I have a confession. Several years into the 21st century I don't have a mobile phone. Yet. It's not that the thought hasn't crossed my mind. I often notice that if I had a mobile I could call whoever about whatever, whenever. But I also often notice people not really concentrating on what I'm saying because they're busy pressing buttons on their mobile. Sending a text? Turning it off? Desperately wishing I'd leave them alone?
Then there's the way conversations always begin with 'I'm on the train.' Followed by 'I'll be at ____ station in about ten minutes' when you know you'd either need to travel faster than the speed of light or invent a time machine to manage that. For instance, when everyone on my course decided to swap phone numbers in what threatened to turn into a horrible snowstorm of reply-to-all emails I was the only one with a sweet little tied-to-the-hearth landline number. Just me. By myself. Unique. One-of-a-kind. Or unpopular, out of touch and jealous. But there's hope. An educational video might yet reform me.
I've been trying to reduce, reuse, recycle. Reduce probably means as a minimum not getting a mobile. Their manufacture and disposal doesn't have a great environmental reputation. By the way, did you know you can donate your old mobile to Oxfam? I've completed my first ever sale on ebay – hurrah! It's amazing how proud you can feel to offload an ink cartridge you can't use any more. Our printer broke and there are no replacement parts available. You can still get replacement parts for my in-laws' ancient cine-camera and the projector, but not for a five-year-old printer. Shame on you, Hewlett Packard. Our new printer is NOT made by you. Okay, maybe I should have reduced and not replaced, but trying to write assignments without a printer meant taking a lot of trips to the printer in our church office – I was desperate to see it all spread out in front of me. I'm trying to sell the broken printer on ebay for spare parts, but no luck so far.
More promising is that I've been approved to run a Freecycle™ group for my area. With Freecycle™ you give away unwanted things to people who can use them. There's one really important rule - everything has to be free. I'm enjoying making mental lists of all the things we have cramming the loft that I could give away rather than store indefinitely or dump, once I've quit wasting time online. Hm. This could be quite a long project.
22 November 2006
16 November 2006
Sick with embarrassment
Saturday morning was Child 2's ballet class. I often meet up with a German friend there – her daughter is in the same ballet class. We thought we would dash to the supermarket while the children were dancing. While we were shopping, suddenly they announced the time. Now, they never normally do that, right? So I was making facetious comments in German, when suddenly my friend said, 'But isn't it Remembrance Day?'. Suddenly the penny dropped – 11 o'clock on 11th November! Everyone around me was observing the two minutes' silence and I was chattering in German.
Is it more embarrassing to have people think that you're a foreigner who doesn't know British customs, or to have people think you're a German who doesn't care about the war dead, or to be a British person being taken for a German who doesn't care about the war dead, or... I was very embarrassed. Especially as the same friend and I had been at choir practice together the night before, rehearsing a beautiful and moving short choral setting of Laurence Binyon's lines:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
The children both threw up on Sunday night, possibly as they couldn't bear the embarrassment of their thoughtless mother any more. Since then, I've been feeling either 1) guilty for leaving them with other people so I can go to my course or 2) frustrated as my feeble attempts to amuse them at home fall flat and I fail to do any work on my assignment. They love watching Charlie and Lola on the internet but that means I have no laptop for working. Pen and paper? Too boring and practical (for me, not for them). Thank goodness for downloadable dress-up Charlie and Lola dolls and beautiful ballet videos (Swan Lake and a dance set to a German pop song) for an occasional change from children's DVDs.
I'm feeling intrigued by the new James Bond and might try to persuade Husband (in the interest of conversational topics, you understand) to try to book a babysitter to watch it some time while it's still in the cinema. I enjoyed the trailer – both this original and this non-original version of it. Is it just me, or does that seem a bit odd so close to Remembrance Day?
This post was previously published as a student blog for The Times online.
Is it more embarrassing to have people think that you're a foreigner who doesn't know British customs, or to have people think you're a German who doesn't care about the war dead, or to be a British person being taken for a German who doesn't care about the war dead, or... I was very embarrassed. Especially as the same friend and I had been at choir practice together the night before, rehearsing a beautiful and moving short choral setting of Laurence Binyon's lines:
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.
The children both threw up on Sunday night, possibly as they couldn't bear the embarrassment of their thoughtless mother any more. Since then, I've been feeling either 1) guilty for leaving them with other people so I can go to my course or 2) frustrated as my feeble attempts to amuse them at home fall flat and I fail to do any work on my assignment. They love watching Charlie and Lola on the internet but that means I have no laptop for working. Pen and paper? Too boring and practical (for me, not for them). Thank goodness for downloadable dress-up Charlie and Lola dolls and beautiful ballet videos (Swan Lake and a dance set to a German pop song) for an occasional change from children's DVDs.
I'm feeling intrigued by the new James Bond and might try to persuade Husband (in the interest of conversational topics, you understand) to try to book a babysitter to watch it some time while it's still in the cinema. I enjoyed the trailer – both this original and this non-original version of it. Is it just me, or does that seem a bit odd so close to Remembrance Day?
This post was previously published as a student blog for The Times online.
10 November 2006
Still talking?
Beginning to study again has had some surprising and some obvious side-effects. Okay, I have no income, have fees to pay but still have to find the cash to pay a childminder. Despite that I'm not eligible for working families tax credit and generally have neither time nor money. I'm used to having to choose one or the other - but losing both is hard. There is an upside. Improved conversation!
Husband and I have been married for nearly ten years (yes, I know, I was a child bride) and seemed to have nothing to talk about any more. I don't mean that anything was wrong – we've just already had nearly all the deep conversations possible and know each other inside out. Conversation had been dwindling to sorting out who would do what around the house or with the children.
It's been quite a bonus to discover that my course and the things I'm learning about are putting some new ideas into my head that we can discuss. I'm also enjoying showing him my latest youtube discoveries – the Dove evolution video and a spoof version. (Thanks to Mary Ann Sieghart for the tip in her column.) The trouble is, then he knows I've not been glued to my books while he's been working hard to bring home the money... Time-wasting is a traditional student activity I suppose, as well as watching children's TV – but I have an extra excuse for that.)
When I've not been studying hard in front of youtube, I have been busy gathering things for child 1 to take into school. We lived in Freiburg, by the Black Forest in Germany, last year for a year (more new topics of conversation) and Child 1 went to kindergarten. 11 November is St Martin's day, celebrated in Germany with bonfires and children's lantern processions.
So we've taken a lantern, CD and songbook into school for her to tell her class all about it. She and I have also baked lots of traditional "Weckmänner" – gingerbread men without the ginger, made with sweet yeasted dough – for the class. Trouble is, I don't have enough containers for transporting them all. Trying to get us all to school by bike in one piece could be interesting – at least I'll have something to tell Husband when he gets home in the evening.
This post was previously published as a student blog on The Times online.
Husband and I have been married for nearly ten years (yes, I know, I was a child bride) and seemed to have nothing to talk about any more. I don't mean that anything was wrong – we've just already had nearly all the deep conversations possible and know each other inside out. Conversation had been dwindling to sorting out who would do what around the house or with the children.
It's been quite a bonus to discover that my course and the things I'm learning about are putting some new ideas into my head that we can discuss. I'm also enjoying showing him my latest youtube discoveries – the Dove evolution video and a spoof version. (Thanks to Mary Ann Sieghart for the tip in her column.) The trouble is, then he knows I've not been glued to my books while he's been working hard to bring home the money... Time-wasting is a traditional student activity I suppose, as well as watching children's TV – but I have an extra excuse for that.)
When I've not been studying hard in front of youtube, I have been busy gathering things for child 1 to take into school. We lived in Freiburg, by the Black Forest in Germany, last year for a year (more new topics of conversation) and Child 1 went to kindergarten. 11 November is St Martin's day, celebrated in Germany with bonfires and children's lantern processions.
So we've taken a lantern, CD and songbook into school for her to tell her class all about it. She and I have also baked lots of traditional "Weckmänner" – gingerbread men without the ginger, made with sweet yeasted dough – for the class. Trouble is, I don't have enough containers for transporting them all. Trying to get us all to school by bike in one piece could be interesting – at least I'll have something to tell Husband when he gets home in the evening.
This post was previously published as a student blog on The Times online.
07 November 2006
I thought I'd cracked it.
I thought I had all the balls in the air and that everything was chugging away in a hectic way but with everything getting sorted. I'd felt so efficient earlier in the week. I'd agreed to review Bang! The Complete History of the Universe by Brian May (yep, that one), Patrick Moore and Chris Lintott for the Imperial student newspaper. I did it the same evening and wallowed in smugness. My comeuppance wasn't far away. My assignment wasn't coming together, still wasn't coming together, still hadn't come together and the weekend was here with a Bonfire Night party to go to, children to be played with, and friends coming to stay.
As well as my M.Sc., I'm also learning German at an evening class at the Goethe Institut (try this animated German house). We're reading a whodunnit together - the third in a series by Bernhard Schlink (the first is available in English). The plot involves kidnapping and private banking families and I surprised myself by bursting into tears at a newspaper article about a notorious real-life kidnapping case in Germany.
A law student kidnapped the eleven-year-old son of a Frankfurt private banker. He was caught with the ransom money and threatened with violence by the head of the police force if he didn't immediately tell them where the boy was. The police didn't know at the time that the boy had already been strangled. The case led to great debates in Germany about whether the police were justified in making their threats or not. The head of the police force was fined for making the threat. I suppose in a way the debate is similar to the designer babies one – when is it justified to take a life to save a life?
Talking of designer babies, I went to a talk given by the fertility expert Robert Winston on Religion and Science. I think the gist was more or less what he had broadcast in 'The story of God' and published in a newspaper article – that there is evidence that we are hard-wired to search for something beyond and that belief in God helps us to cope with troubles. As a Christian I found this very thought-provoking, and I liked his final point very much. He said that our ethics can only be as good as our knowledge, and showed this picture.
It's a picture of a sperm, drawn by Nicolas Hartsoeker in 1695 after he examined seminal fluid under one of the first microscopes. He believed that he could see a little man ('homunculus') curled up inside each sperm. This gave rise to the view that women were merely the 'field' into which a little person was planted, where they could grow into a baby. In terms of reproductive ethics, it meant that it was wrong to waste any sperm, since it was already a living human being. Lord Winston's point was that now we know more about the start of human life, we no longer regard an individual sperm as human and our ethical view has also changed.
Interestingly, we had been shown the same picture the previous day as an example of a scientific controversy. Nicolas Hartsoeker's theory had been challenged, but the observational evidence had not been enough to settle the matter. Perhaps the rival who couldn't see the little men didn't have a good enough microscope? How much do we see what we want to see and ignore the evidence that doesn't fit our ideas? Perhaps I'm only looking out for the things I want to see?
And the assignment? Teamwork got us through it. My husband did some of my normal chores and I stayed in where possible and worked. It was 11pm on Sunday before it was done, but I handed it in yesterday and never ever want to see it again!
This post was previously published as a student blog on The Times online.
As well as my M.Sc., I'm also learning German at an evening class at the Goethe Institut (try this animated German house). We're reading a whodunnit together - the third in a series by Bernhard Schlink (the first is available in English). The plot involves kidnapping and private banking families and I surprised myself by bursting into tears at a newspaper article about a notorious real-life kidnapping case in Germany.
A law student kidnapped the eleven-year-old son of a Frankfurt private banker. He was caught with the ransom money and threatened with violence by the head of the police force if he didn't immediately tell them where the boy was. The police didn't know at the time that the boy had already been strangled. The case led to great debates in Germany about whether the police were justified in making their threats or not. The head of the police force was fined for making the threat. I suppose in a way the debate is similar to the designer babies one – when is it justified to take a life to save a life?
Talking of designer babies, I went to a talk given by the fertility expert Robert Winston on Religion and Science. I think the gist was more or less what he had broadcast in 'The story of God' and published in a newspaper article – that there is evidence that we are hard-wired to search for something beyond and that belief in God helps us to cope with troubles. As a Christian I found this very thought-provoking, and I liked his final point very much. He said that our ethics can only be as good as our knowledge, and showed this picture.
It's a picture of a sperm, drawn by Nicolas Hartsoeker in 1695 after he examined seminal fluid under one of the first microscopes. He believed that he could see a little man ('homunculus') curled up inside each sperm. This gave rise to the view that women were merely the 'field' into which a little person was planted, where they could grow into a baby. In terms of reproductive ethics, it meant that it was wrong to waste any sperm, since it was already a living human being. Lord Winston's point was that now we know more about the start of human life, we no longer regard an individual sperm as human and our ethical view has also changed.
Interestingly, we had been shown the same picture the previous day as an example of a scientific controversy. Nicolas Hartsoeker's theory had been challenged, but the observational evidence had not been enough to settle the matter. Perhaps the rival who couldn't see the little men didn't have a good enough microscope? How much do we see what we want to see and ignore the evidence that doesn't fit our ideas? Perhaps I'm only looking out for the things I want to see?
And the assignment? Teamwork got us through it. My husband did some of my normal chores and I stayed in where possible and worked. It was 11pm on Sunday before it was done, but I handed it in yesterday and never ever want to see it again!
This post was previously published as a student blog on The Times online.
26 October 2006
What have I done?
Help, help, help! What have I done? I'm 34, married with two young children and studying full time for a Masters for the next twelve months. A few weeks in and I'm ever so slightly in awe of my fellow students: gorgeous, young and clever. Then there's me. It's been so long since my chemistry degree that I can't remember anything much about it. I can't even understand my doctoral thesis any more. And by the time I'd negotiated and agreed the childcare plan for this term with husband, childminder, fellow school mum and mother-in-law, I was worn out and my brain hurt.
It seemed like such a good idea when I first thought of it. After a few years with small children for company, I wanted to exercise my brain again and the MSc in science communication at Imperial seemed like just the ticket. I dreamt of working at home in those halcyon hours while the children (5 and 2) were merrily amused at school or pre-school. Well, there's been a lot of reading and learning to do and my brain is stretching in unexpected ways. I even had the mental energy to rent a thriller - The Interpreter - at the weekend, instead of my usual sort of no-thinking-required romcom. My first assignment is complete and handed in. But the big surprise has been how much fun I'm having.
Last week my course-mates and I made four Question Time-type ten-minute 'as live' TV programmes. Just over half of the group operated the cameras, sound, and chose which camera shots to use. The rest of us pretended to be erudite panellists and discussed the ethics of designer babies, human drug trials, teaching intelligent design in schools and the North Korean nuclear test. There was a lot of laughter as we watched the end results. I think the Question Time team can rest easy in their beds for a few months yet (despite not having matched our scoop in getting Kim Jong Il onto the programme). Some of our discussions were more confrontational than others but I don't think any of them lived up to these classic Question Time moments.
Another highlight was a seminar from the evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi on his experiences of writing a popular science book, Mutants, and writing and presenting two TV series Mutants and What Makes Us Human?. Some of the heartbreaking pictures he showed us from his book were hard to take and after reading up on 'designer babies' or rather, on the technique of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for my role as a Question Time panellist, I found myself ever more grateful for the blessing of two healthy children.
PGD is a bit like IVF plus. It works like this: a couple know they carry a faulty gene they don't want to pass on to their children. Just as in IVF, eggs are harvested from the woman and the man donates sperm for her eggs to be fertilised in the lab. One or two of the fertilised eggs are implanted into the woman's womb in the hope she'll become pregnant. With PGD, there's an extra step or two before implantation. When the fertilised eggs have each developed into embryos of eight or so cells, one cell is removed and its genetic make-up tested so that embryos free of the faulty gene can be chosen for implantation.
Our 'Question Time' discussion was only ten minutes long and could only touch on some of the ethical issues raised. What does 'playing God' mean when we routinely make decisions about whether to try to conceive this month or not? What would I do if I discovered I had a 50% chance of passing a genetic disease on to a child?
A younger friend of ours came to stay recently and helped out with childcare while I was settling into the course. After twenty-four hours she declared she'd never have children. Clearly I'm better at dwelling on the lows of motherhood than the highs. Getting the children up in the morning, doing the school run, wiping their noses and mopping up the sick in the middle of the night are all more in-your-face than the hard-to-convey subtle joys of cuddling up to read a story together, sharing big hugs, seeing them grow and understanding Child 2 when he says 'Mick-mick' (he means Baby Pom from the Fimbles).
After a week our friend had changed her mind. She might have children one day. But not while she was studying. That leaves me just where I was at the beginning – what have I done? Help, help, help!
This post was previously published as a student blog for The Times online
It seemed like such a good idea when I first thought of it. After a few years with small children for company, I wanted to exercise my brain again and the MSc in science communication at Imperial seemed like just the ticket. I dreamt of working at home in those halcyon hours while the children (5 and 2) were merrily amused at school or pre-school. Well, there's been a lot of reading and learning to do and my brain is stretching in unexpected ways. I even had the mental energy to rent a thriller - The Interpreter - at the weekend, instead of my usual sort of no-thinking-required romcom. My first assignment is complete and handed in. But the big surprise has been how much fun I'm having.
Last week my course-mates and I made four Question Time-type ten-minute 'as live' TV programmes. Just over half of the group operated the cameras, sound, and chose which camera shots to use. The rest of us pretended to be erudite panellists and discussed the ethics of designer babies, human drug trials, teaching intelligent design in schools and the North Korean nuclear test. There was a lot of laughter as we watched the end results. I think the Question Time team can rest easy in their beds for a few months yet (despite not having matched our scoop in getting Kim Jong Il onto the programme). Some of our discussions were more confrontational than others but I don't think any of them lived up to these classic Question Time moments.
Another highlight was a seminar from the evolutionary biologist Armand Marie Leroi on his experiences of writing a popular science book, Mutants, and writing and presenting two TV series Mutants and What Makes Us Human?. Some of the heartbreaking pictures he showed us from his book were hard to take and after reading up on 'designer babies' or rather, on the technique of pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for my role as a Question Time panellist, I found myself ever more grateful for the blessing of two healthy children.
PGD is a bit like IVF plus. It works like this: a couple know they carry a faulty gene they don't want to pass on to their children. Just as in IVF, eggs are harvested from the woman and the man donates sperm for her eggs to be fertilised in the lab. One or two of the fertilised eggs are implanted into the woman's womb in the hope she'll become pregnant. With PGD, there's an extra step or two before implantation. When the fertilised eggs have each developed into embryos of eight or so cells, one cell is removed and its genetic make-up tested so that embryos free of the faulty gene can be chosen for implantation.
Our 'Question Time' discussion was only ten minutes long and could only touch on some of the ethical issues raised. What does 'playing God' mean when we routinely make decisions about whether to try to conceive this month or not? What would I do if I discovered I had a 50% chance of passing a genetic disease on to a child?
A younger friend of ours came to stay recently and helped out with childcare while I was settling into the course. After twenty-four hours she declared she'd never have children. Clearly I'm better at dwelling on the lows of motherhood than the highs. Getting the children up in the morning, doing the school run, wiping their noses and mopping up the sick in the middle of the night are all more in-your-face than the hard-to-convey subtle joys of cuddling up to read a story together, sharing big hugs, seeing them grow and understanding Child 2 when he says 'Mick-mick' (he means Baby Pom from the Fimbles).
After a week our friend had changed her mind. She might have children one day. But not while she was studying. That leaves me just where I was at the beginning – what have I done? Help, help, help!
This post was previously published as a student blog for The Times online
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