She said I’m BEAUTIFUL!

by Mothership on May 7, 2010

Well, actually she said I’m a beautiful blogger.

But it’s an AWARD so I’ll take it anyway.

THANK YOU, ALY!

The small hitch is that the rest of you have to endure listening to seven mind-numbingly boring facts about me that you were not supposed to know before, but as I’ve been blogging for a while now there’s probably nothing left that I haven’t already told you, even if I didn’t exactly mean to.

Here goes anyway

1. I try to be polite and gracious. I honestly do. But when someone says something unfair, bullying, racist, sexist or treats others with grave contempt I have been known to *cough* speak up quite loudly.

Sometimes then I’m not very polite.

2. I floss my teeth every night. Except when I forget.

3. When I was eight I took trombone lessons at school. After my lesson was finished I was to return the school trombone to the headmaster’s cupboard, next to his office, which was also where the tuck shop supplies were kept. Every week I would heave the unwieldy black case up the stairs and place my instrument next to the Eden-like temptation of a box of Banana Chewits. It was a painful moral battle each time.
One day I lost.
Walking out into the playground with my mouth stuffed full of guilty joy, the school nurse intercepted me and asked me where I had gotten the sweets.  Crap! I knew she knew. And she knew I knew she knew. So I did what anyone in that situation would reasonably do: I lied.
“From home, Mrs. Scott”. I mumbled through the goo, eyes as wide as I could make them go.
Minutes later I was hauled into the headmaster’s office, confession tearfully extracted and parents summoned.
I was terrified, ashamed, humiliated and I swore I’d never, ever do anything like that ever again.

Since then, I have been very careful only to steal sweets from members of my family.

4. I have an owl nesting in the palm tree in my garden. It spits out a lot of pellets which are fascinating to dissect.

5. I have observed that the people who spend the most time and energy trying to draw attention to themselves are often the least interesting

6. I love this band. They’re mad. I found them on the street and now I’m a crazed groupie.

7. My tea is cold now. D’oh!

According to the ROOLZ I’m supposed to nominate a further fifteen people for this award.

FIFTEEN?

I don’t even KNOW that many people.

Here are ten that I thought of before I contracted advanced link disease and my fingers fell off.

Please collect your award, link back to my good self  (either to thank me or shower me with curses), and then reveal seven fascinating facts about your own magnificent person and pass on the love to ten or fifteen more bloggers.

Don’t say I never gave you anything.

http://ageofuncertainty.blogspot.com/

http://itsallsolovely.blogspot.com/

http://www.libertylondongirl.com/

http://belgraviawives.blogspot.com/

http://www.mrlondonstreet.blogspot.com/

http://sw14group.com/wzzy/

http://misswhistle.blogspot.com/

http://geekymummy.blogspot.com/

http://deegeefee.wordpress.com/

http://www.nappyvalleygirl.blogspot.com/

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Anything but that..

by Mothership on May 5, 2010

I am quite old.

Yes. It’s true *makes mental note to book Botox appointment*

In fact I remember when Margaret Thatcher was elected Prime Minister. I was a small girl and everyone in my family and step-family was appalled except my step-grandfather who, it emerged, had voted for her – a fact which he has never been allowed to forget and his wife has still not forgiven him for despite the fact that he is now ninety.

Even I hated her although my reasons were more personal. I knew her as “Margaret Thatcher, milk snatcher’ because she had introduced a bill to ban free milk at school for children over seven years old, but to my deep chagrin our local council had managed to find the funds to keep on giving it to us so I was subjected to a small, sickly bottle of slightly sour, lukewarm milk every morning at eleven o’clock.
I was deeply resentful that she had not managed to spare me the morning torture and thus my antagonism towards her was sealed.

By the time my family left the UK for the USA she’d been in power for over a year and over in the USA her counterpart, good ol’ Ronnie Ray-Gun was gearing up for a similarly aggressive fiscal overhaul in favour of public spending cuts, the trickle down economy and lower taxation.

I came back to the UK again just in time to watch John Major topple the Iron Lady and carry on her good works. By then she and her compadres had taken us into a war on questionable grounds, stomped all over our education system, released all kinds of desperate and needy people into ‘care in the community’ to wander homeless in the streets, vilified single mothers while saying nothing about the absconding fathers and quietly made the rich richer than ever before.

Then we had a nice recession to celebrate.

Oh, it was fun being young, then! I loved going down the DHSS right after college – so invigorating, and it gave me that ‘whole world view’.

During the election campaign in 1997 there was one Labour poster of a child being held up above a crowd – he looked like he was literally soaring through the air. My friend Donna and I were ecstatic. We were going to vote for FLYING KIDS!

And they won! You can’t imagine how happy I was that day. I was sure it was going to be different. And it was. A lot has changed for the better.

Unfortunately, quite a bit has been overshadowed by that asinine war (um, did you think we would forget about that?) and the giant bank FAIL (um, yes, Gordon, you made a boo boo) and the fact that ol’ toothy Tony stuck around way longer than he should have (go AWAY you annoying little man).

Still. I can’t quite bear the thought that we’re going to go back to the same old Tory backslapping crap. Where more public spending will be cut.That’s our schools, hospitals, police force, services for the people who need them most.

This is what happened in Hammersmith recently

I used to be a staunch Labour supporter. Not so much anymore. I wanted to vote Green because I really believe in them, but of course they haven’t a hope. Clegg? I dunno.

But please. Anything. Anything but Cameron.

If anything’s going to break Britain, it will be him.

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Vote

by Mothership on May 3, 2010

I sent my vote in last week. I don’t know if it will get there in time. I don’t know if it will make a blind bit of difference in a constituency where my MP has been the same person for the last 20 years but it was important to check the ballot box, stick my stamp on the envelope and post it anyway.

Fewer than 100 years ago I wouldn’t have been able to do that. As a woman, I would not have had the right. I would have had to have put up with whomever the (white) men of my country chose for me, and I could have been fairly certain they wouldn’t have taken any of my needs or rights into account.

At just nineteen years old, my own father was thrown into prison under the 90 day detention act in apartheid South Africa. For those of you unfamiliar with that clever little ruse, it enabled the secret police to arrest and detain anyone they suspected of being involved in ‘acts against the state’ – for instance demanding that any citizen regardless of colour or creed be allowed a vote –  and hold them in solitary confinement for three months. Then they could release them and in theory ( often, too, in practice) arrest them immediately and repeat the process ad infinitum. My mother would have been arrested too but she was at home with terrible menstrual cramps rather than at the ANC meeting. Probably the only time in her life she’s been grateful for a bad period. After he got out they fled to London and were not allowed to return to their home country for over twenty five years.

Pretty rough, eh?

Harder than a stroll down to the voting booth and marking a box with an X.

I think the British voting system is a bit crap, really. I really wish that I could vote separately for my local borough and for my national candidate, that we had proportional representation, that the stupid House of Lords was dissolved (what relevance do they have anyway?). I wish there was more transparency and accountability and that in some way young people could be more energised and interested in what goes on at Westminster.

Perhaps if there is a hung parliament there really will be some kind of change? I don’t know. It’s a bit difficult to tell.

But there most definitely will not be change if people do not force it. If they sit on their arses moaning and not using the power they do have.

That power is your ballot paper so get out and use it.

No excuses.

Vote.

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PR man, our relationship isn’t working..

by Mothership on April 29, 2010

I get quite a lot of requests from PR people these days.

I can’t really work out why.

If anything I post less frequently and the quality might have taken a slight dip *cough* due to lack of talent but perhaps I’m on some sort of ‘hit ’em up’ list and there are at least two or three in my inbox each morning with a request for something or other.

The clever ones address me by my psuedonym, Mothership, and say something specific about my blog to show they’ve actually read it, and then put in a polite request to see if I am interested in something like a paid post or commercial link.  I always respond to these quickly and politely. I don’t often accept them. In fact I never have to date as there hasn’t been anything I’ve been particularly interested in but I live in hope that Native Instruments will ask me to test out some music software (not v. likely on a parent blog, but you never know?)

The not-so-clever ones clearly send out the same email to everyone on their giant list which is not what I would do, but perhaps this blanket approach works for them, I don’t know. However, I do know that bloggers are a community, built on people, trust and relationships so I would have thought they’d be more successful with a bit more care.

I have been known to be rather sharp-tongued with fools. It’s true I do not suffer them gladly.

However, one cannot accuse me of rudely not writing back.

Here is a gem I received this morning, plus my reply. I just had to share:

Hi,

I’m emailing from the PR agency for ChitChat Bingo about some research that they have recently done in to small talk. I have a release here with some interesting statistics, for example the research revealed that Mums are considered the best in the family at telling stories. The release also has some information on why we engage in small talk, who we do it with, where we do it etc. Is this something that you think you would like to hear more about? If so I could send you through the release.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Thanks,
James

Dear James,

Thank you for reaching out. I appreciate this is part of your job.

However, this research sounds not only mind-numbingly boring to me, but also highly dubious in its scientific premise. I find it difficult to believe that the questions or results have not been manipulated (as it is so easy to do) to show that ‘small talk’ is in some way important and linked to our innate parenting ability – that would be the attempt to flatter me and my readers with the ‘revelation’ that Mums are considered the best in the family at telling stories.

What discredits it further is that the ‘research’ has been nobly funded by a company who has a vested interested in getting people to spend time and money indulging in ‘small talk’ online in order to fuel what I suspect are huge profits.

So, I’m going to have to say no. Not interested.

Regards,
Mothership

P.S. I respond very politely to most P.R. queries. This one just offended me.

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Capabilities Presentation

by Mothership on April 27, 2010

I know, I should write something. It’s been a while.

But to be honest I’m just TOO TIRED!

I was up until stupid o’clock last night writing a ‘Capabilites presentation’ for a potential client which, while it didn’t actually make me any money, did give me a sense of tremendous self-importance given I’ve not really done much of that kind of thing for a bit.

When they first asked me to give the ‘Capabilities presentation’ I was actually a bit confused.  Was I supposed to show them how I can make a cup of tea, comfort an inconsolable toddler,  issue instructions on how to find a lost brush for My Little Pony and make interested, supportive comments on an academic paper all at the same time as I’m straightening my hair and mentally assessing what we have in the fridge?

That’s pretty fucking amazing, if you ask me.
Much cleverer than what I do with my machines that go ping.

But probably not what the CEO of this agency wanted to see. So I fiddled about with Powerpoint and surreptitiously sidled over to Facebook and Twitter once in a while  until finally the birds were chirping and I realised that I had better go to bed because I was making things worse, not better.

This morning I had another look at what I’d done and I was rather pleased with the end result, so I sent it off, checked with the agency that it all worked properly at the other end and fingers crossed the meeting will go well.

What I’d really like to do now is have a nap and daydream about the money I might make if any actual work comes of this, but instead I am looking after Two who is quite grumpy, and Five will be home soon. I also have disgusting hair and I need a cup of tea, plus Husband needs to talk to me about something he’s doing at work so in actual fact I will be doing that other ‘Capabilities presentation’.
Right here at home, without an audience or pay on about two hours sleep.

I bet you’ve done that, right? There are millions of us doing it every day.

We’re all fucking amazing. Hats off to us, ladies.

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Ready, boots?

by Mothership on April 20, 2010

I have a complicated relationship with clothes.

I don’t seem to be able to build a wardrobe in a sensible, grownup way and I don’t have a nice, colour co-ordinated range of outfits for different seasons in good fabrics that are cut well by esteemed designers. Despite my advanced age I am yet to grow out of my signature style, settled upon in adolescence of a combination of pyjamas, leggings, demure 1950’s housewife dresses and sparkly/furry outfits more suited to stage performances. I have a great fondness for ridiculous high heeled shoes although sadly in Stepford, there are precious few places to wear them, this being the land of Uggs and flip-flops. Still, I continue to wear my odd get-ups despite the funny looks I get from the other mothers at the school gates.

I did try, for a while, to tone down the clothes. Mostly when I felt rather flat and fat myself. I wore pretty things from Anthropologie. I tried carrying a handbag and putting things in it (instead of chaotically stuffing everything into a tiny Coach purse on a strap around my wrist). I wore ‘natural’ makeup. I foolishly allowed a hairdresser to colour my hair light brown instead of the blonde it has been for decades.

Husband loved it.

I wanted to kill myself.

Who was this frumpy imposter?

Last year I decided that it was just no good. I was clearly NEVER going to grow up and age gracefully.
It was going to be much easier on everyone (well, maybe just me actually) if I went back and embraced my inner teenager and bought stupid, disposable fashion at shops that are not meant for ladies such as myself.  This worked out rather well, not least because there are a number of shops like this in Stepford given the high student population. I might look a trifle out of place riffling through the racks, but hey, I can rock those 80’s styles with the best of them. After all, I’ve had lots of practice having done it in the real life ’80’s. If only I had kept some of those gems, I wouldn’t have to buy them again.

My favourite shop on our rather paltry High St. is Forever 21. If my friend Liberty London Girl is reading this she will be fainting around now from the horror of associated acrylic static shock and my general fashion low-rentness, but listen. It’s genius branding.

For me, it’s not merely the clothes. It’s the whole shopping experience that gives me a sense of nostalgic glee, a sort of recherche de temps perdu (sorry, Proust).
There’s something about that place that makes me feel I’ve gone down the escalator into the Oxford Circus TopShop circa 1985 with a fistful of cash that my granny has hoarded and handed over. I’m dizzy, delirious with sartorial desire, surrounded by baubles and beads, ruffles and ruches, glitter and glitz. The music is deafening, I can feel the bass through the soles of my shoes and the synthesisers make my ears fizz.  This helps drown out any voices that might tell me that the ‘tops’ that I’m trying on are actually dresses for most of the clientele, that Five is closer to the target demographic than I am.  I just sing along, nod my head, scoop up armfulls of garments and enjoy myself.

Of course I’m not shopping alone these days. Often I’m accompanied by Two and Five who throw themselves into the store with wild abandon, starting to dance as soon as we enter the giant wooden doors, boogying on podiums with mannequins, placing hats on their heads and trying to moonwalk, much to the amusement of other shoppers. Five tires of this fairly quickly and starts her campaign to be bought something – usually “nake-up” or “diamonds” but Two rarely stops his marathon and will swiftly move into the window display, shaking his groove thing and blowing kisses to pretty young women who pass by.
This boy will be trouble, I tell you.

I remember my mother, at about the age I am now, refusing to wear the sensible clothes I picked out for her at department stores. I was embarrassed at her slightly hippyish attire and I would say, frustratedly, that she looked like

“Mutton dressed as lamb”

She took that with quite good humour and riposted

“But darling, that’s my style!”

I think I might be treading in her footsteps.

And you know what? It feels good.

On Sunday, while Five and Husband were at the local swimming pool, Two and I slipped down to Forever 21.  He did a bit of window vogueing and I bought those silver boots for the princely sum of $13.99 (if you can’t see them, click here or on the title of this post)

Husband was a little ambivalent, but I posted the photo on my facebook page and the response was overwhelmingly positive. Nearly every woman I know loves and wants a pair of Mid-life crisis boots herself (possibly some of the men do, too, unless I got that wrong and they just want to see us wearing them).

So, ladies, I suggest you run, don’t walk, to your nearest teen-wear emporium and buy yourself a pair of really silly shoes, and perhaps even another garment or two that you may or may not restrict to the confines of your bedroom *cough*.

And if my feeble words alone cannot persuade you, you cannot ignore NANCY!

.

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Hidden Truths

by Mothership on April 13, 2010

I have noticed some startling similarities between myself and Five.

For instance, she does not like homework.

We have an almost daily battle over the few, tiny tasks she has to complete and she rails against me as if I were trying to force her to eat live slugs, weeping and complaining that it’s TOO HARD and she CAN’T DO IT and she NEVER EVER…

The never ever is not actually specified as by the time she reaches what would be the end of the sentence she has usually fallen on the floor crying with self pity and rage, but I do understand the sense of dark despair and utter pointlessness of life that she can’t quite articulate but definitely feels.

I quite clearly remember feeling like that about homework.

I do try explaining to her that it will be much less painful just to do the few little tasks than to work herself into a state and  by the time she’s thrown herself on the rug and writhed around screeching she could have finished it, but this does not have any effect. She’s too busy whimpering with terror and misery.

Just for the record, we are talking about a bit of colouring, unscrambling a sentence, and writing the answer to some sums that she can easily calculate in her head. She does occasionally display an aversion to writing (her penmanship being somewhat lacking in finesse), but left to her own devices she will write secret notes and compose stories in one of her many exercise books, so it’s not as if she can’t actually utilise a pencil to form words.

I try to be understanding. I know she feels awful. But on the other hand, I can’t stand to watch her go through what I put myself through for literally years which eventually resulted in academic failure over what was essentially an emotional problem.

It’s not that I didn’t find my own solution to homework hatred. I did. I just didn’t do it.

I was incredibly creative about avoiding my homework and managed to get through high school by scraping by on natural intelligence, convincing bullshit, fabulous and inventive lies and deciding that as I was going to art college which was actually a gateway to being a pop star I didn’t really need to bother with all that school stuff anyway.
In one sense I was right. I set a goal and I got there, but the slamming of doors as I shut off option after option was near deafening, not to mention the sick feeling I got whenever a test came and I knew I’d get a D or an F and have to pretend I didn’t care.

I don’t want Five to feel like that. I want her to learn that her school work is just something you do, that sometimes it’s boring, but you just get through it and then there is the rest of life waiting to reward you at the end.

I tried getting her to set a timer for a number of minutes that she chose but this approach did not work because she chose one minute

I offered a computer game or television or a treat at the end of her tasks but she wailed that she COULD NOT DO IT and she wanted her treat NOW!

(tough luck, cookie.)

I asked which bit was hardest, did she want to start with the bit she liked most?

She said she didn’t like any of it, she HATED BEING TOLD WHAT TO DO and EVERYONE EVERYWHERE TELLS HER WHAT TO DO!!

Poor Five. I suppose in a way she’s right. It’s one of the very unfair things about being a small child. And I sympathise. I don’t like to be bossed around either.

We tussled and struggled, I reasoned and was rebuffed. I listened and cared, but finally I had had enough of the drama and I’m sorry to say I shouted back.

“SUCK IT UP, FIVE! Either you do your homework now or else you don’t and then it gets harder and harder to catch up until one day the only thing you can do is work somewhere where someone DUMBER than you tells you what to do ALL THE TIME for the REST OF YOUR LIFE! The choice is yours.”

There was a silence.

And a glare.

And then she picked up her pencil.

But it’s not like she did a great job. The task she had to complete was:

Unscramble the following sentence, write the words in the correct order, then finish and colour the picture (a girl on a lawn holding a string going up).

up The went kite .

Five expressed strong disgust at the simplicity of the sentence’s construction, gave the opinion that at least they should have made it:

Up went the kite! (she is especially fond of exclamation marks)

and wrote the correct answer in the most awful, huge uneven letters, reminiscent of how she was forming the alphabet nearly a year ago. She resolutely would not erase and rewrite them and she insisted on completing the drawing in grayscale, saying it was so STOOPID that it didn’t deserve to be in full colour.

I decided that it was better, on balance, just to let this slide and let her teacher deal with the quality of the work. At least she’d done some of it. Whew! We could move on to maths which was, hopefully, a little less emotional.

Just before I picked up the sums worksheet, I had a quick look over the picture part of The kite went up and noticed that there had been some modifications to the grassy area, not more than half a centimetre high, but running the width of the page.

Five had written quite clearly, in tiny, legible, evenly spaced letters.

I do not like kindergarten.

Do you think she’ll get extra marks for that?

(I’m hoping that Five develops a bit more of her father’s aptitude  and appetite for study in the years to come)

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Consolation Prizes

by Mothership on April 7, 2010

In spent my teenage years in Washington D.C. and, like now, I often felt homesick and longed to go back to England.

I would lie in bed eating sweeties, reading my way through every Barbara Pym novel I could lay my hands on and imagine that when I finally grew old enough to go home on my own I would be magically transported to a postwar Britain where everyone was polite to one another, had a friendly vicar in a welcoming parish (even in London) and I would wear stockings and gloves to take tea at Lyons Corner House.

Terribly comforting, if not entirely accurate in 1987.

However, one of the abiding truisms is a piece of advice from one of the books – I forget which – in many ways they’re interchangeable, where the local doctor distractedly advises an older woman suffering from depression to

“Go out and buy yourself a new hat, dear”

This is, of course, horribly patronising and one wants to kick his unhelpful, patriarchal geriatric arse to kingdom come for not really listening or trying to help a patient.

But on the other hand, he’s got a point.

You know from my post the other day that I wasn’t exactly feeling tickety-boo.

So I’m going to buy a new hat.

From my incredibly talented friend Martina, who happens to be one of the sweetest most lovely women I know and is, astonishingly, a mother of three children who are nearly grown even though she’s roughly the same age as me.
(This is because she had them at about the same time as I was reading those Barbara Pym novels.)

I suggest, next time you feel low, feel wonderful, feel frisky, feel daring, or just want a nice hat, you get one too.

I’ve put a couple here, there are loads more on Martina’s website, and if you can’t see the BIG PICTURE at the top of the pretty one with butterflies, please click on the title of this post.
That’s my favourite!

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Cracks in the Shell

by Mothership on April 5, 2010

This holiday, like them all, was complex and uneasy.
And I was very angry.
Where the hell were they? That fictional, Fifties family
I was promised, at least by myself.
Me in the starring role, at last!
And no-one would detect the bleak, fragile heart as it beat
wild and anxious, beneath my pristine apron.

I did not have a lovely Easter.

I tried very, very hard. I honestly did. But it didn’t work.

The Easter bunny came, the bunny cake was baked, the eggs were dyed, the crafts were made, the children were suitably clothed, and I did my absolute utmost to keep everyone happy, but sometimes, no matter what you do, things just don’t turn out the way you want them to.

And I want to go home.

Back home to my house in London, ten years ago.
When Pumpkin was still alive, when my skin was smooth, when my heart was unfettered, when my hopes were still high, when I never dreamed I’d be where I am now or how I’d long to be back where I was then.

I know I can’t turn back the clock.

And even if I could go back, go home, I would only do it if I could pack the children.

But on low days like this, I think about suitcases.

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Oops, I did it again

by Mothership on March 30, 2010

My parents are under the illusion that I am a technological wizard.

What they don’t know is that I have pretty much no idea what I’m doing most of the time and that every single electronic device and computer program I have ever come into contact with has been a sweaty wrangle of trial and error (mostly error) until I finally manage to make whatever it is I’m dealing with work in some haphazard fashion.

This blog is no different.

As is my custom, I only learned the bare minimum of the software in order to throw up a post, deciding I’d learn the extra bells and whistles later.
Mainly I just wanted to write, get my thoughts out.

Later, I started to experiment with widgets – the clever little things that allowed me to add my Twitter feed, tell you what books I was reading (not that I get around to changing the selection on screen as often as I finish an actual novel) or report a funny thing that one of the children had said.

I felt rather pleased with myself at this, and also emboldened.

On the strength of this, and because Two took (shockingly) a long nap the other day, I thought I’d have a good poke around the WordPress interface and click on a few buttons to see what they did.

Result:

I sent out an empty, password protected post to all of my readers.

This prompted quite a few emails and tweets asking me

WTF is this???

*They did not put it in those terms.  My followers are much more polite /generous than I might have been in similar circumstances.

So. Now you know WTF that was. Me, being a dunderhead.

I wish I had a really marvellous, pithy post to make up for it, but I’m still trying to think of something to say.

Until then I’m off to RTFM

Apologies for the inconvenience,

-Mothership xo

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