Old-school engineering

A moment of levity for you.

Unlike many of my friends, I am coming to the sobering realisation that I am not key to anything. I don't work in the probation service, the armed forces, the NHS, a school, the food-supply chain or any element of critical national infrastructure. I'm pretty much useless in fact. Unless you really need to know the composition of gas trapped in the top of a jar of marmalade that's been in the cupboard for seventeen years because it turns out your family don't eat marmalade. Then I might be able to help.

I do, however, work in a small firm occupied largely by men from a previous era of British engineering. An era when going to the pub for a pie and a pint on a Friday was a perfectly normal thing to do. And going back to work after that pint was also perfectly normal.

In a move that is perhaps more representative of my company than anything I have ever seen, the Engineering Manager has brought a vat of chilli to work and the Managing Director has provided bottles of beer*. Nothing will stand between British engineering and its Friday lunchtime "pie" and a pint**.

Keep calm and carry on social-distancing.


* The company handbook states that it is strictly forbidden to bring intoxicating liquor onto the premises without permission of 'The Company'. Fortunately, the Managing Director embodies 'The Company' and is giving permission.

** It is impractical to re-heat any pastry-based object in the work microwave, so we have flexed on the definition of "pie". We take pie seriously here, and prefer no-pie to disappointing-pastry-pie.

I'm not your mother

Every now and then, BigBear and I discuss the possibility of moving overseas. The idea of escaping the growing racism, intolerance, isolationism and false sense of superiority in this country. If I'm honest, the major reason for not upping sticks and leaving is my own anxiety, specifically my anxiety about my LittleBear and how he would cope with being uprooted. And if I'm really, really honest, I'm mostly certain that he would cope a great deal better than I would, but he's a handy peg to hang my neurotic hat on.

That is all somewhat by-the-by, however. The point of that preamble is that I was talking about the idea of moving to my colleagues. My young, naive colleagues. My young, naive colleagues who are young enough to be my children (if I'd started very early). I had mentioned that Germany and the Netherlands were the most obvious options given the combined linguistic skills and professional expertise of BigBear.

Their response to this idea flummoxed me.

They started to discuss in some detail how easy it would be for me work remotely, and perhaps "pop" back from time to time.

At no point did it seem to occur to them that emigration could equate to me resigning from my job. I am clearly such an immutable part of the company that their dear, fragile little minds were unable to conceive of the possibility that Mummy might leave one day.

I found this both profoundly endearing and utterly alarming at the same time.

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.

Playing chicken

I work in a part of the country that has, shall we say, a reputation for being populated with people who are not overly endowed with grey matter. Jokes are made about webbed fingers and marrying cousins. But even by the usual yardsticks of idiocy, a local lad has plumbed new depths. It would appear that, over the weekend, he attempted to play chicken in his car with a building. Unsurprisingly, the building failed to get out of the way. Slightly more surprisingly, he decided not to get out of the way either, thus plunging himself, his car (and his girlfriend) straight through the rear wall of said building. Said building being the one I work in. Fortunately it was into the neighbouring company's half of the building and not ours. Didn't half make a mess though:

We're gonna need a bigger vacuum cleaner

 (These is actually a hole through to the outside, it's just got emergency boarding over it to keep the weather out.)

While this is a disappointing and untidy thing to happen in the offices of a PR company, it would have been absolutely catastrophic if those breeze blocks had come slamming through into the room next door - our laboratory, complete with multiple precision scientific instruments in the middle of being built. 

You can see the boarding now

The first impressive thing is that on the way to ploughing through a solid wall, this young idiot also went straight through a hedge and two air-conditioning heat-exchange units. Apparently nobody explained the rules of "chicken" to the shrubbery. The second impressive thing is there were no skid marks in the car-park at all. He really, really, really didn't try and stop. The third, and most impressive, thing is that neither he nor his girlfriend suffered any serious injuries. Natural selection is failing to work. Though if his girlfriend has any sense she's not his girlfriend any more, which will at least temporarily prevent him infecting the genetic pool.

Three ways in which the internet is terrifying

Only three?

Obviously the internet is terrifying in a wide variety of ways, not least of which is the ease with which one stumbles into frothing loons, conspiracy theorists and Trump-supporters. Frequently all three rolled into one. However, those are not the dark and daunting corners of the internet that I'm talking about. There are three recent experiences I've had that have left me alarmed, terrified and depressed in turn.

You have no privacy

Before Christmas, I ordered something online. And in my haste to type my address into the delivery information box, I swapped the digits in my house number. And since number YX HomeRoad has the same postcode as number XY HomeRoad, the address was accepted and off the package went. Time passed and I wondered where it had gone. I checked and double-checked the order and the predicted delivery date. I was just warming up to send an irate email when I triple-checked and spotted my typo. So, I went round to the wrong house to ask if they'd had my parcel. Except I never got as far as asking... the man in the house opened the door, took one look at me, and said, "Ah, I've got your parcel here." Not unnaturally, I asked how he knew it was for me... and it turned out he'd looked up my name on the internet and found my profile picture on Facebook, so he knew what I looked like. He'd also discovered where I worked in WorkTown, and what I did there. To say I was perturbed was an understatement. On the other hand, he hadn't found out where I lived, so I guess I should be grateful for small mercies.

They ARE watching you

I've just recently signed up to LinkedIn, and am in the process of piecing together a professional network. Partly I'm doing this because it vaguely feels like it might be a good idea one day. Mostly I'm doing it so I can check out potential interview candidates when they send us their CVs. When I first logged in and signed up, I was astonished that the list of "people you may know" did indeed include vast swathes of people I do know. I hadn't handed over my address book, or social media identity to LinkedIn, so how did it know? More worrying, among the suggested contacts were TheEx, and his best friend (our Best Man). I don't even want to know why LinkedIn thinks we should be connected, but that is right out. And as if that weren't bad enough, ExBestMan has sent me a "connect" request, asking to join my professional network. Given he hasn't spoken a single word to me since TheEx walked out the door 11 years ago, and in that inaction hurt me very badly, this is also right out.

Having freaked me out completely with whatever algorithm allowed it to know who all my friends are from the get go, LinkedIn went another step into the Dark Side a few days later. I phoned the plumber, from my mobile, to arrange to have the boiler serviced. The next morning, LinkedIn suggested I should add the plumber to my network. How did they know? (I'm assuming I'm in the plumber's address book now, and he's set his address book to link to his LinkedIn profile. When I say "assuming", what I actually mean is "hoping", because the alternative is just a bit too terrifying.)

GOMI

GOMI appears to be a website dedicated solely to be being bitchy and foul to other people. A site fuelled entirely by negativity and criticism. More specifically, it stands for Get Off My Internet, and is set up to mock and humiliate other bloggers. Some of it has, apparently, got really personal, and just reeks of the kind of bullying and unpleasantness that the anonymity of the internet has given free rein to. Now, I'm as happy as the next person to mock the absurd, point fingers at pretension and smirk at stupidity, but running an entire website dedicated to sneering and abuse seems to be taking it all a bit far*. They even give awards for the blog they hate the most. How unpleasant does your mindset have to be that you think it's "fun" to launch unprovoked attacks on members of the public and tell them you hate them/their lives/their writing? Because that's what most bloggers are - just people. Not famous people, not influential people, not publicity whores, not important, wealthy or dangerous people. Just people. And there's quite a simple solution when interacting with people - if someone writes a blog that you don't like, and isn't actually harming anyone, then you can just not read it.

I've read plenty of blogs. Blogs of smug motherhood with perfect, lentil-curry-eating, Boden-wearing children. Blogs of how hard it is to sell your four-bedroom Islington house and self-build an organic yurt in Copenhagen. Blogs that have become successful and started to have more and more adverts "sponsored content" and less and less witty, engaging, honest content. Blogs that seem to be sensible rational human beings right up until they launch off into an anti-vaccination rant**. And all of them I've given up on when they ceased to be interesting, or entertaining, or have anything whatsoever in common with my own life and outlook. It was quite easy, I just stopped reading them. And astonishingly, I had absolutely no desire to go online and declare that the authors of these blogs were horrible people.

You might think that I'm concerned about GOMI in case someone decides to lay into me for my bad parenting, or my terrible writing, or my smug bragging about LittleBear. But given that, at an ambitious estimate, I think there are about 40 of you regularly reading this, I don't think there's any risk I'm going to crop up on their radar. It does give me pause for thought about considering spreading the word about the existence of my blog though. The world is full of self-righteous, superior arses who think that they have carte blanche to rip apart the writings of anyone they don't happen to enjoy reading, just for fun. I don't think I want to be part of a world like that. I think I prefer the other 50% of the internet, where people post pictures of cute kittens.

And since one of our suppliers of precision vacuum equipment has decided to make a calendar with pictures of kittens on scientific instrumentation, here's the happy side of the internet:

Vacgen's kittens on a vacuum manipulator

Happy Internets to you all.


* Yes, I know GOMI isn't the only website that exists solely to be unpleasant about other people's endeavours, but it's my current example. 

** Or pro-disease as I like to think of the anti-vaccination brigade.
 

Meeting Otis

Last week I took LittleBear to the bookshop so he could spend a bit of his birthday money (not, sadly, on books, but on a dinosaur toy he'd seen last time we were there). Happy as only a small boy with a new dinosaur can be, we then retreated to the bookshop cafe to have shortbread and milk (or coffee in my case) and play with the lovely new dinosaur. And several other dinosaurs who'd had to come shopping with us. Obviously.

While playing, another small face appeared over the back of a chair and announced, "I like dinosaurs!" A rather angelic small face, framed with shoulder-length curly hair. Making a foolish assumption, I suggested to LittleBear that we invite the little 'girl' to come and see his dinosaurs. I then asked 'her' name and discovered it was Otis. Oops. Otis didn't seem to mind and none of his accompanying adults had been within earshot, so I didn't offend anyone.

Otis then produced his own Spinosaurus to come and play with our dinosaurs, and settled down in a chair at our table. I nodded a smile to his grandmother and said it was fine, and away we went. For the next forty minutes I played with two small boys and four dinosaurs, attempting to keep the peace between warring dinosaur factions, negotiate the "correct" answer to taxing questions of palaeobiology between two very determined young men with differing views and prevent milk, coffee or shortbread being strewn too widely across the cafe.

Meanwhile...

Otis' mother and grandmother sat at a different table and had a nice relaxing cup of coffee and slab of cake each. My coffee went cold before I managed to drink it, and I didn't get to eat any of the shortbread.

Now, I didn't actually mind playing with LittleBear and Otis, and I was fully expecting to have to spend my cafe-time playing and chatting with LittleBear anyway, but I can't help but wonder how it is that I'm always the one who accrues children in this situation, and never the one who sheds them? Because this is not the only time I have accumulated additional children when out and about. Some mothers seem to have the knack of engineering a peaceful corner with a cup of coffee, and I seem to have the knack of surrounding myself with mess, chaos, noise and dinosaurs.

I have a sneaking suspicion I actually know the answer to this question... I think it's because I like talking to children. And being the perceptive little creatures that they are, I like to think that small children are aware that I'm interested in talking to them, and so come and talk to me. They have no front, no guile, no social niceties. They are usually inquisitive, interested, interesting and (generally unintentionally) very funny. And they seem quite happy with me just being me. I don't feel any pressure to look a certain way, or conform to any particular model of adult behaviour.

Much as I'm sure it will surprise anyone who's ever met me socially, I actually feel excruciatingly, gut-twistingly uncomfortable and ill-at-ease when meeting and talking to new people. And even not-that-new people. The fact that my defence mechanism in such situations is to talk too much does a pretty good job of plastering over the cracks, thus leading the world and his dog to assume that I am confident and self-assured. Whereas in truth I have been known to pace up and down outside a pub instead of going in to meet people I don't know well. I've been known to turn back in my car and go home rather than go to a social gathering that's making my lower intestine attempt to strangle my liver. And I've lost count of the number of invitations I've turned down because the thought of them makes me break out in a cold sweat. But mostly, when confronted with an uncomfortable social situation, I just become absurdly garrulous with a tendency to over-share.

And with children? They are judgemental and opinionated and tactless in a way no adult could ever manage. But that also means they are honest and open and straightforward. I know where I am with children. I know that they are not merely humouring me, not rolling their eyes behind my back, not itching to get away but plastering a smile on their faces simply because it's the polite thing to do. If LittleBear thinks I'm being stupid or unreasonable he has no qualms about sighing and rolling his eyes. If he's not interested in what I'm saying or doing he either wanders off to do something more interesting, or just interrupts me. I get instant, honest feedback. So much easier than the complex world of adult human interactions.

So, thank you Otis' mother and grandmother, for lending me your child for some honest, human interactions. Next time, maybe I could have some honest, human interactions with a slice of cake while you entertain two small boys?

When dinosaurs rule the world...

... they will apparently limit themselves to eating only those construction vehicles who are the same colour as themselves.

Dimetrodon attacks Lofty

Tumbler is defeated by Utahraptor

Grabber is no match for Dilophosaurus

Ceratosaurus takes a bite from Roley

Bob the Builder has never been so exciting.

Yes, I did move the scenes to have slightly less cluttered photographs. All other features were the work of LittleBear. He was quite firm on the subject, and adamant that each dinosaur was only interested in a vehicle of the same colour. Scoop and Muck were very fortunate.
 

Ironing a tea-towel

Yesterday evening found me ironing a tea-towel. Just stop and think about that for a moment. Ironing. Ironing a tea-towel. Who does that kind of thing?

Let me try and explain my relationship to ironing. Purchases for my wardrobe are largely made based upon the cleaning and care requirements of the clothes. Does it need dry-cleaning? Not buying. Ponder what it will look like un-ironed... an abomination? Not buying. I do own a lovely pair of linen trousers. When I wear them, I love them, but they're white, and basically at the end of the day that's it, they're straight in the laundry basket. (To be honest, they're usually wrecked by lunchtime, but I draw the line at more than one outfit per day). They get washed. I'm pretty good at washing. And then they either go in a mysterious heap in the spare bedroom, or get hung up. Last time that happened it was TWO YEARS before I wore them again, because that was how long it was before I got the ironing board out again. Seriously, ironing just doesn't feature in my life. LittleBear doesn't know what the iron looks like, or what ironing is, and he's three-and-a-half now.

So how did I find myself ironing a tea-towel? (And pillowcases, and duvet covers. I nearly ironed a duster.)

Let me take you back to 1969. My beloved grandparents bought a holiday cottage in the Lake District. It was initially solely for the use of the family, but was soon being lent out to friends for holidays too. Because you could never quite guarantee who would be there, my grandmother wrote handy little notes, and sellotaped them to the inside of cupboards, and on the top of old biscuit tins, to inform visitors what lay within, and what should be returned. I think some of those little notices are still there. And the ones that have disintegrated have been replaced by similar notices in the hand of GrannyBear, or her sister AuntBear. There was never any question but that one must return all items to their proscribed locations. One must also always, on pain of my grandmother's diapproval, clean the cottage at the end of the holiday.

On one occasion University friends of my parents stayed and did not leave the cottage in an acceptable state at the end of their holiday. That was more or less the death-knell for non-family members being allowed to stay unaccompanied. My grandmother's disapproval was so stark, and so unwavering, that none of us dared ask again (and I don't think I was even born at the time). There now seems to exist an unspoken embargo on others staying there. They Might Not Clean Properly.

So now, we clean the cottage. And I turn into some kind of deranged monster in my insistence that it be clean to the standards of a woman who died thirty-odd years ago. Though my mother holds us all to the same standards. She notices if the skirting boards haven't been washed. Really. I'm not sure I've ever washed the skirting boards at home, but at the cottage? Oh yes. And I dust inside the lamp-shades, and move the fridge to clean underneath it. The kinds of the things that would be just a bit too much like effort at home, are utterly, irrevocably vital at the cottage. And it must all be done in one morning, as we're packing to drive for six hours to get home. No, I don't know why I make it so hard either. But I do know that BrotherBear does the same thing - his wife has complained to me that he goes a bit bonkers in cleaning up and starts doing un-natural things like cleaning behind bookcases.

I'm not entirely sure that the rest of the family has been imbued with the same sense of terror of Granny Disapproving Of Inadequate Cleaning, but my god it's had a lasting effect on me. (In fact given that one of my cousins once asked incredulously whether I genuinely got down on hands and knees to wash the kitchen floor rather than just using a mop, I know that it's perhaps affected one side of the family more than the other.)

What's all this got to do with tea-towels though?

Well... among the many facilities provided for the weary traveller at the cottage are a chest of drawers and an old chest full of tea-towels, towels, sheets, pillow-cases, blankets etc. And being incompetent and disorganised I had not taken any tea-towels, or any pillowcases with us. Go me. So I used the supplies from the cottage, and as is traditional, will pass them to the next visitor to return. But they came out of the drawer crisply ironed, and I cringe inwardly at the thought of returning a white Irish linen tea-towel in anything other than pristine condition. And thus I found myself ironing tea-towels. My family has a lot to answer for.

Aspirational parenting

I read an article in the Guardian yesterday by George Monbiot that made me stop and think. The first thing that I stopped and thought was the same thing that I always stop and think when I read an article by George Monbiot and that was "Oh do shut up George, you're talking utter nonsense again". Makes you wonder why I've read more than one or two of his articles doesn't it? However, on this occasion my eye-rolling despair lasted only as long as reading the headline

Aspirational parents condemn their children to a desperate, joyless life.

And given that it's a sub-editor that's usually responsible for the headline on the Graun, I think I might, on this one, rare, occasion have to not disagree with George.

Once I got round to reading the actual article I was reminded afresh how much I loathe the competitive nature of so much that happens with parenting. And I was appalled, depressed and slightly sickened by some of the things he talked about. The very idea that people start coaching their children when they're toddlers, hot-housing them, force-feeding them knowledge and information and skills to try and make sure they get ahead. I was reminded of poor little Bertie in Alexander McCall Smith's 44 Scotland Street novels, a six-year old boy with a domineering and misguided mother who inflicts saxophone classes, Italian lessons, psychoanalysis and pink trousers on her son, despite his desire to join the boy scouts and hit things with sticks. Those were works of fiction, written to raise a laugh. Admittedly they're funny because we (almost) all know parents who possess some of those traits. Parents who start their little darlings on piano lessons when they're three and ballet and tennis and horse-riding and all the rest. But Bertie was an exaggeration. Wasn't he? It would appear not. It would appear that there are actual human beings in this world who pay someone to coach their child in the right skills to be admitted to the right nursery. Or pay someone simply to identify the right nursery for ensuring their child starts out on the right path to the right university. Whatever right means to the kind of people who do this.

I hate people. I hate the idea that there are small children out there who want to play and giggle and be loved and have a sense of worth that isn't related to whether they've achieved something. Who want to be secure in their parents' love and approval irrespective of whether they can correctly decline their Latin nouns aged three. I hate the idea that there are parents who already have fixed and concrete ideas about what university counts as good enough, what career is good enough, what salary, what car, what house, what material possessions are adequate before they will deem their child to have succeeded.

Which sort of, in a roundabout way, brings me back to the headline, and my initial disagreement with it, and my own aspirations for my LittleBear. Because of course I have aspirations for him. Hopes. Dreams. I'm only human, and I don't think there are many parents in the world who don't want the best for their children, who don't aspire to something "better" for their children than they have. It's what that "better" is that makes the difference though, isn't it? Just because you have an aspiration or two doesn't necessarily mean your child is condemned to some sort of joyless existence. You could aspire to joy after all, couldn't you?

When BigBear and I were expecting LittleBear, we talked about what we wanted for our unborn child, what was important to us, what we hoped for. And we both had the same basic hope. Our first hope was that our child would be born healthy. Nothing more. Not exceptional, just whole and pink and perfect. And after that, the thing that we both want, more than any other is that he feels loved and has self-confidence and a sense of self-worth.

As you may have noticed from some of what I've written here, I'm perhaps not over-endowed with confidence in myself. And, it would be fair to say, BigBear is not exactly overflowing in the self-confidence department either. And therein lies the "better" that we want for LittleBear. We want him not to suffer from the fears and anxieties that have beset us. I'm sure he'll have his own fears and anxieties, and I'm sure that it's not entirely in our hands what happens in his mind. After all, we both had loving parents and we both ended up the way we did anyway. But that doesn't mean I can't aspire to have a more psychologically robust child than I have ended up myself. It was that hope that, slightly indirectly, led me to my course of CBT...

... I sat in my doctor's surgery, crying, as seemed to be the case rather often at the time. And I looked at my beautiful boy playing with toy cars on the floor and sobbed, "I just don't want him to grow up like me. I don't want him to think he's a failure. I don't want him to hate himself." My delightful and sympathetic doctor looked at me, somewhat bewildered and asked, "How long have you felt that way about yourself." And thus I ended up getting some help to stop feeling "that way"...

So, yes, of course I'd be delighted if my boy goes to a "good" university, or is a talented musician, or a skilled sportsman, or indeed excels in any field. And yes, of course I will nurture and encourage him to make the most of his inate talents. And I'm sure I'd be proud of him if he had a "successful" career. BUT, what I really want is for him to find a path through life where he feels fulfilled, where he is rooted to his own life, connected to people who love him and who he loves, where he does something that inspires him and satisfies him, where he has a sense of his own worth, where he is confident in the validity of his own feelings and able to express his own opinions. Where he is happy, secure and loved. I hope to give him as much of that as I can, to lay a foundation on which he can one day build his own life.

Every night, as I kiss my LittleBear good night I say "Night night, sleep tight, Mummy loves you lots and I'll be right here if you need me" and my LittleBear always replies "Night night, sleep tight, LittleBear loves you lots and I'll be right in my bed if you need me". I will hold true to my promise as long as there is breath in my body. But I know that the day will come when my LittleBear won't any longer be in his bed if I need him. And I hope I have the strength to let go when that day comes and let him find his own way, his own life and his own joy. That's what I aspire to.

So, are you going to wear that shirt?

Many of my friends from University days will recognise the question "so, are you going to wear that shirt?" I cannot quite remember the origin of the phrase, other than that it was addressed by a girl to her boyfriend on observing what he had chosen for an evening out. I think we all know what it means, but perhaps the non-British readers may not be quite so familiar with the full nuances of the question. Broadly, it translates to "Dear God! What the hell do you think you look like? There is no way I will be seen dead with you dressed like that. Go back to your room and choose something more appropriate. Now. Ideally ask me to come and tell you which shirt to wear."

I don't know whether it's a particular British thing, or an English thing, or just a passive-aggressive thing, but I do seem to experience a lot of this kind of question. Sometimes it's obvious what it means, other times less so. And sometimes it's a downright sledgehammer, that's abandoning all pretence of "passive" and moving directly to "aggressive". So today, I'm going to take a little tour through some of my favourite examples (with translations).

Are you going to eat all that cheese?
 - option 1: Don't you think you're more than fat enough already? I really think you should consider cutting back on your cheese intake.
 - option 2: I haven't bought enough lunch for myself, and I would really like to cadge some of your lunch, despite the fact that you have shown the foresight to buy enough food for the whole week, and I haven't even managed to bring enough for today.

Do you use that china?
 - My own life is so chaotic and my children so badly behaved, I find it incomprehensible that you might be able to use fine china in your lives. I am therefore going to assume that the fact that you have a glass-fronted cabinet full of Royal Doulton is just pretension on your part, and try and embarrass you about it, in an indirect fashion. [Note: this attempt fails, as we do use the bone china, and allow LittleBear to use it, on the grounds there's no point having it otherwise, and by treating him as a responsible human being at times, I find he behaves like one.]

Are you testing the new scientific instrument?
- I can clearly see that you're sitting at your desk, on a different floor of the building to the instrument in question, and therefore cannot possibly be testing anything downstairs, however, rather than asking you directly what you're doing or when you're going to start testing I shall be obtusely oblique, and leave you utterly bewildered about what the point of this question is. Other than nagging. I'm pretty sure nagging is involved.

Were you getting a cup of tea?
 - easy one this - please make me a cup of tea.

Does LittleBear still <fill in the blank>?
 - I believe my child is more advanced than yours and I am going to attempt to draw your attention to this fact in the least subtle way I can imagine, beyond actually pointing and laughing. The utterance of a question of this nature almost instantly relegates the speaker into the category of "parents I have no interest in spending time with". I don't need this rubbish. There are enough ways in which I can feel like a rubbish mother on my own thank you very much, I don't need anyone's help. Besides, today I am an absolutely bloody awesome mother, so there.

Do you let LittleBear <fill in the blank>?
 - this is a tricky one, as it can have two clear, and diametrically opposite meanings, that all depend on the intonation. If there's a slight air of incredulity, then we're looking at option 1. Option 1 is therefore much the same as my previous example. This is a parent (usually a mother) who wishes to claim the moral high ground for her parenting choices and condemn any other choices to the heap of neglect, stupidity or failure. She (as I said, it usually is) can bugger right off with her faux outrage at whatever it is you've chosen to do that she thinks is inappropriate. On the other hand, if there's a slightly plaintive tone, or a hint of desperation, or indeed simple curiosity, then we're firmly in the territory of option 2. Option 2 means you're talking to a normal human being who is looking for advice, validation, help or information. This is not a passive-aggressive question, it's just a question and should be welcomed with open arms (open ears?) and responded to kindly.

You don't actually wear leggings do you? With your knees?
 - this is one of the classic sledgehammers. Uttered by my "best-friend" at school. Perhaps the fact that she was 6 inches shorter than me and with legs of double the circumference might explain the source of the question, but still. With friends like her I really didn't need any enemies.

You can eat a lot can't you?
 - I have genuinely no idea what this meant. It was uttered by a Chinese work associate. It was uttered as I prepared a plate of fish pie and steamed vegetables. Did he mean I was fat? Greedy? Thin enough to get away with eating a lot? I remain mystified by it, along with some of his other declarations, such as "Why have you worked here so long?" and "Why don't you have a PhD? Everyone has a PhD!"

Have you put the bins out?
 - I know perfectly well that you haven't put the bins out, and I'm going to draw your attention to it, so that you can leap into action, rather than actually just being direct and asking you to do so.

OK, I admit it, the last one is me. I blame everyone else though. Their bad habits are rubbing off on me. Perhaps my late-May-resolution should be to try to be more direct. Sorry BigBear.