Tag Archives: Parenting

Take it to the bridge

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We’ve hit the instrumental section of the season here at my folks’. The middle eight of Christmas when my Father’s daily quest to get us out for a walk revs up the morning with all the subtlety of an Animal drum solo. It’s less an attempt at a family bonding manoeuvre than a central heating cost saving exercise. He has already started to feel up the radiators while exclaiming the house has exceeded tropical temperatures as another icicle falls from his nose, crash landing on an empty Pringles tube.  He could put someone’s eye out with that. It’s traditional.

untitled

Hey! Would you like to go for a walk?

No Christmas would be complete either without his progeny reverting to their teenage default settings. This year, we’ve applied some efficiency of our own to the random insults. Gone are the unwarranted dead arms, and any valid reasons for accusing each other of being annoying. ‘You’re so annoying’ is a perfectly workable stand alone English sentence. Like a Christmas induced tourette’s outburst. Gone too is any appetite for resurrecting twenty year old gripes for shoehorning into an already ridiculous argument. I haven’t once heard anyone remark “what exactly do you mean by that remark?”, and the only response I got to my bleating at Bono’s exchange with Michael D was a Mexican eye-roll and the offer of a Celebration. I’m not sure middle age agrees with us.

Thankfully, this outrageous display of civility is compensated by the impressive juvenile pursuits of our respective children. The bickering baton has been enthusiastically grabbed by sticky hands, which they use to cheerfully beat each other up. Oh no wait, that’s a breadstick. Was a breadstick.

I don’t remember either of our parents calmly meeting us at eye-level to theorise on the origin of the other’s mickey fits and appeal to our inner rational adult. Plausible reasons offered for having a melt-down include: tiredness, playfulness, “their age”, or, to quote my own toddler, “an intensifying sense of injustice over perceived uneven turn-taking”. Couldn’t have said it better myself. Here, have a milky bar, kid, and eat it gloatingly right in front of your cousins’ faces. Their Dad administered the worst Chinese burns to me as a child, and wouldn’t take me to see The Smiths when they played our county. Not that I harbour festering grudges. The fucker.

Frankly, and I never say frankly, so I mean it forcefully, the endless polite intervening and over-rationalising gets fucking exhausting so I knocked on the doors of bathrooms and bedrooms where their parents were hiding out from their own off-spring and suggested I take them to the cinema. And, if they spared me excruciating levels of social shame, if they were really good, I might throw in a trip to the other Michael D’s.

I interpreted the time delay in their answers as horror at the suggestion of going to McDonald’s, and fully expected exaggerated disgust and nauseatingly emphatic pronouncements about their children’s nutritional habits. Not really. These are my people. So, right on cue, doors enthusiastically swung open, and we cranked our newly fledged maturity up a gear with a potentially violent argument over who would pay for the privilege.

“No, I insist”.

“No, it’s MY treat”.

“Take that back” *flings €50 note*

Etc.

Etc.

It’s a beautiful thing.

The end of year mothering quiz

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1. It’s another Wednesday morning. Yet again you notice your child has been wearing the same gear to her childminders for the last two days running. Do you:

a) Coordinate a new, clean outfit from scratch

b) Dampen a towel and attempt to wash off the stains to take the bad look off it

c) Ignore the stains and your shame, and bundle her into the car. You’re too late for this shit.

2. A visiting friend thrusts a box of chocolate into your toddler’s hands on arrival. Do you:

a) Stage a Mary Poppins show (full costume, if possible) to help distract her from the drugs and prise them off her while she’s singing her lungs out to supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

b) Initiate some plea bargaining and shuttle diplomacy between you and her Dad to negotiate a compromise with the promise of one OK, two sweets once she eats her dinner

c) Clobber your visitor with a cucumber. Lock yourself in the bedroom with the child, remaining there until you’ve both calmed down, emerging to a burnt dinner with chocolate stains around both your mouths

3. Your neighbour is having a birthday party for her child at one of those play centres and invites your little one along. You don’t know a soul but half an hour in, you find yourself getting comfortable with one parent you’ve been chatting to. Do you:

a) Look around and, with an over-weaning smile, declare how wonderful an event it is, and how brilliant it is to spend time with other parents

b) Stay in the background hovering around the requisite level of small-talk with courtesy and civility assured at all times

c) Get a little too relaxed on the child’s chair that can accommodate only one of your arse-cheeks and wonder aloud if the other mother thinks this is ‘hell’ also. Before a tumbleweed rolls idly by you both and you casually shuffle away to go and hang out with the small ones.

4. Your toddler occasionally catches you having sneaky drinks of Coke (zero) from the fridge. She demands to know what it is. Do you:

a) Tell her it’s a drink for grown-ups only, that if taken at her age will result in her becoming morbidly obese by the time she’s six and/or on the front page of the Irish Daily Mail.

b) Smile, and exclaim “what are you talking about?” as you wipe the Coke ronnie from your lip.

c) Tell her it’s your medicine. She knows Coke is a bad word and will only grass on you.

5. You meet an experienced Mother weaning her second child onto solids at four months. Do you:

a) Say “I’m not racist but” “Each to their own, it’s totally your choice. Fair play to you. You have to do what’s right for you”. Then give out about her on an anonymous parenting website.

b) Smile and ask her to remind you how old the child is again. Then let it hang in the air for a second before asking if she’s planning on eating that last biscuit.

c) Tell her you got off to an over-eager start at six months but fell back into lazy ways and that your one is still taking a bottle and only eats ReadyBrek at three years. Then say you made that up, and hope she half laughs. Then hope she stops looking at you funny.

6. You get talking to a grandparent you know in the GP waiting room. She proudly announces her daughter recently gave birth to her second child. Her first is younger that your toddler. She asks you outright if you ever planned on having a second child. Do you:

a) Smile and say, “With God’s blessing, we will have another so our poor child is spared the worst fate of all – having no siblings.” Then don’t move your hand as she places hers on top it a la a woman with 30 years  quality Vincent de Paul volunteering under her belt.

b) Shrug it off with an “Ah sure you never know” before asking her the time.

c) Tell her you weren’t prepared to take the risk in case the child turned out like the last one. Then laugh. Inanely, if necessary.

7. It’s Sunday morning. You’re on the early parenting shift. Do you:

a) Cheerfully clear up the breakfast table to make way for some ‘craft time’

b) Decide on a little TV time before getting dressed and going for a walk

c) Haul the gigantic sheep fur-lined blanket down stairs and give a half-running commentary to the items on the re-run of the best bits of TV3 AM from under it

8. You gradually get chatting to the mother of one of the children that attends the same childminders. Do you:

a) Respond enthusiastically to her suggestion of a coffee and fix a time there and then

b) Invite them round to your house knowing this is the only possible way you’re going to get around to cleaning it

c) Scurry back to the car after hearing yourself voluntarily utter the term “play date” and wonder aloud what you have become

9. You read about all these play dates these mothers and children go on. Do you:

a) Nod, knowing it is a great way to meet other mothers and start stalking every mother in the childminder’s car-park

b) Wonder if it’s mandatory to stay at the play date, or if it’s possible to drop your child off while you go and have a proper coffee

c) Wonder if you will ever be able to say ‘play date’ again with a straight face

10. Your child wants you to paint with them. Do you:

a) Beat her to it. The table is already cleared, the paints are in transit from the top shelf.

b) Promise to do so after you’ve read the very important paper you refer to as “work”

c) Ask her to ask her Da

11. Butternut squash is:

a) A healthy and nutritious vegetable

b) The first stage in the production of peanut butter

c) An extreme sport

12. Your toddler is staying over in her grandparents’ (your in-laws) house for the night. She’ll be there for dinner. Do you:

a) Pack some roasted butternut squash and fruit into her overnight bag for later

b) Tell her grandmother she’ll have whatever they’re having

c) Hope that whatever they’re having includes a tin of spaghetti

13. Your two year old frees herself from the straps of the car-seat while you’re driving. Do you:

a) Calmly pull over and hop in to re-adjust them

b) Not notice until you’ve pulled in to wherever you were going and shudder

c) Have a melt-down and pull into the nearest bus-stop holding up the traffic for a few minutes to re-arrange the straps

14. You and your partner are having a disagreement. Your child is present. Do you:

a) Agree to talk about it later when your child is in bed

b) Continue talking calmly until it’s resolved or ignore each other

c) Passively aggressively direct the communication through your child. “What will we do about Mum. The silly billy” .

15. If you had to…you know..

a) Justin/Mr. Tumble

b) The tall curly-haired presenter on Cbeebies that occasionally goes on safari

c) Mr. Bloom(ing gorgeous)

Results

Mostly As

With all your excessive care and consideration, you’re headed for a break-down and a referral to social services for creating a land of make-believe so inconsistent with the adult world you’re in danger of permanently messing up your kids cognitive development. There’s no point worrying about breaking the news about the fiction of Santa when they will attempt to “take their turn” in real grown-up life with devastating consequences. And not every hurt can be sung away with the theme tune from Frozen or a lollipop piece of fruit. Cut down on the *grimaces* play dates, and aim for more *grimaces* me time. It’ll serve you and your child far better. Take the day off cooking, and bring them to MacDonald’s. They’ll get a free balloon so it won’t be a totally wasted visit. No-one will see you because it’s conveniently located out of town, but not too far. Besides, all your Mummy friends WOULDN’T DREAM of going there.They’ll probably be just leaving as you’re arriving.

Mostly Bs

They say parents try to do their best. Doing the minimum is the best some of them can do, including you. Don’t be too hard on yourself. You’re managing to navigate the assault course of parenting doing 60 MPH in third gear but you’ll get there eventually, even if the vehicle will be clapped out on arrival. Keep an eye on the wine consumption. If you’re reading articles about the rise of alcohol as a coping mechanism for parenting, then it probably is you they’re talking about. It doesn’t matter that your partner is on 10 cans of Dutch Gold and 40 Benson & Hedges a day. You’re the mother, right? So it all falls on you remember. You might’ve read about it. On a blog somewhere.

Mostly Cs

The model parent. Other mothers can only strive to reach your levels of rearing perfection. Would you like to go on a play date with me?

My unsolicited parental advice

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Go placidly amid the white noise and bodily waste, and remember what temporary peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without wearing suspenders be on good terms with most parents.

Speak your truth quietly and internally; even when sensationalist headlines and paranoid articles claim you’re part of the mythical conspiracy that hides it from other parents. And avoid listening to others too much, especially the dull and the ignorant; because unfortunately they like to overshare their story.

Avoid loud, aggressive, smug, overbearing, self-sanctified and over-earnest parents, they are vexatious to the spirit and mind-numbingly boring. If you compare yourself with others, you may become a pain or bitter, like me; for always there will be greater and lesser parents than yourself.  According to them anyway, though they’d never admit it directly.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your ridiculously futile plans like having an uninterrupted lie-in. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; even if it is a ‘menial’ job that you would one day like to graduate from into a ‘proper’ career accompanied by an entitlement to hang on to it, it is a real and valid aspiration in the unchanging fortunes of inequality.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of treat or trickery and you’ll probably run out of sweets by tea-time if you didn’t get enough or have eaten them all. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of unnecessary heroism. Like baby-led weaning and cup-cake baking.

Be yourself. Especially on-line, do not feign affection or over photoshop your pictures. We’ll know. Neither be cynical about parental love; for in the face of all this acidity and the ever-changing commandments, it is as perennial as the grass stains on the arse of your children’s best clothes.

Take mildly the counsel of your peers, reluctantly surrendering to the universal ‘truth’.  Whatever one they happen to be talking about this week.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.  Such as your child breaking free to terrorise everyone through the aisles in Tesco. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings like leaving her there. Many potential blog posts are born of fatigue and loneliness. Sometimes boredom.  And occasionally the need to avoid the fridge, and the urge to hear the sound of my own voice.

Beyond a lack of physical discipline, be gentle with yourself. Yours is a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to expect the ‘village’ to present itself sometime soon to dig in and help look after it. Preferably on Friday nights.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt one of those universal truths is unfolding as it should: Justin from CBeebies really is disturbingly creepy.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Her to be (the childminder), and whatever your labours and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep pace with your sole determination to write it all down. With all its sham, drudgery, vanities and fantasies, it is still a beautiful world wide web. Don’t be cheerless. Strive to be reasonably happy. Ah gwan. It’ll not kill you.

eHomogeneity

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Yesterday, it lashed rain for most of the day so I was condemned to the local soft-play centre for a few hours with our one to run off some energy (her) and try to hide behind the Sunday papers (me). No sooner had I opened a supplement to partake in some mildly bitter lifestyle envy, when the first of three parents landed in with a brood, shortly followed by the other two.

It quickly transpired they all knew each other and their collision was a random surprise. The chat about their children took off as they were waved off; each of them taking it in turn to spring up momentarily to warn one of their off-spring to refrain from inflicting pain on another.

Each politely and engagingly inquired how each other’s children were doing. They spoke about the challenges of getting them to focus on doing their homework. Confidence levels between girls and boys were sized up with two registering worry that their girls exhibit greater reluctance to assert themselves in contrast to their boys. After-school programme options at their respective schools were listed and enthusiastically reconciled with the interests and talents of the little folk attending.

It was a familiar scene no doubt cascaded across the nation on a hostile Sunday morning; when one parent is relieved of getting up while the other shepherds their children out of the house to leave it in peace. Unremarkable in many ways.

It shouldn’t be remarkable that these parents were in fact fathers, but I’m rarely in their company so it was both a novelty and an affirmation of what we already know about the centrality of fathers in contemporary child-rearing. I wasn’t watching them while wearing rose-tinted glasses. We know the economic imbalances that characterise the roles and responsibilities in the home and workplace of women and men with children. It’s fair to generalise that the brunt of financial loss and decision-making gain is borne by women. That’s a given. But that doesn’t negate from the evolution of child-rearing as a joint task compared with our parents’ generation. In the main.

Women shouldn’t have to perpetually gender check themselves when relaying their own parental experiences; but men don’t need to be stay-at-home-dads to scratch their heads over many of the same anxieties that have women exchanging furrowed-brows. It may not be the cultural norm for men to take to the keyboard to tease these things out; but in taking to the keyboard many of us are not doing so as single parents. Sometimes it can be hard to tell the difference. That’s not to suggest the existence of domestic utopia, but just an acknowledgement of child-rearing as a predominantly shared crusade.

For all the overlaps in the chat from yesterday’s ear-wigged on men with the worries of women, it’s impossible to imagine fathers being characterised in over-generalised terms in the same way mothers tend to be. There are probably competing answers to that from every academic discipline imaginable. But it doesn’t make it any easier to square with family life as it is. In the main.

The future’s so bright

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Regular unwilling listeners to my whinges will know the acute side-effects I suffer from playgrounds. Before having our one, my previous association with them was during my early-teen Linden Village phase when the local excuse for a playground transformed into an exotic cider garden on Friday nights. And occasionally a canvas for my mate to piss out the symbol of The Jesus and Mary Chain.

These days, the shuffle towards our ‘youth centre’ has been replaced by the dreaded dragging of feet towards the newly opened all swinging, all prancing about affair. Ten minutes in, I will be struck by at least two, if not all, of the following dilemmas:

  1. If two middle-sized children are beating the shite out of each other while their parents are sat looking at them from their car in the car-park, is the adult closest them obliged to adhere to some universal playground child protection policy and intervene OR just pretend they’re not there OR address the issue in polite/passive aggression terms through you own child? “The lovely boys will stop fighting now and let you have your turn”
  2. How long is it reasonable to wait for a turn on the swing/slide before it’s OK to start shuffling your feet around to indicate mild expectation that they’ll be ‘right with us’, so to speak? When can you start throwing filthy looks? And is it ever OK to address them passive-aggressively through your child by talking about the importance of sharing and/or praising the shit out of her for patiently waiting? Relax, these are all at a fantasy stage. For now.
  3. Are parents duty bound to smile inanely at other parents, and strike up a conversation while their respective children get competitive on the trampoline?
  4. Stair-hogging on little slide/castle combos. Should I explain our one is doing an imaginary shit and will be finished up shortly? I made that up. She doesn’t do imaginary shits on stairs. But she did do one in on the kitchen floor the other week. Yes, an imaginary one. After an imaginary ice-cream.

One thing that can be said in the sun’s favour is the permission it gives everyone to hide behind massive shades that devour one’s face in the manner of Jackie O. After she seriously let herself go. More a lifesaver than an accessory. Being incognito from the neck up gives one sufficient time to dive out of the way on clocking someone who gives one a dose of piles from their capacity to make small-talk out of small-talk.

jackie

“Oh God, there’s Bobby’s wife”

Shades as a coping mechanism for playgrounds was going so well, I’d enthusiastically taken to keeping them on when it was cloudy. I also wore them on occasional mornings during work as a way of blocking out my colleagues, and was not averse to cooking dinner with them.

But alas the low point came when another parent enquired if I was feeling OK as a nod to me wearing them. In November.

He may talk some shite, but I have to give Bono his dues for keeping them on come hail or high avoidable tax bill.

I wish I was as courageous as him.

There’s a perfectly normal English sentence.

Lamb

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That’s right. Get the massive eye-roll out of the way first. By the time you’re old enough to be able to read this you’ll be exhausted from pleading with me not to call you that; especially in front of your mates. I try not to. Swear. In the same way I try not to swear after I’ve sworn. You’re not so bad at that yourself. I hear the yelps of “Jesus Christ!” when life is giving you jip. Those dolls clothes can be tricky to get off alright. Even they have to lie down flat on the bed to yank their zips up. Wait till someone robs the parking space you’ve been keeping your engine ticking over for, or refuses you an overdraft. You’ll be adding more exclamation marks to it then. And get ready to let rip with a string of them when someone addresses you as Dear Ms. Lamb. You either have penalty points, or you didn’t get the job.

I can’t think of any other way to address you here. I don’t want anyone else to know your name. Or see your face. And I’m not so sure what I want to say to you anyway. An almighty urge to write to you usually strikes at the most inopportune times. For instance, when I’m driving along with your Granny. She might be waxing lyrical on all the crazy matriarchs in her clan down the decades, and I’m warning myself to remind myself to get it all down. This is your history. And then the feeling fades. Or when you’ve sent the clouds skedaddling after a shit day at work. Like today. I’m thinking I should probably start a new paragraph now.

So I will. Yeah. Today. Jesus Christ !!!!. One of those. A few weeks ago I was writing about how your Uncle’s snoring tested the vows your Da and I made when we had him round to stay. Yet, your snoring is one of the most calm-me-down sounds around. And it is definitely surround sound. Disaster in the nostril of another but strangely soothing coming from you. Like your cracker crunching, and the indecipherable mumbling I hear between you and your Dad on Saturday mornings. Both annoying in a lesser loved voice.

So I sat listening to you snoring earlier when I came in from work. Your Da told me you went to sleep quickly, but you got upset looking through photos of a holiday we had in Berlin long before you came along. You couldn’t see yourself anywhere. I know – I can’t imagine life without you either. In many ways, life stayed the same. I was back Jesus Christing my work sooner than I’d have liked. But for a few minutes when I come in at night, you manage to single-nosedly, open-mouthedly, delete the exclamation marks. I’ve been reminding myself to get myself to thank you for that. Done.

Formative ears

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A quick Google search shows the number of column inches devoted to the subject of ‘only child’ is not about to dry up any time soon. Searches prompting predictive text reveal the extent of the chin stroke. That is, the frequency of similar queries so frequent, Google saves the searcher the bother by beating them to their own question mark. They’ve heard it all before. I await the day they insert a dramatic eye-roll graphic in their double O. You can still catch them out however. For instance, not enough people have searched “Aren’t Mumford and Sons just brilliant?” for it to make the predictive cut. Aw. Moving cheerfully on..

Type in ‘only child’ and various extended texts blink and sharp elbow their way into the search bar:

First up..

“Only child syndrome”

But of course. A pathology even. Immediately followed by..

“Only child syndrome Edinburgh”

I have heard it’s expensive all right.

“Only child expiring”

Oh dear, that’s not good. But not as alarming as..

“Only child funny”

Anxious parent getting their priorities right there, if not their logic.

“Only child quote by Isaac Newtown”

Which is.. ‘Contrary to popular belief, only children are not anti-gravity’

And my own personal favourite..

“Is Jesus an only child?”

So Jesus is still alive then. That’ll make the Second Coming a bit awkward.

It was with exalted joy and relief, I learned that only children like music, and some of them have gone on to be bona fide musicians. Sure. Aren’t they great altogether. But what about their musical influences in the absence of sibling collections to rouse their curiosity? Not an article or sign of frenzied Googling to be had.

Luckily our one’s parents are in possession of superior taste (buffs lapels). No doubt my parents thought the same, as they Chinese burned their vocals around Sweet Sixteen by The Fureys and Davey Arthur. Which they tended to do. A lot. My Husband didn’t fair much better. He still can’t listen to REO Speed Wagon without asking for a Liga.

Fortune favours the bold however, and I was permitted to flee these amazing feats of talent to get my mitts on the emergency antidote. I would rummage through the Brothers’ vinyl collections until I seized upon the relevant potion. As opponents in a thirty ten year game of ‘submit’, and other displays of family affection, owning up to appreciating my siblings’ music would have been the ultimate sign of weakness. And something else for them to keep out of my reach along with any influence over the TV, and gender equality on the makeshift football field out our backyard (I never graduated from goalkeeper). Getting caught having a sneaky listen to Thin Lizzy was up there with my first 32 As flapping on the clothes line. The shame. Remind me to Google ‘only girl trauma’ sometime.

And so it was, my early teenhood coincided with the bitter sixteenth of the youngest of them. The turntable gradually falling into my possession. The bedroom carpet reupholstered weekendly with album covers strewn about after intense scrunity. Cross-legged examinations consistent with the position of youthful seriousness. Or just youthfulness. It’d take me ten minutes to straighten up from that position these days.

The enlarged pupil followed me around the room (Bowie). Armpit hair never seemed so exotic (Patti Smith). Covers so stubborn and unwilling to reveal their content, the minimal clues demanded further investigation (Joy Division). The two pence coin delicately slid onto the needle, applying just the right pressure to navigate it over the occasional scratch. Needle back on its rest, records back in their sleeves, lights out, and back to my Paul Young adorned room before their owners returned.

I didn’t take those posters down for a long time. I quite liked his 54 pairs of eyes following me around the room like the secular equivalent of the stations of the cross. The uncut version. He was as valid a part of my musical awakening as the revered heavyweights. Plus Every Time You Go Away will always remind me of Zig and Zag (‘You take a piece of meat with you’).

paul young

Paul Young before he set off for Calvary

It is in this context I maintain confidence in our daughter’s future listening habits, as she defiantly bangs out Rock Me Mama Like A Wagon Wheel at top tonsil. I’ve little choice. It’s that, and getting her up dancing to She’s Lost Control again. And again. And again.

Oh!

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We’re at my folks’ place for the weekend, putting up the usual limp resistance to fry-ups, The Late Late Show, and offers to baby-sit; nearing the end of a day I know will go down in the annals of our toddler history as one of the best.

It crept in with an early morning re-acquintance with daylight on the sofa, shaking off my dream before registering our two-year old was stuck in a Holby City trance in front of the TV. It rowed out with her snoring before I hit the bit in Little Bear Won’t Sleep where the main protagonist has fallen asleep. He’s all talk.

Nothing particularly out of the ordinary happened inbetween. We built sandcastles like we do every time we head beachwards; a troupe of orange bouys shimmying on the waves behind. We rolled our trousers up and disappeared up to near our knees in freezing water. Dogs were waved at, horses were pointed out and badly mimicked. We smashed the sandcastles before retiring to the same cafe table where we polished off crepes and coffee last time… to polish off crepes and coffee.

I’m not great at living in the moment. When I manage it, it’s like the emotional equivalent of an unexpected ear-pop. When you didn’t realise your ears were anyway blocked to begin with, or your hearing dulled. That instant oh! followed by the fleeting satisfaction from a noticeably sharper reception from World FM. It comes in somewhere on the hierachy of lesser celebrated bodily thrills between a lipwax and a bitten nail grown back.

These occasional heart-pops remind me of the hinderances posed by pre-occupations. How they threaten to rob the water of its turquoise. Add a drop of complacency, and the dramatic mountains get shoved into the background. Had I a camera with me, I’d have captured it all. Our girl high up on her Dad’s shoulders, delighted with her methodology of relocating washed-up seaweed back to the sea, ignoring the horse I was enthusiastically pointing at, and side-stepping the tiny crabs playing alive while dead on the sand.

Perhaps if I had a camera, there wouldn’t have been anything worth capturing. Like many of the best moments in life, they were uneventful, unhunted, and I had experienced them already. I’ll know for again. And I can Google images of crepes anytime.

 crepe

Non-photoshopped crepes (yeah, right)

 

Women and the web

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One of the by-products of blogging I hadn’t anticipated, is the level of interaction and commentary between bloggers. Which seems daft now given the congestion when making my way towards a few favourites.

Before taking the leap into the virtual wilderness with WordPress, I got off on trading banter on a couple of message-boards of varying purpose and personality. I still do. The chat deviates from what it says on the tin (music, matrimony, cheese appreciation etc.). Topics are flung up at random, and the discussion belongs to all in common without the original poster’s work coming under heightened scrutiny. At some stage, everyone will unite against perceived injustices carried out by an invisible board administrator. Lyrical will be capital-lettered on the benefits of free speech and fears over grave threats to the ‘community’. However off-beam and barmy that speech can deteriorate into. Conversation is less about responding to the person who makes the point that kicks it off, than all grabbing the topic to play tug o’ war with it until they knock themselves out after 50 pages. We’ve all been there. The dynamic differs. Sensitivities wither more rapidly.

In the fifteen years (yikes) since dipping my toe in on-line chat, social media continues to thrive as a much lauded instrument of democracy; a civic forum transcending officialdom providing unfettered access to channels for the creation of public ‘opinion’ from the comfort of our kitchens. A challenge to consensus. Mostly by people who comment on-line. Its status as an apparatus of the people comes into sharper focus with the centrality of citizen reporting in contemporary front-line news packages. An integral component of modern life in which everyone has an e-print of their own. Even Daily Mail readers.

But is it inclusive of everyone? The opportunity to swap chat with folk scattered across time-zones suggests a compendium of the world has never been more reachable than through a keypad. It’s hard to argue with that when you’re busy arguing with someone else 10,000 miles away over the merits of U2’s output since Achtung Baby. The lack of a consensus on that topic is on-going and set to intensify with each successive album release.

As a relatively busy person with the concentration span of a bubble (so busy I get to sit down and tell you), and an allergy to discussions on U2 exceeding five minutes, I can’t devote myself to making the case for their overdue break-up. Hopefully some youths will fly the skull ‘n’ bones flag for me. They have a toolbox of acronyms to speed things up, IYKWIM.

Most of us are contending with busy lives, so it is not possible to fly the flag for every conceivable injustice or inequality all of the time. We can’t diversity-proof our life’s experiences and posts. Nor should we have the desire to do so. Our powers of inclusion and empathy are not limitless. Most of the time I come on here to blog top five cheeses, which I must get round to doing soon.

Even so, I get instinctively jittery when walking into what feels like on-line cosy consensus at times. On parenting matters, for example, particularly the challenges to women, and all the attendant anxieties of inhabiting that role. A singular narrative creeps in and a new consensus threatens to dominate. From the risk of glass-ceiling concussion, to best ways to hide butternut squash in a veg-resistant child’s meal. Certainly, these topics are as worthy of a chin-stroke as the umpteen other common denominators that divide and console our daily difficulties.

Still, I wonder how much of the prevalent views on social media are representative of women’s experiences as a whole. Women for whom the term glass ceiling means something entirely different. For whom the challenges of balancing childcare and career fling insurmountable barriers in the way of their hopes rarely discussed, let alone realised. A diversity of women, whose lives don’t fit with a prevailing commentary often alien to them. The women that trickle-down feminism doesn’t ever seem to reach.

Which is where I think message-boards have a slight edge over blogging. The neutrality of a public space dissolves consensus and social niceties more readily; whereas crossing the threshold of someone’s virtual living room helps keep them intact.  Being surrounded by another’s carefully chosen décor and family portraits will naturally influence conduct and contributions.  It does mine, at times. The ugly side of anonymity on message-boards needs no defending, but the benefits of anonymity cannot be dismissed either.  Assumptions and generalisations are exposed to a more rigorous kicking from size 10 steel-toe caps than a less threatening pair of pumps.

That’s not to suggest blogging is free from fisticuffs, or that message-boards provide a utopian level of interaction for all. Participation in social media hinges on a number of factors. Exclusion is part and parcel of the privilege, but that doesn’t mean those with access are required to apologise for making full use of it.

It’s just that in 2014, women in Ireland have never been more diverse in terms of ethnicity, class divide, income, and the configuration of their families. I’m not convinced they’re represented on-line, or that a lot of potential consensus on parenting and family life represents their experiences entirely. Because, it can’t though, can it?

And there goes the question mark it has taken me 832 words to reach. Far from a desire to issue sanctimonious full-stops, it’s just something I occasionally wonder about in the context of the web’s reputation as the great leveller. Something to bear in mind.

But not nearly as important as top five cheeses, which are as follows:

1. Cashel Blue

2. Stilton

3. Camembert

4. Richard Curtis films

5. Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits

 

Feel free to add your own.

“Just the one”

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There’s no such thing really, is there?

What starts off as a benign statement full of good intention usually collapses before the one pint is polished off. It’s only manners the other person gets their round in. Another one for my good friend here.

What starts off as a meaningless comment in response to conversational calculations of children among parents, usually converts into an arrow slung at the heart of a strain of sensitivity you wish to fuck you could shed.

You’ve just the one.

I have? Oh thanks. I’ll put that with my other information.

No, I just made that up. I actually have eight others I hide in the attic at home.

That’s right, I have one.

The one in a million.