parablepsis

You Are What You Eat

2011-11-04T08:17:00.000-07:00

Food has always played an enormously important part in our family life - and not always in a good way! The Husband, having pursued many, many years of weight training before his reinvention as a rower, has always been meticulous about the composition of his diet. He knows precisely what he has eaten, the percentage of protein/carbs/fat in most common foodstuffs, what to eat, and when to eat it for maximum benefit. Even when he lived at home (before he was let out and married me) his most excellent mother catered for his every nutritional whim to the extent of making packed lunches at 5am before he set off for work and popping to the shop to pick up extra gallons of milk for the protein milk-shakes if required. Bit of a shock then when setting up his own home to realise that a good diet required a great deal of forethought, effort....and money! Still, in those days we were both working, young(ish) and idealistic and as a couple still managed to hit the gym three or for times a week and eat a pretty healthy diet. Photos from our first foreign summer holiday together show us lean, toned and muscular. To be quite honest, we were pretty vain and narcissistic and probably bored the pants off everyone around us.
All that was to change with the arrival of our first child, a bonny bouncing thing who - having turned up with a bit of difficulty two weeks late - decided that sleeping was a Bad Idea. We became drawn, irritable and haggard and comforted ourselves with the thought that the second baby (who arrived placid and smoothly two years and two months later) could NOT POSSIBLY sleep less than the first.
How wrong we were! The Bright-Eyed Boy was not only just as bad at sleeping, but much worse, had some sort of hair-trigger motion-detector that sensed breathing three-foot distant and roused him in inconsolable wailing. Night and day this continued, one setting off the other in a constant round of baby-noise. Unsurprisingly NOTHING got done. I'd given up going to the gym as I was constantly shattered and, more than likely, somewhat depressed. The Husband still went occasionally as far as I remember (I'm not really sure) but when we had a major extension built on the house (cheaper than buying something bigger) he spent two years decorating and fitting stuff whilst I sat zombified and minded the babies. Pretty grim actually. The Husband looked like a skeleton, and I piled on the weight through exhaustion and an inability to care. At the same time the Bright-Eyed Boy developed some sort of digestive problem that made him throw up constantly: every night I'd have to strip off next to the washing machine, carefully pulling jumpers over my head that were covered in vomit. Just as the spewing got better he decided that eating was a Bad Idea altogether, and it was all we could do for a year to coax him to eat custard creams. This aversion to food persisted until he went (kicking and screaming) to nursery and saw that hey! Other Kids Eat! So he started to join in and although he still had quite rigid ideas about what he liked, he has got better and better and now at age 12 has a fairly sophisticated palate. I think the root of the problem is that he has an extra-sensitive sense of taste/smell so that what we would count as fairly bland and unremarkable flavours seemed to him outrageously bitter, sweet or sour, hence his insistance at age 5 on having a pizza that consisted only of the base and the cheese (I think they are now quite trendy and called 'pizza bianca' or somesuch) - absolutely NO tomatoes in ANY shape or form. The Daughter has always eaten like a horse and her diet as a rower needed only minor tweeks to make it fit for purpose (e.g.porridge for breakfast, lots of pasta, tuna, chicken etc.). Even the BEB, having taken up rowing this summer, has taken to eating more, although quite often this consists of attempted raids on the cupboard for chocolate biscuits before tea.
Anyhow, in our home food has gone in a complete circle: the Husband started really taking an interest in nutrition again when he took up competitive indoor rowing a few years ago (before 'proper' rowing was even a twinkle in his eye) and his interest rekindled my interest. Being told by the practice nurse that I had the beginnings of hypertension spurred me on to take stock and radically rethink and reform my diet. Drawing on all my former knowledge, which up until that point had been buried under the quotidien family crap that all families wade through, we decided to pull our socks up and Get Serious about nutrition.
Not that it's been easy - it's really hard to plan ahead for healthy dinners if we don't know who's going to be around at tea-time and who's got an activity organised. The slow-cooker is an absolute boon (thanks Sam!) allowing for stews, curries, pasta sauces, and chilli to be taken out as needed, but sometimes the best-laid plans fail and there is a certain amount of nutritional compromise. As I am the one who works on academic research from home, it falls to me to prepare the vast majority of the meals and although I am mostly OK with that, I have to admit that occasionally this particular worm turns. Hence fish and chips. But there was no excuse for my lunchtime lapse today when I am ashamed to admit I actually ate a Pot Noodle. I'd just come in from town, needed to fire up the computer for work and just could not be bothered to sort out something healthier. At least I know precisely how many evil calories I have ingested (392) and comfort myself that had I indulged my appetite with a panini, brownie and latte whilst out, the total would have been a great deal higher than that. On the upside, Friday night is sirloin steak night, eaten with mushrooms, salad, a few oven chips and a big glass of red wine. Food of the gods! And rowing training tomorrow to burn it all off....

A Clash of Antlers

2011-10-29T01:24:00.000-07:00

The Husband has merrily trotted off down to the boat-house to meet up with some of the guys who were on his 'learn-to-row' course last May. He is extremely lucky in that he has found three other people who have taken to the sport of rowing with as much enthusiasm and commitment as him, and together they have made a reasonable - if somewhat unusual - quad crew. There! That didn't sound too anarchic,did it? And yet, the reaction in the club up until very recently was, if not actually hostile, then certainly very unhelpful. Having encouraged folk to learn to row, and very happily relieved them of a not-inconsiderable amount of cash to take up full active membership, there seemed to be an unneccessary amount of obstacles put in their way to prevent them doing precisely that which they were initially encouraged to do: row. I'm not sure how the women's squad runs things, but the men's squad seemes to be run along the lines of some minor public school, where the 'new boys' are made to jump hurdles merely for the amusement of the 'prefects'. Arbitrary training regimes were set up - and amended - on a weekly, daily or even (and I kid you not) hourly basis. It was initially a source of some amusement, and later despair, to receive emails all marked 'high importance' stating that 'the men's squad will meet at 6.30pm for a 3k run, then circuits' only to have that replaced by 'please meet at 6 for a 2k ergo test'. Programmes were sent out and then abandoned before the first date on the list. The whole set-up seems based on whim rather than solid training principles.

The Husband found the whole thing ridiculous. He'd always wanted to have a go at rowing but, like many people, never got round to it. Having taken the opportunity to learn, he was keen to give it his best shot and willing to put up with a bit of frustration and annoyance to fit in. But he came within an ace of packing the whole sorry mess up as he and his new colleagues were told that, yes, they could go out in doubles, oh wait no, you can't: singles only. No hang on a bit we're not going to be on the river tonight (what! it's beautiful out there!) - there's going to be an ergo piece...2k...note your times. And by the way lads - you won't be rowing as a quad together: we don't encourage private armies.
Okay, thought the Husband, keep the head down, don't antagonise the chief buck (who, by the way, is never seen on an ergo, in a boat and quits out of circuits to go home after one set of reps). Dutifully he did what was asked of him: circuits twice a week, 2k tests etc. etc. Even kept his frustration under his hat when beautiful autumn evenings went un-rowed.

The first head-race of the season took place about a month ago in north Lincolnshire. At less than 3k and on a river that is merely a big, straight drainage ditch, the Husband and his mate thought it would be an ideal first race to have a go at, and put it forward that they could enter in a double, not with any expectation of doing particularly well, but as a first-time experience, a bit of fun. This was greeted with much humming and ha-ing and prevarication until - hey presto! - the entry list was closed. Through gritted teeth this was accepted: we were down there anyway as Daughter #3 was racing in a double and then a quad. More frustration ensued: more revised training schedules, broken coaching appointments, more reminding that the Husband and friends wouldn't be racing together at any point.

Imagine his surprise when he got an email (marked high priority, natch) with a boat-list up for the next head-race a week hence (on a notoriously bendy river) containing....yes, the Husband and his LTR chums. With less than seven days to practise for it. Never rowed as a crew.... Assuming that the mick was being taken, they rearranged their work commitments to squeeze in a few sessions on the water. And yes, you've guessed it, when they arrived for the first one, they were told they couldn't go out on the water that night....Well, an explosion was due, and it happened. A few home truths were delivered. And from that time on things seemed to get a bit easier. A second early morning practice session was arranged and encouraging noises made. The head-race itself was windy, choppy, nerve-racking, included a minor crash (at a bend - bow had only steered the quad twice!), but they came away grinning from ear to ear at the achievement and enthused beyond measure. And that's where they all are this morning, happily going up and down the river.

But why the stupid delays and aggravations? You would think that the club would want new blood to swell their ranks - particularly dedicated and enthusiastic blood. Not to mention the membership money! The problem, I believe, is the hierarchical nature of the set up. The junior section runs like an oiled machine, thanks to one person who gives up an unconscionable amount of time to organise it. Everyone knows what they're doing, when they're doing it, and with whom. The older rowers, the ones who have kids are fine, relaxed, helpful, keen to offer advice and even coaching. The middle section tend to be in their late twenties, early thirties, single, unchilded, and range from flint-eyed monomaniacs to swivel-eyed loons. There is a lot of testosterone about, a lot of competitive antler-butting and, as goes with the territory, an aversion to incomers - particularly those who just might - one day - end up as competition. I rest my case.

A Test of What? Patience, Most Probably!

2011-09-29T08:36:00.000-07:00

Indoor rowing at Manchester Velodrome

The weather is absolutely beautiful, unseasonably warm and almost making up for the dismally wet summer. You would think, then, that the rowing fraternity at our local club would be eager to take to the river as quickly as possible during the sun-balmed evenings. Apparently not!
I have noticed a distinct tendency, very akin to that which I noticed as a former air-sports instructor, to stand around and talk about the sport rather than actually get on and do it.

This is particularly true of some of the more experienced crews: they certainly look the part standing round in flip-flops and faded splash-jackets and gazing distantly downriver, but I could count the times I've actually seen them rowing on one hand. The Husband is distinctly aggravated. Not only does the 'training programme' (and I use the term loosely here) change literally week by week (actually, none of the proposed sessions have been fulfilled), but he can never tell if, when he turns up at the boathouse as instructed whether there'll be anyone to coach him, even if he's gone to the trouble of arranging a coaching session. What tends to happen is that he arrives (along with his new rowing buddies) and finds that, despite it being perfect weather, no-one is there, or that there's been a gym-session declared, or that by the time everyone's got their arse into gear it's getting too damn dark. But - hey - they've had a splendid time standing round talking about what they would have done.
Last night he turned up promptly from work hoping to get a good hour plus on the water only to find that everyone was expected to do a 2k erg test. Even the poor guy who'd just returned, unwarned, from holiday. Fortunately the Husband wasn't too bothered - he's competed in the British and English indoor rowing championships and is currently following a Concept2 training programme at our local gym in order to compete again in the spring - climbed on his erg and did an easy sub-seven. Didn't push it, had something left in reserve and recovered quickly. This caused some consternation amongst the men. Husband is a total novice, so wasn't expected to perform well, yet he beat most of the squad with ease. There seems to be a mystique to the erg that 'real' rowers like to bang on about, as if it's some dreaded instrument of torture that they love/loathe simultaneously but that 'non-rowers won't understand; etc. etc., but in reality all it gives is a basic indication of stamina and cardio-vascular condition.
It's not rowing. There is no point to it until you've got the technique sorted out - you'll never use the fitness it imparts unless you can row well enough for it to make a difference, and the best training for rowing is rowing itself. And as for using it to determine who gets a place in the best boats....well, that had to be quickly rethought!

Autumn Break Point

2011-09-23T06:01:00.000-07:00

I have actually ground to a halt. My best intentions to write 500 words per day for my thesis are foundering in slack-jawed apathy. The dissertation is growing - in fact, it's probably growing too much. My latest chapter (so nearly completed!) is now over 52,000 words, and it's going to need some heavy pruning before submission. But it's nearly one-thirty on Friday afternoon, and here I am blogging - not doing academic stuff, carelessly frittering the remains of the day away.
My elderly parents came round this morning and regaled me with tales of their holiday in the Italian Lakes and I started to feel restless and very twitchy. I need a break, preferably abroad for a few days, but I have a feeling that just ain't going to happen this autumn. It's the financial climate, I guess. That, plus the rowing club fees are due for all for of us (and NO direct debit facility - ridiculous!), Daughter #3 wants to go on a residential school trip, the car needed taxing, new school uniforms, birthdays...the whole routine. Nor did we manage to get away this spring either as Daughter #2's second baby was due near the half-term holidays and I was on standby for minding the delightful Bouncing Babba #1.
It really aggravates me how hotel prices shoot up in half-term holidays (cynical or what?) but we are practically threatened with excommunication if we take the kids out of school in term-time. I did think about going to Rome for the weekend, taking them out of school for the Friday and claiming it was a pilgrimage. Well, it would have been - to the Tazza d'Oro coffee shop near the Piazza Navona as much as to go to St Peter's!
The weekend looms with all its usual activities. I just can't imagine what 'normal' (i.e. non-rowing) families do. Just lately, Saturdays consist of the rowing-convert Husband cycling off to the rowing club for 8am, hopeful of calm conditions, and me walking into town later to meet him for a much-needed latte and listen to his exploits.
Sundays usually start early again with me accompanying him to rowing and helping him out with the boat, boating up etc., or with me arriving an hour later (9am) with Daughter #3 and the Bright-Eyed Boy for the junior rowing training session, where I'll either coach singles from the riverbank (trying not to slip on the goose-shit and fall into the water) or cox a quad (getting noticeably chillier by the day).
Last Sunday the river was high, so the Husband and his cronies opted to stay in the gym (ffs!). The juniors put them to shame by blithely boating up and paddling off, although it was a bit 'exciting' on occasion, judging where to land etc. This again is followed by a welcome hot drink, coffee and rowing chat at the local Costa, which I surely must have shares in by now (that's probably where all the money's gone!).
Both Saturday and Sunday afternoons see us two adults (and occasionally children, too) down at the recreational gym near our house (much nicer than the boathouse gym), trying to fit in the weights sessions that we have failed to do during the week (more correctly the guilt-wracked Husband has failed to do - I'm a goody two-shoes and get there most days before I start my work). Into this we must fit the usual colossal school/work clothes wash and iron, prepare and cook food, homework (for the Husband too, sadly), and shop for the forthcoming week's packed lunches etc. Housework and gardening doesn't get a look in, not that I'm really that sorry, but I'm increasingly aware of disapproving glances at the fluff-wads and overgrown grass and weeds. Sunday night and we're knackered -slumped with a pile of food and glass of wine having a marathon sport-watching session of stuff we've recorded whilst out.
So yeah - I could do with a break, a complete break from the routine. We're going to tot up the air miles again and scan RyanAir and EasyJet. I seriously doubt it'll be on the cards...and if it is the only cards it'll be on is the Mastercard. I might have to live with that. Seize the day etc. Autumn on the banks of the Tiber....lovely!

Full Stream Ahead: Again!

2011-09-20T09:31:00.000-07:00

The view from the boathouse

Our river, the Yorkshire Ouse, is a ridiculous river. Having spent most of the summer at such a low level that we were practically scraping the fins through the silt boating up, we are now in overnight flood season. The levels go up and down like a 'bride's nightie'. A couple of weeks ago I had the pleasure(?) of coxing the J15 boys upriver in against a stream so rapid that it took them all their time to make any progress at all. Again this week after a torrential thunderstorm on Friday night (both in York and up in the feeder hills), the levels rose steadily. Sunday morning at the juniors training session, the tow path was covered, annoyingly only by two or so inches of water, which made boating up a real problem. If the levels are higher it's fine to plop the boats in the water just at the bottom of the boathouse steps -the fins and rudders won't catch. But because there wasn't quite enough clearance under the hulls, we had to (very tentatively) paddle through the water and put the boats out just past where the towpath ended. Very cold, especially for those without wellies. I had my Crocs with me, so I wasn't too bothered about the getting wet, although the getting cold was a bit unpleasant! Some of the juniors, who hadn't been out during such conditions, were a bit phased about taking their shoes and socks of and paddling about, but that's what seperates ruffty-tuffty rowers from ordinary mortals (as I pointed out to them). Because there was a fair bit of stream on the river (but not too bad) the younger ones went out in quads and the older in doubles. I had a crew of J13s - quad scull novices - including my own Bright-Eyed Boy (some quad experience under the belt) and one lad who'd never been in a quad before.
It was a bit optimistic asking them to warm up in pairs 'arms only, body lean, quarter-slide' etc. Feeling the flow of the river I swiftly called for full slide and asked for a bit of a squeeze to get us through the arch of the railway bridge where the venturi effect was evident. Rounding the corner to St Peter's Straight, the onslaught eased a little and we made reasonable progress upriver until we reached the turning point before the next bridge. Spinning the boat was a doddle: just paddling a bit on bow allowed the current to drift the boat round and we easied (well actually, we didn't, we had to keep backing down slightly to remain 'stationary') as the coach shouted out instructions to me. Start rowing, then stern pair (the slightly more experienced pair) to square blades, then back to feather, then bow-pair (including the new boy) to do the same. It was the usual rocky old business, although I did (briefly) get all four on to square blades . Spinning the boat for the upriver leg by the boathouse wasn't easy: we had to turn earlier than we would normally and even then there was a bit of a hairy moment when we drifted slightly sideways nearly under Lendal bridge.
Another circuit, same stuff. The new boy coped, and kept up, remarkably well given that everything in a quad scull happens much faster than in the single tracers that theclub normally starts them off in. As they were true lightweights, and the river was high, their session was a bit shorter than the normal one-and-a-half hour's stint. Landing the boat was rather tricky too - I couldn't quite see where the edge of the tow-path was, and not wanting to damage anything, had to shout to a rower in wellies for directions. I was a bit worried about plunging off the invisible edge of the path on getting out too!
All safely landed, I had to co-opt the Husband to help carry the boat up the steps and, after washing it, help slot it back into its rack. The little guy at bow just wasn't tall enough to be able to half-turn it without dragging the gates on the floor. Aww! My feet, which had just got wet again were freezing - I felt that I'd never deserved a steaming latte and sticky-toffee muffin as much.....

In Full Flow

2011-09-10T13:08:00.000-07:00

Not our river!

Monday morning came around, as I knew it would, and I had to sit down at my desk and look with intrepidation at my thesis. Not a word has been written since the start of the school holidays (mid/late July) and, having made a commitment to submit 10,000 words for scrutiny in early October, the pressure was on. One thing I have learned over the course of my doctorate is that slow and steady wins the day: "It is quite possible" said my supervisor during one of our first meetings nearly three years ago " to get a PhD by sheer application and getting enough words down."
I'd originally had some fancy plan about strolling through the groves of academe and reading for - ooh! about a year - and then putting down the fruits of that intellectual indulgence in a pure stream-of-consciousness argument of profound depth and cogency, but he had other ideas. "Write" he said "from day one. If the words are down, you can make something from them." And that turned out to be excellent advice, and the thesis has grown and grown (in size, if not in quality) like a piece of knitting grows even if you only knit two rows per day. So with approximately four working weeks to knock out the ten thousand, that's 4 lots of 5 days, 2,500 words per day, 500 per day: eminently achievable. Except of course, the actual writing is the easy bit, the quick bit. What takes the time is the reading, the formulation of ideas, the cross-referencing, bibliography and checking back for logical progression. And all the time in the background is the mantra of business guru Steven Covey 'The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing'. There is endless scope for fascinating digressions and if you're not careful you can end up several light years from where you should be!
Coupled with this return to academic activity has been the loss of rowing activity. Having 'persuaded' the Bright-Eyed Boy to have a crack at rowing this summer, I've been accompanying him (and Daughter #3)down to the club up to five mornings per week in an effort to get him up to speed and feeling confident about the whole thing. It seems to have worked and he has progressed from tracer up to a fine(ish) boat, had a go in a quad (where he's held his own quite nicely) and, as of today, a double with another J13.

I've got a real glow from seeing his confidence and satisfaction increase and hopefully he will soon be as competent and confident as his sister who started rowing two years ago. I am, however, feeling distinct withdrawal symptoms both from coxing and coaching the beginners from the riverbank. I'm still trying to get down once midweek and once at the weekend, although the oncoming darker evenings will soon put paid to the former. Actually, Daughter #3 was supposed to be at a regatta in the West Riding today, but it was cancelled due to unfavourable weather conditions: I didn't need much persuading to go and cox the J15 boys. We had a fabulous trip: our river was calm and, accompanied by the coach in a single alongside, we went 6k upriver at a low rating, working on balance with me calling for single strokes, two strokes, five strokes....they just got better and better, and we glid along magically under the willows, silent, balanced....

The Husband, who has also taken up the sport, has had a less happy time. Being 6' 6" tall and 18+ stone (all muscle), it's been a struggle to find a boat he finds comfortable and confident in. Eventually the club decided to rig up a heavier weight one that's been hanging from the rafters for a couple of years. He's been going down as often as humanly possible (and crikey! that's been tricky in the family/dinner stakes!), but it's been a bit frustrating. It's not unknown for coaches to fail to turn up for arranged training sessions which leaves the novices frustrated as they can't go out unsupervised and things are, in general, slightly chaotic although friendly enough. Additionally, everyone keeeps giving him different advice about EVERTHING - even getting in and out of the boat - and generally bewildering him to such an extent that he's came within an ace of chucking it all in. This was crowned the other week when he turned up for a training session, was dispatched DOWNRIVER, along with another novice, by the coach who told them he would 'catch them up in the launch'. Well, he never did! The Husband fell in about 1k from the boathouse, breaking the sax-board of the tracer he was in. He eventually managed to get back in (don't forget, he's a BIG guy), cold and slightly shocked, and made his way through the heavy river traffic, gradually taking on water because of the breached upstand and other boat-wash.

Arriving at the boathouse, the coach had apparently buggered off without even venturing out on the river, leaving the two novices get on with it! Fortunately, I'd just turned up and managed to help him out with the boat and explain what had happened to a club-member whilst he took a warm shower and changed. Not good. I guess, at base what it really needs is someone to volunteer to shoulder the burden of organisation, but as most members work full-time this is not practical.

The sporadic and ever-changing nature and quality of the coaching has been a a bit of a let-down and is a real shame given the truly excellent nature of the junior set-up where the kids can train seven days a week, 363 days per year (if they so desire) and be assured of good, safe, coached rowing whenever the conditions permit.
Which they nearly didn't last Wednesday when I turned up to cox.

The river was really high: the tow path had disappeared and we had to quickly boat up from the steps - seven boats out, one after the other in rapid succesion. We headed upstream accompanied by a coach in a launch. The stream and wind were incredible, and I had all on to steer it through the tricky 'S'-bends one and a half kilometers up. We just had to keep going: any 'easying' was rewarded by the bow swinging round, so we just kept plugging away. Once upriver we spun the boat (pretty rapidly) and headed back down doing pyramids of 10, 20, 30, 40 light and firm strokes, keeping up with another quad who'd also been due to race this weekend. I needed all my concentration to cox, not only steering and calling for adjustments for current and wind, but counting down into the firm pieces whilst keeping a tally of what we'd done/had left to do, and looking out for logs the size of alligators that the river likes to disgorge during its periods of flood. We got back early, unsurprisingly given the speed of the stream, and managed to spin the boat and land at the steps without too much drama.

And do you know what? I found it the most marvellous and relaxing experience: having spent the day wrangling with grammatical features of the hellenistic Greek language, my mind was purged by not being able to think of anything that was going on except the rowing.

Marvellous!

2011-09-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

I just cannot believe how long it's been since I last posted on this blog - nearly six whole months!
I guess life just got in the way....
Things have been moving on apace: my return visit to the practice nurse for a blood pressure check involved her telling me that I had, in fact, lost a stone in weight (wahay!) and that my BP was righting itself quite nicely (Woop woop!).
Spurred on, I resolved to stick with my new regime and, lo and behold, I am now more than two stone lighter than I was in January.
Am I pleased? You betcha!
There was some minor inconvenience as I found myself having to purchase a complete new summer wardrobe (nothing from last year fitted - none of the trousers would stay up) but that was trumped by being able to wear a bikini (yes! a bikini!) without shame on the beach, for the first time in nearly a decade and a half.
I've actually impressed myself with my tenacilty, and to be absolutely honest I just had to put my head down and get on with it. I initially started by swimming everyday, working up from 15 minutes a go for the first few days and working up to sessions of half an hour/forty-five minutes. Into this I added three sessions a week of weight-training, divided into back/biceps, chest/triceps, legs and shoulders. After a few light sessions, I worked up the weights and concentrated on deadlifts, bench-presses and squats, with additional curls and pushdowns for the arms. After Easter I brought in some abs and core and ergo (rowing machine) work and, finding I enjoyed it, fitted in a session every day (40 mins on its own or 20 mins post-weights) and dropped the swimming to a relaxing post-workout role, along with a steam or a sauna.
I did all this by leaving for the gym as soon as the children were on the school bus at 7.30 in the morning, busting my ass, and then making sure I was at my desk working by 9.30 every day.
I daren't think about it too much - I just made it part of the daily routine and found that no matter how tired I was at the start of a session, by the end I was buzzing with endorphins and feeling totally energised and WELL!
So the hard work has indeed paid dividends - I bought (and fitted into) some size 10 super-skinny jeans last week and have no intention of letting this slip.
One of the major motivations was starting to cox the junior rowers in April.....no-one loves a fat coxswain although, as I told the kids in the early days, they should look on me as resistance training, much as athletes occasionally train with a car-tyre chained to their waists. I work on the premise that, having trained with me on board, a race with another junior coxing will be a piece of cake!
Much to my surprise, just before the summer holidays, the Bright-Eyed Boy finally capitulated and agreed to give rowing a go. Actually it was a bit of a stand-off: I told him I was not prepared for him to waste another summer holiday on the XBox and that I wanted him to try it out until the autumn at least. He agreed surprisingly quickly (maybe he'd already been considering changing his mind from his earlier outright refusal) and said that 'Maybe it would be quite fun'.
Well, he hasn't looked back: since his first tentative captive-rope outings in mid-July accompanied by the Husband (I was away at a conference, godddamit!), he has taken to it like a duck to...er...water, progreesing over the holidays into a fine single sculling boat and making a pretty decent quad-crew member, keeping up in the firm pieces with boys a year older than himself.
Proud or what? Even better when I get to cox them...
And now the summer is practically over. Daughter #3 (who has had a pretty happy regatta and rowing season herself) is back to school for a year ten orientation day tomorrow, and the B-E B returns on Monday. So that's it for the daytime training: back to after-school sessions, which will get gradually curtailed by the earlier onset of dark.
I could feel quite melancholy, as is my usual September wont (see previous years' posts), but I have way to much to do. WAY, WAY too much, with the thesis due for submission in March!
But that's a different story.....

Spring is Sprung

2011-03-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

The cherry tree in the back garden is covered in the most beautiful palest pink blossom, a sign that spring has come at last after a February that was grey, dank and dull. The extremely wet weather has caused all the grass of the lawn to be replaced by moss, which the remaining guinea pig Albino Seal-Point Arthur seems quite unimpressed by. Not much to nibble on I guess.
Last week also saw the last of the season's timed head-races, for which we bored and chilled riverbank spectators raise a stifled, but heartfelt, cheer.
Unfortunately, Daughter #3's crew did not acquit themselves terribly well and the rest of the day was spent in grumpy discontent, compounded by her getting the push from her latest (imaginary) rock-band and it being nearly 'that time of the month'. There was a lot of flumping about and dramatic expostulation and a few tears, which the Flame-Haired BF did very well to cope with, given that he, too, is only fourteen.

Regatta season is just round the corner, a far better prospect for all concerned, shorter courses, better weather, visible action, obvious results. She is looking forward to the prospect as she reckons she is more of a short-burst athlete and is gratifyingly taking her training far more seriously since her coach took her to task for her lack of application earlier on in the year.
I am even considering the possibility of offering myself to train as a coxswain, given that I have already lost a stone on my new exercise regime (so wouldn't necessarily get stuck in, or sink a quad) and would love the chance to shout bossily at people in a good cause.

Death and the Guinea Pig.

2011-01-24T04:42:00.000-08:00

(right: Albert in former days)
Despite the fact that there is now some glorious sunshine pouring down from the blue (ish) sky I am definitely feeling a bit low today.
This is largely due to lack of sleep (Daughter #3 had a rowing 'head race' which necessitated a 4.30am wake-up to get us over a hundred miles distant for 8am start) which was compounded last night by being woken with a start at a loud noise (drunkards down the street) and an inability, it seemed, to get back to sleep fully.

Coupled with this, I went out to the guinea-pigs' hutch at bedtime and found Albert, the littlest fellow, inert and cold.
This wasn't totally a surprise: he had been failing gradually since before Christmas. I'd been bringing them both in faithfully every night and ensuring that they both had plenty of fresh greenery in their diet (g-p's, like humans and unlike many other creatures, cannot manufacture their own vitamin 'c') and keeping their quarters spotlessly clean. Alas, to no avail! Sometime whilst we were in Lincolnshire he shuffled off his mortal coil and headed to the Great Clover Patch in the Sky.

As usual, I got quite weepy (I don't even manage to dispose of the deceased goldfish without a snivel) and called upon the Husband to prepare a suitable grave under the back lawn, where so many other Small Creatures lie.
Albert was still reasonable flexible, and his little head lolled over my wrist as I lay him gently in the ground. I had to leave at the moment of inhumation itself to comfort a sobbing Bright-Eyed Boy who had just been made aware of the situation, and to dab my own eyes.
It's very strange but even had Albert still been warm, it was obvious that he was quite dead - there is something that leaves the body at the moment of death that is perceptible even if your were not a believer in the soul. It is a life-force that exits, a vital spark that seems to be more than just the sum of biological processes. The essence of Albert himself had left the building.
Alfred, big, daft, pink-eyed and pinked lipped ('like a woman, m'lord') appeared agitated. When I put him out in the hutch on his own this morning (life must go on, even for guinea pigs) he snuffled about where the body had been laid before retreating to the bed-department, no doubt to have a little weep of his own (anthropomorphism). I shall feed him spinach for his tea to strengthen and sustain him in his loss.

Pigged Out

2011-01-10T08:03:00.000-08:00

Well, tomorrow it's one week of from receiving the hard word from the practice nurse concerning my raised blood pressure.

How is it going, I hear you say?

We-e-e-ll, actually not too bad! I've adopted a far healthier eating pattern: bowl of low fat cereal first thing, 100cal snack mid-morning, lunch consisting of a pitta stuffed with salad and a dessert spoon full of houmous, 2 portions of fruit, mid afternoon cup of tea with low fat/low sugar snack and dinner consisting of two pittas stuffed with salad and a can of healthy eating tuna with some sort of dressing. I'm allowing myself a postage-stamp size portion of any dessert that's going, 2 squares of 85% cocoa-solid chocolate when desperate for a treat, and a regular sized of red wine with my weekend evening dinners. I've taken to power-walking as and when I can (for example, into an out of town, a good 20mins either way), and I've rejoined the gym (at vast expense, but I don't, as I've said before, want to have a stroke), more of which anon.
I'v also purchased a RespErate breathing coaching machine: it's supposed to reduce your BP by encouraging you to breathe more slowly thus causing your heart to slow and your blood vessels to relax. In fact, after the initial session today my BP registered at a very healthy 145/82, a good ten points down on both readings! Most encouraging! It's also recommended for relaxation and stress-relief too, so a bonus there - I'm aiming to do two 15 mins sessions a day.
It's going to be quite tricky to fit everything into my new regime, which includes a number of academic new-year's resolutions, and keep on course with writing up my thesis. Extra organisation will be required to make sure no one project slips, but when it comes to organising I'm as happy as a pig in what's-its-name!

The Weight of the World

2011-01-07T07:12:00.000-08:00

....a a and...you're back in the room!

Re-emerging after the Christmas hiatus, I am pleased to note that it all went a lot better than expected. Silly of me to have been so gloomy and pessimistic, I think: I have decided that it's not Christmas that I dread, but the prospect of Christmas.

The Husband took the week before off work and threw himself into emptying and re-organising the cupboards and replacing worn-out and clarty pans and baking tins . I was so impressed by his dedication and the quite staggeringly rapid improvements that I was enthused enough to down lap-top and join in on a mini pre-Christmas spring clean. The result was a tidy, smear and dust-free house, and with a little bit of co-ordinated effort, it has remained thus, despite the vagaries of wrapping paper, extra stuff everywhere, Christmas dinner and more food and bodies around than usual. I have to say my mood was much improved to see it all so pristine: maybe we really should consider getting someone in for an hour or so each week to maintain the standard once both our noses are firmly back at the grindstone. For morale's sake.
We generally slobbed about a lot over the holiday, eating and drinking, which for me has come to a sudden halt as a visit to the doc confirmed that my blood pressure was still higher than desirable. Two alternatives were unequivocably given: a formal diagnosis of hypertension and tablets thereafter (possibly for the remaider of my natural) or some life-style modifications.
It's a no-brainer really - I know that being sat on my arse all working week in front of a computer screen and eating what and when I like will inevitably end badly. I am pretty lazy by nature and I don't like exercise much, never having found one that I didn't get bored with. Running?: hate it! Boring, boring, boring! And it hurts my dodgy hip. Swimming?: takes too long to dry off - and that smell of chlorine - phew! (also boring). Cycling? Er, no thanks!

Trouble is, there's no way (or time) to fit an hour's power-walk into my daytime routine, so I'm pretty much looking at joining the gym again so I can go and do something in the evening.

It's just got to be done: I'm overweight, and at my age it just ain't going to miraculously disappear. Measures have to be taken, and that invloves (duh!) eating less (and more healthily) and exercising more. End of.
I absolutely don't want to have a stroke/heart attack or get vascular dementia. Nightmare.

The awful thing is, I know exactly how to go about it, exactly what exercises to do (and how long for), exactly what proportion of carbs to protein to fat is optimal. I know because I used to be well-fit (though I say so myself, ahem!), in my thirties pursuing a regime of restrained body-building that made me lean and toned and lighly muscled. I have photos from the year before Daughter #3 was born , but I don't tend to look at them.
The arrival or Daughter #3 and soon after, the Bright-Eyed Boy, changed all that.
As an 'elderly' multigravida mother (the B-E B was born when I was 41) I didn't cope very well with the tiredness and didn't lose the weight I put on during the pregnancies. I did make a couple of attempts to start training again, but lack of time and exhaustion took their toll and I just gave up. Looking back at pictures of me then when the children were small, it would have been relatively easy to get back into shape, but I just lacked the impetus.
Starting on a degree course absorbed any energy I had and meant that I no longer defined myself in purely physical terms (no bad thing really). It gave me a different sort of pride in myself, and as I have always enjoyed food and wine I unconsciously (Ithink) allowed my appetite full rein, eventually becoming rather dismissive of those who spent any time exercising (jealousy?).
Well, I am now reaping the harvest of that lazy gluttony, and it serves me right too.

At the end of the day, it might all be to no avail - my dad has high blood pressure for which he has to take daily medication, so it could be hereditary and I make no impact.
Nontheless, I am going to give it a proper go: eat less, exercise more. Groan!
I have 4-6 weeks to get my BP a bit lower, and I am damn well going to do my best and use the knowledge I have to make a difference.

A Donkey's Christmas

2010-12-17T08:29:00.000-08:00

Well, here it is: Black Friday.
Apparently, this is what today is known as in the hospitality trade as one of the busiest days of the year, when venues are packed to the rafters with drunken carousers on office Christmas 'do's'. The Husband is going to his second one today, and had the ill-grace to complain that he didn't really want to go as 'he had a lot on' and 'could have done with a full day at work and come home at the normal time'. Really? R-E-A-L-L-Y? Not a good thing to say to someone who hasn't had a sniff of a works do for years, nor the prospect of one in the near future. I actually used to really enjoy them - probably because I got on well with most of my colleagues and actually miss that sort of non-complicated work-based relationship, you know the one where you discuss work, life, kids, holidays without the feeling that you have to pursue the friendship any further than those friendly chats at the table, in the pub, or over a desk.

I am not very good at friendship. I am a poor friend. The two close friends I have had died tragically young, one by their own hand during a severe bout of depression, the other of a cancer almost certainly brought on by a rigorous diet of alcohol and cigarettes. I failed both of them near their end - not at all deliberately - but by failing to realise the seriousness of their situations. No empathy, you see?
I'm a pretty poor mother, wife, sister- and daughter-in-law too, if it comes to it.
Nowadays I keep pretty much to myself, but I do occasionally miss having friends.
Actually, I am not totally friendless, having a one-time colleague that I meet on a fairly regular, if sporadic, basis. But our meetings have become much less frequent over the past six months or so largely, I believe, due to pressure of work, but also I think because I am lacks-a-daisical in pursuing friendship. I don't put in the required effort. I don't wish to impose on a hectic life, and I guess that could be construed as remoteness, or lack of caring.

I think I shot myself in the foot a bit on this: They contacted me this week to see if I fancied meeting up for lunch (and it would have been a Christmas lunch of sorts!) but only gave two days notice which, forgive me if I'm wrong, I felt a bit annoyed about. I felt that I was being 'fitted in' and in a tiny fit of self-important pique, I played the 'up-to-my-eyes-in-it' card, which I was...but REALLY! How pathetic!
So - no Christmas meet-ups for me, nor any cards addressed to me in my own right.

So Black Friday it is, and for me it represents the beginning of the White Noise and Shapelessness of the 'festive season'. The children have finished school, and when the Husband rolls in a bit later (neither too late nor drunk, he prides himself on his self-control too much for that!), that'll be it until January 4th when Normal Service resumes. I can feel my sanity spirally rapidly away from me even as I type. Daughter #3 has her boyfriend round: no doubt he will be another regular mouth at the table over the Christmas break, since she seems joined-at-the-hip with him, and has for the past year (he's actually a fine young man, witty and intelligent).
The Bright-Eyed Boy is currently playing on his X-Box, and I envisage even more of the same as the Husband asked the In-Laws for another game for him, and we have one for him too.
I am also exiled from the 'study' where I work on a daily basis during the evenings, weekends and holidays as the 'family computer' is there.
I did set up a 'satellite' study (up in our bedroom), but it all desperately needs dusting and hoovering because housework just isn't being done anywhere in the house at the moment and, really, who wants to sit in one's bedroom during the day?
Additionally, it's north-facing, so rather dismal in the winter months, plus the desk/chair combo gives me fearful back/hip ache.
I keep thinking of things we (don't) need to make the celebrations go with a swing: a nice tablecloth and napkins, crackers, mistletoe, mince pies......and I have a running list to add to and cross off stuff as we go. It seems endless.

I used to have so much more energy for it all than I do now, and I think I must have set a precedent in the past, because I now get asked if we're having mulled wine and baklava on Christmas Eve, or a curry feast with pickles and poppadoms on Boxing Day.
I just can't be bothered to organise any more. I know the Husband would happily do it were I to ask, but why should it be me that instigates, or even thinks to instigate action? Where's the initiative? I do know, by the way, that that is a mealy-mouthed attitude, and all to do 'unknown unknowns', to borrow a phrase from Donald Rumsfeld

In truth, I don't think I did myself any favours by cutting right down on the wine over the past couple of months. Actually, that's not true - I don't get the palpitations or hot flushes half as much nowadays, but mentally I feel much more on edge and tonight I just feel plain gloomy - and not a drop touched! (Nor likely to be either as I am on taxi-duty).
Why do people keep wanting stuff from me?
Why can't they just leave me alone?
If I had my way, I'd curl up in a corner until summer comes.
I know I am becoming more and more isolated as the years go by, but it's just less exhausting that way. Eeyore!

Christmas. Ho ho ho.

2010-12-15T00:16:00.001-08:00

Christmas looms ever larger and this year, more than ever before, I feel ambivalent about the whole thing.
I am, I have finally admitted, a pretty unsocial creature: I enjoy my own company, I enjoy reasearching and writing up my PhD, I enjoy a routine of sorts.
I dislike banale conversation - the sort that erupts as people flap their gums to fill the silence, I dislike the mindlessness of television and I dislike chaos.
That's not to say that I sit here surrounded by pencils in a neat row, or that my books are alphabetically lined up on the shelves. Not at all - my 'study' (ahem!) is a model of lawlessness, but it is my lawlessness. Similarly, the plates that are on the work-top in the kitchen, the breakfast pots, are mine. I am not uncomfortable, because I can lay my hands on any volume I like within moments and I will either use my crumpet-plate for my lunch or stack it in the dishwasher.

I can't cope with mess that isn't mine, and there's a lot of it about at Christmas. But if I were to say that shoes and glasses and crumpled paper strewn about made me feel uncomfortable, I would, quite rightly I suppose,be accused of being uptight and pernickety, and lacking festive spirit.

Through general boredom, I also tend to drink rather too much at Christmas - not get steaming drunk, but generally end up feeling below par and somewhat self-disgusted. Ditto eating.
I feel, once the schools close and the Husband finishes work, that I enter a sort of limbo, and I think a lot of people feel like that. Speaking to others it would appear that the first week of Januaryrepresents a real epiphany (no pun intended) and the refrain, spoken with a sigh of relief, is that indeed it was lovely, but it's nice to get back to normal.
Yea, it is that normality that I miss at Christmas. You see, because I work at home, I guess that I subconsciously feel that the house is my territory, and I resent people camping on, and sullying, my patch (yes, I know, how selfish and crass of me, I know it's their home too and I love them all dearly).
I also dislike intensely the expectation that I am responsible for feeding people ("What's for tea?" "You tell me!"), and am slighly nauseated by the constant munching that accompanies Christmas. I do love eating, but not really at home. I am bored by my food, and by the whole process of shopping/cooking.I resent it immensely. And I hate going into the shops and seeing row upon row of coleslaw, mince pies and Quality Street leering at me.

I am depressed by the whole grubby house/home thing which I can ignore during most of the year, but deprived of any mental stimulation, I tend to notice smeary windows and cobwebby corners and feel intense hatred towards them without any motivation or desire to do anything about it.

So I will end up feeling bored, grumpy, slightly ill and resentful. Not a good combination, and not one conducive to cheery fireside evenings.
Every year I scrabble around in an attempt to preserve my sanity, and this year I have a little side-project lined up: to get to grips with the ideas and works of Galen, the Roman physician.

Whether this will prove to be absorbing and fruitful remains to be seen: what I really need are some totally noise-cancelling head-phones so I can block out the TV, but remain, semi-socially, in the room. I am not hopeful.

A Bit of a Mess

2010-11-17T06:32:00.000-08:00

I have to say at the outset, the Husband does not expect me to 'keep house'. He recognises that washing, cooking, cleaning and child rearing is a joint effort that one contributes to as and when required, and is not the default task of one parent or the other.
It's just as well, because my efforts at 'housework' (and here I'm talking about anything from de-crumbing the kitchen worktop to weeding the flowerbeds and spring-cleaning the attic) have got fewer and more desultory with each passing year. And so have his.
When we first married (fifteen years ago today!) and bought our first house, we had so little in the way of furniture and possessions that maintaining the cleanliness of our austere and minimalist environment took a joint hour every Sunday morning.
As time progressed, and the children arrived, we acquired more 'stuff' and as our careers zigzagged and progressed, time became more and more limited and mere housework got lower and lower on the agenda. Sunday mornings got swallowed up in footie and rowing practice, walking the dog, homework sessions, preparation for the week to come and the hoover and duster (let alone the lawnmower and paintbrush) saw action less and less often.
Usually we have to have an imminent 'visit' to spur us into action, but then we have to shelve a more important activity to fit it in. Having given the house a bit of a blitz, we're generally content to let it go for a few months.
Now, we're not complete slobs....the laundry is still rigorously done (in fact, TOO rigorously....where does it all come from?), the plates, cutlery and pots are blasted in a hot dishwasher every day, and the bogs get bleached as often as required, but the less pressing (to us) tasks like vacuuming up the dog-hairs, or washing the kitchen window-sill with soapy water, or dusting just gets left. Everyone has clean clothes and hot food and is (relatively) ready to go to where they have to go, when they need to....but that's it. the fluff-wads and tea-stains accumulate, not because we don't care - we just don't have the time to address them.

My research is at such a stage that I now sit down at 7.30 in the morning, and often don't stop until the children get home at around 4 - 4.30pm. (No, that's a lie....sometimes I have to stop because my head is buzzing and I have written myself into a stupor).

The Husband disappears off to work at the same time to his highly stressful and unenjoyable job. Come evening time, 6pm, we sit down to a meal (usually some form of pasta bake or casserole - never, ever, complex or time-consuming) and afterwards generally nothing much happens unless the Husband goes to the gym (mercifully he has stopped his relentless rowing regime) or I go to my language night-class. I suppose we could fit some 'housework' in then......yeah right! That ain't EVER gonna happen!

Why blog about this today? Well, as it is our anniversary, the Husband secretly booked a trip to London, where we will go to the British Library, the National Gallery (both his suggestions, bless him!) and to see a classical concert in St Martin-in-the-Fields. Wonderful! I am so looking forward to it! Daughter #2 is coming to stay at ours (c/w the Bouncing Babba) to look after the young 'uns and will sleep in our big bed. OK.....that entailed me having to wash the one remaining decent bed-sheet (currently in use) and finding it has a rip in it. Actually, I knew that, but was ignoring it.

Drove to a nearby shopping mall this morning to look for a cheap bedding set, but they didn't have anything in super-kingsize, and as I needed proof-read and email my latest portion of work off to my supervisor before lunch, I couldn't afford any more time out. I'm fear that I am actually going to have to do some 'mending'!
My lovely In-Laws will be also round tonight to bring us a card and their best wishes (bet they didn't expect us to last, ha!) and I am conscious that, by their standards, the house leaves much to be desired in the cleanliness stakes. My M-i-L is one of the last generation of stay-at-home mothers (actually, she is fairly unusual in her generation too - many of her contemporaries work at least part-time) whose day has been devoted for 40 years to the daily rhythm (grind) of housework and cooking. Her one-time remark to the Husband was that, if a woman was out at work, she was not doing a proper job at home. Quail!
I don't think she quite realises the amount of time I spend on my work (which is mostly produced on the laptop in the front room 'study') and probably wonders (though she is far too polite to say so), given that I am at home all the time, why the house is so filthy. (I've caught her examining my plug-holes and the inside of my kettle, you know....)
By and large I don't care, but I would really like to care less. It seems really unfair that any shortfall in the household cleanliness will probably be down to me somehow, because I'm the woman.

Just because I am, doesn't mean that I have any interest in housework, soft furnishings or the like. I guess I'm not very nurturing. Don't get me wrong, I am capable and caring, but will not be whipping up tempting little snacks, plumping any pillows or bleaching the paintwork.

The Husband once called me unsympathetic, but my response was 'I will sit up all night with you, and dose you with medecine and run you to the hospital if you need me to. I will wash you and feed you and make sure you are comfortable. Just don't expect any snuffling and maudlin noises of empathy. That's not my style. I am not your mother.'

I am not going to look at the overcrowded worktops in the kitchen. Granted it would only take a couple of hours to clear them (and the cupboards bulging with out-of-date dry goods), but it's time I just don't have. Nor, in truth, do I have the inclination. What I would like is a cleaning fairy, and I've told the Husband this. He said he'd rather do it himself than pay someone to come in....but that isn't very likely, seeing as he has even less time (and not much more inclination) for such matters than I do! Impasse.

The house is a cluttered mess.
But it is of our (mostly my) making: the books piled high threaten to take over every surface, but that's the way it currently is.
At the moment, this house is my office, my library, my laboratory, my reasearch my all-consuming passion. Time will come, I suppose, when I'll consider cleaning the windows a profitable and attractive way of passing an empty hour. Or not.
I know when I visit houses that are as mad and cluttered as ours, I feel an overwhelming sense of relief and I hate 'show-homes' where no-one has any of their 'stuff' on show and everything is pristine. What I really dislike is when people act like their homes are really disgustingly dirty when there isn't a smeary window or sticky cupboard front to be seen. I know their game!

However, it would be extremely nice for a change to snuggle down in crisply clean sheets (not prepared by me though!), next to a bedside table that was not covered with fluff-wads and tea-stains. Just don't move the books.
Any offers?

Alone in Paris

2010-11-07T05:49:00.000-08:00

Back from Paris, and contrary to our fears EVERYTHING was working as per normal. In fact so efficiently, that on arrival at the Gare du Nord, we made our way to the metro just as a train arrived, boarded it, made our way to an interim station, changed lines and arrived on the platform just as a train arrived again. Consequently we got to our hotel, in the east of the city, less than thirty minutes after arriving in the capital. The hotel, a Novotel, was functionally fine (although it appeared that the interior designer had previously worked on the set of the Austin Powers movies) and the self-service continental breakfasts were epically satisfying and a good start to the sight-seeing day. The weather was extremely kind to us, save for a torrentially wet start to Saturday that cleared by lunchtime, and walking through the falling leaves of the Tuileries was a delight, as were the chocolats chauds that we availed ourselves of in the various cafes we frequented. I won't bother to detail the itinerary, except to say that the highlights - for me at least - was the lovely autumnal light, the bustling market next to the Montparnasse cemetery, the cemetery itself, the view from the top of the Montparnasse Tower, onion soup near Montmartre, the brilliant white dome of the Sacre Coeur against the azure sky, the Eiffel Tower sparkling on the hour and a (very) quick visit to Shakespeare and Co. bookshop on Rue Bucherie. I could have spent a lot longer looking around this last, but as the Husband and two children were waiting outside, I made it a brief visit.
Too brief, and yet again I feel like I'd been sidelined. Nor did we visit Les Deux Magots or Cafe de Flore (which I'd wanted to do last time we were in Paris, godammit!). Fair enough, I suppose, the guidebook did contain a warning about the prices charged for a cup of coffee in those places. But still - there's a limit to the amount of times I actually want to see the Eiffel Tower or Arc de Triomphe.
Once is quite enough for me - likewise the rather bland civic architecture of places like the Madeleine, or the Pantheon or Les Invalides. Impressive in scale, yes, but not what makes up the real essence of a city. Paris is just SO big that macro-scale sightseeing just doesn't work for me. Everything is so far apart that you either have to metro it across the city, popping up like surprised moles at an adjacent station, or (as we did this time) sit for an inordinate amount of time on the open-topped tour bus and it contended with the Parisian traffic, which takes an age. I'd hoped that we would indulge in a little micro-scale tourism, taking an area and patiently exploring it street by street and getting to know some of the city's character. I'd picked the area near the Luxembourg Gardens, pinpointed a few destinations and interesting novelties, but alas it fell by the wayside. The only thing remaining of that itinerary was Shakespeare and Co. and a curious little Melkite Catholic church (which in truth was rather a let-down) St Julien le Pauvre.

I'd also managed to choose completely the wrong footwear. Having bought a pair of 'proper' walking boots to replace the ones I'd got last year (that never, ever got any comfier despite the saleswoman's assurances), and I thought I'd broken them in sufficiently to take abroad, having walked into town in them a number of times. They certainly didn't rub at all, and we weren't -on account of the open-top bus - doing an unfeasibly large amount of foot-slogging, but by mid afternoon the left boot was feeling agonisingly tight across the top of my foot, and causing it to go into spasms of cramp. I can't understand it, other than reason that the left boot has been made somewhat smaller than the right. The Husband thought it was something to do with the peculiar anatomy of my foot, but as I pointed to him, I've never had this particular problem before - not even with last year's boots which were patently a size smaller than they pretended to be!
The lasting legacy has been a numb side to my left big toe, and I find that my knees, which became increasingly stiff in Paris, have almost now almost entirely seized up, especially the right one.
It's incredibly hard to stand up at the moment - I don't think it's the joint itself, rather the ligament arrangement around it. Support doesn't seem to help and I'm a bit worried about restricting the blood flow. Coupled with a diagnosis a couple of days after we returned (during a routine appointment and on my birthday of all days!) of rather high blood-pressure (probably hereditary) I feel that I am getting old, creeky and about to fall apart at the seams.

Having been delighted about visiting Shakespeare and Co., I was eager to tell of my experiences, but realised there was actually no-one to tell. No-one I know has heard of it, and if you have to tell someone what it is before going into raptures, it kind of removes the pleasure of relating your story. What I really wanted was someone to say 'Oh wow! What was it like?' But no.
Once again I find I am the only person living in my world.

En Vacances en Automne

2010-10-26T07:26:00.000-07:00

Our Autumn city-break looms.
This year I am a wee bit less enthusiastic about going away as our destination is Paris, currently gripped by protests and strikes. Unfortunately, the day we travel has been declared an industrial day of action, so there is the prospect of arriving (DV) in the centre of Paris and being unable to get the metro to our outlying hotel. We chose one well out of the centre for financial reasons: they're so much cheaper than hotels in the city-centre. We also chose one from an international chain as (a) they're one of the only places you can get a reasonably priced family room (the two youngest still being fairly happy to share accommodation with us - we couldn't afford it otherwise) and (b) the buffet breakfast facilities mean that you can stoke up for the day ahead on endless croissants, ham, cheese, jam, cereal, yoghurt and coffee. I've looked at maps and have worked out that it's about 6km from the Gare du Nord to our hotel - not ridiculously far, but far enough to walk at the end of a day of travel, and probably in the dark. There exists also the possibility of a taxi, though I imagine that if the metro is on strike, or running limited services, the taxi queues will be ridiculous.

I don't like having to plan with worst-case scenarios in mind, but this time I just have to.

What if the protests turn to riots (police, tear-gas etc.)? Go in opposite direction immediately.
What if the tourist attractions are shut tight? (I know the Eiffel Tower was last week)
Plan stuff that just needs to be walked through and looked at (Champs Elysees, Montmartre, plenty of churches...).
We will make the most of it, whatever the situation is, and if the worst comes to the worst, we have the trusty credit-card to bail us out.

It's funny the reaction I seem to get when people ask what I'm doing half-term and I reply 'Oh I'm going abroad (to Milan, Barcelona, Rome wherever..)'. I get the strangest 'old-fashioned' looks that rather convey the impression that they think 'It's alright for her!' or 'Hmmmph!'

This really p*sses me off!
All our planning is done on a shoestring, on the internet hunting for cheap fares and accommodation, cashing in the Tesco Clubcard vouchers for Airmiles, buying railcards, saving month by month for our trips throughout the year.

You see, it's a question of priorities: Some folk believe that having a pristine home, furniture and stuff is important to family life. Some folk (like us) prefer to spend carefully set-aside money on broadening their children's minds and horizons which, unfortunately cannot be done by plonking them on a DFS special in front of a 42" plasma travelogue, or dragging them around the local attractions (again).
Daughter #3 and the Bright-Eyed Boy are fairly well-seasoned little travellers by now. The first trip to Rome (about 5 years ago) was done with (our) fingers crossed, but they were both so good, trotting around with their little back-packs on a ne'er uttering a single word of complaint. They seem to love the continental lifestyle and atmosphere as much as we do, and it's a real pleasure and privilege to be able to take them along.

However there seems to be an undercurrent of envious Schadenfreude when I say we're off to Paris - a general smirking that things might not run smoothly and maybe we shouldn't bother going.

Nonsense! Say I: We will not be put off! We shall prepare for the worst, and expect the BEST - as always.

And when we get back, I'll show you our photos...and you can show us yours.....he he he!

Thank Goodness It's Monday!

2010-10-04T02:44:00.000-07:00

Although I am generally a fairly upbeat person, the sheer grind of day to day living occasionally gets to me, and it generally gets to me over the weekend. When it gets to Friday evening, I feel a tangible sense of relief that Saturday and Sunday lie ahead - we open a bottle of wine, dine late, watch a film and relax. Saturday morning, croissants and black coffee over the paper and a general sense of well-being: I read the recipes in the magazine and vaguely make plans to cook something tasty or go into town and browse the bookshops.....but soon thereafter the good mood begins to slip a bit. I think the problem is that there is so much routine maintenance to do: the Bright-Eyed Boy needs transporting to and from his football practice, Daughter #3 tends to go rowing and returns home boyfriend in tow to take root on the front-room sofa for the rest of the day, so no-one can really access the house-computer because they are watching some teen-drama reruns on iPlayer. Daughter #2 often texts to try and lure me into town with her so she has some company, and sometimes I capitulate.
There are generally a couple of massive washes to do - all the school uniform, sports kit and the Husband's work clothes find their way into the laundry basket overnight and require immediate attention if they are to be returned clean to their owners for the following week. A deal of time is taken in putting it in, and extracting it from, the machine, hanging it up, then taking it to the tumble dryer later on, and finally folding it to avoid creasing. Not to mention the redistribution and putting away.
The Dog requires walking too.
Saturday lunchtime, and if I haven't managed to get out, my good mood has curdled somewhat and I don't feel inclined to cook anymore..
The B-E-B returns home hungry and generally a bit cranky ('hangry' = hungry + angry) if he hasn't been picked to play in the team match the following day, turns on the telly and stations himself in front of either sport or endless repeats of the bloody Simpsons.
The Husband either goes to the gym or opens up his laptop to tackle the workload that threatens to swamp him or turn him mad. The day slides into evening and I get uneasy that I haven't done anything worthwhile. I can't really do any of my academic work without isolating myself at the bedroom workstation that I set up last year - and who wants to sit up in their bedroom on a Saturday afternoon? I can't read anywhere - I need silence to prevent getting distracted during the tricky bits and the constant hum of the telly, and music of different genres coming from the front room, plus the constant trotting up and down stairs that goes on is not conducive to study in the least!
Tea usually consists of pizza, and after a couple of accompanying glasses of wine, I am slumped, fretting at where the day has gone.
Sunday morning: generally up early for either football, rowing or Mass - if I can persuade anyone to go (an increasingly difficult task nowadays, I'm afraid). If the weather is good I will make the effort to walk into town for a coffee when the shops open at eleven, returning home shortly after lunchtime.
Thereafter, there is a noticable decline in the household mood: the Husband and I set about the tasks that need performing before Monday morning; shopping for packed lunch ingredients, ironing (taken in turns), preparing dinner for as many people as are present, persuading the children to do their homework....and before long evening has fallen and we're sitting down to Sunday dinner, usually consisting of a large home-made pasta bake or a roast dinner if it's winter time. I do manage to stir myself to do that. The puddings are a major and much-treasured feature - the Husband actually enjoys trying out pudding recipes and has had a number of triumphs in this department (especially in the bread-and-butter pudding department - his chocolate and rum version is awesome!). I encourage this. It's frankly one of the best bits of the week.
After dinner, a pause while we find out what homework is still outstanding, hard-boil eggs for pack-ups, transport Daughter #3's boyfriend home, lay out school uniforms and pack schoolbags for the following day. By nine o'clock it's all done, but so is the weekend! All done and gone!

And then comes Monday, the work and school week lies before us and we look longingly towards Friday night and its promise of scant rest and respite.
But secretly, I love it when peace and quiet returns to the house. The Dog gets an early walk, then I go over to the shop and buy a single pain au raisin, put on a pot of espresso and turn on Radio 4. I review my emails, a couple of blogs and the news headlines then exchanging the radio for a CD of subdued classical music, I settle down to read or write for the rest of the day, keeping an eye on the clock until its time for the wanderers to return.
I am put in mind the scrap of a poem by the poet Sappho, written about 600BC where she addresses the evening star ('Hesperus') who brings home all the things that dawn has scattered 'the sheep, the goat, the child to its mother'. Thank God it does!

Flick the Switch

2010-09-27T02:03:00.000-07:00

I am very reluctant to turn the heating on.
In my head, summer is only just over, so no way am I going to cave in and turn it on.

However, back in reality, it was still firmly dark at half past six this morning.
It's grey. It's miserable. The washing is hanging up on drying racks in the bathroom nowadays (the sun's angle is so now low that the back garden sees only a sliver of it on a good day) and unfortunately stays damp and starts to smell a bit funny after a couple of days. Not good.

Sitting at my computer in the front room, I'm a bit chilly and have goose-pimples on my arms.
Sometimes I wrap myself in a big lambswool shawl, but that looks a bit mad, especially as I can be seen clearly from the pavement. The room itself is south facing and gets whatever light there is. The days are long gone when I had to move my laptop and books into the north facing dining room to stop overheating and sit with the french windows open for the breeze - it's dark and gloomy in there today.

So I guess I'm going to go and turn it on and let everything heat up a bit.

It's admitting that summer's gone.
But there you go.

Do Not Stand at My Grave and Weep

2010-09-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

Went to visit my old friend's grave today. I haven't been back since she was buried fifteen months ago. I was pleased to see that there was a lovely headstone, engraved with a kingfisher (her favourite bird, the sight of which once persuaded her in the depths of despair away from the river), a loving dedication and the full text of Mary Elizabeth Frye's poem 'Do not stand at my grave and weep, I am not there, I do not sleep....'

The sun was shining, a gentle wind was blowing small clouds across the sky.

I am not ashamed to say I did just that.

R.I.P. my dearest friend....

Ouch! Why Sometimes We Should Ask Questions....

2010-09-15T03:42:00.001-07:00

I have just returned from the dentist, having had a small filling replaced. The side of my mouth is numb: it was my choice to have an injection, not having the highest pain threshold in the world - the dentist thought that the discomfort of the injection would probably be greater than that of the drilling, but it wasn't really uncomfortable at all.

Over the years I have had a variegated relationship with the dental profession.
I had a feeling that the dental treatment I had in my youth was largely unneccessary, and this was indeed confirmed when I asked some questions a year or so ago. Puzzled by the fact that my own children's teeth were filling-free, and that when I was young my access to sweet stuff and fizzy drinks was even more restricted than theirs, I wondered aloud why I had a mouth full of ugly amalgam fillings when as a child/teenager I was regularly seen by our dentist.

Apparently - my very honest lady dental sugeon tod me - it's all to do with how dentists were paid in the sixties and seventies - they received money for work done: a tooth left unfilled was lost revenue, so my probably sound teeth were drilled into to get them cash.
If I spent a lot of time thinking about this I could get really mad: I have been exploited for money - not exactly maimed, but needlessly 'treated', filled with mercury.
I don't have (except for my incisors) one unfilled tooth in my head and, of course, fillings don't last for ever so I am a docile cash-cow that is obliged to drop in for 'milking' every so often.
The Husband's mouth is an even more extreme case: at least my fillings are discrete and I can floss around them. He has what I believe was referred to as the 'Australian trench' method of filling, whereby adjacent teeth were drilled and a slab of filling laid between the two, with no attempt to conform it to the individual tooth. He too, like me, has to go to the surgery regularly to have crumbly bits shored up and replaced. Thank goodness for the National Health Service!
My M-i-L's teeth are, and always have been I believe, in pretty poor condition, but for some strange reason she has opted to have her treatment done privately. I'm not sure if it's a good idea - she has spent hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds over the past few years on extensive treatment that doesn't seem to have benefitted her one bit. But of course, a private patient is another, far more bountiful, sort of cash-cow. Tell them they'll need some complicated stuff done and they'll mildly cough up.

A colleague of the Husband's, who had not been to the dentist for a few years needed, to re-register with the NHS to get treatment for an aching tooth. He decided in the interim to go private because of the discomfort, and was told that he needed the tooth extracting, a post inserted into the jaw and a porcelain cap fitted for £600. Coincidently, he found himself, almost immediately after, registered with an NHS practice and (horrified) popped along for a second opinion. He emerged from his 20 minute appointment having had a clean, descale and a small filling. He was charged £46.

Order Returns

2010-09-14T00:56:00.000-07:00

I am feeling a great deal more cheerful now. Yesterday (Monday) was a far less stressful day, despite the Bright-Eyed Boy forgetting his packed lunch, panicking, and me having to drive over to the school to drop it off. I made Daughter #3's orthodontist appointment as soon as they were open and that left the rest of the day to devote to academic progress. I did a few symbolic things: Hoovered the floor in the 'study' (the parakeet and the children tend to make a mess), damp-dusted the desk, tidied away the loose papers into box files, put on some Julian Bream classical guitar music, made a good strong pot of espresso and sat down to work. And my! Did it feel good!
The weather was appalling: totally grey with continuous fine rain. The garden looks like a tropical rain forest, like looking into a green box - the vine has gone crazy (no sign of grapes whatsoever) drip, drip, dripping rain onto the patio furniture that we have used maybe twice this 'summer'.

Inside I felt snug and smug, and ready to write.
I spent all day on my thesis - until the B-E-B came home at half four - then spent another half-hour listening to a programme on the life and forthcoming beatification of John Henry Newman.

By dinner time yesterday evening I was calm and restored to my more usual sanguine frame of mind.
All that had been needed to restore order - it seemed - was some time for myself.
It's NOT selfish, because everyone else around me benefits. I even managed to cook dinner without too much dark muttering and wished the Husband a good training session at the gym when he departed at 8pm (not to return until 10!).
And today is more of the same. I feel the wrinkles being ironed out of my soul by the rhythm of work: for me calmness and mental wellbeing comes from gentle routine. I often think that I would be suited to a life in holy orders, except I'm not sure that I would like living in close proximity with strangers. Maybe an anchoress? But then I would miss company occasionally - even now I sometimes have to trot of into town to grab a latte and read in a coffee shop - I don't require interaction, I would be truly annoyed if someone tried to engage me in conversation - just the presence of other human beings.
Maybe a cenobitic order, where the residents spend much of the day alone in contemplation or work but then come together to dine?
But I am wandering . I need my family as much as they seem to need me. The last really bad dream I had was asort of inner locution which asked 'when do you know that your children have truly grown up?' The answer that came - and thinking of it even now I can feel tears welling up - was 'when the last soft toy is packed away'. Fortunately the B-E-B's room is decorated and draped with an assortment of toy monkeys, and even Daughter #3 still has two of her cuddly dog collection on her shelf (under the glowering gazes of 'Slipknot' and 'Bullet for My Valentine'), and one 'Ugly Doll' (ChukkaNukka, I believe) to cuddle in bed! Thank goodness!

Over-ridden!

2010-09-13T01:18:00.000-07:00

Well, the children are back at school, and the Bright-Eyed Boy has made the existential leap from junior to senior school with only the most minor of hiccups (slight panic over the PE kit, forgotten pack-up boxes or exercise books). We sit back feeling slightly smug.
I am trying very hard to get back into full academic mode after a summer of generally slacking off and reading pulp-fiction (see another of my blogs more books than sense) and not doing much in the way of intellectual stimulation. It's actually proving rather difficult, as I seem to have lost the thread of my thesis and spend some time scratching my head wondering what precisely I am trying to prove, and how am I going to go about it. I keep postponing getting really pitched in, convincing myself that a trip to the library is required (not really!), that a trip to town is neccessary (not at all!!), that I need to start a new blog (which I have and it's called I wish I was a better Catholic....hardly neccessary but something I felt I've wanted - nay, needed to do to prod my wilting faith). Even this post is by way of procrastination and deferral, convincing myself that it helps limber up the writing facility - which, actually, it does.
I'v got a couple of weeks to put down a couple of thousand words, so I'm feeling fairly optimistic about meeting the deadline, except I've noticed that stuff keeps getting in the way.
Daughter #3's fixed-brace has been fitted and has been the source of much discomfort to her. Not only that but the wires keep coming out of the little bracketty things and try as we might, the Husband and I just can't see to get them back in. In the two weeks that the damn things have been fitted, she has been back twice for minor repairs, which neccessitates her taking time out of school to walk to the orthodontist and back again. This week I can't factor it in as (ironically) I have to go to the dentist for a filling, which obviously carves a slice out of the working day.
The weekends seem to be a continuous stream of activity: the B-E Boy has football practice on Saturday mornings and Daughter #3 often goes rowing. It's the back end of the regatta season so two weeks on the trot, there are regattas to factor in, plus a foorball match for the Boy (if he gets picked, which sadly, is becoming less and less often, much to his upset). Daughter #2 has decided that she will entertain no other baby-sitter for the Bouncing Bubba, so I had to watch him on Friday afternoon while she popped to the doc's, and again on Saturday night when she and the Son-In-Law went out to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. They all arrived chez nous rather early, just as we were just starting tea. Daughter #1 had just turned up from London (via Leeds) and was keen to discuss her ever-more complicated life. We'd only just got back from a tiring day getting soaked on the banks of the River Aire.
Unfortunately, the B-B decided to start grizzling as soon as his parents trotted off, so I was sitting there feeling totally frazzled, nursing him as he squirmed and moaned, and trying to converse matters of the heart (not simple) over a crescendo of 'mummymummymummydaddymummmy' and wondering whether I'd ever get any peace.

Somehow - and it may have been the extra glass of red wine - I woke up the next day feeling very, very sorry for myself indeed. I'd spent much of the previous week encouraging, servicing and minding....and the prospect for Sunday was pretty much more of the same: ensuring homework is done, laundry, feeding kids, keeping an eye on amorous teenagers....
And do you know, I'd had enough!
The National Antiquarian Bookfair had been at the racecourse from Friday 12 noon to Saturday 5pm. I'd been really keen to go - I love old books and a colleague of mine had told me it was a good opportunity to see some outstanding stuff: the postcard advert had been on my desk a while. But what with the child-minding and regatta attendance, I never got the chance. It felt so unfair - I'd been bending over backwards to accommodate other people and felt I'd been trampled underfoot without so much as a thought - the one thing I had wanted to do, for myself, - a once a year opportunity - had come and gone. I lapsed into self-pitying tears and wailed that I felt like some sort of facilitation-bot. the Husband sprang out of bed in consternation and said that if he'd known, he would have taken the girl to the regatta and I could have gone to the fair. But, as I pointed out to him, that would have made me look like a prize twat. It's a sad fact that not only do you have to do the parenting bit, but you're supposed to look like you're enjoying it too!
I just feel somewhat down at the moment. I work as hard as I can on this thesis (present half-hour excepted) and it brings in as much money (thanks to my funding) as a pretty well-paid part-time job. I also do most of the laundry, washing and cooking (because I'm here on site, so to speak, and it would be curmudgeonly not to) and act as chief child-co-ordinator, motivator, and PA. But what I do seems to counted as 'just what Mum does' and can be interrupted ad libitem to bring in lost jumpers, arrange dental appointments, taxi and baby-sit. Not only that, but any notion of time-out is never rears its head.
The Husband has embarked on a training schedule to prepare him once again for the indoor rowing championships (fair enough), but that means many weekday evenings he is absent. If he's not at the gym, he's quite often away on site visits and home late.

I think the Husband was quite shocked, although he knows that I am a reluctant parent and don't thrive on a pure diet of parenting duties. He's far better at kenosis than I am, but then he's only had to deal with the childhood of two of the children. I spent the rest of the day feeling quite wretched, upset, distant and a bit mad. I don't deal well with stress. The only effect it had was the Husband was walking on eggshells, making eyes at the children and mouthing words like 'Your Mum's a bit upset', without saying why exactly that was the case. So now the children think that I'm some sort of nutter that gets wound up and tearful over nothing.
No, it's not nothing! I feel like I am being ridden over rough-shod and the riders are looking behind at my mangled psyche tell each other that Mother's not looking too good! I wonder why?

Ouch! The Difficulty of Trusting

2010-08-17T03:44:00.000-07:00

I've been suffering from exhaustion since our return from holiday, as has the Husband. So much so that we'd been wondering if we'd picked up some sort of virus that has made us incapable of staying awake much later than nine pm! Probably not though: I think in fact that wonderful as our vacation was, it was in no way restful, and that we succumbed to the temptation to fit too much in. So the price for that is a bone-deep weariness that refuses to budge.

It's been (and promises to continue being) a weird sort of week. Daughter #3 has had two of the four teeth removed in preparation for the application of the 'train-track' braces that will allegedly correct her rather eccentric dentition. She doesn't look like she has an 'overcrowded' mouth, but we are assured by the orthodontist that a few years down the line, if uncorrected, she will suffer from more teeth than mouth. But he would say that, wouldn't he? It's in his financial interests that children come to him to have their teeth straightened and aligned. Although he seems a reasonable and honest practitioner, every child under his care represents a big fat pay-check from the National Health Service (even more so, if we'd gone to him under his private incarnation). And there seems to be an element of fashion involved: almost every child in my daughter's year appears to sport a mouthful of metal. Braces were around when I was a young teenager, and indeed I wore them for a couple of years, but they were the sort fitted to a plate by our family dentist, rather than as the result of a drawn-out referral process.

So yesterday I had to sit and watch my child be...well....mutilated in the questionable quest for regularity. And it was horrible (though she was uncomplainingly and unflinchingly brave - bless her!) to see two perfectly white and healthy teeth being levered out of her jaw.....and the same will happen again this coming Friday. My toes were curling inside my shoes: it seemed so....wrong, and I seriously questioned why we were putting her through this ordeal.

But sometimes you have to defer to someone who knows better than you, even if you can't see the immediate need. If you put yourself in the hands of experts, you have to trust that they have gained expertise that is superior to your gut-feeling, or else there is no point in committing yourself to their care.

A similar situation has arisen with the Husband's sat-nav, which has me rolling my eyes. He decided that it would be a good idea to buy one as he often has to negotiate his way to distant offices and sites and is, by his own admission, not the best navigator, particularly when driving.

So a sat-nav seemed like a sensible option, and was bought, and installed. We decided to try it out on our way to the airport, but as soon as it gave my Husband an unexpected direction (turning off the motorway too soon), he had me looking at the road-map questioning the route it was taking us on. I told him what I thought was going on (two sides of a triangle rather than one) and he decided to press on until he thought he should turn off. And lo and behold! By remaining on what the Husband thought was the correct route we ran into road-works (that the sat-nav 'knew' about throught its live update facility) that lengthened our journey by more time than if we'd obediently trusted that sat-nav was right.

Have faith. Sometimes we aren't the experts we imagine we are!

Back Home

2010-08-12T05:52:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting in the living room looking out at rain of monsoon proportions, beating against the windows.

It seems scarcely believable that at this time last week we were sitting in a taverna on the slopes of Mount Ipsarion on the Aegean island of Thassos, dining on the local Greek specialities ('fried pies', feta-stuffed courgette flowers, and cheesy garlicy mushrooms), looking across the shimmering, sun-blasted, rocky hillside. We did try to walk the path up the mountain, but the sun was just far too hot and before long sweat was literally pouring down our backs. Unwilling to risk either sun or heat-stroke we returned to the jeep, and took a joyous and breezy downhill ride back to our apartment where we splashed gratefully into the clear sea, not 50m from our front door.

So once again the family summer holiday recedes into the rolodex of memory, leaving a miscellany of impressions, sensations and atmospheres.

We had an absolutely wonderful time - probably the most enjoyable holiday yet. We'd booked it independently in the January of this year, the Husband diligently researching suitable apartments on the island and finding a gem on the outskirts of the main town Limenas.

We arrived via a flight from Manchester to Kavala, a taxi-ride to the port of Keramoti, and a 35 minute ferry-ride across the narrow strait to the pine-clad island that rises straight out of the sea to the summit of Ipsarion some 1800m high. Our landlord was waiting for us and carried us and our bags to our holiday home. We were more than impressed. The property was newish, immaculately clean, air-conditioned (essential) with a balcony that overlooked the sea.

Having settled in and unpacked we made our weary way into town, but as we'd been up since 3am that morning, we scarcely managed to make it further than a proximate vine-covered taverna, where we gratefully sat and watched the sun going down whilst drinking a big glass of ice-cold Mythos beer.

I'd actually forgotten how huge the portions of food generally are in Greece, so we somewhat overestimated what we'd be able to manage to eat and started to struggle mid-main course. We were exhausted too, and stumbled early to our beds along a little beachside path that passed a tiny chapel (St Basil's?) where the oil-lamps burned all night in front of the icons. Its door remained unlocked at all times too, and the faithful could help themselves to candles to light under the 'candle canopy' in the front porch. The unselfconscious piety of the Greek people is moving - it was a source of wonder to me when we once stayed on another Greek island that the many little roadside shrines twinkled in the darkness, the elderly women who tended them (and it seemed to be only women) ensuring that the icon-lamps were kindled at dusk.

It would be pointless recounting our every activity during the week. We spent time on lovely beaches and in tiny coves, sitting in the shade in a bar on the old trireme harbour eating homemade bread and dips, driving up into the mountains (in the rackety old open top 4-wheel drive that we'd hired from a most accommodating and genial local company), exploring churches, monasteries, villages and the many neglected ancient ruins that lay strewn carelessly along the roadsides. We ate (and ate and ate), sometimes breakfasting on yoghurt and honey on the balcony, sometimes paddling down to the very local taverna for strong coffee and hard-boiled eggs, at other times exploring the menus and wine-lists until we'd reached total satiation. The food is so very cheap that even our most expensive meal (which came with complementary watermelon and coffee) complete with beer, wine, soft drinks and water, came in at half the price of an average meal in Sardinia.

We had forgotten how much we loved Greece. We love Greece, and when we returned home it was with a real sense of nostalgia for the holiday week, an aching longing to return and enjoy this vibrant and generous country.

But now I'm looking out on a rainy, tangled, green garden and wishing instead it was an olive tree studded shoreline against a turquoise sea....

Holidays for Good or Bad

2010-07-27T05:29:00.000-07:00

The weather is strangely oppressive, with its lowering, uniformly grey skies from which the occasional drops of water randomly fall because, I suppose, the humidity gets to 100%.

We're into the school holidays now, as witnessed by the groups of children being shepherded around the city centre by
a) determinedly jolly dads, intent on the family having a jolly educational time (they'll probably return - much relieved - to work after a week or two),

b) tight-lipped mothers for whom this enforced jollyhood precedes a further month or so of desperate child-minding, and
c) bewildered grandparents (usually grandmothers), dismayed that they have been dumped on (from a great height!) by working parents with no paid child-care in place.

I witnessed an excellent combination of a) & b) today in Caffe Nero, where the Bright-Eyed Boy and I were enjoying a lazy coffee and newspapers experience, Daughter #3 having signed up to a week's-worth of rock-music day-schools (where she is having an 'awesome' time apparently).

An aforementioned mother, on entering the coffee-shop, immediately slumped into the nearest comfy chair and assumed an expression of blank-eyed despair. Jolly Father seemed intent on letting everyone around know what a fantastically Jolly Dad he was by addressing his two young-ish children in an over-loud 'public' voice and explaining to them why they couldn't fill themselves with chocolate, buns and coke 'Because, you see Callum, too much sugar is bad for you and you might feel sick, and then and then we couldn't go to the Viking Museum.' No-one was particularly impressed, least of all the mother who passed her hand over her eyes and looked as if she wished the whole bunch of them would disappear in a puff of smoke and leave her with a nice big gin and tonic. Or am I projecting?

Summer holidays, as I am only too well aware, start off - like the Road to Hell - with good intentions:
We won't get cross, or irritated, or bored.
We will maintain a cheerful and upbeat dialogue with our offspring, regardless of their response (or lack of it).
We will not cave in to demands for any sort of stuff.
Food will be simple and nutricious and non-negotiable in either timing or content.
We will simply ignore bickering and wind-ups.
Entertainment will be cheap, and worthwhile. No DVDs, computer or console games.
We will arrange fun and creative play-dates with similar-minded friends and their children.

Like hell we will!

Children can spot a weakness at a hundred yards, can organise a concerted attack that saps not only morale and determination, but ensures that after the first holiday week that the days are running according to their own specific agenda. All bets are off as they loll in front of the telly snuffling their way through Twix wrappers, Fanta and Wotsits before leaving a trail of cheesy dust over your laptop keyboard because they're arguing over whose turn it is on Mousebreaker and you can't stand the noise. And certainly not the prospect of anyone else's brats either!

Been there, done that, washed the damned teeshirt!

I am so glad that my two youngest have got to the age of comfortable, mutual accommodation, can generally get on well, can take turns, are reasonably grateful, polite and sort-of helpful. SO VERY GLAD!

I used to absolutely dread the school holidays (as this blog has probably previously revealed), but we actually seem to have turned some sort of corner over the past couple of years and their increasing independence and maturity is a boon and a blessing. We jog along nicely - they understand that each member of the family (and not just them!) NEEDS their own space and time, that mum isn't a wish-granting automaton, that money is finite, and that eating your cake precludes still having it. If only the dog was so perspicacious!

Soon we are flying to Greece for a family week of exploring by jeep, swimming and sunbathing in off-the-beaten-track coves,, chilling out, eating and drinking in the local tavernas. And do you know, I am really and truly looking forward to it! We deserve this break - we really do. It's been a hard-working year for all of us: it's definitely time to kick off those shoes and relax, drink wine (or Coke) and watch the sun go down over the harbour.

The Last Day at Junior School

2010-07-23T03:31:00.000-07:00

It is the Bright-Eyed Boy's last day of junior school today, and I am besieged by a lot of different emotions.

Sorrow - he is the last of my children, and his passage to senior school signals pretty much the end of his childhood and the intimate ties that have bound us for the last eleven years.

Joy - that he has had such a happy start to his scholastic career (even with the minor wobble when he had his anxiety attacks last autumn) in a caring and supportive environment and is blossoming into a lovely fellow.

Relief - that the monotony of the school-run (through a less than salubrious neighbourhood) has finally ended, and we no longer have to negotiate sullen dead-eyed youths and feral dogs on the walk to school.

Nostalgia - that in a few months time I will be remembering the school nativity plays, parents' evenings and trips out in a golden haze - I am doing that even now!

Anxiety - that he won't find the transition to 'big school' the adventure he currently imagines it to be and becomes unhappy.

Trepidation - now that I have two extra hours tacked onto either end of my working day, will I acquit myself of my academic duties, or am I (as I suspect) a complete lightweight.

Worry - that he won't be able to manage to crosss the roads safely, tie shoe-laces, catch the bus home etc.

Fondness - for all the others parents who I've been seeing on and off for the past seven years, and for some of whom this is also the last day at the school gate.

Life goes so quickly - too quickly - and I am reminded of the feeling I get when I return from holiday, that I could have enjoyed it all so much better if I'd put in a bit more effort, concentrated on enjoying the moment rather than looking aheat to what was next on the schedule.
I feel that way about their childhood. I was always so selfishly caught up in how difficult I found it to be a mother that I often wished it away, wished they were older, more independent. I never took into account how difficult it must be to negotiate the business of growing up. The little things were left unnoticed, swept away in my haste to get it all over with, to move on. I look at the childish cartoons on the fridge, the old school photos, the discarded toys and heartily wish -oh wish so much! - I could re-run the last thirteen years (since Daughter #3 was born) and do it all again but BETTER. Do it for them, not me! Regret is a terrible, heart-churning thing!

I shall try my hardest to be a better mum to them as they get older - God knows, they deserve it. They are great children and I am so proud of them and love them all so much. I have been given a great gift in my family, and it behoves me to treat it like the jewel it is.

Milandering About

2010-06-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

Milan was an absolute revelation! Completely unlike anywhere we've been before. It's a real working city that keeps its treasures quietly to itself unlike say, Rome or Venice, which have their wares conspicuously on display around every corner. You have to WORK at Milan, rifling through the side streets and the guidebook to unearth delights which reveal themselves unexpectedly, like the cool green courtyards glimpsed from the outside of four-square, hulking buildings. Milan is turned in on itself, but in a good way, and we loved it! The Duomo square is, of course, spectacular and the Galleria Vittore Emmanuel II fascinating in its unashamed slavery to image and expense, but the things we enjoyed were a little further off the beaten track: the Navighlie area, Bohemian bars with lavish buffet snacks looking out onto the canals (yes! Milan has canals); the darting, wheeling house-martins around the 4th century basilica of San Lorenzo alle Colonne; the jasmine hedges that lined the streets near our hotel; the pasticcerie with their displays of tarts, cannoli and barquetini.

We did make it up to Lake Maggiore: the weather improved rapidly throughout the morning of day two, so we hoofed it to the station and found ourselves on the 12.43 Domodosula (sp?) train and disembarked at Stresa. It had got hot, so we were content to stroll along the panoramic promenade taking in the (only slightly misty) mountain and lake views, stopping for a cold beer and paddling in the icy waters. After arriving back in the centre of Milan in the early evening, we had a minor restaurant crisis. This involved seating ourselves in an interesting looking place near the canals (recommended in the guidebook!) asked for the menu over our aperitives and found....NOTHING we fancied eating!
The evening before we had gone to a lovely restaurant and sitting in the vine-hung courtyard, eaten local specialities such as osso buco and risotto Milanese (made with saffron, totally delicious). This canal-side restaurant seemed to have had...shall we say an 'Experimental Chef'. Finding that there was nothing that the children would even contemplate (and they are good, hearty eaters) we made our excuses and sidled out after settling the drinks bill. By this time we were really hungry as we'd last had a sandwich on the train up to the lake many hours ago. It's never good trying to decide on where to eat when you're tired and hungry, plus the restaurants were fewer and further between than in Rome. We ended up walking a couple of miles to one that the Husband had read a favourable review of in the 'cheapies' section of our book, but we were SO glad we did! Named L'Oca Giuliva (The Happy Goose) it was an homage to all things goose-like. Small, with dark wood cabinets housing the desserts (typically Italian), cosy tables, goose figurines and images everywhere, and a most attentive maitre d' who seemed to come from another era in his long white apron and neat moustache. The food was gorgeous, none too expensive, and the wine copious and intoxicating. We must have spent sufficient as the waiter brought us a digestivo on the house before we wove our way, via the metro, to our hotel. Alas, it was over far too soon! But we decided there and then that we most definitely WOULD be returning to Milan before too long.

An Impostor in Milan

2010-05-25T08:03:00.000-07:00

May is racing by: next week will be half term again! Our lives seem to be measured in these six-week increments, dollops of time. I have been so busy on my PhD stuff recently, having undergone the 'upgrade' panel ( a not-too-painful grilling on my programme and the whole process in general) and delivered my first-ever seminar paper. As usual, I veer between elation that I am actually doing doctoral studies (and getting paid for it!) and extreme pessimism about my chances of completion. I feel sure that I'll be unmasked as an intellectual fraud sooner or later, but recently someone drew my attention to the psychological condition known as 'impostor syndrome' the symptoms of which sound eerily familiar. I am obviously mad. Bwahahaha!!!

Daughter #2 has creaked past her quarter century and we celebrated with a lovely Italian meal on one of the hottest days this month. Sitting outside, under sun canopies quaffing rossofreddo and working our way through the 'taster' menu, we agreed that it was a most civilised way to proceed. Later on we continued by finishing off a bottle of prosecco and some Lavazza coffee ice cream while the husband and Bright-Eyed Boy broiled at a football tournament near Hull.

Daughter #3 became a teenager a couple of days later, which was marked by the arrival of a new electric bass guitar (black and sparkly) which now occupies pride of place in the front room.

Her regattas continue on a pretty regular basis and we're now finding the entry fees and the petrol used in getting to them a pretty major expense. Never mind the early starts and whole days devoted to just standing around on river banks! Hey ho!

We're going to Milan soon, which I've been unable to get excited about - I've just been too damn busy - a fact noted by the Husband who remarked tartly on my apparent lack of enthusiasm. it's not that I'm NOT looking forward to it: I will, on the day when I'm setting off toward the airport. I don't really think Milan has a big enough historical centre to warrant more than an outline itinerary (the Parents tell me it's just one long street, really), and we're only there for one full day, plus two halves either side. The Husband is keen on taking the train up to the mountains, which would be lovely, but I'm against booking it in advance in case the weather isn't favourable for that sort of trip (low cloudbase), or there turns out to be more than enough to keep us occupied in the city itself. I am totally, totally uninterested in the Milan fashion scene/shops so that means a lot of Milan's popular appeal is wasted on me. Let's see what it's like: it's not Rome, or Venice, or Florence, or Barcelona, as I keep pointing out - it's Milan: let's take it as we find it.

G-g-g-golden Years

2010-05-08T08:10:00.000-07:00

Daughter #3 is twelve years old, going on thirteen. A clever, quick- witted girl, very into her guitar, social-networking and rowing, part of a circle of interesting, quirky friends - including a 'boyfriend'. She's busy, independent, mature and reflective. In short, she is nothing like I was at twelve.
I can't really even remember being twelve: I have no idea what I was like, or what I liked. My memories of that time are sparse. I can remember (just about) being in the second year at 'big' school, and some of my teachers, but I can't remember what I thought about my life. I can't remember what I did at weekends. I don't remember meeting friends and hanging out, nor playing, although I can remember clearly the great times I had a couple of years earlier aged eight or nine,with a gang of friends, roaming about beech woods, throwing bamboo spears and making dens, before we had to move up north. Those earlier days have assumed a golden haze of nostalgia: it was a totally safe environment where we were permitted to wander within the extensive college grounds from dawn till dusk, the little enclave of staff-houses provided a ready made circle of friends and other homes to play in. In bed at night I could hear the owls hooting and the foxes shriek. My parents didn't bother me (or bother about me) too much and, I guess, I didn't bother them.
In moving north, our lives altered radically. My parents moved from spacious staff accomodation to their first mortgaged property. The house was new-build, a bungalow, small with plasterboard walls, at the end of a cul-de-sac, adjacent what was called in those days, 'council houses'. We were now under each others' feet. I was confined, and thus under constant scrutiny.
I no longer roamed on my bike - I knew no-one in the area anyway. My parents spent a lot of time getting the house and garden to their liking. We spent a lot of time in garden centres at the weekend. I started at a new school for the last two years of juniors and made a couple of friends who lived in surrounding villages. I only really saw them at school - my mother didn't drive, and my father worked long hours in a career he relished.
I think I spent a lot of time reading and drawing: I can't really remember. My bedroom, which had been tastefully decorated without any consultation with me was seen as part of the house in general and it didn't feel like mine. It was no sanctuary from the world, not like my untidy old two-windowed first-floor room that overlooked the length of the garden and onto rolling cowslip fields and copses.
I think I was pretty depressed at twelve, actually feeling that the best part of my life was already over, all freedom and friendships gone. All around me seemed dull, boring, sterile, pointless. I can remember meticulously copying a Leonardo drawing one day and then distinctly thinking 'what is the point of this?'

I can't even remember what books I read, although I do remember that my father ferried my mother and I down to the library every Monday night. I can recall its smell, a unique disinfectant/floor polish smell and the child-unfriendly demeanour and hauteur of the white-haired chief librarian to whom we gave the nick-name 'Snowdrop'.
Did I enjoy school? I think so, although my chief delight was to invent imaginary histories for the oldest pupils, who we considered awfully sophisticated, rather than any true interaction.
How on earth did I spend my time? I can't have spent it all in solitude, surely? But in truth I cannot recall any play-dates, or proper trips out. I have no photographs of myself at that age - I forfeited all rights to that sort of thing when I stormed out of the house at eighteen, never to return. In fact, my memories of my entire teenage years are sporadic and patchy at best. I can recall an odd scene from a holiday, or secretly applying make-up in the public toilets, or walking up the farm-track with the dog, but I think that in the main my life was just so dull that I failed to archive it for future reference!

So what will Daughter #3 remember of her early teenage years? I've always thought that the most important thing I can do for my children is to supply them with a repository of good memories, of good times had, great places visited, nice food eaten, fun. It was a good moment when she said to me on her return from rowing on the river one brilliant sunny day, that she'd gone up river in a single-scull and paused to look around her at the willowy banks and listen to the wind sighing and the birds twittering ".....and I thought,'this is what I really enjoy!'"
And I knew at that moment that I was maybe, just maybe, getting it right.

Vines and Tonsils

2010-04-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

The Easter school break is dragging on for another week. There is absolutely no need for it: Easter sunday was over a week ago - we have celebrated accordingly, and now it is really time to get back to our daily routines. And teachers bemoan their lot!

Actually, Daughter #3, having competed in a race on the River Weaver near Runcorn in Cheshire, has gone down with a very nasty bout of tonsillitis. In fact, she was so poorly yesterday (Sunday) that I took her to the walk-in NHS clinic where we waited for nearly two hours, only to be told that she had a viral variant of the disease that would not benefit from antibiotics. When we emerged, the lovely sunny day had dissolved into a cool and blowy grey one. We had spent the best part of the day surrounded by the city's drug users who seemed to have all run out of their prescriptions at once!

The Husband is back at work today, mute with misery and apprehensive of a thankless day of stress and chaos. he seems to be missing his spring dose of foreign travel and, to that end, has been browsing the budget airlines for cheap fares and trawling Europe for city-break destinations. Valencia seems promising, but there is a dearth of reviews upon which he likes to base his decisions. By the time he decides we're going, I imagine the cheap flights will have been snapped up. Still, half the fun comes from the planning, and I'd be quite happy to go back to Rome again, or Barcelona, or Venice, or anywhere....
Because the girl was poorly, we failed to make it for the intimate meal we'd promised ourselves (no-one wants to look after a germy kid, nor would we expect them to) or have a fun day out on our last day together. We ended up spending the day pruning the grapevine back severely and spending a good couple of hours chopping the branches up into small enough lengths to fit in the green wheelie bin (they didn't all go in). I kept thinking of the passage in John's Gospel 'I am the true vine and my father is the vine-dresser: every branch that beareth not fruit in me he taketh away, and every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth that it might bear more fruit.' Well, if that's anything to go by, it'll be bearing grapes a-plenty! Still, it's done now and the whole area is a lot lighter and airier, as is next-door's garden, which fell into its shadow. It's one of my pleasures to sit under the vine in the summer and read, with a glass of wine to hand (not from our fruit, unfortunately), something I hope to do into extreme old age.

Easter

2010-04-01T01:35:00.000-07:00

We are heading into the Easter weekend, which I think is a lovely time of year. The daffodils are blooming, the blossom on the cherry and on the pear tree is about to come out, the little garden birds are picking up whisps of dry grass for nesting and the sky is a deep blue with wind-whipped, scudding white clouds. In fact, today is extremely chilly too, and the weather forecast suggests that snow may be a possibility in the very near future. The Bright-Eyed Boy certainly felt the lack of a hat on his walk to school today!

I am relishing the thought of a few days rest and relaxation: I've been working pretty hard on my thesis and although I don't seem to be making conspicuous progress (ie the word count is growing slowly), I feel deep down that I am getting somewhere with it. There's still so much to do, and I have a German assignment to complete, but I intend to take some time off studying. It seems to be dominating my every thought and move at the moment, and I am constantly aware that I am carrying around a mental list of things that need to be done and books that need to be read. I feel infused by the whole project, which is something that I simultaneously both enjoy and resent.

The Husband is thoroughly looking forward to a week off work - his job is so stressful and busy that a few days respite should return him to sanity - at least temporarily! He's decided to join the gym again which is a good sign: recently he has seemed too exhausted to motivate himself to do anything other than work and sleep. We shall have to make some time for leisurely meals and family trips out. I really want to go and see the forthcoming 3D version of Clash of the Titans, it reminds me of my childhood favourite Jason and the Argonauts, which largely formed my interest in Classics and the ancient world. Daughter #3 has a rowing competition this weekend which takes place a couple of hours distant. We shall load up the Dog and take her too, as a good walk by the river will blow the cobwebs out of her whiskers. When the sun was shining last Saturday, the Dog took herself out into the garden and lay down in the only small patch of sunny grass, just under the pear tree. Roll on the summer when she can lay full-length and sunbathe until she gets so hot that she has to move, panting, into the shade.

Online Perusal

2010-03-25T10:13:00.000-07:00

Since my ruthless spring-clean-out of blogs I am pleased to say that I am squandering far less time online perusing the self-congratulatory bum-licking that persists in academic blogs of a Certain Persuasion. Also less time on blogs that just serve up dull lists of who's reviewed what. And much less time reading the mad ravings of bitter nobodies with teeny-tiny-teensie points to make that, frankly, no-one gives a fish's tit about. Ah! That's better! I can't say I've missed any of the ones that I've deleted.
But I do miss having something to read over my mid-morning coffee, and although I have had a look at a couple of news sites, I'd really like to find a blog that has something new to say of interest on a regular basis. A lot of bloggers seem to start off with good intentions and then, I guess, the novelty wears off or the pressure of work diverts them. Or maybe they run out of things to say. A couple I discovered haven't had any posts for months and are going to go in the second-wave of blog-culls soon.

The Times Literary Supplement is always good browsing, and the articles are sufficiently long to take up an entire coffee break. Having said that I don't think I'll be stumping up cash if The Times presses ahead with plan to charge for reading their online editions. The TLS writing's usually pretty high-quality too, which one might expect from people who....well, write for a living. The down-side of this is that most reviews end with book details, which makes me jump immediately onto Amazon, and then of course I have to look at my recommendations, and before long I've made an inadvisable purchase. If I'm honest, books are coming in faster than I can read them, a problem addressed in one of my other blogs
hypatia-morebooksthansense.blogspot.com ( in truth - just a dull list of books)
but if I'm honest, even that doesn't reveal the full horror of my morbid bibliophilia. I'm lucky in that my doctoral bursary covers the book bills, but some of the stuff I can't really justify. Actually, having said that I bought Neil Gaiman's American Gods on the strength of just having read up on the bicameral mind theory. Good justification, eh?

Still, all good things come to an end, as will my funding eventually and I'll be left, scratching and babbling vacantly, sitting on a midden of books. Even the husband, tolerant to the nth degree, looked around in a rather irritated fashion the other day and noted the colossal number of books scattered about. And this after he'd built two full-height, full-wall bookshelves to accommodate my stuff a couple of years ago. A lot of the volumes could go, the Classics text books in particular(but NOT my Loeb Classical Texts!), but I am loath to sell them at the risible prices they would command. I suppose I could donate them to my old university library, but it looks like the Classics department there is going to be run-down in the 'Ratnerisation' of the Russell Group and in favour of something less elitist like nail therapy or welding theory. So I'm going to hang onto them, even if it means boxing them up for storage in the attic. Maybe I could become an Amazon subsidiary seller.....but that means I'd be on Amazon even more, so any money I made would be ploughed back immediately into the Behemoth That Sunk Borders and is currently hammering nails into the coffin of many independent book shops. *shakes fist* Damn you, Amazon! Why do you always have to have the stock in at such reasonable prices!!! Just add the thrill of a package plopping through the letter-box and you've got me, quivering, in your thrall.....

Another Bite of the Poisoned Apple

2010-03-11T08:51:00.000-08:00

There seems to be - coincidental to my last post, which was largely based on an article in last Saturday's Guardian newspaper - a whole rash of items on 'feminism'.

The series Women, aired on BBC4 during the week, rounded up all the old-school (70's) womens' libbers and grilled them about what the feminist movement had ultimately achieved. I think that to a man (so to speak) that they were underwhelmed, to say the least. It was a bit of a shock to see them looking rather elderly, particularly as they are only slightly older than myself (Germaine Greer was sporting a shawl arrangement similar to the one that I myself don if a little chilly) and I remember their firmer - and, I have to say, somewhat more optimistic - features smiling out from the books that I once devoured so eagerly.

In the same vein, a riffle through the online TLS also revealed a review of a book by Natasha Walker entitled Living Dolls which explores the emerging New Sexism that purveys pink fluffiness to young girls and encourages them to base their sense of self-worth on their looks and, rather more sinisterly, makes sexual allure a necessary component. This Lolita complex is the 'poisoned apple' that is being handed to young girls today as an acceptable image of self.

Walker quite correctly identifies the virulent poison of advertising that promotes a feeling of permanent dissatisfaction, a dissatisfaction that, of course, can only be corrected by the purchase of the advertiser's product. This sense of looks-based anxiety and lowered self-esteem impacts not only on their mental well-being but also their intellectual life. A girl who is constantly checking out her looks and her notional rivals in the 'hotness' stakes is doomed to do poorly, not least because she is not giving her studies full attention! Added to this is the annoying tendency manifest amongst many teenage students to regard enthusiasm for learning as 'uncool' (this drives a couple of my colleagues to distraction: bright and promising girls shooting themselves academically in the foot for want of application) and you have a recipe for a generation of female under-achievers.

I think that this is now apparent enough that there are vestigial stirrings of discomfort amongst women who formerly considered that a fondness for glittery nail-varnish and killer heels would not have a negative impact on how they were perceived. Definitely time for a rethink.

Whilst girls are given the message that looks trump brains, or that looks (largely a matter of luck) equal achievement we are doing them no favours whatsoever.

It's not the message that I give my daughters, either explicitly by encouraging clothes-shopping or crass magazines, or implicitly by fretting over my appearance or wardrobe.

I hope I encourage them (and the Bright-Eyed Boy too, of course) to develop as people, citizens of the world, and to critically engage with those around them, judging each on their merits - not the way they look.

The Poisoned Apple

2010-03-07T08:52:00.000-08:00

I've never really been one for '-isms', considering them mostly to be strait jackets to broader thinking, but one that I might have considered subscribing to in its heyday is feminism. The raw, angry politicised approach that blossomed in the 70s achieved much in terms of equality of pay and rights and it seemed for a while that things were set fair for steadily continuous improvement over the coming decades. True, there were spectacularly silly aberrations, the refusal to use the words 'women' because it contained the word 'men', or 'history' for a similarly ridiculous reason, the deliberately strident, irritable and unappealing tendency to see any man as 'the enemy' because they happened to be male, a prickly hostility and lack of humour that betrayed lack of confidence.......just silliness, really, that undermined a lot of good work and was seized upon gleefully by anti-feminists. Still, it all seemed to even out in the end, the millennium turned and things were pretty looking good.

Then something happened. Women wobbled and took their eye of the feminism 'ball', and many seemed to metamorphose or become re-absorbed by the cult of femininity. I believe that the tide turned with an overconfidence in the power of irony.

The domestic goddess emerged: women who had the nous and intelligence to know better, re-invented themselves as 'ironic' retro-bakers, apparently happy to surrender themselves to floral-aproned afternoons, coated in butter icing and producing 'wicked' chocolate fudge cakes and madeleines for the gasping, swooning delectation of their audience. With a knowing wink, of course.

The pneumatic slut appeared: clad in insufficient cloth to keep a hamster decent, waxed, tanned, hair straightened and extended, they teeter in 'killer heels' from wine bar to wine bar getting more and more incoherently vociferous, groping and propositiong men in a horrendously insulting (and frankly, dangerous) copy of what they imagine to be 'laddish' behaviour, swearing and vomiting, because...well, 'we're up for a laugh aren't we, and why not?' With a knowing wink.

The gym bunny appeared: not a million miles from the pneumatic slut, equally waxed and tanned, but also toned and trim and teetotal, worshipping their bodies as temples, eyeing up the calories, carbs and salt, religiously devoted to three days of cardio, three days of weights and stretching. They can be seen in health-club changing rooms all over England, unsmilingly moisturising their taut exfoliated limbs. No knowing wink there though, it's a very serious business (and actually, not much irony either).

No doubt if questioned all would nod vigorously at the notion that they are indeed - oh yes! - liberated ladies: the fascinated obsession with their looks and the renewed fetishisation of the attributes of femininity is because they love to make 'indulgent treats', they enjoy casual sex 'as much as men do' (honest!), they want to 'take care' of themselves. The hyper-feminine behaviour that has emerged over the past decade is viewed from within certain female ranks as both ironic and self-originating. It's funny because, well, we're not really like that are we? Are we?

But strip away the unsustainable and invisible (because it isn't obvious to the observer) veneer of 'irony' and you are left with good old, fifties-style female caricatures. Cooking mummy; harlot woman; the ice goddess. Ooo-er missus! Look at her lovely buns!

Just consider for a moment the familiar images lined up on womens' magazine shelves for the appraisal of the impressionable; Nigella Lawson, Katie Price, Victoria Beckham to name a few. The clothing styles in a lot of shops; Kath Kidston, shoes that would make Chinese foot-binding an easy option, Playboy clothing for the pre-pubescent. The women that succumb to the images flashed at them by marketers have compounded and willingly tied themselves to the crass stereotyping that used to hold sway before feminism got its act together, women reduced to an existence as comforter, facilitator, sex-accessory and ornament.

For God's sake, what messages are being passed on to young girls on the brink of womanhood today?

That today it's cool to be a mahoganied, depillated, vamped-up cooker of buns, a mindless zombie subjugated to the kitchen, boudoir and the treadmill? Women, no longer using their energy to think and act, but to prink prettily, mesmerised by shiny things and subborned by time-consuming vanity; domestic bower-birds laying out their wares for consumption; silly geese, entranced and paralysed by their own self-imagined reflection in the mirror. Vacuity. This is what they should aspire to?

Ominously, this indeed seems to be presented as a viable proposition. By who? Other women? [Come on girls, we all love shoes and chardonnay and lippy don't we? Wink, wink.]

Or by men, oblivious to the ironic overlay, saying 'See? This is what women are really like after all......What we thought they were in the first place'.

How can girls behave in an intelligently female way when all they see around them are parodies of womanhood, as rooted in reality as the pantomime dame? Where are the good role models, women who have rejected stereotyping - the thinkers, the reformers, the activists, the fighters, the writers, the academics, the politicians, the astute, the editors, the pioneering, the brave? Their presence must be made more apparent!

It's difficult to bring up girls as people when all they see around them are hyper-feminised, hyper-sexualised golem, brought to life and sustained by the fickle breath of celebrity.

Restless in the Sunshine

2010-03-01T01:40:00.000-08:00

I am feeling particularly restless today which can, for the most part, be put down to the weather. The sun is shining in a clear, pale blue sky and there is not a trace of the horrendous snow/rain/fog that has dogged us since before Christmas. It's picking out the smeary Dog nose-prints on the windows (where she stands on the back of the old sofa with her nose pressed to the glass awaiting our return) but I've also noticed that there are bulbs poking through the soil and every thing feels.....full of potential.

I've also reached a natural break in my chapter and don't feel (today at least) like striking out in a new mental direction, so I am going to wait until the post is delivered - I'm expecting a copy of The Travels of John Mandeville from the Book Depository - and then take a trip into town to find a suitable coffee shop to sit and read it.

I am a great fan of coffee shops, and enjoy the sense of pseudo-community that they engender. This has been late coming to British shores and really has only arisen since the appearance of Starbucks, Nero and Costa on the high street. When I was doing my OU studies, I used to go to the Cafe Nero in the centre of town when smoking was still allowed upstairs. the ambiance was slightly bohemian and it was not unusual to see people jotting in notebooks or working on papers. When smoking became a no-no, there was not much to keep me going there - it was a bit grotty really, so I decamped to the Starbucks situated upstairs in the large (now defunct) Borders store, and that became my regular haunt. This was slightly more upmarket: men in suits held informal meetings there and smart ladies with laptops availed themselves of the free wi-fi. I got to know the staff reasonably well and quite often preferred to work there, amidst people, rather than at home alone. When I travelled to Leeds University on the train, my penchant for arriving early meant that I could call in at the Nero en route, and one of my most enduring memories of this time is the day when I'd gone extra-extra-early (it was exam time and I was paranoid about being late) and watched the morning sun gradually turn the building opposite white-gold as I sat entranced, latte and croissant to hand, my revision notes laid out in front of me.

Since the demise of Borders and its Starbucks, a new Nero has opened and has recently become the place where, if I feel the need of caffeine, I end up. I can never understand women who won't go for a cup of coffee on their own. I was surprised by a survey done recently (by Woman's Hour, I think) that revealed just how many women feel uncomfortable on their own in public, which seems to me a shocking indictment of their autonomy. Why would you NOT go for a cup of coffee if you wanted one? Why would being on your own make you feel awkward? Are you so self-obsessed that you imagine that you are constantly being scrutinised, or judged as lonely or on the pull? Oh, get over it! I actively enjoy having the time to myself, to sit down, read, people-watch, eavesdrop...it's one of life's pleasures. And one I think that I am going to indulge in later, I think.

House of Cards

2010-02-23T01:28:00.000-08:00

My poor old mother has lost the ability to sleep. A lingering chest infection over the Christmas period, the remorselessly grim weather and grief at losing her only sibling have combined to rob her of this most basic faculty. My Mum is not generally a moaner, being (as I have noted before) from a generation far more stoical and emotionally buttoned-up than the present one. She is blessed(?) with a vivid inner mental life which, when all is going well, is an asset but without an outlet has a tendency to toxic introversion, lying awake in the dark and dwelling on matters, or over-analysing conversations.

All the things that usually cheer her up, getting out and about, walking the dogs and gardening have been severely curtailed by the permanently icy ground, of which she is understandably wary. She has been on a very restricted round of activities, now rendered almost intolerable in their predictability, all with my Dad in tow. Although they generally get on well enough, being in such close quarters 24/7 has caused a great deal of friction, particularly as he insists on an almost military approach to life and won't countenance any sort of deviation. This entails breakfast, lunch and tea on time, but he would never consider lifting a finger to help.

To be quite honest, it is partly my mother's fault for putting up with this ridiculous situation for so long. The old-school bargain 'I'll be the breadwinner, you take care of the home' is fine up to a point, and that point is retirement. Then all roles should be reconsidered.

I think that they were probably happiest just before my father retired: Dad was immersed in a career he loved and Mum, who had learned to drive late in life, came into a small inheritance which allowed her (without having to ask permission) to buy a small car of her own. She happily pottered about, guiding at a local NT property, shopping on her own and visiting friends, or even me, when she felt like doing so. When my father retired she lost this autonomy in a matter of weeks, and her car became their 'standby' car which she drove less and less until she ceased driving at all.

I really couldn't believe the way that she relinquished this small measure of independence apparently without struggle -it was so hard won, she had passed her driving test at the seventh attempt - but when I quietly took her to one side and queried the wisdom of giving up her freedom, she said she'd basically done it for a quiet life. 'Your father' she said 'can be difficult and very petty' but wouldn't discuss the matter further.

Poor Mum. She painted herself into a very miserable corner, and there now seems very little prospect of escape.

I have absolutely no doubt that she is, unsurprisingly, grieving and depressed. Fortunately, she seems also to recognise this may be the case and has made an appointment with her GP. I hope that she will get a sympathetic hearing and some pharmaceutical help at least in the short term. But in this lies another problem: for many years both my parents airily implied that people with depressive tendencies are lacking some sort of moral fibre or 'intestinal fortitude'. My father, cornering me for 'a quiet word' intimates that he considers my mother's current problem as 'all in her head' and that she has brought it on herself by morbid thinking. Which, even if partially true, doesn't make it any the less real or distressing for her.

Once again I am brought back to face the problem of the contracting life and expectations of old-age.
By and large, my parents have been an extremely good example of keeping going, although they have recently started to manifest signs of slowing down and being less adventurous. The last thing they need at this stage is to perceive one or the other as 'ill' in any way, as I believe that this will bring all their plans grinding to a halt and, like Mum's abandonment of driving, that will be it. Timid old age, fearful of harm.
One the other hand, being 'ill' might actually be a way for my mother to abrogate her role of housekeeper and second fiddle. Perhaps she subconsciously realises this, but I don't think so - she prides herself on her ability to 'keep house'. However, she manages to simultaneously resent the burden of expectation that it puts upon her and dismiss as 'lazy' people who -actually - don't allow themselves to be used in such a manner.

Peoples' happiness seems to be very much like a precarious house of cards - as long as everything is in place all is well: but one puff of the wind of adversity and the whole edifice comes tumbling down around their ears. Its stability rests largely on good luck and an endless amount of minor recalibration.
Roll on the good weather!

Beware of the Leaven....

2010-02-18T02:10:00.000-08:00

Half-term - that which universities euphemistically term 'reading week' - has once again holed the work schedule beneath the water line. The SS Good Intentions is slowing slipping under the waves of lassitude, with all hands shrugging their shoulders and the captain picking her nose vacantly at the helm.

Well, it's maybe not quite that bad: although I've not churned out that many words this week, I've nailed a number of very satisfying references in the original Greek or Latin. This has proved quite a task, quite akin to detective work and has necessitated a few leaps of imagination and pretty inspired guesswork (though I say so myself). It's also something that I can do whilst nominally tending to other things i.e. the children, so I don't feel too guilty on either the work or the parenting count. What I really should be doing at the moment is writing up a piece of lit.app. on Gunter Grass for my German reading skills class which, whilst not being compulsory to my studies, seems to be taking up an inordinate amount of time. I've translated the poem and all I need to do is string together a few observations backed up by textual evidence. Yawn.

Lent having started, I've decided that I'll try to be a bit more committed to the whole process this year. Things started badly last year as Ash Wednesday coincided with one of my day-long trips down to university and I was unable to make any of the Impositions of Ashes. So having been sealed yesterday with a sooty blob on the forehead, I feel that I have made a 'proper' start. No more wine or chocolate for the next forty days, and an attempt to be kinder and a bit less judgmental.

The first two (wine and chocolate) will torment me for the first week or so but, when determined, I can usually stick to this sort of regimen. To be quite honest, my wine consumption was getting a bit out-of-hand, and chocolate is an indulgence that is predicated on boredom. The second two (kindness and being non-judgmental) will not come easy at all. I am supremely intolerant and have a tendency to form initial opinions based on nothing more than gut-reaction. Not good. And I've noticed that I'm getting worse as I'm getting older so, not wishing to end up a bitter and friendless burden, I'm going to try and knock it on the head, using Lent as a kick-start.

I've also gone through my blog list and deleted a large number of blogs that have become increasingly stale - purging the old leaven, if you like. Many of them speak with such staggering arrogance and hostility about their fellow man that I am amazed that they have the gall to trumpet their Christian affiliations, yet they do, and trumpet it as the sure and correct framework for life and religion. They're gone, so their hatefulness can't spread in my direction any more.

Kindness is a much underrated virtue in the modern world. I don't mean the sentimental treacly sort of self-congratulatory kindness that would, say, put money in a charity box or help an old lady across the road, but a more wholistic appreciation for another person's feelings.

Empathy rather than sympathy. The latter is an 'external' sort of thing that allows for less involvement with the recipient, the former requires a great deal more effort to put oneself in their place (it's all to do with the Greek prefixes, but I won't bore you) and internalise their feelings. It's something that I am signally not very good at (not surprising given my childhood, but that's no excuse) and have noted with alarm the small pains inflicted on (mostly) my family with what I thought were smart and witty observations or ripostes, but in fact were unkindnesses and failures of imagination on my own smug part.

It's going to take some serious governing back -having modelled most of my adult conversational skills on either Oscar Wilde or, more worryingly, Dorothy Parker - but I'm going to give it a good go. Charity, in this case the good leaven of loving-kindness, really must start at home.

Engagement as Strategy

2010-02-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

Following on from yesterday's post on the projected increase in dementia sufferers over the next few decades came a very interesting Horizon programme called (ironically) 'Don't Grow Old'. The thrust of the programme seemed to be that, although certain strategies could assist longevity (calorie restriction is one I that I shuddered at, looking at the joyless existence of its practitioners), it ultimately came down to a combination of good genes and attitude. Good genes - that is a hereditary predisposition to live to a good old age - is something that will continue to be a matter of luck until the precise suspects are identified and utilised in gene therapy.
It's no surprise that people who are happier live longer, but that in itself is a bit of a circular argument in that it is easier to be cheerful and upbeat if you don't have to live in pain or with any other sort of physical, mental or psychological burden. Good health, as noted before is mostly a matter of genetic good fortune, ergo happiness is inextricably linked to a good genetic hand.
Interestingly enough, researchers noted that there was a section of the very elderly population (i.e. healthy centenarians) who defied the received wisdom on not smoking, drinking or eating 'naughty foods'. Despite being told of the horrors that lie in wait for those foolish to enjoy a pack of Capstan full-strength a day, brandy in your mug of tea or butter on everything, they looked a picture of sanguine lucidity, positively relishing their daily treats and with no intention of relinquishing them.

A third and very important factor seemed to be that of expectation: people who saw themselves as being old pretty much fulfilled their own expectations. In an bold experiment, a featured gerontologist removed the carers from some conspicuously doddery old men and made them live for a week in an environment where they were made to fend for themselves. They had strict instructions to live just as they had done a couple of decades previously, and to that end were provided with props that reminded them of that earlier time. Amazingly enough, at the end of the week, all the men who had taken part had improved in physical, mental and psychological strength. Their attitude had changed from expecting help and a disinclination to push themselves to a far more positive 'can-do' state. Their balance, co-ordination and alertness had improved dramatically, they had put on weight and even looked younger and were mostly unwilling to return to their former dependent state. It seemed to be not only a real case of 'if you don't want to lose it use it' but 'if you want, you can get it back again' which is most encouraging!

I look at my parents who, in their eighties, are very active and completely independent and see a positive model of old age. My father is still bright as a button and is fascinated by politics (I swear Prime Minister's question time can't start without him!) and my mother acts as a voluntary guide in a civic trust property and has a voracious interest in history (she is currently 'doing' the Crusades). They get plenty of exercise with their dogs, plan holidays and diversions and generally have a tremendous appetite for life.

However, my husband's parents (in their sixties) seem to be slipping almost gratefully into old age. Having got her bus-pass on the dot of sixty, my m-i-l declared that 'was now old'. Their curtains are drawn tight shut by dusk and the doors bolted. They never go away on holiday preferring day trips (always to the coast, 40 miles away, on the train as my f-i-l prefers not to drive) and their world is regulated by mealtimes (always 'home for tea') and grocery shopping. They have no hobbies, no pets and no outside interests and, as far as I can tell, read only the local newspaper, being politically and intellectually disengaged. They are lovely, kind people, but I fear that their old age (which they have already welcomed with opened arms) will be long and increasingly dull and, with their lack of mental stimuli, I am not a little concerned at the prospect of them being affected by dementia.

I myself am not particularly bothered by the thought of old age: I am not particularly vain, so I don't mourn excessively the fading of my looks as some women (and indeed men) do. I would certainly never any countenance cosmetic 'procedure' more extreme than buying a new mascara. Having abandoned the gym as boring, my interests are now such that they can be carried into extreme old age (as long as I can still see - I would consider surgery to ensure this): in fact many Bible scholars are very long-lived. I am a bit on the heavy side, but can still run when I need to, and it is a medically counter-intuitive fact that women live longer if they are mildly overweight (query: protects against osteoporosis which finishes off many a skinny old bird). I enjoy a glass of wine, bar of chocolate and the occasional Gitanes or cigar and I have no intention of giving any of these things up.

The Husband's main hobby (competitive indoor rowing) however, relies on him being in tip-top physical condition, which he has to work very hard at during his four sessions a week at the gym. He has always prided himself on his physique and to this end spends an additional few hours lifting weights. He used to play the piano (beautifully), but this became sidelined in his quest for peak fitness. This complete somatisation plus the unhelpful paradigm of his parents is, to say the least, a bit worrying. If you perceive yourself a mainly a body which, even with the best genetic hand will indubitably wither and age, your old age not only be devoid of the focus of your younger years, but will also be tainted with nostalgia and regret that the best has gone.

An ability to see old age as just another phase rather than a full-stop to the life that has gone before, and a handful of interests seem to be vital in ensuring a 'good' old age.

Engagement - yes, that's what it is - a willingness to engage, and be engaged by life.

The Shadow of Old Age

2010-02-03T06:02:00.000-08:00

The reasearch published today jointly by the London school of Economics and the Institute of Psychiatry telling us that, by 2051, more than 1.7 million people in the UK will be suffering from dementia should really come as no surprise to anyone, least of all the medical profession.

The exponential development of ever more effective pharmaceuticals over the last seventy-five years or so has meant that people no longer die from simple diseases. Which is good in one way- no one really wants to die from something that is easily treatable - but the flip side of this advance is that the only things left to die from are the Big Nasties; cancer, heart disease, stroke and degenerative illnesses. What a delightful prospect.

People are living longer and mental degeneration is part of the territory, and one that is greatly feared. Quite right too. I would far rather die at an earlier age from, say flu, than be cured, only to spend my old age wandering and widdling to the disgust and exasperation of the children and grandchildren.

And there is the continuing debate over assisted suicide.....

The government both want us to live longer, hence the constant nagging about cigarettes, alcohol units, 5-a-day fruit and veg, yadda yadda, so we can keep bringing in the cash to the treasury until we retire in our seventies (or whatever the latest figure is), and don't want us to live longer, as the the hand-wringing over the increasingly elderly placing an ever-greater burden on social, financial and medical resources shows.

My solution: stop giving out antibiotics to patients over fifty (that includes me - I'd happily take my chances). That'll cut down on the old buggers cluttering up the place.

Index-Linked

2010-02-02T08:33:00.000-08:00

One of the most difficult things about doing a PhD, I think, is marshalling information. There is just so much of it. I was becoming slightly concerned about becoming lost in a sea of words and wondering why it was like wrestling a jelly, when it occurred to me that my first chapter (now nearly complete) is, even as it stands, more words than my entire undergraduate dissertation and a third of the length of my MA thesis. Then I didn't feel quite so bad about it! There is a lot of info to handle and I think it behoves one to get a grip of it in the early stages. As my supervisor said to me "It's rather difficult to organise oneself retrospectively".
One of my main problems is the uniformity of digital information. I am a big fan of notebooks and my most important vade mecum is my large Moleskine soft-back academic diary. It's a wonderful, familiar, tactile object. In here I write all my meetings, references, quotes and ideas. Listening to the radio the other day, I was intrigued to hear my views backed up completely: a woman talking of her devotion to writing stuff down long-hand echoed my sentiment that she could picture in a jotter where she'd committed stuff to writing, visualising the side of the page used, the colour of pen and even the position on the page. Me too, I thought!

And that is the problem I have with digital information: it all looks the same!

When I download a PDF and mark it up or highlight text, I have an image in my head of both the marking up and content. This simply doesn't happen, even when using Adobe's finest editing tools. True, the computer stuff is neater, but it is so anodyne and I haven't had any physical interaction with the text, which appears to be necessary in my case if I am to remember it.

I am also a somewhat creeped out by the fact that digital words no longer 'exist' once they're gone from the screen. Why that should worry me, I just don't know.
I had a bit of an epiphany when I read an article (in the Times, I think) about a guy who was learning Russian and had, at the behest of his tutor, started to use index cards as aides memoires for conjugations and vocabulary, and carried them about with him. I largely abandoned the idea of index cards after my undergrad years, when my work became more diverse than just language, but I am seriously thinking of reviving their use in my studies. There's something about the act of writing that opens pathways in the brain, certainly in my brain, that is not replicated by using a keyboard or mouse.

Sure, I would not even attempt writing my thesis out long-hand - thank God for cut and paste!

I love my computer for being a portal to the world, and I think my smart phone is great, but give me a pen and paper for the stuff that I really want to remember.

Parallel Lives

2010-01-31T04:22:00.000-08:00

I actually did some reluctant hoovering today, to remove the fluff-wads that had accumulated around my 'satellite' study in the bedroom. No-one else was going to do it, and as half-term is approaching I'm going to be using it again soon. As I was wielding the vacuum cleaner, I was musing to myself about the role that children play in the lives of their parents. In an ideal world this would simply be to love and be loved, but the more I mulled things over, brief snatches of memory and half lines of conversation conspired to wind me up to a fair degree of resentment.
Let me set the scene: Daughter #3 is at an interesting phase of life: her horizons are expanding rapidly with new friends, new interests and a blossoming intellectual curiosity and enthusiasm for creativity and la vie boheme that I remember fondly from my early teens.
I remember it fondly but in reality, alas, it existed only in my head. My parents, the upright products of rationing and a rigidly hierarchical society did not want a moody, poetry-reading, Oxfam-clad beatnik (at they imagined) for their child. These days, I would probably have briefly become a Goth or something, but in those days there weren't the same sort of neat pegs available and I was just a bit.....weird. Too weird for them. They steered me back towards social acceptability, and closely oversaw my education, music, art and friendships until it all went horribly wrong and ended with me leaving home one Friday lunchtime forever.
As it was, it turned out that I had shot myself in the foot well and truly, turning my back on a guaranteed university place as well as a chance to escape an (emotionally) abusive relationship with a boyfriend that dragged on into an ill-advised marriage for another ten years or so.
They thought they knew what was best for me, and so did I!
So I am finding myself in the same position as my parents did all those years ago and hoping that I don't fail in my parental role.

Where did the rot set in? Well, it is very difficult to be objective about these things, but if asked to identify my feelings about those years it was of complete claustrophobia. Everything was vetted to such a degree that I felt that I had no autonomy whatsoever. I had wanted to play the violin when I started 'big school' but was discouraged from that as my mother thought that 'the clarinet sounded nicer'. When I subsequently proved myself a middling musician (competent but uninspired), I failed to find a place in the regional orchestras (who only required four clarinets max.) whilst my many cheerful violin-scraping friends got into the massed strings and my unique French-horn playing buddy found himself keenly courted throughout the North owing to his rarity value!
I was quite good at art, although I never had any illusions about 'becoming an artist'. My mother was artistic too, so that was 'nice'...and I was encouraged to take Art at A-level. But you can't study art history without becoming aware of the unconventional attitudes and lives of many artists and I developed a taste for Toulouse-Lautrec and the 19th century French demi-monde. That did not go down well.
Combined with this came a desire to go out with my friends (usually those ones who did not meet the required respectibility standard!) to the youth club and local discos and meet boys. Sometimes I was allowed and sometimes not, but always with my father waiting outside for me in the family car tapping his watch disapprovingly if I was even a minute late to our agreed rendezvous.
So I became very devious, managing to fit my debauchery into my time-managed youth unobserved. Maybe I was being really obvious, but I thought I was being so clever. In fact my cleverness entailed me becoming such a different person from the image that my parents cherished that, when the whole elaborate facade came tumbling down and the worms and secrets crawled out, they never really recovered.
Nor did I - I had become two people living in the same space and didn't know which I was. Both? Neither?
They had wanted a daughter that they could show off to their friends and live vicariously through - not unnatural ambitions for parents of that era - and when they found themselves with something that didn't fit the bill, they cut me off - their only child.
Only quite recently have I acquired enough respectibility to warrant mentioning again in polite company, which I find bitterly amusing!

So I look at Daughter #3 and hope that I never, ever drive that bright, blossoming spirit underground to grow amidst the tangled roots that throttled me. I am inclined towards liberality, trusting that we have instilled in her some innate good sense. I don't go on too much about homework, or trace her every move or try to quash friendships with the more unorthodox of her friends. Indeed, I try to make them welcome and feed them. We encourage their music experiments and encourage her to think, read and listen widely.
I think that it's inevitable that we will cross swords along the way, for what is growing up other than a pulling away from the reins that lead you. But I hope that we never reach that stage of utter breakdown that happened between my parents and I.
And I will try to love her for what she is, and all of them for what they are, and not because they are fulfilling my stifled dreams or giving me bragging rights among my peers.

I am currently trying my best to do the former for myself!

Appetites and Destruction

2010-01-25T01:56:00.000-08:00

As the weather is merely grey today rather than pouring with rain, and the pavements are no longer icy, I walked the Bright-Eyed Boy the mile or so to school today (with the Dog in tow).
It's not a particularly pleasant walk. Many of the houses in our area are no longer family homes, but have been developed by speculators into student accomodation, which is distinguishable by assorted recycling tubs left permanently out, and split black bin bags dumped and spilling out onto the pavements. I don't have a problem with students: they're mainly a fairly affable bunch and polite enough, but their messiness is a bit of a problem if you're having to pick your way through and around it. After the beck (i.e. a stream, which often has supermaket trolleys or bikes poking out of the murky water) the student housing gives way to social housing. The houses are either neat as a pin (mainly owned by over 60s) or fairly squalid (not conspicuously 'owned' by anyone). The latter are characterised by equally overflowing refuse receptacles and the odd rusting car up on bricks in the driveway. The problem we had today was the sheer amount of broken glass on the paths where bottles, presumably from the recycling, had been smashed and left strewn in jagged shards. It doesn't take much imagination to foresee a pretty nasty accident happening, either with a falling child or a misplaced dog-paw. So we had to weave about, walk on the muddy verge to avoid the hazard. I'm probably going to drive again tomorrow: I don't fancy a trip either to A&E or the vet's. The council, although having little Smart-cars with 'neighbourhood pride' blazoned on the side couldn't care less if it's not that area's day for collection.

On the return trip I was wondering in my head about the sort of mentality that would think it was a good idea to perpetrate this sort of behaviour.
But of course, 'think' doesn't really come in to it - it's a sort of knee-jerk behaviour: it's there, so I'll do it.

Is it all about instant gratification? To scratch an itch? Isn't this what characterises a lot of society today (sweeping generalisation there)? Is it symptomatic of a more general loss of control?

It's a commonplace observation that we live in an age of instant access: if we want something, we can generally have it straight away - be it food, drink, sex, communication, entertainment.....open a box, press a button and hey presto! it's there for consumption. The message pushed on us by the media is that everything we want is there for the taking and it's ours almost by rights. Why wait? Go get it! And hurrah for credit cards - get a couple!
The idea that it is sometimes better to wait and anticipate is met with incredulity and looks of disbelief. Why on earth would you want to wait? And as soon as the immediate want is assuaged, for many excess becomes the next stop, because humans are hard-wired to continue to want. It's a driving force which, along with curiosity, has made mankind so successful at survival. Why stop at two beers? - have fifteen and a night to remember (or forget, in most cases!). Why only one slice of gateau? - finish it off and we'll get another for later!

As much as I feel a mild aversion to the virtue of prudence (thanks Gordon!), the evidence of uncontrolled consumption and greed is far more worrying. The pools of vomit that dot the pavements after the weekend, the snapped-off wing mirrors, abandoned kebabs, recycling bins full of own-brand vodka empties, puffingly obese teenagers drinking Panda Pops on the school run. Are all these people really made happy by their consumption?

Another thing that I have noticed more of late, and not entirely unrelated to my way of thinking, is people arguing loudly with their partners in the street and parents (usually mothers) shouting, if not screaming, at their small children, unconcerned that they are being watched. The safety-catch on behaviour is definitely off, a message that is no doubt absorbed loud and clear by recipients and onlookers.

But then I reflected that this sort of uncontrolled behaviour in public is almost the flipside of the behaviour that I blogged about in 'Honour Killings: An Unpleasant Look at the Truth' just before Christmas. Britain has lost it's buttoned-up tight lippedness and is letting it all hang out.
It's not a pretty sight, and just as bad in a different sort of way,

A Leap in the Dark

2010-01-22T05:55:00.000-08:00

I should -really should - be settling down with a suitably academic book and doing some serious reading. But as is apparent, I'm not doing that.
I've decided to give myself the afternoon off, partly because the Bright-Eyed Boy has passed on the snotty cold that he was nursing last week and my eyes feel like hot pickled onions in my head, and partly because I've just e-mailed of the latest revision of my first chapter to my supervisor ahead of next week's routine meeting, thus reaching a bit of a hiatus. I'm not inclined to press on with any more writing until I get the comments back: I want to see what he thinks of what I've produced first. By and large he makes encouraging noises, but I always come away feeling slightly downcast and that I haven't said what I wanted to.
It's always a bit of an expedition: York to Birmingham is a good couple of hours by train. Factoring in an allowance for delays means having to set off after depositing the B-E-B at school, walking the two or so miles to the station (the car parking's extortionate and our buses are unreliable and rude), catching the smelly CrossCountry service to Birmingham New Street, surely one of the the darkest and grimmest station in England. Then get onto the branch line that goes by the university (hopping off if necessary for the library), and onwards to the satellite campus where my department is situated, a fifteen minute walk from the stop. And of course, the same thing in reverse after our meeting, which means that I generally get home at around eight in the evening.
When I first travelled down to the Midlands, I really felt that I could not cope with all that travelling - it seemed such a long trek, but now, weirdly, it all feels a lot easier: I recognise landmarks from the train, I know where to get sandwiches and coffee from, how long the various legs of the journey will take me, how to get into the card-protected buildings. It all seems so much more handleable somehow, although nothing's really changed. I've changed.
When I was travelling to Leeds by car everyday during my undergrad years, I had everything worked out to a fine art, and was never late -either for lectures or for picking the children up. But nowadays I am filled with amazement that I managed to do this five days a week for two years, it seems an incredible effort. I guess it's all down to familiarity. Things that are familiar aren't quite so daunting.
A couple of years ago my parents decided, quite out of the blue, that they were going to try a new holiday destination. We were quite surprised, as they'd been travelling to the Italian lakes for a least a decade and a half, with the occasional foray into Switzerland for much the same sort of break. They went further east, and hated it. Unusually for them, they'd not attempted to learn any of the language beforehand, and it seemed to me that from the outset they had almost deliberately decided not to engage with the culture or people - they were sitting back and waiting to be impressed, waiting for the good times to come to them.
Now, if you're unfamiliar with anything east of Italy it all becomes a lot more......rough and ready. Buildings seem to sprout up in odd locations, apparently ungoverned by planning applications or building regulations. Quite often they appear incomplete and remain so for years, with concrete columns and reinforcing rods bristling towards the sky. Roads regularly lack markings, traffic lights are uncommon, pavements rare, gardens seldom well-tended in the our sense of the word. A lot of the landscapes can look pretty desolate and barren, especially if you're used to being surrounded by softly rolling greenery and picture-card views. It was around this new country that my parents were bussed in the company of other equally elderly people. Excursions tended to be very long and tiring, usually ending in a meal of unidentifiable dishes in an out of the way and unfinished hotel. They had a miserable ten days and returned home vowing never to go there again (although looking at their photos, it seemed a most attractive place).
This year they returned to their usual haunt and loved every moment of it, steaming across the lake, going to see the Matterhorn, all the things that they'd done many, many times before. They were surrounded by what they perceived as familiarity. They know the language, the excursion destinations, the timetable for the trains, even the staff at the lakeside cafes - and they recognise what they are eating as well! But I can't help feeling that now they've shut the door on a lot of new experiences, too. I know that there are a lot of places left that my mother especially would love to see, but because the last time they tried something new and didn't like it, they probably won't want to try again. Knowing exactly what you like is great, but sometimes a leap in the dark can ultimately be just as satisfying.

Disaster Limitation

2010-01-20T08:02:00.000-08:00

[There's something definitely amiss....I've written two posts that seem to have disappeared into thin air. I prepared them as a draft and then did a 'save' rather than publish straight away (I wanted to look up a reference to see if I'd remembered something correctly) only to find, when I went to the Blogger dashboard that they'd gone! Not that they're any great loss actually, more of an exercise in putting thoughts into words and seeing if they were coherent or represented that mental babble that goes round and around in your head, promises much, but delivers little.]

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Along with a great many other bloggers, I find myself constantly confronted with distressing images from Haiti of the bloated dead, untreated dying, distraught survivors and widespread destruction. What I am finding more disturbing than these (if that is possible) is the positive relish with which the media seems to treat these disasters. It reminds me of a television series that used to be on a number of years ago, where such events were treated as a chance to raise one's profile by producing an item of captivating journalism, and to that end one of the more repulsive characters used to carry round a baby's bootee to place upon a pile of rubble in order to create a poignant picture opportunity.
But the scale of the human suffering is terrible, and possibly all the more so for its sudden and acute genesis. In truth, Haiti has been a disaster area for years which the west has blithely ignored even though it is practically on the doorstep of one of the major superpowers. How could that be? Well, obviously Haiti has nothing that its wealthy neighbour wants. Despite being occupied by the US from 1915 to 1934, it was left with nothing more enduring than a massive debt to the US banks that has meant that the country's money has haemorrhaged from its coffers in repayment rather than shore up its own infrastructure. Many of its people are poor subsistance farmers, lacking the most basic necessities. Malaria, tuberculosis and water-borne disease are rife. But now that there's been a conspicuous natural disaster, governments are knocking each other out of the way to be the first to give, give, give. It must be an absolute boon for countries with faltering governments to take the spotlight off their own failings and recast them in a glow of humanitarian touchy-feely support, complete with suitably impressive rhetoric and promises that - let's be honest - not one of the voters will remember even six months down the line. The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.
Still, this horrendous event will do just what all the others have done (be they flood, hurricane, tsunami or earthquake): give politicians and the public a chance to feel God-like and pretty good about themselves for an instant. But any improvement that is wrought for the Haitian people will be as a result of long-term, low-level, off-camera commitment aimed at enabling them to improve access to healthcare and literacy, not a one-off, guilt-induced, knee-jerk online donation to mop up the immediate distress.

A Handful of Days

2010-01-12T06:04:00.000-08:00

My poor old uncle, aged 83, long burdened by Parkinson's Disease and cancer, and who recently had a nasty fall that rendered him unconscious for a few days, revived sufficiently yesterday to tell his wife and doctors "No more".
No more meds, no more food. He has decided to turn his face to the wall and slip away. He has had enough, and I can't say I blame him. Despite everything, his intelligence has remained intact, and until very recently there were traces of his habitual dry wit and self -deprecating humour. An active and fit man, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of miltary history, his illness has mostly entailed an agonising curtailment of his former pleasures. His wife of over fifty-five years, herself a cancer survivor, was still (quite voluntarily) pushing him round in a wheelchair until a few weeks ago, but her increasing frailty would have soon made a nursing home an inevitability for him. He knew that, whatever, he was not destined to return to sleep in his own bed. He is currently in a side room of a small local hospital, tended and as comfortable as he can be. According to my mother (his sister) the nursing and pastoral care is exemplary and it is close enough for family visiting to be easy. But we are talking of less than a handful of days here. A gentle slide into the void, tenderly held in the arms of Morpheus, the quiet extinguishing of his light.
Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. May he rest in peace.

2010-01-10T11:52:00.000-08:00

There are distinct signs of a thaw: the temperature has risen above zero for the first time in about ten days and the car tyres on the road are making 'wet' rather than eerily muffled noises. It reminds me of the chapter in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe where the traitorous Edmund is being driven in a sleigh to the Stone Table by the White Witch who realises that her reign of terror is drawing to and end.

'Now they were steadily racing on again. And soon Edmund noticed that the snow which splashed against them as they rushed through it was much wetter than it had been all last night. At the same time he noticed that he was feeling much less cold. It was also becoming foggy. In fact every minute it grew foggier and warmer. And the sledge was not running nearly as well as it had been running up till now. At first he thought this was because the reindeer were tired, but soon he saw that that couldn't be the real reason. The sledge jerked, and skidded and kept on jolting as if it had struck stones. And however the dwarf whipped the poor reindeer the sledge went slower and slower. Ther also seemed to be a curious noise all around them, but the noise of their driving and jolting and the dwarf's shouting at the reindeer prevented Edmund from hearing what is was, until suddenly the sledge stuck so fast that it wouldn't go on at all. When that happened there was a moment's silence. And in that silence Edmund could at last listen to the other noise properly. A strange sweet, rustling, chattering noise - and yet not so strange, for he'd heard it before - if only he could remember where! Then all at once he did remember. It was the noise of running water...'

The Narnia Chronicles were among the first books that I can actually remember reading. I thought at the time that they had been around for ages (probably because of the L,W & W's second world war setting) but when I read them they'd probably been in print only a decade or so. I enjoyed each one of them individually and each one was, in turn, my favourite of the cycle. Even to this day I'd be hard pushed to name my favourite book, but I most certainly did have favourite scenes; the sinister hall of statues, red-lit by the dying sun, in The Magician's Nephew; Doctor Cornelius' midnight revelation to Prince Caspian in the book of the same name; Shasta's unnerving night amongst the tombs outside Tashbaan in The Horse and His Boy, the selfish Eustace's discovery that he had turned into a dragon in the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader; the metamorphosis of the Queen of the Underworld into a serpent in The Silver Chair. I found, at the age of eight or nine or so, that The Last Battle was unbearably sad, and the dying talking bear's bewildered murmur of 'I don't understand...I don't understand' reduced me (and still can reduce me) to tears. These books, read again and again for want of alternative, informed my literary imagination in a way that no others have.

Home Is Where the Hearth Is...(as well as lots of other stuff)

2010-01-09T07:50:00.000-08:00

When we bought our house in 1994, we spent every last penny we had on it. The Husband, who had up until that time lived with his parents at very low cost, had saved enough for a deposit. We both had reasonably well-paid careers so getting a mortgage wasn't a problem. The property was an absolute bargain: built in 1936, it had remained throughout nearly six decades the home of the couple who had originally purchased it brand new from the builder, until eventually the elderly widow had fallen, fractured her hip and been placed in 'sheltered accommodation' by her daughter. She then put the house - presumably her childhood home - on the market, priced for a quick sale. Having already decided some months before that we wanted to face the future as an item, we'd been browsing the property ads for a few months. We knew, having looked around a few, that we definitely did not want a new build. We didn't like the thin walls, small windows and pocket handkerchief-sized gardens. The Husband, being two metres tall, found the low ceilings oppressive. Older properties, the ones we liked the look of, tended to be well out of our budget, so when we saw this house in the estate agent's window, we did a double-take. We viewed it within 24 hours and knew, completely and utterly, as soon as we walked in through the front door, that this would be our home. Strangely enough, it was something to do with the light that spilled through the coloured leaded lights and shimmered on the bare floor-boards of the front hall. The building had been cleared out, stripped of its furniture and as we walked around the echoing rooms, we became more and more certain that this house was THE ONE. It needed some work and TLC: the electrics were original, bakelite fittings and twisty cables. No central heating, no insulation, no damp proofing. The bathroom had the original suite complete with a high level cistern and pull-chain, and the miniscule kitchen had a steel sink in it and nothing else. The back garden was just a mass of waist-deep grass. Although the house was cheap, it needed a lot doing on it just to make it habitable, and we couldn't offer the full asking price and afford to do it up. Taking a deep breath, we made the agent an offer we thought he would certainly laugh at, but - after a quick phone call - he told us that the vendor had accepted. Our jaws dropped in unison: we were astonished - maybe we should have made an even lower offer! It turned out that the daughter was not in any particular need of money and just wanted the place off her hands. Six weeks later, it was ours.
The amount of work required seemed to have put other buyers off. The building society wouldn't advance us the full amount until the neccessary work had been done on it. A survey had revealed that was structurally sound, but quite damp. We borrowed what we could and put together a month-long schedule of work. I was living in rented accomodation in a small village six or seven or so miles out of York, and my lease for the next six-month period was due for renewal. If I could give notice on it, and we could move into our new home at the end of the four weeks, that would be perfect. So we set to with a vengeance and it's amazing what we achieved in so short a time. A local builder was mobilised to move the kitchen wall into the hallway by a couple of feet to increase the kitchen size slightly, the damp-proofing company renewed the damp-proof course where needed, stripped off and replaced the plaster, and a plumber put in a gas boiler and radiators. The Husband (as he would not be called for another 14 months or so!) and I took time off work to insulate the loft and scythe the garden. Daughters #1 and #2 (11 and 9 at the time) merrily ripped the original lino out of the bedrooms and discovered some ancient sheets from the Daily Mail underneath. When we'd originally looked at the house, we'd been less than impressed by the two ugly gas heaters that stood in the fireplaces of both the living and dining rooms. The plumber capped off the gas supply near the meterbox and we pulled them out. We'd been considering renewing the fireplaces as well, but once the two hideous appliances had been removed we we struck by the beauty of the fire surrounds, which were the original oak with art deco tiles, which could now be clearly seen. We cleaned them up and bought new grates to put in the hearths. They were going to stay.

As well as a ramshackle shed, the newly shorn garden revealed the remains of flower beds, a cinder path, a couple of fuchsia bushes and a rather woody old hydrangea. And a large toad, which hung around for a while until the stubbly environment proved uncomfortably dry and exposed for him. We cleaned up the bathroom as best we could - the unallotted money had run out by then - and grew to appreciate its austere efficiency.

As for furniture, we had practically none, as my bungalow had been fully furnished (although I possessed some curtains and bedding) and the Husband had none of his own either, except a piano and a full rack of electronic keyboards, mixers, speakers and amplifiers. We'd bought a couple of beds from a local housebuilder's show house when he vacated a completed site. An old lady across the road (who'd been friendly with the original tenants and, coincidentally, the Husband's grandmother-up-the-hill) very kindly gave us two cottage-style armchairs (hunting scene tapestry/bare wood arms: not that comfy). We re-used the room-sized rug from the front room in the back room, where we also put an old TV and a donated VCR. Some kind acquaintances gave us some old Argos chest-of-drawers which we used for our clothes. On August Bank Holiday 1994, we moved in.

Talk about minimalist living! Over the next couple of weeks, the Husband and his dad put floor tiles down in the kitchen and fitted some very basic MFI units complete with sink and a heavily-discounted oven and hob. We lived on food from takeaways during this time (our neighbourhood, which has a high student population is extraordinarily prolific in them), and washed our plates in the bath! We grew rapidly and heartily sick of fast-food, and it was with great relief that we walked to the local supermarket (we had no car then, only a bike each) and bought fresh food to stock our new cupboards.

Because we were then both working full- time we could gradually add to our new home, month by month. We acquired bits and pieces of furniture, carpets (some second-hand from the Husband's relatives), more curtains, an old dining table and four chairs. We cycled everywhere and what with this and the continual DIY, we were lean and fit. When we'd saved enough for our wedding reception (family only) and a three-day honeymoon in Rome, we married. Within the year daughter #3 was on the way, followed two years and two months later by the Bright-Eyed Boy. The increase in the family size entailed a substantial remodelling of the house. We extended the mortgage substantially and had a two-storey extension put on the back of the house. The builder was an absolute star and had it completed within three months from breaking ground. It was sheer hell at the time, living in one downstairs room, everything coated in plaster-dust with muddy-booted builders tramping up and down the stairs all day. We gave up tidying very quickly as the mess re-occurred every day - not because they were particularly messy, they were very considerate, actually, but because the whole process was just messy! It was very a difficult time, with two very small children, neither of whom slept well, juggling our work (we both worked 20 hours a week each at this time) and managing the building project. By the end, we were pretty much broke. We had no money to decorate the new extension and the Husband spent every spare minute for the next couple of years, growing thinner and thinner, doing DIY tasks and decorating if and when we could afford the materials, whilst I (growing fatter and fatter!) tended the children. Never having really recovered from my late pregnancies, I had become run-down and exhausted. I had given up going out to work and struggled to keep our computer-aided draughting business running from home and look after two small children. I was certainly not in my element! The unpredictable demands of the construction industry (feast or famine work-wise, many different employers and never daring to turn away a contract) saw us regularly trying to meet a deadline by sitting up until 2 or 3 in the morning on adjacent computers, often each with a child in our arms. I think I probably went a bit mad during this period. We probably both did, being very much sleep-deprived.

However, in my madness, I decided that I now desperately needed to do something to revive my atrophying brain and so I enrolled at the Open University to study Classical Greek. I'd originally attempted to do this the year before and then discovered that the B-E-B was on the way and had postponed it. This did mean that I often had to start my studies at ten at night when the children were 'asleep', or very early in the morning before they 'woke up' although it was never predictable. Not the best way to learn a whole new alphabet and language! For a while the Husband kept me company, doing a module on Astronomy and Cosmological Science which proved ultimately too time-consuming for him to sustain alongside his other commitments. Fortunately, by this time the whole building industry had become far more computer-savvy and designers were doing their own CAD and, at the same time, the Husband's career was progressing nicely in the same field. Without any regret (save that for the extra income) I bade our last client farewell and mothballed the business.

And that was pretty much that. Still caring full-time for daughter #3 and the B-E-B, one OU course led another until I'd pretty well run out of Classical Studies options. On a whim, I contacted the Classics department at Leeds and before long found myself enrolled full-time (courtesy of the student loans company - yet more debt) for the next two academic years. After gaining a First in Greek and Greek Civilisation, I went on to get an MA by research in New Testament textual criticism. By this time the children were in full-time education. A rigorously organised schedule, plus occasional back-up, meant that I could drop them off at school, tear off to Leeds for lectures, seminars or tutorials and usually be back in time to pick them up, just like I'd been at home cooking and cleaning all day, or whatever it is that women fill their time with. And finally, after a decade of study, my academic perseverence paid off and I find myself doing a fully-funded PhD in New Testament linguistics. Not in Leeds, as my MA supervisor - who is a world authority in the field of textual criticism - retired, but (less conveniently) down in Birmingham where, once again I serendipitously find myself surrounded by world-class scholars.
But I could have done none of this without the support of the Husband, my rock and my star, who has supported me and kept me going with unquestioning love and tolerance, who looked at this unpromising creature all those years ago and decided that maybe - just maybe - she was worth the risk.

Ground (Still) Stands Hard as Iron

2010-01-07T02:01:00.000-08:00

The novelty of the wintery weather is starting to wear off a bit now. The return to school, usually a dull and dismal prospect signifying the end of the Christmas fun and festivity, has been made far less oppressive by the deep, crisp layers spectacularly coating the neighbourhood. The Bright-Eyed Boy has been mightily cheered by it all, which is a massive relief as I was dreading that his earlier anxiety symptoms would return with the start of the term. So far though (touch wood), so good: the snow has most certainly been a mitigating factor, with the prospect of snowball fights with friends and probably more sledging this coming weekend acting as a distraction from any lurking worries. I do hope that it was just a passing phase, although if it does return, I think that we'll probably be better able to cope with it.
Daughter #3's school has been operating irregular opening times, which meant that she has been returning home just after 2.30 in the afternoon, much to her delight. On Monday she had a teacher-training day, so she took herself off for a morning's sledging, complete with flask of hot drink and bags of biscuits.

The bird table in our garden has seen a mass of frenzied activity of late. I've made sure that it's re-stocked everymorning with crumbs, fat, bird seed and mealworms (popular with robins, apparently). The avian clientele seem to wait in the surrounding trees and bushes until I've done my duty (which includes making sure they have fresh, unfrozen water) and then descend. There is a definite heirarchy: the starlings arrive first, then the blackbirds, sparrows and the thrush (singular) and finally the ring-collar doves and the wood pigeon, who is too fat to sit on the table and sits underneath it waiting for stuff to drop to the ground. The blue and great tits arrive whenever they feel like it and tend to prefer the balls of fat that I've hung from the cherry tree at the end of the garden. I haven't actually seen the robin lately, although (s)he was around before Christmas.Very occasionally, I've caught a glimpse of a wren which bobs around at low-level, seldom above the bottom-most plank of the wooden fence. Last year, and the year before, blue tits actually nested in the box that the Husband carefully constructed from approved RSPB plans (did you know that size of the entry holes are variety specific?). However, unless blue tits are able to dispose of their egg shells completely - we opened the nest box up to clear it out in the autumn - I don't think they raised any young in there.
The guinea pigs are still living inside too, side by side in two large plastic tubs filled with shavings and hay. They've been in for three weeks now, but I'm not going to risk them outside in their hutches until the temperature increases somewhat. We lost a rabbit and a guinea pig to something like pneumonia when the children were small, and I still feel pretty guilty about it today. I did take them to the vet when I noticed the symptoms, but despite antibiotics and a special diet their conditions just deteriorated. And it is very difficult to bury even small pets at this time of year, as the ground is like iron. Last year daughter #2's budgie died at around this time and he had to wait about ten days for his funeral. Luckily, because it was so cold at the time, he remained quite well preserved round the back of her house, in his little shoe-box coffin.....

So Arthur and Albert - the guineas - remain inside, and pretty boring it must be for them too. Like solitary confinement. Roll on the days when they can laze around in their runs in the sunshine and vocalise abuse at one another! Albert (tri-coloured and short-haired) gets pretty noisy during the evening, which encourages the whole family to respond with squeals of their own. Arthur, albino, long-haired and quite, quite mad, maintains a more dignified silence. It's a shame they can't keep each other company in the same pen, but they just don't get on. When we tried it there was lots of eye-rolling, stiff-legged, wary circling and hostile chittering. Don't fancy taking them to the vets with battle-wounds either!

New Year's Fun

2010-01-03T07:08:00.000-08:00

As it is the last day before the general return to work/school/study - no waiting until 12th night which falls on a Wednesday this year - we spent the first part of the morning taking down the Christmas tree and cards and stowing all the baubles in the loft until next year. We were quite shocked at how quickly Christmas had come round again this year, and no doubt we will be expressing the same sort of thoughts twelve months hence. Once everything was all clean and tidied away it was actually quite pleasant to have that bit of extra space and the feeling that the coming week represents a 'fresh start' in many ways. Once that was out of the way, all four of us went up and over Siward's How, the southerly ridge that obscures the low winter sunlight from our house, to the steepish hill that drops away onto Fulford Moor. This is excellent sledging terrain: the Husband and the Bright-Eyed Boy did some reconnaissance yesterday and ended up having two hours of snow-based fun. They couldn't wait to go back again today, and daughter #3 and I needed little persuading. The piste itself is reasonably uniform in profile (with some more challenging sections) that has been polished over the past couple of days to a glassy sheen, ensuring a fast and rather exciting trip. The run-out area at the bottom of the hill starts where the longer weeds and grass poke through the snow as a natural break. I suppose the entire run from top to bottom is about a couple of hundred feet or so, and you can reach a fair old speed. The trickiest bit is avoiding other sledgers, especially as the steering is a bit erratic, and a good loud shouting voice is essential! There were a lot of families there, lots of Dads imparting advice to their children and a lot of parents doing stuff that is going to mean aching joints and stiff muscles tomorrow (myself included - one particularly spectacular wipeout left me with some colourful abrasions on my leg).

But was most noticeable was the sound, a sound of pure joy, people of all ages laughing and having wonderful fun together that didn't rely on expensive gadgets or complicated preparations, and it struck me how unusual that was -an atmosphere of warmth and camaraderie, strangers chatting to one another, all their defences down.

Gradually the sun became veiled by cloud and large flakes of snow started to fall silently. Having had the best fun we'd had for ages, we headed home for soup and hot buttered toast, making a wholehearted resolution that this year we would - as a family -try to have much more fun!

2010-01-01T05:12:00.000-08:00

Somewhere between Christmas and the New Year I have managed to pick up a stinking cold. This is absolutely typical: I manage - through sheer bloody-mindedness, I think - to make it through most of the year unscathed, only to succumb when there are a concentration of lovely, sociable gatherings to attend and enjoy. Still, at least it's only a cold, not a recurrence of the rather debilitating virus-thing I had last year, where I spent most of the holiday week glassy-eyed and inert on the sofa.

We managed to stay up and 'see the New Year in' last night (complete with daughter #2 and her Bouncing Babba, who grumpily kept stirring in his sleep to complain about the disruption to his routine). To be quite honest, we could have easily have turned in at our normal bedtime, having snaffled our buffet supper at seven in the evening and been bored to tears by the bland TV scheduling. We did attempt some games, but by then I was feeling a bit rough and was losing my voice and was not terribly enthusiastic. However, we stuck it out and raised a glass at the as Big Ben struck the midnight hour. On retiring almost immediately after, my attention was caught through the bedroom window by a flotilla of Chinese lanterns rising silently into the night sky. The light northerly wind carried them directly over our house and it was a beautiful sight, very much like drifting, luminous jelly-fish - much nicer than the raucous fireworks that randomly punctuated the early 2010 calm.

This morning the Bright-Eyed Boy and I were up early and, having waved goodbye to #2 and baby, took our sledge to the local park where over the past couple of days I'd been eyeing up the solidly-frozen and iced-up gravel path as a makeshift competitor to the infamous Cresta bobsled Run. The B-E-B soon mastered the art of weight-shift steering and, after a couple of trial runs, managed to propel himself along a fair portion of the track at a reasonable speed. He was quite keen (against my better judgement) on trying the head-first 'skeleton bob' approach, but fortunately this proved less successful than the conventional method, to which he reverted after a couple of slower runs. It was quite tricky remaining upright, especially as I was juggling the Dog's lead and my phone-camera and trying to boost the Boy out of the 'starting gate'. Much slipping about and hilarity ensued, but I eventually managed to get some fairly good video footage and some stills, despite the Dog being sent into leaping, outraged fits by a spaniel that had the nerve to get too close. When we arrived home the B-E-B was so enthused and glowing that the Husband immediately decided to accompany us back to the park (minus the Dog, who'd had enough excitement by then) and have a go himself. The bonus to all this fun is that my cold seems to have gone into retreat, no doubt on account of all the adrenalin coursing through my bloodstream, and I feel a lot brighter. (Long may it continue to improve.) It was a fantastic way to start the year.

Avatar (spoiler alert)

2009-12-29T12:28:00.000-08:00

Went to see James Cameron's film 'Avatar' today. We don't go to the cinema very often, largely because we fail to organise our leisure time properly, but rather enjoy it when we manage it. It tends to be a school holiday activity, when amusing the troops is a high priority and we have plenty of unoccupied hours. Daughter #3 had spotted the trailers for it on TV, and it was generally agreed that it looked pretty interesting. So we took ourselves of to York City Screen, a very pleasant, smallish venue complete with cafe/wine bar/bistro attached, where they don't mind you taking your wine or coffee into the screen with you, which is very civilised. Donning our 3D specs we sat back and were enthralled by technical wizardry for three whole hours. The storyline was a bit cheesy (noble race of indigenous creatures threatened by nasty corporate greedsters, some love-interest and a big old battle) and rather PC, but the CGI was absolutely fantastic, and I say that as someone who has no particular interest in that sort of thing. The best bits were the 3D rainforests and landscapes and the little insects and creatures that appeared to come out from their depths and actually hover in the middle of the auditorium. The 'dragon'-flying and the battle scenes were mesmerising and gut-grippingly involving and when we emerged, blinking, into the chilly York twilight, we agreed that Dr Who would seem a bit dull in comparison. It was like entering another exotic, far more vivid, world for a portion of the day. You can quite see why people might make use of substances that would engender the same effect - only I don't think a trip to the cinema rates quite as highly on the 'injurious to health' scale. Well worth seeing.

Digital Madness

2009-12-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

I read TWO very interesting pieces in the Times today which seemed to confirm what I've been increasingly thinking over the past year/eighteen months: that it is easier to assimilate information from a paper, rather than a digital source.
In the course of my research I find myself reading many, many PDFs (mostly from JSTOR online digital journals) and a lot of Google Books (how I hate the way vital pages are always missing from the 'preview'). Ideally, I would print them (the PDFs, that is) all off to read at leisure, but because printer ink is unreasonably expensive and lots of documents are nigh-on forty pages long, I tend to print off only the ones that will definitely be useful. These I store in colour-coded files under relevant headings. Easy-peasy. However, the ones that aren't printed off, I save to my computer in a similarly logical fashion: PhD>PDFs>Linguistics; Socio-Historical; NT Texts etc., etc.
But I find it very hard to recall, at a distance from the initial reading, what relevant snippet of information I have read where amongst my digital resources, and when I attempt to scan through the documents to re-find it, I feel not only a rather unpleasant sensation of disorientation, but a real inability to absorb what it being relayed. In fact, sometimes when I do this, I often find myself thinking 'I really can't be bothered' which is quite disturbing, given that I am now actually being paid to do this! I far prefer to read stuff on paper, and the following speculative article from the Times seems to back this up.

Constant Digital Stupidity

When you're constantly scanning mobile phones and computer screens, your attention is so fragmented that you can't concentrate on one thing. That's known as constant partial attention. The next stage is that you'll start forgetting things, missing important pieces of information and making mistakes, and you'll never get round to quality thinking. This matters at work when you're scanning masses of fast-moving information, you're under pressure to react quickly and you're rushing. At home you have so many pass-words in your head that you forget your PIN and can't get money out, then you phone your bank and can't remember that password.
research will confirm that multitasking is a myth, we'll see phrases such as slow media emerge as people realise that if you read things on paper you are more relaxed, you register more, you reflect and see the big picture. This is why paper is not dead and why,while news will be mostly delivered online, serious comment and analysis and novels will largely stay on paper.

Vindicated! I knew it!
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A second piece, from today's Times business section, states that 'print advertising is more than twice as effective as television advertising'. Research, carried out by Microsoft Advertising, confirms that ever £1 spent on print advertising yields £5, compared with £2.15 for television and £3.44 for online advertising. The study recommende that retailers increased online and print advertising budgets by 10% and decreased television advertising by that amount. Not surprisingly, an executive from a television marketing body didn't think much to the findings.

I have to say that I am actually oblivious when it comes to advertising. I tend to like the things I like and am not tempted to diversify. Household and grooming products are not things I ever spend any time thinking about - I do my shopping online because I hate wasting time in supermarkets. Buying white goods, carpeting or furniture is something that I delegate to the Husband. I'm not that bothered about what we end up with. I am not a great target for marketing! Advertising campaigns are just not on my event-horizon. Similarly, if I'm online I find it easy to ignore irrelevance, and our pop-up blocker screens out the majority of unwanted stuff.
That's not to say that I dislike shopping completely - but I am never persuaded to buy things that I wouldn't already be buying, and the stuff I like to buy (second-hand books, bags and deli food) aren't advertised anyway!
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Another paragraph in the first article discusses the rather more worrying tendency towards 'digital isolation' where the world is ever-more connected but increasing remote from its fellow-man. Looking around this seems to be true. People look past you in the street as they talk on their mobile phones, are talking as they are served in shops, are isolated from their surroundings with a cocoon of head-phoned, non-stop music. Once upon a time you'd think a person was mad if they were walking along talking to themselves: now you just assume they're using their blue-tooth hands-free! Even in our house, everyone huddles over their own digital gadget. Everyone has a phone and an iPod of some sort; the Husband and I have a laptop each (his is a work one, admittedly) and there is a 'house' PC (pretty bloody temperamental) for general use.

Even in offices people don't communicate, they stare at screens all day. Lunchtime has gone, the dining room has gone, the family sitting around one television has gone.

The piece end with a pretty bleak prediction for the coming years:

Loneliness and depression will become even bigger issues.

Ah! digitalia! Where would we be without it?
Instant gratification, but no true satisfaction. Everywhere and everyone can be accessed, but never really reached. As the article notes, this is why Starbucks is so successful, it gives the isolated home-based laptopper somewhere to work, where they feel part of a (even if somewhat illusory) community. I've certainly taken advantage of their venti lattes over the years!
And this is why I have decided that this coming year our family will be following a partial defragmentation regime. Dinner will take place more regularly around the dining table (we've been slipping into on-knee mode lately), where mobiles will be banned. We will be attending Mass together on a regular basis (never mind about the Sunday morning sporting activities, we'll all make the effort to go to the Saturday night vigil, or the Sunday evening Mass).
Call these my New Year's resolutions....that, plus redoubling my commitment to my PhD (but that, dear reader, is another blog posting....)

Talking to my supervisor at our last meeting about the vast resources of information now available for scholars, I rather stupidly mused on how people managed before the advent of the internet.
He fixed me with a cool eye:
'We went to the library, of course, and met our friends, and then we went for coffee or a drink...'

And no doubt it was a far more sociable and pleasant experience than sitting hunched alone over a computer......

Drifting Towards the New Year

2009-12-26T05:44:00.000-08:00

Boxing Day: a day out of time. I awoke before 5am with creasing stomach pains (almost certainly due to conspicuous overindulgence over the preceding 18 hours) and took myself off downstairs to get a cup of tea and a hot-water bottle. Propping myself up in bed, I attempted to tackle a few pages of Vygotsky's Thought and Language and before long, slid slowly down the pillows into a comfortable enough doze which lasted until gone 9am. By the time we'd all got downstairs it was eleven o'clock and the rest of the day has followed a similar chronologically dislocated form. We've just had French bread, cheese and grapes for lunch, but it's actually just getting dark! Taking the Dog out earlier, the Bright-Eyed Boy and I skittered about perilously on the icy pavement hummocks and decided to forge rather more safely across the still-virgin snow in the park. It's meteorologically very strange: not really freezing, but lethally slippy underfoot where the untreated footpaths have been compacted down. Glad we don't have far to go in the next few days.

When I was very young (three or four) at this time of year we regularly made our way down in our three-wheeler car, in all winds and weather, from the central Highlands of Scotland to visit my widowed granny in her freezing bungalow that smelt of furniture polish. She wasn't the most affectionate or attentive of grandparents and I remember being stupefyingly bored, with nothing to do (no telly) and no-one to talk to, or to play with. Because it was a very long way from Perthshire to Gloucestershire, we generally stayed for a few days, sleeping in the chilly guest room. Never a late riser, I would join Granny first thing in the kitchen as she lit the range and prepared a gloopy sort of porridge, sweetened with saccharine (she was diabetic) on the hotplate. All this was accompanied by a sort of muttered German commentary, the contents of which were a mystery to me. Occasionally we would drop over to visit my paternal uncle and his three children (all older than me) who lived in the next village. I remember the year when there were the most tremendously high snowdrifts (probably the winter of 62-63) and we played out until our hands ached and our feet were blue with the cold inside grown-up sized wellies. Tea at their house generally ended with an enormous sherry trifle, and the taste of sherry trifle can still take me right back to those twilit days.

It could go either way over the next few days: we could carry on feeling relaxed and drowsy - and the snowy weather is certainly conducive to that - or we could start to feel irritable and confined. After we have eaten and drunk as much as we really want, and move on to eating and drinking because it's there, there is a risk that discontentment and boredom will set in, ungrateful wretches that we are. I think we might need a pre-emptive strike. Sadly, the traditional panacea of long walks are off the agenda until the council decide to grit. Daughter #3 could go to rowing tomorrow, which would mean rather an early start but would at least guarantee that we got motivated nice and early. Foraging for wood and chopping logs is very therapeutic, but everything near us is still covered in snow - plus we still have plenty of wood from the summer. So what to do......

A strange time, this dying of the year.

Christmas Eve Calm

2009-12-24T13:22:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve and all is well. Daughter #3 took part in the annual Christmas Eve mixed quad racing at the rowing club today. It was really atmospheric, the dark water contrasted with the snowy banks and the tops of the Minster towers gradually disappeared into the mist. Everyone was cheerfully decked out in silly costumes and funny hats and threw themselves into the races with enthusiasm. It was a bit parky standing in the snow, but the racers themsleves managed to work up a head of steam. After three lots of three heats, the winners were rewarded with selection boxes and everyone tucked into hotdogs and buns.

This afternoon we went to my elderly parents where we were treated to a lovely curry with all the trimmings, mango jelly, and finally, mince pies and coffee. After a leisurely few hours of chatting we arrived back in York in time to attend the first Mass of Christmas at our local church. It was packed to the rafters, literally standing room only with many people attending that aren't what you'd call regulars....well, they are regular: once a year, at Christmas!!!

So now we are home again: I've decorated the rooms with evergreens, mistletoe is hung above the door, the turkey is thawing, the fire is laid in the grate for tomorrow, the wine is chilling.....

All that remains is a bit of last-minute present wrapping, to be completed when the children are in bed (NOT asleep, that'd be asking too much), and to relax before the onslaught of the day itself. Nine people for Christmas dinner, including daughter #2, her husband and this year's best present so far, my grandson the Bouncing Babba!

Happy Christmas everyone!

Our Barque Slowly Sails the Christmas Sea

2009-12-23T02:46:00.000-08:00

Have resigned myself to the inexorably downward slide to Christmas Day and, like the drowning man who gives up struggling and surrenders his vital processes to the waves, I have decided to give in and enjoy it. We spent a splendidly anarchic day (for us, anyway) yesterday rising late, consuming pastries for breakfast and then drifting into town. We spent some time looking in a leisurely fashion around the shops, stocking up on ingredients for proposed festive sweetmeats and then adjourned for lunch at a little Italian cafe/deli where the Bright-Eyed Boy and I were lucky enough to nab a recently vacated table while the Husband stocked up on vin santo, cantuccini and panettone. Several panini, lattes and biscotti later we stumbled off into some more shops where we indulged -yes, that's what we did indeed INDULGED (courtesy of the good old AHRC grant) in various bottles of alcohol (Illy coffee liqueur, Bombay Sapphire gin and Limoncello) small presents and trimmings. It felt goooood not to worry too much about what the January Mastercard bill would bring: all the more so as we are more than familiar with the stomach-clenching sensation of opening an unexpectedly large demand. I know it's a temporary blessed state, but we intend to make the very most of our current good fortune. The B-E-B and I (inspired by his tasty lunch, which he devoured totally) made a rosemary focaccia later in the afternoon which made the basis for a delicious buffet tea of cold meats, cheeses, pickles, olives, wine and the like which had the unfortunate effect of making us supremely thirsty for the remainder of the evening, and needed several cups of tea to slake the craving.

Today, again, we have had a relaxed start to the day and the Husband and daughter #3 have headed townwards to pick up the last few requisites. Soon the B-E-B and myself are going to make some chocolate torrone, which requires a lot of almond toasting and crunching (it is an extraordinarily rich confection, several heart-attacks waiting to happen) but I need to prise him off his latest football game which arrived in the post this morning as a reward for being brave over the past few weeks.

Later, before lighting both the log fires, I intend to head out to pick up some evergreenery to deck the house in Yuletide splendour. I just love doing this task at Christmas: I feel like some medieval peasant, plodding out, breath steaming, hands frozen and this year the snow - certainly deep AND crisp AND even - will add extra atmosphere and a timeless feel to the whole procedure, just like the Breugel painting above.

In the Dark

2009-12-21T00:19:00.000-08:00

Daughter #3 hosted a rather lovely soiree at our house last night. I say 'lovely' not because of the hosting arrangements (oh no! they were all rather carefree and ad hoc) but because the girls who attended - all #3's peers - were a simply delightful advertisment for 'the youth of today'. They represented a mix of friends old and new that have coalesced into a band of like-minded allies. Not that there was anything clone-like about them: each one seemed to represent a slightly different facet of young teenagerhood. They were an amusing, polite, gregarious and good-natured crowd and I was more than impressed by the fact that they managed to just sit there and chat and laugh for two hours and (more importantly) NOT SPILL A THING!!! It made me almost nostalgic for the days of ground-in jam sandwiches and trampled sausage rolls.
However, by the time the last liftless girl had been deposited safely home and I had hoovered some errant pine needles, my mind/body - tricked by the bonhomie of the previous few hours - was raring to go. Not even a fairly large glass of wine and the suitably soporific Match of the Day 2 was able to stop me revving in overdrive: Chelsea drew with West Ham? Yay! The Husband, who has decided that today will be his last day at work until after the New Year, was mindful that it was getting late and he was tired. So we adjourned to bed where I sat up reading Saturday's review section until he was snoring gently and I started to worry that the rustle of newsprint would wake him again. Consequently, I moved onto the glossy mag (less rustling) until bored by its silly vanity and cringing hand-wringing. By this time it was ten past midnight, so I lay myself down and turned off the bedside light hoping that sleep would come soon. Not a chance. An hour later I found myself increasingly convinced that I was getting colder and colder under the duvet and remembered that we'd fail to click the heating back on at bedtime. I grudgingly hauled myself to the airing cupboard and fumbled around for the on-switch and turned the thermostat right down. I'd been back in bed for about twenty minutes when it occurred to me that I'd not heard the heating pump come on, which meant that it was still, in effect, getting colder and colder in the bedroom. Indeed, I was convinced that I could feel my steaming breath in the dark. So up again I got and readjusted the thermostat to a slightly higher setting. I paused on the landing for a moment until the pump kicked in and I could stop worrying that the entire central heating system had broken down. That's a major concern in the middle of winter, and in the middle of the night - that, and the oven breaking on Christmas Day, or the freezer in the preceding week.
Well, that was it for the remainder of the night. Worry mode. I should, in hindsight, have just turned the light on and forestalled it all with some cheerful reading, but I was still partially convinced that I would fall asleep before too long. But no, my mind wandered and fretted around the usual unpleasant and cobwebby mental annexes that only open up during the hours of darkness: mortal illness, death, financial straits, and the most recurrent one for me at the moment - the feeling that I will most certainly flunk out of my PhD programme.
I've tried analysing this, and I think it's down to a lack of confidence in my own ability. Certainly my supervisor seems happy enough with my progress at this point in time. He does keep going on about word counts though, as if writing up research on a words-per-day basis can guaranteee its success. I'm not convinced this is true, considering that the early stages of a thesis will mostly consist of reading and making notes and that the donkey-work of writing-up happens at the latter-end when you have a clear model in your head of how (or if!) your proposal really works. I think that if you write up too early, you can run into problems if you come across a staggering piece of scholarship that impacts greatly on your ideas (and that is always a real possibility). It can become a major, major task to weave new revelations into a 'done' text, far more trouble and work than if you were still operating at a notes-and-ideas level. You don't know what you don't know, as Donald Rumsfeld said, until you know it. I am acutely aware that I have done no writing on my chapter since my last supervisory meeting a couple of weeks ago, and yet I seem incapable of doing anything about it: my mind keeps skidding away from the topic as if I have an aversion to it. I think it may be because I feel that I am losing control of the project: my supervisor has very definite ideas about what should be said and I often find myself chivvied down avenues that weren't part of my original plan. Still, I remind myself, he is the expert appointed to keep me on the straight and narrow, and to make sure that I deliver a PhD on target. When I was self-funded and part-time I felt that the PhD was mine: I was the client, was paying the university for their expertise, calling the tune, almost. When I got funding (mirabile dictu!), I ceded control. Other people now have a vested interest in my success and thus my progress. Research has ceased to be a delightful stroll around the charming groves of Academe, with ample pauses to sniff at random wayside blooms, it has become a goal-driven, progress assessed slog, with value-added, transferable-skill distractions en route.
When I was a child - and indeed as I grew older, my life seemd to consist of a series of disappointments. I never got the presents I really, really wanted for Christmas (and they were never extravagant) - I got the cheaper, less-desirable version. My friends were always less fun and cheerful than I had expected them to be, having been a voracious reader of Enid Blyton's Mallory Towers. Summer holidays were not golden and tranquilly idyllic, but long and dull and spent trawing around garden centres. My teenage clothes were a home-made approximation of what was then in the achingly fashionable Chelsea Girl chain. My boyfriends were generally off-hand and distant, and likewise an early doomed marriage was characterised by my husband's reluctance to be more than token, beery presence in his children's lives. All in all it seemed to me that, somehow, I always got less than the best because I probably wasn't worth anyone's full attention or effort. I was easy to ignore, write-off, dismiss as trivial, as a winging, neurotic perfectionist who should be damned happy she'd actually got what she'd got.

It wasn't until much later when I met someone who thought I was actually pretty remarkable that my self-confidence grew to the degree that I felt that...yes, I was worth the effort and, yes, I did have something to contribute, and I was utterly transformed and went from strength to strength.

But still deep down, there is that little girl who expects to be let down and feels that she is probably not up to much, who can't bring herself to 'waste' money on a decent haircut for herself and who is not surprised when 'friends' cancel a lunch engagement. And thus (I guess) it is with my doctoral studies. Surely the AHRC must have been mistaken in giving me funding? Me? They expect me to produce something worthwhile? Don't they realise that I will probably let the side down, fail to deliver? Last year, because I was 'in the driving seat', so to speak, I was only ever going to disappoint myself if I did not complete. No biggy. Now that there additional factors, parties and expectations attached to my PhD, I feel burdened by self-doubt and guilt. I am a shabby investment. It's not a great feeling, and one that, in the dark, in the middle of the night dammit!, returns to haunt me again and again.

Honour Killings: An Unpleasant Look at the Truth

2009-12-18T01:35:00.000-08:00

The murder - with the apparent knowledge of her family - of the Turkish teenager Tulay Goren has once again brought into focus the nastier side of family life. Many will no doubt have thrown up their hands in horror at this tale of patriarchalism, oppression of women, pride and shame, and thank God that we Anglo-Saxons are so much more enlightened and liberal.

Oh really?

Isn't it a matter of fact that this honour-culture is really not so very far removed from the sort of behaviour that has been rife in Western culture since the year dot? The mind-set that saw a father hunt down, tie-up, drug and eventually kill his own flesh and blood is at one end of a continuum which has its roots just as firmly in middle England as in Southern Turkey.

It's no so very long ago that a young woman, finding herself pregnant and unmarried, faced social ostracism, with recourse only to highly risky abortions or banishment until the illegitimate child was born, to distant relations or in special homes where they were treated as moral degenerates. A veil of secrecy and silence cloaked these 'shameful' events. Family members colluded with one another to suppress the truth and save face in the community. Children were raised in strange, dislocated relationships where the 'mother' was actually the grandmother, or a childless cousin. There are many stories in the media of these poor, sad birth-mothers being reunited after many, many decades of separation from their offspring, lamenting the wasted years of mourning babies who grew up without them, and of the children whose lives were often rocked or ruined by the revelation that 'we aren't actually your biological parents'. How is that sort of collusion and covert manipulation of lives any different from what we are reading in the papers this very day?

There's a lot of it about under the thin veneer of liberalism and nominal equality of our society, a poisonous, conditional love that is often granted to the very people that deserve our absolutely unequivocal support and devotion, for they are flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood, our children, our families.

How often - even nowadays - do we hear of parents who 'lose' contact with children who disappoint in some way? Because these oft-labelled mavericks 'fail' the parents by attaching themselves to a partner deemed 'unsuitable' in class, creed or colour; by leading lives that the family fail to comprehend (as if real love should depend at all on comprehension or approval!), by being gay, converting or marrying out of a religion, or unemployed, mentally ill, a substance abuser, or merely humanly fallible, not measuring up in some way - 'different' from the rest of the brood, and against whom the cudgel of expectation and normality is wielded?

Snivelling humanity has a history of trying to claw its way up the social pile, careless of treading on one another in an attempt to make it to the top of the heap. There being strength in numbers, it helps if there are other climbers singing off the same hymn sheet and giving one another a bunk up on the way. Strength in numbers and all that. And while this is a seemingly altruist family-friendly scramble, the concealed underbelly revealed is that people who aren't going with the family flow and kow-towing to the pack leader are seen as endangering the ascent of the entire upwardly mobile mass.

It all has its genesis in post-WW2 Britain: A nation frightened to death by the ravening maw of totalitarian otherness, shrank into itself, wrapping desperate material greed and social aspiration around its chipper, mustn't-grumble respectability. A nation emerged that increasingly prided itself on 'having', on competing with the neighbours with one eye cocked over the top of the Daily Express and the privet hedge. Anything that compromised keeping up with the Joneses, or being seen as socially acceptable and upwardly mobile was given as short a shrift as an unwanted kitten in a weighted sack. No room for sentiment or regret. Far better if you cut out the poisoned flesh. Your child has let you down? Cast them off without a backward glance as an aberration, a bad seed. Certainly let your disapproval be felt, loud and clear - but behind bolted doors and tighly pulled curtains. Smile at the neighbours and continue as if nothing has happened: let no trace of sentiment show...this child has betrayed you, your way of life and all that you stand for!
[You say my daughter hasn't been seen around for many weeks? I shrug and smile and voice some banality about the unpredictability of girls. My family will not be shamed, I will countenance no stain on its honour, no matter the cost or the suffering. We are all united in this!]

Conditional love, love that is doled out as a reward for keeping to the script is no love at all. It is a depressing fact that many people only love those around them if they bolster their own self-image. Witness the Mums that deck their toddler girls as mini-me's to prance around in front of the X-factor. Or Dads who shout abuse at their sons from the touchlines of junior football leagues. Or husbands discarding no-longer young or desirable wives, or wives discarding newly redundant husbands.

It is a selfish 'love', one that is concerned with rewarding what a person does, not what they are. And while we are rightly appalled at the murder of a fifteen year old girl who took up with an 'unsuitable' man, we would do well to reflect on the difference between a mote and a plank, and the subtle gradations between the two.

Christmas looms.....

2009-12-14T03:43:00.001-08:00

The last week before the schools break up for Christmas and, as usual I am torn between relief and alarm. Relief that, from Monday next, we won't have to get up at the crack of dawn for a while (dawn?...it was still pitch black an hour after that, at 7.30 this morning) to set the family juggernaut in motion: Alarm that, as usual, I have achieved far less than I'd hoped to have done academically by this point in time. It's been particularly hard over the past few weeks, what with the Bright-Eyed Boy's ongoing virus/anxiety problems and the distractions of the German reading skills assignment/assessments. I keep looking at my marked up thesis chapter and putting it down again - I need to spend a good few hours at a stretch to make inroads on my supervisor's comments. Today, for example, I have grudgingly done the usual bare-minimum household stuff (plus some Christmas card writing) and now find myself staring at German verb tables in preparation for tommorrow's in-class grammar test. I am annoyed that I care how I do in it - I really cannot afford the time, but feel compelled to put in a good performance. Tch! What a pain!

I think that I'm going to have to start using my satellite (bedroom) study again over Christmas, as the ground floor will be given over to toys, games, telly watching and (after Christmas Day itself) two electric guitars! It was a real God-send having that bit of personal space in the summer and meant that I felt I was actually maintaining control over the doctoral process, rather than letting everything slip during the holidays. It will probably help if I have some sort of rudimentary plan to stick to as well, so that - even on the most unproductive of Yule-tide days - I manage to feel that I've achieved at least something, which is absolutely essential so that panic doesn't set in come January! Parsing Greek verbs is always a good task: working my way through the Pauline epistles in this way is really quite dull (but absolutely esssential for helping me spot discourse prominence) - but like most dull and mechanical tasks, can be done with less than 100% concentration and can become soothing and even therapeutic. I shall shut my laptop down soon and head of into town. I am acutely aware that I need a bit of a break, and will be doing myself no favours by flogging an unwilling horse.

Turning the Corner

2009-12-09T08:09:00.000-08:00

After a pretty horrendous few weeks of assorted illness and stress we seem to have turned a corner. The Bright-Eyed Boy is certainly a lot better than he was seven days ago, and whatever was wrong with him (and I suspect that a rather nasty, but seemingly innocuous, virus had thoroughly disrupted his chemistry) seems to be finally leaving his system. Daughter #3 ,who last week uncharacteristically spent an entire day in bed laid up with the snottiest cold ever, returned to rowing-training last night. She was pretty pooped after it, but still managed to stay up way past her bed-time organising her friends' end-of-term party (chez nous - don't ask how that happened). The dog's upset stomach also seems to be getting better. Thank goodness! I was dreading an extended and expensive session at the vet.

I am also feeling...well...less despairing actually, which is a massive relief (DG) because I certainly didn't like the way I was feeling this time last week. The extremely low mood was probably largely due to worry about the Boy, disrupted sleep and the lack of sunlight.

However, the husband woke early this morning complaining that 'all the bones' in his face ached and the B-E-B started complaining about a sore throat. Daughter #3's cold is making its way around the household no doubt. But strangely enough everyone is pretty cheerful. I just hope that, in an effort to keep going until Christmas, I don't get another virus like the one that laid me out and robbed me of my seasonal enthusiasm last year!

A Trumpet-Blast Against the Monstrous Onslaught of Admin

2009-11-27T04:18:00.000-08:00

Friday again, and my morning has disappeared like mist. The Bright-Eyed Boy is still not properly well, having spent the past couple of days inert on the sofa and refusing food. I've just managed to get a toasted ham and cheese muffin down him without any sicky repercussions (thus far). He seems a lot brighter and, with the exception of the trace of a headache (query: dehydration), certainly on the up. The Husband managed to work from home yesterday while I went down to uni for a 'presentation skills' workshop. I'm getting those boxes on my training needs form ticked at a rapid rate

Pity they're all largely useless and extremely distracting from the job in hand: i.e. research.

I find that it takes me a good few hours to get into the swing of productive scholarly thinking, and another few hours to make any decent headway and put some writing down. Pearls of thought are hard come by and require some extremely oysterly grinding of grit. The ratio of words-read to words-writ is about 10:1 at a conservative estimate - possibly more like 20:1. So anything that distracts is an unproductive irritant.

I was talking to the Husband about this and we decided that the modern mania for monitoring progress and outcomes has meant that we largely spend our time writing about our processes rather than actually doing them. Thus, the result of our investigations tends to show that we are failing as a result of not spending as much time on them as we should. This has the unfortunate effect that, in an attempt to rectify these apparent failures, more strategies are generated. As there are only so many hours in the working day, implementation of the strategies to deal with the first set of failing strategies bites further chunks out of the time that by now is desperately needed to be spent on the original process. We become locked into a downward spiral of assured failure.

What is needed is a return to academic roots. Stop hobbling scholars (and their supervisors) with all this 'quality control', 'investors in people', feedback, outcome bolony.
Universities: say to your post-grad students "Go away, read, research and write. Then come to me occasionally for a chat." The net result will be that the dedicated will stay the course, unfettered by admin and will produce the academic goods. Those that aren't, won't. But at least we won't be in the position of propping up weak candidates who probably couldn't survive the vicious cut and thrust of academia.
Of course, universities are not run for academic or teaching excellence any more. There's no message about the joy of learning for learning's sake, of education as broadening the mind and horizon rather than lining the pocket. Universities are run like the business sector and often managed by its economic migrants. It's all about bums-on-seats and cash in the bank. The way that departments are funded encourages the churning out of publications, not investment in teaching. Departments whose staff don't publish don't get funding, no matter how superb their track record of teaching is. Esoteric courses are ended in favour of more relevant ones. You try finding somewhere that teaches Sanskrit or Syriac. Rare learning and skills are going to be lost and, as they say in supermarkets, WIGIG: when it's gone, it's gone. The same way as the passenger pigeon or the Caspian tiger. And, sadly, just as unlikely to be revived.

Virus

2009-11-25T07:23:00.000-08:00

Na.....the Bright Eyed Boy is actually poorly....not a psychosomatic thing at all as I'd feared, but some kind of nasty virus that's given him, in turn, a headache (yes - I've done the meningitis checks), nausea, lassitude, tummy pain and general feeling of 'off it'. No temperature as yet though....So he's flaked out on the sofa clutching a bottle of water to sip and watching his way through all the Sky Sport channels (about their only use....!).

I really needed to go to town today, but that's obviously off the agenda. At uni. tomorrow, so hopefully the husband will be able to work from home (and will probably get more done in reality, away from distractions). A funny sort of day, here in my little doctoral bubble - revising some work to submit and keeping an eye on the invalid. It'll be dark soon. Another day gone forever.

Who, Who, Who Let the Marmite?

2009-11-24T08:25:00.000-08:00

Absolutely typical. Today was German Reading Skills so I hopped over the hill to my local uni. (not my actual alma mater) for two hours of grammar, revision (eek! better learn those imperfects!) Kafka and to hand my assignment in (feeling rather pleased with myself). I'd turned my mobile off and when I got home the house phone was ringing: it was my Ma-in-law saying that she'd had to fetch the Bright-Eyed Boy home from school as he'd been complaining about feeling sick/dizzy/faint (again - this has been going on since a rather unpleasant incident at school the other week). I groaned. It's the THIRD time he's come home from school early in about ten days. I think it's largely psychological as he's the sort of little fella who somatises his anxiety. Worry really does make him feel sick.

Anyhoo - I was in the middle of my rather late lunch: 2 slices of toast & Marmite and a cup of tea. Leaving it on my desk, I immediately went to the car, slamming the front door behind me.....and realised the key bunch I'd picked up didn't actually have my house-keys in it. Nor did I have my mobile with me. And I was in my slippers.

Luckily, daughter #2 lives just round the corner and was in, so I borrowed her bunch and proceeded to the in-laws. The B-E-B was certainly looking a bit wan, but also a slightly shifty, and the M-I-L was hyperbolacally making much of his symptoms. I was not really either impressed or so convinced. Trouble is, the school is very keen to ship them off home at the first sign of a 'bug' (stops it spreading , I guess). Took him back home and made him comfy on the sofa. Two minutes later the boy was shouting to tell me 'the dog's being sick - I've let her out the back!'. I raced through and found a small pile of dog barf on the back doormat.....and a much larger pile in the kitchen - with my half-eaten toast and Marmite nestling in the middle of it! Grrr! I told her off for being opportunistic and greedy (well - more like 'Dirty dog! Bad dog!' actually), made two fresh slices, and warmed my by-then-cold tea in the microwave. Two o'clock and not a stroke of doctoral work done. Typical. Absolutely typical.

Time and Thyme Again

2009-11-22T06:26:00.000-08:00

The German tutor was quite specific - "Do NOT" she said "leave your assignment until the last minute. It'll take quite a few hours to make a good job of it." So here I am, with barely 48 hours to hand-in, staring at an unwritten commentary (if you can stare at something that doesn't exist). *sigh*

It's quite worrying, the way that time telescopes in on itself, like a piece of tissue paper self-crumpling before my eyes. It's all a question of priorities: I spent much of last week dividing my time on writing up a draft chapter for my next supervisory meeting, and parsing Greek verbs to form my own corpus of the Pauline verbs (don't ask - it's a long story!). I need to make steady progress with that to keep on track. Somehow, I kept back-staging the German project, although we'd had two weeks to complete it. I have done the translations (last weekend, after spending all Saturday at a conference that wasn't really relevant, as it transpired), but life just keeps getting in the way. I feel compelled to remain polite and sociable, but having a morning (actually, a couple of mornings) monopolised by someone that has no idea of the pressure I'm under or what I have to do, is making me increasingly twitchy.

Today, the Husband and daughter #3 are competing at the British Indoor Rowing Championships down in Birmingham, so a lot of yesterday was taken up by preparation for that, culminating in taxi-ing them to catch their train. Today, I had to mobilise the in-laws to take the Bright-Eyed Boy to his junior league football match as I was reading in church first thing. So I zoomed off to the pitch after delivering a section of John's Apocalypse (one of my favourite books of the Bible: super-weird!) and stood watching his team getting trounced in the biting wind. Then home again in time to catch a webcam deliver a garbled and halting coverage of the d#3's race. Then a number of phone calls to the Husband, who had recovered from his magnificent race earlier this morning (SEVEN seconds faster than his all-time PB! What a star!!), a trip to the shop to stock up on fruit, veg and bread for the week, home again to chop and cover the veg with olive-oil to slowly oven-roast with sliced pork, apples and thyme. And now it's 2.45pm and I've only just had lunch and a sit-down. No wonder I'm feeling shaky and weak. Before long they'll be on their way home, so another trip to the station will be in order, then dinner and sharing the excitement and then I'll probably keel over with a glass of wine.

Ah me! Where will I fit the German in? Tomorrow, I guess. But it's the father-in-law's birthday this week and no present's been bought yet (I know, I know). Tuesday IS German Reading Skills Day (you see, at least I remember that now), Wednesday, I have to email my portion of work in to uni for next week. Thursday, I'm actually going down to uni to do a 'presentation skills' workshop (ugh!). Then Friday, which is when my dear old Mum and Dad will probably land squarely at 10.30 and raise their eyebrows that I haven't been keeping up with current political events or even housework*. And I was up at 5.15 this morning, which doesn't help. I did manage to do some 'serious' reading on Pauline metaphors, but I'm feeling a bit stale now. I think I'll have a look at one of the poems in a few minutes and make some notes about the more obvious features. It's Lit. Crit. - you can say pretty much anything you like as long as you back it up with evidence! So I will.

* they don't understand that it ranks pretty low on this house's agendum: my Mum is still fussing around with a duster and Dad's tea on a tray at 80, and makes constant reference to cooking, gardening and busying about as having to do with woman's sense self-worth . O pur-lease!!! Rod? Own back?

Head Down

2009-11-18T08:38:00.001-08:00

I've spent most of the past few days sitting in front of the computer working on my doctoral studies. The weather has been very wet and windy, so the idea of venturing out hasn't been that appealing. This means that I'm rattling along nicely with my chapters and getting into the swing of dedicating most of my day to study. But I'm very aware that most of my day is spent pretty well motionless, and what with the temptation to punctuate thought with a coffee break (and a biscuit, of course) it's not a recipe for healthy living. I've long since given up the pretension of going to the gym. Just before the summer holidays (while I was still doing my PhD part-time), I made a few desultory attempts to go, but I resented the time spent on boring cardio work and kept putting my neck out with weights. I had a bit of an epiphany when I looked about and saw all these grim, humourless faces pounging it out on the treadmills like raddled hamsters and thought 'God! They're so busy trying to stay fit and prolong their lives that they are no longer enjoying them!' So I never went back, despite the fact my membership doesn't run out 'til February. They can keep it - the point of life is life, as Goethe said. Now I'm studying full-time, and being paid for it, I really can't spare the sort of time required to make a difference.
That being said, if the weather's good, we walk the school-run (dog in tow, a mile there and a mile back), and I'll walk at a brisk pace into the middle of town if I feel like a break. I used to quite enjoy swimming, but because I do that stupid woman-keeping-head-out-of-chlorinated-water swimming style, my neck wasn't too good after it. Plus I resented the inordinate time it seemed to take to get showered, wash my hair, get dried and dressed again. I guess I'm either lazy, or impatient, or possibly both.
There's something about the dark evenings that encourage eating large amounts of carbs too: pasta, pies, mash, baked spuds...and a nice glass of wine too, before snuggling torpidly down on the sofa for David Attenborough. The Christmas hols aren't too far off either, and although they are trying for a number of different reasons (see last Christmas's posts), this year I am rather looking forward to the blurring of the presently sharply-defined compartments of the daily routine. Sherry for elevenses, anyone?

A Slip of the Mind

2009-11-07T06:29:00.000-08:00

Back into the swing of things after our busy half-term and I'm already flagging. The week started splendidly with my birthday (hooray!), but that in itself meant that I had to be generally sociable, look pleased and receive guests. I ended up going out for lunch with daughter #2 which bisected the day so completely that I ended up not doing any doctoral stuff at all. OK, no panic then, I start in earnest on Tuesday morning: so I did, and made reasonable progress on 'intentionality', got a number of interesting points down on paper, read a few PDFs (I could really do with a Sony iReader to store them on - I must have killed off a small copse by now in printing them out), had a think about 'reader response'...couldn't decide what I thought anymore, as per usual etc. etc. The husband came home and, over dinner, asked how it was going. Fine , I said, I just have to look at my German Reading Skills prep. for tomorrow, then O M G! The sudden realisation that I had, in fact, missed the tutorial which had been that very morning!!!! I'd been so intent on making progress on my chapters that the class had been completely forgotten. Ever get that nasty cold wave that starts at the top of the skull and seeps right down the spine? Well, I did. I generally pride myself on punctuality and attendance, and now I had ****ed up big style, particularly since I had missed the previous week through being abroad. Doesn't look too good, does it? Especially as it wasn't a course that I had been overly keen on taking, it was really just to tick an appropriate box on my 'training needs' record at uni. To an outsider it could look like truculence, whereas it was, in fact, pure forgetfulness. I found it quite disturbing actually, to have been so obliviously unaware that I'd been missing something. Thinking about it rationally (once I'd calmed down and fired off a grovellingly apologetic email to the tutor), I think I'd had it at the back of my mind that the class was on Wednesdays -as it had originally been scheduled when I 'd registered back in July - and somehow I had defaulted back to that unconscious setting since our first session a couple of weeks ago. Oops! I have tried very hard to catch up (future + conditional tenses, plus literary appreciation of the poet Rilke), but it was a salutary lesson in remembering to write scheduled stuff in the diary.

Religion

2009-10-22T08:22:00.001-07:00

Oh dear....during a conversation with an agnostic friend the other day, the talk turned to spirituality and then religion, the result of which was that she started to question me, very kindly and interestedly, about my faith. And I'm afraid to say that I did not give a very good account of it or myself. I always find it difficult to discuss my beliefs with anyone, as - I have to confess - I'm not entirely certain what they are myself. I just can't put what I feel into words or rationalise it in a way that either sounds satisfactory or coherent.
It's like trying to communicate what the feeling of 'being in love' is like to someone that never has been.
A lot of people can empathise with the awe that one feels in a great cathedral, or be moved by sacred music, or love to see the incense-filled spectacle of the Mass, or be moved by icons and flickering candle light and I admit that it is difficult to define exactly what it is I feel in addition to the uplift that these things certainly give. To the rational mind (like my friend) that is all there is: a need for the feeling of transcendence, and there may be a lot of truth in the neuroscientists' claims that man is 'hard-wired' to feel religious. Maybe I'm not really a 'true believer' as I harbour a great many doubts, both about the church and the religious tenets that it espouses. I carry my doubts about as rather regrettable baggage that stands in the way of my unquestioning acceptance. I'd really like a true, clear faith, unclouded by dark 'what-ifs'. But I haven't got one. I don't really know if God exists, or if Jesus was his son - but I act like I do because I want (and trust) it to be the case. I want it to be the case that this life doesn't end at the grave, that we do - in some form, either bodily or atomic - meet our loved ones in a love that transcends death. I keep these feeings in tension - not entirely happily - within me, as I know that there will be no resolution in this life. Not for me blind, unquestioning obedience to the church either. I am not happily yoked, although I still pay lip-service it and am happy that there are such black and white, incontravertible teachings handed down to us. I know that the church has been responsible for some absolutely terrible things being done in the name of Christianity, awful unforgivable abuses of power. That is a fact that cannot be escaped, but power in any organised form can give rise to horror. It is part of our flawed humanity, the need to dominate and control at any price - and it cannot be excused. So how do I convince her that what I feel is either real or, indeed, desirable? Well - I can't. I just know that once I had precious little faith, and then (after an epiphany of sorts) I did, as if I had suddenly grown another layer of consciousness, or extra organ that supplies it, and it is refuelled by the liturgy and beauty of the church. And if that sounds lame or self-deluding, I'm sorry. But that's how it is. I'm mute in the face of questions, because it's not something that can be rationally explained away or even given voice to. The nearest analogy that I can give is the 'magic eye' pictures that were popular around ten years ago. On first examination they appeared to be an unintelligible mess of colour and pattern, but if you relaxed your vision - 'gave in', in a way - and looked beyond the picture, an image startlingly appeared to hover in front of your eyes. And the strange thing is, once you could see it, you couldn't 'unsee' it.
Well, my faith is somewhat like that....

Barcelona!

2009-10-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

The long dry and mostly sunny autumn seems to have eventually come to an end: today is distinctly cold, dreary and wet. Daughter #3 has very bravely gone off to rowing-training, though I don't imagine it'll be as much fun as it was in the lovely mellow days just gone. She's doing tremendously well and has taken part in a couple of races, thoroughly enjoyed them and won a couple of medals. She is so good at organising herself for this, her guitar lessons and school that it's difficult to remember that she's still only twelve. Twelve, and on her road to independence. I am, by turns, very proud of her and sadly nostalgic that she's growing up so fast. I am feeling somewhat overwhelmed by my doctoral studies. Not that I'm not enjoying them - I really am - it's just that having got funding, the pressure is on to crank up the pace to submit in two and a half year's time - not the five years that I'd originally scheduled. There is so much to do and so much I don't know that even chipping away at it bit-by-bit is quite daunting. Luckily my supervisor is excellent and keeps my feet firmly on the ground, so I don't have the hassle that a lot of my friends have had with unsatisfactory working relationships. The only thing I'm finding a bit of a trial is the obligatory hoop-jumping that seems part and parcel of PhD work nowadays. 'Investors in People' meets academia: paper trails and finding and completing exercises just to have them box-ticked on my training-needs record. Honestly - I'm coasting downhill towards retirement. I'm not realistically going to find gainful employment at the end of the day, am I? (fair enough, my younger colleagues have none of them, to a man, found a job in their chosen field), so why pretend that all this time-consuming workshop attendance is anything more than a form filling exercise that takes me away from the real business of writing?

Half-term looms again (can't believe we're nearly half way to Christmas this term already) and fortunately we've lined up a real treat: Barcelona, courtesy of Airmiles earned through shopping at Tesco. Brilliant - I can't wait, never having been there before. I'm going to try and savour every single moment, not get too stressed over the travel arrangements (like I usually do), and take time to stand and gaze in awe at all the unfamiliar stuff around me. It should be lovely, and a much needed break for the Husband, whose job is pushing him into meltdown, if not complete burn-out.....

A Glimpse of Eternity

2009-10-02T05:56:00.000-07:00

Daughter #3 and I went into town this morning to see the relics of St Therese of Lisieux which are in the Minster before making their way (not under their own steam, obviously) to Leeds' and then Middlesbrough's cathedrals. Despite being allegedly incorrupt (and apparently emitting the odour of roses on inspection), the remains themselves were not on open display, being enclosed in a tiny casket within a glass case. The faithful and the curious filed by respectfully touching the glass with their prayer cards to absorb some of the sanctity of the saint who died at the age of 24 never having left her convent. Her 'little way', is seento be achievable by absolutely anyone - to do any task or service, however menial, with complete love. Relics are indeed curious things, dividing even the faithful in their reactions to them. Some, like my Pa-in-Law, shudder at the thought of them (squeamishness? horror mortis?), others reverence them deeply. I'm most certainly not in the former camp, nor yet really in the latter: I am curiously drawn to them, and will seek them out if given half the chance. The continent is particularly rich in relics and any self -respecting cathedral has a number of mummified body parts, splinters of the true cross, phials of saints' blood, and bones mounted in crystal reliquaries, usually badly top-lit by buzzing neon tubes. The family is either quite resigned to, or heartily sick of, what they see as my almost prurient interest them. But do I love to visit them. I can't quite describe the feeling that I get in the presence of relics. I tried to describe it the Husband (I'm not sure he really understood) as a feeling of mildew: of timelessness, like you get from the smell of incense or hot candle-wax, damp wood or cement; from the sound of distant dripping water, or the feel of your hand on marble; the sight, on dull drizzly days, of gloomy thickly carpeted altars in dim side-chapels, covered in faded silk flowers or dead roses; those flickering votive candle-bulbs that light up at the drop of a coin. A feeling of unity with all those who have prayed there before, lives lived and gone, young girls who became mothers who became old women. Red velvet covered by heavy white lace. Whispering. Candles. Holiness.

I can't quite remember which was the first relic I ever saw. I think it was the tongue of St Antony of Padua (he was a renowned orator). I remember thinking, full of atheistic eleven year-old scorn, that it looked like a raspberry. Not long after we were taken to the relic-filled treasury of St Mark's in Venice by some devout Italian family friends. I revisited these when we went back there this spring and was not disappointed. Rome was well-endowed too, and we visited the Capuchin crypt of Santa Maria della Concezione on the via Veneto to see the ossuary where the dead monks' bones and remains decorate the dank subterranean walls. In St Peter's we visited the undercroft where Pope John-Paul II is buried in a flower strewn tomb amongst his papal predecessors. Even my daughter's school has the mummified hand of St Margaret Clitheroe in its chapel (she says that it looks like a rice crispie). I would like to sit in their presence and try to fathom out what it is that I feel, but the children are too antsy and the Husband, although kindly tolerant and nominally Catholic, would rather not. One day I will take myself off to Rome and find a quiet church (St Ignazio has a wonderful altar with a crimson-robed saint in tiny slippers and a silver death-mask) and sit there and think, and work out what exactly it is that I get from the dead. (below: the relics of St Robert Bellarmine, St Ignazio, Rome)

..and then they all come at once!

2009-09-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

Things never seem to occur singly: within the space of one month I found a £20 note fluttering down the street (hooray), was informed that, as I had reached 50 years of age, I could take my pension as a lump sum (double hooray - it paid off my student account overdraft), and that I had been awarded funding for the remainder of my PhD (triple hooray....still can't quite believe it). On the down-side my Ma AND Pa-in-law both had accidents that necessitated hospitalisation (the latter's being a lot more serious than the former's)...we're awaiting a third occurrence. And today chez nous we have a broken kitchen hot tap (very difficult to rinse grease off plates), a dishwasher whose heater element has given up heating (so HOW do we do the washing-up?) and the Husband's rear bike tyre exploded whilst he was riding to work! All the last three can fortunately be coped with thanks to the fact that I am now in receipt of my 'stipend', but it's not exactly what I envisaged spending it on! And looking grey-faced at the latest credit card bill my other half voiced his gratitude that I was 'now in a position to help out'. Fan-flaming-tastic.

The Perfect Wedding

2009-09-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

The wedding could not have been better: the day dawned bright and cloudless, the preparations on the day ran smoothly (bar a little crying session from the Bouncing Baby), the traffic was minimal and everyone arrived at the registry office in plenty of time. The groom was immaculately turned out, as were the groomsmen who soothed his understandable nervousness; the bride positively glowing, looking beautiful in her empire-line pearl-trimmed dress, clutching a small bouquet of cream roses, purple lizzianthus twined with pearls and trailing ivy. Daughter #3 (a bridesmaid) stood tall in her pretty purple dress, with a posy that matched the bride's flowers. The Bright-Eyed Boy was smart in his co-ordinated mave-striped shirt and purple tie. Indeed, we were all smart - and happy. The ceremony was brief, as was the photography session, and then the wedding party made its way on foot through the Museum Gardens (pausing for more photos on the way) to the restaurant where the reception was being held. The champagne flowed freely, the food was delicious, the company excellent. The guests went their separate ways and later reunited in the newly-weds garden to continue celebrating with cake and more sparkly stuff until the sun went down. What a perfect day: may it be the first of many.

Boring Blogs

2009-09-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

Where O where are some interesting blogs? The blogosphere is quite arid at the moment! Just a load of dull lists and cross-postings that could have been generated by an info-bot. You're all very boring and I'm going to delete my favourites list unless someone posts something interesting that has a bit of personal investment in it. Let me know what you THINK, not who's been doing what: I can find that out by myself , thank you!

An Intriguing Discovery

2009-09-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

Actually I already knew he was there, only I thought that he was a she.....

In the Catalan-Gothic cathedral of Santa Maria Immacolata in Alghero, Sardinia, is a modest chapel to the rear right of the main altar. It is plain and undecorated, unremarkable in every way save that under the altar (whose tabernacle is in a sorry state of disrepair) is a glass-fronted sarcophagus. And within this lies what appears to be a body, lying supine, dressed in silk robes, the shoulders and slightly lolling head supported on a pillow. The face is pale but attractive, the eyes and mouth are half-closed in what may almost appear to be ecstasy - but there is a sizeable gash that running across the base of the neck. The expression is reminiscent of Bernini's St Teresa in Santa Maria della Vittoria in Rome.

This wax-covered effigy contains the bones of St Donaziano, an early Roman-Christian martyr whose remains (from the catacombs of Rome) were gifted to the wealthy Algherese Garibaldi-Piccinelli family in 1845 by Cardinal Costantino Patrizi . After passing through various members of the family's hands, it was eventually donated to the cathedral and installed in its Chapel of the Holy Spirit, where it lies to this day.

The relics were received into the cathedral on October 25th 1913 with great solemnity, an occasion recorded in local dialect in the archives of the Bishop of Alghero. There also seems to have been an authentication of the remains:

È tosto accertata l’identificazione del corpo del santo martire per i caratteri di esatta corrispondenza che presenta col rescritto rilasciato ai maggiori della donatrice dal card. Patrizi, vicario di S. Santità in Roma nel 1845.
A conferma e chiarezza maggiore si aggiunge che il corpo del santo, formato dal suo scheletro rivestito di cera e vestito in abito romano, presenta una larga ferita al collo, e giace (la testa sopra tre cuscini di seta) in un’urna di legna esternamente da tre parti dorata e chiusa da tre vetri. Dentro l’urna è pure l’ampolla di sangue ritrovata nel suo loculo. All’urna è annessa una piccola lapide marmorea colla iscrizione «Donatiano Te in pace». Dai lati esterni, verso il capo e i piedi del santo, si notano quattro impressioni di ceralacca con timbro poco leggibile. L’urna è riposta in una cassa di legno, aperta da tre lati, sormontata da mensa con pietra sacra, per la celebrazione della Santa Messa.

And it was in the cathedral that I first noted him on our first visit to Sardinia, although I have to admit that for six years I did think that he was a female, and it was only on finally discovering his name that I realised that I had been wrong all along! The mode of death appears to be typically Roman - a short sword is either thrust into the neck or driven down adjacent the collar bone skewering the thorassic organs and severing major blood vessels. Death would be, if not instantaneous, then certainly rapid (see below).

Very little is actually known about this St Donaziano: even his name - which might be translated as 'St Donation' or 'Gift' - is suspicious for one whose bones were given as a present, and the trade in 'relics' was traditionally notorious for fraudulent claims. There are at least 18 saints known by variants of this name, including the female Roman martyr St Donata, whose relics, along with those of her companions Hilaria, Nomiflanda, Paulina, Rustica, and Serotina are enshrined in the Via Salaria Catacombs, in Rome.

But I'm not sure that that is important. These wax-covered bones have been the focus of pious Algherese prayers for many years. And if one were to ask for saintly intercession, who better to invoke than one currently not too overburdened with requests?

Pruttetor sés declarat
San Donaziano a l’Alghé
un màrtir que glòria té
del pòpul sempra alabat.
Un eroica virtut
a l’Alghé estem gozant
gràcia de l’Espírit Sant
que aquest Sant avem tengut
gran relíquia y ha vengut
singular y de plajé.
Protector ec. ec.
Un àngel de puritat
en l’Alghé avui tenim
en devoció nul pranim
que serà nostru avvucat
vergin martirizzat
prova que és mort per la fé.
Protector sés declarat
San Donaziano a l’Alghé.
Prova santa y giusta ha dat
deffenent la religió
essent ancara mignó
a los devuit ayns en poca etat
per Gesús sacrificat
avui quanta glòria té.
Protector ec. ec.
Giaquè goza eterna glòria
amba devoció sa miri
Déu ly ha rendit lo glyri
y la palma de la victòria
del pòpul fassi memòria
que na tenim manasté.
Protector ec. ec.
Decimosesto Gregori
de l’Alghé gia s’és dignat
aquest papa lu Sant ha dat
amba devoció s’adori
gràcia en general emplori
que axí és lo nostru prajé.
Protector ec. ec. ec.
Per medi de un algueresa
s’és dignat a cumpació
amba fe y religió
tota a egl s’és emprumisa
un señora cortesa
aquest tesor avuy té.
Protector ec. ec.
Gràcia emplori en general
en plúvia y serenitat
de pesta y calamitat
nus deffenghi en lu temporal
féu que al espiritual
cadaú pensi al maggior bé.
Protector ec. ec.
De un tesor tant preciosíssim
na forma un gran santuari
amba un begl reliquiari
de la sang sua puríssima
o màrtyr gloriosíssim
biada la casa que lo té.
[Protector ec. ec.]
Per diura del sou flagellu
suffrinnu amba tot amor
flagello de gran dulor
lu que ha soffrit poverello
Aquell tyranno ribello
de escannarlu ly dighé.
Protector ec. ec.
Un cop murtal en lu cap ly han dat
y al bras un altra ferida
la que ly ha troncat la vida
era quant l’han escannat
la que lu cor ly ha trapassat
y és mort amba gran prajé.
Protector s’és declarat ec. ec.
La sua vida és accabada
y Déu la glòria ly dóna
una celeste curona
y la palma duplicada
de àngels és adornada
la sua ànima també.
Protector ec. ec.
A Roma l’han enterrat
amba occulta diligència
per divina providència
a l’Alghé l’han trasportat
l’ayn mill vuitcentz és estat
y quaranta sys dyuré.
Protector ec. ec.
Que nos miri a totz quantz sem
adorannu en cumpagnia
que y pughi veni’ un dia
que en la glòria nus vaggiem
amba egl totz que sighiem
a gozar l’eternu Bé.
Protector ec. ec.
Totas las súplicas nostras
syghin per las vostras penas
abbundantas soaves venas
que han ubert las glòrias vostras
féu que sighin prepostas
las ànimas ha fer bé.
Protector ec. ec. ec.
Un màrtyr que glòria té
del pòpul sempra alabat
protector s’és declarat
San Donaziano a l’Alghé

All Over Bar the Shopping

2009-09-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Nearly there.......the Bright Eyed Boy dons his shiny new uniform tomorrow and heads off to the start of his last year of primary education. Daughter #3 is making the most of the last few weekday morning sessions of rowing training before her return to school next Monday. The weather is distinctly on the turn now, the sun at a lower angle in the sky, the nights that bit longer, dawn that bit later.... I can get quite melancholic with the shortening of the days: I need a goodly amount of warm sunshine to keep me chipper. This year however I'm not going to get much time to brood as I start my full-time doctoral studies in less than a month's time! To tell the truth, I haven't given it a great deal of thought just recently - there was a flurry of admin to complete just before we went away (only a fortnight ago in reality), and since we arrived back I have been absorbed by general mucking-out, uniform buying, hospital duty (visiting Pa-in-law after his DIY tumble) and wedding hysteria. Daughter #2 is drumming her fingers waiting for her 'big day' to dawn. I haven't actually bought anything to wear to it yet, so that delight is for next week when I have a bit of peace and quiet - although it won't be either peaceful or quiet as the wedding excitement will have reached fever-pitch by then, and no doubt there'll be unforseen crises to attend to along the way. So you can see that anything academic has been severely backstaged. Looking at the blogs that I read on a fairly regular basis, I have to chuckle at the beard-stroking earnestness that allows some chaps (chapesses are conspicuous by their absence in certain circles: I guess they're 'surrendered' or what have you) to spend their summers reading tomes of epic proportions then critiquing them online. I wonder if anyone really cares.....
Although to a certain extent I am envious of those scholars who can devote swathes of time to their subjects, I am so glad that I have a life external to my studies. Real life - family life - tends to sort out the wheat from the chaff.

You Got to.....Ac-centuate the Positive...

2009-09-01T00:27:00.000-07:00

It's a beautiful morning...the sky is clear blue, the sun is shining, the hedgerows are burgeoning with glistening purplish blackberries.....The whole world has a distinct feeling of new beginnings and promise about it today. I'm glad to feel perky again, particularly after a rather fraught few days which saw my poor old Pa-in-law take a nasty tumble off his garage roof (DIY incident) and sustain three broken ribs. Rushed to hospital in an ambulance (the extent of the damage wasn't immediately clear) he's been kept in on account of the pain and being unable to bend in the middle - a prerequisite for a car-journey home. A nasty shock for all concerned and possibly a foreshadowing of years to come, with increasingly frail dependents tripping over their slippers, choking on their glacier mints etc. Hopefully he'll be home soon and improve rapidly. But it could have been SO much worse: he fell onto concrete, full onto one side, so the potential for a fractured skull, hip or leg was there. Three ribs seems not too bad in the circumstances really.

The Days Thou Gavest....

2009-08-31T02:40:00.000-07:00

Well.....that's the summer hols over for another year, and needless to say I am riven with guilt about not appreciating it more at the time blah blah blah. As per usual. Actually it was great: I loved every moment of our foreign sojourn. The fact that we've been to the same mediterranean island for the past six years (...I know - how predictable) lent the strange illusion that the total weeks spent on vacation had consolidated into one six-week long visit, and by the end of our second day we could not believe that we'd only been there a mere 48 hours. So we ate and drank and sunbathed far more than would be deemed good for our bodies, but it was immensely healing and nourishing to the soul - and that's what holidays are all about. But back to this grey and bickering small island with its cold drizzle and unappetising diet......We are already planning our next escape.

At the moment, I feel quite tired out and unenthused about rejoining the fray: the Bright-Eyed Boy returns to school later this week, leaving daughter #3 and myself to make a few desultory trips for new school uniform before she goes back next week. Then I am on my own again, facing the HUGE responsibility of becoming a full-time, fully-funded PhD student at the beginning of October. Ulp! (That, and daughter #2's wedding which is scheduled for a fortnight's time) No doubt I'll perk up once relieved of my quotidien maternal resposibility. Perhaps I should buy some new stationery goods to symbolise my new 'start'. I remember from my schooldays that a new pencil-case and jotter always seemed to promise a new, improved term-time identity, a new commitment to study and enthusiasm. I was always baffled by those who chose to cling on to their scruffy old pencil-cases and eschewed new goods: were they deliberately embracing asceticism as a style-choice or simply unable to appreciate the frisson generated by minor self-indulgence? Probably neither - they just weren't as neurotic as me, and no doubt their lives have gone on to be models of rectitude and fiscal commonsense.

I was mesmerised in the outbound airport by a rack of Moleskine goods of every size. Had I not been going on my holidays (rather than returning from them) I would no doubt have plundered the display for another large floppy-back 18-month diary (week per page). I've been using one of these for over a year now and am very conscious that it runs out at Christmas and I haven't seen one locally. I love it: it's now covered in my erratic handwriting in various different inks and is full of useful website addresses, quotes, references and bibliographic essentials. My supervisor expressed a modicum of surprise that I 'did everything longhand'. I don't - at least not 'proper' work -but I've never mastered the art of cyber-notes - where do they all go? Everything that has caught my imagination or attention is there to see and, most usefully, I can usually visualise a particular item's whereabouts on the page or pen-colour which makes its retrieval much easier than snatching it back out of the ether. It is a real vade mecum, a commonplace, a forum, a repository of knowledge, ideas and the springboard of thought. And much as I love the functionality and range of my laptop, it will never replace my diary.

Idyll Fears.

2009-08-14T00:55:00.000-07:00

Am suspended in that strange no-man's land between 'normal life' and going on holiday. I am feeling a compulsive need for order which saw me up at an unfeasibly early hour cleaning out the bird and hoovering up. The clothes that are washed are being put on one side for ironing and packing, so we're wearing some pretty strange combinations, I just can't -just CAN'T - be relaxed about travelling: I've tried and all that happens is a terrible sensation that I've forgotten something vitally important. Trouble is, I see the whole process as a series of hurdles to be overcome. I start in a state of high tension: the drive to the airport....what happens if we break down or get a flat...or God forbid! have an accident? The flight: did I really check our documentation thoroughly enough? Did the airframe inspectors get distracted at a vital moment? Turbulence? Air traffic computers crash? Will we get our luggage? How are we going to get to the apartment? Will there be a taxi available if our flight is severely delayed? Has the apartment owner double-booked us? Run off with the deposit? Will the whole week see freakish storms and power-cuts? Acute appendicitis anyone? Food poisoning? Jellyfish stings? And then the whole thing in reverse to get home. Ach! Who'd be a control freak?

So until I am actually sunning my wine-numbed carcase like a tide-driven leviathan upon that golden shore, lulled by the lapping waves and the roar of the occasional Airbus, I shall remain Very Ill At Ease Indeed.

The Carelessness of Youth

2009-08-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

I'm deliberately weaving a little web of happiness around myself today, having finished off a particularly downbeat book in the early hours of dawn. The residue of sadness that overlaid me was almost palpable. Recognising that I can slide off down into the Slough of Despond if I dwell on gloomy thoughts too long, I made a conscious decision to Be Happy, buy little treats and act like a jolly mummy today. And happily it has worked. I feel quite perky, particularly as the weather is sunny and breezy. The dog is happily sunbathing in the garden, the children - tired, but not exhausted from their trip into town - are contentedly sprawling about the house listening to music and drawing. I am not going to do any work today: I've decided to give myself time off to anticipate our trip to foreign shores. I've invested in some clip-on sunglasses (not too hideous) so that I can lie and read on the beach without getting a pounding headache from squinting through my untinted readers (like last year). I am far too stingy to pay out for a pair of prescription sunglasses. I also bought a heavily discounted hat, a man's fedora that is big enough for me to wear even when I've got my hair clipped up, which is absolutely essential as I can't stand having a hot neck. It looks, I have to say, rather stylish - in a 'Sissinghurst' sort of way. Daughter #3 bought a bikini, tiny slivers of material that makes me nostalgic for the days when I too could get away with such minimalist clothing. Daughter #2, having produced #1 Bouncing Baby earlier this year, has been more than a little shocked by the way her previously svelte figure has disappeared under a mass of stretched skin. Ah me!Careless youth passes like a golden shadow over our corporeity, ephemeral gorgeousness that evaporates in so few years.

ἐπάμεροι: τί δέ τις; τί δ᾽ οὔ τις; σκιᾶς ὄναρ

ἄνθρωπος. ἀλλ᾽ ὅταν αἴγλα διόσδοτος ἔλθῃ,

λαμπρὸν φέγγος ἔπεστιν ἀνδρῶν καὶ μείλιχος αἰών

Creatures of a day! What is a man? What is he not? A dream of a shadow

Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men

A gleam of splendour given of Heaven,

Then rests on them a light of glory

And blesséd are their days.

Pindar: Pythian 8, line 95-8; (courtesy of Wikiquote)

Mild Annoyance at Irritating Bloggers

2009-08-10T07:03:00.000-07:00

I generally spend about an hour a day catching up with the blogs that I've got filed under 'favourites': it makes me feel like I am keeping abreast of the work environment even if I'm not putting words down myself. But just recently a couple of them have began to rankle and I'm seriously thinking of knocking them off the list. It's hard to identify the reasons precisely, but it's the same sort of feeling that you get when a colleague's voice starts to get on your nerves and you sit drumming your fingers, waiting for them to get on their favourite hobbyhorse yet again. The intrusion of ego into scholarship, I think. Sure - everyone's got a point of view (and there's nothing duller than a blog detailing field-resources with no personal reflection) - but when that point of view becomes absolute conviction and obscures objectivity......

The older scholars tend to take themselves less seriously, even though they are the ones with greater academic clout, but I suppose that self-deprecating humour comes after years and years of experience and the realisation that the more you think you know, the less you actually do! I have to admit a wry smile when one of these established scholars verbally 'pats' a neophyte on the head: the puppy-like fawning and widdling that follows is most amusing.

Confined

2009-08-07T00:25:00.001-07:00

The carpet fitter is coming at some point today to fit some new stuff in the hall and landing and on the stairs. Ordinarily the husband would do it himself, but the stairs are that bit more tricky to get right - and more to the point - safe! So I am confined to barracks until the fitting is complete. As usual with tradesmen, there was no indication of any time slot -even whether it would be am or pm, so patience is the name of the game. And I'm bored already.

It will be nice when it's done, but really, I have no interest in soft furnishings, textures, colour schemes and the like. Our house is functional, not an aspirational statement. I spend little time fretting about how it looks or how it will appear to others. What I do care about is the life within its walls, and that that is what should be nurtured and tended. I don't think children particularly care about home decor, although the Bright-Eyed Boy once expressed an interest in 'modern' houses. All they need is a safe, warm, dry, food-filled bolt-hole to curl up in - not sea-grass on the floors and a Smeg fridge.

Incrementality and Jesus Saves

2009-08-04T04:43:00.000-07:00

School holidays are actually progressing much more smoothly than last year. Looking back, I think I was feeling pretty tense about the whole PhD thing and the funding thereof. That all came to a nasty head during our week away when daughter #2 decided to let me know (by text) that I'd had a letter from the AHRC. Of course, then I had to know what it said, got her to read it and text me any news "I'm SO sorry...." she started. Great. I was massively disappointed, but couldn't let the others know how I felt, which was really difficult when we were confined in such close quarters. So I pretended I didn't really care, dismissing the whole issue as a mere inconvenience. When we returned home I found out that the scholarships had already been awarded in early June, so no luck there either. All this tension pretty much overshadowed the whole Summer from start to finish. I had the OU course to do, but all the time I was thinking beyond that to possible doctoral study, but couldn't feasibly do anything constructive towards it. I was very ill at ease and this manifested itself in many ways.

This year however I think that I am much more chilled. The children are that little bit older, a little less demanding and tempestuous and I have my 'bolt-hole' where I can go and write for a couple of hours. Plus I have a plan, which always makes me feel positive and cheerful. Everyday I commit to writing for at least a couple of hours - it doesn't matter what I write: even blogging is a useful authorial experience, and hones the compositional skills. Refinement can come later. In the evenings, I spend half an hour brushing up my basic German.

One of the things that I have learnt over the years is the value of small increments. Whatever needs to be done can be done in small chunks that barely impact at all. 'A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step' and all that. Just keep those steps coming and you'll get there remarkably quickly and with minimal effort. This is one of the really useful things that motherhood taught me: it's no good bewailing the lack of time you have when you have small children. Divide your day into 15 minute slots and allot an achievable task to one of those slots. I carried this philosophy through to later my university years: 15 minutes is quite long enough to memorise some vocab, or photostat an article, or source a book, or grab a coffee. Just don't approach life as a monolithic entity: break it down so you can see its constituent tasks, then tackle them one at a time. Don't get overwhelmed: be a serial do-er.

Our 20 pence Jesus bears testimony to the benefits of this approach. He is a garish 9" high pink flock covered plastic statuette, with a slot in his back for coins, bought (with an ironic wink) by daughter #2*. Every time I find a 20 pence piece in my purse I pop it in the slot: I have been doing so since last summer. Just before our trip away, I'm going to empty him out and cash the savings in for Euros. I anticipate there'll be about £40 sterling, enough to buy us a cheap lunch out on holiday. A salutary lesson in the incremental approach.

* she understands my deep fondness of Catholic imagery, even if she doesn't share it!

Moan moan moan....

2009-08-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

The weather has been absolutely atrocious recently: persistant heavy drizzle. The children are climbing the walls and I'm not far behind them! Fortunately daughter #3's rowing sessions have provided a focus for many of the days that would otherwise pass in an amorphous blur. At least we've got out! Many acquaintances are feeling the pressure: we've all done the painting/pasting/baking thing to death over the years. Neither we or the kids can tolerate any more make-do-and-mend bargain basement amusement. Intelligent youngsters suck up mental stimulation like sponges, and they won't be fobbed off with substandard offerings. The local museums are dull and patronising even with a well-planned 'treasure hunt' element. Theatre and cinema fare is predictable and overrated, concerts rare and exhorbitant. And you can only read so much in one day! My heart goes out to 'staycationers', those poor fools who thought it would be ironic 'fun' in these economically straitened times to camp or hire a beach hut or stay put and have 'days out'. By the time you've paid the entrance fee and marched a family of four around a good old British attraction in the cold and rain, paid for a few hot drinks and some seriously overpriced slimy sandwiches (or worse than dull, brought your own), you might as well have bitten the bullet and got some cheapy last-minute foreign holiday deal. At least the weather or food actually can't be worse than here, nor the locals less welcoming, nor your teeth less gritted.

The Best is Yet to Come!

2009-07-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

Well, I've spent quite a lot of time closeted in my 'satellite study' i.e. the tiny laptop desk adjacent the door in the main bedroom. It's been a real godsend and means that I can get some work done without being subjected to too much distraction. Daughter #3 seems really caught up in the whole rowing thing, opting (quite voluntarily) to go to the training sessions 3-4 times per week. This is a fantastic opportunity for her to become skilled in a sport that she is really enjoying, despite the fact that she capsized today and had to be assisted from the river by a couple of nearby fishermen (who assured they'd seen it all before). It seems to be a bit of an initiation thing - completely expected at some stage, and better now than in January! She is completely unphased by, and indeed a bit proud of, her bit of drama. It's a real commitment getting her there for the morning sessions, I have to be a bit strict about making sure she's out of bed, dressed and having a good breakfast before I take the dog for her walk. Still, we're all ready by nine am to drive to the rowing club where I drop her off, ensure that she's safely off up-river and make my way into the city centre. The weather hasn't been so great lately, so sitting on the riverbank with a book isn't an option at the moment. Plus I've got the Bright-Eyed Boy with me, who is eager to fritter his birthday money on stretchy chickens, mystery UFOs, magic 8-balls, Pokemon cards and the like. The Starbucks bill for his caramel 'frapuccini' has been astronomical since the schools broke up. Crusty French bread, pate and sliced tomatoes for lunch and then a quieter afternoon. Happily his football training recommences this weekend, so that should mean he feels a little less left out. Not too long until our trip away: I'm already anticipating the delicious arrival as the sun sets behind the sheer headland, hearing the house martins squealing as they dive over the olive groves and grape vines; the greeny-turquoise sea, the ancient sun-bleached bastion set with shaded linen clothed tables; perspiring rose wine bottles sitting in ice-coolers; hot silver sand; tiny cups of espresso; almond biscuits dipped in prosecco; the freshest of exotic fish on ice in the supermarket; sleepy afternoons swaying on the terrace swing-seat. Aaaah!! I can't wait!

Summer Hols (groan)

2009-07-15T05:07:00.000-07:00

O Cripes! The school summer holidays commence as from Friday this week. As per usual, I am completely mentally unprepared for them. Our scheduled week away isn't for a little while yet, so I have the opportunity to spend some quality time with the children before then. NOT!!!! I shall no doubt find it just as exercising as I did last year, trying to amuse them on a pittance, stay sane and produce some quality written work to hand in before my next supervisory meeting in September. At least this year I don't have the OU Advanced Latin to keep up (the sooner they transfer ALL their courses to coincide with the academic year the better IMHO), although I suspect that the discipline of translating a little of the Aeneid book II kept me from losing the plot completely. Anyhow - I'd better face up to a number of weeks of utter chaos and madness. I can certainly see the merits of Summer Camp.

Sky Tours

2009-07-14T01:29:00.000-07:00

The 'Sky' man is here at the moment, nailing a satellite dish to the external wall, so what with the drilling and banging and to-ing and fro-ing the atmosphere is not conducive to calm, rational or intellectual thought. I am ambivalent about the whole satellite TV thing and have no great desire to have x number of telly channels to go at. The bright-eyed boy however is beside himself with excitement and has been counting the days off until the installation. The husband too - a bit of a gadget enthusiast - seems to be Quite Keen on the whole thing (obviously, as he's the one who has arranged it all). I think that I see a satellite dish on the side of the house as a bit of a Mark of Shame ('here's a family who spend an unconscionable amount of time sat in front of the box'). There are very few programmes that I will put myself out to watch, or record, certainlyI NEVER watch films on the telly, or DVD as my attention span is too short and they're Not Real, are they? If anyone starts to relate the plot of a film to me, my eyes glaze over and I feel myself losing the will to live. Funnily enough, I DO enjoy going out to the small cinema in town, probably because it's rather lively and cool with its integral wine bar and bistro - it's a very pleasant social experience. I have to admit that it'll be nice to watch the more esoteric sports. and it has been a source of annoyance that the terrestrial channels have never shown the Giro d'Italia or the Tour of Spain. So we could watch the rest of the current Tour de France on Eurosport but as my husband says, Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin's commentary has been such a part of our summer lives for so long that to change now would feel like a betrayal. It was during the second week of the Tour ten years ago that the bright-eyed boy made it obvious that he was about to make his way into the world. Fortunately, we managed to watch the remainder of the highlights before whipping off into hospital. Within 48 hours we were back in front of the peloton, slack-jawed with babe in arms.