Wife in the North

by Judith O'Reilly

  Monday, 11 June 2007

  It’s a duck, dammit

  School is having an anti-bullying week. That is good. Let’s start from me being happy. Look at me sitting in the classroom, see me smile. I am relaxed and ‘happy’ and prepared to listen, indeed participate, although I hate to participate in workshops. The only other workshop I ever attended was an anti-racism workshop at my son’s previous school. Naturally enough, the only parents to attend an anti-racism workshop were those least likely to be racists. When I gently made that blazingly obvious point to the earnest and trendily multicultural woman in charge (sorry, ‘facilitating’ the workshop), I was told that we could feed back what we learned to the other parents at the school gate. That is to say, we could hazard which of the young mothers sported a Union Jack hip tattoo underneath her thong and white sweats, then engage her in conversation about her right to wear a burka. How exactly do you start that conversation? ‘Hello, you look like you might be a Nazi. How do you feel about Islam?’

  We were invited to a workshop on emotional literacy and bullying. The problem with politically correct workshops is they turn me into a raving fascist. I am, to all intents and purposes, sitting still. In reality, as I listen to the liberal drivel which is sold to you as fact, I feel my orange plastic moulded chair move further and further to the right, so far and so fast, the world starts rushing by me in the opposite direction in a hasty pudding blur of Jerusalem and fireworks.

  The workshop started off: ‘When I am included, I feel …’ We took it in turns to fill in the gap. I said ‘happy’. I could have said ‘surprised’. Then went on to: ‘When I am not included, I feel …’ I said ‘gutted’. That about covers it. I drank my tea while the nice lady wrote things on her large pad of paper hanging from the board. Alert. Alert. I picked up my ginger biscuit and put it down again, uneaten. I have to be seriously disturbed not to finish a biscuit. The people who might be involved in a bullying incident include a ‘receiver’. ‘Receiver’? Why not ‘victim’? She said she would come back to that. That was the moment the chair started travelling really fast through space and time. I had thought that in a bullying situation there was a bully and a victim. I checked the handout to make sure I had not misheard. It is explicit. There is a ‘person (or child) who is bullied’ or who is a ‘target of bullying (rather than “victim”)’. It goes on: there is a ‘person doing the bullying, using bullying behaviours (rather than “bully”)’. It goes on: ‘The reason for this choice of words is that bullying does not come about as a result of fixed personality traits in children, leading them to become a “bully” or a “victim” (both terms which can imply a permanence and resistance to change).’

  The handout continues: ‘In fact, research suggests that many perfectly nice and popular children use bullying behaviours on occasion, and many are unaware of the devastating impact which their behaviour has on the children they target.’ Well, that’s all right then. Because you can attach the words ‘research suggests’ to a statement does not make it true. I would also suggest that if a child is a ‘target of bullying’, I doubt very much whether the child doing the targeting is ‘perfectly nice’. These bullying children are being ‘bullies’. If any one of my ‘perfectly nice’ children used bullying behaviour, I would, without hesitation, call the little wretch a bully.

  ‘It would also seem that anyone could become a target of bullying if the context allows this to happen.’ ‘Context’ presumably means the enormous, jug-eared fourteen-year-old who insists on pinning you against the wall and thumping you repeatedly because he thinks you are gay. The jug-eared one is not a bully, he is demonstrating ‘bullying behaviours’ for his own reasons. Doubtless, remembering that would make it hurt less.

  Then it asserts: ‘For most children the roles will be dependent on a situation, and they will be, over time and in different contexts, target, witness and person doing the bullying.’ That is to say, we are all bullies, passive bystanders and sometime victims. I have had therapy and I think this utter psychobabble. The nice woman assured us that in all likelihood, we had all been guilty of bullying behaviour or at least witnessed bullying. I wanted to groan out loud at this point; I wanted to clutch my face and shriek at her. When I dared warble: ‘Not true’ and that she could perhaps speak from her own experience but not for anybody else, certainly not for me, her answer was that perhaps I just ‘hadn’t realized’ what I had been doing. I did groan out loud then. How do you answer that one?

  My child was excluded by other children from activities and physically hurt. He was, for a time, a victim. Point. Par. Ends. The school acted. They did a good job. He is no longer a victim and I am an altogether happier mother. I was not happy sitting in that classroom listening to what I considered politically correct drivel, passed on as received wisdom. At the end of it, I was so angry, my hands shook as I gathered my papers together. I was not shaking for my child. I was shaking for the children out there whose lives are misery: fat girls and misfit boys who will hang themselves this year or next. They will do that because of bullies. Let’s use the B word. When behaviour and actors in that behaviour are not given their proper names, the names everybody understands, it undermines faith in the rest of the strategy. The lady assured the parents and teachers gathered before her that we did not want a ‘blame’ scenario. Why not? What is wrong with blame? The flip side of blame is responsibility. Let’s be sure and tell the kids. Accept responsibility for your actions. Own it. Say it out loud; you are the only ones who can. ‘I’m a bully and you can’t touch me for it.’

  Thursday, 14 June 2007

  All aboard for the double decker

  I am trying not to think of London as home – to think of it instead as ‘London’, a place I used to live. A while ago, driving the children to my favourite beach, we came over a hill, the narrow road falling away, cutting through the fields, out to the links. Tucked behind the golf club was a big red London bus. My first thought: ‘There’s a big red London bus.’ I am nothing if not obvious. My second: ‘Can I get on it?’ Third: ‘Will it take me home?’ Tsk tsk. I mean ‘to London’. I glanced quickly at my husband as he pulled the car tight over into the side of the hedged road. I thought: ‘Can he see it? Can he see the bus? Or is it only me?’ I am not sure whether I was disappointed or relieved when he said: ‘Look, kids, a bus.’ He turned off the engine. ‘Make sure Mummy doesn’t get on it.’ I thought about running for it. I decided against it for fear the bus would pull away in a cloud of fumes and dirt just as I reached for the pole. I did not want to see the children’s faces when I turned back to them having bungled my escape.

  Yesterday, I was braver. I hopped on. The big red London bus rumbled down the A1. There is something about a bus journey. You think: ‘OK, this time is mine. I am excused a little while. Now, where is it that I’m going? Why? And who is it that I am again?’ I sat on the top deck at the front of the bus. You have to if you want to pretend you are driving. You could tell you weren’t in London – little things like green fields and cows.

  My conductor, a former management consultant, and the driver, a former miner, bought the Routemaster bus two years ago. It costs £15,000 to buy and do up a bus. It has done 3 million miles since it was first commissioned in 1966, and has carried an estimated 3 million passengers. They call the bus ‘Kenny’ after the mayoral man who sacked it from its city job. Now, instead of commuters and shoppers and metropolitan folk, it carries golfers and tourists up and down a thirty-nine-mile stretch of Northumberland’s sandy, castled coast. I like Kenny. I put my hand on his metal bonnet and felt it throb. I could tell Kenny likes me. I rang his bell. Twice. We have a lot in common, the two of us. We’re about the same age, we’ve been around, we’ve seen things, we’re natural Londoners, we’re probably both a bit too big, back-end-wise. Admittedly, no one points at mine like they do when he thunders past, but Kenny and I have a bond. If I return to London, I am taking the bus.

  Friday, 15 June 2007

  Billy the Kid

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nbsp; The boys have lost TV for a month. A month! That is to say until we move back into our cottage. I was about as happy as the children were. It is one thing for me to take TV away, it is another for Billy the Kid to take it away when I am out at my book group. For a month. I wanted to know why. Apparently, the six-year-old swore at his brother and then his father. ‘Where the fuck did he get that from?’ I asked my husband. ‘I have no fucking idea,’ he said defensively.

  Tuesday, 19 June 2007

  The moving finger writes

  We were having a family day out when I did something to my back. I cannot quite stand upright. Periodically, I groan. I was squatting next to the children, pleading with them to choose something in a shop so I could go back to a cup of tea and a cheese scone in the café next door. I admit I was buying silence. I am not proud of it, but I was desperate for the tea. As I stood up, I thought: ‘Oops.’ It was so bad, I was clutching at the shelves. The nice shop assistant came over. I said: ‘Having a bit of a problem standing up. I just need a minute.’ He was about twenty-three; he thought I was seventy. The car was parked up a hill. As we laboured up it, my husband said to the boys: ‘We’ll have to roll Mummy down this hill like a pig in a barrel.’ I was in a considerable amount of pain at this point, hanging on to my husband’s arm with one hand and holding on to my six-year-old’s shoulder with the other. I stopped walking in silent protest. My six-year-old said: ‘I don’t think you look like a pig, Mummy’ – I smiled lovingly at my child – ‘even if Daddy does.’ I did not smile lovingly at his father.

  Wednesday, 20 June 2007

  Mrs Overall

  ‘Gnarly’, I think, might be the term for my body and mood. I am in such a bad way, I do not even know what to do about it. Every now and then, I crawl into bed and sob. Do I go to London to my own osteopath? Do I hang on and hope that someone can fit me in up here? My first instinct was to get on a train. Only the fact that I did not know whether I could make it from the train to the taxi rank at the other end stopped me. I think I could just about make it if I didn’t carry a baby or a handbag. I might have to cry the whole four hours down there. Alternatively, I could get slightly out of it on anti-inflammatories and white wine.

  I have been looking forward to going down to London to see some friends and take care of a bit of business; it does not have the same attraction if I literally have to crawl back into town. Maybe I could tell everyone: ‘Fell orf the hunter. Damned shame. Had to shoot the horse.’ That would also explain the reek of alcohol if I started drinking with my breakfast bap on the train. It sounds so much more interesting than ‘Dicky back. Old crock. What can you do?’ At one point my husband said: ‘You seem to be walking better.’ In what world does he live? My body is completely twisted and I am dragging a foot. The only thing I am missing is a bell rope. There are times when it is thoroughly demoralizing to live with an optimist.

  A small part of me feels as if I should sort it out up here and that I cannot keep getting on a train every time I want a haircut or a newspaper. (Actually, I did get a haircut up here a few weeks ago. I hated it. It took the guy about seven minutes. Seven minutes. Maybe it takes my London hairdresser seven minutes and he spends another thirty crouched behind my head making scissor sounds, but I doubt it.) Another part thinks: ‘Go to London. See your own back man. Make up some excuse and stay a while.’

  Thursday, 21 June 2007

  Crossing the Rubicon

  I stayed and saw someone local. I have to say it was something of a Rubicon for me. Obviously, this was entirely because of my commitment to northern living and had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact I might not manage the journey without pulling the emergency handle for the guard to bring me more drugs. The osteo was very nice. He thought I had sprained a ligament which had put my muscles into spasm. He happens to be tall, dark and handsome. He hugged me. I like it when people hug me, especially when they look like he does. He stood behind me, wrapped his arms around me and stretched me. He asked: ‘Does that hurt?’ I felt like saying: ‘Yes, but I don’t care.’ He pulled bits of me. Luckily, nothing came off. Nothing I needed, anyway. Maybe I am taller. That would be nice. It might take me some time to figure that one out, because I am still walking with a stoop. It is a shame about the stoop because my figure is lovely now I have a bad back. I have to say that it is not entirely my own work. I had to put a Wonderbra on because stooping makes your breasts dangle and I did not want to graze my nipples. I also struggled into a pair of enormous elasticated knickers that promise to smooth away all your lumps and bumps, and go all the way up to the bra and all the way down your thigh. They are the sort of knickers you buy to go with a particular silky outfit. As soon as you get home and take them out of the packet, you hold them out in front of you and think: ‘I’m married. I don’t have to wear these.’ They do provide useful support when your back gives out, though.

  I liked the osteopath, but he seemed to have a hidden agenda to change my entire life. Among other things, he advised I drank less tea and more water. Luckily he did not ask me whether I had a Chablis habit. He also said I should suck my abdominal muscles in. I did not want to tell him that I was already sucking my abdominal muscles in. Apparently, sucking in your abdominal muscles makes you think about your movements more and protects you from momentum (which is a bad thing). Finally, he said I should lie on my left side, curl myself into a foetal ball, stick a pillow between my legs and stay there. I said: ‘I can’t spend my entire day in the foetal position, much as I’d like to.’ But apparently, that is exactly what I should do whenever I feel the need, which will probably be just about all the time.

  Saturday, 23 June 2007

  Outside looking in

  I was invited to Girl Friday’s thirtieth birthday party. I never go to parties. I do not work well in large groups. Frankly, I do not work all that well in small groups either. The theme was fancy dress of the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. I was in a weird combination of Sixties and Seventies in an old orange smock dress and orange silk blouse, black and white tights, red ankle boots and a wig of long, dark, wavy hair. The thing I most resembled was a dog’s dinner. My husband took one look at me and pleaded work, so I set off on my own. The girl introduced me to her bewigged time capsule of a family lining the ballooned walls of the community club. The disco blare made it impossible to hear anyone. She brought me over to her girlfriends of pink ladies and Marilyn Monroe. I shook some hands. One young girl laughed as I glad-handed. I must stop myself shaking hands. I said to the party girl, a picture in a massive wig and platform shoes: ‘You go mingle. I am going over to the bar.’ I thought: ‘I don’t want this poor girl feeling like she has to nursemaid me at her own party.’ My back was still bad and I stood alone at the bar for what felt like three hours but was probably thirty minutes. Occasionally a boy would look across at me and I would think: ‘I am way too old for you, mate.’ He would think the same; not even a Blues Brother came over to chat me up. Eventually I skulked away. Apparently I missed the party games.

  Monday, 25 June 2007

  Baby talk

  I tell my baby girl ‘I love you’ one hundred times a day. The thought as natural as a breath. I chase and catch, hold her in my champion arms and kiss a rounded cheek. I shout out ‘I love you’ as I whirl her round in celebration of my dazzling prize. Later, as we play, she sucks in her cheeks to moue a kiss, then, distracted by a brother or toy, walks away. Disappointed in my loss, forlorn, I say ‘I love you’ to her back. Sitting on the kitchen floor, with infinite and tender care she tears the paper edging from a teabag, peers into the heart of her gift and pours it into her lap pot to join the rest. I, as ever, notice too late. Sigh, scoop and hug, whisper ‘I love you’ and pull her from the dried tea sea.

  She walks now among our words, one small and trusting hand in mine. Unsteady still, sometimes she totters and then falls, plump on her behind. Unperturbed, she sits blank a while and then clambers up to try again to reach her goal of understanding. She says: ‘Mama. Loves. Loves me.
’ True and sweet. Her mother loves her. She does not say the words she hears. She does not say ‘I love you’, though you would think she might. Might hope she would. Instead, she wraps herself entire in this one and truest certainty. ‘Mama. Loves. Me.’

  Tuesday, 26 June 2007

  Sweet home

  I am not sure what my builders think of me. I like the fact they take decisions. I just like to know the reasons behind the decisions. ‘Why have you put the pantry door on that way round?’ ‘Why can we have a flat floor when we couldn’t a week ago?’ ‘Why have you knocked down that wall?’ Whichever one of them I am cross-examining will look at me for a split second. Sometimes, I think he is constructing his answer. Sometimes, I think he is thinking: ‘Why … do you ask all these questions?’ They are very patient with me, but they like to talk to my husband. I suspect he provides them with answers rather than questions. Maybe they just feel sorry for him. Maybe they think I ask him: ‘Why do you want sex with me tonight?’ Anyway, they do not have long to finish off the job and give us our house back. It will not be entirely finished. Work will continue on the arches when we move back in, but I do not mind that. Frankly, I will miss the builders when they leave.