In front of the lens

Let me ask you a question:

Before the husband did his back in we went to the beach for his birthday earlier this month (yes..it was THAT mild). The place was heaving with people; hearty dog-walkers, families with cute kiddies running around in brightly coloured wellies, elderly promenaders donning hats and sticks, some dudey surfers looking to brave the sea and a flock of photographers wielding tripods and zoom lenses obviously on some sort of club outing.

We nestled into an out-of-the-way spot, off the main drag and set up our barbeque bits. Max and Chloe climbed on the groynes and we lit the coals which smoked and smoked and smoked. To our left, a couple were climbing some rocks with two ferrets on leads sniffing around the crevices. To our right an older lady with white hair - probably a member of the photographers' troop - set up a camera on a tripod and trained the lens right on us. A few minutes later a man came and set up his camera right next to her. So there were two - looking directly at us.

They were really quite close and 'in your face'. If they had just been snapping quickly I wouldn't have minded really, but they were all tripodded up and stayed there for ages, taking picture after picture. We began to feel a little under the spotlight and it felt intrusive. Were they taking pictures of us or focusing on the ferrets?

Eventually my husband went up to the old lady and asked. Yes, she was taking pictures of us she said - the smoke from the barbeque looked beautiful apparently. Husband then commented - fairly I think - that he would have preferred that she ask our permission before taking pictures of us at which she acted surprised and mildly defensive, making out it was her right as a photographer to take pictures of whatever and whomsoever she liked.


Did she have a right? I don't think so. I always thought you had to ask permission to take photos of people, whatever country you are in - and especially when there are children involved.

What do you think?

Back problems

My husband 'put his back out' on Sunday. Apparently all he did was stand up a bit too suddenly having been kneeling down to clear out the fireplace.

I came back from football with Chloe (two unbelievably tense matches, in which C got repeatedly whacked in the head by the ball and was herself complaining of backache) to find Max complaining of a headache and husband hobbling around like an old man. I myself had a splitting headache - really honestly I did- but didn't bother to mention it, it would have seemed all too contrived in the circumstances.

So it was an aching rag-tag bunch of us who sat down to watch the rugby that afternoon.

Come the end of the match though, while three of us felt much better, the husband had frozen in place and couldn't move even an inch without sparking off a series of agonisingly painful spasms in his back. Even the most basic thing like turning his head caused him to be racked in extreme pain. I'd never seen anyone in quite such agony (except myself in childbirth - but then again I never actually saw myself).

I bought some Neurofen from the local shop but it did little to help. It just seemed so ludicrous. How could one small action have such a dramatic effect?

Over the course of the evening it got even worse, and we set up a mattress on the floor for him to sleep downstairs. It was a long night, with cries of pain from downstairs requiring my help and attention and two children, for some reason deciding to share my bed and taking up all the room.

The following morning it had become almost farcical. I returned from school drop-off to find him sliding along the dining room floor trying to get to the bathroom. Stronger painkillers which I quickly bought from the chemist did nothing to help. He was stuck on the floor for ages. All sorts of strategies and solutions were mooted, thought up, tried. But he just couldn't get up. The pair of us were getting quite hysterical with it all but, with cruel irony, laughing made it hurt even more.

I spoke to the doctor and she prescribed a pharmacopia of pills - muscle relaxants, anti-inflammatories, mega-paracetamol. But we had to wait four hours to administer these. When they finally kicked in we managed to get him back on his feet. It was an almost epiphanous moment .

Today, he is much better. We have rigged up the sofa bed, he can get in and out of it and walk to the bathroom. But it's still desperately fragile and he is still in pain.

To top it all it's his birthday: Happy Birthday darling!

Now I've been awarded a couple of awards which I must dutifully pass along.

Maddy has very kindly given me a Bloggers of the World award which I pass to: Swearing Mother, Diary of a Housewife, Too young for a Midlife too old for a tantrum, Manic Mother of Five, Land of Sand, Tomfoolery and anyone I nominated for the other award below who already has it!


Belle has given me the Excellent blogger award which comes with the following instructions:

I love being a part of the blogging community and part of all the friendships that I've formed so I wanted to give a blog award for all of you out there that have Excellent Blogs. By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, you have to award it to 10 more people whose blogs you find Excellent Award worthy. You can give it to as many people as you want but please award at least 10.

I nominate: Tomfoolery, Identity Crisis, She's like the wind, Crystal Jigsaw, 3kidsnojob, Itchy feet at 40, Flowerpot, Witterer on Autism, Land of Sand, The Write Eye and Mother of Shrek.

As I have just found out that most of these already have said award - anyone who does is welcome to take the bloggers of the world award instead. Anyone who I haven't nominated, please feel free to take either!.

Just a common or garden crisis

When I had my major meltdown, I thought it was a product of the way my life had gone, the place I found myself, the frustrated ambitions and pent-up resentments I had harboured for years. I thought it was a totally and utterly unique mid-life, individual and peculiar to me.

Now, I hear on Radio London that scientists have decided that the most typical time for a mid-life crisis -the ultimate nadir in one's life-course - comes at the age of 44. And how old was I when I finally expressed my angst-ridden rage? How old was I when I reached the very lowest point of my adult life?

44.

My very personal descent was after all just a scientifically predictable statistic. Somehow I find that rather disappointing.

Can you credit it?

Everyone's panicking about falling share prices and the fate of the economy this week.

I don't pretend to understand economics. I really can't see how something as ephemeral as the (lack of) 'confidence' of bods on the stockmarket floor can have an impact on the price of veg at Tescos. But I do understand that the greed of US and UK financial companies in dishing out massive amounts of credit and the gullibility, avarice and consumerism of borrowers, has landed us up in a big mess.

You don't need to be a clairvoyant to have seen this coming. Where I live, I'm surrounded by low-income families driving around in BMWs with personalised number plates, sporting 'designer' clothes, trolling off on holidays to Florida, building hot tubs in their gardens and out purchasing the latest HD tv as if it's a life necessity.

It's almost endemic. Last month a friend of mine told me of a lady who comes to clean for her. This lady has 4 children, she cleans for a few hours a week and has a husband on disability benefit. She told my friend how she was having to 'cut back' on Christmas presents for the kids this year and was only spending £100 per child. That's cutting back??

I'm pretty sure that our household income is higher than hers, but there's no way I'd think of spending £100 on each child. I can only think she used the credit card.

I know it sounds a little precious and pompous, but this level of materialism really bothers me. Don't these people realise that they have to pay the money back eventually? Don't they realise that showering their kids with expensive items at Christmas doesn't make them happier, better, more rounded children, but just future victims of shallow consumerism? It's just all wrong.

It's not just low-income families who get in this mess either. On Radio 4 I heard an ex-journalist for the Times describing how his credit borrowing spiralled to such an extent that he ended up without his wife and kids, without his home, out on the streets and without a job.

The sad truth of all this though is that it's not only the borrowers who end up suffering in the long run. Now we are all paying for it.

But in a peverse way, I welcome the 'credit squeeze'. It's about time someone pointed out that you shouldn't buy what you can't afford. Simple as that. (um..except for a house of course!).

Best laid plans

I got a couple of glossies in my Christmas stocking one of which was Psychologies. As a freebie for the festive season, a little pink journal came with the mag. I'm supposed to use it for goal setting: writing down my weekly/monthly targets and achievements. Though I appreciate the thought, needless to say it's already gathering dust on my bedside table.

I'm not a great one for resolutions, plans or lists. My mother makes daily lists and holds regular 'planning' sessions, which usually involve me having to commit to things I don't want to do or making arrangements way before I'm ready to even think about them. Maybe as a result, I tend to rebel against this level of organisation, preferring to 'live on the fly', make impulsive decisions and strive as hard as I can, not to be too organised.

However, the mid-life meltdown two years ago did see me turning to self-coaching techniques and I went through a phase of target-setting and list writing, during which I acheived some personal results.

Going through a basket of papers the other day, I found a list I had written last January whilst in the first flush of this super-efficient pro-active me. In it I had written down all of things we hoped to achieve that year; things we needed to do to the house, decisions we needed to make as a family, places we wanted to go and actions we needed to take. One year on, I realise, we have hardly got anywhere: the radiators haven't been repainted - though the eggshell paint has been bought, we still haven't put the futon and random stuff on eBay to sell, our doorbell still doesn't work, our porch is still separated from next-door's by a horrid bit of plastic and, more importantly, our house is still bursting at the seams, crammed with stuff we had in Abu Dhabi which we keep tucked away in the belief or vain hope that one day we will finally move to a larger property - or at least make our own large enough to accommodate everything.

This last issue - whether to move or improve - has had us in an impasse for about three years now. Every January I resolve to decide one way or another whether we put all our efforts into moving or whether we pour some money into the house to make it a nicer and roomier place to live. We can never decide and another year goes by without us doing anything at all. But this year I really do want to decide.

The main problem is that my son's room is TINY - and I mean TINY. There's just room for a bed and that's it. He's 10 now and I can't imagine him even fitting in lengthways at 15. Also, we live on a main road and the traffic disturbs my husband who is used to living in the country. On the upside we have a fantastic garden. But come the winter and we're confined indoors we all begin to feel cramped and claustrophobic.

Houses round here are expensive and the choice is pathetic. We have scanned the papers and internet regularly but have never found one we like which we could afford which isn't in a flight path, by a motorway, miles away from schools and work and which has a garden bigger than a dishcloth.

At the end of last year, we had more or less decided to stay put until I finished my PhD, after which, we hope we would have more money. In the meantime we could do up the house and the kid's rooms. But the other day, I realised that by the time I finish, Chloe will be 15 and we'd only have a few more years with her at home before she leaves us. So now we're swinging the other way again. My latest scheme is to find an affordable house, similar but slightly larger than our own, with a decent garden which will not cost much more than ours.

But who knows how long that will last. I feel something major will have to happen to make us take a decision - like winning the lottery or inheriting a fortune, having the road diverted from the front, seeing the perfect house in the perfect location at the perfect price or having a decent architect just happen to drop by, appraise our house and draw up wonderful plans. Otherwise, another year is going to go by and we'll have done nothing.

Festive tidings

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to fellow bloggers. Eat, drink and be merry!!

Back in the New Year

Dad

Every time I see my Dad, a little part of me yearns, momentarily, nostalgically, painfully, for the man he once was.

His bent body, skeletal frame, rheumy eyes and gamely shuffling gait, are so far removed from the rampunctious, larger-than-life, tempestuous yet loving man of my childhood .

But this is how I remember him: a distinguished academic, fiercely intelligent yet competitive, with a quick temper, but equally quick to calm down; a fat man - his rounded tummy giving ample evidence of his intense enjoyment of cooking, fine food and drink; a funny man - with a sharp sense of humour and a tendency to make terrible puns; a wise and caring father, always ready with considered advice and respectful of my childish opinions.

His second wife, now back with him as a carer, ensures that his quality of life is as good as it can be. He gets out a lot, meets friends, travels, visits his children. But he can barely write now, he can read -but not long books - he can cook occasionally but is now more or less off the alcohol and can only eat soft food. He still cracks the odd joke and gives advice on my thesis, but his voice is so weak that he is sometimes hard to hear.

Parkinsons has taken so much of my old Dad away from me and although his mind is still the same, what upsets me most is that my children will never know who he used to be. I miss him.