Of mothers and hills

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I was going to do a whole thing about the Mothers, and how generally amazing they are, and how they never get the credit. I had a whole riff about how there are no awards ceremonies for knowing all the words to The Wheels on the Bus, and singing it twenty times a day. I know that bringing up a happy human is reward in itself, but all those film actors get paid millions of dollars and sent free shoes AND then they get a little gold statuette as well. I was going to have a little rant about that awful collocation:  only a mother. There shall be no only about it. It's really hard, and sometimes scary, and often baffling, and always unremitting. It's the kind of thing I watch in awe and wonder.

But then I went outside and there was my neighbour, a very nice gentleman, building a shed. Now, there is nothing wrong with a shed. I love a good shed, myself. But the shed is going BETWEEN ME AND THE HILL. They are taking away my hill.

The neighbour must have seen my expression of bemusement.

'Oh,' he said, diffidently. 'Do you mind?'

He was digging the foundations. It wasn't as if there was anything I could say.

'I talked to the landlord about it,' he said.

'Yes,' I muttered. 'Of course.'

'We discussed it,' he said.

'Will it be a lovely shed?' I said, sadly.

'It's just a shed,' he said.

This is the very definition of a First World Problem. It is not life and death. It is not fighting for democracy in the streets. It is not nuclear meltdown in the Far East. It is just a small building made of wood. I am ashamed to say I felt like weeping.

It's not as if I shall never again see the hill. I can walk round the garden and a few yards to the south and see it from there. It's just that it will no longer be the first thing I see when I walk out of my door in the morning. I shall see a shed instead.

It makes me sad that everything was done and dusted without asking. But then, why should anyone ask? Why should the landlord and the neighbour know of my love for the view of the hill? And how can it matter, in the scheme of things? I really must butch up and stop getting so sentimental. In the Chilterns, people are having to deal with the fact that an entire fuck-off high speed rail line is going to be built in their back gardens. That is something to weep over.

So I shall gather myself and send out love to the Mothers instead. My own mum got a bunch of tulips and anemones and eucalyptus. These pictures are the internet equivalent of a great big bunch of flowers for all you mothers out there.

The canine loveliness:

And my dear old hill, as stately and blue as I have ever seen here:

Happy Mothering Sunday.

Bonus Post: guilt

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Suddenly overcome with guilt that I neglected to photograph the hill today, so I just ran outside and did it.

I have absolutely no idea where these imperatives come from.

And, as a bonus bonus - the new grape hyacinths:

Carnations and Coffee Cake

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

I was still quite grumpy with poor old Mr Willetts this morning. I really do not think he is a bad person, and I suspect he will be quite amazed that he has made so many ladies sad and cross. (Although I should say to my sisters that saying 'Fuck you Mr Willetts' on Twitter does not necessarily advance the feminist argument. Although I suppose it does show that females can cuss just as well as fellows.)

I almost launched into another lovely feminist argument, because I know how everyone longs for one of those. But the sun was shining, and heavenly Graham Norton was laughing at his own jokes on the radiophonic device (I have a helpless love for that man), and I decided to devote the morning to pleasure. Possibly my favourite saying in the entire world is: living well is the best revenge.

So I thought I might buy some more of those lovely cheap scarlet carnations. To my delight, the flower shop also had deep blue grape hyacinths for TWO POUNDS EACH. Two pounds? For perfect little pots of raging beauty? I actually offered to pay the florist more, because it seemed as if I was robbing her. She appeared to find this very funny. She also had two ravishing little salix plants, which are my other very favourites, so I got those too. I know this is shocking indulgence, and terrible profligacy, but here is caution, here are the winds, and I am throwing.

Just to add to the shocking behaviour, I went up to the delightful coffee shop, which always strikes me as a miraculous thing to have in a tiny village, and defiantly bought some coffee cake. I know. I am the Marie Antoinette of the North East. I don't know what to say. And, just to add to the loveliness of this gentle Saturday, I am making a classical chicken stew. I can smell the scent of it, wafting through from the kitchen, filled with joy and promise.

I am listening to the wonderful voice of Christopher Martin-Jenkins, commentating on the final of the cricket world cup. Because one of my kindest and most loyal readers is from Sri Lanka, I am rooting for the Sri Lankan team. They have just got Tendulkar out for 18, which is an extraordinary feat, since he is widely regarded as one of the greatest batsmen of all time. So, Mystica, I am keeping my fingers crossed that this is a good omen for you.

 

I did not take any pictures today. I was too busy naughtily buying myself CAKE. So here are some happy spring-time photographs from the week.

 

And now for the glorious glory that is the ladyships:

I put this one into sepia, so that they look like serious Edwardian hounds:

Can't you just imagine them going for a walk with Edward VII and Mrs Keppel? Or perhaps that is just me.

Have a lovely weekend.

In which I discover what a perfect monster I am

Posted by Tania Kindersley.

Warning for intemperance, occasional incoherence, reckless use of heavy sarcasm, and a stupid amount of capital letters.

I was thinking: oh, it's Friday, it's a time for gentle diversion. I was going to give you butterflies and bluebirds and lovely undemanding good news stories, to take your mind off the national debt and what is happening in Syria and Yemen. I wondered if there were any Portuguese or Irish readers who might need cheering up. (Not that things are very much better in dear old Blighty, hanging on to some kind of fiscal sanity by our fingertips.)

Then I discovered that a huge feminist row has erupted. I used to love a good old fight about feminism. Now I am older and more tired, it just makes me feel rather melancholy. Yes, yes, we are all man-hating bitches who are to blame for every social ill from single motherhood to yob culture. We spend our spare time going around emasculating gentlemen, for fun. We are all secret lesbians, and most of us have facial hair, which of course makes us bitter, and therefore EVEN MORE FEMINIST.

If you open a door for us, we are more likely to assault you than thank you, because who ever heard of a feminist with manners? We are always moaning about the patriarchal conspiracy, because we have no other topic of conversation. We insist on calling history herstory. If you do not refer to us as Ms we will report you to the European Court of Human Rights.

Yes, yes; tell me something I do not know.

Then, David Willetts did. He told me that I am directly responsible for the lack of social mobility in this country. It took me a moment to understand. Not only am I a castrating harridan, but I am an ELITIST harridan.

Here is how the argument goes, apparently. When middle-class women were allowed out of the kitchen and into jobs and universities, we deprived working-class men of any opportunity to get on in life. I have read it twice, and this really seems to be what Mr Willetts is saying. Of course, a moment's reflection will bear out the good sense of his thesis, because if there is one thing we feminists hate more than men, it's bloody working-class men. Of course we ran around literally taking the bread out of their mouths. That will teach them to read Page Three of The Sun. We are amazed that no one noticed until now. Fair dos, Signor Two Brains, we are SO busted.

It is not for nothing that David Willetts has a reputation for being the most intellectual member of the Conservative Party. Anyone who can say this is of a mind so dazzling that I run out of adjectives:

'“Feminism trumped egalitarianism,” he said, adding that women who would otherwise have been housewives had taken university places and well-paid jobs that could have gone to ambitious working-class men.'

You see the cleverness? So blinding brilliant that he thought no one would notice that feminism IS egalitarianism. What we feminists don't like to tell gentlemen, because we are too busy laughing at their penis size, is that really all we want is to be treated equally to men. We know this is a big ask, what with our times of the month and our irrational hysteria and our fear of spiders and our overweening interest in shoes. When we are not busy running off to sperm banks so our children need not have fathers, we dream our ghastly dream of EQUALITY.

(I would like to state for the record that I have always thought David Willetts a very nice and engaging fellow, even if he does labour under the disadvantage of being a despised man, and I am really hoping this is an April Fool, or that he has been kidnapped by space aliens and replaced by a pod.)

Luckily, though, my sister in arms, Christina Odone, was ready to do battle. 'Why David Willetts is wrong about Feminism' said the headline of her piece. I put the carving knife down and paid attention. Then it turned out that she too is one of the pod people:

'Willetts is right that feminists are responsible for the plight of working class men. Feminists have undermined working class men with their philosophy that all males are expendable. Women don’t need men: not as husbands or partners, not as bread-winners, not even as fathers to their children. This man-hatred has not only been taught, it has been rewarded. “Thatta girl! You don’t need him! He’s rubbish!” – this is the refrain that working class men keep overhearing. Little wonder they feel demoralised and useless, and live down to these expectations.'

All right. I put my hands up. I do spend most of my waking hours going up to working-class men and jeering at them about how I do not need their awful rubbishy testosterone-fuelled selves. It is my absolute number one thing in the world, I freely admit. It is quite spooky that Ms Odone knows my daily routine so well.  'Thatta girl', I do indeed yell, to my lady friends; 'You don't need HIM.' It is the famous feminist cry, the one that Mrs Pankhurst started, as she chained herself to the railings outside Number Ten. 

For even more illumination on the subject, there are grateful readers over at The Telegraph, ready to elucidate the point. My favourite by far is one called Long Haul, who judiciously remarks:

'Put it anyway you like Ms Odone, but call a woman a feminist these days and it'll be taken as an insult by the great majority. Most of them have broken relationships in one form or another, and I've yet to see one that could be called physically attractive. Good looking women in sound marriages and relationships are seldom feminists.'

It really is nice to see that the dear old Torygraph, newspaper of the Great and the Good, is still attracting such a high class of reader.

All in all, I feel quite breathlessly lucky that I have nice Mr Willetts and brave Ms Odone and incisive Mr Long Haul to set me straight. I am immediately going to apply to be a housewife, so that a poor deprived working-class gentleman can write my books instead. It's a bit late to revoke my MA in history, but obviously I am VERY VERY SORRY about it, and promise that if only I had known then what I do now, I should never have been so greedy and stupid and illiberal to apply for university in the first place. And now I am going to do some nice crochet, and ponder the frightful error of my ways.

 

[If you too, would like to be put back on the road to righteousness, you can read both pieces here, and here. If not, then I would go out and have a very strong cocktail instead.]

 

And now for pictures. Because it is Friday and there must be loveliness. Yes, yes, there must.

Amazingly, the dear little carnations are still going:

(Warning: the carnation is of course a secret feminist flower. The word carnation is actually code for: CASTRATE, CASTRATE.)

Here is some old eucalyptus, which has dried and looks rather sculptural:

Outside, these lovelies are still in full fig:

It turns out they are irises, as some of you correctly guessed. I was confused, because they are the size of crocuses, so I thought they were some kind of iris-like crocus. Well, you can take a horticulture, but you can't make her think, as the great Dorothy Parker once said.

They are so lovely, I also transposed them into black and white, just because:

 

The heavenly hellebore:

THE ORNAMENTAL JAPANESE CHERRY IS IN FLOWER:

That was in capitals because there was nothing there yesterday. This happened overnight, like magic. When I saw it, I shouted: THE ORNAMENTAL JAPANESE CHERRY IS IN FLOWER, out loud. The dogs seemed slightly surprised. They have a lamentable lack of interest in ornamental cherries. Philistines.

These are mystery bulbs. No idea. Tulips, perhaps? But the green shoots alone are worth the price of admission:

The little apple tree:

I love the acid green rose leaves against the magenta honeysuckle:

The murk:

But the black sky cannot dull the philadelphus:

Or the radiance of the ladyships, for that matter:

The hill, almost lost in the dreich:

Final thought: does anyone actually say 'Thatta girl'? Surely it is 'Atta girl'? Just asking. I really am stopping now. Really, really.

Have a lovely Friday.

t