Christmas presents - too much?

As I was wrapping presents for my daughters' stockings last night, and trying not to waste any wrapping paper (because my mother taught me that), I wondered why I was bothering - I bought that paper to wrap those presents, so if there's none left over, that's ok. Isn't it? On the other hand, if I do manage to use it frugally and have some left over, I won't have to buy so much next time. I even made sure to buy at least one design that isn't Christmassy so it will do for birthdays too.

There is a trend now to return to the spirit of "Make Do and Mend" that characterised wartime frugality, but even this is a modern invention. There was surely a time, not very long ago, when make do and mend was the only way of carrying on for many many people. It was a way of life, not something you could choose. And this made me wonder about our modern obsessions with more, and where the line got blurred somehow between enjoying the plenty that now surrounds us, being generous towards our children, and just being downright greedy and profligate. When did we morph into the throwaway society that is so disgusting when one considers the deprivation many people still experience the world over? How did we breed the child so beautifully caricatured as Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter books? 

A little while ago I listened to a Radio 4 programme about Ian Fleming, and naturally much of the discussion was about James Bond. I was struck by how Bond’s character was described, and how it has come to be misinterpreted to some extent by modern generations in the simplistic judgement of him as someone who likes fast cars and faster women. In the radio programme he was described as a ‘bon viveur’, and as such quite typical of that generation who had lived through the Second World War, experiencing rationing, hunger, fear and the chaos of warfare. In that context, his love of good food and wine (more evident in the books than the films), as well as cars and women, can be more readily understood – this is a man who has lived without these things, and as such can appreciate them as the luxuries they are. He has also seen death, and wants to enjoy life while he has it. Most of us don’t live like that in modern Britain. The majority of us have plenty of food, new clothes when we grow out of the old ones, and clean water on tap, not to mention "all mod cons", gadgets galore, and a cupboard stuffed to bursting with shiny plastic toys for the children. We no longer think of these things as luxuries, but as essentials.

Here's an extract from "Little House in the Big Woods" by Laura Ingalls Wilder. Laura in the story is perhaps 4 or 5 years old, the other children are her cousins and are a little older. The book was written about the family's life in the late 19th century.

In the morning they all woke up almost at the same moment. They looked at their stockings, and something was in them. Santa Claus had been there. Alice and Ella and Laura in their red flannel nightgowns and Peter in his red flannel nightshirt, all ran shouting to see what he had brought. In each stocking there was a pair of bright red mittens and there was a long flat stick of red-and-white-striped, pepper-mint candy, all beautifully notched along each side. 

They were all so happy they could hardly speak at first. They just looked with shining eyes at those lovely Christmas presents. But Laura was happiest of all. Laura had a rag doll.

Before this, Laura used a corn cob wrapped in a piece of cloth as a doll, while her older sister had the only real doll in the house. It's the bit about the shining eyes that really gets me - how wonderful to see such unadulterated joy and delight in a gift, however small it might seem to us. I hope that, although my children's stockings have a little more than just a pair of gloves and a candy cane, they will still appreciate what they are given.

Wednesday Window: Herdy

One of my favourite blogs, A Crafty Chai, does a regular post called Tuesday Treat. She uses this to show us, her loyal readers, anything cool that she has come across recently, and I rather like it. So in the best traditions of creativity, I'm blatantly nicking the idea, but changing the title to make it seem like mine: I'll do it on Wednesdays not Tuesdays, and the window idea is a fond hark back to a certain children's TV programme.

So here's the first. As some of you know I love the Lake District with a passion that might seem unhealthy were the Lakes a person. It's not a crush any more, it's been going on far too long for that. And like any love-sick individual, I am keen to hold on to fragments of the admired in whatever form I can, to try to capture and hold on to that scent of fresh air and sheep-dung-covered grass, the views of rain-lashed dry-stone walls, fabulous rocks, skylines, mirror-like pools of peaty water and the rest. Of course, much of this I need to guard from prying eyes, and I'm certainly not telling you my favourite walks, or hidden corners, or the best places to eat soggy sandwiches in a howling gale (not today anyway), but this little gem I will share with you.

This clever little company, Herdy, with their creation of a cheeky little Herdwick sheep who graces their products, have found a perfect way to provide me with a little bit of Lakes-proximity-therapy every morning with my breakfast. I'm slowly building up my collection (two mugs so far), and I've just discovered they do T-shirts in a rather fetching pink. They also do very cool animations, one of which won Best Commercial at an international animation festival.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

As the parent of two small children, I am as familiar as I might wish with the nursery rhyme Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, or as my younger one called it until recently, "winkle liddle dar". The simple tune, much more lovely when harmonised by the more musical parents at BabyGirl's north Oxford music group, is apparently an old French melody called "Ah! vous dirais-je, maman". It is the same tune as that traditionally used for "Baa baa black sheep" (also known as "bye bye beshoo") and the alphabet song - one of those little things I didn't notice until I became a parent.

Mozart also used it for a set of twelve variations, so it seems we're all in good company in re-using the notes, though there are times when I've heartily wished for something a little meatier, or perhaps more bluesy to keep my spirits up while keeping up with endless requests for these songs from my lovely little people. Anyone know any good alternatives? (This feels like it could be a good source of material for that "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" game where they have to sing one song to the tune of another - suggestions below, please! I digress. Back to Twinkle Twinkle Little Star...)

Last Monday, when it was mentioned on BBC Radio 4's Brain of Britain quiz, I discovered that the verse we sing is in fact merely the first verse of a much longer poem. Written by Jane Taylor, and called "The Star", it was originally published in 1806 in a collection of poems by Jane and her sister Ann, called Rhymes for the Nursery. It goes like this: 

    Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
     How I wonder what you are.
     Up above the world so high,
     Like a diamond in the sky.

     When the blazing sun is gone,
     When he nothing shines upon,
     Then you show your little light,
     Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.

     Then the traveller in the dark,
     Thanks you for your tiny spark,
     He could not see which way to go,
     If you did not twinkle so.

     In the dark blue sky you keep,
     And often through my curtains peep,
     For you never shut your eye,
     'Till the sun is in the sky.

     As your bright and tiny spark,
     Lights the traveller in the dark.
     Though I know not what you are,
     Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

     Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
     How I wonder what you are.
     Up above the world so high,
     Like a diamond in the sky.

     Twinkle, twinkle, little star.
     How I wonder what you are.
     How I wonder what you are.

 

 

It's always interesting to find out something new about something you think you know so well, and although it's not the greatest poetry in the world, I like to think I will now appreciate it more next time I sing it.

 

I'm tagging this post as part of Sarah Miles' Monday Club, in the hope that maybe linking up with others will encourage me to write more often. You have been warned...

Toothbrushes and other objects

My daughter went to sleep just now in the pushchair, clutching a tub of rice pudding and a teaspoon. Two nights ago, she fell asleep in our bed with a bottle of calpol in one hand, and a plastic medicine spoon in the other, and now she won’t go anywhere without her toothbrush, and if she can get away with it, her sister’s too. Why this need to have something to hold in her hands? Paediatricians and psychologists talk about a child’s need for a “transitional object” – usually something soft and cuddly, like a bear or blanket, from which the child receives comfort and companionship as they are learning to become more independent from their parents. It’s an almost exclusively Western phenomenon, a fact attributed to our habit of pushing our children towards independence early, keeping them at arm’s length in cots and pushchairs, and having them sleep in separate rooms from a very early age. In other cultures, where children are carried in slings, and sleep in a shared bed with their parents and siblings, such objects are not common.

All this makes sense, and I remember quite clearly when my older daughter started to become very much attached to her favourite bunny, the now much-loved and rather scruffy looking “Floppy”: it was when she was 3 and a half, and I moved her into her own bed because I was pregnant again and fed up of being kicked by a long-legged child turning through 90 degrees every night. She occasionally favours another soft toy, of which she has many, but basically Floppy is her constant companion; he/she comes in the car with us, sits on the sofa to watch TV with us, and even sits at the kitchen table sometimes to eat a pretend supper with us.

Her younger sister, now 21 months old, will occasionally give a soft toy a perfunctory kiss or cuddle, but she’s not really interested in them. Useful things, however, like medicine spoons, toothbrushes or pots of rice pudding, she can become utterly fixated on, to the point where removing them will cause a major tantrum. Is this behaviour coming from the same root as the need for a transitional object? Is she doing this now because she is becoming more independent anyway? She is still firmly attached to me in many ways (we are still co-sleeping and she is still breastfeeding), but she is becoming more bold in her exploration of the world, and more aware of how things affect her. She has become terrified of dogs, and when a loud aeroplane roars overhead she will cling to me, saying she is scared. Perhaps these inanimate objects allow her to feel a small amount of control over the world in which she is finding her place. Maybe I’d better stock up on a couple of spare toothbrushes in case she loses this one.

Library Lion

Appropriately enough, we borrowed this book from the library recently, and liked it so much that we bought our own copy.

Library Lion, by Michelle Knudsen with illustrations by Kevin Hawkes, is a simple tale about a lion who goes into a library. I love the way that sort of thing can happen in a book, and no one wastes time asking where the lion came from, or why he's gone into a library. He's just there. He sniffs the card index; he rubs his head against the new book collection; he goes to sleep on the bean-bags in the story corner.

No one knows what to do because there are no rules about lions in the library. There is a theme running through the book about rules, and whether one should break them or not. As it happens, the lion hasn't broken any rules, so there is no reason to ask him to leave. And so he stays. He stays for the whole of story time, but when it's over, he becomes upset and roars in frustration. A new rule is created: "No roaring in the library." But the librarian, the charmingly named Miss Merriweather, states that a quiet lion would be welcome to come back the next day.

The lion becomes quite a fixture, and Miss Merriweather comes to rely on his help, though her assistant Mr McBee is very resentful. Eventually, of course, there is a crisis, and the lion is forced to break the rule...

I won't be spoiling much (it is a children's picture book after all) if I let you know that it all ends happily. It appeals on many levels, not least because in a past life I worked as a librarian for several years, and there were many days when I would have dearly loved a lion like this to keep me company! There is something rather wonderful about the character of Miss Merriweather and her gentle insistence on the importance of rules, and her equally gentle admission that occasionally there is good reason to break them. The illustrations are beautiful, and the characters are portrayed with subtlety.

My 5 year old loves it, with its combination of the unexpected (a lion in the library! "Don't lions eat people?" she asked) with more recognisable details ("No running!"). We will be reading this one a lot, I think.

Pumpkin

Today I had to throw away last week's pumpkin, so this is in its honour. I'm not a fan of the modern Halloween traditions in general - I've always hated horror films, don't see any pleasure in dressing up as any kind of weird or violent creature, and feel rather threatened by the "trick" part of trick or treating - but I have to admit there's something rather wonderful about the glow of a pumpkin.

As a child I remember one year when my mother either left it too late to buy a decent pumpkin, or was trying to economise, and we ended up trying to carve turnips instead. They were very hard, and smelled terrible when the candle caught the turnip flesh on the inside. Naturally I was anxious to avoid repeating this experience, so when my 5 year-old came home from school full of excitement about the idea of a Halloween pumpkin (she's never expressed an interest before), I bought one several days early in order to make sure we had a lovely plump looking specimen. Poppet drew the face and I carved it.

  

Like many modern celebrations, the "new traditions" have obscured the old. My googling tells me that Halloween probably has its origins in the Celtic festival Samhain. Then during the Roman occupation of Britain they attempted to replace Samhain with two of their own festivals: Pomona, celebrating the harvest (the symbol of the goddess Pomona was an apple, so perhaps this is a tenuous link to the tradition of apple-bobbing?), and Feralia, a celebration of the dead. By the 800s, Christianity had taken hold and 1 November was designated as All Hallows Day, probably in an attempt to create a church-sanctioned way of celebrating the dead. 31 October then began to be referred to as All Hallows Eve, which eventually led to its current name.

There seems little consensus about exactly when or why people began carving pumpkin lanterns; google throws up a number of possible stories, most commonly the Jack o'Lantern v. the devil story, and I was amused to find that the original lanterns probably were in fact made of turnips, until Irish immigrants to America discovered pumpkins, which are much easier to carve. It seems an innocent enough pleasure - it's a chance to light a candle, really, and that's always a hit in our household!

Next year Poppet wants to dress up and go trick or treating; this gives me nearly 12 months to work out what I'm going to do about it, and canvass neighbours with older children. What's your take on it?

Barefoot Books, Oxford

When Barefoot Books opened its north Oxford branch a couple of years ago, there was a ripple of interest around the parental circles – a genuinely baby friendly café/bookshop is a real find – and it soon became popular with the buggy-pushing trendy mothers in the area. Since I aspire to be trendy, and have a bit of a thing about books (and cake), I thought I’d feel at home there.

The ground floor is designed in three sections which flow front to back: first a bookshop, then a café, with plenty of high chairs, space for pushchairs, and a low table supplied with paper and crayons for toddlers to test their new teeth on, and beyond that there is a story “tent” – a carpeted area with benches around the walls and heaps of cushions, a throne for the story-teller, and drapes hanging from the ceiling to look like a colourful nomadic tent. Outside the front doors is a small area with more café style tables, which has recently been fenced off from the pavement, to prevent free-range children escaping.

It’s colourful, bordering on garish, it’s welcoming, and the books are an interesting mixture of modern and traditional stories from all around the world. Barefoot Books has an impressive reputation so far, and an ethos it would be hard to argue with. The founders say they want to give children nourishing “soul food” in the form of art and story. It's a way of life for Nancy Traversy, Owner, co-founder and CEO of BB) who says:

Living Barefoot for me is creating beautiful, magical and authentic stories and art and bringing these to a grassroots, global community of people who care about how our next generation of children is raised.   

So far, so good. But I have to confess I don’t like the Oxford studio (as they call it) as wholeheartedly as I want to. More bluntly, if it weren't for the baby-friendly nature of the place, I wouldn't go again. My main bugbear is the enormous TV screen on the wall of the café area, which is permanently on, showing the DVDs that tie in with many of Barefoot Books’ titles. At best it’s distracting, at worst downright intrusive. The words scroll along the bottom of the screen with a little bouncy ball to tell you which one to sing along with, karaoke style. I accept that DVDs are a significant part of their marketing strategy for their books (this makes me uneasy in itself, but that's another matter), but if I’ve gone to a bookshop/café, the chances are I haven’t gone there in order to watch TV. It makes me feel really cross just being near the bloody thing. When it's really busy, they turn the volume down slightly, but today, with the café surprisingly quiet, it was loud enough to make conversation difficult, and no-one was watching it at all. They even left it playing while a shop assistant led a story session in the tent area just beyond the café. She did her best, but it was difficult to concentrate on her with tinny singing coming from the TV the whole time.

I've also been disappointed by the café itself. It is styled in keeping with the rest - bright colourful crockery and a family friendly space, but having been there three times, I’ve had bad food twice: first, in the very expensive fresh fruit platter, a pear so unripe as to be crunchy and inedible; and more recently, carrot cake that was both stale and strangely bitter. The café is a big selling point here, so why these basic errors? It’s pricey too, even by north Oxford standards (and that's saying something). Oh, and did I mention there’s a whacking great TV on the wall? Maybe it’s to distract you from your food…

That said, they do run an impressive-looking series of events, both in the story-telling area downstairs, and a larger studio area upstairs, and they have definitely fulfilled a need in providing such a child-friendly place for parents to hang out, especially now the fabulous Summertown Wine Café has sadly closed down (sob!). Doubtless I will go there again, despite these bugbears, but maybe next time I'll smuggle in my own food, and pluck up the courage to ask them to turn off the screen.

A Necklace of Raindrops (2)

Many of you will have enjoyed the works of Joan Aiken in your youth, and perhaps saw my earlier blog post about her story A Necklace of Raindrops. That blog was seen by a Twitter friend of mine, the lovely Kate, who blogged about it in her turn, and then did something even more wonderful. She took the idea of the raindrops, found some glass teardrop beads that were just perfect, and commissioned me to make a new version:

Now I've found a supplier who can get me more of these beautiful beads, so I can create more of this lovely design. I've also made some matching earrings. What do you think?

Tonight, I think I shall read A Necklace of Raindrops to my Poppet again, who at five years old is ready to be utterly bewitched by such magic. I imagine she'll want a necklace of her own after that!

Do you have a favourite children's story? Has it ever inspired you to create something as an adult?

Cumbria (for National Poetry Day)

It's National Poetry Day today, so here's one I wrote earlier...

Cumbria

Cumbria travels with me,
a two-inch ragged oval on the atlas
penned in by the blue motorway.

Larger scale, I can contour the kitchen wall,

Exploring hidden valleys with coffee in my hand.

Each mountain conjures a postcard:
Fairfield - where sudden snow lit up the air;
Wetherlam - where muddy sheep stole sandwiches;
Coniston - where a thunder-storm tore the sky and day apart;
Mardale Head - where we climbed
    away from cars and cares
    and lay map-flat on the grass
    listening to the skylarks
    and heather humming bees
just off the pink dotted Right of Way.

Fiona Lewis

You can find out more about National Poetry Day 2012 from the official website, and from the Poetry Society, who also have an events page.

Perspective

Yesterday morning I heard BabyGirl saying "Climb. High." This is a child who is fearless, and at 20 months is regularly found balancing ("look no hands!") at the top of the slide, or on the kitchen table, or on the back of the sofa, so a part of me was suddenly very afraid. I abandoned all hope of a nice long shower, turned off the water and hurriedly grabbed a towel...

This is where she was:

She continued to climb on and off the book for several minutes, before inviting me to do it too, and holding my hand to keep me steady. I wonder what we'll climb next!

Communication without words

Kidnapped, and Penguin

We tend to rely on the written word for a great deal of our modern day communications. But is this as wonderful as we think? Certainly language has its limitations, and is notoriously open to mis-interpretation. Great writers over the centuries have illustrated its power to persuade, confuse, incite and threaten as well as to teach, inspire, inform and entertain. Local and personal idioms render writing less simple than it might at first appear, and we often hear nowadays of the difficulty of reading expression in emails, text and tweets. There are still many cultures around the world that remain entirely oral, whether through their own determination not to write anything down, or because the way they live their lives means they have no need of it – a small tribe, who see each other all the time, and remember their history, might see little need for writing. The Druids, who lived in Iron Age Britain, Ireland and Gaul, are said to have avoided writing down their knowedge in part because they felt such knowledge was powerful and of great importance and should only be passed down to their own, and not spread about the place in the way a written text might be.

What I’m really interested in is the variety of other ways of communicating, from the Victorian language of flowers to much more complex systems. One of my favourites from literature is the wonderful example from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped. Set not so very long ago, really, and on our own shores, the scene involves David Balfour and Alan Breck hiding out in the woods, and needing money. Alan decides to send a message to his friend John Breck Maccoll, asking for help. He does this by making a cross out of a sprig of pine and a sprig of birch, tied together with a strip of cloth from his coat, and adding a button which once belonged to his father. David, puzzled by this, asks Alan what he thinks his friend will make of finding such a strange thing on his windowsill.

"Well," says Alan, "I wish he was a man of more penetration, for by my troth I am afraid he will make little enough of it! But this is what I have in my mind. This cross is something in the nature of the crosstarrie, or fiery cross, which is the signal of gathering in our clans; yet he will know well enough the clan is not to rise, for there it is standing in his window, and no word with it. So he will say to himsel',The clan is not to rise, but there is something. Then he will see my button, and that was Duncan Stewart's. And then he will say to himsel', The son of Duncan is in the heather, and has need of me."

"Well," said I, "it may be. But even supposing so, there is a good deal of heather between here and the Forth."

"And that is a very true word," says Alan. "But then John Breck will see the sprig of birch and the sprig of pine; and he will say to himsel' (if he is a man of any penetration at all, which I misdoubt), Alan will be lying in a wood which is both of pines and birches. Then he will think to himsel', that is no so very rife hereabout; and then he will come and give us a look up in Corrynakiegh. And if he does not, David, the devil may fly away with him, for what I care; for he will no be worth the salt to his porridge."

"Eh, man," said I, drolling with him a little, "you're very ingenious! But would it not be simpler for you to write him a few words in black and white?"

"And that is an excellent observe, Mr. Balfour of Shaws," says Alan, drolling with me; "and it would certainly be much simpler for me to write to him, but it would be a sore job for John Breck to read it. He would have to go to the school for two-three years; and it's possible we might be wearied waiting on him."

Alan’s hope that John would interpret his twig cross in this manner (which he does, turning up a couple of days later to offer the help they need), is evidence that within his clan this kind of language of symbols was well understood, and a powerful means of communication; David’s incomprehension also demonstrates the usefulness of such symbolic language for keeping secrets - had a Redcoat found it, they would probably have realised that it was a message of some kind, but they would not have been able to interpret it.

And if you haven’t yet read Penguin by Polly Dunbar, please do – it’s a wonderful picture book about a boy who becomes increasingly frustrated by his new friend Penguin’s inability (or refusal!) to talk or communicate with him in any way.

At last, after the (disconcertingly blue) lion eats Ben for being so noisy (a subtle warning to all those of us who talk too much?), the penguin rescues him, and finally tells him what he's thinking:

 

 Who needs words when you can say all that?