Rubik's Cubes, Family History and Other Puzzles.

"If you are curious, you will find the puzzles around you.  If you are determined you will solve them," Erno Rubik is famously quoted as saying.

In 1980 I went on a German exchange trip.  My pen pal, Bettina, lived next door to Karl Heinz Roomy Knicker's mother and we had to check for photographers before playing in the street. He was a famous footballer, just in case you were wondering about the significance.  I liked my pen pal.  We got on and had been sending letters back and forth for the previous six months as the school recommended.  We were both curious and determined.

On one day, with her family, we did several things I'd never done before.  We went to Koln (Cologne), we had pizza in a restaurant, drank champagne (only a little), and bought a Rubik's Cube each.
We were hooked.  We worked on our puzzles day and night for the full two weeks and eventually solved it.

When I got back to England it took about a year before someone published a book on 'How to Solve the Rubik's Cube' and people were very keen to tell me that I was solving it wrong.

"You have to get the top two layers first."
"I get the corners first."
"No, that's wrong. The book says it has to be the top two layers."

I have stubbornly lived in blissful indifference to my inaccuracy for the last 35 years until Greenwich University Maths Department gave my son a new cube.  Now I realise that I don't know 'how' to do the cube at all.

I can't make the words match on every face

This is a problem.

The problem is eating away my summer break.

I have to keep trying.  I'm determined.

I believe that Rubik's original quote is the basic flaw in my nature.  Other, normal, people can leave a half finished puzzle.  Many of them don't even see the puzzle in the first place and they do lovely things in their summer break like eat, drink and go to the theatre.

I, on the other hand, am spending my time on a Rubik's cube, getting to the end of Candy Crush (level 1101) and solving the puzzle in my family history that has been bothering me since my last attempt at working out my family tree.

Then, I was concerned that in that in 1851, my Great Great Great Grandfather, Charles, appeared to be living with my Great Great Great Grandmother, who was 15 years his junior and his children, ranging in age from 5 to just 6 years older than his wife. Since then I have taken a trip to sit in a dark and stuffy registry office. I discovered that he had been married before and that, just as my journalist daughter, who is attached to fact had said, Sarah had died at the age of 24, at the same time as her child Mary was born.  But Charles had not been married before Sarah, of that, the records office could be certain, which didn't explain Harriet. The puzzle, still unsolved, had to be left but it kept nagging at me.

Visiting Greenwich, after getting the wretched cube we went on the Cutty Sark. I got what my daughter calls 'the history feeling.' Apparently not everyone gets the history feeling so I will describe it to you. It starts with prickles at the back of the neck and a slight shortness of breath and you think, "This is important. Something happened here." I kept thinking about Charles and Mary's son, Henry (my GGGrandfather) who had been on a ship in the 1861 Census and at sea in 1891. 

"It was probably a ship just like this. I wonder where he went and what his ship transported," I said aloud, causing a small child to back away from me and go running, crying, burying himself into the skirt of his mother.

So, my determined puzzle solving has started again and I am loosing every waking moment (except for the Rubik's Candy Crush interludes) and some sleeping time to the solution of the puzzle.  

"What's for tea?"

"There's cheese in the fridge. It's too exciting to stop."

"Why?"

"Oh, not much. I'm on the Isle of White and I think I've found Harriet.......wait..... there is a huge change in fortune. Can you bring me some cheese and more caffeine I could be some time."

Ghost Walk

I've lived in Maldon for 22 years now and I've heard (and made up) lots of stories. I love a ghost story and Maldon is perfect for it. It has old pubs, a history of Viking invasions, a monastery and leper hospital, and a spooky miasma rising gently from the Blackwater.

During the Summer a pair of brothers (a historian and an actor) run ghost walks around the town. We had never taken the walk and so as my daughter had come home for the Long Suffering Husband's birthday and it was a gorgeous day we decided to join them for the last walk of the summer. 

It was very good. With a historian on board it was historically accurate and focused very much on the supernatural reports rather than any wild made up stories about headless monks and leprous butchers. The actor brother was a very convincing Victorian Nightwatchman, with wonderful diction and a glottal stop.

It is interesting to take a tour like this with other people (and there was a large crowd on this warm sunny evening). Some were rather skeptical and the overheard comment, "Well that's just bollocks," after the story about the Essex Throttler did make me chuckle. In fact there were lots of laughs throughout the evening, including some my expense. For example when I walked into one of the black metal bollards that are helpfully placed all the way down the High Street and when I jumped out of my skin when a boy racer shouted, "GHOSTS!," from his car. 

If they run the walks again next year I would highly recommend them, although I do think they should start a little later. By the end of the tour 8.30 we were just beginning to get some atmospheric lighting and by the time we walked home from the pub some of the alleys felt truly haunted. 

Sick Conflicted Parents Day

Today, is the second in a month, where parents will be waking up feeling slightly sick, helpless and conflicted.

"Results day? Nah, I'm not worried. It's up to him/her. I'm not one of those parents," you announce, wondering why sleep wandered around your bedroom like a pushed ball of mercury and your Coco Pops strangely taste like you captured that ball in your dreams and shoved it in your mouth. 

People will be full of advice. Older, wiser parents, people who got good results, people who got bad results, people who are too old or young to have ever taken any exams will all say that it doesn't matter. Jeremy Clarkson will appear on Twitter telling you that he failed everything but still managed to drive fast cars. 

I have no advice. 

It's going to be a roller coaster of a day. You will feel sick. You will feel helpless. You will feel conflicted. You will feel excited or sad or even both.  You will feel proud, ashamed or both.

Parents, they are not your results but you feel like they are. You were there through the pen-throwing tantrums and the tearful meltdowns. You nagged. Oh, boy, did you nag. You made sure that they did the best they could. 

I know that you are scared that if they don't do as well as they should it will have somehow been your fault. I'm not going to tell you it wasn't. Of course it was. They have your genetic make up, after all. Somewhere down the line you must ultimately take responsibility, so just suck it up. Guilt is in the parent's contract and nothing I say about a child leading their own life is going to make any difference. 

I also know that you are scared they might do much better than expected. You won't tell anyone this because it is a childish and selfish thought but what if they really are much cleverer than you? What if they do really well and all your friend's children bomb? 

I just want to say 'good luck' to all parents who are waiting today and leave you with Maureen Lipman who, even though she's just a grandma seems to capture the conflict perfectly.

101 Things

I'm one of these people who should never get bored. I always have at least one project on the go. Sometimes the projects are boring (even to me), leaving me fighting vainly the old ennui, but when they are I just move onto another. This does mean that I never finish anything, though and that seriously annoys the Long Suffering Husband.

I have four main projects to keep me occupied over the school summer holidays. 

1. Gardening: see Perrywoods is my FoMO blog or any Allotment Nazi reference.

2. Family history: I'm now back to 1755 in Cambridge (still no sign of the Scottish ancestor who plucked a name out of thin air to blend into English life) My grandad was a storyteller

3. Nagging while reading: this one is particularly fun and one I am quite good at that really needs no explanation.

4. My 101 Things project.

"101 Things to Do with a Courgette" is the book I'm going to write, one day, when I've got time, when I get round to it. This Summer, I have decided to launch myself firmly into the research stage. 

I love a courgette. 

When a colleague announced to the staff room that the Greek Filo Pie in the end of term buffet was probably mine because, "Julia loves a courgette," I found myself blushing. A courgette has a wonderfully phallic shape and is ripe for a double-entendre and sexual innuendo and it's all I seem to be able to grow.

I always have more than my fair share of courgettes and so this summer I have decided to practise some recipes and try them out on willing victims.

I made my daughter take a courgette cake back to the office after a weekend at home. This was a risk. She's new to the job and I didn't want her to be tarred with the, "Her mother's a courgette loving weirdo," brush. Luckily, it went down well. "The best courgette cake you've made," she texted. One of her colleagues has even asked when she's next coming home, hoping there will be another one soon. Most people quite like courgette cake even if they dislike the vegetable but he is the first person  I've come across who doesn't really like cake but loves this because he is partial to a courgette.

Back from the allotment, last week, I was washing my courgettes, thinking how rude it looked when an advert for the Great British Bake Off, warned that this week was biscuit week.  I chuckled.  I still haven't recovered from the idea that some people refer to their private parts as biscuits. Biscuits blog..

Bake Off is brilliant at innuendo and so I decided to try out several Courgette Biscuit recipes that I could find on the internet.  My son had some friends round and they agreed to be biscuit eating guinea pigs.  They were playing Cards Against Humanity; they were old enough.

They rated each biscuit out of 5 and wrote comments.

1. Courgette Cookies (with cinnamon and raisins) recipe here

I needed to use more flour and cook them for longer than in the recipe, as it was a bit too soft.
3.6 Stars
My testers enjoyed the consistency.  They thought they were soft and moist and the cinnamon flavour was nice but it was a bit too salty (which I think was my mistake)

2.  Courgette Choc Chip Cookies (with Oats)  recipe here

The oats made this easier to make and the quantities worked.
3.8 Stars
The testers were not too keen on the dark choc chips. They thought the cookies might have been a bit too moist and maybe should have been cooked for longer.

3. Chocolate and Courgette Cookies. recipe here

This worked well but I didn't have any yoghurt so I used creme fraiche instead.
4.6 Stars
These were really gooey.  My tasters liked a gooey biscuit. Some thought they were a bit sticky but on the plus side you couldn't tell there was any courgette in it, so they thought it would be good to give to children.

4.  Cheesy Courgette Biscuits recipe here

 I used parmesean and committed the Bake Off crime of using a cutter.  (Poor Dorret. I'd be crazy as a box of frogs too.  It seems it's fine to use a circle cutter but not any other shape. )
2.8 Stars
My tasters were not too keen on a savoury biscuit. Their comments said that they were both chewy and dry (which is quite a feat).  They were more like cheese straws, a bit too much like pastry.

5. Carrot and Courgette stained glass biscuits  recipe here

This recipe didn't work.  I ended up nearly doubling the flour content.
3.2 Stars
The tasters liked the consistency of the biscuit but it was bland in taste.  They liked the boiled sweet in the middle.

I'm thinking that you shouldn't put courgette in a cookie recipe unless you like your biscuit to be moist and sticky. 

Mission Impossible: the need for music education

I promised the Long Suffering Husband that I would go and watch the new Mission Impossible film with him. It's not the kind of film I normally enjoy but it's the school holidays and I've got spare energy of an evening.

I have a problem with these kind of action films, in that I am the only person in the cinema laughing. Why doesn't everyone find it as funny as I do? I think they are meant to be funny. The film is packed with musical jokes and cues. Tom Cruise, 53, leaps from tall buildings, jumps through plate glass windows, rolls the car nine times down steps and emerges without a scratch. Meanwhile, the LSH, 50, seizes up in the cinema seat and thinks he might have broken a tooth on some popcorn. "Can I get a motorbike?" he asks at the end of the film. "Of course," I reply, "As soon as you can jump through a window without getting cut."

While watching the film I was thinking about some things I'd read about music Education earlier in the day. I'm always seeing things that say teaching music is good because it helps with literacy or numeracy but earlier I had read a blog that cautioned against such rationalisation. He pointed out that music is all around us, it's rare to go an hour without hearing music and that is why we should want to know more about it. We shouldn't just want to study music because it helps with other things.

If we heard spoken English every day and just shrugged and thought that there was no point learning how it worked because that was only for a select few that would be bonkers. That's what we do with music, though. 

Mission Impossible is a masterpiece of a film musically. It has a very clever musical score, where Mission Impossible themes are interwoven with other music. The LSH recognised several bits of classical music and often barked, "Music?" at me, during the film, to enable him to fill in his missing knowledge. 

Benji plays Halo to the Marriage of Figgaro. I thought it should have been another Mozart Opera, the Magic Flute, which could have been a musical reference to the whole point of the film. 

The baddie needs money (don't they always?) and he is so desperate for it that he is prepared to kill anyone he needs to and I know why he needs money. 

It's all to do with the scene at the Vienna Opera, where we watch some beautiful Turandot in a bit of a random order minus the last scene (because Puccinni died before he could write it). The lady in high heels and a dress that you can see her lady garden in, slides down the back of the set without tripping or getting her heel caught in the hem of her dress and checks her score. We know something is going to happen on the high A of Nessun Dorma, although they do start shooting on the B before it, which is a more natural climax (shoot at the point of tension not the resolution) If you weren't able to read music it is helpfully circled in red and followed by the word 'affrettando', which tells us things are about to kick off and everyone is going to hurry and rush around.

 She does all this while Simon Pegg (always makes me laugh), as Benji watches on a flickering monitor. He helpfully arrived at the opera to Beethoven's Eroica, just to let you know that he is a hero, even if he doesn't look like one. He might be an IT expert but I can tell that even his Poxy Server keeps going down. While Benji is watching and thumping things Tom Cruise (I have no idea what his character name is) leaps around not getting a scratch. There are two other shooters and one has a weapon that just made me gasp. 

A gun made from a Bass Flute. No wonder the baddie needs money. You are not going to find a Bass Flute covered in cobwebs at the back of someone's loft. If you don't have a spare five grand, you might be able to pick up a second hand one for four and a half. There's not a flautist alive that hasn't fantasised about a dual purpose gun/instrument. For me, the highlight of these imaginings came when a conductor told me that I wasn't allowed to breathe during Schubert's Unfinished. "If you breathe. I'll kill you, so you might as well risk it and not take a breath," he said as I turned my imaginary flute gun round, cocked to reload, placing a bullet square in the middle of his forehead. Not one of us, however, would dream of using it as a strangling weapon (silly Tom Cruise). We would also leave it at home if we were playing Turandot because there is no Bass Flute on the score.

If, like me, you get to the end wondering why the baddie needs money now, even though he has been doing the things he needs money for already then you just have to think about the Bass Flute. And if you were thinking that Tom Cruise might be too old for all this then the composer reminds us, with a small reference to James Bond that spies are old.

Isn't it sad that most people will have missed all these musical because learning the language never seemed important?

Perrywoods is my FoMO

Essex University Psychology department discovered a Social Media phenomenon a few years ago that they labelled FoMO, or Fear of Missing Out. Obviously, the anxiety that people feel when they suspect everyone is having more fun than they are isn't new but with Facebook, Twitter and Instagram people are suffering this weird anxiety more than ever before. The Essex University researchers devised a way of measuring someone's FoMO.

Do I suffer from FoMO?

I look at Facebook a lot. I think this is mainly because my phone pings everytime someone comments or likes something I've written and also because I'm incredibly nosey. I am also compelled to read everything. I can't tell you how many times I've read the latest Buzzfeed list of things you know if you are from Essex article. I decided to do the quiz at www.ratemyfomo.com and it agrees with me. 

I'm somewhere in the middle. Normal.  Do you hear that? NORMAL!!!!!

Occasionally, though,  something does catch me. I see a status and my palms go sweaty, my phone falls from my hand, my rib cage struggles to contain the throbbing mess that my heart has become. "Why haven't I done that?" I wonder. 

When I get these feelings, I try to stay rational. I remind myself that I could either do those things or that I wouldn't enjoy them anyway. The latter often happens with pictures of food (which is why I don't do Instagram - I would be huge). I can't tell you how many times I've got excited about a plate of fish or Rick Stein's seafood restaurant before realising that the smell and taste of anything slightly aquatic turns my stomach. 

For several years now Perrywoods has been my main FoMO. I have tried to ignore the anxiety.

I rationalised.

 Of course, I'm not missing out on anything. It's just a garden centre. It's probably really expensive. What is the deal with coffee shops at garden centres anyway? Just get home to get those plants in and the weeds dealt with. Sitting around drinking coffee when courgettes need watering. How ridiculous. 

This summer, though, I didn't get any little bedding plants early in the season to grow on and although the allotment is fine, (Actually, it's not fine; It's been a terrible year.) the garden was looking a bit plain. "Can't you get some colour in this garden?" complained the Long Suffering Husband. He had a point.

We took a trip to several garden centres that I usually go to; the ones that sell small bedding plants cheaply or the best seed potatoes. I felt like Mother Hubbard. The greenhouses were bare. "When should you have done this then?" the LSH scolded. We fell back exhausted and decided that next year would be better. 

Monday and the LSH was back at work, so I persuaded my son to come with me to fulfil my curiosity about Perrywoods. We wandered around, asked advice, tried swing chairs, looked at pizza ovens, marvelled at the number and quality of the plants and their one year guarantee.

The excitement was too much so we decided to have lunch before filling the car with plants and pots and compost. 

The LSH can't believe that Perrywinkles (as he insists on calling it) is as good as we say it is. Then again, he doesn't do any social media, so how would he know what he's missing out on? 

Determinism

I'm not a huge fan of determinism. I like to think that people can achieve whatever they decide to despite their name, sex, social background or where they come from.  Determinism is, however, a really attractive narrative and in a world that is increasingly subject to words (through social media) the story is often more important than the truth. 

We believe that girls like pink and can't enjoy science, boys are tough, the poor will never be good at school, Northerners like flat caps and whippets, and Batman will save Gotham City. 

It's rubbish though. Batman didn't save Gotham City. Everyone thought she would. She believed in the narrative that the poor in London were doomed to failure within the school system and persuaded governments to give her lots of money. Even though I know her charity did good things I can't help wondering how far that £3 million would have gone in a Social Services department.

I have really enjoyed Radio 4's broadcast of Helen Scales' book Spirals in Time and although I was initially excited by the nominative determinism of a person called Scales being a Marine Biologist she could have had any name and it would have been just as brilliant.

And while we're on the subject the only thing your sex defines is which body parts you have and whether you can carry a baby in your body. My friend tried to buy a pink birthday balloon yesterday for her son and had to have a very strange conversation with the Sales Assistant, who clearly thought she was a very bad mother. I'm going to stop writing now before I have to change my name to Mrs Rant.

My Children were Freaks

Why did no one tell me?

Not one of my friends pulled me to one side and said, "Julia, I have to tell you that your babies are freaks.  They have hair on their head!"

Daughter - day 1

Son - day 1

Why not?  All these years when I should have been ashamed of my body's ability to create a monster and I didn't know. It was bad enough that they were ginger.

When I was pregnant I had a lot of heartburn and several midwives told me that it meant my babies would be hairy, "Oh, don't worry dear.  I just mean on their heads.  You aren't going to birth monkeys or anything."  They didn't suck their teeth and say, "Oh dear, heartburn.  Your baby will be a freak with hair on it's head!"

It has taken me this long and a front page picture in the Daily Mail of a child (not even a newborn) with hair to appreciate my mistake.

Today, my daughter sent me a screenshot of her Facebook page with #journorequest:  "Looking for pics of babies with lots of hair! Your pics could be in the paper tomorrow."

I'm sure it's not that unusual. Is it?

Thoughts about the Labour Leadership Contest

It's all getting a bit hysterical, isn't it?

I'm not sure if it's just me but with 38 days to go until the Labour Party elect a new leader it feels a bit like everyone may have peaked too soon. 

Last week the Liberal Democrats quietly elected Tim Faron as their leader, giving him 5 years to build his party's policies for the next election.

Labour supporters and consequently the press (and it was that way round; the noise started on Twitter first)  have treated the election of a new leader as if it were the General Election itself. 

I can see why. Labour has lost its way as a political party and its supporters don't want another Tony Blair, so this choice of leader seems really important. 

I'm not a member of the Labour Party (or any party as I'm too anti-social to do parties) but I like to vote for them. I want to vote for a party that cares about the people who can't care for themselves​. I didn't vote for them once after hearing someone (I can't remember who) from the Labour Party say that people who don't use the NHS,or something like that, should get a refund from their National Insurance. No matter how loudly I shouted, "It's an insurance policy not a savings scheme," at the radio I could tell that the Labour Party had abandoned all hope of protecting the people who can't in favour of making sure that those who can keep as much money as possible.  That is a value many people will have but the Conservative party is already there for them. 

Again, I can see how this happened. After the lovely Neil Kinnock (I did like him. In fact, I had a bit of a crush!) lost the 1992 election, which he fought on principals of fairness and equality the Labour Party knew it had a problem. They should have won that election but Margaret Thatcher had changed the mind-set of the country forever. People had learnt to put themselves first and that money was the most important thing; being aspirational was all about having more money. There just weren't enough people left in the Country who didn't believe that.  Those of us who felt differently were clearly in the minority. Tony Blair arrived with his 'New Labour' charismatic smile, blue ties and adopted a 'if you can't beat them join them' policy. It worked and Labour won. In the time they were in power they funded the NHS, schools, police and libraries. They introduced a national minimum wage, set up the equality and human rights commission, brought in paternity leave, reduced unemployment and brokered lasting peace talks in Northern Ireland. They started SingUp and made it a free resource for schools and funded a scheme called Wider Ops to get children playing a musical instrument in school. Many schools didn't use this funding properly but it was there and it isn't now.

The Labour supporters on Social Media have become very excited, almost hysterical, about a quiet principled man called Jeremy Corbyn. He is saying everything that those of us who voted (or would have voted)  for Kinnock want to hear.

I don't know much about him but I do remember reading that he and his wife divorced because they disagreed on the education their children would receive. http://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/may/13/uk.politicalnews2 He didn't want his children to go to a grammar school and his wife thought that would give them the best chances. He is clearly a man who sticks to his principles but he still lost. I confess, I'm suspicious of him, as a person, because he is unable to joke. 

photo from the BBC

What about the other candidates? 

Andy Burnham is a bit too dull and Northern with sad puppy dog eyes and the other two are just women, one of whom is married to Ed Balls (no one likes Ed Balls) and the other isn't even married and is probably a witch. [This is sarcasm if you don't know me]

I get it now. Given those choices, they have to vote for a man in a beige vest and hysterically hype. 

I just wish they'd calm down a bit. Another 38 days of this before we can even see how the man will be as an opposition leader might send me over the edge.