oh the drama of it, as Lily Rose's hat gets washed out to sea! This is Advanced Milly Molly Mandy - a celebration of the simple family life, all mucking in together, not much room or money but happy in the good fortune of having each other.
Love it.
And tonight - what a cliffhanger! Will Jim Ruggles ever escape from his drainpipe, or will he be whisked off to foreign parts in the belly of a big ship? Agog we are, I tells you, agog.
Tuesday, 10 July 2012
Wednesday, 13 June 2012
Dr Dolittle
little A came back from a couple of days with Grandma and Grandpa clutching my old copy of DR DOLITTLE. Bliss! for the first time, she is really truly captured by a full length book and wanting to keep on till the end. I'm sad to say that not even Roald Dahl has had this effect until now.
It's not without its problems though. Hugh Lofting was very much a man of his time and I'm afraid I've found myself skipping over some deeply unfortunate passages. I do wonder if modern editions have excised the dodgy attitudes to people of other nations? At first I took my lead from Mrs Winterson (oh do read WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU CAN BE NORMAL? if you haven't already, and you'll understand this reference) and tried to rewrite extempore but it turns out I lack her talent and after a couple of attempts at substituting the word 'white' with 'fine' in the sentence 'I wish I could be a fine prince' I floundered at the relentlessness of it all and just skipped a chunk of pages with no regard for plot.
That aside, what I hadn't appreciated in Hugh Lofting the first time round is that he's a rather beautiful writer. Tonight's adventures involved Jip the dog sniffing the four winds of the world in search of a sailor, and a boat with silken beds. His imagination is a joy to get lost in.
You can tell how much I'm enjoying it - it's inspired me back on here. The long silence has been filled with endless re-readings of Ivy and Bean and some well-loved picture book favourites. I fret sometimes that while her friends have started avidly devouring chapter books, little a is not yet a fan of reading herself. But perhaps we both are clinging to this special time of reading and being read to.
And with my father now introducing my daughter to the books he shared with me as a child, I'm revelling in the sense of stories which will go on being told forever, and loving reliving the magic of the pushmipulyu.
It's not without its problems though. Hugh Lofting was very much a man of his time and I'm afraid I've found myself skipping over some deeply unfortunate passages. I do wonder if modern editions have excised the dodgy attitudes to people of other nations? At first I took my lead from Mrs Winterson (oh do read WHY BE HAPPY WHEN YOU CAN BE NORMAL? if you haven't already, and you'll understand this reference) and tried to rewrite extempore but it turns out I lack her talent and after a couple of attempts at substituting the word 'white' with 'fine' in the sentence 'I wish I could be a fine prince' I floundered at the relentlessness of it all and just skipped a chunk of pages with no regard for plot.
That aside, what I hadn't appreciated in Hugh Lofting the first time round is that he's a rather beautiful writer. Tonight's adventures involved Jip the dog sniffing the four winds of the world in search of a sailor, and a boat with silken beds. His imagination is a joy to get lost in.
You can tell how much I'm enjoying it - it's inspired me back on here. The long silence has been filled with endless re-readings of Ivy and Bean and some well-loved picture book favourites. I fret sometimes that while her friends have started avidly devouring chapter books, little a is not yet a fan of reading herself. But perhaps we both are clinging to this special time of reading and being read to.
And with my father now introducing my daughter to the books he shared with me as a child, I'm revelling in the sense of stories which will go on being told forever, and loving reliving the magic of the pushmipulyu.
Sunday, 27 November 2011
Homework serendipity
The very day I'd picked up a leaflet for Greenwich Theatre Festival and seen with a pang that there's a puppet show of The Velveteen Rabbit, Little A came home with a project to find a story about toys, and draw a character from it.
The Velveteen Rabbit is one of my favourite children's books, but Little A has never been interested, which made me sad. This Friday, though, all because of homework, we spent a happy hour curled up on the sofa under a fleecy blanket, reading the story of the rabbit who was loved so much by his boy that he became Real. Little A clutched her own beloved toy rabbit, who peeked over the edge of the book and is surely destined to be hopping through meadows herself one day.
Happy hoppy happy.
PS also discovered through homework this week The Magic Paint Brush by Julia Donaldson. She is a complete genius.
Saturday, 8 October 2011
Appy ever after
That's it. My work is officially done. I've been replaced by an iphone.
As I write this, little a is having her bedtime story read to her not by a doting auntie, fithusband or grandma, but at the touch of a button on the 3-D fairy tale that is nosy crow's Three Little Pigs app.
I haven't even recorded a personalised voiceover, which I believe is the ultra modern act of love from absentee parents.
Is that it, then? have I completely sold out?
We didn't have a television at all when I was growing up, there's a lingering part of me that sees them as the ultimate decadent corruption and I have equally ambivalent feelings towards the computer: lured by the bright entertaining fun of it all but guilty that I don't have to put in much work.
But the pictures in these apps are as charming as any story-book, and in many ways it's a calmer more child-centred experience than me galloping through some hideous pink fairy book with my teeth gritted. Isn't it?
Now all we need is an app that will get out of bed at hideous times of the night to scare off monsters and we'll truly be ready to retire.
As I write this, little a is having her bedtime story read to her not by a doting auntie, fithusband or grandma, but at the touch of a button on the 3-D fairy tale that is nosy crow's Three Little Pigs app.
I haven't even recorded a personalised voiceover, which I believe is the ultra modern act of love from absentee parents.
Is that it, then? have I completely sold out?
We didn't have a television at all when I was growing up, there's a lingering part of me that sees them as the ultimate decadent corruption and I have equally ambivalent feelings towards the computer: lured by the bright entertaining fun of it all but guilty that I don't have to put in much work.
But the pictures in these apps are as charming as any story-book, and in many ways it's a calmer more child-centred experience than me galloping through some hideous pink fairy book with my teeth gritted. Isn't it?
Now all we need is an app that will get out of bed at hideous times of the night to scare off monsters and we'll truly be ready to retire.
Saturday, 24 September 2011
Mr Nosy
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.
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.
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.
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