Inclusivity in the community

Last week I was quoted £200 to hire our local village hall for a two-hour children’s party on a Saturday. There are reasons for this which to the committee (all volunteers, I emphasise, and it is a big job to manage alongside everything else, I’m sure, and not for remuneration) who run the hall and its workings are very good ones as to why on Saturdays they only hire the hall for the entire day (which is what the cost reflects), and then not on Sundays; but obviously for me it wasn’t really an acceptable offer. In fact, I assumed I’d misheard the voicemail left in response to my initial query, so exorbitant and (to the business profit maximisation side of my brain) surreal was the pricing structure.

It brought into sharp relief how perhaps I’ve taken village inclusivity for granted. I love living here and have found a sense of belonging and proper community which I wasn’t able to find elsewhere I lived. But during that brief conversation I felt awkward, an outsider, persona non gratis. I live here, and they didn’t want me.

Now, afterwards I rapidly got over it and remembered that I was channelling my employed behaviour and simply don’t like not being able to negotiate myself into a more favourable situation – and believe me, the hall hirer wasn’t for turning. But right then it hurt, and in that moment I saw how important it is to take individual responsibility to shore up our local communities in whatever ways we feel we can. I am very cynical about the reasons why Cameron has championed his ‘Big Society’ – saving money by forcing the community to take responsibility for various services previously supplied by local authorities, perhaps? But here’s the official line. Regardless of any of that, the principle of finding a place to feel at home and comfortable and working with the others living there to make it better for everyone, to me that intention doesn’t seem like such a bad idea. Because in a survey last year, 26% of us don’t even know our neighbours’ names. And more disturbingly, we might not even recognise them either.

No-one should feel responsible for the life and times of everyone around them, and in my view no-one should take on so many community commitments that they lose vital space for themselves; but there are people who feel how I felt about the village hall rejection, all the time, where they live, and I personally don’t like the idea of that. I’m fortunate that I live in such a kind community that I can be super-sensitive over a teeny little isolated event; but there are people who walk anonymously through their surroundings every day, feeling invisible to those whose eyes they lock regularly.

I would hope I don’t do that, look away; but the importance of not doing it has been thrown into sharp relief.

Me, my feet and I

I have always had an erratic relationship with my feet. I have to confess that for quite several years, we were not on speaking terms. For a start, they have been size 8 or 7 (UK) since I was around 11, so in any of the shoes du jour of my teenage years (DMs, mainly) they resembled ocean-going liners at full throttle.

Then, when I was fourteen, I had the indignity of an ingrowing toenail operation. Wearing trainers with a hole hacked in the toe at a school where we ordinarily had to wear the Platonic ideal (I rather like this definition of the Platonic ideal, even if it remains clear as mud as a concept) of uniform was not the greatest start to my career at that educational establishment; it also left an unsightly scar down the side of my left big toe, with only two-thirds of a toenail remaining even to this day.

Following two pregnancies where my feet spread to an extent where ocean-going liners became supertankers, then strangely shrank back to a size smaller than they were at the start, I believed that finally we had the chance to reach an entente cordiale, me and my feet. I also gained a fresh respect for their capabilities, undergoing moxibustion to turn the baby during my second pregnancy, involving the burning of acupuncture ‘products’ by my smallest toes on a daily basis – and you know what, it worked. So surely, I concluded, feet rock if they can do all that and keep me upright against all the odds.

It was strange that I didn’t enjoy the presence of my actual feet until mid 2007 since I have been renowned throughout my career as the Imelda Marcos (see the end of the second para on this link) of Marketing. Oh, I love love love a shoe. For example when planning my wedding outfit I had no real thought for my dress and every thought for my shoes – all I wanted was Jimmy Choos, and by jiminy I got them. Frankly I could have got married in those and my invisiknickers and I would have been happy.

But enough.

I had major surgery on my spine last year; for the majority of the five years prior to that, and six months after, I couldn’t wear the beautiful heels I’d amassed over the years and lovingly cared for. But I did have some gorgeous flat sandals permissable for spinal issues that I felt deserved the best possible showing. So I started to look into what I could do with my feet. Inspired by one of the pedicures I had when my back was too bad for me to reach my own feet to deal with them, I started cutting and shaping my nails; but the biggest breakthrough came when I unearthed a pumice stone and some aqueous cream at the back of the bathroom cabinet. Originally purchased to soothe away L1′s verruca I gave it a go on the cracked skin at the back of my heels – after all, it was getting so unsightly that anything was worth a try. And you know what, it not only worked, but in one fell swoop it transformed the way my feet looked and felt. I couldn’t take my eyes off them. And they didn’t even have shoes on them (my usual reason for encountering an inability to take my eyes off my plates of meat).

For me and my relationship with my feet, the key has proved to be ease and simplicity. Once a week I exfoliate those feet, getting rid of the dry and cracking skin around the heel, slather on some aqueous cream and leave them free for the cream to soak in. When I cut my toenails I don’t go for glamour, I go for straightforward and simple, with snipped and shaped nails, and it works very nicely for me thank you. And most importantly, in the midst of a busy life where sometimes it’s still a bit painful to bend over to pamper those tootsies, it’s a routine I can easily maintain. The Clarks Scent Flower sandals strike me as being the perfect excuse to flash those feet that are perfectly fitted for me, frankly. Let’s just start praying for sun eh…

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The lessons of history’s silent majority

We’ve been having many discussions about the Second World War in our house recently, since L1 has been learning about it and has just finished a lengthy project, which she really enjoyed (yes, as did I, especially cooking the ration meals – illustrated here).

Some of our conversations – plus recent reads of mine and debates with friends – have really got me thinking about the way history is taught in our schools. I don’t mean the quality of the teaching – in L1′s case, her WW2 instruction has been exemplary, but I have written elsewhere about how lucky I think we are on that score.

What it is, is that in the syllabus there appears to be no acknowledgment that in the case of WW2 it was the actions of the few that led to life-changing horror on every side of the conflict, not just in the UK. This seems to be to be a message that is alive throughout our history – ancient and recent – and is prominent in these times in which we’re living.

I’ve just read Markus Zuzak’s incredible The Book Thief, in fact I read it some months ago but it’s so fresh in my mind because of it’s impact that it feels like I read it more recently than I actually did. The recounting of one girl’s personal experiences and tragedies in the midst of the macro tragedy that was starving terrified Germany ruled by a lunatic in the run-up to and during WW2 starkly, beautifully and devastatingly outline that there were all the other general populations of all the other countries fighting during those years undergoing the same unspeakable horror we were. The Allies’ actions, vitally necessary as they undoubtedly were, led to the same howling terror of night air raids and crushed cities for the general population as they did in our country too.

It is important that the undeniable achievements and bravery – which continues today – of our armed forces and civilians on the ground forced into untenable circumstances and practicing survival are highlighted. And it makes sense that the focus of what happened to the ordinary population – and how the ordinary population not only survived but became extraordinary in those horrendous, heart-breaking times – is on what it meant to the UK. By doing this it is easier to make it real, and more memorable, especially when told from the memories of our very own relatives, friends and kind people prepared to share their stories with our children, to make the events they underwent part of our children’s memories in the hope – and I do hope this – that lessons of the blessings of peace can truly be learned. Living in Kent, by the side of the constantly targeted London to Channel coast railway, the devastation of the bombings in our local area have always been very real to me, and have become so for L1, visiting Chislehurst Caves and Jubilee Park, and hearing their histories, as I did.

I’m not trying to lead a crusade to redress this balance except quietly in my own home. Whether for money or for religion or for oil or for territory or for any of the other legion reasons that wars are fought – be these wars blatant bombardments or undercover terrorism campaigns – I don’t want my children to think for one minute that the actions of a few leading these groups – whatever banner that few fight under – necessarily, or even ever, in the case of true evil and extremism – reflect the mindset of the majority. This lesson can be best taught, I believe, not by special focus but by including the message in the subjects taught as part of our current curriculum. Tolerance and understanding are qualities that are becoming increasingly important, so we have to start getting the message across while the next generation are young.

Friends, reunited

I haven’t blogged for a while because the amount of catarrh I am currently undergoing is drowning my usual levels of simmering anger and injustice, so nothing going on in the news has driven me to put keyboard to screen.

However, last Saturday was my ** year since leaving school reunion (it’s so long ago that I left, I’m unable actually to write it – suffice to say I have lived more years again than I had lived by the time I left school, if that’s followable – my cold isn’t helping).

I was a very strange mixture of fiendishly curious and gut-wrenchingly terrified as I waited on the station for the train. I can’t say it felt like groundhog day – because the last time I did that journey for that reason was ** years ago – but it did have an unnervingly familiar taste to it emotionally.

Like maybe every teenage girl at one stage or another, I felt like a spare part at school. There was a social jigsaw that everyone else seemed to be able to put together, but into which my piece didn’t ever feel a fit. There were kind people, fun people, incredibly clever people, awkward people, at my school, like at every school, but they all seemed to have it more sussed than me. I was nervous that even though the years have changed everything for me and now I’m comfortable that it’s okay not to be always comfortable, and not ‘get it’ sometimes; that being back there would unlearn all that, even if only for one night.

I should have had that vodka and diet Coke on the train.

Although perhaps it was just as well that I didn’t, since I managed to squeeze in enough of them throughout the rest of the night.

I’m not going to go into detail, there’s too much of it. But what won’t leave my head is what it actually means to re-meet people ** years on (I’m really not going to say it, really really not). Last Saturday showed – or seemed to show, I’m not going to push my impression on others, suffice to say this is my opinion, my view – we’d all become comfortable in our personalities, and whatever they were, they seemed to fit very well. People being themselves; however closely related or otherwise to how they were all those years ago.

It was surprising, refreshing, dementedly entertaining, and ultimately led to me returning home exhilarated at 2.30am in the morning (I wasn’t exhilarated when I woke up, it has to be said). I always swore blind that nodding to the past could only lead to the past reciprocating by head-butting you in the face, breaking nose and probably cheekbone too; but maybe I was a little bit too judgmental on that one.

Good to see you, class of ’93, really really good. Ooops, there, that date, I said it.

Childcare ratio change is ratio-ning attention, and courting danger

I’m a tad late to the party on this one, but it’s never too late to be genuinely concerned.

For some months now there have been rumblings that the Government is planning to increase the ratio of children to adults in childcare situations in the UK. Bear in mind that already Gove has decreed that 30 is no longer the maximum for a primary class. This is leading to teachers in the public sector simply performing crowd control, or schools forced to spend budget usually deployed elsewhere on employing extra classroom support so this doesn’t become the case. As a result, it is slowly eating away at one of the fundamental pillars of our – in the main – excellent state education system, and therefore in the not-too-distant future, at the standards it can achieve.

And now the Government turns its Vulcan death stare to childcare. With a huge number of UK children in paid childcare situations, decisions here are not affecting a minority. Not, I hasten to add, that it would matter if it was. It would still be wrong, unkind, and potentially catastrophic. Liz Truss and Stephen Twigg battle it out in the ‘for and against’ video here (who’s that woman on Liz Truss’s right as you look at the footage, I ask you?); a well-reasoned piece from a specialist against it is here. And as a bonus ball, here’s an article on the Tories’ ‘childcare expert’ that I had to share, as it beggars belief. And, in addition, I would like to tell you a story.

On the day my little girl L1 turned three, she was in her kind, attentive, well-staffed nursery. We had given her her pressies and had the following day – which also happens to be my birthday – off for a double-bubble celebration; so as a consequence, that day, I was in work. I was five months pregnant with L2 at the time.

Unknown to us, my poor little girl must have had a viral infection, as mid-way through the morning, one of my department popped her head round the door (I was in a lengthy meeting) looking pretty frightened. “Your nursery’s trying to get hold of you”, she said, “L1 has fainted and she’s going to hospital.”

Needless to say it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. Lovely marketing team members got me out of the office replete with £20 to get me home by cab if push came to shove, but the train’s faster; and with an hour and a half commute ahead of me – at least – to get from work to hospital; M AWOL; and my mother while find-able and on her way, still a little distance away, my tiny daughter had no-one with her at that very difficult point in her small life. Except, of course, she did.

Because there were enough staff members at that nursery for her key worker to hold her close until the ambulance came, to travel to hospital with her in the ambulance, to be there until we could be, and then to wait with us all until we knew that – thank God – everything was alright.

What would have happened to my baby, my just-three year old if she was at nursery after Liz Truss’s threatened reformation? Well probably they wouldn’t have noticed her unconscious so fast, for a start. And she would likely have been sent in an ambulance, confused, scared and unwell, on her own, with strangers, because there would have been a mere scraping of staff available to look after the kids remaining in the nursery, let alone send one off with my girl. I’ve written this with tears in my eyes from the memory, let alone the thought of what could have been. This ratio change cannot be allowed to happen.

While on the subject of discrimination…

… As of course I just have been, speaking about maternity rights, I wanted to highlight this individual example of how unbending bureaucracy and rigid adherence to rules, not the needs of human beings, will cause not only distress, but also risks forcing a brilliant young person to think differently about himself.

My friend’s son, now aged 12, started at secondary school in September, like thousands and thousands of other eleven year olds. Equally, like thousands and thousands of eleven year olds, the school’s about eight miles away so he has transport arranged to take him to and from the school. He has Downs Syndrome, but thanks to his own attitude and that of his parents, this is not the defining factor of his life. Sadly I have not met the lad in person, but from Facebook posts from his mum one thing that’s very clear is that the defining factor of his life is all the things he can and does do – drama, hanging out with friends, learning at school – which are identical to those thousands and thousands of eleven year olds I referenced previously.

For very good reasons, as a result of a risk assessment he travels to school in a minibus, on which for the moment there are no other kids, simply because no other kids in that area right now need it.

So there’s lots of room in that minibus.

On the main school bus, there is usually sufficient room so that when one of the kids travelling on that bus wants to bring a friend home, they pay £2, and that friend travels as well. So my friend’s son wanted to pay his £2 and bring a friend home with him, too. Like everyone else. And the answer from the council was – you’ve probably guessed it – no. Because apparently no-one else is insured to travel in this spacious transport option bar my friend’s son and the driver. It is – this makes me so angry on their behalf – ‘against policy’.

So this lad who never considers himself disabled or different, because of the work his parents and others have done to make this so, now at the age of eleven, only eleven, is being told by the system that unlike everyone else he cannot invite a friend back from school, because he is ‘different’ to the others. Previously, why would he think that? Now, because of their blinkered actions, thoughtless discrimination and refusal to look at the circumstances of an individual person, the risk is that ‘different’ – negatively – is how he will start to feel.

It is horrible and it is wrong and it is thoughtless. It is unthinkable that a child able to manage happily in a secondary school with all his peers is suddenly told that actually, usual rules do not apply. I wanted to highlight this firstly to say to his inspiring parents: anyone who thinks ‘people first’ is outraged by this treatment of your son, and you are right to fight this all the way, you will find waves of support wherever you turn.

But secondly to highlight that we – collectively, including local councils and other public bodies who I appreciate are constrained by budgetary and other requirements – must think first about the effect that rules and regulations have on people before these rules and regulations are set in stone. Ask questions, consider scenarios, talk to service users… Just look at the human element before you apply a cost to the service you deliver. As a country we run a risk of becoming utterly enslaved to available budget coupled with risk aversion (I refer to my previous post for a macro application of this principle) and every individual has a responsibility to apply ‘people first’ to their own activities in order to counteract this insidious trend.

Maternity pay discrimination – the tip of the iceberg

Oh joy. At the moment there is such a plethora of rampant lunacy being spouted by people in the public eye that I scarcely know to where I should turn my attention.

This week however I believe the winner (to date – no chickens being currently counted) is Godfrey Bloom MEP, and his comment: “No self-respecting small businessman with a brain in the right place would ever employ a lady of child-bearing age”.

An excellent blog on the full comment is here in The Spectator, written by Isabel Hardman.

Now, I only want to focus on two things. Firstly, Mr Bloom discriminates against one small group in society in this way, when it is actually impossible to do so for the following reason. Is there any way to identify who is going to need to take significant time off, for a plethora of often terrible, tragic reasons? No. So discriminating against women like this is not only offensive in terms of the skills, experience and capability being confined to the scrapheap because of a ‘maybe’; it is also bonkers, because there is absolutely no way to tell who will actually cost your business cold hard cash by their unexpected absence. And to look at it one way, at least with maternity leave you have some time to prepare for what’s going to happen. There is a good reason why it is illegal to ask someone about their future baby life choice plans in interview. Would any employer think about saying “are you planning on having a massive car crash while you work for me?” or “do you reckon you’re likely to have a stroke within first 12 months of working with us?”. Should we start asking about how many hours’ sleep a night people have, as part of the interview process? No? Well maybe we should. Being overtired leads to a whole range of risk factors. Claiming that you won’t employ child bearing age women to ‘mitigate risk’ is discrimination, pure and simple. There are an awful lot of more, um, risky risks to keep an eye on here.

And secondly, let’s be practical for one small moment. No matter how you cut it, it wasn’t ever an option for M to take the mat leave on my behalf, now was it, yet we both wanted the children. So let’s say I was a bloke and everything else was exactly the same – background, experience, achievements, even the penchant for unnatural hair colouring – would that make me as a man a better employee, or simply less of a risk? It’s the latter; therefore it is discrimination, as the deciding factor is dictated by circumstance not skill. I feel very lucky that both my maternity leaves were taken while I worked for a truly enlightened boss. Or maybe he was just being fair, and it is the alternative ways that many other employers react that make him appear enlightened.

Parental leave – where either parent can take the time off – will make things easier on the individuals taking the leave to decide who and when, supporting both careers (allegedly), but oooh that’s a UKIP quandary then. Because shouldn’t that as a result mean that men of any age ought to be viewed as an employment risk, since a man at any stage of life could become a dad, and take the time off.

I read Richard Godwin’s Farage interview in the Evening Standard on Monday, and was chilled by UKIP’s current lack of a deficit reduction policy, and apparent lack of ability to deliver one. “In October, we have to put down a plan of how we would deal with the deficit — and that is going to be one of the biggest challenges we’ve had to face,” said Farage blithely. Perhaps UKIP should concentrate on working out this, rather than trying to dictate demented business policy.