Tag Archives: women

A weekend without the WWW where I was in Wales with women

Posted on March 26, 2019 | 1 comment

Yesterday morning:  in a field in Wales, palms and face turned to the cushion-y golden warmth of the sun, noticing my yoga breath. The confidently green grass was as springy as a fresh sponge cake.

Same time this morning: right hand clicking through work email. Left hand frantically redialling the Australian High Commission to deal with an expired passport before an imminent family holiday.

I wish I could bottle up just a little wisp of those shiny happy times, to hold under my nose when I’m about to faint with dizziness and busy-ness …

valley

A view enhanced by wet muddy boots.

The weekend that was

I was in Wales for a friend’s birthday. A remote farmhouse stuffed full of alarmingly smart and interesting women. There was also:

  • Local bacon so delicious that it could be a ‘gateway drug’ for wavering vegetarians.
  • A scramble up a small waterfall. I fell in a stream, filled my shoes with mud and admired the view.
  • No WiFi or internet or mobile phone signal. No digital cave to hide in.
  • All the cakes. Chocolate, carrot, red velvet. Banoffee pie for breakfast. Giant lebkuchen (German biscuit ) in the shape of a smiling woman.
  • A happy mess of heritage, birthplaces, languages, work places and homes.

We don’t have much evidence that this weekend actually took place. No live-tweeting or vlogging or Insta-story. I just have an increased knowledge of precious gems, mindfulness and Dutch snacks; and continuing confusion over Welsh pronunciation.

Happy birthday E, or is that ê?

cake

A global birthday cake. Only slightly offended that Australia got shoved off the side.

Here’s one I wrote earlier

Getting comfortable Daughter: Mum, we’re learning about life cycles at school. Me: OK. What stages are there in a life cycle? Daughter: Birth, growth, reproduction and death. Me: And what stage are you at? …

To all the ladies in the house Mother’s Day had serious expectations heaped upon it, such as handmade cards and someone else replacing the toilet paper for once. International Women’s Day? Just the same old fluff – gender parity, equal opportunities, more women in leadership, less violence blah blah…

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To all the ladies in the house

Posted on March 16, 2016 | 3 comments

Mother’s Day had serious expectations heaped upon it, such as handmade cards and someone else replacing the toilet paper for once. International Women’s Day? Just the same old fluff – gender parity, equal opportunities, more women in leadership, less violence blah blah.

Here are some words for the important girls and women that I know.

My daughter. I will never be disappointed in you, even if you don’t become the first female astronaut on Mars. (It would be VERY cool if you did though.)

My nieces. Can you hear that? It’s the sound of your big lives starting. Enjoy. I watch with hope and interest.

My female colleagues. You are smart and funny and interesting and ambitious. Please be kind to yourselves.

My lady friends. Thanks for not judging. We’ve got enough to deal with, without kicking each other behind the knees. We do not fight dirty.

My sisters in law. The paid work, the unpaid work, the family, the friends, the home decor – you are totally smashing it. All of it.

My mum. If you don’t want to live with me later on in life, I’ll pick a really good retirement home.

My mother in law. You are the head of a very impressive family of women. You can never have enough X chromosomes.

Pair of finished lipsticks

Finished two lipsticks in one week. Not much comes close in the ‘achievement’ stakes. 

Here’s one I wrote earlier

Judgemental as anything. It’s not cool to judge, unless you are a legal official or preside over hotdog-eating competitions.  Women and mothers – judge me not.

Let there always be kittens. One day I found myself hopping with a clickety click of the mouse from pictures of vintage French cheese labels, to a pro-anorexia, self-harm Tumblr site.  I have never seen one of these before because I am neither interested in anorexia nor self-harm.

 

 

 

 

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Judgemental as anything

Posted on October 17, 2013 | 2 comments

It’s not cool to judge, unless you are a legal official or preside over hotdog-eating competitions.

Women and mothers – judge me not

Women, and the subset ‘mothers’, are the most judgemental people I’ve met. The sisterhood is not always a friendly suburb of tea and sympathy. Motherhood is a place where sometimes I roll up my windows, lock the doors and drive through really fast.

I don’t like the gently shredding comments about other women’s choices. Casual dismissal of circumstance and background. Little packets of superiority sliding across café tables.

My close lady friends are, of course, excellent people. I have ‘binders full of women’ who I like and love and would share a Twix twin bar with.

Nerds and geeks – free hugs!

Nerds and geeks are the least judgemental people I’ve met. I recently had to say goodbye to a charming group of them. I said that it was ‘one of the most diverse places that I’d ever worked at’. This wasn’t a euphemism for unpleasant weirdness, but an appreciation of difference.

Aside from the obvious differences (gender, race, sexual preference, age etc), in the team there people who:

  • Liked a screen of neat code or fat book of chick lit
  • Changed hair colour on any day of the week ending in ‘day’
  • Enjoyed noisy gigs (yo there thrash piggies!) or throwing pottery shapes after work
  • Were proudly working class or mildly middle class
  • Could dance like Justin Timberlake in a tumble-dryer
  • Didn’t eat carbohydrates or food with faces or didn’t drink alcohol
  • Wore tweed in a non-ironic way
  • Could discuss non-intersectional feminism or Grand Theft Auto cheats.

A basic level of mutual respect (and sharing of kitten videos) kept this mixed bunch together.

(BTW – I found this intriguing empirical analysis of the difference between nerds and geeks.)

So don’t judge a book by its cover. I was once too embarrassed to read a Dr Who novel in public, so I hid it under a fake book cover titles ‘Mother truckers’… Was that any better? 

Here’s one I wrote earlier

Slightly ranting about kids, technology, good and evil I can’t decide. Internet = evil cesspit of narcissistic idiots chatting to gambling-addicted paedophiles? Or Internet = global community of inspiring humanity sharing knowledge and joy? Depends on which parent I am talking to … 

Will you be my friend?  The fastest way to make friends is to have a brief chat, run around a park for a bit, then exchange phone numbers. This method seems to be working quite well for my son.

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Let there always be kittens

Posted on April 4, 2013 | 2 comments

One day I found myself hopping with a clickety click of the mouse from pictures of vintage French cheese labels, to a pro-anorexia, self-harm Tumblr site.  I have never seen one of these before because I am neither interested in anorexia nor self-harm.  

I started off scrolling through:

  • artful pictures of fading flowers in enamel jugs
  • pretty girls in wistful hats
  • nail art  (I am getting sick of nails painted to look like ladybirds and cheap cocktail umbrellas)
  • biscuits
  • kittens.

I then ended up stumbling through a stream of:

  • skeletal hip bones and shoulder blades and spines of teenage girls
  • rainbows
  • various skin wounds and scratches, sometimes in the form of bleeding red text
  • life-affirming platitudes “never give up” “ you are beautiful” “follow your heart”
  • kittens.

I rolled through these images for a while, wondering at the curious mix of cute sunny fluffy animals and deep self-loathing. Is this what it feels like to be a modern young woman? Is this what my daughter will fall in to as she grows up? Is there any place on the web where it is NOT appropriate to include kittens?

As sad as that desperate collection of images was, I’ve had a tiny useful glimpse in to a dark place that I want nothing to do with.

Thank you Mrs Internet for teaching me a little about the girls who cut themselves because they don’t have a gap between their thighs.  And for kittens. Let there always be kittens.

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