Booked up

Self-indulgent Plog alert.

It was a rainy bank holiday. I had fifteen minutes whilst the toddler slept. Someone on Facebook (well, not just anyone - the impressive Kraken) nominated me to list ten novels that have made an impact on me. I duly did this.

Somebody else asked me what impact they had. And I think that's a great question.

So here are my ten novels (in no particular order) and the impact they had on me:

1. Lolita (Nabakov)

This is the only text I came across at university to make it to the list. A mandatory requirement of Modern Literature (which at Bristol Uni, stopped at 1950. Don't ask.), I read this on holiday with a friend in the Dominican Republic during Easter break. I loved the cleverness of the language, how it seemed to me that someone who was a linguistic outsider to the English language could see words and patterns that native English speakers were blind to. Purple pills became "purpills" and the therapist became "the rapist". Dissecting the novel in tutorial also made me conscious of the power play of language, and how Lolita never has her own voice. Her words are always narrated for her, by her rapist.

2. The God of Small Things (Roy)

I tried to read this for preparation for a university interview but found it impenetrable. A few months later, a co-worker recommended it to me, lent me a copy and I made a renewed effort. Once I got past the unfamiliar names and large cast(e) (see what I did there?), I found it a stunning work of poetry and impressionism. To this day, I love to think of bluebottles in hot weather as being "fatly baffled". It is also the first book I read where I had to look away from the page because of the violence. I then continued reading between my fingers. I do this quite a lot. TheBloke (TM) thinks it's hilarious.

3. Rebecca (Du Maurier)

I came across this through Book Club in my mid-twenties. I had always swerved it, thinking it would be romantic crap. I read it whilst a hurricane raged and bad stuff happened in the world. Perhaps it's the novel's genius that many people feel the same, but very rarely have I identified so closely with a protagonist - that slightly gauche, awkwardly polite person, trying to fake it in an adult world. The book took me away from the cold January; I found Rebecca and Rebecca fascinating. And to this day, I like to speculate on the heroine's unknown name.

4. Saturday (McEwan)

It was tough choosing just one McEwan novel (of course, I didn't have to - but it would seem harsh to put in several McEwans and only one Austen). It was a toss-up between Saturday and Atonement. The novel came out in 2005, and I counted the days down until it would be released in paperback (I didn't have much spare cash at the time). A lot of my favourite novels feel like love letters to London - this one was even more special to me because the Saturday on which it was set was actually one where I was living in London - and remembered what I had done that day. (I wasn't on the anti-war march, but Erica and I ate lasagne in my flat in Dalston - way before it was trendy - and went to a comedy club in the evening.) Saturday made me feel like I was a tiny (lasagne-eating) part of history.

5. The Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck)

I had studied Of Mice and Men at GCSE, and y'know, it was OK, but honestly I didn't see what all the fuss was about. I thought I'd give this one a go, as people said it was good, and Oh My God. Beautifully written, desperately tragic - and very educational for me, as I hadn't realised the full extent of the Great Depression. Though why anyone would name their child "Rose of Sharon" is completely beyond me.

6. Pride and Prejudice (Austen)

The only "school-studied" text to make it to the list. Again, I found it hard to choose just one Austen. Most of them, with the exception of Mansfield Park (which I did study at A-level and still resent on a profound level) could have made the list. When I first read Pride and Prejudice, I hated it. But we were studying it for GCSE coursework, so I took it with me as one of the six or seven books I could carry on a French exchange trip for a fortnight. I had finished five of the books by the end of the coach trip to get to France. I had another two weeks, and an 18-hour coach journey home to survive, sans-reading materials. Out of sheer desperation for something, I re-read Pride and Prejudice; and then I re-re-read it. And then I bought Sense and Sensibility from South Mimms service station on the way home.

Other people got drunk and had a good time. Welcome to my teenage years.

7. The Handmaid's Tale (Atwood)

Dystopian, feminist sci-fi, what's not to like? Seriously, I had never really come across female-authored sci-fi before - and from a feminist viewpoint too. Rarely for me - I can't remember exactly where or when I read this one; I think I borrowed it from the library; I certainly remember raiding that part of the bookshelf and reading pretty much everything she'd ever written for a few weeks afterwards.

8. Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Atkinson)

This is an odd one. I can't remember if someone gave it to me at Book Club because they said they thought I'd enjoy it, or if I bought it for someone else because I knew they'd like it. Perhaps that's not important. It's clever without being snobbish. It has touches of magical realism without going all Angela Carter on us (though, to be fair, from memory, this novel uses less of the magic than other Atkinsons). A twist, a denouement, and characters that stay with you.

9. Gone with the Wind (Mitchell)

A bit like Rebecca, I had given this one a miss, thinking it was going to be corset-heaving nonsense. With a sense of duty ("I can't believe I haven't read...") I picked this one up. What I didn't expect to find was the feistiest heroine I've ever come across (say what you will about Scarlett but she gets her shit together) and a backdrop of war and slavery. A page-turner from start to finish; despite it being a massively long novel, I felt bereft as I noticed there were hardly any pages left to go.

10. The Diary of Anne Frank (Frank)

I lied earlier - this was also a school text, though well before GCSEs. We studied it in English (rather than history) class. The same year (entirely coincidentally) I played Anne Frank in a school play (whilst wearing a lot of dental braces. I was basically Anne Frank, had she been the patient of an over-zealous orthodontist) - so I spent rather more time than I might otherwise have done learning passages from the diary verbatim and really thinking a bit more about what it would actually be like to be Anne Frank, than if I had just read the book, written a couple of homework essays and then moved on. Personally, this was the first time I had been interested enough in something outside of school to do independent study for no reason other than wanting to know - using my pocket money to buy other reference books, and really reading around the subject. Reading my own diaries from the time and comparing quality, I am struck repeatedly at what talent this young girl really had. She was a great writer; she should have had the chance to keep writing.

Self-indulgent Plog over. Normal service will now resume.

Minding your Ps and FUs.

Manners are important. This is what we tell our toddler regularly, as she demands something or other. She almost always gets whatever it is that she wants, but we feel slightly better about indulging her if she lisps, "Pease, Mummy", appropriately.

She hasn't quite yet mastered, "thank you" yet. Instead she prefers to say, "No pease" when she doesn't want something. So far, so cute, but every day's a school day.

In the library, I asked her if she'd like to choose another book. "No pease, Mummy," she said.

"How about saying, 'no thank you, Mummy?'" I suggested. "You say it! Say 'thank you'."

This was a mistake.

For the next 10 minutes, my middle-class smugness at entertaining my child in the library was shattered by my offspring running around shouting, "No, fuck you Mummy."

We might stick to "no pease" for now.

Topsy turvy

I hate Topsy and Tim's mum.

I really do. I hate everything about her. Here are some examples:

Topsy and Tim's house

Topsy and Tim want to make robots out of boxes in the middle of a house move

Topsy and Tim's mum: That's a brilliant idea, my twintastic twins! Let me help you with some foil and some glue.


My house

Toddler wants to play with the fingerpaints again. This involves approximately 15 minutes of setting up, for a full three seconds of play, until she screams because she has paint on her hands, and is then followed by 15 minutes of clearing up.

Me: No. Have some chocolate.


Topsy and Tim's house

 Topsy and Tim are sad they had to put the tent away.

Topsy and Tim's mum: Never mind, my twintabulous twins! Let's make a cool den indoors with sheets and some clothes airers!


My house

Toddler cries because we had to turn the TV off/ put our shoes on / take our shoes off/ come inside / go outside / the cat wouldn't let her lick his face.

Me: Stop whining. Here. Have some chocolate.

***

I mean, seriously, she's just making the rest of us look bad. She never loses her temper. She never says no. She never says, "Hang on, I'm just on Facebook." She even lets them keep a pet rabbit. And all this in the middle of moving house.

One day when Topsy and Tim's nursery school had to close down for the day, Topsy and Tim's mum invited the whole fucking nursery school class to her house. Her house! She did this whilst smiling, looking gorgeous, and having some really good ideas about how to entertain fifteen little bastards.

And she has twins! Twins! Two of the little fuckers.

In addition, Topsy and Tim's mum looks gorgeous. Well-groomed, well-dressed and perfectly made up. If I were her, with two pre-school fuckwads to look after, I would have a bald patch from repetitive stress hair-pulling, would be at least three stone overweight and may well have developed Tourette's. Well, at least that's what I would tell the neighbours to excuse the fact that every third sentence contained the words "fucking little cockweasels".

They probably wouldn't use me to make a pre-school kids' show.

I like to think she's nice on the outside, but it's all bubbling away inside, eating away at her. One day, they'll broadcast "Topsy and Tim's Mum Goes Postal". And it'll be the policeman asking Topsy, "Are you good at remembering? What sort of weapon was Mummy holding? The answer is behind Mr Nibbles..."

Making a meal of it

"There is chicken and vegetable pasta in the fridge for the toddler," I said to Mrs Nunn. "And for dessert, she can have some natural yoghurt with the pureed raspberries and blackberries from the garden." I wrote it down on a special piece of paper, as Mrs Nunn likes lists.

Off we went to a lovely wedding.

Getting home that evening, I ask Mrs Nunn if the toddler ate all her dinner. Mrs Nunn says, "Oh, she actually had some of our pizza for dinner."

"OK," I say. "Did she eat all the yoghurt?"

"I forgot to give it to her," says Mrs Nunn. "But she did have an ice-cream from the ice-cream van."

"What?! That's not very healthy!"

"She only had a little bit. We had most of it," Mrs Nunn says defensively.

Readers, I will let you judge for yourself as to whether or not Mrs Nunn is a big fat liar.

God-awful education

Not everyone likes Richard Dawkins. I do. I mean, I've never met him or anything, but I found The God Delusion air-punchingly brilliant (if I was the air-punching sort, which I'm not. More the kind of clucking my tongue approvingly and nodding sagely) and The Selfish Gene wrote about genetics in a way that was both accessible and enlightening.

Dawkins' website today has made a story out of this article, about parents in the London Borough of Redbridge being offered either a "faith-based" school or no school at all for their children. This is a debate I've been having with friends for a long while, and is of particular interest to me, as we live within the affected borough.

The whole idea of faith-based schools turns my stomach. It's not a racist, or even culturalist (is that a word?) issue for me; I absolutely want my daughter to grow up in a mixed school that represents the community around her. I want her to be able to mix with people who hold different ideas about religion - and I want her to come to her her own conclusions. But, I absolutely, fundamentally disagree with the fact that I pay taxes for a school that my child either cannot achieve admission to (see: high-performing Church of England schools) or else will receive alongside her education, religious doctrine, which is at its best unprovable, and at its worst, damaging in its attitudes towards women and promoting guilt or intolerance.

"So Laura," you might say, "does that mean that you are also opposed to single-sex education, as if you have a daughter, she cannot attend an all-boys' school, for which you pay taxes?"

Actually, no. I have yet to come across a local authority that has single-sex schools for one gender, and not the other. It's about parity. Where there is an all-boys' school, in my experience, there is also an all-girls' school. That is fine. Other people may disagree with single-sex schools, but that is a separate debate.

I have friends who - despite having been decidedly agnostic as long as I've known them - have suddenly got involved with church activities, in order to secure that all-important place at an (inevitably mostly-white, high-performing) C of E school. And I completely, completely understand that as a parent, you will do almost anything to ensure the best future for your child. I do not judge those parents. Well, I do a little bit. But I try and be polite about it.

But I am pissed off that people are having to declare a faith they do not feel, in order to gain a solid education for their child. I am pissed off that - because I am a card-carrying atheist (they don't actually issue cards, but I wish they would) - my child will never get into a Catholic school (nor would I want her to), despite the fact that my taxes are paying for it. I am pissed off that classroom time is given over to prayer. I am pissed off that no-one else seems properly pissed off about this.

The USA - a far more religious country than the UK - has total separation of church and state in its schools - to the extent that (I understand - please correct me if I'm wrong), they cannot put up Christmas decorations, sing carols, celebrate Hanukkah, for fear of litigation. Many people would say that's taking things too far. Perhaps they are right. But actually, surely school should be a place for learning, for facts, for understanding, for debating, for gaining tolerance. Of course religion should be part of the education - in terms of helping people to understand what others believe - but only as far as facts go. For example: "This is what Christians believe, this is what Sikhs believe etc." and categorically not "This is the truth, now let's pray." And if that means removing the relatively harmless fripperies of religion for a greater good, then so be it.

Some will argue that a faith school is important as they are unable to practise their religion without it, as it is so deeply embedded in their culture (for example, washing and praying several times a day, girls separated from boys in the classroom, needing to learn a religious language). If this is the case - if this is truly the case - I think those parents need to assess whether state education is appropriate for their child. I don't see that the taxpayer has any obligation to provide a religious backdrop for your child - Christian or otherwise. You can do that in your free time, or else pay for it elsewhere. (Actually, honestly, I would rather faith schools were forbidden entirely - even in private education - but I suspect we're a few decades away from that.)

I see Free Schools are on the rise - where a group of parents essentially sets up a school, but it is funded by the government. How long before someone sets up an Atheist Free School, free from doctrine, with the emphasis on learning, questioning, tolerance and empirical evidence? If you do, let me know. We will move to be in your catchment area.

Sod it, I might just start one myself. Anyone want to join?

Trouble at sea

Of the many things I am good at, tact and subtlety are not among them. They never have been. When I was about fourteen, my schoolfriend Hazel challenged me to try to be subtle for a whole day. Easy peasy. Except, when I did something particularly subtle (or rather didn't do something unsubtle) I would inevitably feel the need to point it out to her, thus - apparently - negating the subtlety. Hazel's rules are harsh.

So, one of the reasons for my recent Plog absence is we have been on holiday. And because we are now "of a certain age", we chose to go on a cruise. We had never been on a cruise before. We chose the ship we sailed on because it had fantastic children's facilities, including a playroom. This playroom became pretty much where we - and every other parent with an under-two year-old - spent our entire holiday.

So, despite there being 3000 passengers on board, we bumped into the same people over and over again. This can be a problem when you lack subtlety or tact.

Day One

The toddler has been playing with the same girl for a little while. Let's call her Lottie. I decide to give Lottie's mum a compliment about Lottie. What parent doesn't like to hear their children praised? And let's pay a thoughtful compliment about her character, rather than how she looks.

"I've noticed Lottie is really independent," I say. "She's really happy to play by herself while other children are playing elsewhere."

"Yes," replied her mum. "She had her two-year checks recently and she's going to have further tests on that. They think she might be autistic."

Oops. Never mind.


Day Two

We see a parent - let's call him Jake - in the pool with his child. No problem here until...


Day Three

Jake is in the playroom. I introduce myself (as it turns out, for the second time). TheBloke (TM) points out we've already met.

"Oh yes," I said. "Sorry, I didn't recognise you with your clothes on."

There is awkward silence.

Apparently this is not an appropriate thing to say to a toddler's father whilst his wife is in the room.

Still, never mind. Things with Jake can only get better, surely?


Day Four

Jake is in the playroom with his toddler again. This time I recognise him. Lottie's mother is also there and we are talking about Peppa Pig. We all love Peppa Pig. If I'm honest, we're actually quoting our favourite bits to each other. Jake likes Peppa Pig too. We talk about how it doesn't talk down to children, and is actually genuinely funny.

Talk turns to CBeebies.

"What do you think of Dinopaws?" Jake asks us.

Before TheBloke (TM) can answer, I reply, "I loathe Dinopaws. I absolutely hate it. I can't abide how it uses incorrect language like 'more biggerer'. The toddler hates it too. She cries when it comes on."

Jake takes a breath. "It's just... I worked on that show."

Oh shit. Time to backpedal.

"Well, I mean, the animation is very good... and the voices are fine. It's just the script. So long as you're not one of the script writers... ha ha ha..."

"I am a script writer."


Day five, six and seven

I let TheBloke (TM) mostly take over playroom duties. I focus my attentions on not speaking to anyone.

I am beginning to wonder if 2014 is going to be the year I offend multiple people connected with CBeebies programmes.

Perhaps I should refrain from expressing opinions altogether. Next Plog: Staring impassively out of a window.

Milking it

I meant to write about breastfeeding earlier. Very early, in the first few weeks of the baby, actually. It was a huge, difficult part of my life.

But in those early days, when the baby wasn't feeding and was losing weight, I didn't write about it, because I never had time to write. And because it felt like failure, when really the only thing you're supposed to be able to do as a mother in those early days is keep the baby clean and feed it successfully. I was failing at 50% of motherhood.

Then - after quite literal months - it kind of clicked into place, and became less fraught, less effortful. And still I didn't write. 

I worried that it would cause controversy, a debate I didn't want to have. I was worried that friends who had made different choices would think I was judging them, would have reason to add more chips to their guilt pile.

I think we are probably the first generation who bring up our children by committee. Yes, the Internet is a wonderful thing at 4 a.m., when you're close to a breakdown because there's a funny rash (i.e. three spots) on the baby and you can Google it. But it also means there is one consensus opinion. Ask a forum if you can give your 12-month old something relatively innocuous like grapes, and at least five people will reply within ten minutes and practically threaten to call Social Services because it's a choking hazard. To modify and mollify, they will probably use the word "hun". 

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, hun - it's a choking hazard."

"Hun, my doctor told me not to do that, as she knew someone who... blah blah blah, hun."

Barf. The only type of hun I want to be is Attilla.

So now - rather than as previous generations have had to suffer the advice of a handful of friends and family, who may have a wide range of opinions - mothers (and fathers) today are increasingly told there is a "right" way to do things. You mustn't let a baby under 6 months old cry itself to sleep. You mustn't give a baby under a year old a teddy bear. You mustn't allow your baby to sleep on its front. All of these things will cause irreparable damage or death and it will be your fault because you were warned. Hun.

The biggest and loudest of these is you must breastfeed. Breast is best. Look - here is the science, here are the health benefits for you and for the baby. Hun.

I was sold. I was duly horrified when we did our hospital tour whilst I was still pregnant, and I met mothers who weren't even planning on trying to breastfeed. I was going to breastfeed. I was going to persevere. It was going to be fine.

It wasn't fine. It was fucking awful.

I was in hospital for a fair few days after the birth, because of the C-section, which meant I had ample opportunity to talk to various midwives (never the same one twice. Once called Precious, who was not. One called Patience, who had not. Had there been one called, "Fucking loud at three in the morning when you're trying to sleep", I could have bought that) about how to make the baby feed. My nipples were squeezed repeatedly. I was shown at least four different ways to hold the baby. The baby sort of fed. She slept a lot. I didn't worry too much.

After a day or two it really hurt. It really hurt. Unlike all the books I had read where "baby latches" and then feeds, my baby latched, came off, latched again, came off again, screamed, latched, screamed, latched, screamed. Repeat. Every time she latched was like having your (already sore) nipple twisted in a violent and painful way. I used to keep a stress ball by the bed to squeeze when she latched, as the pain was so severe I thought I might reflexively punch/drop the baby.

"It takes a few weeks for the pain to go away," people advised. Not fucking kidding. Four months it took me to be able to breastfeed without pain.

Five weeks into it, I realised the baby wasn't gaining weight. The doctor wanted to see us every couple of weeks to make sure she was gaining. Her poo turned green. It stayed green for a couple of weeks. 

Every feeding session - each one supposed to last up to an hour - only ever took five to ten minutes, and was generally 30 seconds on, 20 seconds of screaming, another 30 seconds on, another 20 seconds of screaming. Repeat on a 24-hour cycle. Think about what that feels like at 3 in the morning. Remember the pain. Now remember you're not getting more than 2 hours' sleep consecutively either. And you're failing your baby. This little being that depends on you for everything? You're fucking it up.

Fun, eh?

Then, just as she seemed to be feeding, she would lose the nipple and I would have to help line it up to her mouth again.

I had fantastic support from our local breastfeeding group. They checked for tongue-tie (none), listened to the weird clicking noises the baby made when she was feeding, and were appropriately baffled. They suggested (over the course of a number of weeks), expressing at the start of the feed, expressing at the end of the feed, not expressing at all, feeding more often, feeding less often, giving Infacol before. Giving Infacol afterwards. Giving Infacol during. Gripe Water. Feeding in the bath. Skin-to-skin. We tried everything.

After about two months of this, when the baby was about four months old, one of the lovely, lovely staff said to me, seeing me at my absolute wits' end, "You know, if you need to give her formula, it isn't actually the end of the world. You have done everything."

Ironically, it was almost as if being given "official permission" to formula feed was like a magic spell. Feeding slowly got better. Less painful. Less screamy for both of us. She still never had long feeds, but something clicked. It worked. She never got back up to the 75th percentile she was born on, but moved up from the 9th, where she had dropped to, and she tracked the 25th percentile pretty well. I was successfully breastfeeding.

Four months doesn't sound that long in the grand scheme of things, but that's easy to say with a bird's eye view. At three in the morning, trying not to scream in agony of your sore nipple being chewed, as your baby literally claws at your face... happy days. Nothing like the "midnight snuggles with my lil man", the forums claimed they missed once their babies weaned.

I worked harder at breastfeeding than probably anything else in my life - possibly excluding my A-levels. But still I felt I couldn't speak out about how pleased I was, in case I came across as a "smug mum", rubbing my success in the faces of those who'd tried and couldn't, or who had made different choices.

For the first time, breastfeeding did become easier than (I imagined) bottle feeding was. I had previously envied friends who rocked up to coffee, whipped a bottle out of their bag, and off they went, whilst my baby was screaming, losing the nipple, screaming again... and in the meantime, my overactive milk production meant I was squirting the poor little thing in the face.

But now - it seemed to work. I didn't have to prep anything or sterilise anything, or remember to take anything out with me. I'd even stopped (mostly) squirting her with my massive milky waterpistols. It was great. 

(For about another two months until she got teeth. But that's perhaps another story.)

We breastfed until she was about ten months old.

I don't know that there's a moral to this story. Perseverance? Maybe. It did frustrate me how many people don't even try to breastfeed their babies (if nothing else, it's so much cheaper!). I want to write, "Each parent knows what's best for their child, and should be allowed to make their own choice," but the number of Monster Munch-clutching obese toddlers dressed head-to-toe in pink, wearing T-shirts saying, "Daddy's little princess" or "Future footballer's wife" makes me shy from that opinion too.

So, for once, no advice. Just a story. If you want advice, go onto a forum. They'll tell you everything you're doing wrong. Hun.

Playtime-out

The scene: today, our kitchen, lunchtime. I have spent the last 20 minutes making a healthy tomato-based organic vegetable soup for the toddler. She is sitting expectantly in her highchair.

Mummy: Here you go, sweetie. Yummy tomato soup.

Toddler: NO!

Mummy: Try a spoonful please.

Toddler: *Takes a spoonful. Spits it directly - literally - all over Mummy's face*

Mummy: *Wiping approximately £0.53 of organic ingredients from her face* No. Naughty. VERY naughty. Don't do that again.

Toddler: *Spits in Mummy's face again*

Mummy: If you do that again, you will have to go on the Naughty Step.

Toddler: *Delightedly* STEP! 

I decide I have to follow through. I wipe her mouth and take her to the Naughty Step for the required minute and a half.

She sits on the step, merrily swinging her legs. I go to the living room, where I can still see her, but deliberately don't make eye contact.

I sneak a peak. She is winningly smiling at me. I show her that I am not paying her any attention, by facing the other way and whistling in a nonchalant fashion.

The toddler starts whistling too. I think this is odd behaviour for a toddler. She can whistle. Is that normal? I try not to smile, and keep looking the other way. The toddler decides what I really want her to do is to sneak up on me whilst I'm "not looking". I whip my head round and catch her in the act. She thinks this is hilarious, and runs away, giggling, and sits back down on the Naughty Step.

It is actually quite funny. She starts whistling again and indicates I should look in the other direction. I do, and she sneaks up on me again. I can't help laughing. We're now playing a really fun game.

She ate Mummy's expensive Spanish tapas with manchego cheese for lunch. The organic soup will be used in one of our dinners this week.

The toddler is totally beating me at this parenting thing.

Telling the tooth

It was time to take the toddler to the dentist. All week we practised opening our mouth for the dentist. "What do you say to the dentist?" I'd ask her.

"Ahhhhh," she'd obligingly reply, with her mouth wide open.

Excellent.

Except once we arrived at the surgery, I realised that she would have no concept of this stranger as a dentist. And in fact he was more likely to say to her, "Can I have a look at your teeth?"

I thought we would rehearse this. The receptionist gave me a kindly smile. The other patients looked on approvingly.

"What do you say when the dentist asks to look at your teeth?" I asked the toddler. All eyes in the room were on her.

The toddler thought about it. I prompted her again. "What do you say when he asks to look at your teeth?"

She then shouted decisively, "NO! TEETH MINE! NO NO NO NO!"

She did not get a sticker for good behaviour.

Miss-ing the point

Yesterday the BBC published an article about whether or not calling male teachers "Sir" and female teachers "Miss" was sexist.

The accuser was a university professor, specialising in linguistics, and I have to say, I rather thought she had a point. She said that "sir" denotes knights - to me at least, it conjures images of upper-class, high status men. "Miss" on the other hand, tends to refer to junior females. The difference in status is therefore sexist.

Yes, there are probably bigger things in the world to worry about, but I thought she had a fair point. The school I went to didn't use the "sir/miss" form of address; instead we addressed teachers by their name - Mr Pearson, Ms Smith, Miss Peters, Dr Tompkins and so on. My brother's school, however - a boys' school which was the brother school to mine, did indeed use the sir/miss labelling.

Interestingly - though perhaps not definitively - whilst my school had very strong feminist ideals, his school was rather sexist.

What I was surprised about was the comments on the BBC website, from people who seemed genuinely outraged that someone had dared bring this up as an issue. Various comments suggested that Professor Sara Mills had nothing better to do, that she should "get a life" and stop her "inane drivel". Many comments said - probably correctly - that there was no difference of respect in a pupil's mind between "sir" and "miss".

But that is not the point.

"Sir" is not an equivalent to "miss". I have never been in a restaurant where TheBloke (TM) is referred to as "sir" and I am "miss"; in this case I would be "madam".

The equivalent to "miss" is "master" (which actually has its own linguistic problems, conveying authority and ownership).

In a world where women are consistently paid less than men, where they struggle to hold top positions in companies, surely it's worth looking at the language which is shaping our children's perceptions of gender before they even get into the workplace?

And even if we decide that actually, no need to bother changing it, surely, surely it's not a waste of time for a professor of linguistics to consider the question.

Nope, sorry Professor Sara Mills. The people have spoken. Get back in the kitchen, and maybe consider popping out a child or two so you can be properly fulfilled.

Raisin' hell

It was my own fault really. As the baby (OK, toddler) lay across me this morning, saying, "cuggle, Mummy" and kissing my cheek and giggling, I thought, "I'm so glad I work part time. I'd really miss this special time together if I was working five days a week."

It was my own fault.

Big Ted in happier times

Fast forward a couple of hours and we're stuck on a non-moving Central Line train. We have exhausted any amusement Big Ted or Oinky Pig might be able to provide. The carefully-stashed maraca was brought out of the buggy so we could do some singing and tapping in time to music. She grabbed it excitedly... and then thwacked me over the head with it. Hard. Twice. The maraca went back into the buggy.

The screaming commenced. The emergency box of raisins was retrieved from my coat pocket. I have them stashed in any given coat like dog treats.

"Rai-dan! Rai-dan!" shouted the toddler. One single raisin was dispatched. Whilst still chewing, "Rai-dan! Rai-dan!" was demanded.

"Say please," I said, hopefully, more for the benefit of other passengers, so I could pretend for a little while longer that I was a decent parent and my child wasn't a despot.

"NOOOOO!" screamed the toddler. I gave her a raisin.

"Say thank you," I suggested, optimistically.

"NOOO!" she screamed again and reached for the raisin box. I am not an idiot. This was a terrible idea. We were on a non-moving train; the entire Central Line had been suspended. I had no idea (nor did the driver) how much longer we'd be there for - and we had no way of getting off the train, as there was no step-free access, and the last time I had asked a TFL employee to help me on the stairs, he told me to fuck off and gave me the finger. I love the Underground.

The raisins needed to be rationed.

But the toddler wanted the raisin box. And she was prepared to scream for it. The noise that followed is - I imagine - the exact same noise you would get if you electrocuted a guinea pig.

My fellow passengers shooting me death-stares, Reader, I gave her the raisin box.

"Rai-dan," she gurgled happily and set to work opening it up. She achieved this in approximately 0.2 seconds. And - little genius that she is - her next step was to shake the box vigorously, thus sending said rai-dans flying all over the floor of the tube.

Securely strapped into the buggy, the toddler could not reach the dropped raisins, nor would I pick them up for her. We generally have a 5(00) second rule at home with dropped floor food, but even I draw the line at tube floors. If their cleaners are as committed to their jobs as the station staff, they probably mop the floor with their own piss.

The biggest problem was this: the tube - now stationary for over 30 minutes - had no other seats. And the toddler could see the dropped raisins that she wasn't allowed. There was nowhere to move to. The next five minutes involved the most tortured wailing I've ever had the misfortune to witness. I tried to give her Big Ted. "NOOOO!" she screamed, hitting Big Ted halfway across the carriage. I tried my failsafe fall-back - showing her videos of her narcissistic little self on my iPhone. "NOOOO!" she wailed, knocking my iPhone (quite hard) into the lap of a disapproving-looking older lady.

The raisins were gone. The iPhone distraction wasn't working. The tube wasn't moving.

And I'm sorry, TFL, but the £1.30 compensation you're offering me for a journey which caused a migraine and  necessitated an emergency slice of cake in the John Lewis cafe doesn't begin to cover it. Much less the fees for boarding school. Can you send them from age 2?

Potty mouth

Today we decided to start potty training. Mothers from a generation ago will say, "Ooh, 18 months, that's a bit late, isn't it?" Anyone who's currently raising a child will say, "Are you mental? It's not possible to potty train a child under the age of two."

The big issue, apparently, is that disposable nappies are just too good - so babies these days tend not to know they're wet... and so it takes them longer to realise when they're going to the toilet. (Or rather, not going to the toilet.) In the meantime, Pampers are making a fortune as most babies are in nappies for a good year longer than they were when everyone wore cloth nappies.

In Eastern Europe, they tend to potty train much earlier than we do, and I have several friends from Lithuania and Romania at baby groups, with children roughly the same age as ours, whose babies - barring a couple of accidents - are already potty trained. Those who know me, know I'm competitive. It was time to potty train.

I'm a planner. We put aside the bank holiday weekend as a time we could be pretty much totally in the house all day, close to a potty, wandering round underwear-free (just the baby - TheBloke (TM) has already had complaints about this from the neighbours.). Today was the day we started.

We didn't get off to a great beginning. The baby woke up with a cold, and decided that the way she would most like to start her day was with a solid 45 minutes of whinging and crying.

Not to be deterred, after breakfast, I put her in a dress, with no nappy or underwear, showed her the potty again, and we practised sitting on it. Well, she did. I didn't really fit.

Fast forward twenty minutes. She had steadfastly avoided the potty, but had made a puddle on the floor.

"Never mind," I said brightly, fetching a cloth and some disinfectant. "This is why it's great we've got wooden floors!" I sat her on the potty to show what she needed to do. She picked up the potty and pretended to drink from it, making a satisfied, "Ahhhh" noise when she had finished her (hopefully) pretend drink.

I cleaned her up, and we went on our way.

It was close to the time of the morning when she normally has a poo. I sat her on the potty. She did not want to sit on the potty. She wandered round the house. I followed, with the potty.

The baby walked over to the door mat - literally the only piece of fabric we have downstairs, literally the only thing on the whole floor that wasn't wipe-clean... and, whilst standing up, did a massive turd, right in the middle of it.

I think the only word that could describe this is "spiteful".

At 9.00 a.m. today, I was tipping a giant turd from our doormat into the toilet. How was your day?

We quietly put the nappy back on at about 9.01, and haven't mentioned it again. Perhaps we'll be brave enough to try again tomorrow.

The squeezed middle

Mr and Mrs Nunn come to stay fairly regularly. They pretend it's because they want to see me, but they don't. They couldn't give the tinest rat's arse about whether or not I'm even in the house, so long as the baby is there.

This is fine. It's nice to see them. And Mrs Nunn takes on nappy duties quite regularly. (Although every third nappy is oddly, and somewhat unusually a "stupid nappy, I think there's something wrong with it". It's usually upside down.)

However, there is an unsolved mystery when Mr and Mrs Nunn come to stay. It's to do with toothpaste. Now, here I think I ought to explain my own foibles a little more closely.

I am not a tidy person. I have never been. I would like to be. But I'm not. However, there is one thing which I am entirely anally retentive about; toothpaste.

Toothpaste should always, always be squeezed from the bottom of the tube. There is no room for negotiation on this one.

To you middle-squeezers, I say this - why? Why would you do that? What is the benefit? Is it particularly exciting to squeeze the toothpaste from the middle of the tube? Is it? Is it? No. Well, if it isn't exciting then, why do it? You're just storing up trouble for yourself about a month from now when you get to the end of the toothpaste, and suddenly all the toothpaste is trapped at the bottom of the tube. And then you have to spend valuable seconds squeezing it all back up again! All this ridiculousness could have been avoided simply by squeezing from the bottom in the first place. Morons!

I care about this so much, that (and this is desperately true) when I did online dating, years ago, squeezing from the bottom of the tube was actually one of the criteria I stipulated in my ideal partner. It might have sounded quirky and amusing but I WAS NOT JOKING.

Anyway, whenever Mr and Mrs Nunn come to stay, although they swear blind that they bring their own toothpaste, when I go to brush my teeth, my lovely tube of toothpaste has a kink right in the middle. This makes me angry.

What is worse is that neither of them will take responsibility. The last time I rounded in on Mr Nunn; sharing my levels of natural tidiness, he was the likeliest culprit.

"No!" he said. "I have this row with your mum all the time. She's the one who squeezes from the middle of the tube. It drives me mad!"

Mrs Nunn came to stay earlier in the week. I raised the toothpaste issue with her. "It's not me!" she said. "It's Dad who squeezes from the middle! Does Dad seem to you to be the sort of person who would squeeze from the bottom of the tube?"

This is a tough one, you see. Mr Nunn is more logical (hence a potential bottom-squeezer - so to speak), but Mrs Nunn is naturally tidier.

All we know for sure is that one of my parents is a big fat liar.

And in the meantime, until they sort it out and 'fess up, I'm withholding grandchild privileges.

Bare-faced lies

Facebook is a strange place, isn't it? A lot of my more self-disciplined and intellectual friends have sworn of it completely, preferring to hang out at Twitter and be the smart-mouthed kids at the back of the classroom. I'd like to be able to do that, but - it's time to be honest - I kind of love Facebook. As a natural introvert with very little desire to actually put myself in a social situation, it enables me to follow the minutiae of my friends' lives without - you know - actually having to speak to them.

Anyway, over the last couple of days, a viral meme cropped up everywhere, with ladies posting photos of themselves going "bare faced" (i.e. no make-up) for "cancer" or "breast cancer".

Obligatory paragraph here about how for fuck's sake people, posting a photo or changing your status "for cancer" does absolutely fuck all "for cancer". Some of the brighter sparks gave a link to donate or instructions on how to check yourself for breast cancer, which is undeniably a good thing. But the main point, apparently, was to "raise awareness". Quick survey folks - anyone reading this who hadn't heard of cancer before this Facebook meme? Nope? OK, so everyone had heard of cancer. But how many of you knew it was a bad thing? Oh? Everyone again? Looks like we didn't need to raise that awareness after all. As it happened, this particular meme wasn't an orchestrated campaign by any cancer charity. Like many viral trends it was mostly people jumping on the bandwagon and nominating each other.

Which brings me onto my second point - "going bare faced" was done as a dare - are you brave enough to show the world what you look like without make-up? What the actual fuck? Are we as women so utterly revolting in our natural state that we require sponsorship and/or congratulations for daring to show our (chemical-free) face in public?

I had a debate with a friend once about whether or not make-up was anti-feminist. I don't have a coherent view on this, it has to be said. On one hand, I firmly believe it's up to every woman to decide how she wants to look. On the other hand, I question my own actions: despite literally never wearing make-up round the house, unfortunately, I wouldn't dream of going to a job interview without some subtle make-up. Not because I feel I need to hide, or even "to present my best self" but because I know - I know - that this would be so against the norm, and that interviewers don't want weirdos. Asking ourselves why we wear make-up, what our personal motives are, is perhaps an important debate to have.

And I think, "I look scary without it" is a really sad answer. And it's what society is telling us; women without make-up are wrong, unfeminine - ironically - unnatural.

So by all means, post photos of yourself without make-up on. But don't expect any congratulations from me. That's just your face.

Bossy boots

So I wrote this Plog a couple of weeks ago, but kept it in "drafts" for a while, as I wasn't quite sure the tone was right. Once again, proving my excellence at hitting the zeitgeist, I see this has been in the news this week, so I thought I'd hit "publish"...

The childminder said the baby had been "making her voice heard". That when one of the other little children picked up a toy she was playing with, the baby said, "No, no, no, no, no!".

"Oh dear," I said. "Has she been a bit bossy?"

"Assertive," the childminder replied, diplomatically and entirely fairly.

When I got home, I thought about the word "bossy". It was me who used it - but you do see it crop up frequently on children's programmes and in books, to describe little girls or other female characters who are, well, bossy. I realised that you literally never hear it used to describe little boys. Think about it. Think about a bossy little girl. Change the gender. You suddenly wouldn't call him bossy, would you?

What would we call him? Officious? Possibly - depending on the context. Authoritative, displaying leadership qualities? Potentially, although this is far from the pejorative intended by "bossy". Controlling? Maybe - but he would need to be high status for this. "Bossy" can be anyone - sorry, any female one - regardless of actual status.

So, being a word geek, I looked into the etymology of "bossy" for clues as to why it's a gendered word. It appears to have come into common usage as recently as the 1900s from America - derived from "boss"; in that time, it was surely a male word. So it is much more recently that we have applied it firstly to women, and then pretty much exclusively to women.

I have seen enough of 17 month olds to know that - at this age at least - there's no difference between boys and girls to speak of. Well, perhaps as a whole the boys are a bit quicker to walk, and the girls are a bit quicker to talk, but that's about it. I know perfectly well that boys can behave just as "bossily" as girls. So the construct is adult. 

The behaviour that is exhibited equally by both genders as small children learning social skills for the very first time, is pulled into focus and whilst the boys' behaviour goes unremarked, or maybe with a smile, "He knows his own mind, doesn't he?", people who use the word "bossy" shine a negative light on girls simply for expressing what they want.

As tiny toddlers we (and I am not excluding myself from this - I was the one who initially described the baby as "bossy") are saying to girls, "Be quiet. Do not think it is your place to tell others what to do. Your behaviour is poor. Try to acquiesce."

Looking at female roles in children's TV, there is often the stereotypical "bossy" female. I am sure this is also the case in children's books, although we're still on board books at the moment, because someone - and I'm not naming names - hasn't yet worked out she isn't a goat, and will try to eat anything that isn't chew-proof. The answer to Where's Wally? is usually in her nappy.)

On CBeebies again, bossy - or rather "negatively assertive" characters include Bluebird in Everything's Rosie (having just Googled this to check spelling, I see there is even an episode entitled Bossy Bluebird), Bella in The Tweenies (described as "bossy" on the CBeebies character page), Joan the "bossy fennel" in Mr Bloom's Nursery (described as "bossy" by the BBC press release) and Lola in Charlie and Lola to an extent. (I give her a free pass, as bossiness isn't her defining - and in most cases mentioned already - only characteristic).

"But Laura," I hear you saying, "just a couple of weeks ago, you were moaning that girls were too kind and nurturing and under-represented, that their voices weren't heard at all. You can't have it both ways."

And that's the problem. It's both ways. Two ways - demure and nurturing or harridan. (Harridan - another female word - can you find a male equivalent?) Once again, reducing women to the age-old dichotomy of virgin/whore. Well, perhaps whore is a bit strong for CBeebies. Though I would definitely tune in to watch that episode of Show Me, Show Me: "Show me, show me prostitution, Pui!"

In The Tweenies, for example, there are four child characters: Bella (the bossy girl), Milo (a boy, bit of a joker), Fizz (flicks her hair a lot and likes ballet and dolls) and Jake (the littlest, gets his words wrong); in order to have a defining characteristic as a female, it appears to need to be either naggy or girly.

Why can't Fizz get her words wrong, or Bella joke around? Or indeed, why can't Milo be "bossy"?

I'm not sure banning the word "bossy" is the answer - but an awareness that there's a problem would be a good start.

And more to the point, when is the Show Me, Show Me prostitution special ever going to air?

Interview with Mellie Buse - Grandpa in My Pocket

The odd thing about having a blog is, very occasionally someone will read it. Even more occasionally, someone will actually get in touch to say that they've read it. Usually this person just wants to know what I look like naked. Sometimes I tell them. But occasionally, a really interesting conversation is started.

After my recent blog on the topic of sexism in CBeebies, Mellie Buse, the writer and producer of Grandpa in My Pocket got in touch, and has been delightfully patient in answering a multitude of questions I had about gender and children's TV.

Thank you for taking the trouble to get in touch Mellie - it's great to get an insider's view.

I was interested to read your blog and I think it's important, when someone writes something along those lines, that they hear the perspective from the coal face, so to speak. 

Over the past five years, we've had about four complaints about sexism in Grandpa - four that have hit our radar, that is. I was braced for more. Everything gets researched and analysed and things aren't done on a whim in this business. There are child psychologists and educationalists crawling all over what we do. But we think it's important to address any concerns or gripes people have about issues and it makes us think which is a good thing. Gender representation is really important and it’s great that the industry and parents are getting stuck in to discussing it.

What are your thoughts regarding the myth of boys not wanting to watch shows with a female lead?

Dora the Explorer

 First up - it isn't a myth. Sadly. It is the experience of  the industry that a lot of girls will watch "boy-skewed" content but few boys will watch "girl-skewed" content. None of us like this much but it is a fact that influences every commercial decision relating to children. Having said that, there are certain pieces of very recent research claiming that boys will watch girl-skewed material if it is an action-orientated show with a strong girl lead. Boys will watch Dora the Explorer, for instance. This doesn't surprise me at all because that is not a narrative-driven show with an emotional hub. It’s basically a “puzzle.” The kids at home help Dora (who is really more of a presenter) solve a puzzle. This would traditionally appeal to boys. This is new research and, if it is indeed credible, it hasn't yet filtered through to the people with the power – i.e. the distributors. Watch this space. I like developing shows that are gender neutral but broadcasters will often ask for one or the other. 

In the case of Grandpa, the brief was for a boy-skewed situation comedy. As it turns out, this has gratifyingly proved to be a gender-neutral show. All the stats show that there's an equal split between boy and girl viewers. The reason why we introduced the sister, Jemima, was so that a girl was represented in the core cast. However, to let that character (regardless of its gender) "in" on the magic secret would have diluted the stories and weakened the Grandpa/Grandchild relationship which is at the heart of the series. I know this may sound odd but in story structure terms, we were playing by the rules and they are rules that work. Now, if we'd made that central character a girl, we almost certainly wouldn't have got the show commissioned. 

Why do you think that would be?

Grandpa was the first live-action comedy commission on any pre-school channel anywhere in the world. So I kind of understand why the commissioner wanted to "play safe" with a boy-skewed property. Having said that, we felt when developing the show, that the lead sat more comfortably with a boy character within the creative environs of the idea and we only wanted one kid to know the secret – much stronger, emotionally. Equally, it may interest you to know that the licence fee paid by the BBC does not cover the cost of making the show. So we have to get investment. Investors need to recoup. The way to recoup is via international sales of your show and merchandise. So you see where I'm going with this. There is suddenly a commercial imperative because boy-skewed shows are an easier sell. The new research may show that it’s an outdated prejudice but it’s a prejudice of the distributor and merchandiser based on their previous experience, not a prejudice of the programme maker or necessarily the broadcaster.

So the licence fee covers a proportion, and it needs "topping up" with private investment?

The licence fee needs topping up, yes. The BBC no longer fully fund independent productions. 

Independent producers have to get investment from private individuals, distributors or organisations and they often have to do co-productions with other countries - Canada, France, Ireland, South Africa in order to make up the budget. This involvement will influence the content of your show because you will need to skew it to satisfy the sensibilities of an overseas broadcaster. Mostly shows in the UK are written with an American sensibility because the "holy grail" is a sale to a U.S. broadcaster. I have some relatively big reservations with this particular ideology and Grandpa will never sell to the US because it has too much jeopardy and too many antagonists. But nearly every animated pre-school show that you see, albeit with British accents, is written “the American way.”  An independent animated show commissioned by the BBC though has to gain even more commercial investment than we had to – for them it’s up to 75% of their total budget.

I have watched the first two episodes of the new series, and I have to say I think it is a big improvement. I love the fact that Josh and Elsie (the new co-leads) seem to take it in turns to narrate an episode.

Grandpa with new leads, Elsie and Josh

I'll be perfectly honest with you, that my colleague, Jan Page and I have always been uncomfortable about the fact that Jemima didn't see Grandpa for exactly the reasons you state. So, when we were commissioned to make a Series 4, it was our opportunity to deal with this. Now that we could introduce more kids - by necessity because Jason and Jemima are now 14 and 16, we felt that we should have two kids be in on the secret - one girl, one boy. Now that the series was so well established we thought that two kids would work. It was important to have just the one at the beginning of the life of the brand because the relationship is far more potent with just one child/one Grandpa. But for Series 4 we had to move it on and this was definitely the way to go. So you'll see that we now have Elsie who is a spirited little girl full of ideas and Jemima has grown into a very confident young woman. 

Do you think we should be portraying realism to kids (Bob the Builder doesn't know any women who work in the industry and will probably rip you off) or idealism? Should we be representing the world around us or putting it through the lens of what we would like to see?

Can he swindle? Yes he can!

I think you have a good point here. I come down more on the side of representing the world around us but in an aspirational way than writing about a world that we'd like to see but that isn't real. I alluded earlier about pre-school in the U.S. where the ideology is very different.  You are not really allowed to show any kind of "negative behaviours" - everyone has to be positive, there are no "baddies"  - or if they are a bit bad it's actually just that they're a little misguided or have made a mistake.  It's all Pollyanna time.  I think this is a curious way to prepare young children for school or for the outside world. It was ever thus that, through story, kids learn to process fears and situations that they will later come across in the school playground. I'm not saying we should scare the hell out of them, of course not.  But I am saying that using “proper” story  - i.e. story with some identifiable conflict is more nourishing, lasting and aspirational. If kids trot through the school gate thinking that everyone is always lovely all the time then we aren't doing them a great service.

CBeebies has a very committed team of people doing amazing work on tiny budgets. Nobody is going to like all the shows but on the whole they are trying their best to make sure that there is fair representation in all areas. It could be argued, however, that the BBC should not need to be as ratings driven as they are. They’re a public service broadcaster and, what's more, they have virtually no competition in the UK. So it would be good to see them take more risks  - not specifically on the gender related front  - but in terms of the tone of shows. But, independent producers, because they need to raise additional funds, can only get shows off the ground by involving investors.The first thing investors want to know is "How much licensing potential?"  In other words - how many toys? And in order to get the licences from publishers, toy people, pyjama makers, you have to have the ratings.  And in order to get the ratings people play safe - not just with gender but with everything. If the BBC were to be able to fully finance these shows, it wouldn't matter whether there was licensing potential.  We wouldn’t have to pander to that.  We could just make shows that the kids love – and a real variety of shows – shows that are properly girl skewed as well as the ones that use a strong heroine to attract the boys to the party.But it’s worth seeing it from the point of view of the BBC kids’ channels. In order to get their budgets for the channels they presumably have to prove how successful the channel is and success is judged by ratings. So it’s a vicious circle. They also get more programmes made and not rely so heavily on repeats if they don’t have to provide all the budget.

The bottom line here is that BBC Children’s simply does not get given enough money by the Corporation and CBBC gets appreciably more than CBeebies. You could look at it very simplistically -  0-12 year-olds make up 14% of the UK population so you could argue that they should get 14% of the BBC budget. Currently they get about 3%. So finance models have an awful lot to do with every area of content and editorial choice.

*************************

I was really impressed with Mellie's willingness to engage and debate an issue that's genuinely close to my heart. The biggest surprise to me was how commercially driven the BBC is, with a need to pander to international markets and sensibilities. I still believe there is work to be done, and in some cases, braver choices to be made, but it is a fascinating insight into how CBeebies programmes are brought to life. Find out more about Mellie's work at http://www.adastracreative.com/

It's funny. Period.

When I was doing stand-up comedy, I was always keen to get advice from others on the circuit - particularly those whose brand of humour I admired. I was about 23 when I first started out in stand-up. I was fairly new to London and whilst I had a grown-up job, rented my own flat and paid the bills, in many ways I was still quite naive. I imagine when I'm 50, I'll look back on myself right now, early (OK, mid) 30s and laugh about how immature I used to be.

I was 19 the first time I ever saw stand-up comedy, during Freshers' Week at university. I am embarrassed to admit that for the next couple of years, I genuinely believed that stand-ups were improvising their entire set. It was only when I saw an act for a second time, I thought, "Hmm, that sounds familiar." And over time I realised that actually, there's a lot of technical effort that goes into a perfect joke - from the strange linguistic truth that a list of three things are funnier than two, that the names Barry and Nigel are funnier than John or David, that - unlike with writing comedy to be read (rather than performed) it's important to have your punchline at the very end of the sentence, so that anticipatory laughter doesn't drown out the rest of your joke.

Some of these things I worked out by myself, others were pointed out to me by mentors. I was always grateful for advice.

When you start doing stand-up, you will generally get a 5-minute spot. Once you are a bit more established, you will be offered a 10-minute set, and as you progress to paid gigs, the hallowed 15 and 20 minute spots will open up to you. Let me tell you now, starting from the very beginning, even 5 minutes is a lot of time to fill.

Here is a truth - think of your favourite stand up. Go on. Think of them. If you just thought of Peter Kay, please go away now. You are henceforth banned from the Plog. Got your favourite non-Peter Kay stand-up in mind? OK. They were once shit. They wrote and performed shit material. They died on their arse. Repeatedly. That's how you learn. That's how you hone.

For me, my set evolved gradually. I would probably try out two new jokes each gig, usually sandwiched between my A-list material. If they worked, they'd be a keeper and remain in my set permanently (taking the place of more hit-and-miss material). If they didn't work, they'd be tried out a couple more times - in case it was the delivery or the audience, or perhaps the joke just needed rewording. If I still couldn't get the new jokes to work, they'd be dropped.

One of my very first sets had the following joke in it. Now, I'm not claiming it's comedy gold. It isn't - but for a brand-new stand-up, it's OK.

"So yes, the condom split, then my period was late, and I was genuinely very worried. I didn’t know whether to get a home pregnancy kit, or go to the doctor… But then I remembered. Girls – you’ll back me up on this. The one thing absolutely guaranteed to make your period start? Wear a white skirt. God loves nothing more than to see you mess up your new Karen Millen. So I tried it, wore my white skirt, and it worked.  I shat myself."

Like I said - hardly comedic genius. And looking back now, it's even worse than I remember it, with a non-sequitur as the punchline. But one well-intentioned comic took me aside and suggested that I shouldn't do period jokes. Full stop. (Or should I say, "period"?) His logic was that one of the reasons women don't progress in comedy is they write about being "different" instead of male comedians, who just write about life. By talking about periods, I was making at least 50% of the audience feel uncomfortable, as it was a subject they couldn't relate to. For some reason it didn't occur to me that I was perfectly able to find jokes about "the male experience" funny - be that penises, weeing standing up or wanking to Countdown, I was always able to relate and - if it was a good joke - laugh along. I certainly didn't think, "I can't find that funny because I don't have a cock. What a shame. I'll just think about kittens instead."

At the time I listened to his advice, and dropped the joke.

Now I feel retrospectively pissed off. The joke wasn't great. If it had been suggested to me to drop it for the reason it wasn't that funny, well, fair enough. But live stand-up comedy is one of the very, very few arenas where literally nothing is off the table. I have seen skilled comics joke successfully about rape, incest, domestic violence, racism, murder. The key to doing this without seeming horrifically insensitive is to ensure the butt of the joke is the right person - to ensure the joke sides with the victim. It's an incredibly difficult thing to get right, and some punters will still never accept it, stating that you "just shouldn't joke" about certain situations. A good example of this was the furore Jimmy Carr caused a few years ago with this joke:

"Say what you like about those servicemen amputees from Iraq and Afghanistan, but we're going to have a fucking good Paralympic team in 2012."

For the hard of thinking, the butt of the joke here is not the servicemen, but the war itself, and the horrible things it does to people. The humour comes - for me at least - from contrast between the pathetic compensation (a good Paralympic team) to the lives ruined. It is irony.

I digress.

The reason I'm pissed off about the period joke issue is that the reason I was encouraged not to talk about that was that it marked me out as "female", as "other". That the female experience wasn't one that was valid, relatable and certainly couldn't be joked about. Even many other female comedians will argue that writing jokes about menstruation is lazy, is "hack", regardless of the quality of the joke itself.

In a world where being a white male is the default setting, merely obeying the laws of female biology - along with 50% of the human population is seen as "other". Most companies' diversity policies take account of disabled employees, employees from minority ethnicities, employees who are gay, transsexual, transgender, bissexual... and women. Merely by having a pair of tits - something which I've never thought particularly remarkable (well, not quite true, I do have a cracking pair of norks) means I am considered "diverse".

I maintain that female comics have a harder time than men - though perhaps this is changing with more women comics reportedly taking up the craft. From my personal experience, I met promoters who wouldn't book me for a certain night as "we already have a woman that night", promoters who would ask me out on a date - and if I refused - wouldn't book me again, one promoter who introduced me to stage with the line, "We've got a girl up next, so maybe time to go and grab yourself a drink". I also heard of a punter who tried to negotiate a discount on their entrance fee because there was a woman on the bill that night.

I just deleted a paragraph I wrote about the "are women funny?" debate. I deleted it because firstly, it's a separate issue. And secondly, it doesn't even deserve to be a debate. Women are funny. And if you don't think they are, you need to have a think about why. Do you genuinely believe that women are biologically unable to create jokes as skilfully as men? Or maybe, just maybe, it's your own attitude towards women that needs examining?

As I write more and more about feminism, I do find my writings more and more earnest, and less and less funny. This is really irritating as it's completely undermining the point I'm trying to make.

So anyway, I was having this wank to Countdown...

In the pink

I think about feminism a lot; since having a baby girl, I am increasingly angry and frustrated that society seems to be going backwards rather than forwards with how we treat girls. Walk into any high street children's clothes shop; I defy you to find more than three items of girls' clothing that aren't pink or purple. You certainly won't find any that are blue or green. Those colours are For Boys. As are dinosaurs, bears and tigers. Cats, cows and rabbits are reserved for girls.

And don't get me started on the revolting toys that are marketed along gender lines; make-up sets and cupcake kitchens for girls (including pink Lego, because if they used regular Lego, they would probably become infertile, or lesbians, or both); army toys, science kits and robotic cars for boys.

I have talked before about why it matters, but for the genuinely mystified, there are some excellent resources here and here.

I don't want the baby growing up feeling that her choices are limited, or that she needs to pick the pink item in order to fit in. It isn't about forbidding pink. It's about encouraging her to choose from the entire spectrum.

One thing I do stand my ground on is "no TV with adverts"; the sort of crap they get away with marketing to tiny children is horrendous. Mermaids, ponies and sexualised (or nurturing) dolls for girls. Action toys, cars, tools and guns for boys. Very few adverts (if any) showing boys and girls playing together.

So we stick to CBeebies. Advert-free, CBeebies does - in my opinion, and speaking from the perspective of an able-bodied white person - an excellent job in promoting diversity when it comes to disability and race.

Unfortunately, I think it misses the mark very often on gender equality. Which is, to be honest, very disappointing as it's so easy to get right. We watch a lot of CBeebies. Here are some of my thoughts.

Firstly - those that get it right:

Katie Morag

I love this. Katie Morag is a surly, angry little girl who stomps around in boots. Mum and Dad both work, and her best friend seems to be her tractor-driving grandma.


Sarah and Duck

One girl (Sarah), one boy (Duck), with a seemingly gender-balanced cast of extras. This cartoon is surreal, funny and whimsical. Admittedly, I seem to enjoy it a lot more than the baby does.


Charlie and Lola

Like Katie Morag, this is based on books, and the (e)quality shines though.


Melody

Whilst the theme tune to this will get stuck in your head for at least twelve years, Melody features a partially-sighted little girl and her (stay-at-home? Perhaps I'm being picky) mother who listen to classical music each episode and imagine what might be happening.


Swashbuckle

Not the most educational show going, but the "goodie" and "baddie" are both women. The imbeciles are both played by men. Splitting hairs, perhaps the two silly pirates should be one male, one female, but really this show gets it right most of the time.


Now onto those that get it wrong:

Mike the Knight

"Mike the Knight, he's a brave young hero". No, he's a smug, sexist little twat. His closest friends are his two dragons (both male), Trollee (male) and his horse (male). He has a sister and a mother; his mother's role seems to be mostly the preparation of feasts and telling her useless dogs (both male) to be quiet. His sister is a trainee witch. Out of seven main characters, just two are female, and one of those is heavily stereotypical.


Peter Rabbit

Beautifully animated and based on the Beatrix Potter books, CBeebies have decided to introduce a female rabbit to keep Peter and his male friend company. To illustrate the fact that she's a girl, she has been kitted out in a pink cardigan and matching headband. Vom.


Topsy and Tim

Topsy (the girl twin) stays inside with Mummy whilst Tim (boy twin) goes into the garden to help Daddy with the car. Welcome to 2014, folks.


Octonauts

I feel bad including this one, as it's mostly an educational show about marine biology. But out of 8 Octonauts, only two are female - a recruitment statistic that the actual Navy should feel embarrassed about. Admittedly, one of them is an engineer - but the other one has a bright pink bedroom. So that you know she's a girl.


Everything's Rosie

Vomit-inducing from start to finish. Clearly marketed at girls (the eponymous Rosie lives in a pink helterskelter), all bar two of her friends are male - because God forbid a programme should exist where females make up the majority of the cast; of the two females, one of them is bossy. See also Tilly and her Friends; only one of said friends is female, and is a self-absorbed and bossy hen.


Baby Jake

Baby Jake has nine brothers and sisters. But he only interacts with his brother Isaac. Also the Hamsternauts (all male), Nibbles the rabbit (male), Pengy Gwyn (male) and Sydney the monkey - who is female. So, one out of about 20 characters there is female. And has a pink ribbon on her head, just in case you were in any doubt.


Grandpa in my Pocket

Jason Mason (whose parents need a slap for that name) has a secret with his Grandpa that he's not allowed to tell anyone. In the wake of Yewtree, if that doesn't send shivers down your spine, nothing will. Revoltingly, his sister is excluded from the knowledge that her grandfather can (improbably) shrink himself down, plus all of the adventures they have together. Because it's better that "us boys" play together.


***

I know this does sound like I'm over-analysing what is intended to be entertainment for children; but if every girl child grows up thinking that she is a minority figure or supporting character, it's so much more difficult for her to be a pioneer in the story of her own life. These children are starting life with a totally unnecessary disadvantage. Even where a TV programme has a female main character, it seems necessary to surround them with male characters "to compensate" in a way that just doesn't happen when the programme's lead character is male.

There is a myth - at least, I hope it's a myth - that girls will watch or read stories where the protagonist is male, but boys won't watch stories where the lead character is a girl. I would have hoped that Buffy the Vampire Slayer would have dispelled this at least ten years ago. Why haven't we moved forwards?

Apologies for the lack of humour in this Plog, but really - should it be this difficult to find gender equality on the BBC in 2014?

I mean, yes, of course I could turn the TV off and do something more interesting instead*, but frankly, life is too short to try to do enriching activities like this. Besides which, where's the pink spaghetti? How will my daughter know she's a girl?

I have made a handy cut-out-and-keep flow-chart for CBeebies executives, should they wish to improve.

* Yes, I'm a child of the 80s.

Dial M for Martens

When I was about 15, my school ran a babysitting course at lunchtimes. This covered precisely nothing about what it was like to actually look after a baby, but essentially provided a very high-level overview of first aid, and an awful lot of practise folding cloth nappies. To this day, I have never needed to fold a cloth nappy other than when on some sort of training course.

Most importantly, completion of the course came with a certificate which "qualified" you as a babysitter.

Off I raced to our local cornershop, which was either called Lateshopper or Tateshopper. The logo was confusing and nobody cared enough to actually find out. We always called it Lateshopper. Until it changed to Spar. Then we continued to call it Lateshopper.

I put a card up in the window. "Qualified babysitter available. £3 per hour", plus our phone number. I underlined "qualified" twice.

I sat back and waited for the phone to ring. I had done the same the summer previously when I had advertised piano lessons for children, despite only having Grade 6 myself, and not really liking children. I also failed to factor the second part of that into my babysitting advert. No-one wanted piano lessons.

However, against all odds, a couple of weeks later, the phone rang. Someone wanted a babysitter! Remembering my babysitting course, I asked for full details of the child. Not child. Children. Five of the little fuckers. All girls. Their names? Mary, May, Mandy, Molly and Megan*. And their parents Michael and Marnie Morrison.

Their ages ranged from 7-13. In for a penny, in for a pound. I said that because there were so many children, I would have to charge £4 per hour instead of my advertised £3. This didn't seem to be a deal breaker.

On the designated date, Mrs Nunn walked me to the Morrisons' house. In I went to meet the children. The parents left. Little Molly brought her colouring book into the living room, "because I might not want to talk to you". This was a good start.

"Anyway," May said, "you probably won't stay very long. The last babysitter we had, we tied her to a chair and left her in the middle of the road." This didn't sound very likely, but I didn't want to call bullshit on a ten year-old.

Turns out, babysitting is the easiest job ever. 13 year-old Mary put the youngest to bed, and then kept bringing me lemonade and pizza. She then insisted we watched an 18-rated vampire film, and told me - on her life - that the younger children were allowed to watch it, so long as we fast-forwarded through the sex bits.

Four very easy hours later, after a fair amount of blood and gore, home came Michael and Marnie, and massively overpaid me. I pointed this out - but they said it was fine - it was difficult to find a good babysitter. (Skillsets utilised: pizza eating, not getting tied to a chair, allowing underage children to watch horror films.). The part that confused me was when both the adults walked me home, thus leaving an entire household of children by themselves, completely undermining the need for a babysitter in the first place.

A few days later, I bought my first pair of Doc Martens. I had money. It was brilliant.

*Names have been changed very slightly, but I swear, they all started with the same letter. It must have been an absolute bastard when post arrived for M Morrison.

Evolving thoughts

I don't believe in evolution.

I had to come out and say it. My name is Laura and I don't believe in evolution.

No, don't worry, I haven't been captured and brainwashed by some cult. I just don't see how it works. Regular readers will be aware that I'm an evangelical atheist; I believe what I can see, what can be proved, what can be understood. Where something (such as quantum physics) is beyond my understanding, my "faith" - for want of a better word - is directed towards scientists, for whom peer reviews and scientific scrutiny should mean that I can trust that their work is rigorously reviewed.

So far, so good.

I have read The Selfish Gene. I have read other books that attempt to explain to a novice how evolution works. And I still think it must be rubbish.

I have no issue with survival of the fittest - that is to say, that which is most adapted to its environment. It makes much more sense if a bird can fly away from its predators, that those who are able to fly are much more likely to survive, to breed successfully and to pass on their genes. Agreed. Tick.

I also understand that these changes happen not overnight, but over literally millions of years. So a bird probably didn't develop wings in a day, and all the other wingless birds weren't immediately eaten. I get that too. (But wonder a bit how the "stubby wings" stage they presumably went through provided any help whatsoever. Though am willing to accept they must have.)

I also understand that "evolution" happens as the result of (for want of a better word) a faulty gene, a mutated gene which contributes an extra feature that its parents and previous generations didn't have.

What I don't understand is this: how these slight mutations become the "norm". Let's take for example pruney fingers. You know what I'm talking about, when you've stayed in the bath a bit too long and your fingers go all wrinkly.

Now, recent research has suggested that this might have happened because wrinkly fingers improve our grip in water, thus giving an evolutionary advantage, as our ancestors foraged for food in wet conditions. OK.

So several million years ago, Jonny Ugg was born with the freaky mutation that no-one had ever seen before, which caused his fingers to go all wrinkly when he got them wet. Brilliantly, this actually afforded him an advantage because it meant he could catch more fish than Timmy Igg. Timmy Igg's family starved, and Jonny Ugg passed on his wrinkly fingers, and the world rejoiced.

Right?

No. STUPID. Firstly, a genetic mutation is surely likely to be a recessive rather than a dominant gene. I may be wrong about this, but my understanding is that that would mean it's fairly unlikely that future generations would also inherit the wrinkliness.

Even if I'm wrong and genetic mutations can be dominant genes, so far we have ONE wrinkly-fingered freak in a whole population of smooth-fingered humans. And yes, he does OK and gets enough food - but that doesn't in itself mean that everyone else is going to starve immediately. Equally, I can't imagine Jane Grunt refusing to shag Timmy Igg from now on because of his disgustingly smooth fingers, thus preventing his unwrinkly fingers getting passed on. It makes no sense.

And what about things that are likely to have no effect on reproduction at all? For example, I have a weird allergy to sunlight, meaning I break out in awful itchy red bumps if I overdo it. It hasn't stopped me reproducing. No man has ever said to me, "Laura, you are my perfect woman, but your strange allergy to your own melanin makes me feel sick and I could never impregnate you." (they may have said the last ten words or so, but that's a separate story).

I would argue that the vast majority of "mutations" that we call evolution are not drastic enough to actually impact reproduction or survival. Even going back millions of years, are we really arguing that someone's slightly wrinkly fingers meant that the whole of the rest of the human race died out?

Don't even get me started on the peacock. To be honest, if you were a peahen, and all your peacock friends had normal-looking tails, and then suddenly Simon ShowoffPeacock turns up with a massive fucking turquoise train that he's just evolved, you aren't going to think, "I'd fuck that," you'd probably think, "What a twat."

So yes, I don't believe in evolution (but would be genuinely interested to hear from anyone who could explain the logic flaws above). I don't believe in a god either, so I'm in a spiritual and intellectual vacuum. Send help.