A bulge with questionable sauces

The annual battle of who has the biggest bulge took place this week and it was a truly bizarre experience.

I never really understand meetings. I don't understand the point of sitting round talking about the things you have done, probably to the people that did them with you or knew that you did them and weren't interested when you did them. I don't understand the people who enjoy spending their time in this way. 

One Christmas my Dad and my neighbour had a 'who can be Britain's biggest bore' competition. It is one of the defining moments of my childhood and I've always wondered who would win it, if there really were such a competition. 

Sometimes at these meetings you are treated to presentations by Gold Medalists.

  At this meeting we had three amazing talks about the Maldon Burgh (or lump, as I thought of it), the Bloomers, who could be an offshoot of the Flower Arranging and Gun Violence Club and the Tie Stroking Appreciation Society.

The Man of the year was Father Christmas, who did actually get a framed certificate, rather than the empty brown envelope that I was presented with two years ago because they 'didn't know what to get a woman.' Father Christmas was quite lovely, as you'd expect and blamed his wife, who he said, "arranged everything."

There is a long historical problem with women at meetings. Mary Beard spoke wonderfully about it.  http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n06/mary-beard/the-public-voice-of-women     It is therefore difficult for women to ever feel fully part of democratic processes. They could chose, like the Mayor's wife, to take the supportive role, flitting about with trays of sandwiches and cups of tea, beaming, while telling everyone that they are having, "a simply splendid time," but looking like unpaid caterers or like Mrs Christmas doing all the organising while her husband gets the recognition. Women who try to take part can be ignored and people get irritated with their speaking much sooner. I noticed that there was a lot more chair shuffling for the women in Bloomers than there was for the man with the lump that was derived from -(according to my Time Lord friend)- questionable sources 

Sexism and Misogyny still run our local town council. 

There are two women on the committee that (I was told privately by a councillor) no one likes but the rest are back patting, weird handshaking men, who love themselves and each other. In a conversation with one of these men he actually turned his back on me and directed his answer to one of the men I was with. These councillors were parading around the hall, dressed in suits and their special ties with  a fur and lace trimmed dress over the top. They were particularly proud of their ties, stoking them frequently, and the Mayor assured us that he was wearing his underneath his ruffle, which I managed not to inappropriately touch this year. 

The third talk was about the tie. It is blue to represent the sea, with white to represent the sky and has gold stripes on it to represent just how important these men think they are. The men will wear them so that people around the town know they are very important council members and the men will stroke their tie more than is appropriate in public.

"Isn't it wonderful?" they said,"Everyone will look smart and the whole council will be easily identified."

I looked at the two women and wondered where their ties were. The local paper informs me that the women are to get a broach. A BROACH! What era are we living in?

If I were made of stronger stuff I would join the council and insist on a tie, which I would wear tied around my head, Rambo style and I would talk. A lot. I would talk all the time, clearly, concisely, sussinctly. I wouldn't make tea for anyone and I'd get things done. The problem is I'm not made of that stuff. During the meeting I said nothing about the sexist ties, I didn't call out the man who turned his back on me and the last thing I want to do with my evenings is go to mutual back slapping parties.

Impress me

First impressions count.  People think you can tell a lot about people by what you notice on first seeing them.  This is something I've been thinking a lot about lately.

The online writing course I'm doing encourages us to sit in cafes and make notes about the people that we see. This has caused me to sit in cafes, drink tea, eat cake and think about writing. People watching has always been a hobby of mine and I like to wonder and imagine what their story is but instead of being inspired I have just started think about how wrong it is possible to be.  I've also been thinking about how long it can take for the truth about a person to reveal itself and how there can be things about people you think you know really well that suddenly surprise you.  I'm not talking about the skeletons in the closet that someone has carefully hidden or the things they have hidden in plain sight, like Jimmy Saville and his paedophillia. I'm talking about the boring things things like, "How could I have not known that you hate cheese, I've known you forever," or "You hate cats?  Really? You always 'like' everyone's cat pictures on Facebook."

Then, while I was thinking about first impressions a man appeared on the TV in tears.  He had been judged on what he was wearing and the world was horrified.  "Those bloody feminists, making a man cry, not appreciating the work he's actually done and judging him by his clothes."  This makes me smile.  The irony of it.  Feminists are being blamed for doing something to a man that everyone does to women all the time.  Just look at the comments about any reality TV programme and you will see that they are about what the woman in wearing and what the man says. I do feel quite sorry for the man, who doesn't strike me as the least bit mysoginistic but just has a terrible taste in shirts.  It also makes me really sad that a woman would think that she wouldn't be welcomed to work with this man because he likes brightly coloured shirts with cartoon women on.  If you were clever enough to work in this area of science, you are surely clever enough to tell him that you hate his shirt? I'm not saying that I approve of the way women are 'cartoonised' to have enormous boobs and tiny waists but I don't approve of David Beckham being paraded around in his pants for women to drool over either.

Dr Matt Taylor doing a press conference in shorts and the offending shirt (Picture from the Independent)

Then I noticed a story about a Newsreader, Karl Stefanovic in Australia, who had worn the same blue suit for a year and not one person had commented.  He started doing it in support of his co-presenter who would get terrible comments on her outfits on a daily basis and could never wear the same thing twice.  However, on the video clip he begins to wonder if it is actually sexism because he had noticed that the comments his co-host received were from women, not men, who are clearly thinking about things other than the clothes. Maybe, these are the same 'feminists' who didn't like the scientist's shirt.

Karl Stefanovic and his co-presenter who can't stand the smell anymore

So, in my cake eating sessions, I have been looking at people's clothes and wondering what they are telling me about the person.  It's not something I'm very good at because I'm always more interested in what people say and do than what they wear but I realise that other people do focus more on the outer packaging.   Is it wrong to assume that the woman in the top with the horrizontal blue lines owns a boat? or that the 50 year old woman wearing socks with her pumps, a gilet with straw in the pocket and an alice band in her hair is in an unhappy marriage and loves her horse more?  A friend joked recently that she was worried that the man she had seen at the hospital hadn't been a proper neurologist because he wasn't wearing a bow tie, so maybe clothes are a more important part of the story that I thought.

And now, I am not only unable to write but desperately anxious about what my appearance is telling people.  I don't make much effort and wear a lot of black and I don't think I even brushed my hair this morning.  I am concerned that I might look like a bit of a lush, who is too hungover to take any care over her appearance.  I worry about this because, despite being a boring non-drinker who likes to stay at home and not really talk to anyone when I'm not working, the children at school think I'm a bit of a party animal.  I know this because they were challenged to design a house for me (it was a shapes and perimiter maths challenge) and they gave me a bar in the garden so that I could 'entertain all my friends'.  I'm also a little worried that my dress sense makes me look less than normal because on Friday the Foundation Stage class were a bit distracted by the rain and one child said that it felt as though they shouldn't be at school.  I agreed with him and said that I thought it was the kind of day when you should be tucked under a duvet in your pyjamas watching a film.  Another child looked at me, wide-eyed in disbelief and said, "Do you actually have a telly?......Really?"

Inspiring a Generation

The official slogan of the Olympics had me worried for quite a while.  Inspire a Generation.  Inspire them to do what?  Sit on the sofa and shout at the TV? Complain about how the British aren't as good as the Jamaicans, "Is it because they're black?" (was actually discussed on the BBC last night)  Run down our schools and teachers? Complain about the price of a Coke in the Olympic park?

Then team GB turned out to be really quite good.  We won medals.  I believe we are 3rd in the Medals Table, despite being a country with 1,281,498,000 less people than China and 248,950,197 people than the USA to draw our winning athletes from.  And they are beginning to inspire a generation, although I think the re-appearance of the sun is also helping.

Yesterday, we went to Hyde Park to watch the women's Marathon Swim.  Four laps of the freezing cold Serpentine, that's about 6 miles or about 400 lengths or my local swimming pool.  They finished it in just under 2 hours.  Based on my usual swimming rate (not that I've ever swum more than 70 lengths in one go) that would have taken me nearly 7 hours.  I thought it was really exciting, although I was disappointed not to see anyone swimming breaststroke with their sticking above the surface so that their contact lenses don't wash out.  There was some confusion about who was winning as the Hungary flag and Italian flag look very similar if you are not sure which way is up.

The top 5 swimmers, were miles ahead of everyone else and they included a British Woman, Kerrie-Anne Payne who delighted everyone on the banks of the Serpentine by coming 4th.  I'm sure she'd have loved to get a medal but we were happy with such a strong placing.

Hyde Park was then filled with a generation or three who were inspired.  As we walked around the park we saw children practising long jumps in the sand bridleway, blissfully unaware that there was horse poo in there somewhere.  There were toddlers swimming in the the ponds and fountains.  We saw little boys wrestling, being refereed and coached by their dad.  People all over the park were discussing whether they would or even could swim the course they had just seen, even my son who is convinced that if we keep practising we could get to 400 lengths in one go quite soon.

We were home in time to see Bolt stroll to victory and two GB women get gold medals in sports I find very difficult to watch.  I have a personal aversion to watching people get hurt.  I can't quite see the sport in trying to kick someone in the head.  I said to my daughter, "GB have another 2 gold medals, there's some scary women out there."  Having brought her up as a proper feminist she immediately said, "Why is it scary because they're women?"  Confusion hit me for a while and then I realised how it might have sounded.  "No, they're scary because they're good - they win gold medals and the British men haven't managed to do that yet."

First it was Nicola Adams, who was then interviewed by Gary Lineker, in patronising tones.  He spoke to her like he was trying to encourage a schoolgirl who told him she liked to eat newts. He told her that she had a "beautiful smile" and virtually patted her on the head.  There was an unspoken, "strange choice of sport for a girl, you'll never find a husband if you don't give up this silly idea that you can hit people.  You'll frighten them all away but never mind you have a nice smile."  The Long Suffering Husband thought he was patronising, I thought he is patronising to everyone and my daughter thought anyone would patronise her because she spoke like a little girl.  But, whilst Gary Lineker does patronise everyone he wouldn't say that to a man, no matter how young he seemed.

Then it was Jade Jones, the Welsh Taekwondo gold medal winner.  She was really bouncy and very good at kicking people in the head, a skill she couldn't learn in Wales and so had to be driven to Manchester by her Grandad.  An article in the Independent about yesterday's Women's Marathon mentioned how Kerrie-Anne Payne had been driven to early morning training by Steve Parry.  Would an article about a male athlete describe how they got to training?  It is assumed that they are men and men can drive themselves but these poor little girls...well, they need someone to take them.  What about all the mothers who take their sons and daughters to training, do they get mentioned in articles?
Then after Jade won the medal, she called her coach over, saying that he was a true inspiration and she couldn't have done it without him.  I wish she had been able to.  What a sexist pig.  He was praising her strength and determination in training and he said something like, "She's brilliant, she trains so hard, she's just like a male athlete"  Whoosh.  It was like tumbleweed blew through our living room, we stood, slack-jawed incredulous and then the coach added, "There's still more she can do," and the Long Suffering Husband sarcastically said, "Yeah, like grow a penis!"  I know that the men who live in this house have to be feminists to survive but it was brilliant to hear.

This morning there was a picture being shared on Facebook.  It showed two men holding the Irish flag with these words written on them, "Katie Taylor, Olympic Champion, The only woman Irish men fear more than their Mammy"  This is funny but is it also just a little bit sexist?  Would the same be said of a male boxer?

This year's Olympics has featured women's boxing for the first time, had a woman competitor from Iran and seen the GB women's football team playing matches of staggeringly better quality than the men.  This should be something to celebrate. If it important to discuss Jessica Ennis' stomach then the newspapers should be running pages about the nicely toned asses of the male gymnasts (I'd buy it!) If  If we inspire a generation to do anything it should be to celebrate everyone's success equally.