Working mothers – your “heroes” aren’t helping us

It started off as an innocuous link on Facebook to a column by The Guardian’s Zoe Williams, writing in praise of part-time working women.

“Women who work part-time hours and get paid for part-time hours, do full-time jobs,” stated Williams. “They constantly rush, they never chat, they finish things at home, they simply do the whole lot faster.”

Great words. But it was this rest of that paragraph which got my back up: “I know, I know; it’s not evidence-based. It doesn’t even have the solidity of impartial observation – I’ve probably got an availability bias, where I think of working mothers as working harder than everybody else, and my mind filters out the ones who are just loafing about on Facebook, putting off leaving work until they’re sure they won’t get roped into a child’s bedtime.”

Ahh, so we’re not talking about working women. We’re only talking about working mothers.

A day in the wardrobe

By Jasmine

Day Look
I suppose my day look can be described as builder meets Simulacra punk meets feministy righteousness. Purchasing my buttercup yellow boots from the Shoe Embassy in London’s Camden earlier in the week, I decided that although boots are not commonly associated with sunny weather, anything is made possible with a bit of yellow on your feet. In an attempt to do these new wardrobe recruits justice, I have teamed up my Cheap Monday stonewash jeans with my No More Page 3 T-shirt. The top now has a bit of a distressed look thanks to a mean battle with my washing machine in back when I lived in Madrid, but I think that reasserts with feeling that the idea of breasts featuring in a national newspaper is as archaic as institutional sexism comes.

In praise of the pedicure

By Emma F

I’m not a fan of feet. Sure, they do the job of helping me stand, walk and show off my not-insubstantial collection of shoes, but generally I think they are a bit ugly. Thanks to years of ill-fitting footwear and now my running habit, my tootsies are looking a bit knackered. Roughly rubbing in moisturiser every so often and haphazardly daubing my toes with polish really isn’t cutting the mustard so, thanks to a lovely gift voucher from my friends, I nipped off to the salon for a pedicure. And boy, had I forgotten how good they are.

My missing mummy gene

By Cath R

I am used to being the odd one out: first of my friends to leave school, get a job, leave home, get married, then divorced. At the age of 31, I am in the minority once again. I am the childless one. No fewer than 13 of my friends will give birth in 2013, some to their second or third child. I fall in love with their babies. I buy gifts, change nappies, listen to all the stories of sleepless nights and cracked nipples and I give the well-rehearsed smile when it’s suggested that :“You’ll be next”. But I won’t be. Having a child was never part of the plan.

So, I tried Bikram…

By Emma F

I’m not really one for exercise classes. I don’t much like all the lycra, the matey-ness of classmates, the over-enthusiastic instructors, the full-length mirrors, my appalling lack of co-ordination – so for some unknown reason, I decided to sign up for Bikram Yoga. I should at this point reiterate my lack of co-ordination and mention it is combined with an absence of both flexibility and balancing skills.

Wikipedia told me this about Bikram: “Classes run for 90 minutes and consist of the same series of 26 postures and two breathing exercises. Bikram Yoga is ideally practised in a room heated to 105F (≈ 40.6C) with a humidity of 40 per cent” [1]. Sounds fine, I thought, I’ll sign up for the introductory 30 days, unlimited classes package.

Review: The World’s End (15)

Directed by Edgar Wright. Starring Simon Pegg, Martin Freeman, Nick Frost and Rosamund Pike.

So first off a disclaimer: I am a massive fan of the Pegg/Wright partnership. I can probably act out every scene from Spaced and I loved the first two parts of the Cornetto Trilogy so while this had a lot to live up to, I was also in the mind set to love it before I entered the cinema. Oh, and love it I did.

Gary King (Pegg) is what we’re all afraid of becoming: well, what I’m afraid of becoming as I enter my 30s questioning if I should still dress like this, never letting go of the glory days of his youth. He’s desperate to relive one amazing night with his four school friends even if they would rather be at home with their families (or a 26-year-old personal trainer) rather than sinking 12 pints in one night on the Golden Mile. So the five Musketeers (four of them reluctantly) head back to Newton Haven one last time to complete the pub crawl they failed to finish all those years ago. But something isn’t right and things quickly descend into a nightmare, a nightmare with Gary King. Sometimes you hate him, but mostly you want him to make it to The World’s End no matter what it takes, with Frost, as ever, by his side. But there’s history to work out before they get there.

Like all Pegg/Frost films it’s a film about friendship, albeit set against a potential apocalypse. The humour is warm, despite some darker moments and a lot of blue robot blood (I can’t be the only one who spent the whole film waiting for someone to say: “You’ve got blue on you”). You don’t need to have seen the other two films to enjoy this one, it isn’t full of in-jokes or references and the story is in no way related to the other films in the trilogy (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz). So see this – it might even be the best of the three.

How Being an Expat is Making Me Less British

By Joanna W

Firstly, before the Queen revokes my passport, I should probably state for the record that I’m still pretty pleased to be British. While I am naturally suspicious of over-the-top patriotism, I’m happy to admit my great affection for the country I call home. What’s not to love about a place where a cup of tea is considered a panacea for all ills? A place which birthed the NHS, David Attenborough, working men’s clubs and the Beatles? Since living overseas – I’m in Cambodia – I’ve yearned for the rolling Dales of my adopted county more than I ever did when I lived in Leeds. I wax lyrical about London and miss the dramatic coastlines, corner shops, and terraced housing.

Then I saw this list of 30 Very British Problems. And boy, are we a nervous, worrisome lot. I showed it my expat friends – the Australians, Americans, Swiss, Singaporeans, Canadians, and Cambodians who make up my social circle – and they all thought it was hilarious stereotyping until I pointed out that I identified with many on the things on this list on a fairly regular basis. They then all looked highly concerned and slightly pitiful.

Perhaps these aren’t British things and I’m just more prone to nervousness, social unease and bouts of shyness. Perhaps I spent too long with my grandma, who did indeed hold items she intended to buy up in the air, like she was triumphantly clutching an Oscar, lest the shop assistants accused her of thievery. Maybe I’m just a very good Brit.

In any case, living and working among forthright Australians, make-yourself-at-home Cambodians, laidback Europeans and socially adept Americans has taught me to be less fretful and to stop sweating the small stuff. On a practical level, this means I save approximately 34 minutes of worrying every day. I can immediately answer emails without trying to decode the underlying tone of their greetings. Now when hosts offer me a drink or something to eat, I immediately accept rather than wait to be asked again. As a result, I’m considerably less dehydrated and hungry than before, I’m slowly getting better at making small talk with people sat next to me on the bus and I try not to die a little inside after every less-than-perfect social encounter. I’ve also got better at telling people when they are pissing me off, even when I’m sober.

Yet on the flip side, living abroad has made me appreciate a lot of my British qualities, too. I confound my close American friend by not being susceptible to public crying, even as she probes me about whatever is making me stressed or unhappy that day. And I relish in that unique British ability of sounding as if I’m being awfully polite and perfectly nice when in actual fact, I’m being very, very rude and possibly a bit condescending. It doesn’t matter if my interlocutor doesn’t pick up on it for it lifts my mood on those bad days. I wear second-hand dresses and lipstick which make me look a bit like a granny (don’t ask me why but I’ve always felt there to be something quite particular about the quintessential British granny) and I’ve taught various nationalities that a British person saying: “Not bad” actually translates as: “I’m in a really, really good mood and everything is bloody brilliant”.

I occasionally wonder if I’d feel the same way in any other country, one more similar to home, such as Australia or Canada. Cambodia is so vastly different that the things which bemuse or baffle newcomers are now commonplace to me. Plus, it is home to a large cohort of foreigners with whom I have so much in common despite our vastly different backgrounds.To conclude, I have just one thought: in fretting about all this stuff and analysing my personality traits, aren’t I still being the same worrisome stereotype of a British person? I guess I’ll only know for sure when I move back and am still able to tell a waiter that my order is wrong or declare my love for my best friend before two bottles of house red have been drunk.

Jo

My internet dates from hell

By Lizzie

My first foray into the world of internet dating wasn’t wildly successful. I messaged him on Gumtree and we emailed back and forth. We discussed meeting up, I suggested going to a Mexican movie at the Edinburgh Film Festival, he never replied. Ever. I guess he must have really had something against Gael Garcia Bernal.

I moved to London and things didn’t really pick up. I tried Gumtree again and this time got to the actual date stage with the first man I messaged, but again films were my downfall. I casually mentioned I didn’t much care for the work of Pedro Almodóvar. I was met with disbelief and an aggressive reply of: “Well, what films do you like then?” Put on the spot I literally couldn’t think of a single one I’d even seen, let alone enjoyed.

I persevered with the whole online thing on various sites and had a mixed bag of generally terrible dates. There was:

• the Mexican banker who wanted to set up a business back home because he didn’t have to pay people proper wages there;
• the raging Tory who didn’t look anything like his (deceptively flattering) profile picture and insisted we’d have a better society if we all had a pot of money to spend on pet projects rather than contributing to education and healthcare for all;
• and then the worst of all – the guy who licked my neck when I went for a hello peck on the cheek, who insisted he could guess which of the things I liked on each of the stalls in the market we were visiting (he couldn’t. It was a big market), and then kept his hat and sunglasses on when we went to a dark and dingy pub for one very quick drink before I ran away.

There were some more enjoyable evenings but ultimately, I didn’t meet anyone I would particularly want to see on a regular basis or have sex with. Fortunately for me, I realised I was in love with my best friend and was able to knock the whole dating game on the head. But at least I know if I need to try it again I can collect some more good stories.

Lizzie

Happy to be mum

By Luciana

As my daughter approaches her first birthday, it has forced me to sit up and really soak in how my life has changed. For the better!

To set the scene, I was the ultimate party animal: lived for clubbing, put on club nights, over indulged in party dens from Friday until Sunday, spent all my money seeing DJs and going to festivals… I have a mountain of stories, most of which I probably should keep a secret.

But I had worn myself out when my now husband popped into my life again on a flying visit home to Glasgow from Australia and we fell in love in an instant.

When I became pregnant, I struggled a lot with who I was and where I now sat among my peers. Only one or two of my close friends actually had children; the rest were still living life as I had – partying, up to date with new music, seeing all my favourite DJs – and I had pangs of jealousy coupled with delight that I was out of the scene and at home with my perfect baby.

It has taken until now to strike a balance: the odd night out for a dance, just a few drinks, enough to relax me, not enough to make the next day unbearable, playing disco to techno with my baby and having a dance before retiring early.

And now I know, now I realise, I am content, happy to leave the clubbing to the juniors, happy to stay at home on a Saturday night with my husband.

Happy to be mum.

Luc

[Paint skills all mine -Ed]

The Hapless Chef Part Two: Courgette Carbonara

(Embot)

Week-night meals pose particular issues for the terrible cook because not only do you still hate cooking, but you’ve probably been at work all day and now you’re hungry. It is not a good time to be bereft of inspiration and to take, on average, five minutes to chop a fucking onion.

Times like this call for the power of the internet. Husband owns approximately 200 recipe books but they’re not much use when you need to go to the supermarket on the way home from the office. Perhaps one day I’ll prepare meals in advance and do a big weekly shop, like my mum used to, but such admirable levels of organisation seem some way off. And so, on this occasion, I turned to The Guardian‘s Food and Drink site. And I came across this: The 10 best 10-minute meals [1]. Perfect for my ravenous, lazy self!

As I suspect is the case for many shit cooks, I am easily attracted by recipes that promise almost instant gratification because the act of cooking has no inherent joy to me and, the more complex the instructions, the more likely I am to cock things up. However, I have found to my distress that the promise of a ten-minute recipe rarely results in a meal I can eat ten minutes later. Often this is because the recipe wrongly assumes I can do more than one thing at once. And sometimes, frankly, the author has wilfully misled when promising me “supper” (Nigel Slater, I’m looking at you and your insubstantial “buttered eggs”). However, the allure of a meal I can eat in ten minutes remains so magical – and I am always so horribly hungry when searching – that I persist.

On this occasion, I went for Felicity Cloake’s courgette carbonara. She is the author of The Guardian series “How to cook the perfect…” so I am perhaps not her usual target audience. Cooking the perfect anything feels an unnecessarily ambitious goal at the moment. But I like pasta. A lot. And I thought courgettes seemed suitably summery for this unusually seasonable weather we are enjoying.

 The method:

The recipe seemed pretty simple. I was cooking for myself so I divided everything by four and got to work. A few things struck me as I worked through it:

• when I am asked to turn a vegetable into a specific shape, I instantly lose all visual/spatial perception. I am flummoxed by the onion’s layers and what will happen if I chop one way or the other. On this occasion, my red onion ended up diced, rather than thinly sliced. If you thought I had exaggerated my haplessness, think again.

• the recipe called for me to thinly slice my courgettes lengthways but I found myself unsure of how to achieve the perfect slice. Should it be cut across the entire courgette or should it just be a strip? I stopped at this point to take a photo of my options and question why the hell I was Instagramming my courgette for a blog. My conclusion was that the size of the slices didn’t really matter. Husband has told me that uniformity is handy in cooking so that every potato or piece of chicken or whatever cooks evenly. But cooking thin slices of courgette isn’t really a precision sport. In fact, a mix was quite pleasing aesthetically. I think I may have been over-thinking this aspect of the meal.

• the recipe requires a shitload of cheese. Again, I felt compelled to record this with my camera. I think this means that this isn’t really a healthy option. Sorry, folks.

• it is hard to beat a solitary egg into 24g of cheese (see photo of dubiously lumpy mixture). I think I’d chuck in an extra egg next time.

• 

The verdict:

Well, I think it looked quite good! And it tasted – fine. It was much improved with a squeeze of lemon and a bit more salt (as most things are, in my view). Surprisingly, given the amount of cheese, it wasn’t very rich; in fact, it was quite light and fresh. Which is a bit disappointing in a way – if I’m going to eat 10,000 calories on a Monday night, I’d prefer to be rolled to bed groaning about gout than craving seconds.

And the time? Twenty-six minutes, including photography. If I were to make it again, I could get it down to about 18 (I am so competitive about everything that I basically have cooking PBs. What a knob). If you are not as, er, impaired as me, I reckon ten minutes is actually realistic. Sound the trumpets!

So, what do you think? Any suggestions as to modifications/ improvements? And what do you think I should cook next time?

 Gem

1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2013/jul/06/10-best-10-minute-meals