...
....
.....
I've got the blackest pile of slimy gloom hanging over my head, dripping down into my eyes and burying me.
Sunday, March 24, 2013
Saturday, March 23, 2013
48 ways
I keep writing beginnings. I keep starting things, making notes and jotting down the ideas of things, spawning little tiny projects that remain unfulfilled. I can't stop it. I'm not sure why it's happening, maybe it's the beginning of writing again after a long break, I don't know.
But I want them to grow. I want to send them off out into the Universe and have them return full and complete and ready for the world.
Instead I've got a notebook full of strange little two word notes that say things like:
48 ways.
But I want them to grow. I want to send them off out into the Universe and have them return full and complete and ready for the world.
Instead I've got a notebook full of strange little two word notes that say things like:
48 ways.
New beginnings.
Everyone has written everything. There is nothing left to write. All the words are used and I am casting about for topics left write about. Every time I think of something it immediately sounds trite and cliched. Yeah I can't sleep - so can't half the world and they've all already written about how each dark second becomes a lonely hour. They've written about longing, and wishing and hoping, waiting and worrying into the dawn. They've told all the tales of sitting, working, drunk with exhaustion from the night before.
They've used up all the words and there are none left for me that haven't already been chewed over millions of times before.
They've used up all the words and there are none left for me that haven't already been chewed over millions of times before.
Tuesday, November 08, 2011
I wrote this for Dirty Bristow magazine. It's in issue 2, called 'Beast'.
Most of the time as an adult woman with two children, when you tell people you rollerskate they laugh and then automatically tend to imagine glitter and 80's roller discos and leotards. Either that or they picture you careering down a hill as a child hanging off your sister's bike, wearing a set of four wheels on each of your feet that are precariously attached with tiny straps of leather. And probably falling down and scraping your knee, because that's most people's experience of basic rollerskating.
Rollerskating doesn't have a very hard image. Or at least it didn't, but I think that's changing increasingly and rapidly. Suddenly the fastest growing sport in the UK is the sport I play and it's rollerskating but not as you know it. The kind of rollerskating I do involves wearing a mouth guard, knee pads, elbow guards, wrist guards and a helmet. And that's not wimpy over-caution, it's what is expected and legal in order for you to get on the track. Referrees come and check your safety equipment before you start skating and people who remove their mouthguards on the track are instantly sent off.
At the last bout I played in one skater broke her ankle in three places and one girl broke her finger. The girl who broke her finger was just warming up and hadn't even begun to skate against the other team. At the last bout I played in I was so nervous as I approached the start line that I was crying and I don't cry very easily. (Well I do, but only about terribly sad things like footage on wildlife programmes of baby elephants who have become separated from their Mother and are following the herd's tracks but devastatingly, the wrong way). I don't generally tend to cry about pain, or confrontation and I am not a nervous person. I'm also not the sort to choose a full contact sport, I don't even much like touching people I don't know and I don't mean that in a rude way, but I came to skating in a roundabout way.
It started with the lethargy of cyberspace, posting, circa 2006 in the vaguely Gothic internet teenspace known as Livejournal, not, I hasten to add because I was either Gothic or teen, but it was in the youthful days of the internet when sometimes you could find quite sensible adult people in strange, slightly inappropriate spaces. A rather intelligent 30-something woman from Chicago also used to post there and she skated for a Roller Derby team called Windy City. I followed her blog and accidentally fell in love with the idea of the sport and the sort of 'infinitely cooler than the suicide girls' type women who appeared to frequent it. After a year or so of reading about it I did a bit of searching for a UK Roller Derby team and discovered the Birmingham Blitz Dames. I found a flyer. I looked at their website. I had fuzzy little daydreams where I imagined myself belting round a Roller Derby track generally being awesome in roller skates, I saw myself being a brilliant roller girl, knocking women flying here and there, Queen of the rink. But I was too scared to actually contact them. These women were seriously cool, intelligent, hard and no-nonsense. I would never have fitted in.
I'd just like to say at this point that I was never picked last at school for games or anything. It would be cool to tell you that I was the kid who was never chosen, but it's not true. I was pretty good at sports actually, used to run fast and for a long time, played Left Half at Hockey, Wing Attack at Netball. But that was a long time ago and then I had a child, got out of the sporting habit. Of course I ponced around at Ashtanga yoga a little bit pretending I had all the gen on the Ujai breath (it's a bit like pretending to be Darth Vader, that's all you really need to know) and I went to the gym under sufferance occasionally. But I wasn't 'sporty' and I certainly wasn't cool enough to be a rollergirl.
Then one day my boyfriend went to the Chamber of Commerce for one of those 'setting up your new business' courses and the Blitz Dames were there learning all about how to run their league finances properly. He told them I was wussing out about joining and they basically ordered me down to a newbie practice.
So I went. I don't know how to explain now what it was like. It's all the clichés – I never looked back, it's my reason for living and this is why; they say that everybody needs a 'third place'. You have home, you have work and you should also have a third place which ideally has nothing to do with the first two. Your third place is supposed to be the space that you can truly be yourself and yet have nothing expected of you or demanded of you. I'd read that, heard about it, but I never used to believe it. I didn't think I needed a space away from home or work, even though my home and work blend into one because I work from home as a Designer Maker with my boyfriend. I didn't think I needed any extraneous activity, and then I took up Derby.
Skating on the derby track is the only place that I have truly ever just been myself; that in the moment, visceral being-ness that comes with absolute physical exertion, with pushing yourself to the limit, with the threat of injury at any moment unless your whole mind is focussed on exactly what you should be doing.
Derby is the kind of game that takes away all your boundaries. It engulfs you, it completely obsesses you and it allows you to be who you really are without having to apologise, to temper your behaviour or in some way fit in with a pre-determined stereotype of 'woman'. In Roller Derby you create your own alter-ego. You choose a name and you skate under that name, rollergirls have names with words in like 'Fierce' and 'Killer'. 'Bitter' and 'Vortex'. 'Helen Fury', 'Violet Attack'. Where else can a woman do that? It's not just a mental thing, Derby accepts and actually needs all sorts of shapes and sizes of women; some of the best skaters both here and in the U.S are not average size. There are skinny, tall, fat, short, big boobed, tiny boobed...every type of physical woman is represented. You can look round the derby community and you can make no stereotypical judgement. You see only one constant and that's commitment.
For me the derby love manifested itself instantly, the week after my first practice I bought skates and all the safety gear and then I attended every single practice available to me from that point onwards. I passed my basic skills and became an intermediate skater, I learned how to bout. I learned how to hit and be hit safely, how to knock people down, how to stay up, how to skate fast and hard and long (to the point where you're retching as your skating because you're so knackered and all you want to do collapse on the floor) and finally, after a year and a half of three practices a week, I made the travel team.
In learning this sport I have hurt my knee, my neck, my ankle, I've had rink rash more times than I can remember (rink rash, for the uninitiated, is a certain kind of amazing diamond-patterned bruise which comes from falling very hard and skidding along the floor in fishnet tights). I've knocked someone down so far they skidded out the door, I've knocked someone into the wall. I've not done any of it maliciously or because I didn't like the opposing skater, I've done it because it's my job as a blocker to get the opponents blockers out of the way of my jammer.
It is the greatest female sport ever invented and it soothes my soul. It melts my heart like a brand new lover and I am devoted to it. There is something about it which takes over your brain and it becomes all you can think about. Normal everyday women, hardworking ordinary women suddenly start behaving like teenage boys consuming porn; hunting all over the internet for rollerderby blogs, perving over wheels and stoppers on derby shopping sites. Women who never dreamed of talking technical suddenly converse with great knowledge on the subject of wheel hardness, or the best way to clean bearings. It's like it takes over your mind. Small, neat and elegant women become hellish, violent whirlwinds on the track, women who have never confronted anyone in their lives suddenly begin to paint skulls on their faces and channel their years of pent-up anger into being the best blocker in the league. You can sit at work all day and hate your life, be resentful of other people, have no channel for your anger. Or you could take up a sport. My sport is Roller Derby, and it allows women to be furious and brilliant, to skate vigorously and to win. It turns the taboo into the celebrated. It champions bruises.
I know a skater called Rip Lashes. She is a tiny person, delicate and perfect. Kind. One day at work she was trying to recruit people for the Blitz Dames when one of her colleagues asked if there were any other Roller teams in Birmingham.
"Sure," Lashes said, "There's one more." So her colleague said, jokingly, "Oh I might join them then." And Lashes replied with total certainty, "If you do I will find you on the track AND I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN." Utterly serious, shocking herself.
I know a lot of women who say they do not have a violent side. I say get on the track and bring it on. But I would, wouldn't I?
Because my name is Izzy Dauntless. And I am a rollergirl.
Blitz Dames
Most of the time as an adult woman with two children, when you tell people you rollerskate they laugh and then automatically tend to imagine glitter and 80's roller discos and leotards. Either that or they picture you careering down a hill as a child hanging off your sister's bike, wearing a set of four wheels on each of your feet that are precariously attached with tiny straps of leather. And probably falling down and scraping your knee, because that's most people's experience of basic rollerskating.
Rollerskating doesn't have a very hard image. Or at least it didn't, but I think that's changing increasingly and rapidly. Suddenly the fastest growing sport in the UK is the sport I play and it's rollerskating but not as you know it. The kind of rollerskating I do involves wearing a mouth guard, knee pads, elbow guards, wrist guards and a helmet. And that's not wimpy over-caution, it's what is expected and legal in order for you to get on the track. Referrees come and check your safety equipment before you start skating and people who remove their mouthguards on the track are instantly sent off.
At the last bout I played in one skater broke her ankle in three places and one girl broke her finger. The girl who broke her finger was just warming up and hadn't even begun to skate against the other team. At the last bout I played in I was so nervous as I approached the start line that I was crying and I don't cry very easily. (Well I do, but only about terribly sad things like footage on wildlife programmes of baby elephants who have become separated from their Mother and are following the herd's tracks but devastatingly, the wrong way). I don't generally tend to cry about pain, or confrontation and I am not a nervous person. I'm also not the sort to choose a full contact sport, I don't even much like touching people I don't know and I don't mean that in a rude way, but I came to skating in a roundabout way.
It started with the lethargy of cyberspace, posting, circa 2006 in the vaguely Gothic internet teenspace known as Livejournal, not, I hasten to add because I was either Gothic or teen, but it was in the youthful days of the internet when sometimes you could find quite sensible adult people in strange, slightly inappropriate spaces. A rather intelligent 30-something woman from Chicago also used to post there and she skated for a Roller Derby team called Windy City. I followed her blog and accidentally fell in love with the idea of the sport and the sort of 'infinitely cooler than the suicide girls' type women who appeared to frequent it. After a year or so of reading about it I did a bit of searching for a UK Roller Derby team and discovered the Birmingham Blitz Dames. I found a flyer. I looked at their website. I had fuzzy little daydreams where I imagined myself belting round a Roller Derby track generally being awesome in roller skates, I saw myself being a brilliant roller girl, knocking women flying here and there, Queen of the rink. But I was too scared to actually contact them. These women were seriously cool, intelligent, hard and no-nonsense. I would never have fitted in.
I'd just like to say at this point that I was never picked last at school for games or anything. It would be cool to tell you that I was the kid who was never chosen, but it's not true. I was pretty good at sports actually, used to run fast and for a long time, played Left Half at Hockey, Wing Attack at Netball. But that was a long time ago and then I had a child, got out of the sporting habit. Of course I ponced around at Ashtanga yoga a little bit pretending I had all the gen on the Ujai breath (it's a bit like pretending to be Darth Vader, that's all you really need to know) and I went to the gym under sufferance occasionally. But I wasn't 'sporty' and I certainly wasn't cool enough to be a rollergirl.
Then one day my boyfriend went to the Chamber of Commerce for one of those 'setting up your new business' courses and the Blitz Dames were there learning all about how to run their league finances properly. He told them I was wussing out about joining and they basically ordered me down to a newbie practice.
So I went. I don't know how to explain now what it was like. It's all the clichés – I never looked back, it's my reason for living and this is why; they say that everybody needs a 'third place'. You have home, you have work and you should also have a third place which ideally has nothing to do with the first two. Your third place is supposed to be the space that you can truly be yourself and yet have nothing expected of you or demanded of you. I'd read that, heard about it, but I never used to believe it. I didn't think I needed a space away from home or work, even though my home and work blend into one because I work from home as a Designer Maker with my boyfriend. I didn't think I needed any extraneous activity, and then I took up Derby.
Skating on the derby track is the only place that I have truly ever just been myself; that in the moment, visceral being-ness that comes with absolute physical exertion, with pushing yourself to the limit, with the threat of injury at any moment unless your whole mind is focussed on exactly what you should be doing.
Derby is the kind of game that takes away all your boundaries. It engulfs you, it completely obsesses you and it allows you to be who you really are without having to apologise, to temper your behaviour or in some way fit in with a pre-determined stereotype of 'woman'. In Roller Derby you create your own alter-ego. You choose a name and you skate under that name, rollergirls have names with words in like 'Fierce' and 'Killer'. 'Bitter' and 'Vortex'. 'Helen Fury', 'Violet Attack'. Where else can a woman do that? It's not just a mental thing, Derby accepts and actually needs all sorts of shapes and sizes of women; some of the best skaters both here and in the U.S are not average size. There are skinny, tall, fat, short, big boobed, tiny boobed...every type of physical woman is represented. You can look round the derby community and you can make no stereotypical judgement. You see only one constant and that's commitment.
For me the derby love manifested itself instantly, the week after my first practice I bought skates and all the safety gear and then I attended every single practice available to me from that point onwards. I passed my basic skills and became an intermediate skater, I learned how to bout. I learned how to hit and be hit safely, how to knock people down, how to stay up, how to skate fast and hard and long (to the point where you're retching as your skating because you're so knackered and all you want to do collapse on the floor) and finally, after a year and a half of three practices a week, I made the travel team.
In learning this sport I have hurt my knee, my neck, my ankle, I've had rink rash more times than I can remember (rink rash, for the uninitiated, is a certain kind of amazing diamond-patterned bruise which comes from falling very hard and skidding along the floor in fishnet tights). I've knocked someone down so far they skidded out the door, I've knocked someone into the wall. I've not done any of it maliciously or because I didn't like the opposing skater, I've done it because it's my job as a blocker to get the opponents blockers out of the way of my jammer.
It is the greatest female sport ever invented and it soothes my soul. It melts my heart like a brand new lover and I am devoted to it. There is something about it which takes over your brain and it becomes all you can think about. Normal everyday women, hardworking ordinary women suddenly start behaving like teenage boys consuming porn; hunting all over the internet for rollerderby blogs, perving over wheels and stoppers on derby shopping sites. Women who never dreamed of talking technical suddenly converse with great knowledge on the subject of wheel hardness, or the best way to clean bearings. It's like it takes over your mind. Small, neat and elegant women become hellish, violent whirlwinds on the track, women who have never confronted anyone in their lives suddenly begin to paint skulls on their faces and channel their years of pent-up anger into being the best blocker in the league. You can sit at work all day and hate your life, be resentful of other people, have no channel for your anger. Or you could take up a sport. My sport is Roller Derby, and it allows women to be furious and brilliant, to skate vigorously and to win. It turns the taboo into the celebrated. It champions bruises.
I know a skater called Rip Lashes. She is a tiny person, delicate and perfect. Kind. One day at work she was trying to recruit people for the Blitz Dames when one of her colleagues asked if there were any other Roller teams in Birmingham.
"Sure," Lashes said, "There's one more." So her colleague said, jokingly, "Oh I might join them then." And Lashes replied with total certainty, "If you do I will find you on the track AND I WILL TAKE YOU DOWN." Utterly serious, shocking herself.
I know a lot of women who say they do not have a violent side. I say get on the track and bring it on. But I would, wouldn't I?
Because my name is Izzy Dauntless. And I am a rollergirl.
Blitz Dames
Friday, November 04, 2011
Tuesday, November 01, 2011
I've lost all my comments here on my blog when it got transferred over to blogger from my old site. I don't know why that matters, other than that it makes me feel like I am somehow more real; when actual other people comment.
Having said that lots of the time it was a shitstorm about feminism, or more often than that just silly abuse. So perhaps this is better. Just me, talking into the nothingness, and with no apparent listener.
Having said that lots of the time it was a shitstorm about feminism, or more often than that just silly abuse. So perhaps this is better. Just me, talking into the nothingness, and with no apparent listener.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
This blog has moved
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
On what the baby can say
The baby can now say many words and so has decided that sentences are the only way forward. His version of a sentence needs some slight rearrangement ("Cup all gone, more cup?") but on the whole he's doing very well with the whole speaking thing.
Given that he's only 18 months I think that being able to say, "My Daddy a man." is a grand achievement.
In other news he has become obsessed with Nee-naws and wakes up first thing in the morning saying, "Nee naw? Nee naw?" because he once saw one go up the road out of his bedroom window first thing in the morning and now thinks this should be a regular occurrence.
He also sits in the car whispering, "Nee naw, Nee NAW, NEE NAW." over and over again like a little mantra, as if saying it repeatedly will somehow attract them to him; The mating call of an emergency vehicle.
The baby can now say many words and so has decided that sentences are the only way forward. His version of a sentence needs some slight rearrangement ("Cup all gone, more cup?") but on the whole he's doing very well with the whole speaking thing.
Given that he's only 18 months I think that being able to say, "My Daddy a man." is a grand achievement.
In other news he has become obsessed with Nee-naws and wakes up first thing in the morning saying, "Nee naw? Nee naw?" because he once saw one go up the road out of his bedroom window first thing in the morning and now thinks this should be a regular occurrence.
He also sits in the car whispering, "Nee naw, Nee NAW, NEE NAW." over and over again like a little mantra, as if saying it repeatedly will somehow attract them to him; The mating call of an emergency vehicle.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
A really cool woman that I know slightly via the internet (and who also loves roller derby) divides her life up into segements. She has work, play, hobby and pastime. Within those categories she places all the things she does; roller derby comes under play, work is office but also laundry, pastime is watching lost. So that's very organised, but she also says that she has whittled her life right down to the things she likes doing best. Because perhaps in the past she had things like 'quilting' and theatre production' in her hobbies, now she just has 'writing'. She says that life is hard enough concentrating on the main things you do, without having all the other little categories all adding up and wanting input from you.
She has taken this idea of division of time to the extreme level, with weekly charts divided up into time groups and even pre-planned menus.
I don't think I could do that; for one, she doesn't have kids. But I'm thinking that in the main it's an excellent system. I might try it.
She has taken this idea of division of time to the extreme level, with weekly charts divided up into time groups and even pre-planned menus.
I don't think I could do that; for one, she doesn't have kids. But I'm thinking that in the main it's an excellent system. I might try it.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
The Early Learning Centre have recently introduced a policy of gender branding the packaging and the colour of their toys, producing things in two colour waves, pink (for the girls) and blue (for the boys).
I am supporting the Pink Stinks campaign group http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/ in their boycott of the Early Learning Centre and I am posting my intial letter to the company here:
Dear Customer Services,
I have long shopped at ELC but I am writing to tell you that I am now boycotting your stores. I strongly object to your recently introduced gender branding, something which I feel is a step back and completely unnecessary. By presenting yourself as a bastion of education and play learning, you have a duty to children to present positive gender role models. This would obviously present itself as non-gender-specific branding for toys. The ELC has a very specific and easily recognisable colour palette. Toys should be packaged within the colour palette of the shop, not in the gender colour deemed 'suitable' by some unknown designer or branding advisor.
There are many shops in the UK who have a practice of gender colour branding, but none of those shops are presenting themselves as centres of excellence for play education.
I would like the ELC to rethink its branding policy. I would like a reply explaining why the ELC has recently chosen to incorporate gender branding, specifically the recent pink and blue run-out . I would like a statement from the company on it's policy of gender branding of toys and why it has decided now is the time to introduce this strange demarkation of toys.
I am supporting the campaign group Pink Stinks in their boycott of ELC and I shall be advising my many playgroup friends to do the same.
I do look forward to hearing from you, as soon as possible,
Kind regards
etc,etc.
I don't of course expect this to be the end of the conversation, I fully intend to continue correspondence with them; I expect the immediate reply will be that their market research shows the majority of their customers support gender branding and I am looking forward to receiving that letter!
I am supporting the Pink Stinks campaign group http://www.pinkstinks.co.uk/ in their boycott of the Early Learning Centre and I am posting my intial letter to the company here:
Dear Customer Services,
I have long shopped at ELC but I am writing to tell you that I am now boycotting your stores. I strongly object to your recently introduced gender branding, something which I feel is a step back and completely unnecessary. By presenting yourself as a bastion of education and play learning, you have a duty to children to present positive gender role models. This would obviously present itself as non-gender-specific branding for toys. The ELC has a very specific and easily recognisable colour palette. Toys should be packaged within the colour palette of the shop, not in the gender colour deemed 'suitable' by some unknown designer or branding advisor.
There are many shops in the UK who have a practice of gender colour branding, but none of those shops are presenting themselves as centres of excellence for play education.
I would like the ELC to rethink its branding policy. I would like a reply explaining why the ELC has recently chosen to incorporate gender branding, specifically the recent pink and blue run-out . I would like a statement from the company on it's policy of gender branding of toys and why it has decided now is the time to introduce this strange demarkation of toys.
I am supporting the campaign group Pink Stinks in their boycott of ELC and I shall be advising my many playgroup friends to do the same.
I do look forward to hearing from you, as soon as possible,
Kind regards
etc,etc.
I don't of course expect this to be the end of the conversation, I fully intend to continue correspondence with them; I expect the immediate reply will be that their market research shows the majority of their customers support gender branding and I am looking forward to receiving that letter!
Monday, June 22, 2009
The baby has decided that crawling and walking are not worth learning and that movement by Mummy is the way forward. He has taken to waving his arms in the air and pointing at me until I pick him up and then pointing imperiously towards the way he wants to go and saying, 'Dat!' in a commanding voice. This is often accompanied by kicking of his legs on my hips, much like you would get a horse to move forward.
I have become the Mummy Horse.
I have become the Mummy Horse.
Friday, March 06, 2009
On the dire thing that is Secondary School Transfer.
Lately we've been navigating the murky waters of lake 'School Applications', something which has not been pleasant. We have planned and tested and practiced and crossed our fingers but all our scheming has not worked and it appears we have now sprung a leak and are rapidly sinking into the mire.
This manifests itself in the form of living six metres out of the catchment area for the nearest good school, despite being comfortably within in for the four previous years.
Six metres is very frustrating. It means that if we stand at the bottom of our garden we are probably still in the catchment area and Harry would now have a place. I have considered pitching a tent for Harry to live in, and then appealing.
As it turns out we don't appear to be living in the right place for, in fact, any school; the upshot of which is that Harry has been offered a place in a single sex school three and a half miles away, one that is mainly populated by expelled boys and boys with 'special needs in learning'.
How they can justify sending him to a school three and a half miles away when he lived too far away from the one that was one and half baffles me.
There's also the fact that I am morally opposed to single sex education because why would you want a child not to learn how to communicate with one half of the population, especially during the five most formative years of his or her life?
So I am angry, and frankly he won't be attending the school he's been offered. The school we applied for is the one he should have a place at. The appeals process is difficult and frustrating but I don't see any other path. The appeals board told me that we have to show why an already oversubscribed school should take on my child, and that there have to be exceptional circumstances for this. Well, I think in Harry's case there are.
Queensbridge (the school of choice) is an up-and-coming school with a commitment to the Performing Arts, and over the last four years the Headmaster has completely turned it around. That's why suddenly everyone wants to go there. So we were in the catchment area when it was rubbish, but because it's based in between two very wealthy areas of Birmingham as it becomes better the catchment area shrinks and the kids in the less wealthy areas suffer.
And Harry has worked very hard in Primary school. He gets good marks, he gets privileges and rewards, he is a talented musician, playing guitar at grade three level and playing in the Birmingham Central Ensemble, and he sings in two choirs; the Selly Oak choir and the Birmingham Central Choir. He even campaigned to get bike racks put in the school and now lots of children cycle to school.
So I'm going to appeal on that basis. I'm going to say that the school should provide him with a place because he would be an asset to the school in every way and because his education will suffer if he doesn't get a place there.
And then we'll see.
And we'll cross our fingers because he's currently number five on the waiting list owing the frankly ridiculous six metre boundary, so that might change over the next few weeks. But if we don't get a place then I have no idea what we'll do.
The whole thing is utterly terrifying.
Lately we've been navigating the murky waters of lake 'School Applications', something which has not been pleasant. We have planned and tested and practiced and crossed our fingers but all our scheming has not worked and it appears we have now sprung a leak and are rapidly sinking into the mire.
This manifests itself in the form of living six metres out of the catchment area for the nearest good school, despite being comfortably within in for the four previous years.
Six metres is very frustrating. It means that if we stand at the bottom of our garden we are probably still in the catchment area and Harry would now have a place. I have considered pitching a tent for Harry to live in, and then appealing.
As it turns out we don't appear to be living in the right place for, in fact, any school; the upshot of which is that Harry has been offered a place in a single sex school three and a half miles away, one that is mainly populated by expelled boys and boys with 'special needs in learning'.
How they can justify sending him to a school three and a half miles away when he lived too far away from the one that was one and half baffles me.
There's also the fact that I am morally opposed to single sex education because why would you want a child not to learn how to communicate with one half of the population, especially during the five most formative years of his or her life?
So I am angry, and frankly he won't be attending the school he's been offered. The school we applied for is the one he should have a place at. The appeals process is difficult and frustrating but I don't see any other path. The appeals board told me that we have to show why an already oversubscribed school should take on my child, and that there have to be exceptional circumstances for this. Well, I think in Harry's case there are.
Queensbridge (the school of choice) is an up-and-coming school with a commitment to the Performing Arts, and over the last four years the Headmaster has completely turned it around. That's why suddenly everyone wants to go there. So we were in the catchment area when it was rubbish, but because it's based in between two very wealthy areas of Birmingham as it becomes better the catchment area shrinks and the kids in the less wealthy areas suffer.
And Harry has worked very hard in Primary school. He gets good marks, he gets privileges and rewards, he is a talented musician, playing guitar at grade three level and playing in the Birmingham Central Ensemble, and he sings in two choirs; the Selly Oak choir and the Birmingham Central Choir. He even campaigned to get bike racks put in the school and now lots of children cycle to school.
So I'm going to appeal on that basis. I'm going to say that the school should provide him with a place because he would be an asset to the school in every way and because his education will suffer if he doesn't get a place there.
And then we'll see.
And we'll cross our fingers because he's currently number five on the waiting list owing the frankly ridiculous six metre boundary, so that might change over the next few weeks. But if we don't get a place then I have no idea what we'll do.
The whole thing is utterly terrifying.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Governemntal Hypocrisy.
The government provides Healthy Start vouchers to the tune of £5 per week for the purchase of fruit and vegetables for my baby (or me and my baby when I am breastfeeding, which I still partly am because he's only six months old.) These vouchers are for anyone who is in receipt of Child Tax Credit only, and is on Jobseekers Allowance or Income Support and has an income of less than £15,000 per year.
I have an income of considerably less than £15,000 per year, but because I work and so receive nominal Working Tax Credit I am apparently not entitled to these vouchers.
If I gave up trying to provide my own income I would suddenly become eligible for the vouchers, even though I currently have a lower income than I would if I was not working.
How can this be ok? I asked the woman on the phone why and she said that the government probably thinks you have an income of more than £15,000 if you're on working tax credit.
Well I wish.
I'm so pissed off. The government spends it's whole time saying it wants people off benefit and then it penalises those who are on the lowest income of all - people like me, part time workers trying to bring up a family on an income of very low wages and working tax credit. I'd be better off on benefit; and I wonder how many millions of us are saying that on a regular basis?
I think I feel a letter coming on.
The government provides Healthy Start vouchers to the tune of £5 per week for the purchase of fruit and vegetables for my baby (or me and my baby when I am breastfeeding, which I still partly am because he's only six months old.) These vouchers are for anyone who is in receipt of Child Tax Credit only, and is on Jobseekers Allowance or Income Support and has an income of less than £15,000 per year.
I have an income of considerably less than £15,000 per year, but because I work and so receive nominal Working Tax Credit I am apparently not entitled to these vouchers.
If I gave up trying to provide my own income I would suddenly become eligible for the vouchers, even though I currently have a lower income than I would if I was not working.
How can this be ok? I asked the woman on the phone why and she said that the government probably thinks you have an income of more than £15,000 if you're on working tax credit.
Well I wish.
I'm so pissed off. The government spends it's whole time saying it wants people off benefit and then it penalises those who are on the lowest income of all - people like me, part time workers trying to bring up a family on an income of very low wages and working tax credit. I'd be better off on benefit; and I wonder how many millions of us are saying that on a regular basis?
I think I feel a letter coming on.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
I've been blogging since 2002, I've amassed a good deal of writing but I've done it quietly and off the the side. I haven't been all big in the blog community and I haven't got a whole heap of regular readers. I haven't really cared about that till now, but recently people I know who've been blogging for a much shorter time than me have been all proactive and involved and now I feel like I've somehow failed myself.
I feel like I should have been twittering and I should have had a RSS feed and I shouldn't have been afraid to go to meets, and I feel like I want to be on the 50 best Brum bloggers list. Which I am currently not. I wish I wasn't so afraid of throwing myself into the middle of things but I am; I think people aren't going to like me and are somehow going to judge me for crap, nefarious reasons, which is an outrageous thing to think about other people, because why would they do that to me anymore than I think those sorts of things about them? (Which I don't, just to make that clear.)
So my New Years resolution is to fix up Olulabelle.com, make a whole new site with links and a feed and a regular section where I post. And I'm going to start off posting about jewellery, the baby and general everyday thoughts. It's a bizarre combination I know, but there you go. At least it will be something.
I feel like I should have been twittering and I should have had a RSS feed and I shouldn't have been afraid to go to meets, and I feel like I want to be on the 50 best Brum bloggers list. Which I am currently not. I wish I wasn't so afraid of throwing myself into the middle of things but I am; I think people aren't going to like me and are somehow going to judge me for crap, nefarious reasons, which is an outrageous thing to think about other people, because why would they do that to me anymore than I think those sorts of things about them? (Which I don't, just to make that clear.)
So my New Years resolution is to fix up Olulabelle.com, make a whole new site with links and a feed and a regular section where I post. And I'm going to start off posting about jewellery, the baby and general everyday thoughts. It's a bizarre combination I know, but there you go. At least it will be something.
Friday, October 24, 2008
On deliberately making yourself sad.
Anyone who has broken up with someone, or who has experienced the death of a person they love knows very well how to do this. You play songs, very loudly, that make you cry, that have too much emotion attached to them, that take you to places you really shouldn't be. Often you do this when you've had too much to drink, which I have, and when you aren't actually keen to go to bed yet, which I'm not, for the principle reason that I have a vague hope the alcohol might go out of my system in time to feed the baby.
I must just point out that I know this is wishful thinking. The baby is clearly just going to sleep very well this night.
Probably that makes me a bad mother.
So.
Playing sad songs.
In fact it's not so much making yourself be sad as allowing yourself to be sad. I think it's probably cathartic in many ways, actually.
The way I personally do it is to play songs that either remind me of being small, or play songs my Dad loved.
The best one for me is 'Dreamer' by Supertramp. When I hear this it makes me whirl around like a little girl in a party dress with a full skirt. And sing words like 'stupid' really loudly. Eternally, I will be six when I listen to this song and I cannot reframe it or move on and I don't really want to. I like the fact that I have a tool which takes me back to a place I can't go otherwise. You know, I don't often get to wear a party dress in my mind or in real life, so when I do I really relish it.
When you have your father near you are sometimes able to opt out of being grown-up. You can slip back into the child role, you can be the little girl who doesn't have to make decisions, or find the money, or fix it, or know things, because your Dad is the one that does that.
And that's why it's fabulous being six. Just for a little bit. Instead of being adult and sensible and Mummy, and 'in charge' and 'making the dinner' I get to shriek and dance and jump up and down and act a bit silly and twirl around and be someone's little girl with no responsibilities.
And when I do that I can really, properly remember my Dad.
Anyone who has broken up with someone, or who has experienced the death of a person they love knows very well how to do this. You play songs, very loudly, that make you cry, that have too much emotion attached to them, that take you to places you really shouldn't be. Often you do this when you've had too much to drink, which I have, and when you aren't actually keen to go to bed yet, which I'm not, for the principle reason that I have a vague hope the alcohol might go out of my system in time to feed the baby.
I must just point out that I know this is wishful thinking. The baby is clearly just going to sleep very well this night.
Probably that makes me a bad mother.
So.
Playing sad songs.
In fact it's not so much making yourself be sad as allowing yourself to be sad. I think it's probably cathartic in many ways, actually.
The way I personally do it is to play songs that either remind me of being small, or play songs my Dad loved.
The best one for me is 'Dreamer' by Supertramp. When I hear this it makes me whirl around like a little girl in a party dress with a full skirt. And sing words like 'stupid' really loudly. Eternally, I will be six when I listen to this song and I cannot reframe it or move on and I don't really want to. I like the fact that I have a tool which takes me back to a place I can't go otherwise. You know, I don't often get to wear a party dress in my mind or in real life, so when I do I really relish it.
When you have your father near you are sometimes able to opt out of being grown-up. You can slip back into the child role, you can be the little girl who doesn't have to make decisions, or find the money, or fix it, or know things, because your Dad is the one that does that.
And that's why it's fabulous being six. Just for a little bit. Instead of being adult and sensible and Mummy, and 'in charge' and 'making the dinner' I get to shriek and dance and jump up and down and act a bit silly and twirl around and be someone's little girl with no responsibilities.
And when I do that I can really, properly remember my Dad.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
On betrayal
This morning we went to the children's hospital because the baby has to have regular blood tests. He sat in the waiting room beaming at everyone and cooing and generally being charming and then we went into see the phlebotomist. In the children's hospital you have to follow footprints to either Room 1 or Room 2 when your turn comes for a blood test so we made our way to Room 2 following the prints to show the baby, because we've only ever been to Room 1 before.
Room 2 has minty green walls and a lovely smiling lady waiting for us at whom the baby promptly grins at and says, "Oooo-ah-o."
So we sit down and the baby continues his display of lovely smiles and babbly oo-aaahing and then the phlebotomist says, "Oh dear, please don't smile at me like that" and stabs him in the arm. At which point he gives her this shocked look so full of hurt that she is almost unable to draw the blood she needs, she feels so bad.
So the lovely smiley lady turned out to make horrible hurty pain and the baby learns in one tiny moment that actually it is possible to be betrayed.
This morning we went to the children's hospital because the baby has to have regular blood tests. He sat in the waiting room beaming at everyone and cooing and generally being charming and then we went into see the phlebotomist. In the children's hospital you have to follow footprints to either Room 1 or Room 2 when your turn comes for a blood test so we made our way to Room 2 following the prints to show the baby, because we've only ever been to Room 1 before.
Room 2 has minty green walls and a lovely smiling lady waiting for us at whom the baby promptly grins at and says, "Oooo-ah-o."
So we sit down and the baby continues his display of lovely smiles and babbly oo-aaahing and then the phlebotomist says, "Oh dear, please don't smile at me like that" and stabs him in the arm. At which point he gives her this shocked look so full of hurt that she is almost unable to draw the blood she needs, she feels so bad.
So the lovely smiley lady turned out to make horrible hurty pain and the baby learns in one tiny moment that actually it is possible to be betrayed.
Friday, October 10, 2008
This person is the reason I have not been blogging much over the last four months:
He is thirteeen weeks old, his name is Solomon and his nickname is Solly Boppit because he randomly waves his limbs in many different directions.
The other day he slept through the night for the first time and I got all complacent, but then last night I was woken up every three hours.
I am Lady Tired of Bedfordshire.
He is thirteeen weeks old, his name is Solomon and his nickname is Solly Boppit because he randomly waves his limbs in many different directions.
The other day he slept through the night for the first time and I got all complacent, but then last night I was woken up every three hours.
I am Lady Tired of Bedfordshire.
On clouds
Sometimes on occasional days when the Cumulus clouds were low on the horizon and the houses in front hid the place where they ended I used to pretend that I lived in a really mountainous place, like the Swiss Alps. I discovered that if you scrinched your eyes a little bit you could make the clouds become mountains and for a little while the place you live in suddenly because hugely exciting. I don't know why mountains made life appear to be so much more exciting. It's not that I ever really had a hankering to be Heidi or anything.
When I was a little girl I used to do this. Sometimes I still do.
Sometimes on occasional days when the Cumulus clouds were low on the horizon and the houses in front hid the place where they ended I used to pretend that I lived in a really mountainous place, like the Swiss Alps. I discovered that if you scrinched your eyes a little bit you could make the clouds become mountains and for a little while the place you live in suddenly because hugely exciting. I don't know why mountains made life appear to be so much more exciting. It's not that I ever really had a hankering to be Heidi or anything.
When I was a little girl I used to do this. Sometimes I still do.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Colour Theory for babies
I'm reading lots of papers about the theory of colour and the use of colour to stimulate psychologically helpful frames of mind because I'm about to paint the babies room.
A colour called Baker-Miller pink is used to paint holding cells and prisons because it allegedly surpresses violent and aggressive behaviour. Young children in New Zealand showed greater physical strngth and made more positive mood paintings after spending time in pink rooms compared to blue or grey ones. A high school in America found it's children had lower blood pressure in the afternoon if they had been studying in a yellow room.
It's all fascinating, but I am still no nearer to deciding what colour the baby would like. Interestingly babies respond best to black and white geometric patterns in their first few months, because their focusing muscles in their eyes don't work brilliantly so everything is a bit fussy.
I'd paint a big geometric pattern on the wall but at about age 16 my boyfriend at the time and I did that to his bedroom, in order to facilitate the ideal background for tripping, so it would be freaky in the extreme in the babies room.
What colour do you think I should choose?
I'm reading lots of papers about the theory of colour and the use of colour to stimulate psychologically helpful frames of mind because I'm about to paint the babies room.
A colour called Baker-Miller pink is used to paint holding cells and prisons because it allegedly surpresses violent and aggressive behaviour. Young children in New Zealand showed greater physical strngth and made more positive mood paintings after spending time in pink rooms compared to blue or grey ones. A high school in America found it's children had lower blood pressure in the afternoon if they had been studying in a yellow room.
It's all fascinating, but I am still no nearer to deciding what colour the baby would like. Interestingly babies respond best to black and white geometric patterns in their first few months, because their focusing muscles in their eyes don't work brilliantly so everything is a bit fussy.
I'd paint a big geometric pattern on the wall but at about age 16 my boyfriend at the time and I did that to his bedroom, in order to facilitate the ideal background for tripping, so it would be freaky in the extreme in the babies room.
What colour do you think I should choose?
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
I can't stop thinking about the dolphins at Percuil and what made them flee the deep water. I'm really sad about it.
I spent all my summers at my Grandparents house as a child, very near to the Percuil river in a little village called Treverva. I know the area where they were stranded really well. I don't know why that makes things worse, but it really does.
I'm angry with the navy because I think things are pointing towards it being their fault. If there were live firing exercises, which it appears there were, it's no wonder the dolphins freaked and swam inland. Seventy dolphins don't just decide to go into low waters for no reason whatsoever.
There's some vague talk of a killer whale scaring them, but I just don't believe that. Although killer whales are predators of dolphins they don't scare a whole pod of seventy. I feel sure it has something to do with the naval exercises in Falmouth harbour.
I don't see why we have to have submarine exercises in the first place. Quite frankly I'd rather we had safe dolphins.
I spent all my summers at my Grandparents house as a child, very near to the Percuil river in a little village called Treverva. I know the area where they were stranded really well. I don't know why that makes things worse, but it really does.
I'm angry with the navy because I think things are pointing towards it being their fault. If there were live firing exercises, which it appears there were, it's no wonder the dolphins freaked and swam inland. Seventy dolphins don't just decide to go into low waters for no reason whatsoever.
There's some vague talk of a killer whale scaring them, but I just don't believe that. Although killer whales are predators of dolphins they don't scare a whole pod of seventy. I feel sure it has something to do with the naval exercises in Falmouth harbour.
I don't see why we have to have submarine exercises in the first place. Quite frankly I'd rather we had safe dolphins.
Monday, June 02, 2008
Monday, May 26, 2008
On words being twisted.
A long time ago women used to be attended in birth by a group of close women friends called God-sibbs, sometimes translated as 'sisters of God'.
Apparently, this gathering of women to give birth and assist each other has been distorted in the lens of time and became the root of the word 'gossip'.
I feel cross that such a lovely thing has been so distorted.
A long time ago women used to be attended in birth by a group of close women friends called God-sibbs, sometimes translated as 'sisters of God'.
Apparently, this gathering of women to give birth and assist each other has been distorted in the lens of time and became the root of the word 'gossip'.
I feel cross that such a lovely thing has been so distorted.
Thursday, May 22, 2008
For crying out loud stop talking about babies Lula.
I think I need to make little cards for everyone exempting them from having to listen to me boring on and on about babies. I think I might start to lose friends. I'm starting to bore myself.
But the thing is, when you're this big, all you really can think about is how moving around is much more of a hassle than it should be, you're knackered all the time, you hurt - Oh the list is endless.
And then there is the whole birth thing - don't even get me started on the birth thing unless you have a tissue handy, I get so angry and ranty and tearful. It is frustrating ands annoying that the western world seems to treat birth as if it is a difficult, medical issue that always goes wrong and is fraught with problems. It is hard to believe that women have been having babies since time immemorial when the thought of a big baby sends the whole medical world into a big spasm of panic. Oh my god, the baby is a bit on the large size, no birthing centre for this mother.
In this country it is the law that a woman can demand to have her baby anywhere she likes and a midwife must attend. I could demand to have my baby in a phone box if I felt like it. But apparently I can't have my baby in the birthing centre, because my baby doesn't fit into their statistical average measurements. Because my baby is big I have two choices, have it in the delivery suite and labour on the labour ward, or have it at home.
But wait...I wanted to go to the birthing centre because it is 'halfway' between home and hospital. It is reassuringly still a little bit medical, but mostly comforting and relaxing. How can it possibly be safer for me to have my baby at home? Of course if you ask western medicine they'll say it isn't, some hospitals still call home birth 'child abuse' but they have to let me if I want to.
And I think I do want to.
I cenrtainly do not want to labour on a ward full of other labouring women, feeling like I'm ill in hopsital and then get shifted to a delivery suite where they are hurrying you up and timing you and monitoring the baby constantly. Statistically women are much more likely to have interventions (forceps, episiotomies, etc) in hospital than they do at home. At least at home you can take your own time and manage as you see fit your own pain, there is no-one pressuring you to be quieter, to have an epidural.
That said, two of my friends have had hosptial births and caesareans which went really well for them. Oh, it's so confusing.
So there's the thing.
I'm open to opinion and discussion on it.
I think I need to make little cards for everyone exempting them from having to listen to me boring on and on about babies. I think I might start to lose friends. I'm starting to bore myself.
But the thing is, when you're this big, all you really can think about is how moving around is much more of a hassle than it should be, you're knackered all the time, you hurt - Oh the list is endless.
And then there is the whole birth thing - don't even get me started on the birth thing unless you have a tissue handy, I get so angry and ranty and tearful. It is frustrating ands annoying that the western world seems to treat birth as if it is a difficult, medical issue that always goes wrong and is fraught with problems. It is hard to believe that women have been having babies since time immemorial when the thought of a big baby sends the whole medical world into a big spasm of panic. Oh my god, the baby is a bit on the large size, no birthing centre for this mother.
In this country it is the law that a woman can demand to have her baby anywhere she likes and a midwife must attend. I could demand to have my baby in a phone box if I felt like it. But apparently I can't have my baby in the birthing centre, because my baby doesn't fit into their statistical average measurements. Because my baby is big I have two choices, have it in the delivery suite and labour on the labour ward, or have it at home.
But wait...I wanted to go to the birthing centre because it is 'halfway' between home and hospital. It is reassuringly still a little bit medical, but mostly comforting and relaxing. How can it possibly be safer for me to have my baby at home? Of course if you ask western medicine they'll say it isn't, some hospitals still call home birth 'child abuse' but they have to let me if I want to.
And I think I do want to.
I cenrtainly do not want to labour on a ward full of other labouring women, feeling like I'm ill in hopsital and then get shifted to a delivery suite where they are hurrying you up and timing you and monitoring the baby constantly. Statistically women are much more likely to have interventions (forceps, episiotomies, etc) in hospital than they do at home. At least at home you can take your own time and manage as you see fit your own pain, there is no-one pressuring you to be quieter, to have an epidural.
That said, two of my friends have had hosptial births and caesareans which went really well for them. Oh, it's so confusing.
So there's the thing.
I'm open to opinion and discussion on it.
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