Mud and mayhem at the Green Man Festival

If it's Summer in England, it's festival season. And everyone has to experience a festival at least once in their life. It's the unwritten rule. 
The trendy festival scene started with Glastonbury. But now there are so many festivals, it's hard to go anywhere in June, July or August without passing marquees being set up in muddy fields and signs featuring the names of bands  you have never heard of in big red letters.

So a few years ago, in order to cross it off our " things to do before we die," list, my family ( us and my brother and sister and their families ) decided it was time. So we  bought tickets  for the Greenman festival in Wales. We chose the Greenman partly because  we had actually heard of some of the bands, partly because it's very family friendly, but mostly because it's very close to where my brother lives so if the weather was too bad and the toilets too disgusting, we had an escape route.

The Greenman Festival takes place in the grounds of a beautiful house, nestled in the foothills of gentle mountains. On the rare occassions that the Welsh sun shines, it is breathtakingly beautiful. We We arrived on Friday night as the first twang of live music vibrated through the peaceful Summer evening. The hardier festival- goers had already been there for days, colourful tents and painted camper vans crowded together, like a holiday refugee camp.

 We inspected the compostible toilets, which on Friday evening, still weren't too bad and  leaving our van in the hope that we would be able to find it again, we wandered through the happy crowds to try and find the rest of our family. Children with painted faces, wearing nothing but flowery wellies, weaved in and out of tents while their (mostly) long haired parents, also wearing flowery wellies,  hammered in pegs, laid out bedding and set up chairs and tables.  Teenagers in cut off jeans tried to catch the eye of other teenagers in cut-off jeans and smells of barbecue and curries and compost drifted over from the stages where the bands were already playing. And the evening was warm, the food we  ate together at " base camp," delicious, the cousins delighted to see each other and the first multi-talented band we heard that night:  Bellowhead, were amazing. 

                            http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZjnxFMQACk
 The main stage was built at the foot of a hill,  creating a concert basin with slopes to lounge on and the perfect backdrop of mountains and sunset. We danced and wandered around listening to music, poetry, stand up comedy and watching the enormous bubbles from the " bubble shop," drifting by with the beautiful relaxed festival-induced sense  of peaceful aimlessness.

And that's how the whole weekend was. 
 Full of good music, delicious food, bubbles and so much " love and peace," that it was hard to believe that bad things could ever happen in the world.  
The kids loved it. 
It was small enough for them to roam freely wherever they wanted without getting lost but big enough to feel like an adventure.       
We grown-ups based ourselves at the Chai Wallahs tent with a constant stream of beer, chai and amazing, as yet unknown, musicians from all over the world.
By the time we had to leave on Sunday evening we were so chilled it was impossible to believe that anything could ever stress us out again.  The kids, faces painted, flowers in their hair and huge bubble wands in their hands, all declared it had been the best weekend of their lives. 

 And we thought so too and as soon as we got back home we booked our tickets for next year.
The whole of the next year was spent in anticipation of the " time of our life," we would re-experience the next Summer.  We looked up the bands who would be playing so that Ninesh and I could listen to them beforehand and pretend we had always liked them.  We planned our food, our wanderings, our Chi Wallah nights. 
And the weekend arrived.
And it rained and rained.  
The mud changed from squelchy and earth coloured to compacted and unpleasant runny  brown.  
Walking was like a game where, if you made it to the other side of the path without losing a welly in the mud, you felt that you should win a prize. The toilets were brown streams and by Sunday, if you didn't keep walking, you sank!

The music was still amazing and we heard Linton Kwesi Johnson, which in itself made the weekend worthwhile.  The kids still loved the freedom of roaming unwatched, the mountains, when you could see them through the rain and clouds, were still beautiful and the food just as delicious, even the ice creams!

But somehow, the magic was gone. 
Perhaps the novelty that comes with "first-time,' experiences was missing.
Perhaps you should never do the same thing twice.
But mostly, it was the mud. Cloying and ( by the end ) stinking, we are still finding it in our clothes and van and wellies and tent a year later.
The truth is, that us " oldies," are fair-weather festival goers.  Deep down inside, I know that mud and dirt and blocked toilets are an integral part of the true festival experience but I have always preferred green grass and cleanliness and toilets that flush. 
And I can't help feeling relieved that I can now tick the  " go to a festival," box on my life plan.
I am glad it has  moved from my: " to do," to my: " have done," list.  
And when our kids are ready to festival on their own, I will willingly help them pack their bags with wellies and flowers and toilet paper, while I dream quietly of  weekends away in sweet smelling hotels with crisp white sheets and unmuddied bathwater.

Letting go

The strange thing about your own children is that however much they exhaust and frustrate you, letting go of them is one of the hardest things you will ever have to do. The wrench is almost physical. A cutting of the ties, a loosening of the knot, a lowering of the safety net you have created for them.
Yesterday our 15 year old daughter, Mia, started her work experience for You Magazine in London. The offices are in Northcliffe House, just off Kensington High Street, the building  huge and never ending with escalators that  reach to the sky.

On the train and tube, Mia had towered over me in her heels and "smart/casual," blue dress but as I watched her disappearing through the spinning glass doors , she suddenly looked so small and vulnerable. A miniscule blue dot against the imposing brown brick and reflective panelled glass.  
It was hard not to chase after her - just to check she was alright.   
But that would never do.  
It was uncool enough that I had come.
So I stood and watched her disappearing along the shining hallway, taking her first step into adulthood. 
Watched the emptiness where she had been standing.
Watched the doors spinning constantly, rotating people in and out.
Watched the world that, at 15, Mia will now know more about than me.
And I couldn't help wondering when it is that we stop being the centre of our children's worlds and start becoming mere observers, standing outside, watching their lives unfold through the reflective glass.

Perhaps it starts with the first day of nursery or the first day of school. 

Or the  first time they go to a party without you or sleep at a friend's house. But I think that maybe it starts the day you are walking down the road together and they see a friend waiting for them and shaking off your hand, they say:
"you're not going to walk all the way to the end of the road with me, are you?"

I spent the rest of  yesterday pacing the grey London pavements, breathing in the fume-filled air, feeling old and slightly unnecessary. 
And at the end of the day I waited inconspicuously at the tube station.

Until I saw her, smiling and waving through the crowds in her blue dress and high heels.
And she was fine.
And I was fine. 
And I waved back, smiling too.  
The slightly sad smile of someone who is learning to let go.

To A Daughter Leaving Home

When I taught you
at eight to ride
a bicycle, loping along
beside you
as you wobbled away
on two round wheels,
my own mouth rounding
in surprise when you pulled
ahead down the curved
path of the park,
I kept waiting
for the thud
of your crash as I
sprinted to catch up,
while you grew
smaller, more breakable
with distance,
pumping, pumping
for your life, screaming
with laughter,
the hair flapping
behind you like a
handkerchief waving
goodbye. 

Linda Pastan

One perfect peony

The thing that I love best about Spring and Summer, is the way that gardens, which have spent all Winter looking brown and boring, are suddenly filled with splashes of colour.  Red and blue buds poke through hedges and paving stones, sweet scented pink and white roses tumble from trellises and window boxes are filled with the deep pinks and velvet reds of geraniums, so bright that it is hard to believe they are real.

 To a chaotic gardener like myself, each new bloom is a pleasure and a surprise.  I never remember what I planted  last year.  I don't plan for flowers that bloom at different times, I don't plant flowerbeds with the tallest flowers at the back grading down to the smallest at the front. I don't think about what colours would look good together.  I just see flowers that I like and put them in the ground and hope that they will grow. And each year, if they reappear, my joy at seeing them again is not just the result of their colour or beauty or scent but is filled with the pleasure of a reunion, of meeting old friends who you had almost forgotten about but now you have met them again, you remember how much you liked them.

But there is one flower that I always wait for amongst the colourful chaos of our garden. One flower that, for the short time it blooms, seems to hold the rest of the garden to ransom. Nothing seems to me to be as beautiful as our peony. When it opens its rich, red petals, I always breathe a sigh of relief. It has been growing here since we first bought our house and the small wilderness that was its garden.  If flowers had been planted, they had long ago been strangled by weeds and overshadowed by knee length grass and bits of rubble. But when we had tamed the grass, waged war on the weeds and kicked aside the odd chunk of brick, I was amazed at the flower I found, nestled in the shadow of the crumbling shed. Its deep red petals formed perfect swirls of colour. Against the peeling green of the shed and hay-like brownness of the grass,its beauty seemed almost luminous.
 In the house our newborn son was crying and our 2 year old daughter was demanding 
" more milk." But I remember standing in front of that flower and for just a moment the exhaustion of sleepless nights and relentless demands that come with being a parent, disappeared  There was no epiphany. I wasn't suddenly filled with inner hope or enlightened courage but just knowing that something so beautiful could survive despite the odds, made me think that we could too.
When I asked my gardening guru neighbour Gill what the flower was, she laughed.
" That's a peony," she said, " needs replanting though. Look at those roots! And it needs more light."
So with her help, I replanted it in a better place. It was the first planting  I did in our garden, the first change I made ( after cutting the grass ). And it did feel symbolic, as though by replanting a beautiful flower I had taken the first steps towards replanting our lives in our new home.
And so I will always feel linked to my peony.  I will always wait anxiously for it to bloom. Each year I watch as the spiked red edged shoots break through the earth, hold my breath while the strange puppet fingered leaves grow longer and thinner, hunt hopefully for the buds hidden amongst all the foliage.  And there is a lot of foliage!
" Too many leaves," said Gill disparagingly, " that's the trouble with peonies."
And I suppose she's right.  
Once again this year, the leaves have taken over most of the flowerbed but they are nurturing only one flower, deep, deep red against the green.
 But I don't care because it is beautiful and perfect- and one perfect peony is all I need. 

Murder most unfathomable

Sometimes spine-chilling things happen at the most unexpected times.  Ninesh was in London this week, visiting his dad in hospital. My father-in-law is just recovering from major surgery and Ninesh was sitting next to his bed, chatting quietly when the hallway outside the door suddenly filled with policemen armed with machine guns. As Ninesh and his dad watched, a young man, handcuffed to a wheelchair was pushed past the door.

" Who's that?" asked Ninesh.

" One of the Woolwich murder suspects," whispered the nurse... " did you see. He looked straight at me."

For a moment, no one could speak. What is there to say when an alleged murderer, who just a week ago might have stood in the street, in the middle of the day hacking someone to death, passes your door.

There are no words. 

Just raw fear

It is impossible to fathom what drives someone to commit the cold-blooded murder of an innocent man.  
It is easy to blame religion, to accuse Muslim preachers of rousing followers to hatred.
It's always easier when we have someone to blame.
But there is never one reason that causes individuals to act in the way they do.
It is never that simple. 
We are, all of us, complicated products of confusing pasts and our reaction to the here and now is always part of a bigger picture. In these times of unemployment and economic crisis there are many disenfranchised people wandering the streets feeling that their existence is pointless, that their life has no meaning - no job, no money, no reason to get up in the morning, nothing to make you believe that you matter.  Easy prey for extremists whose passionate words can fill the emptiness inside with meaning and a sense of purpose.  As young black men living in England, the alleged murderers will probably have spent their lives feeling like outsiders.  However multi-cultural and open-minded 
(superficially at least) the country we live in might be, our colour and ethnic background will always define us. Even as he was being charged with murder, Michael Adebalejo, described himself as a "British citizen," as though by being suspected of committing such an unforgivable atrocity he had at last proved that he belonged.
There is no defence, no justification for the murder of an innocent man. The fact that someone can stand in the middle of a street in broad daylight and proudly hack a man to death is the stuff of horror movies, except that it happened in Woolwich. Perhaps the murderer was mad, it is not the action of a sane man, perhaps he truly believed he was doing it in the name of his religion, perhaps it was the moment that his whole life had been leading up to. It is hard to believe that as he was pushed along the corridor of a London hospital, handcuffed to a wheelchair, the suspect felt fulfilled. 
There is a difference between faith and religion, a difference between extremism and quiet belief.  But until we can give the disenfranchised and disillusioned a sense of purpose, until they rediscover their self-esteem, it will continue to be easy for extremism to fill the gap and give their life meaning.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

 Steven Weinberg-1933

 Lee Rigby's family's request for peace, for  people to remain calm and not to allow his dmurder to be the excuse for racist attacks and religious unrest, is the greatest and most courageous tribute they could have paid to him.

Nothing can bring him back.  

Nothing can justify his death. 

Let building bridges and growing understanding be his legacy.

Lee Rigby  RIP

The importance of holiday dreaming

I am sitting here enjoying the early morning peace that comes with holidays and sleeping teenagers.  
No groaning about having to get up so early.
No last minute searches for PE kits that should have been washed.
No panicked realisation that there is forgotten-about homework to hand in today.
No battles over uneaten breakfasts.
No packed lunches to prepare.
No reproachful rushing out of the door with cries of " I'm late now. Why didn't you wake me up earlier!"

Holidays are great.

Not just school holidays but all holidays. 
And not only if you are lucky enough to spend them on sunny beaches or in exotic countries.  
What's special about holidays is that your days belong to you. 
 They are not defined by lessons or meetings or deadlines. Instead they are filled with the things that are really important in life: relaxing, laughter, friends and of course, Facebook, Twitter and re-watching sit coms. 
Like islands surrounded by weeks, holidays are what we are always sailing towards.  
The thought of being away from work or school is what keeps us going. 
Even if it is simply  staying with friends for a few days, or relaxing at home.
 The break from routine helps us re-charge our batteries, reclaim our lives and put things in perspective.
When we lived in America, I was horrified by how little " vacation," people were allowed to take.  
Working life there does not begin with a certain number of vacation days already allotted.  Instead you have to earn them: a day a month.
 If you work for 6 months you get 6 days holiday and if you use them all up on a six day vacation, you start again from zero.
 The trouble with that is (or the benefit if you are an employer ) the longer you work, the more holiday you accrue, so better to just keep working and save the vacation time. 
And in the end work becomes what is safe and familiar.
 People start to believe that they are indispensable, that if they take a holiday everything will fall apart.  
The thought of taking a vacation becomes more stressful than the thought of staying at work.  
And so holidays are put on hold, days off spent in the office.
 Enjoying life with your family becomes something you wait to do when you are retired - if your family is still together and remembers who you are by then. 
When we moved from sunny, work-driven California to the lush green pastures of family-centred Switzerland, the change in work ethos was extraordinary. 

Swiss pastures

People begin their working life with 5 weeks holiday and if you are still at work at 5.35 pm, your boss asks you if you have a home to go to or if you are experiencing family problems. 
On bank holidays and Sundays offices and shops are closed completely. The only places open in town are cafes -  packed with families and friends and laughter. 
And everyone, everyone takes all their annual leave. 
The strange thing is that the work still gets done. the deadlines are still met and Switzerland, for all its natural beauty, is a famous international business centre.

Switzerland-interanational business centre.

The hardest thing to do in life is prioritise.  
There is always a reason to believe that what you are doing now is more important than what you should be doing next. 
But if you never take a break, never take time out to re-assess, relax and re-charge, how will you ever know what is truly important - even if it is just the peace of early morning and the knowledge that the rest of the day belongs to you.


    Leisure by W H Davies

What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty's glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

Brighton-ing up the weekend with friends

Ninesh and I have just come back from a weekend away in Brighton.
We were with friends from our student days.  
Friends who we have known for so long that our lives have become interwoven, held together by the threads of warm memories, shared dreams, dashed hopes, drunken evenings and the simple pleasure of each other's company.

When we first met, the 6 of us,  we were all young, free and single.  More than two decades later we are middle-aged, tied down and coupled. 
We have swapped gossip about last night's party and which pub to meet up in later, for talk about our children's GCSE options and our plans for retirement.
But there is something about Brighton that helps you to forget all that. 
Something about wandering along the sea front, browsing The Laines, watching through coffee shop windows or from cocktail bars as musicians, transvestites, old hippy dreamers and young trendy would-be-ers pass by.
 Something about it's bohemian vibrancy and colourful energy that pulls you in. 
You never know what street performers or artists you will bump into round the corner.

 Or what every day object or body part will suddenly become a work of art. 
Wandering through a tiny alleyway, we came across Jamie McCartney's body casting shop. There is not a single part of the body he won't cast for you. 
In the window he has a panel from his installation: " The Great Wall of Vagina." 

Some of The Great Wall of Vagina

It made us women blanche and our men pull out their cameras, while we chatted to the friendly artist, who almost convinced us that a group casting would make the perfect family Christmas present. ( You can even have it as a mug! )
" You'd be amazed how many people get it done," he said. 
" Are they waxed?" we asked, voices quavering.
" Mostly," he said, sipping thoughtfully from his mug of tea " but not always." 
That was enough for us. 
 We left the men chatting and went shopping. 
Consumer therapy and a bar of Montezuma chocolate is what you need when you feel faint! 
And that's Brighton. 
Even when it tries to shock you, it's done with a friendly chat over a cup of tea.  Everything is acceptable and nothing is impossible. 
And after a while you begin to believe it too. 
As the weekend wore on, we stopped talking about our children's exams or the woes of work or the daily grind that defines our lives.  
Instead we talked about the dream houses we would one day live in, the canal barges we would buy, the camper vans we would go travelling in.
 Because slowly, very slowly we realised that while we no longer believe we can change the world, there is, at least, still time for some of our dreams to come true.
As we sat over our very last cup of coffee together, we planned where we would meet up next year. London, Birmingham, Liverpool- but I have a feeling, it just might be Brighton.

Brighton Beach and the disappearing old pier

Street Partying

There's something about a street party that breathes life back into a community. 
Last year the country was full of them. Streets closed and lined with tables piled high with cakes and sandwiches getting soggier and soggier in the torrential rain that marked the Queen's diamond jubilee.

 Yet despite the rain, everyone who went to a street party will  tell you that it was the best day of the year.
One of my friend's at work told me that when they had their street party, one of their oldest residents came. He spent most of his days by himself and didn't really know anyone in their close.  But he motored around the party on his mobility scooter, balancing a beer on the handlebars.  And at the end of the evening, he wheeled his way home grinning, telling his newly familiar neighbours it had been the best day of his life.
He died a week later, not lonely and forgotten but part of a community.
I'm not sure why it is that, as a nation, we seem to spend very little time getting to know our neighbours
Perhaps it's because of the weather. 
When it's cold and wet, it's easier to stay inside huddled around the television than to brave the elements and pop next door.
Perhaps it's because none of us stay in one place anymore.  
In the past, generations of families would live on the same street, parents, grandparents and great-grandparents all living next door to each other with the grand children and great-grandchildren constantly drifting through the always open doors. Your street and local community were based around your family.
Perhaps it's because we are all so busy balancing work and family, living such hectic lives that there is not enough time and it is just too tiring to make the effort.
Perhaps it's because computer games and on-demand television can keep children entertained for hour upon hour,  without needing to find peers on their street to play with.
Making time to meet neighbours who you know nothing about, who might come from a different country, a different culture, a different generation, is not easy. 
But it's definitely worth the effort.
And street parties make it much easier because, you suddenly have something in common: a  shared memory.  
And shared memories are often the place where friendship begins.   

Like many other roads, we had a street party last year, full of Union Jacks and snail races and drunken half-renditions of God Save the Queen. It was only a few hours,  but in that afternoon we stopped being just a street and became a community.
Our road is not a long road.  It has about a hundred houses. We have lived here for most of the past 13 years and yet, last year, I met people I didn't recognise. 
This year we knew almost everyone.
The Diamond Jubilee was a good excuse to close the road and dance on the street. 
This year we didn't have an excuse or a reason.  When people asked why we were having another street party, the only thing we could think to say was: "Why not?"  
And that seemed to be reason enough for everyone.

So on last week's sunny, blue-skied May Day Bank Holiday, we put up official "Road Closed," signs,  emptied the street of cars ( the hardest part, but in the end there was only one left ) set up covered tables down the middle of the road, put an urn in the front garden, a cool box full of beer on the pavement, speakers in our neighbour's garden .....and waited.

                                And gradually the tables filled with delicious food.

                                And the road filled with people. Old....

                                 
                                  and young....

                                   
                                    and teenagers ...

                            

                                 and everybody in-between.

  

And instead of cars accelerating up the road, all you could hear was music and chatter and laughter. The kids - big and little -covered the street with chalked pictures, glue and play dough.  And while the" street seniors," helped us judge our newly traditional May Day hat competition, teenagers lounged on chairs and secretly sipped Pimms, while people from opposite ends of the street met and smiled and became friends.

And when, at 8 pm we had to take away the " Road Closed," signs, no one wanted the party to end. So we moved it onto the pavement.
And children didn't go to bed and neighbours didn't stop talking and cars driving up the road again, didn't stop us feeling that old and young and in-between, we were all part of this place.  And small as our road is, we all belonged to it. 
And that sense of belonging leaves you feeling warm inside, long after the sun has gone down.

It's a simple thing, a street party.  
But it made me wonder.
Wonder what would happen if we all spent more time getting to know each other.
Wonder what would happen if we all felt part of a community, even a community as small as a street.
Wonder what would happen if, instead of building walls between ourselves and our  neighbours,we built bridges.
We live such scattered, isolated, separate lives that it is easy to forget how important it is to sit and talk and laugh. And maybe even dance.....


  

The terrible UKIP triumph - we are all to blame

Today is not a good day to be British.
The shocking United Kingdom Indpendent Party result from Thursday's local elections should have left us all reeling.
The complete apathy of the more than 60% of our voting population who stayed at home  should make us all feel ashamed.
The complete lack of belief in the trustworthiness of MPs or in their ability to represent and truly understand the views of the people, should make Whitehall wince.
And the fact that a quarter of the people who did vote, voted for a nationalistic, racist, policy-less party, should be a wake-up call to everyone.
But the truth is, no one cares.  
If they did, they would have voted. 
Instead poling stations were empty, ballot boxes left unfilled and a minority party was able to win the day.

Our local poling station most of the day, 2nd May 2013

For the first time, I am pleased that we don't have proportional representation because if we did, our local government would now be led by Nigel Farage and his crazy UKIP gang. 

Nigel Farage

And that would be a day to dread.

And it is not ok to say you didn't vote because none of the politicians have anything to say to you.  

And it is wrong to say you stayed at home because your vote wouldn't have made a difference anyway. 

Every vote makes a difference, even if it is just to protest.

Your vote is your political voice. If you can't be bothered to speak, don't expect anyone to listen.
In the constituencies where the most people voted ( still only 39%)  UKIP did worst.
If more people had voted in the places where UKIP did best, the result could have been different. 
Your vote could have been that difference.
Edmund Burke once said:

" The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing."


And on May 2nd 2013, too many good men and women in Britain, did nothing.

1 million people vote for the X Factor.
Why do people believe their vote can make a difference on a TV show and not in an election?.
The simple truth is that we care more about who will be the next big celebrity star, than  what is happening to our country.
Today is a sad day to be British.
And it is easy to blame the politicians, the system, the weather, the day. 
Much easier than it is to blame ourselves. . 
There is much that is unfair and wrong in Britain today. But we live in a democracy. 
And as voters we have the power, it is up to us to use it.
I know It is easy to be melodramatic about Thursday's result. And it is too easy to define UKIP as a purely racist party.  But it is a platform for racist views and it is frightening.
When our mixed race 15 year old daughter heard the local election results on Friday, she turned to me, her deep brown eyes full of panic.
" I'm frightened mum,: she said, " Are they going to throw us out of our country?" 
And I know it doesn't and I hugged her tight and told her so.
But somewhere, deep inside, I'm frightened too.
Because a seed has been planted and it doesn't need much for roots to take hold.

First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

 Martin Niemöller

When they do come, let's hope we are not all too busy sitting at home, watching "The X Factor," to notice.

Burning away the birthday blues

The thing about birthdays is, the older you get, the less you look forward to them! 
Instead of being something to celebrate, they become a symbol of time passing.
 A reminder that another year has gone by and you still haven't written your masterpiece, saved the planet or even kept your house tidy. 
Another year has gone by and mostly everything is exactly the same and somehow that's a bit disappointing!

At work I watch kids bursting through the door when it's their birthday. They are so excited that walking through the day is impossible, they have to run or skip or shout through it.
Mostly they have been telling you for months, in loud whispers, that it is their birthday tomorrow.  Because when you are 3 or 4, tomorrow is the rest of your life and the rest of your life is exploding with potential and unexplored dreams.  
And I wonder when it is, that we lose that sense of uncontainable excitement, lose the belief that tomorrow will always be better than today, stop believing that all things are possible. 
Birthdays do that to you when you are little.  
For a whole day you truly are the centre of the universe.
  Presents are poured upon you,  you have a party where all your friends are there just because of you and a cake with candles that only you can  blow out ( although your friends will always try!)

A cake made for Joss when we celebrated his birthday in Portugal

When you are little, birthdays confirm everything that you have always believed about the world: you are at it's centre.
And even as you get older, there is still something magical about birthdays.
 The mystery of unwrapped gifts, the planning of how to celebrate, the angst of what to wear. 
As a teenager, each birthday is a step towards adulthood, an excuse to celebrate and party and ask for  the latest phone as a present.
And even as you take your first steps into adulthood, there is usually something special about birthdays, proving to yourself how your life has moved on, how in just a year you have achieved so much or so much has changed. 
And then you hit 40.  
And after that you lose count and the years blend together.
And it is hard to believe that another year has passed!
 And instead of making you feel excited, birthdays make you feel blue.
Usually I hibernate for the day.
But this year my birthday was on the weekend and it seemed wrong to do nothing. 
And something has changed this year. 
We have built a fire-pit in our garden.

So on Saturday night, we invited friends to sit round our fire.
Not a party, not really a celebration, just an evening sharing food and drink and laughter with friends. 
And I was lucky, because throughout the day, long-ago friends phoned to wish me happy birthday.  
And even though it's a very long time since I believed that I was the centre of the universe, for just a day, I did feel special.
And the fire blazed and the conversation bubbled and as I sat staring into the flames, I realised that there truly is no greater gift than friendship ( cliched,-can't do accents!- I know, but true ).
And that perhaps birthdays aren't so bad after all. 
Perhaps you don't have to see them as marking the passage of time but simply as a way to celebrate all that you have. 
And who knows, perhaps this really will be the year when all our dreams  come true!

Mrs Thatcher and the love-to-hate hole

There has been so much talk of Maggie Thatcher in the last few weeks. that it is hard to believe there is anything more to say.  
In England, until the bombings in Boston, there has been no other news.  
A few more Afghanis dead, so what! 
Problems growing in Syria- that's not us.
But Mrs Thatcher's funeral- now that is news! 10 million pounds worth of news apparently.

It's hard though, not to get caught up in the memories. 
The truth is, any child growing up in the Thatcher era, remembers her. She changed the whole education system, she destroyed whole communities in the North, she de-socialised council houses, she didn't seem to care about the poor and she loved the rich.  But before all of that, before she even became Prime minister:

SHE SNATCHED OUR MILK!

I remember those bottles of luke warm milk at school. Every morning we would have to drink them.  Pushing a straw through the silver top and through the layer of coagulated fat that had formed while they stood in the playground. We had to sip the grey, watery milk until it was all gone.  We were jealous of the lucky kids whose parents had written notes saying they didn't have to drink it. We would plan ways of tipping it down the drain without being caught.  
We hated the stuff.  
But the day that Maggie Thatcher, Minister for Education,  took it away from us, we hated her more!
And that was the thing about Maggie Thatcher:

We all loved to hate her. 

There are few things that can unite a classroom.  From the moment you walk through the door you become part of a group: the trendy group, the boring group, the annoying group, the-not-sure-where- I-belong-but-there-must-be-more-to-life-than-this group. 
But where Mrs Thatcher was concerned, there was no division.  
We all hated her.
We stood together on the place in the playground where the milk crates used to stand and chanted in unison:
 " Mrs Thatcher, Mrs Thatcher milk snatcher."
And we knew we were right.
Because that's what Maggie Thatcher did: she made it easy to know what was right and what was wrong.  
Obviously, Mrs Thatcher was evil. Everything she did was evil. 
Therefore everything everyone else did was good and right.
Life was black and white.
And it was such a relief. 

In the grey wishy-washiness of politics today, it is hard to know what to believe.  There is little to differentiate between the policies of the different political parties.
 A vote for one could just as easily be a vote for another.  
So why bother!

I remember the day when Mrs Thatcher resigned. 
November 22nd 1990. 
I was living in Providence, Rhode Island and was woken by a phone call from some American friends living in a tiny town called Tiverton, a little bit further down the coast.
"Becky," said my friend, " your Thanksgiving has come early. Mrs Thatcher has resigned.   Do you want to come over to celebrate?"
And we did celebrate, in true American style with donuts and coffee. And later with Tequila shots.
 But I can't help wondering what would happen if I was living so far from home today.
If David Cameron resigned, would anyone actually notice? Would people living in Tiverton, Rhode Island even know who he was?
And that is Thatcher's legacy.
She has left us with a big " love-to-hate," hole.
There is no one left in politics who we care about enough to hate.
Mrs Thatcher did terrible, terrible things but she had a vision. 
And if her vision was opposed to yours, she forced you to act, to do something about it, to stand up and fight.
Today it is hard to trust our politicians, hard to believe anything they have to say. They are so busy pleasing the media, worrying about their image, being popular, not offending anyone, that it is hard to know what they really have to say.
They themselves don't seem to believe there is anything worth fighting for.
So how are we, the voters meant to care?
When Mrs Thatcher resigned, she seemed to have lost all grasp on reality. She seemed to believe that she was a god, that she alone could change the world, ignoring all advice, uncaring about the misery she was causing.
It was time for her to leave.
But when she stepped down, she took our hatred and our motivation and our passion with her.
And I am still waiting.
Waiting to find someone I truly love to hate.
Waiting to find someone who will re-snatch our milk!