Tag: Love yourself

I Am The Imposter; Sorry, Cowgirl!

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We had an emergency trip to the opticians last week, necessitated by The Cowgirl’s glasses ending up, entirely inexplicably, in two very separate pieces. (Apparently, someone may have trodden on them, and maybe that someone was her, but actually maybe, no, they didn’t. Well covered, darling, well covered.) Other families of glasses-wearing geeks will be all too familiar with the entertainment that ensued. The check-up itself took about 10 minutes, but the combination of taking pictures of eyes, squirming in the middle so having to retake pictures of eyes, choosing frames, checking frames, spelling names wrong and having to start the whole process again, meant that we were actually in the opticians for over an hour, and my masterly plan of treating us all to indulgently warming refreshments between wrapping up the appointment and arriving in a calm, relaxed manner at our weekly swimming lesson were quickly demonstrated to be utterly foolish: we actually screamed into the swimming pool a mere 5 minutes late.

Somewhere in the midst of this, as is normal at such things, I was asked to sign for the NHS voucher that entitles all children under 16 to free eye tests and mostly-free glasses (#ThankYouNHS). And exactly there in the midst of this, I had the same reaction I always do when an adult calls me “mum”. I looked over my shoulder for the person they were really talking to; I hesitated, to give them enough time to call me out; I signed the iPad with a shaking hand and a rote comment about modern technology they must hear 50 times a day, but were still sweet enough to smile at.

I have spent most of my mothering years looking over my shoulder and expecting someone to out me as just pretending to be able, or willing, or responsible enough for this role. I thought that feeling would pass; it didn’t. At first I thought they might say that I wasn’t old enough to be a mother (ironic really when you consider that I had my first child in the UK’s Teenage Pregnancy capital, and that I probably had 10 years on the next oldest person in the ward where I spent my first night with The Palaeontologist). I don’t think that now – a decade of building up grey hairs and sleepless nights has put paid to that – but I still look over my shoulder, waiting for the other shoe to drop and for anyone – for everyone – to realise that I have no idea what I’m doing here.

Despite having had so long to think about this, it took me until this week and an opticians appointment to put the name Imposters Syndrome to my parenting experience. But through that lens (in a totally undiagnosed fashion) it all makes much more sense. Do I feel like a fraud? Like I have to work 3 times as hard to justify the title I have been given? Like any moment someone will see through the mask and spot I don’t belong there? Like I do not deserve this relationship? All of the above. All of the time. I know it isn’t rational; that I have been there from the beginning and in every moment since, there in the decision-making and the praying and the worrying even when it is not me there in the day to day. I know that there is no-one else my children would want to be there even when they tell me that I’m spoiling their lives and I’m the worst mum ever, as much as when they run to me when I walk in from work and hug me till my ribs hurt after an argument. I know that this is the place I am meant to be and the place I am called to be and the place I want to be. But that still doesn’t stop me feeling like an imposter, like I’m outside looking in and like sometime soon, when I’m least expecting it, everyone else will feel that too.

When The Cowgirl plays Among Us, she always wants to be The Imposter. I once asked her why she would want to be the baddy, the one who everyone else wants to kick into the outer reaches of space and never be contaminated by again? Because, she explained, The Imposter is the one who has the most fun. They can do what they want, and go where they want, and if they manage to kill everyone, they get to win the game. Being on the outside is the thing that gives you control, because it means that you’re not governed by the rules that everyone else has to play by.

Among Us. A bizarre and probably totally inappropriate game for children to be playing, full of challenges and spaceships and stabbing people in the back. Fun, though.

I will probably never feel entirely comfortable in my own skin or in the rules that are set down, in my head or others’ expectations, for people who are Mothers, or who are Vicar’s Wives, or who are struggling to live simply and sustainably in the 21st Century western world, for that matter. But however I feel about those titles, all of those aspects of my life and personality are ones that I have made a conscious choice to add in to the jigsaw that makes me the problematic, overstretched and overworked person that I am. And all of those roles help me see, from the inside out, how life could be better if fewer of us followed all the rules; if we were the rebels, who went through secret passages and found our own ways to success (but who maybe didn’t have the goal of killing everyone else around us. Any metaphor can be stretched too far). They show me what fun can be had by not focussing so much on how others may or may not think about me but accepting my view of myself instead; the good and the bad of it. They remind me that this is my choice and I have earned the right to make that choice, and have the responsibility to live by it. They whisper that I have been doing this for some time now and haven’t killed anyone yet, despite a fair bit of provocation. They demonstrate that, Imposter-ish feeling or not, I’m actually doing all right. And it turns out, that’s a pretty darn good thing to realise.

To every thing there is a season

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Some things in life are uncontrollable and unquestionable. Night will follow day. Feathers are lighter than bricks. If you are poor you are much more likely to suffer during times of flood, fire, pestilence and broken election promises. And the first of September means that the slow pace of a sleepy summer is about to be smashed by the mind-boggling vagaries of a new academic year.

Discussions ebb and flow around how that last can be combatted – how teachers ought to reduce their own workloads, how the focus of Ofsted inspections might include wellbeing (oh, the irony), how the summer holidays should be shorter. I can safely say that my initial reaction to that idea can best be summarised by viewing Munch’s The Scream; whether I admit it to outsiders or not, the possibility of an unbroken stretch of planning time with the lazy luxury of indulging my imagination rather than being constrained to using only what can be found on teaching websites or Ecosia in the first 15 minutes of searching is one of the few things that prepare me for the jaw-clenching emotional battering that is currently the autumnal lot of a teacher.

But like most initial reactions, mine doesn’t hold up to reasoning or scrutiny. Less time off in the summer might be balanced by more time off through the year, which just may avert having to spend every school holiday curled in the foetal position and only moving to find more wine. Less time off in the summer would mean fewer colour-coded spreadsheets detailing how every favour going has been called in to allow working parents to afford to keep their children safe and entertained and fed for 6 consecutive weeks. Less time off should mean less time for those same kids to forget everything they have been taught, thus avoiding the need to cover the same topic again in entirely new ways at the start of the next year. Less time off could even ease the emotional pressures of going back after so much growing and changing and boredom and shifting sands, and allow those children (and adults) made anxious by new starts to walk back in through the school gates with equanimity.

Changing the length of the summer holidays. A quick win that would genuinely benefit the economically deprived more than the well-off; but that’s OK, because it would benefit the economy too. So why haven’t we done it? If we were ever going to take this step, this year was the year to do it. Life was already stopped short. Children had managed to squeeze a lifetime of braincell-destroying emotionally stunted drivel Power Rangers and Richie Rich into three months of Lockdown, and even they were starting to get bored of the same people doing the same jokes with the same canned laughter day, after day, after day. Returning to the classroom in August could have solved so much. What better time, then, to change the unchangeable and attempt the impossible?

By Edvard Munch – National Gallery of Norway, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=69541493

It couldn’t happen. Not right now. It is just too big. Too different. Too hard. Too creative. Too dramatic. Too united. Far, far too scary. Too many of us are still frozen, shell-shocked by the battering we have taken in the last few months. Head teachers ordered schools to be locked and children turned away at the gates, mere days after insisting fines would follow any absence from the premises. Bishops ordered churches to be shut and people locked out of the houses of God. Parents forbade family to see the grandchildren that made their now-threatened lives worth enjoying. Those we most trusted to respect our institutions, our loved ones, our ideals and truths, were the ones who stopped us from accessing them and left us to cry alone in the night. It may have been the right choice, the moral choice, the only choice; but its consequence is still that we are now left standing, slack-jawed and staring, unsure where to go or what to say or who to trust. Every household drew up its drawbridge and filled the moat with crocodiles, reminded at all times that contact with anyone outside those gossamer thin, MDF walls could carry the disease that would decimate those living within. That mistrust could not be fully overcome as the collective clapping of March descended into enforced community judgement time in May, as the pubs re-opened, or with the invitation to return to city centre offices. It will not be overcome by the calendar turning from August to September either.

This lesson is fundamental for those of you raising the cry for revolution, for immediate and dramatic action, for every one of us still cowering in the half-light of uncertainty to get up, get out and get on with it. This is true for the arch-conservatives and arch-radicals alike, united as you are by the desire to move beyond Lockdown and into whatever comes next. It may be overthrowing the government and celebrating the world doing a U-turn on its axis and accepting the emergency that is the climate crisis. It might be the pressing need to drive the economy back into never-ending, never-tiring growth as the means to draw the world’s poor, unprivileged, desperate-to-be-educated peoples into the same glorious bubble as the Western world. Wherever you are and whatever led you there, do not attempt to force action on those of us who are still a long way off. Go easy on us. For you this may be a time of infinite possibility, or of a need to act that is so strong it fills your mouth with adrenaline and your guts with nervous energy. I love that there are people with energy and hope in the world, because it reminds me that one day, I will be there too, walking beside you, shouting in time with you, working in harmony with you. But I am not there yet. I am still in that place where the one way systems and beautifully individualistic face coverings and starkly divided classrooms make a space that was once more familiar than my own home feel alien, and threatening, and unsafe. I am still in a time that is neither ready to reap nor to sow, to heal nor to die, to build up nor to break down. I am in the time between times; the pause between breathing in and breathing out; the moment on a pendulum when everything is changing direction and, at exactly the same time, everything is utterly still. The time will change soon. You can taste it in the water and feel it in the air. It is coming. Have patience. We do care and we will shake off the lead-lined inertia holding us down, and when we do, we, too will dance.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: 2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; 3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; 4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance

Fighting will not solve anything: a pacifist’s view of obesity

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The UK Government appear to have noticed recently that there might be quite a lot of fat people in this country. This is a problem because one of the impacts obesity can have is making you more likely to suffer complications from Coronavirus. Therefore, it is now your moral duty to Lose Weight For Lizzie, England and Saint George! This sudden awakening has prompted ridicule, fear, anger, and frustration: partly because the headlines are very, very wrong; and partly because they are probably right.

Why are they wrong? The easy answer is that there is no easy answer to this complex situation. Just as there is no single way to exercise, worship God or decorate a home, there is no single reason that people are obese. There are many medications and health conditions that can result in weight gain; there are societal and cultural implications; there are lifestyle factors and financial involvement. To suggest that all of these can be overcome by stopping junk food adverts for children and providing bike maintenance is, to put it mildly, utterly missing the point. Instead, it is taking a cheap shot at a group that we as a country are already conditioned to demonise: an easy target for a quick headline, and don’t worry if it all goes wrong, it isn’t your fault these people are too lazy to help themselves.

Me on our last wedding anniversary. BMI: definitely in the red.

I am obese. I haven’t always been; for many years I was solidly overweight, unable to drop down into healthy, but equally able to keep my BMI below that scary red “you will die and it will all be your own fault” zone on the charts. I’m tall and in proportion with myself, so even health professionals didn’t always realise I had a problem. They used to look surprised and change tack abruptly when I stepped on the scales, looking slightly embarrassed and talking about the problems of “carrying a little extra” – like I’d just picked up one too many books at the library. I have most of a lifetime’s experience of hating the “little extra” I have grown used to carrying; but speaking about it as something separate to me, something inconvenient that can be put down as soon as possible and forgotten about, won’t help. These rolls of fat are as much a part of me as my greying hair, my automatic smile, my heart and my pancreas and my memories. They may stop me doing some things (fitting into old clothes and choosing the right sizes in charity shops, for example, or touching the floor instead of my toes) but so do my memories. So does my fear. So, for that matter, do my job and my family and my finances and all the other pressures that hold me here, for worse and for better.

Given all this, then, how can any of the current headlines about obesity be in any way right? Because, although the message is clumsy and temporary and turning a process of love into a glorification of violence, it is a message with truth at its heart. I do want to lead a more sustainable life, and that means changing the things that have helped to keep me, at least, obese. I don’t like buying more food than we need, and one reason for buying too much is because we are eating too much (or sometimes that we’re buying treats for our kids to get them through the craziest, scariest months of their lives so far and then eating them ourselves to get us through those crazy, scary months instead, and end up buying more). Food with fewer ingredients and less processing is in general more sustainable, likely to be produced more locally, is more linked to natural diets and more likely to keep us full for longer: better for the planet, better for our bodies, better for our minds. Making food at home and bringing it to work and picnics means less plastic, less food waste, less chocolate mysteriously finding it’s way into my shopping basket, my handbag, my bulging waistline. It’s not all about food, either. Sustainable school runs would mean scooting, cycling, starting a walking bus around our estate; not driving to school slightly over the speed limit, late and knowing that that will mean sitting in traffic as I continue on to work. Sustainable days would be activities that build relationships and boost oxytocin, having fun playing together, exploring together, working together; not only shopping, eating, watching TV together.

It sounds like a dream, doesn’t it? A lifestyle that is healthy, happy and reduces the risk of dying horribly while people explain to you how you could have avoided this if you had just taken a little more responsibility for your own choices. Why would anyone not choose that option? So why is it, then, that I, and so many like me, are still obese?

I don’t have the answers here. If I did, I’d be out there marketing how easy it is to do this: if I can, anyone can! Instead, all I can do is share the things I have learned so far. One is that blaming people who are overweight is about as helpful as a chocolate teapot, and likely to be swallowed just as easily. There are a few people who have made conscious choices to eat food that makes them fat. There aren’t many of them, and they’re not going to be paying attention to the advice given out by the government in contradiction of their life choices, so let’s not get caught up in that. Let’s assume instead that excess weight is usually the result of other influences, not a goal in itself.

Sometimes it is lack of knowledge and education. Knowing that things with high calories are bad but never having been told why can lead to choices like eating Quavers instead of nuts or unlabelled, un-traffic-lighted carrot sticks as a snack. Never having eaten freshly cooked food can mean it is overwhelming to think about cooking yourself. Local council regulations that say that a microwave is essential in a kitchen but an oven is not can prevent many people from ever having the option of eating healthy food. Educating, discussing choices, changing priorities can change these things, but they will not change everything.

Living healthy also means living slow; dreaming slow; cooking, eating, shopping slow. It means having time to plan your shopping, to cook from scratch, to eat slowly enough to know when you are full and have time to stop eating. It means having time to walk or cycle, not drive in a race to squeeze everything in. It means having time to think and reflect and reject, not just react.

Changing shape means changing priorities. It means looking at where your energies are currently pointing and being able, and willing, to change direction if you need to. It may mean putting less energy into working and less value into financial gains. It may mean laying down commitments, hobbies, roles at church or, you know, Quaker Trusteeship (looking closely in the mirror) in order to have the headspace and diary freedom to be more active. It may mean letting go of good things as well as bad. And it may be – for me, it is – that these are not sacrifices that feel right at the moment. I’ve worked hard to get my priorities where they are now, balancing self and work and family and faith. It’s a nerve-wracking balancing act as it is, and if I add anything more in, however healthy that may be, the whole crazy caboodle will come crashing down in ruins.

If we’re agreed that headline-grabbing contradictions are not going to win the good fight and free us from obesity, what will? It has to be an entire lifestyle shift. A celebration of each of us as we are, without the blame and condemnation that lead so many into disordered eating. A commitment to ourselves and our finite energy and time, that lets us say no when we can fit no more into a day, that allows decent sleep patterns and prioritising care for ourselves and for others. A commitment to model good practise in cutting off the stresses and strains of work when we need to. If the government wants to fight this, let’s see real action. Let’s see legislation that encourages employers to allow their employees to take mental health days off. Let’s see rewards in the workplace for volunteering, so that you don’t have to sacrifice yourself in order to both do good for others and earn enough money to put healthy food on the table. Let’s see town planning that builds exercise into daily tasks; that put fun into routine activities; that makes love and loyalty more rewarded than individualism and self-promotion. Let’s celebrate who we are and how we look just as we are. And you know what? When we stop interfering and just let them get on with the process of living a good life, it’s possible that our bodies will end up sorting themselves out.

A normal city street with people walking and buildings in the background. In the bottom right are two people, waiting for a bus, swinging happily on the bus stop swings.
Bus stop swings in Montreal, Canada – activity and joy in the everyday

Present absences

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Thumb idly scrolling, alarm clock snoozing for the seventh time, my day is starting with a whimper and a sigh. I tell myself to move before my back locks completely, but even while I am telling myself sternly to get up and get going, I scroll on. On through posts that I ignore – plenty of them, rightly or wrongly; posts that make me laugh – sadly few of them; posts that make me angry; posts that make me hurt. There are a lot of those, and they lurk behind my eyelids for the rest of the day, popping out of my subconscious and into my internal monologues whenever I stop for long enough to take a breath.

What is it that makes me hurt? It’s not the crisis after incompetence after tragedy typhooning through the world, though that does me no credit, I know. Those are the posts that make me angry, and my responses are either avoidance or self-destruction, as they consume my mind in a blinding supernova of rage. No, the things that make me hurt are the day by day moments that are so much more creative, more joyful, more full than my days are. Is it jealousy? Probably, in part, if jealousy starts with your throat and your eyes and your hope and moves on to your tummy, inching its way by repetition to your heart. I know those are the good moments, the islands in the storm for others, just as they are when I post the same. And yet, that litany of pictures, of family adventures, positive Lockdowns, weight loss, planning a holiday, making a difference, speaking out, being brave, achieving goals, taking a risk and getting it wrong, and just plain living – that cumulative scrolling makes my heart ache and saps my will.

This is not a post bewailing social media. Of course people should share their joys, their sorrows, their hopes and failures, if that is what they want to do. Indeed, for those of us who are congenitally incapable of maintaining relationships over a distance, Facebook is a marvel and a delight for much of the time. But when the presence of something is an expected norm, unquestioned and unquestioning, how do you share its absence?

I was one of the first in my friendship group to have children, so I won’t speak like I’m an authority on what it feels like to have none when your body and your mind and your soul are tearing you apart with longing. People I love have shared their experiences with me – of the fear and the pain and the praying, the debt and the hope and the impossible choices, but it is not something I can directly speak to. At the other end of life’s glorious spectrum, I have lost a parent when most of my peers were still living with theirs. I know that moment of jarring reminder when someone asks “Where do your parents live?” I have seen the dawning horror on their faces as the conversation progresses. I answer about my Mum, and they ask whether Dad will be joining us too.* Now my Dad died many years ago, so, although it still makes me sad to think of all he is missing and of all the things I can’t share with him, mention of those things no longer makes me cry. So if I’m asked, I answer the question. To be honest, I usually answer it bluntly. And then the person I am speaking to is left with no idea, at all, of what to say next. Because how do you respond when someone tells you that they are outside the box you expect them to be in and, no matter how much you want them to, they will never go quietly back to being normal?

Normal. Isn’t that an awful term? As though there is something we all started out as, and any deviation from that is somehow an error. But if normal is white, cis-gender, heterosexual, in a stable relationship, with children, able-bodied and neurotypical, with no mental health concerns and no traumatic events in their past – if that is normal, then normal is an awfully small collective. And where does that leave the rest of us?

It leaves us living with absence. It may be small. It may be life-changing or hope-destroying. It may be dictated by circumstances or forced upon you by another’s actions. But let’s not forget that it may also be a blindingly positive, proactive choice. How do you celebrate small, with the things you did not buy, the waste you did not create, the plastic you did not use? Or celebrate big, with the choices you made to not follow that expected path and the joys it has given you in the execution of your own vision? Living a more sustainable life, materially and emotionally, is as much about positive absences as it is about the presence of future-looking actions. It is about the counter-cultural refusal to cash into a society that tells you that the way to protect our communities is to buy and to fly and to keep on moving, spending, updating. It is the rejection of the message that if you buy this or avoid eating that or go there, you will be full and have no absences, because they are bad and must always be hidden from view. 

Epidauros II by Barbara Hepworth. Negative space can be extraordinarily beautiful.

Absence is as real as presence in our lives. Sometimes it is more real than the furniture around us and the lives outside our windows that all look so very, very different to our own. It can be a fury-filled growl of silence and frustration; a blank canvas of waiting for something to happen; an exciting and life-giving explosion of self over expectation. If we could share those moments of absence without fear, or pain, or judgement, or apology; if we knew the whole of our selves could be seen, how could the world not be a better place?

*As a side note, please don’t do that. Don’t repeat language someone else has changed. It wasn’t an accident. They heard what you said and they changed it deliberately. If you ask about someone’s wife and in their response they use the word partner, or husband, or reply about themselves in the singular, that’s what you need to use too for the rest of your conversation.

New year, same world: a million marvellous shades of grey

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New Year’s Day is at once mystical and terribly ordinary. It symbolises the endless possibilities of fresh starts and new horizons, stretching before us like an ocean of snow that no one has yet jumped through, or pinched all the deepest drifts of for their own snow sculptures. At exactly the same time, it is an ordinary, boring day, full of hungover, sleep deprived adults and children who have reached the end of their secret stashes of chocolate and are suffering their first sugar low for two weeks. Every year, I tell myself I won’t buy into the general hyperbole and hype of NYE. Every year, I am lying to myself.

I love New Year. I enter fully into the principle of fresh starts, New Me initiatives, plans and schemes to sort out the things that have been bugging me about myself since September. They usually start well, not least because I have been saving them up and planning for them, putting off doing anything about them until we have Survived Christmas, since about the middle of November. But, let’s face it, they do always peeter out (Exhibit A: my #Challenge2019). That too is a part of this season.

There is something definitely both backwards and forwards facing, Janus in January (hey, could that be deliberate?) about this time of year, a thinness and honesty that can creep through the mugginess and unexpected nothingness of the weather and the atmosphere around today. We look back at what was different this time last year, or, in decades with a 0 at the end, at what we were doing this time a decade ago. And we prove that, once again, the French were onto something with the idea that the more things change, the more they stay the same:

  • Family life has to have seen both the most and the least changes over the last decade. I now have two children instead of none (hooray!) and, as of last week, one cat instead of two (sob). I have the same husband, who I love in whole new ways. We have developed and strengthened how we listen to and support each other, and aggravate each other in all the same old ways.
  • Church life was in a village church I only fully appreciated when we moved away (so typical). We have moved on from the church we moved on to, moved on and into a new new Quaker community too. We are established and have even pencilled our way onto the tea rota. Those shoots and roots that come only from a worshipping community are deepening, slowly, painfully sometimes, gaining nutrients from the darkness and the dampness of being unobserved.
  • Politics ten years ago was infinitely different. We had a government no one liked, an NHS no one thought would see out the decade, and people on the far right and the far left both had megaphones and visions that had no recognition within the mainstream. Oh, wait…

So the mystical nature of New Year encourages us to look back and marvel at the things we have done, the things we have created and sustained and quit, the things that have changed us and hardened us and tempered us. And shimmering, mirage-like through the mysticism, is that same pile of dirty washing up you didn’t quite get around to yesterday; the same reading from the scales (if you’re lucky); the same unfinished to do lists and unmarked assignments (speaking for a friend, naturally). And, at your core, under the resolutions, the intentions and the incomplete Forth Bridge nature of the household chores, is the same person. Same hopes. Same inconsistencies. Same drive and same stumbling blocks. And that is a good thing.

It’s a good thing because the times that have gone past are entirely necessary to the stories of our lives. The mistakes and almost-misses are frequently the bases of our favourite stories, the ones that get told year after year until they have a life of their own and are part of our shared community. (My personal favourite is a story from my wedding day, involving a mysteriously missing taxi, replaced with a decrepit old Nissan Micra, uncomfortably squished full of my hooped wedding dress – with a train, elvish sleeves, and a cape, because if you can’t dress like that on your wedding day, when can you? My husband assures me it could not have happened as I tell it; but I point to the number of people over the years who have heard it, laughed at it, retold it. If that doesn’t make it part of the story of that day, what would?)

The stories I tell and the actions I take are so often stark, with crystal-sharp outlines, black and white. My job is incredible, or it’s killing me. Dieting is awesome or the work of the devil. My children give me life or drain their energy directly from my soul. But life isn’t really like that, is it? It can be a rainy day with an afternoon of laughter and board games and baking and petty arguments and everything else that makes up the best, most forgettable, parts of family life. Depression isn’t limited to the winter. It is, I’m told, possible to eat a chocolate digestive and not write off the whole day as a breakdown in healthy living. So that is my challenge to myself for 2020: to look beyond black and white, and see the glorious technicolour embodied within a million shades of grey.

Clouds shadow a face - an angel, a goddess, an inanimate stone figure? - who gazes beyond the middle distance. Behind her, a clock spirals into oblivion.

https://pixabay.com/photos/fantasy-clock-statue-light-spiral-2879946/

Simple creativity: Making something is one way to say I Love You

Simply Messy

You know that feeling of standing in the kitchen after a long day of achieving not very much, trying to avoid looking at the washing up piled forlornly by the sink, vaguely ignoring the nextdoor grunting of sofa gymnastics to the soundtrack of a slightly familiar theme tune, when suddenly, out of nowhere, you hear the line from a made-for-Netflix programme that puts a whole new slant on your thinking? For me, tonight, the programme was Daniel Tiger’s Neighbourhood. I had been mulling over creativity, why I love it, and why I give it so little time, when suddenly and repetitively came an inanely animated voice singing “making something is one way to say I Love You.”

Of course it is! My father was a past master at this one. Once he put together a whole new wall for my bedroom to avoid saying he missed me when I was away for a week. He passed the skill on to me: most noticeably around birthdays, because if you don’t make someone the perfect birthday cake (thank you Pinterest), how will they know you love them? My crafting projects around the house suddenly blur into focus as acts of love towards the family I want to enjoy them; so much easier than thinking about needing to keep up appearances or avoid judgement from passersby. Though let’s face it, saying I love you isn’t the only reason to be creative…

What could possibly say I Love You more than a cake topped with dinosaur bones and biscuity mud?

Then there’s making things for Christmas – food, beds, decorations, to do lists, an unholy mess, and everything else needed for good old-fashioned relaxing fun. Let me make one thing clear: this is absolutely not me saying it’s time to think about Christmas. Not until Advent; don’t even get me started. Why would the council put up Christmas decorations on Remembrance Day? How can people be sorted except for “a few last minute things” by the end of October? And the people who manage to have jobs, small children, and send out Christmas cards all at the same time… No, this is about me thinking about why it is so important to me to make things myself when my eyelids are trying to close themselves over burning balls of fire at four o’clock in the afternoon, and why I keep cards, and ribbons, and paper from one year to the next, to the next, to the next, in the hope that maybe this year will be the year they get transformed into gift tags, origami stars, or anything from my recently borrowed copy of Paper Christmas. (Borrowed from the Library at the same time as Stuff That Sucks. Is my subconscious overdoing it, do we think?)

Why do I put us all through this every year? Because how else can I say I love you to my man, who works into the night so often through December (Midnight Mass is an early finish in comparison), holding and supporting and grounding everyone else’s festive spirits and crashing out on the sofa by 6pm on Christmas Day (and if we ate lunch at lunchtime that day he’d never make it that late). How else could I say it to my children, who struggle through a season of snuffles and broken routine and hype and impossible dreams, and all they have between them and devastation is whatever we manage to spin from our imagination and overnight Amazon deliveries? How could I say it to my extended family, who have fussed and fretted their way through Advent, watching the weather forecast and praying it won’t snow yet, that the roads will be clear, that there will be room in the car and the house and their brains for everything that needs to be remembered?

It turns out I quite like carving pumpkins. It also turns out I’m not very good at letting the children take a turn, in case they Get It Wrong…

Saying I love you is important. It is important to children who need security; to spouses who need appreciation; to friends who never get as much time as they deserve; to people we have known forever and people we’ve only just met. It’s also important to ourselves. Writing; baking; crafting; planting flowers: they are all ways for me to say to myself that I am worth the time I am spending on me, OK being proud of the results of my labours, that enjoyment for its own sake is allowed to be an act of love. Creativity in a world of numbers and statistics and targets has been weighed, and measured, and found wanting. It will not solve the climate catastrophe. It will not save humanity from itself. Being silly and spontaneous and simple does not often make it onto the news, or even our highly edited Newsfeeds. But for me, at least, it brings peace. Balance. Acceptance. And making things is one way to say I Love Me.

The Big Bad Maybe Later

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This will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody: I am rather inept at saying no. Slightly more unusually maybe – or at least, slightly less talked about – is being equally bad at saying yes.

So how do you go through life saying neither no nor yes? By becoming a master of the unholy trinity: We’ll See, Maybe Later, and I’ll See What I Can Do. Used effectively, they will answer any situation known to humanity, and are as useful in a classroom as they are in any number of parenting conundrums. In fact, The Paleontologist has started predicting my response, and has changed her questioning technique, asking open questions whenever possible: “Why can’t we have bubblegum ice cream?” is a frequent opening gambit. Other favourites include “When are you going to let me have a phone?” and the wonderful “Why does our Tooth Fairy give less money than the Fairy that goes to [insert the name of absolutely any other classmate]?” The Cowgirl, predictably, approaches things totally differently, dodging asking questions altogether by doing things she thinks she won’t be allowed to do as secretly as possible. Thankfully, subtlety is not as much her forte as, say, running headlong through any obstacle, from rose bushes to recalcitrant authority figures. The time she ate a whole pack of chocolate coins, hiding the wrappers in her pillowcase so that I didn’t see them in the bin, showed particular insight and forward planning. At least, it did until she asked me to plump up her pillow the next evening. Oops.

So I have one child who has developed excellent open questioning techniques, and another who has mastered the art of independence before mastering her 3 times table. This is good, right? Nothing wrong with a bit of healthy noncommittal… Except, of course, we all know there is. And not just the kind of wrong that leads to my more decisive friends and relations (looking in no particular direction, but we both know who you are!) wanting to throw me out of the nearest window fifteen times on any given day. Avoiding both yes and no is a great way of dodging most forms of conflict: if no one (including me, particularly in busy times, or September, or first thing in the morning) knows what I want, they certainly can’t get in a grump if I disagree with them. But it has a deep darkness as a cost. It also means avoiding contentment within myself. Saying yes means saying this is good; saying I’m happy with this; saying this is enough.

There is often a feeling that living a more sustainable life means saying no. You say no to flying and take your chances on holidaying in the UK – may be amazing, may be the end of your marriage and feel like December. You say no to plastic and no to frappacinos, to deodorants bought in your lunch break because you forgot to put any on this morning, to sanitary towels, to the basic fundamentals of everyday living. You say no to meat, to cheese, to takeaways, to many of the things that make busy lives both enjoyable and achievable. You say no to all the things other people are doing, heart pounding as you say it – will they think you’re judging them? Are you judging them?

What if, instead of saying no, simple living was all about saying yes? It would change my perception of it dramatically if I could navigate that mindshift. Here’s an example of when I’ve tried. A few days ago, I went on a train journey to the very North of Scotland – and, as if 7 hours on a train (plus delays, of course) wasn’t enough, three days later we came back again. I was, obviously, not optimistic about the whole experience. Two children, one tablet, tired Mum, Dad away with work; what could possibly go right? But then came the magic. The first bit of magic was my previously-mentioned saintly mother saying yes to buying magazines for both children. Hooray for plastic toys! Hooray for Ninjago mini-figures! (That’s Lego, if you’re not up to speed with the latest lingo the kids are using.) Hooray for activities, and quizzes, and facts that keep science-crazy munchkins engaged for… well, actually for hours. We also had activity books, Top Trumps (cathedrals in one pack, dinosaurs in the other – only in my family…) and an ancient game of Master Mind that involves breaking a code set by the other player. And with that, we survived. We not only survived, we thrived. Both Mum and I managed to spend time reading; in fact, I stopped when I was ready, not before. I genuinely can’t remember when that last happened. It turns out that saying yes to what is directly in front of you, being present and answering questions, reading instructions, then letting the instructions be followed without interference (even when they Do It Wrong), works terribly well, something I used to know, but had let myself forget.

View from a train window, looking out over a very wide river. In the bottom corner is the reflection of a child playing on a tablet.
The beauty of the Scottish coastline. The wonder of a happy child who hasn’t run anywhere for several hours.

Sometimes, I say we’ll see because I don’t know how to even conceive of having the energy to do what is asked (particularly when I’m being asked to build a working robot out of toilet roll wrappers, to take just one example…) And at other times, I say we’ll see because I mean no. Just no. In fact, I frequently mean I’d rather do the school run across hot coals than even think about doing what is asked. (Building a robot isn’t that bad. A whole afternoon of joining in with watching Peppa Pig is.) So I’m setting myself a slightly late #ChallengeAugust. To say no when I mean it; to say yes when I want it; to say we’ll see when I genuinely mean I don’t know yet whether it’s yes or no. Well, apart from when discussing birthday parties. With four months to go until the closest one, any resolution needs a touch of realism and some hard-won messy survival techniques, naturally.

A long bridge curves across a wide estuary, big enough to almost look like the sea.
The rail bridge approaching Dundee. An utterly stunning sweep of countryside.

Everything is connected

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One of my all-time favourite films is V For Vendetta. Apart from the obvious moments (after all, right now, is there anyone who would object to Westminster being blown sky high, particularly if empty at the time…) one scene that really resonates is a montage where investigator Eric Finch says “I suddenly had this feeling that everything was connected. It’s like I could see the whole thing, one long chain of events… It was like a perfect pattern, laid out in front of me. And I realised we’re all part of it, and all trapped by it.” His companion, of course, asks if that meant he knew what would happen next, and with typical bluntness gets the response “No, it was a feeling. But I can guess…” And tragedy plays out, giving the film the chance to leave those horrors in maybe-land: did they happen? Did they not? Can the girl with glasses be saved?

“V for Vendetta” by Marko Manev is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

We live in a time when every problem is treated as though it stands alone, and every individual is trained to see themselves as an island, with, if they are lucky, causeways connecting them to others, appearing and disappearing with the tides, with never a hint of where the mainland might be found. If you are ill, you get tablets. Tablets for blood pressure; for cholesterol; for headaches; for coughs, colds and not being quite at your best; for anxiety; for depression. Tablets for each individual symptom, as though all of these things are somehow caused separately, interacting independently with the body they have found a home in. Sorting out your work-life balance is a task for every individual, who is then held personally to blame if we get lost in the middle of a perfect storm of demands and expectations and can’t do it by ourselves. Saving the world means cutting your personal carbon footprint, giving up plastic around the home, individual action and sacrifice. The question is always: what are you doing? You as an individual; a family household; maybe, at best, as a town.

Seeing individuals as worthy of value and respect, with God dwelling within them, whatever they have done or thought, however they look and regardless of the capacity for good or evil weighing down their actions, is a gift and a curse and a thing we should all be aiming for. Seeing the individual as the height of all our ambitions, personal glory over a community rising together, has caused lives to fall apart, an ever-widening gap between the rich and the desperate, and Boris Johnson moving into number 10. How much further does this road have left before it splits into so many individual footpaths, some smooth and wide, some rocky and overgrown with nettles, but all leading inexorably into the wilderness of isolation, getting further and further apart, until we can no longer see, smell, hear, any other living things around us?

Talking to students has made me realise how unhealthy expectations in this country can be. One told me that she works so hard that she buys clothes and doesn’t have the time or the energy to wear them. They lie in the bags they came in at the bottom of the wardrobe until, packing for an extended journey home, they resurface, bringing with them the hope they first entered the home with; hope that will now be enjoyed elsewhere, because there is no time for it here. It is so different, she said, in the country she was born in. People there value and enjoy their possessions, their friends, their time. For someone who barely has the energy to brush her teeth at the end of some days, I confess, that sounds like an idyll beyond price.

How have we come to value ourselves and each other so little? Why do we value money so much more than time? During my first year as a teacher, I got used to a day that left the house running for school at 8am and didn’t finish until the next day’s lessons were just about thrown together, usually at about 11pm. I put up with the hours, the expectations, the lack of any life outside the walls I had prepared for myself. I boasted about how bad it was, as we outdid each other with stress levels and caffeine intake around the staff room kettle. But why? The expectation is that in order to have a job with meaning, with satisfaction, that changes things, however small, you put up with what is thrown at you. And acting alone, my choices are suck it up or sack it off, give up, do something else. But what if we all stood together? Not just my union (though we are working on that one); not just those working in the public services; all of us, walking together saying we, and our lives, and the planet are all worth more than mindless, individual busyness?

More time means more ability to slow down, to make from scratch, to take care and do, buy, say the right thing, not the easy thing. To have a sense of achievement from that. To tell someone else about it, and work together so that they can do it too. More life in that notorious balance means more opportunities for joy. And more joy means less greed; less need for eternal, all-consuming growth; more options.

Living within our means is a phrase that has been used for the good, the bad, and the blatantly discriminatory within society over the last decade or so. But when it is used, it is always used to talk about living within our financial means. What would it be like to live within all our means? To live lives where we use the time, the emotion, the energy we have to live our best lives; where nothing is asked of us that we cannot freely give? What would it be like to be able to look ourselves in the mirror and know that we are enough?

It is the summer holidays: traditionally the point that teachers look at their lives and try and sort out all their problems at once, now that they suddenly have space to breathe. I find myself looking at the chaos I create around myself and wondering what we would have to do as a family to live within our time-means. What would we as a country have to change in order to do the same?

When grief and guilt collide

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This is a bit of a secret, but here goes: I can never hear “Let It Go” without smiling. There are reasons, I promise. (Admittedly, I like a lot of other songs without the reasons, but some things are meant to stay secret…)

When Frozen was the new big thing, The Paleontologist was still at nursery, and only knew the names of about 3 dinosaurs. Picking her up each lunchtime, we often found ourselves walking home with another little girl and, as often happens, the two became fast friends. It would take us twice as long to walk home, of course, but it was worth it for the company, for the grown ups as much as the small people. As we walked, we discussed everything from religion to the trials and tribulations of having little girls with ridiculously curly hair. It was mundane, often slightly stormy, and utterly lovely. A few journeys home stand out particularly clearly in my mind. One was the walk where we spoke of my friend’s family for the first time. She was from Yemen, and these were the days before the war there was particularly spoken about. It was from her that I heard about the conflict, and her who told me the story of a nephew of hers, lost in the fighting. She never said what side he fought on, and I saw no reason to ask. She did tell me his last action was to call his mother, pray for her, and tell her he couldn’t get out. She stayed on the phone until the line went dead.

Image by Sarah MacIntyre, published on Twitter in response to the attack on the Charlie Hebdo building in January 2015. A beautiful picture of two young girls, one in a hijab, one with uncovered hair, weeping as they draw a heart between them.

My other memory is made more beautiful by the tragedy that walked with us at times. The Friend could barely speak English, growing up as she had in a bilingual household that spoke Arabic at home. The Paleontologist had never seen Frozen, or listened to any of the songs. But there they were, skipping down a backstreet, dodging dog poo and abandoned tyres, and belting this song out at the top of their voices, The Friend singing, The Paleontologist echoing. It remained their song until they left nursery to go their separate ways, to different schools and, soon enough, to different cities. In my mind, it will always be their song.

At this point in the academic year, Let It Go becomes a bit of an anthem. That and The Final Countdown. There are a lot of reasons for this, to say the least. Mistakes are always made, by teachers, by students, by other departments who frankly should know better. The time to sort them out has passed and we are left with no choice but to accept whatever outcome we are left with. Students who have failed who deserve to pass; students who have passed who did no work at all; students who have faced circumstances that mean they have dropped out, at the last minute quite often, because of exam terror, or sudden eviction, or losing their Home Office appeal and facing deportation. And we, their teachers, are left saying goodbye, looking at a year of slogging our guts out, summarised in a row of 50 or so little words: Pass. Fail. Pass. Pass. Fail. For me, at least, those words are filled with emotion. Grief for the things I planned to do, but didn’t quite manage in the heat of yet another Ofsted year. Guilt for the times I wasn’t focused enough, didn’t get that marking back with enough feedback; would that have made the difference? Grief because, for all it is an overwhelming relief when the end of the year finally comes around, it is also a goodbye, to the groups you have really enjoyed as much as the ones you have struggled with, and I have never been any good at goodbyes.

Loss. Goodbyes. They always seem to be bad things, to be avoided at all costs with Hollywood-style endings and Olaf having “his own personal flurry”. None of the heartbreak of The Snowman for younger generations, please. And don’t get me wrong, I’m all in favour of happy endings. There is a reason I’ve never made it to the end of Watership Down. But we know that growth, beauty, fulfilment can only happen if some things are lost. The more you prune roses, the more will grow in future. (I think, anyway; though if I’m wrong that explains why my roses keep dying…) Students must finish with us to leave and move on in their lives and achieve whatever they are able to. Children must grow up, grow independent, make choices and mess things up for themselves. Loss surrounds us, from monumental landslides that make life after them unimaginable, through to little disappointments, more hurt pride than moments to mourn. Beautiful moments you don’t want to let go of. Moments that went wrong, and leaving you grieving for what you hoped they would be. Every breath draws in new life and releases what is no longer helpful. Accepting those losses is the only way to release the weight of carrying the world on your shoulders, eternally. But isn’t that so much easier said than done?

How can you accept your children no longer seeing you as the most magical person to ever exist? How can you accept students who once saw you as their salvation seeing you now as the teacher who let them down? How can you accept the passage of time robbing you of health, energy, self identity? How can you accept a political situation that fills you with fear of what may be lost, and anger at the price that will have to be paid by those who have nothing to pay it with? How can you accept the loss of your parents, your partner, your siblings, your children? Grief never disappears. It sneaks into your gut when your shields are down, when you sleep and dream they are still alive, still around, that you are still able to change and correct the situation. And resting underneath the grief, gurgling maliciously, is guilt. Have you let them down? Could you have done more? Do they know you could, should, tried to do more to change things? And then that guilt surges to the surface, forming a suffocating barrier between yourself and acceptance.

Making a choice means closing down opportunities and saying no. If you commit to one course of action you are saying no to all the others. Sometimes it is just a delay, a maybe next time, or an I’ll try that when this other thing changes. But sometimes the choice is absolute. The choice to move countries; the choice to have children; the choice to get married, or to get divorced. Some decisions will forever change the direction your life will take, and you will never be the same person as you were before you made them.

But when we make these big life choices, we rarely pause to grieve for the things we are leaving behind, even as we celebrate the things we are moving towards. Nor do we acknowledge the guilt that can be associated with those choices. Getting married will always be a point where everything changes, and I added to that by moving halfway up the country at the same time. Oops… And then my father died, 3 months after my wedding. Publicly celebrating our intention to support, aggravate, annoy and enhance each other for the rest of our lives was utterly beautiful, and I will never again have a party that is so much fun. But it meant I was giving up my father’s name, changing documents so that he was no longer an explicit part of my identity, as he lay dying (even though we didn’t know that was what was happening). But I had just got married! How could I feel guilt, feel grief, for that? But seriously, looking back, how could I not feel All The Emotions at such a time?

You can have anything. You can’t have everything. And admitting that, whilst being one of the hardest things ever to do, is almost certainly key to surviving everything else, acknowledging the grief, the guilt, and moving beyond both into genuine acceptance.

Poppies at sunset. Image by danigeza, via Pixabay.

Why I wish I could break the rules

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A long time ago, in a life-stage far far away, I did something unbelievable. The kind of thing that, looking back even a few days later, I couldn’t believe I really did. One Friday afternoon in sixth form, a group of us decided to leave school early and head down to Glastonbury Festival. We had tents and sleeping bags (well, most of us did. If I remember rightly, one individual named very aptly after a capricious Shakespearean character decided all he needed was a change of socks. Probably best not to ask, really.) We did not have tickets. Crowded into the back of a car, a bit terrified and very excited, listening to Britney Spears and laughing at how terrible the music was, was probably the closest I ever came to feeling like I had a part in the action. 

We parked up and started off in the direction of the fences, which suddenly looked rather more official than they had in my head. Close to the car park were a few scary-looking individuals who had cut holes already, and were charging a nominal fee – sometimes rather aggressively – to get through. We walked on. None of that nonsense for us, they said, though at that point my heart was pounding like mad, imagining that all these eighteen year old lads would be literally jumping over the fence, leaving unhealthy and unfit me on the other side, unable to get in, unable to leave. As was the case far more often than I realised, I suspect, I had underestimated the leaders of the crew. They kept going until we found a gap we could all squeeze through.

You are probably wondering why I am admitting to this now. The truth is, that is just about the only time in my life when I have not only broken the rules, but also refused to feel guilty about it. (Not long after this, the same classmates and I had the choice of jumping a queue or missing the Vatican Museum. We jumped the queue. I still feel guilty about it now.) Even when the news broke, shortly after our return, that so many people had broken in to Glastonbury that they were cancelling the whole festival the following year, we still felt proud rather than ashamed. Proud, and just a tad smug. 

A gorgeous image of the beauty and chaos of such a huge gathering of people.
By jaswooduk from UK – Glastonbury 2011, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18498961

Breaking the rules is absolutely not something I do. Even my acts of teenage rebellion were all within the stereotypes. We not only got our parents’ permission for the Glastonbury trip, for example, we also got our teachers’ permission to leave early (though there is a very good chance we didn’t tell either group we didn’t exactly have tickets…) When I started smoking – sorry, Mum, but I realise now you’re not daft and probably knew the whole time – it was an act of rebellion against my parents, my teachers, my goody-goody reputation; but I waited until I was legal before I started, and always used money I had earned myself to buy them, not money from my parents.

Breaking the rules genuinely makes me shake. Even bending the expectations fills me with quiverings. I seem to have passed this on to The Paleontologist too, unfortunately. When she was much younger and we were living somewhere very different, I took her to the local Eid celebration. It was the kind of party that had 20000 people attending, and its own funfair, so I was expecting her to be in her element. Instead, as we walked the familiar route to the local park that had been transformed into a place for prayers and celebration, her feet got slower and slower until eventually she stopped altogether. “What if they don’t want us there?” she whispered. “What if people like us aren’t allowed?”

I watch people who break the rules with a mixture of awe and horror. Extinction Rebellion have achieved amazing headlines, but my gut rebels at the idea of praising their methods. Greta Thunburg I’m happier with; strikes fit better within the language of revolt from my staunch Labour-supporting upbringing. But do we have to break the rules to be noticed? Does that mean that those of us who feel unable, morally or practically, to take that kind of action have no part to play at all? 

And it turns out that being congenitally incapable of breaking the rules has even deeper consequences than feeling unable to take full part in movements fighting for the things I most believe in. Breaking the rules should be a deliberate act, knowing what those rules are and rebelling against them. Middle class adulting in modern society means following a set of abstract and unwritten rules and keeping yourself and your loved ones within them, accepting the inevitable fallout when you step over a boundary no one ever told you was there. There are rules that deserve nothing less than annihilation; and yet, breaking the rules has consequences, not just for me, but for those dependent on me. And I can’t take that risk. So I struggle on, trying to work them out, only aware of them as they lie in ruins behind me. Have a home. Your own home. Keep that home tidy enough for a photoshoot at all times. Apologise profusely for the way your home looks if anyone pops in unexpectedly, even if it is spotless. Record everything – if a day out isn’t on social media, it didn’t really happen, right? – but whatever you do don’t go getting all self-obsessed. Value all things by their economic worth, whilst also bemoaning that stay at home parents are not treated with the respect they deserve. Recycle everything possible. Talk a lot about climate catastrophe. Own two cars. Go on holiday. Drink plant-based alternatives to milk.

What happens when you can’t keep to the rules? They are so many, so varied, so hidden under layers and layers of obscurity and obfuscation that even in trying to stick to the rules you end up shattering a lot of them. In fact, I’m fairly sure that one of the cardinal rules is to never acknowledge their presence. Some have never seen the rules in action, never understood what is expected and what you are expected to ignore. Many don’t know the rules, have never been shown them, have lived among people with different guidelines and spend every interaction expecting to be called out as a fraud. Some know the rules intimately, using them to their own advantage, manipulating the system to create a world that no one quite knows how to challenge. We have created a system so intricate, so all consuming, so woven into the mesh of our society, our economic system, our values, that we are no longer able to tell apart the rules that do good from the rules that do harm.

There are some rules – morality, decency, love – that deserve to be followed with the rigidity I use when waiting for the green man before crossing the road. Somehow, though, these rules seem to be the ones most neglected within the structures and confines of our everyday lives. Some need to be broken in emergencies. And some deserve to be wiped off the face of the world for all eternity. Particularly the one that says your worth as a person (and especially as a woman) is somehow inherently linked to your ability to keep up with the washing up. I really don’t like that one.

Saying it like this makes it sound so easy. Follow the good rules. Ignore the mediocre ones. Send the bad ones into oblivion. Trouble is, it’s really not always obvious which is which. And the likelihood is, some rules are life-giving for one person and a prison for another. One of my students, for example, the thing she is most proud of is keeping her house spotless. It gives her self-worth in a life that has consistently stripped it away, in a society that would cast her to the bottom of every heap going. How can I say it’s a bad rule that makes me feel terrible, when it gives her acceptance?

Some people see Christianity as full of endless rules. But Jesus didn’t just break the rules. He turned them upside down and ripped them apart from the inside out. He set down a way of life that is still more radical than anything we imagine today, and made it sound so easy to follow – just take your eyes off the rules, and follow love instead. Like every religion, one interpretation tends to dominate media consciousness, and it is never the whole picture. For me it is not about rules. There is one clear commandment, set in three parts (God does love threes…): Love your God, love others, love yourself. Do that and everything will be OK. It broke the rules then, it breaks them now. It seems to me that, thousands of years later, this is still the best advice we have. If we followed these rules, wouldn’t it be marvellous to be able to shelve the rest?