Why?

Why is it always Monday morning? I feel like I am in Groundhog Day.

The Tide of Life

Life is not linear like time, but moves forward like a tide. We rush into the future but, like a wave, the past drags us back so that sometimes we find ourselves back where we were ten, twenty or even thirty years ago. I feel like that every time I sit in my school hall listening to the headmaster - I may be the parent now but I can still smell the polished floor and see the dust particles in the air and I am transported back to my childhood.
People too move in and out of our lives. A friend from the past can remind us of what it is like to feel 21 again, just like a song or a smell can take us back.
For me it is a secret pleasure that just sometimes I am not the person I am now but for a moment in time I feel a connection with the person I was then.

21 again?

I recently turned 35 - not a milestone age, I know, but one that I do seem to have a bit of an issue with. Up until now I have dealt well with the idea of being in my thirties because I was in the "early thirties" age group, like some kind of twenty-something hangover. But now I have most definitely hit that "mid to late thirties" and have suddenly realised that I am as close to fifty as twenty!

The Case for the Might-Have-Beens

These days we all seem to head into the future with so much of a past, all pigeon holed nicely so that at any time we can produce a handy list or do a nice internet search to reconnect (lovers, partners, school friends, university friends, ex-colleagues and so on). But what about those people that had an impact on our lives but don't fit neatly into any category? We all have people who, perhaps in different circumstances, might have become something quantifiable but for some reason, some fated obstacle this wasn't to be. For me I can remember the colleague who sat opposite me and for 18 months we flirted, fought, ignored and generally distracted each other from working constructively. The attraction was unmistakeable but neither of us was in a position to pursue it, so we tried to ignore it. I still remember him fondly and wonder if he still sings Sinatra while he works but I doubt I will ever have contact with him again. It is not that I hanker for the past - my present is so much happier - or even that I would like to find out what might have been, it is more a sense of acknowledging that he also had an influence on my life and a hope that life has been good to him.

The authority of old age

I like the bit in the Importance of Being Ernest when Lady Bracknell utters those famous words "A Handbag!!". She speaks with the authority of age and everyone present knows that her opinion counts. This image of Lady Bracknell was in my mind when, at the age of 21, I had to tell my formidable grandmother that I was just about to graduate, unmarried and pregnant. To me this was more terrifying than facing childbirth itself - despite the fact that I had been in a relationship with the father of my child for five years and we had planned to marry soon, I knew that for her this was not how things were done and I knew, that to me at least, her opinion mattered.

Now, though, authority does not seem to sit with age. Old people are seen as somehow foolish, out of touch with the world and therefore unable to dictate to us what should be considered right or wrong. I suppose that in a world of such rapid technological change it is difficult to equate wisdom with someone who struggles to understand what a DVD is let alone how to actually play one. But this is wrong - we should look to the older generation for guidance and perhaps at times it would do us well to be a little bit scared of what they might think of us.

The Green Con

Is it just me or are there other people who think green taxes are just a good excuse to get more money out of us? Politics seems to have jumped on the eco-friendly band wagon and we are all being financially punished for our carbon curses like some big swear box. And like a swear box we feel in no position to argue - we know we are doing wrong by driving our polluting cars and by throwing away our tesco plastic bags so even if we feel we are being unfairly taxed and suspect that our money is not really being used for the furtherance of the green cause we don't feel in any position to protest. Very clever.
But the more I think about it the more I question just what these current policies will achieve (other than the obvious financial gain). For example cars are now taxed on their carbon emissions and my husband, with his 2001 high powered petrol car, will have to take out a small mortgage to tax it in the future. Whereas my car (yes, I admit, we are a sinful two car family) is a diesel and will cost me substantially less. But my husband barely uses his car and with the mileage he does his emissions must be minimal against the 300 miles of emissions I rack up on a weekly basis with my commute to work. Surely if the government was serious about reducing the impact of cars on the road they would be encouraging better public transport (with big free car parks next to stations and trains that aren't standing room only in rush hour). Or perhaps giving companies incentives to encourage working from home - just one day a week would radically decrease the traffic on the roads and may even help to solve some of the childcare issues we all face.
It doesn't take much to think of ways in which we could so easily make our lives more eco-friendly with a little help and incentive from the government, but it would be so much better if this help and incentive was constructive and focused on the end result rather than just using financial penalising as a quick way to help balance the treasury books.

The Doughnut Agenda

As I bit into a birthday doughnut my work colleague, Peter, bet I couldn't eat it without licking my lips. He is convinced that doughnuts do not have as much jam in these days which made me wonder if there is a doughnut hidden agenda. Perhaps we are all worried that too much jam will ruin our constant dieting (less-jam doughnuts - the lower fat option?) or perhaps the idea of creating all that potentially scalding hot jam has caused a heightened health and safety issue reduced by the smaller volume of jam to doughnut? It may even be the case that over-flowing jam has caused jam discolouration to clothing or upholstery that has led to an increase in legal action for compensation. As an accountant I think it probably has more to do with profit - less jam equalling less production cost. It seems a shame, though, as there is something so deliciously childish about messy food, food that cannot be eaten gracefully, food that sticks to your lips and fingers demanding a concentration level to eat it that makes us pause for a moment to give it our full attention.

What price Equality?

My mother was born in the twilight of the second world war and hit her twenties just as London started swinging. She and her girlfriends experienced an independence unknown to their mothers and grandmothers, an independence they grabbed with both hands, living life to the full.
In the seventies these independent women questioned their new roles as they wondered why they had proved themselves outside of the home and yet still did not have equality with men. The sense of the fun and freedom of the sixties turned to something darker as men were lined up as the enemy and the traditional roles of wife and mother became synonymous with repression.
With the dawn of the eighties strong women wearing shoulder pads turned their back on this victim view and instead set out to prove that, not only were they equal to men, but that in a man's world they were superior. Women fought tooth and polished nail to have successful careers, to have financial independence, to prove that they were as tough, as intelligent and as self-sufficient as any man. We who grew up in the eighties have felt the benefits of these strong women; throughout our schooling we felt no different to the boys and fully expected to have the same opportunities as adults. But we are now also feeling the consequences of this battle. You see no-one told us that rather than seeing our right to work as a hard fought for privilege it can, at times, feel like a financial shackle as homes are priced out of reach of families with only one working partner and parents are forced back to work with young children just to keep up with the cost of living. Women feel the constant pressure to prove that they can do everything, with the responsibilities of home and children still falling predominantly on their shoulders. And we certainly did not realise that those women who chose to follow the traditional roles of full time wife and mother would become second class citizens, ostracised by other women for somehow letting the side down. I can't help but think we have gained equality by suppressing what is feminine and not by striving to be proud of what we are and demanding that it be treated with as much respect as all the qualities associated with masculinity. It is no wonder that marriages and family life are under so much pressure today with home-making and child care, traditionally female spheres, now considered secondary activities to work. Don't get me wrong, I would not give up my right to a career for anything but I dream of finding a balance that does not seem possible and yet it would not involve much - a more flexible working life that would allow me to be at home when my child came home from school, maybe a part-time/job share role that still allowed me to reach my full potential and be paid properly for it. Perhaps this war for equality is not yet at an end and perhaps this is the new battle that needs to be fought so that our daughters can feel equal to men without the need to sacrifice the feminine.

The Training Gap

My husband has fallen victim to the training gap. A couple of months ago my husband's boss went bankrupt and he and his colleagues found themselves out of a job - not so Happy Christmas! But as with relationships you pick yourself up and start looking for the next thing that will suit you and, more importantly, pay the bills. These days, though, finding a new job has become a paperwork nightmare with cvs, lists of past employments, references and of course qualifications. And this is where my husband falls down. You see he went to the sort of school where careers advice involved handing out the address of the nearest dole office and as with most of his friends he left school with nothing. Now a few months off his fortieth birthday he has no official trade, no qualified profession, no noted skill set that can take him from job to job at a pay level he deserves after over twenty years of working. The problem is that when we were teenagers the country seemed gripped with the idea that academic qualifications were all that mattered and anything vocational was somehow inferior. School kids were encouraged to take A Levels in traditional subjects and those that did wanted to go onto universities, not polytechnics. In the midst of all this madness polytechnics all over the country changed their names to university, almost apologising for their roots in training people to do proper jobs. And then we all wondered why ten years later we could not find a plumber or a builder or even a mechanic! Thankfully this madness has now passed and school leavers are being offered apprenticeships and vocational training that will set them up for life, but for my husband, with half his working life still ahead of him, this is too late. So we are now reading through course lists from the local colleges hoping that he can finally get the qualifications to get the job he deverves - they say you can't teach an old dog new tricks but I am really hoping that is not true!

Notes on Modern Life

Last Christmas I got married for the second time. Our perfect day shared with friends and family - friends who understand the hope over experience of second time around and family who have watched us make the mistakes that have brought us to this point in our lives. The thing is I look at the wedding video and the photos of our day and I can see the older generation, the friends of my parents, who have been married for years, who have brought up children in our quiet English town and I know that I still measure myself against them and quite frankly I have failed. Divorce and step families were unheard of at best and talked about in whispered hushes at worst, mothers did not work full time and dinners always seemed to be cooked from scratch using mince and fresh vegetables. But then I look at our friends, our peers, and I realise how unrealistic this benchmark is. I struggle to think of friends who have met, married, had children and stayed together - we all still seem to long for this vision we were brought up to think was normal, but life has changed and while we have experienced so many common modern life experiences it can be difficult to accept that what we have been through is somehow normal, or even acceptable, and not one of those taboos spoken about with hushed voices twenty years ago. For this (purely selfish) reason I want to record and hopefully make some sense of these thoughts on modern life.