Children's Party Hell

Most parents dread kids parties, whether planning one: what if it’s not good enough? What if child hates it? What if child says he wants a pirate party but then 24 hours before the party decides he wants a fireman party instead? Or attending: what if my child won’t play? What if they are rude about the food or entertainment? What if they won’t even go through the door – I’ve have spent many hours in village hall car parks coaxing son number 1 into a party he refuses to take part in because there are balloons, an unfortunate phobia for a 3 year old, thankfully we’re over that one.

Children’s parties are far more stressful than you would think pre-parenthood, on son number 1’s first birthday party we had 12 kids all with their parents (we served beer and wine to the parents to help them get through it – that was a controversial choice, possibly the rookie mistake of a first time mum) squished into our tiny flat, and I was so relieved that it was finally happening and going well that I drunk half a bottle of wine in an hour and was intoxicated and asleep before everyone left.

But I realise I have created my own party monster. Son number 2 was due a month before son number 1’s birthday. Heavily pregnant and needing a project, I threw myself into planning the ultimate pirate party for son number 1’s third birthday. The man, as the appointed MC, spent a week making a pirate costume to wear and I made a little pirate pack for every guest including sash, eye patch and bandana, with the pirate captains hat for son 1. Even son number 2, only a month old, wore a stripy sleepsuit and a little eye patch. It took a huge amount of planning, and was meant to be a one off. Make son number one feel loved and special while dealing with the transition from only child to big brother. But of course the following year he wanted a Buzz Lightyear party. I’d made the mistake of setting the bar too high. The man got his costume making hat on again and we arrived at the party as family Buzz, the kids in supermarket Buzz costumes, the man and me in slightly too tight white jogging bottoms and home made wings. I was terrified the man would take some poor kids eye out with his wings, fashioned out of motorcross body armour and a car undertray (mine were far more child friendly, made out of carpet tiles).

And then there’s the cake. For at least 24hours before every party I am stuck in my kitchen, sweating and stressed, coughing under plumes of icing sugar. For son number 2 I recently did Lightning McQueen. But I’ll let you in on a secret, neither of my kids even like cake. I do it because I love the artistic side of it, and the pleasure I get when people say, wow what an amazing cake! It’s all self indulgence.

Sometimes I wish I had just started with a nice simple soft play centre party and a supermarket cake. Minimal planning, no ridiculous costumes, no panicking because Lightning McQueen looks slightly boss eyed. Just show up, pick up the presents and go home. The kids don’t even mind. They always have a brilliant time at soft play parties. But when our parties are over and we can all relax at last and son number 1 says “Mummy, that was the best party ever in the world” I know I’ll be doing it all again next year.

The man says he doesn’t enjoy the big parties so much, it’s all too stressful. You could have fooled me when he’s up til 2am the night before making pirate boots out of an old PVC skirt he’s bought from the charity shop. He says he would rather just play on the soft play with the kids and he really doesn’t care whether the cake is homemade or not (which is a shame because he’s kind of the only person who actually eats the cake).

I said that this year I would do a MacDonalds or soft play party for son 1. Easy and simple. But before I got the chance to suggest it to him he said “Mummy, I want a Lego City party this year.” Yep, I’ve definitely set the bar too high. 

Fresh Start

The household was a flurry of activity yesterday as son number one is starting infant school next week and his term started with a visit from his new teachers this morning. I get nervous anytime I’m supposed to be making a grown up responsible, impression because I don’t actually feel very grown up or responsible (is it just me that finds it really hard to remember the appropriate term for bogey, fart and poo when talking to teachers and doctors?) While being nervous about my choice of vocabulary I also want to ensure that the house is spotless so son doesn’t have “dirty house” indelibly written on his school record.

I spent the entire day with a really clean and welcoming home in mind, 2 quiet and ironed little boys playing sweetly with a jigsaw puzzle when they arrive. And not screaming kids still in Coco Pops stained pyjamas simultaneously playing Xbox, watching cartoons and hitting each other with a door stop amid a pile of primary coloured plastic toys, as is the general norm in our house.

I had a head start on my cleaning mission because BFF and her boy came down this weekend to help us celebrate son number 2’s second birthday (at least I was able to offer homemade birthday cake to teachers, hopefully a nice big tick on sons report). BFF is a cleaning whirlwind so my house always looks like a How Clean is your House after photo when she leaves. I clean for 4 hours before she arrives, thinking it’s spotless, but no sooner has she put her handbag down, she is whizzing round the house merrily swishing and swiping at the sticky jam handprints on the cupboard doors while keeping a sideways eye on her little boy picking raisins up off the floor (by 10am everyday my floor resembles a buffet table). I don’t think she even notices that she’s doing it, it’s just as much part of her nature as leaving a trail of mess and destruction is part of mine. And I’m very grateful to her for it too, as she sees things I don’t, always good to have another pair of eyes and hands.

It’s not just the thought of the teacher visit that had me on a cleaning mission, but the beginning of the new term feels like New Years Eve. I can’t bear starting the year with lots of washing in the washing basket and always do a thorough clean on New Years Eve. I’m not sure where I’ve got it from (my mum says not from her) because the rest of the year I’m messy.

I remember the excitement as a child of the new term, getting in supplies and having everything laid out the night before. Being organised would only last a day, after that I would be running out the door with books falling out of my bag and always having to use the school lost and found PE kit because I’d forgotten mine (not much fun playing netball in the freezing cold wearing trainers of 2 different sizes and obscenely too small PE knickers flossing your bum crack).

I read somewhere that the new school year holds the same opportunity for change and resolution as January 1^st, but without the guilt of having to give things up, it’s all about new starts and new shoes. I like that. Any opportunity to make a fresh start is one I will reach out for with both hands. Son’s new uniform is ready and waiting to receive name labels (uncharacteristically organised of me to have ordered them in June, characteristically disorganised to have left it till the last minute to attach them).

So I went to bed last night happy in the knowledge that my house was clean and son will not have to live with “manky house” on his record forever more.

But typically they showed up ten minutes early while I was still washing up the breakfast things, the telly was blaring Cbeebies and a sea of Peppa Pig toys had to be negotiated before being able to sit down. And I actually used the word bum in conversation. So that report probably won’t be squeaky clean after all.

It's hard being healthy

So after a few weeks of going at the diet and exercise hard I decided to give myself a “cheat week”. It is son number 2’s birthday week, so the house is full of naughty stuff and I knew would be spending my time sniggering and tying balloons into the obligatory two round one long configuration and picking up fluttering Argos receipts, far too busy to work out or think about healthy eating.

But after only four days I began to feel sick, exhausted, and had indigestion straight from the fiery pit of hell. I discovered that weirdly, the things I considered treats were in fact not what my body wanted.

As the designated chef of three demanding males, I have a hard time cooking in my house. Son number 1 is a picky eater who is only just coming out of the “I’m not eating that, it’s white” stage (especially not cheese), has a verging on compulsive obsession with things being cut up or not cut up in a certain way, god help anyone who cuts his sandwich into 4 instead of 2 and don’t even get me started on the square versus triangle argument. I admit I have probably pandered to his random demands too much, but if your kid is going to scream the house down for ten minutes because you cut his cucumber into sticks instead of rounds you get to the point where bad habits creep in, just for a quiet life.

The man is a bigger version of son number 1, and doesn’t see the point in eating anything that he doesn’t absolutely love. So if a meal isn’t at least 85% meat it has to be covered in cheese to make up for it and I have a very narrow selection of fruit and vegetables to work with. Healthy versions of favourites don’t appeal, why have berries and honey on your porridge when you can have cream and golden syrup, don’t bother making me packed lunches this week because KitKat Chunkys and Hula Hoops are on special at the garage across the road and for goodness sake woman, is full fat mayonnaise too much to ask for? It doesn’t help that he is one of those infuriating people that has a criminally perfect body despite never working out or watching what he eats, so there is probably a sneaky element of sabotage in the fact that I am so willing pour double cream down his neck, just to see if it makes a dent in his rock solid pecs (it never does).

I regularly find myself cooking 3 different meals every day to suit all the complicated dietary requirements of the brood.

Why slave for 3 hours a day cooking a healthy and delicious meal for people who are happy with sausages and chicken nuggets? So I’m often forlornly eating my healthy meals alone and rarely justify the expense of making myself a fruit salad, which has had to be washed and chopped, washing up created, before it can be enjoyed. It all seems like too much hassle for just me. By day 2 I have a huge bowl of unappetising spongy fruit taking up space in my fridge and I’m reaching for the mans secret KitKat Chunky hidden behind the ancient box of Trex on the fridge door.

Why can’t they make healthy food more accessible, and more importantly cheap? Why is it that it works out cheaper for me to buy kids yoghurts with reportedly over a teaspoon of pure sugar in each pot than it does to buy plain yoghurt and add toppings to it (which I now do, although still trying to move away from jam and nesquik powder as acceptable toppings)? You can buy a ready made lasagne the size of a small continent for around £4, make my own healthy version and I haven’t saved anything except fat and maybe pride, but it’s taken me three hours to convince them that I haven’t added anything “weird” (slightly worrying that my family trust Tesco more than me when it comes to food). Even the Expensive Cats prefer supermarket budget brand cat food, not even described as any flavour, just meat. It’s a conspiracy I tell you.

I know we should all be eating healthy but picky eaters make it so flipping hard for us family cooks to provide a balanced diet that everyone can enjoy. I don’t blame people for eating ready meals and cooking less, I get such a head ache from banging my head against the unhealthy brick wall that is my family.

But sometimes, even for a healthy food lover, only chocolate will do.

“Mummy, what’s that you’re eating?”

“Erm… it’s a brown cheese bar. It’s new, want to try it?”

“Urgh, I don’t like cheese."

"I know."

"I thought it was chocolate.”

“Nope, definitely cheese.” It’s probably no wonder that none of them trust me.

Hallelujah, Praise the DJ

In my ongoing quest for spiritual enlightenment I always seem to come back to the Buddhist philosophy as the model which sits most comfortably with my inbuilt natural ethics. Not answering to a certain God but to yourself, doing everything with a positive outlook, ensuring your actions do not harm other people, animals or your environment, loving everyone regardless of race, age, religion or background (comment if I’ve missed any or got anything wrong here), are, in my opinion, a pretty perfect set of answers for any situation.

In my limited understanding, Buddhism is a fairly solitary philosophy, with wisdom and inner peace sought through quiet meditation and vows of silence. But I can see why more organised religions have taken precedence, there is something thrilling about lots of people with a common belief system coming together to celebrate a mutually adored higher power.

You can see examples of mass worship in the most unlikely places if you look at things in a certain way. Take a football match for example. The pitch is the altar, the stadium is the church, players are the gods. They even have their own hymns (football songs) and a lively debate about the sermon afterwards (breakdown of the match over a pint). Not being a football fan myself I don’t really get it, but you can’t deny the sense of euphoria in the congregation when one team wins or scores a goal.

We had our regular bi-annual child free party this weekend. It’s the only time when we get the opportunity to come together in the same way as before we became parents and sensible overtook silly as the default setting. As I was throwing questionable mummy shapes on the dance floor, seeing nothing in the black light but the grinning teeth and sparkling eyes of my most beloved friends, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of spiritual energy, connecting us all like a holy light. We were worshipping the God of bass or maybe music, at the altar of the decks, with a DJ minister presiding over, providing a path to utopia through some seriously uplifting music.

Maybe it’s just me but it’s in those situations when I feel a total affinity with the smiley happy-clappy people on telly, grinning and raising their arms and shouting “Praise the Lord!” Because, ultimately, finding spiritual peace is as much about a connection with other people as it is about finding that connection within your inner consciousness.

Research suggests that spiritual people are happier, live longer and have better health than their atheist peers, which are good a reasons as any to seek some form of divine understanding. And it is times like Saturday night when I’m surrounded by people I love, bathing in the light and glory of a truly breathtaking sermon (set) that I feel most at peace, blessed and likely to raise my arms in a gesture of praise.

Or maybe it was just a group of people teetering on the brink of middle age, dancing to old tunes and reliving the glory days of their misspent youth.

Either way it’s the closest I’ve ever come to spiritual nirvana. God bless you father DJ(s).

Inside the Mind of an Insomniac

11.07pm, that’s good. That’s acceptable. If the kids wake me up at 7 that’s nearly 8 hours sleep. The recommended 8 hours. That’s good, except it’s usually more like 6am. That’s fine. We can deal with that. Mmm, nice comfy bed, so tired, drifting… Is the window open? I need the window open.

Ooh must remember to get that new baby card and gift tomorrow. How can I fit that into the day? I could pop to the shops on the way to the play date, so I’ll go to that little Tesco on the way. But… a card from Tesco? Surely I can do better than that. Maybe I could just pop into M&S, could get a gift there too… No, stop this. It’s time to sleep, not to play out tomorrow in your head. Think about it tomorrow.

Right, stop thinking, clear your mind, empty it, clear it out… see now you’re just thinking the words. Stop talking to yourself in your head woman. It’s the first sign of madness (there have been other signs, you’re skating close to the edge here) no, don’t think about that now.

OK back to clearing, and we’re clearing, we’re emptying, clear and empty, empty and clear, there’s those words again, try thinking in pictures. Right, pictures. A house (ooh that looks like a Mr Men house, maybe Mr Greedy, or is it Mr Messy, definitely Mr Messy, wonder if there is any significance about the fact that it was Mr Messy’s house that popped into my head?) No, we’re thinking pictures, PICTURES. A dog, a cat (did I remember to give Expensive Cat his medicine?)

You’re thinking again.

OK let’s try relaxing. Start with the top of your head, and relax your head, soft head, relax your face, soft face, no that’s forcing, you don’t need to look like you’ve had a stroke, just smooth out the muscles, now the neck, ow ow cramp, OK stop relaxing.

Maybe I should just get up and do something else, OK let’s get up. No, you need to sleep. Get up. Stay in bed. Get up. No, don’t. Aaaargh.

Just calm down and try something else. The beach thing. You’re on a beach, listening to the waves. I can hardly remember what it’s like, has it really been five years since our last holiday? Really must address that issue, we’ve just spend £500 on a darn cat for gods sake I’m sure we can find a few hundred for a week in Bognor next year. So the beach thing didn’t work.

Mum always used to tell me to think of black when I couldn’t sleep. Right, black. Black. BLACK! Isn’t black a weird word? Stop it. Just think black. Amy Winehouse Back to Black (god is she really dead? Still can’t get my head around it) stop, we’re thinking black. Little black dress, black sky, Black Sunday (What was that? I’m sure it’s something I should know at my age), oh for goodness sake woman this isn’t a word association game, it’s a getting to sleep exercise.

Look at the man over there, snoring away. How can he be sleeping like that while I’m going through this turmoil? It isn’t fair. Maybe if I just give him a little kick he’ll wake up and keep me company. Or maybe an elbow in the ribs… Jesus, he’s a deep sleeper. I’m so jealous. Now you’re just getting angry, that is not helping.

Right what time is it? 1.07. Oh god, I’ve been at this for 2 hours? I’m exhausted. If I go to sleep now that’s 4 hours and 53… now 52, minutes. Ok that’s doable. If you just sleep now, now, NOW! That didn’t work either.

You clearly can’t sleep because there’s too much going on in your mind, so write it all down:

-         buy card

-         cat medicine

-         holiday???

-         Practice serene relaxed facial expressions in mirror

-         What was Black Sunday?

-         Buy some herbal sleeping pills.

That’s better. OK time to sleep. Mmm comfy bed. What time is it now? 2am. OK I can live on 4 hours sleep. When the kids were babies I lived on much less sleep, I did eat more cake in those days however. Oooh, cake. If I get no sleep I can totally justify eating cake tomorrow. Stop it, we’ve already cleared the mind, don’t start adding new things to the list.

Just sleep. Soft things, cloudy, soft pillows, nice and relaxed, floating, it’s working! What was all that nonsense about not being able to sleep? Mmm, drifting…

“MUMMY? It’s morning!”

Oh bollocks.

It’s time… to face… the “MUSIC”

The X Factor started again this weekend. Oh joy.

The ‘audition stages’ used to be my favourite bit of any talent show. Misguided people of all shapes and sizes prefacing their performances with “I wanna be a legend”, before being shot down by Simon Cowell saying they sound like a creaky ironing board. Fantastic singers reduced to a sob story to the same old sad song. But these last few seasons I have to admit even I am getting a bit bored of it. They can’t fool me with their new panel, it’s nothing new.

Apart from it being the same old, same old, I’m sick and tired of these programmes taking over my life. It feels like The Apprentice just finished (great for pseudo intellectuals who think that the X Factor is beneath them) which took up one hour of a fairly innocuous Wednesday night. But the talent shows take up our entire Saturday nights, sometimes dragging over onto Sunday night like an ill-advised hangover. I remember the days when Saturdays were meant for going out clubbing, meeting friends in the pub or at least sitting at home chatting over a bottle of wine and some music, made by people who got their break the old fashioned way. And Big Brother started this week, that’s another hour a day. I can feel any spare time I had being inhaled by the telly. And use of the V+ box is futile in this instance, if you don't watch it within 24 hours you may as well not bother because before you know it you're behind.

I have purposely tried to avoid the last couple of seasons of the X Factor but inevitably I get sucked in and within a few weeks I am shouting at some poor deluded person on the telly who has the gall to get up there and murder the crap out of any Adele number. Barely a murmur of conversation passes between the man and me, except to sing along to the sad story song (What about now? What about todaaaaaay), and joining in with the phone mime whenever a contestant is desperate enough to use it.

I love telly, but I am really starting to appreciate having the 200+ channels that our cable package provides me with. I can forgive the fact that they dedicate 10 or so channels to crime drama throughout the ages (double bill of Morse, followed by Midsummer, followed by Taggart, followed by Lewis, followed by Rosemary and Thyme, that’s some seriously samey programming) someone must watch it, having that many channels I can spare a few. But the original 5 channels just seem to churn out the same old guff week after week. It’s not like I’m tuning into BBC 4 every day (only on occasions when I’m feeling particularly intellectual) but I do like being able to watch random American talk shows and documentaries about people being buried alive under piles of their own rubbish. Thank god for the digital age, it came at just the right time. Can you imagine only having the choice between Strictly or X Factor every week?

OK if I hate it so much why do I watch it? It’s kind of like fast food. We all profess to hate it but can’t help but be lured by the aroma of a Big Mac as we’re wandering past and before we know it we’re addicted. I suppose they aren’t going to be getting rid of MacDonald’s anytime soon, so we shouldn’t expect anything less with talent TV. But like MacDonald’s, one occasionally is a nice treat, but have it day in day out and it starts to get cloying, and makes you fat.

I suppose it’s just all part of our greedy nature as a whole. We find something we think we like and feast ourselves on it until we are busting out of our jeans and can’t seem to stop. And the television companies, like the fast food giants, know just how to play us so we keep on consuming. Ooh there’s going to be a “new twist” on X Factor this season (like MacDonald’s limited editions), better watch it to find out what it is.

I mean, come on, even Simon Cowell is bored of it. Going off to the States to churn out his Got Talent franchise, in a feeble attempt to branch out and do something different. Come on Simon, we all know it’s the same flipping thing with the addition of the odd performing blind dog and a kids dance troop or ten.

So it's the usual bizarre mix of creepy old men, gobby teenagers and slightly scary middle aged housewives to weed out, then we can get excited about the real talent, before they are devoured by the industry machine, churn out a couple of predictably pants tracks and eventually fade in obscurity. But that’s another rant entirely. I'm not even going to attempt to avoid it this year, I'm kind of curious as to how things will go in the absence of Simon's cutting remarks. Somehow I don't think Gary Barlow is going to think up as good a put downs, but I'll give him an audition.

Playing: Not just for kids?

I’ve been rereading The Happiness Project for my book club and I’m at the bit where Gretchen is trying to instigate more play in her life.

Playing? As serious, professional, grown up adults? Yep. And we should all be doing more of it in my opinion.

I’ve been thinking about play a lot lately, not least because I still have three weeks of summer holidays left and the kids are starting to get googly eyed with boredom. I want to find things that we all enjoy doing together, not grudgingly dragging them along to the park because I feel that’s what I should enjoy.

Having kids is a great excuse to play but so often it’s the only time adults allow themselves to do it. Grown-ups get so hung up on the idea of value; value for money, value for time. What we spend our precious free time on needs to be valuable, something that needs to be done or at the very least it should be a legitimate recreational activity, and if we actually enjoy it that is just a bonus. But maybe many of us have simply forgotten what we truly enjoy doing.

I said to the man this morning “I’m thinking of giving up my blog. I’m not getting many comments; people aren’t engaging in it, I don’t know if people are enjoying it.” “Hold up,” he said. “You started this blog for YOU, for fun, for an opportunity to write, why are you suddenly getting hung up on other people?” He is right of course. As the months have gone on, and in the process of trying to be a better writer, I had taken the joy out of something I was doing purely for the fun of it. I put a lot of hours into my blog and my grown-up brain was starting to look for some added value, totally forgetting that the value comes in the sheer fun of writing it, if one person reads it and enjoys it, it should be considered a bonus, not a reason to do it. 

The man says that he loved working with cars, until he became a mechanic. That’s probably true for many people and their jobs. But maybe that’s less about not enjoying the work, and more about forgetting why we chose to do something in the first place, because we enjoy it. We’re looking for that value again.

Anyway, back to playing. Watching my kids play totally unconcerned with value inspires me to play myself. They don’t care about getting money or recognition or “getting things done because they need to be”. They don’t even think about it.

As adults many of us play games consoles, do crosswords or Sudoku in our free time. All legitimate play options for adults, they encourage fine motor skills, keep the brains working, some console games could even be considered physical exercise. But one of the things I love is those mosaic sticker books. I haven’t had one since I was a child but recently I have begun to crave the quiet pleasure of neatly sticking little coloured squares into dedicated boxes to create a funky picture. I eventually found one online. My mouse has been hovering over “add to cart” for weeks now, I just can’t seem to justify spending £3 on something that is actually just a “toy” (and not even one for the kids). Why? There is nothing wrong with a 33 year old enjoying sticker mosaics, or colouring in for that matter (as long as it’s with nice pens and on good quality white paper, there is very little fun to be had with broken crayons and scratchy grey paper). What makes Sudoku, crosswords or Xbox any more “legitimate” than mosaic stickers? Why should I care anyway?

If someone had said to me 6 months ago that they were trying to play more I would have said how lucky they were to have time to spend on something so decadent. I think there is a certain amount of martyrdom that comes with being an adult, especially a parent. We all think we should be spending our time ‘working’. Childhood was time for fun, adulthood is time to get serious and stop wasting time.

But playing isn’t wasting time, it’s a serious business. Just ask son number one, he quite often tells me he has to get his playing done, it’s his ‘job’. I’m lucky enough to be working my way into a job that I also consider ‘playing’ and I hope I can retain this sense of fun as my career progresses. In the meantime, my mosaic sticker book has finally found its way into my shopping cart.

“Omnipotent. Oh, you are? I’m Sorry”

In one episode of Friends Ross asks Joey what he would do if he were omnipotent. “Probably kill myself” is Joey’s response, easy misunderstanding to confuse omnipotence with impotence. But I think if I were omnipotent, even though I may not kill myself, I don’t reckon I’d be too happy. Impotence would be a different issue entirely.

So much of life’s pleasure comes from the simple enjoyment of striving for something and getting it. Whether that is having money, a successful career or knitting a blanket for your baby (I started one when son number 2 was a few months old, he is now 2 and I have yet to experience the pleasure of finishing it, but still), I honestly don’t think there would be much pleasure left in life if you could have anything and everything you wanted.

We watched the remake of Arthur the other night (highly recommend if you’re thinking about it) and down on her luck Naomi tries to explain to Arthur the joy of earning success rather than buying it. Arthur has led an incredibly financially privileged life and has never experienced the pride of earning something. He has all the money he could hope for but if it wasn’t for his nanny Hobson, he would have been highly emotionally neglected, and it shows. Money can’t buy happiness, and I’m not sure that power can either.

I recently had a conversation with my friend about what we would do if we won the lottery. We both agreed that winning hundreds of millions of pounds might be fun in the short term but after the initial buzz of buying whatever you wanted wore off what do you do with yourself? What do you do once you’ve given up work, paid off all your (and your families) debts? Wouldn’t life be a bit boring? No, we both agreed, enough to pay off the mortgage, help out friends and family and a bit to charity and we’d we happy.

Aside from having all the money you could dream of, being omnipotent would be far too much responsibility. Having unlimited power to solve all the problems in the world in one fell swoop is quite a hard task if you think about it. Every time I watch the news and wish I wasn’t seeing images of starving children in Africa or wars in the Middle East I wonder, what would I do? I really don’t know. I don’t think I’m clever enough to be omnipotent because I still haven’t come up with an answer. The root cause of all these problems is people, and unless you change people you will never truly change anything. People have the mixed blessing of free will, so they will always do what they want to do despite what I or any other power might do.

The London riots last week have sparked some quite powerful debates about the poverty of some of the people behind them. We are lucky enough to live in one of the most socially mobile nations in the world, if you are unhappy with your lot and are brave and determined you can make that change. Young children are born with the view that anything is possible, and I think it’s sad that most adults grow out of that. Whether or not the cause of the riots was desperation and poverty (yet to be seen in my opinion) no one can deny that some of the most successful people in the Western world came from the most humble or poverty stricken of backgrounds. Just look at Oprah and JK Rowling.

In this country, even if you have the most basic of your needs met you already are omnipotent to an extent. If you’re poor you have the power to make money, if you’re fat you have the power to be thin, if you’re sick many of us are lucky enough to have access to healthcare to get well. What more do we want?

What would you do if you were omnipotent? Would you want to be?

Riot Ranting

Apparently the riots were a protest against the cuts. The man said we have been overpaying for petrol for many years now and you don’t see scores of road users stealing massive tellies from Curries in protest. I am sceptical as to whether or not any of the ‘protesters’ knew what they were ‘protesting’ against, I mean, make your mind up kids, was it the shooting of Mark Duggan or having your youth club shut down? In my opinion, the answer is neither. The very fact that the riots spread to so many different areas of the country just goes to show how bored the ‘yoof’ of today are, pumped up full of pubescent hormones and looking for the next adrenalin hit. They are not content with what they have, because our society values possessions over principles and money over morals.

Maybe the police should have stamped it out the moment it started. But can you blame them after the death of Ian Tomlinson? We were all very quick to criticise them when an innocent man was hurt while they were protecting our country, how could they possibly guarantee that innocent bystanders would not be injured by rubber bullets or dry clean only trainers not ruined by water cannons (and lets face it, there were an awful lot of trainers on the street those nights)?

Being ‘poor’ is a delicate subject, it’s always easy to sit in a position of privilege and judge those who have less than you. But these people give those who are truly poor a bad name. I think it’s pretty strange that the ‘poor’ rioters were walking round in £100 jeans and expensive trainers, and come to think of it, how come they all had Blackberries to organise it in the first place? Are Blackberry’s even available on weekly payment options from Freemans catalogue?

 “There is nothing for young people these days”. Well the truth is, our current ‘yoof’ have more amenities and resources available to them than ever before.

Just take a look at your local library notice board. Groups, helplines, out reach projects, all for young people. I don’t see many “middle class out reach project” or even “wine appreciation society for mothers on the verge of alcoholism” (kind of describes my book club but still) notices, it’s all about the kids. Our parents, or even those of us in our thirties, didn’t have access to half the amenities there are today (the most exciting addition for my generation being the launch of Childline, a service I was fortunate enough not to need except in response to “you’re grounded” “I hate you. I’m gonna call Childline on you”) and you didn’t see us rioting in the streets, helping ourselves to anything we could lay our hands on.

I remember very well how hard it was to be young. Everything is boring (I’d give my back teeth to be bored these days). Hormones are off the chart (I know how that feels, but for different reasons these days) making everyday life uninteresting and you are constantly searching for the next big adrenalin hit, whether a snog behind the bikesheds or pooling your dinner money to buy ten B&H and a bottle of White Lightning at lunch time. So much of the ‘fun’ I had as a child involved being naughty in some way. But I would never, ever have considered doing anything like what has happened this week, bored or not.

Can we blame a lack of discipline? This is the first generation of kids whose parents were not allowed to smack them, is that some kind of coincidence? We all use the naughty step, and hang on Supernanny’s every word, but would our kids be better behaved if they got a good smack every now and then? One father said on the news that he couldn’t control his kid because he wasn’t allowed to tie him to the bed or give him a smack. I kind of see where he’s coming from, what’s he going to do? Put his 16 year old on the naughty step? Ooh I’m scared.

The reason why me and my mates didn’t do anything that naughty was because we knew that repercussions would stretch further than taking a ball out of one jar and putting it in another, or moving one space down on a reward chart. My mum wasn’t a smacker but my Dad was (“just wait till your father gets home!”), in the pull your pants down and smack your bum in the middle of the shopping centre kind of way. And when we  were too old for that, he’d already done the ground work so we understood the look that said: “I WILL pound the crap out of you and if that means taking you to the shopping centre I bloody well will, don’t test me.”

Real Men?

I asked the man recently if he would ever consider a hair transplant. He looked at me as if I had asked him if he wanted to wear a dress; despite bemoaning the demise of his hairline for as long as I can remember it seems as if a hair transplant would be going too far. Most men don’t like to look as if they have tried too hard. The man is very much a blokey man. As a mechanic he comes home grubby and sweaty and frankly there is no vision I like to imagine more than that of him topless, overalls tied round his waist and carrying a tyre, a la Athena poster circa 1989.

The rise of the metrosexual man has been well documented and is now creeping into the lives of ‘normal’ men. Where previously it had been women who were bombarded with images of perfection in the media, men are now starting to get a taste of it and are feeling the pressure to buff, polish and beautify themselves to keep up with current trends. But should men be men? Should plastic surgery, beauty treatments and Botox remain women’s domains?

Men and women’s roles have become more interchangeable in society, so it is inevitable that other lines are becoming blurred. And why shouldn’t men make more of an effort? Us women have been using beauty products and primitive forms of makeup since time began, going so far as to use toxic ingredients to create makeshift face powder and mascara, the danger of blindness clearly outweighed by the thrill of having long eyelashes to bat at potential suitors.

In the last twenty years we have seen a massive growth in the male beauty industry, with male grooming products seeing a rise of 900% in less than 5 years. So many men are clearly jumping on board. But having a neatly trimmed beard and using moisturiser is one thing, wearing guyliner and manscara is a completely different animal.

Ollie from Made in Chelsea is a case in point. He has enviably shiny, swingy hair, fake tan and wears more than a hint of foundation. And he is, for want of a better word, beautiful. I think there is something intriguingly sexy about him but I’m not sure I could relax around a man who is prettier than me. In reality, I like my men to be men, including a satisfyingly rough face and chest rug long enough to twirl round my fingers. If I wanted a smooth chest to stroke and someone to borrow my makeup I would become a lesbian.

I see nothing wrong in men looking after themselves. Moisturiser, body lotion and aftershave show that you care about your skin and smelling nice, I would even go so far as to say a bit of concealer to cover the odd spot wouldn’t detract from a mans innate masculinity.

There is however, a limit, and I think for me that line is with obvious makeup and excess plastic surgery, a little nose job I could handle but shiny foreheads from Botox, implants to increase the size of random body parts or wind tunnel facelifts are out.

But two areas of metrosexuality that I fully support are pedicures and man bags. In my experience a man with nice feet is as rare as the proverbial flying pig. Horny, yellowy toenails and random tufts of hair sprouting from misshapen toes, even my sons have gross feet and they’re only 2 and 4. But it’s nothing that a nice pedicure wouldn’t fix (if only the sons would allow me). And man bags are just good sense. How nice would it be to go out and not hear the dreaded words “can you put this in your bag?”, your tiny beautiful clutch only designed to carry a lipstick, a twenty pound note and a Tampax is now bulging with car keys, an extra mobile and a mans wallet. A man bag would solve all this. They could carry our lipstick and Tampax instead, and of course, their concealer.