Then we have Supermarket Zoo, by Caryl Edwards and Ed Eaves. This adventure revolves around a trip to the shops with Mum, but Albie soon realises it’s no ordinary supermarket – some of the stock looks like it wants to eat him! As they tick off the items on Mum’s list, Albie makes some new friends and decides that shopping isn’t so bad after all. In fact, he can’t wait to go next week!

The text is warm and witty, plus the bold, bright illustrations keep your attention firmly fixed on the story. It’s just as well, as this is another story we’ve read approximately 345,006 times.

I Love My Mummy, by Giles Andreae and Emma Dodd, is a firm Tweetie Junior bedtime favourite. The rhyming text about a little boy and his lovely mum bounces along and the pictures are both funny and sweet. The companion book – I Love My Daddy – is on our list of books to get.

And lastly, we both love Snuggle Up, Sleepy Ones by Claire Freedman and Tina McNaughton. This Savannah based bedtime book has a dreamy lyrical text but the most memorable thing about it is the quality of the pastel illustrations. Filled with delightfully sleepy animals, each page glows with colour and melt from gorgeous gold through the deepest of red sunset into the velvetty purple of night. It never fails to get Tweetie Junior in the mood to go to sleep, which may be why it’s such a hit with me…

So what are your favourite picture books, and why?

I don’t know who to attribute this quote to but used to have it on my wall when I was a teenager. Even so, I’d continue to ask the same questions to different people (and even my tarot cards) hoping for a different response.

I love giving advice – in advice columns or other self-help features, when working with clients and so on – but it’s usually a variation on the theme of, ‘You know yourself – and what’s right for you – best!’

Are you struggling with a decision at the moment? How would it feel to know that you couldn’t make a bad decision and that whatever you decide will be just fine?

Even if you don’t fully believe that, it’s likely to take some of the heat out of the decision making process. By being more light-hearted about it, you can focus more on what you love and less on what you fear.

And getting in touch with this playful, creative, relaxed part of yourself might help you come up with a solution you’d never considered when you were taking the whole thing so seriously.

Pay attention to your gut (did you know that the enteric nervous system, based in the human digestive system, contains as many neurons as the brain of a cat? That’s one pretty intelligent gut you’ve got there!).

How do you feel when you imagine yourself doing A versus B? What feels better? Lighter? More joyful? (If both feel bad, what at least feels less awful?)

Imagine yourself telling trusted loved ones about your decision. How will you describe decision A versus B? Which has more support? (I know, I know, am asking you to trust yourself but there’s a difference between giving all your power away by asking others and keeping people in the know about things that will affect them, at some level, too).

When you imagine yourself in the future – a month from now, a year from now, and on your death bed decades from now – are you i) likely to remember this decision you’re struggling over (is it as big a deal as you currently imagine)? ii) regretting not having gone the other way, or iii) pleased with the knowledge that you did the right thing for you at the time?

As you look back at decisions you’ve made with aplomb, how did you know, at the time, that this was the right thing for you to do? Were you conscious of physical sensations? Your body has all sorts of wisdom if you just learn to listen. Think about the physical signs you’ve had after making ‘bad’ decisions.

Then think about the best decisions you’ve ever made. What physical signs did you get then? How else did you know it was the ‘right’ thing for you to do?

If you believe in a higher power, ask for guidance. Even if you don’t, meditating and tuning into the wisest part of yourself can be pretty illuminating (truly, you DO know what’s best for you).

I love Gabrielle Bernstein’s prayer to her inner guide, ‘What would you have me do? Where would you have me go? What would you have me say? And to whom?’

Ultimately, most of our decisions aren’t life or death in magnitude but learning to make peace with the process can make life much easier.

The trouble is that stability and life are about as mutually exclusive as two concepts can be.

I remember Patrick Dean telling me a story some years ago about two philosophers. The first was a well-known, well-established man of thought who talked about three stages in life – growth, stability and then decay.  Then his student (a young upstart, no doubt!) argued that there were really only two states – growth and decay – because there were no guarantees in life, and we could never be certain that anything would stay the same. We only have to look at the cycles of seasons, weather, life itself – be it human, animal or cellular – to know that we are always and ever in a constant state of flux.

So, how does this relate to balance? My light-bulb moment was a realisation that the reality – in fact, the paradoxical absurdity of “balance” – is that to be in balance requires constant motion.

I’ve taken to likening it to standing in the middle of a seesaw and keeping both ends up in the air. It requires vigilance and constant adjustment… even when we achieve what looks like “perfect balance”, we’re still adjusting our muscles with microscopic movement! Of course, the secondary challenge of life is that sometimes, someone or something comes and plonks themself on one of the seesaw’s ends, and you can end up a-over-t, flying through the air, wondering what on Earth happened. Sometimes, though, the imbalance comes simply because we’ve stopped paying attention.

You know that feeling – when you KNOW something is true? And then you stop paying attention and you REALLY know it’s true? I’ve had the pleasure/displeasure of getting to practice my own re-balancing act over the past few months. Without going into depths of detail, suffice it to say that I’ve seen more doctors, specialists, had more blood tests and antibiotics than I ever care to have again in a three-month period. And it all came from not paying attention to what my body was telling me.

Having enjoyed a hard landing (my a-over-t flying was quite a spectacle, I can tell you!), I’m taking a dose of my own medicine. I remember, years ago, someone telling me that when you say “yes” to something, it’s important to ask yourself what you’re saying “no” to in making that commitment. It turns out that I’d been saying “yes” to work, and “no” to sufficient quality sleep, down-time, relaxing (preferably crafty) activities and, consequently, my health.

I am grateful to say that I’ve learned my lesson, though. After years of joking about the fool who invented a five-day working week (have you ever noticed there’s more truth in humour than humour in truth?), I’ve rebalanced my diary to four clinic days, to give me time to breathe, and to keep up with the paperwork that had been littering my evenings and weekends. I’ve booked a camping trip with my sister and some time away with my husband in a few weeks. I’ve given myself permission to sit and read with a warm cup of tea. And my, oh my, have I slept.

According to that certain philosophical upstart: in this balancing act of life, we get two choices.

I’m still not quite there yet, whatever “there” may be; but as ever, I’m a work in progress… which is another word for “growth”, as opposed to “decay”.

Hello Bea, I’d like to share an idea with you.

One hundred years ago thousands of women walked from all across Britain, starting from as far away as Lands End and Newcastle, converging in Hyde Park, London on the 26^th July.

There were 50,000 women assembled in Hyde Park on that day in 1913. They were demonstrating to the government how many women wanted the right to vote.

My idea, dream, is to celebrate those women this summer by gathering with a few, or with many, and walking. Yep, just walking, in Britain, our green and pleasant land.

As we walk I love the thought that it could be a time to share stories, about what it means to be a woman now, and a time to remember the struggles that the women who came before us endured for our freedom and rights. But also a time to think about what we can do to make life better for future generations of women. And let’s please walk with men, if they’d like to walk with us, men also spoke out and fought for our suffrage, let’s show our sons that equality works for all.

I feel quite emotional to be honest when I think about this. My fertile imagination conjures up images of walking through villages, women and men of all ages, perhaps some wearing a sash or a hat or rosette in remembrance. And (in my furtive imagination) there’s a choir singing or a group of Brownies have made cakes assembled in a village we walk through. And while we are walking, there are other groups, in other areas doing the same. We’re all walking and celebrating the fact that we’re free and honouring the fact that is was because of the suffrage movement.

So, that’s the idea in my head. A fabulous woman in Brighton is co-ordinating a route from Brighton to London starting on Sunday 21^st July and ending in a flop in Hyde Park on the Saturday 27^{th July}. It will be split into sections so that people can do a whole day walking, or half a day, or just meet us somewhere for lunch. My dream of smiling Brownies in rural villages is somewhat being eclipsed by finding it impossible to speak to the right people in District Councils and things like Public Liability Insurance.

I’m out of my comfort zone to be honest, in fact it’s all a bit ‘gahhhh, my comfort zone is WAY over there!!!’ But I really think it could be beautiful and fun to celebrate the women who fought for our freedom.

I’d love to know what YOU think?

And if you want to help? There’s so much we could do to make this glorious!

Could you organise a walk in your area? For one or two friends or on a bigger scale?

Would you like to work with me in a team to see if we can pull the Brighton to London one off?

So, please join me!

Please help me!!!

Let’s Celebrate Women.

Let’s Walk For Women.

Lucy

Walk for Women

I’m not even going to pretend, in spite of the title of this post, that we handled it exactly right. In such a topsy turvy, arse-over-tit world, there probably isn’t a perfect way to deal with it. I went the route that, on the whole, I suspect works best, which is to ask lots of questions to help her unpick the message: “what makes you think that?” “why does it matter?”. Her dad, perhaps because the revelation is a little more recent to him and he’s less immersed in parenting communities on a day-to-day basis, went rather more strident: “if ever anyone tells you that, it’s rubbish!”. He also reeled off a list of counterexamples – not least the one that pointed out that our daughter’s second favourite colour, after red, is blue – and pulled out a shirt of his with pink and lilac stripes on it.

We probably overreacted. On further, gentle examination, it transpired she was actually only applying this rule to this particular product – although, as it’s only the packshots that show the gender distinction in that ad, it just goes to show how much even small details get noticed. But I immediately took to Facebook, depressed and feeling slightly like a failure. How could our daughter somehow not have absorbed my righteous indignation through the placenta? Why doesn’t my kid get a free pass on this shit? I’m a good feminist. I mean, I have failings and make decisions that aren’t always what a good feminist might do, but basically, I know this gendered marketing malarkey is rubbish and therefore I shouldn’t have to suffer it. Cos that’s how it works, right?

Of course, I know better. And I knew that going to Facebook was wise because it’s a place where people like Bea’s editor, Keris, can provide words of comfort and sense. One friend, Jo, whose sons are all kinds of awesome, reiterated what I suspected; that the best approach is not to go so gung-ho that you make the forbidden fruit too appealing. And really, I don’t want to exclude all pink and glitter from my daughter’s life at all – I just want balance, which apparently is too much to ask for sometimes. So – because I like to try and move myself from a point of helplessness as the gender juggernaut trundles towards me to a point of power where I amass my tools to fight the onslaught – here are my top three tips for dealing with this kind of nonsense when it strikes.

1. Don’t fight an assertion with an assertion.

The antidote to marketing assumptions is a questioning gaze. Also, try to find out what it is specifically that your child is saying, and why. It turned out my daughter was very specifically applying pink and blue to that product; she was perfectly willing to accept that her own multicoloured cartoon character pull-up pants are for anyone because she hasn’t seen an ad or packaging that suggests otherwise. Making it a bigger deal at her age – 2 and 3/4 – is just confusing.

Also, if you want to teach independence, you’ve got to teach independence, which means they get an opinion, not just your thoughts projected onto them. Obviously, you’re going to make plenty of decisions for them at this point, especially if they’re tiny, but it’s never too early to try to respect their individuality.

2. Don’t overdo it.

A rant goes over the head, and has far less power than a calm explanation; making yourself approachable sets a good precedent for far more delicate conversations when they’re older.

3. Fill your space with counterpoints.

Take inspiration from neutral clothing chains like Polarn O. Pyret, Tootsa MacGinty and Pigtail Pals & Ballcap Buddies, the last of which I can thank for giving me a mantra to pass down to my toddler: “colours are for everyone”. Seek out toys that show gender neutral play (or remove the packaging so kids are not led by the external appearance). I don’t worry about limiting TV per se, but I do TVR to try and avoid ads – though clearly not as well as I could have been. But having a gender balanced home in as far as you can achieve this means that when this situation does arise, you have a wealth of counterexamples at your fingertips.

This will not change overnight, but plenty of campaigns are starting to have an impact, with Boots, Hamley’s and other retailers gradually giving in to pressure from parents to change the gendered way they display toys. It is a matter of time, patience and persistence – as well as the snowballing successes of alternative options like PPBB – before manufacturers begin to follow suit, and advertisers along with them. That doesn’t mean sitting back and waiting for it to happen, but it does mean that options are beginning to appear and need to be grabbed with both hands.

It ain’t over til the gender-neutral choir gives an encore.

[Image: OttawaAC]

This post is meant to highlight some of the difficulties I face as a disabled person, the relentlessness and how it can make me feel. I call it an accidental poem, not what I set out to write but what I ended up with. Every time I’ve looked at it since I’ve thought of more disability things I’m bored by – strangers staring while I’m doing something, someone I just met watching me put my coat on and saying to ask if I want help then grabbing it and taking over. That sort of thing. I’ve not made any changes but it’s been oh so tempting.

It originally appeared on my blog on 1st May 2013 as my contribution to Blogging Against Disablism Day 2013.

BADD is a blog swarm type event that’s been run by an excellent blogger known as The Goldfish each year since 2006. Disability bloggers and allies come together to write on that one day and share what disability means to them and well, just blog against the discrimination we face. Those blogs are written by people from all over the world, a huge range of disabilities and from all walks of life.

The range of topics and aspects covered is vast as well. It includes things I never would have thought of. And some very real honesty. I had thought of linking to a few entries I liked in this but its difficult to pick my highlights. So I’d just recommend taking a look at the Master list and The Goldfish’s blog in general. BADD this year was dedicated to the memory of Elizabeth McClung who died a few days before it. Beth faced a hell of a lot of struggles and discrimination in her life but write about those with a candour and level of openness that few bloggers manage. Plus, she shared some amazing pictures. Her reach and impact were huge. Screw Bronze!, her blog, is another worth exploring.

Even in this enlightened age, women’s wrestling is still often seen as separate to “mainstream” wrestling. UK promotions are still primarily male-focused, with the occasional female bouts thrown in depending on location and audience, but some promoters still happily admit, “I don’t like to see females wrestling,” (as one man who shall remain nameless told me) and won’t book them on their shows.

It’s fortunate then that the UK has two high-profile, high-quality women-only promotions, including Bellatrix (formerly known as WAWW, the World Association of Women’s Wrestling), run by the legendary Knight family.

Sweet Saraya Knight is best known as the first British champion of SHIMMER, possibly the most famous women’s wrestling promotion in the world, a title she gained at the start of 2012.

She met her husband Ricky Knight over 20 years ago when she was a teenager working at a holiday camp, and he was one of the wrestlers on the bill there.

“I met Rick when I was 18 years old and I was working at Pontins Holiday Camp, Hemsby,” she recalls. “He was 38, very muscular and a perfect gentleman. He asked me to marry him after six weeks and 22 years down the line we are still together.”

The Knights have also founded a wrestling dynasty of their own.

“I have never pushed my children into wrestling but they love the business as much as I do,” she says. “Rick and I love the fact they followed us into the job, and being a wrestling family sets us apart from the rest and sticks us in a very prestigious club alongside the Harts [the Canadian wrestling dynasty, including most famously Bret 'The Hitman' Hart]. My children are my pride and joy and whatever they do I will back them: it’s a bonus that they are excelling in a sport I adore.”

Women’s wrestling some of the veterans recall, has only recently started to become mainstream; for a while in the 1980s, it was banned in London for having a ‘sexual element’. Saraya thinks things might finally be changing, though.

“After 22 years in wrestling, I have seen wrestling change many times, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad,” she says. “I have seen women’s wrestling dip to a point that I wrestled Klondyke Kate every day for four years because there wasn’t anyone else out there to work – although I loved working Kate.

“There are girls out there that will always be regarded as tits and arse, but that’s because they want to be perceived that way. There are girls out there that are s*** and can’t work, but believe their own publicity, and their ego and attitude spoil them and lose them work.

“But right now, in the eve of my career, it seems that some girls actually get it! Some of the workers out there now are breathtaking and some are even better than the boys. I wish they could have been about 10 or 15 years ago so I could have spent more time with them.

“With these girls in the job, the business is in good hands. When I eventually retire, I will still watch with great interest and will still train the girls – and definitely be very opinionated because that’s who I am. I am proud to be part of an ever-changing business, I am proud to be a female wrestler and I am proud to be a Knight.”

It’s a good sign that she thinks things are starting to change and British female wrestlers are really concentrating on being the best that they can be in the ring – for example, Nikki Storm, who is living out the dream she’s had since she was ten.

Although she was always a wrestling fan, she hasn’t always been impressed with the way the big US promotions have treated their top female talent: “The bra and panties matches, even though they are a thing of the past, have also had an impact, I feel, with the way people perceive women’s wrestling,” she says, adding, “Even though Nikki Storm is a sexy beast, no amount of money in the world would make her agree to a match like that.”

It’s not surprising then that in the spring of 2012, Storm launched a scathing attack on the wrestling industry’s ingrained sexism via an article on the Ringbelles website, criticising men who refused to treat her as an equal in an attempt to protect their “boys’ club”, adding: “My biggest issue is the disrespect that I get from fans, workers, bookers and promoters who dislike women’s wrestling. Doesn’t matter how good you are – if you’re a girl, you will never be high on the pecking order.”

Storm has been on the UK scene for a few years and has built up a scarily large collection of shocking stories.

“I remember speaking to a promoter a few years ago, and he actually said he would never pay a girl more than twenty quid; even if the girl had been in the business for years, he said he would never pay her more than £20. It was not the figure that bothered me the most, it was the way the dickhead had emphasised ‘a girl’. Needless to say, I never have and never will work for that guy.”

She has another example where a promoter has made explicitly sexual comments to her, making her feel “hurt and betrayed”; now she admits, “Looking back I think it was a joke – but would he have said that to a guy?”

It’s not just the so-called banter she and other women have to deal with backstage – it also has an impact on the way female wrestlers are used on shows.

“A few promoters have asked me and the girl I’m on with to not do any strikes as ‘they look weak when a girl does them,’” she says. “I have responded each time by going out there and hitting fantastic strikes. Clearly these men have never seen Nikki Storm in action. After the match, the promoters were very complimentary about the strikes and the match itself so that makes me feel great – that I have managed to change their opinions slightly about women’s wrestling.”

It’s tough to change attitudes, though, and tough to judge when and how to speak up and challenge people, admits Storm. “It’s hard to deal with this because a huge part of you wants to throw a hissy fit and have a good rant and perhaps go all honey badger on their arse. Then another part is like be professional, it’s a job, just do your match, get your money and then get out of there. I mean, there are drawbacks to every job, right?”

She pauses. “Yeah, I know, it’s not a convincing argument, I have failed to convince myself on that as well. Another part of you doesn’t want to speak up in case you lose future work. It is very difficult as you have so many conflicting opinions about it. In the past I have just got on with it and ignored it but in the past year I think I am a much more confident and secure person than I was when I started wrestling in 2008. If I lose work over it, then so be it.”

Storm isn’t deceiving herself, though – she’s not going to be able to fix everything by herself, and this isn’t a problem confined to wrestling.

“I think that it’s something that will not happen overnight and it may take decades to overcome. The double standard is so prevalent in society, not just wrestling. In the middle ages women were burned at the stake and accused of being witches if they were a bit different – I mean, we have moved on from that, so hopefully we will live in a world where there is no sexism: wishful thinking, perhaps, but attitudes can change given time, and hopefully it doesn’t take, like, 500 years. I think that when guys start speaking about the issue about sexism in wrestling it will make a difference. When more girls start speaking about their opinions and experiences it will also have an impact.”

Spandex, Screw Jobs and Cheap Pops: Inside the Business of British Pro Wrestling is available to pre-order now.

Nüsslisalat- a fresh, lovely salad

Nüsslisalat

A firm favourite with the Swiss, Nüsslisalat is mainly lamb’s lettuce dressed with tasty extras and a creamy sauce. Toss lamb’s lettuce with fried bacon bits, croutons and roughly chopped hard-boiled egg. Top with a creamy French dressing and enjoy!

Sennenrösti

Rösti enjoyed 15 minutes of fame during Ready Steady Cook‘s hey day. The speedy chefs on that programme usually served rösti as a side dish but you can make it into a whole, wholesome and hearty meal all by itself with a little effort and by adding cheese, bacon and a soft fried egg.

Par-boil waxy potatoes and leave to cool. While they’re cooling fry off your  bacon pieces and drain on a sheet of kitchen roll. Grate a handful of (preferably Swiss) cheese. Peel and grate the cooled potatoes and mix with the bacon pieces. Season with salt and pepper.  Melt butter in a heavy-bottomed frying pan. When butter is bubbling, turn heat down and tip the potato-bacon mixture into the pan. Form into a flat, round shape about an inch thick. Cook slowly, covered, until potatoes form a golden yellow crust underneath and can be flipped. Flip the rösti and sprinkle grated cheese over the golden crust on the top of the rösti while it finishes cooking on the other side. Meanwhile, fry an egg until the yolk is soft.

Serve the freshly cooked rösti on a warm plate with the fried egg on top. Don’t bother counting the calories, just enjoy.

Wurstkäse Salat- sausage and cheese salad

Wurstkäse Salat

Sausage and cheese salad? This is a dish I wouldn’t have dreamed of ever trying until I was with a friend who told me it was her favourite summery dish. Then, when I did try it, it became one of those dishes I can’t resist when I see it on a lunch menu on a sunny day out. In a restaurant, you can choose between a simple salad (just the sausage and cheese) or garnished (with salady trimmings like beans, corn, beetroot, lettuce etc) and it’s always served with a gorgeous crusty bread to mop up the salad dressing. Mmmmm mmmmmmmmm….

But enough drooling, here’s how you make it. Take some Lyoner sausage or  and chop into bite-sized chunks. Chop roughly the same amount of cheese into the same sized chunks and mix together with the sausage. Very finely slice or chop as much or as little onion as you please and add it to the cheese & sausage. Mix all together with a creamy French dressing and a dollop of mild mustard. Season.

Creamy French dressing and mustard is truly the best way to dress this salad but for a healthier (perhaps lower calorie) alternative, mix olive oil with lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Either serve the salad on its own (Einfach/Simple) or over chopped lettuce and various other vegetables. A hard-boiled egg is a great accompaniment. Don’t forget your crusty bread and a glass of crisp white wine.

En guetä! as we say here in Switzerland.

Unlike me, she is not fond of reading: “…in her opinion books were for those unable to entertain themselves in any other way. For those who could not draw…or stare out of a window or daydream or suck their knees; these people, she thought, might possibly be able to find a use for a book.”

I can’t remember a time when I haven’t been a reader, when I haven’t had at least one book within reach at all times, even if I’ve then chosen not to read it but to daydream or suck my knees instead. My reading recently had been confined to rereads of old favourites, with the occasional addition of a new book by a known author, but now that maternity leave has ended and I’m back at work in a bookshop, my to-read list is expanding by the second.

I also seem to have started my new book glut with a theme: books within books.

I’d managed to miss that the lovely Charlie Fletcher (author of the amazing Stoneheart trilogy) had a new book out last year, but was lucky enough to spot a free copy of it in the staff room on my very first day back.

‘Far Rockaway’ contains stories within a story in one of the best possible ways, by putting the heroine within them. Cat has been involved in an accident, and while her parents hover by her hospital bed, she is involved in a quest featuring characters from the books her grandfather used to read to her. As well as being a fabulous story, and featuring the brilliant cover tagline “Real girls rescue themselves”, Far Rockaway has made me dig out my copy of Treasure Island, and look for copies of Last of the Mohicans, Kidnapped, and The Three Musketeers.

‘Among Others’ by Jo Walton won both the Hugo and Nebula Best Novel awards in 2012, and I’m still a bit unbelieving that I’d managed to miss out on her previous work. It’s the story of Welsh girl Mori, who has been badly injured in an accident that killed her twin sister. They were attempting to stop their mother from using black magic, and now she is marooned in England at a boarding school where she doesn’t fit in and escaping into books to save herself.

I read an awful lot of SF when I was Mori’s age (although not in the 70′s) and so many of the books she references are familiar. Even the unfamiliar ones don’t break the pattern of the narrative though, just made me add them to that to-be-read list. I love the friends that she makes through her reading, and it’s the first time in a very long time that I’ve found a character that resonates with me as much.

Reading these two made me head back to my favourite books within a book book (book); ‘Fire & Hemlock’ by Diana Wynne Jones. There’s a bit where Polly receives a Christmas parcel of books with a note that reads: “…They were the things they told me in the bookshop that nobody should grow up without reading.”

“She read for the rest of Christmas, mostly kneeling on the floor with her hair dangling round the book like a curtain, but sometimes, when a cousin crawled up and tried to grab the book, she took it away behind the sofa and crouched there in the shadows.”

Of the twelve books, only nine of them are named (I secretly allocate the missing titles to be some of Diana Wynne Jones’ other books) but among them is ‘The Sword in the Stone’, the first book in the series published as ‘The Once and Future King’.

This takes us nicely back to Rose, now a few years older, and book free since Indigo (her brother) read her chunks of ‘Morte D’Arthur’ when she was eight. In ‘Forever Rose’ her teacher has just discovered how little she reads, and so Saffron (sister) and Sarah (friend) are attempting to find her a book that she will enjoy. After attempting some HP “reading the book after seeing the films felt like going into black and white slow motion.”, ‘The Wind in the Willows’; “…rodents. Dressed or caged, they are not for me.”, they have some success with ‘Where the Wild Things Are’; “it got into my dreams” (and she draws the forest on her bedroom walls).

Sarah gives her ‘The Once and Future King’ and “Kay was there, and Arthur and Sir Ector. They were talking and I could hear. It was like walking into a strange room and finding it unexpectedly full of your friends. It was hours later when I put that book down again…my brain had the sort of dazed feeling you get when you wake from a very vivid dream. So that’s what they were talking about. Reading!”

That’s it exactly Rose. That’s the feeling I get from certain new books and from old favourites that I’ve had sitting on my shelves for over twenty years (24 for The Dark is Rising). It’s also nicely the feeling that I get when reading about Permanent Rose herself.

It was, of course, completely innocent.  We were sitting on the couch, she on my lap with our stomachs facing, her head on my shoulder. She reached up, pulled my head down close to give me a kiss… and then she added something special.

Shocked (and slightly skeeved), I immediately reacted by drawing away. To her 3-year-old brain, I had decided to play and suddenly she had her tongue out and was trying to pin me. I couldn’t help wondering if she was making her sexual preferences known and then I wondered if I cared.

I decided that I didn’t (though I still kept dodging her).

This French-kissing incident (and the idea that my youngest was revealing that she digs chicks (though it could, of course, just be that she loves her maman quite a lot and was just goofing around)) brought to mind the whole Mariage Pour Tous broo-ha-ha that’s recently fired up France and how the streets of Paris have been alive for months with people showing their support for their preferred camp.

Photo from Nouvel Observateur (so awesome)

Now, for a country whose very motto is Liberty, Equality and Fraternity (in the sense of brotherhood), the fact that there was actually a massive contingent of folks that believe(d) that certain rights don’t apply to  certain people based on their sexual orientation, sort of made (makes) my head explode.

I also don’t understand how these same Manif(estation) Pour Tous people can think that they’ll be taken seriously with a spokesperson who has a pseudonym like Frigide Barjot (à la Brigitte Bardot (who everyone has heard of from her younger St Tropez(?) years and who is now quite an activist, though I’m not sure of her effectiveness as she seems to carry a mantle of loony bird around with her)). Frigide means the same thing as English’s “frigid” (but also “sexless”) and Barjot means, quite simply, crazy.

She sounds like a great person to be representing one side of a democratic movement, non?

And yet!  While it was understandable that the number of people out in the streets was quite high in support of the potential new law giving homosexual couples the right to a civil marriage, given France’s motto it was surprising that there were quite a lot of people in the opposing camp: that didn’t believe that homosexual couples should have the right to marriage.

What was even more shocking was the number of kids that were brought along to these opposition walks that infiltrated the capital to show what a “proper” family should look like. I had to wonder what these families were doing: nurturing prejudices in children against homosexuals because they’re not “like us”, as though homosexuals are somehow “lesser” because obviously, they shouldn’t have the same rights.

These people quoted the sanctity of marriage sanctimoniously.

These people quoted the fact that children, which for some are the “purpose” of marriage, should have an adult member of each sex as a role model within the home.

I actually heard one guy on the news say, “It’s hard enough for straight folks to adopt a kid! If gay people are allowed to adopt too, then the couples that have already been waiting forever, will have to wait even longer.”

Right.

Now, I’m not even going to address the fellow who was worried about not being able to adopt because that’s pure foolishness.

However, the very idea that marriage between a man and woman is sanctity itself is ridiculous. Now, it’s been many, many years since those university history classes, but I distinctly remember writing a paper on marriage: it was slavery back in Roman times. There was nothing sacred about it. The wedding ring was simply a sign of “being owned”.

In terms of the marriage practice being transferred to Christianity when Christianity took over the reigns of civilization, The Old Testament clearly states (doesn’t it?) that Adam was Eve’s “master”. It was her punishment for eating that stupid apple (that some stories say she didn’t know she wasn’t supposed to eat) from the Tree of Wisdom: that for all of eternity, woman would be dominated and ordered around by man, her master.

Doesn’t anyone think that perhaps Christianity pulled this into their ideology because woman was already a slave? Making the tyranny official, if you will. Fantastic: that’s totally a valid argument for the sanctity of marriage. Really.

I asked my in-laws what they thought. Unsurprisingly, they opposed the new law because of the idea of children needing both types of adult as role models to grow up “properly”.

What the hell is “growing up properly”?

Because, honestly, before our era here in our comfy Western civilization, there were two facts that kept life short for everyone. War culled the male population down and childbirth culled down the female population.

More families than not were in situations where one or both of the parents of the children in the household were, quite simply, dead. Widows remarried thereafter for protection but they often got more children into the bargain to (perhaps grudgingly) take care of because that was their role when remarrying a widower. While yes, the balance is still woman/man, how many of these marriages were actually for love?

Is that a model that’s worth fighting for? Is that really a “proper” environment for children to grow up within? Knowing that one or the other parent is grudgingly raising them? I’m sorry, I’d prefer kids to grow up loved.

Even in our own era, there are tons of single parents out there. Doesn’t that throw out the window the whole idea that you need two parents, one of each sex, to raise a kid “properly” already?

Personally, my opinion is that it’s really none of my business what people do in their own bedrooms. What matters in this era is love (and honestly, since men and women are so different psychologically, I can’t help but think that homosexual marriages will be a helluva lot more successful).

Writing this made me wonder: does this law make certain heterosexuals feel threatened?

Hmm…

This is what I told my in-laws: that marriage these days can be for love and that’s something that should be encouraged. Homosexuals shouldn’t be deprived of officialising their vows because of the sexual orientation they were born into. They gave me the impression that being homosexual was somehow “learned”. I responded that homosexuality being something learned was exactly like being born with a dark skin color was something “learned”.

Understandably, we dropped the subject because… I’m right. However, I found their point of view disturbing because it’s one that a lot of French people hold.

Thankfully though, on April 23, 2013, France passed the law: homosexuals can now marry here.  They can also adopt.

France’s inscrutable belief that everyone in this country should be able to enjoy Liberty, EGALITY and Fraternity won.

And because the French cannot help themselves, immediately thereafter certain opponents to the law, the law that was voted in democratically, filed some sort of non-constitutionality claim.

There’s little chance that their claim will have any affect on the law voted in, but that isn’t stopping the Manif Pour Tous people from continually clogging up the streets of Paris. I imagine that they’ll storm the first homosexual marriage if they can (which should be possible as of June 2013).

They should give it a rest: they lost democratically.

I’m grateful though that the law was passed, because if, indeed, my youngest decides that she needs to share kisses with another woman, should she decide to make France her home, she’ll have the liberté to do what she wants because by the time it’ll matter for her, the idea of égalité in this regard will be ingrained in the fraternité of her fellow citizens.

She’ll be accepted for who she is and won’t be an outcast within her own country.

At least I hope so.