Ah, Paris....
City of my heart. City of my dreams...
I first came here 25 years ago on a French exchange trip. It was my first trip abroad (my already well travelled kids will probably mock that in years to come) and the experience was rendered with that extra bit of magic that all such first experiences have.
From the very first moment, I loved everything about Paris: the cafes, the buildings, the bouquinistes. The Metro seemed impossibly smart and smooth next to the Underground, the compactness of the city compared favourably to London's urban sprawl, and my first views of Notre Dame as I crossed the Pont Neuf took my breath away.
My exchange visit, alas, was somewhat less successful. I stayed with a rather sulky girl, who engaged in internicine warfare with her incredibly strict mother to a level I couldn't comprehend. There were rules in my house, but in the main, as I wasn't going out sniffing meths in the local park, my mother very rarely said no to any activity I suggested.
My French friend, on the other hand, lived under a set of rules I would have found suffocating: no parties, no boyfriends, no telephone calls, no seeing her best friend (whom Maman had decided was a very bad influence). So of course my FF did the lot. Despite Maman having put a lock on the phone, the minute she was out of the house, FF would be searching for the key, ringing up Bad Influence and arranging to meet several streets away. Meanwhile Maman, knowing damn well what she was up to, would test her out by coming back unexpectedly or lurking on street corners to see if a rendezvous had been arranged (which nine times out of ten it had). When confronted with the evidence of her misdemeanours FF had perfected a brilliantly blank stare, and Gallic shrug. Her ability to lie in the face of incontrovertible proof was quite extraordinary. If I hadn't been so stressed about getting caught up in the consequences of it, I'd have been a lot more admiring I think.
Because of course, I did get caught up in the consequences. Every time FF set off on an escapade with BI, I was sworn to secrecy, and made to promise that I would tell Maman nothing. Lying doesn't come easily to me, and certainly didn't then, when my normal role in life was to be Miss Goody Two Shoes, so when the spotlight of Maman's interrogation fell to me, I retreated into the only defence left to me: namely blank incomprehension. If I pretended not to understand the question, then I couldn't lie...
The worst occasion was when FF and BI decided to go shopping at the out of town shopping centre, several miles away, despite having been told not to. Maman clearly didn't trust her one iota, because as we got off the second of two buses to our destination, BI spotted we'd been followed. Really. She had tailed us for fifteen minutes. We then spent a farcical hour diving in and out of shops to hide from her. Eventually she caught up with us as we leapt on a bus home, but being slightly plump and out of condition, she didn't make it onto the same bus we did, so we left her raging on the pavement. And when she got back, FF STILL denied we'd been there. As the French would say... incroyable...
My other chief memory from the period is discovering the joy of French cuisine and cheese, only slightly marred by the fact that the TV would be on in the corner during every meal. As it was my first experience of speaking French on a daily basis, I struggled to follow the conversation when I could see out of the corner of my eye, pictures of British soldiers piling onto troopships, and catching the occasional frustrating mention of the words: Malvinas and Task Force. I hadn't any idea what was going on (my hosts didn't do politics, and apart from one uncle who kept teasing me that we were about to lose a war - what war? He never actually got to that bit), so my first question when I got home was, Are we at war? to the huge amusement of my family. Galtieri had invaded the Falklands the day I left England. We'd been at war for over two weeks, and I hadn't had a clue...
My next trip to Paris was altogether more delightful. I left England on the day of the first Live Aid concert to go and be an au pair for a French couple my sister had met during a year spent in Paris. The sun shone and the Channel was the calmest I've ever seen it. It was the first time I had taken a trip abroad, alone, and I felt (laughably probably to most gap year students now, but opportunites to travel were less then) like I was having a real adventure. My host met me at Gare du Nord, and then I was whisked to a Bastille Day party in the town I was staying in, where I chiefly remember struggling to understand everything that was said to me, but mainly feeling made incredibly welcome. Two days later, on my 20th birthday, they thoughfully provided a cake and a small party. I was very young, and slightly homesick, and they pitched it perfectly. I knew from that moment I was among friends.
My charge was four years old and an absolute dream. Her wonderful parents made me feel at home straight away, and I spent a merry summer in their house, taking long trips to the park during the day, and indulging in fascinating intellectual and political discussion at night. I had little experience with children, beyond babysitting, but luckily despite a slight sense of mischief (Maman says I can have as much hot water as I want in my bath - Maman, says no such thing it turns out, as several days running I inadvertently use up all the hot water in the tank) I fell in love with the little girl I was looking after, and she gave me not a moment of trouble. In fact she was so easy, having to cope with my own children came as something of a shock, I can tell you.
At the weekends, my employees generously paid for me to have a carte orange, so I could go and explore Paris. I had many wonderful days alone, strolling through the near empty Paris streets in the sun (this was August, so most Parisians were away). It was quite quite glorious, and I spent many happy hours in Montmartre, or strolling down the Boulevard St Germain looking in the bookshops. I had no money, and this being the early days of my courtship with Spouse I missed him hugely, but the joyous freedom of those days will forever be imprinted on my memory.
Conversation round the dinner table was also a hugely enjoyable part of the experience. My charge's father speaks the best English of any foreigner I've ever met (in fact, he probably speaks it better then some English people), and at the time his wife didn't speak all that much English. Their daughter had been brought up to be bilingual, so she understood everything I said to her in English, but being a bright little button, she quickly twigged that I could speak French so though the idea was for me to encourage her to speak more English, I fear I rather failed on that score. However, my French leapt forward hugely, thanks the rapid rate of translation from one language to the other round the dinner table, and by the time I returned to England I had got the point of dreaming in French. Indeed, on my first day back in London, so immersed had I become in France and the French way of living, I felt like I had come back to a foreign country. That love of France has never since gone away.
Something also happened to me for the first time on that trip, which has occurred several times since. Despite a working knowledge of both French and German, I find there is always a gap of understanding of the subtleties of the other language, and an inevitable lack of knowledge about certain aspects of the other culture. But with certain friends I have met abroad, that gap and lack matter not one whit. Because something happens which transcends language somehow and you reach an understanding with the other person, which goes beyond speech. I can't explain it better then that. But I like the French phrase: l'ami de mon coeur. I have several in Germany, and here in Paris, all those years ago, I made two for life.
And now, thanks to them, and their wonderful daughter, I was back. Visiting the city I love most in the world, and showing it off to my children. Something I couldn't have envisaged in the slightest back then.
We didn't have much time, so we took a quick flit into the city in the morning, emerging from a Paris subway to spot our first sight: Notre Dame towering magnificently over the Seine. Those tall Paris apartements were just as I remembered them; the cafes spilling out onto the streets (I know cafe culture has tried to come to England, but we just don't do it as well); the bouqinistes setting up by the river - it was all as perfect as my memories. My heart did a little leap, as we drove up and down the river, past the Louvre, the Jardin de Tuileries, the Place de Concord, and (rather hairily) around the Arc de Triomphe. The kids were thrilled to bits at the sight of the Eiffel Tower (as was mil who has never been to Paris before), and we amazingly were able to park up near enough to leap out and get a few pictures. Time alas, was running out, so we couldn't stay long, but that brief snatch was enough for me to know I have to get back for a proper visit, and show the children what a magical place it is.
Ah, Paris...
Vraiment, et pour toujours, la ville de mon coeur...
Monday, June 04, 2007
Saturday, June 02, 2007
You Know You're On Holiday When....
...You've booked Eurotunnel.
But you've never been Eurotunnel before, so you don't EXACTLY, QUITE.... know where you're going.
And somewhere in the mad packedness of getting all seven of you ready and out of the house you haven't quite apprised your husband of the fact...
And DESPITE the fact you've read the bit of paper you printed off from the internet, which looks less reassuring every mile you've travelled, which SEEMS to mention Eurotunnel in connection with FOLKESTONE, somewhere in your brain you have the idea that when you prends le train through the tunnel it goes via ASHFORD. So you go there.
It is only at the point that you are queuing up in a roundabout towards Ashford, that you start getting wobbly about this UTTER CERTAINTY you have about the start of Eurotunnel. The utter certainty is fading away into some kind of... oh shit, why did Folkestone seem to be featured so highly in the contents of this very important bit of paper I have...
Such thoughts are immediately dispersed by the sudden realisation that your youngest daughter doesn't feel well. In fact, despite a travel sickness pill (carefully chosen to work fifteen minutes into a journey, as opposed to the crap kind we had last time which take two hours to get going), she is sounding distinctly wobbly, in fact, very wobbly, indeed.
I know I am on holiday the moment my daughter vomits everywhere just as my husband is navigating a roundabout sending us in the wrong direction (Ashford) as opposed to the right one (Folkestone). To be utterly sure we had made prats of ourselves we had to of course visit the Eurostar office, where we apprised of the notion, that whereas ten minutes, one traffic jam, one vomity child, and a wrong turn earlier we had been in plenty of time for our Eurotrain, we were now in danger of missing the fucking thing...
Fifteen minutes later, Spouse (who heroically rose to the occasion and drove like a maniac - as behoves a husband of this blog - to get there on time), pulled in at the check in for Eurotunnel. The car smelt like sick, everyone was moaning, we had no time for a clean up, and we hadn't left England yet.
What's more, it had started to rain....
In my family. As no 4 put it prosaically a couple of days later, I know I'm on holiday when it's raining....
If you weren't knocking about this blog last summer when I recorded the holiday from hell, well here's your chance for a recap. Our recent sojourn, wasn't quite so terrible, but it didn't start off promisingly...
(To find out what happened to us last year, go visit: http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html
http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html)
Luckily there is more that was more fun to come....
And I've just got back to the news that Frankie Dettori has won the Derby. Given that it is on my doorstep, and my favourite run includes half of the Derby racecourse, I have to stop to raise a brief cheer for that. There were LOADS of reasons (more to follow) for being pissed off for being away this week and the Derby was one of them. A couple of years ago, we watched Frankie Dettori in a race on Derby day (we knew it was him because he was chatting to the other jockies and that amazing accent? IT'S FOR REAL!!!) and I was chuffed that he won today... but bugger me, the most amazing Derby in ages and I missed it.
So you know you've been on holiday, when:
You nearly miss your train,
Your daughter is sick,
The weather is crap,
And your favourite jockey wins the Derby....
It's nice to be back folks, pip, pip!
(And thanks so much you nice people, for your messages on my farewell blog!)
But you've never been Eurotunnel before, so you don't EXACTLY, QUITE.... know where you're going.
And somewhere in the mad packedness of getting all seven of you ready and out of the house you haven't quite apprised your husband of the fact...
And DESPITE the fact you've read the bit of paper you printed off from the internet, which looks less reassuring every mile you've travelled, which SEEMS to mention Eurotunnel in connection with FOLKESTONE, somewhere in your brain you have the idea that when you prends le train through the tunnel it goes via ASHFORD. So you go there.
It is only at the point that you are queuing up in a roundabout towards Ashford, that you start getting wobbly about this UTTER CERTAINTY you have about the start of Eurotunnel. The utter certainty is fading away into some kind of... oh shit, why did Folkestone seem to be featured so highly in the contents of this very important bit of paper I have...
Such thoughts are immediately dispersed by the sudden realisation that your youngest daughter doesn't feel well. In fact, despite a travel sickness pill (carefully chosen to work fifteen minutes into a journey, as opposed to the crap kind we had last time which take two hours to get going), she is sounding distinctly wobbly, in fact, very wobbly, indeed.
I know I am on holiday the moment my daughter vomits everywhere just as my husband is navigating a roundabout sending us in the wrong direction (Ashford) as opposed to the right one (Folkestone). To be utterly sure we had made prats of ourselves we had to of course visit the Eurostar office, where we apprised of the notion, that whereas ten minutes, one traffic jam, one vomity child, and a wrong turn earlier we had been in plenty of time for our Eurotrain, we were now in danger of missing the fucking thing...
Fifteen minutes later, Spouse (who heroically rose to the occasion and drove like a maniac - as behoves a husband of this blog - to get there on time), pulled in at the check in for Eurotunnel. The car smelt like sick, everyone was moaning, we had no time for a clean up, and we hadn't left England yet.
What's more, it had started to rain....
In my family. As no 4 put it prosaically a couple of days later, I know I'm on holiday when it's raining....
If you weren't knocking about this blog last summer when I recorded the holiday from hell, well here's your chance for a recap. Our recent sojourn, wasn't quite so terrible, but it didn't start off promisingly...
(To find out what happened to us last year, go visit: http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006_08_01_archive.html
http://maniacmum.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html)
Luckily there is more that was more fun to come....
And I've just got back to the news that Frankie Dettori has won the Derby. Given that it is on my doorstep, and my favourite run includes half of the Derby racecourse, I have to stop to raise a brief cheer for that. There were LOADS of reasons (more to follow) for being pissed off for being away this week and the Derby was one of them. A couple of years ago, we watched Frankie Dettori in a race on Derby day (we knew it was him because he was chatting to the other jockies and that amazing accent? IT'S FOR REAL!!!) and I was chuffed that he won today... but bugger me, the most amazing Derby in ages and I missed it.
So you know you've been on holiday, when:
You nearly miss your train,
Your daughter is sick,
The weather is crap,
And your favourite jockey wins the Derby....
It's nice to be back folks, pip, pip!
(And thanks so much you nice people, for your messages on my farewell blog!)
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Au revoir, Auf Wiedersehen
Saying goodbye in foreign is so much better, don't you think?
Till we meet again, is so much less final somehow...
Tomorrow we're off to Paris, where I am thrilled to be going to the wedding of someone whose au pair I was half a lifetime ago. Last year I blogged about meeting up with her wonderful parents after an absence of many years, and now I'm off to see the whole family again for her wedding. It feels like a real privilege and honour to be invited, and apart from a slight angst about how utterly crap my French now is, I can't wait...
After Paris, we're off to Germany, staying overnight at Worms to break our journey (many years ago we were travelling through Europe and needed to stop for the night, and I made us stay in Worms on the basis it was Historic - there were many Diets of Worms, if sixteenth century religious politics turns you on - it's a beautiful Rhineland town, so we're going back for a night, before embarking on a whirlwind tour of northern Germany catching up with mil's rellies. After about eight visits, my German just about stands up to muster, but it's bloody hard work I can tell you. Spouse always accuses me of speaking in thoughts, not sentences... (and he's not wrong).
So, maniac mum is going quiet for a while.
Which is a pity.
As...
I was going to blog about my dodd (dear old departed dad), whose anniversary it is tomorrow, but hey, I''ll spare you the misery fest and just say, I wish he were here now to know that I was about to be published. Words is my business and words is what he taught me... I miss him more than I can say, even after all this time. One day, I'll do justice to that thought.
I was also going to blog about the madness of my day, trying to get packed and ready, and the stress of standing in a queue at Waitrose, when I wanted to be exchanging something at M&S, and I only had about ten minutes to make it back to school. But you're spared that too...
I will just say that I made it out again with Lovely Friend on another celebration of her birthday, except we were so sodding busy packing Spouse and I missed eating... The bottle of wine we drank was very nice though. And...
Eleanor Roosevelt once said something along the lines of you meet many people in life, who you like, but very few leave footprints on your heart. Lovely Friend is one who's left her footprint on mine. There are a few others too. I hope they know who they are. I certainly do.
It's late. We mistakenly thought we'd booked Eurotunnel for 11am and it turns out we were mistaken and it was 10 am. So we have to leave earlier then I imagined.
There've been a few more people coming to my blog of late, and I am immensely grateful to you all. Sometimes I feel like I'm pissing in the wind, so it's nice to know that somewhere, someone's bothering to read this...
See y'all in a week or so.
Be good now, why don't you....
Till we meet again, is so much less final somehow...
Tomorrow we're off to Paris, where I am thrilled to be going to the wedding of someone whose au pair I was half a lifetime ago. Last year I blogged about meeting up with her wonderful parents after an absence of many years, and now I'm off to see the whole family again for her wedding. It feels like a real privilege and honour to be invited, and apart from a slight angst about how utterly crap my French now is, I can't wait...
After Paris, we're off to Germany, staying overnight at Worms to break our journey (many years ago we were travelling through Europe and needed to stop for the night, and I made us stay in Worms on the basis it was Historic - there were many Diets of Worms, if sixteenth century religious politics turns you on - it's a beautiful Rhineland town, so we're going back for a night, before embarking on a whirlwind tour of northern Germany catching up with mil's rellies. After about eight visits, my German just about stands up to muster, but it's bloody hard work I can tell you. Spouse always accuses me of speaking in thoughts, not sentences... (and he's not wrong).
So, maniac mum is going quiet for a while.
Which is a pity.
As...
I was going to blog about my dodd (dear old departed dad), whose anniversary it is tomorrow, but hey, I''ll spare you the misery fest and just say, I wish he were here now to know that I was about to be published. Words is my business and words is what he taught me... I miss him more than I can say, even after all this time. One day, I'll do justice to that thought.
I was also going to blog about the madness of my day, trying to get packed and ready, and the stress of standing in a queue at Waitrose, when I wanted to be exchanging something at M&S, and I only had about ten minutes to make it back to school. But you're spared that too...
I will just say that I made it out again with Lovely Friend on another celebration of her birthday, except we were so sodding busy packing Spouse and I missed eating... The bottle of wine we drank was very nice though. And...
Eleanor Roosevelt once said something along the lines of you meet many people in life, who you like, but very few leave footprints on your heart. Lovely Friend is one who's left her footprint on mine. There are a few others too. I hope they know who they are. I certainly do.
It's late. We mistakenly thought we'd booked Eurotunnel for 11am and it turns out we were mistaken and it was 10 am. So we have to leave earlier then I imagined.
There've been a few more people coming to my blog of late, and I am immensely grateful to you all. Sometimes I feel like I'm pissing in the wind, so it's nice to know that somewhere, someone's bothering to read this...
See y'all in a week or so.
Be good now, why don't you....
Monday, May 21, 2007
Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious!
We've had the greatest weekend.
In fact, I think I'd go as far to say its one of the best family weekends we've ever had.
Some months ago, when I got news that I was finally after eight years of trying going to be a published author, apart from thinking Waahahaaaaaay!!!! I also decided that rather then fritter all my well earned dosh away on boring things like school shoes and gas bills, we ought to go and celebrate as a family.
Now the kids are bigger, a trip to a London show doesn't present the scary prospect it once did (though my bank balance is somewhat dented), so I decided that's what we'd do. I really wanted to go to The Sound of Music, but being as tickets are like gold dust and you need to be far more organised then I am and book about a hundred years in advance, I couldn't get hold of any, so I went for Mary Poppins instead.
Mary Poppins for my generation = Julie Andrews, and though I've enjoyed revisiting the film with the children, I don't know... she seems a bit TOO prim and proper for me, and I've always struggled with Dick Van Dyke's atrocious accent.
So it was a nice surprise to find this Mary Poppins was somewhat more fun then the film version. In fact, I'd go as far to say that the stage version was heaps better. It brought depth, and poignancy to the story, in a way I wouldn't have imagined from the film. Plus the kids who played Jane and Michael were much much better.
I also really liked Bert, who was portrayed as a kind of guardian angel, and seemed to have as much magic at his fingertips as MP herself.
The kids were completely enthralled (despite no 4's initial reluctance to come as she was missing out on a party), so much so that no 3 turned to me in awe after the scene in which Mary arrived and picked things out of her carpet bag (including hatstands/lamps, sheets etc) to put up in the nursery - That's REAL, she said. Being nearly seven, I suspect the artifice/magic divide is beginning to slip a tad, but here we were, somewhere where she knew the magic was pretend, and yet... it might actually be true...
I know how she felt really. The whole production was so spellbinding, the dancing and singing so magical, the sets so imaginative, for a precious few hours I really could imagine a world in which a mysterious nanny comes blowing in when the wind changes to set right the domestic chaos of the Banks household.
Heaven knows, I could certainly do with her from time to time....
Another charming aspect of this production (and one I think probably missing from both the books and the film) was the portrayal of Mr Banks. To me he seemed the epitome of modern man in a way - desperate to keep some order while the chaos of an unfair world howls at the door. The scene where he finally showed his true colours at the bank, by denouncing a scheme he had failed to invest in as being shallow and false, and Mrs B comes rushing in to stand by her man, brought tears to my eyes. As did their realisation together that what they had as a family was more precious then the outward show of the house and the job, that others thought important.
Plus ca change...
At the end of the show, the whole family realise they don't need Mary Poppins anymore (a little bit like the family in Nanny McPhee) and she flies off with her umbrella, in what has to rate as one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen on a stage - they didn't just fly her off the stage, they took her up into the gods. The kids (and us grown ups too) were all sitting their with their mouths open.
It was absolutely wonderful - feel good theatre at its very best. And while it was punishing on the pocket, I hope we've given the kids an experience they will treasure forever.
Afterwards we wandered through Covent Garden and watched the mime artists, before heading on for TGI Fridays for something to eat. While we were waiting for our table the kids were sufficiently distracted by the big TV screen for us to have a quiet drink at the bar - although there was a collective Oh No! moment when they realised they were about to miss Dr Who.
We wandered back to Victoria through St James Park - a walk I took with the kids at half term. One of the joys of London I always think is its parks - vital green lungs in the heart of the city. And when we got to the Buckingham Palace end and looked back down the lake towards a fabulous old building (the which I cannot recall having seen before and I have no knowledge of what it is), I felt that happy ecstatic leap of joy that always comes to me on trips to London. It is just such a privilege to live close enough to visit, even if we don't do it often.
Yesterday we had to rouse the kids much earlier then anyone would have liked, as no 2 was in a gym competition, so we had to be at Guildford Spectrum at 9.40am, which was a bit grim for a Sunday morning.
However, after watching her compete (she tried her best but sadly forgot a part of her routine involving a bridge, and her cartwheel went in her words, totally pearshaped, so she didn't win anything. Still it's the taking part that counts...),we then spent an hour in the pool, which has several water slides and a wave machine. Just the place for a neurotic mum like me to spend a Sunday morning, especially as no 3 will insist on doing her own thing (like trying to go in the diving pool when she can barely swim 5 metres). However, the kids had a great time, and it reminded me of something I don't take notice of too often. Viz... when we're all together we do generally have a really great time.
It was too late for them to watch the repeat of Dr Who last night, so we videoed it for them and told them they could get up early to watch it this morning. Spouse even made popcorn.
So, when I came down this morning they were all fully dressed, and ready to go, having spent a happy half hour in front of the box.
And all the popcorn had gone....
I moan a lot about my life, but really.
Sometimes it is just great being a mum...
In fact, I think I'd go as far to say its one of the best family weekends we've ever had.
Some months ago, when I got news that I was finally after eight years of trying going to be a published author, apart from thinking Waahahaaaaaay!!!! I also decided that rather then fritter all my well earned dosh away on boring things like school shoes and gas bills, we ought to go and celebrate as a family.
Now the kids are bigger, a trip to a London show doesn't present the scary prospect it once did (though my bank balance is somewhat dented), so I decided that's what we'd do. I really wanted to go to The Sound of Music, but being as tickets are like gold dust and you need to be far more organised then I am and book about a hundred years in advance, I couldn't get hold of any, so I went for Mary Poppins instead.
Mary Poppins for my generation = Julie Andrews, and though I've enjoyed revisiting the film with the children, I don't know... she seems a bit TOO prim and proper for me, and I've always struggled with Dick Van Dyke's atrocious accent.
So it was a nice surprise to find this Mary Poppins was somewhat more fun then the film version. In fact, I'd go as far to say that the stage version was heaps better. It brought depth, and poignancy to the story, in a way I wouldn't have imagined from the film. Plus the kids who played Jane and Michael were much much better.
I also really liked Bert, who was portrayed as a kind of guardian angel, and seemed to have as much magic at his fingertips as MP herself.
The kids were completely enthralled (despite no 4's initial reluctance to come as she was missing out on a party), so much so that no 3 turned to me in awe after the scene in which Mary arrived and picked things out of her carpet bag (including hatstands/lamps, sheets etc) to put up in the nursery - That's REAL, she said. Being nearly seven, I suspect the artifice/magic divide is beginning to slip a tad, but here we were, somewhere where she knew the magic was pretend, and yet... it might actually be true...
I know how she felt really. The whole production was so spellbinding, the dancing and singing so magical, the sets so imaginative, for a precious few hours I really could imagine a world in which a mysterious nanny comes blowing in when the wind changes to set right the domestic chaos of the Banks household.
Heaven knows, I could certainly do with her from time to time....
Another charming aspect of this production (and one I think probably missing from both the books and the film) was the portrayal of Mr Banks. To me he seemed the epitome of modern man in a way - desperate to keep some order while the chaos of an unfair world howls at the door. The scene where he finally showed his true colours at the bank, by denouncing a scheme he had failed to invest in as being shallow and false, and Mrs B comes rushing in to stand by her man, brought tears to my eyes. As did their realisation together that what they had as a family was more precious then the outward show of the house and the job, that others thought important.
Plus ca change...
At the end of the show, the whole family realise they don't need Mary Poppins anymore (a little bit like the family in Nanny McPhee) and she flies off with her umbrella, in what has to rate as one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen on a stage - they didn't just fly her off the stage, they took her up into the gods. The kids (and us grown ups too) were all sitting their with their mouths open.
It was absolutely wonderful - feel good theatre at its very best. And while it was punishing on the pocket, I hope we've given the kids an experience they will treasure forever.
Afterwards we wandered through Covent Garden and watched the mime artists, before heading on for TGI Fridays for something to eat. While we were waiting for our table the kids were sufficiently distracted by the big TV screen for us to have a quiet drink at the bar - although there was a collective Oh No! moment when they realised they were about to miss Dr Who.
We wandered back to Victoria through St James Park - a walk I took with the kids at half term. One of the joys of London I always think is its parks - vital green lungs in the heart of the city. And when we got to the Buckingham Palace end and looked back down the lake towards a fabulous old building (the which I cannot recall having seen before and I have no knowledge of what it is), I felt that happy ecstatic leap of joy that always comes to me on trips to London. It is just such a privilege to live close enough to visit, even if we don't do it often.
Yesterday we had to rouse the kids much earlier then anyone would have liked, as no 2 was in a gym competition, so we had to be at Guildford Spectrum at 9.40am, which was a bit grim for a Sunday morning.
However, after watching her compete (she tried her best but sadly forgot a part of her routine involving a bridge, and her cartwheel went in her words, totally pearshaped, so she didn't win anything. Still it's the taking part that counts...),we then spent an hour in the pool, which has several water slides and a wave machine. Just the place for a neurotic mum like me to spend a Sunday morning, especially as no 3 will insist on doing her own thing (like trying to go in the diving pool when she can barely swim 5 metres). However, the kids had a great time, and it reminded me of something I don't take notice of too often. Viz... when we're all together we do generally have a really great time.
It was too late for them to watch the repeat of Dr Who last night, so we videoed it for them and told them they could get up early to watch it this morning. Spouse even made popcorn.
So, when I came down this morning they were all fully dressed, and ready to go, having spent a happy half hour in front of the box.
And all the popcorn had gone....
I moan a lot about my life, but really.
Sometimes it is just great being a mum...
I Don't Like Mondays
Are you having a bad day?
It could be worse...
You could be this poor chap...
I'm fretting this might happen to me, after all I'm here all day on my own. I am rather hoping though, that my husband might notice when he walks from our bedroom to the office to go to the loo.
On the other hand...
It could be worse...
You could be this poor chap...
I'm fretting this might happen to me, after all I'm here all day on my own. I am rather hoping though, that my husband might notice when he walks from our bedroom to the office to go to the loo.
On the other hand...
Thursday, May 17, 2007
All in One Piece
I actually went out last night. Goodness. That's two weeks on the trot. Any more of this gadding about and I might lay claim to having such a thing as a social life.
The reason I don't get out much is because of course I am the mother of four children. Apart from the fact that I am often too knackered to even think about it, just the effort of getting out even now makes it sometimes seem not worth the candle.
The only way we managed to get out last week was because our Lovely Friend came to babysit, and she is so lovely I don't feel too guilty about dropping everything and running, which is pretty much what we did. (Though in order for us to go out at all, the kids had to miss tennis and no 1 didn't go to Guides). It was the first time in nearly five years Spouse and I have been out in London together - our last attempt ended disastrously as I was called home to deal with no 4's first asthma attack, and ended up taking her to hospital at 1am, the thought of which still fills me with Big Guilt...
If you like me, are a fan of Jill Murphy, you may know a story about the Large family called All in One Piece. The Large Family are elephants and they have four children so not unnaturally I have rather a feeling of kinship with Mrs Large. In All in One Piece poor Mrs L tries to get out for the evening while the children cause merry mayhem around her. I know just how she feels....
As it was Lovely Friend's birthday, it was one of those occasions when being a lazy arse who can't be fagged to have a social life simply won't do. Lovely Friend not only babysits for us, she is the kind of friend who will drop everything for us in a crisis. I lost count of the times she's helped out when we've really needed it. I would go over hot coals to be at her birthday party if I had to.
And I nearly did....
Everything conspired against me from the off.
Spouse begged leave to go for a quick early pint, which I gave on the strict understanding he'd be back by 8pm.
Nos 2&3 were brought back from Brownies around 7.15, by which time no 4 was heavily ensconced watching The Lion King. When I became evil mum extraordinaire and turned it off, No 3 burst into paroxysms of IT's NOT FAIR type weeping.
I chased the littlies up to bed, and tried to get changed while no 1 fired rapid questions at me about downloading music from a cd onto the computer, so she can save it on her new MP3 player. It is a truth universally acknowledged by all parents that sooner or later your tweenie will start understanding new technology much much better then you do.
Nos 3&4 then launched into world war three, which I had to calm down while still half dressed.
Then no 2 decided she HAD to practise for her gym competition on Sunday. As this involved doing cartwheels in our rather small family room, and she has history of injuring herself, I thought it wholly advisable to watch her...
Cartwheels completed it was back upstairs to finish getting changed and sort out the latest barney between the little ones.
No 3 then announced she was hungry, and I told her she just had to wait.
By 7.50 there was no sign of Spouse, no 1 was still shouting at me, nos 3&4were stilll shouting at each other, no 2 had moved onto handstands and I hadn't even started wrapping the present. I also couldn't find my handbag, and when I went to switch on the dishwasher realised we'd run out of dishwasher tabs.
By the time Spouse arrived at 8.10 (he had got sidetracked watering our friends' allotment) I was screaming that No 3 was going to have to go hungry and wondering how on earth I was ever going to get out of the house. Thankfully Spouse dealt with the hunger pangs, while I wrapped the present and remembered that my handbag was still in the car.
I eventually left the house at nearly 8.30. As I passed the Co Op en route, I not unnaturally went to buy dishwasher powder... always thinking domestically me, even on a night out.
Lovely friend was there with very Drunk Work Colleague. VDWC is highly entertaining, so it was enjoyable sparring with him, given that I was totally stone cold sober. Mind you, that state of affairs didn't last long.
We were chucked out of the bar we were in at 10pm, so we wandered back up to the local Spouse and I have been drinking in since time immemorial. Aaah... the stories I have about that place. It seems to currently be working its way into the wip somehow. All I'll say here is that it is known locally as The Stranglers on account of a previous landlord having come to a sticky (and strangled) end at the hands of his wife's lover. It also has ghosts, or so I'm told, and is one of the few pubs I've ever been in that I don't mind walking into on my own.
Before I knew it, time had gone all elastic on me and it was midnight - which is way past my normal bedtime. Oh dear.... I rang Spouse to say Oh Dear, but I think he was feeling so bad about having got in late he didn't tell me off. I'll be back soon I said...
Soon turned into nearly 1am, so it was very oh dear this morning.
Particularly as I had promised to go swimming with another lovely friend...
It was a sharp shock I can tell you, but not a bad way of getting rid of a hangover...
And I've just reminded myself that sometimes it's worth the effort of getting out, even if I'm not quite all in one piece the next day...
To lovely friend, hope you enjoyed your birthday as much as I did....xxxx
The reason I don't get out much is because of course I am the mother of four children. Apart from the fact that I am often too knackered to even think about it, just the effort of getting out even now makes it sometimes seem not worth the candle.
The only way we managed to get out last week was because our Lovely Friend came to babysit, and she is so lovely I don't feel too guilty about dropping everything and running, which is pretty much what we did. (Though in order for us to go out at all, the kids had to miss tennis and no 1 didn't go to Guides). It was the first time in nearly five years Spouse and I have been out in London together - our last attempt ended disastrously as I was called home to deal with no 4's first asthma attack, and ended up taking her to hospital at 1am, the thought of which still fills me with Big Guilt...
If you like me, are a fan of Jill Murphy, you may know a story about the Large family called All in One Piece. The Large Family are elephants and they have four children so not unnaturally I have rather a feeling of kinship with Mrs Large. In All in One Piece poor Mrs L tries to get out for the evening while the children cause merry mayhem around her. I know just how she feels....
As it was Lovely Friend's birthday, it was one of those occasions when being a lazy arse who can't be fagged to have a social life simply won't do. Lovely Friend not only babysits for us, she is the kind of friend who will drop everything for us in a crisis. I lost count of the times she's helped out when we've really needed it. I would go over hot coals to be at her birthday party if I had to.
And I nearly did....
Everything conspired against me from the off.
Spouse begged leave to go for a quick early pint, which I gave on the strict understanding he'd be back by 8pm.
Nos 2&3 were brought back from Brownies around 7.15, by which time no 4 was heavily ensconced watching The Lion King. When I became evil mum extraordinaire and turned it off, No 3 burst into paroxysms of IT's NOT FAIR type weeping.
I chased the littlies up to bed, and tried to get changed while no 1 fired rapid questions at me about downloading music from a cd onto the computer, so she can save it on her new MP3 player. It is a truth universally acknowledged by all parents that sooner or later your tweenie will start understanding new technology much much better then you do.
Nos 3&4 then launched into world war three, which I had to calm down while still half dressed.
Then no 2 decided she HAD to practise for her gym competition on Sunday. As this involved doing cartwheels in our rather small family room, and she has history of injuring herself, I thought it wholly advisable to watch her...
Cartwheels completed it was back upstairs to finish getting changed and sort out the latest barney between the little ones.
No 3 then announced she was hungry, and I told her she just had to wait.
By 7.50 there was no sign of Spouse, no 1 was still shouting at me, nos 3&4were stilll shouting at each other, no 2 had moved onto handstands and I hadn't even started wrapping the present. I also couldn't find my handbag, and when I went to switch on the dishwasher realised we'd run out of dishwasher tabs.
By the time Spouse arrived at 8.10 (he had got sidetracked watering our friends' allotment) I was screaming that No 3 was going to have to go hungry and wondering how on earth I was ever going to get out of the house. Thankfully Spouse dealt with the hunger pangs, while I wrapped the present and remembered that my handbag was still in the car.
I eventually left the house at nearly 8.30. As I passed the Co Op en route, I not unnaturally went to buy dishwasher powder... always thinking domestically me, even on a night out.
Lovely friend was there with very Drunk Work Colleague. VDWC is highly entertaining, so it was enjoyable sparring with him, given that I was totally stone cold sober. Mind you, that state of affairs didn't last long.
We were chucked out of the bar we were in at 10pm, so we wandered back up to the local Spouse and I have been drinking in since time immemorial. Aaah... the stories I have about that place. It seems to currently be working its way into the wip somehow. All I'll say here is that it is known locally as The Stranglers on account of a previous landlord having come to a sticky (and strangled) end at the hands of his wife's lover. It also has ghosts, or so I'm told, and is one of the few pubs I've ever been in that I don't mind walking into on my own.
Before I knew it, time had gone all elastic on me and it was midnight - which is way past my normal bedtime. Oh dear.... I rang Spouse to say Oh Dear, but I think he was feeling so bad about having got in late he didn't tell me off. I'll be back soon I said...
Soon turned into nearly 1am, so it was very oh dear this morning.
Particularly as I had promised to go swimming with another lovely friend...
It was a sharp shock I can tell you, but not a bad way of getting rid of a hangover...
And I've just reminded myself that sometimes it's worth the effort of getting out, even if I'm not quite all in one piece the next day...
To lovely friend, hope you enjoyed your birthday as much as I did....xxxx
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Auditors Are In...
I may have mentioned once or twice, that I am a big Terry Pratchett fan. Did I say big? I mean HUGE...
The guy is a living genius and should be up there with Alan Bennett et al as one of our National Treasures. I can't think of a single living author who so relentlessly and comically exposes the failures of our age (Soul Music - takes apart the pop industry; Moving Pictures - Hollywood; The Truth - the media; A Monstrous Regiment - the nature of war, with a strong empathy for the plight of the common soldier as well as a brilliant understanding of what makes women tick). He writes the most perfect satire, but because it is dressed up in the mad fantasy Discworld he's created (a world that travels through space on top four elephants supported by the great Turtle A'Ttuin), no one notices.
TP fans will know of course that at Christmas the first attempt to film a Discworld book was made by Sky. Being the season to be jolly, and everything else rhyming with olly (that line alone brings joy to my heart. Oh the sublime brilliance of the man), they not unnaturally chose The Hogfather, loosely translated as the story of how Death (who speaks in capital letters, has a horse named Binkie and tries very hard, and fails, to get humanity), saves the Discworld equivalent of Christmas.
Sadly, we don't have Sky, so we've had to wait till now to get the film on DVD. To our delight it was well worth the wait, being absolutely fabulous, incredibly true to the book, and very very funny.
The key premise to The Hogfather is that the universe is run by Auditors (that sounds familiar). They are shapeless beings (portrayed in the film in shimmering cloaks) who find humanity rather distasteful, and imagination awkward. So they hire the Guild of Assassins to kill the Hogfather, thereby destroying belief and ensuring the sun won't come up in the morning. Ultimately creating a world that is ordered and right, but without stories and heart and soul.
Terry Pratchett's big on stories, and I think he's right to be worried about the Auditors.
They've moved in to all areas of our lives, not least those of our children.
This week nos 1&3 are sitting the dreaded SATs. No 3 fortunately hasn't quite twigged what they are, but no 1 has been pressurised about the wretched things for months now. I have blogged before about how I think our current education system is just painting by numbers, so I won't go there again, but it does frustrate me that these poor kids are tested over and over again for no apparent educational purpose, but just so the Auditors can tick boxes.
I am lucky in that both my offspring are likely to do well in the tests (though quite frankly I don't honestly care if they don't), but no 1 never does as well in her writing assessments which she hates. Unfortunately THAT test is scheduled for tomorrow, which also happens to be her birthday.
Now I appreciate I am not a teacher and probably know diddly squat about education, but I was staggered a couple of years ago when one of her teachers showed me a tick box list of all the things that these kids are supposed to be able to put in their writing assessments. The list had about thirty five things in it, including use of adverbs, pronouns etc.
I'm all for them being grammatically correct and all that, but this seems to take the soul out of the bloody thing.
The main purpose of teaching our children to read and write is not so they'll all go on to read War and Peace (or even write it), but so that they can communicate with others when they eventually go out in the big bad world. So the essential points of any written work they do should be: does it make sense? Have they communicated their thoughts clearly and coherently?And if they're writing a story has it got a beginning, middle and end?
My inner editor was screaming as loud as loud can be, you're missing the bloody point here! Storytelling isn't about ticking boxes, it's about taking us some place out of ourselves into an imagined world created by a writer. Kids have the best imaginations in the world, and should be the best storytellers.
By breaking the act of writing down into so many disparate elements, the education system (I'm NOT blaming teachers here) has taken the Auditors' approach, and in doing so in my view they're destroying our kids' imaginations. No 1 regularly writes brilliant and wonderful stories at home, and yet time and time again I'm told that her writing is her weak point.
Is it her?
Or is it a system which is bleeding her imagination dry?
At the end of The Hogfather, with the help of his granddaughter Susan, and his butler Albert (gleefully played in the film by David Jason), Death defeats not only the Auditors, but Mr Teatime (pronounced Teah- tam- eh) the psychotic Assassin who's trying to kill Death just to see if he can.
He tells Susan that human beings need fantasies - or as he puts it the little lies: the Tooth Fairy, the Hogfather, so we can believe the big ones: justice, mercy, duty and so on. When Susan protests that it's not the same thing, Death points out that if you ground the Universe down through the finest of sieves you wouldn't find one atom of justice or one molecule of mercy. But we have to believe they exist to make them happen. Otherwise there's no point.
I understand that SATs are on their way out (at least in their current form), and if that's so, I certainly won't mourn their loss. Because there should be a place in education where the Auditors don't go, where children can learn to think and play and imagine. Otherwise, they'll never ever learn the big lies.
And then the sun really won't come up in the morning.
The guy is a living genius and should be up there with Alan Bennett et al as one of our National Treasures. I can't think of a single living author who so relentlessly and comically exposes the failures of our age (Soul Music - takes apart the pop industry; Moving Pictures - Hollywood; The Truth - the media; A Monstrous Regiment - the nature of war, with a strong empathy for the plight of the common soldier as well as a brilliant understanding of what makes women tick). He writes the most perfect satire, but because it is dressed up in the mad fantasy Discworld he's created (a world that travels through space on top four elephants supported by the great Turtle A'Ttuin), no one notices.
TP fans will know of course that at Christmas the first attempt to film a Discworld book was made by Sky. Being the season to be jolly, and everything else rhyming with olly (that line alone brings joy to my heart. Oh the sublime brilliance of the man), they not unnaturally chose The Hogfather, loosely translated as the story of how Death (who speaks in capital letters, has a horse named Binkie and tries very hard, and fails, to get humanity), saves the Discworld equivalent of Christmas.
Sadly, we don't have Sky, so we've had to wait till now to get the film on DVD. To our delight it was well worth the wait, being absolutely fabulous, incredibly true to the book, and very very funny.
The key premise to The Hogfather is that the universe is run by Auditors (that sounds familiar). They are shapeless beings (portrayed in the film in shimmering cloaks) who find humanity rather distasteful, and imagination awkward. So they hire the Guild of Assassins to kill the Hogfather, thereby destroying belief and ensuring the sun won't come up in the morning. Ultimately creating a world that is ordered and right, but without stories and heart and soul.
Terry Pratchett's big on stories, and I think he's right to be worried about the Auditors.
They've moved in to all areas of our lives, not least those of our children.
This week nos 1&3 are sitting the dreaded SATs. No 3 fortunately hasn't quite twigged what they are, but no 1 has been pressurised about the wretched things for months now. I have blogged before about how I think our current education system is just painting by numbers, so I won't go there again, but it does frustrate me that these poor kids are tested over and over again for no apparent educational purpose, but just so the Auditors can tick boxes.
I am lucky in that both my offspring are likely to do well in the tests (though quite frankly I don't honestly care if they don't), but no 1 never does as well in her writing assessments which she hates. Unfortunately THAT test is scheduled for tomorrow, which also happens to be her birthday.
Now I appreciate I am not a teacher and probably know diddly squat about education, but I was staggered a couple of years ago when one of her teachers showed me a tick box list of all the things that these kids are supposed to be able to put in their writing assessments. The list had about thirty five things in it, including use of adverbs, pronouns etc.
I'm all for them being grammatically correct and all that, but this seems to take the soul out of the bloody thing.
The main purpose of teaching our children to read and write is not so they'll all go on to read War and Peace (or even write it), but so that they can communicate with others when they eventually go out in the big bad world. So the essential points of any written work they do should be: does it make sense? Have they communicated their thoughts clearly and coherently?And if they're writing a story has it got a beginning, middle and end?
My inner editor was screaming as loud as loud can be, you're missing the bloody point here! Storytelling isn't about ticking boxes, it's about taking us some place out of ourselves into an imagined world created by a writer. Kids have the best imaginations in the world, and should be the best storytellers.
By breaking the act of writing down into so many disparate elements, the education system (I'm NOT blaming teachers here) has taken the Auditors' approach, and in doing so in my view they're destroying our kids' imaginations. No 1 regularly writes brilliant and wonderful stories at home, and yet time and time again I'm told that her writing is her weak point.
Is it her?
Or is it a system which is bleeding her imagination dry?
At the end of The Hogfather, with the help of his granddaughter Susan, and his butler Albert (gleefully played in the film by David Jason), Death defeats not only the Auditors, but Mr Teatime (pronounced Teah- tam- eh) the psychotic Assassin who's trying to kill Death just to see if he can.
He tells Susan that human beings need fantasies - or as he puts it the little lies: the Tooth Fairy, the Hogfather, so we can believe the big ones: justice, mercy, duty and so on. When Susan protests that it's not the same thing, Death points out that if you ground the Universe down through the finest of sieves you wouldn't find one atom of justice or one molecule of mercy. But we have to believe they exist to make them happen. Otherwise there's no point.
I understand that SATs are on their way out (at least in their current form), and if that's so, I certainly won't mourn their loss. Because there should be a place in education where the Auditors don't go, where children can learn to think and play and imagine. Otherwise, they'll never ever learn the big lies.
And then the sun really won't come up in the morning.
Friday, May 11, 2007
He rocks...
... It's official.
I have died and gone to heaven.
Ray Davies is a god.
Wow.
What an evening. What a bloody brilliant, fantastic wonderful evening.
Sorry you are in for some hyperbole...
Spouse and I arrived at the Albert Hall last night with minutes to spare (you try getting out of the door by 6pm when you have four kids and a husband who's walked in at 5.30...) and seeing that we hadn't a clue who the support was, decided we needed a bit of a breather before entering the fray.
So we got a drink and some nibbles (the frantic dash up to town having not left time for food), and sat in nervous anticipation of what was to come.
Suppose we don't like him, said Spouse.
Maybe he'll be a disappointment, I said.
Is it wise to go and see your idols? we both wondered anxiously. (This mainly from me, remembering a time when I went to see Margaret Atwood at the National. Given that she is only one of my two living literary idols - Terry Pratchett being t'other - I was nervous as hell. I queued up hours to get her to sign a copy of Cat's Eye, trying to think of something witty and incisive to say. And then when I got there, all I could do was babble incoherently about how brilliant she was... )
We needn't have worried.
We were sitting in the Arena in row 23, and in an aisle too boot. So we had a great view from the start.
From the minute he walked on stage, the atmosphere was electric. He launched straight into: I'm Not Like Everybody Else, which I forgot to mention yesterday. It's another of my favourites... and one I play to the children to give them the idea that they're individuals who should carve out their own niche in life (though I would kind of like them to get jobs...)
It was spine tinglingly good. I fell in love with that song when Spouse was given a live Kinks CD called To the Bone, but to hear it actually live... was, just amazing. What was so great about that, and pretty much everything else he did, was that it exceeded my expectations, and was BETTER then I could have thought possible.
Cheekily he fed into Where Have All The Good Times Gone?, which given the news that the long goodbye had finally been announced, I'm sure was not uncoincidental... And you realise just how bloody good he is, because the song is just as relevant today as when he first wrote it. And that goes for Dead End Street too, which came later. The original black and white video for that was banned for being too shocking, and now looks almost quaintly archaic, showing a glimpse into a world that no longer exists... At least not in that form. The two rooms, apartment on the second floor are now likely to be on a council estate rather then a tenement block, but sheesh, does that song still resonate. As did Celluloid Heroes, which I've always found incredibly poignant, and seems more true then ever before.
The gig got better and better. He had us jumping and clapping and shouting and singing... It's so great when you go to a gig and you KNOW all the words. I haven't sung so much in years. And even Spouse joined in. He was trying hard to be all English about it, but it was impossible not to get into the swing.
What was also fabulous about it was, that the new stuff, I didn't know was all wonderful too. His last album features a fantastic song called The Tourist which so perfectly encapsulates the way we travel and look at the countries we visit, and can only ever see a fraction of what is really there, and the song he ended his first set on, Twentieth Century Man, proves Ray Davies still has the capacity to write thought provoking songs that speak so eloquently of the times in which we live.
In between he was witty and urbane, moving smoothly from heavy rock numbers, to softly silent solos. We came out of the first half almost speechless, from the sheer dazzling brilliance of it all.
After a quick drink and excited cool down, we went back to a second half which, if such a thing could be possible ,was even better...
I can't remember the name of the song with which we were launched into the second set (I think it was called No One's Listening to Me) but it's new and deals with the aftermath of an incident three years ago when Ray Davies was shot. There was clearly a lot of personal stuff going on in there, but clever old Ray, he goes from the personal to the universal in the blink of an eye and has written a brilliant indictment of today's society, where no one listens, and those in power ignore the horrors around them. I am absolutely going to have to go out and buy his new album whenever it arrives. How wonderful to still be churning out such songs, even now... what a genius. What a star... What a god...
The hits then came so thick and fast, that I can't remember everything, but he had us all toe tapping to Come Dancing (which I don't actually like) and by the time he'd reached Set Me Free by way of Sunny Afternoon, Tired of Waiting For You (THAT was the song that featured in the last episode of Green Wing) people at the front were beginning to get to their feet. We were a bit too far back for my liking, and apart from a game couple to the left who were straining at the leash to get going, no one else around us was joining in sufficiently for me not to feel at total twat for leaping up.
I want to dance, I said.
Not yet, said Spouse, all English and self conscious.
Bugger that, I said, as Ray launched into The End of the Day, and I jumped up, and dragged him down the front.
And do you know, we were both so glad I did. I have never been so close to a stage before, we could have probably jumped up there with him. It was amazingly intimate, and very funny, as Ray Davies was interacting with the crowd in a hugely enjoyable way. And the songs. Those bloody marvellous unforgettable songs.
He saved the best till last.
A brilliant one, I've never heard before about his brother Dave - it summed up exactly how I will feel in a few years when no 1 goes out into the big bad world, another new one called The Getaway (God, I MUST have that album...) and then, oh joy, Lo-lo-lo-lo-lo fantastic wonderful witty Lola. Oh the joy. Had he ended there, my cup would have runneth over...
But he didn't.
We got an encore.
And then we got another one.
And STILL we hadn't had I Really Got You.
But finally it came. And boy was it worth waiting for. For anyone who has his album The Storyteller, you'll know that Ray was playing the first few bars on his piano in one room and he called Dave into listen. I don't get it says, Dave, till Ray ratchets it up a notch, and then another, and then another...
By the time he'd exploded into I REALLY GOT YOU, I doubt that there was a single person in the Albert Hall not on their feet. It was absolutely brilliant. Spouse and I dancing to our favourite song, practically touching the legend who wrote it. It doesn't get much better then that.
And then it did.
Because having got us all screaming, he quietened us down with a wonderful rendition of Waterloo Sunset, which has to be about Waterloo Bridge because there isn't a bridge at Liverpool Station...
Then he brought Mick Avory and another Kinks member whose name I forget back on stage to finish off with an anthem thumping Victoria. Not my favourite song. But it worked.
As no 1 would say, Ray Davies rocks.
And for two and a half perfect hours.
So did we.
I have died and gone to heaven.
Ray Davies is a god.
Wow.
What an evening. What a bloody brilliant, fantastic wonderful evening.
Sorry you are in for some hyperbole...
Spouse and I arrived at the Albert Hall last night with minutes to spare (you try getting out of the door by 6pm when you have four kids and a husband who's walked in at 5.30...) and seeing that we hadn't a clue who the support was, decided we needed a bit of a breather before entering the fray.
So we got a drink and some nibbles (the frantic dash up to town having not left time for food), and sat in nervous anticipation of what was to come.
Suppose we don't like him, said Spouse.
Maybe he'll be a disappointment, I said.
Is it wise to go and see your idols? we both wondered anxiously. (This mainly from me, remembering a time when I went to see Margaret Atwood at the National. Given that she is only one of my two living literary idols - Terry Pratchett being t'other - I was nervous as hell. I queued up hours to get her to sign a copy of Cat's Eye, trying to think of something witty and incisive to say. And then when I got there, all I could do was babble incoherently about how brilliant she was... )
We needn't have worried.
We were sitting in the Arena in row 23, and in an aisle too boot. So we had a great view from the start.
From the minute he walked on stage, the atmosphere was electric. He launched straight into: I'm Not Like Everybody Else, which I forgot to mention yesterday. It's another of my favourites... and one I play to the children to give them the idea that they're individuals who should carve out their own niche in life (though I would kind of like them to get jobs...)
It was spine tinglingly good. I fell in love with that song when Spouse was given a live Kinks CD called To the Bone, but to hear it actually live... was, just amazing. What was so great about that, and pretty much everything else he did, was that it exceeded my expectations, and was BETTER then I could have thought possible.
Cheekily he fed into Where Have All The Good Times Gone?, which given the news that the long goodbye had finally been announced, I'm sure was not uncoincidental... And you realise just how bloody good he is, because the song is just as relevant today as when he first wrote it. And that goes for Dead End Street too, which came later. The original black and white video for that was banned for being too shocking, and now looks almost quaintly archaic, showing a glimpse into a world that no longer exists... At least not in that form. The two rooms, apartment on the second floor are now likely to be on a council estate rather then a tenement block, but sheesh, does that song still resonate. As did Celluloid Heroes, which I've always found incredibly poignant, and seems more true then ever before.
The gig got better and better. He had us jumping and clapping and shouting and singing... It's so great when you go to a gig and you KNOW all the words. I haven't sung so much in years. And even Spouse joined in. He was trying hard to be all English about it, but it was impossible not to get into the swing.
What was also fabulous about it was, that the new stuff, I didn't know was all wonderful too. His last album features a fantastic song called The Tourist which so perfectly encapsulates the way we travel and look at the countries we visit, and can only ever see a fraction of what is really there, and the song he ended his first set on, Twentieth Century Man, proves Ray Davies still has the capacity to write thought provoking songs that speak so eloquently of the times in which we live.
In between he was witty and urbane, moving smoothly from heavy rock numbers, to softly silent solos. We came out of the first half almost speechless, from the sheer dazzling brilliance of it all.
After a quick drink and excited cool down, we went back to a second half which, if such a thing could be possible ,was even better...
I can't remember the name of the song with which we were launched into the second set (I think it was called No One's Listening to Me) but it's new and deals with the aftermath of an incident three years ago when Ray Davies was shot. There was clearly a lot of personal stuff going on in there, but clever old Ray, he goes from the personal to the universal in the blink of an eye and has written a brilliant indictment of today's society, where no one listens, and those in power ignore the horrors around them. I am absolutely going to have to go out and buy his new album whenever it arrives. How wonderful to still be churning out such songs, even now... what a genius. What a star... What a god...
The hits then came so thick and fast, that I can't remember everything, but he had us all toe tapping to Come Dancing (which I don't actually like) and by the time he'd reached Set Me Free by way of Sunny Afternoon, Tired of Waiting For You (THAT was the song that featured in the last episode of Green Wing) people at the front were beginning to get to their feet. We were a bit too far back for my liking, and apart from a game couple to the left who were straining at the leash to get going, no one else around us was joining in sufficiently for me not to feel at total twat for leaping up.
I want to dance, I said.
Not yet, said Spouse, all English and self conscious.
Bugger that, I said, as Ray launched into The End of the Day, and I jumped up, and dragged him down the front.
And do you know, we were both so glad I did. I have never been so close to a stage before, we could have probably jumped up there with him. It was amazingly intimate, and very funny, as Ray Davies was interacting with the crowd in a hugely enjoyable way. And the songs. Those bloody marvellous unforgettable songs.
He saved the best till last.
A brilliant one, I've never heard before about his brother Dave - it summed up exactly how I will feel in a few years when no 1 goes out into the big bad world, another new one called The Getaway (God, I MUST have that album...) and then, oh joy, Lo-lo-lo-lo-lo fantastic wonderful witty Lola. Oh the joy. Had he ended there, my cup would have runneth over...
But he didn't.
We got an encore.
And then we got another one.
And STILL we hadn't had I Really Got You.
But finally it came. And boy was it worth waiting for. For anyone who has his album The Storyteller, you'll know that Ray was playing the first few bars on his piano in one room and he called Dave into listen. I don't get it says, Dave, till Ray ratchets it up a notch, and then another, and then another...
By the time he'd exploded into I REALLY GOT YOU, I doubt that there was a single person in the Albert Hall not on their feet. It was absolutely brilliant. Spouse and I dancing to our favourite song, practically touching the legend who wrote it. It doesn't get much better then that.
And then it did.
Because having got us all screaming, he quietened us down with a wonderful rendition of Waterloo Sunset, which has to be about Waterloo Bridge because there isn't a bridge at Liverpool Station...
Then he brought Mick Avory and another Kinks member whose name I forget back on stage to finish off with an anthem thumping Victoria. Not my favourite song. But it worked.
As no 1 would say, Ray Davies rocks.
And for two and a half perfect hours.
So did we.
Thursday, May 10, 2007
You Really Got Me
As a girl of the eighties, I shouldn't by rights be into sixties music. Indeed. Until I met my husband I wasn't. As a teenager I spent rather alot of time bopping to the Beatles at the end of parties which rather put me off the whole decade.
I tend to think of music as adding the soundtrack to my life (which is why I always use it to inspire my writing).
Roxanne represents the moment I suddenly got pop music - coincidentally the first time I heard it was also the first time I got asked to dance. I had no idea it was about a prostitute, but hey, what the hell. Every time I hear it now my thirteen year old heart does a little leap - he asked me to dance, thereby fulfilling the most important desire of a girl's teenage years...
All that ska stuff, like Ghost Town and UB40 makes me think of strikes and pickets, and rocking against racism; the new Romantics took me through the trials of my late teens when I learnt that boys not only asked you to dance, but then they stopped asking you, too; Madonna, King, U2, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Everything but the Girl exploded into my life as I experienced freedom for the first time, mainly on the dance floor late at night in Liverpool's seedier drinking holes...
But sixties music. Now in the main that had passed me by till I got together with Spouse. He introduced me to the Zombies, the Animals, the Mamas & Papas, loads of stuff I'd never heard of. And I haven't been able to enjoy the Beatles since, as there was so much more that I like far better.
California Dreamin' by the Mamas & Papas remains a favourite of mine (indeed, I used it for mood in Pastures New), as does She's Not There by the Zombies (which I haven't used yet, but I certainly will).
But the band I am most grateful to Spouse for introducing me to are the Kinks. Ray Davies in my book is a living genius. I love his storytelling capacity, his ability to poke fun, his wry social comment, and above all his ability to produce great simple songs that you can not only dance to, but which stick in your head forever...
My role of honour for Kinks' songs goes to:
Waterloo Sunset - two things coincide there for me. Waterloo Bridge happens to be my favourite bridge in London. I used to walk across it every day when I was commuting, and I love the grand sweep of vision you get from being on a bend in the river which means you can see London laid out in all its glory on both sides. Every time I hear the song I can picture that view.
All Day and All of the Night - encapsulates love's young dream so perfectly. And let's face it, who wouldn't want Ray singing to them he wants to be with them all day and all of the night... That will no doubt make its way into a book one day too.
Lola Bearing in mind I was a lot more innocent the first time I heard this song, I can remember the moment of revelation when I suddenly realised, that the singer not only knew he was a man, but so was Lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-Lola... I love that song. It is so funny and Ray Davies at his mischievous best.
But my favourite Kinks song is probably their simplest.
It's You Really Got Me and its the only song I can guarantee will drag my husband to the dance floor.
When I first met him, he had recently had the disappointment of driving all the way to Southampton to go to a Kinks gig which was cancelled. So last year I managed to book us tickets to see Ray Davies at the Royal Albert Hall only for that to be cancelled too.
Tonight, however, all things being well, we are finally going to get to see the man himself.
Here he is.
Isn't he lovely? (OK, not a patch on David Tennant, but David Tennant doesn't have a voice to make your soul sing).
I'm really looking forward to it.
I do hope he doesn't cancel.
Because I'm looking forward to a dance with my husband...
PS. A very kind friend has pointed out that apparently Waterloo Sunset was originally supposed to be Liverpool Sunset, and was about Liverpool Station, not about Waterloo at all... Although according to Wikipedia it IS about Waterloo Bridge... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Sunset
The truth is out there I'm sure...
I tend to think of music as adding the soundtrack to my life (which is why I always use it to inspire my writing).
Roxanne represents the moment I suddenly got pop music - coincidentally the first time I heard it was also the first time I got asked to dance. I had no idea it was about a prostitute, but hey, what the hell. Every time I hear it now my thirteen year old heart does a little leap - he asked me to dance, thereby fulfilling the most important desire of a girl's teenage years...
All that ska stuff, like Ghost Town and UB40 makes me think of strikes and pickets, and rocking against racism; the new Romantics took me through the trials of my late teens when I learnt that boys not only asked you to dance, but then they stopped asking you, too; Madonna, King, U2, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Everything but the Girl exploded into my life as I experienced freedom for the first time, mainly on the dance floor late at night in Liverpool's seedier drinking holes...
But sixties music. Now in the main that had passed me by till I got together with Spouse. He introduced me to the Zombies, the Animals, the Mamas & Papas, loads of stuff I'd never heard of. And I haven't been able to enjoy the Beatles since, as there was so much more that I like far better.
California Dreamin' by the Mamas & Papas remains a favourite of mine (indeed, I used it for mood in Pastures New), as does She's Not There by the Zombies (which I haven't used yet, but I certainly will).
But the band I am most grateful to Spouse for introducing me to are the Kinks. Ray Davies in my book is a living genius. I love his storytelling capacity, his ability to poke fun, his wry social comment, and above all his ability to produce great simple songs that you can not only dance to, but which stick in your head forever...
My role of honour for Kinks' songs goes to:
Waterloo Sunset - two things coincide there for me. Waterloo Bridge happens to be my favourite bridge in London. I used to walk across it every day when I was commuting, and I love the grand sweep of vision you get from being on a bend in the river which means you can see London laid out in all its glory on both sides. Every time I hear the song I can picture that view.
All Day and All of the Night - encapsulates love's young dream so perfectly. And let's face it, who wouldn't want Ray singing to them he wants to be with them all day and all of the night... That will no doubt make its way into a book one day too.
Lola Bearing in mind I was a lot more innocent the first time I heard this song, I can remember the moment of revelation when I suddenly realised, that the singer not only knew he was a man, but so was Lo-lo-lo-lo-lo-Lola... I love that song. It is so funny and Ray Davies at his mischievous best.
But my favourite Kinks song is probably their simplest.
It's You Really Got Me and its the only song I can guarantee will drag my husband to the dance floor.
When I first met him, he had recently had the disappointment of driving all the way to Southampton to go to a Kinks gig which was cancelled. So last year I managed to book us tickets to see Ray Davies at the Royal Albert Hall only for that to be cancelled too.
Tonight, however, all things being well, we are finally going to get to see the man himself.
Here he is.
Isn't he lovely? (OK, not a patch on David Tennant, but David Tennant doesn't have a voice to make your soul sing).
I'm really looking forward to it.
I do hope he doesn't cancel.
Because I'm looking forward to a dance with my husband...
PS. A very kind friend has pointed out that apparently Waterloo Sunset was originally supposed to be Liverpool Sunset, and was about Liverpool Station, not about Waterloo at all... Although according to Wikipedia it IS about Waterloo Bridge... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo_Sunset
The truth is out there I'm sure...
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Dr Who Wed Em Bed Em or Shed Em...
As my Wed Em, Bed Em or Shed Em game proved so popular at my party, I've been talking about sex and Dr Who and several people seem to want a Dr Who version, I thought oh what the hell!
(Btw to find out who won my competition and for news of my next running exploit you can go over to the Other Blog).
Ok.
Your starters for ten are...
Evil Davros... where those
pesky daleks began (and frankly
a lot less risible then the human
variety we saw the other week)
It's the tin dog...possibly the
most irritating dog in tv history
Ahh, now. How could I leave him
out?
Lovely, lovely, lovely David Tennant
(Did I mention he was lovely?)
And boys... for you we have...
Rose Tyler. The woman who
made being Dr Who's assistant
cool.
Leela. Well she had to be there really
didn't she?
We all know why they employed her
in the non pc 80s!
And finally... oh look what the future can bring.
Be careful what you wish for, Cassandra...
Enjoy!
(Btw to find out who won my competition and for news of my next running exploit you can go over to the Other Blog).
Ok.
Your starters for ten are...
Evil Davros... where those
pesky daleks began (and frankly
a lot less risible then the human
variety we saw the other week)
It's the tin dog...possibly the
most irritating dog in tv history
Ahh, now. How could I leave him
out?
Lovely, lovely, lovely David Tennant
(Did I mention he was lovely?)
And boys... for you we have...
Rose Tyler. The woman who
made being Dr Who's assistant
cool.
Leela. Well she had to be there really
didn't she?
We all know why they employed her
in the non pc 80s!
And finally... oh look what the future can bring.
Be careful what you wish for, Cassandra...
Enjoy!
Thursday, May 03, 2007
Dr Who and Sex.... the solution
Yesterday I woke up to hear Sarah Kennedy talking about the mass of betting that had been taking place that a hitherto unknown actor called Julian Walsh was going to replace David Tennant as the next doctor. Apparently he and his agent know nothing about it...
I couldn't find any reference to it anywhere, and thought I must have imagined it until I found this....
http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.php#newsitemEEZlEplFplYQzbVqxm
Apparently Mr Walsh is both bald and small....
That'll put paid to sex in the Tardis then....
Marie Philips has come up with a brilliant scenario as to how the Doctor and Martha will part company, which you can read here...
http://strugglingauthor.blogspot.com
I do hope she's wrong....
I couldn't find any reference to it anywhere, and thought I must have imagined it until I found this....
http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.php#newsitemEEZlEplFplYQzbVqxm
Apparently Mr Walsh is both bald and small....
That'll put paid to sex in the Tardis then....
Marie Philips has come up with a brilliant scenario as to how the Doctor and Martha will part company, which you can read here...
http://strugglingauthor.blogspot.com
I do hope she's wrong....
Monday, April 30, 2007
Sex and the Doctor
All right, all right. This is just another excuse to print a picture of David Tennant again.
There. Isn't he lovely?
There. Isn't he lovely?
Although, actually I did have something else to say.
Elsewhere in blogland there exist others as obsessed as I about the good Doctor, and they are having conversations here
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/dave_hill/2007/04/no_sex_please_were_time_lords.html
and here:
http://strugglingauthor.blogspot.com.
I decided that Dave and Marie had both made me think about it so much that I had too much to say and they'd get bored of me posting on their blogs, so I would just go and post on mine...
I have to confess when they first brought Dr Who back I was really nervous. I mean. Russell T Davies. He wrote Queer as Folk and The Second Coming for god's sake. And brilliant and all as that was, I couldn't quite see him toning it down for a Saturday teatime audience. But then I saw Mine all Mine, and thought, ok, maybe I got that one wrong then...
To my delight as a lifelong saddie Dr Who obsessed fan, Russell T more then delivered. I thought Rose was a huge improvement from the wet assistants of my day (even Sarah Jane who keeps being heralded as a really strong cookie. I thought she was a girly wuss... Russell hugely improved her when he brought her back).
I was a tad disconcerted by the burgeoning relationship between the Doctor and Rose - partly because Christopher Eccleston seemed way too old for Billie Piper, and partly because, well. it didn't seem like Dr Who, did it? I mean since when has the Doctor gone about fancying his companions? (Although I do remember Jon Pertwee being quite affected by Jo going off to get married...)
However, I have to confess, the very last episode of the first series, The Parting of the Ways, changed my mind.
I just LOVED the very tender kiss the Doctor planted on Rose to get the Vortex out of her head, and then the way he said as he regenerated, Oh Rose, I was going to show you such things... It was beautiful and haunting and well, romantic... For me that pressed all the right buttons. Moving, but not schmalzy, tender but not too sexy for a kid's programme.
And then of course the last series was a great long tease between Billie and David, who were much better suited to one another, and spent the whole of it getting separated as if to herald that final separation: Sarah Jane showed Rose her future without the Doctor, Madame de Pompadour his without her, she got trapped by the wire, he got trapped in a picture...
You have to hand it to Russell T, he does like to flag things up for us.
But...
It ended. The Doctor lost Rose and until he met Martha he was on his own again.
And, I really don't want the whole shebang to start again. If he falls for Martha the way he fell for Rose he's going to end up looking like some kind of lothario, and personally I'm with Dave Hill, I kind of like him being slightly asexual, and OUT of all that sort of thing. I do love all the depth of emotion that David Tennant portrays with the whole being the last of his line thing, and that he cannot be like other people. But if he keeps hopping from assistant to assistant he's just going to look like your average jack the lad down the pub. And that will never do...
And apart from anything else, without sounding too prudish about it, this is a kid's show. My lot are deeply embarrassed by any hint of what they call the kissy kissy stuff. They prefer straightforward daleks being blasted into smithereens kind of episodes. And despite the laughably ridiculous pig slaves of the last two weeks (though they did hark back to the idiotic kind of monsters from my childhood, so in that sense they were following a well worn tradition), the children thought they were great.
On a slightly wider point, I do think this constant obsession with sex in everything is also an indication of something that has gone slightly awry in our society. Given that I have girls, I am constantly cross when I come to buy them clothes and find it damn nigh impossible to find them anything that doesn't make them look like little tarts. It's not just having images like the inexcrable Bratz dolls thrown at them (mind you, what we think is just tarty, they think is pretty and on the upside, the kids do play fantastically imaginative - and no not what you're thinking - games with them, so they're not all bad), or the fact that even magazines for eight year olds are full of pictures of skinny popstars, there seems to have been a change in society which assumes that we shouldn't hold back. Kids should know about this stuff. It's the way the world works.
Now granted, when I was growing up, we were shielded alot from That Kind of Thing, and it wasn't always helpful, but I hear horror stories (I have no idea yet as to how apocraphyl) about sex education lessons at secondary school including discussions about bestiality and s&m behaviour and think, aren't we taking honesty and openness a bit far? Last year no 1 came home from a talk about puberty with a leaflet about periods which earnestly explained that you can still have sex when you are having a period. Why on earth did she need to know that?
And from where I'm sitting, all this sex education appears to be having no effect whatsoever, given that we have the highest teen pregnancy count in Europe. Now there's a statistic to be proud of. Because there seems to be an assumption that as everyone is at it, it is having safe sex that counts, instead of an assumption that it is probably in the main better to wait till you're old enough, and for most of us the whole thing works a lot better when the relationship involved is a reasonably important one.
Which brings me back to Dr Who. Without making too much of a mountain out of it (ok, I probably am), what sort of subliminal message are kids going to get from seeing Martha jumping into the Tardis with an alien she's only just met, and then moaning that he isn't interested in sleeping with her (see episode two about Shakespeare, in every other respect, totally brilliant)? And if the doctor does get it on with her, it kind of implies that commitment is an out of sight out of mind kind of thing.
I had an interesting if rather oblique discussion with no 1 about this the other week. We were watching Mansfield Park and she came to the (correct) conclusion that Henry Crawford wasn't the One for Fanny. I explained as unscarily as I could that no 1 in time might meet the odd Henry Crawford, but really it was Edmund Bertram she should bother with. Jane Austen. Sexual politics in a nutshell.
I kind of hope therefore that the Doctor doesn't turn in to Henry Crawford (they can have Captain Jack for that), but remains if not Edmund Bertram (ok he is a bit wet), Mr Darcy or Mr Knightly through and through...
Either that or he regenerate as a woman...
Friday, April 27, 2007
Binge Drinking
So parents are to banned from shoving alcohol down the throats of their five year old children.
Well, if Alcohol Concern have anything to do with it they will. Not only that, the dissolutes involved will be prosecuted for their wicked and wanton behaviour.
In one fell swoop this will solve the problem of binge drinking among teens apparently.
Apart from the rather surreal image this conjures up of parents up and down the land appearing like characters from the Rake's Progress forcefeeding their children gin, it did make me wonder what planet the people in Alcohol Concern live on.
I don't think I know a single person who gives their five year olds alcohol. We have a five year old. We drink alcohol. But so far she seems unsullied. Indeed, she's never even wanted to try it. The two older ones on occasion have had a sip of their dad's beer, and now they've made their first Holy Communion they get to taste the communion wine (hmm, will churches up and down the land get prosecuted?). And get this. They don't actually like it. So us letting them have a sample isn't so far leading them into the path of dissolution.
The whole notion that the State should yet again have the power to interfere in people's homes in this way should be completely abhorrent in a free society. Yes, there are feckless irresponsible parents out there, who for all I know are freely plying their offspring with drink on a regular basis, but it isn't up to the State to go marching into their homes to prevent such behaviour, nasty and all as it might be. I am getting rather tired of do gooders telling me how I should behave. It's as if no one trusts us anymore to make up our own minds about how we bring up our children, and how we act in our own homes.
Rather then encouraging teenagers to be heavy drinkers, I think having some alcohol around in the house and being introduced by your parents to it in a responsible way, is a much more rational approach. From the age of 13 or so, I was allowed a small glass of wine with my Sunday lunch. I didn't then go haring down to the local park with my mates to finish the bottle. When I was a bit older I had my first taste of drinking/getting drunk in my late teens. My parents probably knew I'd had a drink (though laughably Mad Twin and I used to walk up and down the house several times eating mints in a frantic attempt to sober up), but they didn't make a big deal of it, so consequently we weren't driven to do it more in order to shock them. The people I came across who drank to excess the most at university, tended to be the ones who'd been kept on a very tight rein at home. Once let off the leash they went mad.
I'm not claiming virtue here. I did my fair share of drinking in my youth, and am still probably far too partial to red wine, but....
Prosecuting me for giving drink to my children under fifteen is going to make no difference to binge drinking in this country.
The rise of binge drinking as far as I can tell has been as a result firstly of the dratted alcopops, which look all shiny and nice and fun - just like lemonade but with a bit of a kick. As teenagers everyone I knew used to drink cider because we naively thought it wasn't that strong. Now I know we'd all be drinking alcopops because they look so pretty, and we'd be kidding ourselves that they were just like fruit juice.
Secondly, although I agreed with the change in the licensing laws, given that our cousins on the Continent seem to manage drinking all night without the scenes of debauchery that now regularly occur on Saturday nights across the nation, I think now it has been a mistake. The fact that it has been coupled with a rise in the number of licensed premises being opened, and the double whammy of the drinks industry insisting we have to drink much larger measures has been disastrous. Whether or not teenagers drink at home is irrelevant, if once they get out in the big bad world, they can go out to bars, where they can drink for hours on end, and with three glasses of wine consume the best part of a bottle. Beer is stronger now and so is wine. No wonder we're turning into a nation of pissheads.
Thankfully, it does seem the government seem to at least have the sense to realise that Alcohol Concern's proposal isn't the way forward, so it looks like Spouse and I won't be going to prison in the near future for corrupting our young.
But, jeez. Wouldn't it for once be nice to read in the paper that the majority of parents are doing a pretty decent job bringing up their kids (against increasingly difficult odds), and that actually, we're quite capable of making responsible decisions about our childrens' welfare?
Despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail to persuade us otherwise, I think in the main it's true.
Shame the powers that be don't think so....
Well, if Alcohol Concern have anything to do with it they will. Not only that, the dissolutes involved will be prosecuted for their wicked and wanton behaviour.
In one fell swoop this will solve the problem of binge drinking among teens apparently.
Apart from the rather surreal image this conjures up of parents up and down the land appearing like characters from the Rake's Progress forcefeeding their children gin, it did make me wonder what planet the people in Alcohol Concern live on.
I don't think I know a single person who gives their five year olds alcohol. We have a five year old. We drink alcohol. But so far she seems unsullied. Indeed, she's never even wanted to try it. The two older ones on occasion have had a sip of their dad's beer, and now they've made their first Holy Communion they get to taste the communion wine (hmm, will churches up and down the land get prosecuted?). And get this. They don't actually like it. So us letting them have a sample isn't so far leading them into the path of dissolution.
The whole notion that the State should yet again have the power to interfere in people's homes in this way should be completely abhorrent in a free society. Yes, there are feckless irresponsible parents out there, who for all I know are freely plying their offspring with drink on a regular basis, but it isn't up to the State to go marching into their homes to prevent such behaviour, nasty and all as it might be. I am getting rather tired of do gooders telling me how I should behave. It's as if no one trusts us anymore to make up our own minds about how we bring up our children, and how we act in our own homes.
Rather then encouraging teenagers to be heavy drinkers, I think having some alcohol around in the house and being introduced by your parents to it in a responsible way, is a much more rational approach. From the age of 13 or so, I was allowed a small glass of wine with my Sunday lunch. I didn't then go haring down to the local park with my mates to finish the bottle. When I was a bit older I had my first taste of drinking/getting drunk in my late teens. My parents probably knew I'd had a drink (though laughably Mad Twin and I used to walk up and down the house several times eating mints in a frantic attempt to sober up), but they didn't make a big deal of it, so consequently we weren't driven to do it more in order to shock them. The people I came across who drank to excess the most at university, tended to be the ones who'd been kept on a very tight rein at home. Once let off the leash they went mad.
I'm not claiming virtue here. I did my fair share of drinking in my youth, and am still probably far too partial to red wine, but....
Prosecuting me for giving drink to my children under fifteen is going to make no difference to binge drinking in this country.
The rise of binge drinking as far as I can tell has been as a result firstly of the dratted alcopops, which look all shiny and nice and fun - just like lemonade but with a bit of a kick. As teenagers everyone I knew used to drink cider because we naively thought it wasn't that strong. Now I know we'd all be drinking alcopops because they look so pretty, and we'd be kidding ourselves that they were just like fruit juice.
Secondly, although I agreed with the change in the licensing laws, given that our cousins on the Continent seem to manage drinking all night without the scenes of debauchery that now regularly occur on Saturday nights across the nation, I think now it has been a mistake. The fact that it has been coupled with a rise in the number of licensed premises being opened, and the double whammy of the drinks industry insisting we have to drink much larger measures has been disastrous. Whether or not teenagers drink at home is irrelevant, if once they get out in the big bad world, they can go out to bars, where they can drink for hours on end, and with three glasses of wine consume the best part of a bottle. Beer is stronger now and so is wine. No wonder we're turning into a nation of pissheads.
Thankfully, it does seem the government seem to at least have the sense to realise that Alcohol Concern's proposal isn't the way forward, so it looks like Spouse and I won't be going to prison in the near future for corrupting our young.
But, jeez. Wouldn't it for once be nice to read in the paper that the majority of parents are doing a pretty decent job bringing up their kids (against increasingly difficult odds), and that actually, we're quite capable of making responsible decisions about our childrens' welfare?
Despite the best efforts of the Daily Mail to persuade us otherwise, I think in the main it's true.
Shame the powers that be don't think so....
Thursday, April 26, 2007
And then there were three.
No 2 is away on a school trip. It's only two days, and as most of the time covered she'd be at school in bed, her absence is really only notable for four hours each day.
But it's a weird thing.
You'd think having four children, I wouldn't notice one missing. I've got plenty to go round, and one little person being out of the house won't make much difference surely?
And yet, it does. Somehow.
There is a great big, no 2 sized gap that follows me about. The place seems too big without her. It's too quiet. Last night, I actually had time to watch Coronation Street for the first time in - ooh years.
How can one person make so much difference?
The others don't seem all that bothered.
No 1 casually said, why would I miss her? when asked. Mind you, she got a treat last night - thinking (how foolish am I?) that she might be missing her sister, I let her sit up with a chinese takeaway watching Mansfield Park which I videoed a few weeks back. She probably doesn't want no 2 to come home. It's much more fun when she's away.
Yesterday morning (see how pathetic I am? She only went yesterday and she's back tomorrow)
I said goodbye in the playground, and took the little ones round to their school. When we got there I suddenly realised no 3 had run ahead, did you say goodbye to your sister? I asked, worried she might be upset about missing her. I said goodbye in the car, was the nonchalant response. She didn't appear too bothered at all, while no 4 who adores her older sister and normally follows her round like a little lapdog ran off without a care in the world, completely oblivious (apparently) to the fact she wasn't going to see her for a couple of days.
Last night they didn't even mention her, nor this morning. At tennis this evening there was nary a sign from any of them that they missed their sister AT ALL. Am I the only wimp in the family, consciously aware of that big gap and eager for it to be filled up again?
I thought so till bedtime tonight, when no 3 suddenly said, I can't wait for tomorrow?
Oh, why? says naive mum, thinking, oh great, I'm about to get roped into going to assembly again.
No 2's back of course, she said crossly. Honestly, how could you forget about her?
How indeed...
But it's a weird thing.
You'd think having four children, I wouldn't notice one missing. I've got plenty to go round, and one little person being out of the house won't make much difference surely?
And yet, it does. Somehow.
There is a great big, no 2 sized gap that follows me about. The place seems too big without her. It's too quiet. Last night, I actually had time to watch Coronation Street for the first time in - ooh years.
How can one person make so much difference?
The others don't seem all that bothered.
No 1 casually said, why would I miss her? when asked. Mind you, she got a treat last night - thinking (how foolish am I?) that she might be missing her sister, I let her sit up with a chinese takeaway watching Mansfield Park which I videoed a few weeks back. She probably doesn't want no 2 to come home. It's much more fun when she's away.
Yesterday morning (see how pathetic I am? She only went yesterday and she's back tomorrow)
I said goodbye in the playground, and took the little ones round to their school. When we got there I suddenly realised no 3 had run ahead, did you say goodbye to your sister? I asked, worried she might be upset about missing her. I said goodbye in the car, was the nonchalant response. She didn't appear too bothered at all, while no 4 who adores her older sister and normally follows her round like a little lapdog ran off without a care in the world, completely oblivious (apparently) to the fact she wasn't going to see her for a couple of days.
Last night they didn't even mention her, nor this morning. At tennis this evening there was nary a sign from any of them that they missed their sister AT ALL. Am I the only wimp in the family, consciously aware of that big gap and eager for it to be filled up again?
I thought so till bedtime tonight, when no 3 suddenly said, I can't wait for tomorrow?
Oh, why? says naive mum, thinking, oh great, I'm about to get roped into going to assembly again.
No 2's back of course, she said crossly. Honestly, how could you forget about her?
How indeed...
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The Party is up and running
Over at my other blog: http://RunningonEmptyLaunchParty.blogspot.com
You can read some inspiring running stories, join in my competition, play the drinking game I shamelessly stole from the Ladies Lounge - Bec if you're reading this I hope you don't mind, I did email you and ask!, and even if you feel inclined buy the book.
Please please do pass the word on though!
Hope to see you in the smoothie bar soon....
You can read some inspiring running stories, join in my competition, play the drinking game I shamelessly stole from the Ladies Lounge - Bec if you're reading this I hope you don't mind, I did email you and ask!, and even if you feel inclined buy the book.
Please please do pass the word on though!
Hope to see you in the smoothie bar soon....
Monday, April 16, 2007
More Blatant Self Promotion
I am in the process of organising an online party both to promote my book and celebrate Flora London Marathon which is run next Sunday (good luck to anyone out there taking part).
I'll be doing it over on my other blog:
and will post more details here shortly.
Spread the word, why don't you!
Friday, April 13, 2007
You Know It's Weird Out There in Cyberspace....
I'd hazard a guess that most grown ups of a certain age have been glued to the silver screen watching Messrs Simm and Glenister in action. What I am now supposed to do with Tuesday evenings is beyond me, but hey, at least I have the new series to pine for...
If, you like me, were a bit baffled by the outcome - gloriously gripping though it was, you might have been as sad as I am and gone searching in cyberspace for some answers. Courtesy of wikepedia I followed some links and found them. Which was rather a disappointment really. I think I'd have preferred the engima.
If I can get these sodding links right, you can find out to by going here...
http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ianwylie/2007/04/life_on_mars_the_answers.html
There. That doesn't give anything away unless you want to go looking, does it.
It being the holidays and any serious chance of doing proper work being seriously out of the window I have ended up getting slightly obsessed with following links from wikipedia about my favourite programmes.
My little foray into You Tube took me to this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGoNQLeaSwI
which is how I now know what John Simm did next...
And then sadder then ever I went back to wikipedia again and found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Saxon#Mr._Saxon
which is when I realised that I am actually not sad at all. Indeedy, I am only a tiny teensy bit obsessed with tv programmes I like compared with some of the things I found.
(I did however do a whole mad look at Green Wing too, so I now know all about Guy-ball and why it's called Green Wing - but that I can justify, as I am rewatching the entire series so I can follow Mac and Caroline's very fabulous romance to get tips on how to keep sexual tension going in my next book).
But what I've discovered is this. I may be a tiny teensy bit obsesssed, but there are whole Hordes and Hordes of people out there in cyberspace who seem to do nothing else but collect bits of trivia about their favourite tv shows and feed it into wikipedia for people like me to read about and marvel that anyone even has the time to do it.
And you wouldn't believe the number of You Tube videos I've found on the subject of Rose and the Doctor getting separated. I loved that last episode, and everytime we've watched it brings a lump to my throat, but sheesh! Making You Tube videos of it???
Now that's what I call really sad.
And I'm not quite that obsessed...
yet.
Though I wouldn't say no to David Tennant any time of the week...
Or John Simm for that matter...
If, you like me, were a bit baffled by the outcome - gloriously gripping though it was, you might have been as sad as I am and gone searching in cyberspace for some answers. Courtesy of wikepedia I followed some links and found them. Which was rather a disappointment really. I think I'd have preferred the engima.
If I can get these sodding links right, you can find out to by going here...
http://blogs.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/ianwylie/2007/04/life_on_mars_the_answers.html
There. That doesn't give anything away unless you want to go looking, does it.
It being the holidays and any serious chance of doing proper work being seriously out of the window I have ended up getting slightly obsessed with following links from wikipedia about my favourite programmes.
My little foray into You Tube took me to this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGoNQLeaSwI
which is how I now know what John Simm did next...
And then sadder then ever I went back to wikipedia again and found this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Saxon#Mr._Saxon
which is when I realised that I am actually not sad at all. Indeedy, I am only a tiny teensy bit obsessed with tv programmes I like compared with some of the things I found.
(I did however do a whole mad look at Green Wing too, so I now know all about Guy-ball and why it's called Green Wing - but that I can justify, as I am rewatching the entire series so I can follow Mac and Caroline's very fabulous romance to get tips on how to keep sexual tension going in my next book).
But what I've discovered is this. I may be a tiny teensy bit obsesssed, but there are whole Hordes and Hordes of people out there in cyberspace who seem to do nothing else but collect bits of trivia about their favourite tv shows and feed it into wikipedia for people like me to read about and marvel that anyone even has the time to do it.
And you wouldn't believe the number of You Tube videos I've found on the subject of Rose and the Doctor getting separated. I loved that last episode, and everytime we've watched it brings a lump to my throat, but sheesh! Making You Tube videos of it???
Now that's what I call really sad.
And I'm not quite that obsessed...
yet.
Though I wouldn't say no to David Tennant any time of the week...
Or John Simm for that matter...
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
You Tube
I had so much fun posting my previous effort on You Tube, I've just posted another ad there too...
You can find it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3nrqibExg
You can find it at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i3nrqibExg
Tadpole Heaven
We've had a busy weekend. In a moment of madness after Christmas when I was feeling fed up as my side of the family hadn't managed a get together, I decided that we should invite everyone over at Easter instead.
Now in normal families this is probably an immensely obvious and practical thing to do. But my family isn't your average sized family. In fact it is rather large. And between us we all have rather a lot of children. So planning a family meet is rather like a military operation.
However given that I am in the very fortunate position of getting on with everyone of my siblings AND their partners, and all the children adore their cousins, military operation notswithstanding meeting up is always a joyous pleasure (if a rather madly frantic one).
Luckily, Spouse and I have many years of experience of hosting large numbers as we have been putting on parties for his side of the family ever since we moved here.
Simplicity, I find is key.
We had to feed 12 grown ups and 15 children (there was a baby too but his parents provided for him), who were all arriving at different times. So we did a buffet lunch. Spouse decided he had to make waldorf salad which we've never done before, but that was the only complication. We ended up making far too much, so we'll be eating it all week...
For the evening I decided to do a roast for the grown ups. The children had been communicating via email and decided that they wanted a film evening with snacks. So no 1 promised she'd take charge of that and organised an incredibly healthy menu of pizza, hot dogs, beefburgers and popcorn. She did the popcorn, and half the pizza base but playing with her cousins was irresistible, so we, er did the rest...
Puddings I had (in best Blue Peter tradition) made earlier: raspberry fool, redcurrant cheesecake and apple tart. All I'm pleased to say made with fruit from the garden.
There was a lot of running about, and I didn't sit down all that much, but it was well worth it to spend a sunny afternoon sitting in the garden with my siblings.
And the children had a ball...
Most of the afternoon was spent picking out the tadpoles from the pond in buckets and counting them. We have 125 apparently. Well I use the word "have" advisedly. We probably had 125, but I'm not quite sure how many of them have survived their little holiday to the bottom of the garden in the wheelbarrow. And if they thought they were tadpoles, apparently, they were mistaken. Because in actual fact they were zoyburgs (I have no idea if I've spelt that right, or even what zoyburgs are, but no 1 assures me they're something to do with Futurama).
I have visions of these poor little tadpoles up in tadpole heaven saying to one another, Cor that was a big tsunami that got us, or how did you cop it? I fell off the edge of the earth, me...
The ones that are left are probably suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and will probably now start the savage process of eating one another (ain't Mother Nature a peach?) which is infinitely preferable to death by a thousand handlings.
Once the tadpoles had been mauled to death, as it was a sunny day the next thing to do (obviously) was to have a water fight. Everyone ended up completely soaked before deciding enough was enough and they went back to tadpole tormenting again. Apart from no 2 and her favourite (and spookily doppleganger like) cousin who set up a Down With School Campaign and went marching about with placards tied to barbie dolls' legs, which I found the next day planted in with my pansies. Which was clearly the right place for them...
The feeding of the five thousand took place (thankfully) in the garden, and I have never seen hotdogs disappear so fast. By now they were all whacked out enough to sit quietly through a film while the grown ups managed a civilized dinner.
The younger contingent didn't even put too much of a fight up when it came to bed...
Not everyone stayed the night, but we did put up five grown ups and ten extra children, somehow. I feel as though my home has just mutated into the tardis....
And we survived.
But somehow, I don't rate the tadpoles chances very high...
For my fabulous family. Thanks for a smashing day. Oh... and sorry about blogging about you...
Now in normal families this is probably an immensely obvious and practical thing to do. But my family isn't your average sized family. In fact it is rather large. And between us we all have rather a lot of children. So planning a family meet is rather like a military operation.
However given that I am in the very fortunate position of getting on with everyone of my siblings AND their partners, and all the children adore their cousins, military operation notswithstanding meeting up is always a joyous pleasure (if a rather madly frantic one).
Luckily, Spouse and I have many years of experience of hosting large numbers as we have been putting on parties for his side of the family ever since we moved here.
Simplicity, I find is key.
We had to feed 12 grown ups and 15 children (there was a baby too but his parents provided for him), who were all arriving at different times. So we did a buffet lunch. Spouse decided he had to make waldorf salad which we've never done before, but that was the only complication. We ended up making far too much, so we'll be eating it all week...
For the evening I decided to do a roast for the grown ups. The children had been communicating via email and decided that they wanted a film evening with snacks. So no 1 promised she'd take charge of that and organised an incredibly healthy menu of pizza, hot dogs, beefburgers and popcorn. She did the popcorn, and half the pizza base but playing with her cousins was irresistible, so we, er did the rest...
Puddings I had (in best Blue Peter tradition) made earlier: raspberry fool, redcurrant cheesecake and apple tart. All I'm pleased to say made with fruit from the garden.
There was a lot of running about, and I didn't sit down all that much, but it was well worth it to spend a sunny afternoon sitting in the garden with my siblings.
And the children had a ball...
Most of the afternoon was spent picking out the tadpoles from the pond in buckets and counting them. We have 125 apparently. Well I use the word "have" advisedly. We probably had 125, but I'm not quite sure how many of them have survived their little holiday to the bottom of the garden in the wheelbarrow. And if they thought they were tadpoles, apparently, they were mistaken. Because in actual fact they were zoyburgs (I have no idea if I've spelt that right, or even what zoyburgs are, but no 1 assures me they're something to do with Futurama).
I have visions of these poor little tadpoles up in tadpole heaven saying to one another, Cor that was a big tsunami that got us, or how did you cop it? I fell off the edge of the earth, me...
The ones that are left are probably suffering from post traumatic stress disorder and will probably now start the savage process of eating one another (ain't Mother Nature a peach?) which is infinitely preferable to death by a thousand handlings.
Once the tadpoles had been mauled to death, as it was a sunny day the next thing to do (obviously) was to have a water fight. Everyone ended up completely soaked before deciding enough was enough and they went back to tadpole tormenting again. Apart from no 2 and her favourite (and spookily doppleganger like) cousin who set up a Down With School Campaign and went marching about with placards tied to barbie dolls' legs, which I found the next day planted in with my pansies. Which was clearly the right place for them...
The feeding of the five thousand took place (thankfully) in the garden, and I have never seen hotdogs disappear so fast. By now they were all whacked out enough to sit quietly through a film while the grown ups managed a civilized dinner.
The younger contingent didn't even put too much of a fight up when it came to bed...
Not everyone stayed the night, but we did put up five grown ups and ten extra children, somehow. I feel as though my home has just mutated into the tardis....
And we survived.
But somehow, I don't rate the tadpoles chances very high...
For my fabulous family. Thanks for a smashing day. Oh... and sorry about blogging about you...
Thursday, April 05, 2007
Ok Folks... It's Shameless Plug Time
It's nearly that time of year again.
The London Marathon is upon us, so it's time I started shamelessly plugging my book again.
So anyone out there reading this blog who hasn't yet bought it...
If so, why not????
It's time to make amends.
So go forth to Amazon, or Waterstones or wherever and get your copy now.
And find out all about how a serial non runner turned herself into a marathon mum...
Failing that you can at least enter my competition to tell me (if you're a runner) the strangest thing you've seen out running, and if you're not the strangest thing you've experienced when exercising. And if you don't exercise at all you can write me an essay on why reading my book: Running on Empty: Diary of a Marathon Mum has at least inspired you to think about it...
For the record strange things that have happened to me include: tripping over my toes in front of our local hospital and nearly getting run over by a nurse, getting lost on a mountain in Spain with a dog, getting lost on a hillside in England without a dog, and my favourite, getting locked out of Waterloo station in just my running gear five minutes before I was supposed to be somewhere else.
To enter the competition email me at: jules@marathonmum.com before 22 April (marathon day) and I'll send the winner a signed copy of the book plus FLM fleece.
Go on, you know it makes sense....
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