BRED FOR WORK

“Any fool can get married and have a baby,” I remember my mother saying to me as a teenager. “Work” was the mantra of my mother’s generation as they drove the ideal of independence into our skulls from birth. Our careers were our mothers holy grail. Proof that generations of oppression was over, the women’s revolution complete and women were finally “free”.

 
Lady GaGa said this month; "Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their
 dreams. If you're wondering which way to go, remember that your career will
 never wake up and tell you that it doesn't love you anymore.” Her comments caused a blog-storm as women all over the world asserted that you can most certainly wake up and find that your career doesn’t love you any more, and to put career ahead of love and family can be a treacherous mistake.

 In a recent survey it was revealed that young mothers between the ages of 18 and 34 consider homemaking the aspirational lifestyle choice as opposed to ‘career woman’. Luxury is no longer a four thousand pound handbag, but the time to stay at home and decorate cupcakes, pot up jam for the farmer’s market and spend quality time with their children. Like our grandmothers, but without the scratchy woolen underwear and mangles. Bluntly, the lifespan of the “Amazing Juggling Woman” is over. We made it look too hard. And that’s because it is hard.

 Our mothers wanted us to be independent from men – but they equated independence entirely with money. So while we no longer rely on men for cash, now that we are working, we need them more than ever in so many more ways than before. The monthly wage packet no longer buys them their slippers by the fire. We need them to empty the dishwasher, and forgo their Saturday sports to take the kids off our hands. Men have gone from being the petrol that fuelled the household machine, to being an essential cog in the wheel.

Except now it only works when it is prodded and pushed and now we have to provide half the petrol ourselves. Did our mothers honestly think that men were going to step up to the plate and take fifty percent of the fall out from a battle that was, frankly, not theirs? My parents were both teachers. My mother worked locally, my father in the city. So every morning he would leave the house an hour earlier than my mother with his paper tucked under his arm and get the tube to work. My mother had to wash, dress, and feed and transport three of us to school, leaving the baby at home with her mother. After school she had to take us all home, feed us and do our homework and by the time my father got home, less one hour after she did, have a hot meal ready on the table.

 The truth is she was so thrilled to be allowed to work (her own mother was a trained teacher who had to, by law, give up work in Ireland after she got married) that she didn’t take all the other ‘work’ into account. The unpaid, thankless work that women had been doing since time began, so low was the self-worth of our mother’s generation that they barely noticed that they were now bringing home the bacon and cooking it.

 The drudgery of cleaning and cooking and child-rearing that had trapped women in their houses until the 1960’s it has now transpired was actually very important, and very skilled labor. So skilled, in fact, that we now need television programs to show us how to clean our toilets, and rear our children and cook our dinners. The most basic housekeeping skills, like working out how much money you have to spend each week and sticking to it, seem to have completely eluded us. Debt? Our grandmothers did not know what that meant. Could they have ever imagined their granddaughters would be stupid enough to spend half a month’s wages on a handbag and the other on Marks & Spencer’s ready meals? Or throw a perfectly good blouse out because of a missing button, or not know how to bake a batch of buns without looking up a lavishly illustrated cookbook.

 Our mothers wanted to go out to work for all sorts of reasons. Independence, freedom, fulfillment – but mainly they wanted to do it because men did it and their work was more valued in society. In actual fact, men were not valued because of the work they did outside the home, but simply because they were men. And they were valued and respected not because they deserved it, but because they set the rules and the men need to be valued and respected otherwise they won’t do anything! So we set a new rule saying, we’ll go out to work too (if you do fifty percent of the house and kids stuff. Ok – do thirty and I’ll pretend it’s fifty. Hell – I’ll pretend it’s eighty!) and in one generation we have reversed the situation so that a man who allows his wife to stay at home and keep house is doing her a favor.

Economically, the woman who has time to stay home and cook her kids a dinner from scratch is not down-trodden but privileged. Menu-planning and having the time to steam clean your upholstery is a luxury ladies. I remember my poor, emancipated mother looking on aghast one Saturday afternoon as I modeled my new Anthropologie apron and discussed brownie recipes with my sisters. “I wanted you educated so you’d discuss Proust – or at least current affairs!” We reminded her that as full time working mothers, we barely have time to read the newspapers never mind discuss them. Our homes and children have become our recreation. Our aspiration is not longer to be more intelligent, or accomplished but to become more “homey”.

Money has outlived its promise as a means towards independence or even a designer handbag. What we want money to buy us now is time, the time to sit around our perfectly managed kitchens discussing current affairs. The time to not feel guilty about the amount of time we’re not spending with our kids. The time to give our cutlery drawer a good clear out without eating into a precious Sunday afternoon. Enough time to feel that being a good mother and earning and income is not an either/or decision. Our mother’s told us we would need to learn to “juggle our lives”. You’ve got dishwashers now, they said, today’s young men are great – they’ll help out. You can cook a dinner with one hand tied behind your back, microwave some chips – that’ll do them. After a generation of trying to hold it all together frankly, we’ve already dropped a few balls and now we’ve discovered they were the one’s marked “cup cakes” and “cuddle baby all day”. Balls marked “2 Hour Commute” and “Midnight empty-dishwasher” we’re still endlessly throwing round, and round, and round. We’re not fighting for our right to work any more, we’re fighting for our right to knit.

 What our mother’s neglected to tell us was that women had been keeping the show on the road for centuries. That our skills as homemakers were important. Nourishing our children, managing the money, the traditional crafts of knitting and sewing – these were not simply things we had to do, but creative occupations that added as much value to family life as they money the men bought it. Or, as we are discovering now, more. The pressure of the modern working mother is turning the next generation into aspiring Stepford Wives – and nobody wants that either. Maybe instead of passing the values of working independence to our daughters, our mother’s would have been better placed in validating the importance of being good homemakers to their sons. Although with our macho TV chef-culture it looks hopeful that, before long, men will be convinced that at home growing vegetables and pottering around the kitchen, baby in one arm, roulade mould in the other is where they truly belong.

 The problem for women might be – can we get back in there first before men discover the joys of knitting? More terrifying a prospect than that is what are we going to tell our own daughters having got it so very wrong ourselves. We’re certainly never going to allow ourselves go back to the Jane Austen days of simply marrying a rich man (not least because there aren’t enough of them to go around and more!)

Perhaps what our mother’s mistake has taught us is that when it comes to living a truly successful life there are no absolutes. Women do have more choices, we just have to make sure we help the next generation make the ones that will help them fulfil their dreams – not ours.

Crossing the Road in LA

I'm in L.A on research and trying to cross the road. I do not know which way the cars are coming from, and they all seem to be going really fast. I do not understand the whole pedestrian lights/crossing thing and neither, I suspect, do many of the cars. I shadowed a woman across a pedestrian crossing yesterday and she stopped in the middle of the road to argue with a revving truck driver about right of way. I cross the road like I’m on crack cocaine, ducking this way and that, hopping from side to side, jumping with surprise and raising my hands in apology as a car I didn’t see suddenly appears behind me. All the roads are two way and very wide and treacherous for pedestrians. It is truly terrifying. Now that I come to think of it, there are very few pedestrians, and many of them are homeless. Which is kind of how I feel right now.

dust-gathering kitchen utensils

I came out of my weekly shop in Lidl this week and the sun was shining. It is always raining in Ballina Lidl car park. I have come to think of it as a sort of punishment. I go in on a perfect sunny day, get my trolley, fill it – go through my impressive high-speed bagging routine. (I often attract an audience as I can separate frozen, fresh and larder goods at the same speed the uber-fast checkout workers throw them at me.)
I love Lidl. It’s cheap, has a limited and regular selection of stock – so you are not loading your trolley with foie-gras-in-a-tin and ingredients you are never going to use or forget you already have. (I have about five complete sets of sushi ingredients in my larder and every time I want to make sushi, like - once a year, I go and buy more.)
However my real motivation for shopping there is that I have a weakness for Lidl lifestyle offers. Camping gear, workshop benches, scuba diving equipment, oil-painting kits. Wonderful hobby-enabling stuff that inspires me to take up a new activity with impressive Germanic confidence. “Why, if I buy that harness and hat in Lidl, I shall be horseriding in no time!” “A complete sets of oils in a box that turns into an easel! Well, if that doesn’t get me painting a masterpiece, I don’t know what will!”
It is the curse or the gift of a peculiar sort of optimism, depending on how you look at it. If only I had a surf-board, crepe-pan, bread-maker, compost-making kit – everything would be better. Everything could be so different. I’d be the sort of person who’d have crepes for breakfast and go surfing and make-my own compost. Whatever that means. It’s an escape from oneself, of course and yet – sometimes it works, and when it does, it’s wonderful.
My father in law Joe, who passed away in 2009, was my Lidl-buddy. Joe and I clashed horribly at times, but on that one thing we were agreed. Lidl rocked. While my husband and mother in law raised their eyebrows in frustration, we formed a sort of Lidl support group. Joe was a generous man and a great man for buying gifts. He was the person who gave Leo his pocket money every week, and he always had the eye out for bargains that he could pass on. The key to Joe’s gifts was they had to be something that you didn’t know you needed until he arrived up “da-daah!” and presented you with it. A car cover, hose attachment kit, a pasta-making machine. Most of them went straight into the cupboard with a curt thank-you. Joe didn’t mind - he was wiser than that. He knew his stuff would come in handy one day.
And it almost always did. The car cover got dug out and used to cover Niall’s vintage jalopy the winter we did the garage up to house his office. A few years ago when Niall’s brother Fintan came home from Australia for my husband’s fortieth bash he decided to teach me how to make pasta. Joe’s pasta making machine was in the very back of the cupboard under the sink. Covered in that mysterious sticky dust that gets inside my kitchen cupboards, I honesty never thought it would see the light of day. Fintan was thrilled with it and, after a short lesson in making home-made pasta, so was I. It has become one of my kitchen staples, serving all sorts of culinary mood. I use it for kids cooking when the cake icing runs out and if I want to impress guests with home-made ravioli – out it comes.
Since that afternoon when my jovial brother in law broke eggs in my kitchen, and the two of us wondered at the miraculous compulsion of his father to buy me a pasta maker in Lidl, both of those men have died. Tragically and unexpectedly, insofar as all death is both.
Joe’s gifts have outlived him. The car polishing kit is still in the cupboard under the stairs along with the baseball mitt Leo has yet to use. Niall had to fix a burst pipe in the garden the other day and broke open a multi-purpose hose attachment set which has been in the shed for years and which I am certain has Joe’s stamp on it.
It’s the small details of ordinary life that sometimes put us in mind of lost loved ones. The memories they made for us are the real gifts.
I’ll never make pasta again without thinking of Fintan and Joe.

The Polytunnel

A co

Aspiring to country living begins with looking out your townhouse window at your fat neighbour getting out of the shower and vowing to replace your current view with one of devoid of other people.
That done and a couple of years pottering about the village, boasting to city friends about the quality of local schools, tinkering about making jam for the farmers market one has finally had the last of the Cath Kidston sale fabric made into cushions and it is now time to get serious. The next step is self-sufficiency, the ultimate badge of the nouveau country wannabe – I speak of course of the polytunnel.
A couple of years ago we were out of our minds trying to score a bit of fresh coriander in the village shop and coming home from the supermarket bemoaning the price and quality of slimy bagged salad leaves. This year the asian herb has already bolted and there is a veritable field of mixed greens for us to choose from. Am I feeling smug? Frankly, if I wasn’t me – I’d hate myself.
Recluctantly I have to admit the polytunnel is not an entirely sole achievement. We share it with our neighbour Steve although, that was my idea. I knew if we invested on our own it would quickly become one of our great family failures. Like the platinum gym membership a life-changing lifestyle choice that came with great intentions and turned out to be a waste of money. My husband used to be one of those men who would edge himself out the patio doors for the odd fag, shrugging himself cautiously against the bit of rain, doubtless still wondering just quite how in God’s name he had come to live in Killala, County Mayo when he had signed up for a life in Dublin’s city centre with a media chick. Steve, on the other hand, is one of those energetic outdoorsy types, always mowing his lawn and calling to the door with hand-picked mussels and going mackerel fishing so I hoped he’d be something of a driving force.
As with most of my ideas I had sold it to my husband as a no-big deal thing. I have a terrible tendency to understate the amount of work involved in any outdoor activity I commission of him - my complete ignorance overtaken by unreasonable expectation. “It’s only a tree babe – how hard can it be to trim a tree? Look, I’ve borrowed you a ladder and everything….” So, having booked the tunnel men to come and erect it for us, (and having cleverly absented myself from all real work by falling pregnant) all the men had to do was dig up a patch of land. Easy. Or not at all, as it turned out. It seems that the scrub grass growing on our narrow field was, in fact, an obnoxious weed whose roots had reached down into the earth’s core. They hired every shape and type of man equipment from the man equipment hire store to no avail. Strimmers, rotivators, killer-grass cutting machines – until eventually they found somebody with a digger deep enough to wrench the triffid a few feet from it’s bedrock, and stop it growing for long enough to get the tunnel up.
Steve had, of course, already seeded his lettuces and planted them all in a neat row on his side. So, I had to quickly run to the garden centre and stock up on seedling greens, sprinkling a bit of compost over them so I could make them look convincingly home-grown. Other veg enthusiasts gave us various plants which I threw down willy nilly with great enthusiasm, labelling nothing and hoping that every salad contained actual lettuce and not a roving, poisonous weed.
A year later it’s a different story. My rain- reluctant, urbane husband has transformed into a Monty Don pin-up – all Hunter wellies and Barbour Jacket – out there every night watering and weeding and keeping evil slugs and weevils at bay. Every time I see him leave our back door, trowel in hand full of stern intent to plant another lettuce, or attack a chard that’s grown too big for it’s boots, I get a quivery feeling of marital contentment.
I remember sitting in a married friends kitchen in my early thirties and watching her husband mow the back lawn. I wanted what she had so badly - a kind man and a shed for him to potter about it – yet, at thirty three I thought I would never find it.
I assume, like everyone that life is short, yet my life suggests it is long enough. I look back on where my life was before I met Niall twelve years ago and it looks so different now.
Day by day, step by step in small un-noticed increments, my dreams have come true.
I’ve got a sexy outdoor-man in Hunters and a polytunnel full of fresh veg. Life doesn’t get better than this.

My not-very adventurous spirit.

“I’m not a ‘Big Traveller,” I used to say to my friend to try and persuade her against dragging me off on another one of her adventures. Beautiful, with long dark hair and a mysterious, captivating manner Gai’s hunger for exploration and adventure made her the worst possible person for me to leave the country with. I like to be in control, have a plan, be punctual and guard myself against the unknown. Gai likes to wake up each day and see where it leads her – especially when she is on holiday. She is notoriously unsettled, often moving from one Greek island to the next following the good weather. There is always a more comfortable place to stay around the corner, a more authentic restaurant that we have yet to find, a hidden-away hammam, a camel ride into desert, a bar on the 80th floor of a skyscraper, an unexplored island. I, on the other hand, like to stay in one place – even if it’s a kip – we’re here now lets just hunker down and get on with it. I’ll eat when I am hungry – and I don’t care if we are “abroad” – if I pass a McDonald’s and it’s gone my dinner time – I’m in. I am not prepared to go the extra hour in a taxi in search of legendary paella in an obscure mountain-top restaurant. Somehow Gai always persuaded me into situations that filled me with a mixture of exhaustion and terror. Her desire for excitement and drama was greater than my need for safe, dull routine – even on holiday.
The first time I remember feeling genuine terror on holiday with her was when she persuaded me to go to a deserted beach on the small island of Skyros. We were on a Writers Workshop week – perfect for both of us as, although it was on a remote, hard-to-access authentic Greek Island - good for her, it was a routine based week with workshops and set mealtimes, which we had already paid for. This, I comforted myself, would put pay to any off-schedule activities on the part of Gai and keep us out of trouble. When she begged me to find this secluded beach some locals had told her about, I felt it was the least I could do. Needless to say, it was accessed by a treacherous vertical slope “path” made of loose rocks and sand and I suffer from a terrible fear of heights, and dodgy feet and knees which means that unsteady “cliff walks” leave me petrified. While Gai basked blissfully in the sun, swimming and enjoying the extraordinary view, solitude and privacy, I sat crossed legged in my large swimsuit afraid of strange insects interfering with my unmentionables gazing in blind terror at the path back up which we had to climb. Gai was very kind when she saw how genuinely petrified I was, and assured me that she would go back herself and organize a helicopter rescue for me, if needs be. She wasn’t being sarcastic, but deadly serious. Me being airlifted by the Greek Coast Guard was just about the perfect holiday anecdote to bring home.
The Italian Brothel was my idea. After spending a week stuck inside the apartment of the non-touristy Italian seaside village recovering from an allergic reaction to three horrific mosquito bites on my first day – one of which was on my face – while Gai tripped solo down to the local Italian family beach, I suggested that before we left, we should have a night out. On the end of the holiday promenade there was a building, separate from the restaurants and small bars that confidently announced “Discoteque”. “Come on,” I said with uncharacteristic verve, “lets go dancing tonight!”
We got all dressed up, and wandered down there after dinner, at about ten o’clock. We walked in through a dark front bar which was empty except for a few girls sitting on a row of stools, and into the quieter back bar. The back wall was painted with a huge, ecstatic female nude. Gai went to the bar and ordered two drinks, where the bar tender, strangely, refused her money. When she came back, we sat for a few moments before I said; “I think we’re in a brothel.” She laughed; “Don’t be ridiculous.” “Look,” I whispered. “Women sitting in a line – check out the tarty clothes – the mad shoes!” “They’re Italian,” she said, “Italian women are sexy. Relax. Don’t be so stiff.” The bar tender and his older female colleague were looking over at us and pointing. The girls in the front bar were also checking us out.
“I don’t like this,” I said. “Look at the painting….and there’s no music?” “Oh for Gods sake,” she argued, “Finish your drink – the music has just probably not started yet.”
Just then, an older man came in through the door, picked a girl out from the line of women on stools, nodded to the couple behind the bar and disappeared with her through a door in the middle of the wall with the nudie painting.
“Now!” I said.
Gai, of course, thought this was hilarious and wanted to stay and see what happened next. She looked so thoroughly delighted with herself I thought, for sure we be lynched by mob men for muscling in on their territory or as my grandmother used to say in hushed tones, “worse” and we all knew what that meant.
I stood up assertively, and, with my best Miss Marple “come along young lady” face marched out – throwing some money at the barman, who seemed most anxious to have a conversation with us.
Marriage and children have put and end to my annual “single girl” travels and holidays are now rather benign affairs that happen in hotels with set mealtimes and kiddie’s pools. We spoke again this week and she reminded me that some ten years ago I had “promised to go to Seville” with her. She might have to wait another ten years, but I can’t help quite looking forward to it.

Musings on looking like a ghastly sleb

They are too rich, too thin and they are living uninvited and rent-free in my head against my will. I have decided that celebrities are, in fact, alien life forms who have been sent to take over the world. Their mission is to make us look like them: glossy-haired, orange-skinned, glittery toothed, big-breasted, bubbly clones with obviously made-up non-humanoid names like “Jade” and “Jordan”,“Holly” and “Bez”.
Then, in the year 3000 the mastership will land from the planet they call Big Brother and whisk us all off to ……okay so that last bit needs a bit of work - but is there any other explanation for the insidious way that celebrities creep into your subconscious so that even when you do not care in the least about any of them – you find that, in actual fact, you do? We have become so saturated with celebrity culture that it is no longer enough to simply ‘not care’. I do not care about “Posh Spice”. See? I even write her name in inverted comma’s to illustrate the extent of my aloof, superior disinterest. And yet two weeks ago I sat in front of my hairdresser and asked for a bob. “With long bits at the front – you know – like……” Ouch! And there it was. I wanted a Posh Spice haircut. Did knowing that deter me? No. Because despite my better judgement my little celebrity gremlin was whispering: “Posh Spice has bob – bob goo-ood haircut ”.
Ditto teeth whitening. My dentist has been badgering me to have my teeth whitened for ages. Last year I almost had an excuse to travel to L.A. and she lost the run of herself altogether insisting that I could NOT travel to the west coast of America with ‘ordinary’ teeth with the urgency more suited to an emergency root canal. Eventually I gave in, but deep inside I know it’s not her insistence that got to me. It’s the pearly-white gnashers gleaming from the stack of Hello! Magazines in her waiting room. Gradually, after years of fillings and drillings I decided – dammnit – I want teeth like Paul McCartney, and Billie Piper and the woman who won herself a job working for that angry looking man who does the ads for Prize Bonds.
As I was leaving her surgery with several hundred pounds worth of tooth-bleach and my set of see-through inverted dentures – she coolly informed me that I wasn’t to drink anything that would stain, especially tea or coffee, for a fortnight. I am completely dependent on both – and yet I did manage to salvage a germ of comfort from reassuring myself that in all probability, Eva Longoria from Desperate Housewives was also going to bed that night with her mouth crammed full of bleach and plastic.
And then I thought - this is how it begins. This is how a normal woman starts to morph herself into a footballer’s wife for no better reason than she can. All it takes is hard work (the gym), courage, (Brazilian wax), creativity, (skilled application of make-up), endurance, (the constant diet), a sense of humour, (spray tan) money, (a designer wardrobe) and a surgeon for everything else. What it does not take a great deal of is brains. So while there are people we admire greatly for their wit and intellect, sadly few of us aspire to look like true idols like Alan Bennett, Germaine Greer, Vincent Browne or Melvyn Bragg (except, his smile suggests, Melvyn Bragg himself).
I’m afraid of where it might lead. Teeth bleaching is the middle ground in ‘commitment vanity’ coming somewhere between the ability to apply mascara in a moving vehicle and hard-core liposuction. Should I get my forehead injected with botox? Or perhaps I’ll get my bob readjusted to incorporate a fringe instead. Make me look like Juliette Binoche. She’s a French celeb: that’s got to be posher than “Posh”.

can't do candy

My aunt and health guru always speaks of sugar as if it is some kind of awful drug. And I am beginning to believe her. Several weeks ago a large bag of miscellaneous “Sweet Factory” sweets of various types appeared in my house and such was the ferociousness of the various textures and colors and the vastness of the quantity there-in, I decided that, for the greater good of my son and any of his fellow hyperactive buddies that might be knocking about, I would hide the bag on my office desk. The jelly babies were the first to go. I like jelly babies. They are soft and, like talcum powder, they remind me of childhood. Everything else in there was stuff I didn’t like. So the bag just sat there among the other forgotten debris of my desk – cheque books, half packets of stick-on nails, sewing kits, out-of-date stamps, the wrong sized light bulb I keep meaning to change and really important documents that I think I have lost because I couldn’t possibly be sensible enough to file them on my desk. Like said documents the bag of sweets became something that I stopped seeing any more. Until earlier today.
Earlier today I was on the phone on the other end of a boring phone call. Someone telling me the gory details about their non life-threatening health “issue” of theirs. I won’t judge, we all do it, but as my brain was zooming out, looking for something more interesting to occupy it, it fell upon the bag with renewed curiosity. I opened it half-hoping to locate a missed jelly baby. There wasn’t one and somebody had opened the wrapped sweets put there for adult benefit and put the empty wrappers back in the bag (I will hunt you down). I mooched about for a bit while making soothing cooing noises about my friend’s bad back or bunions or whatever, until my hand came to rest on a jelly bean. I’ll give it a go, I thought. I know I don’t really like jelly beans but it’s only small. No harm.
It wasn’t bad at all and so, adventure having pricked my taste buds I decided to chance a mini-egg. One of those cheap chocolate ones they coat in a wafer-thin layer of speckled concrete. My friend was feeling depressed now – overworked – giving me the full lowdown on some woman in the office that had been giving her jip, so I decided to try the two together. Jelly bean, mini-egg – at the same time. I’ve got to tell you – it was fantastic. Well, not Gordon Ramsey fantastic, but fantastic enough to be getting along with. Fantastic enough for me to power my way through a Sweet Factory sack of them until my head was buzzing and my teeth fizzing. My phone companion had moved onto the general ennui of not really being sure what she was doing with her life. She was worried that hadn’t really reached her full potential. I mean, she was a creative person you know? Really, she should be writing, or acting, or painting or something? My stomach hurt a bit. A bit, but not enough to stop me from hoovering up the pretend fruit pastilles and plastic fried eggs at the bottom of the bag.

As I put the phone down, I felt terrible. At having eaten the sweets, not at my friend’s personal life crisis. Like blaming your parents, whinging about not being ‘fulfilled’ has a shelf life of about thirty. Having said that, the cut-off point for eating bags of sweets you don’t really like is ten.