Child Substitutes

Last weekend, Nick and Jackie were listening to Nigel talking about our doves and how he had built an extension to the dovecote for them.  I explained how we had got them through an outbreak of coccidiosis (a fatal bird disease). Then Nigel showed how we hand-feed them.   

“Ah,” said Jackie, “Child substitutes.”

I’ve been considering this.

Jackie is wrong because:

a I cannot tell the doves apart, whereas I can tell my children apart (even though I constantly mix their names up).

b I do not expect my children to sleep outside.

c I do not exchange news and anecdotes with the doves.

d And finally, the doves are often at home and seem pleased to see us.

However, it was Perran and Carenza’s birthday on Wednesday – we were both at work and so were they (for such is adult life) so we post-poned a get-together until the weekend.

It did occur to me that if I were to bake a birthday cake and take it out to the doves there would be no suspicious queries as to whether it was fully vegan or health worries about the sugar and fat content.

  They would be simply delighted and gobble it up.

I still don’t think they are a child substitute, for me at least, but they do offer certain definite advantages…

Joined up writing

I was with friends at an outdoor café.

Sunshine meant a busy day and as I queued with Carol, a young waitress came out and wrote on the chalk board,

'No more soup.  Sorry for the inconveniance.'

She stood back, and surveyed her handiwork: 'That’s not right is it?'

'It’s an 'e',' offered a helpful bystander.

She rewrote it

'…inconveneance' her hand trailed off- she knew it still wasn’t right.

Other people in the queue began to voice their opinions. She started again, but in the face of contradictory advice, she soon froze, unable to proceed.

By this time the queue had advanced and I was right next to her. If a teacher has one super-power, then it is to write things clearly on boards.

'Would you like me to…?'

Gratefully she handed me the chalk.  I used my best teacher hand-writing to complete the notice and, resisting the urge to bow, passed on happily to order my food at the hatch.

'Well done,' said Carol, 'Inconvenience is a tricky one.'

I didn’t need soup to warm me, I had the smug glow of the accurate speller. 

But when we joined the others with our sandwiches, Diane nudged me to look back at the board. 

The young woman was painstakingly rewriting my inscription in an adult hand with loops and flourishes. 

'Alright – so I can spell – I just can’t do joined up writing.'

A very inconvenient piggy-bank

Coming back from work, I could see Nigel’s coat in the hall.  But no Nigel.

“Helloooo!”

“Gnnnn….”

The strange noise led me through to the kitchen.

On its side was the washing machine.  Wedged between it and the wall was Nigel.  Dirty suds stained the floor and he was up to his elbows in the device, like James Herriot delivering a problem calf.

I had nonchalantly put the sheets to wash before I went to work, but he had come home to find it all gone wrong.

With gritted teeth, and a pair of pliers, he was tugging at something caught in the pipe.  Again and again there was a clunk as he lost his grip on the object.

Eventually he wrestled out 71p’s worth of change. 

Unfortunately the machine was still making a weird sound afterwards so I now need to get it fixed.

The whole thing reminded me of a childhood gift that a relation once gave me.  It was a ceramic piggy bank where the only way to access my savings was to break the pig.

(And by the way, who on earth would do that to a child?!?)

All in all, I’m not sure 71p was worth taking the machine apart for. 

But at least I’m not emotionally attached to it in the way I was to poor Porky.

Gnomes threatened by high winds

Nigel’s family is a bit posher than mine and it doesn't usually matter.

But recently a divide has opened up between us.

It is over a little thing. To be precise, two little things.

We’ve been in our current post-kids home for four years now.  The garden has matured nicely. 

However, when I looked around, it seemed clear something was missing.

“I want gnomes!”

“Gnomes are awful.  You can’t have them.”

“Not even in an ironic, Post-Modern way?”

“Maybe just one…”

“But he would be lonely.  There have to be at least two!”

At this point, our memories of the conversation diverge.  Nigel seems to think he said “Over my dead body,” but I somehow heard it as “That would be fine.”

Carenza very kindly gave me two little cylindrical parcels for Christmas.  My gnomes.

I asked Nigel where I might place them in the garden.  His suggestions always seemed to include the word “behind” – “behind the rockery”, “behind the pittosporum”

That didn’t seem sensible to me.  Nobody would be able to see them.  Instead, I found a nice open spot in our front garden where they could greet any passing neighbours.

Only problem is, there’s no shelter from the wind and last time we had a gale, it knocked one of them over.

At least, I guess it was the wind…

Saved by the School Bell

Three years ago, Christmas finished but Carenza was still living with us and not in proper work yet.

Two years ago, Christmas finished and both Perran and Carenza were living with us.

One year ago, Pascoe was home.  “We could have an adventure, Mum,” he said, and we did – a short trip to meltingly beautiful Lisbon.

This year, however, after what was for me an unsatisfactory Christmas (flu) all the children left to go back to their own flats and working lives.  Nigel returned to work too.

Still feeling rather sorry for myself, I found myself with several days before teaching started and a to-do list which, though long, contained no task that I found in any way tempting.

Instead I sat around wondering what my whole life had been about, whether the good times were all over.  Whether all that was left was decline and inevitable decay.

Luckily, work started again this week.

I now know what life is about – it is about printing out registers, marking stray exercise books, making sure the info on my PowerPoints is correct and that everything is uploaded to my USB stick.

I feel much more myself again.

So that’s alright then.

Phantom Christmas

I have heard of the concept of a phantom pregnancy, where, perhaps because she longs for a baby, a woman develops the symptoms of pregnancy, yet there is no baby to be born.

This year, I had a phantom Christmas.  I made all the preparations – cards, gifts, food, sleeping arrangements.  Even though I try not to over-complicate, there’s still more than enough to do.

Pascoe, Perran and Carenza had all arrived home, much to our delight.

Then on the morning of Christmas Eve, I woke to find I could not get out of bed – I was gripped by a fever and aches and pains. Even my eyes hurt too much to read my novel.

On Christmas morning itself,  I got up for just long enough to see Pascoe, Perran and Carenza open their gifts.  I tried to be glad for everybody else’s sake that the sun was shining for the annual Christmas walk.  I got the makings of dinner out of the fridge and, led by Carenza, the rest of the family cooked and ate them.

By Boxing Day Nigel had the flu too. 

Gradually, over the next couple of days, we began to feel more ourselves again and had some good moments with our lovely children.  However, by Sunday lunch time, they were all gone, back to work, or celebrations with friends. 

Now there is bedding to wash and leftovers to use up, evidence that the festival took place, but I kind of have this weird feeling that I’m short by one Christmas.

Perhaps I’m due two next year!

When you thought you knew somebody and then….

I’m in pre-Christmas headless chicken/blue-bottom fly mode.

Rushing round shopping, wrapping, posting.

But something this week made me come to a complete stand still.

It was a totally unexpected find, and it is taking me a while to process.

Whether it is good or bad I have not yet decided.

Let me explain---

I was just putting away some gloves when I opened Nigel’s hat/glove/scarf drawer in the hall cupboard.

There, carefully arranged in Marie Kondo style were all Nigel’s scarves.

“Nigel, did you do this?”

“Errr, yes.”

“And is it working well for you?”

“Yep.”

And there I left it.  But in my depths, I am troubled that after thirty-five years of marriage, he can still surprise me.

Better to light a single candle

In October, I wrote that I had been out protesting/demonstrating and that it made me feel empowered in the face of a scary world.

Things have since got even scarier. 

But: “It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.”

So in the days running up to the election, in between working hours, I leafleted a couple of streets on behalf of the People’s Vote Campaign (suggesting tactical voting) and another four streets on behalf of the Lib Dems.  I also helped to collect dozens of letters aimed at stopping the expansion of our local airport (if it happens, it will greatly increase carbon emissions) and also sewed logos on a few tee shirts for Extinction Rebellion.

It was better to be doing something than sitting and fretting.  Or at least it would have been, if I hadn’t run myself into the ground and succumbed to a heavy cold.

And now, the national election has gone against everything I’d prayed for. 

As Annabel said “Woe, woe, and three times woe”.

But on the bright side, in St Albans we got a brilliant new Lib Dem MP, Daisy Cooper.

And concerning the National Tragedy, all the campaigning work I put in means I now have a copper- bottomed excuse to ‘curse the darkness’ or grumble.

But being a positive person, I’ll probably do something more constructive instead…

…like tunneling all the way to the Continent and leading the rest of my life there.

Lost Babies

All year round, I take photos of lost things.

I’m not sure why – perhaps it is because of the stories they suggest.

Sometimes the lost things are lying on the ground, sometimes perched on a fence for the owner to spot.

The commonest item is hats, the second commonest, gloves.  So no surprises there.

At the Greenbelt festival, I found a whole get-together of lost items

And recently a lost moustache made me smile.

Another memorable find was some abandoned underpants, just outside a public toilet which had been permanently closed and chained up.  Fill in the story for yourself.

But the most amazing things this Autumn were two lost babies, both in the same week.

Anthony Gormley’s sculpture of his own baby was left in the courtyard of the RA, making passers by marvel at its statement of vulnerability.

And on a school carpet, somebody’s tiny plastic baby doll, sadly not intentionally abandoned, I suspect.  I hope it found a new and loving owner.

What will I find next year?

Lots of hats and gloves, no doubt, but also, maybe something else to make me marvel.

A Proud Day

Just like with every PhD, there were moments when Pascoe, and even Nigel and I, thought the end would never come.  Around the end, progress slowed to a very slow sloth crawling up a steep tree bough in a leisurely fashion.

But finally on Saturday, graduation day had arrived and to cap it all, the letter appointing Pascoe senior scientist at a biotech start-up arrived through his door at about the same moment we did.  So we were all in ebullient mood.

The firm which was hiring out the academic gowns for the ceremony clearly had a plan – a very tight route from the hire-stand into McKewan Hall for the ceremony and then straight back out to the stand again.  

But Pascoe reasoned that he had paid good money for the hire and was going to take his robes out for a spin.

We processed through Edinburgh Christmas market where I had been drawn to the twinkly lights like a consumerist moth, and then as the cold rain grew heavier, into the National Gallery of Scotland where Pascoe posed with the great art. 

It was a lovely experience as a number of strangers congratulated him and stopped for a chat. 

And Pascoe certainly got the value out of his robes.

The Impossible Dream

I hanker after a little place in Cornwall. However, it is a complex category of dream since we don't have the money and we don't actually believe it's the right thing to do.

Yet, my vague wish for a pied a terre in my homeland of Cornwall remains since it is an emotional impulse, not a logical one. In Welsh and Cornish there is a term 'hireth' which means something like 'the longing for one's homeland'.

Partly it is the love of my homeland which tells me I should not aspire to a second home there. It is to snatch a dwelling from a young family who might make their lives there and contribute to the economy.

But this week a huge chunk of logic was also added to the scales. I had to be home to open the door to tradesmen to repair a broken window, a leaky roof and a blocked drain. All the routine aggravations of house ownership in one week. If we were lucky enough to own another property it would be house maintenance times two.

No thank you.

I shall stick to dreaming and looking wistful, like so many displaced Celts before me.

Rosy-fingered dawn

If there's one thing I try to avoid, it is the Dawn. 

When I rearranged my teaching life I was keen to swap early morning commutes for evening classes. I simply am not a morning person.

So when something is important enough to get me up early, the dawn seems like a foreign country to me. 

Saturday morning, I was travelling to the Saatchi gallery where Perran had bought us tickets for the Tutankhamun.

The footpath to the train station was deserted.  Silence.  A huge grey heron flapped noiselessly over my head. Some chickens murmured nervously behind a garden fence.  And when a black crow took off just in front of me, I could hear the taffeta rustle of its black wings.

But then came the best of all. As I turned onto the road beside the old prison, the trees blazed with golden leaves and a little robin was perched on the railings. As I drew closer though the bird grew less familiar. I was expecting to see a red breast but instead the whole bird was a sooty black. As I neared, it turned and fluttered to a nearby tree and its tail flashed orange. 

I was looking at a black redstart,  an uncommon sight in the South East. 

If I had set out later, would I even have noticed the redstart in all the bustle? Would it already have fled to somewhere quieter?

Maybe I do like dawn after all.

If you love them, let them go

I don’t like to see birds held captive in an aviary.

Small zoo cages also bother me.

For a long time, we talked of keeping doves, then finally we took the plunge.

But the first stage in keeping doves is to keep them netted in for six weeks while they decide that your dovecote is home.

Nigel carefully put up a net that was as spacious as possible, but still I did not like to see them trapped inside. 

Whenever somebody visited I felt I had to explain our apparent cruelty.  One friend jumped to the conclusion that the net was permanent and scolded me.

However, the only thing worse than keeping the net on was the day when it was time to remove it.  

You cannot be certain the doves will return.  Like adolescent children they will be exposed to the dangers of road traffic and evil strangers – although in the case of the doves, the evil stranger is a sparrowhawk. 

It was my birthday when we removed the nets and our children were there.  The doves sped off into the blue as fast as their wings would carry them before the nets were even down properly.

“They buzzed right off!” said Carenza.

Only at dusk, when the urge to roost came over them would we know for sure if they would return.

That night, as the sun lowered in the sky, through the clear evening light, first came winging one dove, then several more, plopped into their pigeonholes, turned and looked out at us. That first night, we were two short, but another came and rejoined the second night. 

One down.

We would have to be content with that.

Supernatural Bird Activities

We had netted in a batch of new doves – to keep them in our dovecote for six weeks while they came to accept it as home.

Now, we were only one week off releasing them so they could fly free.

We returned home one night in the dark. 

I looked up and said goodnight to the roosting doves.

But then I stopped in my tracks.

On the floor of the enclosure lay a still white shape.

“One of our doves is dead.”

But when I looked up at the dovecote where the rest were roosting, I counted the same number as ever.

We looked again at the dead dove and saw it had some black markings unlike any of ours.

“So the one on the ground is from outside?  But how did it get in?”

Nigel hazarded, “Perhaps it was trying to get in through the net and it died.”

“But then it would still be stuck in the net.”

It was like Sherlock Holmes – The Mystery of the Dead Dove. Or is that a Henry James?

I decided that a neighbour had found an injured or sick bird and tucked it into our enclosure, out of the way of cats.  Where, unfortunately, it had died.

One day soon a neighbour would come up to me and explain.  However, a fortnight later I am still waiting.

Spooked by the event, we un-netted the doves a week early.  So for them it was a good outcome.

I’m now wondering whether, in the interests of freedom, they somehow managed to rig up this “dead dove scam” themselves.

Our house with "doves"

Protesting is good for you

In the week that I turned fifty-seven, I protested with Extinction Rebellion and marched for a People’s Vote on Brexit.

My back hurts a bit, but my spirits are in good shape. 

I’m frightened about what will happen to the economy of this country and to the welfare of our citizens should Brexit occur.  I’m terrified of what will happen to our planet as Global Heating ramps up.

Many of my friends lie awake at night fretting about the future of their children and grand-children.  They are right to do so. 

But my way to be at peace with my conscience and get a good night’s sleep is to protest.  I  am signing the petitions, writing the letters to MPs and I’m getting out there with flags and banners and demonstrating and marching.

Feeling powerless is destructive to the body and mind, but grasping whatever agency we have is empowering.  It has been better for me to take action than to sit at home following the newsfeeds and gnashing my teeth in impotent rage.

I’ve had challenging conversations while handing out leaflets, and I’ve also been touched by the kindness of others, handing me home-baked flapjack.

So in trying to keep my country and my planet alive, I’ve come to feel more alive too.

Annabel with her beautiful banner

A businesslike approach to the threat of extinction

Greta Thunberg asked why she should go to school if everything she would learn there is irrelevant in the face of catastrophic climate change.

But what if you’ve already spent decades in business earning a living and working towards a great future for your employees and for your own family? How do you react when you are confronted by the looming climate change disaster?

Two St Albans businessmen who did not previously know each other took similar action. 

Alex Paul is owner/director of a sportswear company employing fifty.  He has been with Extinction Rebellion since its inception. 

“I asked myself the question In ten years time when my children ask me what I did to prevent the catastrophe what will I say? I now have an answer for that question.”

Nigel Harvey, CEO of a company which coordinates recycling joined Extinction Rebellion over the summer.  His motivation was strikingly similar to Alex’s.  

“One day I hope to have grandchildren.  When they ask me whether I did anything to prevent this crisis, I’ll have some sort of answer for them.”

Both are busy running their businesses and annual leave is limited so each picked the means to make the maximum contribution to Extinction Rebellion in the shortest time. 

They each attended training sessions on the rights of arrestees, then booked a day off work, travelled into London, and headed for the high-vis jackets of the police cordon.

On Monday 7^th October Nigel sat on the road in Trafalgar Square in defence of a scaffolding tower which Extinction Rebellion members had erected, climbed and then superglued themselves to.  In no time, he was being carried off into a police van.

On Tuesday 8^th October Alex went to Downing St.  Seeing that the police were clearing the protesters’ tents, he went and sat in an empty one and refused to budge.  He was arrested almost immediately.

Both were released after a number of hours and able to resume work the next day.  Both now have a cogent story which makes clear to their colleagues and friends the depth of their concern for the future of the planet and the need to act.

Job done.  For both Alex and Nigel a businesslike approach to climate protest has proved effective.

It should also be said that Alex is not the first arrestee in his family. In the April protests, his wife, Emily Spry, GP, decided to be arrested in order to spread awareness of the climate change emergency.  If Alex’s response is anything to go by, it certainly had an effect.

Extinction Rebellion

When is being arrested a good thing?

When you are doing it deliberately to raise awareness of the looming threat of climate change.

On Monday Nigel  sat on the road in Trafalgar Square in defence of a scaffolding tower which Extinction Rebellion members had erected, climbed and then superglued themselves to.  

The protesters are following the example of Greta Thunberg and the school strikes in asking the government to act urgently to save the planet from irreversible climate change.

Far from being one of the “crusties” dismissed by Boris Johnson, Nigel is CEO of a company which coordinates recycling and he has a science degree from Cambridge University.  Many of the Extinction Rebellion protesters are educated professionals who have seen the data on climate change and are terrified by the implications.

“The great mistake is to imagine that the UK will be okay.  The changes that are affecting the planet will wipe out millions of hectares of agricultural land and dispossess many millions of people across the globe.  You can be certain the repercussions will damage the UK.”

Nigel was keen to allow himself to be arrested to show how important this issue was to him.

“Extinction Rebellion follows the models of the Suffragettes and the American Civil Rights Movement led by Martin Luther King. Allowing myself to be arrested is a great way of showing how important this is to me.  One day I hope to have grandchildren.  When they ask me whether I did anything to prevent this crisis, I’ll have some sort of answer for them.”

The Capture

We've been watching The Capture, the cleverly plotted BBC drama. 

It's made me think - how many times each day as I go about my work routines, pics/footage of me is captured.  I teach in several different schools which have adopted a new visitor system.  On arrival, I go to a touch screen and enter my details.  Then it takes a pic.
Even though it's a head shot, I can't help sucking in my stomach.

The photo is then printed out with my name, inserted in a little plastic wallet and hung round my neck on a lanyard.
 
I had presumed that this was in case, under the stress of modern teaching, I was found wondering the corridors, unable to remember my own name. 

Now, I realise it is for security. 

Or maybe for blackmail purposes - if I ever threatened to quit a particular school they could post the world's most unflattering photo on facebook/insta/twitter.

At the first school this week, I was too short for their set-up and my photo was only of my glasses and the top of my head. 

In the second school, I had cycled and my hair was frizzy and my glasses misted.

In the third school, the set-up takes photos against the light, so as always, I was represented by a silhouette, specs glinting in a sinister manner.

Think I'm going to invest in a stick-on moustache to see if I can go one better next week.
After that - some false goofy teeth.

And when I run out of ideas - a hand-stand of course.