Category Archives: Family

Live in the Now: September

September 4, 2011 By in Family, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Pink blossoms on a blue background with the slogan 'live in the now'

Happy September!

The nights are drawing in, and there is a chill in the air. DorkySon’s windows have that sweep of condensation on them when I open his shutters in the morning (he points at it and tells me we need to call the window cleaners), but I love this time of year. The trees are all turning to autumn colours, and some evenings the final moments of sunlight are just magical. Best of all, the city is getting quieter, hunkering down in preparation for winter. The purple cow, the street perfomers and the visiting luvvies have all gone into hibernation. Continue reading →

Postcard from Potterrow

August 21, 2011 By in Family, Guest Posts, Poetry, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Dear Dorky Mum,

Greetings from the Festival.  It has been wet. A lot of rain. And this year nothing is located where it used to be.  No Speigeltent pissing off the neighbors in the middle of Old Town Univille.  And not much happening in the New Town at all, really, though the Book Festival is gallantly holding up what little is left of a Fringe on that side of the tram.

The weather has not been helpful.

The real news is the BBC.  They are here, in style, and they are working hard at doing it well. For the very first time, they have their own venue. We can only imagine what they whispered to the University of Edinburgh to gain access to a central site that was, until a few weeks ago, entirely a place where something will be built between two buildings.

The subcontractors arrived early one morning a few weeks ago and snapped together sturdy grids of basic floor, then raised upon it an elegant wee village. The Big Bubble houses a stage that any artist here would love to occupy. The three pods nearby hold a bar, a stage, and a 15-second video booth. The toilets are excellent.

Somebody thought a lot about this.

I was asked to help organise a poetry slam as part of their programming, four nights featuring six writers, with one winner each evening, then the four best on the final night. Calum Barnes – the President of Edinburgh University’s Literature Society – and I got in touch with people we know and came up with 24 warriors.

It was cool, as cool as I have ever seen the Embra spoken word thing go down in my six years talking here. Every one of those four nights was good.  Every night there were people who had never seen this thing before, and were inspired and amazed.  Every night there were joys and gasps and silence, as poets cut up the roof of that white tent with their words.

Every night it rained.

Cat Brogan won.  Go look at the Beeb site for the footage, for the winning poem. She was crisp and delicious.

This is what I think.  The BBC took a chance, which I appreciate and applaud. They built a big stage for spoken word in Edinburgh and Scotland. The poets, to a person, danced on it. The audience, to a person, liked it. Some of them even fell in love with it.

See you again, same place, same time, next year. The BBC will be welcome back.

Love,

DorkyDad

Live In The Now August

August 7, 2011 By in Family, Poetry, Scotland Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

Pink blossoms on a blue background with the slogan 'live in the now'

Although Scribbling Mum will no longer be hosting the link-up, I’ve decided to carry on with the tradition she started of doing a monthly Live In The Now post. This is partly a look at what’s to come in August, and partly a reflection on 2011, since we’re now well into the second half of the year.

There is a stack of empty pizza boxes by the front door, that haven’t yet made it out to the recycling bins. Mounds of clean but unfolded laundry are piled high on every available surface. Our plates are shifted from dishwasher, to dinner table, and back to dishwasher again, without ever making it into the cupboards. Welcome to the Edinburgh Festival. Continue reading →

Marks and Me

August 6, 2011 By in Family Tags: , , , , , 27 Comments

This was originally featured as a guest post over at Scribbling Mum. Thanks to lovely Caroline for giving me the opportunity to post there before she made the decision to stop blogging herself. Her excellent posts will be much missed.

I am finally resigned to my fate. After years of fighting it – of squeezing myself into clothes that were the wrong shape, shoes that were the wrong fit, and underwear that was just too darn small – I have accepted that my natural match on the high street is, in fact, M&S.

For too long, I have associated the place with the fashion disasters of my schooldays and teens. A flick back through my parents’ photo albums reveals an astounding number of sartorial horrors – palazzo pants, t-bar sandals, furry gilets, pinafore dresses, hypercolour t-shirts, and polyester, calf-length culottes – that all originated from the sweaty confines of M&S.

Until recently, it represented everything awkward about growing up. It’s where I stood, shoulders hunched, cheeks burning, being measured for my first proper bra. It’s where I argued with my mother about how short my skirts could be and how high my heels could be. It’s where I first had to confront the issue of whether to wear a bikini on holiday.

So for the last ten years, I’ve given M&S a wide berth. I have tried, at times, to be a sparkly-socked TopShop girl. I have bought neutrals in Gap, jeans in French Connection, and, most recently, have been living in leggings and smocks from Boden. I have not exactly been setting the fashion world on fire, but nor have I stooped to the florals and pastels of Per Una.

Recently though, things got a little desperate. I needed a wedding outfit. I tried all my staple places. I spent hours walking up Princes St, and then hours walking back down George Street. I found nothing. Nada. I was waiting for the bus home, wondering how the heck I was going to jazz up an old outfit; most of the dresses in my wardrobe had barely fitted me pre-baby, they were unlikely to be any more flattering now.

Anyway, by some coincidence, the bus stop was right outside M&S. And with twenty minutes until the number 41 was due, I figured I had nothing to lose. I might as well take a look.

It took about three and a half minutes to find a perfect dress, which came with a matching shrug. There was a bag and a bracelet hanging an aisle away that both went perfectly with it. I nipped upstairs for a new bra and pants. And then thought I may as well take a peek at the shoe department, where I found a pair of heels that were both cute and comfy.  The whole bundle was less than a hundred quid, and I still managed to catch my bus.

It pains me, massively, to realise that I have become an M&S mum. My husband says sometimes, in jest, that my sense of style hasn’t quite yet recovered from my student days… but the truth is probably worse. I haven’t quite accepted that I won’t be one of the truly yummy mummies – the ones who wear skinny jeans three days after giving birth. I would like to be an Angelina or a J-Lo or a Gwyneth, with a baby on one arm and a Balenciaga bag on the other. I would like to smell of Chanel No 5, instead of strawberry yoghurt. And I would really, really like to be able to walk in heels. But a quick flick through those photo albums – a glance at those sandals – should have been enough of a clue that it was never going to happen.

So I have come full circle. I am back to good old Marks and Sparks. I am learning to be okay with that. And tomorrow I’m going back for another outfit.

Our Electronic Incompatibility

July 31, 2011 By in Family Tags: , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

This post originally appeared over at Sylwia Presley’s site, as part of the BritMums guest post match-up. Given how many gushy posts I’ve put up here about how fab DorkyDad is, I figured he wouldn’t mind just one confessing the only real trouble-spot in our relationship…

DorkySon son spent the other morning walking round the house saying, “The small one is the iPod. The big one is the iPad.” At 27 months, his grasp of technology is somewhat terrifying.

He is more than capable of turning on both the iPod and the iPad, unlocking the screen, and scrolling to find whatever app he wants to play with. Sometimes it’s Jelly Doodle… sometimes it’s Create A Car…  sometimes he just likes to tap on the clock and see what time it is in Melbourne. He can keep himself happy for hours tapping away on the touchscreen, and has even executed a couple of actions (perhaps by accident, but who knows) that I didn’t previously know about.

It is just as well that someone in the family is tech-literate, because it is not a skill that DorkyDad or I have. In fact, it is one of the very few areas of discord in our marriage; we suffer from severe electronic incompatibility.

For two people who both pride themselves on being clear communicators, it is extraordinary that we seem unable to have even the simplest conversation about technology without it descending into argument. With computers in particular, it’s like we’re talking two different languages. DorkyDad will ask me how to do something, but he asks in such a roundabout way that all I can do is stand and look at him blankly while I figure out what exactly it is he needs. Usually it’s nothing more than how to add an attachment to an email, or re-name a file, so when I’ve eventually decoded his jargon, I’ll walk over and try to show him… but then he’ll get hacked off that I’m standing too close and breathing in his ear. So then I’ll stand a little further back, and try to talk him through it… but to anyone who’s not an IT expert, it’s pretty difficult to do that without seeing the screen. He shakes his head at me, and scowls, and shouts that he doesn’t see the menu option that I’m talking about. So I’ll offer to sit down and do it myself… but he’ll just keep grumbling for a minute before slamming his laptop shut, and muttering something about doing it ‘another time’.

We have the same problem all over the house. DorkyDad will accidentally sit on the remote control and make the TV screen go blank, and it’ll take half an hour of arguing before I can wrestle it out of his hands to fix the darn thing. He’ll unintentionally do something to his iPod that leaves it stuck playing the same track again and again… and I’ll find him jabbing his finger at it angrily, but achieving nothing. At the moment our printer is out of toner… and in all seriousness he suggested buying a new one rather than trying to change the cartridge. Given the tension it’s probably going to cause I am (almost) tempted to agree with him.

The thing is, nine times out of ten, when he wants help with something tech-related, I know how to do it, I just don’t know how to explain to him how to do it. I am quite sure he would say the same of me. Our electronic gulf is so wide, I am not sure there is much we can do about it, except keep muddling along, and trying not to throw anything too big at each other. Remote controls are probably okay, laptops not so much.

Our great hope is that within a few years, DorkySon will have advanced his skills even further, and he will be able to fix things for both of us. He can act as the mediator, the computer expert, keeper of the remote control, and changer of the toner cartridge. For that, the current smudgy fingerprints on my screen, and cookie crumbs on my keyboard, are more than worth it.

In the interest of fairness I should say that since I wrote this, DorkyDad has, in fact, been out, purchased a new toner cartridge, and replaced it, all by himself… However, he’s also bought a new phone that he’s trying to get to grips with, so wish us luck with that!