Week end better than Week start

Last week was a ‘mare and I’m glad it’s done.  Having been put on “those” tablets to stop me having bonkers thoughts, things are a lot better.  Almost positive.  Almost, dare I say it, content.  And then I found a lump where no woman wants to find one, so off to the doctor I go.

There are targets nowadays.  You can only wait 2 weeks TOPS, no longer.  Thus I was whisked off for scans last Friday.  This Tuesday, after fretting all weekend, I got the results.  "”Hmmm, there’s a shadow here.  Look, I’m 90% sure you’re ok but….you need more tests”.  Oh poo.  Oh pooey fooey.  And of course a hypochondriac like me will focus on the 10%, not the 90%.  Oh yes.

But yesterday I had more tests and (oh the relief) – “YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY FINE”.  From start to finish all done in 10 days.  Of which more in another blog post.  Possibly.  I may prefer to forget, to be honest.

So I’ve been enjoying the weekend I can tell you, even though it’s mostly involved painting walls and other sundry decorating.

Winchester in the sunshine 

And “those” tablets.  Sometimes they cause odd feelings of euphoria, extreme ones which take me unawares.  I think this will settle down, but at the moment it’s nuts (in a good way).  Walking back from work along the towpath, for instance.  Spinning around (yes, SPINNING AROUND like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music with arms outstretched) and shouting “WOOOT!” because I saw a moorhen, and then a great tit, and the sun was shining and I thought of the Smallcat and the Catman and how much I love them and how lucky I am.  Spinning right round, like a middle aged record.

  The moorhen has scarpered.  She’s obviously not a fan of Scritti Politti.

Can I bottle this feeling?  It would make me a fortune.

One word of advice – do not sing out loud whilst plugged into your MP3 player on said towpath, assuming there’s no one else around.  Because there might be, and they might be startled by your appalling rendition of “The Word Girl”.   Oh, the embarassment.

I am an agent of social decay

Hopefully this is a gentle, cosy blog.  A blog about attempts to crochet toys which mainly go wrong and end up looking like aliens.  A blog where I sometimes mention a lovely little boy and a gorgeous man, and planes plunging at 1000mph into active, exploding volanoes in Iceland, exacerbated by the songs of Bjork.  You know – everyday stuff.

It’s not really about issues, or heavy duty topics, or politics, or the end of the world.  Even during the election one tried to keep it, you know – light.

But today I am angry.  Very, very angry, and I’m going to use this blog to rant.

Frank Field.  Yes, you.  You have suggested that pre school clubs, which enable mothers (note – never the father, always the mother, for we are the ones to blame for social decay, obviously) to get to work by 9am are somehow a signifier of maternal failing.  We don’t love our children, or care about our children, enough to make them breakfast ourselves.

How DARE you, how absobloodylutely DARE you suggest that working mothers are somehow lacking in parental skills and parental love.  How DARE you suggest that because we send our children to pre school clubs - because we have work - that we are somehow failing them, ruining their lives, contributing to this tedious, oft repeated load of old TRIPE commonly known as “broken Britain” (and I swear, if I hear that phrase one more time I will put my boot through someone’s head – and I don’t even wear boots). 

I have breakfast with my son before he goes to school.  We get up a bit earlier you see, Frank.  D’oh!  And do you think I want to work full time?  Do you actually think I want to get someone else to pick my son up at 3.30pm while I’m out there earning the money to pay for the roof over my head?  Affordable housing would help, Frank.  Affordable bloody housing. 

And you always refer to the feminine, Frank.  The “she”, the “mother”.  Never the father.  Never the man.  How does a single mother cope, Frank?  How does she pay the bills if she doesn’t work?  Tell you what, love – how about I become a stay at home mum and get YOU to pay my welfare bills, put me in a council house – or, you know, not, because there’s a shortage of council housing, a shortage of childcare provision too, so I’d find it difficult to get a job once I’d given up work.  Hey – I’d plunge my child into poverty, and then you’d be calling for my head.  But at least I’d be at home, living hand to mouth, stressed, depressed, unable to afford the mortgage, but doing the traditional thing, the way you people want it.  The way it is in la la land, inhabited by none but rich people, people who have something the likes of me don’t have. 

CHOICES.

So I can’t give up work, can I?  Because then I’d be a feckless, single mother, spending the taxpayers blessed money on gin and fags, wouldn’t I?  Way to go with the moralising, you out of touch loon.

Catman tells me to calm down and wait for the budget on June 22nd.  But it doesn’t matter anymore.  Even if they don’t cut my child benefit, or cut my child tax credits, the words are out there now.  Frank can’t take them back.  They’ve been printed on the BBC site (although at the time of writing, the stuff about parental failings has been removed – wonder why that is?).  You want signifiers?  I’ll give you signifiers.

The man that David Cameron has appointed to look into “tackling poverty” has signified to me, very clearly, that woman are to blame for all the ills in society.  No word of single fathers (and yes, they do exist, and work as hard as any other single parent, but are somehow exempt from being agents of chaos it would seem), no word of men who walk away from their responsibilities and leave women, quite literally in my case, holding the baby with no job, no money, no support and but two alternatives – throw yourself on the welfare state, or go to work and magically find the vast sums of money for decent childcare (which is scarce, believe you me).  And either one you choose, you will be criticised and condemned.  Simply for being a woman.

Welcome to our Coalition overlords

I would swear copiously at this point, but this is a cosy blog.