How not to become Ms Phillips

It's been a while since I posted here. Turns out that it's not the first year of having a toddler and a baby that is the hardest, but the second. Occasionally I have spare time, and occasionally I have bursts of brain activity, but rarely at the same time. ("Don't worry," said a friend, "my mum says the first thirty years are the hardest.")

Mums are full of good advice like that. I recently came across a print-out of an email my mum, Ros, sent me in 2005. I was writing lots of columns at the time - mainly The Independent and New Statesman, sometimes The Guardian and Times Educational Supplement and others - and pitched a piece to the New Statesman on how a young leftie columnist like myself can avoid becoming a Melanie Phillips type figure in the future. It was commissioned, though considered too risque for publication. But the list my mum sent me (all my best work is hers really - we joke it's written using my first name and her surname), is wonderful.

I am 35 now, and struggle sometimes with my carriage leaning to the right slightly as I hurtle down life's tracks, just as I struggle with train metaphors. All my conversations are about house prices and primary schools. Worse, I start these conversations. FML* as people my age pretending to speak like we think young people do would say. (*Fuck My Life). I'd use a hashtag but I've reclaimed my desktop from what used to be my office and is now my son's bedroom and can't seem to find the hashtag on this keyboard. So rereading my mum's list has come at just the right time. Obviously Nelson Mandela is now dead, and it is partly my mum's doing that I was born middle-class (point 9), but it remains brilliant. I hope you enjoy it too.

How not to become Melanie Phillips

1. Keep it real, innit! I mean, make sure you meet real people as it is not so easy to slag off asylum seekers etc if you know a few.

2. Ask yourself how you would feel expounding the grumpy old fart stuff to the face of the person you are slagging off.

3. Don't be starry eyed about people/ideas to start with, then they won't disappoint so much! But remember no-one (or hardly anyone) is as bad - or as good - as you might once have thought.

4. Don't work for publications or write for slots that expect you to be grumpy - what else would they want but grumpiness, for heaven's sake!

5. Don't take yourself too seriously.

6. Don't wear a severe hairstyle, wire rimmed glasses etc. Or you'll have to live up to it.

7. Don't confuse grumpiness with realism - of course as one gets older one gets a bit more circumspect and that's fine, but it is still possible to be optimistic about a better world even if it appears to be a longer and more arduous route than one first hoped i.e. It's okay to get more right wing about means, but not so much about ends, and many people confuse the two and think they have to throw the (ends) baby out with the (means) bathwater.

8. It is fun to fulminate, but that doesn't make the fulminations appropriate. Find other ways to have fun. Get a life.

9. Don't be born middle class. It's the upbringing that comes to reclaim the grumpy ones. They were only flirting with radical thoughts.

10. Imagine you were trying to justify your grumpiness/bitterness to Nelson Mandela,

Peppa Pig and me

The other day I found myself emailing my husband an observation about one of the Peppa Pig books our household owns: "In the Fun at the Fair Peppa book," I observed, "Dr Brown Bear and Mrs Cow appear to be sharing a carousel capsule. Platonic friendship or interspecies date?"

You know things have gone too far when your main subject for discussion with your spouse is a children's television character. But really, we love Peppa Pig in our household. And it's not just us - I tweeted about my favourite episode not so long ago and got several responses from people I knew from my work in journalism and politics telling me about their favourite episode in return. 

For some this marks us out as a little, dare I say it, chavvy. For Peppa Pig is not on CBeebies, the middle-class television channel of choice, but on Nick Jr (which we don't have) and Five, which is where we watch our daily triple bill every morning before resorting to the thirty or so episodes we have recorded. It's the equivalent of having a satellite dish on your house in the early nineties or allowing your kids a McDonald's birthday party (I had one, it was great), and will no doubt earn tuts from the same kind of people who consider flapjacks a biscuit and raisins a treat, Still, it was fitting as we were en route to stay in a caravan for a week. That's right, a caravan, not a cottage, not a farmhouse, not even a Center Parcs. (And it was great.) 

Anyway we love Peppa Pig, an acutely observed five minute animation about the Pig family, a loving and stable family of four whose recent bad press was entirely undeserved, not least because Daddy Pig seems to me to be exactly the sort of dad I would hope all children have - involved, fun and responsible. He's the kind of man, I mean Pig, who makes lunch for his family, gives up his slice of cake so his kids can feed the ducks, takes his kids to work on 'Take your piggies to work day', organises fun days out and fun days in and still enjoys a bit of slap and tickle with Mummy Pig, who he takes to the theatre on her birthday having arranged the babysitter by himself. By which I mean he's certainly no Homer Simpson, though to be honest who wouldn't want him as a dad too?

So we promised our daughter, who already owned a Peppa bubble bath, toothbrush, bag, nightie, pyjamas, two t-shirts, several play figures, large plush toy, small plush toy, camper van, sound blocks and twenty Peppa books, a trip to Peppa Pig World, as if she doesn't already live in it.

And what a world it is. As a rule I hate theme parks. I don't much like rides or enforced fun. But the rides were gentle (a trip in a train, or a boat, or Daddy's car, or if you dared - we didn't - a helicopter, hot air balloon or dinosaur). We saw a real duck in the fake duck pond which made my day as a keen observer of skeuomorphism, had a picnic just as the Pig family would, ate an ice cream from Miss Rabbit's ice cream parlour and, best fun of all, splashed in the muddy puddles fountain area (because as the show frequently points out, everybody loves jumping in muddy puddles). For this I advise taking a swimming cossie and a towel for the kids. Had we paid for our own tickets (see below) I may have been a little annoyed that this was my daughter's favourite bit, as our local park has something similar for free though without the Peppa branding. 

My daughter is two and a half and I would say this was at the lower end of the appropriate age group. The gentle rides were good and the queues for them (on a Monday before the summer holidays had started) just manageable for her, but it was one of those days where we were all in relatively good humour. Had we not been the whole thing could have been a disaster. 

Of course the thing about Peppa with its bright colours and jaunty music is it promotes good behaviour. It was incredibly hot the day we visited but there wasn't any pushing or queue jumping or shouting or swearing. In fact for a show that fails the middle class test, it was all remarkably, you know, middle class. 

There was also a soft play area (take socks with you, adults and children, if you want to be allowed in) though I have to admit the look we get when we admit to being a family that watches Channel Five is the look I give people when they choose soft play over a trip to the playground. Still, it would have been handy had it rained.

I often judge family days out by the price of the food on offer and the price of the gift shop. The food was fine for drinks and ice creams but I would definitely take your own picnic, though I felt a bit guilty about the pork pies I'd packed given the nature of our visit. The gift shop was expensive but had enough at pocket money prices to keep us all happy and we came away with a fridge magnet, a pencil case and a small Rebecca Rabbit soft toy that squeaks when pressed, and a present for my nephew too, and still had change from fifteen quid. 

All of this took place in a brightly coloured area of Paulton's Family Theme Park in the New Forest. We didn't have time to explore the rest of the park, which has rides, animals and gardens, but it looked to me, as we walked through it to the Peppa Pig part, like exactly the kind of place you'd allow a teenage Peppa to take Delphine Donkey when she comes to visit on French Exchange in ten years time and not worry that they'd meet the wrong sort and end up at a Facebook Party organised by Freddy Fox or smoking a spliff behind the playgroup building with some dodgy friends of Danny Dog. 

I'd go again, any time we could afford the price of a non press ticket - £22.50 in advance for an adult or a child over 1 metre (children under a metre are free) or £86.00 in advance for a family of four, and could face the drive down the M3. I just hope that when my kids are too old for Peppa (can you be too old for Peppa? I'm certainly not, but I suspect there may be a period between about 6 and 26 where one is both too old for Peppa and too young for Peppa) and want to go on the rides in the rest of the park, that they'll still let me pop in for a splash in a muddy puddle. 

www.peppapigworld.co.uk

www.paultonspark.co.uk

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It may come as a surprise to non journalists but the way this kind of thing works for journalists is that you ask the press office for free tickets and you then write about your visit either in a review or in other articles. I tend not to write direct reviews but most of my trips are written about at some point or another. Take, for example, a trip to Legoland a few of years ago which led to a mention in my national newspaper column shortly afterwards and a diary piece in the Evening Standard when I noticed that the wits in Windsor had added a removal van to the model Number 10 Downing Street at a time the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was in trouble. This means for the very small sum of a free ticket the place in question, if it is any good, gets rather a lot of free publicity. If it is bad you tend not to write about it.

So in the interests of full disclosure, which is something bloggers are expected to do these days, We received two free tickets to Peppa Pig World (and at under a metre, the kids were also free). As Peppa Pig is such a family kind of show, and also enjoyed by the grandparents in our family, I asked if we could also have tickets for my in-laws who planned to come with us, in return for me pitching an article about Peppa Pig World as an ideal place for all generations. It was, in fact, an ideal place for all generations - gentle rides, picnic areas, toilets, ice creams, a sense of wholesome family fun etc etc. But the press office refused my request so that is as much as I am prepared to say. Harumph. Or rather, snort. 

Brother V Brother

This afternoon I'm going to see David Miliband talk to students at Goldsmiths College where I am a part-time lecturer in journalism. We've spent much of the morning researching his policy positions on things and discussing what to listen out for when it comes to identifying a top line for the news stories I have asked them to write on it.

Perhaps because baby number two has been kicking me throughout the morning and because I'm wondering how our own family dynamic will change when this one arrives, two years on from the leadership election (and from the arrival of our first child) what I really care about is not who would make the best Prime Minister but the whole brother versus brother thing.

Sibling relationships are complicated, necessarily so as you can't walk away from a complicated relationship the way you can from a simple one, and family ties are important. But regardless of the complexity, of feelings of rivalry, of love and hatred and grudges and emotional tangles, I just still don't understand how one brother can publicly stand against another in a fight where there is only one winner. Even the word itself, brother, should be one of togetherness, not conflict - we call people we are not related to our brother or sister to show we see them as part of our community, that we walk in solidarity with them.

Those on the right might take a different views of siblings. It is the unionists and oppressed minorities most likely to use this fraternal or sororal term greeting after all. Tories might put family before society when it comes to their rhetoric, but only when that family knows its place. It is still the party of inherited privilege and inherited wealth and this of course also means primogeniture. Cameron may have invoked his stokebroker dad in his recent conference speech, though his line "My dad was a stockbroker from Berkshire" is disingenuous in its suggestion that he was the Berkshire equivalent of a self-made Essex man, what with wealth and aristocracy in his line for generations, but he doesn't once mention his three siblings.

By contrast, those on the left should reject thoughts about whether it is the younger or older sibling who should get opportunities. As a younger sibing myself I've even rejected the kind of double buggy that places the older child on top of the younger child to the detriment of the younger child's view, feeling it is unfair for the baby to automatically get the raw deal. So it's not that the younger Miliband, Ed, beat the older Miliband, David, that bothers me, but that they couldn't reach a deal together, behind closed doors. In fact they should have been fighting to stand down, each wanting the best for each other.

My mum says that when my brother and I were young children she used to feed the ducklings in the local park when we went to feed the ducks. When we were teengers she'd go for the half white and half grey adolescent swans, in their own awkward phase. Once we were adults she switched her feeder attentions to the grown ducks with their flashes of green and purple. Now she has grandchildren she's gone back to the baby ones again. I understand that - we identify, be it ducks, or public figures, with the creature at our own stage of life. So I, like most parents I suspect, still think of the Milibands and think, first of all, about their poor mother, and to be even more biblical than the obvious Cain and Abel comparisons, think about the Judgement of Solomon* and his suggestion to cut a disputed baby in half in order to flush out the real mother. (Perhaps the Labour Party should have suggested a leadership job share, with the candidate who said 'oh go on, let him have it then' being awarded the job).

See, I think about it a lot, every time I see either of the brothers in the news in fact. So of course there are multiple angles my students may take this afternoon, and many directions their questions may take,  but still, yes still, what I really want them to ask David, when it comes to the Q&A part of proceedings, is about his relationship with his brother.


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*(I Kings 3: 16-28) Solomon must decide which of two women claiming to be the mother of a baby is the true one. He suggests cutting the baby in half so they can each have part of him. The 'fake' mother agrees. The true mother says in that case the other woman can have him so the baby lives, and it is therefore decided she must be the real mother as she wishes above all no harm to come to the baby.

Sharing too much

Writing, be it a blog, journalism or books, inevitably draws on your own life and experiences. For this blog in particular, without the constraints of editors, I write about what I am interested in and this is sparked by what is happening in my own life. Which means I have an ongoing dilemma about what to share. This is not because I mind sharing personal things - anything that appears on here or published by me elsewhere I have thought through and decided I am fine for readers to know - but because many things that happen to me are not just mine to share.

Stories about my family life aren't just about me. They are about my husband, my daughter, my parents, my friends, my colleagues and others. So every time I write a post I have to ask myself the question 'is this mine to share?' Sometimes I probably get this wrong. But I am trying hard to ensure that while this blog is about me, and about parenting, and about my thoughts on parenting (with some books and products thrown in), it is not about my child in particular.

This means I have to censor some posts before I write them. Because it is not for strangers to know personal details about my daughter, be it her health, her name or what she had for breakfast. Occasionally I persuade myself that she won't mind, but then I delete the post before it is published. And whenever I almost slip up, I remind myself of the journalist who many years ago wrote an article in a national paper about a rare health problem his children have. Some years later I saw this journalist and his children out and about, and found myself scrutinising them for any signs of this health problem, which was of course absolutely none of my business.

Where do you draw the line though? If you write about problems bonding, or depression, or breastfeeding issues, might your child one day read your back catalogue of work (yeah right, as if they will take an interest in what you do!) and feel it reflects on their ability as a lovable child, as a source of happiness, as a competent feeder?

I remember the journalist Jon Ronson, whose funny column in The Guardian frequently featured his son, explained his decision to stop writing it as something he had always promised to do when his son asked him to stop, which he did. And Julie Myerson has made a career out of exploiting her children, which ended in tears when they found out they were the subject of her column and when she wrote a book about one son's drug addiction.

The publishing industry is to blame for some of this. My daughter sparks many ideas for articles I would like to write without giving her story, but parenting magazines do not want an article about an issue without a personal touch and preferably a picture of the two of us hugging. And journalists are to blame too of course - I don't want strangers to know about my child but it is my job to persuade other people to tall readers about their stories and the stories of their loved ones.

What it comes down to I suppose is that we all have our own line we will not cross. I do not think I will mind if one day my daughter says to me "I've read the cache of your blog mum and apparently parenthood is like, totally brilliant but totally terrible too." Perhaps it will spark a discussion about my love for her and how this trumps absolutely everything, even bitten nipples. But I don't want her to ever turn to me and say she saw a stranger looking at her oddly in the street, as if, you know, they were wondering about her health.

Blogging versus journalism

I'm guest blogging today over at Tots100 on the advantages of blogging over writing columns for newspapers. Read it here.

Related posts:
It's not just parents who should be interested in parenting
Why blog?

Choosing between risks

I'm still thinking about risk. I needed to go to the post office today and pick up a parcel. The baby was asleep in the back of the car having just dropped off after a slightly troublesome night. I needed the parcel but was loathe to wake her.

The road outside the post office has three lanes of traffic and is just after a bend that cars often take too fast. The parking bays are on the right hand side of the car and the baby sits in the back on the left hand side. So I had two choices if I was to pick up my parcel: leave her locked in the car, which was visible from the post office or take her with me but get her out of the car with traffic zooming past me on a busy road.

I took her with me of course. But I did wonder for quite a while what to do. Truth is I suspect taking her out of the car was more dangerous than leaving her in it alone, with an accident more likely than an abductor. Perhaps it is because I am a journalist though that my brain works in headlines. Mother Leaves Baby in Car would be worse than a headline about a road accident.

I was of course influenced by the fact that she was asleep. Any parent knows that sleep is sacrosanct. I have an image of a cartoon in my head in which a mother holds a sleeping baby while the house is on fire. "Come on," says the firefighter, "we need to get you out of here". "Later" says the mother, "She's just fallen asleep."

But where do you draw the line when it comes to risk? If you are buying petrol and you need to go to the kiosk to pay, can you leave your child in the back of the car? At ten years old? At five years old? At ten months old? I have always done this at the petrol station yet wouldn't outside the supermarket. What about if you need the loo when you are out shopping? Can you ask a stranger to watch them much as you would your bag or coat? I would not dare just in case the worst happens. Yet what is more likely - she is abducted by that stranger or she gets ill from licking the toilet floor as she sits in the cubicle while I pee?

Raising a child is about gradually allowing them the independence to weigh up and take risks. I'm fine with that (until she wishes to do as I did and backpack around the world alone anyway). But goodness me the risks we take with them are many and the chances we take are abitrary.

Related posts:
The risks you dare not take
Searching for lost children
My baby, my daemon

It's not just parents who should be interested in parenting

I'm back in the freelance market again after my maternity leave and, yawn yawn cliche cliche, I pitched an article to the family section of a newspaper. I liked the pitch - all about the rise of parent bloggers, but got a swift rejection from the editor. They try, the editor told me, to avoid articles about parenting, because the section is about family, not about parenting, and that they want articles that people can relate to whether or not they have young children.

Fair enough - they can publish whatever they want to publish - but I am quite surprised that they think parenting is only of interest to people actually doing it at that moment. Sure, the colour of your child's poo or their weaning habits may only be of interest to you and your partner, and perhaps an involved grandparent, but the wider issues of parenting go much further than this.

After all, who gets the blame if there are riots? Parents. Who is responsible for ensuring teenagers eat, drink and fornicate sensibly? Parents. Who needs to encourage children to ensure they get the skills necessary to contribute to society, economically and socially? Parents of course. Parenting isn't a niche issue - it impacts on us all, and I don't believe that only people going through it at the moment have views on it. I enjoyed reading about parenting when I was a child, when I was a childless 20-something and now. I imagine I will in the future.

"What we are looking for are stories from the other end of the spectrum, when families are grown up and the really interesting things in life have happened to them," the editor wrote back to me. And I am interested in these things too, but that's because I am interested in all types of human relationships. I am not old, but I am interested in stories about that part of life too. I am not adopted, but I find stories about adoption fascinating. I have discovered no deep dark secrets that I am willing to share, there are no famous people in my family, I think I know about all my siblings, no one has hidden any treasure and, luckily, there have been no great disasters. But I want to read about all of these things when other people write about them.

It's not to say my article should have been commissioned. Freelancers know that for every commission you get you also get twenty rejections. Indeed that is the job of an editor. And the joy of blogging, I am finding, is that you can write what you want without having to persuade anyone else to see merit in it in order to have it published. But I do resent the suggestion that being a parent and having young children is only interesting to those going through it at the time. I do believe it takes a village to raise a child, and I expect everyone in that village to be interested in how it is done, just as I am interested in their lives, whatever stage they are at.

Harumph.