Living in the present

Cabbagey things hidden in nasturtiums

Oh I do love the now! I mean the age we live in. I suppose it is one of the worst times to live in a few ways; it depends where you live etc etc and whether you can afford to live at all. But I remember (here an anything-but-misty look comes over me) the 80's. Horrid times in some ways. My kids were little and that was lovely; I enjoyed being a mummy very much. But I could have enjoyed it a bit more if I hadn't been so eaten up by the anxiety that really I ought to be out there doing some 'job', and I felt very much the risk of being called [here I trot off for a moment to Google 'cabbage', and with some relief find that it just means a vegetable now] a 'cabbage'. Those were the heydays of Laura Ashley and Clothkits and some very wholesome clothes where you could get the same item in both mummy's and daughter's versions, and I don't mean the kind of 'glam 6 year old' stuff of now; I mean there was a lot in the way of floral corduroy, and I did rather like it - at the time. But now and again, you'd see one of your mates out somewhere, and hardly recognise her, 'cos she seemed to have sprouted the Big Shoulders of Dallas and Dynasty as she tried to make her way in the World of Work, as it was called, while the kids were at playgroup.

My work today

I was in a bit of a difficult position, 'cos there was this pressure on women to Succeed, but we didn't yet have anything like a sense of disability rights, (rights! hell, I'd have been satisfied with the milk of human kindness; but we do need rights, 'cos of the hardness of the human heart) and so I only stood to lose, since I was not going to be a typist for a tycoon, nor a schoolteacher, nor any of the things where you went to Meetings (the things I feared most) and had to be able to hear properly so that you could come up with some incisive reply that showed that women really were a lot cleverer than men. There weren't really any jobs that didn't involve meetings except for things that were called 'menial', and I'd just come out of uni with a jolly good dregree and an MA that took me 18 months full time to achieve, and so I had a bit of hauteur about me, which I needed more than most people. And there was this drive to get women into education that was aimed at what were called 'women returners', who were assumed to be in need of some basic literacy training, as they obviously thought we didn't retain information for long.

So I felt perpetually uncomfortable, and never had the right answer to any question, and there was only ever one question that people seemed to ask me, and that was 'What do you dooooo?' when my kids were well old enough for me to be allowed to do something else in the daytime.

But now! Oh NOW! Oh wow! I'm only sorry I never stuck to my original intentions cooked up when I was about 6, which was to become a tight-rope-walking nun ("TRWN" for short). Still, maybe I have some of these elements in my life; vicar's wife/ biblical person/ windsurfing. You can see the continuity. Somehow I feel that it would go down a lot better now to be a TRWN that it would have done in the 80s, when there would have been questions about the career structure. It seems to me that NOW we are very much more accepting of people's individuality, in fact it is seen as a positive advantage to have a bit of a quirky CV.

Vita Sackville-West may have had one.

But how did I get here? It was because I was thinking today: Now what shall I do, I have these fruit flies threatening to take over the house because of all the apples lying about - tons of them - and I have this exhibition coming up for which I will need a quantity of embroidery - around three kilogrammes of the stuff, at least - so how do I choose what to tackle first? And I thought about all the women of the past making the choice between attending to the harvest - which is urgent - and attending to the embroidery - which is important. And I had a little smile to myself at the continuity with those women (omitting the 80's of course), and thanked the gods that I could feel comfortable without the Dallas/Dynasty padded shoulders or today's equivalent. Today IS much better than yesterday.

But a bit of a digression - just look at the pics of the harvest - crab apples, perhaps the most beautiful of fruits, here cultivated varieties 'Golden Hornet' and 'Gorgeous', and some quinces. (And out in the garden, I was wondering why some fruits grow with a deep waxy shine, and others grow with that velvet bloom. HOW does it happen, and what is the assumed natural advantage of one or the other?) But you will notice a wonderful aluminium thing containing some of the crop. One of our friends once asked what it was, seeing it hanging on a hook. I said it was designed primarily to be a container for water that you sling round your body when you go out to pick flowers; Vita Sackville West probably had one, I should think. The friend looked unconvinced, and said that to him, the thing really looked like an elephant condom, and I'm glad to say, the name has stuck. If only he were around now to name that pink thing above.