KEEPING A DIARY

We were in Amsterdam last week and we visited Anne Frank's house. It was harrowing and heartbreaking as you would expect. All those people hiding for all that time and all in vain. But what made the biggest impact on me was unexpected. At the end of the tour there is a short film that Otto Frank made in the 60s. He said that he didn't know that his daughter was keeping a diary and after he had read it  he had thought that perhaps he didn't know his daughter at all, so deep and personal were the things that she had recorded.

I am an inveterate diary keeper. I have them going back to the 80s, recording my life as I saw it. The major events are all there. School and exams, my first boyfriend, university, my working life, my wedding and the birth of my children. And then, about two years ago, I stopped writing. January came and I chose not to buy a diary. In fact if truth be told, I stopped really writing when there became a possibility that someone would read them. After the birth of my children the function of my diary changes from being an account of my innermost soul to a simple record of day to day events, no less valuable but not what I wrote a diary for.

So when I heard Otto Frank speak about Anne's diary two things struck me. Firstly, as a mother, is it true that you hardly know your children? I tried to exclude myself from the generalisation. He was a father and a father in an era when openness was not embraced as it is today. Of course his comments didn't apply. But my objections sounded hollow even to me. How would I ever really know what was going on in the heads of my children? Even when they are young, they keep things back, things they think might upset you or get them into trouble. Eventually I concluded that there is nothing wrong with not knowing your children as well as you'd like. As long as they are happy why does it matter? Surely it's simply vanity to assume that you know what goes on inside another's mind.

So then I looked at myself. Throughout my life I have recorded, albeit unintentionally, how I have changed and developed as a person. You don't necessarily spot the shifting opinions as they happen but a comparison of the musings of one year with the next will show a developing psyche as it deals with life's hurdles. I change all the time. I know this because I blog and play on Facebook and by these two media I am able to see how my responses to situations alter. But you have to dig deep to spot it and it all smacks a bit too much of navel gazing for my liking. Better to write a diary and record those changes honestly and in one place.

This is not a light bulb moment for me. I have toyed with the idea of a diary ever since I gave one up. My iPad stores various Journal apps, each more aesthetically pleasing than the last and I have written things down from time to time behind the security of an obscure password. But when I mentioned writing a diary on my iPad to my eldest she looked at me in horror. "You can't do that!" She exclaimed. "It's not a proper diary if you don't write it with a pen." And I think she might be right. Tempting though it is to start typing behind a little app icon, such a function lacks the soul of having to find it in your heart to form the words on the page. It's a bit like the difference between paying on a credit card and counting out the cash from your wallet. One thing is for sure though. If I venture back down that path I need to be honest with myself and not give two hoots about whoever might read it. Rather like writing a blog really.

WHO'D BE A GOVERNOR?

Forget what's going on in America. Imogen Clark is standing for election as a Parent Governor at our secondary school. There are two vacancies and a startling seven nominees. The voting has opened and now I just have to wait and see.

I've thought about standing for Governor before - well every time a vacancy comes up in fact. We get notification of a position to be filled and I consider it carefully. I even got as far as writing my little statement once. But then something always holds me back: a better candidate; a reevaluation of available time; sheer, unadulterated terror of the whole election process.

Anyway, when the letter appeared this time, I girded my loins and decided to have a go. I read the instructions. 'Nominees should prepare a short statement setting out the skills they can bring to the role.' Oh Lord. Flummoxed by the first hurdle. What on earth should I say?

Even now as I type this I have come to a spectacular halt. I have skills - which of us doesn't? But what are they and how can I organise them into a coherent cohort? As I sat at my computer pondering, I realised how much easier this task would be if I still had a proper job. In a work environment, blowing my own trumpet long and loud was something that I had to do to stay afloat. And I knew what my skills were because they were all nicely listed for my in my annual appraisal.

At home it's different. No one tells you what you're good or bad at any more.
'Well, Imogen. Your baking skills aren't bad and I'd hang my hat on those if you're looking for promotion but those shirt sleeve creases leave a lot to be desired.'
You have to dig deep and honestly to identify those transferable skills.

Then you have to write them down without sounding like an idiot. We've all read personal statements that make your toes curl but what is it that they say that puts you off and what makes someone else appeal? It's a minefield! In the end I decided that I should stop fretting about how I came across and just write about myself as honestly as I could. I would either strike a chord or I wouldn't and there was nothing I could do about that. And if I were elected then worrying about what others thought wouldn't really be part of the job description.

Eventually I managed to churn out half a page of who I am and sat back, relieved that the task was completed. I took a final fleeting glance at the instructions letter. 'Include a short statement.... and a CV.'!
At this point I almost gave up! A CV! Not since 1987 have I done that. I didn't even know what to put in it. Thank God for the internet.

Anyway, I now await the public vote. My statement doesn't really match the others. It's less business like and more Mum at Homeish but then what would you expect? That's who I am. The business bit of me went into retirement over a decade ago. But just because no one pays you for what you do doesn't make it any less difficult or valuable. If the voting public like what I have to say then perhaps they'll give me their vote. If they don't, then I'll be ever so slightly mortified for a day or so and then I'll just get back on with life at the pointy end.

A BRAVE NEW WORLD

I am a fan of technology. I'm just not awfully good at it. But I'm trying to learn.

I first decided that I needed to improve my almost non-existent knowledge when my primary school aged children started running rings round me on the PC. I was frightened of the big bad internet and how it was going to harm my children. I had visions of them watching hard core porn or being cyber bullied. These were the things that we were constantly warned about and so this was how I thought.

I now have four children who are all more savvy with a keyboard than me (but who obviously as yet lack my wit and experience). I have never had to close down unsavoury sites. They sometimes find things that contain language that I'd rather not hear but it's nothing worse than they pick up in the playground. They just look for things that interest them (which on the whole tend to be age appropriate) and then use the information in ever more creative ways. I appreciate that that might not be everyone's experience but it is mine.

And the more I learn, the more I come to realise that this fear which is, in the main, a fear of the unknown, is really holding us back. As parents, we have a tendency to fight against the tide of technology, refusing to let it change what we know. Our children carry round in their pockets more technology than we needed to take man to the moon and yet we ban them from using it. An we connect technology with all the bad things in the world. I was the same. I wanted my children to know how to use a library card reference system, a phone directory, a train timetable. And of course I still think that they need to have a passing understanding of these things but they are no longer relevant to the world that they are growing up in. This stuff is now done with a click.

When I was a kid my Dad could fix a car. In his youth, engines were simple and unreliable so knowing how one worked was crucial. I'm sure he could not have imagined a world in which people wouldn't be able to look under a bonnet, locate the problem and sort it. But how many of us can? Even mechanics hook the car up to the electronic diagnostics these days.

My point is that things move on and we have to move with it. We cannot stand, like King Cnut, with our feet in the sea. Yes it's new and it's not how we did things but that doesn't make it wrong. The catalyst for this post was something I watched on the apple page today. I urge you to watch it too.  Just imagine if we had had textbooks where the pictures moved, where we could look up words we didn't understand just by touching them, where we could add our own notes to the pages without being told off, which were updated continuously rather than out of date as soon as they hit the shelves and then churned out year after year regardless, that weighed the same no matter how thick they were or how many we carried. I could go on and on but you take my point.

The more I learn, the more excited I become. I do have the odd wobble and look back longingly at a time when new information was fed to me in a way that suited the Victorians. But that world is gone and I am going to try to embrace the new one and work with it. To be honest, the more I think about it the more I believe that I will not be doing the best for my children if I don't.  And I'm excited!

BRITISH ENGLISH?

I have a new computer. It's American and it can't spell.

That's probably not fair. It's an American computer and it can spell in American but I am English and it's frustrating. So, after adding more 'u's than was good a girl, I decided to go in search of something to change the language settings.  I found a setting called 'British English' and, without really giving the matter much thought, I clicked on it. This morning, when it informed me that 'tantalizing' is spelt with an 's', I started to get a bit cross.

I don't mean particularly that my computer's spell check cannot cope with the vagaries of English. Let's face it. It's not the most complicated language in the world for nothing. (Actually, it might not even be that but that's a different posting.) No. What has annoyed me is that we have to define English in terms of being British. British English. Surely that's ridiculous. It's English. Pure and simple. It's a language all of it's own.

But then nothing seems to be truly English any more. The Scots are fiercely proud and the Irish identity is pretty secure. Even little Wales knows what it stands for. And then there's us, hiding quietly behind the mantle of Britain hoping that no one will notice that we're there or, which is infinitely worse, apologising. I know we have stuff to apologise for. Imperialism perhaps wasn't our finest hour and no other nation tries to wear socks and sandals in public. We drink too much, speak loudly to foreigners, insist on showing far too much flesh when the sun comes out and eat food from photo menus. But I'm sure that's no worse than any other nation. We all have our faults.

I'm not convinced that Britain is any good for England. Somewhere along the line we seem to have lost our sense of national identity - the things that make us English. I don't mean all the silly things that I've listed but the important stuff. True grit in the face of adversity, a desire to explore and discover, scientific endeavour, the stiff upper lip, stopping for tea in the middle of the afternoon. Ok. I know. I've strayed back into silly but you take my point.

And the worst thing of all is that even as I type, I'm worrying about the response that I'll get. There's a fairly good chance that by blowing the trumpet for England I will cross a line for some readers into some vague and unidentifiable xenophobia which should be only spoken of in hushed tones. But why is it unacceptable to be proud to be English but not Scottish, or French or German? I don't get it.

I might write to Apple and tell them that there's no such thing as 'British English'. I doubt they'll listen to me but they might learn how to spell tantalize.

MUSICAL CHOICES

I seem to have stopped listening to music. It wasn't a conscious decision - it just kind of crept up on me. I gradually slipped from being someone who always had music in their life to someone who didn't.

My preference for silence springs from my home. It is a very noisy place. All manner of sound spills out of every room almost all the time, resulting in a cacophonous din which makes clarity of thought an impossibility. In desperation, I began to protect the rare moments of peace by not destroying them with my own music.

However, made aware by the constant references to musical selection on Facebook, that I seemed to be out on a limb, I thought that I ought to revisit my music collection and see if anything appealed. After careful analysis, it seems that most of my records fall into two camps - stuff I have because it reminds me of something else and stuff I have because I thought, at some point, that I ought to have it.

The first group is easy. It's made up of music that I think I like but when I listen carefully, I realise that I simply enjoy the connotations that it carries. These are songs that remind me of people or of a holiday or a great year at school. If I were to hear most of that music for the first time now, would I bother listening for a second time? Unlikely. So does music like that have any merit for the purposes of this exercise? Well, I suppose I enjoy the memories but that doesn't make it music that I like does it?

The second group is more complex. There is stuff I bought because people whose opinion I respected liked it. There is stuff I bought to ingratiate myself with people I considered to be important at the time. There is stuff I bought because I thought that I should listen to enhance my own knowledge. I don't really like any of it. It is music I own because someone else likes it. What's the point of that?

So I looked at every album I have and imagined that I had never heard it before. What did I actually like when looked at in those terms? What remained was very small. Boys singing sacred choral music and soulful stuff circa 1965 -80.

So this makes me think that perhaps it's not listening to music that is the problem. It's listening to the wrong stuff. Instead of playing things I thought I liked, I should listen to the music that makes my soul sing. This is probably really obvious to everyone else but it has taken me an awfully long time to get there.

On reflection I do probably prefer silence but a more discerning approach to what I actually want to listen to might get me better results. And, as in so many things, I need to stop thinking that I am missing out on some crucial aspect of life. Just because everyone else tells me what they are listening to, doesn't mean that I need to be doing it too.

SOCK TROUBLE

My socks keep twisting round in my boots.  I know it's not the kind of news that is going to keep you awake at night but it is really annoying. I'm constantly having to stop to sort it out, hopping around on one foot whilst I twist and turn the uncooperative fabric back into place.

Before you start casting aspersions about the shape of my feet, let me assure you that they are not the problem.  Sock twisting is a relatively new phenomenon for me. It's the quality of my socks - my new socks let me add. If they were old and worn with the lycra long since gone to meet its maker, I would be less irritated. But these are new Marks and Spencer's socks.

I suspect that you are wondering where on earth I could possibly be leading you with this erudite and insightful observation. Well, this is a post about quality verses price. You get what you pay for, as someone once said to me. Marks and Spencer's socks now cost next to nothing. A veritable bargain in fact at £4.50 for three pairs except they are not fit for purpose and won't stay right way up in my boot.

It's not just socks. School polo shirts seem to have fallen for the old "Never mind the quality: feel the width" adage as well. Cheap as chips but almost see through and washed out of shape long before they are grown out of. It's the dumbing down of retail. Perhaps they think I won't notice? Well I have.

But times are hard. People are price conscious and, lured by the temptations of the super cheap stores, our expectations about how much things should cost are becoming muddied. After all, who wants to pay top dollar for something when you could buy it for a third of the price just down the high street?

Well, me actually. Call me old fashioned but I'd rather pay a little more for a pair of socks that stay put. I'd like to throw my socks away because they have worn down to the warp and weft and not because they have gone baggy before their time. ( I generally draw the line at darning. I'm not that old fashioned.) I was taught to launder well and take care of my clothes but I seem to be a dying breed. At some of the prices in Primark it hardly seems worth laundering at all.

I'm hoping for a backlash. Perhaps eventually we will tire of this disposable world that we live in and yearn for quality once again? It does seem to be happening in other areas but I fear that soon we will be so far down the road of cheap clothes that it will be culturally impossible to turn back.

I could, of course, shop elsewhere for my socks. I know that if I paid a little more I could get socks that stayed put. It's just that I have bought my socks in Marks and Spencer's for as long as I can remember and it seems a betrayal to jump ship. Then again, they have betrayed my too. They have some in Harrods, I note, that might fit the bill!

CHUCKING STUFF OUT

There is something very satisfying about throwing things away. It gives me a sense of order, of moving forward. It reminds me that in the fight between me and stuff, the stuff may win the occasional battle but that I can win the war.


I'm good at getting rid. In a house of six people with walls made of brick and not elastic, it is a necessary skill and one that tends to fall soley to me as the rest of my family don't seem to have my talent for it. It hasn't always come naturally though. As a child and a young woman, I was sentimentally attached to all kinds of things. I had items in boxes and files all over the place, precious treasure that was important in some way. I have a sweet that a boy that I fancied gave me in class when I was 11. I have all my 'O' level exercise books. I have the sugar flowers from the top of my wedding cake. 


Then one day I opened a box and found things that no longer held any significance for me. I couldn't remember why I'd saved them. Whatever it was that I was seeking to preserve had been lost, notwithstanding the keepsake and at that point I decided that hanging on to random things was pointless.  I had my memories no matter what else I kept. 


This realisation coincided with me having my fourth child. With the first baby, I kept everything, squirrelling it away for posterity. Paint daubs, shoes, birthday cards. By the time I got to number four, I realised that something was going to have to change or we would sink under a tsunami of preschool art. I started to be selective. Each child has a box file and things only make it in if they are really good or really special. 


However, the rest of the house is a bit hit and miss. I'm great at throwing away clothes because my wardrobe is tiny. I'm less good with shoes and coats because you never know when they might come in. I'm rubbish with books too but fortunately my kindle arrived just as I was going to have to start making some difficult decisions in that department. Current areas in need of attention are the pantry (far more containers than any woman could ever need), the kids' wardrobes (toys that haven't been touched for years but are too good to throw away) and the garage (I really need to master eBay.) 


But I can't just throw things away. I have to be in the right mood. I have to be feeling ruthless and practical as there can be no turning back halfway through. Today I was like that and took full advantage. But tomorrow I may be feeling more sentimental, less gung ho. Tomorrow I may think that the past deserves a second chance. Who knows? Life's funny like that, isn't it?