The five stages of baking

I bought the ingredients for macaroons this week in the vain hope that I’d produce these lovely little things and save myself shed-loads of money (have you noticed how expensive they are to buy?) Of course I haven’t made them yet, who knows if I ever will, but it has prompted these thoughts about my rather complicated relationship to baking.

This relationship can be summed up thus: I like eating sweet things but am rather lazy and lack attention to detail. Here is a picture of my butterfly cakes:

A bit burnt, slightly misshapen, kinda small.

I have detailed what, for me, are the five stages of baking below.

The five stages of baking.

1. Hope - foolish optimism that I will be able to bake a thing that resembles the thing in the picture.
2. Dismay - this whole procedure seems to be a whole lot more complicated and drawn out than I’d envisaged.
3. Rage - why, oh why, oh why did I ever try and embark on this!
4. Despair - the kitchen is a mess, I've ruined at least one implement and there is a sticky layer on the counter that can’t be removed by some half-hearted rubbing.
5. Resignation - ah, maybe they don’t look so bad after all. O.K. so I used self raising flour instead of plain and salted butter instead of salted and there seems to be some kind of subsidence issue going on there but never mind! Anyway, I owe it to the sisterhood to be crap at baking and cooking as I don’t want to turn into some frilly-apron-bedecked Stepford wife.

I'll just leave you with a picture of the butterfly cakes my husband made:

Irritating, no...?

The holiday illness hypothesis

As surely as day follows night, a crass, insensitive and woefully misinformed opinion piece by Katie Hopkins follows an atrocity and Peter Stringfellow follows a seventeen year old girl around his nightclub, one or both of my children will get ill when there is a school holiday.

I should have known which way the wind was blowing, this time five years ago, when every one of our Easter weekend plans had to be cancelled because the baby had a virulent stomach bug. This was the start of a rather frustrating trend. I won’t bore you with all the tedious details, I’ll just give you a précis of the last two years. In non-chronological order: last Easter it was chicken pox, the last two Christmases, it’s been flu. Spring half term of last year it was the norovirus and this Easter it’s a chest infection!

The youngest was ill a couple of weeks ago but it seemed safely in advance of the holidays and she dutifully recovered. But then her older sister got ill last weekend (the rather alarming sounding) Scarlet Fever was doing the rounds at her school. I took her to the doctor on Monday and she didn't have Scarlet Fever but a vague, ill defined malaise. She’s been coughing all week and this seemed to reach an apex last night with a continuous hack that sounded like something straight out of a Dickensian workhouse. (I'm sorry if this makes me sound unsympathetic; I joke to hide the worry and pain...The temperature reading in the picture shows my other half's temp, BTW, he was monitoring this every hour when he was off sick the other day and texting me the results!)

So today, at 8 a.m on Good Friday, I duly trotted down to the walk-in centre with her. I don't know if you noticed but it was a brilliant, yellow morning.

“I wish it was raining!” Snarled my daughter.

Now, people who have never met my daughter but know me, might think that this miserablist attitude indicates that she’s a chip off the old block. The thing is - she isn't! She’s an extrovert and an enthusiast and (usually) as cheery and ebullient a 5 year old as you’d ever hope to meet. Lack of sleep, feeling run down and missing so much school, must have taken its toll (I know the feeling!)

“I don’t want to go to the doctors!” She said.

“I know.” I said. “But’s let’s just get this bit of unpleasantness out of the way and then we can have fun. We can go to the park...we can watch a D.V.D.”

“I don’t want to go to the park and I don’t want to watch a D.V.D!” She said, grumpily.

I could go on detailing our conversation but I think you get the gist.

Anyway, we saw a really lovely female doctor (I've made my peace with the fact that many doctors seem to be younger than me these days…) Daughter cheered right up and behaved exemplarily. We got given a prescription. We wasted some time in the coffee shop while we waited for the chemist to open. My daughter stung me for a smoked salmon sandwich! (Are you sure you’re going to eat this? It’s very expensive. Reader - I think you can guess how this story ended…) I had a latte and a cheese and tomato toastie (v nice!). The pharmacist told my daughter that she hoped she got better soon. And all the way home I was thinking - gawd bless the N.H.S! (I am an atheist so perhaps this is hypocritical - perhaps I should have been thinking Bevan bless the N.H.S!)

Postscript:

We almost tempted the gods (as in Greek gods - those capricious bastards) by booking a holiday this Easter. It would have involved passports, flights and everything! Thankfully our own laziness and lack of motivation prevented this.

So I've been lurking on Facebook and Twitter today, casting envious and rather resentful glances at other people’s holiday snaps. The thing is, and perhaps this is me changing a habit of a lifetime and becoming an optimist, they’ll be other sunny days! (There will be, right??)

P.P.S I am aware that when I wrote the diary of an introvert the other day that I promised to write something more exciting next time - I'm well aware that this isn't it! But I do need to keep my hand in with this blogging business so, as you may imagine, I'm rather limited as to subject matter at the moment!

Finding a Voice

I read a piece by Julie Birchill once, where she talked about writing being a way of having a proper, authoritative, grown-up voice. She felt this way because her own speaking voice, she wrote, was so breathy and childlike. Whilst I don’t particularly like my voice. (You know when you hear yourself leaving an answer machine message and you think - who the hell is that? Far too nasal and high in register) I don’t feel that it is particularly girlish or childlike. What I identified with, in the whole finding a voice thing, was that, as someone who was basically shy and found big groups of people difficult, writing was a way of expressing myself - a way of being heard. 

Are you a shy person? Does the word ‘networking’, especially when applied to a work function, fill you with dread? Do you spend too long formulating answers, only to find that in the meantime, the person asking the question has got bored and moved on? Do you have a problem with job interviews? Family functions?

Sometimes I think that in every introvert there resides a massive show-off who is just desperate to break through the restraints of convention and shout - ‘look at me, look at me - I am here!!!’ This is evidenced by the shy actors and performers you come across, giving awkward, sullen-seeming interviews, mumbling into their water and being monosyllabic. Yet, on stage and screen they give effervescent, magnetic performances. They are drawing your eye and attention to them.  They like being centre of attention in the context of a work of art, but not in their real life.

Writers are not that different. The writer wants your attention, even if they go about it in a less direct way, they still crave it. And, arguably, they also want your approval. Even the sardonic, verbal acrobat Will Self (writer) once said in an interview that, with his writing he was no different from the schoolboy, buying sweets for his friends to try and get them to like him. (If that’s really the case then write something a bit more accessible, Will! His sweets would be the equivalent of someone telling you that they had a treat for you, then chucking  a packet of Fishermen’s Friends in your lap; if you’ve never had a Fisherman’s Friend, imagine that someone has taken a ball of earwax, injected tar into it, left it out in the sun to dry then rolled it in soluble aspirin. ;) )

So here I am - have I got your attention? No, don’t scroll through your phone in the meantime. LISTEN.

Just checking.

So, if I'm so shy and reserved and such an introvert, then what am I doing drawing attention to myself by creating a page for my blog? I think I've already answered that question, haven’t I? The introvert who secretly wants to be the centre of attention (did I mention that it was my childhood ambition to become an actor?)

Not just that though. If I do have your attention then I want to tell you something - come closer...I think that I can make us both happier. No, really, I know it’s a bold claim and it sounds like something that Paul (‘I can make you thin’ - no you can’t, Paul!) McKenna might say. I think that I can make us a little bit happier by a joint endeavour to do two things. Just two things; a little start in the whole happiness game. These two things are hardly scientific breakthroughs - you will probably have heard different people saying these things at some time or another, but I want to restate them here and make an attempt to focus on them. So these two things are:

1. Stop comparing yourself to other people

Don’t worry about what they've achieved and you haven’t. Don’t worry about the things that they have in their life that appear to be missing from yours.

Just keep on swimming.

Does that sound all bullshit and touchy-feely? I don’t care.

I don’t  mean that you should let go of your aspirations and stop trying - quite the opposite, what I mean is just focus on your own goals and don’t worry about anyone else.

2) Don’t regret the things that you haven’t done.

No point looking back into the past and regretting the travelling you didn't do or the musical instrument you didn't take up - you can’t change anything about the past, all you can do is either plan to do that stuff now, or shelve it and move on.

Now, let’s do that together shall we. (Sorry if that sounds patronising) I need to take my own advice and I think that you might find it beneficial if you did too, dear reader, because, I've really become rather fond of you over the last couple of pages.

Good luck!

The Diary of an Introvert

Wednesday

Got up, had shower, failed to get published!

Or, to go into finer detail:

Morning:

Tried to explain what a period was to my daughter (after she had picked a tampon up and asked what it was). Didn’t want to traumatise her too much with talk of blood. Talked about eggs and babies, to which she replied - ‘Mummy - have you laid a egg?’ (am quoting her verbatim, she said ‘a egg’ not ‘an egg’) I laughed.

Forced self to walk to work and was glad - very glad!

I love walking - esp when it is a clear bright day like today, but, as this is the diary of an introvert, I must touch on that aspect of it, I like walking to work as it means that I don’t have to get the bus with other people!

Midday-ish

Walked into town to meet him indoors for lunch. Almost everyone I met on the way pissed me off in some way; from the grown man on a skateboard, to the lairy sixth-formers with their shouty voices, to the man in the post office who didn’t say ‘thank you’ (tosser!) Am aware that all of this makes me sound more like a misanthrope than an introvert so will blame it on my hormones (I’m allowed to do that - you’re not.)

Anyway, was massively perked up by lunch! Of course, being a bit of a foodie (or a fattie, if you’re more cruelly inclined) lunch is often one of the high points of my day. Today, me and the old man shared a ‘Cheeky sharing platter’ or somesuch, from The Cheeky Pea in Kingston. I don’t normally do other people’s advertising for them, but, 1) They are lovely and friendly in there and I like them and 2) the food is lovely and 3) Hardly anyone reads this blog.

Here is the photographic evidence - cos, like, everyone loves a picture of some food, don’t they! ;)

Evening:

Got kids ready for bed with minimal threats (get your pyjamas on now or you won’t be able to have__ in bed with you - insert name of toy here)

Home alone with the keys to the T.V controls. Husband had texted to say he was going to the pub (without the requisite 24 hours notice, am not bothered, but will store this up in the virtual tally for when I want to go to the pub on a whim).

Pyjamas, slippers, hot chocolate.

Need to make a resolution not to turn P.C on in evening unless am prepared to do anything creative on it! Need to impose a social media embargo, starting from 9pm or 21:00 hours (to pinch a gag from ‘Spaced’.) Because the news filters through in all channels and can be disruptive to sleep and equilibrium.

So, that’s it for now - banality on a plate! Will try and pitch up with something more exciting next time. Ooh, feel need to end this with a positive, life-affirming message. Crikey, what can it be???

The evenings are getting longer and lighter, aren’t they!

Au revoir, gentle reader.

International Women’s Day

If you don’t think that there is a need for International Women’s Day, let me just remind you that:

1. Women still only control 1% of the World’s wealth
2. Women only own 5% of the wealth in the U.K.
3. Although women make up 51% of the population, we comprise only 29% of MPs, 22% of professors, 15.6% senior judges.
4. The prevalence of forced marriage/Child marriage: Every day around 25,000 girls under the age of 18 are married, 1 in 7 is under the age of 15. http://www.plan-uk.org/
5. In many parts of the world, baby girls being are being murdered or abandoned because they are seen as a burden to the family.
6. The fact that F.G.M Female Genital Mutilation, still goes on! One of the many oranisations that tackles this issue: http://forwarduk.org.uk/key-issues/fgm/
7. The way that the criminal justice system treats victims of abuse and sexual assault: What was the accuser wearing? If she was wearing something that was deemed to be provocative, then she was sending out a signal about sexual availability. (Can you imagine a man being blamed for being sexually assaulted because he was wearing shorts? What about those men who remove their shirts as soon as the temperature goes over 19 degrees - are they asking to be raped?) How late was she out at night. Was she asking for it? I could write a very long essay about this, so let’s get on to masturbation.

8. If you think that we live in a more enlightened society, here in the West, I’d like you to take a minute to think about masturbation - yes, really think about it. Think about the fact that men freely admit to it but for for many women, it’s still a slightly taboo subject. Yes, there’s giggly, sniggering talk of Ann Summers Rampant Rabbits but for a large part (snigger), it is generally accepted that boys are constantly wanking but that if girls do it, there might be something wrong with them.

At school the conversation around what the (young, schoolkid) couples got up to centred around how ‘loose’ a girl was - ie what she had ‘let’ a boy do to her. There was no acknowledgement of a girl’s own sexual desire, what she herself may have wanted to do, it was all about what she had permitted the boy to do. So, her body was a bargaining tool and the liberties she allowed to be taken, determined her moral standing. The whole slag/stud dichotomy is as old as time, it’s as old as the virgin/whore split.

(If you get the feeling that I haven’t really thought this through properly, then you’d be right. I’ve just done an Internet search for books about masturbation and it came out with plenty of books for women and young girls on the subject - perhaps it's not as taboo a subject as I first thought.)

I think that it’s a really critical design flaw that a woman doesn’t actually need to have an *orgasm to get pregnant, whereas a man pretty much needs to present the goods to keep his half of the bargain.

*We are told that having an orgasm helps with conception but it is far from essential. What the hell is that about, eh!?

At the risk of sounding misandrist (man-hating!) I also think that the male anatomy, in itself, has a very basic design flaw and that everybody would be a lot happier if his member came with a little nodule at the base that stimulated the clitoris during sex. Is this the root of gender inequality, I wonder? The fact that the act needed to reproduce the human race is inherently pleasurable to a man but not necessarily to a woman? I found it both amusing and perplexing that all Christian Grey, from Fifty Shades of bollox, had to do to Ana was to tell her to come and she came! She ‘exploded’ around him. No external stimulation was needed. Thus perpetuating the *myth of the vaginal orgasm. Thanks a bunch for that, E.L James, you cynical, moronic millionaire!

*O.K so it may not be a myth exactly but rather a rare thing, on a par with a four leaf clover.

So, when you are on your tea break at work today, I’d urge you to talk about all the groundbreaking, trailblazing women; talk about Ada Lovelace, the Pankhursts, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Luxemburg, Germaine Greer, Rosa Parks, Shami Chakrabarti, Mary Beard….the list goes on and on. But, also, talk about masturbation - go on, start a conversation about it, I dare you, woman to woman. Don’t talk about diets or last night’s T.V. Start a conversation about wanking (is it still called wanking when women do it?) When did they first start doing it? Who do they think about when they do it? Do they think about anyone at all? I would start the conversation myself but I’m not at work today!

What’s that you say? You think I should bring it up at the school run?

‘Hi there, how’s it going?’

‘Freezing, isn’t it?’

‘They say it’s Spring, but…’

‘No, I haven’t signed her up for any of the after school clubs - she says she doesn’t want to do anything….’

‘Oh, can I just ask you a question? How old were you when you first started masturbating?’

I’ll just leave you with this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leHeUWjGYSA