Time for a revolution

Fore-foreword: after the horrific attack on David Amess, I decided not to immediately publish this post. It seemed like a time to reflect on what I was writing, and whether the level of anger I feel towards our government is something that it's acceptable to post online. I have a very, very small readership, most of whom I know personally, so I hardly think I'll be inciting acts of violence. But on the other hand, I am contributing to a wider malaise of rage and intolerance, and maybe I shouldn't be. But what is it that I'm intolerant of? Not race, or gender, or sexuality, or religion, or age, or ethnicity, or nationality. I am intolerant of hypocrisy, of a cavalier attitude to facts, of lying, of greed, of cruelty, of lack of empathy. And honestly, I don't want to become tolerant of those things. I don't want to sit back and stop caring. So I stay angry.

Foreword: I found a draft of a post I started writing in November 2020. At the time it all got a bit rabid and then petered out and I never quite finished it. Nearly a year later, and not much seems to have changed within my opinions. So to maintain my eco-credentials, I'm just going to recycle it with a few updates that take account of the passage of time. For the sake of historical accuracy, I'm going to make those edits obvious.

I'll start today with an an observation and a warning.

My observation is that it's quite apparent that in the dark and troubling times* we're living in, people are looking for positivity wherever they can find it, even if that's in random whimsical blogposts by some woman they once met outside the school gates. In the past, when looking at the statistics from my blog posts, I consistently had a higher readership for my political rants and introspective anxiety-bleats than anything else I wrote. If I ever produced anything light and fluffy, it was generally met with a bit of a "meh" response. Now, Last year, however, my ten days of positivity each garnered twice as many page views as my grumbles about the shit-weasels governing the country. So, perhaps I should try and stick to some more positive posts - give the people what they want eh? 

And now for the warning:

This post is going to be absolutely rammed full of expletives. I shall curse, swear and profane profusely. If you think this is an impoverished use of language that reveals a lack of imagination and creativity, or if you're just plain offended, tough. Piss off and read about kittens instead.

Back on track...

I cannot write positively just for the sake of it. I'm not positive all the time, and even writing 10 days worth of good cheer was seriously difficult. There were a couple of days I dreaded having to stick to my self-induced schedule. 

I've had enough. I've fucking had it. I'm pissed off. I hate everything about the way the world is. I hate our lying, conniving, self-serving, contemptible shits of politicians. I despise every fucking Brexit-supporting moron who thought "taking back control" was such a fucking good idea they chose to condemn us to becoming a pariah floating in the North Sea. There was never any positive outcome to Brexit. Never. Every sodding thing I wrote about before the referendum was right. I'm not saying I'm some kind of genius. Far from it. I'm pointing out it was blindingly fucking obvious that leaving the EU was the most half-arsed, blinkered, navel-gazing, dim-witted thing we could possibly do, and that it absolutely didn't take a genius to spot that. And if the fact that it was a stupid idea didn't put you off, the fact that the campaign to leave was led by the biggest bunch of lying, power-crazed, wealth-obsessed shit-gibbons this country has ever seen should have been a bit of a clue.

But never mind Brexit, eh? Not while we've got over 500 100 people a day dying of a pandemic (again), while the Brexit-cock-wombles' friends are lining their pockets and failing to answer questions before a Select Committee. How many billions have we spaffed** up the wall on contracts for nothing, or PR campaigns, or "consultants"? How many more people have to die while our government refuses to learn any lessons from the first 50,000 160,000 dead? What the fuck is wrong with these people? Is anyone actually able to stomach listening to Johnson's bullshit waffling at his press conferences everywhere he goes. Waving his arms around, randomly clenching his fist, burbling pointless, frequently military, analogies. Why the fuck did anyone vote for this scum? THIS IS YOUR FAULT.

I'm just so fucking angry with everything. I'm trapped, and fed up, and powerless and it's all just so bloody exhausting. We have a government of incompetent, ill-informed, immoral lickspittles, who kowtow to a stupid, narcissistic, man-baby whose expensive education has left him with nothing more than a veneer of pseudo-intelligence and the mistaken conviction that he is entitled to rule. A man who is incapable of listening, learning, understanding, empathising or indeed leading. A man who escapes on holiday to his billionaire-friends' homes as often as possible, apparently oblivious to the fact that his presence or absence has absolutely no impact on the efficiency or effectiveness of the governance of the country. A man who has no strategy, forethought, policy or direction beyond feathering his own nest and being patted on the back. A man who will say or do absolutely anything for a cheap laugh or a round of applause, but who will renege on every promise he's ever made, personally or professionally.

And this personality cult that's masquerading as a political party has an overwhelming majority in the House of Commons. A majority that they're busy trying to make unassailable by changing voting laws, banning protests and limiting freedoms. A majority that is baked-in to our antiquated FPTP voting system. A majority that is still, gobsmackingly, approved of by some 40% of the voting public. 

Where the hell do we go from here? Where are the decent Tories who will stop this nonsense? Are there any? Because it's only Tories who can currently do anything about this fiasco of a corrupt, incompetent government. 

And then it's time for a revolution, and the creation of a mature democracy fit for the 21st century. Who's with me?

* A year on, and a question for the reader - are times more or less dark and troubling now, or is it much the same?

** For those who are not followers of the Parliamentary sketch-writer John Crace, he habitually refers to Johnson as "spaffer" after his obscene complaint that money spent pursuing historic cases of child sex abuse was being "spaffed up the wall". He later attempted to claim he was not aware that the term was synonymous with ejaculation. He is an utter, irredeemable shit.

Imposter Syndrome (or just an Imposter)

I have previously mentioned Imposter Syndrome as it applies to my work as a physicist.  On that happy occasion, I was revelling, slightly, at discovering that I perhaps wasn't as shit as I'd always thought I was. Since I'm a glutton for punishment, it was not enough to finally feel confident and secure in my abilities, so I have found new and interesting ways to feel useless.

It is unlikely to have escaped anyone's notice that I am reasonably firmly embedded in LittleBear's grassroots football club. I have not gone into a great deal of depth here about the degree to which I am embedded, or how and why. As with many things in my life, the full story is too much someone else's story for me to be entirely comfortable writing about, so it remains just "one of those things". However, suffice to say that, while I started out four years ago helping with the administrative side of running LittleBear's team, I'm now the manager. I'm a qualified FA Level One coach. I run training sessions, with the original manager assisting me*. I run match days, planning team-sheets and line-ups, making substitutions, encouraging, coaching and supporting the boys**. I'm the First Aider. I'm the administrator. I'm the accountant. 

Some of those roles I take in my stride. Managing a bank account is not beyond the wit of PhysicsBear. Applying an occasional ice-pack is quite do-able. And despite a certain amount of swearing, I even survive the vagaries of fighting with the tentacles of the FA websites to undertake the arcane aspects of team management. But the training, the teaching, the coaching, the football?

I am lost.

I am at sea.

I have less than no idea how to maintain any semblance of control, or convey any teaching points, to a rabble to 9 and 10 year olds. Occasionally a training session has the air of running smoothly. This largely occurs when the stars align and I happen to ask the boys to do something they wanted to do anyway. When I try and get them to do something new or, heaven forfend, something involving applying brains or concentration, the chances are that I will spend 50% of the session telling them to stop interrupting and to listen. 

I am not a teacher. I have never wanted to be a teacher. I have never thought I'd be a good teacher. And yet, here I am, teaching. If I were teaching something that I felt secure in, like physics or chemistry, I would find it stressful (as indeed I did) but at least I'd be sure I knew what I was talking about. Instead, here I am teaching something about which I know almost nothing. 

We have all seen, over the course of the past two years, how rapidly people assume a mantle of expertise on subjects about which, quite frankly, they know bugger all. Everyone's an epidemiologist these days aren't they? Football has always had this feature, well before it was fashionable. Football is populated by the kinds of people who have no qualms at all about phoning national radio stations to explain what exactly Pep Guardiola has done wrong in his tactics this week. Football is also an immensely popular sport in this country. Which means across a squad of seventeen boys that I train, at least fifty percent of them are in possession of parents who have firm opinions about football. Parents who will express strong views about Klopp's choice of starting 11, how to play against a high-press, and (ad nauseam) the impact of VAR on the Beautiful Game. Parents who certainly appear to know an awful lot more about football than I do. Most of them have the advantage of having played the blasted game, which is more than I've ever achieved.

I watch football. I enjoy football. But I have a guilty secret. I always end up watching the ball. For those non-football-afficionados here, this may not seem such a stupid thing to do. It is football after all. But for those who actually want to understand what's happening on the pitch, watching what the players without the ball are doing is key. And I don't. I try, but I'm very easily distracted by the ball. 

So I know, deep in my soul, that I am not an expert. And without an expert's level of understanding and knowledge of how to play, I have absolutely no idea how or what to teach my boys. I try. I really do. I watch YouTube videos. I read FA training plans. I study books of training ideas. I want to know what to do. I want to get it right. I want to be good at it. But I'm not. I know I'm not. And I know that it's only a matter of time before the boys, and their parents, realise that I don't have the faintest idea what I'm doing. If they haven't already. 

I'm just about keeping my head above water this season, coaching 7-aside football with an under-10 side. But I find it hard to imagine being able to offer any technical or tactical insight as we progress through to full-blown, competitive 11-aside football.

I don't want to give up. I don't want to abandon my boys. I don't want to fail. 

But I don't know how to be better. I don't know how to learn the huge amount that I don't know. There aren't enough hours in the day to be physicist, mother, wife, daughter, football coach, friend and me. I can keep going, being a bit shit, hoping nobody notices that I'm a bit shit. Hoping the boys learn something by magical osmosis from somewhere else. Hoping they don't see through me too soon. Hoping the parents don't think their boys would be better off elsewhere. Or I can walk away. With my head down and tears in my eyes, betraying my son's faith in me, and his team's need for someone to run things for them. 

My name is PhysicsBear, and I don't know what I'm doing.

 

*Yes. I find this as toe-curlingly awkward and difficult as it probably sounds

** I do have a lovely assistant for this, and she is supportive, kind and helpful, and does everything I ask of her, and more. But my own over-developed sense of responsibility means that as the one with "Manager" written next to my name, I take emotional ownership of it all. 

PSA: graphene

I would like to say that the world is full of idiots, except apparently calling people idiots is not a good way of winning an argument. So, instead, I shall assume the world is full of people who are a little bit scared of science. People who've never had reasons to know about or understand nanotechnology. People who aren't necessarily educated in the realms of materials science or chemistry. And that's OK. Nobody is an expert at everything. But... (and it's a BIG but)... if you're not educated in these areas, and you don't understand, and something sounds big and scary and weird... maybe the thing to do is to find a reputable source of information and try and educate yourself?

That in itself appears to be a challenge. Reputable source of information. Reputable source of information. Not someone with a diploma in aromatherapy. Not someone whose grandma felt a bit funny after a flu jab one time. Not someone who wants to explain to you how the moon landings were faked. Not someone who writes a blog you quite like... oh... hang on... Seriously though, I could be anyone. I happen to be a Fellow of the Institute of Physics whose professional area of expertise is in chemical analysis, with a focus on material structure. But I could just be saying that. 

So... you probably shouldn't just believe me... you should probably follow some of my references if you really want to know whether I'm right. And I have deliberately chosen not to reference Wikipedia. 

Today's little piece of science will address one of the more bonkers theories I've read about the covid vaccines. The claim goes something like this: the vaccines contain graphene, and once the graphene is in your bloodstream, it self-assembles into a nano-bot that can form a brain-computer-interface and thus control/intercept your thoughts. 

Graphene eh? Nano-bots? Sounds pretty scary doesn't it? 

Would you like to make some graphene? I bet you can do it(1). Grab yourself a pencil, and some sellotape. Start with one piece of sellotape and press the sticky side against the "lead" of the pencil. Peel it off. You should have a grey smudge on your sellotape. That's graphite. Not quite graphene yet, but you're getting there. Now you need to repeatedly fold the sellotape in on itself and peel it apart again. Ten to twenty times should do it. Apparently Scotch tape works particularly well for this, as the peeling apart stage is easier. Any low-tack tape will do though. I'm not being paid to advertise. 

Each time you stick and peel, the smudge of graphite is pulled apart a little bit more. The graphite becomes thinner and thinner until eventually you'll have fragments of graphene. Because graphene is simply graphite in a single, one-atom-thick or "monatomic", layer. 

But what is graphite? And is a monatomic layer of it scary? 

Graphite is carbon. That's it. Just carbon. Carbon arranged in a nice, neat lattice. Each atom one member of a hexagonal ring, and many rings together forming a stable sheet (2).

So, there we are. We now know what graphene is - one layer of graphite. And we know what graphite is - a hexagonal lattice of carbon atoms. I don't even need to address whether covid vaccines do or don't contain graphene. Maybe they do, maybe they don't. Instead we're going to think, just a little bit, about whether little hexagons of carbon atoms are going to find each other, assemble themselves, and create a robot, nano or otherwise. I'm hoping that this thinking isn't going to take us too long. I'm hoping that it will be but a fleeting thought that will allow us to realise that the chances of fragments of carbon assembling themselves into anything is about as likely as your IKEA Billy bookcase assembling itself, or your pencil becoming self-aware and writing down its Christmas wishlist.

So, there we are. Hopefully one stupid covid vaccine myth debunked. There are no self-assembly graphene nano-bots in your blood-stream controlling your thoughts. 

(1) https://physicsworld.com/a/how-to-make-graphene/

(2) Fig 1 in https://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlehtml/2019/cp/c8cp07592a  

Never did me any harm...

There is a prevailing, and to me misguided, view that often gets expressed that those things one has experienced oneself, and survived, can reasonably be inflicted upon the next generation.  I hear it about student debt relief - that cancelling student debt for this generation is unfair on those who did pay off their loans. As though one's own suffering justifies others' suffering. I've heard it about unpaid internships, or about appalling working hours for junior doctors. About corporal punishment in schools. About cold baths in boarding schools. Any number of unpleasant, or downright dangerous, experiences that could justifiably be left well and truly in the past.

It will come as no surprise to hear that the arena in which I'm currently hearing this is football coaching. And more specifically, the coaching of young children. How much is it OK to shout at children? How much yelling is too much? How much stick is "needed" compared to the carrot? Those who know me, know that my own style is not to berate children, or tell them they're not good enough, or yell and scream from the sidelines*. 

I've had several people lately tell me that being yelled at and intimidated by your coach, and told you're not good enough, is just how it is in football. That it's what their own experience of youth football was like. That it, "never did me any harm".

And, for me, there are two obvious responses...

Firstly, how do you know it didn't do you any harm?

Who would you have been without that experience? What might you have done differently? How might your interactions with the world, and the people you love have changed? None of us can know the path not taken.

Secondly, forget about yourself, some things aren't just about whether you were fine. What about all the other children? What about the boys and girls who were terrified by the shouting, intimidated, made to feel useless or worthless? What about the children who couldn't handle it and who left the sport? The ones who stopped playing football because they cried after every match where they were shouted at. Football, sport, life, none of those are only supposed to be for the thick-skinned, the robust, the supremely self-assured. We should be making space in life, and in sport, for those who are not sure, those who have self-doubt, and building their confidence, not breaking it. 

Maybe, once you reach the top-flight of international sport, a certain resilience is required. The ability to believe in yourself, despite what others may say, is almost certainly needed both to rise to the top, and to stay there. Even there, the honesty of people like Marcus Trescothick, Ben Stokes, Naomi Osaka and Simone Biles reveals that it's not that straightforward. That even at the top, doubts, fears, depression and anxiety may be an ever-present enemy. But when we're talking about children playing non-competitive, grassroots sport? Inclusive, open, sport played for fun, should be, well, fun.

And if we can nurture today's children, and show them that it's possible to participate in team sports, and give your all, even when you're not the best, without being demeaned and belittled, then maybe when today's children grow up, they will be part of a kinder world.

“It's not our job to toughen our children up to face a cruel and heartless world. It's our job to raise children who will make the world a little less cruel and heartless.”

L.R. Knost, Two Thousand Kisses a Day: Gentle Parenting Through the Ages and Stages

 

* Obviously, I do yell from the sidelines, but it's generally anodyne stuff like, "Well done!" or "Keep it up!"  or occasionally even such tactical gems as "Man on!" It's possible that at a recent training session the phrase, "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry" was also used...

Pleasing none of the people none of the time

The thing about random memes on Facebook is that most of them, aside from being poorly spelled, poorly punctuated, and frequently involving utterly invented quotes, are complete tripe. They sometimes make me wonder whether I really know my friends when I see the things they link to. On the other hand, there's the odd thing that pops up that stops me in my tracks and actually makes me think.

Here's one of them (with apologies for spelling, punctuation, grammar and colour-scheme):

And the problem is, I am absolutely not OK with not being liked. In fact I spend an inordinate amount of emotional and mental energy contorting myself attempting to be liked. I volunteer, I help, I smile, I cook, I step up, I try so damn hard all the time to be a person other people will like. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, it doesn't work. The people who like me, like me anyway. And the people who are either indifferent to me, or don't particularly like me, are not going to have their minds changed by me spending hours of my free time doing things for them. They'll just willingly soak up my kindness and carry on with their lives, not liking me any more or any less than they did before. I am an irrelevance to them.

It would now appear that I have engineered myself into a hole. I have spent so much time contorting myself in desperate and futile attempts to be liked, that now if I stop being the ever-biddable, ever-self-sacrificing, ever-helpful me, I am resented for not bending over backwards. I am now expected to be all things for all people, and I am burnt out, unable to keep offering more and more of myself. And yet I keep doing so, because to stop, and to risk not being likeable enough is still unthinkable to my needy little mind.

Every day I receive emails, WhatsApp messages, text messages, phone calls, taps on the shoulder, all asking me for something. Sometimes it's a simple question about a date or a time, sometimes it's a request for information, and sometimes it's a request for help. But it's always something. Always requiring an answer, or effort, or work, or commitment. Worst of all is that sometimes it requires a decision. A decision that I know is not going to please at least one other person. And then my need to please slams up against my need to do the right thing, or my need to be clear and honest, or my need to be organised. It's not possible to be honest, and honourable, and moral and also please everybody.

I have to find a way to tell people things that they won't like. I have to find ways of telling people what I think or believe without worrying about whether they will or won't like it. 

I have to find ways of saying "No", without being paralysed by the fear of being disliked. I have to find ways of doing what I know to be right without spending hours agonising over the wording of the email that needs to be sent, and then days agonising of what I have (or more likely haven't) heard in reply. 

I have to find ways of accepting that I cannot please all of the people all of the time. I will be lucky if I can please some of the people some of the time. 

At the moment it feels like I'm pleasing none of the people none of the time.

 

Perils of cycling

 For those who like a bit of levity in their day... picture the scene... I am cycling LittleBear to school early for triathlon club. We're in a hurry, as we're always a little late for the 7:55-at-school start. Suddenly, there's huge resistance to my pedal stroke, and my bike slams to a halt. My long skirt has caught in the chain and wound itself round the rear hub. I lurch onto the pavement dragging my bike, and clutching my skirt to prevent it being pulled off entirely by the weight of the falling bike.

I try to contort myself, my skirt and my bicycle into position to disentangle myself, and then hear the dulcet tones of an Angel of Mercy. The neighbour whose house I have stalled in front of happened to be looking out of the window and has rushed out to help. 

She turns out to be dextrous and of delicate touch. As she gently eases the wheel round, inching the oily fabric out, a van pulls up and the slightly-less-dulcet tones of the chairman of our football club ring out, offering help. I sternly wag my finger and forbid photographs. To my surprise, and relief, he complies. Though he also mocks me. Deservedly. 

My Angel of Mercy completes the extraction of my skirt, without once needing to reveal my bottom to the world AND she then gives me a hair tie with which to bundle up the ill-advised skirt and complete my journey. We even got to triathlon club before they closed the gates.

I will not be riding in that skirt again. 

Football management vignettes #3

It's now been a month and half since I wrote anything here. Some of this is just the inevitable impact of a school holiday, and being busy, or away, or playing Minecraft with LittleBear. But some of it is because football has eaten my life. I thought that football had already eaten my life before now, when I was simply running a team, but I see now that I was painfully naive.

In July, I asked the Chairman of the club for some help. He helped, but just before helping, he asked me for a favour. Obviously I agreed. Devious bastard. Unfortunately the "favour" was stepping up to assist as a Welfare Officer for the club. This was something I was asked to do when another volunteer stood down two years ago, but I didn't feel I had time to commit to it*. There was no escaping this time.

For the past two years, the Chairman has been doubling up as the Welfare Officer as well. What I had not fully appreciated, is (a) the degree of mind-numbing attention to detail required to maintain the database of volunteers at the club and (b) the absence of mind-numbing attention to detail possessed by the Chairman. He cares passionately about the club, and about it being run well, and for the benefit of the children. This doesn't necessarily equate to a mind-numbing attention to detail however.

And thus it arises that I have inherited a system that is, to be kind, not entirely in top-notch condition. I also have not really inherited it. Instead I was asked to only be partially responsible for the system. Because partial responsibility for a complex system is definitely a strategy with no drawbacks. So, for most of August I took a relatively laid-back approach to my responsibilities: I reminded people that their qualifications were expiring; I sent out links to training courses; I gently explored the periphery of another arcane section of the FA's website.

But then reality started biting. I tried asking the Committee why we had so many people listed on our own spreadsheets who were not registered with the FA. Or who all the people registered with the FA, but not on the spreadsheets were. Or why we had so many people registered as applicants to volunteer, whose applications had seemingly been stuck in limbo for months, or possibly years. I was told not to worry about it. I was told that was too many questions. I was told The Spreadsheet Is King**.

I poked around a bit more. I asked the County FA safeguarding officer some questions. To start with she answered them. Then she started getting tetchy. Then she became quite vexed. Because the more I tugged at the threads of the anomalies I found, the more the entire jumper unravelled. 

I will not bore you with the excruciating details of the issues I found as I delved deeper, but suffice to say that for the past two weeks I have spent a minimum of 2 hours a night working on ensuring the right people, with the right qualifications are registered with the right teams. The season is about to start, and if a team's registration is not squeaky clean, that team (and potentially the entire club) will be suspended by the FA. In the first three days of September alone, I sent and received over two hundred and seventy emails. I spent, at a conservative estimate, 18 hours over those three days fighting with four spreadsheets, two wings of the FA website, the online Disclosures and Barring Service website and two email accounts***. I have had to book annual leave to cover the time I've spent beating my head against this particular brick wall.

In the end, I bypassed the rest of the Committee and just tackled the FA and all our volunteers head on. I decided not to sit back and ask polite questions, but to just get it done. To mis-appropriate the intended use of a key phrase from my Welfare Officer training: 

If not you... who? If not now... when?

There was a job that needed doing, so I did it. I still have qualms that I have trampled on rather too many toes en route. The fact that neither the Chairman nor the other Welfare Officer has replied to any of my emails in the past few days of frenetic activity is now making me feel distinctly anxious. But I am 99.9% sure I have both done things right and done the right thing. At the cost of a huge amount of my own time, energy and emotion. But the right thing nonetheless. I just have to hope other people see it that way...

* This was a grave error. Had I taken over two years ago, I would have inherited a nice tidy system, and this blog post would have read, "I have become a Welfare Officer. The End." 

** The Spreadsheet is Not King. The FA database is King, and Queen, and Courtiers, and Joker. If the FA database says you're not qualified to work with children, then that is the final answer.

*** A story for another day. A very, very tedious story.

Football management vignettes #2

Now that I have introduced you to the concept of the FA website, I can delve deeper into the arcana of attempting to administer a team via one of the tentacular arms of the website. This is an arm that, unsurprisingly, bears almost no apparent similarity to any other arm of the FA, and is called the Whole Game System. Because nobody would want a Half Game System, or even a Two-Halves Game System.

I'm fairly certain that you have to have performed a ritual sacrifice under a full moon while chanting ancient Sanskrit incantations to be allowed to actual register players with the Whole Game System. Which is perhaps why it is that the Club Official who is allowed to do so for our club is, well, venerable. 

It also appears to be exactly the same system that is used for every level of English football. For instance, my own entry lists, in order of importance, my name, date of birth, and number of international caps.

Among the vagaries of the Whole Game System is the fact that once a player's name has been entered, it is cast in stone for all time. It is not possible for any changes to be made by our venerable Club Official. Instead, he must submit a request to the County Official, who may then have to escalate the issue to FA HQ at St Georges Park. Because I can't imagine them having anything better to do at the moment. And it's clearly unheard of for anyone to ever change their name. It's almost as the though the FA aren't aware of the concept of marriage, or the tradition many women still follow.

The immutable nature of names makes it all the more frustrating that venerable Club Official is not the most accurate typist. LittleBear, for example, has spent three years with a letter missing from his surname. Various other boys in my team have their names entered with no capital letters, or entirely in capitals, or in one notable case, changing from lower case to upper case half way through the forename, just after the letter "a". Anyone who's ever slipped onto the Caps Lock key knows what we're talking about here.

It took two days this week to have a letter added to LittleBear's name, but I have finally managed it.

And then I hit a more significant hurdle. One of my boys has changed his surname. He no longer wants to have his (estranged) father's name, he wants to use his mother's name. Utterly fair and reasonable, and relatively painless in other areas of his life. But with the FA?

The emails went something like this:

Me to Club Officer: My player has changed his name, what do I do?

Club Officer to County FA: Our player has changed his name. Shall we create a new player in the system?

County FA: NO! Never create a new player if it's someone who's played before! Send me the player details.

Club Officer: It's OK, I haven't created a new player, I was just asking. I don't know his details anyway.

Me: Here are his details.

Club Officer: Shall we create a new player now?

County FA: NO! NO! NO! How many times have I told you, never create a new player if it's someone who's played before!

Club Officer: Why are you panicking? I haven't done anything.

County FA: I've changed the name.

Club Officer: I can't find the new name in the system. Shall I create a new player?

At this point, I'm fairly certain I heard County FA's intestines climbing up his throat in an attempt to choke off the blood supply to his own brain. He certainly hasn't shown any signs of life via email. I don't really blame him.

I looked on the Whole Game System for my player. We now have two copies of him, both with the same, new, correct name. 

Football management vignettes #1

I have been very quiet here lately. Very, very quiet. And this is partly because I feel as though I have nothing interesting to say* and partly because the only interesting things have been both enormously stressful and involving other people who don't deserve to be written about, even on a pseudonymous blog. 

 Oh, and I'm busy.

 Busy? Even while a pandemic continues to rage?

Oh yes. Busy.

Because it is the end of the football season, and the start of preparing for the next football season. A season that only starts on 11th September, but one for which we must start organising now.

So I am going to attempt to get back into the swing of writing by giving you some vignettes into the life of volunteering at a grassroots club. 

And we'll start with the FA website.

The FA website. When you phrase it like that, it sounds as though there might only be one website. And there is. Sort of. I certainly only have one username and password. But an injudicious click of a link and I find myself somewhere that bears almost no resemblance to where I came from. I have (so far) identified at least five different websites that all pretend to be part of the FA. Each has clearly been written by different people. Each has different designs, colour schemes and menu layouts. Why should this bother me? Well... I have, for reasons that are probably good, volunteered to become a Welfare Officer for LittleBear's club. This has involved additional training. Online courses, webinars and questionnaires. All of which is accessed through MyLearning. Not, it is important to note, through MyAccount. Though MyAccount does have a subsection titled My Learning, this is categorically not the same as MyLearning. Spaces matter don't you know?

Having completed all required modules, and acquired nice green ticks next to each one, my training was marked as 83% complete. There was no means of determining what the remaining 17% was, or where to find it. I tried asking my County Safeguarding Officer. She asked me to send her my completion certificate. I explained I couldn't because of the aforementioned missing 17% and thus absence of certificate. She asked for the completion certificate. I explained (with screenshots) why I couldn't send it to her. She asked me for the completion certificate. There were brick walls that were more rewarding to bang my head against.

I asked the FA, via a bizarrely complex web form, in which in the "other comments" section I resorted to begging for help. "I just want to be a Welfare Officer! Please help me!" Then, magically, for reasons that have never been clear, my course was marked 100% complete and I was the proud owner of a certificate. And then the FA emailed me to say, "we've looked into it, and your course is complete. What's the problem?" Sigh...

So now I was qualified. Right? Wrong. MyLearning showed that I had completed the course. But My Learning, over on MyAccount, did not know this. My Learning did not think I had completed any of the course. Do pay attention to the typography here. Spaces matter. Remember how the County Safeguarding Officer wanted my completion certificate? Remember that? Well, it turns out, she needed me to send her the certificate that the FA website issued to me, so that she could upload a copy of it to the FA website, to be attached to My Learning record on MyAccount, so I could then be registered as a Welfare Officer. Yes, really.

So here I am, as a Welfare Officer, and it has been my great joy** to discover that there are several more sections of the FA website that I now have privileged access to. Guess what? They look nothing like the rest of the site.

* I could, of course, write reams, almost every day, in which I rant about the government, but I'm mostly sure that most of you are as tired of the shit-show as I am, and being permanently angry is exhausting.

 ** It really hasn't.

Isolation and exhaustion

Preamble: I started writing this about three weeks ago. Since that point I have added to it and deleted from it as my mood has ebbed and flowed. I have hit crashing lows where the world seemed unmanageable and I felt broken, and I have had days when I've wondered what I was being so melodramatic about. I have tried to capture both sides of my emotions in my editing.

Even at the best of times, I find interacting with the world hard work. And I think we can all agree that 2020 and 2021 very much come outside the boundaries of "the best of times". 

So, where normally I would find myself second guessing my every social interaction, questioning whether I have been too abrasive, too sweary, too self-absorbed, too needy, too rude, too oblivious, too opinionated, too me, I now find myself doing all that but beyond the veil of face-to-face interaction. I am robbed of even the clues of body-language and tone of voice that used to tell me when I wasn't welcome, or my views weren't needed. My social world has collapsed down to WhatsApp, and three-minute conversations outside the school gates. I now spend more of my free time talking to a football manager who trains on the pitch next to us* once a week than I do to people I once thought might be my friends.

I say "once thought might be", because there are now a surprising number of people, with whom I once thought I shared some kind of friendship who I essentially haven't seen, spoken to, messaged or otherwise interacted with for about a year and a half. And against my existing background of being perpetually anxious about whether I am saying the wrong thing, looking out of place, getting in the way, or in other ways transgressing subtle social rules, the isolation of lockdown has eroded what little confidence I had about my place in society.

The rational part of me knows that as much as these former-maybe-could-have-been-might-still-be friends are not contacting me, I am also not contacting them. As much as I am struggling with holding my life together, and navigating the emotional and psychological barrages of a pandemic, they are too. As much as I may be questioning my place and value and worth to others, they may be too. I doubt very much if I am the only one feeling isolated, anxious and alone. I doubt if I'm the only one whose child still will not sleep through the night and who is whimpering with exhaustion**. 

But inside my own mind, the degree to which other people may or may not be struggling doesn't change the reality of my own anxiety. No amount of rationalisation silences the voice of a school "friend" that said, "If you changed the way you acted, maybe people would like you." Inside my own mind, the loudest voice is the one that says, "See? People only ever tolerated you, they're probably all relieved not to have to spend time with you." 

Which isn't to say I don't have friends, or that they aren't enormously lovely people. I do, and they are. But when I'm reduced to electronic communication, or fleeting, mask-obscured exchanges, I am also reduced to doubting everything that I say and do, even with those lovely friends. I obsessively re-read messages I've sent to ponder whether somehow I have caused offence. I replay those fleeting conversations in my head to question if I managed to remain the right side of socially-acceptable. Was I too flippant? Or did I over-share? Am I wearing people out with my complaining? Have I failed to listen to other people? Am I oblivious to an undertone that is obvious to those who find human contact easy? 

Always, always it boils down to "am I too much?" or "am I not enough?"

The less I sleep, the more I find myself to be either too much, or inadequate, and the more I am sure that others do too.

The less "normal" contact I have with my friends and acquaintances, the more isolated I feel, and the more convinced I become that I will always feel this way.

I have spent so long without much face-to-face social contact that I have now reached the point where I cannot really imagine resuming it. Regular pub nights? Having friends round for a meal? Having play dates for LittleBear's friends? These seem like wildly improbable events now, and almost as daunting to consider as I previously found meeting new people. 

Back in the mists of time, I wrote about how hard I find it to move from casual acquaintance to genuine friendship, and how much I tend to feel as though everyone else is friends with each other and I'm the outsider. Well I'm right back in that state now, convinced despite all evidence to the contrary, that I alone am alone. That I am adrift in a sea of vague acquaintanceship without the dry land of solid friendship anywhere in sight. I have a small life raft of dear and lovely people, but I fear that if I cling on too tight I may either draw them under the waves or be pushed away by them before I sink us all.

In an attempt to dig myself out of my self-fulfilling hole of isolation, I am trying very hard to step outside my isolated bubble and reach out to other people. And it's not as bad as I feared. I am met not with rejection and horror, but with warmth and enthusiasm. It turns out other people aren't desperate to avoid me. It turns out other people may just be waiting to be invited too.

I went out for a drink with two people I've never socialised with before. 

I'm having lunch with two members of my life raft. 

I've suggested meeting two people for a drink who I've barely spoken to since before covid.

I am not alone.

We are not alone.

* To put this extensive friendship into perspective, we exchange pleasantries and ask whether our respective teams won or lost the previous weekend. Yet this is still a greater level of conversation than I manage with most people.

** I'm too tired to fix my participles. We're both whimpering with exhaustion - read it however suits you.

April Reading List

 Somewhat late for the deadline this month, but really, who's counting? 

The Dark is Rising series - Susan Cooper

Technically five books, Over Sea, Under Stone; The Dark Is Rising; Greenwitch; The Grey King and Silver on the Tree. More books that I haven't read for a long time, although despite being children's books I don't think I read them as a child. I think perhaps my mid-twenties? And, as with so many of the other books I'm re-visiting I remembered almost nothing from them. One character had stuck in my mind, but only one. And one location. Nice to be absorbed in a good fantasy with just enough peril but not too much.

Espedair Street - Iain Banks

Mostly I'd remembered enjoying the non-sci-fi Iain Banks books and yet found this one surprisingly joyless. I didn't really like any of the characters, I wasn't particularly interested in what became of them, and it all left me feeling rather flat. I had been planning to re-read some more Iain Banks, but now I'm not sure. Perhaps this will be an opportunity to purge the shelves of something I don't really enjoy? Or perhaps it depends upon my mood and I should give another one a go some other time.

An Aside...

Why, you might ask, would I think my mood is having such an impact on my reading? Well, since the schools re-opened and LittleBear finished with home-learning and went back to the classroom, his sleep patterns have gone out of the window. He struggles to get to sleep. He struggles to stay asleep. The only source of comfort and reassurance is Mummy-cuddles. And heart-warming though it is that my presence is enough to lull my poppet to sleep, I do not function well on broken sleep. 

Most nights LittleBear now spends in a bed with me, because I simply stopped being able to operate as a vaguely normal human being when spending an hour or more every night trying to reassure him enough to go back to sleep in his own bed. And now, sleeping with Mummy is a habit that he is either unwilling or unable to break. Meanwhile I feel broken. It currently feels as though parenthood is a choice between my child's well-being and my own, with no path that allows for both. Naturally this isn't actually true, as it's only my own psyche that is telling me that the world judges me for my nine-year-old son needing me with him to sleep. But my own psyche is a harsh mistress, and spends a lot of her time telling me I'm a failure, a bad mother, incompetent and a whole host of other negative things. The kind of things I would never dream of thinking, let alone saying, about a friend, but with which I allow my psyche to berate me.

So, with my own mental health seemingly spiralling deeper into the mire of self-flagellation, I am finding that it is only by reading lightweight fluff, or looking at pictures of cats on the internet that I am able to find a semblance of inner calm. I don't need angst, or betrayal, rage or recriminations. I need comfort. Which leads me on to the next wave of books that I am compulsively consuming...

Artemis Fowl; Artemis Fowl and the Arctic Incident; Artemis Fowl and the Eternity Code - Eoin Colfer

I treated myself to the entire set of Artemis Fowl books, having read the first 4 when they were published. They're fun, silly, entertaining, and just what my battered psyche needs. The peril is not too perilous, there are fart jokes and fairies. What more could I ask for?

Political rage

Every time I think I have run out of ways to be angry about politics... the contemptible shit-weasels who govern us find new ways to rile me. I would say they find new ways to surprise me, but the one thing their corrupt manoeuverings don't do any more, is surprise me.

We've just had, as some of you will have noticed, a raft of local elections of various descriptions. Despite my feeling that asking us to vote for Police and Crime Commissioners is utterly stupid, given how much any of us know about how to run a police force, I was heartened that we had a half-way-to-grown-up voting system for them and for our mayors. We were allowed to use a supplementary vote system, which avoids the need to try and make tactical decisions about how to vote. Second preference voting in the mayoral election in my area meant that instead of the Tory candidate getting in with 40% of the vote, the 60% who'd voted for a left-of-centre candidate were rewarded with a left-of-centre mayor. Not exactly Proportional Representation, but a massive step forward from First Past The Post, which punishes parties who are at the same end of the political spectrum by splitting their vote (see previously Tories and the Brexit Party but currently affecting left-of-centre votes for Labour, Liberal Democrat and Green).

Can you guess what the Tory Party's reaction to Labour winning 11 out of 13 mayoral contests is? That's right, they intend to revert mayoral elections to being First Past The Post, an antiquated, unrepresentative system that we should, if we were a mature, intelligent democracy, be moving away from. I am sickened by the naked thirst for power exhibited here - "we didn't win, so we're going to rig the electoral system in our favour". And with a massive Parliamentary majority, they'll do just that. All the howls of outrage from advocates for democracy will be meaningless. All the letters to MPs begging for integrity will be irrelevant. All the eloquent speeches from the Opposition benches will change nothing. FPTP won the Tories 56% of the seat on 44% of the vote, allowing them to now do exactly what they want, including rewarding themselves with more power by degrading our local election system.

And as if rigging the local election system weren't enough, the next step is to try to limit the number of people who can vote. After all, you don't want the wrong sort voting, do you? The kind of people who don't have passports or driving licenses. The kind of people who might vote for improvements to the welfare state or the national health service. Anything might happen if poor people voted. The idea of the poor being allowed to do anything probably brings Jacob Rees-Mogg out in a cold sweat. So, despite there being no evidence whatsoever that electoral fraud is an issue, the Tories are moving to require photographic ID before you're allowed to vote. Photographic ID that is disproportionately not possessed by the poor and the young.

I cannot imagine having voted for these people and then sitting back thinking, "Yep, this is the kind of thing I want more of. More corruption, more lies, more election-rigging." I used to at least understand those who voted for different economic and social policies, even when they were not my own views. But this? This shower of mediocrity and mendacity? We are governed by self-serving scum, and I no longer understand anyone who votes for them.

Another stupid endeavour

Having Actually Made a Thing, I have continued and I Made Another Thing. It was another skirt, though (I thought! Ha!) less tricky to make. There was no lining for a start, and far less fabric to handle, because it wasn't a crazy puff-ball shape. But then it turned out that I had only managed to insert the zip in the first skirt by some strange fluke, and I managed to get this one wrong three times and have to unpick it, before I realised what I was getting wrong. So that was fun.

Skirt Number Two was also a much lighter-weight fabric, so harder to keep the edges neat, and harder to avoid it stretching while being sewn. And there were more seams sewn on the bias, which didn't want to behave. And it was a full-circle skirt. And the only way to get a really neat hem was to hand-stitch a blind hem. Despite only being knee-length, a circle turns out to have quite a large perimeter. About 15 feet of hand-stitching. 

A very, very long hem

So once I'd recovered from the cramp in my hands, the weather turned cold, and I've only actually managed to wear my nice swishy circle-skirt once. 

Swishy!

But once summer comes, and it's not too windy, I shall be swishing and swirling my way round the village.

Meanwhile, however, I have been unable to resist the lure of more beautiful fabric and am embarking on a pair of trousers. Which would be a splendid idea, if it weren't for the fact that the only pattern that I could find that even came close to making what I wanted was a download, and not a physical printed pattern. So step one was to print out thirty A4 sheets of paper and attempt to sellotape them all together into one giant sheet. It turns out it's quite tricky to stick that many pieces together perfectly lined up. Two days later and I had an approximation to a pattern. Not a useable pattern you understand, since it couldn't be cut out and pinned to fabric, being made of thirty pieces of erratically-sellotaped printer paper. So then I had to trace the pieces onto pattern paper, and cut those out. 

You might think that I would now be ready to cut the fabric for my trousers. But, no! I have opted to make a muslin version first, to get the fit right before committing to cutting the actual fabric. Which sounds like a really splendid idea, until it turns out that muslin has a mind of its own, and shifts, stretches and wriggles as soon as you consider cutting or sewing it. So, I currently have a half-assembled pair of muslin trousers, and a vague reluctance to carry on, because I fear the step where I discover they don't fit quite right and I have to work out what changes I need to make.

It may be some time before this is a blog post about trouser progress...

Idiot cat is... an idiot?

Over the past year, IdiotCat has become accustomed to having us all at home. I'm not sure that he approves, but he has at least adjusted to our presence. If "adjusted" means that he spends any time when he's not asleep shouting at us. It is at mealtimes, however, that he has developed his most fixed habits. He is a big fan of mealtimes.

This is IdiotCat's schedule for a family meal:

• Follow person carrying plate of food from kitchen to dining room. Ideally position yourself just in front of person carrying plate, in the hope you will either trip them up or guide them to your own food bowl.

• Continue past the dining table to your own food bowl, and stare at the floor. When the plate fails to arrive, look around to identify where the person has taken the food.

Where did you take the plate?

•  Walk round the table, assessing where the best smells are coming from.

• Sit hopefully for a while before observing that the clinky-clanky noise is occurring when the people are banging the plates with metal sticks. Clinky-clanky noises mean it isn't time for IdiotCat to be fed. Unless the smell of fish or cheese is so overwhelming that IdiotCat cannot resist putting his paws up on the edge of a chair, hoping that his unbearable cuteness will cause a person to relent. The fact that no person has ever relented and fed IdiotCat is not relevant.

Unbearable cuteness

• When people fail to feed IdiotCat, it's time to guard the table, in case other cats spot that it's meal time. There are no other cats, but you can't be too careful. Spread yourself out as large as possible in the doorway, with your back to the dining table, watching the world and making sure nobody attempts to steal fish or cheese.

You shall not pass

• After a suitable length of time guarding the people and the food, it may be time to come and sit on a chair at the head of the table to assess the chances of stealing or begging food.

For me?

• When the clinky-clanky noise stops, it is time to beg at the big human's chair. The big human sometimes provides leftover gravy. It's worth begging for gravy even if the big human has been eating a cheese sandwich. You just never know.

You've finished?

With all this, you may be beginning to think that IdiotCat is not an idiot, and that he's got everything well under control. Well, think again. This week we had some unusually clement weather, and LittleBear and I chose to eat in the summerhouse. I treated myself to smoked salmon. IdiotCat is a big fan of smoked salmon, so was very keen to make sure he let me know this as I prepared lunch.

As we were taking the food out, I carried a tray loaded up with most things, and LittleBear carried a plate. A plate with only the smoked salmon on. Naturally, IdiotCat pre-followed LittleBear, straight to his food bowl. And he then failed to notice that LittleBear and the smoked salmon continued through the house, across the garden and into the summerhouse. Thus it was that LittleBear and I were able to eat our lunch in splendid peace while watching IdiotCat go through each stage of his mealtime ritual in turn. 

He walked round the table.

He guarded the doorway.

He begged at BigBear's chair.

There was no food. There were no people. He is an idiot.

Eventually he gave up, and mooched through the house. Then he spotted a butterfly to chase in the garden, and upon scampering after it, his nose twitched and he homed in on the smell of smoked salmon.

I know it's here somewhere

My poor cat is definitely not the brightest kitten in the barrel, but he does try. So yes, he did get a scrap of smoked salmon at the end of lunch. Because i'm just as much of a softie as BigBear.

March reading list

March turned, at first inadvertently, and then deliberately, into a month of only allowing myself to re-read books. It also provoked me into having a mild purge of the bookcases, evicting books that I wasn't prepared to re-read. If I have no desire to read it, and more than a decade has passed, I think it's fair to send it to a better home. Currently "better home" translates to "sitting in a pile and getting in the way in the hall", but I aspire to improve upon that. Perhaps when charity shops are open again. Meanwhile, here is the selection of books that featured last month...

Hide and Seek - Ian Rankin

The second Inspector Rebus novel. Again only vague recollections of it. Again not the Rebus I remember from the later novels. I'm rather enjoying re-reading them as new though, and currently prefer the character of Rebus that I am (re)discovering more than I remember doing either first time round, or in the books that I have a stronger recollection of. Either the odd decade has changed my outlook on grumpy middle-aged characters, or my memory is flawed. Or both.

Sweet Danger - Margery Allingham

Due to a catastrophic failure in the internal library system, what I was expecting to be the second of the Albert Campion books turned out not to be, but I was committed and didn't want to abort a few chapters in once it dawned on me that there was a chunk of chronology missing. I more-or-less remembered the plot of this, as it can only be five to ten years since I started reading Allingham. Rather silly, and fun, but horribly, horribly sexist and racist, so occasionally difficult to fully enjoy the silliness.

Faceless Killers - Henning Mankel

Ah, Scandinavian crime novels, a great way of depressing oneself. BigBear introduced me to the Wallander books sometime round about 2005/6 ish. And I think I've only read them all once, so this was another foray into realising how little of the plot of a murder mystery I remembered. The characters were at least familiar, unlike with Ian Rankin, so it would seem that I have some ability to hold onto the essence of who I'm reading about, if not what I'm reading about.

Ash, A Secret History - Mary Gentle

A proper, epic historical-fantasy set in a not-quite real Burgundy of the 15th century, with many battles and much bloodshed. I last read this when BrotherBear spent a year on sabbatical in Japan and deposited his books with me while he rented out his house. This gave me the chance to read large quantities of books that I didn't own without even having to go to the library. This one stuck with me as a rollicking adventure, so I have recently bought myself a second-hand copy, and now seemed a good time to tackle it again. At 1,100 pages, "tackle" feels like an apt term. Curiously, though I did remember quite sizeable chunks of the plot, it was all chopped up and swapped around in my head, so events that I thought occurred a good half way through were actually in the first couple of chapters.

At 550 pages in I was wondering how it was going to fill another 550 pages. Most of what I recalled had happened, bar (obviously) the exciting denouement, so I genuinely couldn't fathom how it could be stretched out even further. But it could. And not all of it was descriptions of armour. Though there were a lot of those. I suppose if you've gone to all the effort of researching 15th century mercenary armour in Western Europe, you want to make sure you shoehorn all that research into your masterwork.

Armour aside, it was still as entertaining a read as it was fifteen years ago, though I had forgotten how irritating I found one of the literary techniques used. The entire book is presented as though it is a translation of a newly discovered text, and thus is interrupted every few chapters by the email correspondence between the supposed translator and editor. Both of whom I wished to throw out of the nearest window.

Tooth and Nail  - Ian Rankin

I am absolutely convinced I've never read this book before. But since all the Rankin's are mine, not BigBear's, this seems unlikely. Curiously, though only the third book in the series, it opted for the old chestnut of taking the protagonist to a new location for a bit of variety. Which the series didn't really need yet. But it worked, and I enjoyed reading it for the first(!) time. I'm beginning to wonder if the Inspector Rebus of my memory actually exists, as he's not the one who's appeared in the first three novels.

44 Scotland Street - Alexander McCall Smith

I have loved these books, though not returned to them recently. The cast are primarily the residents of a single building in Edinburgh that is divided into flats, and the series of books simply explores their lives, loves, foibles and minor domestic adventures. The books was originally written as a newspaper serial, with a new chapter appearing every day. The compilation of very brief episodes that manage to hold together as a single narrative is unusual nowadays, but captivating. There is very little in the way of actual plot, it's all character-driven, which interestingly meant it all seemed a lot more familiar than any other books I've re-read after a similar length of time away - the nature of the characters has stayed with me far more than anything mundane like who killed whom. The downside of this is that it repaid a return visit somewhat less than the rest of this month's offerings.

Actually finished a thing

Having decided to have a go at making a skirt, I found I had presented myself with a task that was perhaps a teensy bit more daunting than I had anticipated. There were more than a couple of skills required that I had never attempted before. Skills that I'm sure, having watching Great British Sewing Bee, are considered bread-and-butter to people who sew anything on an even vaguely regular basis. For instance, I have never fitted a zip to anything, let alone an invisible zip. I have never made an item of clothing with a lining to it. I have never inserted hidden in-seam pockets. I have never understitched a seam. I have never overlocked an edge. To be able to make this skirt, I needed to acquire four new sewing machine feet, as well as then learn to use them.

On top of all this, I have never made a fitted item of clothing before. I have, I think, scratching around in my memory, made things with elasticated waists. I have made quite a few rough-and-ready costumes for LittleBear, which have tended to have been made of very forgiving fabrics and velcro. 

The significant downside of never having made anything to fit was my lack of confidence about getting the sizing right. For a start the pattern was, shall we say, confusing. There were measurements for hips and waist, whose relationship bore no resemblance to my own dimensions. I do not have an hourglass figure - it is distinctly more columnar. I like to think that I have particularly slim hips, though others may contend that it's my waistline that's too large. Whichever way you look at it though, the instruction to make the skirt size that corresponds to the circumference of my hips was going to result in something that was several inches away from doing up around my waist. 

So I consulted the pattern instructions for adjusting the waist:hip ratio, feeling temporarily quite pleased that the pattern had such helpful instructions for modifying the fit. The happy sensation quickly passed. Sadly, the pattern assumed that if one were an irregular dimension, it would be that one's backside was overly generous, not one's waist. There was no consideration given to the possibility that it's not my arse, it's my stomach that's the problem. Hey ho. I decided the only way the skirt was going to fit was if I picked the size that would do up round my waist, and hoped for the best. A niggling fear that I was still getting it wrong led me to be overly-cautious in my seam allowances, just in case my tummy was even bigger than I feared or the tape measure had been conspiring against me. And thus I ended up making a beautifully finished skirt that was at least an inch too big round my waist. 

At that point the temptation to give up was quite strong, but I laboriously unstitched the overstitching, unpicked the waistband, removed it, shortened it, re-gathered the waist and re-attached the waistband, overstitching and all. I also took the opportunity to give up on the hook and eye fastening at the top of the zip and put in a nice chunky button and buttonhole.

And now I have a retro Spring skirt, made to fit by my own fair hands. And it makes me happy as it swishes.

Ta-da!

Pockets! Lovely BIG pockets!

Invisible zip being mostly invisible

And I am honestly, genuinely happy to have tackled a new challenge, and to have overcome it. The sense of achievement, not just in making something, but in learning some new skills, was something I haven't felt for a while. So I might make some more things, and I might try learning some new things too. It's really rather a lovely feeling.

February Reading List

Look at me go! I'm managing the second month of maintaining my reading list!

Guardian of the Horizon - Elizabeth Peters

As with January's list, a comforting foray into a somewhat parodic Edwardian murder mystery. The second of my new Christmas Amelia Peabody books, and one that threw me slightly, as I'm acquiring them in publication order, but the author went back and filled in some of the story's chronology as she progressed, so this one jumps back in time 9 years prior to the one I read in January. My feeble mental state was not ready for his and I felt quite put out. Particularly as it returned to a point in the story filled with unresolved sexual tension that I'd been happy to see the back of.

Godsgrave - Jay Kristoff

Second part in a trilogy and a thoroughly entertaining fantasy romp with magic, gladiators and assassins. Extremely violent and no holds barred in killing off favoured characters to advance the plot, or sometimes just to kill them. Slightly irked by the obvious male gaze exhibited - the main protagonist is a girl, but the male author spends a fair tranche of time on her sexual desires and exploits, including an utterly gratuitous threesome. Admittedly the man involved did end up swiftly and unsympathetically murdered, but it felt very much like male-fantasy fulfillment, as did the heroine's discovery of lesbianism. Isn't the idea to "write what you know"? I was unconvinced by this being what the author knows particularly well, but very much convinced it was written by a man for other men.

The Wrong Side of the Sky - Gavin Lyall

Returning to another book I haven't read in decades. A proper rollicking adventure thriller from the 1960s with full complement of beautiful women and hard-drinking, wise-cracking, damaged men. Didn't remember any of it and couldn't put it down.

Darkdawn - Jay Kristoff

Concluding part in the trilogy, and the author redeemed himself by mocking his own writing style in a curious plot device that involved the characters finding a copy of the books that they themselves appear in. Which worked a lot better than it sounds. Really enjoyed the series, despite my caveats about the sex scenes.

Knots and Crosses - Ian Rankin

I've been acquiring the Rebus novels since about 2001, but realise (as with many of my collections of detective novels) I don't often re-read them. And it turns out I'm not sure I have ever re-read this one, the first of the series. Aside from the fact that I'd forgotten the plot, I'd also forgotten the character that Rebus started as in this book. I'm much more familiar with late-era Rebus, and had forgotten both his origins and how much he changed. I may have to gradually work my way through them all again to see how his character develops. 

So there we are, another mix of returning to books that haven't been read in years, and new books. My major revelation is that after sufficient years buying and reading books I have now reached the stage where it's very definitely worth re-reading some of them, even if they're not works of high art that will reveal new facets of themselves upon repeat visits. My memory is now faded enough and I've filled it with so many books, that I can go back and discover old books almost as if they're new. Which should save me a fortune.

What I've learnt in Week 4,792 of lockdown

Encroaching insanity, and provoked by a friend asking, "But what are you doing for you?" I have decided it's time to do more than sit on the sofa drinking wine and rotting my brain with television every evening. To which end, I have dug out some books on sewing that I acquired some time ago, and have decided to make myself a skirt. Being the kind of sucker for punishment that I am, rather than buying a regular paper pattern, all nicely marked up, I am attempting to follow instructions from a book. This is not to say that the book doesn't have a pattern in it, rather that it has too many patterns on not enough pieces of paper. In fact, it has the patterns for 24 different skirts, in something like ten sizes each, spread across a paltry 3 sheets of paper. 

Perhaps some of you will be familiar with the technique that Jane Austen and Charles Darwin both used of rotating the page when they reached the end and writing again at 90 degrees to their original screed. The result was, unsurprisingly, somewhat confusing to the casual reader. Well, I think it would be fair to say that 240 patterns on three sheets of paper is... erm... challenging.

What are all these lines for?

After several evenings I did finally manage to render this mysterious collection of coloured lines into a set of paper pattern pieces. Having conquered the mighty challenge of cutting the paper pattern, I moved onto the slightly easier territory of cutting the fabric, and was momentarily lulled into thinking I knew what I was doing. And then I began to doubt whether, despite my careful and repeated measurements, the finished object was going to comfortably encircle my comfortable girth. So during the cutting phase I actually made the lining pieces one size larger and test fitted them. And then reduced them back to the original measured size, as I was just being paranoid. 

Filled with a warm glow of satisfaction at having a neat pile of fabric all cut and ready to go, I returned to the first set of instructions that actually pertained to sewing anything. And I discovered that I don't know what understitching a seam means. And I don't own an invisible zipper foot. I don't even own a visible zipper foot, let alone an invisible one. I was beginning to regret that in a book of patterns that starts with easiest and works towards hardest I had not opted to start at the beginning but had leapt in half way through. 

Apparently neither of these are zipper feet

. 

I managed the darts in the lining. I managed to join the three sections of lining together. I even managed to join two of the pieces of outer fabric together. And then I reached the dizzying heights of Step 4, sewing the side seams. One sentence in, and I have to take a diversion to page 158, to discover how to insert pocket bags. Half-way through the instructions on inserting pocket bags, I must divert to page 139 to learn what it means to understitch a seam. At which point I have to give in and scour the entire book to try and work out what is meant by the "facing fabric" in a seam. Having pored over these instructions, and indeed made notes to myself, I retreat to the kitchen to press open the scant handful of seams that I have sewn so far. But it is late, and I am tired, and I fail to notice the setting on the iron when I start to press open the darts on the lining. It turns out that polyester lining fabric does not react well to a hot iron.

A disappointing outcome to an evening's work

So my first evening of actual sewing ended in unpicking a seam, cutting a new piece of lining, and pinning and tacking it in place. I decided at this point that I could not be trusted to do anything involving machinery. So I returned to the sofa with a glass of wine and some mind-rotting television. It's a good thing I'm making a summer skirt, as it might take another 6 months to finish.

January reading list

In an attempt to find something to focus on that is neither pandemic nor politics related, I'm going to try keeping a monthly record* of not only what I've read, but vague thoughts on what I've read.

So here goes for January

The Amber Spyglass - Philip Pullman

Part 3 in the His Dark Materials trilogy.  I'd decided to re-read the trilogy in December, and the final part fell in January. I had loved these when they first came out, and every now and then have thought about re-reading them but for some reason they still seemed quite recent. It turns out they're over twenty years old, and it came as something of a surprise to discover just how much I didn't remember of the details. In fact, I barely remembered anything beyond the odd vague story arc, and who the main characters were. And I didn't even remember all of them to start with. Which just goes to show there is a benefit to getting older and forgetting stuff. It becomes possible to re-read books and enjoy them almost as much as first time round. 

The Golden One - Elizabeth Peters

Amelia Peabody mysteries are a comfort blanket, a hot water bottle and a cup of cocoa; they're a soothing balm against the cold and grey. Possible to read without taxing the faculties too much, but entertaining, silly and enjoyable. For those who haven't read them, they're murder mysteries set in the late 1800s to early 1900s in Egypt with a redoubtable archaeologist heroine and her family. Firmly tongue-in-cheek. I hadn't read this one before, so it was a particularly enjoyable treat.

The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett

First in a set of six books, the other five of which will not be troubling my bookshelves. This book slowed me down enormously as, despite having a reasonably entertaining plot, it was bogged down with too many characters, too much double-triple-quadruple crossing, a tedious habit of quoting Latin and French and, finally, unnecessarily florid prose that would have required frequent dictionary-consultation if only I could be bothered. Oh, and a transparently derivative hero - the Scarlet Pimpernel was implausible enough, without being copied and embroidered upon to a point of utter absurdity.

I blame the third of these for the fact that I only read three books in January, which is below average. Apathy and exhaustion may have played a role as well. But two hits and a miss is an acceptable ratio.

* Given my current mental and emotional fortitude, I can imagine this attempt lasting at least a month.

Still here

Hello there! Remember me? I used to blog here. Sometimes I wrote several times a week. I'm not sure I remember that to be honest. I'm not sure I remember the feeling of having the energy to write that often, or of having enough to say. I barely have enough to say to maintain a conversation with BigBear, let alone write something that might even raise a wry smile with the rest of you. We all know how it goes now, you talk to a friend on Zoom and try as you might, you just end up bleating about boredom, stress, homeschooling, whose spouse does the most/least around the house, government ineptitude, vaccinations or whichever other permutation of lockdown happens to be at the forefront of your mind. It's not as though we've all got lots of interesting films, concerts, holidays or adventures to tell each other about, is it?

So, to save time, here's a Generic Blog Post that you can pop in and read whenever you're wondering what the Bear Family is up to.

BigBear is coding, with the exact location of where he is currently to be found in the house being determined from a complex algorithm based upon the temperature of his feet, the angle of the sun through the windows, the noise from the homeschooling department, and how persistently IdiotCat is pestering him.

LittleBear is squirming in his chair, running the nails of his left hand back and forth across the fabric of the seat to make a rythmic rasping noise as he listens to a message from his class teacher. A rasp that begins to file through the fabric of your mind after approximately five and a quarter seconds. It's History first thing, to get the pain out of the way early in the day, and the entire lesson is punctuated by complaints of "I can't do this, it's too hard." Particularly as it involves drawing a picture. Why? Why must they have to draw so many pictures? LittleBear is not a child who wishes to express himself through the medium of narrative collage. After forty-seven hours on the history picture, it turns out there's another task. By this point, even I'm not sure I can face more History. It involves expressing an opinion. Asking LittleBear his opinion on anything other than football or Minecraft is akin to asking a cactus whether it wants porridge for breakfast. I think the cactus would answer quicker. LittleBear certainly doesn't have, or wish to be asked to express, opinions on the religious beliefs of Vikings and the impact these had on their life choices.

Having completed his History, and had an interstitial penalty shoot-out with Mummy, he moves on to Maths, as a relaxing treat. LittleBear is genuinely very good at Maths. And Maths is LittleBear's favourite subject. Except when his teacher asks him what his favourite work from last week is, and suddenly it's RE. The RE that he has been known to ask why they study. The RE that caused him to sob and wail about the injustices of life, not to mention the iniquities of being asked to draw a picture. (Again, why? Why always the pictures?) The Maths however, will be awesome, and LittleBear is amazing, and brilliant, and Mummy must come and see how brilliant he is. Until he makes a mistake, and then he's an idiot, and the stupidest child in the world, and he's never doing another Maths question ever again, and he's going back to bed. It's a real rollercoaster in Maths lessons round here.

Having recovered from the Maths, and forgotten that the History even happened, and had another penalty shoot-out with Mummy, it's lunch-time. A chance to wonder which permutation of bread and cheese we're having today. Or to quote one of my colleagues, "I'm bored of bread and cheese, I think I'll have pizza today..."

English after lunch. Though only after some more penalties. It's important LittleBear keeps proving his superiority over his mother. LittleBear starts the English lesson video, but the volume on this particular video is strangely loud, and Mummy can't really think straight when someone's yelling about fronted adverbials. And then LittleBear starts bleating because he's going to have to write an entire paragraph. The horror. Mummy goes to assist, but the desk is a bomb-site with pens and paper everywhere after the History-or-is-it-Art lesson. Vexed by noise, Mummy tries to clear up, but the colouring pens fall down the back of the desk. So Mummy yells at the pens. And at the computer, which is shouting back about prepositional clauses, and at LittleBear who is sitting looking bewildered. Then the books that were teetering in a heap, biggest book on top, slump sideways across the desk, knocking the pen pot over and Mummy picks up the biggest book and hurls it on the floor in a rage.

Then LittleBear is crying, and Mummy is crying and someone is still banging on about time connectives and powerful adjectives. Eventually English is paused, and Mummy and LittleBear are cuddling in a chair, and we're all sorry, and we eat chocolate together until we feel better. It's never too early to teach a child that eating chocolate is a useful emotional crutch is it?

Eventually, English is resumed at a lower volume, and LittleBear only requires "someone in your household" to discuss things with three times in an eleven minute video. And then another twenty-five minutes of help planning before he can tackle the forty minutes of writing it takes him to complete the twenty minute task. 

But in that forty minutes, only interrupted twice by complaints of, "my hand is too tired to write," and a few penalties to limber up again, Mummy has a chance to discover that she made a mistake in her own work right back at the start of the History lesson, and that all the subsequent work done today is based on one error and will therefore have to be thrown away. Because Mummy is also working from home, and it's going swimmingly. Just as Mummy begins to get into the zone of sorting out the design monstrosity she's unleashed, the English is finished, the school day is over and it's time to play with LittleBear.

Which I do. Because I love him to the moon and back, and I'm a shit teacher, but I can at least try not to also be a shit mother once school is over for the day. I don't always succeed, but at least I'm trying, which is all any of us can ever really say. 

And even though most of the above is mostly true, it's not always all of that all of the time. In fact, compared to many, LittleBear is an angel, and works hard, and tries his best. And the school have done an outstanding job of providing video lessons and it is infinitely easier to get LittleBear to do the work when he has to submit it to his teacher and there's the tantalising prospect of a star in return, compared to the soul-destroying trudge last year of working and working and the only people who saw the work were his parents. And BigBear takes charge of French and Art, and anything else we decide he'll enjoy, and he sorts out the day's Variation On Bread And Cheese. And he gets his share of penalty shoot-outs as well. So we're doing as well as anyone. But I don't have anything else to write about.