Halloween special

There is a part of me that is slightly smug about the fact that the old festivals have not rolled over and played dead after the Christians took a big stick to them. Yule has become Christmas and for all of the ‘away in a manger’ stuff there is still plenty of holly, ivy and Yule logs on everything festive. They can’t quite get rid of May Day with its overtures of sex and fecundity. Easter hasn’t even had a name change and since when did Christ eat chocolate eggs? Sure, they say it’s all about the resurrection but the egg was a sign of rebirth before that, even before the Cosmic Egg of the Egyptian religion. The Harvest Festival still takes place in church and schools and you can never escape the meaning is of the earth giving us its (her) bounty.

The one that makes me the smuggest is Halloween. Yes, there may be All Saint’s Day straight after it but I feel as if that was a reaction to the raw energy created on the night before. I have been watching and listening to quite a few debates about this festival where people (mostly churchy folk) have been saying the supermarkets must stop stocking such scary stuff. They don’t like the devils and ghouls and ghosts and moving hands and spinning heads and….Osiris loves it all. We have a skeleton outfit for him to wear; we have carved three BIG pumpkins (One of them we picked from the pumpkin patch at Over Farm. I have never seen so many pumpkins in my life. He had to look for squashed fairy hands under the pumpkins to win a prize), we have a HUGE bowl of sweets ready for any trick-or-treats and a selection of Halloween sparklers.

When he’s older I will tell him about the veil between the worlds becoming thinner and I will tell him about Ceridwen and the magic of the Hag but for now we will play games and scare each other.

I found out about Samhain one night at West Kennet Long Barrow one spooky night. A group of crazy hippies went up there to spend the night and to take mushrooms. I think we had a kind of ‘horror movie’ idea to spend the night in a tomb. After the initial giggling we started to try and scare each other talking about the bones that were just through the wall and all the bodies that had lain where we were sitting. A few of us got a bit creeped out but mostly we just laughed. We were a musical bunch and soon we got the drums out, the didge, shakers and singing voices.

I wandered off on my own outside and walked down the back of the long barrow. It was a cold night and dark, the ground uneven beneath my feet. I felt my head clear a little and I sat looking at the stars in the black sky. I felt a presence, even though I was on my own and I knew who it was because she told me her name loud and clear. She has many names, Ceridwen is only one. She whispered in my ear about the wisdom that comes to a woman in her autumn years, about the Great Work of the Grandmother, the woman who washes and dresses the dead, even as she washes the babes when they are born. A woman’s hand will great you on the way into this life and wash you down on your way out. The dead are still with us in our hearts and minds; when the veil is thin you can move that memory into this realm…And then I spoke to my dead friend…

Afterwards I wondered back along the ridge of the long barrow, no longer cold, and heard the sounds of my friends singing and drumming. I knew this is how it had always been; the music calling to Her to come and be with us. You move away from the warm circle round the fire to have your own communication with Her and you return to your tribe filled again with the certainty that She is within you, part of you…you.

Magic Mushrooms grow at this end of the year so that we can use them as a shamanistic tool to take us through the layers of our consciousness. I do not think that it is a coincidence that such a magical tool exists at such a magical time of year. The shroud of the unknown and the dark is daunting but with a full heart and a brave mind one can reach out to the Others.

I do not fear death. I know there is a girl waiting for me in the Summer Country.

So I shall be spending Halloween with my children tonight but after they are asleep I hope I will find a moment to go outside and sit under the moon to have my own communion with my Goddess. She has a lot to teach me.

Feminist must-reads

I've nicked this from Maia and green grrl. Bold are the ones I've read.

1. "Stone Butch Blues"- Leslie Feinberg
2. "To be Real" by Rebecca Walker (ed)
3. "Tales of the Lavender Menace"- Karla Jay
4. "S/He" - Minnie Bruce Pratt
5. "Lesbian Ethics" by Sarah Lucia Hoagland
6. "Herland" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7. "The Colour Purple"- Alice Walker
8. "Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit" - Jeanette Winterson
9. "The golden Notebook" - Doris Lessing
10. "The Poisonwood Bible" - Barbara Kingsolver
11. "The Lovely Bones" - Alice Sebold
12. "Rubyfruit Jungle" - Rita Mae Brown
13. "Reviving Ophelia" - Mary Pipher
14. "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" - Gerri Hirshey
15. "You Can't Keep A Good Woman Down" - Alice Walker
16. "The Second Sex" - Simone de Beavoir
17. "A Room of One's Own" - Virginia Woolf
18. "Brecht & Co" - John Fuegi
19. "Ophelia Thinks Harder" - Wm Shakespeare and Jean Betts
20. "An English Miss" - Alicia C Percival
21. "The Vagina Monologues" - Eve Ensler.
22. "The Yellow Wallpaper" - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
23. "Bridget Jones's Diary/The Edge of reason" - Helen Fielding.
24. "Sex and the city" - Candace Bushnell.
25. "I know why the caged bird sings" - Maya Angelou
26. "Masterpieces" - Sarah Daniels.
27. "Ourselves Alone" - Anne Devlin.
28. "The Feminine Mystique" - Betty Friedan.
29. "Beloved" - Toni Morrison.
30. "Big Women" - Fay Weldon.
31. "The Shipping News" - Anni Proulx
32. "The Bell Jar" - Sylvia Plath
33. "The Vindication of the Rights of women", - Mary Wollstoncraft
34. "Sexual Politics" - Kate Millett
35. "Bad Girls and Dirty Pictures" - Alison Assiter and Avedon Carol
36. "A Return to Modesty" - Wendy Shalit
37. "Women, Celibacy and Passion" - Sally Cline
38. "The Female Eunuch"- Germaine Greer
39. "The Whole Woman" - Germaine Greer
40. "The Beauty Myth" - Naomi Wolf
41. "Fire With Fire" - Naomi Wolf
42. "Virtually Normal" - Andrew Sullivan
43. "My Secret Garden" - Nancy Friday
44. "Manifesta" - Jennifer Baumgarnder & Amy Richards.
45. "In Our Time" - Susan Brownmiller.
46. "Listen Up" - Barbara Findlen (ed).
47. "Cunt" - Inga Muscio. L
48. "Bust Guide to the New Girl Order" - Stoller & Karp (eds). P
49. "Backlash" - Susan Faludi.
50. "We need to talk about Kevin" - Lionel Shriver

I’d like to add my own little selection.

Happy as a dead cat by Jill Miller

Big fat love by Peter Sheridan

Affliction by Fay Weldon (Let’s face it, anything by her is great)

Ahab’s wife – Sena Jeter Naslund

Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides

The tenant of Wildfell Hall – Anne Bronte

Affinity – Sarah Waters

The World’s wife – Carol Anne Duffy

Middlesex – Jeffrey Egenides

The bloody chamber – Angela Carter

When God was a woman – Merlin Stone

The passion of the new Eve – Angela Carter

The mists of Avalon – Marion Zimmer Bradley

Greenham commen (woman at the wire) – Barbra Harford and Sarah Hopkins

A gathering light – Jennifer Donnelly

Monstrous regiment – Terry Pratchett ( no, really, it’s about women soldiers)

The Politics of breastfeeding – Gabrielle Palmer

Fresh Milk – Fiona Giles

Bliss and other stories – Katharine Mansfield

A declaration of love

I just want to write here that although I am a moaning old feminist I DO have a man in my life who makes it all worth it. He does not objectify women AT ALL, he never makes sexist jokes or comments and he tells other men off for doing so. He can see through all the crap marketing of women’s bodies and he loves mine (which is NOT AT ALL like a super model) and he tells me he loves me every day.

It’s very easy to moan about the things that are not perfect and many people may have heard me doing so BUT I know none of us are perfect, especially me. He puts up with my imperfections when sometimes I forget to forgive him his.

He choose to have children with me and he loves his sons and has worked with me through the harder parts of our time together so that we can reach the good parts.

There are times when I listen to him laughing with the children and my heart seems so full of love for all of them. After nearly 6 years together we still talk all the time and never run out of things to say. Even if we are just in front of the TV we are bitching about how crap it is in total agreement.

So…ROB I LOVE YOU, you big hairy hippie!

Looking back on the year

Well, I've learnt to do something now so you might have to bare with me until I get it out of my system.
In a run-up to Samhain I am looking back on the year and starting with a bit of sunlight from the Big Green. This year was great in a challanging way, with a new baby and a crazy 3 year-old it was hard to get to do anything other than childcare but I am looking forward to next year with a glad heart.
I want to say a big THANK YOU to the people who were there (you know who you are) for helping me and for being such good friends. Bright blessings to you all.

A reply to a comment

“Being a man I feel a certain amount is normal in the "growing process." Yes, many young men as well as adult men take pornography far to excess.
Any adult man who has had any serious relationships know that pornography is vastly overrated.
Will pornography hurt these growing men? I doubt it!”

Much as I love to have input from male readers, and I am glad I have them, I do have to pick apart this one.

This male perspective is very interesting isn’t it? First he assumes that any discussion on porn would be about men, their usage, damage to them and their expectations.

Guess what? I wasn’t talking about men!

There is another person involved in the porn equation – THE WOMAN!

Ok, let’s take another look at some of the wording here:

“…take pornography far to excess.” – Where is the line? What defines ‘excess’? Is it wanking too much (no crime there I reckon), is it using porn for wanking, is it using porn every time you wank, needing porn to be able to come, using ‘niche’ porn, using violent porn, porn fuelling fantasies of rape or raping and killing women because they have been totally dehumanised for you? Where is the line?

“…pornography is vastly overrated.” – ‘cos you just can’t get girls to do the stuff you see in porn can you? Or does this mean that actually it’s a bit grubby compared to the images in your head?

“Will pornography hurt these growing men?” YES YES YES!

Now I don’t want people to think I am anti-sex, I really am not! I am not anti-masturbation either, male and female ‘self-love’ is important for physical and mental reasons BUT you don’t need to fuel the porn industry to do it.

“Arh but” I hear you cry (or maybe it’s just the voices in my head!) “Won’t men be thinking about porn even if they are not using it? Won’t they be thinking about objectifying women and isn’t that just as bad?”

I think the answer to this can be found in the Nancy Friday book ‘Men in Love’. In this book thousands of men sent her in their masturbatory fantasies (she did countless ones about women’s – the best is ‘Women on top’) and most of them were not about women who were just pieces of meat. A lot of the fantasies were about women that the men knew and were about a relationship they had with them, they had faces and names and a surprising amount of warmth compared with the women’s, which were full of faceless nameless guys.

I don’t know how much this has to say about male and female sexuality in that the people who contribute to these books may be a certain type of person but it has kept my faith in men alive.

So to conclude: men don’t need porn to masturbate to…what’s wrong with a healthy imagination and erotic literature?

Spot the photoshoping

Come on...you forgot the potoshop the shadows! Bag o' shite!

I found out how to do stuff

Thanks to Rob I can now do more blog stuff so here is the dove advert from the link below.

What scary stuff is this?

For all us co-sleepers I guess this just seems crazy!
Scary fake hands to be with your baby when you don't want to be.
You can add this to the list of things you can buy for your new baby but don't actualy need to if you plan to spend time with it.

When the supermodels don't look like supermodels

this link
On Stomy's blog
Made me laugh.
IRGxana, you will like the photoshop bit!

The cone

Link to strange advert

I'm confused!
No, I'm happy...old people are allowed to have sex (albeit on their own).

“But porn is normal…”

…Was said to me yesterday when I was complaining about the normalisation of porn.

What do you say to that?

Do women really act like that during sex? Well, the answer is yes because we are led to believe that certain behaviour will turn men on and that behaviour does turn them on because of their previous encounters with porn. This is not the way women act when they are on their own, it is a performance for the man; take the whole nipple-licking thing as an example.

Most men and a lot of women use porn in their normal lives to stimulate themselves or to ‘spice up’ their sex lives. It is the normal way of things.

I feel there used to be a kind of grubby honesty about porn. When I started to become aware of such things there was one shop in Gloucester at the cattle market. Its windows were blacked out and it was called the “Privet Shop”. Men would scurry in there furtively and come out with brown paper packages. One day I decided I would go in there and check it out myself. My friend and I (Who was full of bravery until we actually went in there) walked confidently in. As females we got a strange look from the proprietor. I grabbed a lavender dildo and boldly plonked it on the counter.

“£12.50” Said guy, smirking.

I flourished a £20 note.

“I haven’t got ant change” The guy said.

An urge to just give him the £20 and run was creeping over me. “I’ve got it” My friend said as she dug around her pocket. We ran out laughing at our purchase.

I learnt a few things from that trip: The porn in there was all fairly tame, just pictures of people fucking, the kinkiest thing I saw was a man with a woman on his back wielding a whip: The ‘no change’ scam probably worked a lot of the time: One had to be quite brave/determined/desperate/secretive to go in there in the first place: There was no pretence that this was a normal shop, they sell porn and it had ‘PORN’ written all over it.

Nowadays, only 10 years on, Gloucester has an Anne Summers (dress up for women performers) and an ‘adult shop’ above a book shop but also all the newsagents that are crammed with porn or lads mags.

One thing is clear to me; women’s sexuality is a strange, unquantifiable thing that has been misappropriated by men’s desire.

At one point people believed (and some still do) that women do not have a sex drive like men, that men will explode if they do not get ‘release’. Now women’s sexual behaviour is dictated to by the Performance.

I used to have a friend who would have VERY loud sex. She went through boyfriends very quickly, always looking for the marriage proposal that took a long time coming. She told me that she had never experienced an orgasm and so the next time I lay in the next room listening to her over-the-top moans and cries I realised that it was a performance and she wasn’t experiencing any pleasure herself.

I tell you, it was the saddest sound I ever heard.

Ow ow boobs of pain!

On Saturday evening I jumped on a train to Bristol and got down with the funky women-positive group of fab students and ex-students that see me as an adult and not as a mother. Thank the Goddess for them! I got hideously drunk, passed out in the kitchen and had the best nights sleep I’ve had in weeks.

Yay!

If only I could do it every week like a real student!

I had only left my children for a night but my body MADE ME PAY!

When I woke up on Sunday morning my boobs were aflame. The last time they were this full I managed to pump off a PINT of milk. (For those of you who don’t know what I look like; my boobs can hold a pint of milk no problem) I have never been in so much boob pain and I’ve had my nipples pierced and had cracked nipples. I could almost feel the cells bursting. I knew I would have mastitis if I didn’t get back to my children quickly.

My two little sucklings took all day to get my body back into a pain-free state. Osiris thought it was his birthday and Christmas all at once because usually I get cross when he asks for ‘boobies’ but on Sunday he just stuck to me like a limpet.

I wish I had thought of Maia’s solution.

My bodies reaction to being without my children was not only expressed in a boob way but also a psychological one. On the train down there I had an anxiety attack…a proper panic ‘get-me-the-hell-out-of-here-I’m-going-to-die-breathe-just-breathe-help’ type thing. The only way I managed to calm down was by imagining what I would be saying to Osiris if he was on the train with me.

It was a harsh reminder that before I had my children I was as batty as a bobcat.. I think that without them I am still pretty mad but somehow they keep me sane.

Weird that; I quite often say they are driving me potty but the truth is actually the opposite.

Compulsory hobbies for teens

I’ve just been watching tonight’s BBC news on which there was an article about ‘delinquent teens’. You know when you’re not really watching and then you hear something and go “huh?”?

Somebody has made a link with teenagers having after school activities and ‘keeping them off the streets’ to vandalism and other naughty teen behaviour. After-09school activities help them to behave themselves and therefore…Wait for it, this is a good one…

The government will FINE parents who don’t get their children to participate said activities!

Hmm…why wouldn’t this be a good idea? Let me count the ways…

A cop-out post

I just can’t seem to get going on a post at the moment. I have been reading a lot of posts about abortion and they have been making me feel generally glum. Don’t get me wrong; I am firmly pro-choice but that doesn’t mean I’m marching into the maternity wards shouting “Kill the parasites”.

Having experienced a termination myself I know how physically and mentally damaging it is but when you have no other options you literally ‘gird your loins’ and get on with it. I lived with the fallout from that event until I was in a position to have a child and then finally I was able to lay to rest the ghost child-that-never-was.

There was no right or wrong to my situation; it just HAD to be done.

Reading other women going through the same tortuous process has reminded me how lucky we are in the UK to be able to just get on with it and not have to resort to backstreet abortionists with coat hangers or run a gauntlet of pro-lifers putting plasticated foetuses in your hand.

I do know a girl who, when under the anaesthetic, the hospital staff injected her with a contraceptive, against her will or knowledge but still…we are lucky here.

SO…In view of the fact that reading blogs has made me feel weird I have resorted to a silly listy thingy that I’ve nicked of Clare at Playing it by ear.

Things in bold I have done…

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink – after my father died.
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula -
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone
08. Said “I love you” and meant it
09. Hugged a tree – I was filmed hugging Magog in Glastonbury; I’m a big hippy!
10. Bungee jumped – not bloody likely!
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise – sitting in a stone circle, at a festival, on the Tor…let me count the ways!

14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game (and survived the crush afterwards)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg
19. Slept under the stars – plenty of times!
20. Changed a baby’s diaper – HA!
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon
22. Watched a meteor shower
23. Gotten drunk on champagne

24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse – if I put money on a horse it starts going backwards.
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb – plenty up at the city farm.
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day – I’ve also had days when I’ve spoken in rhyme.
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment – yeah thanks to drugs
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales
45. Stolen a sign
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip
48. Gone rock climbing
49. Midnight walk on the beach – then fell over giggling and calling on Aphrodite to come out of the sea.
50. Gone sky diving
51. Visited Ireland

52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger’s table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs – and books, what can I say; I’m a Virgo!
57. Pretended to be a superhero

58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day
60. Played touch football

61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud – Reading ‘92
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theatre
66. Visited the Great Wall of China
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken

69. Toured ancient sites – do stone circles count?
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight - sadly
72. Gotten married
73. Been in a movie
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days – no bloody fear!
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest – my bandage mummy was a triumph at the Halloween party!
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an “expert”
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark
88. Kissed on the first date – yeah and the rest!
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone
92. Buried one/both of your parents – well my father was cremated, does that count?
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children – doing it now!
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over – Birmingham, so much to answer for…
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn’t stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn’t have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback

108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone’s heart
111. Helped an animal give birth
112. Won money on a T.V. game show
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears – I used to have an eyebrow spike and two nose rings. Why did I take them out? Why?
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild – heh heh magic ones
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours – After Glasto’ 98 I slept for a week.
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone’s mind about something you care deeply about
130. Gone back to school
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad.
135. Selected one “important” author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating – here little rabby rabbit come and get the nice carrot…BANG Rabbit pie yum!
137. Skipped all your school reunions
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you’re living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts – this is Rob’s Frankenstein computer
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn’t know you
145. Had a booth at a street fair – does a blanket on the ground count?
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ
148. Shaved your head
149. Caused a car accident
150. Saved someone’s life.

Blogging history day

Tuesday 17^th October was a busy day for me.

At 9am I took my three-year-old to his pre-school, made sure he knew where his wellies were for play time and kissed him goodbye.

I was loaded down by a huge folder, a bottle of wine, all the daily Stuff and lunch for the kids, plus I had my baby slung over me wrapped in a piece of material I carry him in. I do not usually carry so much stuff or if I do then I take the pram with me but as I was going to be getting into people’s cars later I couldn’t take my two-seater pram; it doesn’t take kindly to being folded down.

The baby and I and all my stuff struggled down the road to my friend’s house where I was due to met the wonderful woman who supervises me as a trainee breastfeeding supporter. I have been training for a couple of years now and also volunteering to help run the local breastfeeding support group.

I am breast feeding both of my children and although this is a bit unusual in this county to feed an older child, let alone feeding two children I actually know quite a few women who do it. It’s not something I set out to do but when you have a baby the days pass one by one and before you know it you have a beautiful little boy who still needs the comfort, love and nutrition of a breastfeed. It is a bit of a controversial issue in our time because the media have whipped up a frenzy of paranoia about paedophilia. Although it is acceptable to sexualise young girl’s clothing (high heels, short skirts, thong pants) it is not acceptable to put something so obviously ‘sexual’ as a breast into the mouth of a three year old.

I had a really interesting session where we looked at a book called ‘The contented little baby book’ by Gina Ford which is a very prescriptive parenting book. It is easy for us, having had a lot of training to dismiss this book as a load of rubbish (which it is) but if a mother has been following it from her child’s birth them we need to know exactly what she has been doing, what (mis)information she has been given, how to work with her without pushing her away by saying “That book you have been following is wrong”. This is a topic we have returned to several times but it was prompted by one of our group saying in the last session “But what’s wrong with Gina Ford?” but that book is responsible for a lot of mothers feeling like failures because they cannot fallow her stupid routines. They have not been able to establish breastfeeding because Gina Ford has told them to put a newborn on their breast for 5 minutes every three hours (whilst most newborns would be happy if you didn’t take the nipple out of their mouths for the first few weeks and you certainly need more sucking stimulation to get the milk flowing). So all-in-all a really useful session. I followed up by doing my last assignment which is a taped role-play. I felt fairly confident with the scenario; mother has 10 week old baby who is waking for night feeds, Father wants to give baby a bottle to make him sleep through. The trick is to ask the mother what she wants and after a bit of probing finding out that she is fine with feeding during the night it is just that she has been told that babies should behave in a certain way (i.e. bottle fed way) and hers is not. Now all I’ve got to do is listen to it over and over again until I know what I’ve done/not done/done wrong and write it up.

At 11.30 my Supervisor took me in her car to pick up my big boy from school then we all jumped back in her car and she drove me to the Children’s Centre where I am helping to run a new Breastfeeding Support group. We have not had many mums in wanting support in yet but we have a core of volunteers who are all amazing women who I love chatting with every week. It was a bit disappointing last week as the local Health Visitor came to see us and told us blankly that NOBODY breastfeeds in this area. She wouldn’t even enter into a conversation with us about how we could reach mums. It’s always difficult to get professionals to work with you if they haven’t had very good experiences with breastfeeding their own children. Time and again I have come up across this; how you feed you child is a political hot cake! Don’t even get me onto Baby-led Weaning!

At 2pm one of the support workers for the children’s centre took the boys and I to another centre so we could met up with my partner for relationship counselling. I will have to have to keep what happened in that session to myself and to be honest just thinking about it makes me want to curl up and die!

We all struggled home after that.

In the evening I made lasagne and garlic bread for tea which everybody, including the baby, ate up and enjoyed. I love seeing his little hands grip food and his face change as he tastes something new. He really loved the garlic bread which was great as it was quite strong. Both of my boys are used to eating foods with lots of flavours. My big boy is the only child I know who will eat a huge pile of broccoli and be perfectly happy; I must have done something right somewhere!

After tea I took the baby upstairs and we curled up in bed together for a quick sleep. The baby sleeps in bed with us and the older child did as well up until about six moths ago. He still climbs in with us most nights though. I love it so much, their little bodies are warms and soft and we all snuggle together.

At 7pm I was woken up by my partner so that I could put the big child to bed. I read him some stories (winnie-the-pooh with all the voices, the chapter where Eeyore has a birthday) and then gave him a feed until he fell asleep.

By now the baby had woken up and I settled myself down in front of the television for the evening. Baby played with toys and ate breadsticks and after a while practiced his walking; he can walk a step but then falls over.

At 10pm my partner left the house and the baby and I went upstairs to play in the bedroom.

At midnight baby has a huge feed and fell asleep as I read Thud by Terry Pratchett.

As I fell asleep I felt a little warm body slip into the bed and cuddle up to me, now I had both my children with me.

Now you know why I don’t blog about my daily life…It’s just too boring!

Grrrr...

Why oh why oh why do there have to be naked images of women all over the internet? I'm looking for a game link, not a porn shot. I'm looking for a GAME. Not a sex game, a fun kids game and over the top of the site is a banner with a full on vagina.
If I wanted a vagina in my face I'd...oh well I guess I have done that in my time...ahem...ANYWAY I didn't want THAT vagina in my face when I was looking for a game to play!
...and why is porn full of women licking their own nipples? What's that about??

Terrorists with a ‘masterplan’ found. Did you hear about it?

Link here and here.

“…a British National Party election candidate has been accused of possessing the largest amount of chemical explosives of its type ever found in the country”

“…The home of another man charged with similar offences contained a rocket launcher and a nuclear biological suit as well as BNP literature and chemicals!”

“…the pair had "some kind of masterplan".”

Interesting….*strokey beard moment*…no airports closed then? No big headline slashes? Very interesting…*stokes beard further*…Damn, must sort out whether I should pluck this facial hair or be a hairy in definance….

Trans-seasonal clothing adjustment disorder

This is what I have just heard two women talking about on Radio 4. I had to check that it hadn’t slipped onto another station.

Trans-seasonal whosa whatsa is it?

Yes…Ladies…Autumn is a difficult time for us. Do we start to wear the darker colours of winter now or stay in our bright summer colours? Well, you wouldn’t want to look gloomy and wintry whilst we are still getting a bit of sunshine would you?

The general advice is to stay in pastels; they are the solution to everything.

Well, thanks for that, I was having such a terrible time this morning deciding what to wear.

A nice cup of tea…

I have been looking back over my last posts and realised that I’ve been motivated to write about things that have made me feel fearful and angry. After posting a picture of staving Jews in a Death Camp in my last post I thought I should write about something nice and fluffy and that doesn’t hurt anybody.

TEAPOTS! Yes…I love those round bellied things. They fill me with a sense of completeness when sitting next to a cup, a jug of milk and a sugar bowl. If you use tea leaves you also get to experience the pleasant sensation of staining the leaves through a tea strainer; then smile at the rouge leaf that always makes it through but does not spoil your cuppa. You can make weak tea and stuff you can stand your spoon up in from the same pot.

Arh yes…teapots.

Hey how cool are those dudes?

Yeah…these fat girls are just not trying hard enough to be as cool and skinny as these guys. Anybody would think they didn’t care that they are hugely obese and everyone can see actual flesh on their bodies.

Joking aside…

We think we are so secure in our society. We think we are untouchable but as someone who I can’t remember probably said “Society is only three meals away from revolution” (I may have got that wrong but you get the idea).

When the revolution/war/nuclear winter comes and the oil and electricity run out, when the imported food can no longer get across the world to us, when the seas rise and our homes are flooded then, THEN we will remember that:

• Food is precious and the reason we eat what we can is to store body fat so that when there is not enough food we can survive.
• Body fat keeps you warm.
• Breast milk is the mother’s body’s priority and will keep flowing long after Nestle and Cow and Gate’s directors have been shot against the wall. As long as the mother is alive the baby will not starve.
• If you let your child breastfeed until it wants to then you will still be able to keep that child alive when there is no food and they are 3 years old, 4 years old, 5, 6…
• Clothes are there to keep out the cold. Prada is nothing compared to a big ex-army jacket when you are freezing.
• We carry our baby because we need to keep it to our bodies to keep it warm, so it does not freeze to death.
• Women and men are the same species. There is no hierarchy; we work together to survive.

We are too used to being warm in our centrally heated houses. It was not that long ago that our ancestors huddled together in furs around their fire hoping that the stockpiles of food would get them through until the next hunt or harvest.

Our recent ancestors slaved in mills in the most appalling and inhumane conditions battling illness and poverty to stay alive.

People are dying all over the world of starvation and hunger and deprivation…how DARE we with our western privilege make ‘size zero’ a fashionable thing to achieve? How dare we be so presumptuous to say “We do not need to lay down body fat, we do not need to store food or even grow enough in our country to feed our own population…we are so powerful, we will always be this privileged”.

I will teach my children how to make a fire, how to gut and skin a still warm rabbit, how to layer up your clothes and not care that you look fat, how to think about survival because one day they might need it.

Thin is not beautiful…Thin is dependant. Thin is vulnerable.

Oh…I think I just understood why it’s so fashionable!

A big HELLO AND WELCOME

Hello to my new readers. I’ve recently been getting comments from lots of new people so I thought I’d say thank you to everyone for their interest.

Knowing that you are out there gives me a warm fuzzy glow.

Labour Lads get their knickers in a twist over women’s dress

This week Jack Straw, the Leader for the House of Commons, said a few things concerning Muslim women wearing the Veil.

“It was such a visible statement of separation and of difference”

He said about a woman who had come to see him wearing a full veil. He said Muslim women should consider taking it off

“…would those people who do wear the veil think about the implications for community relations?”

Other MPs, all male, joined in the debate. Gordon ‘Gordy-babes’ Brown agreed, Prescott disagreed and a whole host of TV and radio programs had phone-ins where people (Mostly white male) phoned in to say how “intimidating” they found the veil.

I listened to a few debates before I could no longer bear to listen to any more of the same bollox. Nowhere did I hear anybody talk about the real crux of the matter. So I’m saying here…

It’s not about Muslim vs. ‘British’ culture AT ALL.

IT’S ABOUT MEN DECIDING HOW THEIR WOMEN DRESS.

It’s all about women’s bodies being sexual object in the eyes of men and how the men choose to view that object.

I am sick of hearing while men talking about being intimidated because they can’t see a woman’s face. Well, welcome to the club lads because we women have been feeling intimidated for years from how you choose to portray women’s bodies.

When the day comes that women are not seen as sexual objects then we will be able to walk down the street naked or totally veiled, depending on our mood, but as it is, this debate is not about women’s rights or about religion, it’s about men arguing over possession of women’s bodies.

The doll of my nightmares…

Dolls have been the tool of patriarchy for a long time now. They have led our girl children to eating disorders and a credit card bill overload due to ‘retail therapy’. They have constricted us into the corset of man-friendly womanhood with their bodies but now they are reaching into our heads and wanting to control the emotions we are allowed to express.

My Scene Fab Faces doll.

Quake with fear…oh no, that’s not allowed.

These five facial expressions show you what you are allowed to feel: Impressed (This is the coolest comb ever!), surprise (A fab surprise, a girl-sized tiara for YOU!), psyched (I’m sooo psyched to show off this outfit.), nervous (I hope these boots will go with my new outfit!), thrilled (I totally LOVE all these accessories!).

All this is executed in a plastic Joan Rivers style face. No wrinkles mind!

I urge you to follow the link and have fun spinning the wheel of emotions whilst I run screaming for the hills.

More thoughts on Domestic Violence

When I was at school there was a boy in our class called Mathew (not his real name); he was the naughtiest boy in school. Every now and then, when a teacher told him off for something, or sometimes just for no reason at all, he would explode into a hail of obscenities. My fellow classmates an I were quite innocent as primary children go and his outbursts exposed me to words I had never heard before. The big one was the F word – you know FUCK! When I was 6 it seemed like it really did turn the air blue! The other words he used were quite shocking and anatomical and I didn’t learn what they meant until I was a lot older.

It would seem that Mathew could not help these words spewing out of his mouth at the object of his hate, the teacher. For the rest of the class we would sit quietly, not even daring to move, so shocked that we could not even look at each other. The teacher would tell Mathew to calm down and then he was dragged off to the Headmistress’ office. We could still hear his shouts as he was lead away down the corridor.

The next day he would return to class as if nothing had happened. I always felt as if he had been let off for something that I considered to be the ultimate naughtiness (I was quite young and innocent) or was it that the teachers were powerless to punish him?

A lot of years passed and we were all 13 and in the ‘big school’. Mathew was still around although he didn’t really turn up to school much. He was considered to be the Hard Kid that you didn’t mess with. My friend Caroline (also not her real name) was one of the beautiful girls who had developed a bit earlier than most. She found something about Mathew irresistible and started ‘going out’ with him. It was his dangerousness that she was fascinated by, his bad-boy-ness, she was from a good middle class family.

One day she came to school sporting a black eye. She looked like a film star with her big dark glasses and a sad, wise set to her mouth. She told me at break that Mathew had done it to her because she wouldn’t have sex with him (remember we were 13!) and I was deeply shocked. I said she should tell somebody but she just said that she would sort it out and that she loved him.

I don’t remember anymore about Mathew or Caroline and my mother re-married that year and we moved away to Gloucester.

I haven’t thought about them for a long time until the DV workshop last Thursday, we were talking about the effects of DV on children and how they might behave. Suddenly I knew Mathew’s story. I was surprised it hadn’t occurred to me before. He had obviously been brought up in a violent household and was witness or victim to his father’s fists. This explained his outbursts, where he had heard the language he used, why the teachers covered it up and let him get away with it, why he then went on to be a violent teenager, why he had given Caroline that black eye. It makes my blood run cold to think of it. What happened to his family? Did anybody help his mother? What has happened to him? How many women has he hurt?

As you can tell I have been thinking a lot about DV and its effects on the victims. I have known many women who have experienced it, one who ran away to a refuge and had to leave all her baby pictures behind, lots who said it was ‘just the drink’ that made hubby violent.

Why aren’t we marching down the streets with placards saying “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”? Why is this going on? Hang on…I think I know the answer.

There is a sick, dark hole in my stomach when I think about the way women are treated. From the ‘harmless’ sexisms everywhere to the murder of wives it is all on the same slippery scale.

Everybody loves magical trevor!

Trev link

See, I still have my bow fingers, I will fire arrows into your nadgers Patriarchy

The cost of Patriarchy

Sometimes I ask myself what the point is of fighting the good fight and pointing out the sexism and the inequalities and then someone sends me on a workshop…

Yesterday I attended a workshop on Domestic Violence (DV) and by jingo it made me sit up and take notice. Oh yeah…this is what we do it for…3 women a week in the UK are killed by their partners, husbands or former partners/husbands. Did you hear that? 3 A WEEK!

1 in 4 women are living with DV RIGHT NOW! A Million children in the UK are living with/witnessing or are victim of DV.

…and that’s the ones we know about.

The workshop leader took us through the evolution of DV relationship; it scared the pants off me. She took us to the dark place of the perpetrators mind, let us feel the power he had and asked us if it felt good…it did.

I want to have a long rant about the experience I had but right now I have a small baby who needs a cuddle. Besides I’m still in shock over the scale of DV and how society is so complicit in covering it up.

One thing that stayed with me though…

It’s no good sending the Perpetrator to anger management or to drugs or alcohol counselling as it gives them something to hide their violence behind. “I was drunk” “I can’t control my anger” These people seem to have no problem controlling their anger in the workplace, in the pub, on the street because they are aware of the consequences of their actions. In their home, however, they KNOW that their victim will be silent and all of society will keep her silent too. They do not want to ‘get involved’, it’s not their business.

It’s our business.

Women’s Aid link.

My breasts offend!

The boys and I were eating in a well-known naughty fast food place this week when my littlest one has finished with his finger food and wanted a boob. Being the laid back breastfeeding mother that I am, I whipped a boob out and fed him. Next to us were sitting a couple who seemed to share an unspoken communication and leapt up to move to another table. After a few moments of brain processing I realised it was because I was breastfeeding!

I am a Trainee Breastfeeding Supporter who supports mums every week to breastfeed. I have had two years of intense training on the ins and outs of breastfeeding not to mention having done it for three and a half years. I am one of the growing numbers of women who are tandem feeding (Feeding two kids) and have let my child decide when he wants to wean. I know I’m a bit of a ‘weirdo’ in this aspect but I was feeding a nine-month old so how was that SO offensive that I made these people move to a new seat?

I sat there thinking about it and here are my thoughts as they occurred to me:

• HA HA isn’t that funny!
• Oh, they really are offended! I guess it’s their right to move away from me.
• Hang on! I feel offended, maybe I should ask them what they found so terrible. Maybe I should ask them if they would have moved if I had fed my baby with a bottle.
• No, that would be rude…THEY WERE RUDE!
• Oh no, now I feel REALLY self-conscious.
• Don’t be silly, I’m proud to feed my child, I’m doing you all a favour letting you see how a breast should be used.
• Gulp…hurry up baby.
• My body and all it’s functions are dirty, hideous and I am polluting the world with my presence.
• RUN AWAY

Now, if that’s how I felt I’d hate to think how that would make a first time mum feel who was on the verge of giving up.

This incident, coupled with my doctor doing a double-take when I said I would be breastfeeding for at least another 2 years, had made me all the more aware of how anti-breastfeeding this society is.

Anti-breastfeeding = anti-breasts-being-used-for-baby-feeders-not-for-male-titilation= Anti-woman.

Bah!

Breastfeeding is also a very convenient activity to blame for a whole host of things. Anaemic?…That’s ‘cos you’re breastfeeding. Tired? Hungry? Putting on weight? Loosing weight? Baby not sleeping? Baby won’t go into a routine? Baby clingy? Breastfeeding, breastfeeding, breastfeeding!! It’s the cause of all ills…apparently.