Motherload

Yesterday I swam amongst people — women — Who earn more than £500 an hour, whose word is law. I felt their equal (they did not think me theirs, but no matter). Once upon a time, I was not only their equal, I was more, Better qualified, quite literally entitled: When I changed my name, it was from Ms to Dr. My law was words. Today, I had to argue with the school receptionist To go and fetch my son's inhaler when he needed it, Because he could not breathe. I had to promise to bring it back. I had to apologise, because she had not had personal sight Of the inhaler when it was brought into the school. I had to apologise, because she was too busy, really, the school receptionist, To attend to my needs. And my son was upstairs and could not breathe. I am the same person. Am I the same person? I did not know what I had until I lost it, Because when I had it, It was buried under an avalanche of work, And I was alone, exhausted, goaded. I thought it would be bette...

I was beyond thrilled the other day, when a woman came up to me in the playground, and said, "Your blog about going away for a month to write inspired me! I decided to ask for something at work, and now it's going to happen". It transpired that she runs a dressmaking business, and an opportunity came up to run a dressmaking retreat in the south of France. Until now she would have longed wistfully to run it, then turned away to her domestic duties. This time she jumped at it. "What was I worrying about? It's just a week!" she said. "But somehow I felt that if I wasn't there to do every single ballet class and school run…". She didn't even finish her sentence. She just mimicked rolling her eyes and pursing her lips in disapproving judgement. I knew exactly what she meant – it's that continuous fear that we will be judged and found wanting by other women . That if we are not doing things 'perfectly', then we must be castigat...

I had a wonderful coffee this morning with a friend. She told me a great Motherload story, and I wanted to share it. Before Easter she wound up a teaching job, and then went straight into the Easter holidays. On the first day after the holidays, her three children went back to school, and she was free for the first time. She decided to go for a run. She thought, "I'll just take the dry cleaning with me, and I can do my warmup walk, then go on and do my run". It didn't work out that way. She did drop off the cleaning, then set off to run. But she didn't finish it. All the time, her mind was skittering from task to unfinished task. She didn't enjoy her run, and she felt dissatisfied at the end of it. She hadn't achieved it — completed it, finished it, won it, done it. She was laughing at herself over coffee, but at the same time, she was angry with herself. "I should have laid down firmer boundaries," she scolded herself. "When I was ...

I have been searching for a word that is analogous to 'anthropomorphism' but accounts for the attempt to describe humans in terms of machines or technology. Mechanomorphism and technomorphism seem to do the job. I also thought about the Cyborg. I think it is a fascinating development in humanism: for centuries, the unit of measurement was the human — feet and inches for example. We were anthropocentric, animating our universe through our self-understanding. At the end of the 18th century, with the rise of Romanticism, writers focused on the awe-inspiring spectacle of Nature, which put man in his proper place and proportion. With the Industrial Revolution, we saw language that pitted man against machine, and decried the mechanisation of our lives. With the technological revolution of the 21st century, we have become enamoured of our machines, as Narcissus was enamoured of his reflection — we see ourselves reflected back, not in mirrors but in screen-based devices, an...