a bit of skirt and some numbers…

A couple of gender-related things crop up this week, which make me think about stereotypes, and what ideas children have about men and women, and their roles in society. The first involves maths.

My son, who is six and to whom I’ve been reading daily since he was born, and teaching all kinds of fascinating things and taking to museums and all of that jazz, declares that he has maths homework. I offer to help. He looks at me, stunned. “Can you do maths??!”

This is the point where I am tempted to say ‘Well son, even though I possess ovaries, and buy Grazia, and like shoes, and love George Clooney’s arse, yes, I can do maths. Actually, since you ask, I did both maths and Advanced maths at A-Level (OK, mainly because I fancied the Mediterranean pants off a Spanish guy who was doing Advanced Maths and I was trying to impress him – I failed – but what the hell…) and then I studied science at Cambridge University which is where, you know, quite clever people go, and I can add up the total of three pairs of pumps in Office in milliseconds. (The answer, incidentally, is always ‘too much’.) So yes, I can do maths.’
I am tempted, but don’t want to look like a complete tosser, so what I actually say is ‘Yes, I can. Would you like me to help you?’

He looks at me suspiciously, and lets me have a go at some Year 2 multiplication. I do very well on my six times table, and seem to pass the test.

Later, my daughter is talking about her Year 7 maths teacher, Dr Something-or-other. I’ve heard about this maths teacher a few times, and although I’ve never met Dr Something-or-other, I have a clear picture in my mind of what he looks like. Until my daughter calls him ‘She’. She? He’s a She?
I am shocked that I find this surprising. Without even thinking about it, I had assumed Dr Something-or-other was a man. A man in his, oooh, about 40s or so, who is good at maths. Like men are. Why did I assume this? Why do we often assume that anything math-y or science-y is going to be done by a man?

Things get further complicated when, for reasons I truly cannot explain, I decide to wear a short, tight skirt and boots (oh, and a top, obviously) and cook pancakes for breakfast, before school. I’m not sure which is more surprising and out of character, but I think the wearing of a short skirt has it bya whisker. When I come downstairs in my new, sexy, feminine get-up, all of my kids say, in unison, “Wow, mum! You look amazing!!” and smile at me. A lot.
And as my bizarre Martha Stewart moment is in full flow, and I’m standing there tossing perfect pancakes, in my little skirt and my pretty top, I look across at my kids and notice that they haven’t looked so happy for ages. They apparently love seeing Mummy looking all mummy-ish, and not wearing the same old jeans/jumper combo that they see every single day, while carelessly throwing Cheerios into a bowl.

And I wonder if, deep down, we don’t all have some fluffy, warm notion of a smiling, pancake-tossing, skirt-wearing mum, and a maths-doing, suit-wearing, car-mending Dad. It’s certainly not the image of women and men we’re trying to give our kids – we both cook, and both fix the car, and both paint the walls. And we both do the maths. But they seem hard-wired to expect differently, which I find pretty interesting.

Mind you, so far only one of us gets to wear the skirts, and I think that makes us by far the superior sex. Maths and skirts…? Ladies, we rock.

Have a good weekend )

day in London…

Meetings today with 2 production companies to whom I’m pitching programmes ideas, and who want to work with me. That second bit is always helpful…So off to London I go, on the train.

London is a city I just love love love. It has an energy and buzz about that shakes me out of my smalltown fug, and brings me home believing ‘YES I CAN!’ It’s like twenty little villages all stuck together by an arterial network of never-ending coffee bars and bullshitting. They say you can walk from Oxford to Cambridge on land owned by Trinity College. Well, I reckon you can walk from Camden to Hammersmith never setting foot off land owned by Neros/Costa/Starbucks/Pret and their lovelier, independent cousins.

And people here move. Where I live, the average speed is just slower than it’s comfortable to shuffle along on your bottom at. It’s S-L-O-W. This is nice at times, like when you’re not hoping to get anything done before the next recession. But if you’re, you know, trying to get from A to B some times this year, F-A-S-T is a better speed. And in London people walk fast.
Sadly they do this while drinking their gazillion lattes and talking on the phone at the same time, which is exactly how I came to see a lady get hit full on my a double decker bus on Picadilly. I screamed. She had a lucky escape.

Meetings go well. Very well. I hear ‘OK, just so we’re clear we love you. We absolutely love you. You’re FAB.’   This is a very good thing to hear at a meeting with top TV execs. I feel mildly upbeat. But after 2 hours of brain storming and saying the words ‘concept, big picture and fuck’ (media people like to say ‘fuck’ a lot, which is probably why I ended up working there) we are yet to come up with what they like to call ‘The Vehicle’ for my supposed talents.

I tell them I’ll take any vehicle they can offer me – tricycle, tram, lorry…whatever. Just give me a bloody lift, eh?
We’ll see. These things take time. Just enough time, usually, for your ideas to get taken away and made into programmes by other, even more FAB, even more loved people. But that’s just me being bitter. When it happens to you once you cry. When it happens twice you tend to be a little more cautious about opening your mouth and then feeling pleased with yourself….Time will tell.

But that was this afternoon. This evening is 2 hours of novel-writing in a bar in Soho, being chatted up by a group of very persistent Australian rugby lads, and then it’s book lauch party time, for my good friend Jeremy Musson’s latest volume: Up and Down Stairs – The History of the Country House Servant is published by John Murray and is an absolutely delicious, corking, splendid book for Christmas. (That’s my free copy in the bag. Cheers love….) W1 is lit up like a Christmas tree, rich people are looking into shop windows on Bond Street going ‘Oh, but isn’t it GORGEOUS?’ and I’m just happily walking on by. Fast.

Shall update ye all if good news comes of these meetings. Lordy I hope it does…

anyone for a Playdate..?

OK, some words to begin:
1. I just wrote this for a magazine, so I probably shouldn’t be publishing it here. But hey, you’ve very sweetly made the effort to come and read my stuff, so you are duly rewarded with a scoop! My pleasure…
2. I don’t mean 90% of what I say. That’s very important to remember when reading these blogs. It’s also important to work out which 10% I DO mean…
3. none of my kids has ever killed a pet by electrocuting it. Probably.

So here’s the piece:

There are many things a parent of school-aged children dreads. Nits. Forgetting to turn up for the Xmas show because you were washing your hair. Having a child who becomes the teacher’s pet. Having a child who accidentally kills the teacher’s pet by introducing it to the light socket. Fancying the Head master. And so on.

But none of these compares even remotely with the sheer terror, the horror, of The Playdate. Because the Playdate is fraught with more potential for social disasters, ruined carpets and bad influences than anything else your child will ever suggest. It is also something that you cannot possibly avoid.

Here’s how playdates start: Child A likes Child B. They play together every day, without spitting, hitting, biting or calling each other ‘Fuckface.’ Child A’s Mummy likes Child B’s Mummy, because their mutual children seem to get on so well and because she has nice shoes. One fine day in the playground, Child A says to his Mummy: ‘Mummy can Billy come to play?’ Child A’s Mummy and Billy’s Mummy both scrawl through their mental diaries, trying desperately to find one day in the next six months that works for both parties, and finally agree that next Tuesday is a good day, because there is no swimming/ballet/football/cello/drama/drinking before 2pm…..and so it’s arranged.
Next Tuesday there will be a Playdate.

Barring a fresh outbreak of swine flu or an Act of God such as a plague of locusts (start praying for one now…) you are now committed to this Playdate. And that’s Rule 1 of Playdate etiquette: you cannot cancel. Ever.
Cancelling a playdate is like returning the birthday present your Mum bought you, because you’ve just realised that you look like a hippopotamus in it. If you cancel it gives a clear indication that something else is more important or more desirable than Child B. And Child B’s Mummy isn’t going to like that, least of all because it means a diary reshuffle.
It also means three days of misery, as your own child mopes about looking deathly, picks holes in the wallpaper and tells you he hates you.

Rule 2, concerns authority: have some. Playdates almost exclusively take the same form: tired, overexcited kids come home from school, throw their bags, coats and shoes all over your hallway, eat most of your food, leave the table without clearing it and run upstairs to empty every toy cupboard onto the floor. Whether you survive the next two hours depends entirely on how you handle this first ten minutes. If you play the Kind Mum Who Lets Visitors Get Away With Murder card, you’ve had it.
Much better is to make it clear from the get-go, that in this house we have rules, and we stick by them so that we avoid killing each other before bath time. “Tommy, would you like to hang your coat with all the others please?” is one way to try this. Another way is, “Tommy, if you don’t want me to call your mum and ask her to take you home RIGHT NOW, then how about you hang up your coat? Here. Now.”
The first way is best if you can manage it.

Manners, or rather the lack of them, is a HUGE bugbear of mine. I’ve had kids sit in my house, on my chair, breathing my air while I’m offering them my food, and not once – not ONCE! – have they said either please or thank you. Not even when I subtly add these niceties after every single ‘yes’ or ‘no’ they utter, do they cotton on. They simply won’t say it.
These children get the mouldy end of the cheese and hamster droppings in their juice…

When the playing kicks off in earnest, Rule 3 comes in: establish a screen time limit. This can very tricky when Child B is used to a lot more screen time than yours. My kids have very little screen time, mainly because I think it’s important for them to learn how to invent things, use their imagination, listen to music, and, you know, actually TALK to me once in a while, rather than spend three hours a day blasting the living crap out each other’s Lego Star Wars characters.
So it depresses and frustrates me beyond measure when my child wants to build a huge fortress out of cardboard boxes and egg cartons, and his Playdate friend sits there looking glum, hands in pockets mumbling, ‘When can we watch telly?’ every two seconds.
Rule 4 is implemented here: be a bit like their mum. You don’t have to pander his every wish. Sure, he’s a guest, but his wish is to draw dinosaurs all over your walls in crayon – you going to say yes to that as well? No, because you’re not certifiable, so you allow some things and don’t allow others, just as his mum or dad would. Kids don’t mind this too much. They understand. They just call you Mrs Shitpig behind your back. It’s all healthy…

When it’s time to go home, follow this Golden Rule: get all of the coats, shoes etc ready early, give a five-minute warning that it’s almost time to go home, and when the time comes and Child B is screaming on the floor saying he doesn’t want to go, make a subtle exit and let his mum deal with it. This is one time when you can be of no use at all. Your work here is done.
Just as soon as you’ve put all the toys away and cleared up after tea or course…have fun.

Playdate nightmares:
Mute child. Says absolutely nothing despite your best efforts at coaxing out what she’d like to do/eat/play. Best to just let your own child get on and play whatever she likes. And maybe next time take the Hannibal Lecter mask off too…
Fussy eater. Unless there’s an allergy you need to be aware of, fussy eaters are right up there with mosquitoes in the night and dandruff. They cannot be tolerated. If your Playdate guest doesn’t like pasta, or rice, or pizza, or tomatoes, or peas, or cheese, or bread…explain that she’s just going to have to be hungry then, because that’s all we’ve got. Tough. This isn’t the Ivy, you know, darling.
Attention deficit child. Good luck. If your child’s friend cannot concentrate on any game for more than 2 minutes, suggest he finds a new friend.
Bored child. Some kids cannot find anything they like to do. Put them to task vacuuming the entire house and folding away the laundry. That ought to work…

impossible requests…

A day of demanding editors, chapters 1 and 2 of new novel (Yes, oh YES!!! You MAY drink champagne to celebrate. It’s allowed…) and impossible requests:

Demanding editor writes email to say “Liz – where is copy??” to which I repy “Where is deadline?? I never got one.” It’s easier to write to deadline if you’re actually given one.
Piece for magazine will have to be written tomorrow. I’m outta time.

Then comes the impossible request: receive email from publicist to say that Grazia magazine would like to feature me and my daugher in a piece they’re running. Could they photograph us together.
Yes. When?
Monday.
Hmmmm. This is Monday. You mean next Monday?
No, this Monday.
So, that’d be today then. Yes?
Yes. Can you do?
Well, it’s 3pm, and I live almost a hundred miles from London. And my daughter is at school. I’m thinking… ‘tricky’. But I can do it. Of course. (No is not a word I use often enough when asked to do things. Am trying to improve on this…)

I suddenly realise that Grazia already have fabulous pics of me and said daughter, and suggest they might use those.
However, as this would be extremely sensible, I’m sure it won’t happen. Life doesn’t work that way.

I’ll let you know ; -)

UPDATE: Ha! It gets better: 4.30-pm. Getting a little stressed now. Make 5 calls to publicity department, and get 5 voice mails. Am leaving a message when I get a call from my publicist. She hasn’t heard back from Grazia, but they’d like me evening or early morning. I say could she call me the second she hears, as tomorrow morning is quite close now.
Tomorrow?
Yes. You said they’d like me there today. So I’m guessing if not today, then tomorrow morning.
Pause.
Oh no! It’s not today. It’s next Monday. Or maybe it’s Tuesday hold on….here’s the email……ah yes. Next Tuesday.

And the unnecessry panic is over. It’s a depressing thought that all over the world, communication (or rather miscommunication) just like this is going on right this very minute.
 Don’t you just love it when people actually read their emails….?! ; -)

Ahh, growing up is hard to do…

Yesterday brings a classic pre-pubescent child/tired mother moment. If you’ve never had a conversation like this with your 11-year-old, then I’d like to know what you’re putting in her cornflakes.

Here goes: I get home from a run after a brain-crushingly long day at the computer, to find my daughter baking muffins in the kitchen with a friend. I’ve been looking forward to seeing her all day, and skip into the kitchen with a jolly smile, saying “Hey! How are you? How was your day at school?!”

The answer to that questions is apparently not “Fine thanks. Mind if I trash your kitchen?” but, “Mum, I HAVE to go to the party shop NOW to get an American Indian costume for Children in Need. It’s TOMORROW!!”

OK. Rewind a little. I thought we were baking muffins…and saying hello to one another like humans do. And anyway – haven’t we known about Children in Need for, like, a year? Why the panic the evening before?
I put all of this to my flour-covered child, and get:
“Mu–um! I’ve been busy and I forgot, OK? And I told everyone I’m going as an American Indian, so I have to buy a costume. NOW!”
“Well what did you tell everyone that for? You know we don’t buy costumes, and never have done. We give the money we would have spent on the costume to children. Who are In Need. That’s kind of the point – not dressing up in a £10 feathered head-dress and watching telly all night. Mind the FLOUR!”
“But GOD Mum, EVERYONE else is buying a costume. I HAVE to get one.” Stamps foot. (This is a bad move.)
“Don’t say God. And who is everyone?”
“EVERY-ONE!”
“OK. And did Everyone leave it until 5pm the night before to think about sorting out their costume? Claire – do you have a costume?”
“Ummmmm, not sure.”
“There, see? Claire doesn’t have one either. How about you both go as witches – you still have your Halloween stuff.”
“Witches??! No WAY. We’re not BABIES. We’re going as American Indians. Aren’t we Claire?”
“Ummm, yeah.”
I take a deep breath. I do not want a fight, especially as Monosyllabic Friend is here, I’m tired and I want to have a nice evening with my family. I try realism:
“Sweetie, it’s 5 o’clock. You are covered in flour. My kitchen is covered in flour. I see you have gone to the Co-op to buy half the world’s supply of flour and caster sugar, 90% of which you seem not to need and which cost me…let’s see this receipt now…ooooh look, almost a tenner, and now you are asking me to go to a party shop and buy you a costume which you will wear ONCE….”
“I won’t! I’ll….”
“Hang on. I’m not finished…when I SHOULD be going to collect your brother and sister from afterschool activities, and then make dinner and then clean up this baking goods explosion, and then decorate fifty muffins to look like Pudsey Bear. I’ll spare you the details of the stressful day I’ve just had at work for 7 hours, but in general did I get that right?”
There’s a pause.
“Yes but….”
“Did I get that right?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
More flour is wafted across the kitchen island as I pick up my 23 pence change, move three bags of sugar into a cupboard and turn the oven down from a frazzling 220 degrees to a more muffin-friendly 180. I think we can safely say I’ve won that argument.
And then it comes.
“But pleeaaase Mum I really NEED that costume!!”

The costume was, of course, not bought, the muffins were decorated to look like Pudsey Bear – we completed this task as Big Ben chimed 10pm – and my daughter went to school this morning looking ecstatic, dressed head to toe in blue, which is the colour of the anti-bullying campaign running this week. If I’d bought her five costumes from the party shop she couldn’t have looked happier. I watched her and her friends giggling and skipping to school, with not a shop-bought costume between the five of them.

If THAT wasn’t an argument we could have avoided, I don’t know what is.
All I do know is that I’ll be having another twenty of them before the weekend is out.

Ahhhhhh, hormones. Don’t you just LOVE them??!

Lubricants and yummy mummies…

Liz Fraser, 19th November 2009

I often get the following reaction when people who have read about me in the press meet me for the first time: “Wow, you’re not at all how I expected you to be. You’re….really nice, and normal.”

            I am powerless not to immediately snog people who say this to me on the mouth – but not with tongues…there’s too much swine flu about. Because living with the name Yummy Mummy over your head is a bit like having ‘World’s Smuggest Prat’ tattooed across your Botoxed forehead, and when people ‘get’ me – the real me  - it’s a small champagne moment I like to acknowledge.

            Because I’m not. A Yummy Mummy, that is. At least, not in the Chelsea tractor/au pair/Jimmy Choos/home-made butternut squash gloop/more money than you can shake a Bugaboo at. Nope. I’m just a mum doing her best to raise her kids, and who doesn’t look like shit. And that’s quite yummy enough for me.

            Today is a good example of non-yummy mumminess. I’m not making any of this up – and I have witnesses…

            I take my kids to school this morning, on our bikes – me with a cello on my back, and 2 lunchboxes and a book bag in my basket – and then walk the entire length of the playground and back to drop my kids off at their classrooms, before cycling home again. When I get in I walk past a mirror in the hall.

Something looks weird. Where is my skirt?
Aha – there it is…tucked neatly into my pants at the side. Nice. Thanks for pointing it out, guys.

            After a morning’s productive writing, I have a meeting in town at a café called Le Gros Franck, with a very exciting person I’m hoping to work with. (I could tell you her name but I’d have to shoot you, so let’s just say she’s exciting, I could work well with her and the feeling was, I think, mutual.) The meeting goes well, until, in a mad moment of low sugar, I try to eat the small chocolate that comes with my coffee.

Please don’t ever try to do this in a meeting.

Here’s why: as it rests against a hot cup of coffee or similar, chocolate melts and what was a square of mouth-watering delight turns into a social catastrophe waiting to happen. And thus it is that, on unwrapping the little bastard, I get chocolate all over my fingers. There is now only one option open to me, unless I want to sit here with one hand peculiarly under the table for the rest of the meeting: I have to lick chocolate off all of my fingers without looking either a) like a weaning toddler or b) highly sexually suggestive. This is no mean feat but, by some miracle, I think I get away with it and I’m not arrested. We say our goodbyes, agree to sow seeds and get balls rolling and take over the world by Easter. I return to my bike.

            This is when I realise that my lock has jammed. Like, completely. After several minutes of squatting by the roadside and being whistled at by passing workmen (which is of course very pleasant because it means someone still finds me attractive, even if that someone finds anything that moves attractive) I give up, and go back into Le Gros Franck. I ask for some oil, please, because my lock is stuck.

            The Polish waitress looks blank, and goes to ask chef. Chef comes out. Chef is very gros indeed. Maybe this is Franck. He looks at me suspiciously, and we have the following glorious International communication moment:

F: Virgin?
Liz: No, no, I have three children. 
F: Zee Oeeel.
Liz: Oh, the oil. Yes…. virgin….fine. Or not virgin. I just need some lubricant, really, for my lock.

I shouldn‘t have said ‘lubricant’, or ‘lock’ because now Franck looks very hot under the collar indeed. He retreats with great panache into la cuisine, and comes back with a small cup full of light green liquid.
“‘eer you are. Eeez extra virgin.”

            The word ‘extra’ is hissed, like a spell is being put on me.

The oil works a treat, the lock pings open, hitting me in the eye, and I return the cup thanking Franck very much for his help. He never once takes his eyes off me, staring at this bike-lock jamming whore of a woman with three children who asks chefs for lubricant and wastes perfectly good olive oil on her bicycle lock. Ca alors!

            Returning home, I hang out the washing and get back to my writing. As I sit down, I notice I have copious quantities of melted chocolate smeared across my crotch.

            Poor Franck. No wonder he looked so suspicious of my intentions with his oeeel.

            And I’m suspicious that I am not at all a yummy mummy in any way at all. But I’m happy, yummy or not. And hey, tomorrow there’s every chance I won’t make an idiot of myself. It’s not a big chance, but it’s one I’m clinging to. If I avoid people, and talking, and lubricants, I think I stand a good one.

             

Ring, ring…it’s for You-hoo!

 

Liz Fraser, 18th November 2009 (hand model: Phoebe!)

A change has happened in our house, of the unwelcome kind. It’s happened gradually over the last 3 months – in fact, since the day my eldest started secondary school.

            The change involves the phone.

            Once was a time, oh so long ago in those heady days of mid 2009, when the phone would ring maybe once or twice a day, I’d let it ring a few times to make it appear less like I’ve been staring at it and willing it to ring all day, so desperate am I for some adult conversation. I would then answer it, and proceed to have a conversation with someone who wanted to speak with me. A car insurance salesman, for example, or a time-delayed lady in Bombay offering cheaper mobile phone rates. Yes, I’m that popular.

            But not so any more. Now the phone has been taken over. Handset 1 has vanished from its place in the kitchen, Handset 2 been removed from its stand in the living room, and both are now manned, 24/7 by little hands. Handset 3 is still by my bed, but I feel its days are numbered too.

If the phone rings now, this is what happens: I shout: “Where the hell is the bloody phone??! Emily!”
Almost simultaneously, my daughter shouts from upstairs: “I’ll get it! It’s for me!”

  And it is. ALWAYS. I retreat to the kitchen, feeling dejected.

            What’s even more irritating than the fact that 5000% more people want to speak to my child than want to speak to me, is that she has just spent the last 8 hours at school talking to the very same people who then phone her up. (Usually on a mobile, I’ve noticed when 1471-ing, but that’s a gripe for another day…) Me, I’ve been alone in a silent house all day – I need conversation like a BLT needs lettuce. And bacon. And tomato…Talk to ME!        

            And I mean, what do they even have to SAY to each other?? That’s what gets me. If it were a matter of life or death, or even mildly death-like symptoms, I’d be cool with it. Of course they should spread such news. But it’s not. It’s all: Hey Becca, you know that thing we’ve just spent the whole of the walk home talking about – you want to talk about it some more? Um….OK then.

            I notice also that on the rare occasion I do get to the handset before my children, like when I chain them to a radiator or lock them in the attic, the high-pitched speaker on the other end never ever says ‘Hello Liz, sorry to bother you…’ or even ‘Hello, could I please speak to…’ [insert Child A, Child B or Child C]. No, I get a blunt, demanding, ‘Hi. Is Emily there?’

            Hello?? Helloooo??! Is Emily there? Well yes, oddly enough, as it’s 6.58am and this is Emily’s house, I’m guessing she is here. Let me just interrupt whatever it was I was just doing, like SLEEPING, and go and get her for you, shall I? Then you can impart the utterly unimportant information to her that apparently cannot possibly wait until you see her in ONE HOUR, while simultaneously wasting some more of your mum’s money and giving me crow’s feet.

            And that’s not all. Oh no. If it’s not phone conversations that don’t need conversing, it’s emails that don’t need mailing. Classic examples of this include ‘Hey. How are you?’ [Answer is presumably: rather similar to how I was six minutes ago when we last spoke.] Or, my favourite:  ‘Do you want to go on StarDoll so we can chat?’

            Hang on a tick: you’re now having a conversation via email, asking if someone would like to go online, in order to have a conversation….via web chat.

            The utter craziness of this whole communication thing is completely lost on my daughters, who are in that bizarre stage of childhood where they just want to chat to their mates. By any means. All the time.

            I know this. I remember what it was like in the Precambrian era of The Phone In The Hall. It’s a very normal stage of growing up, so I’m trying to be reasonably cool about it. But I’m tellin’ ya, I’m getting close to my limit, and I pity the next child who wakes me up to ask me to tell Emily that she’s going to be wearing her hair in bunches today – WOW! No WAY! News flash! God, I’m so glad you called! Seriously, that kid is SO going to get an earful.

Well, if it’s this hard to get to a phone these days, I might as well make the most of it when I get the chance, no?

Get well soon Charlie…

Liz Fraser, 17th November 2009

I have a child off school today. This is a rare event indeed. In her seven years at primary school I think my eldest daughter had two days off sick. Two. The first time she was off was in Year 5, and I realised I had no idea what to do when a child was off sick, because it had never happened. For my son, whose turn it is to lie in bed all day today, this is his second day off in only three years, an increase that is largely due to the fact that I am getting softer, and the bugs are getting harder.

             It’s still a remarkably low hit-rate though, and the reason for this low incidence of days off sick is two-fold: firstly, my kids are – touch wood – pretty darned healthy. They each have their weak spots – one gets ear infections just by walking past a swimming pool, another seems to have a chest that invites bacteria round on an annual basis for a good gunge-up, and the third is Mrs Vomit and has been since she was born. She only has to think about being feeling sick, and up it all comes. (She’s the skinny one, wouldn’tcha know?)

But basically, the odd peculiarity aside, their immune-systems seem to be doing the job, and long may that last.

The second reason is that I’m a tough old mum who don’t take no shit, and my kids have to be ‘properly’ ill, or infectious, before I let them off school. A snivel doesn’t make the cut. Nor does a mild tummy ache, or ‘feeling a bit ill’, especially when there’s been a girlie tiff in Year 5 the day before. Yeah yeah, pull the other one, love. Off you go.

The reason I don’t keep them off school at the first sniff is quite simple: 90% of such minor complaints sort themselves out by first break, and they bound home full of beans, miraculously ‘cured’.

I’m not silly about it though: if they shouldn’t be at school they don’t go. Period. I seethe when I see a child coughing and spluttering their infectious little bugs over the whole of Key Stage 1, snot forming a crusty moustache of lurgy across their hot little faces. But sitting about feeling sorry for yourself when you’ve picked up a tiny little cold is a sure-fire way of getting really ill, and there’s nothing like forgetting about it over a play in the sandpit at school to bring about a miracle recovery.

What I do feel mostrously guilty about though, is this: the moment the ‘child staying off school’ notion raises its snotty head, my first thought is always: “Oh God – I’ll have to take the day off work.” Not, Oh poor little mite. Poor ME. How selfish is THAT?! But it’s true, and it’s true for thousands of working mums these days. Maybe even for you too…? A child off school means a day of achieving nothing on the work front, and guess who takes the time off approximately 99.9% of the time? Yup, it’s me, because I’m self-employed and therefore of the two of us who work, I can most easily ask my boss (me) for a day off. My boss is SUCH a pushover for days off, but she’s also a slave driver and will demand weekend overtime to make up for the loss…

This is one of the big sadnesses of our culture of two working parents. If Mum is at home all day, having a child off school is no bother. In fact, it’s quite nice to have the company and to care for them. But if Mum is supposed to be earning a crust in the office, a child’s illness becomes less a source of sympathy and love, than inconvenience. And what does the child feel about that: unloved, guilty and sad.

In my third book, A Spoonful of Sugar, (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spoonful-Sugar-Liz-Fraser/dp/0007284772/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258457423&sr=1-1 ) I talked to my Granny about childhood illness and how we deal with it these days. She put it to me in her usual delicate way: “If our children had a fever, we kept them warm and in bed for a few days. We didn’t go to the doctor and demand pills – a child gets ill, so you nurse it better. If you can’t look after your own child when he’s ill, what sort of a mother are you, Elizabeth? Your primary role as parent is as carer, and a child how is unwell needs to be looked after. No job should come in the way of that.”

I’m tellin’ ya, she don’t take no shit either. Guess that’s where I got it from…

So today I’m going to listen to my Granny, do the right things and put myself and my work second. Today I have my sweet little boy at home with me, and I’m going to look after him, and spend some rare one-on-one time with him. I’m writing this before the day begins (he’s sleeping in my bed with his dad, coughing from time to time like a foghorn through the darkness and burning a pretty high fever) and now I’m going to put my laptop away for the day, and fix my mind on Monopoly, playing estate agents, wiping noses and keeping the manufacturers of Calpol in business. 

Get well soon Charlie.  xx

Waste not, want not. Yeah right…

Liz Fraser, 16h November 2009

Saturday. Rain. Costa.
This is a weekly ritual we like to perform, where mummy and daddy drink enough caffeine to keep them going through the afternoon, while skim-reading some lovely-looking books we’d like to read properly but know we’ll never find the time to (proof being the five unfinished books we both have stacked up beside the bed) and our kids stop trashing the house because they’re not in it. Costa time is also ‘read to our kids’ time – a time I absolutely LOVE, because I can’t see my dishwasher, or the unfolded laundry, or the grimy windows or the laptop.
In other words, I can be with my kids without being distracted by housework/work work every few seconds.

Of course, the eldest two read to themselves, and I’d guess they’ve crunched through several hundred books over the many cappucinos their parents have drunk dring that time. There’s a sort of economy there: 200 cappucinos cost less than 200 books, so I’m saving money by buying coffee. Well, I’m sticking with that theory anyway.

But this weekend brings an irritating dimension. Costa’s dishwasher is broken. (Wait, that’s not the irritating thing.) All coffee is now served in paper cups until the dishwasher man comes. No worries. I can do the paper cup thing. But here comes the irritation: with the froth poured and the chocolate sprinkled, the barista moves to put a plastic lid on top. There follows this conversation:

“It’s fine – I don’t need a lid, thanks.”
“I have to put a lid on it.”
“No, really. I’m just sitting over there. I don’t need a lid.”
“I have to put a lid on it. It’s the rules.”
“It’s five metres away. It’s fine, really.”
“I have to.”
“But I come here every week. You know I do. And I’ve never tripped and burned myself. I honestly don’t need a lid.”
“I know. But it’s health and safety. If you DO trip….”
“But I won’t.”
“Yeah, but if you DID.”
“OK fine, you give me the lid.”
The lid is put on the cappucino.
“Thanks.”
“It’s OK. Enjoy it.”
I pay. The coffee is mine now, and I can choose to burn myself with it or not. It’s now my free choice. I move one pace to my right, take the lid off, and place it in the bin. The barrista has done his job, and ticked a box. I’ve done mine, and been a good, complient, wasteful customer.

Twenty minutes later my kids declare they are hungry, so off they go to buy themselves a (very rare) treat. They purchase a small – and I mean perhaps 10cm small, at the very most – gingerbread Rudolf. It costs three times what it should. And it comes in the biggest cardboard box I’ve ever seen any foodstuff come in.
It’s like serving a Smartie in a wheelie bin.

“What is THAT for?!” I ask, incredulous.
“It’s for the elf’s safety,” beams my son. “The man said so.”
I just bet he did.

And lo, my children have entered the world of mindless, needless, wastefulness. Next time I’m bringing my own cup, and my own paper bag. Wonder what Health and Safety will say about that….

The most important job in the world…

 

Believe it or not the photo, above, from my marathon radio day yesterday is the best of the three I had to choose from. I asked my eldest daughter, ‘which is the least awful?’ and, after much grimacing and squinting, as though choosing between three turds, she chose this one. She was right. In the other two I look like a criminal in a line-up, wearing headphones. At least in this one I only look like an idiot wearing headphones.

Yesterday was a long, tiring and intense day, but, curiously, it was also one of the most relaxing and enjoyable I’ve had for some time. In fact, the most uplifting day since the last time I left my isolated desk and the chaos of family life, and took a plunge into the sea of grey and grimness that is the pre-sunrise commuter train, and spent a whole day ‘at work’ in London.
                        And this gets me thinking.
How can I find sitting on an airless train by 6am, spending the commute preparing notes for the day’s work ahead, working all day and then getting home at 5pm to pick up three kids and make dinner, less tiring than I used to find staying at home all day long looking after two pre-schoolers and a broken dishwasher? How can fourteen radio interviews, requiring preparation, complete concentration, quick-thinking and not a single mess-up, a lunch-break full of work calls to agents and editors, the fight to find a seat on the commute home and then a list of emails as long as my arm to catch up on possibly be less exhausting than taking a child to the park, feeding him lunch and playing with him all day?

                   The answer is obvious: because however stressful and long my day was yesterday, I didn’t once have a small child hanging off my trouser-leg; I didn’t have to ask twenty times for a cappuccino – the barista gave it to me after the first ask; I drank it while working but without being interrupted six times to break up a fight over Lego; when I needed the loo, I went to the loo – on my own; when I was talking to someone, I was able to concentrate on what they were saying and not interrupt the flow every eight seconds to remove a marble from a child’s mouth and then try to recall what I was saying; when I was reading my notes, nobody stabbed me in the ankle with a Playmobil pirate ship; when it was time to go outside I stood up, put on my coat, grabbed my phone and walked out – without having to unfold a buggy, take a child to the toilet, fight to get their gloves on or bring fifty items of emergency childcare kit with me; when I ate lunch, I didn’t have to pick half of it up off the floor.

                   Put simply, I was able to focus on one thing at a time, and do a good job. It didn’t matter that there were many, many things to think about: I could at least address them without my brain being constantly shattered into a million pieces. I could at least finish a sentence. I could concentrate; think; FOCUS.

And not only that – at the end of the day I got a thank you, a massive sense of achievement and boost to my self-confidence…and money. I had done something well, been appreciated, and been paid for it – and no coffee ever tastes as good as one you’ve paid for yourself, I can tell you.

Childcare is one of the least valued forms of work I can think of. If any hot-shot lawyer, banker, marketing thingy or executive whatnot got even a quarter of the amount of shit – literally – that parents get, they’d walk out immediately or call for industrial action. Looking after kids gets no thanks, no pay, no promotions, no bonuses, no work ‘do’s or water-cooler moments and – my biggest gripe – no office Xmas party!
               Instead we get a mouthful of abuse from stroppy offspring and boobs that, according to my son, ‘hide under your armpits’ when you lie down. Thanks darlin’.

I know that office work is hard, and draining and tiring and stressful and pressurised and dull, dull, dull at times. Believe me, I do know that. But having been a stay-at-home mum for years before returning to work, I can assure you that nomatter how hard the work, how wanky the employer or how pointless the hours and hours of pathetic meetings, nothing is as mentally exhausting and emotionally draining as having your train of thought interrupted every few seconds, trying to get a toddler to sit in a buggy without kicking you in the face or giving himself whiplash or finding yourself exactly back at square one at the end of every day – and getting no thanks or pay for all the work you are doing.

This rainy morning on the school run I walked past a mum trying to get her three kids out of the car and onto the pavement without any of them stepping in a puddle the size of the Atlantic, dropping their school bag in it, or pushing each other into it. It was 8.50am, and the poor woman looked ready to collapse from the stress…and there were still another unpaid, thankless ten gruelling hours to go until she would read them a bedtime story, try for an hour to get them to go to sleep and then start clearning up the kitchen.

 Mums and Dads who are at home looking after kids, I salute you!! I praise you, I thank you and I admire you!! You are doing the most important job there is. No, really. You are raising and educating the future inhabitants of this world, and there is no more vital task. It’s shameful and inexcusable that childcare is given so little value in our society. Looking after kids is seen by many as some kind of cushy extended holiday, clogging up the world’s cafes with chattering women and the screaming of babies.                

  But it is – obviously! – so much more than that, and perhaps if motherhood and fatherhood were appreciated and valued a little more, respected and viewed as an occupation – a job, like any other – rather than a self-indulgent past-time or a pain in the world’s arse , fewer parents out there would make such an almighty mess-up of it, or find it so hard and unrewarding. But rewarding it is. Do it well and, though it might not feel like it when you get whacked in the face by a plastic digger for the fifth time in an hour, or have to get up three times every night, you’ll be handsomely rewarded…eventually.
And remember – they ARE worth it. Even the really bloody annoying ones.