The Gallery: Wk 64

This post is for Wk 64 of Tara's Gallery (click here to see the other entries). The prompt this week is 'My Weekend'.

For once my weekend featured very little of the laptop, mainly due to the fact that whilst I was actually at a blogging conference, I was doing precious little blogging. However, I took this shot duing Jay's presentation on photography, and I like the way the keyboard is reflected in the screen. It's faintly disorientating, and to a certain extent (bear with me here) I find that a relevant metaphor for why I started writing things down in the first place.

Struggling to find a sense a self after stopping (paid) work, and driven to distraction by my attempts to potty train my older son who was unwilling to have any truck with this toilet business, I decided that if I could write the experience down, and - crucially - make it funny, it would all seem so much easier and I would have regained some semblance of control. (On the page, at least).

And that was how it worked out. Writing things down became an addictive habit, it helped me to work things through, and eventually, I found that the more relaxed, centred person that I was trying to be in print started to be someone that I also recognised in the mirror.

I enjoyed CyberMummy, although if I'm completely honest I felt that for me it was more about meeting old friends face to face (some for the first time) than about the workshops and the opportunity to interact with brands. And I don't have a grand plan, as so many other bloggers seem to. I certainly have no idea where blogging will take me. I could continue for years, I may stop next week. But one thing I will never feel, whilst it continues to give me the chance to work things through in my mind, is that it has been a waste of my time.

And I suspect that I may always be addicted to using a screen to reflect & focus my thoughts, simply by the act of writing things down.

Glastonbury, London, and squashed sugar bowls

My parents live about 6 miles from Glastonbury, where right now the festival is in full swing. I can hear the music - even from inside their house - like the noise of distant thunder. I wonder, what must it be like to live closer? Perhaps the locals relocate for the duration, like families I know of in Notting Hill who decamp during Carnival; what seemed a selling point when they moved, young, free and single, into their cool west London pads rapidly turning into a living nightmare when they found themselves trapped inside their home with buggies and young children for 3 straight days at the end of August every year.

Sure, it's cool to visit Carnival, but to live through it with no respite from the partying? Those who could voted with their feet and went to visit gran and grandad for the weekend, or better yet, took the children to their doting grandparents before hotfooting back to London, safe in the knowledge that little Lucinda could sleep through the night whilst mum and dad recaptured some of their lost youth...

I haven't been at Glastonbury, though. Arriving last week, we brought the Boys down Somerset (no worries they would be kept awake by the dull thud thud thud of the bass after 3 days spent with family looking to cram 6 months-worth of treats in 72 hours exhausted them utterly), and then Husband and I travelled back to London. I went to CyberMummy11 yesterday before I spent the evening celebrating a friend's wedding and then, finding myself with an hour to spare before heading back to green space, wandered around the Summer Exhibition at The Royal Academy this morning.

Here then are some of the things I learned this weekend...

15 flattened silver sugar bowls, suspended in a line 4"above the floor on fine wires, make a rather more beautiful exhibit than you might imagine.

I can still - after 20 years of living there - get lost in London trying to find a tube station in the City.

This is not a good move when you've been wearing your strappy wedges all day.

Always take an umbrella when you go out in London, even if the sky is cloudless when you leave. Either that, or a hair dryer. If you forget both, then resign yourself to rats-tail hair.

Even the best restaurants can give you a little 'extra' with your salad. A little 'extra' that wriggles unobtrusively on your plate, that is...

CyberMummy is a great place to go for inspiration and impetus to finally get around to all those things you've been meaning to do for ages- either blogging, or writing-wise -but haven't yet got round to.

It's also a great place to meet all those people who's blogs you admire, and some who's blogs you haven't yet got around to checking out but have been meaning to do for ages...

But you still won't have the time to properly catch up with most of the people you want to talk to.

And that there were some drinkers in the bar of a certain hotel on The Strand who got rather more information than they bargained for, when they listened in to a group of 10 bloggers swapping stories on Friday night.

Busman's holiday..?

In case the unobtrusive 'See you a CyberMummy 2011' logo on the top of the right-hand sidebar of this blog hasn't given it away, I'm off to CyberMummy 2011 next weekend. Check out the BritMums blog to find out why...

(And apparently I'm 'profound'... Who knew?)

I've booked...

We're back in Moscow after our week in the UK. I have a million loads of laundry to do, a fridge to stock, bags to unpack, and a pile of mail (both real and virtual) to open. What to do first? Well, isn't it obvious? I'm going to ignore all of that and write a blog post.

It's quite grey and gloomy here. Not cold, particularly; it's about 10 degC today, so yahboo sucks to all those who's first question on learning of where we live is 'isn't it freezing over there?' (Mind you I think I'll be less smug about the answer if you ask me the same thing come the end of the month). And it's good to be home.

Not so good though that I'm not looking ahead to next year; specifically to Saturday 25th June and the Cybermummy conference. I've made a leap of faith and have booked an early bird ticket -having enjoyed the last one so much I didn't want to miss out on the chance to do so again next time - but it did occur to me that there may be some people out there who didn't go to in July and are unsure what to expect if they go to the next one. And it would be a real shame if, because of that, they don't go; one of the fantastic things about mummy blogging is that there is a constant stream of new recruits as new parents come online in search of support / entertainment / ratification / escape / camaraderie and find it all of those and more through blogs.

This, then, is a post I wrote a few days after the first Cybermummy conference; as ever it's highly subjective as all it will give you is my personal point of view of the day. Then again, isn't all blogging essentially about an individual's point of view? In any case, maybe it will help encourage anyone unsure of what to expect from the next conference to make their own leap of faith and come along too...

July 6th, 2010

At the parent's in law, still in London. The sounds of 'Chitty Chitty Bang-Bang' drift out from the sitting room where the boys are spending a glorious morning ensconced in front of the box... (don't judge me; it's week 3 of the school holidays. WEEK 3! And it's only July 6th!) Every now and again Boy #1 bursts out into the dining room where I'm tapping away on the lap top to ask pertinent questions like 'It's the same man in this as in Mary Poppins. Does that mean that Bert has two jobs?' and to exclaim 'No! No!' when the pirates sail over the horizon. I'm currently on standby for when the odious Child Catcher appears since I have no doubt my presence will be required to ward off his advances...

It's all a very long way from Saturday when I joined 200 other delegates at the Cybermummy event in Earl's Court.

Nixdminx summed up the day pretty well for me in a post yesterday when she asked the question 'Cybermummy or Womanhood?' So many different women, so many different lifestyles, but all part of this phenomen and all giving a voice to their experiences of being a woman and a mother.

Before I started blogging I have to admit that I thought of bloggers as people who sought solace and companionship in cyberspace because they couldn't find it in the real world. Bloggers, I thought, probably didn't wash very much. The curtains on their homes were usually shut. They played fantasy games on the internet, and ate a lot of take-aways. They certainly didn't do the laundry, the school run, hold down a job,or juggle a family's schedule. Then - almost by mistake and entirely thanks to Pig in the Kitchen - I became a blogger myself, and suddenly the preconceptions that I had previously had became those of others about me, others who knew nothing about this new and vibrant world that I had stumbled into.

To start with, I didn't really tell anyone about my on-line life. I was worried what they might think of me (given my own previous prejudices, for example), I was worried that they might - the horror! - read what I wrote. But over time, I gained confidence and started to share with close friends what I was doing. I even told my Husband the address after a close friend of his took the trouble to find the blog on google (never forget; you might think your blog is anonymous but if it contains even a kernel of truth about your life, you're not. Bear that in mind when you hit publish...).

And then I took the final leap into linking my real-life with my on-line life; I met another blogger.

As I stood and waited for her to arrive I have to admit that I did wonder what the hell I was doing. One of the issues that seems to come up time and again for bloggers is the hypocrisy of repeatedly warning your older children about 'the weirdo's on the internet' and the absolute no-go of ever meeting them in person - and then going to do exactly that yourself. What if she turned out to be some sort of psycopath who bore no resemblance to the warm and witty person I knew online? What if she turned out to be some kind of internet stalker? What if this meeting turned into a special feature in The Daily Mail, a tale of horror, the apparently sympathetic tone of the article heavily underscored with the unspoken suggestion that 'she should have known better; no good can ever come from the interweb?'

Of course, that's not how it turned it out at all. Frog in the Field and I had a great time; so great in fact that when she roped me in to a special screening for mummy bloggers of 'Chuggington' a few weeks later I didn't hesitate to say yes. And that's where I met 'A Modern Mother', and Jo Beaufoix amongst others. A couple of weeks later when the former asked us to be part of a new ning she was setting up, instead of replying 'what on earth is a ning?' I answered yes, and that's how I ended up in Earl's Court on Saturday, surrounded by yet more warm and witty people who I had also met on the internet.

It was wonderful. For a start, everybody there had washed. There were no drawn curtains, no take-away cartons (at least, not during the day. I can't speak for later after a few glasses of wine had been consumed, obviously...) And I can't sum up my feelings about the day better than to quote something from an e-mail that a good friend of mine - who, whilst I had never met her in person before Saturday most definitely fits that description - sent afterwards, and which I think applies to just about everyone I spoke to at Cybermummy;

'I loved meeting you. You are so very YOU!'