Motherload

Daily ritual — absolutely crucial if you want to do any kind of creative work. The other ingredient? Self-belief. Here's what I know: 1. There's no such thing as writer's block. 2. Getting up early is the best way to marshal your wakening brain with your deepest energy. 3. Good coffee. 4. No alcohol. 5. No internet (doh). 6. Knowing what task you need to start on. 7. Only attempting one task. 8. Continually feeding your memory of yourself as in love with art. Galleries, books, films. And make notes on what you see. 9. Walk everywhere. 10. Never react to other people's messy excess. 11. Talk about your work with others who actually feed rather than crushing you. But don't talk about how hard it is to write (nothing is more boring either to say or to hear), just about how to solve the technical problem you're grappling with. Writing is both solitary and collaborative — after all, you're doing it to be read, aren't you? 12. List...

Last Saturday I had the privilege of attending the Batmitzvah ceremony of one of my daughter's schoolfriends. The candidate was only just twelve, and the ceremony was held in an orthodox synagogue, very much by the book. I was expecting an impenetrable event, something completely foreign to my lapsed Protestant understanding. As I entered the Synagogue with my blonde hair and blue eyes, I felt like an intruder. Instead I was invited into and witnessed a true rite of passage. The young girl had prepared over many months for this event. For her Mitzvah, she had decided to paint a series of six canvases to represent the six days of Creation, and she spoke eloquently about how each canvas had come about. She had understood early on that, although she had wanted to create something out of nothing, in fact, as a created being herself, she was only capable of creating something out of something — she was not able to create raw materials for her art ex nihilo . Only an ultimate Creator...

Professor Jonathan Gershuny of the Centre for Time Use Research in Oxford was making depressing and familiar points on  Woman’s Hour this week  (‘ Chore Wars ’). W omen have been completely done over in the modern world, he said. Because women cannot expect marriage to last (statistically), they'd better keep earning, plus they can still expect to shoulder the majority of the unpaid work at home.   This isn't news to me, but it's depressing to hear a Professor say it. I found it a little simplistic: what about how women cop the unpaid work at   work   as well? All those emotional dynamics, the presenteeism, the bringing in of fattening cakes, and, frankly, the menial   paid   parts of jobs.  Be that as it may, Professor Gershuny's argument was that domestic labour has been progressively 'feminised', through labour-saving devices like boilers, dishwashers and hoovers. He argues that men used to lay the fires in the average home. Domestic jo...

Yesterday, Mumsnet asked me to write a guest post for them on their current Chores Survey. You can read the post here , and I've added it for convenience below. Enjoy! "On Monday I met a friend for lunch. I'd put ‘Luncheon with Janet’ in the calendar, because it made us both laugh to think of ourselves as Ladies who Lunch. As we were sitting chatting, my husband walked into the cafe, carrying a big bag of food shopping. He looked rather dashing, actually, all six foot three of him; he had on one of his dark work jackets, and those deep chocolate brown eyes were twinkling. He wanted to know whether I had the car with me, so he could put the shopping in the boot and walk home. As he left the cafe, we flirted with each other, and he pulled an imaginary forelock, Clifford to my Lady Chatterley. How are we to interpret this silly little anecdote? My heart burst with pride to see my husband in an unaccustomed context and to see him caring for the family, but the tra...

I was absolutely delighted to be asked to write a guest post for a blog I follow, on combining creativity and motherhood. The blog is called Studio Mothers : enjoy! The Sugar Log

As my son 'revised key words for year 4', it became clear that his list of spellings this week contained all the proof you need to refute the teaching of reading and spelling through phonics.  I present… five ways to pronounce '-ough' in English: English is not a phonetic language In the last couple of years in the UK, the methodology of phonics has, delightfully, been converted into a government-devised and compulsory ' phonics screening check ' at the end of year 1.  Kids who know how to read can fail this check , if they baulk at pronouncing made-up words using the rules of phonics.  They are then given remedial attention — to get better at phonics.  Which is then abandoned as children move through primary education… because it stops working once you are writing anything beyond 'cat'. For example, 'Kate'. Or 'Keith'. Or 'knight'. I know, I know, the 'phonics method' is really about helpin...

Thank goodness I saw Helen McCrory's sublime Medea courtesy of National Theatre Live  last week. Otherwise I might find myself becoming complacent about being happy in motherhood. Yup, I am that age. I cannot go out to the theatre any more, because of young children, recession (don't tell me it's over), and exorbitant ticket and babysitting fees. But I CAN go to the local cinema with a friend and some popcorn, and sit amongst a throng of grey-haired ladies and gentlemen, all pretending we are what we once were, and down on the South Bank. It is a strange experience to hear big-voiced theatrical projection and see facial expressions meant for the back of a proscenium theatre, brought to you in close up on a cinema screen. An old friend of mine was also in the production, and frankly, looked as if he was gurning. Others have assured me that from the stalls, he was excellent. So it is not a perfect transmission of the theatrical experience, but it would not have matte...