Books I didn't get on with

As I rather fearfully begin "The Kite Runner" I have a bit of a feeling. I am scared that it is going to be another of those books I can't get on with although lots of people think it's marvellous. Here are my top five in that category, although I have probably supressed others:

White Teeth by Zadie Smith – had to stop after about a third of it as I couldn't care less about any of the characters;

The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kinsolver – all that laden laboured stuff about Africa and missionaries (but it's not her as I really liked Animal Dreams);

Captain Corelli's Mandelin by Louis de Bernieres – I had to read the first chapter about 8 times and it took months to get through it. Hated Penelope Cruz in the film too although loved her before that in Spanish things;

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy – got bored - I just didn't get it;

Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie – can't really remember but I think it was written in a funny tense?

This makes me think of other lists I could write eg. the Top 5 books that I liked although lots of other people couldn't get on with them. Step forward Vikram Seth with your big book A Suitable Boy- I loved it!

Then there's the Top 5 books which I read for sentimental reasons knowing they wouldn't be much good because the author had peaked long ago eg. Jump by Jilly Cooper - overpopulated with appallingly embarrassing sex scenes, including one which raises rather serious issues of child abuse that Jilly ducks entirely.

And the most irritating plot twist - Freya North in Pillow Talk where two characters met again after 18 years, fell in love instantly but failed to swap phone numbers. For the next 200 pages they were unable to find one another and didn't think of googling despite the fact that they used internet for other purposes and one of them ran her own business and the other wrote pop songs and had an odd name .

And the Top 5 unreadable books written by people I know? Better stop now....

WI Fi

I have finally made it to a meeting of the new local WI set up by my friend J after no-showing at the first two.

I find the pub heaving with all sorts of women that I know a bit from various phases of my life in the suburb (play group, school, ballet), and lots that I don't. Apart from having a drink and chatting, we have all come to hear a talk and try to get our heads around what it means to be at the WI really and not ironically.

I tell a member of the committee, who are all wearing hand embroidered name badges, that I grow a lot of fruit on my allotment but don't have much idea how to make jam. She says "I will take your subscription but they have very nice jam in Tescos."

The speaker is semi-famous. She used to present one of those iconic property shows where couples are taken somewhere they've never been before but might just conceivably want to move their whole lives to, and shown a series of derelict barns on a hillside full of goats, or luxury villas with artificial grass depending on their budget. She was unlucky enough to relocate to the suburb rather than to a Tuscan palazzo, and to employ one of the committee's husbands as her painter and decorator. Her anecdotes mainly focus on the celebrity editions of the show which sound entirely rigged, including her mortification when a well-known "It girl" urinated in the open air at the top of the drive leading down to a luxury Greek villa outside which she was standing with the local estate agents. The semi-famous one declares she is so enraptured by the whole WI buzz that she is going to join at some point - but she will be away filming a new show for the next 3 months.

After the talk we have the judging of the funniest holiday snap competition, which is won by a snap of a pair of white ankle socks and sandals. We then have notices. Our first outing will be to a racecourse where Peter Andre is performing. I'm not sure whether there will be any horses around but I'm pleased that being married to Katie Price didn't put him off them altogether. I won't be going on that trip but I'll probably be back to hear how to make a hanging basket with free Pimms next month.

My Royal Wedding

We were amongst those lucky people who had booked our long weekend well before Wills packed the £28k ring for 3 weeks backpacking round Kenya. In fact we were repeating the same May Bank holiday we had had last year with our pals in a camping barn in the Brecon Beacons. Now we would be able to get away really early instead of having to do the M4 Friday night ordeal (which tends to involve too many grab bags of Worcester Sauce crisps and sitting in the fast lane with the engine switched off for a long time hoping radio Wiltshire will explain all).

But, as the day drew nearer, there was an outbreak of patriotism all around us. There was going to be a massive street party flowing from the pub past our house and down the cul-de-sac opposite. Efficient women formed a committee and posted regular updates through the door using twiddly fonts. They came round with clipboards to find out how many trestle tables we would be lending and whether we had any photos of the last known street party in 1977, or perhaps the one that took place when the siege of Mafeking was relieved?

I began to weaken and say perhaps we could do the big screen, although not the accompanying bubbly and butties. Our camping pals confirmed they would not be leaving the Midlands till Wills and Kate were safely back at Buck House glad-handing the Beckhams. Thus, at 10.45, I bundled R and M into the pub and we took up our positions next to an American couple from the next street with two tiny daughters. "O look" the female was saying as Carole Middleton entered the Abbey "That lady's the mommy of the bride so that'll be me when you get married". I remembered that marriage was not something we really focus on in our little unit, so I concentrated on the genealogical aspects of the occasion, ad libbing about the identity of some of the more obscure royals "O look there's Princess Alexandra and her daughters with Princess Pushy that Austrian one that noone likes". R, who spent several weeks thinking that Princess Anne had died when it was Princess Margaret, yawned and eyed the beer pumps longingly. M, who is well beyond the princess stage, said that everyone looked stupid and become very whingy as she had had no breakfast. I sent them both home again and concentrated, trying to ignore the American couple who had bought a bottle of bubbly and were gazing lovingly into one another's eyes, glasses raised, for most of the religious bits, which was most of it. By contrast the rest of the pub talked loudly throughout the ceremony as though it was a mere Championship league game on a Wednesday night in November. I found myself with noone to discuss my many unanswered questions with, especially about the two nuns who were sitting next to Wills and Kate during the interval.

Back in the street the awnings were going up and the music was beginning. M gazed longingly as more and more cupcakes made their way out of houses and onto the loaded tresle tables. Sadly we piled into the car, feeling like Big Society party poopers who were only hurting themselves. We sulked all the way to the Severn Bridge.

Apparently everyone had a wonderful time and, of course, by the time we got back a copy of the group photo with twiddly fonts had been posted through the door. I am definitely not going anywhere for the Diamond Jubilee and there won't even be a marriage to sit through before we start on the cupcakes.

Family holidays

It's that time of the year again and we are trying to find a holiday that will satisfy us all. My poor daughter has been subjected to a lot of rather strange holidays in her 10 years. My attempts to recreate holidays I enjoyed at her age have been dismal. My parents were always perfectly happy to go to Spain or Majorca and do very little for 2 weeks whilst I ran around with other English children getting covered in sand and pine needles, having flotilla battles on lilos and getting stuck in the lift at least once a day when we overloaded its buttons. It was all very fine so far as I was concerned, although my older sister skulked about in dark glasses and tie-dye looking miserable.

My partner R has very different ideas about activity levels however. Having spent every holiday visiting his mother's relatives in North Limburg (a visit we recreate at least once a year) he doesn't really get the great British slob-out package tour. A couple of years ago I persuaded him to try a week in Majorca and he was deeply shocked to the extent of appearing to feel an elaborate joke was being played on him, when, on the first lunchtime in Puerto de Pollensa, our waitress was English, the menu was English and all the other people in the cafe were English Once he had run up all the nearby hills and spent a lot of money hiring first a windsurf then a tiny sailing boat for an hour he didn't really know what to do. My daughter showed signs of enjoying herself as the ice cream was good, but soon got covered in mosquito bites and turned out to be allergic to the cream that was supposed to sooth them, resulting in a spectacular faint and vomit incident in the main street. So it was a bit of a failure all round.

Then there's our carbon footprint. I feel I've emitted enough tonnes to last a lifetime in my pre-child 90s past when I went on holiday to places like China and Chile. M would love to go to Harry Potter World and Hawaii but it doesn't seem to be happening as I wrestle with my environmental guilt, budget and resentment at the short length of school holidays at the best time of year to go.

R is not at all interested in leaving Europe anyway, despite the outdoor potential of various suggested destinations ("fancy the Yukon R?"). He has a strange interest in obscure parts of the Benelux countries, as witnessed by our recent short break to a non-functioning ski resort where stones for sharpening are produced, and our 2010 damp summer sailing break in Fryslan, the northernmost part of the Netherlands. He is passionate about Germany, Central and Eastern Europe none of which interest me in the slightest. That isn't quite true as we all enjoyed a 79p each way short break in Gdansk a few years ago. I got to see the shipyard where it all started and with which we expressed so much solidarity when I was a student. We hunted for amber on the beaches and had coffee in shiny hotels funded by the EU and went on trams. I wouldn't mind going to Warsaw or Budapest. But his latest suggestion that we should borrow a house from his Serbian friends in Novi Sad, a city on the flatlands north of Belgrade, has finally motivated me to ring our friends in Cornwall and get us invited down there poste haste to recreate the holiday we had there 5 years ago!

Big Soc. Dilemmas Part 3: No Office

We are being evicted from our office. We thought we had negotiated a rent reduction after the Council cut our grant by £10,000 but the landlord has changed his mind as he has had a better offer. At first he said we had to go by the end of the month but he has now extended this to the end of May. So four organisations are looking for a new home. The practical lot have huge amounts of kit, including boxes of muddy boots, electric chain saws and a forest of young trees growing in posts which have become a bit irritating as insects are roosting in them which often fly round the office. The arty lot have an enormous photocopier which doesn't work very well, a 1930s sideboard and a lot of elderly volunteers who can't climb stairs. The posh lot have a polished wooden dining table and lots of display boards with photos of graveyards they have renovated. We are currently the youthful lot (apart from me) as we have 3 young men entrusted to us by a scheme from the last Government called "The Future Jobs Fund". The Future Jobs Fund is now a deceased scheme and is being replaced by the more prosaically named "The Work Programme". The young men are supposed to be getting experience of working for an innovative environmental organisation practising their skills in social media, "nudge" (the Big Soc. name for getting people to do what you want) and "commissioning" (which is all about public sector bodies offering you about an eighth of the market rate to do something but pretending that Tescos and NPower are bidding against you). I worry that our innovative organisation will have to scale new heights when we relocate to the local park because we can't find affordable desk space indoors, but the young men point out that this won't be a problem as they all have "dongles". What a relief.

Census and Sensibility

It's been quite a struggle to stop myself filling in "Gypsy, Scientologist, separated, but still legally in a same-sex civil partnership" but I have resisted the temptation. I am annoyed that if you do one hour of paid work a week you are not also allowed to fill in that you do the childcare and housework. And Question 17 - wild eh!?

I have been deterred not so much by the fact that I musn't be silly when the whole country has to be sensible because of the terrible mess we have been left in, but by the thought of all those eager-beaver family historian sleuths looking me up in 2111 (unlikely I will have managed to leave an autobiography).

I'm afraid I have already caught my ancestors apparently lying on many official documents including censuses, and this has raised a lot of niggling questions in my mind which I brood on in the middle of the night and am unlikely ever to get answered, for example:

Great Great Granny Joyce: you said you were married to George Kerr on your son's birth certificate, but the year after that on the census form you had changed your name to Joyce George, and when you married someone else a couple of years later you said you were "a spinster" and used your maiden name again. I suppose it can't have been easy being a single mum in mid-19th century Worcestershire but was it bigamy or what?

Great Great Grandad Robert: you weren't a Sergeant Major - you were only a Sergeant which I have now discovered is two ranks below and meant you were only paid 1s 3d a day not 3s a day - were you showing off a bit and how did you sort it out financially?

Great Grandad David: your dad was a grocer not a fisherman. Was this a family joke or were you worried that having a petit-bourgeois father would impede your political career? Did you have a presentiment that a grocer's child would one day rise to prominence on the other side of the political spectrum ?

Great Aunty Sue: your real name was Lilian. Why didn't you tell your nieces? You lived in a caravan: maybe I have inherited your gypsy yearnings. Lilian is not a great name for a gypsy but Lily would have been fine.

So don't get too imaginative on that form unless you want to torture your descendants and torture social researchers who will long to interview you but be unable to get access to your name and address until 2111. I can't honestly say that you will skew the ConDems planning process by causing unnecessary services to be set up by the Government, NHS (or private sector top-slicers) to support you, but some Big Soc. type will probably waste their Friday night setting up an unnecessary wiki forum.

The Blog Killers

Ten things that have stopped me writing anything much since the thing I half wrote at half- term and have just falsified the date on as a stop gap:

• Grade 3 ballet exam and its eleven extra practice sessions involving self (as self-not-very-employed mum) in collection of four girls from school many times with consequent hot cross bun toasting and brisk walking to the Methodist Hall;

• Damp wall of mother's house involving waiting for builders to give quotes none of whom brought long ladders despite being told they were coming to look at a roof so required 2 visits each;

• Calls to Charity Commission to enquire very politely whether "we seek to respond to your application within 10 working days" now meant 2 months, in a sympathetic voice in view of 21% budget cut, but with wheedling tone;

• Huge row between fellow trustees of charity resulting in two resignations;

• Trips to National Archives to read muster rolls of 44th Foot 1840-60;

• Critical time of year at the allotment;

• Futile search for holiday cottage in Devon with high ratio of bathrooms to bedrooms that will also welcome "well-behaved" dog, but does not have hens running about outside in photo as dog is not nearly that well-behaved;

• Insane trip to far end of Belgium to alleged (by partner) ski location which turned out to have one sloping field open about one week per annum, but many many crucifixes all around village and many graves in churchyard bearing name "Lesenfants" (sic) ...

• Reading "American Wife" by Curtis Sittenfeld;

• Hamster needing a run: can only be released in my bedroom where broadband signal is poor.

Lies

I try to be a good person and am sometimes rather surprised to find that I lie rather freely, if only in my head. So here are a few recent ones that I want to get off my chest:

I took my own cup of tea in my own mug into the Eurotunnel terminal. It appears to be almost devoid of non-commercial bottom perches, so I sat on a high stool in a coffee shop mentally rehearsing a defiant speech about how I was drinking special tea because I have special dietary needs due to a rare medical complaint. I did not get to make the speech as noone gave a hoot what I was drinking and the ratio of staff to disgruntled travellers was about 1:300.

In Tescos I told the machine that I was using 3 of my own bags when it was actually only 2. It probably knew I was a wrong-un as it did "unexpected item in bagging area" 6 times and reported me to the supervisor for trying to buy a bottle of Riesling. (My 54 year old sister who is a real villain was recently reported for trying to buy a courgette.)

I told a woman that I couldn't help with the Community Seed Swap because I was cooking my mother Sunday lunch, but my partner is really cooking it as I wouldn't go within a mile of a raw loin of pork.

I wrote in an email to the organiser that I was looking forward to visiting her project which involves 4 changes and 4 types of public transport across London on a Saturday. I will probably like it when I am there though.

I am lying about the date when I wrote this as I started it sometime in late Feb but then got distracted, tucked it in draft, and have only just written the last two paras. My contemporary followers (numbers 1-5) will know the date is untrue but I am deceiving future generations. I have programmed this paragraph to self-destruct in one week's time.

Big Soc Dilemmas Part 2: Never too late?

My friend Paula and I have been doing the local Friends of the Earth newsletter this week, including one of our periodic attempts to update the mailing list. Despite never having met many of the people on the list, who are sometimes only linked to us by something very casual such as having once clicked on a cyberbutton, we are very reluctant to give up on any of them. There's always the chance that this issue will prompt them into popping into a meeting one first Tuesday of the month, and that they will turn out to be a green-caped superhero who will rescue us from niggling in our obscure suburban backwater and drag us onto the homepage of the Huffington Post.

Sometimes we suggest to Joanna, the membership secretary, that we should ask them all to a party and just see what happens. But Joanna has been in the group a lot longer than us and she shakes her head wisely as we call out the names. "Housebound", "Bonkers" and even "very likely to be deceased despite still paying subs by standing order" are common Joanna explanations for their non-availability for green duties. Other times we have a fleeting memory of them: "That was the French woman who left her gloves behind....the angry angler ...the woman that was obsessed with curing world hunger through growing a particular type of bean". Often, in my case, I have just grown attached to their name and can't bear the thought that I will never again run my eye down a list and see "Eloise Rear, Constancia Knatchbull, Arachne von Hoffschlot, Tristan Glitch".

Thus, though we fear in our heart of hearts that they will never come to join our little corner of the Big Soc., we very rarely strike them out. After all, perhaps they are Bigger than us and are busy at the UN or building a windfarm in the North Sea.

And occasionally miracles happen: Susan and Janine both came to join our soriety (for we are rather a female cell) following very many years as silent recipients. Susan proofreads our outpourings with ferocity as befits a retired English teacher: perhaps she couldn't stand their misplaced capital letters and acronyms any longer. Janine was no sooner out of her important job in the City than we had her in the nylon cow suit shaking hands with the Mayor to advertise the iniquities of genetically modified soya.

So I conclude that it's never too late to become a Big Soc-er. Sometimes just the fleeting memory or idea or name of yourself will be busy inspiring someone like me somewhere, but it's much better to come out and moo.

Jam and Jamiroquai

Last night my friend J announced that she is going to start up a branch (chapter?) of the Women's Institute and that we would all be receiving an invitation to join. She thinks a W.I. in our suburb would be fairly cool, though not quite up to the standard of urban W.I.'s such as "The Shoreditch Sisters" (average age 30) or "The Borough Belles". We are to meet upstairs in a pub, enjoy talks, bop about a bit, drink and go on outings.

J emphasised many times that it would be non-religious and "inclusive". She made a circular motion with both hands (or a semi-circular motion with each hand) everytime she said "inclusive". In our suburb "inclusive" means that women who don't have children will be invited, and, to show that she means this, J has already signed up a single lady called C who used to have a posh shoe shop on the High Street until she was forced online by a rent rise.

Two head honchos from the W.I. Middlesex Federation are coming on an inspection visit on Friday and will be taken to the pub. The Middlesex Federation are all, apparently, pretty advanced in years, which is not surprising as Middlesex was wiped from the map in 1974 and hadn't been awfully rural for quite a few decades before that. I imagine a plucky rump group have clung on somewhere around Pinner waiting for Heathrow to be laid down to arable again. The call from J must have been unexpected.

H, who works for a trade union, looked quite appalled throughout the discussion. She eventually asked J why she didn't just start a book club if she wanted to drink and chat. But J is pursuing her genetic destiny: her mother is President of the local W.I. in West Yorkshire and her grandmother also did the gig back in the 60s. J is nearly 40 and obviously feels she can't wait much longer to have a W.I.

As it happens I am not as not up on W.I. matters as I ought to be. My mother-in-law is a member in Wales and I have read her mags in the toilet. So I was able to put forward the suggestion that we would soon be stripping off and smearing ourselves in ketchup and lying down in the High Street to protest about domestic violence. J gave me a beady look. She does not expect me to be on the committee but I will be required to talk to my friend who runs the Farmers' Market and fix her up with a good pitch for when the jamming season commences.

Big Soc. Dilemmas Part 1: not standing up to be counted

Liverpool has chucked in the towel on being a Big Society pilot area: it is losing so much government money that it has had to slash its support to voluntary organisations, which it recognises is a terrible way to roll out a shiny new relationship. As a student of Big Soc. I have been delving into the renewed wave of media coverage that has appeared as a consequence and feel that it's time to grapple with some of the interesting questions that are being thrown up.

One comment on Nick Robinson's BBC website blog reveals a dilemma that many people must be struggling with: is there a way of opting out of being "in" if you don't agree that "we're all in this together"? Ie. is it still possible to engage in public-spirited activity without fear that you will be branded?

Some people are cleary just a bit confused about what counts as Big Soc. activity so are worried that they might be "in". Are you "in" if you are helping out with school quiz night again this year? Or if you buy some coffee from Oxfam? In the first case you may be at risk of appearing in official statistics once the full Big Soc. apparatus is up and running and attempting to proclaim success. In fact the Charity Commission already asks charities how many volunteers have been involved in their activities each year so if your PTA is a charity it will be very easy to count you although you will be just an anonymous digit. In the second case you are probably safe as the coffee is foreign.

But some people are much more exposed. My friend Seb has gone very Big indeed although I'm pretty sure he doesn't want to be counted: he has just resigned from being a Lib Dem local council candidate in a very public way because the Government wants to build a high speed train line through his village. Despite being landed with the rather unsexy title "Ex Great Missenden politician Seb Berry" in the Bucks Free Press, he is becoming a local Big Soc.- style icon (NB. different from a"style icon"). He has been made chair of the "250-strong Village Association" and is proposing to save the Great Missenden library by turning it into a Roald Dahl visitor attraction (it is the model for the libary where Matilda used to read Dickens and Hemingway whilst her mum was at bingo). I suggest he is in severe danger of being asked to be an official casestudy.

Then there's the old "beware of Greeks bearing gifts" syndrome. Many years ago I hung out with a group that was semi-squatting in a disused bus depot at Kings Cross that had been taken over for slightly nebulous artistic and environmental purposes. The woman who had organised the takeover of the building was a fearsome tactician. Her modus operandi was constantly to nominate anyone and everyone who was trying to build St Pancras International station (and thus evict her) for awards honouring their good work in supporting the local community. She knew they wouldn't be able to resist the opportunity of another photo with a gang of kids in the local paper. Many times they were thus embarrassed into putting off the eviction for another few months: I think they gave up in the end and waited till she moved to Devon. With the Big Society Awards launched just before Christmas 7 or 8 organisations appear to be at risk quarterly. If Big Soc. goes pear-shaped those awards may become millstones that ruin their reputation.

So I am quietly creeping next door to feed my neighbour's cats, although I think the fact that she reciprocally feeds the hamster is enough to ensure that it doesn't count.

How only the Con-Dems are making me feel young again

Last night I sat next to a teenage girl on the bus. She was wearing a mini skirt with bare legs and talking to her friends on the phone about "Oceans"- the club she was on the way to. I was wearing an anorak and texting my friends - one about her chemotherapy and the other about how she is coping since she threw her partner out for sleeping with another woman.

Usually my reaction to teenage girls with bare legs in January who are on their way to a club on a Wednesday night, is to be jolly glad that I am snuggly dressed and heading home for a camomile tea (and to wonder if I should send my daughter to boarding school in Tehran before she works out where "Oceans" is). Yesterday I just envied this girl and wanted to turn the clock back as all the stuff that goes on when you are middle-aged is getting to me at the moment - from getting a builder out to look at my mum's crumbling roof to seeing how flabby I look in the mirror during the yoga class.

I have thought hard and the only exciting thing that has happened this week is that I looked after a West Highland Terrier for the day for a friend of a friend who apparently used to be on Blue Peter. Last time I watched Blue Peter Lesley Judd was wearing a smock and John Noakes and Shep were taking a Christmas food parcel to a lighthouse keeper so I can't say I recognised him (and he didn't give me a Blue Peter badge for washing muddy paws). I enjoyed the walk anyway but it's hardly going to qualify me for getting my phone tapped by News of the World.

The only thing making me feel young at present is the behaviour of the Con-Dems. The sale of publicly owned woodlands and the closure of local CABs and day centres certainly gets my adrenalin flowing. My Big Soc. skills are being tested to the limit at present as I dispense advice on how voluntary organisations should tell their staff that temporary contracts are being ended early and demand to be consulted because the Council is proposing to sell their premises. I suppose it's a bit like going back to the early Eighties when I was against Maggie and "the cuts" - can I recapture any of the energy that also found me in discos most nights of the week? I feel a bit more cheerful when I remember how I was once interviewed by the Daily Mail whilst wearing fluorescent pink trousers during a student occupation of Sussex University. I didn't have a phone at that time of course...

Chinese Tiger Mums

I have been enjoying the discussion of the parenting style of Amy Chua, Yale Professor and author of "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother" published today - see the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059713528698754.html

There's been a lot of focus on the fact that Ms Chua called her daughter "garbage" (in the Hokkien dialect), but in the context of a massive row because the daughter had been very rude perhaps that wasn't quite as undermining of self-esteem as it would appear to be. The biggest turn-off for me is the way that Ms Chua seems to feel that it was OK for her to decide for her daughters in advance that they would concentrate only on certain narrow aspects of education to the total exclusion of the whole package of things children need to learn as part of growing up. Her daughters were allowed to spend time only on academic work and music (but only the piano and violin were allowed) to the exclusion of sport, drama and any socialising with friends. So they were never given the option of excelling as actors or hockey players, and it is not clear what the long term effect on their ability to relate to other humans has been.

My parenting style is uber-slack compared to Ms Chua. I am so relieved if homework is done without endless nagging that I make no attempt to doublecheck it for A-plusness before it goes in the rucksack. Indeed, when I tried to help with maths at the beginning of Year 5, I completely misunderstood the whole point of the exercise and every answer was wrong. Luckily there was no grading just the slightly chilling comment "Your work in class has been very good so far (ie. when you are away from the interference of your dismal sloth-like mother) and you have obviously tried hard with this really quite complicated homework" (thanks for the careful attempt not to undermine self-esteem Mrs F!).

However, as the mother of an only child I have always been far more anxious about whether she is able to form friendships and get on with other people than almost anything else. My experience of the world of work and life has been that only people who get on with other people and are able to form good relationships with them are ultimately successful at anything. If you can't cope with people you can only excel in the sort of jobs that you can do in isolation, usually in front of a computer, and sooner or later management will axe you anyway because they don't know you or don't like you. At the age of 10 friendships are always shifting and some children are already exhibiting adolescent tendencies to attack and exclude others. If children don't learn to cope now through spending unsupervised time with their peers how will they deal with it when they are grown-up?

But if I'm honest I do have some Tiger tendencies so here is a list of three Tiger-Mum things I have done since 1st January:

1. I have asked whether there are any plans to start trumpet lessons at my daughter's school as she has expressed slight interest in learning it and I haven't yet got round to forcing her to learn the piano or violin;

2. I have made her carry on doing ballet for another term because she hasn't shown any interest in any other form of physical activity;

3. I sneakily read the education bit of my mum's Sunday Telegraph Weekend supplement to see what private school parents are up to, and cut out a list of books recommended for a bright 12-year-old, even though my daughter is only 10.

So when she writes and choreographs her own jazz ballet adaptation of Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials Trilogy" and has lots of pals I shall say "ya boo sucks to you Ms Chua"!

An ex-husband on the sofa

When a couple separates I mostly tend to think "Well, they weren't that well suited, maybe it's for the best - I still like them both, more likely to see her, but no problem having a cup of tea with him should it arise etc etc." But on just the odd occasion I think "This is completely bloody incredible, I do not think I will ever speak to him again"(it's always a "him" isn't it?!).

The separation of my former Latin American neighbours fell immediately, and more conclusively than any previous situation I had ever known, into category 2. If I just mention that he left her two days after she discovered she was pregnant with twins, having been quite insitent that they should have more children, although she suffered from very bad post-natal depression after the first one, you will probably be able to see why Latin American ex-husband shot to the top of the "do not darken my door" category, overtaking oil-trader husband who shut down the joint bank account leaving his wife having to borrow money to buy a pint of milk.

Well, time moves on and, after the return to Bogota, the birth of the twins, the divorce, a few more years and mucho agua appearing to have flowed under various Colombian bridges, it seemed that relations had become considerably more cordial between ex-husband and my amiga. Finally it was time to elevate oil-trader ex-husband back up to the top slot (for a particularly swanky incident involving an ill-timed holiday to Mauritius) and to let bygones be bygones (a.k.a. lo pasado, pasado esta).

So when I got an email in early December asking if ex-husband could sleep on our sofa for a few nights whilst dealing with some business in the UK I thought "Well it will be a bit of a squash what with the Norway Spruce, but the money he saves staying here will add to the maintenance he can pay so why not?" He arrived, he was as charming as ever, I discussed his financial problems and the state of the Colombian economy with him for hours, we all got on fine. A few friends looked at him hard in the High Street and said things like "Haven't you got twins now?" but it seemed as though we were going to get through the four days in a smooth and civilised fashion.

Then the snow came, Heathrow shut and a short visit has become a long visit. Ex-husband has sunk into a depression and lies on the sofa under a blanket listening to internet news from Bogota and drawing bubble diagrams. I have sunk into a cold with washing-machine head and lie on my bed in a darkened room brooding about the fact that I can't lie on the sofa looking at the lights on the Norway Spruce. This period has gone on for days. Everytime ex-husband and I drag one another out to a coffee shop on the high street we bump into my daughter's class teacher who seems to have nothing to do but hang out with her girlfriends now term is over. I feel too weak to explain that ex-husband is not, in fact, my daughter's father, although he came to the carol service last week and I spend a lot of time in Starbucks with him.

But at last the blessed Richard Branson has come up with a flight back over the Atlantic for ex-husband - on Xmas morning and from Gatwick to which there is absolutely no form of public transport whatsoever. My daughter has been persuaded that the presence of a large Latin American on the sofa will not deter Santa from delivering down the chimney and my partner has been persuaded to rise at 6am for a lovely jaunt down to Sussex. My cold is lifting and I feel Xmas cheer finally beginning to swell within me! Feliz Navidad!

Sarah Palin read my blog

I am still not doing too well when it comes to the technical aspects of having a blog. I have moved on slightly from the early days when I had no idea where to find it again each time I wanted to hold forth and had to google, but, since being accepted into the British Mummy Blogging Association a couple of weeks ago I have realised that I have a long way to go. Quite apart from Cath K backdrops, beautiful photos of hoar frost overlaid with whispy writing and offers of free make-up, other bloggers have all sorts of extras, such as statistics showing that people have actually visited their blog, usually many times from the UK and a few times from Benin and North Korea.

After delving into the tabs at the top I finally found a page that showed a couple of URLs and a map of the world with the USA and Alaska shaded in. This seemed to indicate that, possibly, someone had looked at Big Soc. Banshee (twice). For one brief moment of insanity I thought "One of each? But I don't know anyone in Alaska except....and I imagined Sarah Palin and her daughter Bristol, during a break from moose shooting, gathered round the laptop in matching hockey jerseys..." But quickly I realised that this was not likely because Sarah Palin is a very busy mom and political leader with no interest in what sort of Christmas Tree I will be buying.

Probably the tab was referring to the servers on which Big Soc. Banshee is hosted. Let me hope fervently that they have no connection with Wikileaks because I have so far failed to work out how to back up my ramblings even by printing them out. Were it all to go down now Big Soc. Banshee would sink without trace almost unread. I have not yet got to the stage of sending out the jolly Xmas email mentioning O-so-casually to a few people that I never see that they can read my thoughts, now and then, on Blogger.

But it is only "almost unread", because one amazing thing has just happened. I have acquired a follower! I find the whole idea of "followers" delightfully evocative of knights on horseback and pageantry and other Philippa Gregory-like images. My follower is "Very Bored in Catalunya" - but even a bored follower is massive when you have previously been unfollowed. I'm not sure of the etiquette about followers, so I will just say "I salute you Bored One and will follow you also - even unto the end of the blogosphere"!

Becoming precious about the Christmas tree

In my twenties I used to put a string of Woolworths' fairy lights round my Swiss Cheese plant. And that was it - because mostly I was out.

Since then I have become more and more precious about the Christmas tree. It started with a build-up of horror at other people's tree tastes, including flashing lights, pink and purple decorations, and colour-themed or fibre-optic trees.

It has now developed into an extreme dislike of Nordman Firs which I spend this time of year inviting others to share. This dislike is:
1. aesthetic - their needles are not the right shade of green;
2. traditionalist - they are the johnny-come-latelies of the Xmas tree world;
3. social - the fact that they are sold as "non-drop" encourages namby-pambiness: getting pine needles in your socks is part of the Xmas experience;
4. sceptical - because it didn't seem as if the "non-drop" part was true when I did buy one in about 2004 so they could still be a danger to pets' paws;
5. environmental/political - because even if they are not imported from Denmark they are mostly grown from seeds gathered by underpaid women in Georgia;
6. practical - they are too wide so if I buy one that is the right height we are unable to get into our living room without climbing over the sofa.

Accordingly I now spurn the school Christmas tree sale, which is a non-drop-opoly, and seek out a Norway Spruce usually from a makeshift Xmas "Wonderland" further out of London where they only accept cash (the British Christmas Tree Growers Association ensures that it is locally grown - www.btcga.co.uk).

Of course the sensible and environmentally-friendly thing to do would be to ditch the tree altogether. Over the last few years I have developed a modern Xmas tree known as "the Christmas Twigs" (silver birch branches with tasteful white lights and silver balls) which gets in the way in the kitchen.

But if we went tree-free where would we hang our massive collection of red, green and gold fairtrade baubles not to mention the glittery sellotape inner ring with added sequins that my daughter made at nursery? I am unable to contemplate that sacrifice yet!

Thoughts about sports

Save school sport! I am very surprised to find myself writing these words as I wasn't exactly keen on sport when I was at school. Needless to say, with all the publicity about modern children becoming obese and getting rickets because they never go outside, I have become keen in a secondhand sort of way. This is probably a bit hypocritical - but then some aspects of parenting are hypocritical I find (discuss?).

Today my daughter was ordered onto the icy playing fields for compulsory participation in the Year 5 football tournament. Her five-a-side mixed team was down to four due to illness: one medium-tough girl in goal, herself and another weedy girl huddled together trying to keep out of trouble, and one very small boy who tries hard but doesn't quite cut the mustard. Their team (Yellow 3) played five minutes each way against a team containing Superboy. Superboy's Dad astroturfed the garden when he was three and he now plays for Fulham under-10s. My daughter thinks Yellow 3 lost by about 6-0 but says she wasn't really watching.

Also today David Cameron has been hanging out with Prince William and David Beckham trying to persuade FIFA to give the UK the World Cup in 2018, despite our nasty nose-poking journalists who keep fussing about bribery, not to mention our budget deficit. It doesn't seem to occur to them that trying to bag another top event when we've not even got the Olympics out of the way could look a bit greedy.

There is a link between these two paragraphs (unbelievably!). My daughter's chilly morning was organised by the local School Sports' Partnership which arranged for teenagers from the local comprehensive to run the tournament. It ensures that lots of different sports are available in schools, including ones like cheerleading and trampolining which are persuading teenage girls to stay active (whilst remaining firmly indoors with make-up on). It also organises sports' tournaments between schools ie. healthy competition which is surely the Tory party's sort of thing? And, of course, the UK got the Olympics because we took all those children to Singapore and promised that we were going to do our utmost to give everyone a chance to enjoy sport which is how the School Sports' Partnerships came to be set up.

But because School Sports' Partnerships are a Labour Government invention they are being scrapped and every school is being given the "freedom" to go back to spending hours ringing round other schools and saying "Send your first and second elevens over on Saturday afternoon for a match and we'll make everyone who isn't good at rugger watch". How very short-sighted!

There is, of course, a non-sporting reason to hang onto school sport too: our rich British sub-culture of school-sport funny stories. My daughter had me in stitches re-enacting the way in which Yellow 3 retreated as Superboy thundered down the pitch. Nothing remotely so much fun ever happened to me at my very dull junior school where we mainly threw bean bags into hoops. When Superboy attains Beckham-like status in time for the 2018 World Cup she will have a wonderful anecdote to dine out on or put in her very own blog!

Lighting up

Every year there is a lighting up ceremony in the suburb where I live to celebrate the beginning of Christmas. The local town hall was merged into a bigger suburb many years ago but the building is still there with a patch of green in front of it and a couple of London plane trees. They get adorned with bluish fairy lights, and the dentists, who bought the town hall when it was deeemed too old-fashioned for council offices a couple of years ago, kindly allow the lights to be plugged into their supply. Luckily the lights don't get switched off as soon as they stop drilling at night.

This year we had a proper local celebrity to switch on: Dame Jacqueline Wilson, prolific author of kids' misery lit., who lives in another suburb nearby. After some carols from the Rotarians, Dame Jacqueline told us that she likes coming to our suburb because it has really nice shops, and wished us the Merry Christmas that is denied to so many of the children in her books (she didn't actually say that.)

Then we all set off to do the rounds, which, in my case, means being dragged by my daughter into all the shops that I don't normally go in because they look embarrassingly empty and sell pointless things like tiaras and candles with bits of orange peel in them. There was one shop that had raced to open that day and didn't even have a name yet but it seemed to sell nothing but Italian biscuits. We also visited the ex-bathroom shop that now sells wood-burning stoves, probably mainly to people like me that have "Country Living" aspirations.

The good part about it all is bumping into friends all round the circuit and having a free drink with them. The estate agents and hairdressers are particularly generous with the mulled wine and mince pies. The new independent self-employed persons' network, which is full of parents from the school, were also dishing out "Celebrations" and hot toddy. I suppose there is a sense of community here which is a lot better than nothing so I should be grateful for that and not be (overly!) cynical about life in an "urban village".

Civil times

Another form of justifying not working to self is going on courses so today I went on a course called "Business planning for the voluntary sector", expecting to pick up some tips about setting out spreadsheets clearly and so on. But at least half the course was about the context we are in, sometimes called "the operating environment" ie. "What's going on and what will happen next?"

The first thing I learned is that "The Voluntary Sector" is now the last-but-one-name and that, if you failed to talk about "The Third Sector" during the last Government, you now have to bypass that name and talk about "Civil Society". Civil Society is not the same as the Big Society, because the Big Society is supposed to be everyone, not just those of us who are already volunteering who can be smug about having a special name because we are "in the vanguard" (as the Socialist Workers used to say).

People on Civil Society courses are very civil to one another, and drink a lot of tea with crooked little fingers, but they are not very civil about the current Government. Soon they may not even be civil to one another, because, as well as the competition for what's left of grant money, something called "the personalisation agenda" is introducing competition into the provision of services for those people who are still judged worthy of state help. Instead of being told to go to a particular day centre or to have meals on wheels, they will be given their own budget to spend on what they like. We've already seen headlines in the tabloids about the disabled man whose going to spend it on going to prostitutes, but until now it hadn't really sunk in that if they want to keep their organisations going the man from the disabled riding association will be going head to head with the lady from the music therapy trust in the battle for budgets. They were completely bemused.

Not all of this seems bad to me. I wish we'd been able to buy days with a chainsaw gang for my father-in-law instead of sending him to the dementia centre: he would have enjoyed it far more. This summer we went to a lovely children's farm in the Netherlands which was partly staffed by mentally handicapped people who spend their budgets there. In the environment sector we have already dipped our toes into the world of "meaningful daytime activities" by taking on people with mental health problems to help with outdoor conservation work. I don't think I'll be spending my budget at a day centre if I'm ever old and decrepit enought to get one: I'd much rather be on a horse or feeding the chickens.

But I wonder if this is all a big con. Civil Society may spend a lot of time drawing up its business plans with nice spreadsheets, and then find that hardly anyone who isn't ninety five and in a wheelchair with dementia actually still has a budget. At that point organisations will have to close down because their clients are not quite old, disabled or distressed enough. Then the level of incivility towards the Government will go through the roof.

The school reunion

Last weekend I went to a secondary school reunion. I went to a girls' school so it was sixty or so women drinking white wine in the staff dining room and doing a lot of screaming and admiring of how little we had all changed. There was a buffet with salad and some very chocolatey puddings and a lot of old photos on display.

A few things struck me. At the last reunion I went to (after 10 years) it was the actresses and those who had travelled that we admired: they tended to be the ones who had done arty subjects. Now it is the scientists that have come through. I am so proud to have been at school with women who 1. Arrange all the smear tests and mammograms for people in Nottinghamshire; 2. Run their own GP practices 3. Are Government Advisor on how to save what's left of marine life round Britain's coastlines.

The divorces. I know lots of people get divorced nowadays but at least half of those who had ever been married had also been divorced at least once. I suppose I used to think it was people who married very young who had to give it a second try, but these women married in their late 20s and early 30s. Does going to an all-girls school make you bad at choosing men!?

The genuine desire to keep in touch this time round. "Ten years is too long to wait" we all wailed as the school caretaker came to turn the lights out at 11.30pm. There has been much emailing and there will be a picnic next summer. Inevitably, there is now a Facebook group which is filling up with photos of women and their daughters - "Look at her Lolita-esque eye make-up: what shall I doooooo? She's not like we were!"