

Websites:

Netmums thryoid mums club: a support thread I started and which is now HUGE, very supportive.

Stop the Thyroid Madness: fab stuff on why single T4 is so bad, and what to do to get dessicated.

Thyroid UK: a patient advocacy support group and charity with some excellent advice pages.

Thyroid disease .org: a wide ranging support board.

There are many more, but these represent a good uk selection. Mary Shomon runs a great "About" site on the thyroid, which is very informative, but it is best to start on the UK sites, as the test ranges in the USa are better. Here, you have to be practically dead to be diagnosed. In the USA, they are more sympathetic and dessicated is diagnosed regularly, also T4/T3 combination therapy. I want to move!

Wikipedia: on Dessicated hormone.

Kiss your librarian and say goodbye.

2010-09-25T05:49:00.000-07:00

Cambridgeshire: seat of learning, county of libraries. If you attend the university. Otherwise, sod you. Cambridgeshire: home of the library on its' last legs. If you love your local library, visit it now, it may be gone by morning.

Before I begin my rant, let me say I am partisan. I was a university, then a secondary school librarian before I became a teacher. I have seen first hand what a good library can do. Go back 15 years and see me in an Inner London school, surrounded by kids unpacking books they had chosen themselves for the shelves from a chaotic trip to Borders (now also gone). Hear the excitement as they shout "I chose this one! Miss, can I have it out first?" Every lunchtime there is a semi-chaotic rush to the cosy corner, where year 7 boys gape at the Guiness Book of Record man with the long fingernails, and I and my assistant rush round answering late homework queries and showing kids that Miss can find it quicker than Google. There is a thriving book club, a comic appreciation society and a team of willing library helpers. Boys read, not just girls. I've taught them about plagarism, they've had sessions of library learning. I run GCSE and AS/A2 revision and coursework sessions. Childrens authors and a beat poet come to visit. The library is not just for swots, it is for everyone, but it seems, sometimes, especially for those bookish, quiet kids who are shy and nervous, as I once was. When I eventually leave to train to be a teacher, my helpers hand me a video they have made, showing kids explaining what the library has meant to them. I cry.

Now fastforward to 2010. Cambridgeshire has no School Library Service. Schools can opt out of having a library.Use the public library then? Only if it's open. Hours are reduced. Speak to a librarian to help you find that book? Nope, they've all been laid off, instead it's a self service issue terminal, which confuses the older users who always used to get served by Cath, who is now redundant. You don't even get a stamp in your book, just a ticket. It's hard for some people to read, so the books goes oeverdue. The fines have gone up. Finding a book is even harder in the first place, as with no librarians, the shelving is done by volunteers. It's all over the place, Dewey is not their strong point and there isn't anyone to train them. The mobile service is non-existant, there is a charge for large print books. Volunteers are relied on to deliver books to the elderly. This is what the Cambridgeshire Council are doing. This is what "Big Society" means. It means my kids won't have a Rhyme Time with Joan, or a Reading scheme over the Summer. It means they won't get a cheery "Hello Stella" from Cath who recognises them. Seth and Stella won't get to discuss books with a librarian who cares. I won't get the books she puts aside for me because she knows I will like them. The library will be a building, with books in. I will cry. Then I will root out my heaviest encyclopaedia and march to Downing Street, where I will use is heavily against the side of Cleggs head for being such a sodding little twerp and abandoning ANY liberal tendencies he once had, before finishing off Cameron and stamping on him, with the last remaining library stamp, "withdrawn".

For further info on the horrors of cuts round the country on library services, see this blog by childrens' author and library activist, Alan Gibbons , and here at the Bookseller. You can protest by answering the questionnaire in local libraries about the proposed cuts, and write to your local, unfortunately Conservative, MP Steve Barclay. There is also a group of people protesting on "Cambridgeshire against the cuts" here.

Did no broadband make a difference?

2010-09-24T06:34:00.001-07:00

I am back online after a time without a link to the broadband world. Did it make a difference to my everyday life?Ideally, i'd like to be able to say that either I was bereft and wept at the emptiness without an on-line world, or, that I didn't notice at all and my internal life was profoundly improved by not being able to access YouTube. In fact, it was really rather nothingy. I didn't really miss it after a few days and some positive things came out of it.

Here's what I did miss. I missed the Met Office, which I refer to every morning, and went out foolishly sans raincover and mac and got very, very wet. I missed a couple of websites, mainly poultry pages as we (finally!) got our hens (right, BooBoo, Lou-Lou, and Maddy). I missed writing my blog. I missed having my fingers tapping of an evening. I missed mailing relatives who live abroad. I missed managing my thyroid group,and they missed me. The kids didn't miss it at all since I am an ogre about it, limiting them to 30 mins PC and 1.5 hours tv a day (evil laugh). They didn't really notice we didn't have it, since I try to not use it during the day, only when they are having their daily Tom and Jerry fix. I missed Facebook though.

But, although Facebook is great for an isolated mum who rarely sees her friends, actually, it's far nicer, I discovered, to ring them up. I know it's awkward when the kids are tantrumming, and want feeding, but really, I have enjoyed actually talking to friends, rather than mailing or facebooking this past 10 days. And I solved the poultry queries by talking to a friend who keeps chooks (thanks Nancy). Of an evening, instead of wandering the information highway aimlessly, I watched movies with the husband and read. I finally finished piecing son's quilt top (by hand, GAH!, get that machine!). I talked to the chickens, and on occaision, my children. I discovered that the chickens eat everything the kids do not. Instead of browsing info on the web about my charming early menopause, I went to the library and asked them to order me some books (and inadvertantly got a lot of info, some of it unwelcome, from the clutch of menopausal librarians. I'd never really noticed her beard before, but by God i'm aware now, and keep looking at my chin). And mostly, I discovered, that with a little planning, I could live without the broadband at home. I'd simply have to plan my blogs and queries, and go to the library even more than I do now. (And there's the rub: I will post later on this week about the positively gruesome plans Cambridgeshire has for its' library services...)

A terrible choice for a mother, a straightforward one for the Government.

2010-09-12T10:20:00.000-07:00

This news article made me cry. Mother Rachel Edwards, 6 months pregnant, with her son, aged sixteen, and daughter aged 2, had to make the hideous decision which of her children to help this August, as she plunged into a water filled dyke in Boston, Lincs. She chose to help her daughter, and her son drowned. I cannot even begin to contemplate her pain and anger, at herself, the world, everything. I wish her a healthy and happy new son or daughter. What I can contemplate is how very unique, and dangerous the Fen roads are.

Imagine, not knowing the area. You think it's all straight roads and a 50mph speed limit. Must be ok to drive at that, right? Wrong. Maybe you DO know the area, grew up round here. Ok to drive at 50mph for you. Maybe even faster. Right? Wrong. The drove roads are straight, for miles, but with 90 degree turns that you can't see. The camber is shot to pieces because of heavy farm and haulage vehicles. There are new potholes every day during the harvest season, due to the combines. The water in the dykes and drains is deep, and they flow fast. They're freezing. It's raining along the forty-foot, it's slippy. You skid, you're in. You're in, you need to get out. If you think you can do this easily, you're wrong. The death toll along one road this year tells its' own story.

The Fens have the highest teen death rate of any area on the road. This August, my own village/ town lost 3 boys in one weekend, two of them from the same family. Has it stopped the lads screeching their revved up cars down the drove roads? No, it has not. What would? Well, forgive me if you think that 50mph is a safe limit. It is not. Drove roads kill. The limit needs to be 40mph, less alongside drains, and there need to be cameras regularly along the roads. Fines need to be made, lives will be saved. This is not popular with motorists, and certainly not with the Conservatives,or indeed, the last government, who have enabled councils to remove cameras to save money. Not lives, though. If I were a 17 year old petrol head, and I lost a weeks wages to speeding, i'd think again. But the laws are not made on sense, car pressure groups and manufacturers have more sway than a death rate.

And why not a regional driving test? Why not make the lads (and ladies) learn how to get out of a vehicle under water, and provide them with window hammers? Make them learn how to cope with unsteady camber, right angles, left angles, sudden stops, the optical illusions of straightness the Fens produces. Make them learn how to overtake farm vehicles safely, and drive in pitch dark conditions alongside water. Make them, in short, pass a harder test. They might moan, but as a parent, I would back the idea. I'd welcome it. Before I climb into a car again after a period of not driving, I will voluntarily retake a test,locally. I'm sick of seeing roadside shrines where I live. I never want to see another family have to make the choice Mrs Edwards had to.

You can read more about the specific problems of safety on Fenland roads on the Fenland Road Safety Campaign site on facebook, here.

I'm the only one they bite.

2010-09-07T11:02:00.000-07:00

I have been bitten a lot lately, in many different ways.

Firstly, the darn mosquitos. I live in the Fens. the Fens are full of water. Dank, standing water. Mosquitos love this. It is their very Heaven. It is no surprise to discover that hereabouts the airbourne devils were the cause of a high death rate from Malaria, then often referred to as "ague" or "shivering ague", in the 17th and 18th centuries, the rather well known Oliver Cromwell being a malarial sufferer and local Ely boy. They love the ditches and culverts, and they love me. This is a relatively recent occurance. Until 3 years ago, mosquitos eschewed me in favour of the then-fiancee. I could lay naked and laughing as they went for him, not me. Then, my thyroid packed up post baby. And then post baby 2, with the thyroid still packed up, I started the menopause, way, way early (IMO) at 38. What has this to do with mosquitos bites? Well, the little blighters love the scent of a high Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) and they alos love the way cholesterol sits in the skin (a lovely side effect of autoimmune thyroid disease). and then, they really, really love the smell of estrogen. For me, as with many early menopause ladies, the perimenopause is NOT a slow decline of estrogen as the GP's would have you believe. It is often a massive "last blast" of estrogen, leaving you with weeks of sky high levels and rapid cycling cycles. So, I am REALLY tasty. Plus, I am blood group O, the most popular mozzie snack. Research shows they land more frequently on O's, and stay longer. Oh, and if you have a drink....but i'm saying nothing there.

So, dealing with the mozzie bites today, I spent a good twenty minutes in the bathroom applying ungents. Naturally, this is out of order as far as DD and DS are concerned. They have strict rules. If I am out of the room for longer than 5 minutes, they will turn into Fight Club. Or, courtesy of DD, 2, Bite Club. Naughty DD. We have a biter in the house. Cue much consoling of DS. "She BIT me!"(wail, wail). No skin broken. Sooth DS. Search out culprit. Culprit is hiding under her bed because she knew she done bad. Automatically blames DS. "He hit my head which is my BRAIN". As I was out of the room, I cannot deal with it as well as I would like. but I know, like a dog, she has tasted the scent of victory in that bite, and she knows it works. I'll be watching her.

And the final bite? Me, biting the bullet. Potty traing dd. She was 2 in June. She's so articulate, but lazy, and I want to do it now, while i've got an outside chance of still drying pants on the line. I tried earlier, but she wasn't ready. Now, she's taking her nappy off and wanting the "princess pants". I was blessed with ds, dry day and night after only 2 accidents, at 26 months. She, however, is a different case. I've bitten, there's no going back. 3 wees on the carpet, 1 on the chair, 3 on the loo. It starts here. Grit teeth, prep washing machine.

Thyroid, thyroid, thyroid

2010-09-07T04:49:00.000-07:00

I'm going to rant. Post son, I was finally diagnosed with Hashimotos Autoimmune thyroid disease. This affects 1 in 50 women in the UK. I have probably had it since my 20's. Throughout my 20's, I would go through periods of being very hyperactive, lose weight, and be frantic, then plummet downhill and put on lots of weight. GP's fobbed me off. "You don't need your thyroid tested" they said, despite a 4 generation history of maternal thyroid disease. Fast forward to post son. I was 5 stone heavier, balding, with skin so dry it bled, and barely able to form a sentence, having palpitations if I walked anywhere. My milk was low, son wasn't feeding well and I was desperate. "PND" the GP said. "Take some anti-depressants". After a terrible night with me up having palpitations and son screaming, I went to A and E and demanded help.My TSh was 450 and my T4 nil. A healthy person has TSH of between 0.5 - 5 and T4 of about 18-24. If I could have gotten out of bed, i'd have sued someone.

Addenbrookes took me on under an endocrinologist. I hated the first one, saw another one. She told me i'd had this since my twenties and if i'd been tested for thyroid antibodies then, none of this would ever had happened. I cried. Then got cross. She told me about the problems it can cause with fertility if we wanted another child (it leads to a much higher incidence of miscarriage and it is harder to concieve. Many women have 10+ MC before falling). Unbeknowst to me, I was already pregnant. Routine testing on my hormones showed pregnancy hormones in there. I was 6 months gone! Panic. High TSH can cause developmental problems with babies, so cue a lot of scans. Luckily for me, daughter is perfect (apart from a wonky ear), and she is truly a miracle baby. Following her birth, I got my angry pants on. Since then, my thyroid has never been under control. And it makes me angry that there is so much wrong with our health system that this diesease goes undetected and is badly treated.

The first problem is the 99% of the people with thyroid disease are women. It is too, too easy to say "PND" or "mental" to them. My sister got told to "go get some exercise". 1 in 50 women get this, it runs down familial lines. In the USA, and Australia, thyroid tests are done routinely post-partum, as the condition commonly asserts itself then. The Oz research has shown that 25% of PND cases were actually thyroid related. A simple blood test would do wonders. So why don't we do it here? Cost. A thyroid patient is on thyroxine for life, and do not pay for it. In the USA, to get diagnosed your TSH has to be above 3. Here, it is above 10. If I had a TSH of 10 i'd be bedridden, but apparently it's "normal". It's "normal" because the chaps (note that) at the British Thryoid Association have decided that for us. And what they say is the law. My old GP was adamant that at TSH 0.02 I was hyperactive, despite my clearly not being so. I took myself up the hospital with my angry pants on and luckily for me, my endo agreed. "It's all individual" she said. But not according to the GP and BTA, whose rulings on this blight the lives of thousands of women every year.

Treat the PATIENT not the number. My great gran's mum was pre-thyroxine. She ate a pig thyroid every so often to keep herself pepped up. She self medicated. Why can't we? Because of the BTA. And why only one medication, and that a generic? If I have a disease of another type, I can choose between many types of medicine. Not here. In the USA, and Europe, I can take Natural dessicated pig thyroid, which not only replaces T4, but T1, 2, and 3. I could take a T4/T3 combination pill, or T3 only. Here, I am stuck with T4 only. And in a generic (for which read cheap) format, which varies widely in potentcy.

Where is the patient choice there? And why don't we get a choice? Money. And attitude. Imagine a disease that affects 1 in 50 men. How much money would be poured in? How well publicised would it be? How many drug companies would be clamouring to help? But not for us. No, this a womens disease.

I'm ranting because i'm cross. I'm due a return visit to the endo this month to sort me out again. I'm going prepared. I've got lists of what I eat (bugger all), so they can see it's thyroid, not fat. I've got a diary of symptoms. I'm ready to hear, again, that this is "as well as they can get me". Well? I'm knackered! I can't think! I want a libido! I want energy again! I want my joint pain to go and hair to grow! It's not "well enough", it sucks! I've got my angry pants on. And it isn't just me. Click here to see the support board I run for thyroid ladies on Netmums, and see how busy it is and how distraught the women are. How they're not listened to. Told they're "not ill enough" for medication yet. Fobbed off with anti-depressants. And check out your family history too, particularly if you are post-partum or menopausal, as these are trigger points. Thyroid Uk have a fab symptom list. They do great work as patient advocates for thyroid sufferers. I bet they wouldn't need to exist if this was a man's disease.

Tightness of clothes and reading.

2010-09-07T04:25:00.000-07:00

I have promised that 2010 will be the year of no clothes buying. I will mend, I will make do, I will only buy secondhand from the Sally Army for under 2 quid. Thus far I have done well, but preparing for Autumn and Winter, shuffling through my boxes of clothes, a horrible thought dawned on me. Last Winter, I had just stopped breastfeeding daughter. I was still in the feeding tops (for which read horrid baggy things) that i'd worn with son. I was still breastfeeding her the previous Winter, and him the Winter before that. In short, all my clothes are stretched, baggy, and past it, not unlike myself. My pre-baby clothes are weeny, tiny things that I laugh at, sadly. I was a size 6 pre baby. Then 3 years of breastfeeding and thyroid problems put paid to that and I am now a 10. Which doesn't sound much, but I am only 5 foot tall. I'm fine with it, I will never be a 6 again, and I will never wear those black drainpipes again. So what to do?

Clothes swapsie! My friend Alison has doen the opposite to me, she's shrunk. She has bigger clothes, I have smaller. Cue parcels flying between Wales and the Fens, and two new wardrobes for the cost of postage, all without the hassle of shopping, and nice and thrifty too. New skirts, shirts, joy! Not knowing what you are getting in a parcel is a joy. Plus a nice chat with a friend and that nice feeling you get when you're waiting for a parcel. And the follow up call. All good, and certainly more humanising than normal shopping. This, along with my extra thrifty allowance of a huge £2.50 per week at the sally army shop, has bagged me two pairs of trousers (one Monsoon!), a M& S jumper, and a selection of 50p jumpers for the kids over the past few weeks. But my sticking point is this: shoes. I have , for the Winter, one pair of wellies and a pair of trainers. The amount of wet the Fens gets, this is NO GOOD unless I want to be wearing wellies from Spetember to April. I have excluded the kids from the new shoes ban, as they have wee little delicate feet, not shocking parmesan heeled chunks of size 3 like me. Size 3? Yes, 3. I can buy KIDS SHOES. Or boots. I'm foraging the charity shops, none. Because kids wear through shoes, none left to gift, and nobody else has such freaky wee feet. So it's going to have to be new. I'm enviously glancing at the kids snow boots i've ordered from Next. My kids will have toasty feet this Winter, mine will be in my Tesco kids wellies, toes encased in ice. It's not fair! I'M pushing THEM! I want new shoes! WAAAAAGH!

I think I may have found my sticking point there. I don't mind dressing in second hand. I don't mind wearing my wonky sewing. But I just want new, new, shoes. Pre kids, I wore 4 inch heels to teach all day. Marched around in them. Owned 20 plus pairs (my feet were then size 2. Get that! They were crushed and flattened into 3, one foot 3.5, by 2 pregnancies). Now I own plentiful pretty shoes I can't wear. I am an Ugly Sister. I want a pretty shoe. I want a boot that fits.

And herein lies the rub. Having a size 3 boot, I must be pretty weeny all over, right? Wrong. These calves have done some walking and biking. They have levered a double buggy over footpaths. They have biked the length of Portugal in 5 weeks. They have bourne down. They are not the calves of a pre-pubescent girl. So they don't fit any boots, except wellies. Feeling freakish, I googled wide calf fitting boots, already having abandoned my "no new" promise with regard to boots. 150 quid, at least, for the privilige of having weeny feet and slightly non pre-pubescent calves. This is the ONLY site found. Oh, no, hang on, this one has boots for only 80 odd quid (sob) Sisters of the non wee calf unite! Demand reasonably fitting boots! No longer will you have to rummage, asking for lace ups only! No longer will you have to remortgage your house for boots! No? What? An industry conspiracy??? Wellies it is, then. Nobody notices what I wear anyway, and now I have an excuse to be a weird mum with chicken poo on her boot on the playgroup run. The other, nicer, boots, were just too spenny.

When is a playing field not a playing field?

2010-09-05T11:47:00.000-07:00

When it is a "brownfield site". Over 5,000 school playing fields have been sold to developers in the last 10 years, and now my towns' primary schools is to be added to that list. (See picture, right, courtesy of Cambs Times. See article here) 4 out of 10 playing fields vanished between 1992-2005. Under Labour, the loss was slowed and more community fields manintained, but this looks set to stop and reverse under the new government, with its' more "open" attitude to development, especially in my area, the East of England. There are apparently stringent regulations that require the school to maintain, after sale, "adequate" sports facilities, but what is adequate? Councils have to show they have looked into other possibilities, but who checks?

My own school will lose a large swathe of land, which includes a nature trail and pond which my son routinely uses with his pre-school. They pond dipped there this Summer. The play area of the school will be severly curtailed, and the school will now be oeverlooked by 67 houses, and have to contend with vastly increased traffic and all the noise and thunder of the construction. In my own case, the council have opposed the planning application. But because of the opposistion, the yay or nay moved to the Secretary of State, a jolly Tory Lady name of Caroline Spelman, (right) worth 1.8 million, who probably has no idea, given her rarified background, of the importance of these spaces to her rural and poorer citizens. No, she's too busy passing off her Nanny's wages as expenses and getting away with it. Needs £40,000 to clean her home, apparently. Must be quite big. Grrr! Apparently, it's fine to sell off the land, and the school will be just dandy without it. And neither will we need section 106 money (designed to compensate for loss, by giving money to replace the need, build like for like or help out with education),because apparently, the extra homes won't impact on our already oversubscribed schools. Tell that to parents who drive their kids to neighbouring schools 15 miles off, Department for Education.

Now, at the same time as telling us all that our children are fat and unhealthy, where is the sense in restricting the area they can play in? We can't all be hoiked away to fancy gyms in our 4X4's. There are no footpaths, save a few, round here. There are no cycle lanes. The roads are given over to tractors. There is no gym in town, no leisure centre, 2 crappy parks taken over by teenagers. No community centre with a play area, no all-weather pitch, nothing. Nada. Now not even a primary school field. What will the Secretary of State for Health think, when the kids are fatter? What will the chappie in charge of crime think, when, not having had the opportunity to learn a sport and run in their early years, the kids are hanging about in a gang being bored?

The Fens are the poorest, least funded area in the East of England. We have the highest teen pregnancy rates, high youth unemployment, and low achievment all round. And yet the parents I meet daily want the best for their kids, they want them to do well. Who is it, do you suppose, that doesn't? Could it possibly be the (whisper it) Government? Who want to hit a target of Eastern England Development very quickly? With sod all thought ot infrastructure? And what is this I see? 1,000 new homes on the flood plain at the end of my garden. And they'll be giving us (not promised, not in a contract, just offered to shut us up and never delivered), a swimming pool. How about a bigger Secondary? No? A pool you say? Well, we won't need it. The run off from the school playing field and the 1,000 new homes will turn the whole of town into one. Then we won't need to worry. Silly me.

foraging with kids

2010-09-02T05:31:00.000-07:00

It is one of the great pleasures of Summer and Autumn to pack up the buggy with drinks and snacks, and plenty of tupperware boxes, and go off on a food hunt. You get exercise, the kids are occupied with spying out food, and you get to teach them a little about how food works: where it comes from, what sustainability is, and what will kill you if you eat it. Always useful to know.

(Right is the common mallow. You've got one in your garden, I bet).

Now we are in the grip of Fenland, I've discovered that many of the species I used to get hold of quite easily (like Sweet Woodruff) are not Fen friendly, they don't like the ground or water. However, some species, like sloes, seem more abundant. And, I am told, if you go further east, there is samphire to be had. When foraging with the kids however, I stick to easy to spot species, and ones that cannot be easily confused with other things. There are a few rules to foraging with kids. Before you even read the rules, you should buy a decent foraging guide. I have this one, "The Forager handbook" but a new River Cottage one is due out now too. It's on my xmas list.

Rules: or how to forage with kids with no-one dying.

1: Explain the difference between poisonous plants, plants that are safe once cooked, but NOT raw, and safe plants. Make them repeat it back to you before you go.

2:Dress them in thick trousers, long sleeves, and sturdy shoes. This helps with stinging nettles and biting things, and stops those annoying goosegogs of the bedstraw family from getting in their socks.

3: Take savlon, antihistamine if needed, and the usual suncream. Make sure you know what a dock leaf looks like!

4: Choose only plants that are abundant at the time of year. No kid wants to walk looking for something for ages and not find anything. Go for plentiful, they are kept occupied, and you know you'll come home with something.

5: Go for obvious: stick to the easy to find, and easily safe species. AVOID THE CARROT FAMILY ALTOGETHER and the NIGHTSHADE, when foraging with kids. These family includes a large amount of poisonous plants that look remarkably like the non poisonous ones. Also, stick to berries, nuts and leaves, leave the roots and seeds for later. they're too fiddly, and again, too easy to mistake. With leaves, berries and fruit/ nuts, you are firmly in season, when the plant is at its' most identifiable. My top kid forage hits are: the blackberry, hazel and beech nuts, rosehips, mallow, fat hen, chickweed, elderflower/berry, borage, yarrow, nettles, everlasting pea tops and leaves, crabapples, damsons, ramsons, and of course, dandelions. There's a lot of them, they're all safe as houses, and they're easy to get to. Most of them can be spotted along any rural roadside or footpath.

6: I'm going to be controversial here and say that your kids won't die if they eat some blackberries without washing them, worst thing is they'll munch a bit of protein in there too. There has been some concern about heavy metals in berries from heavily used roadsides, so avoid picking along motorways, but otherwise I think you're fine! But a general rule of thumb is wash it first and wait if you're worried. Don't pick things where dogs walk and wee, or cattle poo.

7. No fungi except puffballs.

8: Don't pick all of everything. Leave at least 2/3 of every plant and plenty of berries. Once Spetember is here, an old wives tale reminds people to lay off the blackberries, as the Devil enters them. A nice way of saying leave some for the birds, I think.

What do you do with the stuff you've got? Eat it! Mallow is a surprisingly tasty plant and was once used widely. It is still grown commercially in turkey,where it is a staple. In Greece it makes up part of the "horta" of wild greens. Here; it's a weed. It is somewhat akin to okra when cooked for very long, but swiftly cooked in an omelette or added to salad it's yummy. (Left is blackthorn, with sloes just starting to emerge in August. They need to be left till Oct/Nov to really ripen. )

The Anchor Inn and tomatoes

2010-08-22T11:50:00.000-07:00

Evenings out have been few and far between since Husband and I had the kids. In fact, even the wedding got put off, twice, by each of them respectively, so that in the end getting married was really almost about having a night out. But this weekend was out first wedding anniversary, and we went OUT out. Admittedly, I was nor expecting wonders of the local hostelries. But I reckoned without a little local gem at Sutton Gault, The Anchor Inn. I won't be reviewing often, and I won't be going out often, but if I go out again this year, I will try to go out to Sutton Gault.

As I go out rarely, when I go out I want maximum entertainment for my pound. Nowdays this does not mean what it did in my youth (when it would mean all manner of wonders and weirdness,in London, invited and univited), but an entirely different thing. I want, on my child free evening out, no children. I want good food, and I want it a bit fussy, the sort of fussy I can't be bothered to do. I want meat I rarely cook, wine I rarely buy, and a nice setting with good beer on tap.

The Anchor Inn is perched on a drove road between Chatteris and Sutton. It presides over the river Bedford, aka as the 100 foot drain. In its' Fen incarnation, straight as a die and contained as far as the eye can see, it is Vermuyden's vision incarnate, although he probably wasn't holding the big glass of rose wine I was. The pub garden is riverside and offers a Fen view which is as pleasing as it is unusual. I sat and sipped my wine and watched the sun go down, and pondered the menu, which was extensive, and not (too) expensive. I settled on the duck, husband had pork. The duck was as perfect as I could have wanted it, just the right side of rare and beautifully presented with gorgeous gravy, or jus or whatever and a potato cake of the sort I cannot make. And in a generous portion that didn't leave you feeling short changed. We ate, and drank, and it was all, very, very good indeed, and the service impeccable (even removing a wasp from us as it blundered into our meal, and locating a rare taxi back). I urge you to visit, but book, it's busy!

Oh, and tomatoes. FINALLY, they are coming, and the best ones are yellow. Here they are, in a bowl, while I figure out DOF on my swanky new camera.

Nursery rhyme correctness and grills.

2010-08-12T13:24:00.000-07:00

I recently found a copy of Ladybirds nursery rhymes for daughter. This is ideal, because she likes anything gruesome, dead-ish and messy. This book was published in the years of full glory, when nursery rhymes were still violent, crazed, misogynist, and fun. As an ex-history teacher (although please let me back one day, please), I love how so many of them are basically a history story.

Take "Mary Mary". Poor Mary Stuart. Piggy eyed, despised by her dad, her mum shucked off like a cloak for some strumpet, and so, so desperate for an heir and baby she went through false pregnancies. Took her mind off burning people. I do feel for her though, shut up with an ostracised mother for her youth, only allowed back to court on the understanding that she accept her fathers rule and attitude to her mother. Brave, in many ways, to stick to her Catholocism. But not, by any measure, popular once she DID get the throne by dint of Edward dying. So the rhyme shows us: Mary Mary quite Contrary (Mary, why the flip are you burning everyone, leave it out!) How does your garden grow? (And anyway, what's wrong with you? Pop one out you barren cow) With Silver Bells and Cockleshells (Spend less time at Catholic church (silver bells) and sort your husband (Philip of Spain) out, he's cockleshelling all over the place but not on you) OR (silver bells was a nickname for thumbscrews, and cockle shells was a nick name for...er....something else screws), and Pretty maids all in a row (reference to many miscarriages she went through). So, when I hear it, I feel sort of sorry for her, even though she was quite clearly a crazy woman. This illustration makes it clear it's about her.

And h0w about this. This charming illustration, showing a woman with a machine (!) for whipping her kids' bums. How amazing. Can you imagine this being in a book today? I love it. I like to think of that woman going "go on! Hurry up! Get the soup down yer, whup, and into bed, so I can have me wine!" Originally, this was about Queen Caroline/ King George, who had 8 children. George began the fashion of white wigs and was often referred to as the "old woman". The notion of whipping may be pointed too: the children referred to in the rhyme were the Members of Parliament, who needed to be "whipped" (not least because they were trying to dethrone him half the time), and we still have whips today to keep politicians on the party line.

And look at this for extreme violence for kids. This poor old soul being thrown head first over the bannisters.This dates from the Civil War, where "left footers" (Catholics) were prosecuted by the Cromwellian rule, and refers to sniffing out Catholics from their priest holes and dragging them off to justice, or, just throwing them down the stairs.

Finally, did you know that "Mary had a little lamb" was the first thing Edison said over his phone? They're deep in there, those rhymes. And the Grills bit? Husband had his first day out catering at the Skylark Showground. It went very well, you can see some photos on my Flickr stream. Another event booked for September, soon we will be barbecue millionaires.

Bubba Grills, Barbecue and motorbikes

2010-08-05T14:17:00.000-07:00

Well, I've been making up 1000 portions of hot barbecue sauce for this weekend as husband road tests his Bubba Grill at the International Motorbike Festival at the Skylark showground this weekend. It's been all action stations on the Boston Bean and Pulled Pork front. I am just crossing my fingers and hoping the rain holds off, so the bikers can enjoy, hopefully to our full economic joy, husbands ribs, pulled pork and beans.

There's been a lot of interest in the kit. Men have randomly stopped and asked about it as they've seen it, Americans from the local area have stopped by to admire it. Bubba in the USA is cool, and Jamie Oliver saw them for his last book. Husband visited to learn their arcane barbecue arts, and now we are all stations go! It's a barbecue X10. I just hope we break even for a first venture. And man, my chilli sauce is HOT!

half arsed politics and combining

2010-08-03T13:03:00.000-07:00

I have really gone off the boil, politics wise. I was pondering why, and it hit me: I can't face watching the news because it's too like the 80's, it seems like a replay and I don't want to watch it. I can't be alone in this. I am filled with apathy: when I should be geting angry and waving placards. It will come, doubtless.

And on a similar bent, at least, about the possible futures/pasts, I have been waxing lyrical about harvest, as the combines chug up and down outside my back garden. And it made me search out this poem by Edwin Muir, about the one-day return of the horse, machines abandoned.

Barely a twelvemonth after

The seven days war that put the world to sleep,

Late in the evening the strange horses came.

By then we had made our covenant with silence,
But in the first few days it was so still
We listened to our breathing and were afraid.
On the second day
The radios failed; we turned the knobs ; no answer.
On the third day a warship passed us, heading north,
Dead bodies piled on the deck. On the sixth day
A plane plunged over us into the sea. Thereafter,
Nothing. the radios dumb;
And still they stand in our kitchens,
And stand, perhaps, turned on, in a million rooms
All over the world. But now if they should speak,
If on a sudden they should speak again,
If on the stroke of noon a voice should speak,
We would not listen, we would not let it bring
That old bad world that swallowed its' children quick
at one great gulp. We would not have it again.
Sometimes we think of the nations lying asleep
Curled blindly in its' impenetrable sorrow
And the thought confounds us with its' strangeness.
The Tractors lie about our fields; at evening
they look like dank sea monsters couched and waiting.
We leave them where they are and let them rust;
"They'll moulder away and be like other loam"

We make oxen drag our rusty plough
Long laid aside. We have gone back
Far past our fathers land.
And then, that evening

Late in the Summer the strange horses came.

We heard a distant tapping on the road,
A deepening drumming, it stopped, went on again
And at the corner changed to hollow thunder.
We saw the heads
Like a wild wave charging and were afraid.
We had sold our horses in our fathers time
To buy new tractors. Now they were strange to us
As fabulous steeds set on an ancient shield
Or illustrations in a book of knights.
We did not dare go near them. Yet, they waited,
Stubborn and shy, as if they had been sent
By an old command to find our whereabouts
And that long lost archaic companionship.
In the first moments we had never a thought
that they were creatures to be owned and used.
Among them were some half dozen colts
Dropped in some wilderness of the broken world,
Yet new as if they had come from their own Eden.
Since then, they have pulled our ploughs and bourne our loads,
But that free servitude still can pierce our hearts.
Our life is changed, their coming our beginning.

I just cry at this. It says more than I can, you get it.

straight backstitch, berries, spice,kindness and chickens

2010-08-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Well, lacking a sewing machine, and not wanting to fall back on drinking huge quantities of wine in the evenings in the absence of anything good on telly, I decided to start on son's quilt anyway. I chopped the material into 20X20 squares and 20X40 rectangles. No silly little bits this time. This quilt will be a super fast quilt, and an opportunity to practice sewing in straight lines. Plus, the material is really the star for him, all dinosaurs and airplanes, so lots showing is what he wants. I will get all fiddly with the quilting and binding, after all. Chopped up, I patterned it all out into one rectangle by 2 squares for each (big) block and commenced. My backstitch is now getting very tiny and straight: i'm pleased with it. And the blocks look nice anyway, even though they are big. I am doing 1 or 2 an evening and popping one in my bag for when the kida are busy at the park. So it might get done before Winter.

And then I started baking, or tried to, with the huge glut of blackberries we have. 25 bags in the freezer so far. I haven't found one cobbler recipe I like for them, they all seem to come out stodgy, but this could be the fault of my heavy hands, again. So crumble it is. Nobody else likes it, but I do, so soon I will be fat as well as balding.

As for the week of cooking 70's, it ended badly, with me yearning for spice and chillies. Everything was so bland, and whilst the kids can eat endless potat/cheese based meals, I cannot. I drew the line at a recipe that required spaghetti hoops from a can, and leapt into the arms of Rick Stein for his yummy malaysian broth, searing the roof of my mouth with chillis and making the kids cry. Mee Goreng tonight. Although it is VERY hard to source galangal in the Fens. Garlic is something they use to scare off vampires, the more exotic ingrediants simply don't get up here. Luckily, husband has a Chinese supermarket next to him when he goes to London.

And beautifully, a super act of kindness from a fellow set of Fenland bloggers. The kind lady here , Tina, rang me today to say that she has found a sewing machine for me, and I am overcome that someone who hasn't met me has been so kind! There are other ladies here in the Fens who are conspiring to get me sewing as an obsession, and I thank them. They are all too talented, they may have to show me how to thread the machine, let alone actually use it. you can visit their pages here to see their skills. http://fenlandtextiles.blogspot.com/2010/07/lists.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FenlandTextileStudio+%28Fenland+Textile+Studio%29

http://mixedmedia-jem.blogspot.com/2010/08/luttrell-psalter-exhibition.html I am not sure how to make the links look tidier.

And lastly, the coop is up and treated, the run is on its' way, and the chicken breeder sourced. In a fortnight, we will have our chooks. I have been reading up on redmite, lice, foxes, and the propensity of chickens to die, and frightening myself, but the kids will be sanguine should they kark it, I am sure.