Hashtag backslash

hive500

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It is a peculiar feature of 21st Century life that there is no longer one set of events that we can call ‘the news’.

There’s the Proper News, the kind that is delivered by grim-faced men with mildly interesting ties, bracketed by the sonorous headlines (in strict order of importance) and all-important weather forecast.

But Facebook and Twitter – that’s my real connection to the outside world and has been for – well not for too long actually. And this isn’t just certifiable phone addicts like me, either; this week The Real Legit News told us that one third of the population checks Facebook every day.

(Though the other thing the Real Legit News told us this week was that going on Facebook makes us unhappy. I have some things to say about that ‘news’ too, but another time.)

Now I am not apologising for accessing my Personal News through social media. I am not convinced that there is something sacrosanct about receiving the news agenda of Sky, of CNN, of inherently biased newspapers like The Guardian; even the ‘unbiased’ BBC has certain priorities, which I may or may not share.

All news channels are making assumptions about what the viewing public cares about. And there are a lot of things I DON’T care about – new royal babies, royal weddings, basically anything at all with flag waving and a crest on it.

And there are times when I just don’t turn the TV or radio on for a few days, for the sake of my blood pressure and sanity – like after the death of Thatcher (to avoid nausea/ burst blood vessels in the eye) or during the Olympics (to avoid extensive bafflement and tedium).

My Social Media news, on the other hand, is well-tailored to what I want to know. On Facebook I like to read about what my ‘friends’* have to say – 350 intelligent, interesting people from all walks of life, across the age, race and class spectrum, from all over the world; if I listen to what THEY care about today, then I can be pretty sure I am covering a fair bit of ground.

If you ‘like’ and ‘follow’ a good range of individuals and groups, then the Real News, the democratic news, the word on the street – it will all come to you via a couple of easily accessed channels, usually from a number of different perspectives, often with a few good jokes thrown in. (Often, to be fair, the same jokes repeated over and over again. In several different languages and degrees of crudity.)

On a really good day, participating in social media can be very much like standing in the bar of a really buzzy pub. Listening to the gossip, drinking it in, with your elbows resting soddenly on a boozy beermat.

I loved hearing about the new Doctor Who in this way, just waiting for the name to drift into my ears, cresting on a wave of offensive language and Tartan pride. Much more satisfactory than any hyped up tedious announcement with faked suspense and the viewers’ reactions channelled along appropriate lines. After having received this news in a pleasingly organic way, I can slot back into the mainstream, and read the BBC website after all the faked drum rolls have faded away.

But sometimes the segueway between the Real Legit News and the Virtual Taproom is more jolting, more shocking.

Like yesterday, for example. The Social World was abuzz with a story about a young woman being photographed performing a sex act at an Eminem concert in Ireland. My instinct was to inform myself, quickly, such was the force of emotion on all sides in this discussion. But the Real News wasn’t reporting anything about #slanegirl – and why would they? It wasn’t actually ‘news’. Girl has sex with boy – even in The Village, this wouldn’t be newsworthy.

The way the story progressed over the course of the day will probably become part of the curriculum for a course in New Media very soon – hell, maybe it already is. A photo is shared, jokes are made, the photos and the ‘jokes’ go viral. Memes mushroom. The public – by which I mean, me and all the other social media guppies out here in internet-land – divides into two camps – one slut-shaming, one pity-patronising. Within minutes, a third camp appears to point out how the first two camps are so so simplistic and – now three hours have passed since the story broke – this blogger now has a more balanced view to sell.

Many broad assumptions are made and aired – in the case of #slanegirl that all women who behave like this have no self-respect, that this is clearly a ‘mistake’, that the girl should be (MUST be) ashamed, but the boy is a legend who can’t be expected to say no.

While facial expressions and body language from this now widely-shared photo are being scrutinised and firm conclusions drawn, it is so tempting to make those few key strokes and become more ‘informed’ – but my hand wavers, hesitates.

Am I condoning if my intentions are merely to become more informed about a situation which – bottom line – is absolutely 100% none of my bloody business. Public interest isn’t prurient interest, and I wouldn’t buy a newspaper with that kind of photo printed in it.. but while I am participating in soggy liberal hand-wringing, the ‘news’ story is galloping away.

And then by the afternoon, tweeters, bloggers and commentators on all sides offering analysis and condemnation, support and dissection, and before the last piece of scaffolding from Mr Eminem’s lovely stage is chucked into the back of a van, the story is already starting to eat itself.

By the time the Legit News has something to report – Twitter Storm over hashtag thing – it’s hardly ‘news’ at all.

And this is the seedy underbelly to that lovely buzzy Social Media News Bar – the tap-room where the Neanderthals scratch their crotches and share rape jokes and call women bitches and the men who humiliate them ‘legends’.

The dingy basement bar where the drunken dregs get a kick out of knocking back a little sanctimonious and/or misogynistic vitriol alongside their lurid shots. Is it helpful to know that, for many people in the Twittersphere, that is ‘just what that slut deserves’? I am not sure. Having the right to hold an opinion yes – but then to express it, not privately but rather to broadcast it – this brings consequences, not just for the person who might be on the receiving end of mockery, ridicule and shaming.

And then those people hearing that opinion who are emboldened to express their own hateful opinions – mockery, ridicule and shaming gets doubled, squared, spreads in the cliched metaphor, virally. And it spreads, even, to the legit media, who can’t be expected to show restraint either in this desensitised culture.

And this, I would observe, is what happens once the news agenda is out there, in the not-so-safe hands of us all.

Sure, we get a broad perspective. But you can’t expect – you don’t get – restraint, or taste, or even decency. If you let everyone believe they have the ability to make the news, then they will upload they kind of photos that have, it is reported by the legit media, caused a teenage girl so much distress that she had to be sedated.

When we are all, like the hive, buzzing out the news, then individual responsibility gets diluted, even lost.

There is a meme I saw recently, celebrating the fact that for those of us in our forties and above, we enjoyed something we didn’t understand was precious until we lost it – a youth in which we were able to behave badly, indiscreetly, without the internet and the unforgiving hive to judge and condemn us.

And if no one in the hive is responsible for remembering that just because you put a hashtag in front of a person, doesn’t stop her being a person, an individual with a family and friends and emotions, someone who has to go back to school in a fortnight – then maybe there are no limits to the cruelty and power of the news-hungry mob.

*I do know that the word ‘friends’ has taken on a new meaning in this context, before anyone jumps in. I think there might be a whole blog on the subject of friendship in the Social Media age, in fact.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , | 11 Comments

Gonna lock her up in a trunk

 

200142863-001Last week I found myself in a branch of a very fancy shoe shop, the kind where a pair of shoes costs about the same as I would begrudgingly pay for a new sofa or a week in the Med.

I don’t recall the name of it, and frankly I don’t need to because I don’t ever plan going back. I am only really interested in shoes that I can wear without any degree of actual agony, ones that I can literally go about my normal business whilst wearing – Birkenstocks for example, or Wellies, or possibly – in festive mood – a low-kitten-heeled slingback. I certainly have no need for the kind of death-defying, vertigo-inducing, migraine-risking shoes on offer in Jimmy Choos, even if they did attract Sparkly Daughter from the pavement like a droid to the Borg.

It was a weird experience to be in there, because it was a shop of two halves. On the right, the shoes available for the gentlemen were indistinguishable from those sold in any shoe shop during last forty years – brogues, Desert boots, Oxfords, moccasins.

But on the left, for the women, was rack after tacky rack of the kind of shoes that, even 15 years ago, would only have been available in specialist shops for drag queens and burlesque dancers. Platforms, ridiculously high heels, dominatrix spikes.

When did it became commonplace for young women to wear shoes that don’t allow them to walk or even stand without risking pain or outright injury?

Next week, at our school prom, I can guarantee you that I will witness countless young women struggling to dance while standing on what amount to a pair of carefully-shaped dumbbells, with the kind of paste-sparkles that used only to grace Christmas crackers.

Again, just the women, mind; the young bucks will be unlikely to be wincing and rubbing their blisters by the end of the evening.

And it isn’t just party wear – teetering platforms are everyday shoes, making it a nerve wracking experience to walk across stretches of concrete with young women forced to walk like a new-born foal wearing stilts.

And of course, while not all young women are clomping around in these diamante encrusted clown shoes, it has become a cliché to say that this the 21st century equivalent of the internal-organ-squishing-corset or Chinese foot binding – crippling, even damaging to the health, in the cause of achieving accepted standards of ‘beauty’.

Of course it’s at this point I start to hear myself sounding like the grumpy old feminist that I undoubtedly am. I experienced the same sinking feeling – Number6, get with the young folk grandma! –  earlier this week when I read that one of the reasons I should feel sorry for the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden was because he had left behind a ‘hot’ pole-dancing girlfriend.

Will somebody throw me a rope here, because I am sinking in this quagmire – what’s feminine, what’s feminist? What’s powerful and what’s exploitation? What’s sexy and what’s sleazy? I can’t seem to put my foot on the bottom these days.

I do know, though, that to say that is all a matter of ‘choice’: choice to wear crippling shoes, choice to take your clothes off for money and dance all sexy like while men watch and drool and slurp and pay – well in this context I would say the excuse of ‘choice’ is the gloopiest, stickiest, stinkiest kind of mud to have the misfortune to find yourself sinking in.

I’m clear about this much: that the choices that we all face – least of all young women – can’t ever be described as entirely free. We are bound and hemmed in and limited by the boundaries of our culture, class and gender; the expectations that are deep in our mental and psychological DNA, reinforced every day by our peers and media images.

But surely we KNOW what’s beautiful, right? What amounts to beautiful in 2013 can sometimes make me feel a little queasy – and the young women buying shoes that are what Christian Leboutin describes as a ‘quasi-masochistic experience’ is not even the half of it. Plastic surgery, the bigboobstinywaist conundrum, confusing sexual power with dressing like a dominatrix… I might go on, but there’s enough material there for a catalogue of whinging blogs.

It is hardly controversial to point out that the pressure on young women is very different, much more intense, than it was twenty or thirty years ago. The causes of this are both simple and complex – the images that we are all bombarded with through the global media show extremes in everything (sex, size, hair, clothes, weight, shoes) and can make them seem normal.

To take a hard look at some of these extremes is to recognise, I would say, the limits of using choice as an answer to the squirmy feeling we get when read about a cosmetic procedure currently popular in Japan called ‘yaeba’; this gives a “snaggleteeth” smile deemed sexually attractive because of its endearing “childlike” quality.

Grim, right? But the underlying assumptions here – that it is desirable for women to look child-like and doll-like – are both repulsive and commonplace. To talk about choice in this context sticks in my throat – when the standard of beauty has become this corrupted, to make mealy-mouthed excuses about women having the ‘choice’ to get closer to the ideal of a doll-child, strapped into body-con corsetry and unable to walk without pain, seems more like betrayal of this generation of young women than support.

(Whether the men involved have any choice at being attracted to doll-children, or even if they ARE attracted to such images – well that’s a subject on which I can’t bring myself to comment.)

So in a few short years, when the Sparkly Daughter asks to dip into her paper round money for a belly piercing or some classy porn tats, what will I say?

Christ, I honestly don’t know. I hope, I pray really, that by then she will have the ability to choose her own path across the quagmire, find some role models that are not reality tv stars and find some way to express her power in the world that doesn’t make her walk like she’s been hobbled.

Because surely it can’t be that hard to tell the difference between freedom and slavery, even in this trashy-Kardashian world.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Homeward bound, I wish I was

_66562889_.1Where is your home? This is question with a great deal of power to disturb as well as comfort. Many great works of literature have been written about our human need to find a home, or make our way back to it, and the demons we have to slay, outwit and poke in the eye with a sharp stick to be worthy of the homecoming Fatted Calf Casserole.

From Homer’s Odyssey, to Homer’s Springfield, there is much received wisdom in human culture about what our home should be – a place of safety, where the heart is, our castle,

The reality is a bit more brutal for many people, of course. While we all try to make a safe home for our families, in the real world – far away from the fluffy clichés of sitcom land – home for many people can be a far from a haven.

It has always struck me that it is a little strange for our culture to be so very attached to the concept of home, as our history of staying in one place is so very recent. For the vast majority of our human history, Homo Sapiens was a wanderer, a hunter, a gatherer. Wherever he laid his Stone-Age hat, that was his home; but only until the weather changed or the food ran out or some annoying Neanderthals with a tendency to make very smoky mammoth barbecues moved into the cave next door. Then they would be off, seeking out new territory.

I have always considered myself to be pretty much of a happy wanderer myself. Not so much with the hunting and gathering, for sure – but I always got a bit itchy staying too long in one place. For years, I liked to time my house moves to coincide with the urgent need for the oven to be cleaned. But somehow, I am not sure how this happened, I appear to have managed to stay in the same house for just over a decade*.

It’s not that I am particularly attached to the house, as anyone who has ever visited me can testify. In fact I take it pretty much for granted. I certainly can’t commit to a re-decoration programme, or any anything longer than a short term commitment to grow stuff in the ‘garden’.

But the village, the town, it seems, has wormed its way into my Happy-Wanderer soul.

This week, the Didcot A power station ceased operating. We got plenty of warning of course, but it still hit me surprisingly hard. For me, as for many of you no doubt, the sight of those vast cooling towers nestling in the centre of the town was the first sign of home, whether driving over the hill or pootling into the train station.

On Thursday on my way back from work as usual, the sight of those great curved milk bottles, the Henge of the Valleys, suddenly quiet and lifeless, was so poignant and strange I had to pull over and take it all in.

It may seem strange to feel so attached to something that Country Life readers recently concluded was an ‘eye-sore’; to feel sad at the closure of a facility that Friends of the Earth confirmed was the ninth most polluting power-station in the UK and one that has been a focus for frequent environmental protests over the last decade.

But that’s part of what home means, perhaps – a place that’s yours, where you belong and that belongs to you, despite what anyone else thinks about. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and it’s likely to be full of fairly annoying and possibly noisome company at times – but it is yours, and you can breathe out there.

To be honest, I think the ‘eye-sore’ jibe was always ill-founded. The Country Life types, well they can keep their kitschy-Kitson nostalgia. Personally, I always found a certain charm in the curved lines of the cooling towers, and a pleasing quality to their placement in the landscape – both somehow dwarfing and being dwarfed by their surroundings.

From a distance, the shapes they made against the open sky were frequently beautiful, often almost sculptural in their form; locals affectionately referred to them as ‘The Cloud-makers’. Up close, the size and scale was impressive and even awe-inspiring; the effect of the light of the setting sun on their gently-curved outlines often provided a dazzling display of warm rich colour.

But perhaps the most telling comment was from the listeners to Radio Oxford; they received votes for Didcot Power Station when they conducted a survey of the worst building in Oxfordshire, with some listeners referring to it as looking like somewhere up North. As someone who grew up among the slag-heaps and mine-heads of the actual industrial North, I am perhaps more used to the idea that ‘home’ contains the dirty business of industry and making stuff, the evidence of usefulness as well as twee shops selling dinky teatowels and stinky candles.

So yes, I shed a tear when they turned off the switch and the Cloud-makers were no more. Though none of this will stop me from booking a front seat if and when they decide to demolish the towers. That really will be a sight to see and one to remember.

Coming home will never be the same again.

*don’t worry. I have avoided the dirty oven problem by buying a new kitchen every few years. Much more economical.

Picture acknowledgment – from The Social Landscape of Didcot (payment sent)

The Social Landscape of Didcot is an ongoing photographic project capturing the town; photography by long-term Didcot resident Paul Bodsworth. You can see more of his work and purchase prints etc here:

https://www.facebook.com/SocialLandscapeDidcot/info

http://www.redbubble.com/people/slod/works/10128426-didcot-powerstation-laser-light-show?c=199559-power-station 

 

 

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

We haven’t come a long way, and don’t call me baby


power-to-the-people

Today I am going to talk to you about politics.

No no, don’t do that face! I know it’s not an easy sell, politics these days. The usual response to a discussion about politics is anger or extreme apathy, which doesn’t make for the greatest dinner party conversations.

I guess politics is in my blood. My grandparents were Red Clydesiders, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Clydeside) involved in revolutionary actions to improve workers’ rights and against the war. Their son, my uncle, was a pacifist and conscientious objector, facing prosecution and condemnation for his radical anti-war views.

The best I can manage in following in their glorious footsteps is standing as a ‘paper’ (aka ‘no-hope’) candidate. (Oh go on, I bet you can guess which party, give it a wild stab in the dark).

I have done other things, too; some more ludicrous than others. Writing letters for charities, wearing badges and patches, giving money, boycotting.

I have tried to avoid purchasing products based on an ever-changing list of black listed countries and corporations – and that is no mean feat, when you get to my age, to keep track of who is In and who is Out. Are we still boycotting Barclays, for example? (I still hiss when I walk past their front door.) Are the French Out for what they did to the Rainbow Warrior or is there some sort of Statute of Limitations for sinking peacefully protesting ships and killing activists?

Being a leftie is, frankly, complicated and exhausting. There’s probably an app for it – EazyPinko? – but I’d always forget to update that too. Mostly, I try to follow the advice of my mother – buy everything from the Co-op and hide the Coke bottles and Macdonalds toys when your LeftierThanThou friends come round.

I have been on any number of marches, for sure. I love a march to be honest. I am looking forward to Marching against Gove in March. I hope he drops by. Though I tend to slip off just before any actual rioting starts.

(Unlike my Red Clydesider grandma, who was arrested for helping to roll over a bus during the General Strike. Now I have this information on very good authority, not only from her sons but also from the official files, disclosed to me during an interview for positive vetting. But honestly, wouldn’t it have been just dandy if someone had told me this when she was alive?? Wouldn’t have minded hearing that anecdote from the mouth of that sweet white-haired old lady who taught me to crochet.)

So my political views are usually pretty deep-seated, and yours too probably, mostly set in childhood and fairly early childhood too. What I was told, and what I saw, as a child is cut through me like letters through a stick of rock. The Miners’ Strike. The Poll Tax. The way the industrial decline in the 1980s ripped apart communities in the North and Midlands, leaving absolute devastation in its wake.

And also what I was told, from the older generation. What my grandmother told me about the way workers used to be treated on Clydeside before they came together to protect themselves, their pay and conditions. Her anger, white hot and passionate, about the young men who were sent in their hundreds and thousands and eventually their millions, to be slaughtered in WW1; a loss to their families and to their communities that was not only personal and tragic but also political too, and should still resonate today as a terrible warning of what happens when the political elite stop caring about individual lives because those lives are expendable. What happens when the majority are silent and powerless.

And I guess that’s the main reason why it’s hard to get most people interested in politics  – we feel, many of us, powerless to change anything, especially on a national level. The expenses scandal didn’t help either, adding as it did to our collective prejudices of politicians as corrupt and greedy.

But it’s an illusion. We aren’t powerless at all. We are, individually and most of all collectively, powerful. When the buses run, whether the holes in the road get fixed, if that new playground gets built – this is our business and we can change it. Many things ARE out of our control, but not these things. We have money in our pockets and we can choose how to spend it and we have a vote.

In contrast to my grandmother, who got so angry about the consequences of her powerlessness that she got cross enough to roll a bus over, we have let the pervasive -and untrue – story of our own powerlessness roll us over and made us play dead.

I am not suggesting you all go out and roll over vehicles, or even that you give up your Starbucks with Hazelnut Meringue topping. Boycotts aren’t for everyone. But everyone can pass on what they believe, and why they believe it. Pass politics down the generations, so we don’t forget. It is less than a hundred years since all women and men who did not own property had no power in their government. My granny would be shocked we got so complacent, so quickly. Men and women fought and died for our right to vote, to join together and protest. Don’t let’s piss it away in a generation.

And – maybe – you could have a glance at those election leaflets that some poor beardy sweater-wearing type has schlepped up your madly long driveway to deliver, and see if you agree with them. Or not. Or what else you think they, or you, should do instead with your tax money.

Unless you’re thinking of voting UKIP. In which case take the advice of the 17 year old Junior Mayor of Newbury, delivered to a recent political meeting with all the passion of a young JFK: ‘Don’t vote UKIP. NEVER vote UKIP.’

Amen to that.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 15 Comments

Applehood and Mother Pie

Motherhood-Frustration-180x

Are you a good mother?

What about your mother? Was she a good mother? Or the mother of your children? How do you rate her?

Squirming yet?

It’s still a bit of a taboo subject, isn’t it? I mean, most people would rather have a long chat about their voting habits or bowel movements than engage in a frank discussion about their track record of mothering.

From Marge Simpson to the Virgin Mary, mothers have a lot to live up to. Mothers must be ridiculously patient like Barbara Royle, endlessly brave like Mother Courage. Incredibly resourceful like Homily Clock, dutiful as Peggy Archer, positively saint-like as Marmee March from Little Women. Like Norma Bates, nothing less than a boy’s best friend; so unforgettable that he’d walk a million miles for one of our smiles.

I entered motherhood with not only the example of all these mothers looming large, but also my own, very real mother forming  a startlingly stark contrast.

It was only when I had my own children and attempted to parent them in what can only be described as a plucky way, that I properly appreciated what an amazing mother I have. To take just one tiny example of her vastly superior skills – when we were growing up she produced a cooked breakfast for all five of us, and my father, every single morning – WHICH WAS DIFFERENT EVERY DAY. She was incredibly frugal, an amazing cook, kept a beautifully clean and tidy house and yet a very welcoming and hospitable one too, always full of guests and laughter. And she kept us all in line, with no need for the kind of shouting I resort to on a shamingly frequent basis – a glance and a Significant Look and we were all incredibly well behaved. At least in public.

But – amazingly, given her self-evident superiority in every respect – my mother has never once made me feel like my own parenting was a little lacking. (Which it is, it really is. No cooked breakfast for my daughters on a weekday – unless toast counts – and if I produce a bacon sandwich on a Sunday I expect fawning gratitude and a standing ovation.)

In fact my mother was so marvellously supportive and helpful when I first had children that for a while I seriously considered setting her up as a helpline for new mothers.

For example, when I was pregnant with my first child, she gave me what was to be the most useful piece of advice ever.

‘When the baby comes, Number6,’ she said, ‘the baby will cry A LOT.’

‘Yeah yeah I know,’ I replied, a veteran of NCT classes. I had seen a powerpoint on this. I had watched a video. I was an EXPERT.

‘No, no,’ she said patiently.  ‘Listen to what I am saying. The baby will cry A LOT and you won’t be able to work out why and you will think you are doing something wrong. You aren’t. You are doing everything right. It isn’t your job to stop the baby crying. Just keep cuddling the baby.’

Armed with this piece of wisdom dressed up as the bleeding obvious, I was later able – just about – to resist the books and routines and advice of people who tried to tell me what I should do. And even retain a certain degree of sanity and humour during those first colicky months when I frequently considered pinning a sign on the front door saying, ‘I promise I am not sticking pins in this baby! I know it sounds like it, but I am honestly not.’

And that was only the start of it. Here are some other pieces of wonderful advice from my mother:

1. You are looking really well! You are doing really well! You had the baby six days/ six months/ six years ago? Look at you! Out and about already! Why don’t you go and have a sit down and I will bring you a cup of tea.

2. You want to throw the baby out of the window? / run away to the circus? / sell the baby on eBay? That’s perfectly normal! I felt just the same! No no not with you! Obviously. With your, er, sister. Anyway. Why don’t you go and have a sit down and I will bring you a cup of tea.

3. The child will only eat Frosties in Coca Cola / screams for ten hours straight / wants to dress up as a Thunderbird all day / has had a tattoo of George Osborne on his forehead? That’s perfectly normal and just a phase! Remember when your sister’s boy had that tattoo of William Hague on his cheek and would only eat Pot Noodles? No? Well I may have made it up. Go and have another sit down. Actually I might open this wine and possibly a box of Maltesers.

So basically we just need to know these things – everything you feel is normal, and will pass. Everything your children do is normal, and if it isn’t, it will pass. Cuddles and tea fix most things, and – most importantly – you are doing really really well.

There may not be enough there to fill out one of those books that sell you the vision of a perfect parenting experience, that sucker you into parting with £8.99 with the promise of an answer to all your questions and a solution to all your problems. But it’s worth more than that. My mother was not, is not, a perfect mother. Neither am I, and neither are you. No one is, especially not those people who try and charge you for their ‘secrets’. There are no secrets. The perfect mother is the one you have, the one who loves and does their best. And never takes the serious business of being a mother too seriously.

Like my mother. Who, when I once made the mistake of buying her a Mothering Sunday Card to ‘The Best Mother in the World’, laughed and said – how can you possibly know that? You’d need to try out a few more mothers before you can start making that kind of claim.

A restful half term to all the imperfect, slapdash, perfectly wonderful mothers. Remember – long lie-ins make you a better parent.

I’m pretty sure my mum told me that.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments