The Angel in the House

Throughout my late teens and twenties I would have fulminated against Coventry Patmore's poem 'The Angel in the House' as patriarchal sexist gobshite, particularly nonsense such as: Man must be pleased; but him to please/ Is woman's pleasure' My feminism was fairly scattergun, I used to copy huge tracts out of The Female Eunuch and Sexual Personae onto my school file. I was Millie Tant and I was proud.

However, these days I'm not an angry young woman any more. I'd still class myself as a feminist and I get a bit depressed about young women who totally reject the term feminism. I do hope that they know that they deserve equal pay for equal work and that it is more important to be valued for who you are than what you look like.

This weekend I might not have been an Angel in the House, but I have tried to be a good mother. And it's been immensely rewarding. On Saturday I took my son on the train to York and I gave him new experiences: we ate tapas in La Tasca and then went to the Jorvik Viking centre. I do advise my readers that the viking centre smells like a viking city - open latrines and leather tanning and all, and that eating a mound of patatas bravas and tortilla before visiting is somewhat foolhardy. On Sunday I cooked us a traditional Sunday lunch and then we went for a long walk around a lake. This weekend has been very different to recent activities as it didn't involve booze, dancing or bringing the wrong coat home. But it was really rewarding and I enjoyed it. Especially as my son said 'Mummy, I love spending time with you'.

I do believe that women are valuable people who deserve to be judged on far more than their housekeeping and parenting skills. But, sometimes, being a good Mum is its own reward.

Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?

I'm sure some of you remember the irony of the BBC's summer holiday staple: 'Why don't you?' where the kids were told to switch off the TV and go out and try doing something less boring instead. Nowadays the corporation would be unable to broadcast that programme as between 6am and 7pm kids can watch wall-to-wall Cbeebies (with novelty disabled presenter) and CBBC. And, if I let him, my son would.

On Saturday I was awoken at 6am by my son yowling 'Mummy, I'm SICK' and proving his innate maleness by avoiding puking on the wipe-clean floorboards and instead covering my woven sea grass mat. Nice. I let him watch TV for a few hours whilst I checked his temperature (bucket ever to hand) and then decided he was fine. Therefore, I took him to the local museum where we had a great afternoon looking at fossils and doing interactive computer quizzes on the Romans.

In the evening he went to his Dad's and I met up with some Mums from his school. They had all generally been dealing with puke for the past 24 hours (and the one who hadn't yet switched her mobile to 'silent' so when her kid started chundering her partner couldn't call her home. Nice work). We had a great evening and then at eleven pm they returned to their families and I disappeared off into town with my pals. It was a bit of a random night in which we appeared to gatecrash someone else's birthday and then bumped into some blokes dressed as sheep. When one sheep gave me his fleece I thought it was time to get my coat and leave. So I did. (Without the sheep. In case you were wondering.).

In the morning when I awoke I was a little confused as to how my coat had changed fabric and colour overnight. Then I worked out (those 7 years of higher education were well worth it) that I had picked up someone else's coat and come home with it. I drove to town and tried to revisit the bar from the night before but it was totally locked up. I hung the impostor coat on the door and left.

On the way back to my car I wandered past 'Richer Sounds' and noticed a bit of a deal in the window - a TV which had been knocked down to a third of its original price. Now, my current TV is legendary amongst my friends. It was my baby sister's 18th birthday present in 1993, it has a tiny screen and you can't see what's happening on it when sitting on the sofa. 'Louise' once asked me whether it actually requires a TV licence. I've always liked it as it isn't imposing and takes up 0.5% of my house space compared to my books. But it is a little old. And it has a big dent in the side where my sister let a candle burn down on it. So, in 'Richer Sounds' I let a nice sales assistant talk me into buying a 32" flat screen LG LCD TV. And I even know what some of those initials mean. My old TV was not visible from across the room, this monster is visible from space.

Back home, I'm aware that now my son has even more impetus to watch more telly than is good for him. But I'm going to try to help him resist the urge. I've given up going online between the hours of 3pm and 7pm for Lent to spend more time with him. And it's lovely to spend time with a real person not just Facebook. So maybe I won't be able to get him to switch off the TV and go out and do something less boring instead, but I've banned myself from the internet during his time and it's lovely.

I just wish I could get my coat back.

Hair today

I am currently in the Algarve reading lots of books (in four days I've finished that Lionel Shriver book, read 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher' by Kate Summerscale, 'Saturday' by Ian McEwan and now am revelling in a guilty pleasure: 'Child of the Phoenix' by Barbara Erskine). Holidays are about letting go the hurly-burly of life and living at a more enjoyable pace. However, I found myself thoroughly frustrated this morning by having to follow a pointless and time-consuming noughtie ritual. To set the scene: the Algarve is a pleasant 17 degrees but it is humid. I have naturally curly hair. These two facts of nature result in my hair going frizzy the second I set down at Faro airport. If I had any sense I would tie my hair up in a bobble and leave it festering in its own juices until I get back to the UK. But do I do that? Heck, no. I spend about 40 minutes cack-handedly clawing at my hair with my straighteners to try to achieve a straight look. It's ridiculous.

To horrifically misquote 'Twelfth Night': 'some are born straight, some achieve straightness and some have straightness thrust upon them'. I am firmly one of those whose straightness was thrust upon them. Until October last year I resolutely wore my curls with pride and refused to give into the Cult of the Ghd. Then, in Portugal, my hair was 'restyled' (savaged) by a hairdresser and the resulting mess of layers and fringe had to be straightened (unless I wanted to look like a Norman page). I've got used to having straight(ish) hair. My friends take pity on my hopelessness with straighteners on nights out and sort out the back - as I belong to a select group of women who believe that it only matters what the front of your hair looks like, as I can't see the back I believe that neither can anyone else. There are usually some disparaging comments about my Remington irons as I ought to have Ghds. But I just can't bring myself to pay £100 for something that effectively just burns my hair.

Looking back at 1985, the year this blog harks back to but rarely mentions, everyone had huge frizzy perms. Except me. Back then I had sleek, straight hair naturally. I was out of the times then as I am now. Part of me keeps wanting to give up and return to my curly mop. But now I'm one of the straightened crew I don't think I dare.

Practical Parenting

Recently I've been wondering whether I'm actually a bit of a crap mother. I'd like to think I'm a good Mum and when I asked my son today what he liked about me I was rewarded with an honest appraisal of my parental fitness: 'you let me have Quality Streets'. Well, that's me mother of the year then. Ironically, the said Quality Streets were given to me by a student as a Christmas present and are in one of those paper cartons. Well, we've had them for virtually two months now and they are still only half eaten so clearly I don't even let my son have many Quality Streets.

This blog stems from me trying to work out this morning how many units of alcohol I consumed on a night out on Friday. The honest answer? I honestly don't know. I guessed the total numbers of glasses of wine, gin, cocktails, sambucca and tequila shots and, using the Drinkaware website, got to the staggering (pun completely intentional) total of 13.5 units and 795 calories. Ouch. Thankfully for me I don't get hangovers but I knew I wasn't fit to drive all day so I couldn't take my son out in the car. I did take him to the cinema to watch a Disney film but I kept nodding off.

Now, I'm aware that the perfect 1950s housewife was a mirage. Hand on heart I never planned to be a single mum: I was certain when I got pregnant that I was going to be with my husband forever. I also didn't plan to work fulltime when I had him, but circumstances pushed me into having a fulltime job. If you search the net for statistics on single parents you will find that a quarter of all children of lone parents live in poverty, that they are three times more likely to suffer emotional problems than children who have two parents living with them and every other statistic is bleak: likelihood to end up committing crime or suicide. It makes me feel really guilty that my son's potential has been damaged by my ex's choice to leave. But, on the other hand, I enjoy my freedom and am far happier. So, do I enjoy myself at my son's expense? Sometimes, yes. Usually, no. I'm not a perfect Mum, if such a person even exists, but I found these words on the BBC website to be very reassuring:

Jane Ahrends, from One Parent Families, said while single parents might face poverty, the image of them as "young, feckless women who deliberately get pregnant" was wrong.
"The vast majority of lone parents are ordinary working mums and dads in their 30s and 40s, who are just trying to do their best in circumstances they didn't choose," she said.

Sometimes I do get the balance wrong: but tonight my son and I had Dominos pizza in front of 'You've been Framed' and laughed our socks off. Ok, so it wasn't mung beans and dolphin friendly tuna steaks followed by an improving game of charades but we had a great time.

I need to remember that I'm a single Mum, not single.

Deconstructing texts

For much of my life I have deconstructed texts: as an English student, then a History student, then a Law student, then an English teacher I have spent much of my adult life trying to glean the significance of texts or discussing the implicit meaning in a text. For many of those years texts were limited to novels and plays and poems and happy hours were spent deciding whether a post-feminist slant could be applied to the works of Emily Dickinson. Or not. On one drunken occasion in about 1990 we analysed the tundric nature of the metaphors in 'Ice Ice Baby' by Vanilla Ice (largely due to this line: 'Take heed, cause I'm a lyrical poet'). We were being consciously arch and clever. Course we were. But isn't that what the study of English literature is about?

However, little did I realise in the post-University world that the implicit meaning of texts would gain a whole new and totally absorbing significance. The texts which take me so much time to analyse are not canonical works of literature. No longer do I worry whether I am getting Shakespeare or Byron or Hardy. No, now the texts I worry about are the SMS version that I receive on my mobile phone. Or more to the point, the ones I don't receive on my mobile phone. Many of the single women I know live under the absolute tyranny of their mobile phone and conscious minute counting as to when the bloke that they fancy is going to return their message. I know I do. Your mobile is fished out of your bag every 20 minutes to check for a little yellow envelope on the screen. Your heart actually thuds at that beep-beep noise. If he doesn't text you back the same day you get all paranoid. You question how soon you should text him back and whether responding immediately makes you look too eager or desperate or slutty or needy. And then when it is sent you've set off that whole rota fortunae of waiting for him to respond again. It is wearisome. It is truly tyranny.

So when did he last text? 23:14 on 04/02/2009. It's not looking good is it?

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world/That has such people in't!

The ice age

If you are British and reading this blog I warrant that you are wearing a jumper. It's parky outside. The snow has given we Britons something to talk about constantly for a week: whether to discuss has it snowed? / will it snow? / is the school shut? / is school opening tomorrow? / have they gritted? / why can't we cope with two inches of snow? It's brilliant. Being the Mum of a six year old I have had a fantastic opportunity to go sledging and snowball throwing. I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

The reason I'm enjoying it is that I'm now a constantly sunny person, irrespective of what the weather brings. On the other hand, my ex is really not in such a good place. Apparently, he and his girlfriend have finally split up for good. This led to him telling me that he wasn't going to try to get back with me. I was quite taken aback as I honestly couldn't imagine any world where we would ever be a couple again and even the suggestion seems utterly bizarre. As Heraclitus of Ephesus put so succinctly: 'everything flows and nothing abides'. Just as this snow and ice seems so permanent now in a few short days we will be back to rain and ice-free pavements. Everything flows and I couldn't go back to my ex: I'm not the same person, that period of my life is now as much history to me as the last ice age. As someone with a medieval history degree I understand the value of acknowledging history, but whilst I might be fascinated by the Black Death of 1346, I wouldn't like to experience it. My marriage is now frozen in the past for me and when the sun shines on me it is as a single and happy person.

The post-birth world

I've been reading a book for months that I don't much enjoy: it's called 'The Post-Birthday World' by Lionel Shriver. The premise is that it is about a woman who makes a momentous decision on a birthday and then the book splits into two and we see her life unfurl in two ways: if she says 'yes' that day or if she says 'no'. Today, February 1st is an important birthday for me as it's my sister's birthday (aka 'anonymous' on this blog), it is also the anniversary of my ex moving into his flat.

Yesterday I visited one of my most loved friends and the one whose life was most similar to mine. We are pretty much the same height, have the same degree, are both aspirant writers (though she is far more successful - deservedly), our husbands have the same name, we married them within a few months of each other, both of us have step-children the same age and our first boys were born 6 months apart. So far, so alike. Visiting her is to see what might have happened if my ex and I were happier together: she now has three utterly beautiful children of her own and a husband. Whereas, I am a single mother to one boy and have all but lost contact with my step-son.

But, I do know that this is a life path that fits me better. Whilst you are never supposed to admit this I am pleased I only had one child. Society's scorn is heaped upon women who choose a life of indulgence and never have kids, but, in my experience, women who choose to have only children are treated with equal suspicion. We are seen as both spoiling our only child whilst depriving them of siblings. I remember clearly at post-natal checkups the health visitor blethering away about how 'it would be different with my second'. I did not dare tell her that I didn't want a second. I absolutely loathed being pregnant: I was sick constantly for six months. When my son arrived I resented sleepless nights and exhaustion. My ex was very little help: as I breastfed our son for a year he saw it an an excuse to not really do much to help. My ex cited my refusal to have more kids as a reason our marriage failed, but I believe that it would have failed far faster had I been chucking up constantly whilst running around after a toddler. Additionally, he might have earnt double what I did but he still expected me to pay all the bills (even the entire mortgage!) so I would have had to go back to work early. I love my son dearly but I've never once, even momentarily, wanted another child.

Visiting my friend has shown me how wonderful having a large family is: her kids are joyous. I've always been obsessed by different choices, the reading at my wedding was 'The Road not Taken' by Robert Frost as that is my favourite poem. I've blogged before about my interest in the parallel world theory of physics. It might have been my ex's choice to take the road out of my life on my sister's birthday in 2008 but I do believe that it was the very best path for me. But my heart swells with gladness that my friend's life took the other path so that I can enjoy seeing that other post-birth world.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference