Is It Me or Is Something Funny?

I am just emerging from a 3-day long meeting (OK, technically we were allowed to go home and sleep at night, but it really did feel like a 72-hour slow torture...), so please excuse my absence and the picture-less appearance of this blog.
Colour will make a comeback soon, I promise.

On the first day of the "cross-cultural" meeting, I went to introduce myself to a British guy I'd never met before. Let's call him "Steve", to preserve his privacy.
"Hello, are you Steve?" I asked.
"Oops, yes, why: who's asking?" quipped Steve, putting his hands up in mock surrender.
I laughed. Hard.
"Police!" I joked back, holding up my company badge in the manner of a Detective Inspector.
What a wit, hey?

The thing is: this seemingly minor exchange says SO much about us Brits.
It's that humour thing again, isn't it?
Two Brits, using humour to get over initial awkwardness and smooth the path towards conversation.
This is such a cultural curiosity for me: I don't think I have ever observed two French people (or any other nationality, for that matter) use this "social humour" in the same way, right from the outset.
Contrary to common misperceptions, the French DO have a good sense of humour, and I reckon most of them enjoy a laugh as much as the rest of us... but they wouldn't think it appropriate to use it quite so liberally, or be quite so "upfront".

In fact, I can almost guarantee that, if poor Steve uses his "oops, the game's up!" joke on an unsuspecting French person, well, he's going to hit a cultural hurdle head-on.
To put it simply, they'll think he's deranged.

But it's OK for two complete strangers, who both happen to be British, to laugh and joke and be silly from the first second they encounter each other. And most of their first chat will probably be marked by laughter, silliness and the odd bit of wink-wink sarcasm.

It's fun, it's acceptable, it's heart-warming, it is second nature for me.

But, outside of the UK, it really must be used with moderation.

What Goes Around Comes Around

My 32nd birthday kicked off at 2 a.m., with a bout of hysterical crying.
No, the crier wasn't me - freaked out at the thought of getting even older - but LB. Or rather, a scrunched up, angry, unconsolable version of LB.

The crying continued for a good hour, but I managed to be stoical. "You chose to be a mother", repeated my wise, inner voice. The voice of a well-adjusted 32 year-old woman?

Of course, there was a silver lining to this hysterical cloud.
Thanks to LB, I could completely empathise with how my own mother must have been feeling at the same hour exactly 32 years ago: tired, overwhelmed, shell-shocked and slightly annoyed with those friends who told her having a baby would be a fantastically amazing experience.

God has a sense of humour, doesn't he?

Swinging Sixties

I have just seen two great films in two days (I like to cram a month's worth of culture into 24 hours: it's the mother's equivalent of a drinking binge): An Education (screenplay by Nick Hornby) and A Single Man (by Tom Ford, with the lovely Colin Firth).

As I emerge from this dazzling cultural bubble, I realise that I have a new, overwhelming ambition. It is not one of my more realistic ambitions, but I know it would make me happy:
I want to live in the 1960s.
Preferably in America, but London would do. I'm not fussy.

Now all I have to do is fine-tune the plans for my time-travelling machine...

The Rough Guide to Toulouse

Mum/Nana just came over for a few days, so FH and I were freed up to do a little travelling.
Adventurous, energetic young things that we are, we opted for a citybreak. In Toulouse.
This was environmentally-friendly travel at its finest: a hotel located a mere 5 km from home, to which we cycled.
Can a more "green" holiday exist?? I mean, short of simply camping in your own back garden? I think not. We didn't even use any hot water.

To be fair, our choice of destination was not motivated by ethical considerations: we were just too damned tired to go anywhere else.
And this way, we could come home during the day and play an active role in childcare. The boys probably assumed we'd just gone out to buy bread and croissants and taken a very long time about it.

One perk of the citybreak was the buffet breakfast on offer at the hotel. Man, this was every downtrodden parent's dream. All-inclusive, eat-all-you-can, everything you could possibly imagine wanting or needing at breakfast.
Unfortuntely, such breakfasts are rather wasted on me, as I have limited stomach space and a strange inability to eat more than my full.

FH, on the other hand, suffers from no such constraints.
As I watched him pile plate after plate with croissants, brioche, bread rolls, cakes and those cute little nutella jars, I couldn't help but smile. It was suddenly 10 years ago, and we were backpackers on a shoestring, eeking every bread roll out of the buffet breakfast, so that we wouldn't have to pay for lunch.
Ten years ago, seeing FH stuff his pockets with breakfast stuff would have embarrassed the hell out of me.
Five years ago, it would have annoyed me.
Today, it made me happy. We are still young at heart.

Making Winter a Little More Bearable

Just a thought but...
Is there anything more captivating, futile and poetic than couples' ice dancing?

I think I got hooked in 1984, right after that momentus Torville and Dean performance (I was only 6 at the time: I still remember holding my breath and thinking how beautiful it was), and I'm still in awe today, 26 years later.

It must take a hell a lot of work to be so light and free...

The Wife, The Mother and Me

Last night I speed-read a book entitled "Le Conflit, la femme et la mère" by a French sociologist called Elisabeth Badinter. (Speed-reading, like speed-cooking or speed-shopping or speed-showering, are just the techniques we mothers use in order to cram the basics into a too-short 24 hour day...). Basically, the book is about the new post-feminist wave of "naturalism": i.e. a return to the idea that women should set aside their role as individuals (at least temporarily) and devote 100% of their time and effort to their kids, once they have made the decision to have children.
Badinter refutes the intelligence of this idea, but nevertheless points out - very convincingly - just how widespread it is becoming in the year 2010. And it's true: I see evidence of this "return to nature and maternity" all around me.


Women are increasingly pressured to breastfeed (whereas, 10 years ago, the decision to breastfeed was presented as a choice; these days, formula milk is stigmatised and mothers who opt not to breastfeed are perceived as slightly selfish, or lacking the famous maternal instinct...); more and more women are choosing to stop working (fine if it really is a choice: not fine if it's due to outside pressure) to bring up their kids; home births are all the rage; epidurals are bad, bad, bad and prevent mothers from truly bonding with their baby; the psychological well-being of babies and kids has become a source of immense concern... requiring that a sizeable chunk of the mother's time and energy be devoted to it.

Badinter argues that, since women now choose when and how to have kids, they feel they have a certain debt to pay towards the child who "didn't ask to be born"... and must therefore dutifully fulfil the role of perfect mother for as long as it takes. And despite the pitfalls, frustrations and sacrifices involved.

I know what a can of worms this is, and I want to stress that I'm not advocating one or the other viewpoint. I don't think there's a "right" answer to the way maternity should be approached. But I do get a bit niggled when I witness the attitude of "voluntary submission to our kids" that I see happening more and more. When I hear about the virtues of a home birth without pain relief, I can't help thinking that it's easy for my generation to be blasé about science and medicine... because we've never lived through a time when women frequently died in childbirth.
Likewise, a generation ago, formula milk was seen as progress, because it allowed mothers some freedom: many of us grew up drinking formula milk and, for the most part, well, we seem to be doing OK. Now, suddenly, it's akin to drugs in a bottle...

OK, this is a VAST subject and I realise that whatever points I make here will be too superficial, but if anyone feels like continuing the debate with me, then feel free.

I just have one final thought: I am by no means a career-minded, convenience food, pack-the-kids-off-to-creche-with-a-light-heart kind of mother. And if the state offered me a year's maternity leave, I would happily take it.
But if, at the end of a day devoted mostly to looking after my kids, I have a couple of hours to myself: well, I would rather read a sociology book than chop up and mix vegetables for homemade purée. And I'd rather my baby slept in his own bed, so that I can take some time for myself, my husband, my brain, my enjoyment.

The shocking thing is, these days, that probably seems shocking to a lot of mothers...

Parents' Evening

Something quite radical happened on Wednesday evening: FH and I went out to a dinner party. Together.

In order for this to happen, of course, someone had to come and look after the kids, and that someone was an 18 year old girl named L. who we'd never met before. In other words, as I whined to FH, a total stranger.
The point was, I was half torn up with worry about the idea of leaving the boys with a babysitter, and half looking for a pretext not to venture out but simply slip into bed with a book ASAP (i.e. pursue my usual post-boy bedtime project).
But something about the manly way FH insisted that we "needed a break" convinced me. In a decidedly non-PC way, I rather liked the authoritative tone in which he said this.

So, the babysitter came at 8, and we all hung out together for half an hour, just to make sure she wasn't a freak and the boys didn't hate her (and vice versa). I watched her like a hawk, all the while making friendly, breezy conversation and showing her where all the essentials were located (Sex & the City DVD collection, for example).
Of course, there was no need to worry. It was blindingly obviously that she was absolutely lovely from the minute she walked in. By the time FH and I left at 8.30, BB was so absorbed in the story she was reading him (I swear he was actually batting his eyelashes at her: a shameful ripple of jealousy ran through me...), he barely even acknowledged us.

And it was fun to get out. My head was swimming, my eyelids were drooping, but at least we were out of the house and in company, and that felt like something of an achievement.

And now we have ourselves a babysitter.
It's hard to let go, it's hard to make guilt-free time for yourself, it's hard to admit that another person can look after your kids just as well as you can, at least temporarily.
But in order to be a good parent, it's probably vital to do all of the above.