Following my post a couple of days ago about DorkySon’s relationship with Binky, I got into a conversation online with another Mum, whose daughter had a similar relationship with her imaginary friend Polla. The mum, Lisa Farrell, very kindly agreed to do a guest post on Polla, which is below. Lisa doesn’t have a blog (although perhaps she should…!) but you can follow her on Twitter here.
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Category Archives: Guest Posts
Auld Reekie Roller Girl Role Models?
My Facebook feed has been chock-a-block recently with folk getting excited about the Auld Reekie Roller Girls – Edinburgh’s flat track roller derby team. I am thrilled to have a guest post about ARRG from Mairi Campbell-Jack, a poet who lives in Edinburgh with her daughter and tweets as @lumpinthethroat. I’m also super chuffed to have been given permission by the excellent Edinburgh photographer Dan Phillips to use the accompanying shots. You can find Dan on Twitter as @dan_photo, but more importantly you can check out his website here and Flickr stream here.
While on SlutWalk Edinburgh a few months ago I got a chance to start talking to another radical lefty Mum (where else does one meet her peers?) and we both started discussing our daughters and their understanding of femininity. This was something on my mind following a conversation I’d had with my daughter at a bus stop a few weeks ago.
Daughter: Mummy, why are you not beautiful today?
Me: What makes you think I’m not beautiful?
Daughter: Yesterday you wore a skirt.
As I discussed on a previous post on Barbie, I am reasonably relaxed now about letting my daughter choose her own toys and clothes, but her preoccupation with whether clothing make someone “beautiful” does tend to worry. Fellow radical lefty Mum pointed me in the direction of Roller Derby, as a great example of alternative feminities. I happened to know someone on the Edinburgh writing circuit who played and so I booked tickets to the Auld Reekie Roller Girls festival match.
I must say I was a bit sceptical as I am one of those people who have grown-up utterly hating sport. I hate everything about it, from how incredibly boring it is to the constant unremitting whine that comes from the television whenever it is on. The last time I was taken to see live sport it was an ice-hockey game, and I have no shame to say I found it so tedious that I read through the last third.
I watched Roller Derby and came away a complete convert. It’s violent (secretly I’m disappointed there wasn’t a fight), fast, fun and the women in it are really enjoying playing the sport but also using it as a way to play with their own image and express their sexuality. I wouldn’t really describe it as feminine. Feminine as a word in our culture often carries with it overtones of passivity, and Roller Derby is much more grown up than that, while maintaining a sense of playfulness I have never witnessed in other sports. While one of the often valid criticisms of many sub-cultures is the sameness of dress and make-up choice of those within it, some of whom often claim to appear to be seeking individuality, I don’t feel that can be fairly levelled at Roller Derby.
If you look at the team dress and make-up, which appears to stem directly from the Riot Grrrl tradition, then the conclusion you would come to would be that it is a very homogenous alternative – but you know, being a team they do have to wear a uniform. However, if you bother to turn around and look at the crowd you will see a very different story. The crowd is predominantly female, but there are also a lot of men in there. There are people with strange hair, tattoos and piercings. At the same time there were people of every age range, children as young as six months, families, groups of friends, people who even looked like social workers or the sort of people who buy vegan shoes and some who looked decidedly mainstream – honestly, it was like some of them weren’t even trying to be cool.
How did it affect my daughter? Well her behaviour that day wasn’t her best, she didn’t like the noise, was bored and desperate to get my attention as we had been apart for a week. She did say she wanted to go again. I went straight out and bought the t-shirt and put it on as soon as I got home.
Postcard from Potterrow
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
Confessions of an Interrupted Baker
This is a guest post from my friend Nuala Fahey. Nuala is (in her own words) a geeky feminist Irish woman living in Scotland. She has two daughters, and a lot of yarn. She really likes hummus.
I never intended to be an always there mum. Before I had kids I planned to work at least part time and after having my first that was indeed what happened. But when I was pregnant with number 2, the after effects of a certain Scottish bank nearly going bust made its way down to my corner of IT and I got the chance to leave. Much to my surprise, I took them up on the offer and there I was. At home with 2 kids. But still in a very privileged position as the kids’ dad worked part time and we still had childcare so I was rarely alone in the house with both kids for long.
But then he got another job and as I wasn’t looking for work, it became harder to justify sending older kid to her childminder. And I missed her. So I became an always there mother of a 4 year old and a 1 year old. Which was great and exciting, but suddenly there was never any uninterrupted time. I never got to finish the page of my book, the row of my knitting and I especially never got to do the sort of cooking I have always enjoyed. The fiddly sort which involves lots of chopping and making of sauces and is totally incompatible with the wailing toddler on the other side of the kitchen safety gate – our tiny galley kitchen is too small to let her in safely. Continue reading
On Being an Uncle
This is a guest blog from one of my favourite people, Adam Ramsay. When he’s not being an uncle, you can find him tweeting as @AdamRamsay
There can be few things on earth better than being an uncle.
It’s only happened to me once, so far. My nephew is, like me, called Adam. He’s so named for a lost best friend of his father, for generations of paternal ancestors, and because ‘Adam’ is both Arabic and Scots. Like him.
Like me, he was born in Ninewells hospital, Dundee. I sat up all night with my mother and my sister. We played Scrabble. I lost. I always do with my sister. It was dreich late January, and the labour lasted for hours. But then, eventually, there he was: my blissful brother. And there he was, his tiny son. I remember losing my breath slightly at his beauty, my heart slowing to appreciate the moment. Continue reading
Dorkymum | Stories from Tasmania 