Don't you love other people's book collections? Especially their children's books: full of old, familiar but forgotten faces, and some new ones that you otherwise would never have found.
We've just had two weeks of blissful quality time, not only with each other but with friends. And with friends, and their children, come a host of new stories. THE GIANT JAM SANDWICH, one of those delights which little a knows and loves from school but we don't have at home. And TIDDLER, a new Julia Donaldson with plenty of opportunities for audience participation (Tiddler? Tiddler? TIDDLER'S LATE!!!) And best of all, the chance to nose around in a friend's childhood library: lots of Miffys we haven't had before, and PIPPIN AND POD what naughty mice.
Now I can't decide whether we should have those books in our library, or keep them as treats when we get to nose around othere people's houses. Because I find books bring you memories - of where you were when you read them, or first read them. So maybe the Giant Jam Sandwich will always evoke a window seat in Lyme Regis for all of us, and that's something I'd love as much as it becoming part of the fabric of little a's childhood.
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Wednesday, 10 August 2011
Truth is scarier than fiction
I've just come back down from comforting little a, too scared to fall asleep. That's not unusual. She has a low fear threshold, my daughter. What is unusual is that tonight her fears were completely founded in reality. Usually, we spend a hearty five minutes bopping imaginary monsters, dragons and storybook burglars on the nose. I can promise her that bad earthquakes don't happen in this country, and it's really unlikely that we'll get hit by lightning. But tonight, when she told me she'd overheard the bigger girls talking about 'scary things' I didn't have the answers. She's starting to be that age where she understands, but doesn't quite. And part of me wants to protect her from every bad thing in the world, from even knowing that there are bad things. But a much bigger part wants her to grow up tough. I want her to be Pippi Longstocking: strong and free and kind (and if at all possible, with a large bag of gold coins ...)
So doesn't she need to know about the bad things then? So that she can learn to stand up to them? But how do I tell her and still let her sleep at night? How do I explain the riots when I don't really understand them or know what I think myself? I found myself telling her we'd be safe because we didn't have trainers, or a shop that sold flatscreen TVs. That we were on the top of a hill and lived on a quiet street. But I knew how tenuous my arguments were, because I've just spent three days watching reports of the weirdest and most arbitrary, unpredictable and, yes, scary, things that people do.
I think a lot about the stories we tell our children. I wonder why we value stories so much. I wonder why, in the attempts to understand the riots, so many seem to feel that if only we could teach every child to read, they would be okay. Is that really true? or is it that reading to your child is an act of love, because it takes time and togetherness, and what all children need most of all is to be loved?
Obviously, I like to tell myself that in reading her stories, I'm not telling her lies about the world, but showing her truths. But part of me thinks I'm just weaving that web of cotton wool even thicker. I'm wrapping us both in the cocoon of a world with cats named Mog and tigers who come to tea, where the goodies and baddies are as easy to tell apart as fairies and witches. And of course it's all middle middle class and a world away from the real baddies who aren't so much bad as bored or jealous or angry.
I do want her to learn the difference. Just maybe not yet.
So doesn't she need to know about the bad things then? So that she can learn to stand up to them? But how do I tell her and still let her sleep at night? How do I explain the riots when I don't really understand them or know what I think myself? I found myself telling her we'd be safe because we didn't have trainers, or a shop that sold flatscreen TVs. That we were on the top of a hill and lived on a quiet street. But I knew how tenuous my arguments were, because I've just spent three days watching reports of the weirdest and most arbitrary, unpredictable and, yes, scary, things that people do.
I think a lot about the stories we tell our children. I wonder why we value stories so much. I wonder why, in the attempts to understand the riots, so many seem to feel that if only we could teach every child to read, they would be okay. Is that really true? or is it that reading to your child is an act of love, because it takes time and togetherness, and what all children need most of all is to be loved?
Obviously, I like to tell myself that in reading her stories, I'm not telling her lies about the world, but showing her truths. But part of me thinks I'm just weaving that web of cotton wool even thicker. I'm wrapping us both in the cocoon of a world with cats named Mog and tigers who come to tea, where the goodies and baddies are as easy to tell apart as fairies and witches. And of course it's all middle middle class and a world away from the real baddies who aren't so much bad as bored or jealous or angry.
I do want her to learn the difference. Just maybe not yet.
Sunday, 19 June 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, 12 June 2011
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, 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 ...
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.
 |
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 ...
Friday, 27 May 2011
Home made fairy tales
Starting to dip our toes into the world of non-fiction: it feels adventurous, far less steeped in nostalgia for me. Though now I've said that, I'm thinking of 'how to make a square egg' and the origami book I read obsessively for a while. Quite probably shouldn't admit that in print if I want to keep any friends at all ...
I'm ashamed to say I don't know who gave little a FAIRY TALE THINGS TO MAKE AND DO for her Birthday (when I left the room they were in a beautiful pile, when I came back the floor was strewn with shiny pink paper and all the (equally pink) presents were out. Self-restraint something to work on, then). But whoever it was, I thank you. It has been neglected for a while, then we suddenly rediscovered it and have been working our way through. It's not quite origami, but I've been loving it.
So far, we've made: fairy tale frogs, double-sided Little Red Riding Hood grandma, complete with hand-woven paper quilt and Wolf on the reverse, Princess and the Pea collage and Cinderella's sparkly shoe.
Now have the problem of what to do with these priceless works of art. They're not easy to dust. Do we have to rent a Saatchi-esque garage to store them and hope there's no unfortunate fire? So here they are, a photograph for posterity.
Next project: little a wants to make an igloo. Hmmm. Serves me right for going all educational and getting a book about Homes Around the World from the library.
I'll let you know how we get on ...
Thursday, 21 April 2011
Fancy bows and all!
Ahhhh! a pause in the Princess Poppy phase! And we are delighting in The Elves and the Shoemaker, and The Little Old Lady in the Strawberry patch.
Spring is here, and we are making things and dreaming of sweet red fruit.
Loving it.
Spring is here, and we are making things and dreaming of sweet red fruit.
Loving it.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
Princessism
This Princess Poppy phase is interminable ...
I've been yearning for a bit of Milly Molly Mandy or My Naughty Little Sister - although at a party on Saturday night (40th! can't believe I've started going to 40ths!) a new acquaintance pointed out that they're equally trite and stereotyped. Maybe I just like them for the nostalgia - not just for my own childhood but for some imagined simpler time when things were more straightforward and mothers did proper mothering with baking and scrubbing and hair up in rollers.
It's all just a reaction to a run of late nights working and Guardian front pages about the rotten lot of modern woman. Not to mention the new Princess Poppy I brought home from work - which features gladiator sandals and a routine that Gina Ford would be proud of, all in the first chapter.
Sometimes I wish we'd stop moaning though. Women. Are we never going to be happy? We just put so much pressure on ourselves to do it all and be perfect. Maybe we should start trying to have more fun instead.
Don't want to undermine all those decades of feminism or anything but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't time for a bit of princessism. I'm going to take a leaf out of Poppy's book: adopt the Pollyanna attitude to life. Sulk a little when I don't get what I want, but know that in the end things will turn out my way. Oh, and have attentive adults making sure that they do.
Maybe it's time to move on to Roald Dahl ...
I've been yearning for a bit of Milly Molly Mandy or My Naughty Little Sister - although at a party on Saturday night (40th! can't believe I've started going to 40ths!) a new acquaintance pointed out that they're equally trite and stereotyped. Maybe I just like them for the nostalgia - not just for my own childhood but for some imagined simpler time when things were more straightforward and mothers did proper mothering with baking and scrubbing and hair up in rollers.
It's all just a reaction to a run of late nights working and Guardian front pages about the rotten lot of modern woman. Not to mention the new Princess Poppy I brought home from work - which features gladiator sandals and a routine that Gina Ford would be proud of, all in the first chapter.
Sometimes I wish we'd stop moaning though. Women. Are we never going to be happy? We just put so much pressure on ourselves to do it all and be perfect. Maybe we should start trying to have more fun instead.
Don't want to undermine all those decades of feminism or anything but I'm starting to wonder if it isn't time for a bit of princessism. I'm going to take a leaf out of Poppy's book: adopt the Pollyanna attitude to life. Sulk a little when I don't get what I want, but know that in the end things will turn out my way. Oh, and have attentive adults making sure that they do.
Maybe it's time to move on to Roald Dahl ...
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