Ye gods there has been butt-munchery of undercrackers galore this week. In addition to actually telling the husband not to get his knickers in a twist via text (yes go figure, I have OCD but hubby dearest is the one that gets in a fret), there has been lace twisting and thong irritation a plenty.
It seemed to come from nowhere. There we all were bumbling along in that post Valentines glow/venom of smugness and/or bitterness (I say and/or as I’m both totally loved-up and yet somewhat hacked off that the husband seems intent on doing all those things he did when we first got together - it’s been three years of proper relationship, why hasn’t isn’t he fixed yet?) when out of nowhere came a plethora of irritation.
It began with Gina Ford. In case you aren’t familiar with the divorced childless harridan then she is the author of The Contented Little Baby book, a tome which dictates to the vulnerable (young, sleepless people living with a recently birthed parasite) how they ought to live their lives. As someone who is a bit boho if not quite earth mother I don’t really like her. Ok so I don’t have birth children but I’m generally an advocate of if it’s hungry then feed it, if it’s sleepy give it a nap and other such radical thought. That’s not to say I haven’t absolutely loved the husband and his ex-wife’s bedtime routine that has seen the husband and I enjoy evening after evening of drinks, movies and decent conversation but to me controlled crying just sounds like a fancy term for child abuse.
Anyway, she’s been in the news this week saying something I agree with (yes I do feel dirty). According to Gina - sorry love but you don’t have kids yet lecture us so you’re up there with Gillian on being on first name terms. Gillian who incidentally is utterly lifeless yet feels compelled to dictate how we should live - women should be making time for their husbands a mere four to six weeks after giving birth. I apologise but here is a Daily Fail link.
I get why women have been up in arms but frankly I don’t think that Gina is so wrong. Yes, the view reeks of handmaidenism (a term I leant this week) but isn’t it time to get real? Men often struggle after their partner gives birth and feel neglected. Suck it up scream the Mumsnetters, he should be basking in the wonder that the new life you graced from your loins. Well yes, blatantly but the guy needs the odd hug as well. Not because he might leave you if you don’t and not because you’re being cruelly abused if you do but because – crazy idea – you love him and want to hug him.
There’s this huge reluctance to embrace the model of womanhood as we see as perpetuated by the likes of 1950s characterisation. Now of course I’m a feminist and at a family meal failed to curtail an outburst at my mother-in-law for describing a family members’ recent return to work (after a stellar stint at being a stay at home mum) as having “a little job.” To my eyes this woman had been an excellent mother and despite being highly qualified was cautiously re-entering the workplace. I’ll not sit by and see a woman derided for giving up work to nurture her family and then rebuilding a life of her own once the kids’ need of her is diminished.
But what of his needs? The response is that he shouldn’t be demanding. Um, nobody said demanding, they said needs. Ah yes, same thing.
Except it isn’t is it? Men and women are different. A lot of should’s get lobbied about on Mumsnet but you can’t deride an ought from an is.
It’s basic meta-ethics people!
Because I love you and because I neither assume you have read various works of philosophy or that if you have that you can recall it in an instance, here is a short video summarising Hume’s Guillotine quite nicely. For those of you who know about Hume’s Guillotine and don’t need the video well have a biscuit and my admiration as I had to do a quick search to refresh my memory.
What I’m saying is that in a world of good relationships, bad relationships and more commonly, real relationships (which magically combine the two such as my own where I’m a bitch and he is a sweetheart) there is plenty that we can take meaning from and yet very little to inspire moral judgement.
Your husband is grumpy because he hasn’t had any action in six months.
Your husband ought to appreciate that you are tired/grumpy/hormonal/frigid/other typical Mumsnet poster characteristic.
Why?
For the same reason I’m meant to respect the fact some of you worship a sky pixie? Give me a break. Actually try reading a book, give Plato a go and learn about the allegory of the cave by reading The Republic.
Or be lazy and watch this:
These women are clinging to shadow pictures of their own making. They enforce and build on each others’ stories, nurturing the idea that they are superior and the good men (the ones I secretly think simply hide their porn better and have perfected the art of ‘yes dear’ for an easy life) they have tamed are inspirational models and they pity the women with lesser men.
Excuse me while I vomit.
There’s a flip side of course. There was a thread on evo this week titled, What really turns you off a woman. It starts humorously but gets a touch dark in places as a misogynist appears. I can summarise it for you though, men get annoyed with women for being bat shit fucking mental.
Can you blame them?
Still, women are bat shit fucking mental. Deal with it or bugger off you grumpy gits.
Love and hugs to all!
Kathryn
Last week I buried my great aunt. That’s why there was no column. Afterwards we went for dinner and I chose drinking wine and watching cute boys perform at The Oast House with my mum to writing. Anyway, things were a bit raw. Relationships with that side of the family can be a bit strained and given that I’m quite the funeral goer due to all the dead relatives (cheers Cancer), I found that it was all somewhat compounded. Like each time there’s a new funeral, you tear open the wound of the previous ones.
I’m a happy person but I was knocked.
I don’t get depressed. Instead my OCD skyrockets. It’s a bit like having a non-stop panic attack which you’d think would help you lose weight through sheer nervous energy but sadly no. Weirdly I’m normally a pretty productive person and these days I’m something of a domestic goddess with keeping house. When we were waiting for it to snow I made the kids cookies while I cleaned the kitchen. If I get into ribbon craft I’ll be Martha Stewart!
Anyway, my OCD makes me useless. It’s depressive in the sense that you can’t motivate yourself to do anything because you’re too busy fretting over whether you’ll ever fix the scratches in the fireplace. You know you’re being mental but you cannot do a damn thing about it. Except drink and wait for the husband to come home. Because alcohol and sex stop the cycle instantly. Naturally, when one is waiting for these things (3pm is the absolute earliest I’ll have a glass of wine) one reflects on the fact it’s possibly time to be medicated.
I do not want to be medicated. Partly because these periods rarely last long but also because my mental illness is so tied to who I am that to be treated is to say the person I am on good days isn’t acceptable. For the most part I’ve very happy (annoyingly so and I’m sure I sometimes sound a bit smug – sorry about that) and I harness my OCD. My husband accepts it and works around it.
When I’m spiralling it’s as though the person I am is just out of reach. That elusive mojo like a shaft of sunlight. When I’m in the light it’s so obvious how to be there but when I’m skirting the edges it’s hard to catch.
Today I suddenly got there.
I wasn’t looking forward today. It began at 5.45am which is vile at the best of times. As a general rule, if there isn’t a plane (or hot air balloon, I didn’t mind my 3.30am start for sunrise in Cappadocia) to catch then I’m really not interested. But I need to get some more clients and GIN beckoned. GIN is Gloucester Independent Network and yes, I partly went along because I liked the name.
The best part of the plan was that I’d offered my friend Vikki a lift so I absolutely had to haul my arse out of bed. She was similarly motivated. Had either of us been going alone the duvet would have won. Dressing for a networking event is like dressing for an interview so as the husband slept I was blow drying my hair. I rarely blow dry my hair properly. At 6am it is vile.
But the meeting was fantastic. Suddenly I was buoyed up about what I do. Suddenly I was back in my light place where the crazy thoughts settle down and I’m back to being productive.
In case this sounds as though I’m Bi-polar I assure you I’m not. I’m happy not hyper at least 95% of the time and when I am struggling with the OCD I can still function properly. I’ve never missed a day of work because of it.
A busy day followed and this evening I went to the Cotswold Style readers event at Hobbs. I met the delightful Kate Parker who complimented me on my dress and pushed me out of my comfort zone to try some new styles. I had my hair put in a beehive by Hair Styling by Nicole and had a hand an arm massage as a taster for the new Melting Honey Hot Stone Massage from one of the lovely ladies from Clarins. What wasn’t to love?
Already I’m rolling my eyes at the self of the previous ten days. It’s sunny (Or at least it was)! The tadpoles are growing!
Four days ago
Today
These things are so simple and therein lies the elusivity of mojo. Last Sunday I faked it. The husband and I had bought a tank and when his ex wife dropped the boys off for a few bonus hours (so we could take them to their great grandmother’s Birthday party) we caught frogspawn. I did it but I wasn’t feeling it. Suddenly today I’m getting great joy from it.
It’s frustrating that there isn’t a formula, that this is just something I have to live with from time to time. I suppose the upside it that thanks to therapy (I’m not anti-cure, I’m anti-brain altering medication) I’m better able to tread water until I’m better. I no longer get scared and while I get angry and upset, it isn’t all-encompassing rage or heartache. I know that it will pass.
And that soon, that elusive mojo will be mine again.
Look! I have an orange jacket!
Have you seen Call The Midwife? If not, it’s on iPlayer and really pretty fabulous. It’s taken from the memoirs of a young midwife in the 1950s and manages to charm you without idealising the difficult lives of the East End of London’s working class back when the NHS was new and wonderful.
It seems quite poignant that as our NHS appears threatened, essential Sunday night* viewing looks at its infancy. I’ve been fascinated by early contraception clinics and the compromises made during home births. What has most stood out to me has been not only an attitude of getting on with things but an appreciation for developments. At one point in an early episode a doctor points out that ten years ago none of this was possible.
The NHS was launched in 1948 with Bevan, the Secretary of State for Health announcing “we now have the moral leadership of the world.” Big words but I agree with the sentiment. As it happens I’m not a big advocate for the idea of human rights. I’m not convinced that humanity is so intrinsically special that we are entitled to anything.
What I do subscribe to however, is the idea of societal standards. When you look at Americas Poor (link to Panorama documentary: Poor America), one can’t help but be at least a little repulsed by the right wingers who deny the extent of the problem. I do think however, that as the decades pass we have become soft. When I hear of my Grandparents standard of living when they were newly married (in the 1950s) I am sometimes a little taken aback. I take hot running water for granted and struggle to imagine my comfortably off and fond of his luxuries Grandad dragging the tin bath up the stairs so they could have a proper wash.
In the documentary is a family living in a motel room. It sounds bloody tough and I’d hate to be in that situation. But my Grandfather grew up sharing a bed with his three brothers. Not because they were impoverished so much as that was rather normal back then. Yes there are examples that are truly awful such as the couple living in the drains but the fact that it is 300-400 people in a city as vast as Las Vegas makes for a tiny percentage. Please don’t think I lack empathy, I think any amount of homelessness points to a society that needs vast improvement but the figures do matter.
Of course the crux of the problem is health provision. I passionately believe that America has got it very very wrong. I don’t believe that in any developed nation a life saving operation shouldn’t be paid for by the tax payer. If someone needs their appendix out then cut the damn thing out! Surely this has to be the very definition of a civilised society, the prevention of easily avoided death.
In my first politics tutorial as a wide-eyed undergraduate we were asked the measure of a developed nation. Most people favoured GDP but I wasn’t convinced and posed the idea of the quality of life of the poorest person in that society. I think it was the single-most intelligent contribution I ever made in a tutorial and of course one the lecturer was hoping for. So while I reject human rights I nevertheless am a political scientist with a focus on everyone in a society. From day one I have disliked GDP and have argued in favour of topics such as citizen confidence and level playing fields.
However, what I consider acceptable seems to offend so many of those the husband and I tend to label bleeding heart liberals. You see, my societal standards essentially extend to a few brief points:
1) A roof over your head at night and a place to sleep that offers basic lumbar support and sufficient warmth to maintain health.
2) Access to hot water and the ability to keep oneself and ones clothing clean.
3) To never feel the gnawing pain of hunger.
4) To receive all necessary medical care in physical terms and a certain degree of medical care in psychological terms.
5) Freedom from violence and abuse (in all its forms).
6) Sufficient free education to provide those with the determination and drive to be able to fulfil their potential.
My standards are perhaps more noteworthy by what I don’t consider necessary. I don’t think a shared washroom in a hostel that houses several households is unacceptable. I am more in favour of plentiful emergency housing in the way of women’s refuges than I am of families being rehomed because their house is “cramped.”
My beliefs stem from the idea that things need to be paid for somehow. While I want to live in a society where no premature baby dies from lack of adequate resources, I think that every child having his or her own bedroom is something to aim for rather than being a requisite. I fully support a benefits cap of £26,000 per household because I know I could manage my family on that including our mortgage and all bills. It would be a massive drop in lifestyle but it could be done.
The problem as I see it is that our aging population is going to be an increasing drain on resources and choices need to be made. Choices are already made. To my eyes the treatment my father got was hugely different from the treatment my grandmother got when they each contracted and died from cancer. My father’s case was a tragedy, my grandmother’s simply very sad and a touch untimely.
I think the bill is wrong. But something needs to be done and I’d like to see more alternatives. I think there are very few Tories who aren’t at least a bit incredulous as to what is being proposed but nobody seems to be talking about the fact that something needs doing!
Put simply we can’t have everything but rather than offer a counter point, most people seem to be in denial about it. Where is the alternative?
* More like Tuesday afternoon for me since the husband isn’t really into that kind of thing. I didn’t notice but apparently Joan gets a bit more demure when she gets married and for this reason Mad Men began to lose its appeal for him. In fairness to him, the husband has wide a wide variety of tastes but generally there needs to be a decent geeky element, zombies or something to perve over.
I was reading a review of and then tracked down Disease avoidance: from animals to culture this week. Not, I hasten to add, the full journal. PhD I may be but I’m not up to date with current thinking in my own field let alone my specialty and merely picked my way through bits of it. Although, one might argue (and I have myself effectively argued in the past) that diversity of knowledge gathering is important. Anyway, the crux of the topic is of significance interest to social scientists as behavioural disease avoidance is something rooted in our area of cultural consideration and it’s exciting to think about evolutionary effectiveness. It got me thinking about risk. As the abstract to the Introduction, Proactive strategies to avoid infectious disease, states: In humans, disease avoidance is based upon cognition and especially the emotion of disgust. Human disease avoidance is not without its costs. There is a propensity to reject healthy individuals who just appear sick – stigmatization – and the system may malfunction, resulting in various forms of psychopathology. At the simplest level, when choosing our mates we take a variety of risks. As the Swedish quartet say, we ask our potential lovers: Take a chance on me. The song has the fairly poignant lines of ‘If you’re all alone when the pretty birds have flown, honey I’m still free.’ For me this brings to mind someone fighting something her desired lover has intrinsically picked up upon. I don’t think the character is unpretty (sorry, any excuse to link to a favourite song) so much as she doesn’t differ sufficiently from him in ‘antigen-coding genes.’
Ok so perhaps my attitudes could be argued by many as being pre-emptively defensive but I really think unrequited love is unrequited for a reason. Sure we can deny our feelings and perhaps the Fanny’s of the Mansfield Park’s can get their Edmund’s but for the most part I think when we’re attracted to someone and it isn’t reciprocated then they are picking up on something we aren’t.
Significantly, I see these sensitivities to appropriate mates as being wider than just the couple involved; hence the success of many arranged marriages. But it can’t be done on paper, the contact aspect is important.
This isn’t to say the social stuff doesn’t matter. I’ve been attracted to men I didn’t wish to reproduce with (practicing the act sure but they weren’t life partner material for me) and ultimately I settled with the man I was both attracted to and who ticked my marriagibilty boxes. And yet I was happy to take a greater risk on the social elements (being with the husband meant a path towards stepmotherhood, he was still going through a divorce but I fancied the pants off him) than I was on the physical (I briefly spent some time with a British property developer in Thailand who invited me to live in his hillside house with pool but I just wasn’t that into him).
Of course women are crazy and can’t be trusted. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that when we’re ovulating we’re attracted to men oozing testosterone and aggression but later are attracted to more supportive and nurturing men. In short our bodies say screw the guy from the gym but set up home with the guy from the office. No wonder we’re so fussy when it comes to choosing a boyfriend (assuming we aren’t the type to juggle multiple partners!)
Still, love is a risk and arguably, that’s why we’re so hooked on it.
But take responsibility for yourself and be honest about what those around you are really saying:
The guy you're just casually dating, no matter how complex you like to believe he is.
The nice guy you have a future with (no really, this is what he's thinking!)
The guy who is in it for life!
I'd like to dedicate this blog post to the husband:
True fact xxx
A fortnight ago I wrote part one of this blog. I wrote about how my trip to Turkey made me appreciate the emotional dangers faced by a girl adventurer such as myself. In many ways I think my emotional journeys have been the most interesting. They have made me the person I am today. When I was writing up my PhD thesis I had to describe how my research had evolved and how my views had changed during the process. I decided to answer honestly and wrote about how my not being at all racist had been based in innocence of the complex nature of race relations and how when faced with the racism of others in Malaysia, I changed. I experienced some pretty awful attitudes and comments from Arabic men who saw me as inferior to their veiled wives, men who viewed me as some kind of animal to be freely abused due my lowly status.
It didn’t take long for me to not be terribly fond of Arabic men. Furthermore I amended by behaviour by avoiding them; refusing to make eye contact and crossing the street rather than pass them (seriously, one once pushed me out of his way quite literally into the gutter).
It’s challenging to realise you are making judgements on race. More challenging to realise that it’s not wholly unreasonable. I wondered how it’d be received but I was commended for my honesty and ability to be self-critical. Significantly, I was able to reread my thesis and ask myself whether what I had written was formed by what were arguably a few isolated events.
Still, when it comes to telling stories the physical stuff tends to be a bit more exciting!
So how did I find myself in the middle of nowhere, alone with a man with a handgun?
It was my first day in Cappadocia. I was staying in a village called Göreme after a twelve hour bus journey extended by four hours due to the bus breaking down. This occurred after I’d got up at 4am and by the time I checked into my hotel I’d been up for 32 hours. I’d taken a couple of valium on the bus but this merely achieved my not caring about the delay rather than sleep. I took a (cold) shower and changed into a sundress. I was tired but also somewhat wired and really hungry. I took a walk around the village then stopped for something to eat.
When I got back to my hotel, the girl who’d checked me in gestured quickly and introduced me to her brother who ran the hotel with her. He spoke English and we resolved the issues with the tour I had missed. He then asked me what I wanted to do that afternoon.
It’s hard to turn down hospitality.
I was a bit vulnerable. I was sleep deprived and had already exhausted what the village had to offer. There were no taxis to be seen. While a tourist destination this was rural Turkey. You stay in a cave hotel, you go on organised tours and then you leave. Head away from Cappadocia and you find a place where women still get stoned to death for looking at men the wrong way. Just because you’re drinking raki in a sundress doesn’t change the fact you are enjoying a pocket of freedom in a Middle Eastern country.
I was pushing boundaries and for the last 34 hours had felt at the mercy of the Turkish men deigning to look after me. Part of the thrill of travel for me is how my boundaries shift and change. I used to struggle to relax in public but in Cambodia I fell asleep on the metal roof of a boat surrounded by people. I woke somewhat startled but only because my travelling companion Trev had covered me in his silk blanket (to protect me from the sun) and I thought I was dying in a hot air balloon which arguably is an easy mistake to make.
I got the next boundary wrong I think. I say I think because I wasn’t hurt and instead had an amazing experience. But it was wrong because it could have gone so horribly wrong.
Did I want to shoot beer bottles? I laughed and said maybe. Did I want to go for a hike and see some temples? I’d just had a cold shower, eaten some flatbread and was thinking I had things pretty good, I’m backpacking on a budget, hell yeah I want to see some temples.
He said to sit and drink some more tea and we’d go in a bit.
Of course there was a part of me with doubts but I was also going stir crazy. I’d been stuck on a bus and was now stuck in a tiny village until tomorrow morning when I was to be picked up for a sun rise balloon tour (yes, this costs over a week’s accommodation in a hostel*).
And the crucial thing was... I like guns. When I was fifteen and an air cadet I got my marksman badge. Thirteen years ago I’d been pretty good and I was keen to try again. And perhaps because I’d handled rifles, I wasn’t overly scared of them. That was my mistake. I assumed we’d been talking rifles.
We went in his car. He opened his boot, grabbed some bottles and headed out to position them. It was hot and it was beautiful. It felt like another planet far far away from the real world and real life. He pulled out his rifle and loaded it. It was gorgeous. The rifles I shot with the RAF were serviceable, black. They were tools. This rifle was a thing of beauty, a much loved and cared for form of polished wood and shining metal. My desire to hold it can only be described as lust. Even now as I recollect it I feel a pull that wishes I owned it, could caress it and could feel it explode in my grasp. Firing that gun was like a hot affair that scorches your soul and demands revisiting in the quiet pleasure of recollection.
I was handed the rifle. Barely had I absorbed its texture before my blood ran cold as my companion pulled a handgun from the car. It was a strange sensation because usually holding a rifle you feel quite powerful. But it is a far inferior weapon at short range. I had said I didn’t know how to shoot because I knew I could use a refresher but the truth was that I had a loaded weapon and knew exactly what to do with it. I also knew just how long it would take for me to move and shoot was it necessary.
Nothing bad happened.
As it turns out I’m still as much a marksman as I was as a teenager. Scared as I was by the handgun, I was seduced by the rifle. My companion was impressed and offered me a go with the handgun.
They’re heavy and the kickback is intense. With a rifle you take it into your body and I have strong thighs; I can take it. A handgun’s kickback is localised and I didn’t feel in control of it. Perhaps I was scared of it. I don’t see rifles as fighting weapons. For me rifles are about target practise and shooting animals (not that I’ve ever hunted myself) but handguns feature in episodes of CSI, they get used for shooting people.
It was an amazing afternoon. I saw incredible private churches off the tourist trail, sights that my companion had discovered himself. He estimated that only a small percentage of Cappadocia’s treasures had been found. But the whole thing was marred by the fear that it was a game, that at some point he’d turn the gun on me and rape or kill me.
Nothing bad happened.
But I changed nevertheless. That afternoon made me realise that not only did I have a fiancée who loved me but that I had stepchildren who were anticipating my return (ok, their presents from my trip). In a way I never felt towards my mum and brother, I felt I had a duty to stay safe for the people who relied upon me.
Three boys with guns. Three boys I’ve eaten bulgur wheat with. Three boys who changed me forever.
I say boys because I’m just a girl. These are just stories (true as they are) and this is just life.
It’s challenging but I’m hooked!
Incidentally, my friend Hussein got in touch after the first part of this blog. He’s invited me and my family to visit him in Iraq. I think the boy’s mother might take issue so my plan is to go with just the husband. One day.
What’s the worst that could happen?
* And I’m pretty flash and have a private ensuite room (albeit with cold water).
Before we moved (back) to the centre of Gloucester, the husband and I lived in a village on the outskirts which we used to joke was like Wisteria Lane. I wrote about my doubts regarding moving to suburbia (Suburban bliss) for a second time and have now learnt my lesson. Suburbia is not for me. But my reasons for moving there in May 2010 were still valid when we moved on and after a lot of searching, we found a house that met our desire for a family home but within a more cosmopolitan* area. We live in a Victorian townhouse within a very short walk of an industrial estate. I like that mix. I like that while the house next to us and the ones opposite are the same style, the entire street isn’t the same. It’s little things that kill the repetition of our old village; just about every house has been extended or remodelled in some way and each has its own story.
Really we are still living in a suburb. It takes about a quarter of an hour to walk to Gloucester docks and nearly 25 minutes to The Cross. But it feels different to us. For me it’s the fact I don’t have to cross a major road to get into town and that it’s about as easy on foot as it is to drive. We go into the city a lot more since moving.
It’s not our street that is Stepford-like so much as our house. When the remake of the film came out in 2004 I found myself hankering after certain aspects of that life. I loved the light airy houses that were sparkling clean yet looked comfortable and welcoming. I liked the sense of neatness and order whilst still being lived in (cupcake anyone?). I’m also rather a fan of 1950s fashion to the extent that I wore a circle dress with full underskirt when I married the husband.
We had set the target of finishing our house for our wedding reception and while we didn’t manage it, the transformation was incredible. The house we bought was a bit scruffy round the edges with dark carpets and ugly bathrooms. It was warm and welcoming but it was dusty old house cosy and what I wanted was light and bright cosy. I think we achieved it with a cream carpet throughout and a soft palette of duck egg, lilac-grey and off-white. I baked my own wedding cake (plus cookies and mince pies) and I felt fabulous as I descended my stairs in the sudden quiet (my stepsons had left with the husband) of my lovely house.
We utterly trashed it over the course of the wedding and Christmas and as I cleared up I wondered what I’d do next. I guess I had seen what was possible. I found myself on the Good Housekeeping forum on Mumsnet (lord knows how!) and discovered an American website called Fly Lady. The gist is short bursts of cleaning but what seems to work is the desire of the people on those threads (Mumsnet NOT Fly Lady) to live lives that are a bit, well, tidier.
The issue I took with Fly Lady was that it felt like a step back from feminism. It’s all very female focused and while I wanted to live in a Stepford house I had no desire to be a Stepford wife! I am far from alone in feeling this way but I think to end up in a place where you discuss the virtues of microfibre cloths, you’re already at the point of screaming no more and willing to try anything.
So I gave it a go. I shined my sink and slowly started changing my habits. I gave it a few days before I told the husband and after a few more days he remarked on how different the house was looking. It wasn’t that it was particularly dirty or messy before but there were lots of little things that make the heart sink; a pile of paperwork to sort, a jumper that needs hand washing getting in the way and a sink full of dirty dishes.
He’s joined me. He finds it harder to multitask (empty the dishwasher while the kettle is boiling and so on) but is giving it a good effort.
It’s nice.
I mean, I’m not going to pretend that cleaning is something fun but by doing it in short bursts and being less of a perfectionist about it means a surprising amount gets achieved and it is much more relaxing when you aren’t cleaning. So far we’ve only got the ground floor continually tidy and are perhaps two thirds there on cleanliness but I know we’ll have the whole house there in the next month (crucially when the last of the tradesmen have finished).
What I like is that it feels manageable. I think a house that you can’t manage indicates a life that you can’t manage. When I saw piles of laundry it was a visual indicator of where my life wasn’t in control. Sure I have OCD (sadly not cleaning related) but the husband doesn’t and I’ve seen a change in him. He still can’t find anything but he seems less grumpy about it. He’s also more willing to pitch in, I think because the difference is apparent. When the kitchen is almost tidy and pretty clean, a few quick tasks by him makes it look fantastic.
Funnily enough, my concern that this path was counter-feminist was completely wrong. My relationship has improved and I feel that keeping our home nice is something we’re doing for each other. The husband is doing the most housework I’ve known him to and he’s doing more and more without being asked.
All this fits within a wider life change I’m pursuing at the moment. It’s very much about the family I’m trying to create and I’ve decided it’s something I need a separate blog for as I feel this one has started to slip away from wider reflection and I want to get back to critiquing the world around me. The stuff that’ll keep my mind from going Stepford! If you’re interested in following my new blog, you can find it at Highlights and Hunter Wellies.
Next week I’ll write part two of Bulgur Wheat and Boys with Guns. For now I’m off to empty the tumble dryer. Then maybe I’ll read another newspaper because really I ought to be using this column as my soapbox for budget cuts and SOPA, not housework!!!
* By Gloucestershire’s standards.
I’ve written about Turkey before. When I was there in September I wrote a blog on The Art of Drinking Tea but there is a lot that went unsaid, in particular I needed to confess to my then fiancé now husband and mother.
My mind is on Turkey due to today’s dinner being a soup dish I’ve been reworking for a cookery course I’ll be teaching on Turkish cuisine. Part way through eating I remembered the miniature bottle I’d brought back for the husband and had been saving for when I eventually started cooking Turkish recipes.
I had high hopes of Turkish food and it certainly delivered. There were elements of Greek tastes but for me it took me back to the Iranian restaurants in Kuala Lumpur where I would eat with my Persian friends. It used to surprise and amuse me that these intelligent and cultured men would only eat Iranian food* but it gave me the chance to become familiar with the complexity of Middle Eastern food. Sure there were a lot of kebabs but they were unlike I’d ever tasted and the salads blew my mind.
The surprise lay with Turkish wine. I’d had Raki before and was a fan and Efes the national lager was much as any other lager in a hot country, excellent in chilled glasses and nondescript merely cool. I’d never even heard of Turkish wine. This led me to think badly of it. After all, I’d never heard of Thai wine and that was not a pretty discovery. Turkish wine doesn’t have sophisticated origins and had I known them before hand I may have judged it harshly. For it was only after many nights drinking the stuff that I learned that the grapes grew on public land, were harvested by villagers and produced in factories. I asked somewhat hopefully whether they used casks and got a quizzical look.
Nevertheless it’s lovely stuff and the Shiraz-Merlot blend I brought back was smooth, complex and with perfectly balanced tannins. A look on Wikipedia (I’m terribly glad that SOPA looks to crumble to dust) and I see that Turkey is the world’s fourth largest producer of grapes. I think we’re missing out on something frankly and am surprised there isn’t more on the British market.
But this isn’t a blog about wine, although it is about two men I have drunk wine with. It’s about me finally feeling ready to write about something I have been battling with.
In 2008 I moved to Malaysia. Early on I was approached in the street by a man eager to talk to me. This wasn’t uncommon for me as being Caucasian I stood out somewhat and novelty seems to attract wherever you go. Usually I smiled a no but for some reason I stopped. The romantic in me likes to think I sensed a friendship destined to happen. His name was Hussein and he became my best friend for the few months he was in Kuala Lumpur. It took a while for his story to emerge. His reluctance became clear once I learned it all. Hussein was an Iraqi Kurd who had forged a passport and fled. He considered himself Iranian for that was where he was born and grew up but ones paperwork has the final say.
It all sounds rather dramatic but for the most part we were just two people. We went to the zoo, we drank white wine in touristy bars and we talked about philosophy. He had trained as a cardio researcher and when I told him the far less dramatic story of the breakdown of my marriage he took my hands in his and said that all of life’s answers lay in the heart; that the ups and downs of life were the ups and downs of our heart rate and when the turmoil of joy and anguish isn’t evident we’re dead already.
His plan had been to take advantage of Malaysia’s hospitality to refugees passing through and seek a visa for a new future in Australia. It was rejected and he was deported. I grew up the day we said goodbye. He thought he was going to Iraq to face death.
Imagine my joy then when several months later he got in touch via Facebook. He’d joined the Americans and was pictured in uniform carrying a gun. He’s since disappeared but I’m hopeful that he’s ok.
Between him and Ali and experiencing racism at the hands of Arabic men during my time in Kuala Lumpur I unexpectedly found myself taking sides politically. The Iranians I knew were so charming and educated, they were the good guys right? After all, Iranian Ali said that it was a mistake on the part of his government that the likes of Hussein got sent to Iraq and that Iranian Kurds were his fellow people.
Jump forward three years and I’m making another friend. Süleyman was a Canadian raised Turk who moved back to the country he’d left as a child. A few drinks down and we’re chatting about his early experiences of Turkey. He makes me laugh and as I’ve visited Canada a couple of times and have relatives there, we find a fair amount of common ground.
Except that my teenage years where I played with guns were very different. I shot at targets. Süleyman shot Kurds.
I grew up a whole lot more that night. I learned that I couldn’t travel the world making friends with interesting people without facing up to the complexity of reality.
Süleyman wondered why I was so quiet. I said I didn’t think the Kurds were so wrong and that they surely had the right to live if not inhabit the world in the way the Turkish government saw unfit. A stupid thing to say but then I’ve broken enough laws in Malaysia and I have the bad habit of being blasé. He studied my face and shrugged.
‘Did you know any...’
‘Yes.’ I cut him off.
We changed the subject. We drank into the night until he passed out on the mat we’d dragged to the rooftop.
Only then did I let myself cry and feel stupid for being so ignorant.
Less than a week later I was in the middle of nowhere, alone with a man with a handgun.
* And Nandos. But everyone eats Nandos. This is Hussein with Josie. I saw Josie at the zoo and got all excited at a pink giraffe so he bought her for me. We called her our baby and I said I should be the one to raise her. Very earnestly he told me that this was not how custody operated where he came from. I try not to think too much about the months we got to see each other whenever we wanted. Right now I don't even have an email address. I'd love to see him again one day. I doubt I ever will.
This week I read that a great way to get hits on your blog was to put the phrase sugar cube (1) into the title. I confess I read this on twitter and didn’t give it more than a cursory glance but it interests me to contemplate what makes us click on one link over another. The biggest influence on whether I’ll click on a link from twitter relates to the author. If the person posting is it is a friend or someone who has made me laugh or think in the relatively recent past then I’m more likely to click. Then there are the cleverly worded tweets; the ones that perhaps feature a play on an established idea or phrase.
Plenty of research suggests that numbered lists and how-to guides rank highly for people and I suppose I fit this pattern as well with ‘Five ways to creating a magical Christmas’ probably influencing me more than ‘A magical Christmas.’
Not that this kind of thing affects how I title my own blogs. Possibly because I don’t make any money from doing this, I’m not driven towards attracting traffic. It’s nice of course but I prefer one comment to eleventy page views, a reference on twitter to a surge in hits. To be honest I’d feel a bit strange about trying to phrase a title to influence clicks. It’s not that I don’t care - why else would I announce blog posts on twitter? – but that to do so would feel too overtly as though I was working on it and nothing kills joy quite like something becoming work. I love creating recipes but since I’m putting together cookery courses at the moment it suddenly feels far more strenuous and far less intuitive.
I like to go with the mood. Just as I like stories that go off on a tangent and serve little purpose beyond amusing me. For instance, when I was growing up there was a strange cupboard in my room. It was full of curious things my parents had stowed there. For some reason there were sugar cubes (2) and I used to suck them until my mum told me my teeth would fall out. I didn’t really like them but the horses in the books and annuals I obsessed over seemed to feature them a fair bit and I wanted to know what the fuss was about.
In fact the first time I really consumed sugar cubes (3) was last September in Turkey. Wherever I went I was given small glasses of strong tea that needed sugar to make it palatable. They came in large pastel coloured boxes that sat quietly next to computers and phones, as a vital part of conducting any business.
Still on my sugar cube (4) to do list is drinking absinthe because I do love a good ritual...
The classic French absinthe ritual involves placing a sugar cube on a flat perforated spoon, which rests on the rim of the glass containing a measure or “dose” of absinthe. Iced water is then very slowly dripped on to the sugar cube, which gradually dissolves and drips, along with the water, into the absinthe, causing the green liquor to louche (“loosh”) into an opaque opalescent white as the essential oils precipitate out of the alcoholic solution. Usually three to four parts water are added to one part of 68% absinthe. Historically, true absintheurs used to take great care in adding the water, letting it fall drop by single drop onto the sugar cube, and then watching each individual drip cut a milky swathe through the peridot-green absinthe below. Seeing the drink gradually change colour was part of its ritualistic attraction. (Credit)
Doesn’t that make you want to just make like Van Gogh and go chasing after colour and expression, casting body parts as you go?
No? Just me then?
Truly, you don’t what to go crashing into a starry night above swirling olive trees and just lose yourself in an orgy of abandonment in Arles fuelled by mad nights with the impressionists in Paris?
Ok, I’ll let it go.
I guess ritual is the key here. This blog is a ritualistic activity and I play to my own rules. To play out my ritual according to a set of precepts is to deny the very pleasure I take from creating it.
By now you must be wondering about who invented sugar cubes (5) and if you aren’t then I need a fifth thing as I started with my title. The first four free flowed like the bra burning cousin of the cube; the one the family talk of in whispered tones, you know... loose.
Well it was Jakub Kryštof Rad in 1841. He was the director of a Morovian sugar factory and at that time sugar came pressed into cones that you hacked pieces off. Allegedly his wife was clumsy and after cutting herself asked why it didn’t come pre-cut.
True story.
Twitter to horses to see to absinthe to a cack handed wife. 5 top ways to integrate sugar cubes into a blog.
The triumph of hope over experience was Samuel Johnson’s take on remarriage. In many ways it has been my greatest demonstration that I am truly one of life’s optimists. But really I see optimism all around. Happy New Year, Happy New Year. So many emails, so many greetings. It’s January, so let us start over and start afresh.
I’m not a fan of New Years Eve as a rule. I find that events loaded with expectation rarely deliver. As it happens the New Year’s Eve just gone was probably my favourite to date; the husband and I played board games with my mum, my brother and his girlfriend. It was meant to be a quiet night in but there were impromptu cocktails at a bar that delivered on both concept and glass contents and a near miss as we almost set a footballer’s balcony on fire with a paper lantern (he’s a neighbour of my mum’s, were weren’t roaming the streets of Manchester in search of ASBO’s).
But I love the early weeks of a new year. Optimism is all around. Plenty of us wrangle with self doubt and undercutting much of our ability to step out and be brilliant is our perception of the past. It’s not our fault, we’re conditioned to be nice and to not show off (girls more than boys). When I’m working with my life coaching students and clients I often ask them to list their achievements and qualities without qualifying them. It’s surprisingly challenging.
When I look at my list of the 30 things I hoped to achieve before I’m 30, many seem silly. I qualify them. Take for example my wish to go to Russia. I want to qualify in so many ways to play it down. Firstly, I used to say ‘but it was so long ago.’ What is daft about this is that following my visit in 2002 I returned in 2008, ‘but it’s easy when you’ve been somewhere once.’ I felt that it didn’t count that I was on a university trip (the first time) or that I took a taxi instead of public transport (the second time) and even then was travelling with a group. I berate myself for only knowing the word for thank you and not learning any more.
But I went. As a teenager looking out of a rainy window over the Vale of York, I promised myself I’d go to Russia. That I’d see palaces and have adventures. I succeeded. At The Catherine Palace (summer residence of the Tsars) near St Petersberg I saw a (reconstructed) room with walls of amber which both dazzled me and confirmed my dreams of a world full of wonder. Then, one evening as our fellow students were discussing where to find culture, a guy I had previously not noticed grabbed my hand and pulled me into an alcove. I had been selected by him on the grounds of being the person most likely to be up for a laugh.
We paused at the top of some steps of what appeared to be a bar just as the owner looked out. We were encouraged inside, we saw live music, we made friends and we drank a lot of vodka. We had missed the subway home so got a taxi to a hotel where initially I was accused of prostitution (“if you are students on holiday where is your luggage?”). We headed out early for campus and found ourselves in a square where Goldeneye was filmed. It was deserted and beautiful. Everyone assumed that we’d hooked up of course but we knew we’d experienced something more exciting.
That took effort. It was a challenge to remind myself that I had an amazing adventure in St Petersberg one night. A challenge to remind myself that I can and have realised my dreams. So much easier to play it down, to say I didn’t do anything special and why put myself on the line when I may not succeed.
But in the early weeks of January we are better at being hopeful. While we may berate ourselves for our perceived shortcomings, we often subscribe to the surge of optimism that’s all around and start diets and plan trips. While I make changes year round (my September trip to Turkey was conceived around Easter), I make more at this time of year. My resolutions as they are have been made with the husband (start a joint savings account and see more of our friends).
If you pay attention to the advice trotted out then we want to be making small changes that we can keep, meaningful changes that work towards fulfilling our greater goals and oh I forget, I’m yawning so much.
Don’t be boring. Just because we won’t stick to most of it isn’t a reason to go big, go crazy. I’ve been accused of being flaky in the past because I start lots of things and abandon many. But I finished the PhD, I’m still writing this column, I’ve spoken to the same man nearly every day for almost five years and he’s still my favourite person in the world. I don’t fear getting things wrong or making mistakes. I know I have a wonderful marriage and am confident it’ll last until one of us dies precisely because I got it so wrong in the past.
I am trying with the small changes I admit (I’m dallying with Fly Lady cleaning) but I also mean to go big. In June 2010 I wrote about my 30 before I’m 30 list. Since then I have got a tattoo, bought a corset and taken a horse-drawn carriage ride through Central Park but there are still ten things on my list.
1) Publish a book
2) Have a baby
3) Cook a multibird roast
4) Go to an airport and take a flight chosen on the spot
5) Watch a sunset and a sun rise without going to bed
6) Make a film or documentary
7) Ride a motorcycle
8) Take a photo worth framing on a large canvas and hang it in my home
9) Be suspended by rope
10) Buy an entire animal (eg. a pig) and cook it
Some of these are already being planned. I’m cooking a multibird roast at Easter (done myself, not one of those Aldi jobs) and there is a pig at my uncle’s place fattening as I type. Others I fear are too aspirational but it’s January and actually hope doesn’t need to triumph over experience for experience has taught me that when you really put your mind to it, great things are possible.
Happy New Year, may your dreams come true and your adventures be plentiful.
I am shallow. In the last week I have only checked the news once and that was to see what the newest Royal was wearing for her first Christmas at Sandringham. Like the Duchess of Cambridge I have just had my first Christmas with my new family but my outfits consisted of pyjamas for early morning (with the addition of a hat from a cracker at the breakfast table) then a wool miniskirt with a jumper and chunky boots for visiting my mother in law then dropping the kids at their mothers. The husband I had a nap after lunch (the eldest was sent back to bed at 4.15am and 5.45am on Christmas morning) after which I returned to pyjamas. The only photos taken of me were by family members.
The Duchess was expected to wear five outfits according to Jean Broke-Smith (according to Wikipedia she’s an English etiquette and grooming teacher which sounds a rather fabulously vacuous career to me) Kate needed a casual outfit for breakfast, a smart outfit - and a hat - for the morning church service, a dress for lunch, a cocktail dress for early evening drinks and a full-length dress for the evening meal. I didn’t imagine we’d get pictures of much – if she’s on Facebook then sadly I’m not friends with Elizabeth II – but was eager to see what her coat would be like. For I love coats and she was certain to need one for church.
It was lovely. As was the one she wore for a walk earlier in the day. As someone who grew up decidedly unimpressed by the royals (Diana and Fergie both struck me as a bit common, a bit slutty and not very princessy) it has surprised me how much interest I now have. I suppose a bit of the glamour has returned with Catherine. She’s classy and elegant and seems very in love with Prince William but crucially, she’s stylish.
We live in a world of overt sexualisation and while I actually quite like Rhianna her videos and many of her contemporaries are excessively focused on flesh. I like sex as much as the next girl but it hardly determines my day and certainly I find little to inspire me in much of the content of modern media with regards to fashion. That’s why it’s nice to have a celebrity that always wears a coat, wears woolly dresses and nice boots.
I always wear a coat. I like woolly dresses and boots are awesome – they keep your ankles warm!
So yes, my foray away from my domestic nest where a fug of mulled wine has been omnipresent was to see what the Duchess was rocking. Come the sales I will keep my eye out for a purple coat with minimal detailing. I’m also growing my hair as I have serious envy there as well.
Something else I’ve been enjoying has been the #whatyourocking hashtag on Instagram. Actually that’s a lie. I’ve only been liking my friends’ pictures. I just Googled it and found that it’s only her hashtag! This is the blog but to be honest while I like her writing, what appealed most was the bitesize nature of the pictures coming via my Facebook stream.
For me, fashion is something I struggle to justify an interest in. Much as I love it, it has been an almost guilty secret. I’ve felt the need to justify my decision to celebrate big moments in my life with designer shoes (I bought a pair of Jimmy Choo’s when I left my ex-husband and a pair of Louboutins when I got my PhD) in a way that I wouldn’t with a piece of art. It was completely without embarrassment that I’ve told people about the indulgence that has been framing my art collection from my travels. Each professionally framed, the exercise has cost me more than the purchase of the original works but seemed a reasonable and mature way to spend money.
It’s not just the big things. My socks are made from bamboo (very cosy) and this delights me no end. I was also really pleased with how my new red jumper looked with my miniskirt and boots on Christmas day. Obviously I liked that the husband liked my outfit but more than that I wanted to share. I wanted to photograph myself and share my cute look. But I don’t. I think perhaps I don’t want people knowing just how much time I spend thinking about clothes, about how what is essentially my uniform of dresses, leggings and boots with scarves is something that has evolved slowly. I wear a lot of colour and this is surprisingly challenging. We live in a world of neutrals. I am a peacock.
The end of the year is nigh and I think that for 2012 my personal New Years Resolution (the husband and I have several joint ones that support the vows we made to pursue a life less ordinary) will be to give myself permission to love fashion openly. I’m going to follow and engage with more fashion bloggers and tweeters, I’m going to make time for girly shopping trips hopefully including one with she of #whatyourocking and maybe even post the occasional picture of something I love.
It’s not a big resolution nor one whose keeping will be noticed by anyone but it’s a step towards embracing the person I am. In 2008 I made some big changes to my life and I’m the happiest now that I have ever been but my increased self-acceptance has highlighted to me the little areas where I’m not ok and I want to get all those i’s dotted and t’s crossed.
I hope you all had a great Christmas and have a wonderful New Year. I can hardly believe it’s already two years since I began this column. Thank you for your support and all the lovely messages.
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