I'm just back from Telford and Manchester, a sewing machine richer, a Swiss Army Knife poorer, and full of the reflected warmth of family and old friends N & D plus their two-and-a-bit children -- the soon-to-be-middle one of whom I am reluctant godmother to. The reluctance is all to do with the god part and nothing to do with her: she is small and thoughtful and determined, and can already paint with one hand and eat with the other with only minor crossover complications.
Her mother N is one of my favourite people in the whole world -- also small (though quite big at the moment) and thoughtful and determined. We met when she was 14 and I was 15 and we worked together in a bread shop on Saturdays. 'Something reminded me of the Bread Oven the other day,' I said. 'I can't remember what it was now'*.
Really stale bread? she said. Or did you meet a Nazi?
She was referring to Grant the baker, who terrorised us both from our arrival at 8.30 each Saturday until he left around noon. It was so bad that we used to meet somewhere else at 8 -- the lorry driver's cafe in the winter, on the beach in the summer -- to gather our strength and so we would always arrive together. Then we would take it in turns to be the one who first ventured into the back of the shop to get the pork pies out of the fridge. He hated us both -- me because I tried to stand up to him and N because she didn't -- and me a little bit more (maybe) because I didn't hide the fact I was a little bit Jewish and a little bit academic and he didn't hide the fact that he was more than a little bit Jew-hating and more than a little bit of a porn-eating book burner. There were bruises along the way, and none of them on him.
I hope he's dead now, she said. I really do. I do too, I said. Let me know if you hear anything, so I can leave a pork pie and a gherkin on his grave.
The next morning, we were dissecting the Guardian Family Section article about tomboys. In my view, like most Guardian Family Section articles, it raised a potentially interesting issue then drowned it in mediocre middle class reportage. The tomboy in the 1970s sense -- the girl who wants to be a boy, as epitomised by George in the Famous Five -- is a fascinating creature. Does she want to be a boy because boys have freedom of movement and expression that girls are denied? Does she want to be a boy because she can see that boys are more valued in the world? Does she actually identify as a boy? Or does she just hate wearing dresses and playing with dolls and being expected to be passive and nice?
Th article didn't really tell us. The 'genuine tomboy' they interviewed did seem to have some interesting stuff going on, and I think that was handled well, though all the stuff about the 'anonymous mothers' of other tomboys rather diluted the positivity of the story of the lone seven year old whose mother doesn't mind.
But I ain't her, and neither is N, yet we were both labelled tomboys in our time. I don't want to be a boy, I said to N, while a little on the drunk side, and I never have. I just want to be taken seriously.
Exactly, she said. And I fucking hate (she added, five months pregnant, stone cold sober and waving a spatula) wearing a dress. When you wear a dress everyone looks at you, and tells you how great you look, and you know, it's nobody's fucking business how I look except mine.
This is a wilderness point of view in a world that has plastic surgery ads on the back of buses. But it's one I share, and we clinked glasses and toasted a better future for her daughters. I'd like to think they will have more options than we had, but observing our overmediated, X-factored, pink and blue-drenched age, I am not so sure.
Having said that, I had the late night munchies last night, and ate cheese and crackers sitting on the loo while M danced round the kitchen singing 'she's a matzo girl, living in a matzo world'. There's a place for everyone, if we can only find it.
joella
* I have remembered and forgotten what it was several times since first drafting this. Getting up early? Eccles cakes? Parkin?
Monday, December 29, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
What's so funny 'bout peace, love and understanding?
I'm still sworn off the Today programme, but I'm as all over the BBC News website as ever I was... I find the newfangled Have Your Say bits deeply tedious, but it's as well to remind oneself that most people with strong points of view and the time/inclination to expound them in a random and anonymous fashion are both blinkered and borderline illiterate. LOL.
And I love the fact that you can spend time following a story that's caught your eye, come back to it later to see what's happened. The most recent of these for me is the story of Dr Humayra Abedin, a London GP trying to escape from a marriage she was forced into in Pakistan.
I was once stuck for many hours on a train limping north with no lights or heating -- I was travelling in the smoking carriage (it was a long time ago) with then-housemate S, and the woman behind us turned out to have some tea lights on her, so we lit them, passed the tobacco around and got chatting. She was British Asian, a doctor, and on her way to Edinburgh to see a man she'd met via a personal ad. She hoped he would still be there when she arrived -- we were running about three hours late and neither of them had a mobile phone (it was a really long time ago). She also hoped the sex would be ok and he wouldn't be too old.
I said I hope she didn't mind me saying, but she didn't look like the sort of person who would be travelling to Edinburgh to have sex with a man she'd never met. And then she told us that when she was 16 she'd had a white boyfriend, and her parents had taken her to Pakistan on holiday. When they got there they said she wasn't coming back, and that she could either train as a doctor or get married. Then they left.
She was there for seven years, and came back to the UK as a qualified doctor, whereupon she married pretty much the first man she met. He turned out to be a) lazy and b) violent, and a few years later she divorced him, bringing double shame on the family. We met her a few years after *that*, where she was having random sex with men she met via personal ads.
I have thought of her from time to time, perhaps most recently when I was watching a TV programme about the porn industry. Asked how she ended up in her line of work, one of the actresses explained how her dad used to rape her when she was a child. Now she makes porn films to get back at him -- all these men can have her seventeen ways to Sunday, but he can't touch her. Look what you're missing, dad! It was fair heartbreaking, it was.
On the face of it, Little Miss White Trash Porn Star and Dr Abedin have nothing whatever in common, but R, the woman on the train, made a link for me. I wish them all well, but there are mountains to climb.
So all I really want for Christmas is for women (everywhere -- not just the stroppy difficult ones) to be able to define themselves, carve out their own space in the world and inhabit it, rather than have their lives bounded by the expectations, the reflections, and the desires -- real and perceived -- of the people who have more power than they do and do not use it well. Oh and for the Pope to Get An Afterlife and leave this one to people who know what they're talking about.
Since that's all up there with the moon on a stick, I'll settle for a new bottle of Yardley Sandalwood Eau de Toilette, the perfume of switched on spinsters everywhere.
joella
And I love the fact that you can spend time following a story that's caught your eye, come back to it later to see what's happened. The most recent of these for me is the story of Dr Humayra Abedin, a London GP trying to escape from a marriage she was forced into in Pakistan.
I was once stuck for many hours on a train limping north with no lights or heating -- I was travelling in the smoking carriage (it was a long time ago) with then-housemate S, and the woman behind us turned out to have some tea lights on her, so we lit them, passed the tobacco around and got chatting. She was British Asian, a doctor, and on her way to Edinburgh to see a man she'd met via a personal ad. She hoped he would still be there when she arrived -- we were running about three hours late and neither of them had a mobile phone (it was a really long time ago). She also hoped the sex would be ok and he wouldn't be too old.
I said I hope she didn't mind me saying, but she didn't look like the sort of person who would be travelling to Edinburgh to have sex with a man she'd never met. And then she told us that when she was 16 she'd had a white boyfriend, and her parents had taken her to Pakistan on holiday. When they got there they said she wasn't coming back, and that she could either train as a doctor or get married. Then they left.
She was there for seven years, and came back to the UK as a qualified doctor, whereupon she married pretty much the first man she met. He turned out to be a) lazy and b) violent, and a few years later she divorced him, bringing double shame on the family. We met her a few years after *that*, where she was having random sex with men she met via personal ads.
I have thought of her from time to time, perhaps most recently when I was watching a TV programme about the porn industry. Asked how she ended up in her line of work, one of the actresses explained how her dad used to rape her when she was a child. Now she makes porn films to get back at him -- all these men can have her seventeen ways to Sunday, but he can't touch her. Look what you're missing, dad! It was fair heartbreaking, it was.
On the face of it, Little Miss White Trash Porn Star and Dr Abedin have nothing whatever in common, but R, the woman on the train, made a link for me. I wish them all well, but there are mountains to climb.
So all I really want for Christmas is for women (everywhere -- not just the stroppy difficult ones) to be able to define themselves, carve out their own space in the world and inhabit it, rather than have their lives bounded by the expectations, the reflections, and the desires -- real and perceived -- of the people who have more power than they do and do not use it well. Oh and for the Pope to Get An Afterlife and leave this one to people who know what they're talking about.
Since that's all up there with the moon on a stick, I'll settle for a new bottle of Yardley Sandalwood Eau de Toilette, the perfume of switched on spinsters everywhere.
joella
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Topical poll
I could do this as a proper poll in the sidebar, as I have seen other bloggers do. But I don't envisage doing it often, and I know people get here mostly by accident (which is fine, this being the internet) or by design (which is better, but sidebar polls do not show up in feed readers).
So... the topic of the evening, with R & Ms Y and housemate P and post parsnip soup and sloe gin was -- who should Madonna go out with next?
The various suggestions were...
a) Justin Timberlake
b) George Formby (assuming he wasn't, you know, dead)
c) George Clooney
d) Grace Jones
e) M (though given the choice he'd go for Bjork)
f) P Diddy
g) Bill Clinton
It's a tricky one, and your thoughts would be welcome.
joella
So... the topic of the evening, with R & Ms Y and housemate P and post parsnip soup and sloe gin was -- who should Madonna go out with next?
The various suggestions were...
a) Justin Timberlake
b) George Formby (assuming he wasn't, you know, dead)
c) George Clooney
d) Grace Jones
e) M (though given the choice he'd go for Bjork)
f) P Diddy
g) Bill Clinton
It's a tricky one, and your thoughts would be welcome.
joella
Monday, December 15, 2008
Between the Lines
There are two things I often want to blog about and don't.
1. Work. As previously mentioned, NGO X has a blogging policy. This means I can't say anything BAD about the place, or anything MEAN about anyone who works there. So if, say, I felt that there were some DUMB things happening, I would have to keep them under my virtual hat. I'm not saying that, of course. I'm just saying that there's a box of wine in the fridge.
2. The challenges of stepmotherhood, which come and go in a way I cannot anticipate, especially at this most fraught time of year. I *thought* we'd made it perfectly clear that there were no obligations, no strings, see you whenever, but an unwelcome third-party analysis suggests otherwise. I'm not saying it's not hard for them. I'm just saying there's a box of wine in the fridge.
joella
1. Work. As previously mentioned, NGO X has a blogging policy. This means I can't say anything BAD about the place, or anything MEAN about anyone who works there. So if, say, I felt that there were some DUMB things happening, I would have to keep them under my virtual hat. I'm not saying that, of course. I'm just saying that there's a box of wine in the fridge.
2. The challenges of stepmotherhood, which come and go in a way I cannot anticipate, especially at this most fraught time of year. I *thought* we'd made it perfectly clear that there were no obligations, no strings, see you whenever, but an unwelcome third-party analysis suggests otherwise. I'm not saying it's not hard for them. I'm just saying there's a box of wine in the fridge.
joella
Friday, December 12, 2008
Woolly thoughts
I can't say I did much to save Woolworths, but then there hasn't been one in Oxford city centre since I've lived here, or not so as I can remember anyway. But I'm far from the first to note that it has a special place in the national psyche, and mine is no different -- even though I hate Pick'N'Mix.
Lytham Woolworths: small-ish, surprisingly well stocked and recently closed. The site was purchased by Tesco, which is alarming in itself, but that's for another time. I spent many, many hours in this shop as a teenager, as it was the only local source of music once The Disc Centre became a handbag shop. A girl I once babysat worked in there when she left school -- her name was Johanna. Whenever I bought blank C90s from her she would look right through me (to be fair, I was not very good at babysitting), and I would notice that her name badge said 'Helen' or 'Andrea' or anything female except Johanna. I asked my mother, who knew her mother, about this once, and she said that they were required to wear a name badge, presumably so people could complain (or, I guess, write letters of fulsome praise) about them, but nobody actually said it had to be their own. I rather admired the low-level anarchy of this action.
Cambridge Woolworths: big, central, and featuring, at least in the late 1980s, a formica-tastic cafe on the first floor. I've never admitted this in public before, but I used to hide out in there on my own when I first went to university, so overwhelmed was I by the poshness and unfamiliarity of gowns and drinks parties and teenagers with their own cafetieres. In my first term I would take a book up there and drink milkshakes and eat toasted teacakes and smoke cheap cigarettes and look out the window and wonder if I'd made a terrible mistake. Then I would go back downstairs and buy some blank C90s and get on with it.
I can sort of see why what's happened has happened ... unclear retail proposition, online competition blah blah blah. But I wonder where, in the future, will we be able to buy a hot water bottle, a Tupperware box, some glitter pens, daffodil bulbs and a large box of Dairy Milk all under one comforting roof?
joella
Lytham Woolworths: small-ish, surprisingly well stocked and recently closed. The site was purchased by Tesco, which is alarming in itself, but that's for another time. I spent many, many hours in this shop as a teenager, as it was the only local source of music once The Disc Centre became a handbag shop. A girl I once babysat worked in there when she left school -- her name was Johanna. Whenever I bought blank C90s from her she would look right through me (to be fair, I was not very good at babysitting), and I would notice that her name badge said 'Helen' or 'Andrea' or anything female except Johanna. I asked my mother, who knew her mother, about this once, and she said that they were required to wear a name badge, presumably so people could complain (or, I guess, write letters of fulsome praise) about them, but nobody actually said it had to be their own. I rather admired the low-level anarchy of this action.
Cambridge Woolworths: big, central, and featuring, at least in the late 1980s, a formica-tastic cafe on the first floor. I've never admitted this in public before, but I used to hide out in there on my own when I first went to university, so overwhelmed was I by the poshness and unfamiliarity of gowns and drinks parties and teenagers with their own cafetieres. In my first term I would take a book up there and drink milkshakes and eat toasted teacakes and smoke cheap cigarettes and look out the window and wonder if I'd made a terrible mistake. Then I would go back downstairs and buy some blank C90s and get on with it.
I can sort of see why what's happened has happened ... unclear retail proposition, online competition blah blah blah. But I wonder where, in the future, will we be able to buy a hot water bottle, a Tupperware box, some glitter pens, daffodil bulbs and a large box of Dairy Milk all under one comforting roof?
joella
Tuesday, December 09, 2008
Seasonal oppression
Here it comes again. I feel overwhelmed and underwhelmed at the same time. There must be a word for this?
The house is a mess, and this is compounded by a) the makings of various home made gifts (austerity Christmas, you see -- more stressful than you think it's going to be) and b) the fact that it's freezing (austerity gas consumption), so the colder rooms have an air of neglect. This includes the bathroom, which has a radiator that's on but about to spring a leak, just to add a little edge to things. The bathroom is mainly used by housemate P... I don't know when his cleaning gene kicks in, but I've seen no sign of it yet.
A couple of weeks ago, I thought I would cheer myself up by buying something from the Gudrun Sjoden sale. But as with so many mail order things, it just doesn't look right on. So that's another post office queue to endure.
On the other hand, I don't have any plumbing this week, and I am off to buy a samosa in the sunshine.
joella
The house is a mess, and this is compounded by a) the makings of various home made gifts (austerity Christmas, you see -- more stressful than you think it's going to be) and b) the fact that it's freezing (austerity gas consumption), so the colder rooms have an air of neglect. This includes the bathroom, which has a radiator that's on but about to spring a leak, just to add a little edge to things. The bathroom is mainly used by housemate P... I don't know when his cleaning gene kicks in, but I've seen no sign of it yet.
A couple of weeks ago, I thought I would cheer myself up by buying something from the Gudrun Sjoden sale. But as with so many mail order things, it just doesn't look right on. So that's another post office queue to endure.
On the other hand, I don't have any plumbing this week, and I am off to buy a samosa in the sunshine.
joella
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Of rats and rock stars
I was stashing my plumbing stuff in the shed on Monday afternoon when M came out to empty the mixing bowl of compostables into the compost bin. He took the lid off the bin and then yelped. He yelps rather fetchingly, but it's always hard to tell whether it's something serious (eg he's fallen off a ladder while holding the electric hedge trimmer) or not (eg there's an episode of The Simpsons on that he hasn't seen yet).
It was a rat, rapidly disappearing into the cabbage leaves and coffee grounds. And no, we have never added any meat, fish, bread, or cooked food to the compost, nor, for the last couple of years, any egg shells. And still we are infested. I blame the cold. And the students. Most things are their fault.
Our local council offer a free rat management service (which gives you an idea of the extent of the rat issue in these parts) so, after a little vegetarian soul searching, I booked a visit from the rat man. Those who have already met him claim he is exactly what you would expect -- "there's something medieval about him" -- so I'm kind of looking forward to it in a life's rich tapestry sort of way. But also oppressed by having vermin to deal with as well as a leaky roof and a global recession. No fair.
And it's absolutely freezing, and I've got a cold coming on, so the next day I was beginning to wish I *hadn't* agreed to go all the way to sodding Birmingham to see Jarvis Cocker on a school night. I just wanted to stay in with a hot water bottle and a good book and forget about the world out there.
But, as my Significant Ex used to say, it's amazing how wrong one person can be. For it was a near-perfect gig experience, despite being held in a Carling *spit* Academy, where there is no proper beer and they won't let you buy water in a bottle, never mind take it in, and the annual toilet paper budget is used up by the middle of February.
Against all odds, we found the venue and managed to park close by, then bought our Guinnesses and found a spot that was acceptable for me (5'4"), for P (boyfriend of one of M's daughters, who is something like 6'6"), and for our respective companions (both somewhere in between). The place filled up benignly around us, the support band were pretty good, we gradually warmed up and then on he came.
For the first half of the set, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr W, the man who taught me Physical Geography in the sixth form. This was quite confusing, as I do not recall finding Mr W remotely attractive, though he did unknowingly play a cameo role on the day of my deflowering.
By the end he looked much more like the beardy one out of Parts & Labor, or indeed several other beardy geek noise merchants, and calm was restored.
And from start to finish, he rocked, in a funny, clever, cool, Northern, totally right on but not at all earnest sort of a way. I don't think there's anyone else who can do that. I was completely into it, in that rest of the world falling away, nowhere else I'd rather be sense. I don't get that feeling very often, but it's up there with the best feelings in the world when it happens.
And it was even better because it was unexpected... we have a copy of Jarvis in the house but I've never got into it. Seeing it live, it all made sense.
The first encore ended with Don't Let Him Waste Your Time, which is a beautiful song to hear a rock star singing. I was suddenly reminded again of Mr W, and had a little vision of him shrugging off his anorak and flinging himself around the playing fields singing it to me as I blinked back my first 'was that it? And why is he ignoring me?' teenage tears.
I don't think I'd have listened to him, though. You have to find some things out the hard way, and thank god we have music for when we do.
joella
It was a rat, rapidly disappearing into the cabbage leaves and coffee grounds. And no, we have never added any meat, fish, bread, or cooked food to the compost, nor, for the last couple of years, any egg shells. And still we are infested. I blame the cold. And the students. Most things are their fault.
Our local council offer a free rat management service (which gives you an idea of the extent of the rat issue in these parts) so, after a little vegetarian soul searching, I booked a visit from the rat man. Those who have already met him claim he is exactly what you would expect -- "there's something medieval about him" -- so I'm kind of looking forward to it in a life's rich tapestry sort of way. But also oppressed by having vermin to deal with as well as a leaky roof and a global recession. No fair.
And it's absolutely freezing, and I've got a cold coming on, so the next day I was beginning to wish I *hadn't* agreed to go all the way to sodding Birmingham to see Jarvis Cocker on a school night. I just wanted to stay in with a hot water bottle and a good book and forget about the world out there.
But, as my Significant Ex used to say, it's amazing how wrong one person can be. For it was a near-perfect gig experience, despite being held in a Carling *spit* Academy, where there is no proper beer and they won't let you buy water in a bottle, never mind take it in, and the annual toilet paper budget is used up by the middle of February.
Against all odds, we found the venue and managed to park close by, then bought our Guinnesses and found a spot that was acceptable for me (5'4"), for P (boyfriend of one of M's daughters, who is something like 6'6"), and for our respective companions (both somewhere in between). The place filled up benignly around us, the support band were pretty good, we gradually warmed up and then on he came.
For the first half of the set, he bore an uncanny resemblance to Mr W, the man who taught me Physical Geography in the sixth form. This was quite confusing, as I do not recall finding Mr W remotely attractive, though he did unknowingly play a cameo role on the day of my deflowering.
By the end he looked much more like the beardy one out of Parts & Labor, or indeed several other beardy geek noise merchants, and calm was restored.
And from start to finish, he rocked, in a funny, clever, cool, Northern, totally right on but not at all earnest sort of a way. I don't think there's anyone else who can do that. I was completely into it, in that rest of the world falling away, nowhere else I'd rather be sense. I don't get that feeling very often, but it's up there with the best feelings in the world when it happens.
And it was even better because it was unexpected... we have a copy of Jarvis in the house but I've never got into it. Seeing it live, it all made sense.
The first encore ended with Don't Let Him Waste Your Time, which is a beautiful song to hear a rock star singing. I was suddenly reminded again of Mr W, and had a little vision of him shrugging off his anorak and flinging himself around the playing fields singing it to me as I blinked back my first 'was that it? And why is he ignoring me?' teenage tears.
I don't think I'd have listened to him, though. You have to find some things out the hard way, and thank god we have music for when we do.
joella
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