clarienne

I see there's a Universal Declaration of Human rights meme doing the rounds - but until such a declaration recognises the right to life of all humans, not just those who've made it to outside the womb, then I'll pass.

Had a weekend visit from my adopted dad. We've always had quite a strange relationship - growing up there was a certain distance between us because his marriage with mum was rocky, and she was very good at getting our support and making him out to be the bad guy behind his back. When they divorced we were her loyal troopers, and cut off contact with him, but he has never lost hope of getting back in touch with us. A few years ago I got back in touch and have been slowly rebuilding the relationship, but its taken a few years for the negativity and falsehoods implanted by my mum to start really falling away. We had a good visit this weekend, and its left me with a lot to think about.

This kind of toxic situation has a name and an ancronym these days of course - Parental Alienation Syndrome. Some hotly dispute that it exists, but I can vouch that it does, as the home I grew up in was a textbook case. My half-sister Francine (Mike's daughter with mum) refuses to even hear his name or discuss him, saying she wants to protect her family from his mental illness. (He's suffered in the past with schizoaffective disorder, which was scarey for us kids growing up, but is a good person, and in no way a danger to anyone).

Francine has told me she doesn't even want the subject mentioned. We have drifted apart over the years - and while I've sometimes felt cut off, the truth is I've distanced myself from her too. If I could be sure she was the bitch I sometimes suspect she is, I would walk away with a sigh of relief, but I'm starting to wonder if in fact she's hearing things about me behind my back that have encouraged the rift. Since we left home Mum has always had a policy that we don't both visit her at the same time, that she wants to see us seperately - and I know she's very keen that I "respect Francines decision" not to have anything to do with Mike. (A decision she made when she was all of 10!).

Francine has two little girls now, and it breaks my heart that they are growing up not knowing me, Chris or Polly, or their grandad Mike.

I want to quit reading the newspapers. They are full of shit, and I KNOW they are full of shit, but I can't seem to stop myself.

Just now I was reading in the torygraph about Amanda Knox - the American student convicted of the murder of her flatmate in Italy. It's a horrible story, whatever occured, and I've no idea if she's guilty or not. What caught my eye was the stories about Amanda and her boyfriend, which contained lame attempts to search out clues to why they might have done it - and included the following gems:

"But there were signs that Knox was becoming wilder after she began studying modern languages at the University of Washington. A video posted on the internet shows her downing a drink and slurring her words."

Downing a drink! Slurring her words! Damn...I'm just so glad camera phone weren't ubiquitous in the late 90s, when - like Amanda - I was a hard drinking, pot smoking, promiscuous student who rowed with her flatmates all the time.

"Both suspects also had a darker side - Knox had once written a short story about rape, which she had posted on the internet, and Sollecito had an obsession with knives and swords and collected Japanse manga comics, known for their violence and rape fantasies. "

Wow. I hope all you fan fic writers haven't written anything with dark themes. And collecting manga = a dark side? Words fail me.

The thing about reading newspapers is that 90% of the articles just slide into my brain like a fast food milkshake, and I don't question it. Then I read something of such utter tripitude that it makes me want to stick my fingers in my eyeballs and cerebrally vomit up everything else I've read in that paper, because if it was just as bad and I didn't notice, I've just poisoned my own mind.

Thames Valley Police have done my CRB - so that shouldn't be many more days before my registration arrives. Woot! Light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks for your supportive comments re. my last post - its appreciated. I was having a very self-pitying five minutes. Its good to be reminded that other people are also in a similar boat, or have been in the past.

I see the banks have won and don't have to pay back bank charges.

I'm ambivalent about this. I have been charged several hundred pounds over the years, and don't really feel I have the moral high ground. I wouldn't have been charged had I been better organised with my money.

But what is all this rubbish about how the ruling lifts the 'threat to free banking'? There is no free banking, morons. The phrase was born in a bank PR office and is now being spouted by foolish journalists. Look - banks are business - why should they give you a service for free? They don't. They get your money from you in other ways.

I don't know if the money from bank charges directly pays for the free banking of everyone - presumably the internal budgets of banks are more complicated than that. But since everyone claims there is a connection - lets assume that bank charges do subsidise charge-free banking for everyone else. This isn't 'free banking'. This is everyone's banking paid for by the few - those few being the poor, the unlucky, and the disorganised.

Banks are business, and can charge what they like, for what they like. So I'm not sure there was really a case for taking them to court when as a society we aquiesced in this nasty system, which rips off the vulnerable. People want their bank charges bank - but who is volunteering to pay the banks back for ten years free banking? Noone - right.

But I'd really like the following: a) a bank account that promises me not to hit me with swinging charges, and for which I pay a fee. I'm happy to pay a fee - I pay a fee for every other service. And b) noone ever using the phrase 'free banking' ever again.

I love how dreams take elements of two different things and combine them amusingly.

I've been reading The Origins of the British, by Stephen Oppenheimer. Which explains how part of our genetic origins is from people who spent the Ice Age in the east, around the Ukraine.

Then last night, I watched Shakespeare in Love, where Gwinneth Paltrow's character falls in love with Will Shakespeare after falling in love with his plays.

Meanwhile, I've obviously been reading the Belle du Jour stuff in the newspapers. As you do.

Last night, I dreamed that Gwinneth Paltrow had fallen in love with an Indian playwright and his works over the internet - and went out to the Ukraine to meet him - whereupon he told her that it was all a pack of lies, and actually he was going to kidnap her, and ship her to a brothel in Mongolia. O.o

I was walking with my hubby yesterday, and I started talking about a dream I have. Of having my own shop, filled with beautiful things. I envisioned a mix of the kinds of things I love to browse: pretty gifts, a few clothes and wooden toys, art and crafts from local creators, maybe things my creative friends and family had made. A shelf of second hand books, and maybe some homemade jams and cakes. A mix of second hand thrifty stuff, and nice gifts - a sort of Aladdin's Cave of things I like. It would be pink, and beautifully laid out, and I would lounge behind the counter in stripey tights, reading a good book between customers.

It would have to be a nice shop, not a nasty modern retail unit. Maybe in a village, but one rich and populous enough to support a gift shop - or perhaps a studenty area, if I had more lower priced items.

The only downside to this idea is that I lack the pushiness of the truely successful small shop owner, who can make you walk out having spent at least twice as much as you'd intended.

I've been thinking about So Many Ways to Begin quite a lot since I last wrote about it. Mainly I've been thinking about the subpot related to Eleanor and her abusive mother. It's continued to grate on me, and here's why...

I think what I'm annoyed at is the way the book presents excuses for Ivy's behaviour towards her daughter. The story is: she's poor, she lives in a crummy terrace house in Aberdeen, she's had to support the large family while the father was ill, she's exhausted, she's had five difficult births, and Eleanor is one last child too many. What aggravates me about this, is that it is a repetition of two narratives about domestic violence that are strong in our culture, and I think need to be questioned. I say narratives, rather than myths, because they have enough element of truth in them not to be dismissed out of hand - its the uncritical acceptance and blanket application of these ideas angers me.

Idea One: if a woman is abusive, its because she's a victim. This one has so many variants depending on time and place - the woman has an abusive upbringing/partner herself, or she's a victim of patriarchy and dissapointed in her career, or she's an opressed housewife with too much to do, or poverty/drugs/drink made her do it, or she's weak and doesn't know any better, or she's had to be tough to survive. In both newspapers and in fiction, these rationalisations are almost always applied to the woman - whereas in contrast an evil man is simply that - an evil man. Remember in the Baby P case how the mother's angsty backplot was trotted out - but I don't remember similar hand wringing articles about her boyfriend. This whole aproach to female abusers is insulting to a number of people: to those who've survived difficulties and not become abusers, to those who know perfectly well from personal experience that women are just as capeable of personal evil as a man, and to women generally, who are denied the same moral personhood as a man.

Idea Two: domestic violence is a working class problem. Jon MacGregor is a proper literary author, who's books have rightly been on the Booker prize list, and he doesn't write hackneyed tosh. And yet... I can't help thinking that the working class terrace in this novel is a literary cousin of all those bad historical novels with victorian housemaids on the front, and a plot that revolves around domestic abuse, illegitimate pregnancy, and probably an evil landlord with a riding crop. Much of his portrayal of Ivy's family is spot on in terms of dysfunctional family dynamics - the singling out of one child for the beatings, the excuses made by other family members, the weak father, the fact that the mother is generally antisoctial and bitter - but it's larded with a lot of class related stuff that serves to paint a picture of a 'typical' working class house in the 60s. Its insulting to nice working class people who don't beat their kids. It's not an insult utterly without foundation - I know domestic violence is statistically more likely to happen in lower income households - but I'd still like to read some other stuff about working class families - perhaps written by working class people themselves, rather than by middle class people who's idea of what it's like is straight out of Andy Capp.

Much less annoying: Patrick Gale's Notes from an Exhibition. The main protagonist is also a Bad Mother - not violent, but prone to verbal rages and selfishness, and the devastating effects of her difficult character on her children are explored. The author manages to portray Rachel as a rounded woman - she has darkness in her past, but that is never simplisticly presented as a rationale for her bad behaviour. The character has demons, but is also strong, and able to make her own choices - which leaves the reader with sadness that her choice was so often self-absorbtion. She is also bipolar, but isn't presented as a simple victim of this. You respect the character too much to say "she commited X sin because of Y abuse in her past, or because of Z chemical imbalance", and the same is true of her children's difficulties. The writer has a much more intelligent sense of the entanglement of brain chemistry, personality, choices and life experience in creating who we are, and doesn't settle for simple excuses for why his characters behave badly.

Mid August: OFSTED assures me that CRB checks only take a few weeks, but in the unlikely event it takes more than 6, I can contact them to chase it.

End September: Still no CRB check. Chase it with OFSTED, who shrug helplessly and say theres nothing they can do to escalate it with the CRB until its been 2 months. When I say its been too months, turns out they didn't actually send it off until the end of August, so I have to wait until end October.

End October. Ring OFSTED to say can you sort this out now please. They say they will send a polite letter to CRB, but say theres nothing more they can do.

Mid November. Decide to take it up directly with CRB as OFSTED are useless in this regard. CRB shrug helplessly and say its with the police and has been for the last 50 days. Incoherently tell me that this delay is due to the form having been sent back to OFSTED as their inspector buggered up the countersignature, meaning it only reached the CRB properly completed six weeks after my inspection. (OFSTED told me nothing of this!! Yet it is irrelvant - it doesn't explain why the police STILL have it).

CRB then say that they can't release the details to me of which forces are working on it, until the police have had it 60 days (10 days from now), at which time they will send them a polite letter, and 10 days later they will tell me which police force has it.

So another month then before I find out who's desk it has been on since the end of September.

I'm pissed off at the system. The CRB recieves 80,000 forms a week, so I get that they and the police will discourage anyone ringing up to check the progress of their individual application. I get that the police are sqeezed for manpower and its probably noones personal fault. But this delay looks to be losing me at least 4 months earnings, which for a hard up childminder is a bloody lot of money - especially as I'm not claiming any benefits. Even though I can blame OFSTED for 1 month of that delay, thats another 3 months delay just to sheer weight of applications in the system.

I'm sure I'm not the only person in this position - so what is the overall effect on the country of this ludicrous system? My application that I need to earn a bloody living, is jammed behind thousands of other childcare workers and volunteers - most of ordinary people without criminal records, and most of them who've already had a CRB check multiple times in recent years. This is my third in five years.

The CRB checks system exists only to cover the arses of employers, and be a stealth tax. It does not protect kids, as we have recently seen. It is discouraging volunteers, and causing grief to ordinary hard-up people like myself who's only crime is to want to help other families and earn some coin whilst looking after my daughter. *poses glumly for Daily Mail photo, wilst holding baby*

Last night I was up all night with the dreaded throwing up virus, so am pottering around in a somewhat fragile state today. Luckily, Polly is happily entertained with Pingu et al for a couple of hours.

It does mean I have the dilemma of where to buy my veg this week, as I'm not at all feeling up to a 40 minute walk into the farmers market and back. One of the local 'ethnic' grocers I think - as the 20 minute treck up to Tescos does not appeal on so many levels.

PS: I deleted the last few entires on the grounds that, while its nice to get my thoughts in order, I have a general rule these days of "don't leave anything on the internet you wouldn't be happy for anyone to read". It was good to read everyone's comments though.

We're still waiting for OFSTED to get my registration sorted, and are down to our last groat. Over the years though, I've become better at being (relatively) poor - more philosophical about it, and more savvy about how to get through the week whilst spending as little as possible. I've done a few fun thrifty things this week:-

I siphoned my home made wine into a clean jar. This allowed me to taste a swig - and it was very scrummy, if very thick and sweet. Definately a desert wine. There may have been a hint of the parsley flavour, but perhaps this was wishfull thinking. I wonder if the sweetness is to do with me not having used enough lemon juice. Its diluted now, and just has to sit around for another three months before I can bottle it and inflict it on friends and family. I've bought new yeast and bits and bobs to start making more - perhaps I'll experiment with the nasturtium thats running riot out the back, and my grandfather has quinces that I've offered to brew.

Chris threw out a couple of pairs of trousers, and I've started making them into a wall hanging. Don't laugh - its not trouser shaped - I cut a square out. Despite having no dressmaking skills, I can't bear to throw out material and have been longing to try applique with my old clothes for ages. There's a crazy quilter in my soul somewhere. The plan is for it to be a funky fish design on the navy trouser background, and go in the bathroom. The plan is also to finish watching Angel while I sew it. :)

Thrifty eating is in full swing this week. I don't usually approve of factory farmed chicken, but occasionally I have to suck my principles up and buy a tescos value bird. This is going to be: roast, pie with bacon, and the leftovers entered into the Everlasting Stew. The stew has been going a while now and has been combined with various spices and dalhs to be more like a curry. I've also bought some dried pulses to make experimental veggie burgers with.

I've also started tidying the Computers Graveyard, aka the back bedroom. There should be enough dead machines in there to cannibalise one retro gaming machine from, and give away the spare parts.

And I now have two breadmakers, one of which doesn't work. I could throw it out, but I'm now wondering if it can be taken to pieces and used for anything. Today I started fantasising about growing plants in it. I'll be hanging out my teabags at this rate...

On a non-thrifty note - our hoover has died and our floor is therefore in a ghastly state. This is the second cheap hoover to die in as many years, so I'm wondering if Vimes Boots Economics is operating here. Perhaps I should buy a decent dyson with my first clients cheque and have done. On the other hand...my grandfather got a Ewebank (sp?) out the last time I visited - remember them?! Perhaps they are the perfect toddler cleaning up after device if they are still on the market.

...but I don't feel like I have much to say at the moment.

People keep asking me how the childminding is going, and the answer is: OFSTED haven't got my CRB check yet, so I can't start. This is giving life a 'hanging around waiting' feel that it's had for a few months. Perhaps I should instead of mooching, seize the free time and get done some of the hobby projects I've been wanting to do, but I'm finding it hard to get motivated.

I wish I'd got on with applying earlier. na_lon suggested I do childminding way back, when Polly was small, and I resisted the idea for a while. I wish I'd gone with it, because we'd be in a far better financial position now if I'd been childminding for a year already. Sometimes friends can be right. I sometimes wonder if people are looking at our lives and thinking "AARG - Viv and Chris should stop being a pair of twats and do X - they'd be much happier 5 years down the line." Feel free to tell us, I might just listen.

Woke up this morning dreaming about London train and Tube journeys. Realised I wished I was back in London today, where there would be lots of interesting stuff to do and it would be easy to get to it.

A pox on Bristol buses.

I don't often feel moved to write in detail about a book, but I just finished the above, and feel like getting it out of my system. It was very depressing, but also a thoughtful book that sparks off lots of thoughts - not least about why it was so depressing. :)

( spoilery musings )

Hope you have a good one.

Chris's day off today. The first thing we did was go to Hobbycraft. I'd decided that a scrapbook was the best way to present my genealogy material, so I needed albums and pretty card for mounting, and perhaps some decorations. Embellishments, as they are apparently called by serious scrapbookers. (Its a huge hobby, I'm discovering!). Well, I discovered that scrapbooking is a potential serious money pit - gorgeous designer papers and card and embellishments are not cheap. I managed to come away with some pretty card and paper for under a tenner, and I'm going to order an album online as they didn't have the one I wanted, and were charging a fortune for their albums anyway. I've ordered a book on it from the library, which will give me some pointers for decorating it before I go buying ribbons, paper flowers and all the other pretty stuff that can be had.

I'm coming to agree with Chris's cynicism about Hobbycraft as a store. The initial impression is of an aladin's cave for creative types, but I suspect the serious hobbyist views it much as the serious PC gamer views PC World. Patchily stocked, ignorantly staffed, and aimed at those who don't know enough about the thing they are stocking to know that they aren't even particularly cheap...

Then to Clevedon where Polly played in the park and had a go on a minature train. :)

On the way back from Clevedon we stopped at a bonsai nursery, where Chris picked up a three lovely ginko trees - one large and two small that will later make a group. This, by contrast, was clearly a one-man business run by an enthusiast from a (large!) back garden - it had everything a bonsai grower could possibly want, including a knowledgeable owner, who pointed Chris in the direction of a good beginner's project.

So I'm going to try and write a post whilst Polly watches Pingu in the next room. I think I'll just go and put away the box of pastels first...

Right.

Passed my OFSTED inspection. Now I have to wait for CRB clearance which could take any length of time. We're hoping its sooner rather than later as my entitlement to contribution based jobseekers has run out, so I really need to be earning some loots. My newly aquired sister Cath has given me her old double buggy, so I'm pretty much all set now. We're feeling really positive about the childminding - it will give us enough money to get us out of the penny pinching zone and into being able to start saving. Meanwhile Chris is enjoying his job and getting glowing appraisals, so we're feeling pretty good even though there is a recession on. :)

Just had a lovely weekend in Rothbury with my long-lost father and grandfather. It was very nice to spend some time just us and chat about things. Am totally in love with Northumberland - such a sense of enough space, which I'd forgotten about, living in the crowded South for years. The almost deserted beaches with just a few families, and the odd dog and horse rider, were amazing - such sandy beaches down here would be heaving on a summer weekend. Polly loved her first paddle in the sea. "MORE water!". :)

Been trying to spend a bit less time on MMORPGs and more on other hobbies. I love to play MMORPGs (EQ2 and LOTRO at the moment), but they are still eating a bigger chunk of my time than I'm comfortable with. Decided the thing to do is to stop tradeskilling!. MMORPG players will know what I'm talking about here. I get a nerdy, autistic enjoyment out of it, but really it is just pressing buttons and watching numbers go up. There are not the more rounded pleasures of skill in gameplay, teamwork, exporation, being sociable etc that I can get with adventuring. So to free up more time for other things, I'm going to be disciplied with myself and not get into it any more.

Projects for September:
1) start the family history scrapbook - starting with the pages for the Ellmores.
2) do a bit more work on my Ars Magica plot. I've had some more ideas for an overall arc, and am now thinking of running a Christian-themed adventure with all the mages in this covenant having what the system calls True Faith. I need to get my head around the character advancement system first.
3) finish writing a plot for the Tuesday night D&D - I have pretty much figured it out: a treasure hunting romp in Myth Drannor.
4) work out whither next for the Wednesday night evil campaign. The players are enjoying their characters, and I know whats coming immediately, but I've lost my way in terms of long-term plot arc.
5) more brewing, now I've got some more jars from dad. The parsley wine is still fermenting!
5) Carry on with yoga. I'm finding it brillant for tension and easily fit-in-able between mummy duties.

Polly: is almost two, obsessed with trains, and has been known to utter three word sentences. She is a keen artist, making marks that are apparently quite advanced for her age, and knows her colours - she's will bark orders at me for more finger paint squeezing if the mix isn't to her liking: "more RED! more YELLOW!" :) I'm also really proud of her for learning some words to describe her feelings. She's started to say "Polly sad" and "Polly happy" in the right context - I'm really pro teaching children emotional literacy as a foundation for much else in life, so I'm really pleased with this! Bad mummy confession: I'm really looking forward to having more children around to give her more stimulation - I don't have as much interactional stamina as I'd like and have a tendency to be self-absorbed and resort to the TV whilst I get on with my stuff. I worry she's not getting as much input as she should. :/

Right - thats enough waffle!

Based on the lj interests lists of those who share my more unusual interests, the interests suggestion meme thinks I might be interested in
1. music score: 12
2. books score: 11
3. photography score: 10
4. writing score: 9
5. chocolate score: 8
6. computers score: 7
7. harry potter score: 5
8. art score: 5
9. films score: 5
10. poetry score: 5
11. travelling score: 5
12. dancing score: 4
13. cats score: 4
14. sci-fi score: 4
15. sarcasm score: 4
16. friends score: 4
17. the beatles score: 4
18. tattoos score: 4
19. crafts score: 3
20. gigs score: 3

Type your username here to find out what interests it suggests for you.

coded by ixwin
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Many of those things are pretty broad. I should probably add 'chocolate' to my list though. I should point out I can't stand the Beatles.