It was twenty years ago today...

I had a ranty post all written up and shiny-new ready for today, featuring in no particular order; PMT, shouty walks with pre-schoolers, unwashed cereal bowls, PMT, sneaky donuts, PMT, and gloves that look like fishes. But I'm afraid you'll have to wait to read that little belter as I realised this morning that today it is 20 years since the Berlin Wall fell.

This resulted in two thoughts; firstly, god, am I really that old..? And secondly; what would my life be like if it were still standing?

You might think it would be pretty much the same (with the exception perhaps of the fact that I would be unlikely to be moving to Moscow in the next 2 months). But I think this is a perfect example of the butterfly effect. Although admittedly, given the impact this event has had world-wide on not just the people of Germany but of the whole previously Soviet Bloc and ultimately, the world, the butterfly in this instance would be more like a planet sized insect than a fluttery tortoise-shell (now there's an image to give you nightmares)

I remember exactly where I was when the Wall started to come down. An ex-boyfriend and I were in the middle of a very badly-planned hitch-hiking trip to northern France (Hitch-Hiking? In Normandy in November? For Pete's sake, why???), and I was sporting a very fetching black eye from having tripped over in the dark as we arrived on the night ferry to Cherbourg. (Poor Ex-Boyfriend - previously referred to in this post as Sporty Boy - spent the next 4 days being given very suspicious looks by everyone we encountered. At the time I thought that was in part deserved for having convinced me a trip hitch-hiking in Northern Europe in late Autumn was a good idea). Obviously the hitch-hiking thing didn't really work out - no shxt, Sherlock - so we found ourselves on a train to Mont St Michel where we chatted to a perky American girl, travelling solo, who was hoping to head East to watch 'the show' as she so fetchingly called it.

Now, I don't really buy into the whole fame / infamy by association thing. It's not important to me to rush to be in Trafalgar Square when London is awarded the 2012 Olympics, or stand outside the Big Brother house cheering or booing the latest unfortunate to arrive or be booted out. But I can't help feeling that not travelling to Berlin when this incredible event - that would ultimately result in the fall of the Soviet Communist state - was taking place was particuarly short-sighted of me. I should have just stayed on that train with Perky American Chick and gone as far as I could go in that direction. It's a sign of how much my horizons have broadened that I realise now that getting there would have been achievable with actually not very much effort. It's one of the few regrets I have in life that I didn't do it.

As for how the Berlin Wall's demise has impacted directly on my life, well that's easy. I would never have met a tall skinny Dutch guy temporarily working in London in transit to a job in Moscow, for a start. Everything from that point on - for me - would have been different. Not necessarily better or worse, but certainly different.

And, most probably, a great deal more boring.

How about you? Did it affect your life?

British Mummy Blogger of the Week

Boy #1 has decided I am not a 'fashion girl'. Apparently this is because I don't have hair down to 'here' (indicates mid-thigh), don't drive a 'fashion car' (I think we've established this already), and don't own 'fashion bags and shoes'. Bearing in mind I was sitting at the breakfast table this morning, unshowered, still in my dressing gown and looking - shall we say - not my best, when we had this conversation, I have to say that his decision on this matter was not one I could challenge.

It still stinks, though...


Let's change the subject, shall we? This week's British Mummy Blogger of the Week has been blogging for nearly 7 years, but I only came across her blog when she recently joined the British Mummy Bloggers ning, and it stopped me in my tracks. So many of us - myself included - blog about surface stuff. The really personal issues, the nuts and bolts of our emotions, stay hidden as we seek to make sense of our lives in a humorous way. One of the reasons I started blogging was that I figured if I could make what was going on in my day-to-day existence funny, then it would all seem somehow more worthwhile. I've moved on from that now - blogging is so many other things too - but there are still some subjects that are off-limits, that I would never have the guts to expose.

Everyday Stranger doesn't do that. Her posts are heart-rending, soul-searching, funny, and above all honest, and once you start reading you may find yourself - like me - unable to stop before you reach the bottom of the page.

To check out the British Mummy Bloggers Ning, click here. (Note: It's called 'Mummy', but Dads can be members too).

Roll on the weekend...

Once upon a time there was a smart, groomed, elegant, sassy (or at least, I like to think so) thirty something who's life was sorted.

And then she had children.

This morning this rumpled, messy-haired, slightly down-at-heel, struggling to remember the date now forty-something has:

• dragged two unwilling children from bed
• breakfasted them
• tidied them up and asked them at least 4 times each to PUT. THEIR. SHOES. ON.
• started the dishwasher (half empty, but the smell of last night's baked bean saucepan was just too dreadful not to)
• done the school run
• checked her oldest son's shoes when he climbed out of the car at school to try to locate the source of the very unpleasant smell, and discovered it was not his footwear, just the car decaying
• stopped for a restorative cup of tea in a cafe and been generally amazed at how unpleasant some business people can be when they feel their space is being invaded by a small boy who is behaving beautifully - even if he is a little demanding on the subject of having Harry and Dinosaurs read to him
• picked up a product to review (more of which later)
• been to the supermarket
• made more adult conversation with the guy on the fish counter than she's had in the last 24 hours
• unpacked the shopping & put it away
• put the laundry on (actually paying attention to the care labels for a change in the hope that the new wool jumper purchased for her oldest son doesn't shrink like the last one did, before he's even worn it)
• Put some vegetables in the oven to roast so that she can throw them out cooked rather than raw
• Negotiated with her youngest son for half an hour of internet time by selling out and letting him watch tv

And found out when she finally managed to fit in her first loo stop of the day that she had completed all of the above tasks with her flies undone.

It's never too late to do the right thing...

I can't imagine the living hell that Madeleine McCann's family have been going through for over two years now. Somebody, somewhere, knows what happened to her. Please take a moment to view this video and see the new images of how she might look now.



Thankyou.

The Ambassador Is Not Amused

Pass me those Ferrero Rocher, Monsieur Attache. It's time for me to take up my role as an Ambassador again...

However, this time I'm not wearing my Oscars style floor-length gown with the perilously high heels. Nor indeed am I all decked out in the latest sharp business suit with my 'I mean business' Laboutins. No, today this Ambassador is wearing fatigues, soldier, because she's mad and has decided that this is no time for Mrs Nice Guy. Mrs Nice Guy has, in fact, temporarily left the building, and been replaced by Mrs 'WTF! Drop down and give me 20! And whilst you're at it, clean the heads with a toothbrush and DON'T LET ME SEE YOU USING THAT WUSSY ELECTRIC ONE!!!'

Hmm. What's brought this on? I mean, I've sat through a number of films in my role as a Disney Blu-Ray Ambassador, including Beverly Hills Chihauha and High School Musical 3, so you would have thought that any scruples I had would have long since bitten the dust. But no. It turns out that all it takes to press my buttons is what may well be one of the best-loved movies of all time.

Snow White.

Now, before it was sent to me to review, I had never watched Snow White all the way through. Sure, I had seen excerpts from it on countless tv show 'best-of's, the dwarves merrily whistling as they worked in the mine, the dastardly queen talking to her mirror and such-like, but I had never sat down and watched the movie from beginning to end. So when it arrived last week in all it's Blu-Ray glory, I happily sat down with my sons and did so.

Let me start by saying that the High Definition delivery on this version is just about as faultless as it could be with the source material they were working with. Short of starting from scratch and making the whole movie again, I don't think they could have done a better job (or at least, not until the next new technology, whatever that may be, is out of the labs and in common usage).

But actually, I think that that is exactly what Disney should do; make the whole movie again, preferably with a completely different plot. Because, for a modern mother trying to teach equality between the sexes to her two young sons, the storyline stinks. I know that a lot of older animated moves can't be held up as being models of virtue, Sleeping Beauty definitely being one of them, but I can't remember the last time I found myself feeling as uncomfortable about a property created for children as I was when watching Snow White with my boys.

Where to start? Maybe with the sound-track. Not only does it jar with the crisp and colourful animation, reminding you at every turn that whilst the pictures have been updated, there is only so much that can be done with pre-digitally recorded sound, but Snow White's voice has got to be one of the most annoying I have ever heard. She's supposed to be at least 16 years old, for pete's sake (or at least, one would hope so bearing in mind that the mirror deems her old enough to be more beautiful than the icily gorgeous queen and suitable to be of interest to the Handsome Prince), and yet she has a 7 year old's voice, and that's with my being generous to a 7 year old's vocal skills. A child's voice in a young woman's body. What's right with that?

Or perhaps it's the way that the so-called heroine of this movie is so passive, and frankly, a bit of a wimp. Oh, she sighs at the tasks she's set by her cruel stepmother, but she doesn't do anything about changing her lot. No, she meekly finishes washing the steps and sings a charming little song about a wishing well. And when given a reprieve from certain death by the Huntsman and told to run for her life, she finds everything in the forest so terrifying that she swoons... I mean, swoons? Please. Give me a break.

I think though that what I found most irritating about this movie is the blind assumption that Snow White had no control over her own fate. It was down to the Queen to persecute her, try to murder her, and cast the spell of Sleeping Death over her, and down to the prince to kiss her, wake her, and sweep her away to Happy Ever After Land; she just had to stand (or sit, or sleep) and look beautiful. All the good - and bad - stuff would come to her simply because of that.

Now, I'm not for a moment saying that we've moved so far from 1937 - when this movie was made, which goes a long way to explaining it's sexism - that there aren't plenty of women around today who fit this stereotype. And I'm not even saying that this approach - of waiting for life to come to you instead of going out there and making it happen - isn't lauded in certain magazines and in other forms of mass-media. Or indeed that it isn't aspired to by a whole tranche of young girls and women who should know better.

I'm just saying that in this current day and age Snow White's example of womanhood is - to me at least - outdated and dangerous, and that it's not one that I feel comfortable showing to my children. Never mind that all this subtext went right over the Boy's heads, it's the start of a slippery slope and there are enough opportunities for them to see sexism in action in real life without having it sugar-coated and fed to them as a fairy tale. So I'll be sending our copy back to the agency who forwarded it to me.

Thanks, Disney, but you can keep this one.


And for those of you who haven't watched it in a while, who think I'm making a fuss over nothing, I suggest you sit down and watch it again - and then read my post...

Slap-stick comedy

So yesterday morning I went along to a photo shoot with A Modern Mother - check here to see why, and who else was there. (I didn't want to go, you understand. Just like her, I felt this really was taking things a step too far, but for her sake, I did it. Oh, the pain...) And the immediate upshot was that I ended up with a face-full of make-up by 11.30am.

Anyone who's met me will know that cosmetics and I are not the best of mates. Admittedly, I wouldn't be without my close personal friends, mascara and eyeliner, but as to those trollopes eyeshadow, foundation, lippie? No better than they should be. Oh, I've tried to make nice with them over the years, really I have, but every time I think we've worked things out and are getting along well they double-cross me and I end up looking either as if I have two black eyes and smacked cheeks, or so understated that nobody actually notices I've bothered with them...

However, make-up artists don't earn that title for nothing, and after the initial shock of yesterday's experience - who the hell is that woman in the mirror? And what happened to her hair??? - I actually decided I quite liked the effect. I have no idea how to reproduce it, mind, and was far too overwhelmed by the whole thing to do anything sensible like make a note of what product and colours were being applied, but still, I thought I looked OK.

Amazingly, by the time I got home it was still in place (the reasons for which became clear yesterday even when I had to remove the mascara with a pick-axe, but there you go, you have to suffer to be beautiful - or so I told myself), so I was interested to see my family's reactions.

Husband was gratifyingly impressed. I suspect he was also wondering why I don't make this level of effort a little more often, but I didn't like to open that particular can of worms.

The Boys, however...

Well, Boy #2 took no notice whatsoever - until at lunchtime, sitting next to me, he spotted a glimmer of lipgloss left on my mouth. His expression became more serious. He stood up in his chair. He leaned over - and wiped it off. "All better now!"

Maybe not quite the reaction I was hoping for.

Boy #1 walked straight past me when he got home. When asked by his dad if he could see anything different about his mum, he gave me a cursory once-over and shook his head dismissively. Later on though, when I bent down to help him with something, he did a classic double-take. "What's that?" "What's what?" "That. Stuff." "Oh, it's make-up. Do you like it?" "It looks spikey. All pointy around your eyes." "OK. But do you like it?" "No." "No?" "No. There is no way I am wearing that to school tomorrow."

He has a point, I suppose.

British Mummy Blogger of the Week

It may be the end of half term. It may be raining cats and dogs and even small rodents outside, forcing us to cancel our planned expedition to Horse Guards Parade to watch the Changing of the Guards (part of our plan to experience London to the full before we leave it). It may even be the first of dark and dreary November today. But I am relaxed and rested. And do you know why?

Because the Boys' uncle and aunt are in town.

Let me tell you, there is nothing as likely to allow you to catch up on a whole load of household tasks (plus writing a Sunday morning blog post), than having your children distracted by an uncle who has been expressly summoned to town to erect the Lego monstrosity he bought for your eldest son's birthday.

My brother - and his girlfriend, bless her; now that's true love - have spent the weekend kneeling on the floor fiddling with teeny tiny fridges, motor bikes, and satellite dishes as they try to decipher the coded instructions to make a Lego City. Hmm. Giving up your weekend to spend it with two small boys and a whole load of fiddly plastic shrapnel? I call that making good on family ties.

Or, cosmic payback for buying the present in the first place.

So this morning's Blogger of the Week may be lucky enough to escape Lego syndrome, having only daughters (at least so far), but something tells me she'll be busy enough dealing with the trappings of 3 little girls under 3 not to notice that. PlanB - who has just about the scariest photo of herself I've ever seen on the BMB website - writes of herself:

"I'm a 32 year old mum of three girls, L is 2 1/2 and A and S are 10 month old identical twins. I have a wonderfully supportive husband and a Proper Job which I do three days a week. We live in London. "

And not only does she have identical twin girls to deal with, but her older daughter is doing a very good impression of a superhero to boot...

To check out the British Mummy Bloggers Ning, click here. (Note: It's called 'Mummy', but Dads can be members too).