MUM’S VERSION.

Keeps a perfectly clean and tidy home.

Has neat, pristine children.

Serves healthy nutritious meals daily.

Reads a story every night to each child.

Helps with homework.

Grows her own vegetables.

Has fresh flowers in the house daily.

Watches favourite television programmes with their children and does not switch to the news.

Sews, knits and cooks perfectly.

Attends every single school event, belongs to the PTA and becomes a parent governor.

CHILD’S VERSION

Lets me choose my own clothes and shoes, knows its going to cost a bit, and doesn’t moan or make me choose a cheap version.

Listens to every problem with friends or school and comes up with amazingly wonderful solutions .

Takes me to theme parks or fun fairs once a week.

Is generous with pocket money.

Likes it when I’m stuck in watching television or playing the computer

Is not at all nosy, unless I want her to be.

Always looks fashionable and attractive, especially with me, in public.

Knows the latest chart songs and bands but disaproves enough to keep them interesting.

Is happy to give me a lift anywhere I want to go, at any time of day or evening.

Can’t cook so relies on take-aways and fast food bars.

This is something I heard a woman say to her child, in the queue at a supermarket and it struck me how much diet has changed in the last twenty years.

It happens so gradually that we barely notice but not only do we have oven ready fast foods and microwaveable meals but we also have ciabatta’s and panini’s, cous cous or quinoa, arborio rice and rice noodles. Instead of spaghetti or macaroni we can choose Conchiglie, farfalle, fusilli, gemelli, gnocchetti, gramigna, lumache or angel hair.

Never has their been a greater choice of healthy and unhealthy options at a time when the majority could do with losing a few pounds. Maybe it is the amount of food and choice on offer which makes us want to try it all!

So awful it’s funny. I guess you could exercise to it if you can bear it for long enough.

Burns Night is looming and there are more men with kilts around bars, pubs and clubs than at any other time of year, unless of course you live in Scotland.

I always think men look attractive in kilts but it is still an unusual sight. Men don’t have any other type of official skirt or dress that I can think of, apart from robes (Muslims, vicars and priests,) or tunics (toga parties or Santa.)

If all things were equal then men would be wearing skirts and dresses as much as women wear trousers, but it doesn’t seem to be happening that way round. In fact there was a huge reaction when David Beckham wore a sarong.

So why is it, in 2008 that men aren’t dressing in skirts and dresses as much as women are wearing trousers?

The Government has decided to make cookery lessons compulsory for teenagers. Not a bad idea if they go back to basics and avoid trying to follow the fancy plans of umpteen TV chefs.

Boiled egg and omelettes, a good spaghetti bolognese or shepherd’s pie with plenty of veg chopped up with the mince, soups and how to roast a (free range) chicken, would be a start. I hope plans to provide ingredients for those who cannot afford them will ensure that these are good quality, locally produced and free range and not the cheapest, old, vitamin dead produce.

Maybe gardening classes will also become compulsory so that schools can grow their own vegetables.

I’ve tasted my share of grey fairy cakes and gritty buns baked by the children in nursery and primary schools so it will be interesting to see how teen offerings turn out. If media coverage of teenagers is anything to go by everything will be highly alcoholic or laced with cannabis.

Trying to be a good Mum is a minefield of confusion. Conflicting advice is fired from ‘experts, ‘ parenting magazines and the Government daily. Basically this means that I am not doing things that I should be doing or doing it too much, being too soft or too strict, allowing my children too much freedom or not enough and so on.

The whole subject is one that everyone else seems to know so much about. The most annoying advice comes from those who don’t actually have children in the first place, so they can keep their idealized view of what they would do, without having lived on call 24/7 with little cash and children who have their own personalities (quite rightly) and won’t just fall in with my ideas.

Family life is about love, communication, negotiation, anger, dramas, laughter and fun so it will never fit into some kind of ideal childhood format. I just wish someone would write something in praise of Mums and Dads, most of whom are doing a great job in a crazy world, rather than taking yet another pop and firing another label at ‘single Mums’, ‘absentee Dads,’ ‘lazy,’ or ‘bad parents.’

We are advised to let our children have more freedom, while keeping them safely at home where we can keep an eye on them.

We are told to feed children healthily and encourage them to make healthy choices but there are still fizzy pop, chocolate machines and sweet selling tuck shops in schools. Manufacturers are allowed to duck and dive with the truth about the health and nutrition in their products and many schools still serve chips and breaded rubbish regularly. Even adults find it hard to resist temptation so why do we expect children to?

We are urged to spend more time with our children, while also being expected to work longer hours over seven days.

Most of us battle to instill a sense of self worth and pride in our children, whatever their skills and abilities, then we send them to school daily where they learn that only those who have the greatest academic skills and do best in tests, really matter.

We have an honest enough relationship to be able to teach our children sex education, but they know they can get advice and treatment without us knowing anything about it.

We seek to give our children the happiest possible childhood in a nation which created ASBOS to criminalise children, which preaches against binge drinking and then allows pubs and clubs to open all day and night; a nation that expects children to learn and be monitored from the age of 2; where the media message is that fame is everything and getting on a third rate, manipulative reality show is more important than earning an honest living doing something that you believe in; and where play comes second to achievement, road traffic, gadgets, designer labels and status toys created by the adult world.

21st Century Mum asks can someone please enlighten as to why you never ever see half dressed (undressed) men on the cover of gadget magazines? I can’t enlighten anyone but the whole topic depresses me. Just when I think equality is winning and sexist pigs are dead, something like this reminds me that I am living in la la land. Obviously the editors of these magazines think that gadgets will interest far more men than women, so they put images that they think will appeal to men on the front cover. The thing is women DO like gadgets but what woman wants to buy a mag with a half nude woman on the front? So woman don’t buy the magazine and the editors continue to think that women aren’t into gadgets. It’s just a shame that some of the men reading the magazine don’t ask for images that are a bit more relevant to the subject of the magazine, and why aren’t they annoyed that the editors are assuming that part of their brain is in their trousers?

We all need comfort food to get through each and every cold grey January day.

The January sales are on and whatever you buy in the wrong size, hoping to slim into it, will not be there in a month or so when you fail and want to exchange for your normal size.

Everyone else is just as fat as you are so who cares?

The remaining Christmas chocolates!


There is no immediate incentive. The weather’s so cold you are covered in clothes layers anyway, and swimming costumes and hot sunny holidays seem a lifetime away

Nobody wants to meet in a draughty community hall to get weighed. In fact, it’s too near the Christmas feasts, to face being weighed at all.

If you do manage to lose weight the photos won’t show it because you’ll still be bundled up in winter wear.

If you diet this early, will you keep the weight off until summer?

I identified with this immediately although in my case it’s youngest son, Timmy. He will sit and watch a film with the family and get between 30 minutes to over an hour in before asking ‘What’s it about?’ If anyone risks starting to explain he continues with questions throughout the rest of it, completely ruining the viewing, so it’s best to answer ‘I don’t know.’ He alwasy gives us a pitying look as if to say ‘well why watch it if you don’t understand it?’ But he goes off and leaves us in peace.

The problem with tales whether from kids or well meaning (or even troublemaking) friends is that once they have told me I then have to take action or have a perfectly clear conscience when choosing not to take any action.

For example, one of the kids tells me the other has smashed a casserole dish. Well I’m not thrilled but accidents happen and I have my fair share, but if I am too casual when I say it doesn’t matter, does that then incite everyone in the household to be reckless with crockery? Will I have kids hurling plates merrily to each other across the kitchen with a ‘catch, Mum doesn’t mind’ CRASH! ‘Oops, oh well there’s three more in the cupboard,’ attitude for the rest of their childhood?

But, is it fair to respond when the news has come through a child telling tales rather than the culprit owning up? Especially as the tale was told almost immediately giving them no chance to wrestle with their conscience and do this. Will the casserole smasher feel that things are more unfair because I can’t say never mind at least you owned up, although I could say, well I know you would have owned up even though deep down I think they’d probably wrap it and pack it in a carrier and take it out to the dustbins and one day I’d be needing it and hunting the kitchen high and low and it would not turn up then, or ever and become one of life’s missing thing mystery’s. Whatever happens now I know I have to respond, and in a way which discourages both casserole smashing and tale telling. If nobody had told me, I wouldnt have the dilemma!

A friend keeps hinting she has some hot news about some mutual friends of ours, one of whom is having an affair with someone else we both know. She is desperate to engineer a moment away from kids and waggling ears so she can tell me and I am equally desperate not to know while at the same time being incredibly curious to know. The trouble is once I know I become a party to the information and then it is the conscience, action thing again. Would I want to know if it were me? How would i feel if I had a partner who was cheating and friends knew and never told me? All these questions spin around so if I don’t act I know I’ll be mortified with guilt and if I do act I could wreck their lives anyway. It’s far nicer to live in ignorant bliss with some unsatisfied curiousity than to cope with all this brain ache!

The trouble is once I know, I know and it can never be taken back and although I can pretend I don’t know, deep down I know, I know. Aaaaargh!