Parody

I haven’t mentioned Brexit in a while. No one has. Since the General Election, the government banned the word and people stopped talking about it but as the first deadline of so-called Brexit Day is tomorrow (31st January), the government has started to parody itself.

For someone like me, it’s like watching a live version of Monty Python. If you are too young for Monty Python then I’m sorry for you. It was funny. Now, things that look or sound like a joke are actually real.

First, there was the new 50p. Sajid Javid was pictured holding the newly minted coin, looking rather like Gollum, sibilantly whispering, “My precious!” The words on the fifty pence seem overly optimistic.
Peace, prosperity and friendship with all nations
Leaving the European Union, shouting, “Goodbye, we’ve always hated you. Stick your bendy bananas where the sun don’t shine,” probably isn’t going to help that aim.
The picture on the reverse will have geographers and their coloured pencils twitching with fury.

Then there was the tea towel. I’m quite partial to a commemorative tea towel. I prefer it to a mug, probably because it’s easier to store. When I first saw it, I thought it was a joke. It looks like a joke.

However, it’s not a joke. It’s available from the Conservative party shop for £12, where you can also buy a mug, fridge magnet or badge. I’m torn. I want a 50p and a tea towel and I hate myself for it.

As parodies go Michael Gove is always up there. Yesterday, he was on the TV complaining that after the 31st he will have to be better. He said, “In a post Brexit world there will be no hiding for politicians like me.” The sudden realisation that he wouldn’t be able to blame the EU for all governmental failings seemed to weigh heavy on him.

Finally, the Brexit party MEPs had their last session and I watched this clip on Twitter Tweet of video - Brexit Party’s last party unable to believe what I was seeing. Nigel Farage was so obnoxious they turned his microphone off. The other members of his party were having a jolly good party, waving flags and shouting hip hip hooray. Really, if you made this up then nobody would believe you.
Channel 4 showed a fly-on-the wall documentary about Nigel Farage that made him and Richard Tice   look like they were in an episode of The Thick Of It.

Whether leaving the EU is good or bad for our country remains to be seen and we won’t know that until at least the end of 2022, when all trade negotiations have to be completed and the EU give us the bill for the services that we have continued to use and we have to do without those services. However, I’m quite enjoying the pantomime of it even though I know I shouldn’t.

A very strange day

There are days where you wade through; like swimming through a super thick milkshake. It’s not unpleasant but it also doesn’t feel entirely normal. Today has been one of those days.

Although my sleep is much better I am still waking with a gasp and a start several times a night and I’ve started dreaming again. Last night, I had a recurring dream of going into charity shops. My parents’ belongings were in each one I went into (entirely possible) and the last two were set out as galleries of my Mum’s art. Each time I did a double take before someone told me how lucky they were to have been gifted a famous artist’s work. This dream would have made my mum laugh and in my dream I snorted with laughter too. The charity shop workers were very offended and told me how they’d sold a piece only an hour ago for £92.38.

“Ninety two pounds and thirty eight pence? Who pays that for a print of an old couple dancing?” the dream version of me asked before waking up with a gasp.

After that I decided to give up on the idea of any more sleep and the dog told me how much he hated me for waking him up at 5am to do some yoga. He often joins me for a quick extended dog pose (which he much prefers to downward facing dog) but this morning he just looked at me through squinted eyes and rushed upstairs to find a quiet place for a little more sleep. On my 77th consecutive day of yoga practice serenity is my middle name and I’m so blissed out I’m not sure what’s real anymore. 

It was always going to be an interesting day. Working in a school on an inspection day is tense. Even in a school that is confident, the staff will feel a pressure. All it takes is a windy day, a flake of snow or a child who decides that their best friend has lied and all of a sudden kids are running down corridors shouting, “Liars go to Hell.” 

Luckily, none of those things happened. Instead, everyone was happy, jolly and nice to each other. The stars aligned. The staffroom table heaved with cakes. And the phantom yarn bomber was out in full force.

It’s nice to find a knitted heart on your desk. It’s pretty cool to know that someone thinks I’m amazing. I’d like to thank that person. They made me smile, even though I think they’re probably wrong. 

I checked my e-mails. There was one from the British Heart Foundation telling me that they have sold some of my parents stuff and checking that they can still claim the gift aid. The value of the donation? £92.38. Spooky.

Then, I read this one.

As I said, it’s a very strange day. 

I’m worried about my flaps

I’m reading Nora Ephron. Specifically, her essays. How it’s taken me so long is incomprehensible. But now that I’m reading I want her to be my best friend. It doesn’t matter that she’s American or, more importantly, dead; I just know that we’d be besties. She had imaginary famous best friends, so I see no reason why she couldn’t be mine in death. Move over Dorothy Parker; you’ve been replaced.

Her essay, “I’m worried about my neck,” made me laugh out loud, with a snort, which is not ideal when old ladies are already tutting at you for walking and reading in public. She writes, “Every so often I read a book about age, and whoever’s writing it says it’s great to be old. It’s great to be wise and sage and mellow; it’s great to be at the point where you understand just what matters in life. I can’t stand people who say things like this. What can they be thinking? Don’t they have necks?”
Not only is that funny; it’s true. My neck is probably the least of my worries but there’s hardly a picture of me where I haven’t subconsciously hidden it with my hands. All photos since I was 43, which is the age Nora tells me necks go into irreparable decline, look like I’m desperately trying to hold my head on, which could also be true because I can cope with a sag under my chin but the fact I can’t remember any of the million passwords you need these days is something I find much more shameful.

So, I’m not really worried about my neck but I still want to be Nora when I grow up.
She writes about going out with her girlfriends, then immediately chastises herself for not celebrating their full womanhood and talks about how they are all wearing scarves, turtlenecks and mandarin collars. I went out with my girlfriends and noticed that we were all a bit crude and bonkers and more confident in our saggy necks than Nora’s pals. We, however, all compensate for a tendency to be a bit sad by wearing sparkles. It’s a rule of sparkle club.

Before I went out I was reading Nora on purses (or handbags to you and I) and agreed more on the bag issue, so decided to use the pockets I have now insisted all my clothes have. The problem is that you can’t fit a book into a pocket and so I felt a little more anxious and vulnerable than usual. I couldn’t read as I walked up and most unusually I was the first one there. It’s terrifying being Julia-no-mates without a book.

We had reserved a plastic igloo in the back garden of a local guesthouse. I know it sounds strange and if you are reading this in twenty years time you’ll probably wonder what on earth I’m  talking about but trust me, it’s a very fashionable way to dine. I was shown through, told I was the first and the lady unzipped the flap for me to go inside. The heat hit me and I panicked that this was not going to be a good place for women of a certain age to eat. I sat at the huge cotton reel, which served as a table and noticed that they still had Christmas decorations up. If only I’d brought my bag and then I’d have had my book. I told Nora that as imaginary friends go, she was already on thin ice.

It wasn’t long before the others arrived and we were laughing so hard that when, by the end of the evening, one of us complained that condensation had dripped from the inside of the plastic onto her chair, as an explanation for her wet bum, none of us were quite sure whether to believe her.

We talked about all the things women of our age discuss, like our children, holidays, work, feeling stressed, hot flushes, housework (why?), ironing tea towels (again, why?), terrariums, condensation and flaps. We discovered that the toilet was in guest bedroom number one and wondered if it would be acceptable to do a number two in number one.

We were quite taken with the igloo, that was saving any other diners from having to listen to our smut. It reminded us of a terrarium. We stuck our fingers in the little holes of the connecting plastic and laughed at the fat fingered who panicked about getting stuck. We wondered where you could get one and once we’d decided it probably wasn’t something you’d get from the centre aisle at Aldi or the middle of Lidl we checked online. £850 seemed reasonable, all we needed now was a pizza chef.

As the outside got cooler and we continued to fill the inside we hot air the condensation started. I’ve never been able to resist writing in condensation. We considered opening the window flaps. Flaps is a funny word. When my sister was little she used to write on the bathroom mirror after her bath. The next person to have a bath would be treated to ghostly writing appearing on the mirror.

“I promise I’ll be good if I can have a dog.”

I’d forgotten that until Nora laughed in my ear, “Sparkle flaps! What will the next people in here think?

You don’t need your dead imaginary friends to laugh at you. My real friends have that covered. The real friends that I have re-named Sparkle Flaps. We could be a band. 

The next morning we felt as though we had completed a sit-up challenge. 

One of the Flaps hadn’t been able to come out to play but she made up for it the next day at work. 

The class had just learnt an African song with some drumming. It was nice. Children in their first year of school can’t sneeze now without it being put on video for their parents to see and so she said, iPad in hand, “Is it alright if I do you from behind?”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” I said. 

“Why are you laughing?” the children asked.

“She’s funny.”

“But Miss is crying.”

A discussion about happy tears followed while we composed ourselves.

So, I’m not worried about my neck but I am concerned about my Flaps. Innuendo is probably a sin and we should know better.

We did have a wonderful time and we are very efficient. The next meal out was booked and in our diaries before we’d finished coffee.

“Ooh, look at us,” said a Flap, “It’s like a proper meeting, maybe someone should take notes.”

I don’t think they needed to worry. 

Blue Monday

Blue Monday is a load of rubbish talked about by people who know you’ve spent too much over Christmas but think they can make you spend more if they tell you that you are sad. Normally, I don’t feel any sadder on that day than any other but this year was different. I felt sad about big things I can’t control. 

I watched Question Time last week in horror, as a man, whose acting I like, acted in a way I didn’t like. You have probably seen the storm that has followed. Laurence Fox is now a horrible racist man who is milking this moment of notoriety, or speaker of truth for a group whose views have been suppressed for far too long now, depending who who you listen to.

It all started because someone in the audience wanted to know what the panel thought about Prince Harry stepping down to live in Canada. Laurence Fox, couldn’t care less but felt an opinion was required and seemed to get quite het up about it. A woman in the audience with darker skin tone said, “The treatment of Meghan has been awful. Let’s call it what it is. It’s racism...”

She might have gone on to explain why she thought that but Laurence Fox wasn’t going to let her. He was furious. He shouted and shut her down.

She countered with a very calm statement that he might not be able to understand because he is a white, wealthy, middle class man. He told her that she was being racist to him.  He properly threw his toys out of the pram and made himself look like an idiot. 

I don’t think the press treatment of Meghan has been fair. I think it’s because of her ‘otherness’. If you compare her coverage to Kate’s then she has had a raw deal but she isn’t just coloured; she’s also American, a feminist, an actress and beautiful in a way we are not used to. She has her own money and doesn’t need to be kept by him or the state. She’s also not going to be the next Queen, so is not as protected as Kate. If you compare the coverage of Diana and Fergie you would probably see the same thing and of course Fergie was ginger and married to a nonce. But, like Laurence Fox, I don’t understand the charge of racism, specifically. That’s not to say that there hasn’t been any but it’s not something I see, probably because I have never experienced any disadvantage because of the colour of my skin.

However, I am a woman and I see rampant misogyny around this whole issue. 

Why is his request to resign from a job he didn’t apply for seen as her fault? Why did Laurence Fox think it was alright to be so verbally aggressive to the woman in the Question Time audience? Adam ate the fucking Apple; why do we still blame Eve?

Yesterday, we experienced a very strange and subtle form of sexism that shocked both the Long Suffering Husband and myself. We have always kept our own accounts at separate banks and a joint account at my bank to pay bills. During an appointment to get some advice about my inheritance money we noticed that because his name was first on the joint bank account (convention) he became the person they were speaking to. The preferential credit card, the free travel insurance, the air miles were all in his name. (Honestly, the world is a truly awful place. I can afford travel insurance now) The investment advisor rang him to make the appointment. It has made us feel incredibly uncomfortable and aware that women still are not treated equally.

Perfectly Proportioned

Yesterday was a good day.

I went for a nice walk with my daughter, bought books and had an epiphany.

We walked to town and I’d forgotten my hat. Since I’ve been walking everywhere I’ve noticed how important a nice woolly bobble hat is in winter. It keeps the cold wind from rushing into your ears. When you have holes in your brain, the wind seems to wend it’s way in one ear, through the Swiss cheese maze and out the other side, leaving you with earache and brain freeze. Hats have always been difficult for me; they just look silly.

The hat I’ve been wearing for the last two winters is a white bobble hat that I’ve made look passable by rolling the hem (do hats have hems?) over twice. Unfortunately, I still look like Pootle from the Flumps in it.

Anyway, yesterday’s walk into town without my Pootle-hat was making me grumpy. My frozen brain was protesting.
“I’m going to see if I can buy a hat,” I told my daughter.
I tried a few on but they all looked terrible. One was so tall the bobble flopped over almost onto my face.
“What are you going to do?” my daughter asked, clearly worried that the choice between walking with a grumpy, brain frozen woman and one that looks a pure idiot wasn’t much of a solution.
I decided not to buy one and I could see her steeling herself for a tense walk home.
We went to the chemist and while she was looking at lipsticks I suddenly shouted,
“I’m going back to the shop. I’m going to look at children’s hats.”

She couldn’t believe that I’ve never thought about it before.
“You’ve always had a small head. It makes sense to get a children’s size.”

I tried several on. Age 5-8 was good but the colour and fit of the age 8-10 hat was perfect.

In the queue to buy the hat I was feeling a bit self-conscious about my child-sized head when I spotted my friend and her recently widowed mum. It was nice to see her out and about. The death of a husband; someone who has been the other half for more than 50 years is such a difficult thing. She had the look, that I remember seeing in my mum, where it’s a struggle to pull your focus away from your grief but you do it anyway because that’s the hopeful human thing to do.

I could easily have got away with it but I’m a blurter.
“Hello. Nice to see you. I’m just buying a teeny tiny hat for my teeny tiny head!”
My daughter told the story and I fiddled with the bobble.
“Hmm. I’m not sure what it says about your brain,” my friend joked.
My brain is often the butt of our jokes.
Her mother said, “It’s perfectly proportioned.”
We all laughed.
“Take it as a compliment,” my friend said.

I will. Who needs a big brain?

I bought the hat, asking for the label to be cut off, so I could wear it straight away.
“Mum! You could have pretended to be buying it for a child!”
The assistant shifted uncomfortably.
“That’s fine. I’m buying a teeny tiny hat for my perfectly proportioned brain,” I said proudly before putting it on and going to buy two fabulous new books.

Light at the end of the tunnel

I haven’t written for ages.

I went into Christmas completely overwhelmed, moved everything out of my parents’ house and started a new year feeling miserable. A sparkly friend sent a New Year message that said something about banishing any ideas of giving up and instead, doing what ever we want to do. My eyes leaked and I sighed.
“But what I want is to give up,” I complained to my daughter.
She thought that was sad but I think it was more of an acknowledgement of how I’d like to be able to stop trying so hard.

I had coffee with a friend who is having a tough time and we talked about going back to work after something that has profoundly changed you. It’s a difficult choice. Do you wait until you are completely ready? Do you go back and accept that you, maybe, won’t be as good? Although I had a couple of months off,  I chose the second option because I was in denial about how broken I was and because I had already accepted that I would never be the same again. Somehow, you have to get used to living with the new you.

This has been hard work for me. Actually, it’s been totally exhausting. I’m like the little anxious clownfish in Finding Nemo. ‘Just keep swimming.’ I swim, I walk, I do daily yoga, I think about stuff, I write about stuff. I panic if someone asks me to do something because I can’t refuse and I know I won’t do it well. I panic if I feel in the slightest bit trapped. I panic when I smell certain smells and I panic if the world is too loud.

So, I’ve gone back to work after the Christmas break,  where I’m trapped in my room by a life saving skills course in the hall (which is making me anxious because the pressure on small children to be responsible for keeping everyone alive feels too much), where people ask me to do things (funny that, when you are at work), in a building that has bizarrely developed a smell of death over the holidays (rats in air ducts, leaking pipes have all been blamed), with people who are generally over-excitable (teachers are just as bad as children). It hasn’t been the best combination.

I was hoping that selling the house would be the light at the end of the tunnel and I would be able to relax. Things are more complicated than that and it turns out that I am probably just going to have to keep working at it.

But.

There are lots of positive things and noticing them is what keeps us going.
When you see all the overly positive memes on social media they can feel irritating, especially when they seem to come from people who you suspect aren’t happy and positive all the time. Just as people who constantly whinge are irritating.

We need to recognise that we all have both. All the time. Looking for the positive things when you are low is a way of getting back into balance.

Here is a list of some of the lovely things in my life.
1. The Long Suffering Husband
2. Great kids and my sister happy
3. A dog, who is still refusing to sit in the same room as me but is always pleased to see my flute pupils and tells me about his day when I get in.
4. Birds
5. Yoga
6. Swimming
7. Books
8. Sparkly friends and looking forward to pizza (especially those who accuse you of being the light at the end of their tunnel)
9. Youth Orchestra and our 20th anniversary plans (very exciting and the best way to spend Friday evening with the best people)
10. Being able to use work as an excuse to run around Apple trees, drinking juice, toasting the trees, banging instruments and singing.
11. Saturday sausage bake from the Archers cookbook, cooked by the LSH
12. The Archers and corresponding tweet-a-long.
13. Made up rude words on Twitter
14. Memories
15. Writing. This blog has cheered me up I hope it has been balanced enough not to irritate you.

There is light at the end of the tunnel.

New but not new

I’ve always hated new year. It probably didn’t help that my grandad died on New Year’s Eve, suddenly from a heart attack in his late fifties and so my mum was always sad on that day but my dislike of the celebration started even before that. As a child I thought that New Year’s Eve was when everyone died. A huge celebrity cull happened in the night to make way for all the babies that would be born that year. All their deaths were announced on the radio the next day. My first memory of this thought is from before I was 4. I was sitting in our bungalow playing with my dolls house that Dad had made with independent working lights for each room, while my parents sat, with a cup of tea, probably nursing hangovers, listening to the radio.
“Oh, Enid Blyton!” Mum said, “That’s sad. No more Far Away Tree.”
It’s what made me listen. My bedtime story had been Moon-face, pixies, fairies and men covered in saucepans. I was quite upset that I’d not get to find out what happened. They explained that although Enid Blyton had died the books would always be there but she wouldn’t be able to write any new ones. Then, bizarrely, Dad launched into a comedy sketch about blood and an armful and everyone was laughing again. Somehow, the idea that New Year’s Eve was death day stuck.

No matter how old I get, I still don’t like New Year.

There’s something fake about it. It isn’t new. This year, it was a Wednesday. A Wednesday that followed a Tuesday and was followed by a Thursday. There were still mince pies for breakfast and left-over cheese for tea. All the worries, difficulties, problems and happiness were the same as they had been the day before. Then social media fills with fake positivity. We are all encouraged to find a ‘new you’, as if somehow the old one wasn’t good enough. We are going to have new habits. We will have a dry January. We’ll go vegan. Eight pints of water before breakfast? No problem. We will be kind; never have a wicked thought; turn the tap off between brushing our teeth; run a marathon; save the planet; adopt a dolphin; read 100 books; walk a thousand miles; start a daily yoga practice. And we will have more time and energy.

If I sound a little grumpy then I apologise. Don’t let me stop you being more, if you want to. I can’t knock any of those self improvement goals. That would be hypocritical because I have combined reading and walking to be able to fit these things in.

I think I’m grumpy because today is moving but not moving day. The sale of my parents house should go through today and my sister will move into her new home. I’m not going anywhere and nothing is changing for me. I’ve done more charity shop runs, sold more furniture and cleaned more cupboards than I thought possible but my life will be the same afterwards. It’s a weird feeling. It reminds me of New Year. New but not new.