Motherload

Last night I had an argument. Among many other things, my husband and I discussed what we each wanted in our lives that we don't already have. I said repeatedly that I had what I wanted, and that the happiness of the children came first. He accused me of being dishonest about my real needs and wants, which were to keep writing and publish. He said that he thought I would be a better mother if I were a happier mother, satisfying more of my career aims. I pointed out that I would be doing this, were it not necessary to bring in an income. This meant failing my ideals on two counts: not being there for the children, and not being there to write. Three counts: I really hate it when the house gets messy. I explained that this was a conflict which I had to live with, but maintained that I care more about the children's development and happiness than my own ambition. He said that if all there was to look forward to was living with one's conflicts, then what was the point of tryin...

Recently one of my contemporaries from Robinson College days became the Deputy Prime Minister. That's just about how I look at the world these days, seething with rancid bitterness as contemporaries sail past me, and I am left tied to the sink... by my own choices. Here's the thought process that regularly assails me: I was the one who wanted to write. I was the one who wanted to have babies. I was the one who wanted to get out of a monolithic gerontocracy, geared only to reproducing the Establishment, through the promotion of an orthodoxy (I was an academic). Well, I have made my bed, had my babies in it, and there I must lie, until the little one says roll over, and my determination to Have A Career somehow carries me through these years of early childhood and out into a glorious future of saying "just a minute, darling", and "mmm, yes, sorry, what was that? GCSEs?", as I pen brilliance, and tour the world basking in my own gl...

Isn't it amazing what you can get even out of trashy films? Exhausted last night after a full day spent doing nothing very much, I curled up with the television, and surfed till I hit paydirt: Ice Princess . Picture the scene (but don't ask why I secretly love teenage slush like this). A young girl wants to follow her dream and become an ice dancer. Her mother is a dowdy academic, and dreams of her daughter going to Harvard to study physics. Our heroine practises by herself, out on the frozen pond behind her house, and hopes and prays quietly. Another mother, blonde-haired ex-ice dancer, trains her own daughter to compete at the highest level. She is the original ice queen, glamorous and beautiful, ruthless in her competitiveness, and determined that her daughter will win... at any price. She carries a dark secret from her own competing days.... Of course she does. Eventually this opposition comes into conflict: the two mothers go head to head for their daughters' achieveme...