Surviving half term - part 5

We are back at home; in time for  a final relaxing evening before the PE kits washing, bedroom tidying, home learning and book marking of standard Sunday panic, amplified by the illusion of having had a week off. 

My parents are the most supportive, and often look after the children during the holidays, but they have been poorly, so asked us to visit.  They have never really asked us for anything, not even a swift repayment of the thousands of pounds we owe them, and unsurprisingly, I felt obliged.  With no car, we travelled on the train, so travelled comparatively light.  

My father finds it hard to imagine why anyone would want to travel on the train when they own a perfectly good car (which clearly I do not), and was almost insistent on driving me home.

"Don't be daft, I have cheap train tickets, it is cheaper than the diesel, even the way you drive dad, you couldn't get it cheaper.  And you'd have to do both ways."

"I'd drive you early on Saturday."

"I can read my book on the train, the children can walk about."

"The car needs a run, It hasn't had a long journey this month.  It needs a long run."

"It's a new car.  Missing one long run in its first six months will be fine."

It was a hard sell, in the end he dropped us at a station further south and no doubt had to sit on the M6 for 2 hours.

I forgot my cardigan, I meant to pack it, couldn't wear it under my coat, bag was a bit full.  I always forget what the weather is like.  I always forget it rains, all the time.  I always forget that it is SO COLD in their house because they NEVER turn the heating on.  But then that is why I owe them thousands of pounds.  

So I had to borrow my dad's cardigan.  

But I spent no money today, except a real coffee at the station because coffee shops are another indulgent reason my parents have lots of money and I have none.

Surviving half term part 4

It turns out, the best way to survive half term on a budget is to go and stay with the grandparents, where you are fed lots of food and looked after.

All you have to do is get there. Dan very generously offered me his car, deciding that if he walked from the sofa to the pub that would be sufficient for the week. The other car languishes by the side of the road waiting for pay day when it may once more drive again.

Instead, I managed to use the same London Midland "Great Escape" deal that I used to travel to London to get to Liverpool for £20. Before that we visited a local garden centre which had a soft play area for £1.50 while I met some mums for a sanity saving coffee. As they stayed for lunch we went for the train and ate packed lunch on the journey.

Today I used my underused National Trust membership to follow a real with the children. We avoided the coffee shop and gift shop. Despite the best efforts of most of the retired guides, the National Trust had really done everything to make families welcome recently. Most properties have some sort of treasure hunt and many have p lay areas and picnic areas, often close enough to a coffee shop or outdoor kiosk and close enough together to combine those activities in the most civilised fashion.


The children have been dosed up to the eyeballs with refined sugar, apples that I "don't cut properly" and pancakes that are also"better than"mine. And I slept til 9  o clock, albeit that when I woke up, there was a snoring toddler in bed beside me.  I even made some phone calls and marked some essays.

Surviving Half term part 3

On our late night return from seeing Kate Bush (see previous blogs) our train was very delayed.  As a result we were entitled to compensation.  (http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/times_fares/ticket_types/72098.aspx) As this arrived in the form of a voucher, it had to be used by travelling on the train again.

We also have a  Family and Friends railcard which costs £30 a year.
http://www.familyandfriends-railcard.co.uk/online10/?gclid=Cj0KEQiApIGnBRCFx-idn7-E2Y8BEiQAc6fQbHnSHMYbMlvC9lJ7fp-P9YTX1yu3HV1lPwMkKWW1JacaAstD8P8HAQ
There is also a 10% discount until May.
Finally, London Midland are offering vouchers for cheap train travel at certain times if you choose when you want to go.
http://www.londonmidland.com/great-escape/great-escape/

So a journey that could have cost  around £53 ended up costing £20 -  and this was paid for by the vouchers.

We went to the British Museum, which despite bearing no resemblance to Night at the Museum 3 was still considered brilliant by the children.  We were lucky with the weather and able to eat sandwiches outside the museum before we went in.  I chose the British Museum because I didn't think I was ready for the tube with three children and knew it was an easy walk.  Of course the highlight of the day was the journey.  " We're in a tunnel!" Rex declared, thrilled.  "Or are we in a time machine?" he added, disappointed that this mundane explanation seemed more likely.

Both of the older children "needed" the toilet on the train, the exact opposite of me who will go to great lengths and endure extreme thirst to avoid using the train toilet.

I thought the children had used the train quite a lot but apparently it was longer ago than I thought.  Max was extremely anxious not to miss our return train and asked me for a minute by minute countdown from the moment we got there.  As it was Shrove Tuesday, he also insisted that it was important to eat pancakes for every meal of the day.

For breakfast we ate pancakes with syrup - not too unusual, and a pre-requisite of a visit to Grandma's.  For lunch Max had ham salad on a mini tortilla wrap and for dinner I fried onions, peppers and chicken, wrapped in more wraps and baked with cheese sauce on top as a compromise.

Tesco mini tortilla wraps 10 for £1;  20 for £1.50  so 60p
Tesco sliced mixed peppers £1 for 500g so 20p
Tesco diced onions £1 for 500g so 20p
Tesco Chicken Breast Fillets £3.99 for 1kg so 50p
Tesco everyday value grated cheddar £2.50 for 500g so 50p
Tesco everyday value sweetcorn 99p for 907g so 10p

Total £2.10

To top it all we won the pub quiz,

Surviving Half Term Part 2

It was Penguins of Madagascar this morning at the cinema.  I thought this was a spin off of a sequel but it still managed to cast Benedict Cumberbatch and John Malkovich so that shows what I understand of film marketing.

We raided the Christmas sweet cupboard for treats and brought our own drinks because I cannot bring myself to pay cinema prices for snacks.  My mum told me she could not understand the modern audience's obsession with eating at every performance and this must be the only time I would allow them to have sweets at this time of day.  I think she may be right.

This afternoon the rain defeated me and we ended up at soft play for £16.  This was not in my budget, but Kettering and Northampton museums don't open on a Monday, rather like hairdresser's.  We slightly made up for this by eating packed lunch in the car, just to remind me of my childhood holidays in the Lake District and Rhyl.

Surviving half term Part 1

I realise that February 14th is only half way through the month, but our bank account is usually empty by the 5th of the month so regardless of the comparative brevity of the month, this half term has to be a cheap one.

Usually I would manage a couple of days on our own, but grandparents are poorly so all the not entertaining is down to me.

Saturday

The majority of this day is taken up with the ordinary ballet lessons and craft at the local library which seems to surpass expectations.  When I attended a meeting there I found out that the library cannot charge for the children's activities, they need to make the money from activities they provide for adults. They have to meet their monthly targets, which are then reassessed based on what they earned the previous month.  Seems a bit unfair to me, but gives me the motivation to support the activities they do provide for adults.  We finished off by trying to teach Pip, my precociously intelligent Princess; to ride her new big girl's bike.   I foolishly decided that without warm up and only exercise bike practice for the last 4 months, I could set off round the block with a small boy on the back.  Apparently he has put on more weight than even I have this winter and I didn't really feel I could do any more after that.

Sunday

Cinemas not only have their "Kids AM" (Vue) or "Movies for Juniors" (Cineworld) at the first showing of the weekends, but also on holiday mornings.  Since we never see anything when it first comes out, the children are always up to date but 3 months behind.  Determined to make the showing of Penguins of Madagascar, I bought the tickets today.  I couldn't buy them online as I wanted to use my Nectar points, so I spent £5 in Nectar points and bought the 4 tickets for £2.

In the afternoon we made dinner together and shortbread.

The recipe is my version from one from "Baking |Magic" by Kate Shirazi.  (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Baking-Magic-Series/dp/186205889X)

250g butter (Tesco value 98p)
50g sugar (Tesco £3.85 for 5kg so 39p
250g plain flour (Tesco 45p for 1.5 kg so 8p)
125g cornflour (Tesco £1.19 for 500g so 30p) Although I usually use semolina.
50g plain chocolate (Tesco 30p for 100g so 15p)

Basically butter and sugar creamed, then flour and chocolate added.  I rolled it into a sausage shape then sliced nice rounds of biscuits, which didn't quite survive the children's manipulations.
Total cost £1.90 for about 40 biscuits.  I had icing sugar, some food colour and decorations although they tasted great without.

Now we're having a late night watching Harry Potter while I do the ironing.
I did a £20 shop earlier and put £30 of fuel in the car.  But otherwise that's my first £4 day....

For whom are women's bodies?

Awkward title, and yes it did start out as "Who are women's bodies for?" but I couldn't bear to look at it.

This has been bothering me since The Sun's massive and "hilarious" page 3 joke.  They really got us there didn't they?  It was a boob-rilliant joke.  I laughed my tits off.

I have tried to justify and understand the whole page 3 thing but I really struggle to see it from any kind of feminist perspective.  You can see boobs whenever you want, if you want.  You can google them (lol).  There is real porn for free on the internet.  And there are boobs of all shapes and sizes pretty much all over the internet.  The type you might want to see if you want a cheap thrill, famous boobs, photoshopped boobs, the kind to put you off plastic surgery, the kind to reassure you and young girls that you are perfectly normal and to be honest there are plenty of men ready to tell you that all boobs are good boobs.  That is choice.  Treating women's bodies as part of the news, something any of us have a right to see at any time of day is a bit, well, weird.

I can recall earlier in my own life and in my earlier teaching career asking students to bring in newspapers - when it was still a strong possibility that they would have them at home, to analyse how the news was reported.  I used to deliberately ask students to bring in only the front page to avoid the sniggers and inappropriate comments around page 3.  I remember the cubs looking through the newspapers that used to be stored in the scout hut for recycling, searching for the page 3s.  Why should teenage girls (and younger) be made to feel so uncomfortable about their bodies, at a time when they are already self conscious?  I remember those desperate attempts to cover up as everyone else became aware that some of the girls in the class were developing more quickly than others.  I remember boys running their fingers down your spine to feel if you were wearing a bra yet.

That is not a message that we should be giving to young children.  Girls' bodies are not for display, they are only just learning to look at themselves in a new light, why should they feel like they have to show them to everyone else?  It would be impossible for boys not to see other people in that light.  We have the right to look at these boobs and we didn't even ask to, why shouldn't we look at yours?  Why won't you show me?  I remember the sixth form boy, early in my career, asking if I would wear that particular blouse out of school, without the other top underneath.

This was brought back to mind today with the news that Barrister David Osborne has blogged that it is not always rape if a woman is drunk.  I tried to google the original blog, as I don't really like judging based on only The Daily Mail's view but I was on the third page of search results and was still finding the outrage of The Telegraph, Huffington Post et al without finding it.

The fact that in this day and age, he feels he can blog this already suggests a certain disengagement from modern life but it does link to the same idea as women as product, as consumable.  They put themselves on display, what was I supposed to do y'honour?

It is as disrespectful to men as it it is to women.  I don't hear men claiming that they had to joy ride the shiny Bentley / BMW/ Nissan they passed in town, yes it was locked, but they just left it there; parked; yes I had to smash the window and the alarm went off but the car just sat there and let me sit in the driving seat.  It didn't even break my fingers when I touched its steering wheel and slid it into gear.  Eugh. Sorry.

I don't mean to get away from the point or conflate two complicated issues, I am just supporting the idea that we are w-a-y past the presentation of women as passive objects that are there to be stared at in a very everyday sense.

I can look at boobs whenever I want, I have never bought The Sun; I have choice and still haven't always managed to avoid them, so any step taken to avoid the irrelevant placing of boobs is welcome.  Breastfeeding is not an irrelevant placing of boobs btw.  But that would get me started on Farage and that's for another blog.

Fuzzy bee logic

In my current work, I frequently support teachers who have had issues with their head teachers.  One of my recent cases was a female teacher who is in a position of authority.  Her headteacher had challenged her over the difficulty of her job, had questioned her over her level of commitment, had actually asked the question "What does your husband do?", and wondered what time she arrived in the mornings.

Oh yes, and it was a female headteacher.

According to some psychologists or business gurus this is the Queen Bee theory - that women don't help out other women, that we prefer to work with other men and have little sympathy for the problems other women experience in the work place.

It is easy to find cases to support this, they tend to be anecdotal and perhaps we have fewer examples with which to compare.  Perhaps women are still more comfortable asking the questions which have been accepted as unacceptable and sexist.  Everyday sexism (http://everydaysexism.com) reminds us of plenty of contemporary examples and anyone my age seems to be able to compare memories that were acceptable in the 80s...maybe...eugh.

Anecdotally, I can report very few problems with any of my female bosses, many of whom have surrounded themselves with other women,  although the field of education is more or less 50:50 male : female and perhaps not representative of the wider world of business.

I wonder if it isn't women bosses that are the problem, but sometimes bosses in general.  What does it take to get to the top in whatever field you work?  Many people who are in charge have got there because of an absolute faith in themselves, their own ability and what they believe is right.  That's kind of inevitable isn't it?  If you prevaricate and procrastinate, considering both sides of the argument and worrying about whether you made the right decision , then you are probably a lot less decisive and probably move a lot less quickly than if you trust in your own judgement and don't feel the need to widely consult.If that were the case, then you wouldn't have a great deal of regard for anyone else's way of doing anything.  If you have succeeded, if you have done things your way and it has worked then you do not always respect anyone else's life choices or even understand why anyone would not want to achieve what you have achieved.

This attitude seems also to exist in some middle class politicians attitudes to working class communities.  About a year ago, David Willetts was engaged in a debate about white working class boys and their failure to thrive in our comprehensive system.  People like me and some of the boys I have taught over the years do not see ourselves reflected in the political class, or for that matter the City and its working residents.  They don't even always respect what they do; we've all read about those thieving expense and libor fiddlers.  It's better to be happy.  Getting a good job - like in the public sector - is more sensible, especially if you don't have family money to fall back on.  No one we know is in those trades, nor can they provide us with work experience in the long summer holidays from independent school.

So if you are in a job that you enjoy and have got to the top, it is hard to see why others can't do it.  They must be too lazy or distracted or unfocused.  I have only gone for promotions when I have got closer to those positions and realised that the job isn't quite what I thought it was, or that the people who are doing it are not super human, or have simply realised that the person immediately above me is working less hard than me and getting paid more for it.

Back to the unsympathetic female bosses; they shouldn't only be promoting other women.  They shouldn't be criticising other women for doing things in a different way, and as I have discussed here many times; things won't change until we accept that parents may have to work differently, and everyone should be working differently and it is no more acceptable for a man than a woman to work until way past his or her baby daughter's bathtime or the time that they could be helping to feed a confused or elderly parent.

We are still trying to balance a situation that has been continuing for a very long time.  It took a very long time and a great deal of technology before people could claim that men running with no legs could be at an unfair advantage in a sprint. The originators of that competition did not set up the race fairly in the first instance, so why shouldn't women be given a leg up against this unfair backdrop?  At first, runners without legs competed in events against one another and that is starting to change.