That is how I feel as a childless woman. I am that plimsoll. I have ended up in a place I did not expect to be, and people tend to view my life with curiosity or suspicion, occasionally make a flippant comment or two…and then walk on by.

I mean, it’s not as though the plimsoll has a family at home worrying about where it is, is it? Perhaps if there were a couple of baby plimsolls looking forlorn at the foot of the tree then people would take an interest, reach out and get it down. But seeing as it’s just a lone shoe, not even a pair, there’s not much point worrying about what’ll happen to it, is there?

We live in a pronatalist society. Despite the rampant destruction by insatiable humans – our arrogance reassuring us that the planet and everything on it is ours, at our disposal, put here merely for our convenience – we continue to view reproduction as our sole purpose on Earth. If you fail to produce a family, as a woman at least, you’ve failed at life. Or maybe just missed the point.

Are childless households still families?

Earlier today, I glanced up from my laptop just as those loose-lipped lizards over at Loose Women were discussing whether or not a household without children in it can be described as a family. Seriously?! Which century are we in? Jane Moore smugly points out that the (antiquated!) dictionary definition of a family is “two parents and their children” and must be “blood relatives.”

We all have a story…

Conversations can often fall flat when you reveal you don’t have children – and later, grandchildren. The childless become adept at side-stepping awkward conversations, displaying verbal fancy footwork as we dance around painful topics, carefully guiding the chit-chat onto safer ground. Of course, there is always a story – just not one we necessarily want to have with a virtual stranger at the bus stop, or a well-meaning relative at a wedding. I recall one “family friend” laughing like a drain as she reached out to pat my stomach at a party, exclaiming: “Still nothing in there, then?!” I guess she wasn’t to know that I’d just had my third unsuccessful round of IVF.

Why we need World Childless Week

One in five women today will never have children. There is a multitude of reasons why: choice, infertility, circumstance. Yet still we sit on the sidelines of life. We’re like extras in a film, as the main cast – the families – take centre stage. Everything is geared towards parenthood and traditional “family life”: at the supermarket, on television, in the media. “Family-size” food portions. “Family” days out. It’s relentless. But, gradually, the tide is turning. Childless women are speaking out. Childless men, too, are slowly stepping out from the shadows. We finally have a platform, and now, with the impending second anniversary of World Childless Week next week(10th-16th September), we are speaking together. Our collective voice is getting louder.

I spoke to Stephanie Joy Phillips, founder of World Childless Week, about how it came about, and how she’s championing childless people everywhere:

So instead of eyeing childless people with suspicion or disdain, or dismissing them as “non-families” please consider for a moment: how would you feel if the shoe were on the other foot?

For more information about World Childless Week, go to www.worldchildlessweek.net, follow the World Childless Week page on Facebook or the World Childless Week account on Twitter. 

(Incidentally, whilst searching for an accompanying picture of shoes in trees, I discovered that shoes in trees are actually a thing.)

Sam x

The post Like a Shoe in a Tree appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

My mum as a child with my grandparents

Imagine all your memories, amassed over a lifetime, handwritten in tiny lettering on a deck of cards, neatly stacked in chronological order. Then imagine someone deftly shuffling this deck: fancy fingerwork as they expertly weave and riffle the cards until there is no order whatsoever. They replace the shuffled cards carefully on the table in front of you and look you directly in the eye, stony-faced. You’re confused: why would they do that?

A sudden gust of wind from an open window blows the cards into the air, sending them in all directions. You scrabble to catch them, to gather your precious memories up and re-stack them as they were in the original pile, but it’s no use: some have disappeared out of the window; one has gone, unnoticed, down the back of the sofa. A few have slipped under the television unit. The ones you have left are jumbled and, try as you might, you just can’t seem to sort them into any logical order. Distressed and frustrated, you scatter them over the table, rest your head on your folded arms, and begin to cry….

My maternal grandfather has dementia.

As I contemplate the way the illness has robbed him of his memories, that’s the image that I conjure up in my mind’s eye: of an elderly man, sitting alone at the table in the modest council house he shared with my nan for most of their lives (before she passed away some years ago), desperately trying to remember things.

He is surrounded by nick-nacks and keepsakes and fading pictures in frames; stacks of old black and white films on VHS that he used to watch continuously but whose storylines he now struggles to follow. The decor is old-fashioned, the swirly carpet a nod to the Seventies, yet the house is neat and carefully maintained. Murphy, his faithful Irish setter, sits at his feet, his head resting on Grandad’s knee.

For several years we would visit him; the trips to the house in South East London taking me back to my childhood, when Nan would serve up beans and sausages from her 1950s stove for my sister and I; my grandad smoking a pipe and twisting his pipe-cleaners into stickmen for us. In the summer my nan would show us how the snapdragons growing in their little back yard looked like bunny rabbits, whilst grandad tinkered away fixing things in his shed. When my mum came to pick us up they’d wave from the gate until our car rounded the bend.

Returning as an adult always felt strange as the house seemed to shrink: I felt like Alice In Wonderland after drinking the potion. Years later I’d visit him occasionally after work; Grandad preparing milky tea and a Fray Bentos pie for me, whilst Murphy the red setter casually released silent stinkbombs under the table.

Gradually it became apparent that Grandad would not be able to live alone for much longer. He started misplacing things; getting increasingly paranoid, confused and upset; calling the police to report perceived thefts of “stolen” belongings; starting his morning routine with a wet shave in the middle of the night.

Eventually he moved into a care home. The thing with dementia is that long periods of total memory loss, whereby the sufferer cannot remember what happened two minutes ago, are interspersed with occasional spells of complete lucidity. It’s fair to say that many of the residents of the home have less frequent lucid moments than Grandad, so sometimes he gets bored. Recently, he spoke about “escaping” – breaking out of the secure residential building and making a break for freedom. My mum, who is also his main caregiver outside the home, brushed it off and changed the subject.

A strong-willed old chap, 89-year-old Grandad is in otherwise rude health. Never one to do as he’s told (I wondered where I’d inherited that trait from), he hatched a plan – a plan so cunning that the local mischievous fox would’ve struggled to better it.

Waiting till the dead of night, Grandad got out of bed and dressed silently, putting on an extra layer against the December chill. Tiptoeing along the corridors, he ducked past the carers’ office, slipping into the laundry room and out of the unlocked fire escape. Excitement building, he scurried down the path out into the crisp night air, leaves and twigs crunching underfoot in the rural setting of the Kent countryside. Freezing cold, but warmed by the euphoria of victory, he marched on…

Until some time later, when one of the carers noticed the open door and, panicking, alerted the police – who duly located him walking along a deserted street in the early hours of the morning and returned him safely home. It was the first time the home had ever had a resident “on the run.” When my mum got the call in the middle of the night, she immediately feared the worst. However, upon arrival at the care home at 5am, she was greeted by the sight of Grandad, ruddy-faced with cold and excitement, sipping a mug of hot tea as he animatedly regaled the police officers with tales of his escapades in Kenya during the war.

When Mum rang to tell me about Grandad’s little adventure it was hard not to chuckle, as we admired his sly determination and resourcefulness: “Good old G-Dad!” was my initial reaction (obviously after hearing that he was safe and well). “There’s life in the old dog yet!” I joked, marvelling at his “great escape.” Mum recounted how he’d told the officers with an eyeball roll that it was “like living in Pentonville.”

There was a brief pause, as we both let that comment sink in. The mood turned sombre. In the cold light of day, Grandad had absolutely no recollection of the previous night’s shenanigans, asking instead where various relatives were – all of whom have long since passed away.

We both know – we ALL know – the reality: that it’s not the care home holding Grandad prisoner.
It’s dementia.

My grandad and I

The post Grandad’s Great Escape appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

My earliest memory of life is being held aloft aged three by my father to peer through a round cabin-hole hospital window at my mewling newborn sister, delicate as a baby starling, freshly laid that morning by my mum.

Having been the sole previous tenant of her womb, I was a tad miffed from the outset that I was about to be gazumped by this scrawny purple-hued imposter for her affections.  Already, my beloved mother was otherwise engaged with this new kid on the block, hence the clashing brown pinafore and pea-green jumper ensemble that my dad had hastily slung on me that morning. It was the Seventies, but still…

At that age when everything is huge and new and terrifying, a day can seem like a lifetime. When a friend’s child started school last year, she asked her whether she’d enjoyed her first day. “It was okaaaay,” came the uncertain reply, “but I don’t think I’ll be going back, thanks.”

The first stand-out memory of primary school for me came when I was five years old. Another child asked me how many exercise books I had in my bag and as I answered “two” I held up 2 fingers completely innocently, having no idea what the V sign I was inadvertently making meant. That snot-nosed kid began shouting loudly to “Miss” that I was swearing, and before I had a chance to protest my innocence Mrs Coles, the teacher, flew across the classroom, grabbed me off the chair by my wrist and held me up as she used the wooden ruler in her other hand to smack the backs of my skinny bare legs.
I cried hot tears of indignation, exasperated and confused at the injustice of the situation. The punishment was meant to teach me not to swear. Since I hadn’t been swearing and didn’t even know the meaning of the word, it taught me something else instead: Life isn’t fair. Which arguably is a much more important lesson anyway. So thanks Mrs Coles. Thanks a f@cking bunch.

Like most kids, my favourite part of the school day was playtime, when we’d charge out onto the tarmac to let off some steam, tearing about the schoolyard playing games such as runouts or British bulldog. The boys would be panting like overheated pitbulls, tongues lolling, hair plastered to sweaty foreheads, whilst the girls sat sedately on the concrete steps plaiting each other’s hair, playing hopscotch or elastic, turning the occasional spontaneous cartwheel or handstand. To the untrained eye, we’d often appear to be engrossed in a serious game of poker, huddling round in tight circles each clutching a spread of cards and studying them closely, eyebrows knotted in concentration…although on closer inspection by the dinner lady we were just exchanging our Garbage Pail Kids collectables.

On the many rainy days, we’d have to stay inside for ‘wet play’ which sounds sexier than it was: steamed up classroom windows and the aroma of soggy dog, as bemused teachers attempted to keep the hyperactive children under control whilst visibly annoyed that they’d been kept away from chugging black coffee and chain-smoking in the safe haven of the staffroom.

Occasionally a few of us kids would be plucked from class of an afternoon to clean the staffroom, granting us the dubious privilege of seeing this inner sanctum close-up: overflowing ashtrays, lipstick-stained coffee mugs stuck to a stack of magazines, washing-up piled high. At the time we were honoured to be selected; now I realise it was free labour, we were exploited skivvies. Hardly a sweatshop in Bangladesh, but a liberty nonetheless.

When the school bell rang we’d line up and slink reluctantly back to lessons: attempting to solve mind-boggling maths problems copied from the blackboard, reciting our times tables parrot-fashion, reading aloud from English classics, clumsily crafting Viking longboats from balsa wood for our history project. We knew we were in for a treat if the big brown TV on stilts got wheeled out.

I also looked forward to the periodic visits from the nit-lady, finding the experience a pampering moment of relaxation as she raked through my scalp. It really appealed to my inner baboon. It was like a complimentary spa treatment. You pay top dollar these days for a half-decent Indian head massage.

There would be regular classroom disruptions from the rowdy crowd who would be flicking ink from their fountain pens, stabbing each other with compasses or covering their hands in Copydex glue for the simple pleasure  of peeling it off again. They would be sent individually to repent their sins ‘under the clock’ outside the headmistresses office, or made to stand on their chairs as punishment.

I only remember being sent there once, having done my Oscar-worthy Baron Greenback impression (the toady villian from Dangermouse) a little louder than intended. I never have been able to whisper. I had to write one hundred lines:  “I must be quiet in class.” I wrote each line in the voice of Baron Greenback in my head, just to have the last (croaky) word.

At lunchtime we’d flip open Smurf or Transformers lunchboxes and tuck into squishy warm sandwiches wrapped in tinfoil or clingfilm; starchy white bread with a generous stroke of jam or marmite oozing out, hastily slapped together by frantic frazzled mums.

photo credit

My favourite was cheese and pickle, a packet of Space Invaders or pickled onion Monster Munch and a Kit Kat or Club biscuit if I was lucky. Occasionally we’d have spam slices with a pig’s face on it in varying shades of pink from Safeway, as a treat. It was like 50 shades of pig. The face went all the way through the meat roll, like a stick of rock – presumably there to inform parents which unidentifiable animal this processed rubbish came from.

Fruit was greeted with disdain and tossed in the bin without a second thought, despite endless lessons about the pitiful plight of starving children in Africa. These moral issues were wasted on us; at our age we had no concept of another county, let alone continent.

Come hometime, we’d rush out of the schoolgates, eager to get home for kids’ TV: Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds, Grange Hill, Thundercats,  The Moomins, Top Cat, Rentaghost, Scooby Doo. Any warnings that we’d “end up with square eyes” fell on deaf ears.

photo credit

When we got bored of staring goggle-eyed at the box, my sister Karen and I would batter each other for a while to pass the time, until one of us invariably got hurt (or pretended to) and we were sent to our rooms, where we’d amuse ourselves amongst a mountain of careworn My Little Ponies, Cabbage Patch Kids, Care Bears and Sindy dolls, some with missing limbs, all in various states of undress. Then Dad brought home a BBC computer one day complete with a huge boxy monitor. It was a game-changer, quite literally, and henceforth the toys were discarded and we instead spent countless silent hours playing Chuckie Egg, Space Invaders, Blagger, et al.

The temporary silence would be broken by one of the kids from down the street ringing the doorbell to see if we could “come out to play” and we’d scamper out until dusk with our Rayleigh Grifters,  cycling unsteadily round to the corner shop to stuff our cheeks hamster-style with penny sweets: palma violets, hubba bubbas and flying saucers crammed into a little white paper bag, cola bottles so sugary they made us wince, our milk teeth melting as we shovelled sherbet dip-dabs into our mouths on swizzle sticks.

photo credit

Biting the pastel-coloured candies strung on elastic necklaces, blowing Chupa Chups whistles and making Kinder egg toys, we loved the dual-function sweets the best. You could play with it and then eat it. Genius. We’d spend a good portion of our pound note pocket money on this sugary goodness, the remainder being saved for the odd splurge at Nuxley’s, the toy shop on Welling High Street, and then a few years later on records at Woolies, my first vinyl purchases being Whitney’s “I wanna dance with somebody”, and “A different corner” by George Michael, when he was still straight.

Last thing at night, just as she was switching off the light, we’d casually remind mum that we had something of great importance happening at school tomorrow which required a Blue Peter-standard home-made costume, and she’d let out a pained wail and half-heartedly set about cobbling together a suitable outfit fashioned from various household objects, some loo rolls and an old pair of tights.

I got ushered to a fancy dress party inside an old cardboard box once, string holding it up like a pair of braces, skinny legs dangling out the bottom, brightly coloured squares hastily coloured in felt-tips on the sides. I was a Rubik’s Cube, apparently.

I wasn’t a particularly sporty child, but being built like a beanpole had it’s advantages; scissor-kicking the high-jump was a breeze, I practically stepped over the pole that came up to the other kids’ chests, whilst long jump sent me sailing to the far end of the sand pit with ease. My lanky stride was double that of the other girls in my year, so when it came to the track events on sport’s day I was like a rat up a drainpipe.

Birthday parties, to which we’d be formally summoned by way of hand-written invitation with a tear-off RSVP slip, were a seemingly weekly occurance and were often held at various neon-lit fast-food joints. Wimpy was a cut above in terms of class, they even gave you cutlery to eat your burger and chips, and a plate. A china plate! This was impressive stuff, practically Michelin standard to a bunch of nine-year-olds, so we dressed up for the occasion in our finest C&A ski pants or tiered ra-ra skirts with batwing sweaters from Tammy Girl, accessorizing with brightly-coloured plastic jewellery, ankle socks and a slick of rollerball cherry lipgloss.

Everything was going swimmingly. Or so we thought. Then something terrible started to happen. Puberty. Suddenly we weren’t swimming, but drowning. In a sea of our own hormonal soup. Like the famous transformation scene in An American Werewolf in London: hairs started sprouting at an alarming rate, inconveniently and publicly, our faces contorting in angst as these shocking changes took place before our eyes.

Soon, we were behaving increasingly erratically, howling at the moon…and then the transformation was complete.

It was 1989.

We were teenagers.

Things were about to get VERY complicated….

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
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The post Old Skool Vibes : Children of the Eighties appeared first on Life: A Birds Eye View.

So who are the other characters in the sit-com of my life?
Which two innocent beings were responsible for the creation of this bubbling blonde mass of insecurities cunningly disguised as a fierce and fiesty be-atch?
First up, I give you Patricia aka De Mama, the alpha female of the Blake posse:

Standing tall at 5ft 2, she’s a Deborah Meaden/Big Mo hybrid. She resembles the indomitable Ms Meaden not only in facial features but also her staunchly suspicious nature, keeping her (bank) cards close to her chest – her trust is earned.

She’s like a learned owl, and having had her fingers burnt by a few unscrupulous characters and one laptop-hacking bunch of Eastern Europeans, is more security-conscious than The Pentagon. If an email comes in from an unknown source, it’s ISIS.

However, she’s also as street-savvy as Big Mo from Eastenders – she ain’t takin’ no crap from nobody. Like me, she’s an action-packed feisty bundle of ‘tude, who loves nothing more than bustin’ out shapes to the latest Ibiza anthems. She can “big fish, little fish” with the best of ’em. When I would roll in at 6am Sundays (still do sometimes!) worse for wear with a faceful of smudged glitter eyeshadow following a marathon raving sesh, she’d climb out of bed for a cuppa whilst I filled her in on the night’s events. I got my strong twerk ethic from her.

More recently, she zoomed across a series of 650ft-high ziplines above the Costa Rican rainforest despite her fear of heights, grimacing like Wallace and Gromit til her face ached. She’s awesome. The best mother I ever had.

Of course, I didn’t get my height from De Mama, as I’m almost six feet tall. No, I owe my go-go-gadget limbs to my dad, Alan :

My pops is of the old school stiff upper lip era, a hard-working salt of the earth geezer hailing from south east London. He first locked eyes with a teenaged De Mama as she casually tossed her flowing blonde locks and sauntered past him whilst out walking Red, her imaginatively-named red setter, as he was playing football (my dad, not the dog.)

They were soon married and to their shock, surprise and…dismay, I put in an appearance soon after. Letting out forlorn sighs, they accepted their fate; their lives were now ruined anyway so they may as well try for a son too….and then promptly had Karen, my sister. Oh well!

Dad had gone from a carefree young chap to being surrounded by familial females, so he had no choice but to do what any bloke in his position would…..he went down the pub. For oh, about 20 years or so.

He may not have got a word in edgeways in our three-bed semi, but surrounded by his colleagues and mates he was the life and soul of the party. Never one to hold back, he loved nothing more after a tough day at the office than to shimmy on down to Smollensky’s with some clients and have a few bevvies ‘on the baron.’

My parents are chalk and cheese in many respects, and their ability to partake in a par-tay is one of them. Whilst Dad has always been the beer-guzzler, Mum is unconscious, eyeballs rolling, after one whiff of a wine gum. She henceforth became the lifelong designated driver, ferrying a pickled Pops home from their jobs in The City.

No strangers to hard work, they’d both clock up untold hours there each week, striving to give us kids the best of everything. Annoyingly sometimes, they also passed on their strong work ethic to me, making it physically impossible for me to skive off school even if I wanted to : a guilt complex ensured there’ll never be any shirking from home for me.

They also share a love of music, the soundtrack to my childhood being icons such as The Beach Boys, Queen and Abba, played full blast on vinyl on our old Sony stacking stereo. On Friday nights  after the pub my dad would wear out the VHS player watching The Blues Brothers repeatedly on video. Despite a tendancy towards being the strong silent type, I know my dad would do anything for me. He really is top of the Pops…

Then there’s my ickle snish Karen. Born three years after yours truly, she was my nemesis for the first 21 years of my life until I disappeared one day into the Ibizan sunset.

As kids, I’d threaten her with dreadful dreamt-up outcomes if she disobeyed my commands. My favourite was getting her to massage my feet for hours on end “otherwise Misty (our cat) will die.” Cruel I know, but highly effective and a perk of being the eldest. The only perk I reckon, seeing as the youngest generally has a far easier time of it.
Firstborns send mums into a frenzy of cooing and fussing, cleaning and mollycoddling. By the time the second sprog arrives the frazzled mother lets them sit goggle-eyed in front of Peppa on the telly eating fistfuls of soggy snacks, grateful for a bit of respite.

The sibling rivalry ramped up to fever pitch as we got older and the ensuing ‘accidents’ came fast and furious. One unfortunate incident involving Karen being tied with a skipping rope to the back of my bike as I pedalled furiously down the street until her foot was a mangled mess in the spokes. A frantic trip to A&E followed for stitches. Boy, did I cop it for that one!

Another time, she threw a hairbrush at me full-force, which split my lip wide open and left me looking like something out of The Nutty Professor. Never a good look for an already self-conscious teen.

We spent many years in a tight tangle of fighting limbs, just as you’d see in an old Tom and Jerry cartoon…..a spinning ball of bodies with the occasional arm or leg sticking out. Black eyes and bulging bumps were de rigeur. We only stopped arguing to eat or sleep.

Exhausted by it all, upon my return from Ibiza aged 22, we decided to call a truce. My parents heaved a sigh of relief as harmony was (for the most part) restored. Today, she’s my mate and confidante and I love her dearly. We even live a few doors apart in the same street. Her rebellious nature has been replaced with a personality as soft and mellow as marshmallow. She’s almost TOO nice. She is now engaged to Chris and mother to a mischievous two year old son named Hayden, who melts our hearts and tests our nerves in equal measure.

The final remaining member of our immediate family is Gramps, my paternal grandfather who is still going strong at the ripe age of 88. Due to his forgetfulness these days he’s as shocked as anyone else when we tell them his age, such is his youthful constitution and pink flushed cheeks.
He loves long walks in the woods and flickering old black and white movies, although he doesn’t follow the plot so keenly these days and falls asleep mid-sentence like the grandpa in The Simpsons.

So that’s it! The players in the game of my life. You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family, but that’s fine by me as I’d still pick each of them…..

……in a line-up.

Sam x


Fancy reading my back-story before you go any further? You can find my other blogs at:

www.costaricachica1.blogspot.com
www.samgoessolo.blogspot.com
www.mummymission.blogspot.com
www.worldwidewalsh.blogspot.com

Follow me:

Twitter: @SamanthaWalsh76 (Life:ABird’sEyeView)
Facebook: @lifeabirdseyeview
Instagram: @lifeabirdseyeview

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