The Squeak Shall Inherit the Earth

Although I do try not to fall into the trap of pigeon-holing children before they can even string a proper sentence together ('Well, little Pubert was pointing at some numbers yesterday, so Hubert and I are expecting him to become an actuary by the time he's twelve'), I must admit that I sometimes catch myself teetering on the edge of this trap. I think that this is probably entirely normal and suggests that you are actually paying a degree of attention and not just blithely letting your child climb into boiling pans of water or stage a hostile takeover of your local branch of Tesco.

I do often wonder how Felix will turn out - admittedly, partly born of that feeling of 'God, I hope I don't fuck you up too much'. Despite my aforementioned resistance, I can't help but notice what a singularly 'definite' character he has. He was miserable as a baby. I don't just mean that he cried a lot, as most babies do, but he actually spent a lot of time surveying us all with an expression that said, 'I despise you all for your ability to communicate effectively, move freely and generally disport yourselves in all your infuriating being-able-to-do-whatever-you-want ways'. Even his movements in utero conveyed a frustrated determination to do his own thing and not let anything (even a Mother's liver) stand in his way. I'm sure many people (my husband included) would tell me that I am either paranoid or a bit mad for suggesting this - at the very least that I'm 'projecting' or some nonsense. Pfft, I can't disprove that, I can only state what I felt.

It's certainly interesting to consider the nature/nurture debate when you are bringing up a child of your own. How much have I contributed to his personality? Does our parental style of allowing Felix to assert and express himself without censure (excepting the climbing into pots of boiling water and the usual hitting/biting/being a rude, horrible little pig stuff) create the independent, determined individual I had imagined him to be in the first place in my delusional pregnancy-brained state? Am I going to continue blathering on without making any kind of useful point until Felix wakes from his nap and therefore never finish this damned post? The answer to that, my friends, is 'Yes'.

Vintage Schmintage

Let me first say, despite the title of this rant, that I am totally, utterly, disgustingly in love with all things vintage and have been for as long as I can remember...but...

I am getting really, really pissed off with how popular vintage has become. It now often makes much more sense, economically speaking, to purchase modern interpretations (read: knock-offs) of vintage items - clothes, jewellery, furnishings etc. Proper vintage items are now usually so highly prized and therefore priced that they are no longer the poor person's preserve when wanting to a) not spend a fortune and b) find something a bit different. I've loved vintage over the years because I like to think of the history, both personal and social, behind the item and the quality of vintage items can be so much better than modern goods.

I've never really had a particular aesthetic that I've adhered to. I recently realised that the one thing I tend regularly to admire is something that is very 'of its time'. This doesn't necessarily mean that I'm always attracted to tasteful, ultra-chic, iconic pieces like the Mies Van Der Rohe Barcelona chair, for example. Actually, that's precisely the sort of thing I take an 'I can appreciate the classic, timeless and yet ground-breaking design of this piece' attitude towards but I would never buy it and put it in my home. I'm a sucker for thirties dressing table sets, forties floral jewellery, fifties meringue-meets-Fairy-Princess-Barbie dresses, sixties psychedelia, and the kind of thing that Margot Leadbetter would be seen snobbing around in at a dinner party. In other words, I'm quite open to finding charm in a splash of kitsch weirdity and a touch of ethnic oddness.

To return for a moment to a previous pet topic, I noticed today that Kirstie Allsopp has a line of soft furnishings in an oldey-worldey, heritagey, vintagey style. Interesting. So, Ms. It's-always-better-to-buy-vintage-because-modern-is-a-load-of-tacky-balls-that-everyone-else-has-got-anyway, explain that one!

What was I on about again? Oh yeah, vintage being popular. Ok, so this is not exactly a new thing; it really got going around 2003/2004 when all the magazines went a bit gooey over pre-war English heritage and fifties prom styles and took on a dressing-up is the new dressing up look. It was around then that I noticed grubby retro clothing stores started dry-cleaning their garments and 'arranging' their brickabrack, and putting up the prices accordingly. This stage wasn't too bad because it was still possible to pick up fabulous things for a fraction of the equivalent high-street cost. I used to supplement my vintage shopping with routing around in the family dressing up bags and cleaning up my Mum's lovely old dresses and skirts. If I went to a party, I would almost invariably be wearing something old. Nowadays, it's hard to track down decent, truly vintage pieces, rather than random bits of rubbish from a few seasons ago.

I've recently purchased two fifties style dresses from River Island (somewhere I've hated for aeons because their stock is usually entirely vulgar) and I was honestly shocked because they are pretty well-made, 100% cotton and have a properly full circle skirt...all for forty-odd quid a pop. I would never, ever find a vintage dress that good for that kind of money these days. That's a bit sad. I've been routing around in the odd charity shop now and there just aren't the golden finds of yore to be had or at least they've become much rarer. Maybe that's it though: when I do find something, I will treasure it more because of its rarity. Or maybe I'll just be secretly seething at all those utter bastards who've got 'a little man who goes around and finds things' for them, and consequently have a wardrobe full of Dior New Look style pieces, floral brooches and tapestry handbags. Feckers.

Check mate?! Hmm, bollocks to this!

I cannot quite put into words how utterly, gobsmackingly enraged I am that we are, yet again, in the thralls of some evil, poxy, bastard disease that has rendered one of us utterly useless. But I'll try. The reason I am especially indignant at the affrontery of this particular, randomly malicious viral bleurghch is that the afflicted one and I are meant to be going to L'Ortolan next Friday to make up for all the times over the last fifteen months that we've been unable to celebrate all the things that we've felt were celebration worthy: a happy conclusion to my horrid, horrid pregnancy and my ghastly, ghastly childbirth; the advent of my 30th Birthday a year ago; Rob's no longer having that piffling, bothersome gall bladder, and me trying to feel good about having to finish breastfeeding earlier than I'd wanted by putting a positive spin on the whole affair (the return to some semblance of freedom, no more hideous maternity bras, my boobs belonging to me again rather than a tiny little ravenous goblin). The last straw came when a big deal was being made about his work Christmas do, for which I had bought a lovely, expensive (for me - no H&M here, I tell you!) dress and an arsenal of Estee Lauder products to ensure I made a fabulous post-baby, post-breastfeeding debut. I even had a really proper fascist skincare regime leading up to it that included Eve Lom masks and preparations for my hands and nails. This was a big deal. Are you getting that? Good. So you will begin to understand the impending sense of injustice I have at the threatened cancellation of YET ANOTHER big night out and a chance for us to simply enjoy each other's company and feel like a couple again who...errr...like spending time together in a grownuppy way and that. Yes, I know I'm a giant middle class whingy pants but I'm afraid I simply am not of the school of you-can't-have-had-it-that-bad-because-you've-never-been-stuck-in-a-desert-with-fifteen-children-no-limbs-and-a-pack-of-hyenas-awaiting-your-demise-with-only-a-pipecleaner-to-defend-yourself. Having a big fat whinge is everyone's constitutional right (probably) and I feel that it's rather cathartic after the catalogue of bollocks we've ploughed our way through recently. Get pissed off, rail at the gods or hamsters or beetles or whoever's running the show these days, get over it, move on. Bourgeois Petulance, over and out. For now.

How to Drive a Woman to Drink

Well, there are two things upon which I should like to wax pointless today:

1. Why on earth women are still being pressured into being Mrs Domestic Goddess while at the same time being pushed into having a glittering career.

2. How completely bloody irritating this new 'Recession Chic' thing is.

These things may not seem obviously related at first glance but, oh, believe me, they are and I think that number 2 is going to make number 1 even sodding worse. Allow me to explain...

I'm most certainly not the first to comment on how women are meant to 'have it all' these days and yet most of us are pretty much incapable of keeping  two personae ticking along in harmony. Has anyone asked, 'Why the hell should we?!'? I find it perplexing and enraging that it is still perfectly acceptable, maybe even expected, that men can live and breathe their career and not bother with domestic achievements whatsoever. However, being a career-focused woman makes you a sexless freak but being a housewife makes you a servile throwback. Obviously, we must do both in order to pass the Modern Womanhood test. And it is entirely unthinkable not to be brilliant and proficient at both. Eh? Am I missing something here? Ok, so there's been this slight fashion for Mr I-Know-What-a-Dishcloth-Is-And-Even-Use-It-Sometimes but I remain shocked at the number of couples I know of where both work full-time and yet the woman still does the majority of household tasks...and is often secretly proud of this fact despite her complaints. There's this whole 'Aren't I so capable and amazing and isn't my husband/partner so lucky to have me?' competition going on that no one seems to want to admit to participating in. I think it's bollocks. As my husband said to me only last night, 'Feminism was about giving women choices, not making them feel guilty about not doing everything'. I absolutely do not want women to be banished to their kitchen of origin but I also don't want women to feel that they have to sacrifice their home and family life in order to appear successful.

Right, now on to number 2. The epitome, or nadir depending on your perspective, of the Recession Chic Movement is the Channel 4 programme, Kirsty's Homemade Home. I do not wish to get personal about Ms Allsopp, as I'm sure she's a lovely person, despite being a Tory, and so I shall be directing my ire at what her efforts represent: further guilt to be piled upon womankind for not knitting her own bedsheets along with growing her own organic vegetables, performing pornography-worthy tricks on her husband on a nightly basis, having sealed a deal that will finally see an end to world poverty, and putting the final touches to little Maisie's sequined ballgown for the school's mega-million pound production of Cinderella. I feel exhausted just thinking about what some women put themselves through. I'm sure the ever affable Kirsty Allsopp would claim she is suggesting no such thing, merely demonstrating how one can achieve a pleasant home environment without resorting to the slavery of consumer culture. Except that's not what will happen in practice. Oh no, wave goodbye to the days when we could genuinely find a bargain through tracking down wonderful vintage pieces of clothing, furniture, any piece of random crap your heart could desire. It's just another excuse for chi chi boutiques to hike up the price of sub-standard goods by 5,000% and add a bit more one-upwomanship to proceedings: 'Oh, Jane, where did you get those fabulous swimming trunks for Martin?' 'Well, Claire, I crossed-stitched them myself from the pubic hair of an Albanian goat-herder...all organic, naturally'. Some one may have to stop me from committing Actual Bodily Harm at some point.

Having said all this, there is probably one thing that currently gets my Albanian goat-herder above anything else and that is this new-found patronising attitude toward men, as encapsulated by the sort of dire programmes I can't help myself from watching on BBC Three. I am talking, of course, of those cultural highlights known as Don't Tell the Bride and Mad About the House. For those moon-cave dwelling types amongst you (or perhaps simply those not prone to the severe lapses in taste to which I am subject), the premise of these programmes is that men are completely hopeless at doing anything that doesn't involve chucking bits of dead animals on a fire or knocking shit down with a massive hammer, so let's point and laugh at the poor darlings as they get it so horribly wrong. Incidentally, they usually manage to do a pretty good job without actually killing anyone or destroying large parts of the country, despite what the premise would have us believe. I hate this, it's the same mentality that has advertising execs showing us that the only men who do housework are a) a bit thick and helpless, so let's make it as simple for their neanderthal brains as possible b) are teeny tiny weakling men, who, frankly, are barely men at all or c) are men dressed as middle-aged women...and at this point I want to give up and throw myself off a bridge somewhere. This attitude simply perpetuates the idea that these poor little men need all the help that us multi-tasking, common sense-abounding, inherently nurturing and motherly women can give them. So, we're back to women flipping well doing everything once again. I don't have enough scream in me to cover this one.

At this point, I shall cease my diatribe of rubbish and admit that I do not have an adequate solution to any of this and will simply continue to watch the weirdness of gender politics unfold upon the world stage. Can we not just be nice to each other and treat everyone as equals, no matter what their background or circumstances? No? Well, balls to the lot of you, then.

Craptastic

Ok, so I think we've established that I'm not very good at keeping these things up on a regular basis. Or perhaps just that, when things are a bit tough, I don't really use this for its intended purpose: The Random Rantathon. People always tell you that you should 'Write it down!' when you are struggling and miserable and when life is getting you down, you can always go...down town. Errrr, to pen a literary masterpiece or hit the shops? What a choice. How about listening to really depressing music and staring into space every time you get a precious moment in which to indulge your melancholy? Because that's what I've come to realise recently: time for wallowing is pure luxury. The only problem that this seems to kick up is, while you're mindlessly carrying on, the God of Knackeredness has a tendency to leap up and bite you in the arse. One morning, you find you simply cannot raise your leaden frame and you realise you have hit that almighty wall of exhaustion. It doesn't help that your little one year old son has given you a stinker of a cold at the same time and you feel that your brain is actually slowly leaking from your nostrils. Pleasant. And why is that, on the days you feel a bit lively, the weather has conspired to keep you in all day with said child who is insistent upon doing everything possible to fatally maim himself? Ah well, the cold is abating, the weather seems genial again, and Melancholia has buggered off somewhere else for the day. Bring on the washing up! I can conquer mountains of house-related activities today! Until a certain little piglet awakes, screeching his gungy face off and we have the inevitable pitched battle to get us out of the house in one (or maybe two) piece(s) so that he can try to kill himself outside of the home for a change.

Hospital

Well, this blog has been abandoned for a while and I shall tell you wherefore. I have been spending a lot of time discovering the wonders of the Royal Berkshire Hospital. Rob has been taken ill several times now with excruciating pain emanating from his stone-stuffed gall bladder and resulting irritated liver and pancreas. I've experienced a side of life I realise I have been previously fairly sheltered from, one that revolves around the agonies and indignities of frail bodies and minds driven to distraction by pain, stress and that master of us all: age.

The first bed my husband was admitted to was on a temporary holding area, not unlike Picadilly Circus. Very soon after arriving there, a man in late middle-age arrived who was clearly in a great deal of pain, incredibly confused and without any control over his bowls. He was followed in by his surprisingly together wife. I wondered how many times she has gone through this before. He kept trying to get out of bed and repeated the mantra, 'I want, I want, I want...I need, I need I need...' but couldn't tell anyone what either of those things were. He was reduced to a mass of id, like a baby, like my son. He quickly deteriorated and I heard a Doctor muttering the words '...if he wakes up from this episode' to his now quietly distressed wife. She sat on the outside of his curtain crumpling a tissue and looking down at the floor. Her clothing seemed so incongruous with this scene and I kept thinking, 'How can you go through something like this when you're wearing a cosy green and pink striped wool cardigan like that?' She should have been walking through crunchy-leafed autumn parkland with toddling Grandchildren, not seeing her husband being put into nappies by an enormous Russian male Nurse who calls everyone 'Boss'.

There was a ghostly presence in this place, evident through a constant plaintiff, 'Aaaaaaaahhhhhh!' This long, drawn-out sigh spoke of frailty married with arduous anguish. I saw a semi-conscious elderly woman with the stretched gauntness and pallor of a Munch painting being wheeled through the corridor. She was uttering a small, breathy version of the wail as she went past. So, this is where age eventually leads us? I don't care that we have modern facilities, equipment, medication, it's-much-better-than-the-old-days; this is suffering and indignity with a modern facade. I am astounded that there are people who can actually endure this enough in order to help treat these people. I am crippled by pathos.

When I received a text from Rob to say that he'd been moved into a proper ward, I replied, 'At least you don't have the wailing woman keeping you awake now'. His reply: 'No, I have a mad, shouting old man instead'. And did he ever. When I came to visit the next day, I was horrified to hear him in his room screaming, 'HEEEEEEELP! HEEEEEELP!' I wondered what sort of a torture chamber my husband had been dumped in and couldn't wrench my mind away from this man's plees and everyone's seeming indifference to them. 'He's been at it all night', said a weary Rob. I was about to get up and see why no one was helping the poor man when I heard a nurse go to him and ask, 'What is it this time, Frank?' 'When's my dinner coming?' he asked in a perfectly collected voice. Incidents like this became commonplace during the many hours I spent at Rob's bedside and ranged from:

'HEEEEEEELP! I don't want to be here! Get me out!'

To:
'HEEEEEEEELP! Have you got any tea over there?'

To:
'MURDER! My wife is a missing person.'
'She's being looked after in a nursing home, Frank, while you're recovering from your operation'

To:
'CAN SOME ONE PLEASE TELL ME WHY I'M IN THIS HOTEL?!'
'Like I said before, Frank, you had an operation and you're in the Royal Berkshire Hospital until you recover.'

And after having just finished yet another cup of tea:
'HEEEEEELP! Where's the tea, you rotten buggers?'

He dictated letters to imaginary secretaries and sent out calls to phantom police cars - sometimes it was to tell them about his 'missing' wife and sometimes it was to complain about the lack of tea in the 'hotel' in which he was staying. He kept telling the nurses that he was a police Chief Constable and gave them all lectures about the falling standards of education making the new breed of officers into a bunch of illiterate incompetents.
Sometimes it was simply the word 'help' repeated again and again with increasing volume and ferocity until the nurses could do no more than close his door in order to prevent him upsetting more patients. I was astounded and in awe of the patience and tireless care the nurses showed to Frank, even when they had many other patients with pressing needs to see to.

A Perfect Circle

It's that time of year again when I get rather excited about all the new season's fashion and dream of looking like a perfectly put together creature who exudes just the right combination of stepping out of the pages of Vogue and boldly showcasing my own particular take on the current trends. This Season my style crush is Louis Vuitton, with his irresistible combination of vintage-esque ladylike primness with a healthy dash of geek chic: http://www.vogue.co.uk/fashion/show.aspx/full-length-photos/id,8886# This feels a little strange to me, as I usually find Louis Vuitton garish, tacky and tarty but I would do seriously dire things to get my hands on just one of those circle skirts.

So, I anticipate that I will trawl the high street for the best interpretations of this collection, find a few good quality and very 'me' versions of Vuitton, and proudly strut around feeling fabulous and devilishly stylish. The reality, of course, is that I will spend hours dragging a screaming, bored baby around Reading town centre and end up buying something ill-fitting, cheap and nasty from H&M once I've almost had breakdown number three in as many hours. I will then flump down in some cafe, having finally succumbed to the hunger and thirst that I have been ignoring all day, feeling guilty about buying into the horror that is consumer culture and wondering when I can return that god-aweful and pointless purchase I've just killed myself in making. I will never learn.