My new career, stalker or eduwarrior?

So which is it to be? Last week I fell into the slough of despond or the trough of disillusionment, whatever... The reason for this despair is that I examined Danny Boy's school books. He has had several assessments in the last couple of weeks and appears to have gone backwards in every single subject. In History he has gone from a level 7 to a level 3 and, at the age of nearly 13, has spent about six weeks colouring in pictures of Henry VIII, devoting himself to shading yellow and green syphilitic ulcers on Henry's legs. WTF? His English book hasn't been marked by his teacher since the term began although he has, once again, designed a chocolate bar for the rest of the class to mark. Having been involved in Marketing and New Brand Development for 20 years I feel well placed to judge whether Shakespeare or I will leave the greater legacy to this country. So, I've decided that my new career is going to involve either stalking Ed Balls or stirring the masses to rebel against the dumbing down of education. I am on a mission.



The cavalry arrived on Tuesday, just in time for The Terminator's birthday. When I came home from work I could make out a dim halo of light shining on the driveway, yes it was Sean Sean the Leprechaun with a camping headlamp strapped to his forehead, finishing off The Guardian Sudoko in the car. El Vel was at his side, rubber gloves poking out of the suitcase, ready for action. As usual, to the utter bewilderment of Lurch, they brought their own towels and mugs as well as all of the half-finished food in their fridge. After five trips between the car and the house we managed to squeeze it all in.



I showed her DB's books and, as a former Deputy Head, she was appalled. I made a list of issues and phoned the Head of Year. She responded fantastically and is interviewing the Subject Heads and then Danny Boy, she and I will be meeting. Hope is glimmering, Danny Boy is scowling, I am crusading. The fridge is sparkling, the vegetable patch has been dug over and planted with purple sprouting broccoli and cabbages, and as I waved goodbye to my parents I felt that all was now right with the world. And relax...

They grow up so fast, don't they?

We spent half term with old friends in Hampshire. My friend from university married Lurch's school friend and they have two boys, exactly the same age as ours. It was lovely. On Halloween we went trick or treating, not that I really approve of that activity, but I relented. About 6 teenage girls came round to call for James, Danny Boy was all studied cool, simmering embarrassment and self consciousness but tailed along with the group. I noted that all of the girls were taller than me, and considerably thinner.

My friend and I took the two younger boys trick or treating. The last door they knocked on was that of a bent and twisted old man of about 98. The Terminator saw him approaching through the frosted glass front door and took his werewolf mask off. Eventually the door opened, The Terminator said 'don't worry, we'll go away' but the old man insisted on searching for something for them and, after 15 minutes he came back and gave the boys 5p to share. They said thank you very politely and my heart swelled with pride when TT explained he'd taken his mask off to avoid causing a fatal heart attack.

Back home to their cosy warm house. Matt's an architect and they've renovated some old stables. All of the children were playing in the garden and Lurch knocked up his speciality for us, Mojitos - topped with fresh mint. Delicious! Life was sweet until I heard the deafening tones of The Terminator from the garden 'You f***in' w***aah!' I inhaled the mojito suddenly, coughing and spluttering, aghast. I called them inside and asked TT what he thought he was doing shouting in someone else's garden, and him a guest to boot. 'Don't worry, Mum' he responded 'it's not real, we're playing Chavs and Robbers! It's so much fun swearing...'


Having put a stop to the game we returned home a couple of days afterwards. A week or so later a shifty looking Danny Boy sidled up to me. 'What's wrong?' I asked 'I've got something to tell you' he replied, looking pale and drawn and at the floor, 'I've been looking at porn on the internet'. This time it was a cup of tea that I ingested. We sat down to talk about it, I found it very, very difficult, I was cross but he had told me. He then explained that all of his friends were doing it and one boy, Robert, spent every Friday night with a couple of Jack Daniels and Cokes surfing the world wide web. He'd given Danny Boy the websites. 'Robert's mother is a teacher and Robert is telling lies' I explained to him. I also told him that porn wasn't real life and that psychiatrists offices were full of young men who were unable to have normal relationships after porn addiction. What else can you say?

I subsequently found out that one of his friends had actually downloaded two porn videos, paid for with his father's credit card. The parents had to send their son's birth certificate to the company to prove that he was 12. Naturally, every computer in the neighbourhood is now fitted with new software and we're trying to hold back that crashing tide...

As you sow...

Rat a tat tat! I woke up to the sound of the door knocker and peeked out of the bedroom window, the shiny red post van was parked in the drive, again. Parcels and packages have been flying in from all over the world; portuguese grammar books from specialist London bookshops, CDs from Portugal and DVDs from Brazil. 'It's for you' I told Lurch, but he had already bounded downstairs to answer the door and unwrap his latest order. The elementary evening course is getting out of hand. I am about to commit Lurchicide. 'How do you pronounce cidades dos homems?' he asked, studying a DVD with intensity. I told him. A small furrow wrinkled his earnest brow 'I don't think Felipa said it like that', he then gave me his version, delivered in a forceful, swishing nasal twang. 'Has Felipa asked you if you come from Minsk, Belarus? And don't ask me again if you think you know best already. I told you I haven't studied portuguese for 20 years...' 'Ok, ok, I was only checking' Lurch sighed.

I am interested but Lurch is incapable of half measures. To humour him I asked him about the other people on the course. 'It's an odd mix' he said 'half of them are single women about your age and oddly enough the others are fifty something men who are married to Brazilian women. Felipa keeps asking them why their wives aren't teaching them at home, I can't understand it, they just look at the floor and don't answer her'.
I can and I was off on one of my favourite rants: Modern Day Slavery. I see these Youth Stealers in Sainsburys, miserable, grey haired paunchy men, being followed by tiny beautiful Thai, Russian or Brazilian wives, staring dispiritedly at the shelves through the bars of their supermarket trolleys, loaded with beer and cleaning fluids. I cannot believe that the practice of buying a wife on the internet is legal. I usually give the men a hard stare to show my disapproval. Lurch says it is none of my business and I am in no position to judge, both parties deem it a fair exchange etc etc but it just does not feel right to me. So, from Ipanema to Ilkley Moor. I explained to Lurch that the reason the Brazilian brides did not talk to their husbands was because they already had to do unmentionable things with them and a conversation with the Youth Stealers may very well push them right over the edge.


However, I don't want to risk alienating my two male readers so I'll desist with the rant. We start the day with a quick recap of the night before's pronunciation exercise. Danny Boy and The Terminator stare at Lurch over breakfast, incomprehension and bewilderment etched on their sleep-rumpled faces. The volume and nasal twang seem deafening at this time of day. We go to work and then when we arrive home the DVD goes on - 'Cidades dos homems' as I mispronounced earlier - a gritty soap opera about teenagers set in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, made ever more difficult to understand because Lurch repeats everything like an exotic parrot in need of a hearing aid. Then to bed where he rustles the papers of his homework, once again asking me how to pronounce things and subsequently correcting me. It can only be a matter of time before Felipa moves him up to the next level, probably at the request of the rest of the class.

Smudge on my character

I have a skeleton in the closet and, after years of burying it, suddenly it's surfaced again. It's risen its terrible head because Lurch has started elementary portuguese evening classes.

In the 1980's I studied Hispanic Studies with subsidiary french at university. I could manage the french and spanish but I'm afraid that I began portugese in my second year, which was, coincidentally, one of the two most debauched years of my life. I had a new boyfriend and we used to go to a pub quiz every Sunday night. Monday morning 9.00am was my portuguese class. I think I made about 2 and after a term and a half I received a departmental warning and was told by my personal tutor that I wouldn't be able to go to Spain for my year abroad if I failed portuguese. I rallied and immediately bought all of my literature books in english and taught myself a code for translating portuguese to spanish to english. I only had to translate from portuguese to english and I managed to pass. I couldn't speak a word of it and my tutors were not impressed.

Cut to 5 years later and Colin, the european head of the global drinks company I worked for, had asked Human Remains to produce pamphlets on everybody to include 'skills they were too modest to mention'. After an attention-seeking entry of 'European' under nationality I also included portuguese in my language skills(hoping it wouldn't be noticed). 'My Favourite European Corporate Polyglot! Amazing! You are the only portuguese speaker in the company!' bellowed Colin at me. I tried to smile winningly and hoped he would forget but he was so proud of me, the European Corporate Polyglot.


I realised I had nothing to fear, nobody spoke portuguese so I basked in his admiration until the fateful day when he cantered towards me, waving a piece of paper, yelling 'The Brazilians are coming! I've prepared your itinerary, let's go through it this afternoon!'. I felt sick to the stomach, he had scheduled in 5 key brand presentations in portuguese, to be given by me, followed by a tour of London by helicopter, with me as translator, and a fabulous dinner to end the perfect day, with me as translator again. I had done the same with our French and Mexican distributors so there was no reason for him to presume I wouldn't be able to do it. My knees were shaking, I couldn't speak. Eventually I had no option but to tell my immediate boss, sobbing with worry and shame. She laughed her head off and rang Human Remains to explain my lack of expertise. They arranged for me to go on a residential 'Active Listening' course on the appropriate days and I got out of it. I have never been more ashamed or relieved in my life. Colin was bitterly disappointed and harangued HR but, saints that they were, they wouldn't budge.

So Lurch began his course. When he arrived home after the first lesson I shouted 'boa tarde' to him. He came into the bedroom with a quizzical look on his face 'I'm no expert but isn't it boa noite when it's dark?' he asked. 'Hmm, maybe' I grunted. 'I told our teacher that you had a portuguese degree by deception' he countered. I said nothing.

Routine, interrupted

When I work in Leeds I have a routine that is automatic; rush out of the house about ten minutes later than I would like to be, hair wet, no make-up, clutching my mobile phone to make sure I remember it and dash off in the car to try and beat the Leeds rush hour traffic. Stop on the way (usually in a traffic jam) and put velcro rollers in my hair and make-up on my face about twenty minutes before arriving at the car park. When I get to the car park I change into my trainers to do the fifteen minute power-walk from the car park to work, aware that I sometimes look very strange, depending on my outfit/footwear combo. However, as stated before, a woman over the age of 40 in the UK is rarely given a second glance and is blessed with an unspoken invisibility cloak. I haven't got a purple hat yet but I'm sure the moment's not too far away.

Last Monday I set off from the car park more slowly than usual (my thigh muscles were burning from the run) and got about a third of the way there. I was distracted from my normal robotic routine by a commotion behind me as I was crossing the road at traffic lights. There were two feral-looking men with pinched faces shouting, swigging from cans and careering along the pavement. One of them had a bloodied nose and fresh scabs all over his face. I hurried along a little faster, feeling quite threatened even though it was early in the morning. The shouting got louder and they got closer and closer, I ended up breaking into a slow jog, but they were still catching me up. Other workers were crossing the road to avoid them but it was too late for me. I sped up again, clutching my handbag and suddenly I felt them grab me from behind. I turned round screaming and looked straight at the shaved head and bloodied face of the most frightening one. 'What do you want?' I yelled. 'Don't panic love, I'm sorry for scaring ya but we couldn't let ya go to work like that...' he still had his hand on my arm and then his friend reached out to touch me too. 'What do you mean?' I asked, preparing for my dress sense to be insulted by a hoodie.



'We can't let ya go in the office with a roller stuck to ya jumper darlin'!' and he produced a bright yellow velcro roller from my back.



I apologised profusely and we ended up walking to work together - the scabby one admitted that he looked terrifying but said that he'd been set upon on Saturday night by some 17 year olds when he'd been roaring drunk, tottering around with a take-away and got beaten to a pulp. He then advised me to get some ghd hair straighteners that wouldn't stick to me and we waved goodbye. Afterwards I realised that none of the business women I passed said anything to me about my dayglo roller. How strange!

Great Big Run

I collected my schoolfriend from the station at 5.15pm on Saturday and we immediately went into our usual routine. We lined up the Nurofen Plus, loo roll, jelly beans, Lucozade tablets, Lucozade carb gel, Lucozade Sport, change for the bus, thermos flasks, numbers and safety pins, ankle chips, change of clothes and baby wipes plus lipstick for me; there's nothing like an unmade-up purple face in the hideous pictures, taken without knowledge by the professionals, to make you feel like re-mortgaging.

This year we were both inexplicably nervous, perhaps because we'd missed last year and I was worried about my knee and not doing enough training. I'd also been suffering from a psychosomatic cold all week which had panicked me into imagining a total, fatal collapse on the side of the road, breathing my rancid last into the face of a poor St John's ambulance volunteer.

Lurch cooked the boys supper and schoolfriend and I ate huge amounts of vegetable lasagne. I had excelled myself during the week in the carb loading department; coffee and cakes in every local tea shop and mountains of pasta and had denied myself wine for two weeks, apart from a couple of blips when things really got too much. I had worn my tracksuit non-stop at home to get myself in the mood, even Lurch noticed and remarked 'there's a whiff of the Vicky Pollards about you these days'. My preparation could not have been more keen. Off to bed at 10pm, awake in a cold sweat at 2pm, 4pm and then up at 5.15 ready for the trip to Newcastle.

The Great North Run is such a moving and inspirational race. It was chilly but bright as SF and I arrived at the starting line with the 52,000 other runners and we both started blubbing at the radio interviews with fundraisers. We also chatted to lots of people and were totally impressed with a 65 year old woman with an 18 year old's figure. She had only started running at 53 after a school reunion where she saw some little old ladies and realised they were her classmates, her best time was under two hours, she was brilliant fun. Schoolfriend and I are hugely competitive and she was confident. We have an agreement to start together but run apart. We were off, with a big high five from Chris Hoy - funnily enough I didn't notice Tony Blair or anybody else at the start.




It was a tough race, I'd forgotten the hills again and really struggled at 4 miles, my legs were hurting and I was boiling hot, thankfully the Geordies were out in force, children were squirting runners with water (I think!!) and kind people were handing out ice pops from their homes (don't eat the yellow ones), all gratefully received by me. Several onlookers were smoking tabs and drinking cans of lager and I would have given everything I possessed, even the boys, at one point to trade places but I forced myself to keep going. At 6 miles I started to feel OK and swallowed nearly the whole packet of Lucozade carb tablets. I had also drunk 2 bottles of Lucozade Sport but still took on board a further pouch of Lucozade at one of the stations. The eleven mile hill is normally my worst point but the sugar rush helped me to carry on without walking and suddenly at 12 miles I realised I could probably get a personal best if I just tried to hang on. I swallowed the Lucozade carb gel and gave it my all. 800 metres to go, 400 metres to go, 200 metres to go with the crowds cheering us on along the seafront and I managed to sprint the last bit to achieve a personal best of 2 hours 7 minutes and 24 seconds. Woohoo! But I was nearly sick at the finish line due to Luco-nausea, tablets, gel and isotonic drink combining to create a near volcanic effect in my stomach. Yuck! Will not be touching that stuff for some time, however I'm grateful for its help.

Met Schoolfriend at the family bit, trying not to gloat, she didn't know her time but her daughter texted her to say she had done it in 2 hours 6 minutes and 42 seconds!!! Pipped at the post by 42 seconds!! 2 all now. Still, we were both thrilled with the result. Got home, happy, sore and tired, had a lovely hot bath with a glass of champagne and fell asleep at 9.00pm.

I would like to say a big thank you and a big congratulations to everybody who did it and made it such a brilliant race. Cheers!

Is this you?

Nobody except Lurch knows I'm a blogger so I was asked at work to discover as much as I could about bloggers for a project on consumer segmentation. I spent a lot of time investigating, but that doesn't mean I'm neurotic. This is one article that summarised a lot of others, thought you might be interested!

Computers in human behaviour (somebody tell me how to do a link!!)

The Big Five personality inventory measures personality based on five key traits: neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness, openness to experience, and conscientiousness [Costa, P. T., Jr., & McCrae, R. R. (1992). Normal personality assessment in clinical practice: The NEO Personality Inventory. Psychological Assessment 4, 5–13]. There is a growing body of evidence indicating that individual differences on the Big Five factors are associated with different types of Internet usage [Amichai-Hamburger, Y., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2003). Loneliness and Internet use. Computers in Human Behavior 19, 71–80; Hamburger, Y. A., & Ben-Artzi, E. (2000). Relationship between extraversion and neuroticism and the different uses of the Internet. Computers in Human Behavior 16, 441–449]. Two studies sought to extend this research to a relatively new online format for expression: blogging. Specifically, we examined whether the different Big Five traits predicted blogging. The results of two studies indicate that people who are high in openness to new experience and high in neuroticism are likely to be bloggers. Additionally, the neuroticism relationship was moderated by gender indicating that women who are high in neuroticism are more likely to be bloggers as compared to those low in neuroticism whereas there was no difference for men. These results indicate that personality factors impact the likelihood of being a blogger and have implications for understanding who blogs.