I blame it on the parents

I know this won't make me popular but I am one of those annoying mothers whose children never had tantrums and therefore I don't understand them. 

To be clear: I’m not talking about childhood exuberance. I have a friend who’s always hugely embarrassed by her three small boys behaving ‘badly’ when they are just having fun.   Of course they cry when rough becomes tumble but tantrums? Never.  And she’s absolutely aware of their activity, apologising to other walkers / passengers/ diners who might be affected.

But what’s almost worse than the toddler tantrum is a thing I call parental oblivion.

I was on a train to London the other day when a lady with a small boy joined the carriage. She appeared to be going to work. She was totally immersed in her iPhone while the little lad, about six years old, wandered up and down the commuter train chatting to people - all heading to work - whether they liked it or not. Mum barely looked up for half an hour.  

After a while I started to think she had just been standing next to the boy on the platform and wasn’t in fact his mother at all.

I was reading through a report when he first came over to me. ‘What’s that?’ he said, pointing to my travel mug. I smiled. ‘It’s a mug.’

‘Why’s it got a lid?’

‘So you can take it with you without spilling your drink.’

‘Can I have it?’ I glanced up at his mother who was oblivious. ‘No,’ I said. Still smiling. ‘I’ve got my coffee in it.’  He went to pick it up but, grin slightly fixed now, I got there first.

‘You should share,’ he scowled. I told him you shouldn’t share drinks with strangers on a train. He picked up my handbag and started looking through it.

‘I don’t think your mummy would like you to do that,’ I said in a slightly louder voice. No reaction. ‘But what’s inside?’ he asked. ‘I want to see. Mummy lets me.’

I won’t bore you with how much more of this followed but eventually, rather than throw myself on the tracks, I stood up, took his hand, prodded his mother and said, ‘I’m sorry to bother you but I wondered if you noticed this small child by any chance when you got on the train? He seems to be completely alone so I’m going to take him to lost property.’

She looked at me, utterly discombobulated, said, ‘He’s with me,’, told him to sit down and went back to her iPhone. Three minutes later he was bored and off down the aisles again and she didn’t bat an eyelid.

I moved carriages. It was either that or abduct him.

Some of us are dying of 'exposure'

This morning I was offered an amazing opportunity. A well-known, very profitable magazine, which makes millions of pounds each year for its seriously wealthy owner, offered to publish my original work on its web site. For nothing.

‘Wait,’ I puzzled. ‘What do you mean ‘for nothing’?  I'm not an advertiser. I'm a writer. I don’t pay to have my work published – people pay me to write it.’

Turns out they weren't confused. They were asking me to write for them for no wage.

I pointed out that I am not a teenage intern looking for ‘exposure’. I am forty-something years old and have been a journalist since I was twenty something. I have written for magazines, national newspapers and global companies. I've written books, proof read for legal companies and edited breaking news for broadcast interviews.

They already knew. They’d heard of me. That’s why they called. Because they have gazillions of readers and so us ‘working together’ would be mutually beneficial.

Like so many of my equally professional, talented and experienced colleagues, I'm constantly asked by friends to ‘just glance over this’ for nothing. I have friends who are doctors, yoga teachers and project managers who have decided to ‘do a bit of PR’ and ask me to check over the (shocking) press release they've written. I am asked to ‘fiddle with’ restaurant menus, corporate brochures and publicity leaflets by people who are setting up a new little business. If I had a penny for every time a mum at school said to me, ‘I've decided to do a bit of PR for my friend who’s just started making cup-cakes / bought a dancing school / become a florist – can you check it over for me?’ I would actually be able to retire to my villa in Tuscany and write the novel I've never got time to squeeze in because no one is paying me to do it.

I recently did some work for a very old acquaintance because they were in dire straits. I halved my rate for them (I know, I know). When the invoice was three months overdue, I managed to get through on the phone. ‘We can’t afford to pay you,’ they said, without a hint of regret. ‘You’ll just have to wait.’

'No problem', I said. 'I'm sure the mortgage company will be happy to hang on a bit'.

Imagine going to your hairdresser and saying, ‘I’d like you to cut my hair for free. You can make me look gorgeous and I will go and walk the streets and tell everyone and the exposure will be great for your business.’

Or asking a painter and decorator to come and smarten up your house for nothing, promising that every time someone comes to visit you’ll tell them who gave it the wow factor.

There are a few other professions where I know this happens. We all know that guy who has decided he’s a photographer because the local rag printed his sunset.  Graphic designers tell of mates who design their own logos and then need them tweaked; in Word.  A friend who’s a highly-qualified landscape architect with years of experience was recently asked if he’d very much mind arriving early for a lunchtime barbecue so he could cut the grass first.

So my plea today is this: pay us like you pay the supermarket, the vet, the mechanic. Pay us when we ask you to, not months later. Pay us in cash, by transfer, by cheque or to our offshore account (I wish).

Now I'm off to the local for dinner. I'm hoping their payment terms are 28 days, by which time it's possible I might have some money.  

CAN SOMEONE TAKE CHARGE OF THE HUMAN RACE PLEASE?

We all love the idea of free will and all that blah. But I don’t think we humans can any longer be trusted to make our own decisions. We’ve been left to our own devices since forever and while our ancestors may have been more community minded - feeding, clothing and hunting for the whole tribe (or not, I have no idea obviously) - we no longer give a tiny little rat’s arse about anyone except ourselves.

Every day I hear of another giraffe being shot for a laugh by a rich dentist and an elephant dies because some tool on holiday fancies a photo. Dogs are skinned alive because someone said it makes the meat taste better if they die in pain. Whales choke to death because there’s more plastic in the sea than salt. Baby chicks are hurled onto a conveyor belt by the bargain bucket load because we all want meat every day but only want it to cost a pound.

Kids are smashing each other to pieces in the playground because they live on sugar and iphones from two years old and can’t control themselves. We’re far too busy and important to feed them properly or teach them patiently. 

We must have a big shiny car that doesn’t fit in a supermarket car parking space because that’s what makes us worthwhile. And we must be able to fly to Africa for less than the cost of filling it up. We must drive it back and forth, back and forth all day, every day because it is essential that we get everywhere as fast as possible and we can’t Bluetooth our ipods on the bus. 

When I was a kid, roast chicken was a Sunday treat, salmon was for weddings and wine was only drunk on special occasions. No one felt it was their right to holiday in ever-further-off places. But now we feel we deserve winter sun as well as skiing.  People without a job consider it a human right to have the smartest smart phone and the latest HD curved screen plasma TV.

We want five tops for a fiver so when we’re bored of them next week we can bin them and get more. We want chia seeds shipped in from Timbuctoo. We throw away half-used lipsticks and apples with bruises.  There are hundreds of sheep in the fields around me but the shops only sell lamb shipped from New Zealand. 

We need to be stopped.

Everyone should be made to read the final chapter of the Bone Clocks, by David Mitchell. (Yes, you read that right. No choice. Made to). In his vision, only a few years from now, everything has run out. It is impossible to speak to your relatives far away in Dorset, let alone visit them. Gangs are looting everything from the solar panels on the roof to the communal food banks where food is distributed fairly. It is too dangerous to travel anywhere on foot. People with asthma die because there is no way to make inhalers. Children listen wide-eyed to the tales their grandparents (that’s us by the way) tell of the ‘olden days’ when anyone who wanted to could fly to the other side of the world. 

So I suggest we are restricted to only using our cars every other day. There must be a cap on gas and electricity use. Food should be rationed like it was in the war. We’d be fitter and better off, rainforests might exist outside of old picture books and there’d be a slim chance of eking out the planet’s resources

I know what you’re thinking. I know you hate the idea; you think I’m mad. But that’s the problem. You refuse to restrict yourself, won’t put up with the slightest inconvenience for the sake of future generations. You think I’m exaggerating, that it’s never going to happen.

For the sake of my grandchildren and all the tiny chicks who fell off the conveyor belt and got squashed, I hope you’re right.

When your impossibly beautiful, super-fit Moroccan guide leans in late at night and says quietly, ‘Can I take you to see the sun rise over the mountain?’, obviously you say yes. But in the light of a camp fire, a few bottles down, I failed to clock the implications until he stood up and departed, saying, ‘Cool. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you at 1am’.

Still, I had no idea what I was letting myself in for.  I've been to Africa gazillions of times and climbed Kilimanjaro on the spur of the moment, largely in the clothes I was standing up in. I thought I knew my stuff.

I’d arrived in Marrakech a few days earlier with a friend for a trip we’d put together ourselves (being very particular about our itinerary) with the expert help of a company called Journey Beyond Travel.

We’d had a couple of days in a gorgeous riad in the old town where nothing was too much trouble, had the top five layers of our skin sanded off in a hammam and eaten seventeen courses of exquisite food for less than a beer costs in London. The same restaurateur had escorted us to the local parts of the souk where you could still haggle serious prices.

On the third day, we were driven to a village in the High Atlas Mountains to begin our climb of Toubkal, the second highest mountain in Africa. Marrakech was a shade below 40° when we left in our linen shirts, shorts and sun hats, attire that served well until we reached base camp.

It was a tough walk – but a walk nonetheless, not unlike ‘climbing’ Kili. Our guide was born and bred in the mountains and ran marathons up the High Atlas. We felt more than safe in his charming hands.

We also had a cook with us and a whole ‘nother donkey to carry all his equipment and food. When our guide indicated lunchtime shade, the cook unloaded pots, pans, stoves, teapots, glasses, china, pretty tablecloths and napkins and cushions for our tender behinds. He boiled kettles for tea, picked flowers and filled vases. We sat on handmade rugs spread on the mountain scrub and ate freshly cooked, beautifully presented local food.

We arrived at base camp feeling hot and sweaty and ready for a shower and a sleep. It had been a long and often steep walk through searing heat and, fit as we were, we could both feel the muscles in our legs starting to complain.

But it was Africa. It was as we had expected. Until our guide woke us in the middle of the night.

‘I thought you’d be ready,’ he said, glancing at my Goretex trousers, micro-fleece jacket and baseball cap.  

 He couldn't believe we were so horribly unprepared. I was sure he was making a fuss about nothing when he insisted I wear his coat over mine and take his head torch, thermal hat and gloves. And sticks. For the love of Pete.

Less than ten minutes later I was more scared than I have ever been before or since. Not in an adventurous roller-coaster, skiing-slightly-above-my-ability sort of way. Really, really scared. Asking myself why I had left my children on a far-off continent and put myself in this kind of danger.

It was pitch black. People say that all the time but this was like being blind. Without my torch I couldn't see my own legs if I looked down. I couldn't see my companions standing next to me. I've never experienced such total blackness – it was claustrophobic, like being in an underground cave.

And it was, as he had warned us, bitterly cold. This was serious climbing, not just steep walking. Within twenty minutes we hit snow. Each step involved stamping out footholds with woefully inadequate hiking boots as we clung to the icy mountain, traversing trustingly, as close to our invisible guide as possible.  

Once, my friend flung out an arm to steady herself and knocked him off the side of the mountain. We heard him tumble down below us in the darkness and howled in terror (us, not him). He climbed quickly back up on his goat’s legs and reassured us that we were doing fine.

A little later, we heard (but couldn't see) rushing water.

‘When I say jump…..jump,’ he said in his usual merry voice.  What? Wtf? Blind? NO!

‘It’s fine,’ he said. ‘Ready?  Trust me. 1,2,3…..’

We did, of course, jump when he told us to. And we were fine. And not long after that, thin fingers of light started to stretch across the sky and by 4am we could see where we were going. By 5am my friend was starting to struggle with altitude sickness and our progress slowed painfully. Ten steps forward, rest for a minute to draw breath. Our guide said we should give up and go back. My friend, a doctor, insisted she would rather chew her own arm off.  

Just before 6am we carried her between us to the peak of Toubkal and sat and watched the sunrise. It was breathtaking. Truly, utterly spectacular. Was it worth it? At that moment, yes, undoubtedly. When we saw the yawning crevasse and waterfall on the way back down that we had jumped over in the dark, not so much. Would I do it again? In a heartbeat. But with my children – and the same guide. Who, on the way back down, as we shed our layers and beanies and donned sunglasses, told us that people get lost on the mountain and die every day trying to do it on their own. Because, like us, they are woefully unprepared.  And because, unlike us, they think they can do it on their own. 

Phones that ....light your cigarette afterwards.

Great news for those who are struggling to save up for the latest ipad, Wii thing or Shoot You Really Dead computer game for their three year olds.

Hang on five minutes and they won’t want it any more. The one thing I find comforting about today’s technology is that it advances quicker than I can write about it. By the time I put pen to paper (metaphorically speaking obviously; even I’m not that much of a Luddite), it’s no longer an issue.

By the time the kids get to Game Station on January 5^th with their Christmas vouchers, the Bloody War thing you didn’t want them to have has been consigned to the charity shops where you can get it for 50p if you’re that uncool. Which they’re not, of course. Crisis averted.

Technology today moves so fast that the revolutionary iphone 4 is already a bit passé, long before most people have finished saving up for one.

The next thing that will ‘absolutely transform the way you live’ makes the original, old-fashioned iphone look like a Neanderthal brick. Facebook on your phone? Old hat. This next generation will replace your credit cards, get you on the Tube and open your front door.

You think I’m joking. Apparently a tiny chip will be integrated into SIM cards issued by mobile networks and – wait for it - can be added to your existing phone. These providers will be able to lease space on the chip to other businesses like banks, travel agents or supermarkets.

Suddenly writing ‘Bit tired’ on your Facebook status while walking upstairs doesn’t seem quite so Bladerunner.

You’ll be able to sell blue chip shares or buy frozen chips at the local shop just by scanning your phone.

Fantastic.  Can’t wait. But guess what? It’s taken me three weeks from receiving the press release about all this to get it online as ‘an area cable has become unplugged’.

The washing machine leaks and has decided it only washes at 30°. And I still can’t change the integral light bulb in my ceiling fan so my conservatory is only useful during daylight hours.

The farm shop down the road where I get my veg hasn’t even begun to accept cheques yet and they’ve almost been abolished.

I don’t want to piss on anyone’s parade, but maybe if we stuck with things for more than a few minutes, we might actually make them work properly before we bin them and move on to the next exciting development.

Hammering home the point........

The other day I was racing from work to school, when my journey was suddenly ended by a car a hundred yards in front of me which span out of control, flipped onto its roof and smacked into a tree.

In the blink of an eye the narrow winding lane was filled with ambulances, police cars and fire engines. The woman driving the car had to be cut free.  Her bags lay ignored on the tarmac where they were flung as she crashed. The road was shut for hours.

I found myself wandering up and down the gathering line of traffic waving my useless mobile at the clouds trying to get a signal (Cuban rainforest? Sure. Sussex? No).

I was furious that once again, through no fault of my own, I’d be late to pick up my daughter from school.  She would then miss her next appointment, the other daughter would be on her own for three hours instead of two, the slow-cooking dinner would be burnt, there would be no time to feed either of them before the oldest had to go out again and I’d have to walk the dog in the dark. There were four people who were expecting me within the next few minutes and I had no way of getting to them or even telling them why I wasn’t there.

I was huffing and puffing and stomping up and down for a good fifteen minutes before a sideways look from one of the other people stuck in the jam stopped me dead in my tracks.

What on earth has happened to me? The woman driving the car had to be cut free.  And I was thinking, ‘how inconvenient’.

My ridiculous timetable has got to change. I was shocked at how completely I’d lost sight of what is really important. I barely acknowledged that in front of me was a human being whose life had literally just been turned upside down – she could have been dying for all I knew - and all I could think was ‘how quickly can you clear the traffic?’

As regular readers know, I am always late for everything. And not because I’m sat at home watching the end of Loose Women. Not even because I’m at the gym or visiting the old and infirm, which would at least make me healthy in body and mind.

I always plan to go to a meditation class nearby and every week I phone the lovely lady who leads it and tell her I don’t have time.  She tells me that if I wanted to have time, I would have.

A friend of mine, who also has two children, always does whatever she wants and if that means her kids can’t do something, bad luck. I threatened my children the other day, when they moaned about me being grumpy, that if they didn’t start helping out, I was going to start behaving just like (let’s call her) Molly.

‘She’s always happy, she’s fit, she’s great at all her hobbies, everyone thinks she’s really cool – because she does exactly what she likes no matter how much it stuffs up everyone else’s plans.’  I bellowed.

‘She’s not exhausted and wrinkly and baggy eyed with no decent clothes – and what thanks do I get? (Oh sweet mother of God, I’m boring myself now).

‘If you’re not careful I’m going to become just like her,’ I threatened.

‘You should,’ they answered, unperturbed, without even wobbling their cart -surfing Penguin. ‘You do far too much.’

So that’s my children, my friends, my mother and – no doubt, had she had the chance to comment - the poor lady in the overturned car, who all agree that I’ve got the work-life balance a bit ass-about-face.

Brace yourselves. Things are about to change around here..............

Not so Golden Oldies......

It appears we’ve all been misquoting the old saying ‘manners maketh man’.  Among folk of a certain age it is clear the rule only applies to ‘young’ man.

I often hear people ranting about how rude youngsters are these days, but by far the rudest people I come across have long since been eligible for their bus pass. I reckon they have reached an agreement that once you’ve completed your hard life of work and politeness and retired, you can do whatever you like.

I’ve just come back from a bustling village where everyone was nipping in to grab something before dashing off to do whatever else it is that keeps us all so busy in the run up to Christmas.

I was standing a respectful distance back from the till, behind an old gent paying for his ball of fat for the bird table, when an equally elderly lady walked around me and put her goods down on the counter.

I assumed they were together. But cash handed over, change issued, he doffed his cap to the 12-year-old on the till and left.

Without old-batting an eyelid, the woman (notice, I’ve stopped calling her a lady) fiddled around in her purse, pulled 47 carrier bags out of her wheelalong trolley, spread them out on the counter before finding the one that was the right size for these particular purchases and spent the next twenty minutes organising them all in the correct fashion within the trolley.

‘I wonder, should I wear my invisibility cloak to fight crime or for more evil purpose?’ I asked the checkout girl, as I grew old waiting my turn.

She shrugged apologetically.  The old shopper didn’t flinch.

It’s not the first time by a long chalk. 

Last Christmas I was taking a week’s worth of empties to the bottle bank like a good eco-minded citizen when I was attacked by a little old fella in an anorak and a trilby.

It was party season and the ‘green bottle’ holes were stuffed full. I was trying in vain to squeeze mine in, when he waltzed up and proceeded to put all of his glass – brown, green, Horlicks and blue Curacao - in the same hole.

‘Er, excuse me,’ I said politely, ‘I think you’re supposed to separate them. That’s why the holes are colour coded.’

‘All ends up in the same place,’ he said, carrying on chucking them all down the ‘clear’ chute.

‘I don’t think they do,’ I tried again. ‘Otherwise why would they make us split them this way?’ (Actually, I think he was right as we have just been told we’re now allowed to toss all our glass in the recycling bin at home along with the pizza boxes, beer cans and milk cartons, but that’s a puzzle for a different day).

‘It’s people like you,’ he said, ‘who clog up all these bottle banks anyway. They are here for domestic use only.’

When I pointed out that mine was just as domestic as his, he retorted, ‘Well then you drink too much,’ and stormed off leaving his empty boxes on the floor with my jaw.

I first met an elderly neighbour of mine, (who I hope will forgive me for this as we’re now firm friends) when she walked her dog around the back of my house on a private pathway. My children and some of their friends were there with our dog, who barked his head off at the intruders. The first I knew of it was when the five-year-old girls ran into the kitchen, wide-eyed, to report, ‘There’s an old lady in the field who’s just told us to control our bloody dog or bugger off.’ I marched out guns blazing and told her that she was in the wrong and should mind her language around my small children. ‘I’m 83 years old,’ she replied, as though that made it ok.

Recently I was sat in my parked car waiting for a friend when a sturdy old chap strode up to his car, put the key in smartly without any fumbling, jumped in and turned on the ignition. This was no frail-boned, last-legs kind of a chap. He then reversed into my car.

I wound the window down and waited a moment, planning to be charming about the whole thing and say it wasn’t a problem. (I drive an old banger and to be fair I can never tell if anyone has hit me or not). But he simply kept going forwards and backwards trying to budge his way out of his space. I’m certain he hadn’t the faintest idea I was even there.

The third time he bashed into me I got out and went and tapped on his window. He wound it down crossly and said, ‘What?'

I told him I had been in the car behind and that so far he’d hit me three times. ‘Then you are parked too close,’ he declared,  before nosing his way out and driving away before I could point out that I'd arrived before him.

In a way I find all this comforting. I am nice and kind to people at all times. I would have let the old lady go in front of me in the queue if she’d asked. I walk my elderly neighbour’s dog for her when the weather is bad so she won’t slip.

But it’s nice to know that in about twenty odd years I will be able, as the poem says, to wear purple and fart in public. I’ll never have to wait in a queue again and if people irritate me I’ll swear at them.

It’s something to look forward to.