The Devil Has my Soul

I feel as though I've sold my soul to the devil.  I was never going to abandon real books;  I love libraries and the feel of a proper book but I've done it.  I have sold my soul to the devil and am the owner of a Kindle.

In my defence, I didn't buy it for myself.  The Long Suffering Husband has wanted to buy me one for years, thinking of all the suitcase room when we go on holiday (at least 6 books a week, depending on size, take up quite a lot of space) but he hasn't dared because of my usual rants on the subject of real books and libraries.  He was very nervous about his purchase and paced the floor watching me, while biting his bottom lip as I unwrapped it.  The fact that they now have a back light so that you can read under the covers at night without waking anyone else up was the thing that had made me mention considering getting one.

I have become one of those middle-aged women who doesn't sleep.  Like most of my friends, I wake at 3 or 4am with 'stuff' running through my brain.  I hear the birds start their dawn chorus, noisily and excitedly chirruping about the start of their day, which is too early for most humans and then I hear them go suddenly silent as though the most enormous bird predator has just entered the garden before a  brave robin tweets, first once then twice, encouraging the rest to decide that they are safe and the day can really begin.  I've never been that worried about not sleeping, I was always quite happy to lie there and mull things over, make notes on my bedside 'brain-dump' book with a too blunt pencil.  I have a little book light but I don't always turn it on, so I can never properly read the rubbish I write at 3am. I threw many all-nighters at college (sitting up talking - not studying - we were much less conscientious in the eighties) and read all night many times when I was still at school (The first I remember was Anne Frank's Diary), while still coping the next day.  But recently, I've been waking with nothing to think about and it has been quite difficult to read under the covers without waking the LSH.

It was a lovely surprise and a very thoughtful present.  He needn't have looked so nervous.

If I didn't like it quite as much as I do then I wouldn't feel quite so guilty but I love it.  It's light and easy to use, apart from one moment when it nearly flew across the room as I tried to work the technology.  Yes, I do miss turning pages, it doesn't smell nearly as good as a book and I'm quite worried about what I'll do when I want a bath (I think it might be dangerous to read a Kindle in the bath).  But I like that it remembers where you are.  I like to be able to download a sample of a book to read before you decide if you want to buy it and I like that you can read books that are not yet in paperback for a reasonable price.  I agree with the LSH that I will have an amazing amount of space in my luggage and may be able to go away with more than a spare pair of knickers and a toothbrush in future.

The first book I have on my Kindle is Miranda Road by Heather Reyes.  It was a bargain at £1.75 and I was hooked from the free sample.  I'm really enjoying it so far, it's a story told from a mother and child's perspective and it's the first book I've read in a long time where the characters are truly believable.  They feel like people I could actually know.

Having sold my soul to the Devil you would imagine that there would be a price to pay.  I never imagined that the price would be three full night's sleep in a row.  I was so looking forward to waking in the night and reading easily, under the covers;  I couldn't wait for the next page but on the first night I slept all night, the second night I slept for a solid 12 hours.  Last night I did wake up, briefly.  I thought, "Great,  I'll just get my book," and the next thing I knew was that it was 8.30 and the dog was whining for a walk.

I didn't know you.......were actually a person.

Children find it hard to understand that their teachers are real people.  I understand that.  They think you live, breathe and sleep school and if they see you out of it they are both confused and excited, jumping up and down, excitedly on the spot looking both embarrassed and as though they are going to wet themselves.  Somehow, I didn't expect their parents to feel the same way.  Naively, I thought that the parents were grown ups and could understand that teachers had lives and interests outside of their job.

Maybe it's because I'm a music teacher that I have been suffering from the 'I didn't know you.....s' this week.  It's half term and I haven't gone away.  I'm spending a week doing very little (for me) but leaving my cave occasionally to buy things or see the odd friend (and it is true that most of my friends are odd).  This week I have bought wool, cake decorating stuff, an oasis and food.  I've been swimming, met friends in Prezzo and been to the bank.  In every one of these places I have met a parent (sometimes with their children but mostly not) and the parent has said something very strange like, "I didn't know you were a knitter, did sugarcraft, liked flower arranging, ate coconut yoghurt, went swimming, ate at Prezzo, banked here."  Quite often the statement was followed by; "you are a woman of many talents," and sometimes: "Just wait till I tell my little Johnny about that he'll be so excited that you do that too!"

Well, I just want it to be known that I am not talented at any of the things I've been doing.  Julia of All Trades Master of None.  I like to try things out but I'm not good at any of them. I only have one major talent and that is procrastinating and I suspect that skill is one the parent hopes little Johnny isn't going to share with me.

Those Foreign Books Coming Over Here and Telling us their Stories

It's been quite a depressing few days.  What with the Farrage barrage and the Times revealing that Michael Gove intends to change the English Literature GCSE syllabus, so that children no longer study books that aren't English it seems as though everyone in the UK (except those that I actually know to talk to about these things) are terrified of anything 'foreign'.

I know I'm naive about politics but I will never understand how only about 1/3 of the eligible population vote and when they do they vote for a party whose only policy seems to be to not want to be part of the council they've just been elected to.  It seems as though they won the votes of the poor, the uneducated and the tabloid readers (according to the BBC) by instilling fear of foreigners.

I wasn't going to write about politics so I will stop now but the book thing is just something I couldn't avoid writing about and I have quite a bit to say (just warning you) and my thoughts are confused.

 I love books and I get quite upset at the thought that anyone can think a book is bad.  Especially, a book being bad because of the nationality of the author. It worries me.  I think of Nazi Germany where Hitler banned anything that wasn't German and burnt books.  It didn't really work too well for him in the end.  The Germans only had their German music but we could listen to anything, so we corrupted theirs (Lily Marlene and Beethoven's 5th spring to mind). Maybe burning books stopped people reading but it didn't stop them remembering or telling other people about what they'd read.

On the other hand I don't really mind if they change the English Literature syllabus.  Pupils study a small number of books and most never actually read those books.  They read little bits and discuss those little bits and if they run out of time to finish reading in class they watch the film.  I know this because my son's English teacher told me that it really 'wasn't necessary' for him to read the whole book.  Would my son's life be any worse for not answering questions about 'To Kill a Mockingbird'?   The truth is that I think it's a great book and I think he should have read it and reading it might change his perspective but I think he should have read lots of books.  In fact, he did decide to read the whole book (the day before the exam!) and the act of reading it in one sitting has convinced him that reading is a good thing to do. I do worry that if a boring book is chosen to replace it then children like him would not get turned onto reading.

Choosing books because they're English could be very confusing. Could books by English authors set in foreign countries be on the curriculum? What about books written by British people who are living in another country? Or books about the UK written by people from other countries? We don't really know what Mr Gove is thinking because the details are vague but we do know that he studied literature at University and has confessed to hating Of Mice and Men. He is entitled to his opinion and as a widely read person he will be able to prefer some books over others. I'm not surprised at his dislike of this book, which don't fit with his personal ideology. I didn't like Alan Hollingsworth's Line of Beauty for the same but opposite reason.  I wonder if he is banning these books because they are too left wing?

I sort of hope that the political leanings of the books is the real reason for their removal from the syllabus. The alternative is too horrific. If only British things can be taught in schools then no more chemistry (periodic table invented by a Russian, Mendeleev), we would have to teach that the earth is the centre of the solar system or that the world was flat. Driving would be a bit tricky as I'm sure Karl Benz wasn't English and we'd have to get rid of the roads that those pesky Romans brought here. 

I'm sure people who set the exams will be widely  read and will be able to find books by British authors that will annoy Gove just as much. If not I have a few suggestions.

1. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists Robert Tresssel

2. Hard Times - Charles Dickens

3. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

4. How Green was my Valley - Robert Llewellyn

5. PD James - the Children of Men

6. Living - Henry Green

7. Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury

8. Wuthering Heights - Bronte

9. The Time Machine - HG Wells

10. The Hired Man - Melvyn Bragg

11. Peaches for M Le Curee - Joanne Harris.

12. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

13. 1984 - George Orwell

14. A Room of One's Own - Virginia Woolf

15. The Golden Notebook - Dorris Lessing.

Actually, after 15 books off the top of my head he probably should just ban all books. Books are dangerous - they could give people ideas!

And just to prove how confused my thoughts are on the subject I start to wonder if Gove has done us all a huge favour. He's got us talking about books. People are reading Of Mice and Men to find out why he hates it so much (all most of us can remember is a big, not very clever man who accidentally squishes a mouse). To Kill a Mockingbird has shot up to number 9 on Amazon's best seller lists and it has given bookstores a marketing hook.

Also, I don't think it matters what people read. Gove is a bit of an intellectual snob when it comes to books. He is quoted as saying, "You come home to find your 17 year old daughter engrossed in a book. Which would delight you more - Twilight or Middlemarch?" I've read both and would probably say that Twilight was more gripping (annoying but gripping) and while Middlemarch is certainly a very well written book it is a bit old fashioned. Both stories have women who give up their own self for a man, so I probably wouldn't be too thrilled about either but I would just be happy that she was engrossed in a book, making up her own mind and forming her own opinions.


Note:  Since writing this blog I have read Michael Gove's piece in the Telegraph and it seems as though the whole thing was made up.  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10857079/Michael-Gove-attacks-fictitious-claims-he-has-banned-US-books-from-schools.html

A Swing to the Bonkers Party

I confess!  I like politics.

 I love voting; the secret wobbly wooden booths, the big tin box, the tiny pencils on a string. I love sitting up (drifting in and out of consciousness) to watch the results come in.  I like a good graphic; a bar chart, a pie chart and I miss Peter Snow with his impossibly long arms and swingometer.

I love the television; Question Time, Party Political Broadcasts, satire programmes (my teenage years were shaped by Spitting Image).

I am, however, purely an observer.  I would hate to actually do politics; I can't sit through a meeting, I'm terrible at claiming expenses, I can't make decisions and I like my sleep. 

The political parties have stopped speaking to everyday people.  They must have done, or there wouldn't be so many people passionate about UKIP.  I think I've worked out why.  They are all talking about 'hardworking people' and most of us don't want to work hard - we certainly don't want to work any harder than we are already.  Most of us would just like a bit more time off, maybe to go home from work and not think about work.  We're all quite tired and people want someone to blame.   That's where UKIP has been so successful.  They may not be offering us any time off. although their name suggests they are all about afternoon naps but they have delivered the EU and immigrants as scapegoats for everything that is wrong with our lives.  In a perverse kind of way I quite like UKIP.  They have started people talking about politics even if most of it is rubbish.

Today I noticed #WhyImVotingUKIP trending on Twitter. Ironically, UKIP started it but funny people have turned it into something much better.  If you want a laugh then it's definitely worth a look.  These are some that made me laugh:

Larry the Cat ‏@Number10cat  5h

#WhyImVotingUkip Because I'm fed up of Siamese cats coming over here and taking our jobs...

Simon Young ‏@producersimon  5h

Because I don't want those Romans coming over here, building their aqueducts, inventing concrete and sanitation #WhyImVotingUKIP

Anthony Grimley ‏@antinbath  6h

#WhyImVotingUkip Because Mr Sheen left smears on my windows and it says on the bottle that he's polish.

Something Dramatic ‏@JoelMcVeagh  2m

#WhyImVotingUkip Because no one should ever have to endure Strawberries that aren't British.

Tom Pride ‏@ThomasPride  22h

#WhyImVotingUkip: because a party led by a public school, Thatcherite, city trader from Kent is definitely anti-establishment.

Shoaib M Khan ‏@UK_HumanRights  22h

#WhyImVotingUkip: because, like the leader @Nigel_Farage, I get a bit racist when I'm tired too.

I can't help reading about the success of UKIP without singing one of my favourite songs from Avenue Q.

Everybody's a little bit racist

Dressing Up

I love Eurovision.  I know I'm a bit late to the discussion - it was over a week ago that everyone was discussing Conchita Wurst's win for Austria and how proud everyone was of the world for being liberal enough to vote a drag act as number one in the world. However, I'm not sure the commentators had the right to get quite so excited. Eurovision has always been the 'campest show on earth'.  It is watched by people who enjoy 'that sort of thing' and it is only the poor journalist, commissioned to write the piece after who really doesn't get it.  Those of us who watch it regularly give our own extra points for glittery dresses, pyrotechnics, changes of costume, unusual use of instruments and other random categories that have nothing to do with the music but everything to do with the 'show'.

Tom Neuwith

They all seem to be forgetting about Dana International too. The shock seems to have arisen because of the beard. The world was talking:  "Is it a bearded lady?" " A well tucked and taped man?" or a "Transsexual, who hasn't quite got their drugs right?"  The world doesn't like not knowing someone's gender.  I can't help thinking that if we had a truly equal society then it wouldn't matter.

Men just aren't allowed to wear dresses or skirts without somehow declaring themselves as less of a man.  They have to become a woman.  I would have been so much more impressed if the Austrian entry had been beautiful Tom Neuwith, looking like Jesus in a sparkly frock singing a corrupted Bond Theme, instead of the same with made up a 'sausage' name - just in case we didn't get it.

This weekend we took my son to reserve a hire suit for his prom.  I commented to the man with the proper 'suits you sir' hairstyle that this dressing for prom was so much easier for boys.

Fast Show - Is this hairstyle compulsory for suit sellers?

He agreed and commented on the waste of girls only wearing their dresses once.  The Long Suffering Husband laughed and said that we still had our daughter's dress and had offered it to our son to wear for prom.   Although everybody had laughed heartily as the LSH's suggestion I wondered how we would have felt if our son had said, "You know what, Dad?  That's a brilliant idea.  Pink is just my colour and I think it would really suit me.  I've always wanted to dress as a princess."  He would obviously have to be very brave to do it and then everyone would question his sexuality but what if he just liked the dress?  Why can't boys just wear a dress if they want?  Men are really missing out on the whole dress thing, especially the jersey dress.  I know it's only a small step from the floral skirt with the elasticated waistband, comfortable shoes and padded gilet with straw in the pocket but really wearing a jersey dress (especially in summer) is just the most comfortable thing.

In the Times this weekend there was an article about 100 boys in Nantes, France who had worn a skirt to school to battle French Sexism.  I wonder how many thought they'd like to wear a skirt again but wouldn't have to courage to do so on a 'normal' day.

When I was at primary school we had separate boys and girls playgrounds and two boys, who had joined us for skipping were made to wear a skirt for the rest of the day as a punishment.  They were told, "If you want to be girls, you must go the whole way."  I'm surprised they didn't make them change their names and tape their willies beyond view.  (They might have done, as I can't remember what the boys were called anyway) I remember being a bit upset about it at the time, as I had wanted the boys to join us in the skipping game  (they were much better than me at making up rude rhymes) and when I told my parents they were horrified that the boys had been made to wear skirts.  I wondered if skirts were bad and if they were then why did us girls have to wear them, after all they were terribly impractical for someone like me who spent most of my spare time upside down.  My sister hated dresses so much that she covered her pretty dress, chosen for a wedding, in creosote.  Now, however, I realise that there is nothing wrong with dresses or skirts (although my sister still doesn't like them) but there still seems to be something wrong with being female.

Another headline in the Times this weekend said, "Am I man enough to take on an allotment?" *sigh*
It turns out that after 14 years as an allotment holder, sometimes working my plot in a dress then answer is that I am man enough!  Maybe if this author wore a dress then he would be able to grow broad beans and potatoes too.

Mind Over Matter or Being Perfectly Fine

This week I discovered I am anaemic and "not just a little bit," as my GP said, wagging her finger at me like I was a naughty child who'd eaten too many sweets.  This didn't come as a huge surprise and explained why I've been tired and dizzy but being told this information seemed to make me feel about a million times worse in spite of the fact that I have started taking the iron tablets a bit more regularly and have eaten steak, spinach and beetroot every day since. I even went home early from something and worried my friends.

This morning I decided that I was just being silly.  I am perfectly fine.  I'm as perfectly fine as I was before I found out about my low haemaglobin levels, which was 3 weeks after the blood test because as a novice user of the healthcare system I stupidly assumed that if there was a problem then they'd let you know.  Before I found out I was going to work, swimming about 40 lengths a day, digging my allotment for hours (in desperation to avoid a weed letter) and  walking the dog twice a day.  After I found out I was struggling to get out of bed and the dog was getting grumpy. I became Mrs disorganised and couldn't remember where I'd put music or plans for lessons and just had to keep making things up (even more than usual).

Today, I got up and thought, "If I could do all that when I was anaemic I'll be unstoppable when it's back to normal." So I waited for it to stop raining enough for the dog to agree to step outside and went for a nice walk.  Then I went to the allotment, came home ate more spinach, did an online Child Protection Course (THE WORLD NEEDS MORE SOCIAL WORKERS! -sorry about the shouting but it's important) and now I'm going to wash my feet and go for a swim and then I'll walk the dog if he'll go out in the rain.  This evening I will have a curry for a friend's hen night and  come home to catch up on my yearly excitement that is Eurovision.

The lovely thing is that I already feel fine.  Perfectly fine.  In fact I might be even better than perfectly fine.

Give Pink a Break.

Pink is just a colour, a lighter shade of red, with many variations.  It is the colour of flowers, skin, lips, flamingos, salmon and piglets.  However, this morning I read an article about the pinkification of girls toys and I started to believe that pink was a bad thing.  I started to feel guilty and ashamed that as a fully paid up member of the   `feminist club I could have raised a daughter whose favourite colour is pink.

I'm not saying that I don't believe there is a problem. Colour coding toys according to gender, implying that there are things only girls or boys should play with is a terrible thing to do and  it has made me question whether I fell for it. My daughter liked to play with Barbies, she had a shed with a cooker and play food and she made us pretend dinners with her imaginary friends, she liked stories and acting out Disney fairy tales.  I tried to interest her in numbers and nature and experiments but she preferred books and singing.  Then my son was born and he loved numbers, when I tried to read to him he was more interested in working out how many pages we'd read and how many more there were to go.  He measured things and wanted to make the volcanoes with baking powder and vinegar that I had been unable to interest my daughter in it.  He showed me diggers and fire engines that I'd never noticed before.  Did I unconsciously instill these gender stereotypes into them?  I have no idea.  I think they made their own choices although my son was probably more rounded because he had his sister's 'girl' toys to play with.  He liked to play with the Barbies and the cooking stuff in the shed but maybe my daughter missed out.  She did have a car, which she washed when the Long Suffering Husband washed his.

I would be horrified to think that somehow I was conned into pushing my daughter into an 'arts' career and my son into a 'science' one because of the toys I gave them.  I remember a discussion with one of my daughter's friend's mums when she was about 3 about how she wouldn't allow her daughter to have a Barbie.  At the time, I thought that it was just a doll with impossibly small feet and big head but as I'm not still in touch with them I can't tell you if this little girl grew up to be a Civil Engineer instead of having a career in the 'Arts' (although as both her mother and father were artists I'd be surprised).

So, I agree with the campaign to let toys be toys and I don't think they should be colour coded but I wish everyone would give pink a break.  It's not pink's fault that we STILL live in a sexist world.
Instead of saying that pink is bad, we should be embracing the colour, we should allow boys to wear it in fact, we should actively encourage it.  When my son was a baby he had a set of bright baby-grows, that I had chosen because as soon as my daughter had been able to express a preference she quite clearly preferred bright colours and I thought it was a shame that we dress babies in such wishy-washy colours, when they would much prefer to look bright and snazzy. One of the baby grows was bright fuchsia pink and it was my favourite.  It really suited him.  However, one day I was really told off by an old lady for dressing my boy in pink.  "You'll turn him," she told me, "Scar him for life.  He'll not know if he's Arthur or Martha."  I think she was wrong as he has no questions about what gender he is.

It hasn't always been this way.  All babies used to be dressed in white and when colours were first introduced at the turn of the century the convention was that boys should wear pink and girls looked better in blue.  It was only in the 1940's that pink for girls was established. It fell out of favour in the 60s and 70s,  but came back in when parents were able to determine the sex of their child with a scan. But it hasn't happened universally.  All that has happened is that parents are frightened to dress their boys in pink; girls wear blue all the time.

Again, I am wondering what is so scary about women.  Why are men so terrified to be associated with feminine things? Women can quite happily confess to wanting to learn to build a brick wall, wear DM boots and trousers or watching boxing on the TV but men would rather die than admit to enjoying a spot of cross stitch, cake decorating or flower arranging. They baulk at the very idea of wearing make up or a skirt.

It has become clear, recently, (you only have to look at Twitter) that a lot of men hate women and the very idea of becoming like a woman is abhorrent.  The men in Nigeria have just proved what they fear most - a girl with a book. We are so fortunate in this country that much of the battle has been won and that our daughters are safe from abduction, rape and being sold into slavery while at school but to win true equality the men need to know that they are missing out by avoiding pink.  When they realise that and embrace all the colours in the spectrum they may be able to stop hating women.

I apologise to my children

There are many things I could apologise to my children for; singing out of tune on purpose in public, leaving the house without looking in the mirror, being totally neurotic about sleepovers, for example, but I never thought I'd be apologising for not drinking alcohol.

I have, however, realised that my avoiding of alcohol because it makes me fall asleep and miss all the fun has robbed them of an interesting autobiography. Autobiographies usually frustrate me because I find them a little one sided; I always want to know what everyone else thinks but I have just finished Romany and Tom by Ben Watt (of Everything But the Girl fame), which was loaned to me by a friend. This autobiographical story about his ageing parents describes life with a fading Jazz musician.  He says that the photos of his Dad that make him the happiest are the ones taken during periods when he isn't drinking.  The funny thing is that he doesn't write about them.

I can understand why.  Alcohol just makes stories funnier.  When I think of the things from my childhood that people might want to read about they all involve alcohol.

 I could tell stories about my Dad's friend and trumpet teacher, a former Jazz musician with a suitably jazzy name, who carried a briefcase full of manuscript paper, sheet music and a couple of bottles of cider.  I remember sitting in pub gardens and listening to him tell stories about his former life.  I always particularly liked the one about his former colleague who had 5 daughters and so commissioned an artist to inscribe the underside of the toilet seat with the words, "Daddy's home." in gold letters.

Christmas was made by alcohol.  From my mum killing the fish with sherry, "One for you,  one for me," before retiring to bed before dinner was served, to my grandad proving he wasn't drunk by walking down the white lines in the middle of the road, falling off the kerb and breaking his arm, to my Uncle slurring how he had shot the bird we were eating to compete with my Dad bragging about the vegetables he had grown to my neighbour, who always cheated at Monopoly, getting belligerently upset because everyone was 'drunk and cheating'.

I could tell of our holiday to France, when we stayed in a Gite in Brittany and how friendly the farmer owner had been after my Dad had tried to explain that my sister's nosebleed had ruined the bed in his very poor french.  I could then go on to describe the evening when they invited us to dinner and my Dad and the Farmer got seriously drunk on Calvados.

My poor children have been denied these stories.  The closest they have is when the Long Suffering Husband  got a little squiffy when the neighbours invited us to dinner over 10 years ago and he chased their cat around the living room trying to give it a cuddle.  I've just realised that we've never been invited back.

I don't think that one story would be enough for an autobiography.  The rest is all quite dull for books. "My parents got up and ate and watched the TV.  My mum read books, complained about her allotment and went swimming and my Dad played golf and swore at the football on the telly."  It's not exactly gripping. So, I apologise Kids, you'll just have to have alcohol fuelled adventures of your own to write about.

This is what booze does to your mother -even less fun!