Pooters

My headteacher once publicly described me as 'old technology'. It was at the end of a young male teacher's class assembly and he had used power points, movie maker and every other whizzy bit of technology he could find and none of it crashed. I had played the piano, badly. I was a little offended. I know that because it was a quick comment made over three years ago and I haven't  let it go. The reason for my angst about the remark was that for a grumpy old woman I don't think I'm bad with technology - just unlucky.

I do struggle with idea of computers (or pooters, as most of the kids at school call them). It's hard to believe how much they can do, how much they can't do, how slow they can be and what they can know about you. I remember the excitement we felt in my final year of primary school when we were first introduced to Oswald, our very first class computer. Oswald was the shape of a large dinosaur egg and could tell you if you'd calculated simple one digit adding sums correctly. We would have never have thought that 35 years later we would be keeping a small computer in our pocket that not only made phone calls but acted as a dictionary, encyclopaedia, calculator, entertainer and Personal assistant. My phone tells me everything from when to change my contact lenses to when to worm the dog. Without it I wouldn't know how to live.

I'm not a technophobe. I have embraced social media and  can use everything Microsoft Office can throw at me but I am unlucky. If it was my assembly it would have crashed or frozen or had pink stripy lines running across the screen. I can do everything that you need to do to fix a problem but it won't work. Sometimes someone else will do exactly what I have done and it will be miraculously fixed or no one will be able to work out a solution, as happened when my Frozen Karaoke App suddenly started projecting on its side for no reason. 

Recently, our broadband has been intermittently rubbish. The Long Suffering Husband rang BT and complained. They asked us to do speed tests. Whenever I ran a test we got 0.3-2 mb and the LSH got anything up to 58mb. Whenever BT were on the phone we got 58mb without fail. Talking to people in India who are pretending to be sitting in an office just outside Cambridge always irritates me and the LSH won't let me talk to them just in case I say, "John? Really, that's a very strange accent for a John?" Or, "Sebastian? Thank you so much for your help, Shimoran." I agree with him, it does make me sound like a casual racist but it's the lies I can't take or the belief that the UK public are quite that stupid. It makes me suspect that nothing they tell me can be true. 

The most shocking thing about these conversations, though, was just how much information they have about you. They could tell us all the devices attached to our broadband and not just the type (eg mobile phone) but the make as well (Apple iphone5). The LSH became worried about our household insurance but I reminded him that India was probably too far away for a spot of targeted burglary.

The problem still hasn't been resolved. They don't think we have a problem and so they are quite happy. I need to write with all the dates and times of the tests on but I had logged the details on my laptop, which is three weeks out of warranty, which means the hard drive has failed and it has lost my whole life.  The man in the computer shop said, "That is unlucky."

Bloody Pooters!

Rape

A young woman was raped yesterday. It was a terrible crime and our whole town is shocked.

The local newspaper picked up the story quickly and reported the facts and social media responded by sharing and retweeting the story. As the day wore on I found myself getting a bit irritated; an irrational response, surely? People wanted to help; they suddenly stopped feeling safe in our super-safe little town. 

The first shares of the story came from women, who added captions such as, "stay safe" or "be careful." Wise words, except that this particular woman wasn't throwing caution to the wind by walking home from the supermarket on a well used footpath at 5.30 in the evening. In fact, she wasn't culpable in the slightest. She couldn't be blamed for what happened to her and that worried people. Rape is horrific. We don't want to think about it but if we can somehow say that the woman was asking for it then it makes us feel safer.

The next round of social media on the subject came from people requesting that someone (although I'm not sure who) makes our footpaths safer. Ah, yes of course, it must have been the footpath's fault. Those bloody footpaths going round a raping women!

Now we have the racist angle. One of the men was described as 'of Indian or Asian appearance, wearing a green Superdry top' and now the tweets are very much focused on 'sending them home'. If these men had come to England and our little town to rape then I agree they should be sent home but personally I think proper punishment for any rapist would be better. I can see the benefit of blaming the rape on the ethnicity; it makes us feel safer. Not many Asians (or Muslims if you believe the EDL's take on it)live here and we can spot them. Avoid all people of colour and you will never be raped. White middle class men never attack women, do they? I'm pinning my hopes on the green Superdry top and am going to run, quickly, in the other direction whenever I see someone wearing one. 

The truth is, we are not safe from rape. It is the only crime where the statistics are rising and the convictions are falling. We live in a world where approximately 35 women a day are raped (some men too)  and where we make excuses for the men who commit these violent crimes. These criminals feel quite safe. They know that even if they are caught they will probably get away with it. If they are caught and prosecuted then they will serve a short sentance and quickly get back to their old life, where they can tell everyone that it was the girl's fault; she led them on, wore a short skirt, was drunk but not too drunk to consent and anyway it wasn't rape they were only cheating. They might even get their mates to set up a website to name and blame the victim, so that men everywhere give her a hard time. 

We also live in a world where women are sexualised to an extent we've stopped noticing. It's a world where women's sexualised bodies are used to sell even the blandest of items. It's a world where women who want to have their music heard must dance in their pants. The subconscious message many young men are getting is that women are on this planet purely for their sexual amusement.

 

          This is just how I use my trainers!

I know that everyone wants to help and make us all feel safer but the best thing we can do is to stop giving excuses to men who attack sexually. These crimes should all be taken seriously and properly prosecuted. 

Sometimes, the Long Suffering Husband and I discuss sexual crimes that have been reported in the press. His default position is to defend the man as he feels a solidarity with people of his gender. When I point out that he is not the same, that he would never treat a woman like that he feels let down. Please men, remember that when I ask you to take the crime of rape seriously and stop making excuses for men who have raped then I know that you are not the same. You couldn't accidentally fall on a woman and rape her.

This is a small town and someone must know something. These men do not deserve to be protected. The only thing that we can do for victims of rape is take them seriously and hope that their attacker is caught and prosecuted quickly and effectively.

The Box

During my pregnancy and for the first few years of my daughter's life my mum went through a phase of reading unusual magazines. A stall in a local market sold last month's remaindered magazines for a £1 for three and that was a bargain my mum just couldn't resist. I don't remember her buying Tank Monthly or Golf in Gibraltar but I think she sampled everything else. Mostly, it was glossy middle class aspirational reading material with photographs that could have won prizes. She didn't just buy the magazines, though, she read them. In our family we read everything; we can all tell you the full address of Weetabix, which we learnt over breakfast. I'm sure she tried every interior decorating tip known to man.

In Antique Collector Monthly there was a suggestion that excited my mum, whose first grandchild was going to be the most loved girl on earth. It suggested making a time capsule. The idea was to fill a box with things that could be antiques in the future but that were from the first year of the child's life. This box was to be left untouched and only opened on  their 21st birthday. There was a whiff of a fairy tale and Greek myth about this idea that appealed to me, so for the last 20 years a box has been sitting in our loft waiting for its special moment. 

Finally!

Twenty years is a long time to wait. My daughter has been looking forward to this day for her whole life. Not her 21st birthday but, " the day I get to open my box." 

The champagne is on ice, the birthday cake sits, in anticipation on the kitchen table, the grandparents and favourite Auntie are on their way round, all for a vey dusty box.

 

------------------------------------------------

I'm not sure how successful we have been at picking antiques of the future. The Jurrasic park toys and Thunderbird glasses are cool, the Take That cushion looks rather odd; none of us thought they'd still be on Top of the Pops doing 'Dad dancing', and the flavoured condoms made us all wonder what we were thinking but they were a really big deal at the time. ("I can't see the point of those, it would be like chewing a sweet with the wrapper on," said a friend's mum at the time). My daughter is really looking forward to studying the newspapers, Radio Times,travel brochures and theatre guides from the day she was born and the lottery ticket (from the first year of the lottery), Eurostar ticket, which started operating when she was ten months old, and the first day cover of stamps are interesting historical documents. Unfortunately, the number one 12 inch single from the date of her birth, DReam things can only get better has warped. The less said about the inflatable Mr Blobby the better.

We put things in the box that we always knew would be worthless because they had been well loved. Tilly, Tom and Tiny, her first baby grow and cardigan, a very scuffed pair of first shoes made us all ahh and coo.

At some point, about 6 years after the box went in the loft I must have had a clear out, adding things from school and nursery that it didn't seem right to throw away. These were,however, the most popular items in there. The folder from Nursery contained some wonderful gems, which along with her big sister T-shirt were a testament to just how much she loved her baby brother, even if he did have "ugly eyes."

When Pandora opened her box she unleashed all the evils of the world. Luckily, this box just contained love and lots of it.

Boobs - probably

Today's brilliant news is that The Sun is not going to have a Page 3 girl anymore.

Probably.

They are not commenting but for the last two days there has been no half naked girl on that page.  It's unlikely that this is an oversight.  I can't imagine the editor is sitting in his office, slapping his forehead and saying, "Damn, we forgot to find a schoolgirl, convince her to take more than half her clothes off for loads of money and take pictures of her."  There are rumours that Murdoch decided to give dropping this feature a go, which means no more Page 3.

Probably.

The campaign to get the Sun to drop it has been going for a while.  Clare Short had private members bill passed to ban page 3 pornography 1986,  (The whole history of what happened is fascinating http://www.clareshort.co.uk/node/12 )  Why it carried on for another 19 years is still a mystery to me. More recently the campaign has been taken up on social media, with women (who appear very organised but are actually sitting in bed in their pyjamas after work promoting the campaign on their laptops and mobile phones).  At the last count the Change Organisation online petition counted 202524 signatures and so The Sun are finally listening to all these people who don't want to see it anymore.

Probably.

The truth is that this feature will be re-introduced in a heartbeat if sales drop.  Let's hope market forces show that people really aren't that interested in getting a sexual thrill in front of their children over their cornflakes in the morning.  I'm quietly confident.  The world has changed.  It's not as openly sexist as it was in the Seventies, when the feature was introduced.  Then, we thought nothing of Bodie of the Professionals ripping Pamela Stephenson's shirt off and dusting debris off her boobs after a bomb ,https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBMSK6Bz4tc  Benny Hill was Saturday evening family entertainment, Parents wanted Jimmy Savile to take a special interest in their children and for their teenage daughters to get felt up on Top of the Pops.  These things were normal but now we are disquieted by such programmes.  Aren't we?

Probably.

Many men have commented that the removal of Page 3 will just drive men to the internet for their porn. God forbid! Who on earth thought people were accessing porn on the internet? The internet is for porn from Avenue Q .  Surely, those looking at Page 3 were getting deeper thrills elsewhere anyway?  Page 3 porn was different though, it was inappropriately placed.  If people are going to look at porn they usually do it in private unless they are a bit weird and if you got onto a tube and sat next to a man getting his rocks off to a specialist magazine or watching porn on the internet you would instantly know to move but it was unacceptable to move away from the sweaty man, rubbing his thighs while reading the Sun because it was just a newspaper.  Luckily, parents will never have to try to explain to their 7 year old daughter why an interesting story about a girl who ate her own hair and had to have it surgically removed was illustrated with breasts, as I had to on a crowded aeroplane once (the paper was a free handout).  Our daughters will be able to grow up believing that their value comes from more than being a sexual object for people to stare at.

Probably.

If you look at Twitter and see the comments that are made to women who are posting relief at the end of this institution then it is clear that a large section of the population are angry about the move.  They believe that women who don't want this feature in their national press are complaining because they are 'too ugly' and many worse comments.  We shouldn't let a few people who feel like this make the rest of us change our mind.  Today, we have taken a small step and that's the best way.  This way of publicly objectifying women has had it's day and we are all glad.  As the Long Suffering Husband said when watching the News last night, "God, is page 3 still a thing?  It's such an old fashioned idea."

 

Probably.

Blue Monday

Today is supposed to officially be the most depressing day of the year: Blue Monday. 

You weren't feeling depressed? Well, let me help you. The weather has finally got cold, your Christmas spending credit card bill arrives, you have no money left in your bank account because you were paid early for Christmas and it's still a week until payday, you read Eeyore quotes yesterday because it was AA Milne's birthday, it's dark when you go to work, it's still dark when you get home from work, you've run out of potatoes from the allotment and have to buy some, your daughter is 21 next week and you are not ready to be that old, nothing has changed since the promising New Year with its bright and shiny resolutions and you can pledge all you want but life is still the same, and it's an election year.

I'm finding the election thing particularly depressing. Normally, I love it. The debates, the leaflets that come through the door for origami, the analysis and the swingometre. This election is different and I'm bored already. It's so much more complicated than the swingometre can cope with and I don't understand much of what's going on. I don't understand all this UKIP stuff, I don't understand why the government is so against having debt (everyone has a mortgage). I don't understand why the TV companies want Farage but not the green woman (that makes her sound like Elphaba I should edit it but I can't be bothered), I  don't understand why Nick Clegg is almost certainly going to be in a coalition government, even though it looks like he might lose his seat (can he be leader of the party without being voted into his constituency?).

Now for something to cheer me up. I can't quite decide between the brooding looks on the beach of Broadchurch or the sultry sideways glances of Silent Witness.

Outrage

My daughter and I often have a discussion about newspapers' responsibilities to be careful about what they print. When I get  twitchy about an article I have accidentally read in the Daily Mail she tells me that it is my fault as they only print things that people read. It's all about what sells. She tells me that people enjoy being upset and outraged and although they pretend they only want to read good news it's always the stories with conflict that they click on. I have, in the past, disagreed with her, insisting that people read those stories because that's all they are presented with and if the press gave us more happy stories then we would all be much more content.

For the New Year I decided not to read or watch anything that I knew would offend or upset me. No more Katie Hopkins, Nigel Farage or Jeremy Clarkson. No more accidentally clicking on a Daily Mail article because someone I respect on Twitter links it with the statement, "you must read this!" If something appeared on the TV I didn't like I was going to turn it off. But since then, life has lost a little of its sparkle. 

This week, I have finally decided that my daughter was right - outrage is fun. Some people like to provoke it and others like to take offence: it's a game we play. It was Question Time and the discussion of Charlie Hebdo that made me realise my error.  In truth, I should have given up Question Time in January, as it has become more provocative recently but I do like to be informed and it helps me fall asleep after a very long Thursday. 

This week David Starkey was being borderline racist about Muslims in his very odd, 'I'm so clever and use lots of long words so that you have to think I'm right' way and Mehdi Hasan was becoming offended but trying very hard to keep calm. It was gripping television. Shouting at a box on the wall had never been more fun. Twitter (or the twittersphere as it is now called by the Guardian) went mad (or imploded, if you read the Guardian). People called for the BBC not to book people like David Starkey (who had  refered to Mehdi as Ahmed) but how can they not when all the Question Time tweets referred to what he had said? We live in a country where free speach is allowed but our National Press is a business and it is going to cater for what the majority of the people want and if we're honest, we want a bit of controversy and something to discuss around the water cooler.

The alternative, however, is too awful to comprehend. If we lived in a society where people weren't allowed to offend then maybe the bombings on the Charlie Hebdo office wouldn't have happened because it would have been illegal to draw the cartoons (just as it's illegal to bomb offices) but people would be punished for saying things. It would be the decision of a government what you could and couldn't say. You could get ten years in jail and 1000 lashes for blogging, "Secularism respects everyone and does not offend anyone ... Secularism ... is the practical solution to lift countries (including ours) out of the third world and into the first world.", as Raif Badawi has in Iran.

So, I'm going to hang on to my right to be offended and to say offensive things, like, "Did you see the picture of Gordon Ramsay suggesting that we all eat more vag?"

Dear Father Christmas

Dear Father Christmas,

I'm terribly sorry to bother you while you are taking your well earned holiday in the Bahamas. I know that you have worked very hard and you really deserve a break.

I am very glad you have been so generous this year and am in complete awe of your ability to deliver so many presents in one evening. I have noticed that you seem to have given many, many musical instruments and this is brilliant. Parents seem surprised that you didn't deliver instructions on how to play these instruments or magical abilities to instantly play like Nicola Bennedetti or James Gallway. We both know that the only reason you didn't bring these things is because they don't exist. Playing an instrument takes hard work. Loads of hard work and you can never stop working. Practise. Practise. Practise. Then practise some more. Even people who seem to be very good have to practise. A friend said to me last night. " I used to think that when I got to grade 3 I'd be able to play and then I thought it would be grade 5 but I still wasn't happy. I got grade 8 and then a degree and it's still bloody hard work." We all need help.

I know that magical abilities to be able to pick up any instrument and play it beautifully don't exist but I am hoping that next year you would be able to send me a little more time, patience and energy if you are going to deliver quite so many instruments. Would it also be possible to deliver a greater variety of instruments and some music teachers for those instruments? I'm not complaining but 120 flutes in any one band is probably too many.

If all this is too difficult maybe you could just take me with you to the Bahamas next year and leave me there.

Thank you

An already too tired music teacher.