Hitting the Buffers

Ladies and gentlemen, we will shortly be reaching the end of the line.

The Emperor's New Clothes

The Impostor Syndrome, sometimes called Impostor Phenomenon or Fraud Syndrome, is a psychological phenomenon in which people are unable to internalize their accomplishments. It is not an officially recognized psychological disorder but has been the subject of numerous books and articles by psychologists and educators.

Regardless of what level of success they may have achieved in their chosen field of work or study or what external proof they may have of their competence, those with the syndrome remain convinced internally they do not deserve the success they have achieved and are actually frauds. Proof of success is dismissed as luck, timing, or as a result of deceiving others into thinking they were more intelligent and competent than they believe themselves to be.

This syndrome was thought to be particularly common among women who are successful in their given careers, but has since been shown to occur for an equal number of men.It is typically associated with academics and is widely found amongst graduate students.

Only someone as screwed up as me could be about to create a tragedy from the brink of a triumph. Not even the brink actually. Probably quite well over the line now, but I'm sure I'll be able to drag it back over the threshold again with my rare and special skill.

Having endeavoured, laboured, pushed myself to get out of the submarine, be myself, I am utterly terrified.

I am remembering now, this is why I don't let people get close. This feeling of having taken off all my armour and now just waiting for the arrows to strike, for the sword to run me through, for the crows to come and peck out my eyes.

Sure, I was smart enough to open with my strong suits. I can talk a good line. Trained to pitch myself effectively and point out my established brand presence (another group of people who were easily fooled, huh?) I can appear lively, engaging, interesting, fun - who knows, maybe even sexy? At first. At first.

I got off to a good start - and now there's everything to lose. The good stuff is up and out, nothing new and exciting to discover: all my best bolts are already shot.

All that remains to find out about me is that I am after less interesting than you thought, not as intelligent as I can seem at first, nowhere near as attractive as the initial sparkle of surprise might have indicated.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

This Page Is Intentionally Blank

“Just do it”, he said.

“Of course you can write, it’s easy. All you have to do is start”.

Where this expertise comes from, I’m not sure. But he’s very authoritative, and that must be a bit like being an author, no?

I want to argue. To ask why he has to be such a damn expert on things he manifestly knows nothing about. To ask him to explain why he will be so vocally supportive when other people are there, yet was outraged when I said I wanted to go on a writing course this year, and felt sure I would be too busy at work to find the time.

However I feel that he is accidentally, unknowingly right about this.

So I decide there is no time like the present to make a start. The office is clean, the laundry is in the machine, the dinner is simmering away on the hob, the girls are quietly upstairs watching TV and so is he.

I limber up by playing the piano for a few minutes, just to switch the neurons into action. Then I come into my quiet, empty office and open up the potential of a clean white page.

He comes downstairs. Turns the hifi on, full blast. Comes into the office. Starting moving piles of papers around. Shredding. Chatting. He never “chats”.

The number of times I’ve been sitting here by myself, working while the life of the family bubbled past outside the door. What I wouldn’t have given for a bit of company, a friendly word.

Ironic? Or deliberate? Or me being difficult, seeing the worst in every situation, attaching the most negative motivations to every behaviour?

Who knows. Irritation factor: 10/10. Writing: nul.

Selective Listening

It's a rare skill I have.

I listen carefully for the things I wanted to hear, and I pretend not to have heard the rest. This straining off of the elements that don't suit my view of the world works really well.

For a while.

Problem is, I did hear the other stuff too. And after a while, it has grown legs and walked itself out of the far reaches of filed-under-lost and is coming in on the fringes. Later of course it will be shouting loudly in the foreground, but I'll barely hear it for the booming of I Told You So.

I've been doing this at the moment. So I'm going to try an experiment in taking responsibility. This will be hard, but character-building.

I am going to acknowledge all the important things I'm pretending not to have heard, and I'm going to put them into a draft blog post, which will capture the date. This will mean that later, when I'm wishing I had taken on board these things, and not the other things, I'll be able to say I Told You So properly, and with absolute authority.

Roses Round The Door

I travelled back from London this evening, just to spend some time with my girls, before I get up early tomorrow to go back again.

I arrived home to find that, although it was past bedtime, they had not showered, were not in their pyjamas, had not finished their homework. They'd only had a mere 5 hours to carry out these simple tasks. When I asked them to do so, there was huffing-and-puffing, rolling of eyes, dragging of feet, mutterings-under-the-breath.

This wasn't the end of it. Oh no.

"When I have children" said Thing Two, "I'm going to be Proper Mummy, not like you".

I reminded her, meanly, that she had only recently announced (when her grandparents were here) that she was going to be lesbian and live on a farm with her friend Tanya and not have any children.

Eyes roll to the heavens. "Tanya's going to have them. We're going to have a sperm donor. Then actually we'll have two Mummies. Proper Mummies". Holy shit. These girls are nine years old. How do they know all this stuff?

"Good for you!" I said cheerily. "Go to bed now".

Thing One is too surly to discuss the relative merits of Proper and Improper Mummies, gay, straight, curious or open to offers.

"I don't know why you've come all the way back from London just to nag us to go to bed".

I grit my teeth and say nothing, fantasising about the good old day of Proper Mummies, when we also had Proper Smacking and Proper Clips Around The Ear and so forth.

I tuck her into bed too. She smiles sweetly and says "please will you bring me a signature drink?"

?????!!!!!

I am going to stay over in London tomorrow night. Little bastards.

Don't Misunderestimate Me

I kind of miss Dubya - he had a rare gift with language. I mean, that's a great phrase, isn't it? So much meaning in such a little sentence.

There are lots of words still missing from English, I feel. And no, I'm not going to launch off into some drear and hackneyed do-you-know-the-Inuit-have-seventeen-words-for-snow riff. I'm talking about two sorts of words.

The first are words you didn't know you needed. Daughter No 2 is good at these. Playing Barbies the other day, one of the dollies is an authan ( you know, a person who doesn't have any parents, who writes books). A dalmanation is a good word if you don't like dogs in the first place. I accidentally invented one myself over Christmas: almagnac - reading an encylopedia whilst sipping a fine brandy.

A friend sent me an email a while ago that had a whole list of newly-invented words like this. Add or change one letter, that was the rule. My favourites are:

Cashtration: The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.

Ignoranus: A person who's both stupid and an asshole.

Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realise it was your money to start with.

Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

Bozone: The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.

Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn't get it.

Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.

Decafalon: The gruelling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

Glibido: All talk and no action.

My second category of words is the missing ones. The words that we should have, but we don't. I could write a whole thesis on this, but for now just ponder that fact that there is no female-anatomy equivalent of the harmless and inoffensive willy. Girls only get to have their bodies described in medical-Latin, porno or Anglo-Saxon. Someone needs to invent a word, and fast, to help all the parents of daughters who swore to themselves they would never say something as crass and ridiculous as "front bottom", and yet.....

And how come men get to be bastards, but women get to be bitches? It's not quite the same thing.

Modern life has also thrown up the need for some new words yet to be invented. Shouldn't there be a word for a friend-you-only-know-on-line? (How about an "eddy"? electronic buddy?)

And how about some 21st century versions for old words we don't use any more like mistress and lover? Friend-with-benefits , which I've sometimes seen, is just ridiculous. And fuck-buddy is truly appalling (it's the "buddy" part which offends me...) I guess there's nothing inherently wrong with lover, except that it contains The Word We Don't Ever Say In That Context which renders it entirely un-usable. If you feel inspired, go ahead and think of one. Please.

Don't think other languages can help you, often they're equally impoverished. As Dubya reminds us: "The French, they don't even have a word for entrepreneur".

Miner Character

It’s rare for me to cry, but I wept buckets yesterday.

I was watching a DVD with the girls, to help them prepare for a performance in their drama group: Billy Elliott.

When this film came out, I was certain I’d hate it. I’d heard a brief summary of the plot and it sounded vile. I didn’t see it when it was at the cinema, and only ended up watching it out of politeness to a friend. And it broke me up. This is the third time I’ve seen it now and it has the same effect every time.

It’s not the whole boy-ballerina thing (although that is surprisingly not mawkish after all). It’s the part where the dad decides to break strike and go back to work. When I watch that part, it’s not just a stray tear running down my cheek. I sobbed for about ten minutes.

The pit-head scenes were all filmed at our colliery (long-closed by the time they made the film). Huge numbers of people turned out to see that bitter history come to life again. Stood silently looking on as the rocks hit the wire mesh on the windows of the lorries. Listened to the sounds we’d almost forgotten, “scab, scab, scab” as the police drummed their truncheons on their riot shields.

My dad wasn’t a miner, but everyone else’s dad was. Having seen how poor a family can get after no money coming in for more than a year, this recession doesn’t really scare me that much. I don’t foresee us having to saw up our own furniture, our own apple tree, for firewood; so I know things could be a lot worse. I don’t foresee us having to live on food parcels donated by our brothers in the struggle in the Russian, the French mines; I don’t have to pretend not to be hungry so the children have enough to eat.

There wasn’t much discussion at home, at school, about the rights or wrongs of the strike. It wasn’t in question. I went to a rally on Town Moor to hear Scargill speak, and despite his strange bri-nylon hair it was like listening to Jesus. Everyone wanted to follow him, logic didn’t form a part of it. We had no wish to hear the alternative viewpoint, as it was inevitably expressed in condescending tones by That Woman, and we simply couldn’t bear to watch her.

Of the hundreds of thousands, millions of people perhaps who have seen the film, only a relative few will understand exactly what it would mean to ride the bus through the picket line of your colleagues and cousins and old school friends and brothers.

I cry for our town, still broken. The men, still broken. Their sons, who have never worked. Their wives and daughters, who never stop, one job after another, to hold the family together. Women’s work - no job for a man.

Our pit re-opened last year. They bring the miners from Poland and Africa. Our ex-miners, in their ex-Coal Board houses, rent out the rooms of their children, long-left, to the new workers. The men still of the town have no training, no trade. They stay at home, drinking, smoking, fighting - and the coal sits deep and bitter beneath their feet.

Say What You Mean

I encountered a lot of euphemism and speaking in forked tongues today.

"The team aren't comfortable with technology", he opined, and I concealed my scorn as they allocated their tasks on white forms, green forms, yellow forms, tear off strips - and lost all the jobs they didn't like down the back of the radiator.

"We've had a mixed experience with that service", said one of their key customers, and then outlined a project which was budgeted at £x, and ended up a year late, costing £2x and not really fit for purpose at that.

"Some of the team are better than others". Do you want to be more specific? No.

I think we English have a mastery of the understatement, the damning with faint praise. "They're not the worse service here".

And I'm becoming more and more interested in the things people don't say. Quite a few situations lately where we Don't Mention It. Sometimes the absence of mention is booming, deafening, resounding round all the spaces in the conversation. I find it fascinating, how easy it is to hear the things that aren't being said.

Written on the Body

I like scars. They’re sexy. They’re interesting.

Every scar has its story to tell: a drama; an adventure; an accident; an illness; a confrontation with Voldemort. Someone wholly unmarked cannot tell of their sledging accidents, sword-fights, smallpox, surgery, snake-bites or sky-diving.

Exploring a new skin, there’s a thrill in the sudden encounter of a healed wound from the time before you met. Tell me the story, I plead, as my fingers trace the the white, the silver, the red of the lines.

My first scar (and my first stitch) is hidden in the shadow below my bottom lip. I can still feel the sensation of my tiny, sharp bottom teeth piercing right through as I hit the floor after my little truck of bricks skidded away from me on the parquet floor.

The zigzag on the inside of my left ankle where the bookcase fell on my leg at primary school is barely perceptible now, but running repeatedly into the sharp corners of our dwarf wall (not on purpose I hasten to add, but in the course of many, many games of street football) has left little dents in the front of both my shins. Chicken pox marked me on my hip and my eyebrow - and has already caused the first blemishes on the peachy perfection of my little girls.

No one would ever notice the flat, smooth, paler areas on my face where moles were lasered away - and that’s the effect I was aiming for. My only vanity surgery. So far. I used to say Never but lately I’ve kind of veered towards Never-Say-Never.

The rest of my scars tell medical stories. The long, wide crinkled line down my left breast, and the strange emptiness beneath the skin where a piece is missing. Getting that scar at 14 was really hard, left me paranoid and hating that part of my body for years. Now the Frankenstein stitch marks and the puckered width of it have faded to an invisible silver, and relatively speaking, my cleavage is one of my finest zones these days. Time does indeed heal the wounds.

Everything else is below the belt, quite literally. Numerous explorations and laparoscopies can barely be noticed now across the ruined landscape of my once taut and concave belly. Alas those days are long gone: two Caesareans were no help there. The first left a fairly neat zip mark, but the second fell victim to a bout of MRSA and didn’t mend for two years. I wonder if I have marks, dead-centre, right on the spine, from the epidurals? My back aches there when I’m tired, when I’m sad, when I’m cold.

My latest soon-to-be scar is still a livid gash, barely holding together, across my thigh where a broken jam jar ripped through my jeans, and about an inch into my flesh. Strangely, in spite of its beginnings as a domestic accident, this is my very straightest, cleanest line.

If you could see inside, it’s much messier. Lots of scars visible from inner space - I’ll make for an interesting autopsy.

The traumas that hurt the most have left no physical trace - but sometimes still ache when the wind’s in the wrong direction; when a song comes over the radio; conjured by a smell, or a word, or an image glimpsed on the TV. All those brow-beatings have knocked me out of line.

My heart has been broken twice, bears its invisible jagged fault lines. But it mended well - time-healed - and its beat is strong and brave.

Three Little Words

I was looking at an article on MSN called "Three words he doesn't want to hear" (you can read it here). I read stuff like this under the flimsy excuse that my very good friend K is just about start dating again and therefore I must carry out research on her behalf.

The piece lists 10 three-word phrases a boy never wants to hear. It does seem to miss some of the more obvious ones so I thought I'd go for another ten. How about:

1.Telly's not working

2. Honey I'm pregnant

3. I'm leaving you

4. I've got xxxx (insert STD of your choice here)

5. My mother's here

6. Let's get divorced

7. Let's get married

8. I'm playing away

9. Your car's disappeared.....

10. You're going bald


Which three little words would I like to hear? My provisional list for today is:

1. Eat less cheese

If someone stood by my shoulder and whispered this every time I went near the fridge or did an internet shop, it would probably be the single biggest factor in helping me reach the mythical Size 12.

2. You look gorgeous

Or any kind of compliment, really.....

3. Have a break

I'm working too hard. Even I can see that. But a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.. It comes with the patch. Maybe in the long run I should find a new patch...

4. Have a cuddle

I'm tactile. I need physical contact. And this would presuppose that the person saying it could recognise I might need a cuddle, which would presuppose that I might be showing a teeny glimpse of vulnerability, which let's face it is not my usual look, which is why people don't think they could cuddle me........ Submarines are hard to cuddle.

5. I'm so sorry

Some people are incapable of apologising, aren't they? And for some things, sorry just isn't enough.

6. Let's run away

We can all fantasise, can't we?!

7. You're really sweet

Guess I'd have to act sweeter before I got to hear this?!

8. I miss you

Hooray - someone would notice that I wasn't there, and be thinking it would be nicer if I was.

9. I'll do that

I know I rarely ask for, and rarely accept, help. So the fact that I don't hear this is entirely my own fault!

10. Sean Bean called

Yeah, right. Like that's going to happen.

Rock and a hard place

Busman's holiday, Christmas, for mums.

I was thoroughly and totally fed up of being at home, after two solid weeks running round after everyone. Making a meal, clearing up, then it's time to make another one and clear it up again. While various comers and goers and hangers-on eat chocolates, slump, watch TV and drink my wine. Humph. And ill every damn minute of it with a rotten cold. Again.

I was equally dreading the drear horror of going back to work. Even though after the the wonder of Christmas Day the rest of the break seemed to drag on interminably in a fog of housework and warming up mince pies, the recession still had not ended as of yesterday.

It was so cold in the office, I had to go home at lunchtime to put a vest on. Really.

I am endeavouring to get into my groove, find my stride. My work achievements so far have been neglible (other than, I suppose, not slitting my wrists on Monday morning. Or Tuesday morning). I'm still warming up.

Just watch me run! Eventually. I hope.

And someone simply HAS to tell me why sometimes the spacing doesn't work in Blogger. It's pissing me off.

Great Leap Forward

Ok here goes. I will hurl myself into the new year with the following resolutions. Some are large, some are small. All of them are achievable - particularly if I demonstrate a suitable degree of follow-through.

So, in no particular order, ten things:

• Do 15 minutes of tidying up every evening before bed


• Have a monthly facial


• Lose weight every week


• Do at least 2, preferably 3 sessions of bodypump each week


• Do 2/3 exercise sessions in home gym each week


• Make significant progress on my novel (I have had a mental breakthrough with this, and have also defined what I mean by "significant progress", more later)


• Identify and write down 3 things I've achieved each day (to become more positive about myself)


• Accept my personal situation for what it is, and what it is not (I think this might make me happier)


• Resolve the work/company situation


• Be a positive, optimistic, cheerful and supportive mum and friend

I suppose I need to work out now how to set specific goals, measure progress, identify my KPIs, all that. Sounds like I should get consultants in (always, always the right choice). I will need an expert in performance audit, it seems.

Resolve

The proper behaviour all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

P J O'Rourke

Drunk - but not that drunk. 1st January is a rubbish day for the new year to start. Everyone's tired and hungover and listless, and all one can do is slump on the sofa drinking milky coffee, eating toast and snoozing.

I am giving very careful consideration to my resolutions for this year - and indeed for this decade. I'm also reflecting on the year just gone, its downs and its ups.

I feel that things matter more than they did this time last month. In November I wouldn't have made any resolutions at all - didn't care enough, didn't have the confidence to believe I could achieve anything of note any more.

Now I feel this is a time of great potential - and I'm taking a deep breath and centring myself before diving in. I plan to start this January as an optimist, believing in myself and creating the possibility of a Happy New Year!