Reading

I’ve only been to Reading twice and never stayed very long, so this blog isn’t about the town in the middle of the Oxford, Windsor, Winchester triangle.  It is a blog about reading and how difficult it can be to read.

Words are confusing. We have so many of them. I suspect that it isn’t possible for one human to know them all. Even Susie Dent has to look them up in her dictionary corner. I like to have a new word a day but sometimes I get stuck on one. A new word, or sometimes phrase will stay and roll around my head inventing new meanings for itself and sometimes new spellings until it turns itself into a dream.

An example of this is a word I learnt from double glazing salesmen. We currently have Georgian style windows with four panes in one that are made to look like sash windows and we want our new windows to look the same. Apparently this is tricky in plastic and requires the use of astragal bars and decorative horns. Clearly these are the devil’s windows. Astragal was a new word for me. I had to look it up. It is a moulding or wooden strip of semicircular cross section or a bar separating panes of glass in cabinet making.  My mind rebelled. “That’s boring!” it said, “Such a beautiful word for a boring thing.” Every time a salesman or the Long Suffering Husband mentioned the astragal bar I imagined a place where my Dad is probably hanging out. It pleased me to think that the afterlife could be a huge pub called The Astragal Bar. Last night I dreamed of it. Dad and Ken Dodd were sitting at table next to the bar arguing about whether 'We are the Diddymen' or 'Happiness' was Doddy's best song and whose turn it was to wear the decorative horns.

I like to think that I’m good at reading but it is so easy to get confused. Sometimes words don’t stay in the right order. Yesterday morning I read a headline as, “Theresa May Talks To Chair.” It puzzled me. I knew the Brexit negotiations were taking their toll but talking to a chair wasn’t going to help. I worried about her mental health all morning until I had time to go back and read the full article. Oh!
“Theresa May To Chair Talks.” All the right words, just the wrong order.

Then there is context. It’s not enough to read the words correctly, know what they mean and get them in the right order. You have to understand how they apply to you. Local councils are using up their budgets and repairing bits of road before the end of the financial year and so there are roadworks and temporary traffic lights everywhere. Yesterday, I was walking down a hill next to some roadworks. Two young mums with snotty nosed toddlers in pushchairs were waiting at the bottom of the hill. I was a bit surprised because I thought there was room on the pavement for all of us. I wondered if they were alright and so asked. They pointed to the sign.

The traffic lights turned green and they continued up the hill.

Oscar and the Feminists

This is the year things have started to change. There has been a power shift and women are taking control. No longer are they happy to stand silently while men dictate their every move. Harvey Weinstein will never work again and women will be able to go to the Oscars without the focus being on what they are wearing.

This year, I had seen a lot of the nominated films and liked them. I was impressed with the number of strong women in them. Stories centred around women and that was unusual. The Post, Shape of Water, Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, Lady Bird and I Tonya are all women’s stories.
“Oh no, what about the men?” I hear you cry.
Well, there was Dunkirk and The Darkest Hour and there were still more men in the films about women.

Credited Characters on IMdB

I’m sure feminist film scholars will apply the Bechdale test and find that women speak less than men in all the nominated films. I hope they include the signing that Eliza does in the Shape of Water but I know there will be eye rolling at the fact they made the main character mute. Obviously, art only reflects life and we shouldn’t worry about these things. After all, in life, those men, they never stop talking. Chatter, chatter, chatter. Poor men can hardly get a word in edgeways.

It is good that these changes are happening and we have to notice the discrepancy to be able to make changes. The ‘we’ I’m talking about is the whole of society, not just men or just women. Not just feminists, or just misogynists. Not just artists, or just scientists. However, you divide the world most people from each group have colluded with the idea that women are somehow less and their ideas should be heard less. We’ve colluded in the belief that men are sexually dominant and that romance is the same as a woman being overpowered by a man.

The problem with all these feminists making us aware is that it spoils everything. I’d enjoyed the Shape of Water until I realised that she wasn’t even allowed to tell her own story and thought that Three Billboards contained the most amazing acting until I felt uncomfortable that it was still a story about a rape and murder that some unnamed man got away with (and a rape that another named man might have got away with).

At the theatre, I enjoyed Young Frankenstein much less than I would have because the monster drags his bride into a cave to rape her until she enjoys it and instead of enjoying 42nd Street for all its sequins, tits, tap and teeth I was horrified by the Harvey Weinstein type boss who rubs himself inappropriately against and kisses the young star to get her to perform. Even watching a opera left me feeling a bit grubby.

As a teenager I laughed, with everyone else, at those feminists that tried to point out our stories were all wrong. Authors like Ann Sexton and Angela Carter, who rewrote the fairy tales from a feminist perspective were to be avoided. Nobody really wanted to be seen that way. It was unfeminine. I was cross with my friend for spoiling Pretty Woman for me. I had thought it was a film about love and romance but she saw a film about prostitution an the transfer of power over one woman to a single rich man.

To point out the problems in our stories makes us uncomfortable and people rebel against stories that take it too far the other way but we should be expecting subtle changes. We should expect to hear women talk more. We should be able to see an equal amount of male and female flesh. We should expect see less rape and have the men who take part in this crime not be glamourised.

Mum

Historically, today is the day when girls in service were allowed to attend their home church and visit their mother. Now it's the the day when mothers get cards, chocolate, flowers or gin,; are dragged out for breakfast, lunch or afternoon tea; have pictures put on Facebook.

Some women can feel very left out.  Those without children or living mothers or just those with rubbish children who write blogs rather than get round with a card (sorry Mum). 

This has been a very difficult year for my mum and she probably deserves a daughter who spoils her instead of one that writes blogs but sorry mum (again) this is what you've got.

When I close my eyes and think about mum there are images and memories that spring to mind.  Some of these memories come from pictures and others are probably made up but I'm going to share some because sometimes it is the tiny things that make a mum important.

Looking like Jackie O - 1970 Style Icon

The first set of memories come from before my sister was born. I remember sitting on my mum's lap, while she tried to cut my toe nails.  Magic Roundabout was on the TV and my Dad was about to take Tess, our black and white ball of furry energy for a walk.  I was terrified of having my nails cut. I would sit, rigid, crying, pulling my feet away.  I was also really ticklish and remember the pain of laughing and crying at once.  She could have given up.  She could have let me grow talons at the end of my feet.  She could have got cross with me.  But she didn't.  I remember times during the day, when the radio was on and I was playing with a glockenspiel or my dolls house with real working lights (having a electrical engineer for a dad was very useful) when mum was pottering around listening to The Archers or singing along to some opera.  These are defining moments.  What would my life be without The Archers and opera?

Then I remember, after we had moved how kind my mum was to other women that lived near us.  There was a woman whose husband left her who lived opposite, who mum would feel sorry for and say nice things about even when everyone else was saying that she'd brought it all on herself and needed to pull herself together.  I remember, in the long hot summer of '76 how she was the only one of the local mums who wasn't ironing in her bra.  Modesty, compassion and dignity are things I learnt from her. 

Without my mum there wouldn't be books. We went to the library every Saturday.  The smell of polished banisters, library cards that were little cardboard envelopes to hold the ticket in the front of the book and the Encyclopedia Britannica (this is how you dealt with a 'why' child before the internet) fill my nose as I remember.  She taught me how to get lost in a book.  We shared the stories.  We still do.  Later, in my teenage years, I remember standing with her in the new library looking at a display about Hiroshima and feeling her anger.  Sometimes it's not enough to be sad.  She taught me that. 

Mum is a talented artist.  She had wanted to study art since she was a child.  Her mum didn't understand that desire, thinking that artists were unsavoury women who wore black turtle necks and had long, red painted nails and so she was discouraged until she saw us at school and proved that it's never too late to be creative.  She joined art groups, did an A level and eventually a degree. I remember joining her at art groups and sitting in the countryside with her while she painted houses and kestrels.

When my children were born she became the best Nanny.  She was there to help when I needed it but stepped back to allow me to find my own way.  She took teasing in good grace and when my daughter responded to the question, "What's Nanny like?" by twirling her finger around her temple, she laughed along with everyone else, even though she knew my daughter was making a reference to her curly hair.  It's important to be able to laugh at yourself. 

Mum's make you who you are.  I'm glad I was made by mine.

The Weather

Someone I talk to on Twitter about The Archers and weather has just had a book published about walking in the rain. The signs were there from her tweets and people on Twitter won’t be surprised when I publish, “Twatter: 140 Characters of Smut and Innuendo” but I thought a walks in the rain book was such a lovely idea that I decided to take more notice of the weather on my walks.

We are in a period of freak weather. This is global warming folks.  Get used to it. Or rather, don’t get used to it because global warming means being unable to predict the weather by the seasons. The press have avoided mentioning it because it’s unpopular. They are more likely to give space to climate change deniers who claim to remember weather like this from their childhoods, as we all do but not in March. This cold snap has been caused by a sudden warming of the North Pole (to above freezing), which has pushed the cold air and snow towards us. Then a storm, which we are getting more of, has hit that cold and given us even more snow. Emily and the Beast from the East, the press are calling it, which is so much more poetic than any scientific data could manage.

By Sunday night train companies had started to cancel services, while outdoor types were in their garden taking pictures of daffodils, oblivious to what was to come.

The snow started on Monday. Just a little. A few flakes settling on the dog’s back. People had seen the weather forecast or the tabloid headlines and were either terrified or determined that it wasn’t going to beat them. Tesco sold out of white bread, baked beans and toilet roll. The evening musical event was cancelled so I rang all my pupils to reinstate their lessons. I collected my son from the station. He was wearing shorts and wondering what all the fuss was about. That evening it started to snow properly but by the morning most roads were clear and schools opened. Snow showers, throughout the day were localised and although driving on the hill my mum lives on was difficult, by the time we got to the hospital there were green fields. It was like April showers had decided to fall as snow.  We were told it was cold and that there was a minus fifteen wind chill but our bodies disagreed. Everyone I met on my walks said, “It’s not as cold as they said it would be.”

I had slept badly, worrying about what the weather might bring and how that would impact on my Mum’s cancer treatment, so at the end of my teaching I confessed that I was hoping for a snow day on Wednesday. I really felt I needed a day off to get myself together.

“I might do a snow dance,” I told a colleague.

It snowed overnight and the ground was full of beautiful, soft powdery snow that someone had laced with glitter. I misread a tweet as, “The glitterers have been out tonight,” and thought that explained everything. Who knew the council were so kind to put glitter in the snow to make everyone happy?

And people were happy. Schools closed and people got a ‘snow day’. Kids and parents walked the streets, tried to build snowmen or throw snowballs (they couldn’t - it was too powdery) and went for breakfast in cafes that they still expected to be open. My son, now too old for snow angels and snowmen helped me clear the drive before I took him back to the station. It turns out that trains are only scared of the thought of snow.  It was a beautiful day with clear blue sky and birds chattering in bushes.

The next day, the snow was still there and schools closed again. It kept snowing but the glitter had gone. The wind blew snow into your eyes as you walked. Birds stopped singing and when they appeared had puffed their feathers up so much that they looked like little owls. The snow was still powdery and dry but everything felt gloomier. The daffodils looked dead and withered. Snow was starting to drift. It floated across paths like a displaced sea creature. Walking was a solitary experience. The Long Suffering Husband suggested that the Zombie apocalypse had arrived.

Tractors with snow ploughs fixed to the front trundled the salt filled roads but as it started to snow again it wasn’t enough. Police blocked hill roads with blue flashing lights and barriers. It’s got colder, the wind stopped nipping and bared it’s full viscous teeth, taking bites out of cheeks and lips, leaving them cracked and raw. Everyone’s heating broke down and from the comfort of their own home they took to Twitter to moan that the gas engineers weren’t working hard enough. The wind brought hypocrisy. They did manage to get to my mum and most other vulnerable customers
despite the closed hill roads.

Schools closed for another day. Parents got cabin fever and decided that they hated their children. Roads next to fields were blocked by snow drifts and the river had started to freeze. Our huge, tidal estuary, served by two big rivers was freezing. There were icebergs in the middle and around the edge were steps of ice, where each tide at frozen at a different level. The swans looked at the dog hopefully. “Have you got any bread?” they asked him. He just pointed to the sign that said that bread was bad and shouldn’t be fed, although he did agree that it was a bread kind of day.
As I left the park a policeman asked me if I’d seen any problems in there. I told him about the ice and the swans and lack of people.

Stuff continued to fall from the sky but it was changing. There were small round pellets of snow, which got harder. Then icicles fell from the sky. Long, sharp, clear bits of ice.
“Is it hail, Mummy?” asked a boy, pulling his red plastic sled behind him like a kite in the wind.
Mummy wasn’t sure but reluctantly suggested going home for hot chocolate and another four hours of Thomas the Tank Engine. The dog made me promise to keep walking and not make him watch any programme about trains.  We walked to collect my mum's prescription.  The weather hadn't made the pharmacy any less grumpy or more efficient.
"I've found one item, do you want me to look for the other one?" the woman asked. I resisted sarcasm.

On the way home, the snow changed again and became tiny miniature rice grains.  It was softer, heavier and stickier and deadened the noise on the streets as it landed. By the evening walk the rice grains were bigger and started to settle on the roads.  Cars slid around, wide eyed drivers at the wheel. One tipped onto it's roof.  People started to leave their homes, desperate to collect some milk and cocoa powder.  It had warmed slightly. The birds weren't joining the humans and the swans had ventured onto the ice at the pond, only to get their feet stuck.  The snow continued as we ate our dinner and our bedtime walk had the magical quality of the snow we were used to.  This is the kind of snow that is we enough to play with and disappears the next day.  The children knew.  The zombie apocalypse was over and children had dragged their parents outside to make snow angels, trow snowballs and go sledging.  The birds peeped out of their bush hiding places and thought these children to be fools. The dog licked ears. "Angels taste nice," he said.

Over the weekend the great thaw started.  Swans waited patiently for their feet to be freed.  Seagulls swooped and squalled, herons fed on sleepy frozen fish from garden ponds and goldfinches risked flying in front of dog walkers in their excitement.  Roads collapsed and the rains started in biblical proportions. Chionophobics could leave the house and pluvophiles were happy.

The dog and I have walked 40 miles to get these few words, so maybe I'll stick to collecting rude words and innuendos from social media.

The Why Phase

”Are you going to tell her?” My daughter texted me last night when she noticed a funny Facebook post from my cousin, complaining about the constant talking from her toddler.
“It NEVER stops” I posted, which was certainly true for my daughter. Even now, when she comes home it takes me a while to re-adjust to the constant noise. My daughter, being self-aware, told my cousin that the Long Suffering Husband and I coped by blocking it out. My cousin asked for tips on how to do that and I said that it just happens.

My cousin may be lucky. She may not have produced a true talker; someone who will grow up to talk, or write (because writing is only talking on the page) for a living. It might just be the ‘why phase’.

When my daughter was two, we thought it was the ‘why phase’, which didn’t bother me. I am someone who has never quite grown out of this phase. (Why is the North Pole currently warmer than here? Is it the beginning of the end?) When my children were small I didn’t shy away from their questions and was always prepared to look things up. I had a notebook of things to check when I next went to the library. Isn’t it wonderful now that we all have an encyclopaedia in our pockets? I thought of the phase as a privilege. How often do you get to build a brain? Some questions were trickier than others. My son asked mathematical questions that I had to look up while my daughter’s tricky questions were more often to do with people and people are tricky.

Not every parent enjoys this time. My mum says that she used to wish she had a buggy that faced the other way. Some parents use a dummy or pretend to talk into their mobile phone when it’s all getting too much. The LSH’s preferred method was to tune out. Maybe he learnt how to do it with me because it’s a method he still uses. I can spot it when his replies fall into a regular pattern of, “Hmmm”s. The trick is to look like you are listening but not actually hear a single word that is said. I learnt quickly from him once it became clear, at about eight, that my daughter was a ‘true talker’ and didn’t actually need anyone to listen. Alright, I didn’t learn that quickly and I’m still not as skilled as he is. I remember now, that it didn’t just happen. I had to work at it.

The worst thing about the ‘why phase’ is when you are unprepared for it. This phase can make you feel stupid. You ask yourself, “How can I have reached the age of thirty and not no why the sky is blue?” You wonder whether it is best to make up an answer of resort to, “It just is,” or “Because I said so.”

Then there is the problem of time and place. Everyone is time poor, these days and so it must be even harder to meet a two year old’s brain programming phase. They follow you everywhere, asking questions that would be tricky, even if you weren’t on the toilet. I used to love reading the Mrs Large picture book, where the Mummy elephant tries to get a few minutes peace from her toddler in the bath. It was a warning to forget the whole idea. Questions can be embarrassing if they are said in front of people. My mum still cringes at the memory of me wanting to know about a large port-wine birthmark on the face of a man on a train. The temptation to stop them in these situations is huge but they are unstoppable, like a juggernaut with failing breaks about to plough into a line of stationary traffic. Sometimes, you are pleasantly surprised, as a friend of mine once was.
She was on holiday with her daughter in Cape Town. (That’s not relevant but I just wanted you to know that I once had friends who took exotic holidays). They were in the pool, after a long day of questions about elephant sex and why anyone would want a Tiger to come to tea when an extremely large lady got in.
My friend held her breath as she watched her daughter’s eyes widen to the size of saucers and trace the woman’s every step. As the woman got in and waves of swimming pool water splashed over the side, my friend struggled to recall any facts about the Archimedes principal that might deflect from the real question she thought her daughter might ask. Toddlers never ask, “Mummy, why is that lady so fat?” in a quiet voice.
“MUUUUUMMMMMMYYYYY!” her daughter yelled
She braved herself, pulling her shoulders up to her ears, as if that would be some kind of protection.
“WHY....”
“Oh no,” she thought, “this is unavoidable.”
“DOES THAT..”
She considered scooping up her daughter and running as fast as her flip flops would take her.
“LADY HAVE....”
She prayed for the first time in her life, “Please God, a hurricane, earthquake, tidal wave. Anything you’ve got right now would be helpful.”
“SUCH A....”
She was beginning to feel faint. Black spots were floating before her eyes.
“B...”
A small amount of vomit appeared in her throat.
“BEAUTIFUL SWIMMING COSTUME.”
There was a collective sigh as the whole pool breathed again. The lady beamed.

The best advice I could have given my cousin, though, was to enjoy every moment because the ‘why phase’ will be gone soon and she’ll miss it. Even if she has a ‘true talker’ and the chatter doesn’t stop until she leaves home she should make the most of it because soon the house is quiet and she’ll have to have Radio 4 on all day just to hear talking.

Something on your feet

Now the children have left home the Long Suffering Husband and I are going out again.  Before children, we loved to go to the cinema.  The LSH could have been a film critic (if he liked writing) and sometimes dreams of retiring to become a projectionist.  Lately, we've seen loads of films and actually have an opinion on which films should win Oscars.

I was bragging about my new life to a couple of colleagues in the staff room, telling them about Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri, which is an amazing study in character and should win all the acting Oscars.
"I'd like to see that one with Imelda Staunton," said one.
"She's an amazing actress," I agreed.
"Oh yes," said the other, "What's it called? I can't remember. Something. Something on your feet."
"Slippers?" I wondered.
"I was thinking dog shit," said my other colleague.
We laughed for a while until the title finally came to mind.
"Finding your feet!" I shouted.
I'd seen the trailer and it looked fun.  One of the clips showed Imelda Staunton and Celia Imrie swimming in Hampstead Heath ladies pond, so maybe the thing on their feet is a verruca.  The Guardian review called it a feelgood comedy with a starry cast but a creaky script.

 By Source (WP:NFCC#4), Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54490321

Today, we couldn't decide what to see.  We fancied Shape of Water but it was sold out. The LSH wasn't sure about I Tonia.
"We could see Finding your feet. It might be nice to see a nice, fluffy, feelgood movie after all this serious Oscar stuff we've been watching." I suggested.

This is a film, however, that should come with a health warning.

It is a good film, with a brilliant cast of older people.  It is a real treat to see older women on screen being real, and having true conversations that are not just about men. There are some very funny bits too, even if they are a bit predictable.  However, it is a film about death.

Death has been on my mind a lot recently.  I've been thinking about how we are all dying that it's the one thing that we can't avoid but it's also the thing that we least like thinking about. It might be that until someone you love dies you don't really think about your own mortality.  Others might be contemplating their own extinction and I'm only thinking about it now because I've had a grief filled year.  It might be like menopause: I've lost count of the the times I've heard a famous actress or journalist on the radio, who when they hit their late forties say, "The thing is, no one ever talks about menopause."

I'm not a someone who cries but this was a film I sobbed through at least two thirds of and had to sit at the back of the cinema long after the room had gone dark, trying to compose myself.  If you are recently bereaved, have been cheated on by a husband, have a relative with Alzheimer's, know anyone with stage 4 cancer, lost a partner in a car accident or had a partner die during sex then this film should be treated with caution.  It might turn out to be the most painful two hours of your life.

I must remember to tell my daughter, as she cried during Paddington.

Beware! The seats on Clacton Pier are dangerous.

Every other week I take my mum to lunch on Clacton Pier.

When you are regularly doing something that’s horrible and boring you invent euphemisms. We joke that Mum gets cocktails with her lunch, although the truth is that those cocktails make everything taste like cardboard so that she really doesn’t want her M&S Prawn sandwich. The man in the chair opposite answers his phone throughout the day saying loudly, “Yeah, yeah, I’m on Clacton Pier.”

If you’ve never been on a Chemo ward then you will have imagined all sorts of things. I thought there would be sick looking people hooked up to machines, vomiting all over the place. On Clacton Pier, however, hardly anyone looks very sick. They sit in blue chairs that have super-charged reclining facilities and knit (properly, unlike me, who apparently is doing it wrong), read, snooze, eat, do puzzles and barely talk to their companions, who get to sit in a comfortable but upright blue chair. There are two jetties with chairs along each side. Each set of chairs has a drip stand beside it; a chrome giraffe that hovers next to the patient and beeps an ascending triplet when the bag in its mouth should be empty. Most patients have a permanent line through which the drugs are administered but others sit with their hands in a bucket of hot water that is wheeled to them on a specially designed trolley. These are a trip hazard for patients’ glamorous assistants, when they navigate a path through buckets and the nurses’ trollies, to fetch hot drinks when the chemo makes their friend or relative’s throat close up. Some patients are only there for an hour but most for at least half a day or longer and often take some gloop home with them in a blue bag, especially designed by Gucci (I’m not sure I believe the nurse that told us that). The really toxic drugs are hung with a black bag of death around them to stop the sun cheering them up. People laugh and chat.

It is a place that is bursting with hope but I must warn you about the chairs.

Each  patient’s chair has a remote control that hangs from a strap to the side of the right hand arm rest. This is a very special zapper with four buttons: an up and down each for the feet and head. Each patient has their own preferred way of spending the time. Some change positions frequently depending upon the activity, others sit, stiff and bolt upright, as if relaxing isn’t in their DNA while others lounge like they are at home in their pants watching telly. It seems simple enough, doesn’t it?

Except that sometimes they have a life of their own.

Mum was pushing the button. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to go up or down.
“It’s not working!” she panicked.
The chair back was scraping down the wall. Blocked on its travels by solid concrete. Suddenly the force of the chair remote was too strong and with a crash the chair pushed away from the wall slightly and placed itself in a laying position. Mum continued to press the button. The chair putting her further into a supine position, continuing so that her head was pointing towards the floor.
“Help! I don’t know what it’s doing?” she said, fingers locked on the remote.
I noticed that the giraffe’s foot was under the chair.
“Hold on!” I shouted, hoping that she would stop pushing the button, while I pulled it free.
The chair, confused by the signals it was getting leaped into the middle of the room and unplugged itself, leaving her trapped in that undignified position.
“The button’s not working,” Mum laughed.
I plugged the chair back in.
“It’s still not working!” She was confused, scared and hysterically laughing all at the same time. My voice only let me do an impression of Muttley but tears were streaming down my face.
“You need to press the other button. You want to go up not down.” I mouthed and she righted herself.
A nurse walked past, looking concerned.
“Are you alright?”
Mum and I looked at each other, wondering how she hadn’t noticed that the chair was in the middle of the room
“We do have a laugh, don’t we?” Mum said.

That’s what life is about, isn’t it?