If mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy

I’ve been working on my “things I should have read/watched/done/understood by now” list (it’s quite extensive) and I’m reading Little Women on the Kindle app on my phone. I’m a bit late to the whole kindle thing, I prefer to actually hold a book, feel its paper and sniff its pages (nothing kinky, I just like books) but we have to sit with the boys until they fall asleep at night (lest they trash their bedroom and not sleep til the early hours) and I wanted something to do in the dark that was a bit more productive than playing Angry Birds.

So anyway “Marmee” in Little Women, the gentlest, kindest woman you could ever meet, admits to having an anger problem, and says she often needs to disappear for a moment to compose herself. This struck me as pretty inspiring, given that she is the mother of four girls (imagine the hormones in that house) whose husband is away in the forces and she doesn’t even have CBeebies or the Xbox to shut them up when they get bored.

Apart from the screaming rows I had with my mum as a teenager, I’m not a very shouty person. I hate confrontation of any kind and am more likely to sulk or have a panic attack if I’m angry. That all changed when I had kids. Suddenly shouting until I was hoarse became as every day as making a cup of tea.

I don’t like myself when I shout. It doesn’t make me feel any better about the situation, it just makes me, and everyone around me, more stressed. I hate the thought that my kids might look back and remember me snarling at them, and I don’t actually think it makes the slightest difference in their behaviour. It doesn’t even scare them anymore they got so used to it.

So in the last two weeks I have been making a concerted effort not to shout. I have found myself taking an awful lot of deep breaths, shaking with rage and wondering what on earth I was doing this for. But it’s getting easier, I am starting to realise that for me at least, getting angry and shouting was a bit of a habit, and like most habits, it can be broken with a little will power.

Amazingly, the general mood of the entire household has changed. There’s a saying “If mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy” which I never believed before. Living in an all male household, I thought no one even notices Mama let alone gives a crap whether she is happy or not.

But actually, the clues were there all along. I could never understand why the more I got cross, the more the man seemed to get cross too. If I was in a mood, he would instantly be in a mood too. I would get even more angry with him, “For goodness sake, can you not just let me be the pissed off one for once?” which of course didn’t help the situation.

We went to Legoland the other day. Family outings are usually the cause of so much stress that I have to take rescue remedy before I even get up. But while the old me would have been shouting and screaming, stressing and straining, and the man mirroring my behaviour, the new me was calm and collected, we left later than planned, the house still in a bit of a mess but the difference was clearly marked, everyone was happy and excited.

I have noticed a lot less shouting from the boys too. Everyone seems to be happier. But the biggest, most exciting change is in how I feel. I am getting better and better at keeping calm, more practised in the art of not getting angry, and I genuinely feel like I am much nicer to be around. The kids punishments are more conscious and have better results and I don’t wake up still feeling the remnants of yesterdays stress on my shoulders.

Whoever said you should let all your feelings come out had obviously never read Little Women. Maybe bottling things up is not good for you, but having a think about why you’re feeling the way you do and deciding whether or not it’s the most productive way to be, and becoming practised in the art of putting on a happy face even in times of stress is just good sense, because it not only makes yourself feel better, it makes others happy too. OK, having the mood of the entire family is just another responsibility for poor old mama to shoulder, but if Marmee can do it, so can I. 

Be Prepared

It’s 9am on Sunday morning and I have just realised in a panic that I am not going to be able to do my blog tomorrow, because later today we are going visiting my cousin and won’t be returning until tomorrow evening. Until now, come rain or shine, hell or highwater, I have managed to get out a blog on Monday and Friday and I won’t let that change now.

If I was better prepared I would have a blog post already done and dusted and tucked away all ready to pull on out occasions like these. But as we all know I’m not organised, at all.

I love the whole “be prepared” concept. I loved it when I was a Brownie and had to carry a safety pin in my brown leather purse strapped to a waist belt. I never ever needed that safety pin but the lesson stays with me and I still carry a safety pin in my handbag (again, I’ve never needed it, I’m not quite sure what I would need it for, but it gives me comfort knowing it’s there).

My mum takes being prepared to a whole new level. Her handbag is straight out of Mary Poppins. She has her purse plus an emergency purse, and in the days when we went on day trips a lot she would always carry her French purse too. Just in case while in Sainsburys she suddenly decided on an impromptu trip across the Channel and needed some Francs to get some cheap wine or baccy. Carrying three purses is quite a feat of being prepared. She used to carry a small kitchen knife as well as a tin opener, so she was ready when called upon to rustle up a tin of baked beans or slice a nectarine when out and about. Times have changed though, and she would probably be arrested if discovered carrying her innocent but potentially deadly kitchen implements, so she no longer does.

When you have kids being prepared becomes a bit of an art form. Tissues, wipes and raisins are absolute essentials, whether you are leaving the house for 5 minutes or five hours. Many a night out with my mates I have found myself trying to cram raisins into my tiny sparkly purse before I remember that as an adult going out on the lash I probably won’t need them, unless the kebab house is shut.

The man had a bit of a situation yesterday when he took the kids out for a couple of hours. The dudes are 5 and 2 now so we have recently stopped carrying a spare set of clothes for anyone, as we never seemed to need them. Big mistake. While sitting in MacDonalds happily eating his Happy Meal and flirting with some young pretty girls, son number 2 had a toilet situation which, according the man’s account, resembled an erupting volcano, as bright green poo rose from his waistband like expanding foam. It didn’t stop until it reached his armpits, and having no spare clothes, the man has to do his best clean up job in the toilet. Son number two had to spend the rest of the outing in nappy, socks and a hoody, while the man valiantly continued his errands, albeit slightly traumatised. Needless to say we will go back to carrying a spare set of clothing from now on.

But there has to be a limit. Any mum (or dad) knows the importance of raisins (or some form of snack), baby wipes and maybe a nappy. But how can you predict a Vesuvius nappy? Over the years I have been known to carry the following in the name of being prepared: plasters, hairbands and brush (both my boys have long hair), up to 6 nappies for a two hour outing, small packets of tissues, 2 changes of clothing, Calpol sachets (I always, ALWAYS have paracetamol and Imodium in my handbag, my mother carries the contents of a small chemist in hers), a colouring book and pens, a Lego figure or entire Lego Lightning McQueen, drink, an emergency drink, wellies in summer, toilet roll, M&S Percy Pigs (bribe material), a remote control (both babies liked to press buttons) and a Thomas the Tank Engine toilet seat. Looking at the list now I am panicking slightly that I ever risked leaving the house without any of that stuff.

The thing with being prepared is you can think you are going over the top until the moment when something happens and you actually need that thing you took out of your bag at the last minute. You can guarantee that there will be a smug mum saying “I ALWAYS carry a spare set of clothing for Aloysius” when you are desperately trying to wipe baby poo with a napkin and dry trousers in a public toilet with a hand dryer.

So I now need to get packed for our trip away. And I must resist the urge to be over prepared. My cousin has a child too so I won’t need to take too much, we’re only going for one night. 4 changes of clothes for each child should do the trick. And I’d better take the Thomas toilet seat. And plenty of safety pins.

Balancing Act

Before having kids the man and I said that we would never become those parents who let their kids take over their lives. We would have at least one date night a week, go on regular romantic mini breaks and would never lose sight of who we are as people.

6 years later, with Shrek playing on the PC and Cbeebies on the TV beside it in one room (son number 2 inches away from the screen flicking his head back and forth, ever said to your kid “you can’t watch two things at once!”? Well, you’re wrong) and Xbox Lego Harry Potter taking a battering in the other, the man and me hole up in our tiny kitchen (the only area where toys are not allowed, although as I write this I can see a number of infringements just from where I’m sitting) and I am suddenly reminded of our promise. How is it that we have allowed the kids to take over our world and lost the balance between being parents and being people?

The more I think of it the more I realise that balance is key in pretty much every single area of our lives. And most of us struggle to find it.

Our oven has gone haywire this week, it started a month ago when Expensive Cat knocked a speaker down off the fridge freezer and smashed two radiant rings of the ceramic hob. After we discovered the £300 excess on our home insurance we patched it up with a bit of cardboard box, and sellotaped the knobs of the affected rings down. But a month on, the oven bit of it now isn’t working properly either. Sometimes it will turn on and others it won’t, a problem when you’ve just defrosted a chicken ready for roasting, can’t exactly stick it in the microwave.

So we have spent the last week trying to work out how on earth we will manage to afford a new oven and bemoaning that as a result of said new oven, our promised family holiday (which was to be the first in 5 years) and romantic mini break (first time ever) next year may not happen. On the other hand, some very dear friends of ours are getting married and details of stag and hen weekends have been released. While initial reaction is to RSVP in the affirmative instantly (they are our friends, it’s an important time for them after all, we’ll find the money), on reflection we need to think about finding a balance. We are scraping together the money for the oven (and holiday), yet not even flinching at going on hen and stag weekends which will cost almost as much. We need to find some kind of balance between spending money on kitchen appliances and leisure breaks for the family, and being there for our friends.

I don’t think I will ever find a balance between binging on chocolate and dieting, being lazy and obsessively working out. The key is a healthy, balanced diet, and regular exercise with a balance between cardio and strength training, you hear it all the time. But even though I seem to comfortably maintain my weight with my “good during the week, naughty at weekends” philosophy, I don’t feel as if it’s particularly balanced. Wouldn’t a balanced person find a happy medium between “good” and “naughty”?

If my life were a set of scales I feel like it would be frantically swinging up at one side and down at the other, I just can’t get my scales to balance in the middle.

I have been trying to come up with a conclusion to this blog for ages. Usually I can say how I think I could find a balance, offer some kind of pearl of wisdom as to how I think other people do it. But I honestly don’t think there is any such thing, no one has a perfect balance because we all have a finite amount of money and time, and constantly shifting priorities.

Maybe at the moment our kids are taking over our house and we’re feeling the weight of the scales being tipped heavily in their direction, and maybe those scales are also leaning closer to having safe kitchen appliances and being able to roast a chicken rather than holidays and hen do’s, but there will come a time when the scales tip back the other way. I hope so because I want to reclaim my sitting room, watch something other than Shrek and actually be able to afford a flipping romantic mini break for the first time in my life.

Miss/Mrs/Ms? Just say Ma'am

I was having some problems getting into my PayPal account the other day, so I reluctantly phoned them to try and get it sorted.

Before I could speak to an actual human being I had to get through the dreaded talking menus (“Do you need to speak to an operator?” “yes!” “Did you say… No?” “No, I said y…e…s.” “I heard… No. Is that correct?” “No!” “Did you say… No?”), I usually stay quiet not only out of principle but inability to get the damn thing to understand me. I got through the first few levels of menu with no problem; it then said “Please state your issue”. I was so thrown by having to describe my problem in a sentence that an inanimate object would understand that I got quite muddled up “I can’t log into Facebook… no eBay… no I mean PAYPAL, for Christ sake you’re not going to understand that are you?” I then had an agonising 10 seconds of Flight of the Bumblebee (seriously, could they have chosen a more infuriating piece of music?) before I was transferred to a lovely American man who said “The computer says you can’t log into your PayPal account, is that correct Ma’am?” So the computer understood me after all, that’s pretty impressive.

Thumbs up to PayPal because not only was my problem dealt with swiftly but I found the repeated use of the word “Ma’am” quite refreshing. Too many companies these days insist on first name basis, which I utterly despise. If you don’t know me, and are taking my money, please find the most respectful way of addressing me, at least by second name. “Ma’am” is a nice way to avoid wading through the Mrs, Ms., Miss minefield.

A couple of years ago the European Parliament caused outrage when it requested all staff to use Ms. in place of Miss and Mrs. People were highly offended by being forced to use Ms., I don’t blame them, being forced to precede your name with such a horrid sounding syllable would piss me off too.

When we bought our apartment in Ibiza, the deeds referred to the man as ‘Don’ and me as ‘Doña’. It is a basic polite form. The man took great pleasure in the fact that he was ‘The Don’. I just liked that I didn’t have to address whether I was married, unmarried, divorced or whatever anytime I filled out a form.

It’s alright for men. They have it easy. They start off as Master, then at age 16 (or sometimes 18) it’s automatically Mr. Their marital status doesn’t even come into it, it’s a far more dignified process.

I don’t understand why it is different for women. Years ago, Mrs and Miss worked in the same way as Mr and Master. It was an age thing. Derived from the term Mistress, (nothing to do with the current more provocative meaning) Mrs denoted the woman of the household, Miss was the daughter.

I have stubbornly hung onto the title “Miss” for my entire adult life. I’m not married, I don’t plan to be, so why change it? But now I am well into my thirties I would like a more distinguished title, one that doesn’t make me sound like a wrinkly old spinster from a Charlotte Bronte novel.

I hate the word Ms with a passion. Not only does it sound horrid (Mzzzzzz) but it has weird connotations. They may as well put the dot in the middle and replace it with a question mark because Ms automatically makes people suspicious, is she a Mrs or a Miss? Why is she using Ms.?

If I could call myself Mrs I could also call the man “my husband” and be done with it. Without having to choose between “my boyfriend” (sounds like we’ve been together 2 weeks) or “my partner” (is her partner male or female?).

Anyway. I’m not planning on getting married any time soon, although I am the ‘mistress’ of the house. It’s all so flipping complicated. So I kind of get where they were going when then brought out this Ms thing. I just wish they had come up with a word that didn’t make me sound like a defective bumblebee.

Of course, someone (take note the man) could always buy me a nice title like “Lady” for Christmas. That would be far more befitting of my stature.

Who's That Girl?

I got a few boxes of my stuff down from my mums loft last weekend. I still have so much stuff (crap) up there that I have stored over the years and I thought it was time to start transferring it now that I’ve got a loft of my own.

The boxes have sat untouched for ten years. Countless folders stuffed full of letters from friends and family, my University coursework (a concrete reminder that I was clever once, before the fug of motherhood and years of pickling my brain in alcohol set in), a programme from a Chippendales show I went to (seriously, the Chippendales???!!!), Reading Festival programmes, the obligatory Boyfriends Box, an envelope of things from my very early childhood including a home typed by me certificate of adoption for my Cabbage Patch Kid (all my friends CPK’s came with a certificate, mine didn’t which is highly suspicious, maybe my CPK was illegitimate?), random collections of giraffes and Lion King memorabilia, and a huge scrap book of all my Kylie and Jason clippings. Yes I know, how sad.

Looking through the boxes has been a very strange and fascinating journey. All this stuff doesn’t even feel like it belongs to me. The owner is familiar, maybe someone I might have met before but can’t quite place.

The truth is I’m not that person anymore, I don’t feel like I ever was. It makes me squirm to think of some of the things I did and said, particularly in my terror years age 13-21 (when I thankfully met the man and everything seemed to slot into place). Who was that provocative, loud vixen in platform trainers (still can’t get over that one, I blame the Spice Girls) who used to occupy my body?

I now know, with the benefit of hindsight, that it wasn’t me at all. She was just a child trying to make sense of the world, work out who she was, someone actually very self conscious and anxious, not that you would have known it at the time. I was trying on different coats for size until I found one that fits. And I think that’s what growing up is, we’re all trying on different coats until we find one that fits us perfectly and we can become comfortable in our own skin.

It’s a tricky business, piecing together which parts actually were me, and which were trial runs. Chippendales concert: not me, Reading Festival programmes: me, Uni coursework: me (thankfully), random collections: not me, typing up my own certificate of adoption for my Cabbage Patch Kid: erm, well that does sound like something I would do.

So now that I’ve reacquainted myself with this person what do I do now? Do I keep her or throw her away?

When I told big bro yesterday that I had found my Uni coursework, he said “My coursework made no sense to me, I binned it and kept the text books.” My text books were the first thing to go, I can’t imagine throwing my work away, it really is a part of me.

We all have to decide what, if any, reminders of our old selves we want to hang on to. The hardcore clutter experts say you should keep nothing that isn’t highly useful, highly practical or seriously sentimental. I don’t consider myself particularly sentimental and a lot of this stuff just makes me cringe. But despite the fact that most of it represents a person that I don’t even recognise, I won’t throw her away. I’ll put her back in my loft along with the other ill-fitting discarded coats from the years. To be got out and remembered but never worn again.

This Is What The Fuss Is Really About

Since October 5^th all I seem to hear and see everywhere is Steve Jobs. He keeps cropping up in the news, blogs (!) and internet forums. All I knew about him was he had something to do with Apple and he died. What was all the fuss about? I didn’t understand why his death seemed almost as newsworthy as Princess Di’s.

Last night while waiting for the man to watch the Grand Prix so I could catch up on X Factor, I was aimlessly surfing, and again Steve Jobs kept cropping up. He must have been someone pretty important. Clearly I should know more about him.

Steve Jobs was adopted into a working class family and had a fairly normal upbringing. He dropped out of University after one semester, fearing that he was draining his family’s finances, returning Coke bottles to make up his food money and eating at a local charity food scheme.

From these humble beginnings, Jobs carved out a hugely influential and successful career in the computer industry, founding Apple with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne, then being fired and branching out into graphics, by purchasing Pixar which went on to create highly successful animated films with Disney.

Jobs then returned to Apple after his computer company NeXT was bought by Apple. They went on to create the iPod, iPhone and iPad. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Regardless of whether or not Jobs invented these products (or whether it was some faceless employee of Apple) no one can deny the impact Steve Jobs had on our daily life. I don’t use Apple products, but you can’t exactly miss them. That’s pretty impressive for a company created in his parents garage.

But I don’t think it’s so much the creation of these (some might say life changing) products that has made the life of Steve Jobs such a newsworthy story. The truth is, he is the perfect example of someone who just wouldn’t give up. He had a dream, a pretty big one, and he didn’t let hiccoughs along the way stop him from getting things done. For me, a self confessed self help addict, who has read countless books about how success is a state of mind, it’s more about how you think than what you do, Steve Jobs is the perfect antithesis of all that. Yes he dreamed, yes he thought, but he didn’t let that thinking get in the way of actually doing.

So many of us say we can’t do this until we have got that, waiting for that moment in the future when everything falls into place and we can start doing things. We think that one day we will be thin, be rich, have a qualification, have more time, but what if we never do? What a waste of a life sitting around waiting to be happy. Steve Jobs didn’t let a lack of qualifications or money stop him from founding Apple, he just got on with it. I firmly believe that most of the things that we’re waiting for are probably just excuses for being too scared or not believing in ourselves.

Too many of us worry about what people think of us, what people might say. Steve Jobs did not listen to people who thought he couldn’t do it. Even when he was fired from the very company he created. He just quietly went about proving them wrong. He didn’t listen when people said the world had PC’s they didn’t need another computer system. He had the courage to believe he knew what people needed and wanted before they knew themselves. He fully and unquestionably believed in himself, and this to me, is what makes him so inspiring.

Steve Jobs isn’t the only influential entrepreneur to die at a young age, or the only successful person to come from an unspectacular background, but he was a pretty fascinating person who leaves behind a very inspiring legacy.

From someone who I had barely heard of, to someone who has impacted my thinking, and my doing, in less than a week. Fair play to you, Steve Jobs.

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” – Steve Jobs, Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Autumn: Take it or Leaf It (See what I did there?)

Take it: Hearty food. Shepherds pies, stews, warming soups.

Leaf it: Spending hours in the kitchen, sweating over vats of bubbling stew, soup and various mince dishes, only for kids to say they wanted chicken nuggets.

Take it: The morning school run. Bracing fresh air, ruddy pink cheeks on the kids, laughing and kicking fallen leaves.

Leaf it: The morning school run. Imminent threat of being knocked out by a prickly conker falling from trees above. Child kicking stealth dog turd hiding under said fallen leaves.

Take it: Yay! Get out the sandals, we’re having an Indian Summer!

Leaf it: Get out the sandals, we’re having an Indian Summer. Put away the sandals, it’s flipping freezing. Get out the sandals, put them away, get out the sandals… for goodness sake, I just want to wear my trainers.

Take it: English apples, pears, blackberries… all the joy of natures bounty.

Leaf it: Natures bounty. Fruit bowl full of wizened apples and glut of pears as hard as bowling balls. Feeling guilty and cross at all the rotten apples littering the garden and getting trodden through the house.

Take it: Christmas is coming!

Leaf it: Oh shit. Christmas is coming. Have mini panic attack in Pound Shop at sight of Advent Calendars, come home have more serious panic attack at distinct lack of stamps in Tesco saving stamp booklet.

Take it: Knowing, without a shadow of a doubt, that I am not going to go out in public wearing a bikini anytime soon therefore can relax the diet and exercise routine.

Leaf it: The constant gnawing feeling that underneath extra layers of clothes, an extra layer of fat is forming. Plus the inevitably rubbish feeling that comes with another day passing without working out, and mixed feelings of enjoyment/resentment/guilt about that extra serving of crumble and custard.

Take it: Son number one looking especially cute in his brand new school uniform.

Leaf it: Son number one returning from school with school uniform covered in grass stains and repeatedly having to wash it. Realisation that “no iron” only valid when washed and line dried, not tumble dried to a crispy ball because of changeable weather. When I was a kid we wore the same skirt/trousers for a week. My mum had it easy.

Take it: Gusty winds blowing outside and feeling cosy and warm inside.

Leaf it: Battling gusty winds with the buggy, screaming child freaked out by waterproof bubble, sweating in a rain coat bought online, described as olive green only to arrive neon lime coloured, coming home to find hair not only blown out of neat ponytail but also full of static from damn lime coloured raincoat.

Take it: Not being attacked by wasps and bees when eating outside.

Leaf it: Getting complacent that danger of wasps and bees has now passed, finding two hornets in our bedroom ready to savage us as we sleep. Not eating outside because it’s flipping freezing.

Take it: The excitement of getting dressed up in hats and scarves for the rare treat of bonfire/fireworks night.

Leaf it: Fireworks starting in September and last through till January.

Take it:  Halloween, carving pumpkins, fancy dress parties, cute kids dressed up trick or treating at our door.

Leaf it: Having to hand out sweets to young adults not even bothered to dress up (unless you count a hoody and flesh tunnel) under the guise of trick or treating. Cheeky gits.

Take it: Winter coats, hats, scarves, a whole new wardrobe in fact.

Leaf it: The never ending quest for the perfect Winter coat, resulting in fifteen discarded specimens which aren’t quite right but cost hundreds of pounds over the years so can’t justify sending to charity shop, brought down from loft in October and returned in April, another year unworn and another few added to collection.

Take it: Spending every evening in front of the telly with a blanket over knees, drinking Ovaltine instead of Pinot Grigio, wearing slipper socks instead of sexy cork wedges.

Leaf it: Feeling like should really not enjoy slipper socks and Ovaltine quite so much.

What are your Autumn takes and leaves?

Tax the Fat?

Denmark has just introduced the worlds first “fat tax”. They are now imposing an extra cost on food that contains more than 2.3% saturated fat. But could a fat tax like the one in Denmark be the answer to the UK obesity epidemic, or would it just line the pockets of the government?

I have a complex relationship with food. Like many women I have battled with my weight at various times in my life. I’ve been fat, I’ve been thin, I’ve been pregnant… I’ve now reached a point where I’m happy and find it fairly easy to maintain, mainly because I make a point to be more active. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t sometimes like to eat an entire share pack of Maltesers in one sitting (I am a woman after all). Would I think twice if that pack of Maltesers was twice the price?

Yes, I probably would. But I don’t see why I should pay more for my Maltesers which I see as a treat, just to cover the extra costs generated by people who choose to eat Maltesers for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The trouble with taxing food is it costs everyone extra. Smokers pay for their NHS treatment through ridiculously high taxes, as do drinkers. And numbers of smokers and drinkers have decreased in line with higher taxes. I asked the man what he thought, and he reckons people over a certain BMI should have to pay extra council tax. I think targeting those people who are in the morbidly obese weight range, who consistently refuse any attempt to lose weight should be the people that are paying. They are the ones that cost us money. Especially with the number of gastric bands they are now doling out on the NHS. Maybe if people who were in the morbidly obese range were made to pay extra for the privilege, they would think twice before having that extra chocolate bar.

They have made great progress by educating people about the dangers of smoking and drinking, and supporting people to give up. Why can’t they do the same with those struggling to lose weight? When I asked my doctor to help me lose weight I was handed some printed sheets about calories and activity and told to get on with it. I didn’t feel half the level of support some of my friends have got when asking for help to give up smoking. It’s not as if one day you just wake up at 30 stone, maybe if these people had more support at 15 stone, they wouldn’t have got to that point in the first place.

Half the problem is there are just too many excuses not to lose weight, and the number one reason? Not enough time. Lots of people simply don’t have time to think about food, we’re too busy and we need things to be quick. But many people just aren’t aware that you can cook a cheap, family dinner for in half the time than it takes to cook a ready meal in the oven. And we are too busy to learn.

I also hate this new “healthy” obsession. Apparently butter is not healthy, low fat margarine is. But most of the so-called “healthy” or low-fat stuff barely even resembles food. Didn’t they find that the transfats found in so called healthier than butter margarine was a carcinogen? They took them out and replaced them with what? Water? Studies have also shown that the calcium found in full fat dairy products actually aids weight loss. Fat free yoghurts are full of artificial sweeteners and flavourings to make them taste nice, but adding fruit or even jam to plain yoghurt is cheaper and much tastier and yes, less calories too. Believe me I know, I am a calorie geek. But I think the “healthy” label is dangerous, eat too much of anything and it will make you fat.

Why are there only two ends of the scale, healthy or fattening? What about the normal food our parents grew up on?

Something needs to be done to curb the rise of the morbidly obese, but I don’t think taxing food is the answer. People need to be given more support and education on how to live a balanced, healthy life. Including healthy food, plenty of exercise and the odd share pack of Maltesers, because we all deserve a treat every now and again.

They don't have a dream

From what I remember, school careers guidance consisted of a useless interview with a council careers officer, a grumpy woman with massive hair and unfortunate blue eye shadow, who hadn’t even met any of us before. Big hair would suggest the boys go into the army, the girls into hairdressing and those stubborn enough to refuse her first option were encouraged to go into accountancy (I was a stubborn one). Has anything changed?

There has been a lot about university fees in the news these last few years, as the cost of a degree is set to rise to a staggering £27,000. Much opinion about students getting a free ride, and whether or not they should have to pay fees and have access to grants and loans is dominating already pretty depressing news headlines.

But to me, the deeper issue is that kids are often coming out of University having completed a degree they don’t care about, and wasted not only their time and money but the chance to follow their dreams.

I followed school with a wasted 2 years of A-levels (and not a bean of careers guidance offered there) followed by 2 years of working in an office. I knew it wasn’t what I wanted and needed help. After some serious foot stamping I managed to procure a fairly useless appointment with the same big haired blue eyeshadowed lady I had seen 4 years previously, who told me to go travelling. I went to University after doing evening classes. But even at Uni, I received no careers guidance and my degree went virtually unused. Ten years later, having done nothing with my degree, I am now studying again, this time not the skill of writing but how to actually make a career out of it.

The man says he never had a dream, never had a passion for a career and didn’t know what he wanted to do with his life. Many of my peers are only now discovering their true vocation and starting to carve out careers that not only bring in the money they need but also the satisfaction of doing something they love.

“They” have got it all wrong. Stop focussing on exam results, qualifications and the three R’s, go back even further than that and start teaching kids how to form ambition and dreams. Teach them to get to know themselves so they can follow a career that they are passionate about and find rewarding. Give them the confidence they need to make these decisions and the bravery to change their minds if something isn’t working.

Maybe this is the job of the parents. But how can we as parents encourage dreams and ambition in our children if we don’t have any ourselves? Like all education, it should be a partnership between parents and the education system to give those who need support the skills they need.

The outlook seems bleak to even the cleverest and brightest of kids. They hear nothing but unemployment, war, recession, cancer, obesity, STD’s, terrorism… it’s a scary world out there. Is it any wonder that many of them look for nothing more than money and fame, which seem, on the surface at least, to give them some protection against the miserable future that faces them? Teach these kids that they have to power to change the world, and they might just do it.

We need to help kids nurture their dreams, and give them the skills to really understand what kind of career would suit them. There’s no point in people coming out of university with all this debt if they are not going to get a job they enjoy, and there is no point in people giving up education simply because they want to earn some money, sentencing themselves to a lifetime in a job they eventually despise.

Higher education services people who like to learn, and there are just as many people who get more out of learning through doing things, but there needs to be more help for those who just don’t know. Who don’t know what they want to learn, let alone how.

Maybe this would redress the balance between those who are going to Uni for the right reasons, and those just there for the crack. And maybe this would create a better society of employed rather than unemployed and fulfilled not disillusioned.

Get rid of the useless degrees in areas that are not going to lead to a solid career, and make those degrees that are available more relevant and useful. But most importantly, make quality careers guidance freely available to all. Maybe then Big Hair would have found a more suitable profession, instead of being paid to wrongly steer the paths of impressionable youngsters.

How Do They Do That?

Son number one has recently discovered the concept of jokes, although he doesn’t quite understand it. He just takes a bunch of random words, puts them into a sentence and labels it a ‘joke’. “What did the tree say to the poopy?” “Um, I dunno.” “DOG POOPY!” Cue hysterical laughter. Anything involving poo, wee, farts and bums is the comedy flavour of the month.

It was after one of these ‘jokes’ that I decided it was time to introduce him to knock knock jokes, so he at least had a few he could pull out with other people, avoiding the embarrassment of being told his jokes weren’t technically jokes and also trying to quell his tendency to shout the punchline “POOPY!” at the top of his lungs while going round the supermarket.

“I’m going to teach you a proper joke, it’s really funny, OK?”

“Ok.”

“Right, I say “knock knock”, you say “who’s there”? Ok? Ready?”

“Ready.”

“Knock knock.”

“Knock knock.”

“No you say “who’s there?” OK, ready?”

“Ok.”

“Knock knock.”

“Come in.”

“NO! You say “who’s there?” Right, knock, knock.”

“It’s me.”

“You’re really not getting this are you? You say “who’s there”? Ok? Knock Knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Doctor.”

“Um, come in?” Even once we managed to get the joke right he is far too young to even know who Doctor Who is so it was wasted on him and we were back to the “what did the car say to the road?” “poopy poopy brum brum” school of comedy.

Son number two is at that really frustrating age where he’s got lots to say but can’t quite get past the babbling stage. He makes his feelings known through a system of babbling, pointing and patting us on the arm. He has a complicated rule process that everyone must follow. For instance, no work clothes or apron at the dinner table. If I sit down in my apron he won’t eat any dinner until I’ve taken it off, and god forbid if the man sits down in his dirty work t-shirt, apparently it is much less rude of Daddy to sit bare chested and half naked at the dinner table.

He also doesn’t like eating dinner while wearing shoes, likes to watch Toy Story 3 from start to finish at least 5 times a day, and he doesn’t like it when people wear glasses when they don’t need to (Nana is only allowed to wear glasses for reading, nothing else).

He is amused by the strangest things. I spent twenty minutes at the saving stamp machine in Tesco this morning because he found it highly entertaining that it kept rejecting my pound coin. Each time I put the coin in and it rolled out underneath, he would cackle hysterically, red faced, eyes watering. I ask you, what exactly is funny about that? I kept doing it because it was an extra few minutes of not being at home watching Toy Story.

The kids woke me up at 4am today and told me it was morning. I (as usual) was half way to the bathroom to brush my teeth when I realised it was still pitch dark outside and they were at least 2 hours too early. So once safely back in their room, I decided to plug our fan in to drown out the noise of them sorting through Duplo (why kids have to do that in the middle of the night is something I will never understand). As I was fumbling around in the dark on the mans side of the bed trying to find the plug, the man, half asleep and thinking I was one of the kids fiddling with his stuff (this happens often) growled “Leave it”. “It’s just me,” I said “Oh ok” he said, back to his normal voice. But being on the receiving end of that growled “leave it” was not nice, and I realised I speak in that growly (or shouty) voice to my kids hundreds of times a day. They are great kids, but I seem to spend my entire life shouting and being stressed with them. I really need to start enjoying them more. No more shouting, I said to myself.

When I did get up at 7am, to discover they hadn’t actually gone back to sleep but had spent the last few hours trashing their bedroom, son number two didn’t stop whining and crying (because he was tired, surprisingly) and son number one insisted on eating three weetabix flake by flake (still in his pyjamas ten minutes before we had to leave for school), so despite my resolution I was red faced and screaming within minutes of waking up.

I don’t know how kids manage it, no one else in the world has the ability to irritate us and make us cross like they do. But they also have the ability to make us laugh like no one else does. I mean come on, ‘dog poopy’? That’s pretty funny.