Give me a sign

I lost my voice again last Sunday. I know. It's boring me too, so I decided to go to the doctor. 

I saw a GP very much like Doc Martin. 
"What can I do for you?" she asked
"I'm not sure," I croaked.
"Oh dear. You need to stop talking!" she barked, "What do you do for a living?"
I started to tell her and she quickly interrupted shushing me and saying that was no good.
"I'll sign you off for a week. No talking until Monday and steam for 10 minutes every hour."
I tried to tell her that it happens every seven weeks or so but she put her finger to her lips and said, "No talking."

I had no one to dep for me at the Youth Orchestra so I had a notebook and made myself a sign.

It worked reasonably well but conflict resolution with eight year olds and a notebook is tricky.  Sign language would only work if the people you are talking to know how to sign.  The LSH does know the few swear words I have learnt.

It is also completely exhausting to have no voice.  You are playing a constant game of charades, which although sounds fun, very much depends on who you are playing with.  

The Long Suffering Husband finds it very difficult when I lose my voice: He is used to being able to have shouted conversations from different rooms in the house, can't see well enough without his specs (and he can never find his specs) to read my notebook, doesn't have the patience to wait for my phone to speak each word that I type and he is terrible at charades. Really terrible.  I have very many fond Christmas memories of him being the worst charade player on the planet.  Let's hope he never loses his voice because if he is bad at guessing that's nothing compared to his ability to give clues.  One year we were all laughing at him, waving his arms in a circular motion, which we all took to mean, "just keep guessing until you get it." When it was his next go he pulled the card from the hat and looked defeated. "I don't even know how to begin," he said. We were encouraging but resigned to the fact that we would be there for some time.  He started by cupping his breasts. "Ship shape and Bristol fashion!" my dad shouted.  We never found out whether he cheated or was inspired. The LSH was so shocked that he couldn't speak for a while and stood continuing to gesticulate until we told him to stop.

Both my children came home for the weekend, which was handy, as they are much better at charades. 

It was irritating not being able to talk. I like talking and after four days you start to lose a sense of yourself.  I found myself checking in the mirror to make sure I was still there. By late on Sunday night, when both children had gone home and the dog was sulking I was feeling quite miserable and not like my usual cheery self.  

"The problem is not being able to talk really messes with your mind and my mind is the last bit of me that needs to be messed with," I told the LSH (I might have substituted messes for a ruder word that begins with F)

The LSH perked up and offered his services if I needed him to mess with anything; just give him the nod, tip the wink and he'd be there. Bob's your uncle.  Fanny's your.....well, you get the idea.

On Monday, able to talk again, I was driving my mum to her chemotherapy appointment and a programme came on the radio interviewing a man who had lost his voice and whose wife had cancer.  It doesn't make great radio; an interview of someone you can't hear but it is odd how everything seems to be about what's on your mind.  My mum has decided that the whole world must have cancer because everything she sees or listens to mentions it.  If you are someone of a slightly hippy nature and prone to a long flowing skirt and dangling earrings then you will be familiar with the idea of the universe sending you a sign.  A Taoist friend once told me that if you hear the same thing three times then the universe is trying to tell you something and you should listen.  

Today, in an attempt to get my head together I took a long walk (missing out a couple of hours of steaming) remaining open to any signs that might come my way. Hippy-types get very excited by feathers.  Finding feathers is meant to be a sign that angels are near.  As I walked along a footpath I noticed that someone had collected feathers and placed them in the cracks of the posts of the fence.  It was a stunning sight.  There were grey, white, black and brown feathers and then I found a green feather.

If feathers are signs of angels, shouldn't they be white? Who has heard of a green winged angel? Maybe I don't have angels but sick parrots stalking me.  I kept holding the feather until I reached the last post, when it felt right to add it to the display that was there already.  

I kept walking, thinking about signs.

Who put that sign there and why? The only way to reach this path is up or down a very muddy and slippery slope.  It must be a message. Life is a slippery surface.

Closer to home.

This sign made me laugh.  I imagined dog owners squatting on this person's garden. I thought about them sitting in their kitchen, watching owners join their dogs in a spot of outdoor defecation.  As I dog owner I get the message and will try not to foul.

Finally, one last sign.

CYCLISTS PLEASE USE YOUR BELL!  Some of us are hard of hearing and the rest don't hear you coming!

Who writes these signs? What is the message? Should I be using a bell or am I the one not hearing things coming.

I think that's quite enough signing for now.

Small Things

When you are having an "annus horribilis", as the Queen would say, it's the small things that tell you how bad it is.

Even if you are just having a, "2017 is a shit year," as my friends would say there are still loads of small things that go wrong.  You would imagine that these small things could break you but you are wrong.  In a good year, they can do that.  Log onto Facebook and you will see loads of people moaning about stuff. Fridges have broken, washing machines have leaked, the dog has been sick on the carpet, the GP receptionist was rude when someone tried to get an appointment for a cold. Friends console with the well known fact that these things only come in threes.  Enemies point out that as these things come in threes they have two more to come. Those people think that one more thing will cause a mental breakdown.

It is true that this year is proving to be a bit of a bad one for me and I'm certain that things don't just come in threes.  Big things or small things.  Yesterday, these small things went wrong.

1. I lost my voice (again)
2.The heating broke on the first cold day.
3. The steering lock on my car got stuck and I had to walk back from the supermarket (without a coat)
4. When I tried to ring the Long Suffering Husband to tell him what had happened he thought I was crying (stupid voice) and he rushed home from work.
5. The gas man said that we need a new boiler.
6. The dog stole my KitKat and ate it wrapper and all
7. I banged my head on a tree.
8.  The dog, on a sugar high, got stuck on the garden table and then threw himself at me, when I came to see what was wrong, hurting his gammy shoulder.
9.  A pupil's flute fell apart.
10. My voice completely disappeared and I didn't even sound like I was crying.

None of these bothered me.  That's how you know things are bad. The little things don't break you. Weirdly, they put a spring in your step and make you feel normal.

You also notice the small nice things.  You notice the friends that check on you. You notice the people that appreciate the effort you go to.  You notice the sun and the birds and the things that are working well.

Power

Sometime you read a book and it changes you. Sometimes you read a book and it seems to have changed society. Naomi Alderman's Power is one of those books. When I read it I wanted others to read it. I wanted men to read it but I was afraid. Scared that by liking it I had marked myself out as one of those ball-breaking feminists that wanted to harm all men.

The premise of the book is 'what if women had the power and used it to dominate men?' I love a what-if book.

Everything in the book reversed and there were things that I read that these powerful women were doing to men that I recognised, that seemed so familiar to my own life and I wanted a man to read it and tell me if they recognised it too. Unfortunately the Long Suffering Husband isn't much of a reader.

Then the Harvey Weinstein thing happened and people started talking about how he had used his power to sexually intimidate women.  Then people talked about how this was a thing in the creative industries and I thought, "It's a thing in all industries." The #metoo hashtag appeared on Twitter and it became clear that most women had felt threatened and intimidated by a man in power and that intimidation was usually sexual. People started to think that is not alright for this to be happening to half the population.  MPs got involved and started to talk about what women have suffered in that industry. It became clear that men didn't recognise the power they held.  They didn't understand that they had used it to intimidate or had defended those who did.

These real life examples have sparked a debate, which is always a good thing.  I've seen people suggesting to men that if it's not something they would say to the Rock (I confess, I'm not sure who the Rock is) then they shouldn't say it to women.

A very funny thread appeared on Twitter this morning changing all the excuses that men make for raping women to women stabbing men, like, "I'm sorry for all the times I stabbed women in the workplace, just a little.  I've had counselling. They were different times.  I've stopped stabbing women now."  I thought it was funny, anyway.  The LSH was less impressed. 
"Are you really saying it's always men?" he asked, offended.
I was confused and wondered what that had to do with anything.
"It's wrong to stab people," I said, "whether a man or a woman does it. It's just wrong."
"I mean the sex thing," he clarified.  He was cross at my wilful misunderstanding.  "Can you honestly say that women never sexually abuse men?"
Again, I was confused because that's not really the point, is it?
"They do, of course, and it's wrong I wouldn't defend them or make excuses for them. I'm surprised that you are willing to do that for men."
He conceded, reluctantly.

In my mind, though, this is a question of misuse of power.  It feels like women are constantly suffering this problem because we are the 'weaker sex'. However, children suffer as do the poor and the young of all sexes in the workplace.  We accept that those who are powerful have the right, nay duty, to intimidate and belittle those below them.  We think it's funny for apprentices to be sent out for a long wait or a can of stripped paint.  Female apprentices can be further intimidated by the use of a sexual suggestion because all women are scared of rape; we have been conditioned to be.  The MP's assistant who was sent out to buy sex toys is an example of the apprentice joke, with an added sexual element.  There is no point to these things, except to make the powerful person feel more powerful and  the other person feel weak and stupid.

When I went for an interview, once, the man locked the door to the office.  I noticed and was on edge.  During the interview he said, "Please put all your clothes in that chair," pointing to a chair in the corner.  Luckily, I was not this man's inferior in any way so I sat in the other chair and told him that I thought that was a terrible stunt to pull on a woman in any interview.  He told me that it was a good way of assessing logical thinking and praised me for my intelligence and quick thinking.  I wish I hadn't laughed.  I wish I hadn't felt superior. I wish I'd told him that he needed to reassess his logical thinking.  I wish I'd thought about the women coming into an interview with him after me. I wish I'd reported him. The fact that I didn't do these things does not make me responsible. I asked every man in the office and none of them had been asked that question but many had been belittled by him and made to feel stupid in other ways. The difference is that they hadn't felt quite as scared.

It's time to stop thinking that the powerful abusing the weak for their own amusement is a good thing. It's time for women to stop feeling scared that it is inevitable that a man will use his power sexually if he has a chance and the way for that to happen is for the majority of men to stop defending the bad behaviour.

I think this can happen now.  Thanks to a book. The Power has shown that it could be the other way round and men wouldn't like it. I love how powerful books can be.

Jeff

Yesterday the sky turned yellow and the sun went red and people rang The Sun newspaper to find out what was going on.  They reasoned that if anyone would know about the sun it would be The Sun. The birds freaked out; stopped singing or flying and sat in huddles wishing they had a Sun newspaper to call. I got a headache, the dog farted even more than usual and children acted more weird than normal.

The Sun really did have the best pictures, though

Their reply to any question I asked them was 'Jeff.'

"Do you like this piece of music?"
"Jeff."

"Have you practised?"
"Jeff."

"Can you play the G major scale?"
"Jeff can."

I knew there was something going on with the name Jeff, as last week we had done a composing task, turning a short phrase into morse code and then musical notation.  There were quite a lot of secret messages about Jeff.

"What is it about Jeff?" I asked.
"Don't you know?" they replied, "Jeff is just Jeff."
"OK.  I do know that," I said.
"But why are you all talking about him?"
"Jeff is awesome," they told me.
"Awesome?" I questioned. "He's alright but awesome is pushing it."
"Do you know Jeff?" they asked.
I had to confess that I'd known him for over thirty years.
"Is he the Jeff of all Jeffs?" they asked.
I wasn't sure.
"How can I find out if he's the Jeff of all Jeffs?"
"Ask Siri."
Siri thought she'd look it up on the web.
"That means she doesn't know," I told them, demonstrating my supreme knowledge of technology.
They shrugged.
"Who will be able to tell me about Jeff?"
"Oh, anyone."
"Really?  Anyone?  I'm someone and I don't know if the Jeff I know is the Jeff of all Jeffs and why you are talking about him."
"Well, anyone between the ages of eight and about twenty.  You are older than twenty, right?"
"Only just," I confessed, thinking that I couldn't even ask my children because they are over the hill too.

I continued to ask pupils about Jeff.  Some didn't know about him.  Then I asked someone who went to a different school.

"Oh, not any more," she said.  "Jeff is so last year.  It's all about Bob now."

Phew.  I don't know a Bob.

An apple a day

An apple a day keeps the doctor away - who knew that doctors were so scared of apples?

This curious little phrase started life as a Pembrokeshire proverb. I like Pembrokeshire and apples and dislike doctors, so I take this phrase at it's word and eat an apple every day and usually keep one on my desk to ward off unwanted visits.

When we were growing up we had two big apple trees at the bottom of the garden and every September the 3rd, on his birthday my dad would get stung by a wasp that was slightly drunk on our ripening apples.  None of the rest of us were but we didn't used to try to hit them, preferring to get on with our game of Horse of the year show, using every broom, mop and chair we could find in the house, or tying worms in knots to see if they could untangle themselves before being dropped in the oil tank.  You can't say that children didn't know how to have fun in the seventies.
My Dad's tendency to get stung always made me question the phrase, though. I did wonder if you'd be better off buying apples to eat or place strategically around windows and doors to keep doctors out rather than growing your own.

When they moved my mum and dad missed their apple trees and so my mum planted a couple.  One variety with the same name as my daughter.  That year, the apple tree didn't work very well at keeping the doctor away.  At one of the first orchestra end of year parties a small boy (who isn't so small now) ran into the tree and we had to call an ambulance. 

This has been an exceptionally good year for apples and mum hasn't been able to eat them all.  In a genius plan she puts some in a tub at the front of the house everyday and watches to see what happens to them.  People love them.  Small children stride up the hill munching on an apple, while their parents complain that they have apples rotting in the fruit bowl at home.  Old men, look surreptitiously around before filling their pockets. People say how much they remind them of their childhood. Men say that their wives have told them off when they bring them home because they say they are scrounging. 

The other day a man came along and took the whole lot, except 4 small wormy ones.
"If I could write I'd have a story," my mum said, although I'm not sure what the story would be.
The Long Suffering Husband suggested that the man was an alcoholic with a cider press. I thought he might have a horse, although he'd probably have taken the small apples too. 

All I do know is that he probably wasn't a doctor, as we know that they are scared of apples.

Coming Out Day

Today is the day we all have to come out. "Gay, bi, supportive or whatever, it's time to speak out," celebs are telling us. Some people would prefer privacy but I'm not sure that's an option.

In the spirit of the day I thought I'd come out. I'd like to be supportive but the truth is that I can't grow anything that needs support: peas, beans, climbing roses; they all fail under the influence of my green fingers. So, I am coming out as 'whatever', more specifically a basket. Soup in a basket: that great Seventies pub dish that is not fit for purpose.

Thankfully, there is the Long Suffering Husband.  He could grow sweet peas. His support is the best.
"I don't want a birthday this year!" I announced grumpily, so he bought me 4 Bounty bars and wrapped them beautifully.
"I can't sort my head out," I complained, so he brought home notebooks for me to fill with elephants and pens that will never let you down.

He's a keeper.

Lay the Blame

It has been a while since I've felt about writing about anything that has been in the news. I've been dealing with an elephant. ( Old joke: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time but it still makes you sick.) However, Harvey Weinstein is in the news and I have something to say.

The only person to blame is Harvey Weinstein.

I could stop there because that is all there is to say but it is important that while we look for ways of stopping these things happening again we do not blame anyone other than the perpetrator. 

Society is changing (thankfully) and it is less acceptable for old men to use their power to sexually intimidate, younger, less powerful women. That is good. Women will start to stand up for themselves because they know it is wrong but if they don't then it's not their fault. They didn't make him behave like that in the first place. 

It is stupid to say that, 'everyone knew' and so it is everyone's fault. What exactly is it that everyone knew? Because knowing that someone is a dirty old man does not make you responsible for them, especially in a society where speaking up about your suspicions (because without evidence they are only suspicions) can cause you harm. 

There are people on social media today being very cross with Judi Dench and Meryl Streep, although less so with George Cloony, who seems to have said the same thing, which is roughly, "Shit, I didn't know he was that bad."  They knew that he was a difficult and powerful man. They knew he made sexual jokes. They knew he had relationships with younger women. They didn't know women had made allegations against him and were paid off. They didn't know any details of what he did.

Some people are trying to make this into a party political thing. It is cross party. It affects everyone in all areas of society. Some powerful men use sex as a weapon and they should stop.

In some areas of the media there is incredulity that he could be both brilliant and a sexual predator. We need to remember that people are complex. We all do bad things but as a society there are some bad things that we won't tolerate and thankfully this predatory behaviour is becoming one of those things.

I was listening to something on the radio about Cyril Smith, yesterday and how there was enough evidence to prosecute him for the molestation of the boys.  It is inconceivable to think that today someone doing what people knew he was doing would not only get away with it but get a knighthood, signed off by the Prime Minister after she had read the police report and that is a good thing but that hasn't happened because we blamed the people who refused to believe he could be both a good man politically and a monster when it came to what he liked to do to boys. It has happened because we believe that men can do those things.  It has happened because we believe small boys when they tell us a powerful man made them touch their willy.  It happened because we, as a society, have grown up and are prepared to blame Cyril Smith for doing awful things.

Some of social media want to blame men. All men.  All men are terrible and capable of these things, they say.  The rest wants to blame women.  All women.  All women are temptresses and have brought it on themselves or are to blame for not calling out predatory behaviour before.  A female fashion designer has blamed women for wearing provocative clothes, for which she must blame herself, based on the clothes she designs.

These people are not to blame and blaming them allows the real crimes to be watered down.  This is not acceptable.  It was wrong.  He's been sacked.  Hopefully, if he does it again there will be enough evidence to prosecute him and other men who feel tempted to do the same will know it is wrong.