Democracy for toddlers!

Last time I had a baby and then started to get the euphoria that comes with the hormones settling down and some sleep returning, I started a blog. This time round I've neglected the blog a little and chosen to use the post baby yearning for change to start a business. I'm so excited!

For the past decade or so if someone asked me what I really want to do careerwise I have talked about combining education and writing. In some ways I have done that - since 2005 I have been a part-time lecturer in journalism and worked part time as a freelance journalist. It's been great and I intend to carry on doing this.

But though it's a cliche to start a business on maternity leave, I couldn't help but realise I've never before felt the energy and enthusiasm for a new project that I am now feeling.

So I am thrilled to announce my new business, Fisherton Press. We're a small independent publisher focusing on picture books for children, that adults also like reading. Inspired by some of the brilliant books we've read again and again (and again and again) over the past few years, and also inspired by the tedious ones, I'm hoping to publish books for children that excite everyone who reads them, young and old. We're aiming to publish our first books in September 2015 and hoping to publish 10-12 in the first year.

Fisherton is my maternal grandmother's maiden name. Those of you who know me personally will know she was much loved - in fact my daughter was named after her. The Fishertons had a printers on Brick Lane in East London and because of the link with printing I decided to seek my mum's permission (duly given) to use it as my company name.

The long term plan is to forge links with schools and other organisations to fulfill the education part of my aims, running workshops in schools and working out ways to get free or cheap books to children who don't own many books.

The short term aim is to publish fun, witty, beautifully illustrated books that cover subjects as diverse as farting and the birth of civilisation, targeted at young children, and to sell enough copies to make this a viable business.

I love being my own boss. Freelancing has suited me beautifully though doing the work at the same time as having young children is starting to get difficult as it just doesn't work when an interviewee asks you to ring them back the next day and you have to say sorry but you don't have childcare again until this time next week. It's no good for deadlines either. Lecturing is also great with the autonomy of being in charge of your own classroom, and the bonus of being able to see, sometimes, the difference you make to the abilities and confidence of the people who pass through your classroom. But you still have to work within the rules of your editors and your institution. I'm hoping that having my own business will allow me to try out all kinds of ideas and hunches, take risks and explore interesting ways of doing things.

With that in mind here's one thing I am trying out. Kickstarter is a crowdfunding website that allows people to donate to your creative project. If the donations reach the amount you are asking for, or over, you get the money to use for your project. If it doesn't reach the target amount, you get none of it.

One of the books I want to publish is explaining elections to young children. I don't hold with the idea that children aren't interested in politics, or that politics can't be explained in an age appropriate way. In fact I think it's vital that we do so if we are to tackle low voter turnouts and general apathy. Politics needs to be normalised. And what better way than by starting young, with a story book about two children whose parents support, and campaign for, different political parties, but who remain friends nevertheless. It's a serious subject but the book is a lighthearted story - it's (hopefully) not po-faced or earnest.

I decided to try to crowdfund this project on Kickstarter as I want to pay the creators of this book an advance, as opposed to the royalty only deal I am offering most writers and illustrators. That's because although I think this book will get loads of publicity, I don't know whether it will translate into sales, and while the business is a labour of love for me, for the writers and illustrators of our books it's their job.

What I'd really appreciate from anyone reading this blog is a tweet or a Facebook link or a blog post or a mention on any forum you use linking to the Kickstarter project. I really need to spread the word about it as far and wide as possible. Here's the link: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/88684307/democracy-for-toddlers

And here's the temporary website for the new business - www.fishertonpress.co.uk - if you have an amazing idea for a book the young children you know would love, and I reckon most people do, please do get in touch.

Thanks.

Impolite notices

I've had a few months off from posting to this blog - my energies have been taken up with an exciting new project, all of which I'll write about shortly. Before I do that though I feel the need to vent a little about polite notices.

I vehemently hate polite notices. In the most impolite, want to scrawl 'fuck off' all over them kind of way. In fact sometimes that is exactly what I do. I hate the way they use the word polite, because as we all know if you have to explicitly say something is polite, then it invariably isn't. I hate them too because they seem to be primarily used as a way to pretend somewhere is child friendly when actually it is wholly unfriendly.

When we were on holiday in the south-west last year we went to Dartmouth where an inviting looking tea shop had a sign on its door saying no under eights. I was fuming - because we weren't allowed in it suddenly became the only place in the world that I wanted a coffee and a tea cake. But on reflection it was a relief, because when we did find somewhere else and our child threw up halfway through tea, at least we weren't amongst child haters and tutters. And a sign saying no children is more honest that one pretending children are welcome and then filling their walls with instructions, warnings and aggression.

The Orchard in Grantchester near Cambridge is a lovely tearoom. You can eat your cake in a deckchair under fruit trees without a care in the world bar the wasps and the occasional hard fruit falling on your bonce. It's was here that Rupert Brook was referring to when he wrote "And is there honey still for tea?" But it's ruined somewhat by notices saying what you can, can't and must do all over the place.

Or at the Royal Free Hospital where we had to go recently after an accident, and where the medical care was exemplary but the notices were not only jobsworthy and passive aggressive (and least those at The Orchard do not try to hide the fact they are aggressive) but pretended to be kind and for the sake of fun whilst really sucking the kindness and sense of fun out of the children's waiting area.

I often take photos of polite notices. Sometimes it is for my private collection so I can look at them when I feel my blood pressure is too normal and I want to raise it a bit just for fun, and other times it is just to be naughty. I took perverse pleasure out of taking a picture of a sign at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight that said no cameras. It said no mobile phones too so I took the picture with my phone. Ha! That'll learn 'em.

This sign at a playgroup at the Methodist Church on Pages Lane in Muswell Hill, North London, infuriated me. Almost everything about it pissed me off, from the idea only mums may have buggies to the suggestion that only parents with twins can use the lift, never mind parents with two children who aren't twins or one child but who need help anyway or even a person without children who needs a lift.

Yet sometimes there's a polite notice, as in a notice that is polite rather than one that calls itself a 'polite notice', that almost makes up for all the others. I liked this one at the Donald McGill Postcard Museum in Ryde, Isle of Wight:

Though my favourite one recently has been on the gate to Highgate Wood in North London. The use of the word please really does mean that though it is officious and has a steep penalty for disobedience, it genuinely is polite.

Here's a little plug for my Kickstarter crowdfunding project for a book about elections aimed at toddler. Here's the link - every pound or dollar helps, and I have until Nov 21 to get to the £2000 total. And here's my previous blog post explaining what I'm doing. 

How to save your child's life (if they are choking or drowning)

My husband and I did a children's first aid course when our daughter was a couple of weeks old. It was the kind of course where you sit on a beanbag on the floor and everyone speaks in what I can only term a 'registrar's voice' - pauses where there should be no pauses with an exaggerated serenity. Serves us right for doing it somewhere called the 'Active Birth Centre'. It was great though and made me feel that I might actually know what to do in a crisis.

It has also given me what I suspect will be a lifelong fear of grapes when the teacher told us that we shouldn't just be cutting grapes in half for toddlers, but for older children too, and even for adults, as the size and smooth surface of the skin makes them prime candidates for choking incidents. I'd dismiss this as over the top except a friend told me that she asked a paramedic once what words were most likely to give them a sense of dread when rushing to a call and he replied 'toddler' and 'grape'.

My son had a choking incident when he was a few months old. I don't know whether I was remembering the course without thinking about it or whether instinct just kicked in. Either way I managed to flip him upside down and get him to cough up the mucus he was choking on bringing him from maroon to white very quickly and averting disaster. Mostly I have dealt well with this incident, because I feel at peace with the way I handled it having done my job as a mother and made everything okay. Still, I think about it every day. And I still cut grapes in half.

Consequently I want to flag up this brilliant article by my friend, the journalist Kate Hilpern, whose daughter suffered a similar episode, and which every parent, in fact everyone parent or not, should read.

I thought she was dying

And also another great article that was flagged up on a forum I use recently, on how to spot if someone is drowning.

Drowning doesn't look like drowning

Some blogs and articles I like (an occasional series)

I keep meaning to link to this brilliant blog by fellow freelance journo Cath Janes. We 'met' online through a forum for freelance journalists called Journobiz which was set up by the journalist Janet Murray. Before becoming a journalist Janet was a secondary school teacher. By chance I taught at Goldsmiths College, where I am a lecturer in journalism (and where Janet also now lectures), one of her former students who told me that she had been the best teacher she had ever had. Which is nice.

I am writing this assuming that now everyone admits to internet dating, unlike ten years ago when everyone was doing it and no one admitting to it, meeting on a forum is also no longer an embarrassing thing. If it is then please just assume we met at a party, had a chat and got on well so stayed in touch (which genuinely really is how I got together with my husband - not that I wasn't internet dating at the same time).

Anyway here is the blog - it's is insightful, (and sometimes inciteful), witty and often very very rude.

The Kraken Wakes

Why do I have so many readers in Norway?

Like all bloggers I am a little obsessed by my stats and seeing how many page views each article has had and other information about the demographics of my readership. I am thrilled this blog has readers from all over the world but puzzled why so many of my readers are from Norway (after the UK and USA). I just wondered whether any Norwegian readers could tell me why?

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. 

That's not my prince...

Readers who know me in person will know that I have a little obsession with the royal family. Not that I wouldn't prefer a republic of course, but until that day comes I'll enjoy analysing pics of the Duchess of Cambridge (I like her, I'll shoot her last!) and judging Charles for his silly outbursts.

Nevertheless I am not sure where my daughter's constant demands of "Where's the handsome prince?" came from during the seemingly interminable coverage of the outside of the Lindo Wing while waiting for the birth of Kate and William's baby. Jokers among you will suggest she could have asked the same question once William did appear but that is not the point - the point is that I don't believe I have ever used the phrase 'handsome prince' in front of her. I blame nursery.

But the desire to make little girls want to be princesses and to find handsome princes is absolutely ingrained in our culture. I thought we'd avoided it - my mum reported that she took my daughter into a shop recently and when the shopkeeper asked my daughter if she was a princess my daughter replied 'No, I'm xxxx' and gave her full name - but just a few weeks later and a trip to an English Heritage shop at Portland Castle while on holiday in Dorset led to an insistence on wanting a pink princess pen as her souvenir even when I tried to steer her towards a rather excellent girl pirate pen in the same range

So I wasn't necessarily convinced by the That's not my Prince offering from Usborne, though I love the series generally. I needn't have worried - I was sent a review copy and it's ever so witty, though I'd have liked one page to say 'That's not my prince, his hair is too thin' in reference to William's balding pate. Instead the princes have hair that is too fluffy, sashes that are too silky and cloaks that are too velvety. If my daughter continues to insist on talking about handsome princes, I hope she does so in as irreverent way.

The same week we were given a copy of That's not my Pirate. I was ever so pleased that one of the pirates featured was female, though a few more wouldn't have gone amiss. It was a missed opportunity though, as she's not the right pirate because her shirt, which is pink, is too silky. I'd have liked her patch to be too rubbery or her false leg to be too long or her parrot to be too fluffy. 

We love the series in my house though - so simple yet so clever. We've also got monkey, car, bear, kitten, santa, penguin and snowman, though I rather fancy the monster and dinosaur ones. They've not yet done a Grandpa one yet though, so for my dad's birthday we had to make our own.