If only women came with barcodes

It's not often you get told that being old is a good thing.

 Today I had an appointment with a gynaecologist for the results of some tests and I normally wouldn't tell the whole world about this (I prefer to be 'perfectly fine') but it was such a funny visit that I just had to share it with you.

I walked in and sat down and the chap, weirdly dressed in clashing shades of mustard, greeted me with the words, "Well there's nothing too nasty down there but there's not a lot that can be done.  You see it's like my old Volvo, it's clapped out really and leaks oil on the driveway and I have to decide whether to scrap it or keep going with it, putting up with the oil on my drive until it dies."

"As you get older and the whole system starts go into failure then these sorts of things can occur.  The whole endocrine system is really imperfect - it's a crap thing really - such a bad design," he went on.

I laughed, "Whoever thought evolution was a good idea had it wrong then? If only we'd kept on pushing out soft little eggs to harden up later."

"Precisely," he said, clapping his hands with glee.  "Although, it had to happen because us men couldn't be trusted to look after the egg.  We'd forget and wander off and maybe go and play golf or something.  So anyway, you have a choice.  If you were younger I'd be recommending a hysterectomy but when everything stops that'll be as good a cure.  The problem is we don't know when that's going to be; 3 months or 6 years, who knows?  If only women came with a barcode that we could scan for the date of the last period."

I agreed that would be very useful to him and asked where he thought it should go, suggesting the forehead, maybe.  He thought the back of the neck might be more subtle.

I like to think that my consultation was delivered in metaphors to amuse me personally, as I'm not sure how other people would react to being described as a clapped out old Volvo.

Beetroot and Goat's Cheese

I have always hated beetroot because it tastes like earth.  I don't want to take too much of a risk with it, just in case the earthy taste means I'm actually eating dirt. My Nan always used to say, "You'll eat a bushelful of dirt before you die,"  I don't know how much a bushelful is and I'm not ready to die just yet. Unfortunately, beetroot is one of the the things that I'm really good at growing, which means I have to eat it, so I was desperate to find things to do with it that I could stand.

When I was on holiday a couple of years ago I had a salad in a pub only to find it had beetroot and goat's cheese on it. If I hadn't been quite so hungry I might have done my fussy eater routine and pushed it around my plate for a bit before hiding the beetroot and goat's cheese under a large lettuce leaf.  Since a holiday in France when I was a teenager I've been very suspicious of goat's cheese, not that I ate any cheese at the time but my sister has never forgotten the experience.  The smell was enough for me and then watching her retch continuously for the whole holiday everytime the cheese was mentioned was enough to put me off for life. So there I was, starving hungry, with my two least favourite foods on my plate, on a Sunday in West Wales after all the shops had closed and an hour's walk ahead of me.  I had no choice but to eat it: I've never looked back; it was delicious.  Now I only eat beetroot and goat's cheese together.

At the weekend I went to the Essex Food Festival and saw on the WI stall (or it might have been next to the WI stall) jars of bacon jam.  "Bacon Jam!" I exclaimed.  "That's nothing there's hedgehog juice over there," said my mum. (It was hedgerow juice). I nearly bought some just because I'm not very keen on jam or bacon and after the beetroot and goat's cheese revelation I was thinking that the solution to fussy eating might be to put try things that you don't like together.

I am planning to try my theory out and was wondering if it would work with other things other than food.  If you spent time with two people you didn't like would you suddenly like both of them? I might try it with books I might try to read the Luminaries again, alternating it with Cloud Atlas.  I could keep a fish and a bird as pets or  plant a laylandii and grow bindwind up it.

I must stop writing now, as it's time to make tea.  That'll be cheese and onion crisps with mashed banana for my daughter, tomatoes and yoghurt           for my son and to help deal with the  courgette glut it will be courgettes and  oragnges for the Long Suffering Husband.

I'm afraid Madam is wrong

Sunday was a day when I was wrong. I know because I was told so three times. A very wise person once told me that if you hear the same thing three times in a row then the universe is trying to tell you something, so thanks universe, I've got the message. I'm wrong!

I should have known really because the Long Suffering Husband and children are always saying, "Well, you're wrong!" It's always a final ending to an argument and every time I make a slightly risky comment to a colleague she rolls her eyes at me and says, "You're just wrong, you are!"

The first of the three messages came via Twitter. A journalist was getting his knickers in a twist about an article in the Guardian.  http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/jul/13/labour-peer-letters-boy-questions?guni=Keyword:news-grid%20main-1%20Main%20trailblock:Editable%20trailblock%20-%20news:Position2  He called it a witch hunt. I was a bit confused, so I tweeted him to say that I didn't know who it was about and that I had read it as an investigation into allegations. I didn't expect a reply (people with blue ticks don't reply to normal people) but I got one and I'm wrong because I can't read (apparently). The funny thing is that his response made me want to google it and now I know who they are talking about and I think a witch hunt might be needed. If I was wrong then I'm glad - go hunt that witch The Guardian!

The next two incidents happened in Marks and Spencer (where I was trying to buy a bra in yet another size - I think I have the full range now). If you haven't read this blog before then you might not know that I have a morbid dislike of bra buying. All I really want is a bra I can wear all day without crying. I have been measured so many times (each time being told a different size) that you might suspect I had a thing for having my breasts touched by middle aged shop assistants. This time I decided to go it alone. I took lots of different sizes into the changing room and was pretty certain I'd worked it out but was struggling to find a style that wasn't a bit flappy at the top, which is a problem I've had since I first started buying bras, so I thought I'd ask. "If it's not too rude then I have to say that's just something that happens with age as everything begins to sag," she said helpfully. When I pointed out that I'd always had that problem she told me I was wrong, it's definitely an age thing and it must be saggy. Somehow I ended up being measured again and although I had found a good fit she recommended a non padded bra, which would move with me. "You can feel like you're going to pop out of the padded bras," she said, "which is fine when you're twenty but not when you're fifty." I didn't want to tell her that I'm not fifty in case she told me I was wrong again so I said, "I just want a bra I can wear all day without crying." She brought back one that, "We all wear here. You can do anything in them." I was nearly very wrong because I wanted to suggest some things you could do in them but I stopped myself in time.

I was out of the changing room, feeling battered but relieved when another shop assistant came up to me and said (in quite a loud voice). "You've got your top on inside out. I wanted to tell you before everyone noticed that you're all wrong!" There was complete silence, while the whole shop stopped to look at the wrong  fifty year old lady.

I think I might need help. Does anyone know of a cure for being 'wrong'?

Superstars and Choreography

Phew!  The year 5/6 show is finally over.  The phew is not because it's been hard going or difficult but because now that it's over I can finally tell you about something that has been amusing me for the last 4 weeks of practising. 

I feel a bit of a fraud when I get public praise because it hasn't been hard work at all for me.  The kids I work with are natural show-offs or Superstars, as I prefer to call them.  Their class teachers crack the whip to get them acting and the Head supports by allowing time for rehearsals (so many headteachers don't) and has encouraged all singing all dancing class assemblies since they started school and I just have to teach them how to sing the brilliantly catchy Andrew Oxspring songs.  At the beginning of practising they act like normal 10 and 11 year olds, they don't want to sing or be seen doing anything other than 'cool' in public. Then we sing the songs, ALL THE TIME, over and over again and then I add actions.  I choreograph the life out of those poor songs.  I think a few moves make it more interesting, get the children feeling the pulse and understanding the meaning of the songs.  Getting all children to salute or punch the air with the same arm is a challenge (although not quite as hard as getting them to clap the off beat) but we get there in the end. We spend a good few weeks with them doing whatever actions they want to do before  I choose the best of their ideas.  By the time we come to perform the whole play the songs and actions are second nature and they've forgotten that they spent several weeks bouncing around the music room doing their own thing. Their singing was fantastic, "the best ever!" say the parents (but they say that every year)

There was one move that I left in until the last moment because it made me laugh.  The line they had to sing was, "we find lots of ketchup covers up the taste," and the children were shaking an imaginary bottle of sauce.  I noticed how this looked quite quickly (go on - try it - hold that bottle of imaginary ketchup and shake it up and down - see - a rather rude hand gesture) but it was amusing me so I took a risk and left changing it until the week before.  Luckily, they all remembered to make a fist and slap it in time to the music instead or I probably would be out of a job!

Judgemental

Are you mental if you judge people?  (I can tell you are judging me already: "You can't use the word mental!")

 I ask because I think I have a problem.  I want to be kind and fair and believe that everyone has their own way of doing things but I keep judging.  

I don't think I'm alone.  We all judge, don't we?  

The number of pushy parents I meet who tell me about another parent who is, "so pushy, she'll put her child off," is quite remarkable.  Obviously, I'm trying not to judge the pushy parent - oh dear, too late I've already judged them as pushy.  I will say that I'm a great fan of pushy parents because no one would ever learn a musical instrument without a pushy parent and obviously I am a pushy parent too.  

If you think you don't judge then I don't believe you.  See, I'm judging you.  You can't be perfect.  You have to be as bad as me.  

In the last few days I've judged complete strangers.  The woman on her phone with the loud voice in the park, discussing her holiday of too much red wine and pasta or the old man walking his dog who drooled after a long-legged teenage girl in micro shorts or the woman who waved her teenage daughter off for a week's trip with the words, "And come back a nicer person!" or the parent who screamed at their toddler in the supermarket or the man swimming too slowly in the pool or the woman wearing socks with sandals and a skirt have all been victims of my silent judgement.  I haven't confined my judgements to strangers, either.  Should I confess to judging my friends, colleagues and family?  I don't think I will but just to let you know I am probably silently judging what you say, what you eat, what you wear and how you behave.  However, you mustn't feel bad about this because you are judging me too, unless I am perfect after all.

Black Hats and White Hats

When we were children we would play the politically incorrect game of Cowboys and Indians and no one really wanted to be an Indian because that meant that you were the baddie and you had to lose.

Life was simple as a child. You knew where you stood. The game was well defined and had clear rules, even going as far as to define which type of children could be cast in each particular role. As a nerdy, bookish girl I was inevitably an Indian. If you tried to give your character redeeming qualities then you were told in no uncertain terms that you weren't playing properly, "No, you're an Indian. Indians can't help an injured Cowboy. You're a baddie. You have to die!"

The Rolf Harris verdict has reminded me that life isn't a childhood game but so many people wish it still was. The shock around the verdict is still reverberating. People can't believe it of him; he wore a white hat; he was a good guy; part of our childhood, where good guys never did anything bad. And then Vanessa Feltz (the baddie: fat female and gobby) dared to write an article describing the moment when he got his hand in her pants live on TV and much of the world nailed their colours to the mast. As the baddie, it was her fault and anyway no one really believed it because the good guy would have had more taste, SURELY? The article received some seriously disturbing comments and Twitter filled itself with Ukip supporters who thought they had a duty to remind us of the rules of the game.

This weekend I also finished reading The Goldfinch. I loved this book until I got to the last few pages. It was confusing. How could something I'd loved for so long disappoint me so much at the end? (Just how people feel about Rolf) But I have come to terms with it. Whilst I haven't forgiven it for lecturing me about what I should think I do understand that the clues were there all the way through. 

The author had told me how to view the painting, she had described in minute detail what the brushstrokes should make me feel. It was inevitable that she would want to control how I viewed her art. I was also a little encouraged. It was one of those books that I read with jaw-dropping admiration. The prose was beautiful, the plot lines were full of twists that kept me on the edge of sanity, there was a real understanding of character and it all made me a bit depressed.

Sometimes I delude myself by thinking that one day I will write a novel. I keep telling myself that it's not too late because Mary Wesley had the first of her 10 best selling novels published when she was 71 but then you read a book like the Goldfinch and think, "I could never do that!" However, the ending encouraged me. I've never been any good at endings either.

Dutifully, I logged onto Goodreads to write a review because despite being cast as an Indian I have always been a Goody-Goody and I'm still a bit scared of Mrs Thaine, who would hit you with a ruler if you didn't review a book after you'd read it. I was surprised at other reviews. I didn't expect everyone to love it - it is but I was shocked that people didn't like it because there was quite a lot of 'bad' in the central character. That was against the rules of the game. The central character has to be a white hat wearing hero. You have to love them all the time, so they can win at the end, without your world view being tainted.

One of the reasons I like the Goldfinch is that the characters are realistic; not like anyone I know (thankfully) but they are complex. I particularly liked Boris (who would terrify me in real life) because he constantly surprised me. I was torn by both wanting the shadowy figure seen outside the shop to be him and not to be him and he's voice sounded like the Meercat from the TV advert in my head. It's how I feel about real people. So when I shouted, "Oh go away!" when the doorbell rang yesterday and my daughter pointed out that the window was open and whoever was at the door would have heard me, I was still really glad to see my neighbour and the spanner they had borrowed. (This is why I could never write a novel - suspense, intrigue and spanners!)

As I'm so bad at endings I just wanted to show you a note book I've bought for planning a trip.

It's got a section for each day of the trip with folders and a zip up wallet. I find that stationary is the only constant; the thing that never disappoints. A notebook is always the good guy.

When the Kids leave home.....

Ever since our children were born the Long Suffering Husband and I have joked that we live lives like the couple in the little German weather house.  We take it in turns to be out of the house or in charge of the children.

If we were in together it was always with the children and there was some freak weather pattern that made golf or music making impossible.

This week both children have been away and we've found ourselves in the house on our own.  The LSH was quite looking forward to it.  He'd made a mental list of things he'd like to do.  He thought it would be fun to be like newlyweds again and I think he even said, "We could walk around the house naked."  We thought the house would stay tidy, we wouldn't have to do any nagging and no one would say, "What's for dinner?"  We thought that we'd talk over an adult meal about our day and be able to discuss things we might not say in front of the children and we thought there would be no arguments over the TV and it might even stay off for a lot of the evening.

It seems, however, that we have no one to blame but ourselves.  We have still been out making music and playing golf (not together).  We haven't discussed our day because, well quite frankly, it's a bit boring isn't it.  The house hasn't stayed tidy because we've both been in too much of a rush and we just both asked each other what we were going to have for dinner. We've kept our clothes on because it would really be a bit gross to wander around with it all hanging out. There haven't been any arguments about the telly but that's only because I'm reading a good book and falling asleep on the sofa every evening.

Empty nest syndrome is not something we need to fear - nothing is going to change for us.