Gardening without permission
I’ve been a very Disobedient Child this morning. I got my daughter to school late (only a weeny bit…) because I figured it was more important to finish the cool story I was telling her (scrabblingly remembered from Shonaleigh’s telling), and then I went and graffittied a council fence, and pulled up some plants on land that was neither public nor mine! Shocking behaviour.
I wonder if it stands in my favour that the fence was a hideous one, erected alongside somebody’s house when the council deigned neither to make safe the lovely brick wall, or build a new one. With some string and some strips of old fabric (otherwise destined for the bin), I cross-stitched a butterfly. Yes, cross-stitch, a resort of the cutesy, and the lacey tablecloth. Pfft.
Ugly fence be gone!
I wonder if it stands in my favour that the plants I pulled were weeds and grass, growing in the cracks of an abandoned hop-scotch, on a scraggy piece of wastland which used to be a council-owned garden and green-space, before they sold it to developers. Who now, of course, are finding it tricky to sell, despite the fact it has planning permission. Yes, planning permission! The only green-space in a huge warren of red brick terraces with postage-stamp back yards, and the council cheerfully sold it off and gave blessing for more houses!
I’m all for Guerilla Gardening , “fighting the filth with forks and flowers”. I’ve done it before; a friend and I snatched back some wasteland from, it turned out, the council, and with help have turned it into a beautiful garden, with fruit bushes, herbs, and wildflowers. A little bird in the council planning department recently let slip that whilst the council had intended to lease it as a possible car-park for the (as yet un-built, privately owned) nextdoor flats, given what we’d done to the space, that permission would almost certainly be turned down! Result!
I’m not sure if we’ll be as lucky this time, but who cares? It’s been derelict for years, in the current economic climate it’s likely to continue to be so. So in the meantime, why shouldn’t local people have somewhere nice to sit, local children have somewhere grassy to play? It’s in a residential area, wouldn’t it be great if someone organised a street party, or a BBQ?
Three of us had been at work less than an hour, when some passers-by saw what we were doing, and gave us £8 “to buy some flowers” – on the proviso there was a pink one, as the little girl with them loved pink. That, more than anything, made our day.
So ner to those who would own and enclose land they never use, like a child putting their arm round their school-work so others can’t see. The dog may sit in the manger, but he can’t stay there all the time. And when he’s looking the other way? Well, I guess that’s my cue.
Keep Curry British!
I’ve been a bit hot under the collar since the European elections, I do confess. The child of people who looked fascism in the eye during WWII (my mother as a Red Cross volunteer during the Blitz, my father in occupied Denmark), I now find myself having to write to my uncle, who fought in the Danish Resistance, and tell him we’ve elected a closet nazi to represent us in the European Parliament. It left me ashamed, and angry.
And then I read this, wonderful, forgiving, eloquent and powerful observation. Thank you, Tom Attah, for giving me hope, and perspective.
Read “Curry and a bit of Motown”, by Tom Attah.
No really, read it now.
Honesty is the best policy
I cannot be alone in loving the way my local branch of Yorkshire Bank has downsized and closed half its ’shopfront’ to a new betting shop 
Shall we wait for the government to revitalise politics?
Or should we just get off our butts and do it ourselves? Hmm, how long do I have to think about this one…
For further information, and hopefully inspiration, I will hand over to George Monbiot; an infinitely smarter and more coherent person than myself….
“For the first time in my life I resent paying my taxes. Until now I have seen this annual amputation as a civic duty – like giving blood – necessary to sustain the life of a fair society. Suddenly I see it as an imposition. Its purpose has reverted to that of the middle ages: subsidising the excesses of a parasitic class. A high proportion of the taxes I pay will be used to bail out companies which, as the Guardian’s current investigation shows, have used every imaginable ruse to avoid paying any themselves.
I think that for many people this is the final blow: the insult which seals their alienation from the political process.”
Now click here to read what he proposes we all do about this. And then do it, of course. Or something like it. I have more to say on this whole doing vs. waiting for someone else to do it for us thingy, but not right now. You’ll have to wait. Ha ha.
A Good Childhood
(edit: I should advise this is a brain-dump, rather than a cohesive blog post with a definite point to make. Take from it what you will.)
I’ve been reading A Good Childhood, the published results of the inquiry commissioned by The Children’s Society in 2006. It made lots of headlines a few weeks back – the usual tabloid misrepresentation and oversimplification, most of it picking out half a sentence which appeared to blame working and single mothers for the shambolic state of the world today. The usual thing. I hope working mothers (a bizarre term in itself – are there mothers that don’t work?) are used to it by now, and can shrug it off as the misogynistic rubbish it is.
Anyway, it clarified something for me, in a bad way.
A few months before this report was published, I started seeing adverts on the side of buses, stating that “3 in 10 children in the UK live in poverty”. I, along with many others, I suspect, found this quite shocking. But, being as I am ever distrustful of shocking figures peddled by any media, I went home and did the maths. I was then even more shocked to find out that two of those three children were mine. Hmm. But we don’t live in “poverty”; we have food to eat, a roof over our heads, clothes to wear, a good education, many and varied leisure activities… somone’s manipulating the statistics, and demeaning what the word “poverty” really means. I thought. I even had the opportunity to have a good old rant on some internet forums with people who felt as disgusted as myself.
I’ve read the report now, and I understand. It is not poverty they’re exposing, it is inequality.
“In European countries a person is defined as poor if they have below 60% of the typical (median) level of income. This is, as it should be, a relative concept – it shows just how far you are from enjoying the things that other people’s children take for granted. In Britain 22% of our children are living in this type of poverty.” (A Good Childhood, chapter 8.)
We all know (don’t we?) how much children want to be like their friends. Dress like their friends. Go places that their friends go. I understand now, what they mean when they say “poor”. It means going beyond the feelings of ‘but there are people in India much worse off than us’ and embracing the feeling that ‘but in this country, at this time, with all that we have, our children should not be subject to this.’
On most of the other counts (Family, Friends, Values, Schooling, Mental Health), my kids come out with top marks, so I guess that should make me happy. We chose a single income lifestyle, so that one of us could be at home with the children. Our happy, secure, well educated children. But in this world of “relative concepts”, there will always be those with more. More shoes, more holidays, more freedom… Always those desires that gnaw at our subconscious. I still don’t know what’s right. I suppose it is the lot of a mother to be constantly aware of what she can give her children, and what she can’t.
So next time someone disses “working mothers” – those who work to pay the bills, and provide for their children – I may just have to vent my outrage in a rather physical way.
Lost a glove, love?
Well, it’s OK, everybody does it. The number of gloves you find lying around at this time of year is quite staggering. This annual phenomenon has been commented on elsewhere, so go read that (and associated links) for a more thorough, scientific explanation.
But you know what? I found your glove. I took it, I tagged it, and I released it into the wild!
These gloves were released in Broomhill, Sheffield – let me know if you spot them. It felt kind of naughty, just leaving them there, a bit like committing glove graffiti. But, they’d already been left! And picked up (quite possibly not even by me – yes, you know who you are, my fellow random glove picker-uppers!). So, it can’t hurt really. It’s nice to leave messages – I hope they make people smile
[ps: the grey one says "Property is theft" - it's a bit hard to read. It's supposed to be ironic. The words, not the hard to read... Oh never mind]
Bake for a change
This kind of stuff really pushes my buttons. A gingerbread eco-house competition!
I love to mix and match. I have children to look after, and work to do, and I’m not exactly the most organised of individuals anyway. So finding time to act on all the things that bother me in this world is not easy. Things like going on protests and demonstrations, organising or helping with events, meetings, stuff like that.
For a while I resigned myself to being an armchair activist; writing too many letters to my bored MP, getting into pointless arguments on internet forums. But then I was invited to get involved with the Open Source Embroidery project and it slowly began to dawn on me that just as some people use their time, their finances, and their ability to organise to voice their protests, so I could use what *I* was good at. I can sew, and I can bake, and it’s high time I joined the growing wave of crafters and bakers in reclaiming these “domestic chores” from those who would demean them.
I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense, but I think what I’m trying to say is along the lines of, Yes, I can be a Feminist and still like to cook! It might be more ‘traditional’ to link the skills of a graffitti artist with the voicing of a political message, but why can’t a stitcher have something to say, too? Or someone who makes gingerbread houses?
Fair warning
As I’m only on my second post, I felt it only fair to warn ye vaste hordes of avid readers that this site will be updated only sporadically. I now have two disobedient children of my own (hurrah), and I don’t actually like computers (especially this one, but that’s another story), so the odds of me having a fabulous insight and me having the time to commit it to type, happening at roughly the same time, are low. But do check back, it’ll be exciting when it happens!
Knit-in for Peace!
I’m still young, but I hope when I’m old, I’ll be like these guys: The Granny Peace Brigade!
John Emerson characterized their protest very well:
“Grannies vs. generals; slow, manual creation vs. fast, technological destruction — this is not just non-violence, but perhaps an opposite of violence.”
Their calm, unflustered, and stubborn knitting of socks and blankets for victims of both sides reminds me of a grandmother (not mine) during WWII, who would watch the aerial dogfights above London and every time a plane went down, English or German, would utter “A mother just lost her son. God bless them”.
Looking at some of these women, and listening to their words, makes me realise that with age there comes a confidence, and a wisdom. Strip away all the playground posturing of our leaders, all the militarism, pride, protectionism and aggression. These disobedient grannies know what’s really important in this life. How inspiring.
