Wendover Woods (circular walk)

In which I visit the highest point in the Chilterns, enjoy a nice walk in the sunshine and get really narked off at some film posters.
Map: None Used - we just followed our feet
Distance: 4k (ish?)
Time: 1 hour

Rating: Moderate Walk (some very steep areas)

Finally, a Monday with a walk! I got there in the end...

So, I found myself with an impromptu day off (in that I cleared the leave with my line manager two days before I had the day off), so ChapDad and I decided it was a good time to explore Wendover Woods.

The Cafe in the Woods

Wendover Woods is run by the forestry commission, and has excellent facilities with a good cafe and clean changing facilities to go with their play equipment and bookable barbecues as well as a Go Ape, yet we don't often go there. Partly it's because you have to pay for parking, and the other reason is that their 'designated trails' are appallingly signposted. They have lovely leaflets printed with all manner of jauntily coloured trails, and we have never managed to complete one successfully - we always lose the route. This makes it much more annoying than, say, the Ashridge Estate, which puts you next to some woodland and seems to announce "there you are, mate - best of luck". Wendover Woods, however, suggests it will provide some walks for you, and then promptly leads you astray.


This time we were feeling relaxed and so decided we would have a wander and just see where we ended up, which was nice because it meant we got to enjoy a new walk that we hadn't been on before.

Cairn marking the Chilterns' Highest Point

Starting at the Cafe in the Woods, head behind the toilet block onto a flat mobility trail. Not far down this you come out into a car park - follow the marked easy access path that is also signposted 'Chilterns' Highest Point'. Down this path, passing the bookable barbecue areas, you will see a Cairn. It is a sadly unexciting affair, as it really lacks any views to speak of (for those I would suggest Coombe Hill or Ivinghoe Beacon). However, it is nice to know that you've reached the highest spot, even if there isn't really a lot to see.

Sometimes, however, there can be too much to see. Journeys to work can be hard enough at the best of times. Whether it's a day I'm in the car or on the bus, each have their own niggles and trials. Slow traffic, trying to find enough seats, hot, grumpy toddlers, it can all add up. What I then do not need to see are one of two film posters that are, to express it politely, really getting on my wick at the moment.

Every now and again, film posters annoy me. For months my journey to work was blighted by having to look at the Life as We Know It posters on bus stops. They are posters that, frankly, let everybody down. Honestly, Warner Bros, we're not angry, we're just disappointed. And as for you, Katherine Heigl - you seem a nice girl, but I saw the truly dire The Ugly Truth and strongly suggest you find yourself a better agent who will get you out of these crappy roles.

But really, this poster filled me with rage. I was moderately-to-heavily pregnant at the time, and my ire was more easily raised than usual (if you can imagine such a thing... my ire is pretty trigger-happy at the best of times). The subtext (although let's be fair, is it really all that sub? It is more the plain text of the poster) that men are themselves children and that women are delighted to spend their lives chasing them delightedly while they forever evade her clutches. Honestly, people, none of us do well out of this poster.

The trees are quite tall.

And, indeed, had we been trying to follow Wendover Woods'  set trail we would not have done well either. After seeing the cairn, we followed the path around to the right until we popped out on the road that exits the area. I don't know if the mobility trail suggests you follow this road back to the car park or if we were supposed to carry on straight over (the route we chose to take) as there were no signs. Having crossed the road, the path leads you alongside it for a while before leading you back into the woodland and through some very long pines.

In due course, the path leads slightly down and then divided into left and right. We chose the left path, the way onto which was slightly blocked by wooden fencing designed to keep out trail bikes, and leading away from the direction of the car park. While the rest of the paths we had been on would have been fine for prams & pushchairs, the way from here definitely became unsuitable for anything more than a sling - there's lots of inconvenient roots and uneven pathways to get in your way.

Turn right, down the bridleway. As you can see,
ChapDad still favours a front carry.

We followed this pathway off into the woods for about 10-15 minutes, with me wondering every now and again at which point we should declare it quits, turn round and head back. However, ChapDad had other ideas. "I think there'll be a path parallel to this one down there somewhere" he gesticulated off down the slope. "We should take the next lateral a join it". I have long given up snorting at pronouncements like this, as more often than not, the swine turns out to be right. Lo and behold, not far after we passed an orienteering marker labelled 3V, a bridleway lead off down the hill to the right. It's quite steep in places, so care needs to be taken. This is particularly true when you reach the bottom of the bridleway and need to join the main trail to the right, as it becomes really steep here - not for very long, but enough to concern you when you've got a baby strapped to you.






However, Hollywood is never tired of churning out annoying films and posters, and recently they've managed to keep me at a gently rolling boil as the bus stops roll past. Firstly, let us begin with the charmingly titled Piranha 3DD. Now, I appreciate that as a woman in her early 30s, I am not the demographic at which this film is aimed. However, while I am not the demographic, the posters have been staring at me on my journey to work for some time now, and they are ticking me off.


There are a number of elements that distress me, and no, I don't think it's too strong a word. I am distressed by the link between sex and violence - there's the cracked sunglasses on an expressionless, porn-culture face. Should one be out of the water and see enough piranhas to reflect in one's sunglasses, I would hope the reaction would be slightly more animated than this bland, airbrushed, blow-up doll of a woman who appears to be waiting for the money shot. And that horrible tagline "Double the action. Double the terror. Double the D's." - which fishwit in marketing thought that up? Roll up, roll up! Come see this film and see large breasted women exhibit fear! In 3D! It'll be hilarious! Once you watch the trailer and see they joys of 'water certified strippers' in a park charmingly titled 'Big Wet' one wonders if the writers of this have ever heard of the women's movement. Again, I just don't think this does any of us any favours - it exploits and cheapens us all.

Having turned right onto the main trail, continue forward like this, again taking the right hand fork leading upwards when the trail divides. Follow past some impressive looking rooty trees as the trail rises until you arrive back near the car park, round the side of the Cafe in the Woods.











And finally, the last bus poster that is making me seethe - What To Expect When You're Expecting. It riles me, it really does.  I will leave aside the opinions of some of my baby-wearing friends as regards front-facing Baby Bjorn style carriers, but needless to say, some of them could write reams on how it's not doing the baby any good. What vexes me, however, and vexes me most strongly, is how the 'hilarity' of this film is conveyed. There are the women, lounging around inside the house, having a good time - like the men should be doing! And look, there are the men loaded down with babies - like women! Ha! Hilarious! Who would have thought it?!

To quote my husband, who has the mot juste on this topic:

"The great strides that have been taken by women into industries, professions and boardrooms necessitate reciprocal strides by men into the domestic sphere. These strides have been taken and are being taken in the face of ridicule from the media [...]We find this amusing primarily because a man in a domestic setting is a figure of fun. This is part of the backlash against women's liberation, in which this document is taking an active and self-defeating part. The author, in seeking to deny the cultural acceptability of a man who is capable around the house, is effectively policing the borders of women's own domestic drudgery. " (Although he said it about an email forward that went round his office - you can read the whole thing here).

"Boom!" is the appropriate response to that, I feel. Except I do not have the funding to put that paragraph on the right hand side of a bus that is currently advertising What to Expect When You're Expecting on its left. Although I would like to.

I'm not denying that the use of the Reservoir Dogs-ish walking in a line trope is funny. The use of the inhaler to replace some sort of weapon makes me chuckle. But again, it is the implication of the emasculation of man - that to look after children is a girly thing to do. Deep down there is some sort of ingrained feeling that we should all be living in some sort of Frank Miller-esque universe, where men are deep-voiced and violent, and women are all an agglomeration of the tropes of hotness and prostitutes or strippers to boot. Why is the image of men looking after their own children presented as funny? Why must the father be undermined in this way while at the same time the Western world scratches its heads at the prevalence of absent fathers? Anyone who has looked after a child for a day knows that it is mentally gruelling, so why can't we all cut each other some slack? I just hope the film doesn't turn out to be as annoying as the poster.


Things I learnt

• I have now been to the highest point in the Chilterns. Oo.
• There is more than one walk to be had out of Wendover Woods! Sadly, I very much need to be in a specific "oh, let's just wander" mood with someone with a better sense of direction than I to get a useful experience out of it.
• Piranha 3DD? Really? Someone gave them money to make that?

Secrets of Dating Prove I've Been Doing It All Wrong

I apologise for the lack of a walk for the past 2 Mondays. The walks have been happening, I promise you, but this is a catastrophically bad time of year for the British teacher to do anything but leave work and hyperventilate as the coursework deadlines get ever nearer. What I'm lacking is the time to write them up - I will try for a post on Monday!

In the meantime, however,I have had time to get annoyed by the Internet. How unusual...

Protip: to repell unwanted advances, employing the phrase
"I feel Jar Jar Binks has been unfairly maligned..." can be effective.

So, there I was idly about to google something when a 'Shh! 53 Dating Secrets Girls Don't Want Guys To Know!' article wandered past. I frankly don't feel I need to look at the 'Guys Don't Want Girls To Know' - frankly, having been with ChapDad for about a decade rather feel I'm past that stage (thank God). Plus, I have also found that being able to have a passable conversation about the moral choices of Han shooting first stands one in better stead than reading website advice. However, I am always curious to find what secrets I am keeping according to Ther Intarrwebz, so I had to click.

Once again, ladies and gentleman, I have been doing it all wrong. Isn't it curious? Is it not a wonder how I ever managed to find (nay, net! Secure, even!) a life partner without taking on board a myriad of rules! In short, I bet I'm not the only one who finds this, to use to technical term, wall-to-wall horsebollocks. I've cut some to save time, but here we go:

1. When we get whistled at in the street, we feel uncomfortable and we’ll always tut and roll our eyes. But we’re awesomely flattered and we’d be gutted if it stopped.

Personally, I love a bit of street harassment. Nothing I like better than some sweaty ne'erdowell summing up my entire being on a scale of how much he'd like to do me. It makes all those years in education worth my while. I'm not just flattered - I'm awesomely flattered. It's almost as good as being groped by a stranger, as that really shows how fanciable you are too!

2. We will never grow out of our fascination with pop stars. A guy can be completely ordinary-looking, but we will fancy him if he’s in a band.

Yeah, that's the problem - it's not the fact you're behaving like a total cock, it's the fact that you're not in a band.

3. We are more likely to fancy a guy if his ex-girlfriends are really pretty.

4. We can be put off a guy by finding out that his ex-girlfriends are a bit ugly.

Will we? Really? Indeed, I find myself regularly thanking my husband for his choice of Evil Ex-Fiance by being shorter than me, fatter than me and being universally reviled by his entire family. By the time I came through the door, as long as I didn't set the cat alight I was green-lit all the way by virtue of not being That  Other One.

7. Here’s how to make us fall for you. One day, come on to us so strong that we’re a bit weirded out by it. Then totally fail to ring us. We’ll wonder what we did wrong, and we won’t be able to stop thinking about you.

Mmmm - I love the smell of date rape in the morning.

8. The above strategy isn’t foolproof. We may just lose interest. It depends on how much we liked you in the first place.

That's completely true. There's nothing I like more than being pressurised for sex. Sometimes it really convinces me that I did fancy you after all.

9. We often don’t know how much we liked you in the first place. We may have to wait until you don’t phone us. If we’re disappointed, it proves that we fancy you. If we’re not, it proves that we don’t. It’s like when you toss a coin to help you make a decision.

Because as a woman, God forbid I should know my own mind. We don't, us girls. Leaky and defective, as Plato said, chopping and changing our tiny little minds. We can't really keep one continuous thought in our heads! You manly men, you make decisive actions like tossing coins to make a decision. We just flit about, flighty little flibbertigibbets that we are.

10. Stop trying to understand how our minds work. Even we don’t understand how our minds work.

Men don't understand how their minds work, either. That's why we have psychology. Stop perpetuating this 'mystical irrational woman' tosh.


12. We love getting a missed call from you. It makes us feel in control.

I've been doing this wrong, too. I always thought that it just meant I had to find a time to call you back.

16. We will never discuss this with you because we are constantly scared of putting you off by bringing “us” up in conversation.

If you find yourself having this thought about a partner, my advice would be to pack your bags and leave. After hearing a friend of a friend's tale about how she'd asked her boyfriend to move in with her after five years and he refused in favour of continuing to live at home with his parents because he 'didn't want things I get to serious', I found myself stabbing tables imperiously with my finger and crying "Why the hell is she still with him? If you ask someone to move in with you and they say no, that is a dealbreaker. She should get rid of him and start again!"*

* I may have had an espresso martini by this point.

17. “I’m scared of being hurt” means “I don’t fancy you as much as I thought I did.” You know it, we know it, and that is all that will be said on the matter.

I thought that when I said this to my new boyfriend ten years ago, it was because I really really liked him, and the thought of losing him upset me. Fortunately he didn't take this as a coded message that I didn't particularly fancy him, and thus continued to go out with me, moved to China with me, proposed, married me, liked me enough to decide we wanted children, helped out once the child was here.

18. We say “we’re not manipulative” because we’re really good at being manipulative.

19. We only manipulate your feelings because you manipulated our feelings first.

Blah, blah, blah. You said that, so I said that, so you said that, so I said that, whinge whinge whine whine I haven't worked out how to communicate with the opposite sex because I've learnt all my gender politics from the Daily Mail.

20. Snoring costs you sex.
I didn't realise there was a bartering system in operation...

21. Your feet disgust us.

I believe Caitlin Moran on Twitter once announced something to the effect of 'a man with an erection won't notice if you're wearing flippers'. Similarly, unless they are rotting in some way, discoloured or giving off an unnatural stench, I do not care.

22. We shave our toes.

I do?

23. We’ve got a rogue hair that needs regular plucking.

I have?


24. We went through a phase of shaving our moustache.

I did?

25. We leave our legs unshaven on a first date so that we won’t end up in bed with you.

26. We wear big knickers on a first date so that we won’t end up in bed with you.

27. We spend entire first dates fancying the pants off you and worrying that we’ll end up in bed with you, all unshaven legs and big knickers.

I always rather suspected that if you were worth the bonk you wouldn't mind about a slightly rough leg. Or, indeed, even notice.


28. We don’t actually care that much about the loo seat.

Hurrah! 28 points in and I finally find something that applies to me!

29. We suspect that you like our bodies more when we’re carrying a few extra pounds, but we always feel better about ourselves when we lose weight. However we hate that our boobs look deflated, and we’re disgusted by the injustice of it.

I don't even know where to start with this. The whole of this list has been about things we do to 'catch' a man and trying to fit in with what they want, but now they like us with an extra slice of cake we're going to get all sniffy? Come on, ladies...

30. We envy you for being able to eat more than us and not get fat. By “envy” we mean “occasionally hate.”

Or we understand that you are larger than us and thus need more calories to maintain your weight?

31. If a grown-up woman has light blonde hair, she’s bleaching it*. You can tell that a woman is a natural blonde from her mousey eyebrows. (* OK, or she’s Scandinavian.)

Women modify colour of body hair shock! Why did no-one tell use about this before?

33. Yes we’ve got nice eyes, blah blah. Boring. We are desperate for you to compliment our skin and our necks.

I am?

34. We are even more desperate for you to write poems about us.

Unless I was dating an actual poet who was paid for their work, I would be deeply concerned that a gentleman who did this had yet to leave his teenage years behind him.

42. During breakouts we get up at 6am and cover our spots with concealer while you’re sleeping.

Again, I am of the opinion that if I am sleeping with you than you should be able to deal with my unmade up spotty face.

I believe my grandmother gave advice my mother about the morning after her wedding night. I believe she advised getting up early to put make-up on before my father saw her. I would therefore judge this practise... outdated...

43. We don’t want you to stay for breakfast. We want you to leave immediately so that you don’t have time to register how dog-rough we look in the morning.

Again, if you don't like someone enough for them to see you looking dodgy in the morning, you shouldn't be sleeping with them in the first place. Also, if you're there for breakfast, it means I don't have to get my own cup of tea :)

44. We want you to text us from your journey home to say how you can’t stop smiling.

That is nice, and good manners. Continue.

49. We fake orgasms so that you’ll stop and let us go to sleep.

Because we didn't want it really. Probably because we were just 'so awesome flattered' by you 'coming on really strong' as suggested by earlier points.


50. We aren’t always sure when we’re faking it. In orgasms, the line between fact and fiction can be very thin.

What? I'd go and see someone about that, love. You're a grown woman - you should know.

52. We find your dark-coloured bedsheets a total turn-off.

That's what turns me off - bedsheets. Nothing about you being an arsehat, it's your bedsheets, love.

Disgraceful that the whole of this tosh is actually being published by MSN. Not by trolls on the Daily Mail, by actual match.com as if it is gospel. Maybe I'm just showing my age, or maybe I've just never been cool enough in the 'cut-throat world of dating', but it isn't making any sense to me...?

Totternhoe Knolls via the Nature Reserve (Circular Walk)

In which I walk through the weird yellow-green nature reserve in Totternhoe Knolls, and inadvertently turn my son into a girl by putting the 'wrong' clothes on him.

Ordnance Survey: Explorer 192
Distance: 2.5 miles approx
Time: 60mins

Rating: Moderate (some steep up and downs - a faff when it's muddy)

Well, back at work this week, and after last week's worrying over the nursery I was then presented with a piece on Radio 4 about child starvation, followed by hearing about the shenanigans of alcoholic parents, followed by a trip on a bus which included a staggering display of generally poor interpersonal skills between a mother and toddler also travelling. In short, I was reminded that maybe putting your child in nursery is not the worst thing ever. We may yet survive. I will keep you posted.

Anyway, eager to get out after last week's snow, I enjoyed a wander over Totternhoe Knolls. Starting in the carpark as with the last walk, go up the steps, bear right at the top and then left. However, unlike last time when I went through the gate on the right, this time I continued forward along the path I was on.

The path takes you up a gentle rise, and the higher you go the better views you get of Totternhoe & the surrounding countryside through the hedge on your left. Had it been a nice day it would have been lovely indeed, but it was damp and misty and cold. On a nice day I'm sure it's lovely, however.

During the snow, there was one thing I did do aside from insist the Chap walked to the shed and back - I dragged our off-road pram 'The Beast' out from under the stairs and wheeled ol' Chap-chops off to toddler group (why no sling? It was sheet ice underfoot, and while I am happy babywearing in the snow, it was so slippy I decided a pram would be better for us that day). He marched up and down with a baby walker for a bit, and then we went over to play with the wooden puzzles. There was a lady there doing a magic roundabout puzzle while he grandson drove a pedal car around the floor, and we did the idle polite chat thing. The older they get the faster they move. The problems with molars. How the Chap is really only interested in a toy that includes wheels or is a ball. By this time, the Chap was showing interest in one of the easy wooden puzzles. He picked up the circle, bashes it on the table a bit, and then neatly slotted it back in place. "Hooray!" I cried, as you do when a small child makes a minor achievement (which the Chap has now learnt, and makes a noise like the Fonz every time something pleases him). "Ah!" said the woman opposite me, "Clever girl!".

And here's the thing- I'd been sitting there blathering about him and he and his and I'm sure I'd used his name too for a good 5 minutes, but something had been talking louder than I'd been. Really very vocal. It had had an awful lot to say. It had been this shirt:

Warning! This shirt will make your child a girl!

Continue along the path - for a good while it was quite unmuddied as there is a structured surface (ish) to it. The further you go along, however, the squelchier it becomes. A few paths can be seen going off this one, but ignore them and stay on this main path. Finally, you will reach a dogleg that takes the path down the hill. Undecided about which way to go, I stood and looked at the map. I was also struck by the weirdness of the landscape of the nature reserve to the left of the path. Mossy, damp, weird teletubby-esque lumps and bumps, like a mogul field without the snow. It's either what happened after some quarrying was left to go back to nature, or the result of some serious bombing.

You're not going into the nature reserve yet, however - stick to the path, which now became very clarty with mud and I proceeded with caution down the slope.

Follow the path down the hill. It will then curve to the left. To be honest, it's a pretty dull green lane - it may be more exciting in the spring/summer, but right now it's sticky with mud, grey and pretty tedious.





Not long after, however, after the path swings to the left you find a metal gate in the hedge to your left. Going through this takes you into the nature reserve and its odd landscape. I found it strangely menacing - the sort of place you are likely to either find or become a body, I thought. Joyfully, neither event happened - we just got a bit damp, but that was the mist.

Take the path bearing slightly to the right of straight ahead (after the gate you can either go hard right or this slightly right, much like the options our government seem to be fond of at the moment) and take the path in between two knolls.

So, some time after the initial 'clever girl' incident, we went for a pub lunch with my parents. I put the Chap in the shirt again because it's sort of a rugby-style shirt, and the first time my father met him he gave him a small talk on which was most likely to be his standing leg and which was most likely to be his kicking leg, so I thought it an appropriate piece of clothing to put on my son. The Chap enjoys walking in places that aren't our house, so holding onto my hand (he can't do it without yet) he marched across the floor with that slightly disturbing toddler goose-step. A grandparent-aged couple on a table nearby cooed at him. "Oooo, you're doing well, aren't you. How old is she?"
"He's a boy." I said. They did the usual polite blustering about being terribly sorry and I made the general polite noises about how no-one can tell when they're this age anyway.
"He was wearing pink, you see." They said.
"But it's a rugby shirt!" My father spluttered.

You pays your money and you takes your gendered choice, it seems.

Obviously, this whole gender segregation of colour thing is a marketing tool - if you have a girl and buy everything with pink & flowers, if you have a boy second you'll simply have to go and buy a whole new load of clothes because otherwise he will clearly grow up to be gay and that would be appalling (someone this week said to me after I'd mentioned how The Chap was very active and allover the place investigating how "Well, you'd rather that than them being all sissyish, really, wouldn't you?", which I'm afraid got a rather firm "He can do whatever he wants to do" intoned from me.). But it pervades everything. There's an American Korean (or Korean American) called JeongMee Yoon who has done a series of photos called The Pink and Blue Project, in which she takes pictures of children with their pink or blue toys. She says "The saccharine, confectionary pink objects that fill my images of little girls and their accessories reveal a pervasive and culturally manipulated expression of femininity” and a desire to be seen. To make these images, I arrange and display the cotton - candy colored belongings of several children in their rooms. When I began producing the pink images, I became aware of the fact that many boys have a lot of blue possessions. Customers are directed to buy blue items for boys and pink for girls. "

JeongMee Yoon's Jake and his Blue Things

It's pretty staggering after a while - go and have a look at the full project so far here.

I can understand this colour-coding for children, particularly babies when they all look the same. A friend of mine said she was grateful when she saw a colour-coded baby, because then you don't have to go through the awkward 'is that a boy? Girl? If I say 'aw, isn't she cute' am I going to really offend the parent when it turns out to be a boy?'. However, looking at Jake and his blue things, it spreads beyond clothes, and it reaches a point where it's really hard to buy clothes for a boy in shops that aren't black, blue, dark green or brown (there are occasional spurts of orange, to be fair. Also, have you ever tried to find a piece of clothing for a boy that has a cat on it? Best of luck to you - girls get pink and cats, boys get blue and dogs. No boy, evidently, has ever liked a cat, ever. My child is clearly some kind of masculine feline-fondness prodigy).

What gets my goat is the way this spreads and spread until activities become segregated and it becomes a major effort to find, say, some sort of 'playing house' toy that isn't bright pink (although the Early Learning Centre do a blue iron. It's rare enough that it's worth reporting). Construction toys, similarly, get heavily marketed towards boys whereas girls get the pink treatment again, as indicated in this video that ChapDad showed me this week.

So while I'm not totally anti colour-coding per se, it's when it starts to infringe upon the activities you may be choosing to do that vexes me. There are some 'girly' things that I suck at, and ChapDad does a lot better - ironing, for instance, and folding. Conversely, when it comes to catching the live mice that the cat brings in, the ChapDad retires quietly from the room while I do a larger version of the 'spider in a glass'  technique. I should stand on a chair and fear for it to climb my skirts, I know, but I don't. Such a failure....

Back in the nature reserve, you will come to a fork - take the left hand one and you will eventually be led down the hill and onto the road. Cross the road and turn left, continuing down it until you pass a farm on your right, then take the next bridleway leading up the hill on your left. When you reach the top, you rejoin the path you started on - turn right, and retrace your steps to the carpark.





Things I Learnt

• There is something that feels a bit odd about Totternhoe Knolls. I've walked there twice and it's not that I don't like it, it just seems to have a bit of an atmosphere.
• In my opinion, you can't make children like something because it's a certain colour. You can influence a purchase, but it's the difference between me asking if something I want comes in red (which happens quite a lot), or me buying something simply because it is red (which doesn't really happen).
• I didn't like Lego as a child. I liked Playmobil. My favourite was the ghost. You could take his sheet off and move his beard up and down (such was the joy of the Playmobil beards) and attach the ball-and-chain to other characters you didn't like. His candelabra was also very useful for hosting banquets. And he glowed in the dark. Amazing! Would I have liked it better had it been pink? Don't be so silly - that's the wrong colour for ghosts to be....

Pitstone Redundant Church to The Valiant Trooper, Aldbury (Circular Walk)

In which we walk off the Sunday glumpf we were suffering, squelch our way through some very sticky mud and I - to my horror - find myself in a position to need to defend Twilight. I feel sullied and unusual.

Ordnance Survey Map: Explorer 181
Distance: 5 miles approx
Time: 3 hours (not including the time it takes to eat a poor treacle sponge in The Valiant Trooper)
Rating: Moderate Walk

We were all of a grump and a glumpf, and what with the weather forecast threatening arctic conditions on the way, the ChapDad and I decided we need to get out of the house before we have to bundle ourselves up in a million layers just to poke our noses outdoors.

The walk starts a Pitstone Redundant Church. Directly opposite this is a gate and a path into the trees. Turn left when you join the main path, and then take the first right hand path that appears to lead you out along the edge of the quarry.

Follow around the edge of the quarry and then follow the instructions as on this walk around the base of Pitstone Hill, but instead of turning right down the public bridleway, we turned left towards Aldbury. Not long after this you come to a crossroads and should continue onwards, joining the Ridgeway National Trail. This is very well signposted (black signs or white-on-black acorn markers), so even I knew where I was going.

This route takes you through the charmingly named 'Aldbury Nowers', which is a delight for all of us who like to verb things at will. (What does Aldbury do? Aldbury nowers. What does Jonathan do? Jonathan Frakes. Imagine our delight whilst on holiday in Brussels upon finding a lorry emblazoned with the name Marcus Vanderhoydonks.). Anyway, it's Chiltern chalk grassland and very good for butterflies and British orchids.





All this tramping across the countryside gives one opportunities to have a good rant, and I had found rantfodder this week whilst idly looking for amusement. Like many people on the Intarwebz, when I find myself with the odd minute of free time it often ends up being wasted finding vague moments of roflment on the wall photos of George Takei's Facebook page. I started doing so after I saw this video:

Now, in the interests of fairness, I must confess that I don't really like Twilight. I read the first one because everyone was going on about it, but it didn't work for me. This is going to sound horrendously shallow, but if you're going to market a love story to me, I need to find the male protagonist hot, and I didn't. I also watched the film in the interests of of fairness (really, everyone was saying how great it was), and my interest remained unpiqued. I didn't hate it (although I did hate the descriptions of Edward Cullen's clothes. Honestly, Bella, take the man in hand and sort out his wardrobe!), but I didn't think it was the best thing ever. Don't get me wrong, I do like a good vampire story, but I always preferred Lestat to Louise; Spike to Angel. I don't like the whiny ones.

So, like many people, I enjoy whiling away my time smirking at the memes people have created about Twilight.

There are the ones that just show horror at it:

There are the ones that have a feminist point to make about it:

There are those who don't think it's much of a romance:

"The problem about Twilight" suggested the ChapDad "Is that there is nothing there for men. Which is why there's this massive backlash against it. All the criticism focuses on how it's rubbish because girls like it, and the pitch of the squawking. The moment Cons get invaded by screaming girls, everyone starts getting sniffy, but they're not taking it seriously, they're just writing it off because its perceived as being for girls."

Which isn't why I didn't like Twilight - I found Edward ferociously patronising (I never liked those paternalistic romantic heroes), I thought his clothes were awful (unbuttoned sleeveless shirts under tan jumpers? Come on, either it's hot enough to unbutton a shirt, in which case you don't need a jumper, or it's cold enough to need a jumper and to do your shirt up underneath, laddie), I disliked the way it uses the old romance trope of the kiss standing in for orgasm (Blood boiled beneath my skin, burned in my lips. My breath came in a wild gasp. May fingers knotted in his hair, clutching him to me. (Twilight, p261, 2009 BBC Audiobooks Large Print Edition )To paraphrase Germaine Greer, if the build up to a kiss results in orgasm, anything heavier will clearly result in epilepsy.), and I dislike that whole suppressed violence thing Edward has going on. Also, I found that whole 'I want to bite you, oh but I mustn't, oh but you seem so delicious, oh I must bite you, but no, I mustn't' not really my style. Stop shilly-shallying, man! I've been promised a good biting, and a good firm biting I expect! Lestat wouldn't hang around like this, you know. But anyway.

Hedgerows near Aldbury

Upon reaching the crossroads, follow the Ridgeway downwards until you join Station Road, then turn left along this (it's not far) until the road makes a dog-leg to the left and you continue onwards along the edge of the field. The planting of the hedgerows was really well thought out, and there were some interesting colours for the time of year. Cross over a black bridleway, and then turn left through a metal kissing gate as I did at the end of the Aldbury Circuit Part I.

The Valiant Trooper, Aldbury

 Along this road, we decided to break our walk in the middle to have a cup of tea in The Valiant Trooper. This is one of those quintessential British village pubs, all nooks, crannies and roaring fires. I didn't have a beer for fear I would fall asleep and need to be carried home, which was mean considering the ChapDad was carrying the Chap too. I had a cup of mint tea instead (it means I can share with the Chap, who is partial to a spot of mint tea. I blame the vast quantities I drank whilst pregnant) and a very regrettable treacle sponge that had been sitting too long beneath a heatlamp, I suspect.

Suitably recovered, and some of us with a new nappy, we left the Valiant Trooper and turned right, crossed over the road heading past the stocks, pond and the Greyhound Inn and continued down the road. We took a right turn through the recreation ground, bearing to the far left corner of the field until we popped out onto the lane that runs alongside the golf course (a route I did the other way in the Aldbury Circuit Part II). Follow this path until you come to a wooden gate in the fence on your right. Go through the gate and follow the yellow arrows up the gentle rise along the side of the golf course. At the top of the rise there is another signpost - go straight ahead into the woodland.

The mud through this stretch of woodland was really black. I'm sure that says something, but what it is I couldn't say. This path will lead you to another green lane running across it - turn left, and you will rejoin the route you came via Aldbury Nowers (What does Aldbury do?). From here, it is simply a case of retracing your steps all the way back to the Church.

So we snorted mostly about psychedelic kisses and I  held forth at some ranty length commented about the relevance of the ensouled vampire to the burgeoning sexuality of the adolescent girl. And then... then there's the stuff about Edward. Now, just in case you've missed the whole Twilight thing, in the Meyer take on the vampire story, the reason why vampires can't go out in the sunshine is because if they do, the sparkle. Now, this has prompted a huge outpouring of glitterball-based snerking around the internet. I'm not having a go at the snerk. I will fight to the death for your right to snerk, as Mark Twain didn't say. But it's not about the snerking, it's the method you use to snerk. The best of the snerking uses stories within the current(ish) vampire mythologies with characters that we know are very bad men:

Just in case my mum reads this, this means
 'really, sir, I do believe you must be joking'

Fine, fine. This being the internet, a kitten also has to get involved somewhere. This is, because as we are all well aware, the internet is made of cats.

And then things start to go a bit ugly...

Really? Only David, Elton and Freddie? Dear God, someone get onto the rappers - put the bling down, gents. Yes, Mr Doggy Dogg, you too. Apparently the shiny stuff is now reserved for three men only, one of whom is now dead.

Ah, now we get to it. Where does that phrase 'real men' come from, exactly? Girly vampires and real men? That's the greatest insult you can give to Edward Cullen - he's girly? Couldn't you reach for, perhaps, insipid? But no, we need the word girly there to prove a point -the vampires are -shock, horror- similar to females! Spock, Kirk and McCoy however, are Men. When Men sparkle, it's through the use of machines to get somewhere. That makes it Manly. Once they've done sparkling, they all rub meat on their chests and go back to whittling a war club.

But, to give the meme its due, it suggests that there is a time and a place for men to sparkle. But then...

Woah....

No, wait a minute, I see your point. Because really, we don't want to perpetuate this namby-pamby myth that men have feelings, do we? Only gay men have feelings, as well we know. If they insist in going about all queer then they need to indicate it in the camp, lispy, shiny suited way, because if they don't... if they just look like the sort of people who sit around drinking tea and eating toast, then... then... we won't be able to tell, will we? We might treat them like normal people, and that would never do. No, real men, that's what we want. Real men have guns and live in the Wild West. They don't speak too much, and if they do we can describe it as a growl, or maybe a grunt. That's a real man. We want, to steal a phrase from Germaine Greer 'the charm of a half-cured goatskin'. That's definitely the image I want my son to grow up with - you're only a man if you're unkempt, toting some form of weaponry, and God forbid you should demonstrate sensitivity (which we all know is a euphemism for 'as a row of tents') or wish to listen to women.

But hold on - Clint Eastwood is an actor. He plays pretend for a living.That's pretty gay. Oo, hold on. Let me consult the Real Man Handbook here - I need to look this one up.

This sort of retrogressive tosh helps no-one. The concept of a 'real man' is a poisonous as  'yummy mummy', and leads to misery for both sexes. It is a myth, a mirage, a lie as big as the beauty industry peddling that women need to constantly be primping and preening or you will be in danger of losing 'your man' (because you need to have one of those. Greatest achievement you can make, apart from the day you have a child, obviously. Obviously that is the same for everyone, right?).
 You know what makes you a real man? Being in possession of the correct set of genitals. Everything else is just gender dancing on top. It is the frosting to your cupcake. You see those guns? Frosting. The swagger? Frosting. The much-lauded inability to cry? Frosting. Those lads strutting down the high street with massive pitbulls? Frosting. Teenage boys pretending to be gangsters? Frosting. Bankers making stupid decisions, risking too much because they got over-confident? Frosting. Feeling the need to perform your gender, feeling you have to be a certain way to be acceptable is dangerous to everyone, and it makes everyone miserable.

Things I Learnt

• What Aldbury does.
• I still don't really like Twilight (stop all this moping a fetch me Mr Pointy, I say, but maybe that's just my age talking), but I like the way it gets criticised less.
• Custard left under a heat lamp = regrettable.

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...

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...