I texted my Dad about Richard Dawkins.....

or Tales of my Dad and Me!

In case you missed it, Richard Dawkins sent a tweet that ruffled a few feathers. My Dad is still pretty much my intellectual and moral cornerstone, so I always want to hear his opinion. At the time, I felt that our texts were cutting edge fiery debate. In the cold light of day, I don’t think either of us look particular dynamic, or come off very well. We’re both white atheists. And neither of us have won a Nobel Prize. "Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night"  

K – What do you think about Dawkins’ tweets? I think it’s bad science xxx

D – No it’s good science! Haven’t looked today yet. Is all well with u? Xx

D – It is the same as Catholic doctors. Medicine should be about provable facts and science. It can’t be in the same space as fairy stories such as religion. If you believe women are inferior where is your intellectual rigor (and throw acid in their face) xx

K – It’s BAD science! And a completely bollocks comparison – we can’t compare an elite university college with a faith found mainly in less economically developed countries! Xxx

K – And no Christian ever won the Nobel prize?

D – Twitter trolls do it because they are bad. Religious people do it because a dead book told them too. Xxx

D – Well as the man said we need to study the fact.

K – His tweets weren’t talking about medical procedures done in the name of Islam. If he wanted to argue that religious belief clouds science, then that’s fine. But he made a lazy inference. He has a brilliant scientific mind – and he should know that words have power and need to be selected carefully. I didn’t read that tweet and think “yes Islam stops science”, I read it and thought “he’s implying that Muslims are stupid” xxx

D – Interesting. He sometimes leads people in to see if they confuse fact with bigotry. He stated a fact but I agree that it cannot be regarded as value neutral. He sees it as his responsibility to take on Islam to prove that his anti-religion doesn’t avoid the dangerous targets.

K – Meh. Perhaps I do see bigotry because as a good little lefty I’m more aware of the erroneous persecution of Islam, particularly by Western media. But do you not think that comparing a hegemonic institution with a religion a bit incongruous? A similar comparison could be made about black people. Of course, we know that socio-economic factors play hugely into the under achievement of people. Dawkins may have a decent argument if he had put it into an essay – but tweeting it is inflammatory, attention seeking and intellectual trolling. It’s just a way for him to inflate his own sense of intellectual self worth to see people retweeting it all flabbergasted, while he sits back in his ivory tower and thinks, “ahh, if only they understood I did that on purpose to show intellectually superior my argument is”.

K – I’m not saying his persecution IS erroneous, but it’s inevitably going to make him look like a twat. And what does that achieve? Plus it’s Eid soon.

K – If a point’s worth making it’s worth making well.

K – Dad come back! Xxx

D – That last bit is true he is an intellectual snob – but he says we should be elitist. We want elite pilots elite doctors elite thinkers etc. Also black people are a race, born into it. “Muslims are willing converts and by no means a racial grouping there is a growing strand on the left, that is, ‘liberal’ to support Islam but if you look at any of their behaviours (flogging rape victims for sex outside of marriage etc) in any other grouping we would be opposing them.

K – Well tweet about flogging then. People go nuts for that sort of thing.

K – Btw I’m thinking of transcribing this into a blog, is that ok? Xxx

K – With my heady blog following of two, I expect we’ll go viral by noon tomorrow.

D – He does – frequently. Of course. Tales of my dad and me! Xxx

K – I’ll call it something better than that J xxx

K – Me jokeo

K – Internet meme trumps all arguments. It is known.

K – Dadddddd! Sorry if I offended you with the title thing.

D – Love the meme – didn’t offend at all. It was intended irony on my child rearing skills xxx

K – You have great child rearing skills! Why, just in this conversation I’ve shown my ability to read, and my dexterous opposable thumbs.

K – Since deciding to blog about this my texts have become increasing contrived and self-conscious. I wonder if anyone will notice.

D – But what about the leave and berries we still have to get thru!*

*This is a reference to a David Attenborough documentary we once watched, where he explain that Organ-utans have to teach their young how to identify over 200 different kinds of nuts and berries before they are able to fend for themselves. They also have to learn how to construct shelters out of leaves – it’s very adorable.

K – I had home grown courgette and garlic for tea! And the pie you gave me a week ago – I’m well prepared xxx

LIVE EVERY WEEK LIKE IT'S SHARK WEEK

Once, in my naive youth (cough, first year of uni cough), I asked a friend what I could do to make a boy I really fancied like me. Yes, I really was that sophisticated. She gave me some good advice, but she also said,

 “Don’t correct him. Boys don’t like being told their wrong.”

I considered this. Surely no-one relishes in being told they’ve made a mistake I thought.  Then told her that I had once pointed out to him that penguins came from the Antarctic, not the Arctic.

“Well don’t make a habit of it, don’t be confrontational.”

I am paraphrasing, and I’m making our exchange sound like a quote from one of the more weedy Austen characters. You know, the kind who gets colds and ends up with the crap vicar husband. But I’m sad to say the main jist of the conversation was laugh at his jokes, and shut the fuck up.

Needless to say I did not take this advice to heart. I have an extremely low tolerance for bullshit, and will never hesitate to (politely) call someone out when they’re wrong. You will be pleased to hear however, that I did get off with said boy, despite my animal habitat pedantry.

That conversation has always stuck in my mind. In between wondering what’s for tea, and whether to wash my hair, I get psudo-intellectual, and wonder, “how are women expected to act?” My dad, on two separate occasions has turned to me in shock and said

“Do you swear/burp like that in front of your boyfriend!?”

At which I burst out laughing. To me it’s so sweetly archaic. Why on earth would suppress my oral gas or guttermouth tendencies around my bf? So he’d fancy me more? I’m all for politeness, so of course I wouldn’t be effin and jeffin went I first met his family. But I would like to stay with this guy for quite a while - he’s going to have to know that I get gassy and swear when I drop things on my toes. In short, I’m going to be me.

The truth is, how women are expected to behave hasn’t changed a lot since the eighteenth century. We can vote, swear, decided whether we want to get pregnant and shave our heads if we please. Sure, it’s ok for girls to drink larger, run about and get their petticoats six inches deep in mud. But you’ll still want to put make-up on and wear pink wellies when you go paint balling. We have but what I like to call the Elizabeth Bennet/Kim Khardashian quandry (or kquandry, if you prefer). We have more rights and freedom, but the overwhelming pressure to be pretty and charming is still present. Women want to be superheroes, but the message seems to be that if you want to kick ass, you better do it wearing high heels. Look at Victoria Pendleton’s recent ad campaign with Pantene. Yes she might have won an Olympic gold, but wouldn’t it better if her hair was shiny and more manageable?

SIGH.

I do talk a lot of crap don’t I? I’m writing this as if this were all inevitable, as if it was hopeless. When in fact by being conscious of this hypocrisy mean that we’re halfway to beating it. It mean we can laugh at it and ignore it. We shall not go gentle into that good night, we shall rage rage against all the bullshit preconceptions the world has to throw at us.

Oscar Wilde allegedly said, “Be yourself. Everyone else is taken”. Whilst dear Oscar makes an excellent point, I am all for some healthy emulation. When wondering, “how am I, a devistatingly sexy and funny 20-something, meant to weave through the tangled matrix of life? WHO SHOULD I BE?” it’s good to have something to aspire to. When I was little I wanted to be Marie Curie. Now I have some more grown up and achievable heroes. Let me tell you about why I want to be Buffy the Vampire Slayer....

So no-one told you life was going to be this way...

For the past year I’ve been working in a coffee shop as a barista. See this?



 Yeah. I can’t do that. But I can make a decent coffee.

Before I got the job, I thought being barista would be a nice, cosy, fun job; making people drinks, giving them cake, talking about their day. So kitsch! Customers would fall in love with me and we’d flirt, as our fingers touched as I handed him a steaming latte. I could wear ribbons in my hair!

After my first shift, I realised it wasn’t quite like that. It was mainly steaming milk and making conversation about the weather. Over and over again. And again. Yes it has been raining a lot. No, it hardly feels like summer at all. Yes I hope it’s nice at the weekend too.

If I was scheduled for a late shift, what I affectionally thought of as “the bitch shift”, I would spend the day washing cups and plates and slinging them into Thelma, our industrial dishwasher. Sometimes trays would come upstairs practically untouched, with a barely nibbled brownie laying there seductively, like a slutty biscuit. I am not too proud to admit that I used to eat some of these leftover. Another of my fun duties was taking the rubbish to Pip the Skip, who was located down what was know as “Piss Alley”.

If the dream was Zooey Deschanel, then the reality was Gunther from Friends. The service industry is hard work. The stuff that keeps coffee shops quaint is pure hard graft and sweat.




 Before I get too snotty and spoilt second child for words, I realise there are far worse jobs than working in a coffee shop, and that emptying bins is not in fact slave labour, or an unreasonable thing to be asked to do.  Being unemployed is a terrible predicament that too many people are currently facing. However, it’s my blog and I want to whine about having to get up early. Deal with it.

You do, however, learn some incredible skills slinging coffee to the general public, just not the kind you can put on your CV. Sure, prospective employers ask about “team work” and “career goals”, but wouldn’t they be more impressed to hear that you had the balls to unblock an unspeakable toilet with a nothing but a rubber glov’d hand? That you once fended off an old man who was waving his walking stick at you and getting angry because there was no gingerbread on display? I can spill boiling hot coffee over myself and not swear. I can burn my elbow on sizzling hot panini grill, and still smile and make a joke about it to the expectant queue of people who are watching you sweat whilst debating the merits of a latte vs cappuccino.


Something that I loved about my job, and that did fulfil my kooky coffee shop wet dream, was the people. There was Ted, who was about a billion years old, and came in everyday to drink a double espresso. He always brought his tray back, and would wave at the security camera when he left. Madge had he own special drink order, halfway between an americano and a machiatto, known colloquially as a Madgachino.

Another slightly less heart-warming character was known as market man, or simply “Poo Man”. On Saturdays the market would set up along our street, and there was a long standing agreement that the stallholders could come and use our toilet. Opposite us was a Fruit and Veg stall, and the owner of this stall, Poo Man, would come and use our bathroom no less than 4 times a day. It must have been an occupational hazard of selling fruit and veg; all that fibre. He had an uncanny ability to sense just when you had cleaned that bathroom and mopped the floor, and then he’d come striding in with a cheering “alright girls” and proceed to sully our facilities.

Whilst there are undoubtedly more dangerous, demeaning and poorly paid jobs that being a Barista, the fact remains that your silky smooth latte doesn’t come fresh from the latte cow (man I wish you could get latte cows) and your paninis do not sprout from the ground (perhaps the latte cows could graze in the panini fields). It remains my view that everyone should do one week compulsory service industry work, to learn to humility and patience, and basically, not to be a dick. There is a lesson for everyone there. Don’t be a dick.

“If I were a piano player, I’d play in the goddam closet”; or why you should read The Catcher in the Rye

If you really want to read a book review, the first thing you’ll want to know is what the plot is, who the lousy characters are, and all that other David Copperfield kind of crap. But to be honest with you, I can’t be bothered to go into all that. In any case, with The Catcher in the Rye, that stuff isn’t useful. The main character is Holden Caufield, who drops out of school, and mopes around New York for a bit. That’s all that happens. There are events an all. I’m not saying nothing happen to him. But boy, you spend half the goddamn book waiting for the sonuvabitch to do something

(source) 

         (I found this on this thing called Google, it's new but it's good)

Sorry. I'll stop pretending that I can write like Salinger now. Incidentally, one of the reason I immediately loved the book was the fact Salinger used italics for emphasis. I always wanted to do it in my own writing, but I thought it was cheating, and that others would think it tacky. I thought you were meant to just write superbly to show where emphasis and significance was, which I still can’t do. 

 When I first The Catcher in the Rye, I was confused when I was two thirds of the way though, the thinner portion of the pages in my right hand (that sudden moment when you realise the weight of the book has shifted subtly in your hands, and you’re nearer the end than the beginning. It’s a sad moment, like the story is literally slipping away.) and nothing had happened. I kept expecting Holden to finally get in touch with Jean Gallagher, so for him to have an epiphany, for good to triumph, for a happy, satisfying ending.

But, spoiler alert, that doesn’t happen. Yet I enjoyed it so much. I just didn’t know why.

Now I have a degree in English and I know all the words and phrases and terms to explain why The Catcher in the Rye works. I can talk about bathos, masculinity in crisis, and refer to other books where nothing happens for a really clever reason (Ulysses, Waiting for Godot...) with footnotes and references to make it all seem valid. But we all know that is bollocks. All the MHRA in the world can never explain why a book touches you. I was given The Catcher in the Rye for Christmas one year, when I was about 11, and it changed the foundation of me. I’ve subsequently lent it to people, who said thanks, yeah they liked it, leaving me aghast and confused. “You LIKED it?” I’d shout (inside my head) “It didn’t make you laugh, cry, reconsider humanity, want to run naked into the streets wantonly beating your breast? You didn’t get to that line on page 177 and start laughing so much you had to put the book down!?"

                                             (source)

             (don't worry about the hipsters connotations, I know you  liked it before it was cool)

The Catcher in the Rye was the first book I’d come across to admit that everything wasn’t ok. No-one tells you when you’re young that sadness isn’t confined to the obvious bad things like racism, genocide, natural disasters or the wrath of God. You have to learn for yourself that life isn’t always good and right. Only life and good literature can give you the disquieting realisation that the hero doesn’t always get the girl, there isn’t always an end to the long and weary path - that sometimes you just trudge. The Catcher in the Rye tells you that you’re going to loose things, and that people won’t understand you, and that you won’t be able to explain yourself, and that you won’t know what to do with your life. That sometimes, nothing much happens. The truth is, the world is full of phonies.

Life sucks, but as Holden would say, it’s nothing to get sore about. The Catcher in the Rye has kid sisters who know how to dance, and nuns who teach English and collect money for the Salvation Army, and records about a girl with her front teeth knocked out. This doesn’t mean that life is fine and that everything has a conclusion. It just means there’s still stuff to enjoy along the way. Just try not to think too much about the phonies, and don’t believe what the movies tell you.

I’ll shut the hell up, and let Holden finish;

“If you want to know the truth, I don’t know what I think about it...About all I know is, I sort of miss everybody I told about...It’s funny. Don’t ever tell anybody about anything. If you do, you’ll start missing everybody”

(source)

Leave a comment if you know where the ducks go in the winter. 

22.28

as a sign of my general contempt for the day
i do not hang my clothes up

The Anti-Craft

I am not particularly good at making things, which is irritating, because I come from a family that is generally very handy. My mum quilts, knits and does all manner of clever things with fabric. When I was little, all my toys were kitted out with clothes and accessories lovingly made by my sister. Who else can say that their toy lion had a hammock, or its very own camping kit?

In the spirit of sibling adoration, I wanted to do whatever Sophie was doing, so I too tried my hand at knitting, cross stitch, crochet and various yarn type things. However, I never took into account that I was 2 years younger than Sophie, and that perhaps I wouldn’t be as good as her straight away. But if I can’t master something instantly, I become very disillusioned, very quickly. I would usually manage about 30 lines of knitting before it became hopelessly tangled and holey, which is the point I would have a strop, throw it away, and shout at my sister for being better than me.

HOWEVER! I HAVE MATURED NOW! And having been brought up in a household where I watched I constantly witnessed things being created out of nothing, I have cultivated an (slightly naive) attitude that craft is doable, even if you’re not particularly adroit. If you have an idea of something you want to make, just go for it, and you can usually hack it together somehow.

So when I saw this little beastie hanging out in the Halloween aisle in ASDA I though, hey, I bet I could turn that into something cute. And reader, I did.

Igor (yes I’m calling him Igor) was meant to be a little rucksack,

for kids to take trick-or-treating I’m guessing, but I thought he was too adorable to let some snotty child stuff with sweeties. I’ve always swooned over Ugly Dolls whenever I’ve come across them in shops, and given them huge cuddles (I have a lot of feelings) before being prised away, and I thought Igor would make a handsome bedroom companion.

WANNA SEE HOW I DID IT? EVEN THOUGH IT’S REALLY OBVIOUS AND QUITE SIMPLE?

Oh alright then...

YOU WILL NEED-
Needle
Thread
Stuffing
Thing that was once a bag that you want to make into something that is not a bag.

I snipped off all the straps and bits, so just Igor’s little bod was left.

If you’re feeling particularly kitsch, avail yourself of thimbles.

Turn the bag inside out, and sew up the bag opening. I used blanket stitch, because it’s the only one I know.

Sew all along the opening, leaving a gap through which you can poke stuffing through, to make Igor plump and hugable. You also have to use this gap to turn the bag right side out again. You’ll have to adjust the size of the hole you leave, depending on the size of the material of the thing you’re trying to force back through the hole.

Once you’ve turned the bag inside out again, the top should be sealed up, now it’s stuffin’ time. I cannot advise you on what sort of stuffing to use in any way. I suggest you do what I did, and rip apart a cushion embroidered with a sickly platitude given to you by a malicious passive aggressive bitch pretending to be your friend that you never liked anyway. Craft and catharsis, it’s the future.

Even if you don’t have the cushion issues that I do, there’s bound to be a teddy or something you don’t know why you have kicking around the house that you can disembowel and harvest for it’s soft and fluffly insides. Prod these cuddly entrails into the gap until your Igor has reached the desired stage of squidgey. Sew up the gap. If you’re cack handed like me, it’ll show, but I think this adds a certain Frankenstein’s monster chic-ness to Igor.

DONE!

Igor is the blue one, I'm the girl in the Ronnie Corbett glasses.
I realise these instructions probably make very little sense. Maybe my gung ho attitude to craft is not actually all you need, but I maintain that if there's somehting you want to try, just go for it.
Do share your stories, dear hearts xxx

O hai

Jane Austen lied to us
It may sound glib, but it's true
She made us believe in love and felicity
She made us believe in someone who
Delights in a voracious reader
Finds beauty in a dark lively eye
Under this misapphrension my

Labours have gone unnoticed
No-one has invited me to a ball
The handsome man, seems to ignore Jane's plan
And chooses the slag with no dowry at all.