Micro-blogging: the power of great actors

This morning* I listened to Mark Rylance being interviewed on the radio. And I was reminded that I have seen him live on stage. It was 1997, and the first full season of the newly built (re-built? re-created?) Globe Theatre on the banks of the Thames. The production was Henry V, and Mark Rylance had the title role. I was there with GrannyBear and my aunt and uncle. We had tickets as "groundlings", standing in the pit of the theatre. We stood, if not at the front, within a few rows of the front, and gazed upwards onto the stage.

It was one of the most powerful, and immersive, pieces of theatre I have ever been part of. When Rylance stood on the front of the stage before the battle of Harfleur, to rouse his men "once more unto the breach", I swear I would have followed him anywhere. Unlike the hushed reverence of many theatres, the Globe unleashed a rawness and immediacy that allowed the crowd to shout and cheer and be the soldiers ready to Cry 'God for Harry! England! and Saint George!' It was an inspiring moment in which the power of a genuinely great actor was revealed to me for the first time.

* "This morning" is now two days ago, because it turns out I'm pretty crap at even finishing a short blog post.

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...

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.

A theory of evolution

I am not addressing here any consideration of Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. 

No, I'm talking here about a mysterious process that occurs when you have lived in a house for a certain length of time. I do not know exactly what that length of time is, but I think there's scope for several doctoral theses on the subject. Something happens, after you have accreted enough stuff in your house, such that new things begin to appear. Things that you have no recollection of begging, borrowing, stealing, buying or being given. And yet there they are, lurking in dark corners, at the backs of cupboards, hiding under the stairs. They are furtive, knowing that once found they may no longer have a welcome home. Have they invaded? Or have they simply evolved from fluff and malice? I suspect the latter.

What other explanation can there be for the fact that I have just found, at the back of the top shelf of a kitchen cupboard, an unopened packet of prunes from a supermarket 200 miles from here with a best before date of 17th December 2011? I have never knowingly wanted a prune. I have never knowingly purchased a prune. And yet, here they are, squatting malevolently in my cupboard.

The only possible explanation is that they have evolved. Perhaps from the thirteen assorted, opened-then-forgotten packets of raisins, sultanas and currants. Or from fluff and malice.

Sciencing my way through the day

Every industry has a "thing", I'm sure of it. One of those pieces of lore passed on from generation unto generation about The Way Things Are Done. Often there's a good reason behind The Way, but equally often, nobody in living memory has ever witnessed that good reason in action. Probably because everyone follows The Way Things Are Done and so doesn't have to re-visit the pain of why doing it a different way is wrong.

In my industry, of ultra-high vacuum engineering, that thing is brass. Brass, for the non-metallurgically wise, is an alloy of copper and zinc, and "everyone" knows that you must never, ever use brass in an ultra-high vacuum system. Weird things happen. Namely, the zinc migrates out of the alloy and evaporates, leaving copper behind, and coating everything inside your vacuum system with a very thin coating of zinc oxide. At this point, I shall simply assure you that a thin coating of zinc oxide is a Very Bad Thing. 

I have worked on ultra-high vacuum systems for twenty-two years, and I have never seen this happen. My colleagues have, between them, some 180-odd years of experience in ultra-high vacuum system. None of them has ever seen this happen. Obviously, we've all been good and avoided putting brass components in our systems.

I have spent the past couple of weeks banging my head against a brick wall of intransigent scientific instrument, at the heart of which is an ultra-high vacuum chamber. Nothing about it made sense, and eventually, in a cascade of exploding electronics, it finally gave up functioning completely last Friday afternoon. So yesterday I pulled it apart, and found a curious grey deposit all over sections of it. Usually when we find Nasty Things, they turn out to be hydrocarbons, and can be dissolved in alcohol or hexane. This stuff didn't want to dissolve that way.

We all stared, poked and prodded the contaminated surfaces. It was like nothing we'd seen before, and it was everywhere. Normally, we consider a faint smudge or spec of dust to be contamination. Things that are not visible to the eye can be bad enough to stop our instruments working properly. We handle everything with surgical gloves. None of us were prepared for this level of crap. My son comes home from school looking cleaner than this thing.

We looked forlornly at each other, at the floor, and at the ceiling, hoping for inspiration. We drank cups of tea. And then I looked more closely. And I noticed something odd about some of the connectors right in the heart of the machine. Little gold-coloured connectors, that were no longer gold-coloured, but a beautiful salmon-pink. Almost as though they were now made of copper.

(With the benefit of hindsight, and my little mention of brass, I'm hoping you can all see where this is going...)

A spot of hunting around, measuring, comparing, and a growing sense of horror, I realised that the connectors had been taken from the wrong packet. They were brass, and supposed only ever to be used in building electronics, and never in a vacuum system. And still my colleagues couldn't quite believe that such a tiny connector could create so much stuff everywhere. Still, there were dissenting voices asserting it must, somehow, be copper oxide, or iron oxide that we were seeing, and not zinc oxide. So out came The Rubber Bible and we were able to determine that there was a simple test - if our gunk dissolved in sodium hydroxide, it was zinc oxide, and if it didn't it was copper oxide or iron oxide.* 

Friends, the oxide dissolved in sodium hydroxide.

We actually managed to do that thing that everyone knows you shouldn't do. We evaporated zinc out of brass to leave pure copper, and coated every internal part of a beautiful mass spectrometer with zine oxide. (A beautiful mass spectrometer that was supposed to be winging its way to its customer at the end of next week, which is a teensy weensy issue now). But the thing is, despite the fact that it's all totally buggered, I'm so much happier than I've been in weeks, because I know why it's buggered. I have found a simple, elegant explanation for every problem this machine has had. I have used a simple, elegant chemical test that demonstrated that my hypothesis was correct. And I got to use The Rubber Bible.

Today, I scienced. And it was good.

* This would get very long and tedious if I went into all the details of why we knew it was an oxide, and why it was limited to those three materials. You're just going to have to believe me.

Other people's oddities

So here we are.

The eve of the United Kingdom's departure from the EU, with a recent poll reporting that 58% of Tory voters want to retain Freedom of Movement with the EU.

The Tory government, meanwhile, are renationalising a section of our railway network despite the howls of outrage that accompanied any suggestion in the Labour election manifesto of renationalising the railways.

The US are on the brink of acquitting a corrupt, criminal president without even the pretence of a fair trial: no witnesses and a defence that goes beyond Nixonian with the claim that if the President acts in the interests of his own re-election then no matter what that act is, it's justified as being in the national interest.

I find myself staring at the world and honestly thinking, "What the fuck?"

What were people voting for in leaving the EU? Is it really as simple as wanting to "take back control" as an emotive concept, while in practice retaining the status quo? Did that many people really not see that voting to leave the EU was going to result in losing Freedom of Movement, and in the creation of customs borders again? Has it really all been about blue passports and the right to have a bent cucumber?

I have a sinking feeling that for many (and I can sympathise with this), "Get Brexit Done" translated to "Make Brexit go away as soon as possible so I don't have to see, hear or think about any more of this nonsense." The fact that we were already well past that point, and there was no way to put the lid back on Pandora's box didn't matter.

So here we are.

Pursuing a path that quite clearly contains many things that the vast majority of people don't actually want, on the grounds that there's a nebulous sense of nationhood that a small majority of people hanker after.

Most people also want to protect the NHS, and fear that a trade deal with the US threatens that*. Most people want to see the railways brought back under state control. And yet those same people voted for a government that promised the opposite. And voted for a government that wants to pursue the hardest of Brexits. Obviously, our recent general election wasn't a single issue election, on either or those particular issues. And obviously there were a multitude of reasons, some of them named Jeremy Corbyn and some of them name Rupert Murdoch and Lord Rothermere, why we ended up with the government we did.

So here we are.

With a government whose policies are the opposite of the views of the majority of the country, though more people voted for them than any other single party.

And on the opposite side of the Atlantic, 53 Republican Senators, who have sworn an oath of impartiality, appear to be doing their very best to acquit Trump at all costs, in the face of all evidence, in the face of the vast majority of their electorate wanting a fair trial, with witnesses called. I know they cling to power. I know they fear Trump, and his retribution, but their honour, their integrity, their constitution and their country surely have greater weight than the term of a single, power-crazed President. Surely? Apparently not.

So here we are.

I don't understand other people.

I don't understand their motivations.

I don't understand what they think when they vote.

I feel disconnected from the world around me, in a way I rarely remember feeling before. I don't know these people. I don't know this country. Maybe I never did, but it was never so blindingly obvious to me before now. Is this how those who wanted to leave the EU felt? Divorced and alienated from their own country to such an extent that they're not even sure it's a country they want to be part of any more? Is this the sense of loss that drove my compatriots to vote to burn it all down?

I don't know.

I don't understand.



* In a recent poll, 81% believe a trade deal with the US threatens the NHS, with over a third believing it represents a "severe" threat.

Merry Christmas one and all

Once again this blog has hit a fallow patch. Are they happening more often? Have I finally run out of things to say? Is my well of inspiration running dry? I think perhaps I am too close to myself to see clearly. What I can say for certain is that I am running on empty. Christmas is fun, and busy, and full. But I am now the generation who takes responsibility for looking after those both older and younger than myself, so it's not so much a break as an exercise in logistical precision, with one slip leading to food poisoning all round, or being on the receiving end of a look of hurt betrayal from a beloved relation as you realise there was one present you forgot to buy.

I am now reaching the stage of the Christmas holiday where I'm wondering if it's time to go back to work yet. Not, I hasten to add, because I prefer work to spending time with my bears, but because life is frankly considerably easier when there is a routine to stick to and I don't have to think about what's happening when and how and where all the time. I don't have to plan, or travel or entertain, or pack, or wrap. On the other hand... LittleBear's football season restarts on 11th January, so there go my weekends again... Can I have some more Christmas holiday please?

Only four people, and all those presents

Old friends

For once, I shall be taking a break from writing about football, despite the fact that my weekend featured large quantities of it. Nor shall I be writing about work, despite my week featuring a certain amount of vexation and exasperation. Nor shall I be writing about politics, despite the quite extraordinary quantity of politics about which I could write. (Never mind the quality, the sheer volume is staggering).

No. Because this weekend featured a rather more unusual event. I actually socialised with some of my old university friends. To be fair, I do stay in reasonable contact with Tigger and Piglet and their families, but I have let a great many other people drift away, through lack of time, inconveniences of geography, laziness and then finally an unwillingness to get back in touch because it's been "too long" and I feel bad.

Piglet is more organised than me though. And she invited one of our old friends, plus spouse and children to stay. I haven't seen OldFriend since our average-fortieth birthday party five years ago, and I had a few qualms about how much we may have drifted apart. I needn't have worried. We went round to Piglet's house for an early dinner, and the menfolk took all five children off to play in the clunch pit while me, Piglet and OldFriend nattered as though we last saw each other a week ago. Come dinner and we managed to cunningly seat all the children round one table in the garden while the adults congregated a safe distance away. I had a couple of glasses of Prosecco with dinner, which turned out to be a less than stellar idea after having spent most of the day in the sun undertaking various forms of football-related activity.

Today both tribes came for lunch here. The consumption of Prosecco had led to evening somnolence yesterday, which in turn had led to an utter failure to make the puddings I had intended to make, which in turn meant that despite starting cooking at 9:30, I hadn't exactly finished preparing lunch when they arrived. This wasn't, to be fair, entirely helped by the fact that BigBear was with LittleBear at a party, thus removing both the helping hands and the minor impediment from the house. Nor, to be completely honest, was it helped by the fact that when parboiling the potatoes to roast I overcooked one pan full, many of which duly turned to mush, so I had to peel, chop and cook some more. However, being the kind of friends that they are, I handed Piglet a mixing bowl and after some debate between Piglet and OldFriend about suitable weights and volumes, she whipped up a crumble topping for the apple, while MrOldFriend helped get the extra chairs required to seat eleven for lunch out of the loft.

And mostly our children disappeared off and played, while we sat and carried on catching up. SmallerChild happily settled in to play with one of LittleBear's favourite games, and then begged OldFriend to buy it for his birthday (in three days time). Fortunately, it turns out she already has. Just as it also turns out that we own and play many of the same board games. Just as it turns out our bookcases are heavy with many of the same books. Though, just to be certain, OldFriend took reference photographs of the bookcases to make note of some new authors for future purchases. Because all of the reasons we were friends twenty years ago are still there, and we still enjoy the same things, laugh at the same things, read the same things.

So perhaps I really shouldn't leave it another five years before seeing OldFriend again. And perhaps, if life gets in the way, and we do leave it too long before catching up, I should remember that time doesn't actually erode lasting friendships.

A holiday in four injuries

I realise, somewhat belatedly, it's been over a month since I wrote anything. I can put at least two weeks of that down to being on holiday in a place with no internet connection or mobile signal, and I think I'll ascribe the rest to the insanity of the end of term - a headlong acceleration through seemingly endless school activities from school plays to sports days and everything in between; plus the plate-spinning miracle that are school holidays - attempting to cling by my fingernails to a job whilst also making sure I'm not actually dumping LittleBear in the woods alone to fend for himself every day. Only four more days to go, and I've not had to resort to abandoning him yet.

And what of the holiday?

Not being the sort to post huge albums of idyllic photographs of my latest five star holiday, I shall simply mention that we went to the Lake District, and remind everyone that there are a great many lakes and rivers there for a reason. The water has to come from somewhere. I could tell you about the fun we had, the games we played and the mountains we climbed, but really, outside my immediate family, I doubt that many of you would be much enthused by an account of a traditional 1950s English holiday. Instead, I shall allow you to laugh at my expense as I recount the more painful episodes.

Let me start with an innocuous car-park in an unprepossessing service station on the M6...

LittleBear and I were walking across said car-park, on perfectly flat tarmac, not hopping, skipping, jumping or otherwise behaving with frivolity or foolishness. And I fell flat on my face, arms sprawling, knees crashing. I have no idea why. I am fairly sure that passers by did not think I was in a fit state to be in charge of a small child, let alone a car. I scrambled hastily to my feet and limped inside, knee bruised and grazed and arm wrenched. The next week involved extreme pain every time I tried to insert my left arm into a sleeve or through the strap of my rucksack.

Moving swiftly on to our first proper attempt on a fell - the Langdale Pikes. For various reasons, LittleBear and I diverged from the remainder of our party, assaulting the peaks while they meandered on lower slopes. This then led to us attempting to descend as fast as possible to regain the main party. LittleBear appears to have legs containing steel springs, and not the custard and leftover bits of polystyrene and putty that seem to constitute my legs. Dropping 1750 feet over 1.2 miles was a challenge. Doing so in barely more than 45 minutes of walking left me shaking, while LittleBear hopped, skipped and generally sprang about the place in a soul-destroying fashion. The shaking at the end of the descent, however, was as nothing compared to my state the following morning, or indeed over the next three days. There were times the only way I could get downstairs was backwards, the pain in my thigh muscles was so excruciating. I used a pair of trekking poles for even the shortest stroll for the next few days.

I had, more or less, recovered from this assault on my pride and legs by the time Friday rolled around. Aware that dear old GrannyBear would be arriving on Saturday, I determined that I would clean the front steps that lead into our cottage. They are smooth slabs of slate, and spend almost their entire time in shade, so develop a nasty slick of vague green across their surface. So, out I went to scrub them clean, and leave them safe for elderly bears to walk on. Never mind that it was lashing with rain at the time. Nor that it was rather cold. Nor, indeed, that I have distinctly sub-standard circulation in my hands. In fact, my hands became so cold while scrubbing I failed to notice that I was repeatedly crashing my knuckles into the rough surfaces of the risers of the steps. It was only when I dripped my way back inside that I discovered that not all the drips were rain. Nearly two weeks later, the final two knuckles still have scabs and holes in them.

And, finally, to my piece de resistance. An injury so impressively incompetent that I have come close to approaching total strangers to tell them about it. While having a family cottage in a beautiful part of the country is an enormous privilege and blessing, it does require that each of us undertakes various aspects of maintenance and DIY on most visits. And thus it was that I sat, tools neatly arrayed around me, carefully marking up where to drill new holes in the front door. I turned to put my pencil down, caught my elbow on the mains lead of the drill and tipped it off the arm of the chair. From whence it fell... landing point first just below my ankle bone. Wood-drill bits are quite sharp. Wood-drill bits pursued downwards by the full weight of a 1kW mains-powered drill are sharp and heavy. At least it wasn't on.

Tumbleweed

I have been sorely neglecting this blog lately. Not intentionally and not through malice. Mostly it's been through tiredness, boredom, and a sense that I don't really have anything worth sharing with the world.

The highlights of my LittleBear's splendidness seem a bit nauseating to write about - I'm the first to grumble about the ubiquity of Facebragging about one's progeny, so I'm reluctant to dedicate an entire blogpost to my LittleBear's parents' evening, or his starring role in a school dance show, or his fascination with maths, or his dedication to his swimming lessons, or his general adorableness and loving behaviour. See? You're sick of it already.

Meanwhile, there haven't been many moments of delightful whimsy to write about, nor any periods of foolishness on my part which I can harness in self-deprecating fashion. There have been moments of Serious Parenting Failure, such as the point when at 3am I threatened LittleBear that if he didn't go back to sleep he wouldn't be taken to the zoo, which (unsurprisingly) then resulted in a sobbing small boy and a guilty-feeling mother at 3:02am. We cuddled, it was fine, we went to the zoo.

Nor has there been any progress on the building site, though we do now have rumours of a date for the windows to arrive, but I'm pretending to myself it isn't real, to avoid being disappointed when something else bizarre and unpredictable occurs to prevent the windows from arriving.

Work has been so deeply tedious, it's not even worth ranting about.

After a cardboard box was inadvertently left blocking the cat flap, IdiotCat obligingly relieved himself in the building site, and not in the living room. Which is probably good, but still involved having to clear up cat poo. Again.

I've become ensnared in attempting to help run LittleBear's football team, and am now in possession of the glorified title of "Assistant Coach", though in truth it's more "General Dogsbody Who Promises to Attend Every Training Session For Safeguarding Purposes." The downside of this position is that I'm now perceived to Know Stuff, which is sadly untrue, though I'm doing my best.

Much of my time over the past couple of weeks has been pre-occupied with fret-inducing health concerns, the details of which are mostly irrelevant. The short version is that my left eye has suffered a Posterior Vitreous Detachment*, and I have a blurry blob of dense vitreous lurking and obscuring my vision a lot of the time. My choices appear to be "live with it" or "have serious and risky surgery". I think we all can all guess which choice I'll go with. And apparently my brain should adapt and ignore the blurry blob over time. I'm still waiting for an appointment with the consultant ophthalmologist though, and can probably look forward to the same thing happening in the other eye. Though the other eye is exhibiting what may be an early sign of glaucoma - the neuroretinal rim is thinning. I'm caught between feeling, "meh, GrannyBear has glaucoma and it's perfectly manageable, plus my retina is fine, so I've got away with the PVD" and thinking, "Aaggghhhh, I'm going to go blind, this is terrifying." Mostly, the second one only happens in the middle of the night. Because, basically the first one's completely true.

So that's me.

Maybe something entertaining will happen soon, and I'll write about it.


* For those who haven't spent a lot of time reading about PVD, this is where the vitreous in the eye (the gloopy gel your eye is made of) detaches from the retina. It can lead to retinal damage, though hasn't done in my eye at the moment.

My life is made of football

When I'm not stressing about the destruction of the house, or whether I've remembered to send LittleBear to school in odd socks, or wearing pyjamas, or with cakes, or whether it's this week or next that I have to go to a meeting about SATs, my life is largely made of football.

This comes in many sizes and shapes.

BigBear has always been a Proper Football Fan, and he managed to harness my innate competitive streak to get me co-opted into watching the Beautiful Game. This means that my weekends have been preoccupied with football matches and results for over a decade.

LittleBear, being alarmingly like his mother, also has a disturbingly competitive streak, and once exposed to sport as a small boy, has been inseparable from all competitive sports. He will quite happily (if allowed) sit and watch cricket, rugby, darts, snooker, F1, but above all football. LittleBear also spends, as far as I can tell, every single break-time at school playing football. When the garden is not strewn with various disassembled sections of house, he will cajole me into it to play football with him come rain or shine. And now, to truly rejoice his little heart, he plays for the local under-7s team. Naturally, this also involves training sessions.

Which is how it came to pass that I rushed him home from school on Friday, wrestled him into his football kit, drove to the next village over... and spent an hour standing around in the freezing cold watching LittleBear play football.

Which is also how it came to pass that not long after 9 o'clock this morning we were cycling through the village while everyone else seemed to still be sensibly tucked up warm indoors... so I could spend an hour standing around in the freezing cold watching LittleBear play football.

This was followed with a detour to a cafe to fill up my insulated mug with coffee, buy a chocolate cake for LittleBear and ride over to the other side of the village for an under-7s match... where I got to spend an hour standing around in the freezing cold watching LittleBear play football.

Fear not, kind readers, my day of football was still not complete. LittleBear had a splendid time, and won the "Player of the Week" trophy, and once home we needed to undertake a thorough post-match analysis, re-enacting corner-kicks, shots on goal and defensive manoeuvres with some Playmobil penguins.

But still my day had time for more football. The three of us headed down to the village football club to watch the proper grown-up team play. This time I got to sit in the freezing cold, watching someone other than LittleBear play football. And for an hour it was great fun, with plenty of chances to point out to LittleBear what the players were doing and why. LocalTeam were 3-0 up and then one of the opposition players went down. And stayed down. And didn't move. And didn't move. And various managers and physios ran onto the pitch, and ran off again. And a stretcher was brought on, but still the player stayed down.

Nobody tried to put him on the stretcher.

Over the tannoy, the announcer asked if there was a doctor in the ground.

All the players left the pitch.

The player on the ground was draped in as many coats and blankets as they could find.

At last, the match was officially abandoned as the club waited for an ambulance to arrive, with the injured player apparently having suffered a serious back injury*. It was a sobering moment, and a stark reminder, possibly LittleBear's first, that football is only a game, and that there are things that matter so much more than winning and losing.


* I am relieved to report that the following was tweeted this evening, by the opposition team, "Good news from the hospital, Player has had X-rays on his spine and pelvis; thankfully no break in either."

That's me

Last week I went to a public meeting held at LittleBear's school about the plans to expand the provision of primary schooling here where we live. I've mentioned the process once or twice before, but it's rather slipped under the radar lately. But I went to the meeting, which was filled with a variety of suits from the council who wanted to assure the local population that everything would be fine.

The headmaster and LittleBear's teacher were also present, but only to guard the door and ensure nobody who shouldn't be in the school got into the school, and make sure everyone left again afterwards. The consultation itself was the council's bailiwick.

It would be fair to say that the meeting was not an oasis of calm and joy. There were strong opinions, stridently expressed (and not, for the most part, by me). One person, appallingly, resorted to shouting at LittleBear's lovely teacher, despite her only involvement being to open and close the front door.

As is the way with such events, there was a form to fill in to express one's opinions at the end. I left still clutching mine, requiring a bit more time and quiet to marshal my thoughts on subjects such as cycle access, drainage and road-crossings adequately. The Headmaster observed me leaving with said form and told me that if I wanted to email my comments in, the email address given wouldn't be accepting comments until the following morning. "So you can go home and write your angry letter and wait till morning to send it."

I wasn't quite sure how to take that parting shot.

Was it a general, impersonal "you"?

Had the overall tenor of the meeting caused him to believe that all submissions would be angry?

Was he making the same quip to everyone who left?

Or, as only the most paranoid part of me thought, was this a direct assessment of the likelihood that I personally would be writing an angry letter?

Fast-forward to today...

I have just finished my letter to the council with my responses to their plans. It is seven pages, complete with graphs, diagrams, maps and photographs. And quotes from George Bernard Shaw, JK Galbraith, and the film Shakespeare in Love. It's probably wasted on the council.

It may, or may not, be angry.

It turns out I wasn't paranoid, and that LittleBear's Headmaster has me pegged.

Starting with a bang

Today did not start well.

Aside from the normal frustrations of a small boy who refuses to get dressed; and a cat who wants to stand three centimetres in front of where I want to put my feet, miaowing; and a kitchen covered in unexplained sticky patches; and breadcrumbs scattered the length and breadth of every surface and unpleasantly glued down on aforementioned sticky patches; and a heap of massive cardboard boxes obstructing the hallway; and yet another load of laundry to get in before heading to work; and not enough butter in the butter-dish soft enough to spread for my toast; aside from all of that, my day started on an even worse footing than normal.

I was unable to get at the toaster because of the box of beer in front of it. So I picked up said box of beer to move it. Unfortunately I hadn't had any coffee yet, and was therefore perhaps not quite at my brightest and best. I therefore failed to notice that the cardboard was not 100% intact at one end of the box. And thus it was that one of the bottles of beer made a bid for freedom, plunging straight down onto the tiled kitchen floor.

Fortunately it didn't break. Instead, the shock of landing bottom-first on the floor blew the lid off the bottle, fountaining beer spectacularly upwards. I stood in a spreading puddle of beer and didn't swear. That was perhaps the highlight of the event.

Beer sprayed onto the walls.

Beer sprayed onto the cupboards.

Beer sprayed onto the cooker, the extractor hood, the window, the sink, the dishwasher and the washing machine.

Beer sprayed into the toaster.

Beer dripped from the ceiling.

Beer also showered all over me. It permeated my shirt, skirt and cardigan. It oozed between my toes. It spattered across my head, dampening my hair down in an appealing fashion. And since it was already eight o'clock, once BigBear and I had mopped up the worst of the beer, there was no time to shower or change before heading to work.

So here I am at work, smelling ever so slightly like a brewery. And there I will be outside the school gates later this afternoon, smelling ever so slightly like a brewery. If you meet me there, no, I have not been drinking, though I have most definitely been Having A Bad Day and probably deserve to have been drinking.

I'm now looking forward to this week's newsletter from the headmaster featuring an imprecation to parents that they avoid arriving at school reeking of alcohol...

Scrabbling around

The Bear family love words. We play with words. We make silly puns. We write stories. We do crosswords. Some of the Bear family even set cryptic crosswords occasionally. Words are a source of joy and fun. So obviously, being inherently competitive bears, we also enjoy competitive word-smithery, and we play Scrabble.

Playing Scrabble with a six-year old is a different sort of game, when I play it, to playing Scrabble with other adults. It's more akin to playing Scrabble against myself, where my Ego has to help my Id to win*. Not only do I have the challenge of finding good words from a motley collection of letters, but I also have to attempt to manipulate the board to expose useful letters, close to high-scoring squares, that mesh with the letters that I know LittleBear has, so that I can then "help" him to achieve awesome scores. It's more of a meta-Scrabble really.

The good news is that LittleBear loves playing Scrabble, and the more we play, the more words he's beginning to find for himself. Today's words included "frank", "jew", "woven" and "drain". All his own work.

The bad news is that BigBear gave me and LittleBear a joint Christmas present of an official "Scrabble dictionary" so LittleBear is now quite happy to play words such as "qin" and "xi" because he's carefully studied the list of obscure short words for use with tricky letters. BigBear is regretting giving us this book, as he feels this is not in the spirit of Scrabble. I think he may have a point.

The worse news is that LittleBear's expectations are getting higher and higher, such that he is disappointed in any game that doesn't result in at least one seven-letter word and associated 50-point bonus. And today, I excelled myself. LittleBear had the slightly daunting selection of DOXYAIS. I had an unnecessarily large number of vowels, plus an L and a blank. So I nobly threw myself upon my linguistic sword, and played CLUE using my blank as a C, thus liberating LittleBear to play the record-beating, eight-letter OXYACIDS, across two triple-word scores.

Partially-completed, triumphant Scrabble board

LittleBear thus scored 212 points for one word. Just for comparison, I scored 214 points in the entire game. I really have set the bar a little bit too high for myself now...


* I have a pretty feeble grasp of Freud's theories of the self, so apologies to anyone who actually knows what they're talking about on this subject.

Ignorance isn't quite bliss but it's not all bad

Today was the first day back at work for me in 2018. And, aside from the sense of lightness and freedom I felt as I drove up the road after giving my bears a cheery wave through the window, it was not much different from many of my work days in 2017. Coffee, trying to remember what I was working on, catching up on the illnesses, bereavements, job opportunities and fashion decisions of my colleagues and their children, debating how to fix the growing wage gap between CEOs and underlings. Oh, and a spot of physics.

A tricky spot of physics.

A tricky spot of physics that has been an integral part of the instruments I've worked on for the past 12 years.

A tricky spot of physics that I don't really understand, but have nodded my way through for the past 12 years. Every now and then my boss discusses it with me in a manner that suggests he thinks I know more than I do, and I have a looming sense of dread that he's going to find out the depths of my ignorance any moment now.

Any moment now occurred today.

We've run into a bit of a problem on my current instrument, whereby it's not behaving like all the others we've ever built, and we're not entirely sure why. So four of us were thrashing out the problem round a hot whiteboard. Suggestion and counter-suggestion batted back and forth about dimensions, materials, voltages and currents that we could try modifying. And finally, I threw all caution to the winds, and piped up,

"Sorry, just stop there. When the plasma strikes, I don't really understand what's going on. What's happening at that edge?"

Did I get reprimanded? Did I get laughed at? Did I get disparaged?

I did not.

My boss grinned at me and shrugged.

"I don't know. I read the papers, discovered nobody else knew what they were doing and had a go at a design. Since it worked I've never had to try modifying it, and it's too hard to work out what's actually going on inside."

So there we go. Twelve years of fearing that I'd be found out for being ignorant, and it turns out, nobody else knows what we're doing either.

Which, come to think of it, is a bit of a pity, as we don't know what to change to try and make this particular one work. But it's OK, it's only a month late in shipping to the customer, and we've only got a handful of variables to try changing... length, diameter, aspect ratio, angle, separation, pressure, flow, gas species, voltage, current... it's hardly going to take any time to characterise and fix...

So we'll probably do what we always do... shove a capacitor in and hope that fixes it.

Is it me too?

Living a life, as I do, where social media features daily in my life, I suspect I'm living in something of a bubble. In fact, I know that I am. And most aspects of that bubble are clear to me. I am largely surrounded by people of a similar age, race, nationality, class, political outlook, education level, and social interests. Largely. Obviously, there are variations, but they're not massive. I know some Americans for instance. And Canadians. I really mix it up.

Because I'm aware of my bubble, I do venture outside it, to read and see what other people are thinking, saying and doing. But there's one aspect of my bubble that I'm not sure about - I can't discern whether what I've been reading and hearing inside my bubble is also occurring outside my bubble.

It's the #metoo movement. The movement whereby women are standing up to be counted, declaring that they have been the victims of sexual assault or harassment. Declaring publicly that their experiences are not unique, not one-offs, not aberrations, but the everyday lived experience of huge numbers of women.

Has this really been as widespread as it seemed in my white, middle-class, female bubble? Has the awareness of #metoo spread outside the people who are participating in it?

I don't know. And therefore I don't know whether what I'm going to write is going to make me look utterly abnormal, or utterly absurd for drawing such attention to my very normality.

Because I haven't been sexually assaulted. I haven't experienced inappropriate behaviour in the workplace. I haven't been shamed into keeping abuse silent. I haven't been groped, manhandled or interfered with at any point in my life. I watched, horrified, as more and more of my friends simply wrote "#metoo" on their Facebook pages, and I began to puzzle over why my own experience has been so different.

And I thought some more.

And I thought of all the things that don't count, because it's just what happens. The wolf-whistles from building sites. The requests to see my tits from pissed men at parties. The men in clubs and bars who wouldn't accept that it was possible to dance with other female friends, and that no, I didn't need a man to dance with. The hoots and yelled obscenities from white vans. The guiding hand in the small of the back to "help" me through doors.

But that doesn't count does it?

That's just the way life is if you're a woman, isn't it?

I haven't been sexually assaulted, so I don't need to write #metoo, do I?

And then I just felt rather depressed.

Because, no, those things aren't OK.

Just because I haven't been raped, doesn't mean every other form of verbal abuse and harassment is OK. And the very fact that I simply shrug it off as "just how life is" is not OK either.

I didn't claim #metoo, because by the time I'd considered the issue, and my own life experiences, it felt as though to speak up was to devalue those who've suffered real abuse, assault and pain. It felt like saying, "ooh, I know how you feel losing your leg, I broke a fingernail once." But actually, I think it's kind of the point - that every day, countless women face a constant barrage of sexism that ranges from "only" a wolf-whistle all the way to traumatic physical assaults, and that it is all part and parcel of the same thing, the treatment of women as lesser beings, as objects, as things.

And I'm not a thing. None of us are. And none of us should sit back and say, "being talked to like an object isn't real sexism, so as long as I haven't been raped, it's not a problem." It is a problem, and it's one that can't be fixed by one or two people speaking up. It will take all of us to speak up, all of us to say, "enough", all  of us to say "no more", to refuse to accept a society where women are afraid on public transport, where women accept being yelled at on the subject of their bodies every time they go for a run, where women think daily insults and contempt are normal. And I mean all of us. Women and men.

#metoo
  

Effortless elegance

Those of you who are as old and haggard mature and experienced as I am, may remember a couple of chocolate adverts from our youths. Firstly there was Galaxy chocolate, with sultry women draping themselves around with silk and chocolate. Then there was Flake, "only the crumbliest, flakiest chocolate", again involving naked women eating chocolate, generally in the bath. Sometimes there was a telephone. And a lizard. It's all a bit hazy now. Suffice to say, the message was that chocolate was sexy and involved gorgeous and come-hither-ish women.

And now there exists such a thing as a Galaxy Flake (more-or-less, trade names notwithstanding). And, having had a rather rubbish day, that involved, among other things

• being told (by two members of the board of directors no less) that I needed to do someone else's job as well as my own, because he was, to use their words, shit at it.

• getting home and finding that one of my radiators was widdling water into a tupperware box, handily placed there by the cleaner, who had presumably caused the widdling by smacking into the radiator with over-enthusiastic hoovering*.

• having a small boy who, once again, "couldn't" get to sleep because he didn't have anything to think about, and even the lure of the new sticker reward chart failed to prevent whimpering and demands for parental attention.

I decided I deserved some chocolate. And having one of these Galaxy not-a-flake-but-similar bars about the house, I decided that was what I'd have. And I proceeded to drop flakes of chocolate down my own cleavage, where it proceeded to melt, covering the inside of my t-shirt and undergarments in melted chocolate splodges. They never showed that in the adverts did they? Though that might explain why the Flake-lady was eating chocolate in the bath...


* Fortunately I have an awesome plumber, who I phoned, and who turned up, fixed the leak and left, without charging me, within twenty minutes. This is the kind of blessing in my life that I should focus on from time to time.

A case of mistaken identity

Towards the tail end of the 19th century, there lived two men. They shared the same forename and surname, and were approximately the same age as each other. That is where the similarities end.

One of these men was a poet, and went on to be relatively famous, writing one of the better-known poems of the First World War. The other was a rather obscure chemist who both wrote and translated a variety of chemistry text books.

The first of these men is of only passing interest to me, the second is my great-grandfather.

I have been, over the years, gradually tracking down and acquiring copies of the various books my great-grandfather wrote or translated, and the internet has been invaluable in allowing me to search for copies, contact libraries and find titles.

But... there's a problem with the internet. And it's a problem that many of you will already be very aware of. It can't be trusted. Obviously, we all know that some sources of information on the internet are more trustworthy than others, and we all make judgements all the time about how much a given site should be believed. Generally speaking, the more exclamation marks used, the less reliable the information. This hasn't been much of a problem in my research so far, as obscure 19th century chemists rarely rate a mention on BuzzFeed or Breitbart.

The problem now is that I have encountered several major, reputable, decent, academic institutions and library catalogues who have merged the poet and chemist who share a name into one person, and my great-grandfather's work is being attributed to one of the War Poets. This isn't exactly a problem of earth-shattering proportions, but it is something that I feel I should attempt to correct. Because once incorrect information is "out there", it tends to propagate, and the more places it reaches into, the harder it is to eliminate. And one day, earnest biographers and students will be marvelling over the polymath poet who found time to translate German text books on chemistry, completely unaware that there was another man of the same name being gently forgotten by history.

I did manage, after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to convince Wikipedia to accept my assertion that the famous poet was not also an obscure chemist. But that's because, for all its faults, Wikipedia is intended to be modified and corrected by normal humans being in possession of new information. I'm not sure how confident I feel about convincing collaborative, international, library catalogues or university archivists that they're wrong...

But, like a dog with a bone, if someone on the internet is wrong, I find it hard to let it lie. So, with a certain amount of trepidation, I shall set forth upon my quest to separate these two identities for future historians. I may be some time.

Gross injustice

Today I had a terrible, terrible hangover. The kind that had me whimpering in the shower and wishing the water wasn't hitting my head quite so hard. The kind that had me clinging to the edge of the toilet bowl to reacquaint myself with my rashly-ingested breakfast. The kind that still, fourteen hours after waking up, hasn't quite worn off.

You might be thinking that I went on a real drinking binge last night. Or that I had my drinks spiked. Or that BigBear and I were out partying until the wee small hours.

You'd think wrong.

I did quite a lot of gardening and then had two small glasses of white wine after dinner. I was probably a bit dehydrated after gardening in the blazing sunshine, though I did drink a couple of pints of water as well, which seemed positively sensible, for me.

The real trouble is, this isn't the first time... Before going to Lyme Regis with LittleBear, I went to the pub with my friends, drank two pints of beer and spent the entire following day feeling awful... While in the Lake District with Tigger, we would imbibe the odd glass of wine most evenings. And most mornings I woke with a headache and feeling ropey... For several months now, if I have a drink, any drink, any type, any size, I feel awful the next day. I seem to have lost all ability to metabolise alcohol without feeling utterly, utterly awful the following day.

This is not right.

This is not fair.

This may be the start of me giving up alcohol altogether. And that is a gross injustice.

Cycling in a long skirt

There are, to the best of my knowledge, three main ways to bicycle in a long flowing skirt.

Method 1

Undertake a complex piece of sartorial origami, using your backside as a final anchor point, allowing your legs to remain gracefully covered and yet still effortlessly mobile. This works perfectly for the first 300 yards, until such time as your backside moves out of the saddle by as much as a quarter of a millimetre, at which point the entire ensemble spills forth from between your legs like satin incontinence. At which point you are back to where you started, but flailing around in the middle of the road, hoping nobody has noticed. If you were a cat you'd start nonchalantly licking yourself clean.

Method 2

Do nothing. Your skirt gets caught in the chain or the wheel, and either you part company with your bicycle, your skirt parts company with you, or, in the worst case scenario, both events occur simultaneously.

Method 3

Grab part of your skirt in one hand, and pinion it to the handlebars. This has the downside of potentially flashing your knickers at the rest of the world, but it keeps you, your skirt and your bicycle all working together as smoothly as the Spanish football team.

This morning, I cycled into the village to acquire some fresh bread for lunch. Being a lady of elegance and refinement, never troubled by wardrobe malfunctions or afflicted with a failure to plan, I was wearing a long, floaty skirt. I think you can guess which of these methods I adopted. I can only apologise to the residents of the village for any surprising views they were afforded and feel relieved that I was wearing my favourite knickers.