Perfect 5- Minute Moments

Christmas is over and  the new year is not yet here.
We are back, once again in those nameless inbetween-days recovering from over indulgence.
Those of us who don't have to go back to work yet are meant to be recovering from the excesses of Xmas and filling our days with nothing but relaxation.
And yet....there is a vague sense of edginess, a feeling that we are waiting for something that hasn't happened yet..
For a new year? A new beginning? A return to work? A return to all things familiar and  slightly boring?
Time pressures have disappeared, replaced, instead, by the pressures of filling time. 
There is no reason to get up in the morning.
No reason to eat breakfast before lunch.
No particular reason to do anything at any particular time.
We are free to do nothing at all.
And all this freedom and resting takes a lot of getting used to.
We have all the time in the world to spend with the people we've been longing to spend  all the time in the world with.
And suddenly all the time in the world can seem like a big,beckoning space.
With as long as we want to talk about everything we have meant to talk about all year,we  find that we have suddenly run out of words.
We are used to making conversation in short, urgent bursts.
We live in a world of sound-bites, rushed conversations and 60 second news.
In a world of acronyms and text speak.
Sitting, listening to our teenage children and their teenage cousins huddled together on the sofa  on Christmas Day, I found myself wondering if they had actually started to speak a different language.
Theirs is a world  shaped by social media sentences and individual letters instead of words.
Sometimes it feels as though  conversation is a dying art
Grudgingly all the cousins, 4 boys and 3 girls, had agreed to participate in the dramatised court-case involving stolen jewels and dubious characters that their grandad had written especially for them.  
But under pretend cross -examination they answered mostly with monosyllables and  giggles and the odd 'LOL." or "TY."
Try as he might, their once-upon-a-lawyer grandad, could not really get them to enter into the spirit of his little drama.
The ad-libbed performance, supposed take up most of the afternoon, lasted only half an hour before the teenagers made their escape.
" I sent them the outline a week ago," complained their grandad, ' they were meant to read it and create their characters.  They've had lots of time."
"Perhaps they've had too much time," I suggested. " Perhaps it would have worked better if you had given them the outline 10 minutes before it started and told them they had 5 minutes to create their characters."
" How can you create a character in 5 minutes,"sighed their grandad, folding away his Christmas masterpiece.
But the truth is, 5 minutes is all that it takes.
5 minutes is all that it takes for the world to change completely.
5 minutes is all that  it takes for planes to fly into buildings, for bombs to explode, for river banks to burst or for freak waves to wash away an entire island.
5 minutes is all that it takes for crazy people to do crazy things.
So 5 minutes is definitely enough time for lively teenagers to create make-believe characters.
Our lives are a chain of sometimes-intense, sometimes-meaningless  5 minute intervals linked  together by hopes and dreams and the occasional bar of chocolate.

Christmas day faded into Christmas night.
The teenagers  turned the music up and danced their way into boxing day., chattering happily in their mostly incomprehensible language about mostly incomprehensible things.

And as we " oldies," sat and watched, we couldn't help smiling.
Smiling at the happiness they found just by being together.
Smiling at the fun they were having.
Smiling at the memories they were creating.

Because what I've realised as I'm writing this, is that it's not the speed at which we live our lives that matters, but the depth and strength of the memories we create. 
And one day, when all-the-time-in-the-world weighs heavily upon our shoulders, it's remembering all the 5 minutes filled with love and life and laughter that will keep us going.

So here's to 2016 being a year full of perfect 5-minute-moments...and lots and lots of chocolate.

Camper Van Ethics

Sometimes something happens and without you quite realising, it changes how you feel about the world, . 
Not the horror of religious extremism and hatred that seems to be flooding our world at the moment.
Nor the current epidemic of killing, bombing and terrorising.
They create an unavoidable ever-present whisper of fear that we are all trying to ignore.
They are all too huge somehow, too terrible, too incomprehensibly inhuman to think about.
But this week something happened, something small and tangible and utterly unsettling. 

It started with the milk.

Three times a week we have our milk delivered by a milkman ( a quaint English habit that we can't quite kick}.

On Monday, Wednesday and Friday, we wake up and our milk is waiting for us on the doorstep.
But last week,it wasn't.
 I opened the door to a frayed  doormat and an empty space where the milk bottles should have been.
Outraged we phoned the dairy who apologised, explained it was probably a new milkman who hadn't quite learnt his round yet and gave us a refund.
But it wasn't the milkman.
On Saturday we found our milk bottles, and even some that belonged to our neighbours.
It was the evening, already full of November darkness, and Ninesh (my husband) and I, were piling bedding into our camper van.
We were spending the night with my sister and her family because my niece was having an 18th birthday party and, much to our surprise, she had invited us "oldies," as well as our teenage children.
But since we are at the age where the thought of sleeping on the cold floor amongst empty beer cans and smouldering cigarette butts fills us with horror, we'd decided we would sleep in the relative comfort and splendid isolation of our van.

Ninesh slid open the door and climbed inside .....and that's when he almost fell over the milk bottles.
Cursing under his breath, he turned on the lights..... it wasn't just milk bottles.
The roof bed had been pulled out and covered in a now-grubby sheet. 
One of our torches lay on top of it and every surface was covered in a thin film of tobacco dust, cigarette ends and joints.
At first Ninesh and I just stood there, speechless.
How could it be that a few yards from our front door, a complete stranger had been living in our camper van?
How many times had we walked past and not noticed him?
How many times had he watched us enter and leave our house?
How many times had he watched the living room window as the daily mundanity of our family life unfolded? 
How many times, under cover of early-evening and late-morning darkness had he climbed in and out of our van?
And how had we not heard the door sliding shut? ( We never manage to do that without waking everyone up!)
We felt shocked, violated, indignant.
How dare he...
We started looking around more closely.
Opening cupboards, pulling out drawers, checking for more evidence, wondering what he had stolen.
But the truth was, he hadn't stolen anything.
Instead, he had left his phone charger, his pen knife and his grinder lying around.
One of our neighbours wandered over
" Has someone been living in your van?" he asked, peering through the door. 
" How did you know," asked Ninesh.
" Oh, we just saw a young man wearing a hoodie leaving it," he said." It was only about 5 minutes ok. Shall I help you chase after him.  I know which direction he went in?" 
For a moment I followed his gaze through the street-lamp lit darkness.
Then I turned and looked at the penknife and the phone charger and the grinder, probably everything he owned in the world. 
I looked at the crumpled sheet and the lonely torch.
" It's ok,"  I said.
" But he broke into your van and lived in it," said our neighbour.
" But he's gone now," said Ninesh " and he didn't steal anything and we're taking the van away tonight."
And suddenly I imagined it.
A young, homeless man turning the corner onto our road late that night, and staring at the space, where his temporary home should have been.
And just like that my sense of indignation and violation evaporated.
And all I felt was a sense of overwhelming sadness.
We cleared away the milk bottles and the cigarette ends.
We opened all the doors  and windows to get rid of the smell of cigarette smoke.
I collected the sheet and put it in the washing machine and we folded away the roof bed.
In the end all that was left of our van's temporary inhabitant was a small pile of his possessions.
We drove to the party, trying to process what had just happened and not to notice the scent of tobacco that lingered in the air.
" I feel bad keeping his stuff," I said, " it's probably all he's got.  What shall we do with it? Shall we just leave on our wall and hope he comes by to pick it up?"
" Good plan," said Ninesh, " we'll just leave a phone charger and a sharp knife outside our house! No one else would be interested in those!"
" Perhaps we could leave a note," I suggested.
" Right," said Ninesh, " to the person who broke into our camper van and has been living there illegally-
 Please knock on the door and we will return your possessions!"
I sighed, he was right.
The price he had paid for living in our empty camper van was the loss of everything he owned.
" At least he still has his phone," Ninesh pointed out.
I thought about that.
Wondered how someone who has nothing can afford a phone.
Wondered why you would choose a phone over food.
There is a cynical explanation, that the phone was stolen that he was dealing drugs, that he needed to stay in touch with his contacts.
And I know that's the most likely answer.
But a part of me wants to believe something different.
I want to believe that at least, with a phone, he could pretend he wasn't lonely.

We danced the night away amongst devils and angels at my niece's " Gods and Monsters," party and when the night was over we climbed wearily into our van.
We reclaimed it as our own. as the movable holiday home it is.
But emotions are never that simple.
He haunted our dreams, this homeless man.
It's easier not to face the truth, to hide behind our belief that we are, at heart good people who give money to charity and believe in freedom and justice and equality.
But perhaps believing is no longer enough. 
Because there is something so undeniably unjust and unequal about living in a world where some of us have empty bedrooms and empty vans and food to spare while all around us our world is filling with people who have nowhere to sleep and nothing to eat.
So now our lives have been divided into the time before our stranger in the camper van story and the time after it. 
Before it happened I could convince myself that " just caring ,"was enough.
Since it's happened my illusions of personal goodness have been shattered.

I phoned and registered our spare room as a space for asylum seekers with the council but apparently Chichester is not one of the places they are fleeing to.
Perhaps we should leave our van door permanently open and a supply of food and milk inside.... but somehow we can't bring ourselves to be that altruistic.
In this world of constant change and fear, it's hard not to cling even more tightly to what you hold dear.
I find myself looking searchingly at " The Big Issue," sellers and the empty-eyed hooded figures slumped on benches.
" Is it you?" I want to ask them," did you sleep in our van?"
But I know I never will.
The truth is, I don't have the courage to cross the bridge from thought to action. 
And so I live with the knowledge that our camper van will never feel quite like ours again.  That staying in it will always make us feel just a little bit guilty.
And every time I lie down on its comfortable cushions, I will see the lost face of a complete stranger who, for a very short time, had a place that he could call home.

Inter-cultural sauna riots

So it is half term holidays in England and our extended family (15 of us) are back in Gran Canaria, the closest most of us will ever be to paradise.
In the last week of October the skies here are still blue and cloudless, the sun still full of Summer heat and the sand still warm between our toes.
We spend our days gourging ourselves on immoral amounts of delicious food, working out the best location for our sunbeds  and making sure nothing interrupts our hours of serious relaxation.
3 minutes from the hotel the sea sparkles invitingly.
 But is hard to leave the luxurious pool side comfort of the hotel.

And when the swimming gets too boring for  our teenage boys there is tennis or boules or table tennis to enjoy.
We are exhausted by our over- indulgence
And at 4 o'clock every day, it's sauna time.
And that's when the trouble starts.
Because isn't there always trouble in paradise?
It began with a row about clothes.
Too many clothes, in fact
Which is strange because the most clothes any of us are wearing all day is  2 pieces of a bikini - and sometimes those just look like tiny handkerchiefs held together by thin threads.
But apparently for the sauna even this is too much.
Sitting innocently in the sauna in their trunks and bikinis, our extremely-body-aware 16 year old son and nephew and 18 year old daughter and niece, were suddenly shouted at  very loudly by a complete stranger more than twice their age.
"Take your clothes off right now," he yelled.
Now in England, a naked man in his late 40s telling  an 18 year old girl or a 16 year old boy to  take off  their clothes, would probably be arrested.
But apparently in a sauna in Gran Canaria, it is completely acceptable.
" I don't like being naked in front of strangers,"our daughter explained valiantly to the gathering sweat-dripping sauna audience " It makes me feel exposed and uncomfortable and vulnerable."
"In England we always wear swimsuits in saunas," said my sister-in-law.
But while shouting  at teenage girls is allowed in saunas,  challenging the received clothes-free German sauna wisdom is not.
Shaking with rage, the original shouter stormed out of the steam room, sprinkling those he passed with drops of angry sweat.
Inside the sauna the battle raged on, German and English words getting louder and louder.
" wearing cloth-es, it's not hygienic," shouted one large German woman, picking up her towel and leaving 2 buttocked-shaped patches of sweat on the bench.
Hostility and heat rising, we stood our swim-suited ground.
But the battle was only just beginning.
Before long the shouter returned, reinforced by yellow -shirted spa management.
" you must not wearing no swimsuits in sauna," she said, " for hygiene."
" for whose hygiene? " we asked.
" Yours," she explained.
" But we don't mind," we said.
She shrugged, already turning away, relieved she had delivered the required message. " tomorrow no cloth-es," she said as she retreated.
But outside the sauna doors the battle raged on.
As our daughter and niece walked towards the steam room, a tirade of angry words followed them and the shouting German blocked their way.
This was it.
Even the squawking emerald green parakeets couldn't compete with our inter-cultural clamour.
It was all out sauna war.
On the one side stood the Germans, dogmatically sure that they were right, that their rules were the only rules that could be applied, on the other side stood we English and Irish, self-righteously open- minded and certain of the injustice being done to us.
In a mixture of German and English we battled on.
"In Germany it is the law: no clothes in the sauna."
" But we are not in Germany. We are in Gran Canaria. In England we tell our teenage girls not to ask for trouble by sitting naked in front of strange men."
" can you not read what it says on the door?  Nudist area. WHAT DOES NUDE MEAN?"
"It means you don't have to wear clothes,  NOT no clothes allowed....."
" The hygiene, the hygiene..."
" Why is me sitting on a towel  in my swimsuit less hygienic for you than me sitting on a towel in no swim-suit ?"
Sauna rules appear to be a German religion, wearing clothes a human right!
It was clear that no one would win, clear that both sides believed they had the moral high ground.
Obviously the sauna is one place where there will be no European Union.
And if there is no hope in a sauna in The sun-filled paradise of Gran Canaria, what hope is there in colder, wetter Brussels?
We emerged  eventually from the no-clothes-necessary spa area.
Outside a crowd of curious  hotel guests was waiting happily to see who and what had caused the sauna riot.
Could it be that a spot of drama is just what paradise needs?

But in the end, however petty it may seem, I think it's sad.
Sad that one culture cannot respect another.
Sad that when perceiving the discomfort of others, people are unwilling to be flexible.
Sad that shouting at teenagers and children is still seen as a way to solve a problem.
Sad that today, with all the huge and terrible things that are happening in the world, we cannot make peace over the small and inconsequential ones.

In the end, we found a compromise of sorts.

It was agreed that the sauna would be opened earlier for sole use of us swim-suit wearing trouble makers and any non-swimsuit wearers who cared to join us, which they didn't.
A private session, a whole spa heated just for our family so that future unpleasant confrontations could be avoided.
Paradise is about nothing if it not keeping the superficial peace and maintaining the illusion of  harmony.
Perhaps it is only when you finally make it to Heaven that  bridges are truly built and peace is about shared solutions rather than compromise.
But I have this feeling that for my insistently swimsuit -wearing, sauna using family, Heaven is still a long way off.

And now I wonder, how many courses should I have for dinner...

18, Legal and Ready to Fly

Last Saturday our daughter turned 18 which, I suppose, means that she is now officially an adult.

She can now legally buy alcohol - which she did at 10 0'clock in the morning - because she could and wearing her "birthday bitch," crown.

Mia, on her way to the shop

She can buy cigarettes - which she never will because she spends most of her time at parties going round putting out other people's cigarettes.

She can legally watch all the "18-rated," films she wants, which she has probably been doing since she was 15

She can also now legally:  vote, drive a bus, buy a house,  buy fireworks, learn to fly a plane and bungee jump.

All of which meant that, on Saturday morning, ... she looked and acted exactly the same as she had looked and acted on Friday night.

"How does it feel to have another adult in your house?" texted one of my friends.

" Like one adult too many," I texted back.

But that's not really true.

Because to me, Mia will probably never quite be grown-up.

She will always be our daughter, I will always be the mum who worries too much, Ninesh will always be the dad who helps her sort out her finances, her computer, her passport, the nuts-and-bolts that hold her life together.

Being an " adult," is not going to mean that Mia suddenly starts doing her own washing  (in my dreams) cooking  her own dinner, paying her own bills...not while she's living under our roof.
Day to day, having an 18 year old daughter will make very little difference to our lives.
But perhaps what it does do, is bring the future closer. 
 Like a blank canvas, permanently hanging on our wall, we have always been aware of our children''s future, of the day they will walk out of the door and into a tomorrow that doesn't involve us.
 But I've never really thought about it seriously.
It's something you can always put off  because it's so far away.. But one day soon, Mia, and not long after that, her 16 year old brother Joss, will lift their blank canvases off our wall, carry them away and start to fill them with colours all their own.
And that;is a very strange feeling.
It's strange to imagine them living a life detached from ours, doing things we will never know about with friends we might never meet in places we have never been ( although I'm probably naive in believing that doesn't already happen).
The thought that they might be hurt or upset or confused without my knowing, without me being there to comfort them  is almost too painful to think about.
I wonder if, as parents, we are ever quite prepared for the day our children spread their wings and with only the merest of backward glances, fly into their unfamiliar future their wings glimmering with the hope and excitiement of unknown possibilities..
" I"m still dreaming of that day," says one of our neighbours whose three sons, now in their late 20's are all still living at home in their small 3-bedroomed house.
I think about this.
Of course there's a little part of me that would be very happy to imagine Mia and Joss forever curled up on our sofa on their phones and laptops while watching TV.
There's a lIttle part of me that would be relieved to hold them close forever.
But the world is too big and mostly-beautiful, too full of wonders and of what-will-happen-next for my love to hold them back.
So when they are ready to carry the blank canvas of their future away with them, I will lift it carefully off our wall and hand it to them.
And perhaps they won't notice the tiny corner I have torn from it and how I keep it buried in my heart.

Mia and Joss 

The Popularity Illusion

And so, Summer is almost over.  
We have holidayed, travelled and festivaled. 
We have forgotten that there is such a thing as work or school .
Forgotten that there are unpleasant tasks to do and unlikely deadlines to meet.

We have indulged in all things pleasurable and absolved ourselves of as many responsibilities as possible.

Despite the rain ( it is England after all! ) we have managed to have a good time.

But if you are a teenager, there is one thing you can be sure about: however good a time you've had, the "populars" have had a better one.

You will know this from the thousands of photos they have released into the virtual ether.

You will know this from the thousands of photos they have released into the virtual ether.

There is not a moment they have enjoyed that hasn't been photoed and shared with anyone who's interested and many who aren't.  

If there is no photo or snapchat story, how can they prove how popular they really are?

Without a visual record, how can they show the world what a hectic social life they lead, just how in demand they are?

Photos at parties, on holidays, at home or at friends' houses. 

Photos in front of a mirror looking handsome or beautiful,fully-dressed, half-dressed, almost completely undressed.. photos in the garden, in the park, on the pavement, in a cafe, doing something, doing nothing with ALL their friends, ALL the time.

The most important thing is that they can show the world just how beautiful and fantastic and popular they are.
And so they take a photo to prove they are physically there although I can't help wondering where they are emotionally as they view the world through their telephone lens.

Can't help wondering if they actually know how to enjoy the now.

If your "present" is constantly viewed through the lens of a camera, are you really living it?

And if you are under so much pressure to show the world what a good time you are having, are you really having a good time at all?

Life becomes not so much experiencing and enjoying as proving and evidencing.

And where's the life in that?

Where's the letting go and embracing the moment because it's simply yours and perfect ?Where's the time to forget and dream?
Where are you in all of this perfectly popular life?

At the beginning of the summer holidays, way back when summer still lay before us full of promise and the possibility of unrainy days, my  7 year old niece and 10 year old nephew came to stay.

" Do you have a boy friend?" my niece asked our 17 year old daughter, Mia.

" No,' replied Mia.

For a moment my niece stared into space, wrinkling her nose, then turning back to Mia, she asked:

" Oh...does that mean you're not popular then?"

Mia (17) and her cousin Neela (7)

At  7 years old, my niece already believes in the absolute importance of being "popular." 

It was a theme both she and my nephew returned to throughout their stay.

Worried for their cousins that they might not be popular enough, worried that if they are not, then happiness, love and all that is important in life will elude them forever.
When did it started, this confusion between being " popular," and being "happy"?
Because they are definitely not the same thing.
And when did being one of the " beautiful, trend-following, characterless, never-daring-to-be-different" people become more important than standing out in the crowd,being true to yourself and following your dreams?
When did being clever and thoughtful, compassionate and kind, stop being qualities worth valuing?
Because what the popular crowd rarely seem to do, is care about each other.
There is no room for " caring."
That wouldn't leave enough time for stealing each other's partners, or having a better, more wild time than everyone else.
There's no point in being "popular" unless you are constantly trying to be the-most-popular.
Life becomes a  constantly, exhausting competition to show the world how amazing your life is.
If you are a girl, you must never appear cleverer than a boy, never show that you care and never admit if you have stayed at home and studied or read a book.
If you are a boy you must never commit to anything more than 5 minutes in the future, never show too much enthusiasm and never admit you actually like someone or leave home without hair gel in you pocket.
The most important thing is to have FUN all the time.
There is no room for introversion, for sitting at home doing nothing, for chillin' and just being.
Where's the selfie op in that?

I'd be lying if I said there wasn't the cool versus " square and boring" divide when I was a teenager.
Lying if i pretended there wasn't an invisible dividing our sixth form common room (and yes, I was on the square and boring side).
Lying to say I didn't feel triumphant when, at one of our parties, the doorbell rang and standing on the doorstep were some of the "cool and trendy" crowd begging to come in.
I would also be lying if I said I didn't make them grovel for a while before saying yes.
But I did say yes... and maybe that was part of the difference between us and them.
But even with the divide, everything was less exhausting then.
There were no mobile phones, no Facebook or Snapchat.
When we went home we could close the door and for a while we could just be. 
We could spend all evening in our pyjamas doing nothing and the next day... no one would know.
Our lives were not the 24 hour, voyeuristic social networking fest that being a teenager is today.
And for that I am eternally grateful.
Because all this pressure to be popular or all this anxiety about not being popular enough, takes its toll.
Something is rotten in the heart of our socially networked adolescent world when, according to an article in The Guardian last week: 

Almost half of British girls aged 17 to 21 have needed help with their mental health........

According to mental health charity YoungMinds, between 2001 and 2011 there was a 77% increase in hospital admissions of women under 25 due to self-harm.

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/womens-blog/2015/aug/24/there-is-an-urgent-need-to-update-adult-thinking-to-catch-up-with-the-reality-of-teenagers-lives

So when my strong-willed, vivacious 7 year old niece worried about whether or not her teenage cousin was popular or not, I wanted to grab her by the hand and run away with her.
I wanted to take her to the beach and let her feel the sand between her toes.
I wanted to sit with her and watch the sun setting over the ocean.

East Wittering sunset

I wanted to tell her that this was enough, a perfect moment shared by only her and me.

A secret that the rest of the world knew nothing of.
I wanted to tell her stories of princesses who were only truly beautiful when no one was looking because only then could they really be themselves.
" Being popular is an illusion," I wanted to say, " it's transitory and when it's over you will be left feeling empty, uncertain and lonely, unsure of who you are or what you want or how to dream. Live in the moment, enjoy what you have."
But my niece is full of the wisdom and confidence that only a 7 years old can have.
And I know how old-fashioned and irrelevant my words would seem.
She would try to listen but already her mind would be wondering and flicking her long, dark curls behind her shoulder, giving her most winning smile she would point at my phone and say:
" Auntie Becky, can I take a selfie?"

Big Dreams

We were sitting in the garden having one of those perfect days - friends, sunshine, flapjack, muffins and a huge pot of coffee.
We chatted and laughed, shared memories and dreams, talked politics and women's rights.
And then one of my friends said:
" The thing is, when I look back on my life, it feels as though I haven't really achieved anything."
I watched the shadow of sadness and failure flit across her face.
This friend of mine who is kind, thoughtful, generous, caring and fills every moment with " distance run."
She has brought up a daughter with Down's Syndrome who is so confident and so popular that walking through town with her is like accompanying a minor celebrity.
She has supported her son and her husband, chaired a local charity and through it all, she has never stopped working.
If those aren't achievements, what are?
What makes us believe that a popstar or TV presenter or famous author has achieved more than those of us who live ordinary lives, caring about ordinary things?
When did the sense of whether or not we have achieved something become inextricably linked with something outside of ourselves?
When did the measurement of achievement stop being something small and become something big?
When did it stop being something personal and become something public?
We tried to reassure my friend that she had achieved so much, that no one in her family would be where they were today without her, that the charity she chaired for all those years wouldn't be doing so well today if it hadn't been for her, of the difference she has made to her workplace.
She listened and nodded and I could tell she was trying to believe us.
" It's kind of you to say so," she said.
But we weren't being kind, we were being honest.
It was just that she didn't believe us.
Somehow, today, being good at your job, being the best parent you can be, creating a home, having lots of friends and a busy social life, isn't enough.
These days, a sense of achievement has to be fuelled by something greater than daily accomplishments and small successes.
And it makes me worry for our kids.
I worry that they are confusing unattainable dreams ( always good to have ) with attainable goals.
X Factor and Britain's Got Talent and the mind-blowingly rich celebrity lifestyles of football players and sports personalities make them believe that anyone can be anything and that all things are possible.

Ask teenagers today what they want to so when they grow up and they say "to be rich or famous." 
And why not? They see the " from rags to riches," stories all the time on television and social media.
With all the " Big Brother," style programmes they watch nobodies become somebodies overnight.
But the trouble is, while many of them believe it's very likely that it can happen to them, the truth is, that it's extremely unlikely.
Most of us will become neither very rich nor very famous. 
Most of us will just carry on living our every-day-lives in our every-day-worlds with our every-day achievements.
Dreams are good, false hope is dangerous.
Because when reality bites, it really hurts.
Studying, going to work, spending time with your friends, falling in love, creating a life for yourself, working out where you fit in this unpredictable world......all that means nothing.
What used to make us feel proud now makes us feel like failures.
We are beginning to forget that the smallest of things can often be the biggest of achievements.

Outside I  meet our next door neighbour, bent double, the result of a crumbling spine. 
He walks painfully slowly using two walking sticks.
With difficulty he lifts his head and smiles at me.
"I walked all the way to the end of the road today," he says,  " I couldn't do that last week." 
I watch him shuffle into his house, each step a success story, radiating a sense of achievement that is almost tangible.
And I think perhaps that's  how we should all of us measure our achievements -  one small, completed step at a time.

From the other side of our garden fence, a newer neighbour grins at me.
" I've been waiting to tell you Becky," she says, " I did it! "
" Did what?" I ask.
"The ultra-marathon," she says, " 50 miles up and down a mountain, non-stop." 
I remember how exhausted I feel when I  run to the corner shop.
" Did someone make you do it?" I ask.
She laughs.
" Of course not.  I wanted to."
" Did you?" I say "Why?"
She shrugs
" To see if I could."
I think of all the things I try doing, just to see if I can.
Going a whole day without eating any chocolate - maybe.
Going  a whole morning without shouting at the kids - sometimes.
Spend a whole day in my pyjamas - definitely.
But running an ultra-marathon - never.
I am full of incomprehension.
" So now you know you can do it," I say, "that's enough right? I mean, it's a once in a lifetime thing really isn't it? If that.."
But already I can see the glimmer in her eye.
" Well....." she says, " there's another one in September and it would have been better if 
I'd trained more....and it took me 22 hours.  I think I could do it faster."

And that's the thing about achievement - the sense of it is so often fleeting.
What we achieve today can often seem like nothing tomorrow.
Today's mountain is tomorrow's hill.
Today's end of the road is tomorrow's corner to turn.
But even if that's true, we haven't failed, we've still won.
Because for one day at least, we know that we did it.
The problem is that we often don't let ourselves bask in a sense of achievement. 
We feel that it's wrong to congratulate ourselves.
Instead we convince ourselves that what we've achieved isn't enough, that the goal we set ourselves wasn't hard enough, that we haven't dreamed big enough, that no one else has even noticed.
And often they haven't
But that shouldn't lessen our sense of achievements.
When our neighbour puts down his walking sticks and sinks into an armchair, all that matters is that he knows what he has achieved.
When an ultra-marathon runner wakes up the next day with aching knees, the victory is all theirs.
And that's all that matters.
The knowledge that you did it.
It's easy to have regrets in life, easy to remember all things we haven't done rather than to celebrate all the things we have.
It's easy to minimise our achievements and diminish their importance. 
Walking to the end of the road, running up a mountain, making your Down's Syndrome daughter believe she has the world at her fingertips - they are all greater, more personal and more long-lasting achievements than any transitory fame brought to you by one electronically enhanced pop song.
So forget winning X-Factor or Britain's Got Talent.
Forget making millions or writing a masterpiece.
Instead, start celebrating the every day achievements, however small or personal.
They are what keeps our ordinary worlds turning.
And I'm thinking....today's bar of chocolate will be tomorrow's delicious memory.

Empty nesting

Last week I visited Manchester University with our 17 year old daughter, MIa.
While Mia went to a " student-life," talk, I went to a " help for soon-to-be-bereft parents," lecture.
 After we had been told about applying for loans, setting up bank accounts, filling in forms, teaching our chilldren how to cook, turn on washing-machines and do-all-thosa-other-things-we-never-actually-make-them-do-at-home lessons, a picture of an empty bird's nest was flashed up on the screen in front of us.

Lowering her voice to one that was calming and soothing, rather  than chatty and informative, the speaker gave us  empathetically meaningful looks and said:
" Last of all,  I want to talk about, empty nest syndrome."
Around me parents shifted uncomfortably in their seats as though their secret had been discovered.
Next to me a mum turned and stared wistfully out of the grey-sky filled window.
And for the first time in the hypnotically tedious talk ( and mostly due to the words "last of all,") I woke up.
Empty nest syndrome is not something that  I"ve ever seriously considered.
I've dreamt of a day when our house is not scattered with teenage clutter - used make-up wipes, discarded clothes, half-drunk smoothies, unattached phone chargers, sweaty socks
I've imagined a house that is as tidy when I get home from work in the evening as it was when I left for work in the morning.
I've fantasised about not being constantly asked what's for dinner or why there is never anything good to eat in our house.
I've let my mind wander to a time when I can  go a whole day without someone demanding where their T-shirt, new jeans, PE kit, lip stainer,  homework or anything-else-that-belongs-to-them, is.
But I've never actually thought about how I will feel when the house is teenagerless and empty.t
For years, my husband Ninesh and I, have been making plans about what we will do when we are free.
How we will spend our time when our days are no longer shaped around parenthood,.
 What we would do with the days when the hours belong to us...
We are already thinking about which camper van we will buy.
Ninesh has already started pouring over maps, planning the route of our carefree future.
But as I sat in that university lecture room in Manchester, I began to worry.
Not so much at the sense of emptiness I would obviously soon be feeling, but at the thought that I might not feel empty enough.
From the moment our children take their first steps, they are walking away from us.
As a parent, it's hard  to watch them fall and even harder to watch them struggling to pull themselves up again.
With every bone in your body, you are aching to do it for them, to pick them up, give them a comforting hug and set them back on their feet,  heading in the right direction.
But deep down inside, we know we have to let them do it by themselves.
Being a parent is never easy.
You never stop feeling guilty, never stop believing you're doing it wrong, never stop wishing you had more  
patience, more time, more energy, more understanding of text speak.
The best gifts we can give our children are a sense of self-worth and self-belief and help them to become independent thinkers.
Washing and cleaning they can learn the hard way, knowing they can manage without you is not so easy.
Life is full of false-starts and obstacles that trip us up and holes that we fall down.
As a parent we can't make sure that the path to our children's future is completely smooth, we won' always be there to pick them up and it's not our job to make their decisions for them.
All we can do is be the safety net that is always there to catch them when they fall and give them the courage to keep on trying.
All we can do is be there when they need us and step back when they don't.

" It's strange," said one of my friends whose son is just finishing his second year at university, " I've only just realised that he has his own life now, that we are no longer the centre of his life, that when he plans his Summer, his holidays, his future, we are not what he thinks about.. It's odd not knowing what he' s doing. But when I think about it, once I left home, I never told my parents anything."
And I think, maybe, more than an empty nest,,a tidy house (in my dreams!), that's what I will find strange.
Up until now it's always felt like Ninesh and I are the roots and our children are the shoots.
It's hard to think of them growing completely separate from us with shoots of their own, hard to imagine completely disentangled lives.
Of course my kids don't tell me everything, probably they mostly tell me nothing, but I know where they are, how they  spend their time, what's important to them.
It's hard to think of them out in the world on their own with friends we've never met, with people who are more important to them than us,dreams we might not understand, living in worlds that are part of a different universe.
It's hard to imagine.
But it's life.
And we have to let them go.
Even if it's not quite far enough away for them.
Because even if they are inhabiting other universes, escape is almost impossible in this modern hyper-connected world.
There's  Facebook and Snapchat and Instant Messenger and Instagram and sos and lol and tybtw
Sometimes I feel almost sorry for today's teenagers. 
Where can they hide?

"Being Facebook "unfriended" by both your children: it's like the 21st century equivalent of empty nest syndrome."
wrote my friend Cath the other day.
And she's right. 
Empty cyber-space is beginning to feel more like an empty nest than an unused bedroom.

But truthfully, I don't think it's knowing that social media is making the world a smaller place or that mobile phones mean that our children are hardly ever out of contactable reach, that's is stopping me from feeling sad.
Life is a big adventure and  standing on it's very edge, our children are just beginning to spread their wings.
I'm excited and happy ( and just a little bit jealous) that they have it all before them.
And our job is not to clip their wings but to help them fly.
And whether they like it or not, a little piece of my heart will always be flying with them! 

So while our kids get ready to pack their bags and flee the nest,  Ninesh and I are off to look at camper vans because I can't help feeling that the future's just about to catch up with us ...and it's always best to be prepared.

Exam Fever

I will be glad when this year's exam epidemic is over.
Glad when every  surface in our house is not covered by an untidy carpet of revision books, coloured paper, broken pens and biscuit wrappers.

Glad when our 15 year old son can stop spending his evenings revisionally reclining on the sofa and return to spending them in the park with friends, playing euphamistic football in the dark. 
Glad when our 17 year old daughter can return to worrying about boys-parties-clothes--bad hair days  (am I really saying this?!) rather than French vocabulary and psychology case studies.
But most of all, I will be glad to stop pretending that exams are the most important things in the world.
Because I really don't believe they are.
I don't believe that they are a fair test of what we know. or a way of making us care about what we learn.

We've all been there, feverishly filling every last minute with exam-cramming, spending sleepless nights worrying about all the things we don't know, trying to remember what we've forgotten, turning our brains into bloated sponges, dripping  with too many temporary facts and too much unnecessary information.
I'm not sure exactly what it is that our exam system tests: memory.....mostly, 
will power,,, perhaps, the ability to make your writing legible under pressure.. maybe.
But with GCSE's in particular, I'm not sure how much students actually learn.
Having to revise for so many different subjects, so close together, (our son is taking 21 exams in the space of 4 weeks) makes it hard to retain anything for longer than the length of the exam.  You don't just leave the hall when you  have finished your exam, you also leave behind everything you have learnt for that subject, otherwise there just won't be enough space in your brain for the next one.
May and June seem to just be " one bloody exam after another."
And what exactly will the students have achieved at the end of it all.
Have they been  inspired with  a love of learning? A thirst for knowledge? The desire to find out more?
Mostly, completely the opposite..

" Son sat English Lit. GCSE today," wrote one of my very good friends on Facebook " told me that he now never has to read another book, So proud" 

And she's not alone, many of us are feeling proud in the same way.
Somehow we are managing to make our kids despise learning rather than love it.
It's not that what they are learning isn't important or interesting, 
 it's just that sitting all day, learning things off-by-heart, never stops being boring and in the end, what you remember is the boredom, not the subject.
How often do books that we love turn into books that we hate because we have analysed every sentence to death?
 Language that once seemed beautiful becomes the stuff of nightmares.
Subjects that we once loved become a series of boring, unspiring facts which in our desperate desire to simply remember them.
" Can you test me on my French sentences," asks our son, before his spoken French exam.
And I test him and he's pretty good, he's learnt them really well.
" There's just one bit," I say, " you got the tense wrong, think about what it means."
He rolls his eyes at me.
" It doesn't matter if I don't know what it means," he says, "  I just have to remember it right." 
That's what our exam system is doing to our kids. 
 Making them learn things "right," so that they can pass exams, not so that they can understand what they mean or gain an insight to their wider significance. 
I understand and remember nothing of the physics or chemistry I crammed for my GCSEs.
 I still believe I am rubbish at maths and although I loved geography, all I can remember about it, is drawing bad pictures of animals in Polar landscapes and that rocks have different layers, although all these years on, I'm not really sure why.
Like rocks, the acquisition of knowledge should be a layering process.
Each layer providing firm foundations for the next.
Learning shouldn't be a lot of temporary,, flimsy structures designed only to last until we have got the required grades.
We need to help children understand that learning things, finding out more about what they see or hear, gives their world a depth and beauty it wouldn't otherwise have.
We want to make them excited about the fact that everything they do is an opportunity to learn something new.
We need to inspire a hunger for knowledge, an interest in the world around them, a belief that finding out more about " things," makes those "things," more interesting, meaningful and useful.
Somehow our education system has lost its direction and as a result, our children have lost their way.
And we need to help them find their way back to a place where they are proud of what they know, eager to learn more because they are inspired by the potential of all they do not know.
I'm not sure how it can be done but I am sure that our exam system is not the way to do it.
Socrates said: 

“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.” 

 I wish we'd listened because our exam system seems to be all about temporary vessel -filling and very little about permanently flame-lighting.

I turn back to the revision chaos that used to be our living room.
And with all my heart, i hope our kids do well in their exams.
They deserve to, they've worked really hard (if that is what helps you pass).
But most of all I hope they realise that there are things you can't figure out from a revision book, that life is too small to fit between the walls of a classroom, that learning doesn't end with a full stop and handing in an exam paper.
The world is out there waiting for them, full of beauty and pain and unanswered questions.
I hope, that when they have finished their last exam, they will still want to step into it full of awe and wonder and a desire to try and find the answers.

True Values

These post-election days have left many in the country feeling blue in every way and have set me to wondering about  "values."
About how much value politicians give to what their voters say. 
About what is truly valued in our society.
About individual value.
About how some people seem to have a distorted sense of self-value while others seem to believe they have no value at all..
About how, if we are not careful, people will begin to believe that there is little value or point in anything they do.
These days,  value seems to be measured in purely economic terms.
Decisions are made about our future by estimating how much we will each cost, not what we are each worth.
Value is defined by distant politicians who know nothing about us, have no interest in what we actually do and appear to care very little about what we truly value.
We live in a  topsy-turvy world of underpaid  "hands-on,"workers  and overpaid " hands-off," managers.
We live in an impersonal world where success is based on generic data analysis rather than on individual, personal triumphs.
We live in a fearful world where people are constantly worried that they will soon be unemployed.
We live in an austere world where government cuts are tearing apart what we value  most.
It's not surprising that there is an overriding sense of disillusionment and detachment.
It's not surprising that morale is low.
It's not surprising that we are beginning to believe that no one cares about what we do or what we say.
It's not surprising that people feel personally and professionally undervalued.
Our government chips away at our public services, at our National Health System, at our education system, at our social services, at our youth services, at the heart and soul of what we have always valued as unique and special.
Everything becomes an economic statistic.
It doesn't matter how hard you work, how many extra hours you give, if you don't reach your targets you are not good value for money.
It doesn't matter how many people you help  or what you actually achieve, if you don't meet your agreed goals, you have failed. 
If there is no value to individual achievement, then what do we have left to value.
Immigrants are an economic drain, illness is an economic drain, old-age is an economic drain, disability is an economic drain.
No matter that immigrants are broadening our horizons and doing jobs none of us want to do, no matter how much people gave and did before they became ill, no matter how hard or for how long or with what sense of pride people worked until they reached pensionable age, no matter that those with disabilities can often make us see life in a different and  better way.
Chances are that at some point in the future, we will, all of us,  be seen as a drain on society rather than valued for what we have done and achieved.
If everything is a financial problem and the only solution is to cut costs, whatever the consequences, it gets harder and harder to value or be valued.
And anyway, who decides how much we are worth.
Who decides that a paramedic, driving the ambulance, first on the scene of an accident or emergency, should earn in a year what some surgeons earn in a month?
Who decides that cleaners, removing the dirt and scum we create, earn in a week what some footballers earn in 10 minutes? 
Who decides that the nursery assistants we leave our children ( our most treasured possessions) with each day earn on average, half as much as the parents whose children they are looking after? 
We live in confusing, unappreciative, undervaluing times.
Thank goodness human nature is such a wonderful  thing.
Our indefatigable desire to survive, to make the best of things, to live, love and laugh despite it all is a constantly inspiring. 
In the end, the only way to navigate our way through this economically fragile world world of natural disasters and ridiculously unfair financial distribution, is to hold on tightly to the personal, emotional and moral values we have always tried to live by.
I was listening on the radio this week, to the story told by someone who had flown to Katmandu to bring aid to the earthquake victims in Nepal.

As he stepped out of the plane, the aid worker, was immediately invited to drink tea by some of the  exhausted, shell-shocked survivors.
Even when faced with such extreme devastation and despair, the Nepalese people clung on to their core values, finding the strength to be welcoming and extend the hand of friendship, however little they have to offer.
Sometimes values are all we have left.
Sometimes the values of others are truly humbling.
Our core values give us hope, they form the essence of who we are and what we believe, they are a solid scaffold of certainty in a fragile, unpredictable world.
They are where we turn to when we are searching for inner strength, looking for a reason to do what we do.
True value is not something that can be decided by politicians or business men or world leaders.
What we truly value is based on what we learn from our parents, from our friends, from the world around us, from our own experience and emotional responses.
Even if we sometimes need reminding of what those values are.

This year, I have been working with an autistic boy.
Together his family and I have been trying to help him find his voice.
Last September he could make a few sounds, sometimes say " no."
One evening, last week,  his mum phoned me, her voice was shaking.
" I just had to tell you,Becky," she said, " before he went to bed, I asked him to say "night night," to dad. I ask him to say it every night and he can do it if I walk over to his dad with him and he repeats the words after me.  But today, when I said it, he didn't wait for me.  He just ran and found his dad, gave him a hug, said " night night dad," and went up to his room."
Her voice was shaking.
" I never thought this day would come," she said.
His dad had waited ten years for those words and that hug.

There are some moments we value so much, they almost hurt.

In the end true value cannot be measured by the way others perceive us.
Instead, it should be measured by what we believe to be good, true and right.
And if we dare to live our lives with those true values at its heart, we will always, always be proud of what we achieve.
And no political party, however big their majority, can take that away from us.