Motherload

I have been trying to get into Crow Pose without success for at least a decade, probably longer.  I’ve also been trying to recover from being bullied out of my academic career, by a vicious female head of department, for the simple misdemeanour of having a baby, even longer. Since 2004, as it happens.  Yes, I’m ashamed, both by the ousting, and by how long it takes to recover from bullying. Move on!  I hear you cry. Let go of the past!   She can’t hurt you now! What are you waiting for? Would that it ’twere so simple, dear reader.  ‘Recovering from being bullied’ doesn’t mean lying in a darkened room for fourteen years, fanning yourself. No, there’s been a living to earn, children to raise, a husband to support, sometimes financially, and a few other choice life events I won’t bore you with here. So ‘getting on with it’ hasn’t been my problem. Recovery , on the other hand, healing… well, that’s a very different murder of crows.  All through that time, I hav...

This weekend, our children ran the house. Obviously, they do anyway, in a thinly-veiled exemplar of the master-slave dialectic. I went to see Frankenstein this weekend, hence the allusion to Hegel. But that aside, we thought, after a particularly fraught weekend, in which we were hugely embarrassed by their riotous behaviour, that they could have a taste of what it's like to be in charge. So we asked them if they would like to make the rules this weekend. Would they? They talked of nothing else all week in the lead-up. Apart from how bad the food was in our establishment, and why did they have to get up in the morning. V-e-r-y interesting. Saturday 1. Daughter played on computer all morning. 2. Son played with mother and father all morning. 3. Lunchtime saw Mummy and Daddy demanding to be fed, and daughter in floods of tears because the breakfast things needed clearing away before she could lay the table. 4. Afternoon saw much fighting, and then a hasty trip to the shops armed wit...