Chez Bedders

Bonjour. I 'av been 'aving ze French lessons, yes? So that I can speak like the natives, yes?

Today I have been learning the language of 'Objects in the Office' and 'How To Say Where They Are In The Room'. I can, therefore, tell you that the paper bin is green and it is in the corner. I can also tell you that there were two pairs of lunettes dans la salle this afternoon and one of those pairs was purple. And I can also inform you that there is a tree outside the window.

I tell ya, when there's a paper bin emergency and you need to know where that bin is pronto, you'll be glad to have me around. 

We also talked about our likes and dislikes and what we do every day. And I now know that Lewis, my fourteen year old classmate (yes, this is what I've been reduced to) likes Greenday. Beaucoup. And Nickelback. Beaucoup. Christina, the Spanish girl who works in a Cuban bar, is my favourite classmate. She speaks approximately 70% of the time in a Spanish/Catalan hybrid and barks 'QUE?' at the teacher periodically. 

Mais maintenant, allow me to show you around the apartment, oui?

First of all, those of you in need of a 1st wedding anniversary present (that's PAPER, folks), look no further than here. You may have seen previously that, amongst other things, Bedders enlisted the help of a YouTube tutorial in order to make me some origami paper flowers for our wedding anniversary.

I repeat - a YouTube tutorial. That, my friend, is love.  

I ordered address cards from the Rifle Paper Company. We have an exciting new address, and the cards are beautiful and printed in GREEN ink. I heart them.

Heart, you say? The hearts are actually a little leaving present from a lovely lady I used to work with at my old school. She tucked them inside a card with a sweet note and I was very touched.

Alors, and here is the desk at which I type. A bargain from a Leeds-y shop. Note, paper flowers on display. And our much-loved bookcase in pride of place in the dining room. 

OK, so this is what all the Pinteresting of picture frames was all about. Clockwise from centre bottom we have an Alan Stones print (Immediate Family), our Swimming for Children book framed, a trio of Irish writers (Joyce, Kavanagh and Yeats - my brother has all 6 which makes me sick with envy, quite honestly), a Guinness advert that I found in an ancient Country Life magazine and framed and then Bedders' Bathing Places Fat-Man-Diving print which he got in the Side Gallery in Newcastle many yonks ago. The blanket is my Donna Wilson BEAUTY. 

Old faithful favourites have been finding new homes...

I'm currently suppressing my inner OCD nutbag and trying not to worry about our luscious new chair being bleached by the sun. Err, hello turning-into-my-mother! No worries - the  John Lewis voiles will be arriving soon. Err, definitely turning into my mother. 

I've had to adapt to the fricking crazy weather we've been having here. When I say adapt, I mean STOP WEARING TIGHTS. Believe me, this is a big deal for me. I swear to God, last week it was so hot I was worried about expiring. On the street. Just giving up. It was SO. VERY. HOT. It was actually a bit disgusting how hot it was, but I won't go into that. 

Another Side Gallery Print on the wall. Benefits of high ceilings (even higher than Leeds) = LOOOOOADS of picture space. 

So there we go. A sneak peek around the apartment. I am as giddy as a kipper. 

It's probably obvious. 

:D 

Oh, look-see. I did a smiley. Yup, definitely giddy as a kipper.  

More coming soon - amongst all of the reading I'm doing for school I came across MORE ADDICTIVE THAN CRACK COCAINE so I'll be penning a few thoughts on that and I'll also do a Brussels: IT EXISTS OUTSIDE OF THE APARTMENT! photo post. 

Eeeep!

Recommended Reading: The Beauty Myth, by Naomi Wolf

**no pretty pictures on this one I'm afraid as I'm on holiday and typing furiously on an iPad-I'll add a few when I return to Bruxelles!**

The Beauty Myth was on the periphery of my literary awareness. AOW's Anna K named it, however, in her 'Books That Made Me me' piece, and I therefore registered it internally on my 'Books That I Should Probably Read' list - mainly because Anna seems so well-informed on feminist issues and so enviably 'together' in her sense of self. And so I ordered it and began it and, somewhere between a Eurostar from London to Brussels, a Ryanair flight to Barcelona and a train ride to Valencia, devoured it completely. 

Her formula is pretty simple - and this is one of the book's strengths. After an introductory chapter of some of her key views and her self-coined terminology outlined, Wolf divides her argument into six clear sections: Work, Culture, Religion, Sex, Hunger and Violence. After such bombardment - and, believe me, it does feel a bit like a siege at times - she finishes up with 'Beyond the Beauty Myth', which (thankfully) offers some 'OK, so women have historically had a horrendous deal - now here's how to channel your fury and outrage into some kind of productive change!' pointers. 

'The Beauty Myth' is a term that probably requires definition before I continue, so I'll attempt one and hope that Wolf would proclaim me 'on the money'. The Beauty Myth, the author asserts, is a conspiracy - a sometimes political, sometimes money-making plot - designed to cheat women out of real equality by ensuring that they measure themselves constantly against an ultimately unattainable 'Iron Maiden' gold-star standard of generic beauty. As a result, the average Western woman spends up to a third of her salary on her appearance. She flagellates herself over her weight, her nose, her breasts, her skin tone. She faces a barrage of sexualised images everyday - beauty pornography - where models dictate that only if she looks like that can she feel like the model does, i.e. eyes half-closed and mouth agape in an intimation of sexual ecstasy. She faces constant scrutiny - from men and from other women, similarly conditioned by the omnipresent beauty myth. 'Ahah!' say the Powers That Be. 'Thought you were free? Well, you thought WRONG.' And this is where I hope I don't start to sound a Little Bit Mental. Bear with me.

You see, Wolf says, women have always had a raw deal. It serves male-dominated-society for women to Know Their Place (remember those Harry Enfield sketches?) - to keep quiet, to not rock the boat, to stay at home, to look after the children. And, over time, different organisations and agencies have done admirable jobs at keeping the fairer sex adequately sedated and constrained. The Christian Church did a marvellous job for quite some time with its lectures on its founding principle Original (that is, Woman's) Sin. Victorian doctors spoke sagely of 'women's illnesses' - hysteria, paranoia, nervous exhaustion - and warned women (or rather, warned their husbands) of the inevitable 'atrophy of the womb' that would occur in those women who 'read too much'. Literature told stories of women who met desperate ends because of immoral behaviour - 'immoral behaviour' that might merely translate to a provocative glance and a difficult-to-define attractiveness (see my much-hated A-level text Tess of the D'Urbervilles for further details). Very simply, the high percentages of women's death in childbirth until well into the industrial age provided a constant reminder to females of their fatality, whereas scientific advancements simultaneously tempered this awareness of mortality in men. 

But then there was a revolution. The 70s arrived and women - having burnt their bras, gone into Higher Education and armed with the contraceptive Pill and the right to a legalised abortion - showed real signs of making real progress for the very first time. They banded together in organised Women's Groups. They petitioned for women's rights and causes at universities and in the workplace. They were a force to be reckoned with. They were loud and they were proud. The future looked bright. 

However, this jubilation was short-lived. Now society has adopted a new angle to ensure that, despite recent strides, women still Know Their Place in this supposedly equal Western world. It's adapted its words to make use of the controlling language of those oppressive forces still remembered as potent - the language of religion, the medical language of woman as invalid - but orientated it around 'beauty'. Women do guilt well, says Wolf. It's strong in our collective memory. We have made strides, it's true, but we still feel undeserving of it. You can have your high-powered job, but you need the right clothes, the right face and definitely the right weight to feel like you're doing it well. 

Wolf does a fine line in articulating truths that, once read, seem patently obvious and yet earth-shatteringly profound at the same time. On women's magazines - an issue that's resonates particularly with me, as I'm sworn completely off them - she writes, 'On the one hand, the aspirational promise of women's magazines that they can do it all on their own is appealing to women who until recently were told they could do nothing on their own. On the other, as sociologist Ruth Sidel points out, the American Dream ultimately promotes the status quo: it discourages those at the bottom from developing a viable political and economic analysis of the American system [substitute the Beauty Myth], instead promoting a blame-the-victim mentality...a belief that if only the individual worked harder, tried harder, he [she] would make it.' One of her interviewees puts it brilliantly: 'I buy them...as a form of self-abuse. They give me a weird mixture of anticipation and dread, a sort of stirred-up euphoria. Yes! Wow! I can be better starting from right this minute! Look at her! Look at her! But right afterward, I feel like throwing out all my clothes and everything in my refrigerator and telling my boyfriend never to call me again and blow torching my whole life.'

And where are men in all of this? Frustrated, mainly. I could recount anything from pages 169 and 172 in quotation here but suffice to say you'll be screaming 'HOW TRUE!' Lots of talk on how men don't understand how an otherwise confident, intelligent woman can morph into an unfathomable, unreachable emotional wreck trapped inside something so utterly pointless. And, worryingly, the recent rise in male eating disorders and psychological referrals suggests that this unhealthy preoccupation with an unrealistic, unattainable image sold to us as the only life worth living by fashion and cosmetic brands might take over men, too.

Ok, so sometimes her rhetoric is a little, shall we say, extreme. I suppose her defence would be that she's shocking her readership out of inertia, and that takes some tough talking. Or some cringe-worthy talking, anyway: on skincare, she ponders whether 'women are feeding their skins as a way to feed themselves the love of which many are deprived.' (I wrote 'Come on!' in the margin). I also found some of her stats a little difficult to digest, too - particularly on rape, where she suggests 1 in 6 women have been raped and 44% of women have been victims of an attempted rape. I was left wondering whether all the women I'm close to have been particularly lucky to escape such assaults. I mean, it is possible that we're all just on the right side of fate, and that's bloody great, but I have to admit to a little cynical 'hmm'ing.

So, I recommend that you read it. I hope that your copy ends up like mine - covered in scrawl and underlinings - and you finish it feeling a little bit more cynical about beauty advertising and a little bit warmer about your fellow woman. Hurrah for us. 

A quickie - oo err, Matron.

Just a quickie as we're a complete pair of penises (peni?) who leave all the washing, ironing and packing until the night before we're due to go on holiday. Why, why, why?! 

The Brussels apartment is beautiful. Actually beautiful. I thought I might be being a bit biased but Adam's colleague Katie has verified that it is, indeed, a lovely apartment. She came around today to translate our inventory from our caricature of a capitalist European landlord. He has the kind of tan it's only possible to achieve when skiing in Aspen and a very expensive watch. I had a day of Sorting Stuff Out on Friday which included a trip to the post office to pick up my (entirely-too-expensive-but-stuff-it-you-only-move-to-Brussels-once) DONNA WILSON BLANKET. It looks a ruddy TREAT on the sofa. Even Bedders conceded that it is, in fact, stunning. 

So. I shall do some proper pictures when all is up and running but suffice to say I'm turning into an interiors BORE. The low-point came when we started pinteresting before we could decide how to hang the pictures on the front room. 

BORE OFF, MCDONAGH. So this is what we've been up to. 

Humming and hawing about where to put pictures (pinterest assistance required)

Worshipping at the altar of iMac.

Bedders MADE me paper flowers for our first wedding anniversary. Using a YouTube tutorial. If he was a wrestler he'd be The Ultimate Husband. They're really deserving of their own post, but time is pressing. I've been rearranging them and resisting the temptation to pick them apart to see how he did it. 

Rediscovering my I'd-save-you-from-a-burning-building possessions (like this Alan Stones print).

Today we had a mooch around a market at Place de Jeu de Baile which was Right Up Our Collective Street. Reproduction Eames easy chairs everywhere. And then we built a barbecue on the decking. Then we fell out, then we drank some beer, then all was right with the world. 

The only blot on my otherwise pretty peachy existence at the minute is my ever-growing collection of mozzie bites, including one beauty which has turned my wrist into a big fat swollen mess. However, I'm prepared for Spain with a supply of Avon's Skin So Soft body oil, which Jeremy Vine claims the SAS use as a repellant (incidentally, this is the only useful bit of information I've ever garnered from Jeremy Vine).

So. Barcelona and Valencia tomorrow. I've only been to Barcelona once and stayed in a depressingly shabby youth hostel with a group of girls. A dirty old man followed us down onto the beach and in my 'I'm abroad! I'm 22! This man is scary!' panic I could only shout, 'Non! Non!' at him in a curious half-French, half-Geordie accent. Nevertheless, it was a grand few days and I warmed to its edginess and its culture.

In other news, the baby name saga rumbles on. Now we're down to Rufus, Rohan/Rowan, Rupert or Ralph. So we're on 'R' now, it would seem. Hopefully there'll be a resolution before Christmas. I'll keep you posted. 

Bon vacances! 

It's a NEPHEW!

Have you ever considered how strange a word 'nephew' is? Consider it carefully. It's an odd one. Phew. Ne-phew. Neffy. Weird. 

Baby Narahari (or Paddy, as he's been nicknamed over the last few months) is a beaut. He's like a skinned rabbit. He has little brown eyes and little red feet. His current hobbies involve flinching at loud noises and putting his hands in front of his face, but brother James is hoping that he'll soon progress to Horrible History books and supporting Newcastle United.

He is, as yet, nameless - poor bugger - but I'm personally hoping for Lucky*. 

* Not really. Yet another laughable choice from the Collins Brilliant Book of Baby Names. I think their verdict was 'sounds like a DOG.'

Babynaming: Would a Kevin, by any other name, smell as sweet?

My sister has entrusted me with quite a responsibility. Yesterday, when she called around with mild labour pains - in the early stages of LABOUR, yes - yes, and she WALKED to our house - mentalist! - presented me with her Babies' Names books and asked me to 'make a list' of the ones I liked. 

It's not completely out of the blue - I am admittedly MAD on names. Mad, I tell thee. The disappointment I felt when my mum revealed they were going to call me Eilis when I was born, (then I actually remained nameless for 6 weeks, THEN they called me Laura - I mean, come on, mum. There were TEN Lauras in my year at school. It was THE name of 1983) still eats away at me. Well, I say eats - I means nibbles. But it's still there.

And, being a teacher, I see the fashions in names changing. Names trending and falling out of favour. Names that are over popular to the point of saturation - enough with the Jacks already! Unusual names that work - and those that really don't, eh, Chandler? 

My friend once bought me a Babies' Names book for a birthday present. I was thirteen-ish and wasn't remotely interested in babies - I just loved names. I went through and starred the ones I liked. That same book is now on my sister's nightstand and the names I picked then - well, the less said about that the better. Which is a worry, is it not?

These are the babies' names rules as far as I'm concerned:

1) Nothing too trendy. That means nothing in the top 30 (or the top 32, the way class sizes are going) - you don't want the '10 Lauras in a year group' issue. Well, your child doesn't. And you might send your child to a single-sex school, where the numbers of Avas and Graces and Charlottes will inevitably double. So that means if little old lady names and flower names are trendy for girls, operate on the edge of that trend. Don't go for Lily, go for Violet. Don't do a David Cameron and go for Florence - try Fleur instead. Pretty, non?

2) Nothing too 'out-there'. It needs to be clever and cool, but tradition must be observed somehow, even if it's just on the birth certificate. Well, in my OCD book it does. Would Katherine Duchess of Cambridge have made it to the Buckingham Palace Balcony if she'd been christened 'Kate'? Or, worse, K8? 

(one of my former colleagues had a primary teacher friend who took on a new class with a little girl called La-a in it. Uncertain as to how to proceed, she called her 'Laa' - like, as in 'The Sound of Music 'Laa'. The mother rang up the school. 'Why are you calling my child Laa?' 'Ummm...' 'It's LA-DASH-AH!' Oh my Actual God. Urban myth or reality? You decide). 

3) Don't land your kid with a complex. I spent my whole life with people mis-pronouncing and misspelling my surname. I was a total arse about it. Not everyone will have the strength of character to be like that. And when it's your first name, I imagine it's even worse. Be kind when it comes to spelling.   

Anyway, the book that she's given me is one that she and Krish bought and it is BRILLIANT. It's the Collins Brilliant Book of Baby Names. Have a look. Ignore that there's a picture of a baby wearing a feather boa on the front. If you're having a baby/know anyone who is, I thoroughly recommend you get them this bad boy - they'll thank you profusely. And what I REALLY like about it is this: it gives you the history of the name, but also an opinion of it. There's no pussy-footing about. Have a look at these:

NOVA - Astronomical term for a star that suddenly increases in brightness, then fades; probably works better for a TV science show than a child. 

PENELOPE - Image of elderly gardening lady in large-brimmed hat has of late been counterbalanced by the dramatic sensuality of Spanish actress Penelope Cruz. Chosen for his daughter by Taylor Hanson, of the group Hanson. (WHAT? TAYLOR HANSON IS OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE A CHILD?! More celebrity baby naming madness here). 

DEMOCRACY - Righteous brother of Peace and Justice - all of whom might have a hard time during playground recess.

And so on. They do like some names, by the way. The bad ones just make for better reading. 

It also has regular selections of 10 names under different headings - obvious ones, such as 'Celebrity Babies Beginning with B', for example, but others that appeal to prospective parents' personal preferences, such as 'Short and Strong Names', 'Names That Sound Creative', 'Names Headed for Oxford' and 'Names That Are Trendier Than You'd Guess'. 

Have you heard any interesting names recently? Do you have names picked out for future use? I'd love to hear them.
  

The last month, in a nutshell.

Hello there.

I'm shuffling one foot awkwardly. Super-awkwardly. And avoiding eye contact.

It's been a long ol' while, hmm? My apologies. I was caught up in a nuclear holocaust - suffering with a fat-fingered disease which meant I couldn't type - doing a lot of hair-washing...actually, I was just doing a million and one necessary but dull things that HAVE to be done, it seems, when you're moving out of your house and renting it to someone else/living temporarily with the in-laws/sporadically meeting a husband who now lives in another country/going to hen dos/doing an online course for a brand spanking new qualification that you're teaching in September....

I'm going to stop there because the use of the second person is irritating me. You get my gist, though. All that is left to say is ET CETERA.

Gaaaah.

But hey - I'm back. The good news is, I've done a LOT of reading and re-reading over the last couple of months (school stuff, but grand stuff - Lolita, All My Sons, Brighton Rock, Madame Bovary, In Cold Blood - wowzer), so I shall press on with a few Recommended Readings when I get the chance to process some opinions of them and pen them in a semi-literate fashion.

Here's the me, me, me stuff, though, lazy-girl style (i.e. via instagram. I think it might just have to replace my memory when it finally gives up the game in about, oo, two years).

In June, we went to Corner of Eden. I've mentioned it before. No, I'm not on commission - I just love it.  The place has a similar effect to temazepam, although without the memory loss and slurred speech. We stayed in the Shepherd's Hut, which I can whole-heartedly recommend. There's a mad dash across the yard to the bathroom involved in the morning wearing a dressing gown, but that's half the fun, no? And when furnishings are as outrageously tasteful as this, who cares?

My beautiful, beautiful bike was also delivered. As anticipated, it is beauty incarnate.  If you follow me on twitter or instagram, you may have  will definitely have heard me crowing about it. Here is is in the flesh metal. You have permission to squeal.

And so, we packed up all out stuff to move. It was crackers. I had a random desk in the middle of the front room for a fortnight. I drank wine and packed boxes in the early hours of the morning. Bedders was in Brussels. I was like a madwoman shimmying around a desk in the front room. At one point, I cried. "There's a DESK in the front ROOM.' It was a worrisome time. Here is aforementioned desk, in the front room. 

It'll look grand in a Brussels apartment, non?

I went on a hen do. There were Sports Day-esque games and craic a-plenty. And the Ceremonial Drawing Of Moustaches On Faces. And Pimms. It was splendid fun. 

(Going Off On A Tangent Just For One Sec: It did make me think, though, about the nature of friendship, and how it will be difficult to keep in touch with friends in Brussels. Or maybe I'm a big old cynic and it will be fine. Or maybe I'm realistic and it's all grand because the important ones will stick around. Yeah? Reassurance, s'il vous plait? Oh, I booked a French course, by the way. And a holiday for August - Barcelona and Valencia. Recommendations please!) 

Then I left my job, which was a Very Big Deal as I've been there for four years ('oh, you fledgling!' I'll scoff when I've done 30 years in Brussels - mebbes) and was given lots of uber-lovely cards and presents, including the flowers below. And I drove home with the windows open listening to Luke Kelly's Free The People (not a deliberate choice, honest) pounding the steering wheel and grinning like a loon. Because Our Big Adventure Is About To Begin.

And so it begins with an anniversary (I've outstripped all previous efforts and bought The Very Best Card EVER. Just wait). And a baby (nephew or niece? I'm going with nephew. And BY GOD I hope that they call it Hugh). And it really began this weekend when we sloped off to Kirklington in North Yorkshire to gatecrash a very hospitable fellow's jazzy Village Hall fundraiser and ate and drank and talked with good people. It was joyous. And the house, Mike (if you're reading), is beautiful. I am a little in awe.

Sooo...that's me. What about you? Does anyone have any thoughts on the keeping-in-touch-with-people-when-you-move-away thing? Or friendships with sell-by dates? Or (happy, happy thoughts!) recommendations for Barcelona or Valencia? Gracias.  

Well, this is rather embarrassing.

Fred: You've been a long way away.

Laura: Yes.

Fred: Thank you for coming back to me. 

***

Indeed, I have been a long way away. Sorry about that. I won't collapse and sob in your arms, though, in a Brief Encounter style. I will, however, endeavour to write something about everything that's been going on chez Bedford.

Hope everything is just dandy for y'all :) Back soon.