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Lest We Forget

By Mum's the Word on April 16, 2013 in Opinion, Politics

As with most people, I have a love/hate relationship with Facebook. I love how it can spark and nurture debate and communication, I love how it can bring people together and I love how easy it is to find a friend when you need it most, long nights with colicky babies or times when you just need to click the ‘like’ button to know you aren’t the only one and someone out there does relate.

I don’t know if it’s just indicative of the way the world is at the moment, or maybe it’s just because of who I choose to follow, but my timeline has become a lot more politcised of late. I see a lot of meme-style photos and captions which make a point in a funny way and I share a lot of them too as I think other people will appreciate them. The cost in doing this is that everyone has the right to share and not everyone shares my politics, so there’s an element of tolerance all-round (unless you just hide people…).

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In the last week, since the death of Margaret Thatcher, Facebook has been awash with hyperbole and opinion from all sides of the debate, but I’ve noticed a growing number of people using the “You weren’t even alive” argument with regards to other people’s opinion on her. I know I’m probably going to upset people I know by saying this, but I’m aghast at this attitude.

At the risk of going all Godwin’s Law on your asses, you have an opinion on Hitler, right? Were you born after 30th April 1945? I know using Hitler as an example is real ‘lowest common denominator’ stuff, but he’s as good an historical figure as any to use to make a point.

I thought that the point of teaching history was to observe and learn from the past? Do we now just teach things to kids and expect them to have no opinion on them? Fine, the people in your timeline weren’t standing on the picket lines with the miners, they weren’t the first in the dole queue and they may not have punched a copper in the poll tax riots, but if the passing of the most divisive British political figure is what it takes to make people give a shit, shouldn’t this be commended?

As a person in their late twenties, I like to think that I’m not SO far off the planet in terms of ‘the kids of today’, and I can say that I genuinely worry about the disenfranchised generations that are bringing up the ranks behind me. The majority of them may never vote because they feel that NO political party understands them or has their interests at heart. What these young people need is something to make them realise that a change needs to be made. They need to be able to look at our history and feel passionate about something and while it may seem like bandwagon-jumping to people in their 40′s and 50′s, these are important times and things could be headed right back to where they were in the 80′s, unless we do something about it.

The phrase ‘Lest We Forget’ comes from the poem ‘Recessional’ by Rudyard Kipling and is generally used in reference to the soliders who were lost during the First World War, urging younger generations to remember the sacrifice made by these brave men and women, but it is something that should be applied here too. The sentiment is the same; learn from the mistakes of others and be grateful for sacrifices made on your behalf.

So, just for the record, I was born in 1984. I wasn’t politically conscious when Thatcher was in power but I sure as hell have an opinion on it, and of that you should be glad.

Comments { 4 }

How Poor SEO Approaches Can Damage a Brand and the Implication if That “Brand” is a Leading Cancer Charity

By Mum's the Word on March 26, 2013 in Cancer, Charity, Opinion

I don’t want this blog to turn into a long list of posts where I moan about SEOs, but I had an approach yesterday that had me bashing my head against a wall.

It started well -

“Hope you’re well. I just wanted to get in touch to ask about your policy on guest posting on Mum’s the Word. I’m working with Cancer Research UK, to build awareness of the breast cancer help and resources offered on their site. We’re doing this chiefly by putting together some informative articles on related topics and working with bloggers like yourself to publish them on selected sites around the web, and I was wondering if you’d be open to running such a post?”

Then took a rapid turn for the worse -

“I do appreciate that it’s a difficult topic, and that it’s not the sort of subject matter that you’ve typically covered on Mum’s the Word, but it’d be great to work with you on this if you would be willing to consider publishing the piece.”

See, if this SEO guy had done even a modicum of research then he’d have realised that this is EXACTLY the sort of post I publish on my blog, in fact I already have several on this very topic.

If he’d used the tiniest amount of initiative or imagination, he might’ve typed the word ‘cancer’ into the very simple and prominently placed search bar at the side of the page and come up with no less than a dozen posts around the subject.

If he’d thought to engage his, no doubt, elite search skills he’d have realised that in 2011, my Stepmum lost her battle with cancer and I spent a long time trying to get my head around it, trying to work out how to process it, how to guide my infant daughter through it all and how to get our lives back on track afterwards. He’d have seen that I now run Race for Life every year in Lorraine’s memory and that I do as much for Cancer Research as I can.

This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with poor marketing from this particular charity and I can’t help but wonder who makes the decisions regarding their marketing budget, given that they’re using aggressive telephone sales people and insensitive SEOs.

The sad part is, (as my friend Ruth mentioned after I shared with some blogger friends how sad I was about all of this) if they were to be a bit more sensible and use what would probably equate to a minute portion of their marketing budget to employ bloggers to help them with their blogger outreach programme I’m 100% certain that they’d be a lot more successful and would circumvent the very real risk of alienating a lot of people.

As I pointed out in my reply to this person, just off of the top of my head I know one blogger who’s child is battling leukemia, one who’s Mum has beaten breast cancer and several others who lost friends or family to this horrible disease and I hope to goodness he hasn’t used the same approach with them that he did with me.

Over to you, Cancer Research…

(I’m including follow links to the Cancer Research page in this post. Despite me criticising their approach, I think they’re a great charity and support them wholeheartedly)

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Jake and the Neverland Doormats

By Mum's the Word on February 12, 2013 in Family, Opinion, Parenting

As is the case with a lot of four-year-olds, Sausage is a big fan of Jake and the Neverland Pirates. It’s a pretty good show and there’s always a moral lesson in each episode, cleverly disguised as something that Jake and his swashbuckling buddies must do to help them earn ‘gold doubloons’ for their treasure chest.

I rarely have an issue with the shows that Sausage chooses to watch on TV and I’ve blogged before about how kids shows, these days anyway, are educational and fun. But today, I was listening to Jake while ironing my work clothes and something about it bothered me. Captain Hook was throwing some shit-fit about the fact that he had no treasure for Pirate Show and Tell and Mr. Smee asked Jake and his mates if they’d hide some treasure so that Captain Hook could think he’d found it all by himself and be happy again.

So far, so schmaltzy.

But my problem is this; Captain Hook treats Jake like shit in every. single. episode. Just off the top of my head, I can recall him stealing the Neverland Pirate’s football, tricking them out of Bucky, their ship, stealing Izzy’s puzzle box, also stealing her hula hoop and kidnapping Cubby’s goldfish. I get that there’s a strong theme of ‘taking the moral high ground’ in the show, but surely it all goes a bit too far? Why should Captain Hook get away with behaving this way and still deserve help? I’m afraid this level of tolerance is a step too far for me.

Kindness is a hugely important lesson to teach children and I’m proud to say that Sausage is the kindest person I know, but at the same time, I’d never expect her to be kind if it was consistently being thrown back in her face. Are Disney trying to teach kindness, or simply make doormats of our children?

What do you think? Have you seen the show and thought the same or do you think kindness is something that should be unconditional and I’m a hard-hearted cow?!

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How Useful Are You in a Zombie Apocalypse?

By Mum's the Word on November 2, 2012 in Opinion

The concept of a zombie apocalypse is something that Husband and I have discussed at length. Yes, we’re nerds, wanna fight about it?! We’ve toyed with the idea of putting a ‘Go Bag’ together, a kit full of supplies that you can grab and go should news of a Shaun of the Dead style outbreak be announced, and we’ve also talked about where we’d bugger off to as well.

I think Husband’s current go-to plan is to jump in the car and make for Cumbria or somewhere similar, find an old, empty cottage on a hill where you can see anyone coming for miles around and hole up until the Army find us. My plan was rather more elaborate, hinging on the fact that we live near the coast, and involving stealing a boat and making for the Hebrides, somewhere with minimal people and no attachment to the mainland, minimising the risk of the outbreak spreading.

The thing is, all of this is well and good, but HOW would we deal with things like food and water? If we went via boat, we’d need to either take a water supply with us or use a desalination filter, which is just not going to happen as we don’t have the knowledge to make one, nor the resources to keep it running. And food…if you manage to find areas of the country which have wildlife that’s viable as food, could YOU kill something to feed your family? It’s all well and good being glib and saying “Yeah, course!”, but really, really think about it; could you look an animal in the eye and know you’re going to end it’s life? And even if you find something to kill and work up the guts to do it, how will you do it? Presumably, you won’t have a gun – could you fashion a bow or a spear and throw it well enough to hit a target?

Obviously we’re a way down the line here, there’s probably enough tinned food already in this country to feed to lot of us until they find a cure for zombie-ism, but are YOU going to share with everyone else? Once the infrastructure of the country has disappeared, we’ll all end up feral again and being territorial about dwellings and resources is going to happen very quickly.

Then, what happens if you get ill? Sure, it’s possible to cultivate your own penicillin but do you know anyone with the knowledge to do that?

All of this just skims the surface of the challenges you’d face without an ordered society surrounding you. Nowhere to buy food, energy sources running out, people out for themselves. It’s a scary prospect, even without the thought of the Undead wandering around, and I do wonder if we’d cope at all. When man was primitive, we knew how to hunt, build or find shelter, survive. Now, we’re so mollycoddled, so used to buying things from a supermarket that we’d all just perish. It’s like humankind has become TOO evolved to survive!

So, how would you cope? Where would you go and what skills do you have that would help you to beat the brain eating bastards? I’d love to know. Maybe I’ve hit on a sound business idea here: Apocalypse Survival School!

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Feldspathoid Silicate Minerals are a Girl’s Best Friend…

By Mum's the Word on November 1, 2012 in All About ME!, Fashion...that's what I want., Opinion

A few months ago, someone on Facebook mentioned that they were looking at the Tiffany’s website and being the curious gal that I am, I sauntered over to have a nose.

After picking my jaw back up when I saw some of the prices (I know, naive of me, but I’m a simple gal with simple tastes), I noticed this:

This is the Elsa Peretti® Cabochon ring which retails for £1025. Let’s not be silly, I don’t have a spare grand to spend on the ring, but to be honest it’s not really the ring that’s the appeal, it’s the stone. It’s called Lapis Lazuli and there’s something about the deep blue that really spoke to me. Then I did some reading up on it and found this on Wikipedia:

Lapis lazuli was being mined in the Badakhshan province of Afghanistan as early as the 3rd millennium BC,^[2] and there are sources that are found as far east as in the region around Lake Baikal in Siberia. Trade in the stone is ancient enough for lapis jewelry to have been found at Predynastic Egyptian and ancient Sumerian sites, and as lapis beads at neolithic burials in Mehrgarh, the Caucasus, and even as far from Afghanistan asMauritania.

I don’t know why, but this made me want it even more, something about the age of it and the earthiness. I know we’re all supposed to go mad for diamonds, pearls and all the other shiny, sparkly gems but I’d take Lapis Lazuli over them any day of the week. I’m SO not a diamonds girl. I know they’re like, well valuable and stuff, but I just don’t see the appeal. Even it I was a trilliontiaire, I wouldn’t be dripping with diamonds and jewels. It’s almost like this stone has character…oh, I don’t know, I just know that it’s spoken to me and now I must have it!

There’s some great examples of jewellery made using Lapis Lazuli on Etsy, and I think this ring is my absolute fave:

Click the photo to link to the sellers page

I love the fact that it’s not quite perfectly round and at just over 80 quid, it’s a little bit more in my price range! Also, I have enormous man-hands, so I have to wear large rings, dainty ones just look daft on me!

So, is it just me who’s not all about the diamonds? I can’t be the only woman challenging the stereotype of anyone with a vagina swooning at the sight of strong covalent bonding between carbon atoms, surely?!

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Kärcher Window Vac – One Month On

By Mum's the Word on October 28, 2012 in Health, Money, Opinion, Review

Just for the record, the lovely Kärcher people haven’t asked me to do a follow-up to my original post, I’ve just found the device so useful that I wanted to show you how we’ve been using it over the last month.

1. Demisting the car

As much as I love our old car, it’s not all that efficient when it comes to demisting the windows on a cold day. In fact, if I put the blowers on too high and listen to the radio at the same time, it overloads the electrics and the immobiliser has a fit, making the car cut out completely, which is a bit scary when you’re on the brow of a hill on a busy road…but that’s another story! On these cold mornings, I’ve found the Window Vac absolutely invaluable when it comes to giving me visibility quickly. It’s saved me so much time as I don’t have to sit around waiting for the windows to clear before I go anywhere, I just vac all the windows inside and out and we’re ready to go. I can’t emphasise enough how much I love the Vac for this!

2. Sorting out our damp house

We live in a little bungalow which is damp at the best of times and even though we keep our bedroom cold, we still wake up with the windows running with condensation. I keep them open all day long but a quick going over with the vac first gets rid off the excess damp and gives us an overall healthier sleeping space.

3. Cleaning the bathroom

Let’s face it, cleaning the bathroom is a complete drag and although I keep the basin, bath and loo clean, I’m not so good at washing the walls down. However, today we stuck the shower on and built up a load of steam so that Sausage could get a bit of relief from her horrible cough and cold and after, the walls were absolutely soaked. I went over all of the tiles with the Window Vac and they came up a treat. An easy way to steam-clean the bathroom, and I love the fact that I haven’t had to use loads of caustic and expensive chemicals to give it a good clean.

4. Cleaning the patio set

Our patio set has a glass top to the table, which looks really nice but is an absolute pig to keep clean. There’s a rim around the edge which means no matter how much you wash and rinse, it’s impossible to wipe it properly. However, this time I washed the top with a soapy sponge, rinsed it with the hose and then gave it a good going over with the Window Vac and it came up a treat, streak free and completely clean.

I knew before we even got the Vac that I loved the idea of it, but as I said in my previous post, I had high-expectations for it to live up to and I can honestly say that it has more than surpassed them. The longer we have the Vac the more uses I find for it and considering they retail for less than £50 if you shop around, it’s worth every penny. If you’ve got one and know of any uses that I’ve missed, do let me know!

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My Jolly Phonics – A Review

By Mum's the Word on October 21, 2012 in Education, Family, Opinion, Parenting, Review

Sometimes, I get given items to review that are so overwhelmingly brilliant that I don’t even know where to begin with reviewing them and this is the case with the My Jolly Phonics kit, so instead of procrastinating over it for ages and leaving it miles too long, I thought I’d just dive in and see where this takes me!

A Bit of Background

As you probably know, Sausage started school in September, which means learning to read and write. Husband and I have actually been teaching her for ages and she already knew her alphabet and could write certain words, such as her name, so she had a fairly good base-knowledge going on. Before she even started, I knew she’d be using the phonics system to learn and I started to make enquiries, but struggled to find resources that I thought Sausage would find really engaging.

The Kit

Once she got started at school, she came home with songs she’d been singing to learn her letters and a quick Google of “The snake is in the grass, the snake is in the grass…” and I found that the system she was doing was Jolly Phonics. I found their website and discovered that they actually offer a home learning kit to compliment everything the kids are doing at school. The kit includes 7 activity books, a DVD, a CD of songs, a CD-Rom of games for the computer, a story book, a poster and a set of three-sided pencils.

Our Opinion

I really cannot emphasise enough how brilliant this kit is. At a penny shy of £100, you may think it’s a bit pricey but I can unequivocally say that, had I not been sent the kit for review, I would happily have paid that. The songs are absolutely brilliant, all set to tunes that you’ll already know, such as ‘The Farmer’s in the Den’ and ‘Jingle Bells’, and are so catchy that Husband and I find ourselves singing them at random. Sausage and I also walk to and from school singing the songs, which is a fun thing to do whilst being sneakily educational!

We’ve got the poster up in our lounge and just having it there as a focal point helps Sausage to remember her letters, as well as prompting her to learn, even on a more subliminal level. The CD-Rom is absolutely brilliant, the games are simple yet engaging and Sausage absolutely adores them. Despite having spent all week at school, she actually asks to play the games at the weekend as they’re so enjoyable.

The CD is great fun, especially as it comes with a full song book, allowing us all to sing along and the songs are short and punchy so it never gets boring or feels like a chore. The story book is great too as it has stories to help Sausage learn her letters, as well as giving words for her to read herself and has enough pictures to remain visually engaging too.

With the DVD, I can stick it on for Sausage and happily leave it playing. I’ve noticed she kind of ‘dips’ in and out of it, paying attention to some of it and zoning out on other parts, but I figured she’s soaking it all in, one way or another, which can only be a good thing!

Verdict

Before Sausage started school, I was very much of the opinion that ‘systems’ for learning were pointless – until we started Jolly Phonics (a sentiment which her school teacher shared at our parents afternoon recently). Since we’ve started using the kits alongside Sausage’s schooling, we’ve seen huge improvements in our, already fairly advanced, child but more importantly she finds it fun and engaging enough that she wants to get involved and do the games and activities. The songs stick in her head and have definitely helped her to retain the information she needs.

The fact that Husband and I now understand what her teachers at school are teaching and the way they’re teaching means that we’re able to properly compliment her daily learning and stay abreast of her education in a way that we all enjoy. The kit is good from age 3+, which means you can start this system even before they start school if they’re ready and the exercise books take them all the way through until they’re reading independently.

The whole family can highly, highly recommend this kit!

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Why Gangnam Style is So Culturally Important

By Mum's the Word on October 18, 2012 in Family, Humour, Music, Opinion

A few months ago, I heard Husband laughing heartily in his office, followed by a yell of “Hun, you HAVE to come and see this”, so I went in and watched what can only be described as the video for one of the most sublime pop songs I’d ever heard. It had a catchy tune, a killer beat, (and this was the clincher for me) a dance that I could do to accompany it. Could I sing along to it? No, not without a few thousand hours of Korean lessons, but it didn’t matter. Over the next few weeks, we listened to Gangnam Style at least once a day, usually while Husband was trying to work and Sausage and I were horsing around his office, but it made us all laugh.

Then, Husband mentioned that he had Psy’s (the singer of Gangnam Style) album, which I started listening to while I was jogging. It’s a mixture of classic pop and funky R&B sounding tunes and it’s obvious that Psy has real talent. Of course he does, the bloke has released 7 albums and 18 singles. People have obviously responded, it’s become an enormous phenomenon all over the world, reaching Number One in the singles charts in approx. 23 countries and charting highly in dozens of others. It’s had almost half a billion views on YouTube, and that’s just the official version. As far as I’m aware, this is the first time a Korean-language song has even charted in a country outside of Korea, so the achievement is incredible.

The reason that I think this is so significant is that it seems to have opened the whole world up to something a bit new. Aside from the fact that we’re having fun and taking the mickey out of ourselves, just a little bit, we’re listening to music IN A DIFFERENT LANGUAGE. It sounds ridiculous, but this is a huge deal. England in particular seems to be full of people who don’t want to experience things outside of their scope of comprehension. If I had a pound for every time I’d heard someone say “Nah, I haven’t seen Amelie, it’s got subtitles, innit?” I’d have…well, a fair few quid. I want to scream and shout and strangle people because they, through wilful ignorance, don’t even know what they’re missing out on. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Because English is so widely spoken in the world, we seem to have this sense of linguistic entitlement and feel that people or other things are worthless if they don’t communicate in our language. I know someone who lives in a foreign country and has done for many years and when I asked if he was fluent in their native tongue he said “Well no, we only really talk to English people out there…” which really shocked me.

We’ve encouraged Sausage to be as broad minded as possible and I genuinely hope that something a simple as a slightly spoofy K-Pop song has got the ball rolling in opening more people up to other cultures and made some much needed reparations to peoples opinions of multiculturalism.

And to Psy – we thank you, for so many things. But most of all, for the dancing.

I’d love to know what you think of all of this. And more importantly….can you do that dance?!

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What Has Happened to the Top 40?

By Mum's the Word on September 23, 2012 in Music, Opinion, Personal, Rant

One of my earliest memories as a child is singing and dancing with my Mum to ‘Reet Petite’ by Jackie Wilson. It was re-released in the UK in 1986, so I can have been no older than two or three but I adored it and used to get really sad when the plasticine Jackie would melt at the end of the video!

When I think about it, many of my memories centre around music. When I was 6, I remember watching my mum get ready for her evening bar job, backcombing her hair and squeezing into some seriously tight Levis, listening to ‘Ride on Time’ by Black Box. Around the same time, my Mum started seeing my step-dad and I fell instantly in love with him when he let me have free reign over his record collection. I’d sit for HOURS on a Sunday afternoon putting on album after album, being oh-so-careful with the needle on the record player, listening to John Lee Hooker, Santana, Van Morrison, The Who, The Cure…he had so many records and it was such an amazing musical education.

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Bullies.

By Mum's the Word on August 23, 2012 in Anger, Family, Opinion, Personal

My lovely little sister.

Something happened today which upset me a lot.

I went into town to meet my little sister, she’d been working a lot and hadn’t had a chance to give Sausage her birthday present yet, so we met for coffee, a chat and a bit of toy and nail varnish shopping with the kiddo. It was lovely to see her, we often go weeks without seeing each other as her working days vary and I’m a nightmare to pin down sometimes, and we ambled around the high street for an hour or so, letting Sausage chatter away about her birthday and newly painted nails.

Just after we’d come out of Greggs, where Lil’ Sis’ had bought Sausage some lunch, a guy and his girlfriend walked past us. I noticed them at first because the female appeared to be giving my sister a really filthy look, which seemed odd. Then, as they got closer the male leaned right into my sisters path and said, with real vitriol, “Look at the f*cking state of that…”, before walking quickly off.

I stood, open-mouthed, watching them walk off sniggering to each other.

If I’m honest, my first reaction was to chase after them and give them both a serious amount of verbal, but as I had Sausage with me I restrained myself, although the anger was truly bubbling over in me. That was my baby sister (she’s 19, nearly 9 years younger than me) whose feelings they’d gone out of their way to hurt and I honestly felt like punching the guy. Lil’ Sis’ was naturally upset, but handled it with more grace than me, she just carried on walking and said “Oh well, he’s probably got a tiny willy…!”.

All of this got me thinking about a similar event that happened to me last year, as I was walking home from a hospital appointment. I was standing at a pelican crossing, waiting to cross a dual carriageway when a car full of blokes went past and one of them screamed “FAT PIG” out of the window at me. I was genuinely devastated and spent the rest of the walk home shaking and crying on the phone to my Mum. These weren’t children, they were all guys in their mid-to-late twenties, wearing suits, yet they felt it was appropriate to bully a woman on her own like this.

If I wasn’t already disillusioned, I am now.

The thing is, I am fat. There’s no denying it. But what on earth goes through the mind of a grown person who feels the need to shout it at someone from a moving car? My little sister isn’t average, she’s unique and makes some bold fashion choices. She’s a huge Gaga fan and expresses herself with hair, make-up and clothes and while I wouldn’t choose to wear studded leggings, she’s a really pretty girl and makes an effort with her appearance. But do you know what? I shouldn’t even be explaining that to you, what we look like is SHOULD BE inconsequential in all of this. The real question is – why are there some people in the world who are so filled with bile and hatred feel that they feel the need to bully, intimidate, abuse and attack innocent passers-by?

I can honestly say that I will NEVER get my head around the need some people feel to hurt other people’s’ feelings for their own amusement. There’s just no need and it makes me feel really sad about what our society must have become to allow things like this to happen. I know nobody is perfect but feeling the need to hurt the feelings of a stranger is a serious character flaw and the worse thing is, we’re the ones left stewing over it – the idiot who chose to attack my sister probably doesn’t even remember doing it.

Bullying is a serious problem and it’s not just happening in schools, it seems endemic in most walks of life. I know it probably makes me a terrible person for saying this, but I just hope this bloke says the wrong thing to the wrong person one day and gets a punch in the mouth.

That seems to be the only language that bullies understand.