So, how am I doing?

This photo was taken when I was 20. It's one of my favourites. I look young and happy and indefatigable, but also more or less fully formed. There aren't many photos like this, certainly not of me.

I had a party for my 20th birthday. In those days you designed your invitation by hand, then photocopied it up onto a sheet of A4, then bought coloured paper or card, duplicated your A4 onto multiple sheets, chopped them up with a guillotine, and put them in the internal post. I can still remember the invite: it said 'please come and help celebrate the fact that I will never be a teenage mother'.

And these days, when I am making an important choice, I don't ask myself what Jesus would do. And nor do I make decisions based on what's easiest, what's expected, what's the least difficult, least boat-rockiest thing to do right now. Instead, I think about the woman in this photo and try to make sure I'm not letting her, or the people who gave her the space and freedom to be herself, down. And generally, yeah, I think I've done pretty well on that front, though no prizes for guessing what one of those important choices has turned out to be.

Tomorrow, I'm going to be 40. I'm not about to invite my friends to celebrate the fact that I will never be a mother at all. We celebrate motherhood, we don't celebrate its opposite, even when it's freely chosen.

And I think that's ok. There are enough children in the world who know they weren't wanted without reminding them that some of us are better at not having them. And now I am 40, I know that most women want children, and that's something to be celebrated too. If my mother hadn't wanted me, I wouldn't be here, and hell, that would be a tragedy.

But me, I made my choice, and it was the right one for me. So I raise a glass of posh Sauvignon Blanc to humanity and turn up the Internationale*. My 20 year old self would be cool with that, I think. Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.

joella

* Ignore the video, I hoped to find this version on Spotify but it was not to be.

Emerging from January blues

I'm ever so grateful to you lovey, said the little old lady.

Well, I said, thank you.

What I didn't say: thank you for waiting an extra week for me to come round given that I went into NGO X last Monday for Haiti stuff and on Tuesday I just couldn't face dealing with anything at all. Thank you for having an immaculate kitchen. Thank you for choosing a plumber to fit said immaculate kitchen who put proper isolators on your taps. Thank you for having a no-frills budget, resulting in an old-style mixer tap with washers, rather than one of those fancy ones with ceramic inserts that you have to go and find in a merchants somewhere. Thank you for leaving me to it rather than watching.

I knocked a fiver off for an easy job, and turned the water pressure down a bit on her cold tap so it didn't splash all over her immaculate kitchen.

She said it was so nice to see women branching out and could she have my card.

I think that's what you call a win-win situation.

joella

Unprecedented cross-posting. Because it's worth it.

As usual, Facebook asks me what's on my mind.

Well. NGO X (Google image here: http://bit.ly/50mgFh), supported by thousands (millions?) of ordinary British people, plus the government we all elected, is now able to provide clean water to tens of thousands of other people who currently desperately need clean water.

Meanwhile the leader of the BNP (BBC article here: http://bit.ly/4EeMX6) sees these other people as 'rioting ingrates'. I hope I can trust these same thousands (millions?) of ordinary British people to keep these fuckers from winning any elected seat ever again.

That is what is on my mind.

joella

Yes we tin

I know brands are basically bad*, and that American ones, being the biggest, are the baddest of all.

But I've just got back from New York, and having stood in awe before this, I can't help but feel really sad about this.

joella

* Naomi Klein often gets right on my nerves, but I think this is a great article.

To freeze or not to freeze?

Everything hangs on the weather at the moment. And the BBC weather forecast for Oxford tonight and for the next five days is unprecedentedly ... Random? Diverse? Terrifying? Anyway, it goes like this: Fog. Sunny. Grey Cloud. Sunny Intervals. Heavy Snow. Heavy Rain.

Glad that's clear then.

joella