I don’t know what arsholes are made of…

 My family are still laughing at a question at a book quiz we went to a few years ago. The round was on famous quotes. Book quizzes are always run by inherently shy people who are prone to a slight mumble. The answer to the question was obviously Wuthering Heights but we puzzled over it. 

“I don’t know, it’s an odd one. I mean who would say, ‘Whatever arseholes are made of, his and mine are the same.’ It’s weird.”

“Maybe, Lady Chatterley. He was obsessed with bum holes.”

“It sounds more modern. Maybe it’s a Sally Rooney, her characters are all arseholes.”

We heard a person on the next table say that they didn’t know where it was from but it was one of the quotes suggested for weddings and she had briefly considered it, being a bookish person. Peculiar, we thought. 

It wasn’t until the answers were given we realised that we had misheard ‘our souls’ as ‘arseholes’. 

I was surprised because I had loved reading Wuthering Heights as a teenager. I didn’t think it was a love story, though. For me, it was a story of longing, class, situations that you know aren’t right but you know no better. It was my first experience of an unreliable narrator, which I loved (the sister).

So, it was with a little trepidation that I went to see the new film. I knew it wouldn’t represent the book I knew as people had said that it was raunchy. I try not to get upset by interpretations of domestic violence as sexy but I knew it was a risk. 

I fell asleep. It’s not uncommon for teachers to do this in school holidays. It’s a warm dark room and you have been given permission to turn off your fully alert status for a week.  I missed all of the sex, except the horse bridal part. 

Heathcliff had just returned, the Long Suffering Husband said, quite loudly, “Poldark!”and the next thing I knew Bridgerton was on the screen. Quick naps can leave you quite confused. 

At the end, the LSH confirmed that I hadn’t missed much missed all the sex but according to him, it was only a ‘montage of fully clothed thrusting’. 

“But did we learn what arseholes are made of?” I asked. 

Apparently not. 

Distraction Redaction

 Yes, it’s true. I know how to spend my free time. I have begun reading through the Epstein files that have been released and, obviously, I already have some thoughts.

My first thought is, “Those poor girls!” 

Then I start to wonder why it isn’t the first thought of everyone. Why is it that the release of these files hasn’t been another stark warning. Women can be treated like commodities and some people do horrendous things to younger, poorer, less powerful people (particularly women and girls) and those of us who stand by, shrug and say, “Yeah but..” need to start to stand up and say that it’s not right. 

I think that we are complicit and that is uncomfortable. How many years did we laugh at ‘Randy Andy’ newspaper headlines? Celebrate his relationships with young models? Imply that Harvey Weinstein’s casting couch was the best way to get into acting? We never said that it wasn’t right. We hung on every tabloid word, waited for the next instalment, delighted in every salacious detail. 

I don’t think the Epstein files that have been released by the DOJ are a huge cover up, although, some of the press conferences and other releases by Pam Bondi don’t smell good. 

These files are the paper trail that gave enough evidence to prosecute Epstein and Maxwell. There may be more work the DOJ needs to do to be able to get justice for the victims with regards to their abusers but the law is clunky and difficult and the rights of victims and the accused need to be treated carefully. 

I hope that the release of these files will encourage us to put pressure on the authorities to seek prosecutions. 

One file, I came across was an email to an FBI agent from another listing names of men they wanted to do further checks on. It said, “Take these names and build derogatory on them.” That means do all the background checks for any negative associations. Trump was at the top of that list, along with Weinstein and Prince Andrew. One was specifically mentioned for being present when a girl was raped and another for their involvement in a Ponzi Scheme.

Now, this is the thing that is getting most people het up. It’s not the sexual abuse (although that’s a way of getting interest because we all still love a salacious detail) It’s the abuse of power and money. The Royal formally known as Prince has abused his privilege - we can’t stand that! Peter Mandelson has abused the trust the government placed in him to make a personal fortune. How very dare he. But do we think powerful men have stopped trading in girls for their perverted sexual pleasure, favours and kick backs?. Do we honestly believe that poor kids won’t fall for the offer of nice things they could only dream of? No. And while we’re all nudging and winking at each other nothing will ever change. The girl-traders continue to set up rooms with unbelievable details such as dentist chairs and masks on the wall, so the victims seem unreliable narrators. 

I also have thoughts about the redactions. These files were never meant for public viewing and if the prosecution and detectives had done their job properly no one would ask to see them. But the victims thought there was more we needed to know. The DOJ have continued to be bad at their job, redacting names that should be left in and failing to protect victims. However, focusing on the redactions is a distraction. It’s another thing that takes us away from remembering it’s about those poor girls. 

School Holidays

How lucky am I to have a week off?

Think of the poor parents of the children I teach who get no time off from their kids. How awful! 

A parent did say this to me last week and another stopped me in the High Street today to ask if I was enjoying my half term because she was already run ragged. 

I’m getting old and I care less about what parents think of me, so I told them to come back to me when they were dealing with 30 at once then we could talk holidays. 

When my children were younger, I loved school holidays in the same way I do now. The time pressure is off. If they or you want to stay in PJs all day and watch rubbish on a small screen then you can. If you forget lunch and only eat cheese and apples that’s fine too. If you are still reading at 3am, who cares? You can start new projects, go for walks in the rain (because if most of the population are forced to take holiday at the same time then you can guarantee it will rain) or spend an hour tidying your sock drawer without worrying that there is something better you should be doing. 

You could also read the Epstein files and think about blogging, if you have a strong stomach. 

I’m honestly not complaining about my job and trying to convince you that the ‘long’ holidays are not a perk but if you bumped into someone who worked in a coffee shop on a day off would you really sarcastically tell them that you had made your own coffee that morning? Maybe. I have no idea and am constantly confused by the queues outside the drive-through Costa.

“Do you think they have a kettle?” I always ask the Long Suffering Husband. 

A week off is just what the doctor ordered too because I’ve been coughing up a lung for about 4 weeks. 

I do have it easy compared with most teachers. There’s not a huge pressure on music teachers to record data, keep up with the latest research or schemes (although I do because I’m interested) and I only work 3 days in school so my weekends are always my own. 

A teacher I know has just dropped to 4 days, so she can do all the school work on her day off and only has to work weekends at report writing time. 

“That’s crazy. Isn’t it crazy?” I said

She blinked at me.

“I mean in any other job if you said you’d taken a pay cut of one day a week so that you could work for free in that day then people would think it’s crazy.”

She only shrugged, not getting my point. 

“But I don’t have to work at the weekend,” she said. 

Parents: please enjoy spending time with your children. Take it from a woman with adult kids. You don’t get that time back. There are no do-overs, no chances to do things better if you think you could. What you do now lasts forever, so enjoy it as much as you can. 

Teachers: enjoy time with your own children Give them what you can’t in the school week, even if your children are grown ups, dogs, cats, plants or books. 

Always keep away from children

 Whenever I walk into a room a disembodied voice says, “Always keep away from children.” It has become a running joke because other washing powder adverts are available. I never walk in to the ones that say, “Always keep out of reach of children” or other warnings about not letting them accidentally foam up the inside of their mouths. 

I don’t heed the advice, though. After an evening of supposedly teaching the flute but really talking about the lifespan of a hamster vs a gerbil, girl fights at school, and why the thumb key on the flute isn’t called the God key and therefore the Bb key could be called the baby Jebus (sic) key, the cold I’ve had for three and a half weeks that was getting better came back and my head felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool.

I walked in to tell the Long Suffering Husband, the voice from the telly said, “Always keep away from children,” and the LSH agreed. 

I have things to say about the Epstein files but now I have to go and find a Pirate costume. So, I will just leave this thought to people who are looking for a sexual thrill.

“Always keep away from children.”

Stand by or stand up?

 I stopped blogging. I got inside my head, worried about what people would think about me, broke into a cold sweat imagining conversations people would be having about my tendency to overshare. I was also trying to be a little serious with ‘proper’ writing and feared a blog would hurt those chances. 

But.

The world.

I can’t say nothing.

In the end, I have decided to swallow the fear because you have to decide if you are going to stand by or stand up.

A few weeks ago, I watched the film, Nuremberg. It’s a stunning movie. I sat, silent, gripped. A film, based on a book that’s based on another book: 22 Cells by the Psychiatrist who was responsible for the mental health of the Nazis due to stand trial at Nuremberg. In the film, they alluded to the fact that the psychiatrist, Douglas M Kelly, was never the same, his book flopped and he suffered from life-ending depression. Five minutes after the film finished, my son and I looked at each other, blinking and said, “We have to read that book.” We did and I would recommend it if you want a view on what is happening in the world today. 

‘Oh come on,’ Mrs All Trades, I can hear you thinking,‘It’s not as bad as that.’ 

I don’t want to be a fear-monger but there are definitely parallels. 

Thinking about what could stop it and watching the ICE murders in America I came to a conclusion that only a small proportion of Germans were true Nazis and probably the same small proportion were activists, fighting for regime change. Most people, were, like me, in the middle. Us stodgy middlers think we have no influence but we do. We fall into one of two camps. Those that stand by and those that stand up. It’s subtle and you would think it makes little difference because both positions are inactive. 

If more Germans said, ‘Das ist nicht richtig!” then things might have been very different. From reading 22 Cells, I think this is the subtle shift that happened in the UK. 

When my children were born I decided they needed a family tree and discovered my husband had an uncle by marriage called Adolph. When I expressed surprise, my husband only ever known of him as Dolf, my mother-in-law told me that they had been Blackshirts and shrugged, as if were nothing. 

At that time, post-first world war, a lot of people were scared and dissatisfied. They were looking for someone to blame. Some rich UK people thought that aligning themselves with the Nazi party would make them richer. But most people were somewhere in the middle. They laughed at the idea or shrugged their shoulders when asked what they thought of it all.

Then Joachim Von Ribbentrop (one of the Nazis later to stand trial at Nuremberg) visited the UK. He was a champagne salesmen and was well connected to the uk elite and therefore seen as the right person to bring the UK on board. However, he made a fatal error. Instead of bowing to the King and following protocol he gave a Nazi salute and shouted, ‘Heil Hitler.’ As his shiny black booted heels clicked together those standing by stood up. ‘That’s not right,’ they said and a possible history shifted. 

My blog will be used for standing up, exploring my thoughts in more depth and hoping, that if you read this, you’ll stand up with me.

Beware of falling squirrels

 Endings are hard. Us humans are not really designed to cope with endings. We think too much. The Long Suffering Husband used to have a motto: change is bad. Like Marvin the Paranoid Android he would walk around the house muttering this to himself and the rest of us would smile indulgently. I’ve noticed that since retirement he has completely reversed this philosophy and has become a thrill seeker, changing our walking route home from town without the slightest pre-planning. 

Endings in schools can be emotional affairs. The anticipatory grief of people leaving hangs in the air, while the pressure to get everything done is ever present. The end of every school year feels a little as though you know that you are dying. You have a need to get your affairs in order, clean your classroom, complete all the paperwork, shred enough paper to build nests for a million squirrels. If you are a music teacher then everything must be celebrated in song. You meet other music teachers who say, “It’s terrible. Worse than Christmas.”

Every performance triggers the stress response. Adrenaline and cortisol levels rising with each one, never quite having time to get back to normal. 

While it is all happening, I’m fine. And before you ask, that is perfectly fine. Really. I’m annoying: Hyper, loud, running around like a squirrel on acid but I’ve got this. I can do anything. Ask me! Honestly, I’ve got time for absolutely anything else you’d like to throw at me. I’m walking 8 miles a day, swimming 100 lengths. Sleep? Oh who needs more than a couple of hours a night? But I’m also perfectly calm, yogic breathing keeps me looking serene. 

The dog, however, suffers from 2nd hand anxiety. He gets twitchy, growls at ghosts and is on the lookout for squirrels falling from trees. 

This has happened. Once, when he was a puppy, on the path to Morrisons a squirrel did fall from a tree and land at his feet, so maybe I can forgive him his attitude on that path at the moment. He can sense a hyper-squirrel nearby (even though it’s me) and he’s waiting for the weird thing to happen. 

Yesterday morning, as he was scuttling sideways and growling at a leaf, a woman appeared. She was coughing.

“Elp,” she wheezed, “I’m choking on a cockle.”

She had tears in her eyes and her face was turning the colour of a Victoria plum. The dog growled at her, while I slapped her back.  Between us, we helped and she didn’t die but instead waved a fishy pot under my nose. 

“Cockles!” she told me, “I grabbed a pot from Morrisons for me protein.”

She didn’t wait for a response but bounced off like Tigger in leggings.

The dog looked at me. ‘That was weird,’ he said with his eyes. ‘I told you a squirrel could fall from a tree.’

Take it with a pinch of salt path

 Writers lie. It’s what we do; take a nugget of truth, bend it, stretch it and mould it into a slightly different shape. A published writer has spent so long honing that new shape into a marketable product that they barely recognise the original truth. Most, get away with it and others make a fat cheque (a phrase I’ve borrowed from Richard Osman who said how similar it sounds to fact check).

About 7 years ago a book came out that people of my class and generation loved. It was a true ‘pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ book with a little nature writing. It had a beautiful cover by Angela Harding (who is an amazing illustrator). It was one of those word of mouth runaway successes that publishers get very excited about. The author was probably paid a tiny advance and when middle England started passing onto their book club friends it eared out quickly. Have you read…? Everyone was asking. Such an uplifting story.

Like all bookworms, I couldn’t resist. As I was also attempting to walk away my problems it appealed but only a little. Writers may lie but they give themselves away too and I did not like the author. I took offence at a sense of entitlement that ran through, camping wherever she liked upset me for reasons I can’t explain. I don’t think I ever believed they were truly homeless or that this walk wasn’t only a lifestyle choice. I could be re-painting my feelings based on the latest revelations but as I haven’t read any more of her next books or even picked one up and flipped past the cover I suspect not. 

The story has been made into a film, which I told the Long Suffering Husband not to bother seeing and the author and her healthy looking husband, who 18 years ago was diagnosed with a terminal degenerative illness have been making me twitch as they appeared on every TV sofa. 

It was only a matter of time before public opinion shifted. There had been rumours for a while that she hadn’t been pleasant to work with and expected a lot from others for nothing in return. So, it was no surprise when the Observer published an article exposing the truth; that this was not a wholly accurate true story. 

People who believed every word are feeling stupid and people who have been trying to walk away their health problems are disillusioned. And I’m cynical. 

The publishers could have known all along and allowed (encouraged) the release of the story. They can get their money back (she will have signed a contract that promises that it’s a true story) and all the people who have never heard of it will want to read it. 

It’s not the best of its type. But don’t  buy the book (unless it’s from the charity shop), even if you have severe FOMO. Take the walk and maybe stay in hotels. Read nature writers like James Caton and Melissa Harrison but if you do read it, take it with a huge pinch of salt.