A nest of (uniformed) vipers

Remember Gulliver's Travels?

I don't, not really. Don't tell anyone but I haven't ever read the actual book, although I did have a highly excellent (probably ladybird) illustrated version. 

As I say, I don't remember much about it, but I do recall the Big-endians and the Little-endians. Two separate factions of Lilliputians (technically, I now learn from wikipedia, some were Blefuscans, but we'll gloss over that bit, as I suspect my source text did) caught in vicious internecine squabbles about which end of an egg is up.

Personally I'm a little-endian, but I can cope with the alternative, if I must.

Anyway, I digress.  The point is that this has nothing on what's going on at school at the moment.

We have a new(ish) head.  She has arrived with a lovely, equally new, broom, with which she intends to sweep clean any corners she's not so keen on. 

One of those corners is uniform.

As it happens, I think she's right.  Bearing in mind I went to a school that required me to have (and my parents to invest large sums of money in), in addition to my every day uniform, a full length cloak (with lined hood), as well as a blazer, a boater and a suit for Sundays, asking everyone to look reasonably neat in matching sweatshirts and polo shirts (secretly I'd rather they were wearing proper shirts but you can't have it all) doesn't seem to me too much.  And, if the truth be told, lots of the children, particularly the older ones (whose parents, I suspect, have wearied of that particular battle) were beginning to get rather scruffy.  I also happen (and I realise it makes me sound a bit Daily youknowwhat) to think uniform makes a difference.  We dress up for things that are important and we make an effort for people we respect, so I think asking children to dress smartly encourages them to think of school and what they do there as something that matters.

And most of the other parents agree.   There is universal approval for the idea that the children should be neatened up a bit.

There is no agreement on how.

The playground is full of secretive huddles of whispering parents you are frightened to approach for fear they'll ask you what you think.  Are you a Little-Endian or a Big-Endian?  Should jerseys be red or black?  Trousers be black or grey?   Have they realised that the local supermarket doesn't stock black?  (Though that particular problem seems rather chicken and egg (whichever way up) to me.)  Can girls wear trousers? Or cardigans?  What if it's cold?  And where do you stand on the irresolvable problem of gingham dresses?

Everyone has their preferred choice and everyone has a (invariably contradictory) story about some child hauled before the head for wearing it.

And no-one, but no-one (and yes, I include myself), is saying anything about the new literacy programme she's also introduced.

On effective delegation

It is supper time.  S and I are in the kitchen.

I say:  S, can you run upstairs and tell the others that supper's ready?.

S doesn't move, other than to turn slightly towards the door: 

 L!  A! Supper's ready!!!!

She's a helpful child, is S.

The Gallery: Two

Almost exactly two years ago, on 31 May 2011, I took part in the Gallery.

The subject, then, was I am grateful for...

 And, that day,  I was grateful for this:

Now here we are.  Two years later.  And on 31 May 2013 Tara set a new Gallery theme.  It is Two:

And so is my boy:

 

I am still grateful.

PS: He got two cakes, too:

Now click this link to see other people's take on two....

It's not women who need to change, it's the world.

It wasn't an enormously exciting news day today.

The front page of the Observer featured Maria Miller (you know, the women's minister and culture secretary - she replaced Jeremy (ahem) Hunt in the latter job, as it happens, so she's got a lot to live up to), who is, we are told, planning to send information packs to parents of daughters to encourage said daughters to become captains of industry, entrepreneurs and chief executives of FTSE100 companies (possibly not all at the same time).

She says, does Ms Miller:

"Making sure women can be successful at work and in business is essential if we want a strong economy.  Encouraging women to fulfil their potential... ".

What does that mean?  How do you measure someone's potential anyway?  And are you really only fulfilling it if you do so in a way that contributes to the economic benefit of the country?

Because that's what this is all about.  She says so.   A report from the Women's Business Council says that equalising the numbers of women and men in the workplace (which means increasing the women) could increase economic growth by 10% of GDP by 2030.

So to do this, we need more women working, and that means more women at the top, because Ms Miller also believes that the lack of women at the top of whatever industry is a deterrent to other women entering at the bottom.

I don't disagree with that, although I happen to have more faith in women - I think we have sufficient imagination to be able to see something as a possibility (a female chief executive, for instance) whether it exists already or not - but I think Ms Miller, and indeed the report is missing something else.

I don't think women need to change.  I don't think they need to become more thrusting, more driven, more ambitious, more like men, if you will.

I suspect, though maybe it's just me and I'm making the ego-centric mistake of assuming I'm not alone, that lots of women (and probably some men too) look at the magnates and bigwigs held up for our aspiration and think:  "Eh? They want me to do what?  Well actually, no.  He (or indeed she) doesn't look that happy, despite the yacht".

I am (or was) ambitious.  I have probably excessive pride in myself and my abilities.  I have great difficulty doing anything if I don't think I'm doing it well or successfully (one of the reasons I haven't been blogging so much recently).  My parents gave me a genuine belief that I could do or be anything I wanted.

Despite all that I have, and have never had, any desire whatsoever to work 23 hours a day, never to see my family and friends, never to have any free time or to have a blackberry surgically attached to my hand, all for the pleasure of a (very) large pay cheque and the prestige of running Europe's largest manufacturer of widgets, chemicals or financial derivatives.  I don't look at Sheryl Sandberg asking me to Lean In, with her high-profile job and full-time nannies and think "I want that".

I am a child of the late 20th Century and I want, and have been taught to want, other, more nebulous things.  Things which my grandparents wouldn't have dreamed of demanding:  happiness, self-confidence and the ability and space to express who I am.

And I think many people of both genders look at the demands made on top-level executives, and the greater demands made on those who aspire to being top-level executives, and turn away.  If you can earn a comfortable living half-way up the career ladder, and still have time to do the other things you enjoy, why continue the agonising push for the top?  What is there at the top apart from a view?

The world has changed.  We want different things, but we are still going about it in the same way.  We want freedom to express who we are and time to do the things we enjoy, yet we still expect the people who are most successful in their line of work to do it to the exclusion of everything else.

To get Maria Miller's (and my) dream of equality in the workplace, we don't need to change women, we need to change workplace culture.  We need to make it possible to succeed and to contribute economically, for both genders, without being omni-present, without giving up the other parts of your life.  We need to change attitudes to part-time working, so that both genders can do it with pride, and still rise through the ranks of whatever job they do.  We need to be (and we need our bosses to be) like the entrepreneur Martin Bjergegaard,  whose book I haven't read yet, but who seems to understand that we are all most successful, most dedicated, when we are enjoying ourselves, both at work and outside it, and that being at the top of one thing in your life need not necessarily mean that everything else has to fall to the bottom. 

I don't think Maria Miller gets that though, however much she contributes to the country.  I wonder if she's happy.

Are you worthy of admiration?

I have this friend.  In our former lives she was a colleague, but then she married a lovely man who works for the Foreign Office and who now has a job as under-secretary in charge of washing machines (or something) in Pakistan, so that's where she and her two little boys live too.

Now my friend (and apologies if this begins to get a bit gushy and mutual-admiration-ish, but I do I have a point - skip to the end if you want to know what it is) is pretty awesome.  Obviously, she's my friend, and I have great taste.

That aside, though, she's clever, funny, one of the kindest people I know, great fun to be with, gentle and pretty with it (doesn't matter, I know, but I don't want you thinking that she's only got a great personality).  She's also got the great common sense to write a blog.

And recently she's written a couple of posts which say nice things about me.

What? Me? Little old self-deprecating me?

Well, yes.  Me.  Turns out she thinks I'm awesome too.

Now you might say that that's what being friends is about. If you don't think your friends are great, then why bother being friends with them?    So yes, to a certain extent that should, and does, go without saying.

But then I'm not sure it should: go without saying, that is.  Because knowing that this person I admire admires me too is a huge boost to my self-confidence.  I know, of course, that I should value myself without the need for external approval or approbation, but I don't always.  I know, too, that the fact that B and my children (mostly) think I do ok, should be enough, but  it isn't always either.

So I wonder if there are women I admire, (and men too, but I find myself increasingly fighting a very small feminist cause as I grow older, so I'm concentrating on the women here), who don't realise how wonderful they are, what a great job they do - whatever job that is -  and how critical a linchpin they are to their little corner of the world.  And I wonder what a difference it would make to them if I told them.  If I said, in passing, next time we're chatting: "You're amazing.  I hope you know that".

I wonder.  And I wonder who you admire.  And if that person knows that.  And if they don't, whether they ought to.

I bet they admire you too.

Taxonomy of mythical beings

Mummy?  Said L this morning over the rice krispies. What's a gnome?
It's a sort of fairy.
Oh.  And what's a pixie?
Erm, that's a sort of fairy too.
Well how do you know the difference?  And is the tooth fairy a pixie or a gnome, or something else?

Of course, as any ful kno - and I realised, while pondering once she'd been packed off to school - a gnome has a beard and a pixie doesn't.  And neither of them  has wings, which a real fairy (and the tooth fairy, obviously) does.

But what about kelpies, or leprechauns, or sprites?  Or elves (I think they probably have beards too), hobgoblins and imps?

And why don't they cover this sort of thing in the parenting manuals?

Things I should know.

There are lots of them, obviously.  I'm a 36 year old university educated, professionally qualified mother of four, but I don't, for example, really know what the difference is between a King Edward and a Maris Piper and which one I want when I need to impress with my roasties.

Nor, for instance, do I actually know what colour eye shadow suits me.  Or how you choose an eyeshadow in the first place.

Or what half my friends actually do for their jobs.  I mean I know what the job title is, and I know who they work for,  but what is a deal architect, or a blue sky thinker anyway?  And yes, I do really know people who have that printed on their business cards.

Or, of more immediate concern, what is the etiquette when someone gives you a present you (or in this case your six-year-old) already has?  She, obviously, wants to come clean, complain loudly, and get them to send her something else.

I want to pretend it never happened, get her to write a lovely thank you card, not mentioning the duplication at all, and put the offending item in the "present drawer".

Which of us is right?