How to be a Woman

Little a is Daddy Camping. Appropriately enough for Father's Day, fithusband and friend have taken their daughters off to the wild and I am revelling in the guilty pleasure of some me-time. Obviously that doesn't stop me mainly worrying that the weather is terrible and the night was cold and windy and did they take a spare pair of knickers? But I'm also loving the peace, and the Friday night I had out with my amazing girlfriends who inspire and nurture me.

And last night - bliss - an empty house, a bowl of cherries and a bar of chocolate; and curling up under a blanket to read HOW TO BE A WOMAN by Caitlin Moran.

I'm loving this book. The first chapter - in which she talks with hilarious, searing honesty (I work in publishing. I'm allowed to use this phrase. In fact, it's virtually compulsory) about getting her first period - I was thinking: 'Fantastic. I am going to buy a copy of this now, wrap it in tissue and put it in a drawer as a present for little a on acquiring her womanhood'. Then I read chapter two - more hilarity, more searing honesty - which moves on to masturbation. And started to worry about people reading it over my shoulder on the bus. And thinking maybe I'll just leave it in a drawer for little a to find for herself on acquiring her womanhood ...

I am laughing out loud. Which I do very rarely, and almost never with non-fiction. Who am I kidding? I never read non-fiction unless I have to. Maybe because I want to learn something, or escape into beauty, like with WATER LOG by Roger Deakin. But for laughs? That's more Marian Keyes's job.

I'm also fighting a weird compulsion to buy every song I ever remember from the eighties and listen to it: Kate Bush, Fleetwood Mac, Fairground Attraction - all receiving unexpected royalties this weekend. Which makes me think that maybe Caitlin Moran hasn't succeeeded in writing a timeless manual of womanhood but rather, David Nicholls' ONE DAY-like, is simply holding up a very very funny and onthenose mirror to my own experience. Frankly, little a isn't going to get even three quarters of any of the references in this book.

But what I'm mainly wondering is whether she will read the experiences with a similar sense of datedness. Sexism in the workplace? she will wonder - that sounds really odd. Unequal pay - yeah, and didn't they used to send children up chimneys?

And, having spent that fantastic Friday night with some of my favourite women in the world, I'm also thinking that there's this deep rooted problem it's going to take a long time - longer than the 70 years since we got the vote - to shift. There we all were, successful women with our own careers, eleven gorgeous children between us, happy relationships, and every one of us confessing at some point during the evening to some discomfiting sense of unease, of things not being quite right. Frankly, of us not being quite right. And reading HOW TO BE A WOMAN, when I'm not laughing, I'm also trying to work out how to raise little a not so that she's thinking she can be great, but with the straightforward understanding that she is great, and the world is a better place for having her in it.

I think that's what we give our boys, in the main, but don't quite yet give our girls.

It's a generalisation, I know. But all this talk of feminism is. And no more so than the page of articles in The Times yesterday about the oversexualisation of women in the media and the impact it has on developing girls' self esteem. A high profile head teacher is concerned that this is leading to her pupils having eating disorders. Of course, they illustrated the article with pictures of Britney Spears and Rhianna, rather than Lauren Laverne and Jemima Khan. And on the opposing page was a full page ad featuring a beautiful woman wearing nothing more than a man's dinner jacket. It reminded me of the pictures I used to tear out of magazines and put on my wall as a teenager. And I remember reading similar articles then, too. So it seems there's still work to be done.

I went to a top notch all girls' school, with impeccable academic credentials. There, we were pushed not only to get the best A level results and go on to Oxbridge, but also to use our spare time being talented artists and musicians and sportswomen. And a lot of us were. But I also watched so many of those beautiful and talented young women struggle with eating disorders, and depression, as we dressed ourselves in jumble-sale clothes and never washed our hair. This was the eighties. Many of those girls had fathers who owned whole countries. We were surrounded by images of wealth and success, and over-sexualisation of women (remember 'Hello, Boys?' That was then). But we weren't anorexic, or living only on cereal, because we wanted to look like Madonna. It was because it was our way of coping with the pressure to be perfect. The only rebellion, at a boarding school, where we had no other freedom or control, and the only way of showing the world that, actually, we were struggling to be all that, and it would be nice, just once, to hear that we were doing okay, and that someone loved us just the way we were.

And it occurs to me, as I putawashonmakethebedtidythecupboardthatwon'tcloseanymorefinallyoilthatsqueakydoorwriteabloggoforaruncleanthehouseipaymostofthemortgageon all before ten on a Sunday morning, so that I have time to visit bestfriend A and her newborn baby in hospital before I go to see bestfriend B on the complete other side of town, that if I can raise my daughter to do all of that without at the same time beating herself up for not looking like a model and also squeezing in somegardeningputtingthatenormouspileofcleanclothesawayohgodandtheironingthenametapesneedsewingonsortingoutourfinancesandwereallyshouldwriteawill then maybe, just maybe, I'll be going some way to improving the lot of womankind.

Rainy Sunday

It may be unfashionable to admit, but I love a rainy Sunday. Unless you have something exciting on, or are on granny-bashing* duty, it's the perfect excuse not to charge around or go to the park, but stay all cosy at home instead.

If you were to ask me my ideal rainy Sunday activity, it would have to be curling up with a good book and a chocolate cake. That ain't going to happen with little a around (WHY is it that on week days I have to wake her up to say goodbye before I go to work, but on a Sunday she's there on the dot of half six prising my eyelids open and demanding a story?) so my next best is a day of quality time with my daughter, baking and making and generally pretending to be supermum.

Even the early start is kind of a bonus, since by 9 this morning we had finished our book, got a cake in the oven, bread on the rise, and glitter strewn across the kitchen table.

The book was IVY & BEAN, which we discovered thanks to Ottie and The Bea, our delicious local toyshop. We've had it a while, but little a hasn't been interested before. This week, we've been loving it. Two chapters a night, lots of naughtiness, not many pictures, and a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter which had us full of anticipation for the next night's instalment. The only downside is that it's full of references to dollars and sidewalks, which brings me out in a terrible American accent ...

So now we have read our first full length non-picture book cover to cover, and we loved it so much that we spent the day making a house for Ivy and Bean. It all started when little a decided she didn't like having the paper cover round it. The publisher/collector/inner librarian in me yelped at the sacrilege, then galloped downstairs in search of scissors. Our first plan was to make a badge (oh yes I bought a badgemaker! I always wanted one when I was a kid. Now I have one. That's being a grownup for you). But we quickly got diverted by a shoebox and my memory of the hours of fun I had making houses with my sister.

So, while I kneaded bread (supermum!!), little a painted the shoebox and made glitter wallpaper (all her own imagining, I might add). Then we sat down together and cut out furniture and gardens from magazines. I'm not sure that Bean, with her love of worms and danger, would be much impressed by little white company bunnies and bunting, but little a is more of an Ivy at heart.

It was very fun. I like rainy Sundays. Did I say?


Today I made: bread, Focaccia, chocolate fudge cake, flapjacks, roast chicken ... and (helped with) a shoebox house. Tired but happy. Manic baking inspired by breadmaking course at Blackheath Cooks.

*'Granny-bashing' is my dad's phrase. How weird that he's now the granny to be bashed. If you know what I mean ...