Playground Politics

The village school my children attend lies just a few minutes walk up the road from our house and is responsible for the education of about fifty children. There are two classrooms; one for the reception class and pupils in years one and two, and the other for the pupils in years three, four, five and six. At the moment I have Eldest Son in one class, Middle Son in the other and The Youngest attending one day a week, although that will all change come September when Eldest Son goes off to secondary school and The Youngest moves up to full time reception. The team of staff is made up in its entirety of a head-teacher, two classroom teachers, one classroom assistant, one cook, and a taxi driver whose main job it is to ferry some of the children to and from school, but who also doubles up as a dinner lady. She's a 'twofer' as my mother would say - twofer the price of one.

The school is very much the hub of the local community and always has a large part to play in the organisation of village activities such as the annual fete, the fun run, and the summer grass-cuts of the village church grounds in which all the parents get together to strim, rake, and then finally wheelbarrow great heaps of grass up steeply angled wooden boards and on to flat bed trucks while the children all run around shrieking and chucking the grass at each other. The P.T.A. is extremely well attended with the majority of mothers going regularly to meetings; indeed if you do not choose to get involved with the P.T.A. and by the same token do not then contribute towards the planning and running of community activities, it tends to be rather frowned upon. The more active mothers huff and sigh and whisper amongst themselves that if so and so can't be bothered to help the school raise a bit of bloody money then why should so and so's children be entitled to free school trips along with their children. What can I say... there's not much to do around here.

Now. There is a small but powerful clique at the centre of the school that has the classroom assistant at its head, her best friend the cook as her trusty sidekick, one of the fathers who is on the board of governors and who has fairly recently split with his partner (he now rents the house directly opposite her) as the third in command, and a few of the other parents as their loyal sniveling minions. They are all on extremely friendly terms with the teaching staff, including the head; in fact the father who is on the board of governors is actually having a relationship with one of the teachers whose class includes his youngest daughter. It's supposed to be a secret but it's a fairly open one really - subtle gestures of intimacy can often be seen passing between them when they think no-one's looking - and so in a nutshell I think it would probably be fair to say that the whole group is rather...um ....cosy.

Funny isn't it how one small group of people can have such a big effect on the wider community around them. One of the ripples cast in the village pond by this particular groups social brick is that of a real change in the dynamics between the children at the school. The offspring of the cliques chosen few all socialise together regularly with their parents and so have very much picked up on the overblown sense of power and influence that their parents have. They shun the children whose parents are shunned by their parents and as a result, something of a two-tier social system has begun to emerge in the village. The strange thing is that all the other parents are only too aware of what is going on. The classroom assistant (who it is quietly felt has far too much clout when it comes to the running of the school) is not well liked despite her position at the top of the tree. She is seen to be something of a bully and a gossip, the sort of person who paints themselves with a superficial coating of sugary friendliness but who is actually rather mean spirited and judgemental, very much focused on their own agenda and concerned mainly with the retention of power at all costs - a bit like David Cameron.

I used to be very much involved with the P.T.A. when Mr S was still living with us and The Youngest had not yet been born. I did the lucky dip every year at the school fete and we would always go as a family to the grass cuts. But these days not so much. The Youngest is too small to be left to roam and play unsupervised at community events while I am busy, and I do not have a partner or any extended family living nearby to help supervise her. Besides I find the group dynamics these days deeply unpleasant - any comments or suggestions made in meetings by anyone outside of the inner circle tend only to be dismissed out of hand anyway - so I've backed off from it all a bit with a view to perhaps becoming more involved again once my daughter is a little older.

Now I know full well that the clique despise me (they barely acknowledge my existence most of the time, often to the point of downright rudeness) firstly for what they probably see as my lack of contribution to the school but also because I just don't fit in with them - never have and never will. They are uber parents and uber villagers, and I'm a bit messy and a bit disorganised and a bit, well.... slummy. I'm not overly concerned by their chilly shoulders, I don't think much of them either and there are plenty of people around that I do like. My main social circle is outside of the village anyway and I find that I much prefer it that way - that it prevents village life from becoming too claustrophobic - however I do know that their superior attitude and air of exclusivity, not to mention their disproportionate degree of influence as to how the school is run, does upset some of the other mums very much and so I was wondering...

Does this happen at every school? Is it inevitable that there will always be some sort of a hierarchy amongst parents? Or is it simply that the community here is small and a little incestuous? I would love to hear about other peoples experiences of school gate politics - what say you?

A Woman of a Certain Age. Or See You at Cybermummy?

I was born in the late hot summer of 1975. I have the scars to prove it. Cold metal forceps dug deep into baby soft flesh, tugging, pulling, splitting the skin. My poor mother. She was only nineteen.

Very soon I will be Thirty Five. And what I want to know is, how the hell did that happen? My eldest son will soon be twelve - is due to start secondary school in September - and still I don't feel so very much different from the young girl trying desperately to give off an air of sophisticated worldly wisdom in the hopes of fooling the circling predators on her own first day of secondary school.

I can remember once when I was about sixteen, standing in the open doorway of my best friends living room. I was leaning lazily with my head against the door frame, chewing in a carefully cultivated 'whatever' sort of manner on cola flavoured Hubba Bubba. Her mother (who can only have been about thirty two herself - younger than I am now) was watching a Tina Turner video. We were contemptuous, my friend and I. After a short discussion we came to the conclusion that Tina Turner was failing abysmally in her duty to "grow old gracefully." I couldn't for the life of me work out why my friends mother was so annoyed.

I keep waiting for the day to arrive when I feel like a proper grown up. Perhaps it will be the morning of my thirty fifth birthday. Perhaps that will be the day when I wake up and suddenly, doing the correct and responsible thing will have become second nature and I won't have to think about it anymore. I won't have to think to myself, "Hmmm, what would a responsible adult do in this situation? O.k. I'll try that then" because I will have stopped feeling like a beginner trapped in an experienced adults body. And just perhaps, on that fine morning, it will all start to feel a little less fraudulent. A little less of a confidence trick. Perhaps eh.

In the meantime though, it seems that there are a whole host of other things to do with the aging process that I should have been worrying about, only wasn't. A few recent happenings have conspired to make me begin to suspect that this is the case. The first was a conversation that I had with my friend and neighbour, a woman in her late twenties with three young children. She worked as a hairdresser before she had her kids and the other day she said to me ( while simultaneously flicking her long straightened hair over her shoulder) something along the lines of:
"Of course I'll just have to make the most of having my hair like this while I can still get away with it."
Me, in typically intelligent fashion: "What?"
Her: "Well you know... once you get to a certain age......

The second was my six year old son rolling his eyes at me in the car today and saying: "Not Lady Gaaaaagaaaaaa again mum. Can't we listen to some David Bowie?" Now I am not generally a lover of pop music but I do love Lady Gaga unashamedly. She's actually a very talented woman I think, a proper musician, and also she's a bit strange. What's not to like? But today, looking at my sons expression which seemed clearly to state that he considered it best just to humour me, it suddenly struck me that perhaps it really isn't appropriate for a nearly thirty five year old woman to be driving along with her stereo on a bit too loud singing Pokerface at the top of her voice. Perhaps my fellow villagers think me unseemly. Oh dear.

The third thing is all this talk of what to wear to Cybermummy. What to wear? I was going in the hope that somebody might be able to teach me how to work my bloody computer. And in anticipation of meeting some interesting, like minded women too of course. I hadn't given that much thought as to what I was going to wear. But here's the thing - amongst all this talk of what to wear, the main concern seems to be that one doesn't end up looking too "muttony", which I'm presuming is a derivative of the expression 'mutton dressed as lamb.' Now my every day get up tends to be a t-shirt and jeans tucked into a pair of slightly battered biker boots. It's comfortable, I like it, and it's probably what I would have worn to Cybermummy, only now of course I'm starting to worry whether it might not be a bit "muttony." It's definitely a bit scruffy. Perhaps I will find that I'm able to 'network' so much more successfully if I wear something.... well I don't know. Something else.

Of course I'm tempted just to say what a load of old bollocks. Mutton dressed as lamb is an appalling expression (is there an equivalent saying for men? Thought not.) But if I said that I wouldn't be being entirely honest, because the fact is I do care about how I come across to other people. So in the absence of a meet and greet photo post which I have noticed others putting up on their non-anonymous blogs in time for Cybermummy, I will simply say, on the day just look out for a woman who's completely inappropriately dressed and trying desperately to act her age. That'll be me.

;-) See you there.

But Hang On... YOU Crashed Into ME!

It's lovely, my local town. You take a ten minute drive away from my house, up out of a valley and down a long and winding road with stunning views out over green hills and fields, and you're there. It's colourful and interesting with just the right amount of charming and eccentric thrown in. Full of independent shops and local produce, it has a real close-knit community feel to it. The post-office workers ask after your children and the woman who works in the second hand bookshop keeps books back for you that she thinks you'll be interested in.

Down the bottom of town is a row of really lovely (but overpriced) shops - mostly independent and family owned. There is a gorgeous cook-ware shop selling everything from heavy cast iron Le Creuset pans to rows and rows of tiny pots of food colouring pastes in every shade of every colour imaginable. There is a drapers with samples from floor to ceiling of beautiful silks and fabrics (you can hear the sewing machines gently whirring upstairs) and an interiors shop full of locally thrown pottery and hand made furniture. There is also an extravagantly upmarket clothes shop to which people have been known to travel from London when there is a sale on.

Now much as I hate to generalise, there is a certain type of woman can often be seen parking her extremely posh and unnecessarily large vehicle in one of the free parking spaces that lie facing onto both sides of the one way street on which these shops are situated. With her designer sunglasses perched elegantly atop her head and great clouds of perfume wafting in her wake, her entire demeanour screams, "I am expensive!!! My husband works away!!! I win dammit!!!"

Yesterday I had an ill child at home and some essential errands to run, so my next door neighbour kindly let my son snuggle up in his pyjamas on her sofa while I quickly made the trip into town. Driving slowly up the aforementioned one way street, I could see only one empty parking space that had been made impossible to get into due to a woman in a BMW X6 straddling one of the white lines that marked it, essentially taking up two parking spaces. I was anxious to get back to my boy and so in a bit of a hurry, stopped my car, got out, and politely asked the woman in the BMW to please move over slightly so I could pop my car in next to her. I got back into my car intending to reverse it out of the way in order to allow her to re-park, but by this time other cars had driven up behind me, so I was unable to move back untill they had all passed. Obviously annoyed by my effrontery at having asked her to move in the first place, the woman in the BMW then reversed huffily out of the parking bays without looking and, despite my frantic beeping, drove straight into the drivers side of my tiny Clio. Shocked, I drove forwards, stopped further up the hill and got out. The woman and her two passengers had also got out of their vehicle and looked about to walk off in the other direction. I walked quickly towards them. One of them turned to me with a false, spiteful eyed smile and said:

"I see you found somewhere else to park then."
Me: "Um... you've just backed into my car. My driver door's all dented."
Driver: "Well I didn't feel anything"
Me: "But come and look at my car!"
Driver: (walking up the road with her expensive friends to survey the damage, and then asking incredulously) "And that's just happened has it?"
Me: "Yes! I'm not lying for goodness sake. You just backed into me. You know you did. Didn't you hear me beeping?"
Driver: (raising her voice) "Yes, so I stopped. Anyway, you knew I was going to reverse. You didn't move out of the way! Pretty bloody stupid thing to do if you ask me!"
Me: "There were people behind me. I couldn't move out of the way. You would have known that had you been looking, which is what I presumed you would do. Most people tend to before reversing I find."
Drivers friend: (with same false spiteful smile as before) "Well I certainly didn't feel anything either, and for a dent that big I think we probably would have don't you?"

To be honest I was starting to feel a bit out of my depth. Already shaky from having had an (albeit minor) bump, I was now faced with three hostile women who were not only flatly denying what was obviously true, but who were also now openly sneering at both me (I had barely had time to brush my hair that morning) and my slightly grubby, bashed up car (complete with screwed up fruit gum wrappers all over the dash.) In the end the driver reluctantly gave me her details and they walked off, their heels clicking down the pavement, the drivers friend suddenly turning around to administer a parting shot:

"So do you want the details of two witnesses who didn't feel anything happen then?"

It was one of those situations where you think of about a million ways in which you could have handled it better - only about half an hour later. But in that moment as I stood there in the street watching them disappear in a trail of over-dressed nastiness into the clothes boutique, all I could think was:

"But hang on. You crashed into me..."

True Blood.

Those of you that follow me on Twitter will probably already know that I am a huge fan of the American television series True Blood. Written by Alan Ball (who also wrote the amazing Oscar winning film, American Beauty) True Blood is set in the small, conservative Southern town of Bon Temps, Louisiana. Vampires are living amongst human society, surviving on synthetic blood and attempting to integrate and achieve equal rights despite the huge prejudice against them. The story line revolves around the relationship between the two main characters: Sookie Stackhouse - a human waitress with a powerful ability to read minds, and Bill Compton - a five hundred year old vampire.

It is a dark fantasy, richly imagined and blackly comic, sexy and bloody and over the top, and in my opinion one of the very few things actually worth watching on television. Not only is it grippingly entertaining, but it is also far more sophisticated than it may at first appear. The opening credit sequence is nothing short of stunning and could actually work as a short film on its own. Created by Digital Kitchen it uses stereotyped imagery of the rural Deep South, juxtaposing themes of sex, religion, and violence to set the scene and create a deep sense of unease. We see a rickety Lucky Liquor store on a dirt road segueing into glowing crosses that could almost be burning. A white preacher heals a black woman as the rest of the congregation sway and clap. A bar room brawl made murky under red lighting occurs in slow motion. The snippets of film and jerking, sometimes flashing images all culminate in a river baptism, a woman flailing and splashing in the dark as two men dunk her in.

What struck me the most about season one in particular were the observations that it appeared to me to make about female sexuality - in particular the way in which societal judgements and norms are set in place to rigidly control it. It is made clear from the beginning that Sookie Stackhouse is a good, traditional Southern young woman - in fact it is made explicitly clear almost from the start that she is still a virgin. In Bon Temps women who associate with vampires are generally viewed with disaproval and contempt. They are labelled 'fangbangers', and so when a woman who was known to sometimes frequent the vampire bar Fangtasia is discovered dead in her apartment, and a further woman (one of Sookies fellow waitresses) is also found murdered in her home with vampire bite marks on her body, the whisperings around the town are that they had somehow asked for it - that they had 'had it coming.' Of course then the irony is that whiter than white Sookie Stackhouse falls in love with a vampire herself - bestowing unto him her precious virginity - and so sullying her reputation. What is interesting is that the whole town appear to take it upon themselves to be horrified, as if her virtue somehow belongs to all of them and it is up to them as a community to safe-guard it. Meanwhile her brother Jason (who was a sexual partner to both the dead women) behaves like a child in a sweet shop - having sex with every willing woman he can find - and everyone simply smirks and shakes their heads. Boys will be boys after all. Of course it is not long before the body count rises and the murderer is on the hunt for Sookie. The good girl gone bad must pay the ultimate price it would seem.

One of the reasons I like True Blood so much is that it pokes fun at this sexual double standard. It exposes as ridiculous the notion that women can be judged good or bad, deserving or undeserving of violence, based purely on how they choose to conduct their sexual lives. With a cast full of telepaths, shape-shifters, vampires and rednecks True Blood manages to say an awful lot about the nature of inequality and prejudice whilst at the same time spinning a yarn so riveting, I defy anyone not to become hooked.

Roll on season three. I can't wait.

The Cats...

Unusually for a modern day household, the Gappy residence is a pet free zone. There are no animals at all - not one. Not even a single forgetful little goldfish. The reasons for this are threefold:

1) I don't actually like animals very much. I quite like dogs but that's about it. I don't like anything with a beak. I don't like anything too large (so that's horses and cattle out of the question) and anything even remotely resembling a rodent is a complete and utter no no. The very thought is enough to make me shudder.

2) I have an aversion to faeces. It doesn't matter how often and how convincingly my children look up at me with big soulful eyes and insist that they would look after it if only we could just please please pleeeease get a pet, I know that it would be me who ended up having to deal with said pets shit. Ugh. I have enough responsibilities in my life thank you very much. Cleaning up animal shit is not going to become one of them.

3) Anything plant-like that I have ever owned has been stone dead within three months of coming into contact with me. Seriously, I've so far managed to kill a grand total of four Spider plants and I hear that they're supposed to be practically immortal. I'm secretly worried that if we did get a cute little puppy or some such creature, that it would take one look at me - keel over - and that my children would be left traumatised for ever more. "It was such an adorable little puppy" I imagine them sobbing to their therapists... "And she killed it with her mind..."

I comfort myself with the knowledge that between them, my neighbours appear to have an entire colony of cats, and so my poor deprived children are able to vicariously enjoy all the more palatable aspects of pet ownership through their friends. Cats are everywhere on our street. Everywhere. Sunning themselves on the garden wall, sauntering nonchalantly up the road, tripping you up when you're attempting to lug ten tons of shopping in from the car. They're everywhere I tell you.

They all seem to come out en masse around dusk. One can sense a change in the mood, their collective feline presence becoming sinister, purposeful. They congregate - these glassy eyed feral creatures - slinking and yowling, in my back garden, looking for all the world like a scene from an Alfred Hitchcock film. 'Why?' I hear you ask.... Because my back garden has been officially designated the communal cat latrine of course. Why go for a boring poo on your own when you could meet up with all your mates and make an evening of it. Oh yes, if you're a cat and you need to go, Gappys garden is the place to be. Pass it on.

They have even started doing it in broad daylight. I often look up from the sink whilst doing the dishes only to see that an individual cat has sneaked into my garden and is now hovering suspiciously over a patch of grass. I will bang on the window and give it my fiercest look, only to have it stare back in an unconcerned yet vaguely put out manner, as if to say: "Please. Do you mind? Only some of us are trying to have a poo here...." But what really takes the biscuit is that some of the braver ones will then hop up, post poo, onto my window sill, arching their backs and rubbing their ears against the glass, looking at me and meowing contentedly. "Ah that's better, they seem to say. You know I do rather like your garden.." Call me paranoid, but I know when I'm being mocked.

One day I will lose the plot, get dressed up in over sized army fatigues, smear my face with black and green face paint and gather together my sons super-soakers. I will fill them all up and sit and wait silently on my back door step for the sun to go down, and then when I see the cats begin to slink in over the fence I shall laugh maniacally while I drench everything that moves.

Bwahahahaha, take that Tiddles! Litter tray isn't looking quite so dull now is it?

Ahem.

Go Team Katie...

Before you say anything, no I can't believe I'm posting this either. But I don't care what anyone says about Katie Price - I like her. She's a survivor and a battler and you just can't keep the woman down. She's got balls which is more than can be said for that snivelling ex husband of hers.

I can't bear him and his public pity party. His 'poor me all I care about is being a good daddy' act (whilst he simultaneously implies constantly through the worlds media that the mother of his children is unfit and a slut to boot) makes me want to chuck. He has done everything he can to publicly shame his ex-wife and destroy her reputation whilst still managing to cling on to the moral high ground by playing the victim, and I personally fail to understand how he can square his professed commitment to putting the needs of his children first with his active collusion in the medias bashing of their mother.

Price on the other hand has always deliberately courted the media - she is a canny woman who understands well the symbiotic relationship enjoyed by the press and so called celebrities - and who tries to exploit that relationship to her advantage. But she has never pretended otherwise. There is nothing coy or disingenuous about Price, she knows full well that the press attention is her bread and butter and she makes no apologies for that. Peter Andre however is supposedly a musician. A musician who used the pain of his recent divorce to promote his latest album.

I personally think that it is specifically Prices refusal to hide and act as though she is ashamed that makes her so unpopular. If she was photographed mascara streaked and blubbing and issued a press release stating that she was suffering from 'exhaustion' and was booking herself in for a stint at the Priory, she would probably find herself soaring in the popularity stakes. The media does love a broken woman after all. But instead she has kept her nose in the air and remarried a man whom she is routinely accused of using and exploiting, despite the fact that he clearly needs her in order to establish his own 'celebrity career' far more than she needs anything from him.

Price is no doubt aware that she's made some mistakes and poor choices in her life (haven't we all), but instead of curling up into a ball and disappearing into a bottomless pit of self-loathing she holds her head up high and keeps walking - and in doing so gives a metaphorical two fingered salute to a salivating misogynist media and its rubber necking consumers - and that is precisely the reason I like her.

GO PRICEY, I say.

Go on, tell me I'm talking bollocks. You know you wanna....

Road Rage and the Lollipop Lady

Driving I'll admit, does not always bring out the very best in me. Mr S used to joke that Britain had always been considered a relatively safe place until I passed my driving test. My what a card he was. But actually if I'm honest it is not completely unheard of, on the odd rare occasion, for me to be taken over by a rather unattractive and impromptu bout of road-rage. This only ever happens within the private confines of my own car I would hasten to add, but I do once in a while catch myself tapping irritably on the steering wheel and swearing under my breath at other (annoyingly incompetent) road users. In fact my two most favourite driving expressions ever are: 'Hoo yes, that is an inspired place to stop there matey' and 'Come on sunshine, you could get a bloody bus through there' ( I am nothing if not original.) For some reason the inside of my car is the only place in the entire world in which I ever refer to anybody as 'sunshine'. It's as if the moment I get behind the wheel, there is always the possibility that I will become possessed by an entirely new persona - a kind of drivers alter ego if you like - and that this other self just happens to sport a deeply unconvincing mockney accent to boot.

Some time ago I was having a discussion with a friend about road rage. She had recently moved from the capital to live more rurally, and I remember her saying that in the London borough where she had lived there would sometimes be articles in the local paper describing how Lollipop ladies had been verbally or even sometimes physically attacked by irate commuters, angry at being forced to stop so that children could safely cross the road to school. My friend had shaken her head in disbelief and declared: 'You know you're scum when you have a go at a lollipop lady.' I had nodded gravely in agreement. Ha, at least I had the decency to swear at other drivers in such a way that they couldn't actually hear me. What kind of moral degenerate would openly abuse a lollipop lady? Jeez.


A couple of days ago I was driving home from work after a long and draining start to the week, and I saw a lollipop lady up ahead walk out into the road waving her stop sign. I slowed down, and came to a halt just as a young woman with a pram started to cross over the road behind her. Now my cars horn is located slap bang in the centre of the steering wheel (which is a stupid place to put it in my opinion Mr Renault designer just in case you're listening.) Tired as I was, I leaned my forearm without thinking across the steering wheel to rest my chin on while I waited. Suddenly there was this almighty deafening BEEEEP!! The poor woman with the pram nearly leapt three feet into the air, and the lady brandishing the lollipop fixed me with a scowl so fierce that I nearly melted on the spot. My slightly panicked response to this was to wave my hands around in such a manner as I thought clearly communicated 'oh god I'm really sorry, I did not mean to do that, damn horn is in a really stupid place eh.' At which point the lollipop ladies scowl darkened to a look of undiluted fury, and I realised that now not only did she think that I had deliberately leaned on my horn because I was impatient at having to stop for a young mother and her baby to cross the road, but that I was also now waving my arms around aggressively in such a manner as to say: 'Get out of the fucking road and take your stupid stick with you before I run you over....' or something like that.

So I am now waiting with baited breath for a headline to appear in my local paper screaming: 'MYSTERY ARM WAVING WOMAN IN SILVER RENAULT CLIO THREATENS POOR WEE INNOCENT LOLLIPOP LADY' and for all my neighbours reading it to think 'Hmm, mad arm waving woman in a silver renault clio... now then, who could that be? Oh hang on a minute - of course - that'll be Gappy.

Blogging on Blogging.

I am about to commit what I hear from certain sections of the blogging community is a cardinal sin.

In the interests of making things crystal clear for those of you that might prefer to run screaming, and just in case the title wasn't a complete give away, this is... wait for it... a blog post about blogging. I know. I'm bad.

A few things prompted me to begin writing this post. Reading and enjoying other posts about blogging, for example this one from Notes From Lapland, and this one from Black Hockey Jesus, but mostly - and this is the crux of my point on which I shall elaborate shortly - reading back through my earliest posts which I believe (but for a few exceptions) to be better than my most recent ones.

Being something of a closet Luddite, I only got connected to the internet in December last year. I set up an e-mail account, found a few old friends on facebook and pottered about on mumsnet for a bit. Then after a week or so, and armed only with my Readers Digest: 'How to do just about anything on a computer' I set up a site using Blogger and published my first ever post. I was thrilled - and that is no exaggeration - by the medium of blogging. Still am. I couldn't believe it, anyone with an internet connection could self-publish whatever they wanted. That to me was revolutionary. It was anarchic and exciting but most importantly I felt, it was a great equalizer. I've always been a sucker for a good free for all.

Lately though I've come to the realisation that many things have been distracting me from the writing, which is after all supposed to be the point. New discoveries such as Twitter, statcounter (I have a sad obsession with the recent visitor map - don't ask) and feedburner, make it hard to concentrate on creating actual content. I find myself checking my e-mail at regular half an hour intervals like a trained lab rat in the hope that there will be a new comment waiting juicily in my inbox to be published. After all who doesn't love getting comments? They are part of what makes blogging the unique medium it is - the ability for the writer to interact with their readers is what can make the posts come alive. The knowledge that someone is not only reading what I have to say, but that they can relate to it enough to want to comment and add to it is fantastic. But getting too caught up in the trappings of blogging along with the self imposed pressure I feel to produce a certain number of posts each week is, I feel, driving down the quality of my writing (not that I think I'm Margaret bloody Atwood, but ya know, I want to be the best I can.)

I have also discovered that I am not in any way immune to blogging insecurity. I find myself wondering why certain posts didn't receive many comments. I compare myself unfavourably to other new bloggers. I worry that I'm not up to scratch.

Today I discovered that someone had blocked me on Twitter. I have absolutely no idea why. I don't think I've ever had any contact with this person, or even commented on their blog - I'd seen them about the blogosphere and was interested in what they had to say - so put in a request to follow them, that is all. The reason I'm (sob) sharing this is because on finding that I had been blocked, I then spent the next fifteen minutes checking through all my tweets to see if I had said anything that could possibly have offended anybody. Fifiteen minutes that could have been spent writing and enjoying my blog. Why do I care that someone with whom I don't even have a passing virtual acquaintance has blocked me from following them? I don't know. I do though.

So I think perhaps I need to go back all of three months to my blogging roots. I need to remember why I started blogging, I need to remember that virtually everyone I have met in the blogosphere has gone out of their way to be friendly and supportive, and most of all I need to get over my existential blogging angst, because frankly it's boring even me now.

I am really interested to know if other bloggers experience blogging insecurity - and if they feel that it can affect the quality of their writing. Have you devised ways of guarding against it? Please feel free to share anything that comes to mind.

Dick for a Day

Last night on twitter, I was bemoaning the fact that I had run out of inspiration for anything intelligent to say on my blog. One quick glance at the title of this post should serve to reassure everybody that not much has changed... but bear with me.

In my house bookshelves take up most of the available wall space. My own personal library is my most treasured posession, and I have to admit to being slightly precious about my books - I have 'sections' and the fiction is arranged in alphabetical order - oh dear, it sounds so anal reading that back. Anyway, on my way up to bed last night after having tried unsucessfully to come up with an even vaguely interesting blog post, I passed my 'womens' section and snatched up a book that I've had for as long as I can remember but haven't looked at in ages. It is a collection of essays by respected women authors and academics, edited by Fiona Giles, and entitled 'Dick for a Day.' I immediately thought (as you would) Aha! Of course! Finally, the eureka moment that I had been waiting for.

You see, at the risk of being struck down by the god(ess?) of feminism, I have to admit to experiencing more than a just a tinge of penis envy myself. It has been there for as long as I can remember, ever since I was a little girl who managed to persuade next doors little boy to let her watch him have a pee. 'Not fair' I remember thinking. Why can't I just pee, shake and go? Having a penis seemed so much more convenient. And so began a number of experiments in which I attempted to master the art of peeing standing up. To be fair I did actually enjoy varying degrees of success with this, but eventually gave up, presumably having learnt as most girls do, that it is sometimes just easier to accept things the way they are.

So now I have in front of me my book, in which the likes of Germaine Greer and Patricia Cornwell discuss what they would do if they had a dick for a day; and I am wondering, what would I do?

I fear that my response may not be a particularly imaginative one. The first thing to immediately spring to mind would be my new found ability to piss up a wall (base, moi?) Clearly there is still a small part of me that has failed to move on from my eventual childhood defeat in this endeavour. So I would certainly be indulging in all sorts of novelty pissing. Then of course one would, without a doubt, wish to be receiving a blow job at some point during the day; in fact lots of sex with a confident and beautiful woman would definitely be on my list. I have often wondered just how different an experience sex is for men, both physically and emotionally, and how much of a social construct the different approaches to sex and relationships that men and women supposedly have really are. Can men honestly enjoy sex with a woman without it resulting in any sort of emotional bond whatsoever? Are they really biologically more driven to pursue sex than women? These would be the sorts of questions I would want my dick for the day to try to answer.

So come on women of the blogosphere, what would you do?

I would also really appreciate getting some mens responses to this post, especially to the questions I have posed to my imaginary dick. What say you?

The Art of Putting Ones Foot in Ones Mouth. By Me.

I am, without a shadow of a doubt, The Queen of the faux pas. The Doyenne of the indiscreet blunder. The Grande Dame of the social fuck up.

The filter located somewhere between my brain and my mouth periodically becomes faulty. Alcohol was frankly never much of a help, but even reliably tee-total things can sometimes (quite often actually) go awry.

Lets see... examples. Well there was the time when I was helping the p.t.a. mothers prepare for the village fete, and I let out a large sigh and complained rather loudly that I felt like a Stepford wife. (I was joking, I thought perhaps they might see the funny side - apparently not). One of them almost inhaled her coffee, which necessitated her having to be violently thumped on the back by her friend, who then went on to fix me with a 'Good god, you could have killed her' death stare for the rest of the afternoon. And then there was the time I declared to a new-ish friend that I wasn't really interested in using homeopathy to treat Middle Sons ailment, because if I was going to use any sort of medicine, I would much prefer it to be one that had a modicum of evidence to support its efficacy. Only to need the loo five minutes later and find a large assortment of Nelsons remedies neatly lined up on her bathroom shelf. Shit. Fortunately she did see the funny side (my how we laughed) and we are now close friends. Oh, and then of course there was the time I was chatting to my neighbour about how unspeakably tacky those awful inflatable santas were in so and sos garden, only to realise.... (deep breath) yep. And so on and so on, you get the idea.

My most recent gaffe occurred when I was out for a rare, and much looked forward to, Day By Myself. (I was by myself for chrissakes - even when let out alone I can still somehow manage to alienate somebody somewhere, such is the scope of my talent.) The weather was sunny and breezy, the air smelt wonderful, and I was happily making my way down the street in one of my favourite places in the whole world, anticipating a few lazy hours spent browsing round the second hand book shops, and sitting outside a cafe with a cold drink, to people watch and look at the new books I had bought myself.

Somewhere along the street I happened to walk past a busker, and so paused to fish around in my purse to find some money to put in his guitar case. I made a point of smiling and saying thank you - I like buskers, music on the street is always a good thing - and this particular mans music seemed perfectly to enhance the already pleasant spring atmosphere that abounded.

I don't know... perhaps I said thank you rather too pointedly, because he immediately coughed nervously, and interrupted his singing to say, 'Oh yes, er..sorry, er..thank you'. I walked on for a couple of seconds feeling ever so slightly puzzled, and then the penny dropped. Aarggh. He thought my thank you had been sarcastic. He thought it had been an admonishment, for failing to thank me properly for the measly one pound or so I'd tossed in his case, kind of like you might hiss, 'And what do you say?'to a small child who had forgotten to thank a slightly scary relative for their 'educational' Christmas present. I almost stopped for a split second to go back, but remembering my closely related talent for digging myself into even deeper holes, decided against it. I carried on my merry way, cheeks red with the acceptance that he would just now think that I was some ghastly woman with a habit of throwing her spare change at people and expecting them to grovel in eternal gratitude.

Ho hum.

Oh Bloody Bloody Computers

For a woman with her own blog, I am just one small notch above complete computer illiteracy. I wrote in a previous post about how my p.c. and internet connection were both new. Well they are now slightly less new, and what I hoped would prove to be a fairly steep learning curve has in fact turned out to be much more of a gentle incline.

In an effort to educate myself I've bought loads of those black and yellow striped books For Dummies. As in The Internet for Dummies, Blogging for Dummies e.c.t e.c.t. My children find this hilarious in a 'glad to see you've finally let go of the denial mum' kind of way, and my 'office' (read cupboard under the stairs) bookshelf is starting to resemble a giant bee. To be fair, I could not have got this blog up and running without those books (one downside of anonymous blogging being that you can't really ask anyone for help) but in lots of ways I am still none the wiser than the disillusioned Luddite that first began this whole venture. A friend had to talk me through sending an e-mail with an attachment the other day. When you notice your friends starting to speak to you very gently and slowly, is it then time to worry I wonder...

The latest computery thing to flummox me is Twitter. Other bloggers all appear to be using it, at least I keep seeing these little blue birds everywhere, and so naturally I'm interested. Yesterday I thought I would go and see what it was all about. I managed to sign up for an account, and also picked a few of the people whose blogs I like, to follow. So far so good. I even got a couple of followers myself which is really exciting, only now I don't know what to do. I have tried vainly to send out a tweet, and also to reply to someone elses tweet, but as far as I am aware, have not managed so much as a pathetic squeak.

Back to the Drawing Board For Dummies methinks.

Any tips are entirely welcome by the way.

Winter Standstill

It's getting beyond a joke.

The snow, I mean. At first the novelty was fun. The wintry scenes were pretty and it was all a great excuse to hunker down at home and not do very much. We built snowmen and threw snowballs, and pressed our noses against the window to ooh and aah at the fluffy cotton wool flakes floating down onto the garden. The heating was turned up to full and the last of the Christmas chocolate was polished off.

I've had enough now.

We have run out of food and milk, and can't get to the shops unless my friend comes round to rescue us in her four by four. The children have had precisely two days back at school since the end of the Christmas holidays. I can't get to work (cue very grumpy Naked Boss) and we are all frothing at the mouth with cabin fever.

And still it comes. The sky it seems, is incontinent. The view out of my window, a scene from Narnia.

Guilty Pleasures, Part 2.

Yes. In the words of a certain pathetic Irish comedian, 'There's more'.

I find that there is much enjoyment to be had from gazumping people in busy car parks. Gazumping men in busy car parks particularly. I know I know, it's not big and it's not clever. I know it's rude. But it is hugely satisfying in a warped kind of way, and I can't seem to help myself. It's not an entirely arbitrary thing. I'm not totally lacking in scruples you know. Certain peeves render me far more likely to decide that nicking the parking space from right under someones wheels is completely called for. These include:

1. Me judging them to have a poncy car. You know, the kind with two exhausts, and go faster stripes. And those funny things on their tyres. Why?
2. Them having their stereo on so loud that other people are forced to share in their musical choices. What their musical choices happen to be can take them to a whole new level of deservedness. Any hint of gangsta rap, and that parking space is mine.
3. Someone idling around the mother and baby spaces when they clearly have no kids in their car.
4. Seeing them in a jam/me being in the wrong lane previously, and them not letting me in.
5. E.c.t.

I have even been known to drive in the wrong direction, contrary to the way the arrows are pointing, in order to niftily nip into a parking space that someone else has clearly got their eye on. Much to the mortification of my Eldest Son, who will then slump down in the front seat, with one hand clamped to his forehead in embarrassment.
'Muuuum, that man was waiting to go in that space. Look! He's waving at you!'
At which point I will reinforce the already sterling example I have just set by hissing, 'It's different in car parks. It's dog eat dog. Everyone for themselves.'

I would like to make clear at this point that behaviour such as this is entirely out of character, and (thankfully) exclusive to car parks. I am not a particularly competitive person. I am normally perfectly courteous. I don't jump the queue in shops, I hold doors open for people, and I'm usually right on the money with all my pleases and thank yous. But gazumping men in poncy cars? There's just something about it that works for me on so many different levels.

Freud, no doubt, would have a field day.

Guilty Pleasures...

I have many.

Mumsnet.com discussion forums for instance, but that's a whole different post.

Another is (deep breath) 25 Beautiful Homes. For those of you that aren't familiar with this paragon of intellectual might and good taste, it is a magazine that showcases photographs of peoples houses, room by room. So what you get is essentially a guided tour around Mrs Snobulike from Upyerownarseshires house, from the comfort of your own gracious drawing room. The houses are divided into categories - traditional, country, glamorous, unique and modern - traditional being my personal favourite.

Mr S used to call it my 'Readers Wives', the idea being that I was deriving pleasure from gawping at what someone else had got. And I have to say, the porn comparison is not an entirely inaccurate one. Indeed I am so ashamed of this particular habit that I hide the magazines when I am expecting company, although not under the mattress. I also fervently hope I don't bump into someone I know when buying them. Wearing sunglasses, a hat, and a dodgy mac seems a bit extreme, but is in fact something I've considered. My blog, however, is anonymous (perhaps now you can understand why) so ha! I'm going to say it loud and proud: I LOVE 25 BEAUTIFUL HOMES! I KNOW IT'S A LOAD OF IRRELEVANT, MATERIALISTIC, MIDDLE CLASS TOSS, BUT I LOVE IT ANYWAY! I read it and I think things like, 'Ooh, I like that bathroom mirror', and 'ooh would you look at those curtains'.

And now after having got that off my chest, I'm off to read some Noam Chomsky or something.

If you like, you can click here for Guilty Pleasures Part 2. Yep, there's plenty more where that came from. Enjoy.

Bog-roll Stockpile Anyone?

It is that time between Christmas and New Year. A strange sort of non-time where you can't remember what day it is. I heard it referred to as 'crimbo limbo' on the radio today during the interminable drive back from My Mothers, which I thought summed it up rather well. There is still the odd mince pie lurking about, and T.V. listings crammed full of nauseating childrens films, but elsewhere things have returned pretty much to normal. That is to say shop opening times have - the break from rampant consumerism becoming shorter every year, or so it seems.

Which begs the question: Why the pre-christmas stockpiling of loo roll? No really, why? The week before Christmas seems to induce something of a communal Pavlovian response in a huge chunk of the great British public. I imagine people waking on the first morning of the week preceding yuletide, consumed with an anxiety they can't name. And then suddenly, simultaneously, having a mass eureka moment.

'Shall we just buy loads and loads of loo roll?' they say to their partners, flatmates, dogs. 'I know, I've got an idea. Let's buy loads of loo roll!'. To which surely, their significant others must reply: 'Yes, lets'. Whole families seduced by the idea of bumper packs of Andrex. Entire communities compelled to panic buy four-ply.

Nearly every trolley pusher I jostle for space with on my Christmas food shop is similarly affected by this anally inspired ration anxiety. I want to put my arm around them. I want to comfort them. 'It's ok' I imagine myself saying. 'The shops are only shut for one day. One day. You can do it - you will be alright. Just how many people are you expecting for xmas dinner anyway?'

Recently Acquired Addictions

In the past fortnight, I have managed to acquire two new addictions. Two brand new dysfunctional strings to my bow. They are namely, Quality Street, and the internet. My excuse for the Quality Street is: it's Christmas. However, the internet habit has taken root altogether more deeply methinks. Both my internet connection, and the sufficient computer literacy required to navigate it, are a total novelty. I finally decided to join the 21st century when, upon asking My Mother for a set of encyclopaedias last Christmas, she scoffed: 'But daarling, you really must get yourself on the bloody internet'. My Mother swears like a navvy - it's the poshest tourette's you've ever heard.

It's taken me this long to actually do it. I think in the back of my mind there was a fear that when I finally began my techno venture I would immediately discover I had been living in a dreary half-world, pointlessly devoid of links, rss feeds, and face-book. Which was not entirely unfounded as it turns out. Discovering the internet a decade after everyone else feels a bit like hearing a joke you're not in on, only to discover that the rest of the world has been pissing itself laughing at it for years.

What all of this means, is that while my children have been staying with their fathers for the past two days; instead of really getting anything done, I have spent the whole time holed up with my tin of Quality Street in the tiny cupboard under the stairs which passes for an 'office'. I have ventured out once to do some Christmas shopping. I must say the daylight seemed uncomfortably bright...

Last night my friend J came round to do some washing (her machine has packed up just in time for Christmas) only to declare that I was now officially a 'nerd'. A computer addicted hermit. Actually, I think I'm just making up for lost time.