Chez Spud

The boys’ new bowls, a sop to the Royal Wedding ‘fever’ which is almost entirely passing me by. What a difference from Charles ‘n’ Diana which, in my 10 year old state, gripped me in a whole body experience kind of way. I just ached, ached for it all. My bedroom was a shrine to all things Diana, my bedroom window (overlooking the street) was adorned with posters, flags, postcards. Charlie boy didn’t get much of a look in of course. It was all about Diana. Well, we all know how that turned out but I always had a soft spot for Diana, even when she turned a bit, well, loopy. The 10 year old in me just couldn’t give her up, I suppose it was a kind of crush.

And here we are, fast forward 30 years and we’re doing it all over again. I’m not given to breathless crushes much these days but, if I were, ‘Catherine’ Middleton (as I gather we are now to call her) wouldn’t even make the longlist. I’m not bothered about William since he, like his father, was born royal and is just pootling along the path of duty. I suppose he had to marry someone, and it’s not a ridiculous match in the way that Charles and Diana clearly were. I think he might even be marrying for love, who knows.

But what on earth is a ‘nice’, middle class, educated girl like Kate (sorry, can’t do the Catherine thing) Middleton doing marrying in to The Firm? She’s clearly been waiting/banking on marrying William since she was at university, since she’s not bothered with a proper job of any sort other than a few months as a buyer for Jigsaw, I think. What a waste. She’s 29. She graduated a long, long time ago and has basically just wafted around being William’s on/off girlfriend and helping out with her mum and dad’s business. As my mother would have said, ‘She’s never really amounted to anything’.

And now she’s got what, presumably, she wanted all along. I wonder how she’ll feel about it in 5, 10, 15 years time…will she still feel it was worth giving up her privacy, her career aspirations, her life (basically)? Will all the feeling of ‘success’ and power be worth it? Will she continue to love being the centre of attention, or will she crave it and hate it all at the same time once the novelty has worn off? It’s seems like a hopelessly outdated ‘dream’, to marry a prince and live happily ever after, for a modern, educated woman. I cannot think of a worse curse to be honest.

I’m not passionately anti-royalist although I don’t believe they have any kind of meaningful role anymore. To me they are part of history, part of the fabric of our heritage but I don’t see that they have much of a useful purpose beyond that. Yes their patronage is hugely helpful for many charities…yes they are great for tourists…yes they are, increasingly, great fodder for the tabloid press (yes Prince Andrew I’m looking at you). But beyond that?

Kate Middleton is an expensively educated, intelligent, beautiful and confident woman. I just cannot understand why she has spent nearly all of her adult life craving marriage to the heir to the throne, without even attempting to carve out a meaningful career and role for herself. No doubt she will soon be plunged in to charity work and photo opportunities and all that stuff that will be ‘expected’ of her as a Royal. What a massive, missed opportunity though…we could have had a thoroughly modern princess, a woman with her own agenda, her own life. Instead we seem to be getting Diana all over again. Diana was 19 when she married, too young to know better. Kate Middleton is 29. Definitely old enough to know the score.

I hope, for Kate and William, that it all works out for them. But right now I can’t think of a worse role model for girls and young women.  If I had a daughter I wouldn’t be encouraging any kind of ‘crush’ on someone who has seemingly pinned all her hopes, and for years, on marrying well. How very, very Jane Austin like.

Let’s hope that love can sustain them. And that I’m not carried off to The Tower for this post.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• Royal Wedding Musings

“You’re not disabled by the disabilities you have, you are able by the abilities you have”…the personal motto of South African paralympic runner Oscar Pistorius. What an interesting stance. I knew nothing of him until yesterday when Bertie was reading a book about the Olympics which had a picture of him in it. What was so interesting to me was how long it took Bertie to spot his prosthetic lower legs, he was completely oblivious to them. I asked him what was different about the man in the photo, ‘He’s not winning?’ he said. Eventually he spotted that his lower legs were different, but wasn’t much interested in hearing about the “Blade Runner” and how he’s competed in ‘able bodied’ races because he can run so extraordinarily well.

In truth, whilst he understands what it means to be disabled, I don’t think he has any appreciation of what it actually means. Like most children he’s much more accepting and tolerant of people who are different than him. When does that change I wonder? Or have we moved on enough in terms of equality for all that he’ll continue not to differentiate? There is a child in his class with special needs. On her first day Bertie told me about her and what her problems are. “And?” I said, gearing up for the ‘we’re all different’ talk, “And that’s the end of the story” he replied. Just as it should be.

I shouldn’t be phased by the disability/able bodied issues. My mother taught at a school for what was called ‘handicapped children’ for 20 years. Very un PC these days. The school doesn’t exist anymore, no longer needed with the move to integration in to mainstream school for children with special needs. And she was ‘disabled’ herself, crippled with arthritis from her early 20s.

I think its the terminology that I struggle with. ‘Able bodied’…what does that really mean? I don’t think many of us are truly ‘able bodied’…seems like everyone has got a dodgy back, clicky knees, a touch of arthritis here and there, weird pains from old injuries that niggle…we’re all working around our own physical issues and limitations, to a greater or lesser degree. ‘Normal’ is all wrong of course, since no one is. I couldn’t even explain what it is about the Paralympics that makes it something significant and special without drifting in to being patronising. The bottom line is that all Olympians (both Paralympians and the other sort that I can’t and won’t classify) are outstanding athletes. Full stop.

“You are able by the abilities that you have”. Such a neat turn of phrase, so spare and elegant. A motto for not just for sport but for life if ever I saw one…revealed to me thanks to a child’s reading book.

Most Commented Posts

• To my boy on starting school…
• Happy Blogoversary to me…and a little giveaway
• Lurkers…DELURK!
• FINALLY…Secret 30…I am a Big…Fat…Liar…
• Fantastic competition: win a family trip to New York! And a giveaway…a cool camera

I’m just banking a memory here. You can read it if you like, but I’m writing this for me more than I ever usually do. It’s a memory that was lost to me, but was returned due to a little chitter chatter with Mocha Beanie Mummy on Twitter. As you do.

Turns out we both studied music as the same places, but not at the same time as she is (rather unkindly I thought) somewhat younger than me. I hate that. She’s a cellist. I’m a flautist and a singer. I’m assuming we’re both pianists too since ‘they’ (whoever ‘they’ might be) don’t let you read music unless you can play the piano. Even thought some of us play it shocking badly…alas I mean me.

What Mocha Beanie Mummy reminded me about, a memory long forgotten, is that I used to study at the Royal Northern College of Music as a teenager. Having been spotted at a local music competition by a professor at the RNCM I would travel from the south of England up to Manchester for my lessons, with the Professor of Flute. Seems kind of mad now I think about it. From the age of 13 until I was 18, every 2 weeks, I’d get on a train from my home town and trundle all the way up north. Always alone. Often changing at Birmingham (argh, so busy) or Crewe (hardly any better). And my grandfather would meet me at the station and take me in to Manchester, a 45 minute drive, for a 1 hour music lesson. Then I’d stay with him and my Nana overnight and I’d trundle all the way home again the next day.

What a huge commitment for everyone involved. It’s was a huge financial stretch for my parents to find the money for the lesson never mind the train fare. But it was generally deemed to be “worth it” because I was training to become a professional musician and I was under the tutelage of the country’s leading flute teacher. Hmmmm….somehow I changed my mind about becoming a musician later in life but I’m sure my parents forgave me…right?

But the memory I’m banking isn’t about the lessons or the train journey or the career I might have had. It’s about my grandfather, my lovely grandad. This is the only photo I had to hand which is, I think, taken in the late 80 in the garden of the house I grew up in. That’s my mother next to him, his daughter in law. I think we are about the same age in that photo. We are alarmingly alike.

My grandad was many, wonderful things but a good driver he was not. You pretty much took your life in your hands every time you got in a car with him. Swerving was a particular skill of his. “Mind that car Bert!”, came the constraint refrain from my Nana (a non driver) every time she braved the passenger seat.

For years he’d ferry me from Runcorn station to the darkest part of Manchester, Moss Side, where the RNCM happened to be situated. He’d deposit me in the ‘woodwind building’ and then he’d make his way to the student cafe, with his copy of the Liverpool Echo. I’d assumed he’d sat and read his paper and drank his tea (one sugar, just like me…I went off it for a while and he was devastated…he said I’d let the side down) until it was time to collect me, time to weave our way home . I was quite wrong. He actually always, always spent the hour chatting to the students. Yes, my Grandad (in his 70s/80s) spent an hour in the cafe talking to the 18-21yo students and was always full of stories and colour and the details of their lives. I was slightly embarrassed, of course, because I was a teenager and that was my default position.

But even as a teen I knew my Grandad had a special gift. He could talk to anyone because he was interested in everyone. And I know, without a doubt, that those 18-21 year olds in the student cafe didn’t laugh at my Grandad…they didn’t snigger or roll their eyes…because he was charming and interesting, kind and thoughtful…and he listened in a way that no one I’ve ever known could do. He wasn’t hugely educated or smart or well read or all that stuff, he was a farm labourer all his working life. He never showed off, never tried to prove anything or get one over by putting someone down.

All he ever did was see the best in everyone, all he wanted was for us all to do our best and be happy. In the quietest, most understated way, he absolutely exuded this…a kind of addiction to seeing the best in everyone…a true fascination in the story that each of us has within us. Even the 18,19,20, 21 year old students sitting in poorly lit cafe in a dodgy part of a run down city.

He died 18 months ago and when I think of him I think about his quietness, thoughtfulness, his old-fashioned gentlemanly approach to life and his curiosity to learn and know about things. And, now, I add to my memories the vision of him sitting in the cafe, Liverpool Echo spread before him, cup of sweet tea and a bun to hand, flat cap on the chair beside him….and a couple of a young men and women chatting to him, hopefully appreciating how their lives were being touched.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• The Gallery…Dads
• A life well lived…a man well loved xxx
• Storyboards
• Lost: one mojo

Awful title I know but I’m sick and my head is thick and has no imagination today. But look what Postman Andy brought, a lovely and perfect present all the way from lovely Elizabeth in Denmark. I have another piece of her work in my home, her gift to me at Blog Camp last year and I couldn’t be more thrilled to have another, custom made to ORDER piece. Oh, I’ve just remembered I also have a lovely Christmas decoration too which arrived as part of Elizabeth’s decoration swap. Lucky lucky me!

How clever she is! These photos aren’t really doing her work justice, I’m using a borrowed camera and am finding it hard to work to get to grips with. What vibrant colours and perfect, neat embroidery. The colours are just right but then, they should be, because they the colours I asked for when I inadvertently ordered it. Earlier this month, Elizabeth celebrated her 500th blog post by asking her readers what they thought she should work on next. Or that is how I read it. What she was actually doing was offering to gift something, so when I said ‘something in bright, vivid colours’ that’s what I got.

The back of the potholder is knitted in a delicate duckegg blue, with a crochet (I think?) trim. I’m not sure why the Momjii doll hopped in to this picture, but I wasn’t about to argue.

Thank you Elizabeth! In a note accompanying the package Elizabeth suggested that I pass the potholder along if I didn’t like it. WHAT?! Is she nuts? Nooo, it’s mine. all mine. To be treasured. xx

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• Saturday Snippets…what I learnt today
• It was the eve before Blog Camp…
• The One Where the Blog Campers meet in London
• Tea for two
• Blog Camp 3.0…let the fun begin

Presenting Fantastic Mr Bertie, dressed as Fantastic Mr Fox for World Book Day. His school asked that all the children come to school for WBD dressed as a Roald Dahl character. Initially he was keen on Badger from Fantastic Mr Fox, then he got stuck for a long time on Sophie from BFG before finally deciding on said Fantastic Fox himself.

Being a literal kind of child he insisted on a bow tie and was angling for a waistcoat too, as per Quentin Blake’s illustrations. He wasn’t that keen on the tail on his costume either since FMF loses his early on in the story. I was tempted to hack it off and leave a bloodied stump. But I’m not ‘that’ mean.

“I just LOVE books” said Bertie as he climbed in to bed with us this morning. Music to my ears.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• Photo A Day: my work here is done
• How I became my mother
• Slipping away
• The School Sports Day one…
• Silent Sunday

Nothing says ‘I live in the country’ quite like eggs with chicken poo/random bits of straw and muck all over them. Here’s a clutch of beauties, laid yesterday, by our neighbours’ very handsome hens. I marvelled at how different the eggs were in size and colour, some speckled, some the most delicate shade of blue. It’s a very different experience from shop bought eggs, all shiny and uniform, clean and neatly date stamped.

That said, I was surprisingly squeamish when Bertie ran up to me and pressed one of the eggs that he’d gathered in to my hand because, silent scream, it was still warm. Somehow it felt too intimate, and kind of cruel in a way…to deprive the broody chuck of the joy of perching on her egg even though, of course, it was never going to amount to anything anyway. It’s all very well aspiring to buy your meat/dairy products etc from a known source..but having it delivered to you hand whilst it’s still warm is quite a bizarre experience. It never bothered me as a child, when my grandfather would bring milk (still warm) after milking the cows and eggs (warm and covered in stuff) for breakfast. That’s adults for you though, always overthinking things.

In theory I like knowing where my food comes from, especially meat, although I’m far from evangelical about it. The lazy part of my nature means I’m never organised enough with shopping to have a ready supply of locally sourced produce. There’s NO EXCUSE though as there are plenty of fabulous local suppliers, even doorstep delivery, and no end of farm shops and all that stuff. If I were more of a foodie I’m sure I could be passionate about it but, in the end, food is mostly just fuel to me. It’s just the stuff that I shovel in to keep me going.

That said, I think there are stirrings of more of an interest in ‘food miles’ in me. Not quite sure why although rising oil prices have at least a little to do with it. Always the way isn’t it?  It’s only when it really, really starts to hit the pocket that you finally get interested. When I say ‘you’ I mean ‘me’, obviously. Plus MrSpud is in the early stages of planning a vegetable garden which, in theory, reduces many of our food miles to a quick shamble out of the back door. Add in some chucks, and me getting over (a) my fear of chucks and (b) my squeamishness, and it’s looking pretty good. Once I’ve persuaded the boys to give up meat for pulses, beans, tofu etc then we’ll really be making some progress. We all need to eat less meat and more pulses, for all the planet and health related issues we all know about. The reality of encouraging small children to delight in beans in something else however…

It’s all just the kernel of a thought to be honest, I’m just thinking it through whilst writing it down. All brought about by one warm egg in my hand and my girlish reaction to it. Also, Diggy was at home with me today while Bertie was at school. Much to my surprise he had a 2 hour nap and I had enough time on my hands to make myself a frittata for lunch, photograph the eggs, think about the eggs, think about ‘that’ warm’ egg and then I was off…my mind was a wondering and a wandering.

Just one egg. That’s all it took.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• Easter in pictures
• The Gallery: Food

Mostly, I work at home. But once every couple or weeks I visit my client in the City of London and, apart from the commute, I love it. It’s a newly redeveloped building, everything STINKS of new, it’s all white leather and orange scatter cushions, sculptured floral arrangements, wall to wall glass and achingly hip kitchens. Best of all, I have an office. With my name on it. With a door. That shuts. And no one ever, ever asks me for a drink or a snack and if they did I would point them in the direction of the embarrassingly over-stocked kitchen down the hall with Coke, Sprite etc etc on tap, every tea under the sun, coffee the same, mineral water (sparkling AND still of course) blah blah blah.  The place is is dripping with cash. And I love it.

The photo above is the view from my office. Actually it’s 50% of the view from my office as alas the iphone camera just isn’t wide enough to get the whole lot in. As views go it’s pretty stunning, and somewhat distracting. Certainly it’s an improvement over the last office I had which, whilst a corner office (KUDOS), was directly over Blackfriars train station. I could see the Thames, but only by wedging myself in to a corner and standing on tiptoes. Not really a room with a view.

I don’t miss London. I lived and worked there for oh-so many years butI don’t miss it, not even one little bit. But I do enjoy working in the City, and I don’t think I will ever lose the adrenalin rush of it all. I’ve worked in the City since 1992, when it was still (just) awash with the late 80s flood of money and excess, greed and naked ambition were the name of the game. Personally I’ve never ‘really’ been part of that scene, I’ve just skirted around the edges but have thoroughly enjoyed being part of it, observing it and (getting lucky to be honest) riding the back of it.

The City feels so different now than it did 20 years ago, and I feel so old to remember the days when we all drank wine at lunchtime as standard. And pushing off to the champagne bar at 1pm on a Friday and not going back to the office was expected, and all charged to the company card.  These days it’s considered positively DARING to risk a glass of wine at lunchtime.  I attended a business lunch this week where one of our number pretty much forced herself to have a glass with lunch so our guest didn’t feel uncomfortable drinking alone.

The same..but different…that’s how the City is for me….one square mile packed full of money and memories.  I’m hopeless with maps and have such a poor sense of direction, but I can reel off my memories of every street and every landmark building and every tube station around the City without pausing. My own, personal topography of  the City involves places like St Swithin’s Lane…near Bank…where I traipsed across London to one Saturday morning to buy text books from Bankers’ Books in 1990…only to find that, durrr, everything is shut in the City on a Saturday…where I had lunch with a lovely friend who subsequently died whilst heavily pregnant with Diggy…where I had lunch this week and kept glancing over at the table where I’d lunched with my friend and wished it had all turned out different.

St Paul’s…name of a tube station on the Central Line where I got off at for 6 weeks or so for one job early 1990. Every day I looked up at the big church nearby and thought, ‘Wow! That’s so big! It looks just like St Paul’s!’.  6 weeks in someone told me, quietly, that it actually WAS St Paul’s. It took me 15 years of working in the City before I actually stepped foot in the place.

Monument…in theory a station you can change to at Bank.  This is nonsense.  A huge long walk underground in tunnels soon teaches you it’s quicker and more pleasant to get above ground and walk there.

Poulty…not chickens but the name of a street in the heart of the City. I worked there very early on my City days when my skirts were short and my glasses the size of mixing bowls. I wore striped City shirts with silk knot cufflinks and hung out with the traders. Thankfully the Mixing Bowl glasses put them off and I didn’t have to marry any of them.

The Bishopsgate bombing, the ring of plastic, no bins anywhere, Canon Street awash with young men in bright jackets, May Day riots, being locked down in the office on 9/11, the same for 7/7, sitting on the grass outside St Paul’s without a care in the world gossiping with a new friend..sitting in the same place 10 years later and weeping as she told me she could never have children…

And on it goes…on and on…my personal map of the City, which bears no relation to an actual map or even how to get from one place to another. It’s all about personal memories and anecdotes really. In the mid 90s I worked for a firm of stockbrokers who, out of pity, continued to employ a man so old he looked like must have personally been acquainted with Dickens. He’s shamble in mid morning, the read the paper, sleep, go out for lunch, sleep and go home. He hoarded food in the drawers of his desk and attracted mice. I sometimes wonder if I might become one of those City relics? It’s been a long time since I saw anyone in the City wearing a bowler hat but I have done in the past. THAT is how old I am, and how long I’ve worked in the City.

The fancy building I now work in used to be the London Stock Exchange. In the Old Days I used to hang out at the reception delivering documents from listed companies who were announcing ‘stuff’ that they were up to which the SE needed to be informed of. Basically i was an overpaid, under skirted courier.  These days my skirts are longer, actually mostly trousers, and I’m paid ‘appropriately’.  But the irony of the circle of life…the circle of City life isn’t lost on me.  Once I hung out round the back, now I’m swanking it way up high in an office. That’s what age and experience does for you.

A more helpful sign of the times is that I was once sent home for wearing trousers to the office, that  was in 1993. I was sneered at, laughed at, addressed as MrSpud and was eventually sent home to change my clothes and I did so feeling utterly ashamed. If any man attempted to do the same these days it would be me sneering and laughing at him. Not all change is bad.

If you liked that, you might like this ...

• What I learnt today
• Lensbaby London
• The One Where the Blog Campers meet in London
• London Calling
• Teaser…snapshot of my day in London

Gloomy. The thrill of having moved is seriously being eroded by problems in our other house which has flooded and is causing our lovely tenants a serious problem and no end in sight at this point.

Cyclamen, a house warming present from our wonderful neighbours. iphone snapped, processed in Camerabag.

Most Commented Posts

• To my boy on starting school…
• Happy Blogoversary to me…and a little giveaway
• Lurkers…DELURK!
• FINALLY…Secret 30…I am a Big…Fat…Liar…
• Fantastic competition: win a family trip to New York! And a giveaway…a cool camera

Buzz Lighyear (or, ‘Buth LightYa’ as Diggy calls him) at the window of the staircase of our new house…looking down the drive and guarding against alien invasion etc.

Quite a camp pose I thought? I think MrSpud arranged him. He’s definitely Spanish Buzz here.

We finally moved in today. It’s been the world’s longest move because we bought the house 3 weeks ago and have been slowly moving in ever since. Today we had The Big Push with men and vans and all that.

It went very smoothly, couldn’t have gone better actually although I think the rain was a chore for The Men.

Even BT played ball and we have both a phoneline AND broadband. I’m quietly stunned.

Most Commented Posts

• To my boy on starting school…
• Happy Blogoversary to me…and a little giveaway
• Lurkers…DELURK!
• FINALLY…Secret 30…I am a Big…Fat…Liar…
• Fantastic competition: win a family trip to New York! And a giveaway…a cool camera

Title says it all really…we moved…it was exhausting…but it’s done now.

Most Commented Posts

• To my boy on starting school…
• Happy Blogoversary to me…and a little giveaway
• Lurkers…DELURK!
• FINALLY…Secret 30…I am a Big…Fat…Liar…
• Fantastic competition: win a family trip to New York! And a giveaway…a cool camera