Confused?

Mothers often quickly disabuse children of wrong understandings.  Some do this by long intellectual discussions regarding the various options, some with a simple, straightforward and now not so popular, slap, others with a simple honest word.  This mum does it well here.

Gender mistakes are common today, encouraged by psychiatrists who themselves are confused and mixed up children.  It is to be regretted that such have had a powerful influence on society in the West in the last 20 years.

The biblical view, not one supported by many Archbishops and Bishops today, is that we are born either male or female.  The only exception being those who are known as 'intersex,' a terrible situation that may be difficult to rectify and complicated for the health professionals let alone the child.  You and I and either male or female, and scientists who study such things indicate it is impossible to be born in the wrong body.  

This does not end the belief many have that this is the case.  Some are encouraged by others to take drugs and even operations, to change their appearance according to taste, others are mentally ill or have serious life problems.  These require care and help to find normality, they do not require to be encouraged into a false position.

Schools appear keen to accept whatever self ID a child may demand.  The mother in the picture would, in my view, make a good teacher in such situations.  Truth would defeat passing temptations.

Let us consider, the trauma of your life, have you ever been tempted to become gay, trans, or a cat, because of the trauma?  Has the treatment offered by life damaged you in your response?  Those who suffer this way, and suffering it is, require our care, not condemnation, they are just like us in the end, but we are luckier than they.

With the news of the Billionaires submersible having imploded and scattered wreckage around the 'Titanic,' the press have been forced to return to the royals to fill space.  There is little real news, a murder or two, rising interest rates, and the usual squabbles which do not demand large headlines, are all that remains.  There is a mass of real political crime of course but the right wing press will be keeping quiet on that, especially as their owners are involved, allegedly.   

So Kate fills the page, drunken women at Ascot take up space, and elsewhere the many voices attempting to find someone to blame for the submarine fail.  The concert at Glastonbury also gives an excuse to see near naked women, people struggling in mud, and dope being peddled.  All just what the 'Daily Mail' reader wants to see.  

Football says nothing much either.  Speculation regarding players moving clubs, the training restart, pre-season friendlies announced, and all the time the media filled with non stories to fill space and keep up the clickbait hoping an advertiser might fall for it.  Nothing much to see here.

I sit at night staring at an empty screen, except for the spiders crawling about everywhere.  

One thing is good this week, the washing has been done, two machine loads in two days, and it dried quickly, that speaks volumes for how hot it has been in here.  This room is usually a cold one.

Sunday

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Today is 'Mothering Sunday' in the UK.  'Mothers Day' is one of those 'Days' that are inventions of the florists and card manufacturers who line their pockets from our guilt. Valentines day is another excuse to keep small, and large, businesses busy during otherwise quiet times. Brave people ignore such money grabbing excuses and are free to inform the world that they do not require special 'Days' to show their care and gratitude to their 'loved ones.'  Most of us obey as we know that 'she' will remember! 

As it is almost two years since my mother died I am spared the need for cards or chocolates, an expense I can do without.  It is strange how often I think about my mother however. Not just the fact that she is not there but when something happens on TV or in the media I can often 'hear; her response. What makes this more intriguing is that yesterday was the sixth anniversary of my sisters untimely death. I often hear her in a similar manner as we used the same expressions (usually complaining about something) and I suspect this is an attitude that goes back many generations in our family!  I have heard from Australia a namesake giving evidence of this. That is frightening if we ever have a family get together! I don't wish to be there!    

One thing needles me about Mothers Day is that I can only regret not doing anything for her. Since she died I have come to a much better realisation of just what she gave up for us, how she endured the difficulties of raising a family of four on a tight budget, dad struggled to get good work, and yet at her funeral a large number of people turned up, people who genuinely missed her.  Mothers Day gives me that 'if only' feeling, and as I have it often enough I do not wish anyone else to endure it.  If your Mother, or even your sister, is still around then I urge you to make the most of them.  The 'if only' emotion is one of the worst to endure.

   

Thursday Gum Bumping

The meeting with the pretty girl at the Job Centre went all right I suppose. I was a bit depressed when I woke this morning, nothing seems to be right, but the pretty lass took a hand and shook me out off it. She took two hands actually, both to shake me, and then the back of just one to encourage me to be more satisfied with life. She referred to this as the 'woman's touch,' although 'touch' is a somewhat genteel way to a slap that hard. I told her that next week I have the 'Theory test' and I discovered happily that this organisation will pay the £30 fee! I asked if they would pay for the two coffees I required and was told to "Sod Off!" This, remember, is a member of the 'weaker sex.' The idea of all this driving tuition being that this enables me to get work. Whether this will or not I do not know but it appears to be the only option open to me at the moment. Bad knees, age, and an aptitude for gormlessness do not a success make! Still I search on and something will come up somewhere. I wonder what? The credit crunch does not help. Hundreds are losing their jobs and for some this is a new experience. A wealthy society, and this has been one of the richest for many years, produces generations unused to doing without. What some believe to be necessities are in fact luxuries. yet doing without them will cause heartache and much pain for many. I feel bad about their pain, it may however be good in the long run. Our parents suffered the Great War, then the depression, huge social change and another war with even greater change social to follow. Many of them deserved to end with a happy home, warm, fed, with the mod cons they never heard of when young, and with a decent health service. This generation has never done without, except in extreme cases. Most will cope but for a great number the next few years, note I said 'years,' will be intolerable.

I had to return in the afternoon to sign on, not through the young lady, she had dismissed me as she was bored with my company, but I saw my friend the French woman. So I signed on, had a chat, and got thrown out as I was taking to much of her time. Her man is slightly older than me, canny find a job, and she understands the position well. While she is helpful she is well able to give back any lip that arises during the day. I once had to call the security guard to get her to stop handbagging me! She urged me to apply for the 14 vacancies in the dole office caused by the vast increase of workload. This I have already done and if the bosses are as daft as I suspect civil service managers to be, I may end up in work. It will not happen of course but it is worth a try!


On Monday the driving lesson was postponed because of the snow. On Tuesday because of the black ice, tomorrow we will try again. So tonight the smiling weather girl has promised between 2-5 centimetres of snow (whatever a centimetre is?). The other smiling (and well built) weather girl suggests it may reach 10 centimetres. I now discover 2.5 Cm's equals one inch, so it may be 2-4 inches of snow. Up north this would slow things down and cause problems. Down here the world will grind to a halt, questions will again be asked in Parliament ("Why do Russia and Sweden cope but we can't?") and newspaper headlines will scream blue murder and blame the government. In fact, it is 18 years since such snow landed here, and off course we are not ready for it, it rarely happens and will be gone by the weekend. Russia and other places have it for six months, temperatures descend to minus 40, and they are naturally prepared. Those who yell would yell louder if we bought the snowploughs they demand and end up garaged for years. Ah well, if we have nothing to complain about there would be no blogs! Not that I am one to complain of course.


My mother is 94 today! Just imagine that! Had my father lived he would have been 100 years old last March. Jings! She was born during the Great War before the mistake of Gallipolli had begun or the first real Push failed at Loos. Her mining family struggled through six months of the general strike in 1926, the depression which ravished them and the second war which broke out not long after her marriage. (Not our fault they claimed!). With two young children she saw him off to war in 1941 (still before the Yanks had decided to join in) and later brought up her four selfish children. She deserves better. She could reach 100 if we are not careful!

A Mixed Saturday

Getting up early this morning I decided to wander around Sainsburys for the weekly fruit and veg. I knew that with it being a holiday weekend, and with snowflakes attempting to fall, that the market stalls would not turn out today. Naturally, as I left the store, I could see the usual veg man trying to erect his stall in spite of the wind fighting valiantly against him.
I then attended to the clean up and washing and all the other things that must be done on a holiday weekend when some folks are enjoying a break and I am plodding around looking for Somerfields own brand washing powder. Well it is actually a kind of purple liquid but you know what I mean.
Smugly satisfied with myself I then turned to the main project of the day, attempting to complete the reinstalling of XP that I began yesterday. All day I spent downloading, installing, scratching my head, installing, querying, and installing till the candle was near the end of its life. Naturally my work had not been completed, I still had to connect to the web and reinstall OE. Today that was accomplished, and some hours later Outlook Express finally allowed me to use it. It is one of the wonders of this computer world that instructions for a wide variety of computer hard and software come incomplete! However I had wisely kept the secret hidden away and, once I remembered this, Success was achieved.
The word success does not include sound of course. No sound whatsoever can be obtained at the moment. 'No audio device' it claims, although I do get a buzz every so often - not like that - so something makes a noise. Oh yes, and the 'floppy' still wants a disk inserted in 'A.' So that is lost also.
However I managed to make an almost uneatable soup out off a wide variety of near penicillin veg that I had lying around. That I used tonight to take away the taste of the 'Flanders Curry' that I had for lunch, with oatcakes. The dole office have never suggested I take up cooking for a living, which is just as well. I once fed beautiful young lass who worked for the environment folk at the council. She closed down my kitchen! While doing this I listened to Sky Sports as the season begins to draw to an end. My ears were anxious to hear the good news of our mighty hammering of Falkirk at Tynecastle today - it never happened. It seems instead we had a dreary nil-nil draw which does not suit us at all. There will now be a moment for sympathy.

Thank you.

An unusual thing did occur tonight mind, I laughed at 'You've been Framed!' One of the sequences had me in tears of laughter and that has not happened for a long time, tears of woe and despair oh yes, but laughter - no! Mind you some folks blogs have come close to it in recent days. Usually deliberately!

But as I looked out of the window I realised just how much I love Spring. The birdies flit cheerily through the trees, singing happily while they begin the breeding season, maybe that's why? The chaffinches and robins, dunnocks and blackbirds pour out their song brightening the dawn. One advantage when I was a postman was to hear the dawn chorus beginning as I cycled to work, marvelous that was. High overhead a kestrel may circle or hover while seeking out the tiny speck that is a mouse or vole far below. Wood pigeons coo irritatingly loudly outside folks windows long before the alarm clock has threatened them into life. Massed ranks of rooks or crows,(who knows the difference?) caw loudly high in the trees, and somewhere a thrush takes time off from listening intently for the worm and instead sings beautifully while announcing that this is his patch so clear off. Among the trees covered in budding leaves are masses of bluebells showing through the darkening floor. Daffodils can be seen in many places, and snowdrops and little blue flowers begin to appear. Lovely, just lovely. The sight cheers the heart, a lightness within accompanies the lightening of the skies above, and the sun climbing higher each day, ensuring the sky is that little bit deeper blue, and the whole world appears a better place. No wonder folk in Norway and Finland who suffer six months darkness each year go bananas! That is enough to turn anyone into a Viking invader!

Admittedly, being Easter, the weather would turn a tad chilly. There is a slightly cold front moving from the north, starting at the north pole and passing through Iceland picking up snow and ice on its way. Kind hearted as it is the front is leaving Spring snow all across the highlands and down the east coast of England. Some of it has been plastering itself against my window all afternoon! To be honest it is bright and sunny at the moment but I can see in the distance another huge dark gray cloud heading towards us. From the light blue sky above small sleet like flakes are drifting by, doing their best to grow up into snowflakes. Now in my humble opinion, if the ice flows are melting, glaciers shrinking, and the Maldives and other places beginning to flood maybe it would be a better idea to keep all this white stuff up there in the north where it belongs? Could we not persuade the weather folk to do something about this?
Clouds have always fascinated me in some ways and I can see why Constable put them in his pictures so often. I doubt he realised just how large a cloud could be. In the far distant past I flew home to Edinburgh and the whole journey was above cloud. Later that night the weather forecast showed the size of the cloud. The picture revealed one single cloud that stretched for thousands of miles from the Arctic to the Mediterranean, and from the Atlantic to the centre of Asia. What a size! Add to this the variation in the clouds, what the meteorologist will understand from them, and what they comprise, it just leaves me wondering in the same way I do when confronted by other elements of creation such as the sea, or mountains. Fascinating. Wonderful stuff, but I would really rather get sunburned somewhere in the Mediterranean!

I am however suffering that guilt that turns up every so often. The guilt caused by talking to my mother! My Mum is a wonderful person and does so well for someone who is 93. However while I want to keep in contact I really find less and less to share with her. My conversation is limited at the best of times, and she is trapped indoors too much at this time of year, and after discussing the weather, the 9 year old, what she eats, and nothing else really there is nothing to say. Women need to converse in a way men don't, and all to often this is plain boring, and add to that my life being very different for the family up north, and indeed everyone else on the planet, it is a very trying time. Until my sister died things were OK, she would call and talk for hours about nothing, and she was just around the corner, not 400 miles away! It is so frustrating, and made worse by here deafness. I am not going to spend all night shouting down a phone!
So nearly every time I call I end up full of guilt, and angry! I want to do more, and I don't want to spend time talking about her dinner for an hour-again! Excuse me, I am just off to gas myself!

Mothers

Mothers, you can't do with them and you can't do without them! Obviously we need them to enter this world and without their help we would find it somewhat difficult to have made our entrance. However, I sometimes wonder whether some folk I come across in fact actually entered this world in this manner. When reading about the 'Ned's' who roam this world, or maybe any 'B' celebrity informing us of the deep traumas of their existence, or indeed meeting those women who insist on spending an eternity putting their change into their purse and moving away from the checkout, then I find myself asking 'Do they have mothers?' The question remains unanswered.

Some mothers of course fail their offspring. We all know of someone who was rejected by their mum at birth and has let it affect their life ever since, sometimes tragically. The fashion for single parents, whether mum or dad is not wise. Children need both parents, and parents who are committed to them at that! In fact a few years ago I heard of a scientific study in a US university which had spend several years, and much money, to come to the conclusion that a child benefits from one male parent and one female parent! Gosh! Well done folks! Of course putting aside fashion death and divorce often leaves a child with only one parent, and this does not necessarily lead to disaster. It has happened in my family circle and possibly in yours, but two good parents, one of either sex, caring and committed, is always the best bet.

So, why all this concern for mothers? I spoke to my 94 year old mother tonight. She has successfully raised four children, and we are grateful to have her alongside a good father to bring us up. Always and ever the cry was 'to behave' and to 'do the right thing.' Consideration for others was inbuilt into that generation, a generation that had seen a major war, dad being recalled into the army to sit tight for two day while watching the Armoured divisions cross the Rhine, then he wandered over. He was too old by then for a front line soldier, but he had the inbuilt soldiers knack of ensuring he avoided the worst! Alongside the war they had both seen the depression, mum reared in Cowdenbeath saw the six months long general strike cripple the whole of Fife, dad had enlisted in the army the year before because work in Edinburgh was impossible to find. After the war, in the new opportunities created, they looked for a decent kind of life, for themselves and everybody else.

Our parents influences influence us. Mine had some church influence, but nominal at best, and I doubt dad believed much. But like so many working class folk they wanted the best for themselves and their neighbours. Today that attitude seems less obvious, wealth has stifled it and 'political correctness' has become the new 'moral law.' Obviously I am not painting a picture of a world where all was love and goodness in days gone by, human nature never changes, but the culture in which we are nurtured does! I am glad my folks were brought up in they way they were. Often tough, never easy, granddad on one side was a drunk, on the other a miner, and times were always hard down the pit. But this shaped them, along with their kind.

So caring was my mother, that when I called tonight, at half time during the football so I did not have to listen to her for too long, she asked how things were?
'Terrible' says I. 'I don't think I can go on.'
'Poor you,' says she. Then begins to burst into laughter.
'Everything is awful, it's falling apart and so am I,' says I.
'Oh dear,' says she, again sniggering,' Poor you eh? Tsk!'

Mothers love and care never falters, does it...........?

Neurotic Women

Why must women be so neurotic? Watching a Gran and daughter walk through a park with the six year old boy and his dog I got the impression this kid will never survive the year!
'Watch the road!' they yelled, even thought the road was a hundred yards away. 'Do this , do that!'When the kid was happily running around bothering no-one. I almost cried out 'Leave him alone you stupid women!' 'There is no danger so why the fuss?'
Such needless vexation just irritates the child, and could lead to long term damage. For one thing he is male. Therefore he will not think, act, or understand the world as they do. Will they comprehend this? I doubt it. Does he have a father? I wonder. Too many stupid girls get themselves pregnant, expect the state to provide for them, and raise a child in circumstances God did not intend. There are many unbalanced kids growing up and raising similar kids today because of such poor parenting. Of course not all kids suffer badly, nor do they all go wrong. Many turn out to be excellent citizens. But why is their life made harder by having a dysfunctional family from the beginning?
Mothers need to worry less. Today's mums do show their neurosis all to freely. In the past women recgnised the dangers and made sure kids did also. Now angst is the order of the day all to often. Why? Because they feel for the child as a mother should? No! Because they feel for themselves. It is not the child but them that counts. He is not a child brought into the world to be reared in the right way, he is an extension of her personality. This is not good. The child ought never to leave a mother, but has to be regarded as an individual, not a continuation of the mothers ego.
The answer? Mothers, and women in general need to spend less time reading magazines that feed their deep seated need to be reassured, and more time just getting on with it. Assurance will follow. It is the same for us all. It is the way for millions of women in deprived countries, who have a real need to worry. So why not here in our fat over developed land?

62 Year Old Gives Birth

So a woman has had a child at sixty two years of age?
Should we rejoice? I think not. When she is Eightytwo, the child will be twenty. Instead of being a mother she will be a grandmother, or even a great grandmother! How very sad.
How sad a woman would put her selfish desires before care of the child.
This happens so often these days, and the child is just a prisoner of the circumstances.
Very sad.