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So, You’ve Eaten a Horse Burger?

By Mum's the Word on January 16, 2013 in Family, Humour, Life

If you read the news/go on Twitter/listen to the radio, you’ll no doubt be aware by now that several major supermarkets have cleared their shelves amidst findings from an independent report which showed beef burgers to contain up to 29% horse meat. The chances are, if you’ve eaten a burger from Tesco, you’ve probably eaten horse. Are you horrified?

I’m not.

Don’t get me wrong, the fact that they’ve sold cheap horse meat under the guise of beef is wrong for MANY reasons. The cultural implications are mind boggling, especially as 85% of the burgers also contained pig DNA, so many a kosher Jew are probably feeling rather upset right now. Also, just for the plain old fact that if you PAY for beef and you get horse, that’s morally and financially wrong. It’d be called fraud in any other circumstance, surely?

But.

What I don’t get is this; people are up in arms simply about the fact that they’ve eaten a horse and I just don’t get that mentality.

Why is a horse more sacred than a chicken, a cow or a turkey? With Christmas just gone by, are we not upset about the TEN MILLION turkeys eaten in the UK alone? I understand that people keep horses as pets and we’re all quite precious about not eating animals that are cute or handsome, but if it were a choice between my family needing food and Joey running free in the paddock, it’d be horse casserole for tea, I’m afraid.

I’m not hugely worldly when it comes to food I’ve tried but I’ve eaten kangaroo, deer and veal (though I will admit I wasn’t properly aware of what veal was before I ate it) and I just don’t get this thing that humans have about prioritising one type of animal over another when it comes to meat. Most people probably now know that pigs are as intelligent as dogs and while that’s led to a rise in the number of people keeping pigs as pets, I bet it’s barely affected the number of bacon sandwiches eaten by us Brits.

Perhaps someone could enlighten me as to why a horse is more important than a cow?

Until then, I’m going to be avoiding beef burgers; not because I don’t want to eat horse, but because if I’m buying beef it’s because I want to eat a cow!

Comments { 8 }

Mum’s the Word – A Retrospective (Pt. One)

By Mum's the Word on January 1, 2013 in Blogging, Humour, Life, Personal

It seems weird looking at the calendar in the bottom corner of my screen and seeing 01/01/2013. This year will be my 29th birthday, Husband’s 34th birthday, Sausage’s 5th birthday, 7 years since we adopted Chuck, my 7th wedding anniversary, my baby sister’s 21st, my baby brother’s 14th….and so on and so on! I remember the days that my brother and sister were born SO vividly and it’s hard to believe that they were that long ago, let alone the fact that I have to get my head around the fact that I’ll have a 5-year-old!

So, before I look forward to the exciting year ahead, I thought I’d do a ‘Mum’s the Word Retrospective’, a look back at the posts that I’m most proud of from the last 12 months. Yes, it’s self-indulgent, but it’s MY blog, so ner! *blows raspberry*

JANUARY

At the beginning of January, I was saying goodbye to Bob Holness who was a childhood favourite of mine and his passing sparked some fond memories. In this post, I was waxing lyrical about my new iPhone 4. I’m not sure I’d be so effusive now!

This time last year, I was still reeling from the passing of my stepmum, who’d lost her battle with cancer just 10 weeks before. Here I talk about how certain Buddhist teachings had helped me with my grief.

In this post, I share some of the harsh realities of adulthood that I’ve picked up on along the way, but it’s not as grim as it sounds, don’t worry!

FEBRUARY

In this Silent Sunday post, I proudly display the partially erupted wisdom tooth I had removed, despite some people thinking that it was a weird picture of a nose!

This was my first attempt at short fiction. I tried to make a linky out of it but didn’t get much interest, but I was still quite proud of my efforts. Here, I discuss the stress of being a working Mum and how hard it is to relax at times. Finally for Feb, I overheard a conversation in Waitrose which literally tickled me pink.

MARCH

March began with me musing over what I wanted to be when I grew up. Turns out, I still haven’t…Sausage kept us amused with some surprisingly subversive humour for a then-3-year-old.

In a more serious post, I talked about how you tackled the subject of mortality with your little ones, which provoked some interesting comments. I rounded the month off with a satirical post about things that, at 27, I’d realised I was too old to do. This is a personal fave for 2012.

APRIL

The beginning of April saw Husband and I changing our strongly anti-Barbie stance, me doing some serious Sausage related trumpet-blowing, attempting to talk about the dangers of Melanoma and celebrating my move to being self-hosted with a post about being reborn.

MAY

At the beginning of May, I wrote about my Nan and Grandad, which is still one of my favourite posts ever. I also mused about what it would be like if our brains were like a computer harddrive and posted a Silent Sunday featuring a very personal subject for me.

This month also featured part one and two of my Cybher run-down.

This post about parental choices was one of my favourite posts because of the debate it sparked in the comments. I still stand by my original thoughts, which were brought into sharp focus later in the year with the horrible events in the news. I often wonder how people’s opinions will differ now.

JUNE

The beginning of June saw me thinking about the parental instinct to protect and why it’s lacking in some people. Here’s another favourite Silent Sunday, featuring a house-guest we had with us for a while. This photo was one of the things to spark the idea for Closer to Nature, a linky that I started later in the year.

I was having a pretty bad time of things in June and this post is me trying to make sense of my thoughts and feelings, the prevailing being that of loneliness. Later in the month, I also discuss euthanizing a beloved pet and when is the right time to say ‘enough is enough’.

A bit of a bleak finish to the first half of the year, but I’m amazed to see how much I wrote in that time. I hope you enjoy reading through and come back for part two!

Happy New Year from Mum’s the Word.

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Being Mum – The Self-Worth Special

By Mum's the Word on November 26, 2012 in Family, Happiness, Life

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my ‘worth’ as a person lately and how that ties in with me being a mother. It’s been an eventful year, this 12 past the 2000, kicking off with me losing my job in April and Sausage starting school in September, two things which have contributed massively to my introspection. When I was working, I was a ‘working mum’ – I did a job and kept home and life ran to a schedule, Tuesday to Thursday at least. Then I lost my job and I became a ‘stay-at-home mum’, using my days to spend time with Sausage and do things together. But now she’s at school, am I still a stay-at-home mum, considering that between the hours of 8.55am and 3.20pm, I have no one to mother?

On a totally base level, since losing my job my contribution towards family life has been much less. Sure, I’ve been available for more housekeeping, but I’m not actually adding to the family coffers and I’m acutely aware that every time I spend money it’s usually been earned by someone else. I do have a small amount of income but that tends to get swallowed up as soon as it comes in on car insurance and my phone bill. I was able to do so much more before and it made me feel good.

My self-worth is obviously closely related to what I perceive as my use to other people. I’m always offering to do things for people which are of no benefit to me, just to be the one who’s helped someone out, like I rack up ‘person points’ every time I offer help. I need to be needed. But I think I was like that before I ever became a parent.

As a mother, though, I know for a fact that I tend to put myself last in a lot of situations. Like mealtimes, for instance. If I’m cooking, Sausage gets her dinner first, then Husband and I tend to sit down rank last, after fetching drinks, condiments and all of the other mealtime accoutrements, with my meal being lukewarm more often than not. Don’t get me wrong, Husband often offers to do things, but I tend to insist he sits and eats while his food is hot and do the running around myself. So, does this mean that I put my worth at less than that of my family? Well, yes, I think I do. They deserve a nice meal, a hot meal, and if my is ruined well then so be it. It’s only me.

My Nan does something similar, bowing and scraping even when there’s no need for her to do so, and I don’t know if it’s always been this way but with her, her martyrdom seems to be something that’s done so that she has a reason to moan. Her and my Grandad have a highly toxic relationship and it’s hard to know what came first; the bitterness or the hatred. Does she hate him and it’s made her bitter or has her bitterness morphed into a ball of hatred? Who knows, but either way, she’ll act like a timid servant (or did before she got too blind and disabled to do it all) and then loudly slag my Grandad off for not moving out of his chair.

I certainly don’t feel bitterness or hatred about my self-imposed lower worth, but then to be fair, I’m 28, not 78 so what’s to say I won’t be a walking hate-factory in 50 years time? Fortunately, the difference is that I have Husband who is NOTHING like my Grandad and I feel appreciated by him and Sausage on a daily basis, and I also have a modicum of reflection in my soul, which means I can see that way my life could go if I allow it. I’m not saying I’ll serve my dinner first or stop being ketchup-wallah, but I will try to consider myself a bit more at times when I feel like I don’t deserve any consideration.

Am I making even the slightest bit of sense? TELL ME YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN!

Comments { 8 }

Something About Doors Closing and Windows Opening…

By Mum's the Word on October 17, 2012 in Family, Happiness, Life

I can finally stop being cryptic.

That thing that I was feeling too superstitious to talk about? Well, it was a job. A great job. My dream job. And it involved moving home.

The position was as a Digital Editor for a new magazine with a major publishing company and it was based in the West Country. I didn’t know if I was suitable, but I applied for the job just for shits and giggles. But they must’ve liked me because I made it to the next stage and they asked me to do the second part of the application process, which was submitting a schedule for a weeks worth of content for the site and a full work-up of one day’s worth of posts and social media.

“This has got me written all over it”, I thought.

And I really bloody enjoyed it. It was stressful as I wanted it SO badly, but the creative process was amazing and I really got a kick out of it.

As I said, it would have also involved a relocation, so I spent hours perusing houses in Bath, imagining life in a new city, I even picked out a school for Sausage. In my head, I was there.

I sent it all off and waited. And waited…

When I started this process, Sausage was having a bad time at school and the thought of being able to whisk her off to somewhere new and change everything was really appealing. Then she started enjoying it, the tears dried up and she settled in and I started to have doubts about whether I could inflict this upheaval on her if it came to it. I concluded that no, I probably couldn’t.

I’d be asking so much of my family. Sure, Husband works for himself and could technically do it from everywhere but I’d be asking them both to move away from all of their family and friends, just for me. Not to mention that I’d be moving all this way, then working full time hours. It was too much.

Then, yesterday, I got this (this is an abridged version of the original email):

Dear Jayne

Thank you for your application for the role of Digital Editor. We apologise for the delay in contacting you with an update on your application and the outcome of your task. I am afraid that due to unforeseen circumstances this role has been withdrawn due to business reasons and we are no longer recruiting for this role.

We appreciate the time you have spent on your application and the task and apologise for any inconvenience caused.

We felt that you had good skills that would be suitable for a role with us and would be really keen to hear from you again for further Digital Editor roles or other positions that we may have in the future.

Thank you for your interest and we wish you all the best in your employment search.

BEST. CASE. SCENARIO.

I didn’t get the job. But not because I’m not good enough, because there is no job. This means that I don’t have to ask my family to relocate, I don’t have to cause them upheaval and I don’t have to make the decision to NOT do these things either. It didn’t work out, but I don’t have to feel like my confidence has been knocked. It’s not me, it’s them. And I’m fine with that.

My Bath dream may be no more, but I’m happy. And what’s more important is that Sausage and Husband get to carry on being happy too. I also have an interview for a local job which is something totally different to anything I’ve done before but I’m excited about it and it would be great for our family.

(On a different note, as you can see, my skills for digital editing are clearly BRILLIANT, so if you know anyone who’s recruiting, do let me know!)

Comments { 3 }

Home Improvements

By Mum's the Word on October 8, 2012 in Life, Personal, Sponsored Posts

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately about how I can brighten up our very…bland home. We live in a rented house which I call ‘The Magnolia Palace” (although it’s hardly palatial) and we’re not allowed to hang pictures on the walls or change the aesthetic of the house in any way.

It really takes some imagination to make the place look warm and homely without changing the colours of the walls but we’ve given it a good go! The first thing we did was change our black leather sofas for a three piece suite that’s upholstered in a terracotta coloured fabric. It changes the room greatly and makes it look more homely right away. We also use lighting to change things up a bit, using a tall lamp and table lamps to light the living room at night, rather than a stark overhead light, giving a much cosier feel to the room.

One thing we’re also thinking about is adding some rugs to the rooms. Both modern rugs and slightly more traditional rugs have a way of adding colour, warmth and depth to a room and also help with ‘zoning’ if you live in a more open-plan space. Fortunately, as well as very neutral walls, our larger furniture is white so we only really have to take the colour of the furniture into consideration when finding something to match!

As a keen sewer, I also had an idea while back about how to add to the room with minimal outlay. I wrote to a large upholstery and fabric outlet and asked if they had any offcuts that were just taking up space that they could send me and they kindly obliged. There are some great patterns in the dozen or so scraps they sent me and I reckon I can make a great selection of throw cushions that will add a soft, slightly mismatched but very comfortable feel to the main living space.

If any of you live in your very own magnolia palace and have any idea of how I can brighten the place up without hammering in any nails/painting the walls/spending a small fortune, I’d love to hear them.

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Which GCSE’s Would You Take Now?

By Mum's the Word on August 26, 2012 in Education, Family, Life

With all the talk of exam results this week, I got to thinking about what GSCE subjects I’d have chosen if I could choose them now. I always think that 14 is such a young age to make the decision, especially as we had it drummed into us that we needed to make the right choices so that we could study what we wanted at A-Level and then Degree level, which is effectively asking a person who’s barely out of puberty to decide what they still want to be doing, 5 days out of seven, until they’re almost 70.

I know that plenty of people retrain or their careers develop into something different, but with education now more expensive than ever, I imagine that kids from families who aren’t wealthy are feeling the pressure to make the right decision as this may be their one opportunity at education. Anyway, I digress.

When I took my options, I struggled. The subjects that I liked the most were English, Maths and Science, which were all compulsory anyway, so choosing the others was an arduous task. I ended up taking English Literature, English Language, Maths, Triple Award Science (which I eventually ended up cutting down to Double Award), IT, Drama, RE and History. We also got a grade for English Speaking and Listening, for which I got an A, so I still put that one on my CV! So what would I take now?

1. Home Economics

I’m pretty sure that the only reason I didn’t do Home Ec was because it was scheduled at the same time as something else I wanted to take, but if I had the chance again, I’d definitely opt for this subject. Maybe it’s the beauty of hindsight, but as an adult I adore sewing and cooking (although can’t claim to be hugely brilliant at either…) and I would have loved to carry on with it past the age of 14.

2. French

I had absolute nightmares with languages at school and wasn’t very good and either French or German, although I still think that this is because of the way we’re taught languages. When you have a baby, that baby learns to speak first then once they’ve been speaking for a while they learn to read and write. This seems like a natural, organic way to learn a language, but at school we were drilled on tenses and whether things were masculine and feminine and it just didn’t soak into my brain. However, if I’d known how hard it was going to be to try and learn as an adult, I might have tried a bit flippin’ harder!

3. Art

When I was younger, I had it drummed into me that Art was a cop-out subject; I wasn’t going to be an artist, so why take art? However, as an adult I find silly things like doodling and colouring really theraputic but don’t have any confidence so I don’t do anything bigger like painting, despite the fact that I think I’d love it…I just don’t know where to start.

4. Philosophy and Ethics

Now, maybe I’m only making this choice because I’m a adult, I suspect that philosophy may have blown my tiny mind when I was 14, but if there’s one thing that most kids could do with, it’s a bit of introspection! Had I the opportunity now, I think I’d find Philosophy absolutely fascinating and the skills you gain from writing essays which simply postulate a theory would actually be quite useful in life (as opposed to vectors in GCSE maths, which I don’t thing I’ve ever used, bloody ever), even if just for the ability to communicate a thought or idea.

So, if you had your chance all over again, what would you choose? Would you do exactly the same and follow the same life path and career that you have now, or would you go for something entirely different? I’d love to know.

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I Don’t Use The ‘C’ Word.

By Mum's the Word on August 1, 2012 in Anger, Life, Opinion, Politics

What would you think of me if you were reading a blog post and I used the word ‘nigger’?

What would you think of me if you were reading a blog post and I used the word ‘queer’?

What would you think of me if you were reading a blog post and I used the word ‘retard’?

I’m guessing you’d be really shocked and appalled, right? Shocked that a (reasonably) well-educated woman would use such inflammatory, bigoted and ignorant language, yes?

Well, dear readers, this happens to me all the time. There’s a word that I see popping up here and there, from people I consider to be pretty enlightened, that makes me feel increasingly uncomfortable.

The ‘C’ word. No, not c*nt, I’m not that delicate. The word that offends me so is chav.

This is a word that has now made it into the Oxford English dictionary and is defined thusly:

a young lower-class person typified by brash and loutish behaviour and the wearing of (real or imitation) designer clothes.

According to the dictionary, it could be either a contraction of the Romany word ‘chavvy’, meaning child or young person, or from the place ‘Chatham’ in Kent where the word supposedly started.

Either way, do you see the key phrase in there?

‘Lower class’.

This is the point – if you wouldn’t use nigger, queer or retard, you have no place using the word chav. If you’re shocked and offended by racism, homophobia or discrimination against disability, why does classist intolerance not have the same effect? It’s not okay to hate or judge someone because of the colour of their skin, their sexuality or how able-bodied they are, so can someone explain why it’s okay to mock, deride and write off a subset of society because of what they were born into? What they’ve been brought up knowing? What they maybe couldn’t afford or have the resources to remove themselves from?

I think Plan B put it a lot better than me in his TED lecture when he said this:

“I believe that there is a demonisation of the youth throughout the media. And people are falling for it, because if you’d had no direct contact with the kids that I’m talking about how the hell can you judge them? Because you’re only judging them based on something you read in a newspaper, aren’t you?

See, this fuels the fire. If you call kids words that are derogatory to them just because they are unlucky enough to be born into a family that couldn’t afford to give them the education that you had, they’re going to hate you. Of course they’re going to hate you and you’re going to hate them because of their actions. And it’s this vicious circle that goes round. By calling these kids these words you push them out of your society and they don’t feel part of it. You beat them into apathy and in the end they just say: “Cool, I don’t care. I don’t want to be part of your society.”"

So, maybe you should think about that, next time you label someone a chav.

Comments { 12 }

The Freedom to Dance.

By Mum's the Word on July 1, 2012 in Happiness, Life, Opinion

Yesterday, Husband and I took Sausage to The Village Green Arts Festival, a free event at one of the large parks near our home, which had various musical acts, dancers and artists performing throughout the day. It was a nice way to spend the day as a family, we met some friends and Sausage had a great time dancing, destroying everyone with her magic wand (that’s another story…) and nicking the food from our friends’ picnic! There were a lot of people there, thousands in fact, more people than Sausage has ever seen in one place I think, but we’re off to Cambridge Folk Festival at the end of the month, so this was like a warm-up show for her!

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Work Smart, Not Hard – Mum’s the Word Cleaning Tips.

By Mum's the Word on April 2, 2012 in How To, Life

As I’ve mentioned about a billion times before, I’m not a fan of housework. I’m not ashamed to say that if I were rich, I’d probably pay someone to do it. It’s a thankless task that is never done. As soon as you think the place is spotless, someone wears something, eats something or pees somewhere and you have to start all over again.

Just recently, I’ve discovered a few little things that have helped to make the cleaning process a little easier, which is something we could all do with. We all know about white vinegar, lemon juice and newspaper being a great help, but the ones I use may not be so well-known. So here are a few things that could make your daily chores a bit less of a, well, chore!

1. WD40

WD40 is one of those things that most people have in the garage or shed but never think to use for cleaning. In fact, WD40 is AMAZING a getting rid of grease. Just recently, I cleaned our cooker hood using WD40 and a soft cloth and not only did it cut through the cooked-on grease with seriously minimal effort, the cooker hood came up to a beautiful shine too. In the grand scheme of things, WD40 doesn’t even smell too bad either and I can’t convey just how easy this made the whole job.

If you go to the WD40 site, there’s actually 2000+ uses for it and Husband informs me that it’s also amazing at getting waxed crayon off of painted walls!

2. Fabric Softener

This is an odd one, but I’m not a massive fan of polish or aerosols in general. I find it smells pretty rough and as is the modern way, I don’t really have a lot of true wooden furniture, mostly Ikea-tastic units that don’t actually like polish very much. I don’t know where I read this one, but instead of polish I use a tiny bit of fabric softener on a cloth instead. It smells nicer and helps you to pick up dust and remove drinks rings far better than a dry cloth. I wouldn’t recommend this if you have antiques or wooden units as it’ll dry out the wood, but for anything laminate, this is perfect.

3. Bicarbonate of Soda

This is a pretty well-known one, I think, but it’s pretty old-fashioned too so I’m not sure if it’s as well-known to my generation. We keep bicarb in the house constantly as it is so useful for so many things. We’ve used it on a saucer in the fridge to wick away any unpleasant smells, diluted in boiling water to brighten stained mugs, made into a paste and used with a toothbrush to clean tiles and the bit round the base of the taps that goes scummy. We even used it to get the smell of sick out of our memory foam mattress after Sausage did an EPIC chunder one night and no amount of cleaning product would get rid of the odour.

4. Chamois Leather

If you have a dog which is a short-haired breed, especially at this time of year, you’ll notice that those spiky little hairs are BLOODY EVERYWHERE. You can’t brush them like you can with a longer haired breed, but rubbing their coat with a slightly damp chamois leather a couple of times a week helps to get rid of all of the loose hairs and will make their coat come up a treat. Plus, if your dog is anything like our big baby, they’ll just love the fuss! (It has to be a proper chamois though, not an artificial one)