Tips from the blogosphere

I have been looking at other people's blogs hoping to pick up a few tips: how controversial?, how often?, how pretty? etc.

My partner's colleague has a blog which she describes as "mainly a record of cakes I have made". There are photos of her lemon cupcakes and chocolate brownies but not a lot of writing: she obviously keeps the recipes secret or in a cookbook. Blog as photo album. Must find a few photos to liven mine up.

My ex-boss has a blog called "The Triple Crunch Log". This sounds as though it is about cakes, particularly his Xmas baking, but is actually about climate change, running out of oil and the financial crisis. He started it during the credit crunch, which noone talks about much anymore. This ought to be a lesson to me as I have adopted a name that will probably date very quickly.

Ex-boss' blog contains some full and frank denunciations as ex-boss is permanently at war with the whole of the oil industry, and has an ongoing personal feuds with a well-known journalist and a successful green entrepreneur. I realise that I am a pretty wimpy blogger who must acquire a bit more backbone. I haven't told anyone about my blog yet and am planning to try to persuade people that I don't know to look at it first. Next stop friends in Australia. I will delay telling anyone local about it until my daughter is at secondary school and I only have to appear once a year for parents' evening in dark glasses(I don't think she will be in any sports' teams or plays).

Ex-boss is a bit erratic about filing copy on his blog, but a woman who applied for a job at one of the charities I am involved with this summer has a blog on which she has written 4 entries in 2 years. Perhaps she is trying to signal that she works so hard on her day job that she has no time for blogging? Or perhaps the rather depressing content (refugees, female circumcision etc.) means she needs a long time to recover between entries.

Next I looked up a proper mummy blog which a colleague's daughter-in-law writes. She is an ex-journalist and he billed her as "very big in the mummy blogging world". Her blog is a blow-by-blow account of life with baby twins, currently particularly focused on getting them onto solid food. "J ate two teaspoons of mashed carrot at 11.30am but P was not interested - perhaps his 2nd bottle was too late this morning". Apparently an avalanche of free buggies that fit through doorways and double potties have been product-placed with her. She has over a hundred "followers" who are presumably also at the plastic bibs and ice cube tray stage.

What would my equivalent be? "M left her pants tangled up in her school trousers on the bathroom floor again - perhaps she was thinking about her maths homework. I need to wash the bath mat." Are there pants-detangling devices that could be product-placed in our household?

So I'm still feeling my way but have reached a few conclusions. Mum-subjects will be discussed when of interest, otherwise mumminess will have to chunter along in the background and not be allowed to crowd out other interests. I'm ten years on from mashed vegetable cubes: it was lovely but now I will aim to write stuff that I might want to read again in ten years time. And illustrate it with a few photos of cake.

Big Nostalgia

As the autumn begins I am in my run up to the 10th anniversary of the only time I ever gave birth. South west London is so full of women with big bulges and/or prams that I don't normally notice them (although I do give up my seat on the bus!) but at the moment I find myself staring and marvelling at how fast the time has gone.

I can just remember what it was like not be able to do bend forward to do up my own shoes, and a day in which the most activity I could manage was walking down the road to the Post Office to buy a stamp. I stopped going to work in mid September in the midst of an office move because I couldn't lift anything or find anything. However I was still struggling to finish a lengthy guide to the legal aspects of campaigning against incinerators for an organisation that had already paid me to write it several months earlier: I'm glad I did actually get it done or it would have been another year (and maybe a few more incinerators!). My dad's friend Graham came to install a new bathroom and I went to visit my sister in Hastings on the train, which was unbelievably bumpy. She bravely drove me home although the fuel protests had erupted and she had no idea if the men in deckchairs outside the BP depots would let the petrol out for her return journey.

I was determined that the baby wouldn't arrive early. My partner was working up in Wakefield and not due to finish until the day I was due to give birth. Although dates mean nothing at that stage, I took great comfort in the fact that first babies are always late, and I clung to the belief that if the women from my ante-natal class who were due before me had not yet produced then I was safe. My friend over the road was due on the same day and it was her second so I convinced myself she would be going first.

Luckily my daughter hung on for an extra three days and, after a long day that began at 4am, was finally born at 10pm. Meanwhile my friend over the road popped into the hospital at 3pm, gave birth in the next room half an hour later and went home again at 7.30pm. I think I would have found that a bit too quick and scary!

Back to school

Back we go, no longer keen enough to have an early night, clean the shoes or even empty last year's shavings out of the pencil case. But keen to see friends again following a two week holiday in a damp part of the Netherlands with only parents.

The new class teacher is not really new as she is entering her third successive cycle with the group of 90 now known as Year 5. There is a new girl to replace the one who went to Australia and didn't cry: she has already lived in Australia, Germany, Hong Kong and Sweden. At 9 and a quarter, this is her fifth school.

The new Chair of the Parents' Association is also Australian, as was the one before last. (NB. Perhaps the Tories need to raise their quota on Antipodeans to help get Big Soc. off the ground?) Interestingly this Chair is a man. He works full time so will not be able to hang around the playground taking directions from the headmaster, placating the caretaker, manhandling the tea urn and repacking the Parents' Association shed when an avalanche of Costco crisps slides out into the mud. He got the job because nobody else could be persuaded to do it having seen how much of all of the above was involved: he wasn't there to watch it happening twice a day. He was told it was all about chairing a meeting once a month and delegating. I know, because I was called in to advise last term when a no-Chair constitutional crisis unfolded. My contribution was to suggest that it was probably better to ignore the constitution. (It said noone else could be elected until there was a Chair, meaning no cheques could be signed so no tea bags purchased for after school football tea trolley on Thursdays etc.)

My own school duties include looking after the Nature Area, a quiet half acre woodland oasis tucked away in one corner of the site which has somehow avoided being sold off for development. Whilst I was on holiday last week a huge chestnut tree crashed into it from an adjoining block of flats and a tree surgeon is needed to remove it.

I have also succumbed to being class rep this year as part of a "team ministry" with two others. It was pointed out that we were the only vaguely sociable mums with email not to have done it so far. Our class has approximately 25% "non combatant" parents who have never helped at a stall or come to a social event. If the little society that is their own child's primary school doesn't interest them I wonder what the chances of them being interested in the big one that is coming are?!

Good to Great?

I have been reading the Book "Good to Great" by Jim Collins: it has been highly recommended by diverse friends. Once I had got over the fact that one of Jim's top eleven successful companies was Fannie Mae, the sub-prime mortgage corporation that helped bring about the whole global recession (he wrote the book 10 years ago), and another was tobacco empire Philip Morris, I began to enjoy his analysis.

Apparently there are a number of factors which an organisation has to have in place to move from doing OK to being really successful(all this is measured in financial performance terms with no reference to how caring or green it is hence the inclusion of Philip Morris where the senior staff apparently see themselves as freedom fighters!).

Successful companies have leaders who are quietly inclusive but very focused with small egos; they get the wrong people "off the bus" and the right ones "on the bus" before they decide on their strategy; they spend a lot of time debating things; and most of all they develop a "hedgehog concept". This means that they decide what they are going to specialise in by creating a synthesis of what they are passionate about, what they think they can be the best in the world at and what they can earn money from; then they stick with it.

My colleague tried applying this to our local environmental network but the synthesis of being passionate about saving life on earth, being good at getting people to do things for free (possibly not the best in the world though compared to Jesus Christ, Lord Baden-Powell, headteachers of primary schools etc.) and, err, hoping some money would come along from the Council, indicates that more synthesising is needed.

But at least I now have the winning formula to apply to my own faltering work life (I think calling it a "career" at this stage would be over-egging the pudding). I can see how women end up running very specialist little businesses eg. supplying cupcakes to the Russian embassy. I will be synthesising saving the planet, gardening, eating, chatting, correcting other people's spelling and punctuation, drinking tea and trying to spot the money and will see if it gets me anywhere.

Holiday comings and goings

At this time of year friends who used to live here come back to visit with their kids, friends pack up to leave, either permanently or temporarily, and friends reappear in time for the new school year after an absence living elsewhere.

I find it interesting to see how their children deal with the upheaval. I remember a moment of terror during my own childhood when it was suggested that we might move to Dundee. I cowered at the thought of going to a new school where I would sound funny and it would be really cold. My own daughter has announced that she wants to live in our house "forever". She finds even the idea of moving down the road deeply traumatic despite her desire for a bigger garden filled with lavish guinea pig accommodation.

Some children just don't seem bothered. My daughter was quite indignant when one of her classmates left to move to Australia last month because the girl failed to cry, unlike all those she was leaving behind, including most of their mothers. The fact that the departed one has an Australian mother and granny plus cousins and aunts, has often been there on holiday, will be living near the beach in a bigger house, presumably with masses of room for guinea pigs in the garden (or the equivalent marsupial), so presumably will feel very at home very soon, made no difference to my daughter's view of the situation.

The young visitors who seem to get the most out of the toing and froing are those who go for two to three years and come back at least once a year to visit. Their visits are a social whirl of picnics and sleepovers, and often they go into school for a day or two to rejoin their former class. They also keep in touch via their mums' Facebook efforts. I've seen several returnees slip back into the swing of things so effortlessly that it's made me wish we'd bunked off somewhere warmer for a couple of years.

The unknown timescale and destination are unsettling. One family left quite suddenly last Autumn. Their first destination was the East Coast, but it was likely to be the West Coast after the first year, or possibly they might come back again, or maybe they would go somewhere else (the husband is a change management consultant!) My friend reported that her eight year old daughter was at first very homesick for England, and then entered a state of existential crisis about where "home" was which she is only gradually emerging from now it has been decided that they are not moving on again but are staying in the same place on the East Coast.

Another friend took her children to live in Cambridge five years ago when they were eight and four. They often asked to go home (meaning the house they had sold here) for the first few months but gradually adjusted. On occasional return visits they claimed not to remember anything or anyone very much. Now they have unexpectedly come back to live here aged thirteen and nine and it feels like starting again as they haven't kept in touch with many people. (Of course you always bump into people who say "Haven't seen you for a while, what have you been up to?")

So the key to moving with children seems to be either to convince them that they are going on a series of giant holidays punctuated by yearly deja-vue trips back to school and pals, and will be returning, or to convince them that they have never been at home where you are but are now going home. Sorted!

Dripware and Dementia

Have spent the last few days in Wales helping to sort out my father-in-law's entry into residential care. He suffers from Parkinson's disease and dementia and is not easy to care for so large numbers of social workers and medical people have been involved in supporting my mother-in-law over the years.

It has felt like there has been a certain amount of resistance to taking him into full time care as he is only in his sixties and likely to be there for many years which has big cost implications at a time when the local authority and NHS are facing massive cuts. He needs medical care and close supervision and has proved difficult to manage in some of the local residential homes which he has sampled during respite breaks. I'm afraid most homes are more geared up for pleasant older ladies who enjoy singing than former engineers who are too shaky to feed themselves one day but capable of dismantling fire extinguishers and walking out and hopping on the bus because they are bored the next day!

So, having elected to accompany my mother-in-law to the care meeting, (the other option was staying at home to put flat pack furniture together), I found myself at the local hospital in conference with five psychiatric social workers and nurses. He has been attending the day centre there for several years and they have done a wonderful job of keeping him reasonably happy, partly by convincing him that he is working there as the gardener. The centre attempts to raise some money from selling items made by the attendees and I was particularly drawn to some teapots decorated with multi-coloured drips of paint. But I don't think dripware teapots are going to go very far towards funding these facilities which are sanity-saving for carers like my mother-in-law. They can only use unqualified volunteers for very limited tasks like making the tea so the Big Society can't help much.

Luckily everyone at the conference agreed that the moment for residential care had arrived. We managed to wade through the forms and find the right bank statements and letters from the benefits agency in time for him to take up a place which had come up at a home ten minutes down the road where he will hopefully be happy. However, even understanding the financial position has been difficult and led to us needing help from the Parkinson's Society who is having to negotiate with social services about how much of a financial contribution mother-in-law will have to make. I can see that volunteers who understand benefits, pensions and the difference between NHS and local authority funding are badly needed.

Meanwhile my daughter spent a dull couple of days helping with the flatpack bedroom suite and deciding which clothes her granny can make for the Build-a-Bear teddies now she has more time on her hands.....

The Big Green Soc.?

At a conference for charities and social enterprises last week the keynote speaker said in an ominous voice "I advise you to consider the Big Society as what you have been waiting for".

In the spirit of morphing seamlessly into whatever shape is needed to get money, we have been musing on this at meetings of the local environmental network. We think we have already been pretty successful at what professionals call "mobilising social capital" and what most of us call "getting people to do things for free" which seems to be the Big Soc.'s big idea. Now we are wondering whether we should stop talking about conservation and carbon reduction and start talking about participating in the "Big Green Society". I think this sounds more like a student prank in which people chuck green goo over one another than anything else. Could it be just what we need to get lots of unemployed recent students on board? I am already visualising a delightful media stunt and I'm sure it will be easy to round up a lot of children in old clothes given the time of year.