Sloely Sloely Catchy Monkey

For all those hankering after another Sloe-based pun and an update on the gin...

It looks like this and it tastes like cough mixture.

I am hoping that further time thinking about what it's done will improve the situation...

The Fitzherbert Arms, Swynnerton (Circular Walk)

In which I wave cheerily at the pub where I had my first job, see yet more interesting fungi I am unable to identify, and think about the latest UK gubbins around childbirth choices.

Ordnance Survey Number: Explorer 258
Distance: 3.5 miles approx
Time: 100 mins

Rating: Moderate (numerous stiles to be crossed, and map reading to be done)

I had a rubbish week last week. The Chap was ill, and ran a 38-39 degree temperature for 3 days. I'd rather forgotten how 24 hour being a parent is - now I get woken up a maximum of once a night or not at all, I rather feel that the time after 8pm until I go to bed is 'time off'. Lies! The Chap was a very sad little fellow, and refused to sleep at all unless he was on a person for two of the three nights he was ill. This meant I pulled a half-nighter (lasted until 3am on Saturday morning, when I had to go and turf the ChapDad out of bed before I died), and with a little more preparation, an all-nighter (11.30pm - 5am). There was then some wazzockry on Sunday night once he was well but had a disrupted sleep pattern. Pale shadows of our former selves, my husband and I discussed it and decided it was time to admit that the job had got too big for two knackered people. I left the ChapDad to sleep, while I ran away up the country to spend a few days with my parents in Staffordshire.

Glamour, thy name is rambling.

After two naps and a full night's sleep (thank you Mummy for dealing with the 2.30am feed request), I decided I was awake enough to try for a walk with my Daddy. He was a little concerned that he would be required to produce a quantity of feminist thinking; I let him off that bit.

And fair enough, really, because what's been on my mind is childbirth (as the news has announced both the recommendation for allowing women to have elective caesarians, and a new report has made some claims regarding the safety of first time home births). There's really a tolerance level for the number of times one can use the words 'vaginal delivery' to your father. I think one is really the optimum number. Bless 'im, I was 38 weeks at Christmas last year, and the combination of them visiting plus me being booked for a homebirth left him quite jittery. Fortunately, The Chap arrived 40 weeks to the day and appeared well into January, when everyone had left and festivities had quietened down.

The beauty of the Fitz's car park

We started at The Fitzherbert Arms pub, where I worked for...ooo, a couple of months before leaving the late nights and potential vomit to opt to be an early morning cleaner instead. I had to clear out trucker's toilets in the newer job, but it was quiet and no-one felt the need to comment on me being 'built for comfort, not for speed'. The charmers.

Unidentified fungus #1

Standing with your back to the Alison Bar, leave the car park and turn right down Early Lane. Continue to the end of the road and then head straight on down the green lane, where we found the first of our unidentified fungus for this walk.








The green lane finishes and you emerge into a field. We were pleased by the portly fellow indicated on the sign, so I took a picture of the matching portly fellow I had with me.

Cross diagonally over the first, second and third fields, where we found the second and third of our unidentified fungi. At the end of the field, cross over the A519, taking care as you descend down a pretty steep & nasty bank - I did it by holding onto the signpost and going down the side of the path rather than the main, slightly muddied route.

Unidentified fungus #2

Unidentified fungus #3

Once you have survived the descent and got onto the path, turn left and follow the field boundary. My father identified a pair of partridges as they flew away from us, and then pointed out a couple of badger sets, which one of his friends had been heard to leap up and down near, crying 'Get up, lazy bones*! It's half past ten!'. Sadly, the badgers, being nocturnal, were unlikely to comply.

Too big for rabbit,
too small for badger...

*The shouter is a grown, middle-aged man and did not shout 'lazy bones', but I have been struck by modesty and am paraphrasing more politely.

We then passed another hole, and stood for a little while discussing if it was for a rabbit (too big) or a badger (too small). Moving on past the tree roots where the burrow was found, we saw the clue to the owner: a pile of feathers suggested that a fox was at work in the area.




So yes, as I mentioned, I had a homebirth for my first child. The thing is, the route the that decision was an interesting one. When I had my 10 week visit from a midwife, I was totally of the "I've never had a baby before, I have no idea what I'm doing! Send me to hospital! Bring me a consultant!". Four weeks later, we went for four days in Haworth in Yorkshire, home of a number of sobering headstones of the sort you don't wish to see while 14 weeks pregnant:

The inscription reads "In memory of  Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph and Mary Leeming
of Keighley, who died August 20th 1855 in the 6th year of her age. Also eleven infants
 of theirs, also two infants of theirs, also of Sarah Elizabeth their daughter who died
December 16th 1862 in the 2nd Year of her age, also of an infant of theirs, also of Fred
 their sonwho died November 19th 1869 in the 4th year of his age.".
 My heart goes out to Joseph and Mary Leeming of Keighley....

Which, if nothing else, makes me incredibly grateful to live in an age where a) I can choose when I want to be pregnant, and b) we understand the importance of clean water (Haworth had one of the worst mortality rates in the country due to a number of factors, no small part being that their water supply was coming through the graveyard before getting to the standpipes).

We also popped across to Leeds to see one of James' University friends, whose second child was around a month old at the time. His wife, who hadn't enjoyed the birth of her first child in hospital, had had a home water birth. She delivered what was a quite fearsome polemic on how women need to educate themselves about childbirth (after all, you don't get in a car and expect to drive it straight away), thrust a copy of Childbirth Without Fear into my hand, while keeping Gina Ford's Contented Little Baby firmly on the bookshelf ("We've got that copy trapped on the bookshelf so it won't fall into any unsuspecting hands!"). I went away and read it, and started to think...

Buryhurst Pit

Continue to the end of the field, where we excited a number of large dogs in kennels. While we had been on holiday in August, the Chap had burst into tears and screamed when a large dog had barked at him, but fortunately  he was asleep by this point - I don't think he would have enjoyed it too much. Cross over a stile next to the kennels, and turn immediately left and cross over a second stile to go up a slightly wooded path. This then widens to a not enormously attractive, but functional path that leads you back to the A519. Cross over this and take the path to the left along the field boundary, go over the stile at the end and turn right down the green lane. This will take you past the Buryhurst Pit ("Oo, it's a marl pit." said my father. I grunted ignorantly, but apparently it's an area where clay has been removed, and has then filled up with water. So there you go.), and an industrial estate that appears to be a storage area for, among other things, caravans, buses, a broken doll's house, a boat registered in Southampton (and impressively lost) and the transporters for the North Staffordshire Racer Pigeon Federation. This path then goes on for a fair way, and at the end it got pretty muddy, with Daddy powering ahead while I took things a little slower for fear of falling and doing The Chap a mischief.

Because doing the Chap a mischief is not something I have wanted to do, so I did a lot of research into home births before making my choice. A report has come out today in The Telegraph  saying that home births for first time mothers are more likely to lead to complications to the baby, and that is something you have to take into account when planning a home birth. It was something we talked about a lot - if the baby dies and we're at home, we will blame ourselves for having a home birth, regardless of whether or not he would have died in hospital as well. Yet, for all the scaremongering in this report, tucked away beneath the scroll down and beyond the golden third paragraph is the sentence

"The researchers stressed that giving birth [at home] is generally very safe as 250 babies suffered complications from the 64,538 births in the study."

So, while that is terrible for the 500 parents who had to deal with the complications, the risks are still very, very low. Yet at the same time, I heard someone on the radio saying that an elective caesarian was a better choice because if you deliver vaginally there is 'danger of prolapse', but the Journal of Midwifery and Women's Health says :

There have been many studies trying to find out which is the safest way to have a baby. At this time, there is no proof that having a C-section is safer or protects against future problems with leaking urine or stool, or uterine prolapse. Because there are more medical risks for women who have a C-section compared to women who have a vaginal birth, vaginal birth is safer.

Also, there's a lot of hoo-hah about how you give birth (no-one gives you a medal), but it is hard to express to someone who hasn't done it how vulnerable you feel post-childbirth. You have just gone through a major physical event. If you're going to run a marathon, you train and prepare for it, they give you a start date and time, you do it, and then you take time out to recover. Childbirth is an effort I think it would be fair to equate with a marathon, but instead of a nice, clear start date you get a five week window, in which your marathon can start at any time. Sometimes you feel you have been taken up to the starting line, only to be told that it's all off and you can go back home. And once you've finally done it, there's no time to recover - you are then woken up every three hours or so for at least three months. Add to that being awash with hormones trying to sort out the fact you're not pregnant and the sudden reality of your life having changed forever (again, you can be told about it all you like, but the way it feels...). It's tough. It's really, really tough.

I may have had a homebirth - and I would recommend it, the experience of childbirth was amazing. I had been worried about feeling out of control, but my main memories of it are a sense of doing something that was really hard work physically, but doing it really well. Upon being told I as 8 centimetres dilated, I remember wanting to argue to my midwife and say "Are you sure? I thought this should hurt more?". I very clearly remember thinking "Actually, I don't need any of you here at all, I could do this all on my own like a cat in a cupboard.". It wasn't really painful - apart from crowning, which lead to me to say something akin to 'Gosh, gosh, goshity gosh'.

But I digress. Homebirth was great for me, but an elective caesarian might be great for someone else. But, as The Guardian noted, "Malcolm Griffiths, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist at Luton and Dunstable hospital, who chaired the guidelines committee, said: "Caesarean section is major surgery. It is about as major as hysterectomy, after which you go home and do nothing for six weeks and some employers won't expect you back for six months. After a caesarean we send a lady home after two days and say 'here's a baby to look after as well'."

I am pro choice for whatever a woman feels is right for her. But what is the most important thing is that women are educated fully about childbirth so they are able to make informed decisions, and as things stand at the moment, the free antenatal education I received was very poor indeed (3 hours from our local NHS), and had I relied on that I think my experience of birth would have been very, very different.

Anyway, walking. You finally appear out on Cotes Lane - the man on the sign pointing back the way we had come looked considerably trimmer than the one we had seen at the start of our walk. Sadly, neither of us had become that markedly slimmer in the time it had taken us to do our walk, and I will still be relying on Big Pants to fit me into my dress for The Godmother's wedding in 4 weeks time.

Turn left, up a precipitous set of steps and go over a stile that is angled sloping backwards, making it a bit unnerving to cross, particularly if you have a small Chap strapped to your front. He had just woken up, and did not look wholly impressed.

St Mary's Church, Swynnerton

Cross the field, go over your final stile into a strip of woodland and turn left. Go through a metal kissing gate and follow the path straight across the field and then along the field boundary until you pop out beside the cricket club. Follow the path along the side of the grounds until you come out onto Park View. Cross the road and continue forward up an alley that will lead you onto a pavement alongside the unclassified road through Swynnerton. Turn left and follow the pavement, waving happily at Lord Stafford's mansion and the local Anglican and Catholic Churches on the other side of the road until you round the corner and find yourself back at the Fitzherbert Arms. And you haven't had to use the phrase 'vaginal delivery' to your father once.






Things I learnt

• What a marl pit is. I should have known that, having lived in Staffordshire for many years. Most things are to do with pots there. It sort of took the gloss off Chinese museums filled with Ming dynasty vases, because I was so sick of looking at pots in museums here. Always love a handsome Tang Dynasty camel, mark you.
• Almost everyone gets a little bit messed up after childbirth. I had friends who regretted being induced which led to C-Section, or regretted getting to the pushing stage and then needing an episiotomy, or regretted not having a contraction at all when they had to have a C-section due to pre-eclampsia. I still wish I hadn't had to go into hospital to get stitched up - it was my treatment there that means I get mild panicky flashbacks that sent me to get some therapy. But put it this way - a new person comes into the world, and they either come out through your fu-fu, or it has to be cut out of you. As amazing as that experience is, it will be a bit of a shock.
• As much as I may bitch about stuff, I haven't had to bury 17 children as the Leemings had to. I don't know how you do that and stay sane. There's nothing I can say about how the thought of that experience makes me feel. It's too big. There are no words.

St Mary's Church, Ivinghoe circular walk via Pitstone Windmill and the Grand Union Canal

In which I do a circular walk from Ivinghoe's Church, see a number of fungi which I fail to identify, and politely request that certain magazines get the ... Dickens... off my ... blinking... case.

Ordnance Survey number: Explorer 181
Distance: 5 miles approx
Time: 2 and a half hours (I was feeling lazy, ok?)

Rating: Moderate Walk - map reading and stile climbing required.
This is posting a bit late today, but I've been in a pickle because The Chap has been running a temperature for the past 24 hours, and I have been stuck playing Human Mattress because he refused to be put down.

St Mary The Virgin's Church, Ivinghoe was originally built at some point in the 13th Century, and at the time of writing is currently covered in some very modern scaffolding. There was originally some hope of the work being done by Christmas, but sadly it seems that it won't be finished until February.

Although I started the walk here, parking isn't amazing. There is some on a verge opposite the King's Head, but I'm not sure how legal or encouraged it is - might be better to park at the Pitstone Windmill area if you don't fancy risking it.

Turn your back on the church (how very Dawkins of you), and follow the High Street down the mild decline. Shortly after passing the library and post office, take the second left down Green Lane. This rapidly becomes unsuitable for cars and leads you through a gate and onto the footpath that takes you across the field past the Pitstone Windmill. Cross straight across this field and follow the path straight across the next one - you will pop out, via a metal kissing gate, onto Vicarage Road.

Turn right down Vicarage Road, and follow until you reach the roundabout shortly after passing Pitstone Memorial Hall. Go straight across the roundabout along Cheddington Road.

Just as you leave the village of Pitstone, and slightly before the National Speed Limit sign, cross the road and turn right through a metal kissing gate to head towards the Grand Union Canal.

Unidentified fungus #1

Usually October is the month for fungi, but I think all the warm weather we had might have put it off. Now it's getting colder, I was able to spot more types, although what most of the were I have no idea.

This is the sort of slightly woody path that I like best - the sort of place Freudians look at in fairy stories and nod and suck their teeth at. I just like it because it feels atmospheric.

Speaking of the atmosphere, there must be something in the air at the moment, because almost everyone I talk to appears to be doing some form of exercise or dieting or both. There's been a rash of exercise/weight loss status updates. There are two reasons for this, I think. 1) Christmas, that annual Excuse For Gluttony is coming, and 2) The Godmother is getting married the week on December 17th, leading to a frenzy of dress choosing and posing to be done.

There's something about weddings - particularly in the age of digital photography, where you know the first pictures will be plastered across Facebook within 24 hours, and then following in dribs and drabs for the rest of the week - that makes us all behave like we're going to walk the Red Carpet at the Oscars. I know I do it; the year before I had The Chap, I marked weight-loss by the three weddings I had to attend.

I remember The Godmother getting engaged distinctly, because her fellow proposed when The Chap was 5 days old. She texted everyone in excitement - it had been 10 years in coming - and I, in my heightened emotional state, burst into tears in the back of the car as the ChapDad was driving us to hospital for the 5 day check. "When are you getting married?" I asked her. "Will I have enough time to lose the baby weight?". When she announced that it would be in December, I laughed. Of course I'd have lost the weight by then! Easy.

Ha!

Of course I haven't. I am also still plugging away at Fat is a Feminist Issue, but I once heard Jo Brand announce that she got halfway through it and then ate it, which is sort of how I feel about it too, except it's on my Kindle and that would be expensive. It's just a bit ... worthy. The Female Eunuch is funny and filthy, but this is just a lot of handwringing. According to Orbach, I am fat allegedly because I am choosing to be so because it is doing something for me psychologically - probably something to do with me wanting to avoid sexual attention. I'm not convinced. In fact, it makes me go 'ppfffft' and reach for a chocolate brownie.

In due course, you pop out of the wooded path and onto the Grand Union Canal. Cross the bridge and turn right. The light was amazing by the water, and the canal was incredibly still and peaceful. I was still fairly ranty, however, but the light did make me stop and go 'oo' before I continued on my muttering way.
Because surely, to say that one gets fat in order to avoid sexual attraction suggests that no-one fancies fat girls (lest we forget, they're 'more grateful' and so 'make more of an effort'. The number of times some arsehat has announced that to me in a pub. To my face. ). I can plainly see the evidence for this, having never been kissed, or had a boyfriend, or been proposed to or got married. No no. Nothing to see here, I've just sat at home at pondered my navel. Which certainly isn't pierced. Fat girls don't do that. We're too busy feeling melancholy.

house by my own rage, I go and buy some form of trashy magazine. I bought one this week, and we shall call it - to pluck a name from the air - Nearer. It purports to contain information on such diverse subjects as fashion, celebrity and real life (albeit the type of real life that exists around the more extreme fringes and almost always seems to contain one story of rape a week. Why, one wonders...?). I know I shouldn't buy these magazines; my sister-in-law refers to them as 'A roll-call of social care referrals', which I think is pretty accurate.

This particular publication is especially poisonous, in my opinion. Because this one is endlessly mentioning somebody's weight, and, most worryingly, slyly implying that when they were thinner, they were happier. So there they are, printing their lead story about two examples of  standard self-destructive tabloid fodder 'ballooning' from drinking too much. Here's a picture of one in a tiny blue dress at some awards bash, with the caption 'looked a lot slimmer attending a launch party in May'. On the next page, here's some reality-show wazzock who 'looked slim and healthy before', whereas in the next picture 'The star looked a lot bigger at a party last week'. The implication is that if they're fatter, it's an indication of their internal misery. I'm not denying comfort eating, what I'm disliking is the broad, brush-stroke implication that if you're thin, you're happy.

Unidentified fungus #2

Continuing along the canal, I spotted another set of mysterious mushrooms - although these looked a little more toadstooly to me. And speaking of poisonous little toadstools, if this whole fat thing was mentioned once on that page and then never mentioned again, I think I'd be more inclined to go 'hm' and leave it. But as I flicked through it, all it seemed to be talking about was who was having babies and who had got back into their tiny jeans within six weeks after giving birth. Clearly I am the demographic for this atrocious tosh, and it filled me with rage. Of course, there's the obligatory page where some celebrity yo-yo dieter pops up half naked 'celebrating her curves' (oh, curves, you pernicious word. We all know you're a euphemism for fat), but for the rest of it... I'm the sort of person who likes statistics, so I did some counting. 34 pages of this magazine dealt with 'features', 13 of which had some snidey little comment about someone looking fatter/thinner. Less than half, but it means that every couple of pages or so, some poisonous toadstool pops up to go "You're fat! You're fat! You're fat, and you must be miserable!". It wears you down. There's better things we have to worry about as women than the fact we are still toting, say, and extra stone of baby weight (such as the contradictory advice of Health Visitors, or the crippling price of childcare, for example), but that's all these magazines want to make you focus on, because they market themselves as a solution, a break, a matey little bit of time for yourself, while it simultaneously grinds you down. It's a vicious little circle that makes them a lot of money, I'm sure.

Potentially identified fungus

I finally passed a fungus that I think I recognise. I'm pretty sure that this is a field mushroom. Had it had more friends, I would have picked them and taken them home for a spot of mushrooms on toast, but seeing as this one was there all on its lonesome, I left it where it was.

Shortly after the possible field mushroom, I reached the point where you have to leave the canal path. At bridge 123, take the path up to the left onto the road.

Bridge 123

I was briefly concerned that this choice of path was deeply foolish, as it takes you across a single lane bridge with no footpath. That being said, it is quite easily done as long as you use your common sense with it and follow the traffic when the traffic light is green.

The traffic light is not green.

Continue along the right hand side of the road for a few hundred metres until you see a green footpath sign on the other side of the road. This leads you into Farm, and for a moment I thought I was going to have to turn around and go back the way I'd come, as there were large 'Disease Control' signs on the gate. I remember going for a walk with my father at the height of the 2001 Foot & Mouth Crisis, and having to phone to get my mum to pick us up from the middle of nowhere because we suddenly found that the paths we were supposed to go on had all been closed. However, as I approached the stile, I saw a large blue box on the other side, which upon further inspection, read:

All fine - feet dipped (easier said than done when you have a baby on your front and a knapsack on your back). Follow the path up the side of the field boundary until, just beyond the top right corner, you will find a gate and a bridge over a stream. I was really glad I was wearing boots here, because the mud was so churned up on the other side of the bridge that my trainers would have been ruined.Turn right and follow the field boundary again along the side of the Grove Farm pick-your-own patch. The strawberries were looking particularly sad.

The sun sets over the
pick-your-own ...

It as at this point I realised that I had misjudged the time of day, and the sun was going down. I hadn't really spotted that it is almost winter, and sunset does happen a lot earlier these days... At the corner of the field, follow the signposted path along the stream until you come to a wide pathway. Turn right, and walk alongside the chainlink fence next to the pick your own gooseberry bushes. A couple of hundred metres down here you will see a pathway sign off to the left. Cross the second stile and walk along a fenced corridor between two fields. When I was there, they had sheep in them, and I had to stop and ponder the following question:

Is it me, or does this sheep have a really small head
compared to the size of its body?
Is it the inverse Brian-from-Westlife of the sheep world?
His head is massive.  Just have a look.

When this path ends, turn right for a few hundred metres, and then left along a clearly signposted path before you wander into the farm.Walk down Maud Jane's Close, and when you reach Station Road, turn left and you will shortly find yourself back at the church where you began.

By which time, I am pleased to say, my internal monologue which had at certain points sounded reminiscent of an episode of The Thick of It, had quietened. I know the easiest thing for me would be to stop reading these magazines, but I know they're there. They look at me, with an expression of poorly disguised loathing, the way they look at all women. And I read them every now and again in the hope that I can find something to approve of, or if it's just going to be another guilty frisson of vicarious bullying as we all crow at how terrible some overpaid, undertalented miseryguts looks in a tacky dress. And that's the greatest problem of all, because you know that guilty frisson of vicarious bullying? I like it.

Hmpf.

Things I learnt

• The sun is going down a lot earlier. By the time I got home, it was dark and I felt like a dirty stop-out.
• The warm weather means mushrooms and other fungal fellows are out later this year.
• Certain types of magazines make me swear like a Billingsgate porter.

Hello Kitty for men...

So you spend your time waving a finger and muttering as you take the foam off the top of your second pint about gender performance,... You paint the nursery yellow and lean away from too much blue... You specify Christmas presents mustn't contain the words 'monster', 'trouble' or 'monkey' (you never find these epithets in the girl sections, it's all angels and princesses over there), but then you find this in the middle of your kitchen...

And you start to think... hmm...

Don't get me wrong, I love Hello Kitty, and many Japanese men would agree. It's just that in the West, Hello Kitty is a girl thing (although, incidentally, it was the ChapDad who handed over my Hello Kitty to his son, not me. Don't know why I feel it's important to say that, but there you go); is it fair for me to allow my son to attach to this particular stuffed plush article when he may either a) feel embarassed about the attachment in years to come, or b) have other kids laugh at him if they find out about her?

Am I overthinking it? Yet Grayson Perry has made a whole career around the adoration of his old teddy, Alan Measles.

Well, as with everything, I'm going to play the Wait And See game. Kitty feels very interesting to little fingers - soft bits and silky bits and lacy bits and hard, shiny eyes* , so we'll leave it for the moment. After all, Kitty may fancy a gender change in years to come. When my father's manly Big Ted met me, he started running round in frilly dresses and calling himself Juliette. Story of my life....

*I think I may have just listed what my husband likes best about me there...

Ashridge Estate (Circular Walk)

In which I find a new walk to do in Ashridge with my sling meet and am all conflicted about the word 'mum'.

Ordnance Survey number: Explorer 181
Distance: 2 miles approx
Time: 75 mins (walking at a pace good for little legs!)

Autumn is finally here! Wet, misty and with leaves changing colour fast. The Chap and I woke up to find it sheeting down with rain. I was filled with confidence at the fact we had agreed to go on a walk with my sling meet - this looked like we should be turning up at Ashridge with a paddle and life jackets.

I think we managed to burn off the rain by sheer dint of the heat of our own rage at the Liz Jones 'spunkburglar' article (as my husband refers to it) - the echoes were still reverberating. Happy minutes were spent creating Ultimate Headlines along the lines of "Illegal Immigrants Steal Babies From Careless Older Mothers, Causing Cancer and the Devaluing of House Prices".

We started at the Bridgewater Monument, built in 1832 and available to climb in summer months (I love a good tower. The ChapDad and I had an inadvertent run of holidays in places with towers, so it has become a bit of a running joke that whenever we go somewhere we have to find a tower to go up. If we ever find ourselves in Mordor we'll be up Barad-dûr by the end of the first day).

Standing outside the cafe and looking towards the Bridgewater Monument, take the paved road to the left. into the woods. This is an easy, slightly gravelly path that is could take a pram if you don't mind having to turn and go back the way you came when the path becomes impassable.

It was really lovely, if a bit damp. For the first half I had to break out my umbrella, which is sometimes a challenge as, more often that not, the Chap starts trying to climb out of his sling so he can reach the dangly bit that fastens it closed when the umbrella is folded.

 In due course, the path will split. We stayed on the left hand fork, but I suspect the right hand one will take you down into the village of Aldbury. Aside from a lot of women toting babies, we also had a number of small people with us, leaping around in wellies and rainsuits (I do mean children, not dwarves), pointing out squirrels and demanding to see some deer.

So there I was, surrounded by mothers, and I was struck by a creeping thought again... I don't really want to be a mum. Now, you may look at this:

And think that maybe I have somewhat burned my bridges if that is my feeling. Left it a bit late for that realisation, perhaps.

But no, my problem isn't with being a mother. My problem is with the word 'mum'. Actually, no, my problem isn't with the word 'mum' - my problem is with the way the word is used. The vast majority of mothers in the UK are called mum, and I'm not in any way criticising that choice. What's getting my goat is that I hear word mum and I come over all a bit Saussure, because what I also hear is the way the word mum is being devalued.

Word	Why it makes me twitchy
mumsy	Sarah Dittum in The Guardian made a good point that there is no 'dadsy' equivalent to make men feel dowdy
mumpreneur	Made it into the dictionary last month (defining a mother who runs her own business from home so she can combine work and childcare). I don't have a problem with the activity, I have a problem with the fact that as a man you can be doing the same activity and you're an entrepreneur - as a woman, we have to put a label on you to disambiguate you from other women running businesses? What's going on here?
Your mum	The final put-down to win any argument.There's even a Facebook group bemoaning the current Prime Minister entitled David Cameron - Your Mum. I know it stems from the cultural belief that one of the greatest insults is to criticise someone's mother, but it's the way the sentence has evolved to needing an ending "Yeah, well, your mum's stupid" to just "Your mum" as an insult in itself.

Add to that Sanctimommies, Discombobumoms, MILFs, the way mumsnet is treated on the news (they care more for biscuits than politics, because that's all mother's heads are filled with) and, if you really want to be depressed, go to urban dictionary and look at all the mom-suffix words. I know they're supposed to be funny (and I know there are also loads of dad-suffix ones), and some are, but it's the sheer number of them, and the wealth of contempt bearing down on you; a list of why you are comprehensively shit.

As a group, after the path bears to the left, we  had reached a point  at a crossroads where we could either turn left through a gate and head back, or carry straight on down the bridleway. After some discussion, we decided that neither we nor our small friends were tired yet. We would continue forward in the hopes of seeing some deer. If you've got a pram, this is a good place to turn around - it got pretty muddy from here.

There was a convenient gate at this point, on which we could put my camera with a timer so we could get a picture of us all.

Further on, there are some trees that clearly came a cropper during some high winds. This is excellent fun for small (and larger) people to clamber all over, as well as getting to go 'ooo' at some tree roots. One member of our group said there was a picture of her sitting on top of these roots while pregnant - it's quite a clamber, so I was pretty impressed!

Sooo, if I don't want to be 'mum', what choice have a I got? Mummy? That's fine for now, but it's hard to be a grown up and still call your female parent 'Mummy' (plus, there are then overtones of 'Mummy's boys'... I'm aware other epithets are also used in a derogatory manner). Ma? I'm not Irish enough. Mama? If you pronounce it with the short 'a' I'm not American enough for that, and I couldn't use the British 'Muh-Mah' pronunciation because Daddy doesn't own half of Berkshire, so I'm just not posh enough. Mother? A bit formal.

I phoned up my mum to pick her brain. Well, I say I phoned up my mum. "I always wanted to be mum." she said "But I never got to be. When you were little it all started off fine as mummy, then we went to America and then it was mommy, and then we had the Pete's Dragon phase where I was Nora, and then you got a bit older and it's been mother, which I hate, because it sounds like you're cross with me all the time. It's like being called by your job title."

You see, even as a child I was conflicted about the word. There were two problems, really. In my head, she is my mummy (and that's what I always write on mother's day cards). But, when I got to about Year 4 at school, everyone else seemed to have mums; I didn't. I had a mummy. But I couldn't tell people that; it was babyish. So I had to refer to this impostor I had at home - but she's my mummy, not my mum. Who is this mum character? I'm 30 now, and it's ridiculous, I still feel like a bit of a prat about it.

My other problem was that everyone else had a mum, and I've always had that sort of temperment where I am a little wary of having what everyone else has got. So I'm afraid I have, without really knowing what else to call her, leant towards mother, because as she said, that's her job title. I know she doesn't like it, but I still hold onto it as a habit when talking to others because it became so ingrained at school. So maybe that's the real problem - I don't really know what I'm supposed to call my own mother, so how am I supposed to know what I should want to be myself? Maybe I should just let The Chap make his mind up. After all, Jenni Murray is 'mum' to her sons, and she's not looking too oppressed. Most mothers are mum, and it doesn't seem to do too much harm. My mother suggested I should just be 'mum' and reclaim it as a word, but it's not like the reclamation of the word 'queer' by the gay community. Queer was always an insult - mum is a word that's being eroded with contempt. I think that, on the whole, I've just got to surrender it to my child - I am his mother, so he should choose. Children come with their own ideas, so whatever happens, like my mother before me, I guess I won't have a choice.

Shamelessly stolen from GeekySweetheart

Take the first left - from here on, things got very muddy indeed, which was a source of much delight to the younger members of our group. There was less delight from mothers who had put their children down to walk, only for them to ask to be carried again - complete with muddy wellies threatening to make a mess of jeans!

It was around here that we saw our first fallow deer - I did try and take a picture, but my wildlife photography is pretty dodgy. I due course, we came to a crossroads - take the left and road. When this road comes to a T junction, do not go left or right but step over a very low bit of fence (or something) among the undergrowth and cross straight back over the field. This takes you back towards the monument and - crucially - the cafe for a cuppa!

The Bridgewater Monument hoves into view.

Things I Learnt

• I should pay more attention when being taken on a walk by someone else. The directions here are a bit fluffy this week...
• If I had called people what they wanted, I would have had a Ma and a Mum. Instead I had a Grandma and a Mummy. I will have very little say in what The Chap decides to call me!
• You can still go for walks with small people. You have to take it at their pace, but tramping through the undergrowth doesn't have to be written off once the little ones can walk. This bodes well for the future.

Me and Ms Jones....

I was having a somewhat challenging day last Friday. I had been woken by The Chap demanding feeding at 4.30am, and while he had happily gone back to sleep, I had not. I was knackered, and wondering whether or not I had the energy to get out of my pyjamas, let alone go for a walk. It was at this point I happen across a Twitstorm in which Caitlin Moran was heard to pronounce "There's been days when I've been so desperate for a column idea I would have stolen someone's spunk too"..."I would have happily run into next door's house and burgled THEIR CAT'S OVARIES if there were 1500 words in it" and led Victoria Coren to note that "Ah, there's the doorbell. I'll take an old sock with me, in case it's the postman". If  Moran and Coren are both being sarcastic about this, I should get on google pretty quickly, I thought.

Oh, Liz Jones. Thank you, Liz Jones. I was feeling sick, I was feeling tired. But you filled me with enough adrenaline-fuelled rage that I was dressed and doing the hoovering within an hour.
I have been known to perform think-by shootings on The Daily Fail The Daily Mail - find a copy, open it (usually to the Femail section, a name I find offensive to start with, as if the news isn't good enough for you, love, don't worry your pretty little head. Bypass all this bit and we've got a load of diet tips, pictures of Victoria Beckham and hand-wringing about Cheryl Cole being/not being married.), annotate a page, and then close the paper as if nothing has happened.

Sadly, this is the Internet, and you can't 'accidentally' hop onto a blog when what you really wanted was to read the Heil Mail. But imagine you have idly opened a copy of that esteemed publication. Go on, humour me. The original article is in white - I have cut it a bit here and there to try and stop this being the longest blog post in the world. My annotations are in colour.

___________________________________________

The craving for a baby that drives women to the ultimate deception Not one woman, not just Liz Jones, no no. Women. Women plural. All of us. All of us do this. It's in the paper, it must be true.

Liz Jones makes her most shocking confession yet

By Liz Jones
Last updated at 10:43 AM on 3rd November 2011


Anyone who meets me, or reads what I write, would think I don’t like children and never wanted to be a mother. Indeed, for most of my adult life, having a child was the furthest thing from my mind.
I wanted a career, freedom, a nice house and to keep my figure. As a feminist, I looked down on mumsy types. This sentence first made me do this, and then, once I'd got the power of speech back, ended up repeating "You what? You what? You what?"for approximately half an hour. I have a lot to say about this last sentence, but to keep it short:
1) You sly old dog, Liz. You know that  most people have stopped reading a newspaper article by the third paragraph, so you whack that in up here in the first. Because that's the image of feminism people will take away from this sentence - feminism is about women looking down on other women,
2) Mumsy types. Can you be a little bit more specific? If you write As a feminist, I looked down on mothers, you are writing off 80% of the adult female population, so that sentence had to go. So what is a mumsy type? What do you mean? Do you mean stay at home mothers? Do you feel they are shying away from 'real life' to hide behind crayons and play doh? That they're wasting their time? Or is it mothers working part time? Do you feel they have ridiculous expectations of themselves? Do you feel they're spreading themselves too thin, that they'll do a bad job at home and at work? Or how about mothers working full time? Bringing all that horrible information about children with them, and asking for sick days when their children have the lurgy? Because every woman who has children will read that and bristle that your 'mumsy type' applies to her, regardless of her situation. Because that is what that sentence does - it makes every mother who has the misapprehension that feminism is about hating men and being all po-faced about a career think that feminism is not for them.
But when I was in my late 30s, I decided that if I didn’t get pregnant soon then it might never happen. I had also reached a point in my life where I wanted to settle down with a man, and though my boyfriend at that time was wildly unsuitable,(so why were you going out with him?) I thought that I could change him.


Just in case you think you've read enough now, we're going to insert a soft-porny airbrushed photo of a woman with - bah-bah-baaahhhhh - short hair (she must be trying to be a man!) to distract you. He's kissing her neck, but she's looking at the camera! The harlot! She shuns his affection! Look at her, being all come-hithery at you! She's only with him so he'll pay for a better set of Acrylic nails for her!

The look of cold dread you get when you realise the last nappy has been used and the shops are shut.

Going behind his back: Would you go as far as Liz Jones did in an attempt to have a baby?

And yet I wanted to hang on to Trevor. I thought that if we split up I might not get a replacement boyfriend in time to use my rapidly dwindling egg supply. Get me a man! Any man! This baby business is limited edition! Better have one as not! Better to shackle yourself to some hideous no-hoper for the rest of your life and shoot your quality of life through the kneecaps! That's feminism, folks!
Trevor had never given me what I wanted from a relationship. At first, he wouldn’t even have sex with me. Ummm... ok. Because all 'real' men wander round with a horn the size of a prize cucumber 24/7. I loathe this pernicious myth that men are always 'up for' sex just as much as I loathe the flip side that no woman can really like sex, we're just all faking it, like porn stars. Except the fat girls, who are 'more grateful' and so 'make more of an effort'.Then, finally, when he moved into my flat (probably more out of a desire to be able to walk to work than any real love for me) we started a physical relationship. This is why you need real feminism, proper feminism. Women need to be imbued with a sense of self-respect to leave shoddy relationships. Better go alone that badly accompanied.
He was still very cautious, though. He refused to believe I was on the Pill, and insisted we use a condom for every moment of our intimate contact.
‘I don’t trust you,’ he said, muttering something about women claiming to want a career, but underneath wanting to start a family. And it was on this basis that you wanted to breed with this man? You want to perpetuate these genetics?

I called his bluff and told him there was no way I would want a baby with him, given he didn’t earn any money. Because if you had a baby you would be giving up your job? If he seems such an astonishing catch that you plan to breed with him, why don't you go to back to work after your maternity leave and leave the one who isn't earning money to look after the baby...? But of course, as a feminist, you would definitely be uncomfortable to challenge the male-breadwinner, female-homemaker paradigm, Yet the truth was, I had hatched a plan that many will doubtless find shocking.
Because he wouldn’t give me what I wanted, I decided to steal it from him. I resolved to steal his sperm from him in the middle of the night. I thought it was my right, given that he was living with me and I had bought him many, many M&S ready meals.
The ‘theft’ itself was alarmingly easy to carry out. One night, after sex, I took the used condom and, in the privacy of the bathroom, I did what I had to do. I've been to the privacy of the bathroom to do what I had to do many times, yet none of it has involved me furkling in the bin for a used condom. Bingo.
I don’t understand why more men aren’t wise to this risk — maybe sex addles their brain. So let me offer a warning to men wishing to avoid any chance of unwanted fatherhood: if a woman disappears to the loo immediately after sex, I suggest you find out exactly what she is up to. "What's that you said, darling? You want to come and watch me on the loo to check I'm not actually inserting the contents of your used condom up my flump? Why, come right in! Bring an armchair." 
As it turned out, my attempts to get pregnant by Trevor failed, and shortly afterwards he and I split up.
But my dreams of motherhood persisted, and I resorted to similarly secretive methods to conceive in my next relationship. And given that I was in my early 40s by then, this was an even more urgent situation.
At least on this occasion we were married, which you might think would — should — give a woman every right to want to start a family. Yes, you do have a right to want, certainly. I have a right to want lots of things -  a baby that sleeps through the night, for instance, or to enjoy the spectacle of a little manly wrestling between, say, Captain Jack Sparrow and The Dread Pirate Roberts, but I accept these things may not happen. That's called being a grown-up.  But my husband was 14 years younger than me, and he had told me he was not ready for children. In fairness, this must be a hard thing, if you want kids and your partner isn't keen. But at least he'd been honest with her and told her he didn't want any.

Guilty secret: Liz Jones and her ex-husband Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal. They met when he was 26 and she was 37

But I didn’t listen. All I heard was my own ticking clock, not his reasonable desire to be allowed to grow up himself first. Because that's all women do - think about themselves.
Of course, not every woman in my position would resort to extreme measures. But I do believe that any man who moves in with a woman in her late 30s or early 40s should take it as read that she will want to use them to procreate good use of a formal word to remove any sense of emotion from the sentence and underline the essentially calculating nature of the single woman over 35!, by fair means or foul, no matter how much she protests otherwise. Liz Jones knows the motives of all women over the age of 35, and she has warned you! Now don't say you haven't been told.

...

Among my circle, many girlfriends have told me how they have tricked their boyfriend or fiancé or husband. One found herself childless in her 40s, so she lied to a very new boyfriend that she was on the Pill. He is now in a new relationship having to pay support for a child he never sees. A throw-away comment with massive connotations. Beware! All women are golddiggers! The only reason we spend any time with men is for their money! God forbid we should actually enjoy their company... 
Another friend was engaged but her fiancé walked out on her. She is 39, and told me she was hoping she was pregnant ‘so he would have to come back’. Yet men remain in blissful ignorance of such tactics. Because, to paraphrase what the ChapDad said, that is some seriously messed messed up  tomfoolery. As someone who currently enjoying a spot of therapy (not because I stole my husband's sperm, but to do with extended necessary medical interference with me post-childbirth. I finally stopped having to be interfered with by the time the Chap was eight months old, but that's a long time to enjoy regular impersonal furkling in your nether) I would recommend going and seeing someone about this. The implication is that men and women cannot sit down and have a grown up conversation about what they want from life - that women are always desperate for families and men are always running from them.

I spoke to several men before writing this article. One, in his mid-30s, has just got engaged to a woman who is 39. He told me he is not yet thinking about starting a family, as he is self-employed and worried about the recession. They also live 45 miles apart, each in their own flat. Which is set up as if this is something about which we should be shocked and appalled. But for two people who are going out to live 45 minutes apart in this day and age? It's not so shocking. When my husband and I started going out after meeting at a party, he lived in Lancaster and I in Aberystwyth - a fun year of 5 hour train journeys if we wanted to see each other.
He told me he wants to wait until they have a house together, and for his business to become established.
I bet his fiancée will be pregnant within the year. Citation needed! Spurious opinion! Based on the information, I bet his fiancee will be too busy going crazy over how much someone wants to charge for a bunch of flowers the moment the word 'wedding' pops gaily from her lips!

Home alone: Liz is resigned to her own childless state now she is in her 50s but thinks it would have been better to have been honest with her exes about her desire to be a mother

Ah, women and cats - a combination long feared with its overtones of witchcraft. Beware the woman with the cat! The echoes of this fear can still be found not only in pictures like the above, but also in events like the Belgian Kattenstoet.
That’s why I believe men should be much more wary. I believe that this is unnecessary scaremongering.Too many of them underestimate women; too many of them muddle along, swept up in the beady-eyed focus of the prospective middle-aged mum. Subtext: men are really stupid.
And the lengths these women are willing to go to make my half-baked attempts seem amateur. One tells me she used secret hormone injections to make herself more fertile; another uses a clandestine ovulating chart kept in the tea towel drawer (a place she knows her husband never looks in). She needs to have a chat with my husband about this one...
I spoke to another friend over the summer who told me she was trying to get pregnant with her fiancé. She said: ‘I really want a year off work. I might even go part-time after that, maybe two days a week. He will just have to work harder.’
It reminded me of the time when I asked my now ex-husband whether he was dating again. ‘No, not really,’ he replied. ‘I don’t want to get some woman pregnant, find out she’s a cow, and spend the rest of my life shackled to her.’ Have we no control over our sexual destiny? Is communication this poor?
...

Women today are used to getting what they want; they believe that ‘having it all’ is their right, not a privilege. Women no longer think merely being ‘married’ to their work is in any way satisfactory. Life without a child is seen as a failure. And this is an idea we need to challenge. As Caitlin Moran says in How To Be a Woman, when sent to interview Kylie she was told to ask her if she wanted kids, yet no-one demands you to ask Marilyn Manson if he's been hanging round Jojomamanbebe, touching little booties and crying.

A friend in the U.S., who is six months pregnant, has just responded via email with her thoughts on the subject
...
‘Did you steal his sperm?’ I asked.
‘Not in the way you described, no, that’s disgusting. But I stopped taking the Pill, mainly because it was making me fat and moody.’
I didn’t reply that I wonder how her boyfriend will feel in a year’s time, when she is fatter and moodier. And there you are again, as a feminist, reducing a woman's value to her ability to be an angel in the home, looking lovely and with a charming temperament.No matter how urgent that yearning for a child, deception is surely no way to embark on parenthood.
We are always debating a woman’s right to her own body and her own destiny, but what about a man’s right to his body, and to his future?
If there are any men out there even contemplating getting close to a woman in her late 30s or early 40s, I suggest you tread very carefully. Even contemplating!
She might be the woman for you; she might be totally honest if she says she doesn’t want to rush into motherhood But she might also be a duplicitous creature willing to go to any lengths to fulfil her dreams of having a family.

___________________________________________

And the subtext? Feminism doesn't work. Look at Liz Jones - she's a feminist, look she says so! She concentrated on her career and then suddenly realised that she'd been wrong all along, and then she went batguano crazy trying to get up the duff! Give up your arguments about equal pay or your desire to be judged on what you think, not how you look. Stop complaining that women over 50 are shunted off our TV screens while men wizen into walnuts of wisdom. Just be barefoot and pregnant and get back into the kitchen, bitch.

The other, deeply depressing thing about this article is that it implies that men and women are fundamentally unable to communicate, to behave like proper grown-ups over serious decisions like mortgages and marriage and children. How fundamentally miserable to live in a world where you can't speak to your partner. This is what feminism should be for - to give women the balls to say what they want, to have the self-confidence to speak clearly, concisely, eloquently about their desires. To negotiate. To have the confidence not to have children if they don't want to. To have the self-belief, if you do want children, to choose a man to be the father of your children, a man who you respect. A man who will pick you up as you lie sobbing on your bedroom floor at 4am after you have spent an hour breastfeeding your child, only for them to vomit the entire feed up and leave you irrationally crying "He didn't do this with formula, it's me, I'm poisoning him.". A man who you trust to think straight for you when you can't. Feminism taught me not to settle. Feminism is about choice. And articles like Ms Jones' undermine our rights as women to choose our lives.

College Lake (Circular Walk)

In which I still have a cold, wander around College Lake and consider how being injured seems to link with a sense of Manliness.

Ordnance Survey Map: Explorer 181
Distance: 3 miles approx
Time: 60 minutes
Rating: Easy


Both The Chap and I were full of cold & grump, so the general conclusion was to get out of the house -a bit of fresh air and distraction from the joys of teething (four coming through at the same time! Four, I tell you!) and mucus-production would be most welcome.

As I am eternally dubious of my ability to read a map (I was mentally scarred during The Duke Of Edinburgh's Award) at the best of times, it seemed foolish to head out to do something challenging, which is why we picked on College Lake. A flagship nature reserve for the Berks,Bucks and Oxon Wildlife Trusts, College Lake has a number of walks that are suitable for both buggies and slings (but be aware that the orange signposted walk that is suitable for buggies can get very boggy in the winter). It's also a fantastic place for birdwatching if that's your thing, although my skills don't run beyond "That's a coot!" and "Hmm...Sounds like a dial-up-modem.".

Once you have passed over the Woolly Mammoth tusk in the turf-roofed Visitor Centre (nappy change available), you come out on a rise overlooking the lake - it's prettier now it's flooded than when it was an old chalk quarry.

We turned right, following the blue signs on the Time Trail, which takes you down along the edge of the lake. If you have a pram, you'll get stuck on this route, so you need to follow the orange Wildlife Trail, which also takes you past an 'honesty' secondhand bookshop and some more toilets and baby-change, just in case.




There are some very pretty views down by the lake, and  quite a prodigious quantity of sloes - it being a nature reserve, however, we felt it as probably Not Cricket to go picking them.

Picking sloes, making gin, baking and cooking are 'self-soothing' activities for me, much more than for my husband, who was happy at University to live off pasta and sauce for a whole term. Is this just a me-him thing, or a boy-girl thing? Fat is a Feminist Issue would have be believe that I've been conditioned to enjoy these activities to fulfil some societal ideal. That every cake I bake is my attempt to level up as a 'Perfect Mother™'. I don't know how much I buy into that argument, to be honest, but it has become clear to me over the years that boys and girls are different (I could even draw you some helpful diagrams!). It seems clear to me there are some fundamental differences that are not only physical, but are also in our heads. Indeed, whole generations of self-help books have made a lot of money out of just that assertion.

What's made me think about it is because events this week have reinforced the fact that boys and girls see danger differently.

We've got a baby walker that was donated to us by a lovely, generous friend. It looks like this. Now, earlier this week I looked up from sorting out laundry to find that my charming child was standing on the orange bit by the back wheels, balancing his stomach on the handle and leaning forward to grasp the orange and green phone on the front. As I watched, The Chap lifted his feet and was balancing like some tiny circus performer, stopping himself sliding onto his face by his continued quest to grasp the orange and green phone.
"Come and look at this." I said to the ChapDad, who was bimbling around with laundry in the kitchen.
"That's my boy." he gleamed, proudly. "We have no need of Jeremy Kyle DNA tests here- that is clearly My Son."

At which point, the chap let go of the phone and slithered down the front of the baby walker, where he would have landed squarely on his face had I not been there to catch him. The ChapDad nodded approvingly at the stunt. 

The thing I like about College Lake is that every now and again you come across an information board with exciting things on it, like woolly mammoths or tigers, showing you what roamed across the 3 Counties area in ancient times. Around here was the edge of an ancient sea, which gives excuse for gratuitous pictures of sharks and trilobytey type things, which are always pleasing (as an aside, did you know that Hampstead Heath was the shore of an ancient tropical sea? They're found fossils of huge palm trees of the sort that burst into flame in Vietnam films. I find that very exciting, especially as we're usually so cold and damp here).

Walking along the non-prammable Time Trail takes you along the banks left by the old chalk quarry. The area is a perfect habitat for examples of the British Orchid in the late spring/early summer. I get quite excited by these slopes in the hope I might get to see a rare Bee Orchid one day. The ChapDad looks at these slopes and gets misty-eyed about bicycle stunts.

Because boys of any age don't seem to see danger. Or they do, but they seem to see it as a challenge. But a few days after the baby-walker gymnastics, I was idly reading my husband's Google+ account when I saw a picture of Mr Nigella (not his real name. If I called him Mr W for the sake of the Internet it always sounds like he is the victim of some horrific ongoing criminal investigation, so I'm just going make up names, if that's oktexted Mrs Nigella to say "Squawk! Saw the picture of your son, glad he's ok." she then texted back about feeling terribly guilty because she hadn't been there for the incident, and this clearly made her a Terrible Mother ™

In the meantime, Mr Nigella had moved onto Facebook, posting the same picture with a paternal pride that seemed to radiate Behold my offspring! I am the father of a MAN.

 

 

Gender performance - what is it about injuring yourself and being a man? Shortly after learning I was pregnant, the ChapDad announced that he would like very much to make the cot. Over the 9 months he took to produce it (in the odd spare moment when I wasn't insisting we redecorate something), he would regularly reappear in the house sporting some graze or scrape he would purport to be a Manly Injury (his words, not mine!). Why does injuring yourself make you more of a man?

And, of course, by writing all this here I too am enjoying a bit of gender performance. A tut-tut and an eye-roll is all part of the game, including probably some form of sighing "Boys...". And there's years of playing this game to come. You know how you witter away to your children while you're in shops? I actually found myself rifling through the racks of a charity shop the other day, explaining to my sleeping son that "It's all a bit 'generic boy' here, darling. I rather hope you'll have a sense of gender identity without needing to resort to all these trains and rockets". The shop assistants must have thought I was bonkers.  But as the mother of a son I will have to live with a lot of this sort of rough-and-tumble gender performance, ranging from at best rather sweet tomfoolery to at worst, overly macho bullshit. And it's a scary thing, being the mother of a son, because you know you need to craft a sensible human being who isn't going to go out and make another woman's life a misery. You don't want to end up producing some overly testosteroned tosser who's going to march around in supremely smug self-confidence, cockily taking too many risks and destroying the banking system.

College Lake is not really at its best this time of year, but the walk is easy and there are some pretty things, like these teasels. I like the word teasel. It's a good word. Both me and the Chap were definitely breathing easier by the end of the walk. Fresh air is always good - and the Chap had, as usual, fallen asleep in his sling, which was a blessed relief after his pretty relentless teething whinging, poor thing. Can't be fun for him. All he needs to do is avoid radiator brackets and hopefully all will remain well for a while.

Things I Learnt

• Getting injured is somehow manly. Or an image of manliness. I thought it was just my husband who thought this, but apparently not.
• Fat is a Feminist Issue. Hmm. Got it on my Kindle; haven't finished it yet. It makes some good points here and there, but I often find myself looking at some assertion and going 'Really? Are you sure?'. It's a bit like the time at University when a friend and I found ourselves in a seminar where everyone in the room was howling about how Mary Collier was discounted by her contemporaries because she was a woman, and we found ourselves trying to assert that she had been discounted by her contemporaries because she just wasn't really any good...
• Teasel. Let's just say it one more time...