Tuesday 15 December 2015

Christmas unwrapped

Christmas time, mistletoe and wine... Late nights, too many presents to buy/wrap and overdoses of vitamin C to keep the winter bugs at bay. Every year, it's customary for me to have a little moan to my husband about how overworked I am. It's all part of the tradition, along with mince pies and decorating the tree.

Christmas tree with presents underneath
The presents are piling up
I often struggle in the build-up to Christmas, particularly as I am not religious. Undoubtedly there is vicarious pleasure in watching my children enjoy the magic of Father Christmas, but even my youngest is beginning to have doubts (despite his fervent desire to believe). When I let slip the other night that I sometimes gave Father Christmas a helping hand, he declared passionately, "Please tell me you are not Santa, Mummy!" 

So if you take away the religion and the myth-making, it seems that all you are left with is a marathon of present-buying and no where to park in town because we've all decided to go shopping on the same day. 

Thursday 26 November 2015

Revenge vs unity

It has been a strange couple of weeks. The news from Paris seems to have depressed everyone's spirits. Tragic stories of husbands who have lost their wives, or parents searching for lost children, are circulating on social media, bringing us closer to the pain and the suffering. At the same time, I remain conscious of the plight of so many refugees fleeing the world's trouble spots. I watch and I listen, but most of the time I feel powerless to help.

A frosty field in winter
Beauty even in winter
Yesterday members of Eagles of Death Metal, the band that was performing at the Bataclan concert hall before it was stormed by Isis terrorists, gave their first interview to the news organisation Vice. Lead singer, Jessie Hughes, said he couldn't wait to get back to Paris and wanted to be there when the Bataclan re-opened. "Our friends went there to see rock 'n' roll and they died," he told Vice. I want to go back there and live."

Wednesday 18 November 2015

Social outcasts

People watching:
Greg Rook, Artist and Course Director, Fine Art, London South Bank University

Hours before Paris suffered a series of devastating attacks last week, I spoke to the contemporary artist Greg Rook about his latest collection of paintings, entitled Off-grid. For much of his painting career, Greg has been intrigued by communities of people who exist on the margins of society, sustained by the rigours of their own belief system. In the aftermath of the Paris attacks, this preoccupation with survivalism feels strangely prescient.

The Good Life by Greg Rook

Through his early depictions of cowgirls/boys in the American West, Greg explored the myth of the "guy out on his own, working out what right and wrong should be". Comparing the dusty, raw linen on which he chose to paint with the rough ground of the American landscape, Greg explains how the lone figure became a metaphor for his position as a contemporary artist. Later he became interested in the hippy communes of the 1970s and their dream of an enlightened future that never quite came to pass. Greg refers to this notion as "past potential futures" - in other words, hopes for the future that were not fulfilled.

Friday 13 November 2015

Super-Mummy-spook

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

I'm just off to analyse some intelligence and plan a few operations in the field. What? You haven't heard about my new job as an intelligence officer for MI6? Super-Mummy-spook? That's where it's at these days. Our Secret Intelligence Service is recruiting mummies. And about time too, I say! If you want a job done properly, ask a mother. Who else has a sense of perfectionism, bordering on O.C.D., as well as the ability to juggle several different lives? I am just glad that HM's Government has finally seen the light.

Shh! Don't look now: Mummy's undercover!
In case you think I am pulling your leg, look no further than Mumsnet's Jobs round-robin email last week. Second down on the list after an advert for Advance Production Operators at the biscuit company, McVities, there was a post seeking full-time MI6 Intelligence Officers. At last, I thought, a proper job for the working mother - assignments overseas protecting national interests. That fits around the school run and Christmas concerts, right? 

Monday 2 November 2015

A pox on failure!

It has become fashionable to extol the virtues of failure. Our children need to flounder; they need to experience the blood-rushing slam of disappointment! In some ways, it is a bit like trying to catch chicken pox. No one wants the inconvenience or the pimples, but it is a rite of passage. For how else can our kids build up emotional resilience? The old public school system would have filed it under 'character-building', along with draughty dormitories and short trousers in winter. I even catch myself saying to other mothers: "Failure is good for them, you know." But who am I trying to kid? 

A signpost indicating success and failure in different directions
Does failure lead to success?
©  | Dreamstime.com
As the next round of common entrance exams come around, many parents face a dilemma: whether to push their children to aim high (investing time, effort and pride) at the risk of watching them fail to secure a place at their favoured school. The poet Lemn Sissay has a saying: "Reach for the top of the tree and you may get to the first branch but reach for the stars and you'll get to the top of the tree." But what about those of us who aim high but still end up in the lower branches?

Wednesday 14 October 2015

Teenage fuel

My 11-year old daughter was bemoaning the fact that she was too tall the other day. Having just started secondary school, she was embarrassed that she was towering above many of the older girls. In an attempt to comfort her, I started to tell her that our culture prized superlatively tall women in the form of supermodels... then I stopped. Where was I heading with this? Was I encouraging her to aspire to being bony and underfed? Heaven forbid!

Teenage girls with fruit for eyes
Having fun with food...
©  | Dreamstime.com
As mothers, we are advised not to comment on our own weight or even focus too much on the way our daughters look. Our girls and boys are growing up in a society where the pressure to look attractive/desirable is almost overwhelming. According to a recent government survey, two-thirds of British teenage girls consider themselves too fat. No wonder then that admissions to UK hospitals for teenagers with eating disorders have almost doubled in the past three years. To add to the complexity of the problem, obesity in children is also on the rise.

Monday 5 October 2015

Moonlight Jasmine

This is my short story that was shortlisted in the Henley Literary Festival 2015 short-story competition. A few of you have asked me to post it on the blog so here it is! It is 3,000 words long so you may want to make yourself a cup of tea first. It was inspired by a true story.  


Jasmine flowers
©  | Dreamstime.com
A spray of white blooms caught Connie’s eye as she marched past the flower stall, but she didn’t allow herself to falter. Not today. She had a very important meeting to make and she couldn’t be late. Possibly the most important meeting of her life… no, that was an exaggeration! Nonetheless, her mission was to reach the café at Selfridges before eleven o’clock. All her instincts told her that she should be safely in situ before her foe arrived. Stepping into the gutter to avoid a ponderous group of tourists, she picked up her pace and continued down Oxford Street.

Tuesday 29 September 2015

Poetic truth

Notes from the Henley Literary Festival 2015

My favourite event in Henley's social carousel has come round again. For one glorious week (the sun always shines), I swan about the Henley Literary Festival on my own little voyage of intellectual discovery. This year I am attending talks on subjects as diverse as babies being born to mothers incarcerated at Auschwitz, black holes, the debutantes at Bletchley Park and an Indian suffragette. Every year I fall under the spell of the written word, marvelling again at its power to capture the gamut of human experience and inspire emotion.

Jane Hawkings, memoir writer and first wife of physicist Stephen Hawkings
Jane's memoir was a way
of 'unburdening' herself
It doesn't matter whether it is fiction or non-fiction: a good piece of writing is always authentic or truthful in an artistic sense. Whilst talking about his latest novel (The Dust that Falls from Dreamson the Great War, author Louis de Bernieres told us how he toyed with writing a biography of his family, but decided he didn't want to upset his father. "I've gone back to the normal plan which is to tell colossal lies," he said. "But there is poetic truth [in the book]." His guiding principle was to recreate what individuals felt as they became caught up in the war.

Tuesday 22 September 2015

Be gone mid-life crisis!

Earlier this year I wrote a blog about the virtues of leading an ordinary life. There was a disgruntled undertone, but basically I was giving thanks for my secure and comfortable existence. In response, however, I received some passionate advice from a friend's mother, who was adamant that we should fight against playing it safe. "Do not let the excitement slip from your life in your middle years," she urged me. "Have a challenge of doing something new, daring and exciting." Her words struck a chord.

Packed camper van
Up for an adventure?
Last week I spent some time with a young couple (in their twenties) who were only too happy to take on a challenge. They were organising aid for refugees in Calais and I couldn't help but admire their youthful, can-do spirit. Inspired by the stories of refugee hardship, they decided to hire a van, fill it with donations and drive down to the camps at Calais. For them, it was that simple.

A few weeks ago, I too considered doing a similar trip, but quickly dismissed it as an unworkable idea. How would I find the time? Wouldn't I be putting myself in danger? And who was going to look after the kids while I waltzed around Calais interviewing the migrants? No, it was a silly idea. 


Saturday 12 September 2015

Thank you Facebook, it was about time!

A few people I know are still a bit snotty about social media and just occasionally I can understand why. You run the risk of saying something silly on the spur of the moment and not being able to retract it. Or you give away more than you intended to because your settings weren't quite right. In the last few weeks, however, Facebook, Twitter and the like have showed us that they can be a powerful force for good. Thanks to messages and pictures shared on these networks, thousands of people have been galvanised into action to help the refugees trudging across Europe in search of a safe haven.

Tom Clark, who is collecting donations for CalAid
Tom Clark, a Henley hero
The deeply poignant photograph of the drowned Kurdish toddler Aylan Kurdi, lying face down in the surf as if he had just fallen asleep, was a turning point in the public perception of the refugee crisis. Aylan and his family had set off for Europe in search of a better life, after previously fleeing fighting in Syria. Up until this point, there had been a steady drip-feed of immigration articles and disturbing images on social media, including pictures of other drowned children washing up on beaches, but somehow Aylan tipped the balance. I know many of us found such images highly distressing, particularly within the context of our hokey, homely Facebook feeds, but all those 'shares' of a little boy on the beach meant we had to face up to the horrors going on in the world.

Sunday 30 August 2015

Ibiza unbound

Almost half a century ago, my grandmother came upon a notice in The Times newspaper advertising a villa for sale on the Spanish island of Ibiza. A few weeks later, she flew out to visit the house with my mother, who incidentally advised her not to buy it! Paying no heed to my mother's youthful caution, my grandmother, who had fallen in love with the villa despite the lack of electricity and telephone line, went ahead and purchased it. 

Villa and pool in Ibiza
My grandmother's old villa near Port des Torrent
Or so the family legend goes. One way or another, history was made and my family spent almost every summer for the next forty years on the island of Ibiza. In 2006, my grandmother was forced to sell up because of health reasons and she passed away a few years later. This summer I went back to Ibiza for the first time since she died, to revisit this place that had provided a thread of continuity throughout my peripatetic childhood. My return to the island got me thinking about how people are shaped by the geography in which they grow up.

Wednesday 19 August 2015

Sore losers

Hermaphrodite Mum
Three kids and a single mum

I am packing light for our holidays this year. No more Lego, Connect 4 (travel edition), or interminable Nintendo. All I am taking to Spain for our recreation is a humble pack of cards and an emergency iPad. This is our chance to bond as a family. It'll be fun! We'll chat around the card table and indulge in a bit of friendly banter. As I slip the Disney-themed playing cards into the suitcase, I feel the glow of smug motherdom warming my cockles.

Two children playing cards
No sign of the iPad...
Most of my childhood was spent playing whist and rummy. Tucked away in an old shoebox, I still have the scores from a summer-long contest with my sisters twenty years ago. What a jolly time it was! No need for an iPad back then. We made our own entertainment. I feel secretly gratified that I am about to pass this gift of gamesmanship onto my own children.

Thursday 30 July 2015

Back in Neverland

I was sorting through photos on the computer this week and came across a video clip of the children from about five years ago. Oh my! Just watching them giggling together and scampering around a sunlit meadow made my heart clench. I wanted to reach into the computer screen and pull those chubby little pootles out onto my lap. Those were the days when they were the beginning and end of my world. They took precedence over everything - my career, my ambition and sometimes even my sense of self.

Two children cuddling in a garden
Rose-tinted childhood
How have all those years shuffled by so quickly? My daughter starts secondary school in September. She is on the cusp of teenage-hood and yet she can still slip effortlessly into imaginary games with her younger brother. I watch them playing together and wonder if this is the last summer of innocence. At a recent new girls' day, one of the teachers explained how he too would have girls starting at the school. "I share your joy and your pain at watching them grow up," he told us.

I am so proud at how far my daughter has come. I am also genuinely excited about the opportunities that now lie within her grasp: the literature she will devour, the mysteries she will solve, the drama of finding herself and launching that identity into the world at large. It won't be long before she becomes an independent person with dreams and projects of her own. So why the pain? Why do I look back and mourn the child that she was?

Tuesday 21 July 2015

Synthetic humans

Review: Channel 4 TV series, Humans

As the summer holidays get underway, I catch myself thinking wouldn't it be nice to have a synth in the house? In case you are not among the four million people hooked to Channel 4's latest Sunday-night drama, Humans, a synth is an aesthetically pleasing but slightly eery robot in human form that performs mundane and thankless tasks. I am looking for one to glide about the house making meals, tidying up after the kids and loading the washing machine. What's wrong with that? Well, quite a lot as it turns out.

Gemma Chan, who plays ‘Synth’ Anita in Channel 4 & AMC’s new drama, Humans.
The actor Gemma Chan who plays the synth Anita
Credit: Des Willie for Kudos
Set in a parallel present, Humans is part sci-fi thriller and part family drama with a clever script that constantly questions what it is to be human. This is 'theory of the mind' with a dash of adrenalin. While most synths are merely robots - albeit capable of inspiring affection in their human users - there is a small and secretive band of super-synths who have been modified: they have become conscious. In other words, they are capable of feeling and thinking like a human, while also operating as a complex machine. The boundaries between artificial and human intelligence are well and truly blurred.

Tuesday 30 June 2015

On the margins of the mobile world

What kind of idiot drops their mobile phone down the loo? That's what I thought to myself a few months ago when my brother lost his iPhone to a watery grave. Now it seems I too have become an idiot. And yes, it fell out of my back pocket.

Since that unfortunate incident, I have been through four  stages of phone bereavement: 
  • initial optimism that the phone would survive its immersion in toilet water (it didn't)
  • panic that no one would be able to contact me
  • twinges of envy mixed with nostalgia every time I heard someone else's phone ping
  • and finally acceptance.

Two teenage girls checking their mobile phones
Teenagers: too exposed to the dangers of mobiles?
© Ctvvelve | Dreamstime.com 
I have been forced to order a new phone but as I wait for it to arrive, I am enjoying an odd sense of peace. During a spare moment - waiting to pick up the children for instance - I no longer reach into my handbag to check my emails. Instead, I just sit/stand and quietly watch the world go by.

Monday 15 June 2015

Food, glorious food!

Food has never been more high profile. What with Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day, the rise of the Insta-foodies, worries over school dinners and the obesity scare, food has become the latest Holy Grail. To some extent, we are all defined by our diet. Over the years, I have evolved from eating pasta sauce in a jar during my student days, to posh ready meals, Annabel Karmel - when the kids came along - and then onto buckwheat, avocado and brown rice. In the course of that journey, I have become increasingly interested in how diet affects our health... and learnt of course how to pronounce quinoa! 

Alex, working mum, and Emma Wildgoose, owner of Eat Real Food
On a food journey: Alex and Emma
Following my previous post about the dangers of processed sugar, I spent a few hours last week talking to Alex, a working mum who has spent several months overhauling her diet with help from Emma Wildgoose, a nutritional advisor and owner of Eat Real Food. Six months ago, at the start of their collaboration, Alex was feeling overweight, plagued by irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and concerned about various health issues. "I was very aware that my whole diet and eating habits were totally messed up," she says candidly. 

During an interview with both of them, Emma recalls how Alex initially felt quite defensive about trying to lose weight. "She kept saying, 'If it doesn't happen, it doesn't matter.'" Nodding her head, Alex admits that she didn't really believe it would work. Six months later, such scepticism has turned to excitement after she lost nearly two stone (11 kilos). "What I love best about losing weight is that I've got my neck back," Alex says gleefully, running her hands over her throat. "No more double chin!"

Monday 1 June 2015

Bitter sweet

Last Sunday I spent half an hour rifling through the contents of my larder cupboard and checking the sugar count in our cereals, sauces and tins. For months I have been reading about the damaging effects of processed sugar - sweet poison as one food campaigner calls it - but only recently have I started to take notice. Ransacking the cupboard brought home to me just how much sugar has been added to our food without us realising - if sugar is in the top three on the list of ingredients, there's probably too much of it.

Emma Wildgoose, owner of Eat Real Food
Emma's wants to pack nutrients into baking!
I partly owe my Damascene conversion to a friend who has recently studied to be a nutritional advisor and now runs her own business offering advice and cookery lessons. Emma Wildgoose, owner of Eat Real Food, is on a campaign to bring nutrients back into food, which means that she avoids using processed sugar and white flour in the recipes she designs. "In combination, these two ingredients have a catastrophic effect on blood sugar levels," she says. Her mission is also to "get children unhinged from sugar and pack into baking as many nutrients as possible".

Monday 18 May 2015

Don't you believe it!

Social conditioning has a lot to answer for. It is one of those vague terms used to explain away all sorts of injustices in the battle for gender equality. In the past, I have felt ambivalent about it, believing that it was all too easy to make social conditioning the scapegoat for our difficulties in achieving equal pay, boardroom roles for women, or penetrating male-dominated professions. However, a startling survey by Privilege Insurance last week on female and male drivers not only challenges the old myth that men are better drivers, but also demonstrates just how pernicious social conditioning can be.

Infographic showing statistics from Privilege Insurance driving survey
Firstly, the survey finds that women are better drivers than men, in use of speed, observational skills on the road and response to other road users (among other things). Secondly, it suggests that there is a discrepancy between women's ability on the road and how they are perceived as drivers by society. The results from the survey actually show that both sexes tend to believe men are better drivers. 

Anecdotally this is borne out by my experiences of being in a car. On family outings, my husband is always the default driver because there is a general assumption that he is the better driver. Similarly, when I was learning to drive as a teenager, my family use to tease me for being a bit dopey, while they described my brother as a "natural driver". Possibly I am the exception to the rule, but how many times do we observe a car making an error on the roads and then assume it must be a woman behind the wheel?