Indifference

"I get confused", she said "between Bob Marley and Bob Dylan. Are they the same person?" Well, no. They are both influential musicians, though, so let's interchange them a bit in our heads. I conclude that Marley could do some interesting covers of Dylan songs, but it wouldn't work the other way around. 

Many other such confusions can be made, so allow me to explain a few. We'll begin with music.  The most influential band of all time is Crosby Stills &Nash. It was started by Bing Crosby, and they were so important that Nashville is named after them.  Neil Young was also a member of this group for a while. There are a number of Neils who frequently collaborate together musically, and their songs are interchangeable (Young, Sedaka, Diamond and Tennant). Most other important musicians are called Johnny (Cash, Rotten, Hallyday and Marr). 

It's the same situation with films.  Katharine Hepburn could happily cover all of Audrey's roles, although Audrey would be rubbish in The African Queen, with her pearls and her little black dress.  Marilyn Manson would be a perfect substitute for Marilyn Monroe. Woody Harrelson, Woody Allen and Woody from Toy Story are all interchangeable, as are Judies Garland and Dench. 

There family relationships in the fame game too. Neil Young's son is Paul Young, the smooth Eighties popstar. Daniel Craig is the lovechild of Butterflies actress Wendy Craig, and Sienna Miller's grandfather was Windy Miller of Camberwick Green fame.  Hugh Grant and Eddy Grant are half-brothers, as are Bruce and Spike Lee.

Much of life is confusing like this, I find. 

Instructions for Living

Bollocks to all these self-help books. Adults have no bloody idea how to live their lives - just look at us, for heaven's sake. What a mess.

I am going to take all my advice from 6 year olds in future. Here is the instruction list two friends made.

How To Fall In Love

1. First you stare at the person.
2. You get close to each other.
3. You ask for a date.
4. You go to bed and do sex.
5. When you kiss you suck and lick.
6. Get nacked in bed and do more sex.
7. -
8. Go dance and put your noses together.
9. -
10. Then kiss forever.
11. Take a shower together and kiss.
12. Give each other rings.
13. Go to the pool together.

Yep. I think that has everything covered.  Steps 14-24 are blank - as they should be. It's all downhill after you get back from the pool.

Curl Power

So I did the thing that women always do in a crisis: I changed my hairstyle.

I’ve also changed my hairdresser. Doing these two things in tandem is a high-risk strategy at the best of times. At this time in particular, I’m under a significant amount of stress and therefore entirely unqualified to take even minor decisions like Galaxy or Dairy Milk. Undeterred, I decided to become a new woman. Well, the same woman as before but with better hair.

“Is it a wig?” asked the Tweenager. Concerned as I am about her, I still felt it appropriate to make a sour face and ignore her.

“Woah” said the Teenager. “Whoah what?” “Nothing. Just woah”.

I’m not sure they like it.

So not I’m not sure I like it either, even though I was really pleased when it was just done. I’ll tell you tomorrow whether it’s turning out ok. And if not, since I’m feeling rather unhinged from stress, I can always do a Britney. Not in the serial-marriages-live-in-a-trailer sense. Nor in the look-amazing-in-school-uniform-number-one-hit sense. Or even the sexy-air-hostess-toxic sense. Just the head-shaving part. Britney, Sinead O’Connor and me. Now where was that strait-jacket?

Access All Areas

Two days of poetry readings as part of my local literature festival have been summarily cancelled.

For several years now, they have been held in the upstairs room of a local tea shop. Free entry as long as you buy a cuppa and a cake. Excellent poets, many of them extensively published, travel from all around the area to perform free of charge.

This year, a disability group has complained that the event is not fully accessible because of the stairs, and so it will not now take place. This is quite likely the group that previously led to the cancellation of another regular poetry event in a neighbouring town for similar reasons.

So now the event is equally inaccessible to everyone and we should all be equally happy with this outcome, I guess.

It's a tricky one, isn't it? I'm all for equal access, clearly.  But in my day job I have seen many businesses have to close down, and many landlords go bankrupt, because our country's property portfolio  -  sometimes many hundreds of years old  -  cannot always be adapted to meet the new requirements.  And as a poetry performer I have seen that only running readings that are fully accessible has the net effect of making live performance evenings less easy to hold and therefore over all less accessible.  A pub or tea shop can't give up it's main trading floor without charging a fee and therefore less events like our readings and poetry nights can take place.

Probably now I'll be hoisted up and made an example of, as if I were unsympathetic to the rights and indeed challenges of people with mobility issues. I know, I know, the problems we face in our family trundling about the place with a profoundly disabled child, his chair, his paraphernalia, his occasional disturbing seizures and (in my view) even more disturbing episode of random Exorcist-style projectile vomiting. I'm just saying, it's tricky to tell when something is right, and when doing what seems like the right thing leads to the wrong outcome.

Meanwhile in this politically correct day and age, discrimination and bullying of gingers continues unabated.  Yes I know we are ugly, and pale, and every freckle points to a soul that we have stolen with our evil carrot-headed mischief. And I had heard it rumoured that we smell.

In my day at school, gingers were reputed to smell of piss. Apparently that's not correct.  According to the latest teenage lore, we smell of cake - and not in a good way.

This is another thing I don't really understand. Oh my golly. I think I'll retreat to bed with a cup of tea and a gingerbread-person.

Film Review 2011 #04

"We thought we'd watch a film while you were away. Jennifer Aniston is my most favourite actress and we liked this film when we saw it on the plane.

"Actually we stopped watching it before the end and went to bed early. OhmyGOD that dog took a long time to die! We just got bored waiting".

Bermuda

"We should definitely eat more triangular food," she announced with certainty. "Most definitely".

???

"I had some Indian triangles at Alice's house and they were really good. Not the argy-bargies, the other things. The triangles".

Ah. "Would you like us to have samosas?"

"Yes. And other triangle things. I like the taste of triangles, I've been learning about them at school".

Ok. So, since I cannot deliver on any of the main things a mum should provide (calm, happy home for example), I have been giving some thought to triangles. Having applied my brain to this  -  easier to solve than other more intractable problems  - I have developed a theory that all foods can be classified as follows:

MUST be a triangle: this includes not just samosas, but following some brainstorming in the Malvern Hills (multitasking, me) also Laughing Cow, Toblerone, Doritos. Not that many things, as it goes.

OFTEN a triangle: of course, there are many foods that could theoretically be cut into a triangle, but some often or commonly appear in this shape. Examples would be Brie and other cheeses, slices of cake, pizza, and sandwiches. 

RARELY a triangle: In this category fall a lot of soft-ish, round or tubular things that could easily be cut into triangles even though they rarely are (Jaffa cakes, small pieces of things like banana, carrot, cucumber). And finally some foods that, although it would be plain wrong to cut them into triangles, could very easily be. For instance Battenburg cake, McVities Jamaican Ginger cake, hamburgers, marshmallow teacakes.

NEVER a triangle: this is the category I am enjoying thinking about the most. So far I'm thinking Pringles, Twiglets, spring rolls, sausages, hot dogs, Easter eggs, scrambled eggs, chocolate fingers,  broccoli, biscuits, rice krispie cakes, Hula Hoops, calamari.

We have been blind taste testing to see whether food cut into triangles tastes different due to the shape. I'm saying not, Terrible Tweenager 2 (oh god, my Mac doesn't have a hash key?!) is saying it's easy to tell. We are now entering a secondary discussion about fair tests, scientific rigour and objectivity in experiments.


Sometimes it's nice to lose yourself in the Bermuda Triangle of inconsequentiality. Sometimes real life is just too hard to cope with.

Do It Like A Dodo

"I'm like a bird....", warbled Terrible Tweenager #2, always chirpy.

"How. How are you like a bird? Exactly precisely how?" asked TT#1, sourly. She is still getting to grips with the devils of PMT.

"Well...... I can fly".

"No you can't".

"Ok, I can't, but lots of birds can't fly and they're still birds. Like penguins and emus".

"You don't have any feathers".

"I'm a baby bird. I've only just hatched. But I'm still a bird". Ever the optimist.

"You don't have a beak".

"Some animals have beaks that aren't even birds. Like a platypus or a squid. So having a beak isn't a proof of being a bird".

"You don't lay eggs".

"Yes I do".

They pause for a while, wondering how to proceed. Perhaps a bit of a Mexican stand-off.

"Ok. You're like a bird. What kind of bird are you, then?"

"I'm an iguana".

This is why your brain turns to porridge when you have children. Listening to this drivel. Trying not to scream that AN IGUANA IS NOT A FUCKING BIRD.

Torn



They’re struggling.

The thing that hurts me most is that they are not talking. It’s making them grow up quicker than I wanted them to, it’s taking away their innocence. I wanted to give them a stable environment until they finished school, and I’ve let them down, I’ve failed to do that for them. I feel bad that I couldn’t hang it together for all of us until that point.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“I’m fine, Mummy”, said one, eyes heavy with tears. “I wouldn’t know what to say”, shrugged the other one, feigning nonchalance.

“How about writing it down?” I suggested. “Writing it down can help you sort out your feelings, and writing it out sometimes gets things out that are stuck inside you”. One still shrugged, but the other one got out a notepad and pen. She wrote furiously, teeth digging in to her bottom lip until they almost drew blood. Handed it to me and announced she was going to have a bath and didn’t want anyone to disturb her.

Our family is being teared apart. The pictures of us as a family on the wall will be hit by a hammer and smashed to pieces. I thought we were the ice cream that never melted but now the boiling, burning sun has come out. Now I don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, shooting stars or the Easter Bunny. I will stop believing those things until life makes me smile again.



We had a big cuddle. I said we would be smiling all the time and having a lot of fun, that Daddy and I would be great friends without fighting and everything would be ok.

Different, but still ok.

Jesus I hope I am right. I don’t how much reassurance to offer.

Film Review 2011 #02 and #03

"There are no knights in this at all, except for a toy one right at the start. So it should be called something else. It must be hard to make an action movie when you are old like they are. I expect they get lots of breaks".

"Gosh. I didn't even know Steve Martin was French.

"Why isn't the panther in the actual film? He looked like he would be from the cover of the DVD but he's only in the titles, it's a swindle, actually".

Grit

"It will be alright", I said. "Daddy and I will be good friends. It's a big house, and we can all live here and do the things we enjoy. Probably the only difference you'll notice is that Daddy and I won't be fighting so much now".

"It won't be alright though, will it", she mumbled flatly, eyes downcast.  I felt awful.  "We'll be a fake family. It will be like actors who look just like us, are in our house, pretending to be a family".

I don't know whether it would be better or worse for her to know it was the time before that was fake. That now for the first time in a long time we are having honest conversations, my feelings and views are being taken into account, we are discussing not arguing.

I feel so much better now, and everyone else feels so much worse. So many ways to fail, aren't there?

Spotlight

Coughing all night.  Saturday morning. I am woken at 5.45am by a child who has struggled to get up in time for school all week.

"Mummy I am wondering about some things. You have to tell me". A bleary OK.

"How big is Pluto?"

The cartoon dog or the planet? Ah yes, good point. Every one does know a dog is dog-sized.  Well. Pluto is smaller than the size of a planet.  No I don't know what the Official Size of a planet would be (although I do know a girl round the corner who is a Space Fact-File and undoubtedly does).  But yes, it is indeed bigger than a sofa.  I think it must be larger than the moon but smaller than the earth. No I don't know how big the moon is. Or the earth. Yes the earth is larger than America. Obviously.

"Tell me again, what is a prostitute?"

I've told you this before. It's a person who has sex for money. No, it's not someone who works for the government, that's a politician.  Yes I know dad said they were the same but he was being ironic. Well, it's when you say something but you mean the opposite. Yes, it can be confusing, can't it.

"Why do so many girls like Justin Bieber and vampires?"

No idea. Really. I'm very tired. I don't feel very well.

Frustratingly, she still wasn't ready to go to Stagecoach for a 10am start.

Any Questions?

As I've said before, I know everything.

This is fortunate, as I have been asked a number of complicated questions in the last few days.

• Why do you look like you are wearing a life jacket under your clothes?
• When did you start growing a moustache?
• Why don't you make nice dinners like the other mummies?
• What is the best way a Barbie would commit suicide?
• If you do a really hard poo, can you break your bottom?

Any more? Come on.  I'm ready for anything, you little buggers.

Guessing Game

"This is my friend, he's having lunch with us".

"Cool!!! Way cool!!!"

"Yes as a matter of fact, he is cool. He has a really cool job. See if you can guess what it is".

"Wow! A solicitor!"

Erm. No.

"Marine biologist?"

No.

"Management consultant".

No.

"Shop assistant. Person who changes the lightbulbs. Postman. Person who licks envelopes. King".

No, no, no. Drama producer actually.

"Hmmppph. Since when was that COOL????!!!  Duh......."

Film Review 2011 #01

"So we saw this film and it was like, AMAZING. Although some parts were a bit boring.

"There's this guy in it, from School of Rock. Except he's not a teacher, he's like a postman, or a travel writer, or something.  And it's also about ginger-haired people, that Emily Blunt who is the the mean girl in Devil Wears Prada, not Cruella de Vil, the other girl. And her mum in this film is that Donna, the bride one from Doctor Who except now she has way bigger boobs. And actually she  is Emily Blunt's mum in real life too.

"Anyway the Jack dude has to go on a trip to the Ber Nooda Triangle, and a wave whips him up to a place called Lilly Pret, in the sky. And he is, like, MASSIVE! And everyone else is, like, really really tiny. Then they have a war but the bombs just, like, bounce off his chest? Which was funny.

"That's it really".