Out of the mouths of babes

All teachers have experienced that moment when a child says something that leaves them speechless. Sometimes it is a well observed comment pointing out just how old you are compared to them or how squidgy your belly is (which is what primary school children are looking at when you are both standing). Occasionally it's something that is just very sweet, like, "Miss, you are so pretty," although, for some strange reason this has never happened to me. Sometimes they will absent mindedly call you "Nanny" or "Grandad", which can make you feel ancient. They will always notice (and point out) your senile moment mistakes, "Miss, you've got your cardigan on inside out!"

This week, however, has left me speechless too many times and I'm beginning to get a bit paranoid. 

The first incident came during Open Afternoon. A child came bouncing in with his Grandma and gleefully told me that three younger children had greeted his grandmother as me. She is a very nice elegant woman but she must be at least 15 years older than me. I may have been able to find words if I hadn't overheard her complaining, "I don't look anything like that woman." This happened after a class thought that the IT man, who was fixing my computer, was my son. I wouldn't like to say how old the man is but I'm sure I'm not old enough to be his mother. 

These older children just aged me by association. The younger children just come right out and tell it like it is. Wide-eyed and excited they say, "Wow, you're old and you still know loads about Chinese music!"

Still, it hasn't been all bad. When describing the instruments we were about to use, one of the children said, "oh, You've got big bangers!"

It's always nice to be appreciated, even if it takes five minutes to be composed enough to speak again.

Dressed for the Oscars

I watched the Oscars last night, clicked on the pictures of the dresses on the red carpet on social media followed it up by watching Newsnight and then couldn't sleep.

Something was bothering me.

That something could have been the fact that the half term holidays are over and I have to start thinking of ways to engage 30 children at a time in a subject that society fails to value, where half of them can't even clap, let alone clap in time.  It could have been due to the fact that I had resorted to pushing a selection of painkillers around my body with a shot of caffeine or the fact that I am a hormonal mess who has forgotten how to sleep properly anyway.

Images of dresses floated through my mind and I kept thinking about what Rosie Millard said on Newsnight.  At the time, I agreed with her. "Yes," I shouted at the TV, "So true.  How can women expect to be taken seriously if they turn up looking like a loo roll holder?"  She had a point.

No she didn't.

Women are not an amorphous hive-minded blob.  Women are a collection of individuals who have breasts of varying sizes and no penis.  In that respect, they are quite like men but without the penis.  Women don't have a duty to other women to dress in a certain way.  Their individual value should not be diminished by what they wear.

What really worries me is that it took me a whole sleepless night to decide to disagree.  I had looked at the pretty dresses, without even noticing the women and know that the point about these women being coat hangers for designers to show off their creations was true.  I had seen the pictures in the press that gave the impression that the Oscars was a 'women only' event, despite the fact that the winner of best leading man (Eddie Redmayne) will be remembered more than best leading lady (I've forgotten already). I had even looked at some of them and thought they needed a good meal, "Boy, that's a skinny coat hanger," I thought.

I watched Patrica Arquette's speech, where she called for equal pay and watched Meryl Streep (who was not attending as a clothes horse) whoop and fist pump.  I watched John Travolta inappropriately touch women he was on stage with only to see them grimace politely, rather than dig a sharp elbow into his ribs, stamp on his foot and shout, "Hey, get off, creep!" I watched Rita Ora wiggle, pantlessly on the red carpet and thought that she was wearing quite a lot of clothes for a girl whose profession it is to dance in pants.

I watched all of these things without even realising that I was judging women as a whole.  This isn't something I do to men.  I didn't watch Eddie Redmayne's giddy Oscar speech thinking, "Men, they're just so excitable".  I didn't look at John Travolta and think, "Men!  Perverts, the lot of them."  I didn't hear Sean Penn joke, "Who gave this sonofabitch a green card," and think that he was letting down every man who ever presented an award.  When Neil Patrick Harris appeared on stage in his pants socks and shoes I thought, "He can come and dig my veg patch any time," but I didn't think that he was letting down men everywhere by whoring his body in this way.  I don't suppose anyone except the Long Suffering Husband, noticed his 15 changes of costume throughout the night.  "I hope he doesn't just put it all in the washing basket," said the LSH, which is something you think when you have a teenage son.  

I can remember all these men's names.  The women, I tend to think of as the one in the red dress, the one with the pretty flowers who was homeless before she met her husband ("I'd like to thank my husband for giving me a home,") or the one who couldn't get up the steps because that dress was too tight, as the designer forgot that human hangers have legs.

So, maybe the fact that most of the men wore exactly the same thing allows us more freedom to remember their names.  Maybe I should go back to shouting, "Yes," at the TV,  Rosie Millard has a point.  She said that these women at the Oscars were being used by designers and that they couldn't claim outrage when people only noticed the dress.  Can we really expect people who are told what to wear for their job (actors) to turn down an offer to be paid for wearing what someone tells them too?  If all women were to turn up at next year's Oscars in a black tie and DJ combo then would the press give them a break?  It's difficult and maybe all we can do is be aware of our prejudices.

When I had an award ceremony to attend I thought very hard about what to wear.  I wanted something that was comfortable for eating in but as there was a possibility of a photo my eating outfit of track suit bottoms and jumper were out.  I still managed to nearly go up on stage with my dress tucked in my knickers and stand on Roger Black's broken toe.  I wouldn't like to have to make a decision about how to dress for the Oscars and now that I know that even self aware feminists are making judgments about women based on the clothes they wear, rather than what they have achieved I might just collect my Oscar dressed in my gardening clothes or I could borrow a bow tie from the dog.

Creative Toast

I love radio 4.

Listening to it makes me feel smart.  I learn about things that I would never know about otherwise.  I like to have it on in the background, when I'm in the house on my own.  It stops you jumping at creaking pipes and the wind banging branches on the windows.  All of those terrible things that happen in those scary films could have been avoided if only they had radio 4 on in the background. It's the kind of radio that suits someone with a mind that is easily derailed or bored by hearing the same things over and over again.  I've never been able to have breakfast TV on because they repeat the same 'news' every fifteen minutes; there's nothing new about news you hear four times an hour.  Where else can you flit between feminist comedy, Vinegar Valentines, a play about the Ghurkas in Aldershot, hearing the most eloquent 91 year old woman talk about dying, The Archers, a new Harold Pinter Play, the panel game to end all panel games, insightful news and comment and hearing complete idiots pretending to know stuff they don't?

I was only a little disappointed recently when even the Today programme was discussing 50 Shades of Grey at 6.30 in the morning. Nobody wants to hear John Humphreys discuss 'bedroom titillation'.

The BBC are currently running a project called 'Get Creative; a celebration of world class arts, culture and creativity that happens every day across the UK", which I am wholeheartedly in favour of.  I like arts, culture and creativity.  We are born creative and this should be nurtured.  This project has then caused the commissioning of discussion shows about Art and Radio 4 often gets the best of them.  On Front Row today they were discussing the funding of the Arts.  Apart from the problem, inevitably being the fault of schools (I'm not going to get into that because I might start uncontrollably growling)  it was a very interesting programme and it included the best moment on radio that I have ever heard.  This is what you get if you ask an economist about the arts.

"I disapprove very strongly about what I might gratuitously call the pornography on the plinth in Trafalgar Square and that's fine, other people can approve of it."

"Why is that pornographic?"

"Well, didn't I hear you correctly when you described it as a....."

"It's a COCKEREL!"

"a cockerel!"

*Audience laughter

"Well OK, putting that aside, I disapprove very strongly when the National Gallery displayed some extremely offensive religious pornographic pictures..."

"Well, let me just ask you, now that you know that what Echo has helped put on that plinth isn't a giant penis but a large (pause for laughter) blue (pause for more laughter) cockerel, what about the principal of that?  You obviously haven't seen it but you would support it in principal?"

"I think art and culture should, by and large, develop from the bottom up..."

Bottoms?  I thought he was against bottoms, or maybe he really is against farmyard birds.

In the news following this programme it was announced that it is National Toast day (which I think is actually tomorrow) and I couldn't help thinking how stupid that was.  Toast doesn't need a day.  Toast is something we all do all the time.  Toast is our National go-to snack. Toast holds our breakfast or lunch.  Maybe, I've missed something and Toast is under threat from government targets.  Maybe schools are not doing enough to get children to eat toast. Maybe the funding for toast has been cut to puny levels and now we should all be getting more creative with our toast.

I like to think of Radio 4 as creative toast.  Something you eat every day, with a variety of toppings.

A new form of procrastination - or madness?

Yes.  It's true.  I'm writing a novel.  Can't you tell?

I'm doing really well, if word-count is inconsequential. 

Writing has taken me to new levels of procrastination.  I've always been a master of the art of acedia but since deciding to write a long story that I actually finish I have surpassed myself in discovering new ways to avoid sitting at my laptop and writing real words that will form the tale.

I'm not complaining, though.  I'm really enjoying these new-found hobbies.  Sitting in coffee shops, pubs or restaurants and writing down people's conversations, visiting places that I've decided to write about and wondering what my new imaginary friends would think about the things I'm seeing are activities to treasure.

I've missed having imaginary friends and it's fantastic to have an excuse to allow them back into my life.  As a child, baby Cumby was my constant companion, who was a confidant, guide and friend. When baby Cumby disappeared I wasn't blessed with new friend, unlike my daughter, who had serial visitors.  She used to explain, "I'm not going to put my shoes on 'cause Lizzie is here and she's from New Zealand.  They don't wear shoes in New Zealand.  Lizzie hasn't got any shoes so I won't wear any either." 

Yesterday, I went to visit my daughter.  I took my son and an imaginary friend with me, she's having a tough time and I thought she could do with a break.  The Long Suffering Husband suggested that I stay in a hotel overnight to avoid too much driving in one day. My friend agreed and got quite excited that she could take me to where she lived and with her guidance I booked a hotel on the banks of Rutland Water. as it wasn't too far from my daughter.  My son found it hilarious that we were staying overnight for writing research, so we took my daughter to look at the village and the hotel.  In the car, my  Puca was chuckling away, "Ha ha, this isn't saving you much driving is it?  Three hour and a half trips and you could have gone home."  I forgave her when we saw the hotel, she had made a good choice: maybe even worth all the driving.

View from the hotel with the best breakfast that was cheaper than a travel lodge

When we were in town we met Felicity (this was the name my imaginary friend gave her).  Felicity (or Fliss as she is often known as) owns the wool shop, which curiously smelt of stale eggs. "I think I made a mistake because I hard boiled some eggs to display the Easter knitted egg covers that we will be raffling for a charity, I might have to go and get some chocolate ones."  As we left we noticed the window display.

You've read the book, watched the film, now knit the jumper

Out loud I said, "Yes, I agree Felicity is funny.  She would be friends with my character."  

"No, she's too old," said my daughter.

My new imaginary friend was thrilled as every woman of 50  gets, when they are thought to be a lot younger than another woman who is probably about 55.  My daughter and I argued about it for a while until I heard laughter, "I can't believe we are disagreeing about someone who only exists in my head."

I have to wonder though, is this procrastination or is it madness?

50 Shades of Green

Fifty Shades is not my kind of film and I won't be going to see it.  I know the whole world is talking about it but I still won't be going to watch it.  Apart from a moral objection to something that glamorises inflicting control and pain on a loved one when we live in a country where an average of 2 women a week are killed by a partner or former partner, I just don't fancy sitting in a cinema full of giggling women and couples who might actually be touching each other in public. Also, it's not my idea of a fantasy.  I'm not keen on grey; sharp suits, shiny shoes and a man with his own helipad doesn't really do it for me.  I'm much more into green.

Sitting on my bench at the allotment, looking at the patch of 50 shades of green that I've half turned into a single shade of brown my eye catches a stray cable tie still attached to a bamboo cane and my mind starts to wander.  I fantasise about the Long Suffering Husband appearing from nowhere. He is silent (that's important) and he dirtily digs my veg patch.

"Eww.  NO. STOP," you are shouting, just as I was at the radio this morning when Neil and Susan from the Archers gave each other smouldering looks in the bedroom and were then named as. "most loved up couple," at the Bull's Valentine's dance. 

 We don't like to think about the middle-aged having sex.  Particularly middle aged women.  The only women in TV and film who have sex are young and toned with completely hairless bodies.  Old men are still at it but always with young women.  Wouldn't it be great if Bond was seduced by M?   No, of course it wouldn't, we're not used to it.  We would all shout at the cinema screen, "Bring back the child-like women with large breasts!"

There was a moment in my childhood, where the realisation that old people had sex became clear.  My Grandfather had just come out the other side of a weird phase where he tried to mow the carpet and abuse bank staff when he found himself a girlfriend.  At a family gathering I overheard my Aunt, saying to the woman who was also in her eighties (It's awful but I can't remember her name), "Why don't you just live together?" and the woman replied, "He's not getting into my knickers until he's put a ring on my finger!"  Have you ever seen a 15 year old turn 50 shades of green?

Valentine's Day

As a grumpy old woman with a long suffering husband I'm not much into Valentine's Day. It seems ridiculous to declare your love for someone you are married to on only one day a year. 

When I was growing up, my next door neighbour's birthday was on Valentine's Day, which meant that he was saddled with a ridiculous middle name and told me about the real 'Saint Valentine' in an attempt to appear more manly. It might have been these stories that put me off celebrating the day. He told me tales of a Roman man, called Valentinius, which means worthy, strong and powerful (this seemed to be a very important part of the story) who was killed in horrible ways because he secretly married people. He was, according to my neighbour, a very brave man, who never showed any pain, even when he was stoned, tortured, whipped and had his head cut off. He carried on marrying people even without a head. Thinking back, the 9 year old Juliaofalltrades  probably got a bit confused by that part of the story. He told me that Soldiers, who were not allowed to marry so that they would be free to rape many women when they were fighting, would leave secret notes on a heart shaped piece of paper in the Church for the Priest who would then seek the couple out and marry them. The story often got sidetracked at this point about whether the notes were really heart-shaped, "Have you seen the sheep hearts in the butcher's shop? They are round and veiny, definitely not heart shaped." He had a theory that the heart was actually the shape of the womb, which they would have known in those days from the Shepherd's Purse herb, used as a uterine tonic because of its uterus shaped leaves. 

He told me that Valentine was killed by Claudius (of the I Claudius fame) for curing his daughter of blindness and that he had just been very unlucky. 

It isn't just the recollection of these childhood stories that puts me off, though. It's the mushiness. I've never been overly sentimental and when trying to choose a card find I get an urge to vomit when reading most of them. This year's were particularly bad with many Grey offerings. The LSH said, "I hope you don't mind but I don't think we should do Valentine's Cards this year." I was thrilled, it was the most romantic thing he's ever said to me. There is a gap in the market, though, for honest cards. If there were cards that said, "Thank you for putting up with me for all these years,"  or "As it's Valentine's Day, I'll wash up tonight," or "I like being married, it's great to have one person you can annoy for the rest of your life," or "If Robert Downey Junior turned up at my door confessing his undying love for me I'd have to turn him down because I'm married to you," I would buy one. Even the couple, reported in the Telegraph a few years ago, who have given each other the same card for the last 70 years might be tempted to buy one.

History isn't quite as convinced about the origins of St Valentine as my neighbour was.  Valentinius did mean worthy, strong and powerful and so there were loads of them. There was even a female Valentina, a virgin (they're always virgins) who was put to death on the 25th July Ad 308. I might suggest to the LSH that we celebrate each of the Saint Valentines and hand make appropriate  and truthful cards. 

He asked me what if I wanted to do anything for Valentine's Day and I had to confess that doing "nothing, absolutely nothing," was at the top of my list. I asked him if there was anything he'd like to do and he said,"I'd really like to play golf." That would have been a perfect day but unfortunately he has hurt his wrist; a repetitive strain injury (don't snigger, I know about your smutty mind).

His request reminded me of a work colleague who told me that he gets up early on a Saturday to play golf, so that his wife doesn't object and so I've already come up with a card idea for when we celebrate the next St Valentine's Day on July 6th.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Please go and play golf all day - I quite like being on my own.

Word of the Day

Malfeasance is my word of the day.

Having a word of the day is perfectly normal, right?  I only ask because I discovered from a staff room conversation on Friday that it's not perfectly normal to visit coffee shops to write down the conversations people around you are having.  Who knew? I thought that's what everyone did.  Maybe that's why everyone else's handbag doesn't contain at least two notebooks and a large handful of pens and pencils?  Anyway, word of the day has been a thing in my life since the Readers Digest stopped being in our downstairs loo.  I realised that I missed the 'it pays to enrich your wordpower' section but with a dictionary and a notebook I could recreate my own.  I tried to encourage my son, who wasn't particularly keen on books but loved a geeky challenge, to join me in the 'word of the day' competition but once he found hippomonstrosesquippedaliophobia (ironically, fear of long words) all other words became superfluous.

Today's word seems very appropriate.  Malfeasance is the wrongdoing of a public official and with today's news about banks, tax and what Stephen Green and Ed Balls knew or didn't know I'm very excited about the synchronicity of my word of the day seeming relevant.

The press seem to have a confusion about what banks are about.  I worked in a bank, on a graduate training scheme but I was hopeless, asking all manner of 'stupid' questions.

The first branch I worked in was in an area with wealthy clients.  The customers were very important and extremely rude.  They expected you to know who they were. I didn't: especially the footballers and I had the cheek not to laugh when they said things like, "I don't suppose you recognise me with my clothes on."  I asked why the famous footballer wasn't charged for his huge overdraft.

 Stupid question.

 It was part of my training to observe all the branch jobs while I was there and when I was learning about financial planning I asked, "Isn't it immoral to tell these rich people how to avoid paying tax?"

 Stupid question.

I was later moved to another branch where the clients were all struggling. It was an odd branch, with a malfeasant manager, who at my interview said, "Would you put all your clothes on that chair in the corner?"  Sales were very important and I was instantly in trouble for refusing to sell Personal Loan Insurance (PPI) to all the people who wouldn't be able to claim on it if they needed to.  "Why should they buy something they'll never be able to use?" I asked.

Stupid question.

Apart from the chance to talk to some of the customers  every day, particularly the jesting undertaker, working in a bank was not for me and soon I worked out that , "Why am I doing this job?" was not a stupid question.

I've written stupid too many times in this blog post, so I think I'll find a better word as tomorrow's word of the day.  I quite like hebitudinous.

Tables

No child can leave primary school until they have made at least one table. Tables are good and not enough people are using them anymore. Too many people are eating their dinner from a tray on their lap in front of the TV. Too many people are writing their novel in bed on a laptop or writing letters (emails) from their mobile phone, whilst waiting for the toast to pop out of the toaster and we, the government, have decided that this is due to a lack of tables. 

You may argue that the world is a different place and that with the invention of trays and mobile writing devices people don't need tables in the same way as they did in the past but you are wrong. Not only that but we need imperial tables that are measured in feet and inches. It is precisely the fault of the lazy centimetre that tables became an endangered species.

Whilst we know that there will be some children who lack the physical skills required to build their own table before they are eleven, we still expect them to achieve this task, including growing and felling their own timber. If they do not manage it then we know this will be the fault of the teachers and the school's management team (who are only old teachers, after all) and we have a solution: a consultant will be sent in to take over the school.

My mate from Eton, Buffy Moreton, is an antique dealer who is suffering a small economic disaster (he had to sell one of his Porches last week) and what he doesn't know about tables isn't worth writing on the back of the envelope that I've written this policy on. For a huge fee, Buffy will be sent into the school and give a valuation of the tables made by the children. If this valuation is above the national average then the school will be safe but if not then notice to improve will be served and eventually our other mates can turn the school into an accadamy, where they will not have to make tables if they don't want to.

Buffy is confident of finding a table just like this; the Tufft pier  table sold by Christies in 1990 for $4.6 million dollars, as some schools will cheat and pass off  real antiques as the children's work.

This policy is my favourite so far. A true win win situation, as Buffy has promised me 10% commission on all finds. Teachers win too, as they don't have to keep trying to make children do things like read, write or do maths anymore and we don't have to pretend that we think they don't. 

Vote for me in the upcoming General Election. You know it makes sense!