A PAL has just started driving and we have been up to Phoenix Park lots, I love it there. This little cherub loved walking the dog more than anything, particularly walking through grass that was taller than she is. It is hard to believe she'll be two years old next week. The doggie of course loves it all.
RM column May 16 - From young child to young woman
I keep having to shake myself recently, all of a sudden I have gone from being Mum to a young child to being the mother of a young woman. Over recent years I have gone from being the ‘young woman’ to unknowingly passing that mantle onto herself.
All of a sudden new stages and new frontiers are creeping into our lives; we have already started talking about college while the Young Wan is talking about her gap year.
Certainly a lot of this talk is a little premature. But I cannot believe she is coming into her last two years of secondary education. It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was worrying about where she would go to secondary school, in fact finding her a primary school wasn’t that long ago either. So I suppose thinking about the next two years is a case of forewarned being forearmed.
Like many other young people the Young Wan would love to go to college away from home. I have many emotions about this, the normal ‘I don’t want my baby going away from home at such a young age’ to the inevitable feeling that I am going to have to relinquish some of my motherly duties to a little grown-up.
Course it goes without saying that I will always worry, that’ll never ever stop but there will come a time and really soon where she will be responsible for herself and for her actions completely.
One of the problems with her going away to college, aside from my own reluctance to let go of my baby is that I don’t have the money to send her. Saving for college was an ideal that I was never able to manage. I could start a fund now however winning the lottery aside I don’t think I would be able to save enough for her to study away between now and two years time.
We talked about this recently and she looked horrified at the thought of having to live at home whilst at college. After telling her that worse things happen at sea I explained how her life at 16 years old is not the same as her life as an 18-year-old college student will be.
It makes sense to me to live at home having access to clean laundry, your meals put on the table, food in the fridge, your own bed and own bedroom, no bills and steady access to the Bank of Mum. Sure what more could you want?
I think she is beginning to see the benefits of this particularly when I explained how I can barely make all the household expenses let alone how she could do that as a student.
Then last night the Young Wan had a bright idea, one that she has obviously mused over with a pal and they both thought it to be a great idea. The last couple of summers she has spent the summer with her Nanny in Turkey and this year her pal is going over too so they thought they could travel together.
Once I stopped laughing I explained there is no way in hell would she be travelling to Turkey on her own, even with a 17-year-old pal.
“But I’m 16, I can travel on my own”, she indignantly said. Again once I stopped laughing I explained to her that it would not be happening. She may be 16 and she may be a young woman but she is not travelling by herself just yet. I told her that maybe this time next year I would feel differently, I doubt it, but you never know.
Parts of this you may have read before, sorry about that.
RM Column May 9th - Turn that down
Saying teenagers make a lot of noise is nothing new but I have to say the Young Wan has been taking things to new decibel levels lately between her mobile phone, her new ipod and of course the auld stalwart, her music system in the bedroom.
I am being driven nuts. I am actually boring myself saying ‘turn that down’, well actually it gets to the point where I end up roaring ‘TURN THAT DOWNNNN’.
Like most teenagers her mobile phone has become an extension of her hand and she seems to be constantly texting with the very irritating and constant noise of her hitting the number pad.
The straw that broke the camel's back recently was the all-evening click, click, click, click, click, click of her two-handed teenage texting and it began to grind on my nerves. Between the clicking and the tinny sound of her ipod I told her to 'gowan away and play in your room and give my head a bit of peace'.
I have to say that I didn’t think I would ever be saying that to her again, I thought that had passed around the time she stopped playing with dolls.
When she is at home there is a steady noise level in the house normally going on in all four corners, not to mention the obvious drain on the national grid and my wallet. You can bet the music will be left on in her room, the tv is probably tuned to a music channel, the radio will be on in the kitchen, meanwhile she’ll be listening to the ipod and texting.
She appears to be incapable of doing dishes without loud music, loud enough to drown out the telly.
You find yourself saying that she must be nearly done just leave her to it, but like a slow and steady irritation all of a sudden it creeps up on you and you break before yelling about loud music and how it can be heard all over the street.
She will turn it down then leave it a couple of minutes before slowly and surely turning up the volume slowly. This is another one of those occasions where you wonder if your offspring think you stupid and incapable of realising what they are at. Then the yelling ‘turn that music DOWN’ starts again and so the cycle starts afresh.
That has been bad enough but I recently bought her a new ipod and unlike the other one she had I have not been able to turn the volume down on it.
Ipods allow you to set a higher level for the volume on your computer, this means you can set how loud the ipod can be played at which is great in terms of trying to protect hearing from damage.
On another and more selfish level I want to turn down the volume because the level she has it at sometimes can be heard from another room with two doors closed and the television on; still somehow the tinny noise of the player is audible.
It’s funny though because I will give out yards about the noise yet when she isn’t at home you miss it. But don’t tell her I said that.
A FATHER of eight children, Anthony Nagle, was jailed yesterday for 12 months for plying a 15-year-old with drink and joints before videoing himself raping her over a period of hours.
Shamefully his defence asked the court that didn't the girl 'look like a sophisticated female in the video'. I do not need to see it to know that NO she did not, however for a predatory bastard intent on violating her this sick excuse is a flimsy shield that is churned out and unfortunately some people seem to agree.
While I know there is no place for personal feelings in court, I cannot help but wonder if that rapist scum's defence have daughters and how would they feel if their daughter was violated in such an awful way if they would say 'well she does look old for her age'.
The defence even tried to claim the ordeal happened over a short period of time, despite a clock in the video showing this not to be the case and how the girl held the video at one point, both arguments were completely dismissed by the Garda investigating the case.
Sometimes Judges' hands are tied in terms of sentencing but in this case Nagle could and should have been looking at being sentenced to the maximum 14 years for producing child pornography, instead he received two years in jail with the last year suspended. I have to say I was nearly sick watching the TV3 news coverage, who interviewed him!!!
I also wonder why he was put on the sex offenders register for 10 years, will he be cured by that stage?
I just love how we value and protect our children. And 15 year olds are children, quit with this bollox of how 'she looked older' 'said she was older', or whatever nonsense argument is also used. Wouldn't you just love to take a big stick to our judiciary?
RM column May 1 - Closing doors
SOME of you will remember that we have moved recently from a small, cramped and totally inadequate two-bedroom(ish) flat we lived in for far too many years. We have gone from cold, drafty, old and nearly dilapidated accommodation to a snazzy, warm, well-maintained and newly decorated two-bedroom cottage and we love it.
I don’t know whether it is down to a manic-amount of washing machine loads, the thrill of having a washing machine still has not waned and when we first moved in I would say every item we possess has been washed, but our electricity bills have been too high for my liking. As a result I find myself pulling out plugs on phone charges, turning off lights, turning off the electric shower at the main when not in use and saying things that would make my Dad proud.
Things like ‘it is like Piccadilly Circus in here’ in reference to the fact that every conceivable light has been switched on in the house. My Dad said that to us all the time when we were kids and I laughed out loud the first time I heard it pass from my lips.
One of the other amazing things we have gained since moving has been cupboard/storage space.
Now I can buy the more economic bulk items because we have places to store them. For years I was unable to do anything like that, there just wasn’t the room to put it anywhere in the last place.
The funny thing is we have twice as many cupboards in the kitchen than in the previous flat and somehow, God knows how, the stuff I had somehow has filled up the twice as many cupboards with little room to spare.
I have no idea how that happened because I took the opportunity to cull so much during the move, yet somehow my kitchen stuff has reproduced with a population explosion spreading to filling out all the available space.
It would also appear that we have a poltergeist because every time I walk into the kitchen all the cupboard doors are open, so I close them all up again.
This happens a couple of times a night, of course the poltergeist is a 16-year-old who seems to find the closing of doors abhorrent. The battle cry at night time when she goes to her bedroom is ‘shut the door after you’ or ‘this isn’t the star ship Enterprise’ or ‘were you born in a hospital with revolving doors?’ so I suppose it makes sense this ‘born in a field’ mentality follows through to the kitchen as well as her bedroom.
One of the worst things about the other flat was the fact that the first thing you saw when you walked in was her room in all its filthy glory. Now you see into her room as you leave the house and straight into the outrageously messy build-in wardrobe in her room.
Whether I like it or not, the cupboard pulls me like a siren (without the pleasure of course) and before I know it I am tut-tutting at how messy her new room is.
So I offered her a little advice last night, if you even want to pretend that your room isn’t the cess-pit that it is, either close the bloody door or at the very least close the wardrobe door. Then I won’t get pulled in and what I don’t know what hurt me. However I think that is being too sensible so for now I will just keep closing doors.
Just going to post up some columns, I'm somewhat behind.
RM column April 24 - Bullying
An OECD survey which is the largest ever conducted in Ireland and researching students’ performance in particular subjects uncovered a staggering 43 per cent of 15 year olds who said they were bullied during the school term in which the survey was carried out.
The bullying part of the survey was not the main leaning as to why the survey was carried out but obviously stood out as something very important that needs to be attended too immediately.
Most parents will be very concerned by these findings and despite the high profile campaigns around bullying the problem seems to be getting worse.
The Young Wan has had her own experiences of this with ex-friends who mounted a vicious and constant attack on her through her bebo pages and on the phone. One of the things that struck me about it at the time was the complete and utter ferocious cruelty in their actions.
Fair enough that they didn’t want to be friends with her anymore, they are teenagers and will drift in and out of friendships but their behaviour around it was just plain wicked.
Personally I was quite happy the friendship was gone with this gang. While I witnessed some of their behaviour I was completely thrown when they constantly rang our house with nonsense messages. We both laughed at most of them until I heard one that made me stop in my tracks. This particular message said that they hoped she died.
The Young Wan was getting more and more upset and I wouldn't let her answer the phone. While she was trying to be brave and handle it herself, thats my job. At the very least she watched me deal with the calls and at various points she even managed to laugh out loud at my side of the conversation. I felt this was important, that somehow I was taking the power those horrible kids had over her and helping her cope with it.
I found it startlingly that they didn’t care that they talked to me, instead they put on dopey Belfast accents trying to imitate me as brazen as you like. They knew I knew who they were so my tact at the end was to keep them on the phone to waste their credit while saying nothing. No point in adding oxygen to their bullying fire.
For the day or so during the climax of their relentless bullying campaign the Young Wan walked around the house holding her tummy complaining of stomach pains. She was dreadfully unhappy and I loathed seeing my normally happy and bubbly daughter like that. Were all these incidents related, you bet they were.
As they were not friends/ex-friends from school, I couldn’t go through the school but I did approach the parents of one of them who were wonderful and supportive and talked to their child. It didn’t stop completely at that moment but petered out over the following days and by that stage herself was less affected by it. Since then the ringleader has apologised and wanted to be friends again. Thankfully the Young Wan has more sense and while accepting of his apology she now knows the cut of their gib as they say and won’t be going there again.
Do I think those lads wanted something bad to happen to herself? Mostly I don’t, but if anything had happened to her, I would have bayed for their blood and would have probably had to be restrained from killing them myself; I saw the effects in the Young Wan to their behaviour and would have happily kicked them up and down the road.
There seems to be a bit of a mob-mentality about it all and little empathy. That’s one thing that I hope I have instilled in herself; being considerate of other people. She may be my princess but I want her to treat people with the respect they deserve.
I think it is very easy to bully now. We have seen how people react on the internet, in fact there is a wonderful cartoon explaining just how over the top people behave, which you can see by going to this link.
While the cartoon is humorously done, the message is the same people lose all sense of manners and decorum on the internet and I would not be surprised if some/a lot of the bullying has been carried out on bebo and by texting. It is easy for messages in these mediums to read worse than intended or easily misconstrued, it is also easy to lose the run of yourself and possibly overreact and become aggressive in ways you wouldn’t in real life.
Now it is time for more to be done to tackle this problem, children are suffering, their education is suffering and in many cases the mental (and physical) scars will remain with them throughout adulthood.
Offenders need to realise the impact of their actions and more must be done to penalise those behaving in this way. Schools must be given the right tools to deal with it, it is clear from this survey that despite everything that is happening in schools to tackle bullying it is clearly not enough.
WOW just spotted this on Flickr Blog, unbelievable and sad that Mildred passed away only last month. Do read about this brave couple and enjoy the rest of Loving Day.
Their inspirational story just shows you that there are some liberties we take completely for granted, such as voting. If you haven't voted in the Lisbon Reform Treaty referendum already, get your arse in gear and do so before 10pm. Your vote is one of the most important things you possess and really should not be taken for granted. Can you really complain if you haven't exercised your right to vote?
SOME random images from the last week. Once I finish the back log of images, I'm sure there'll be more.
WELL they were taken nearly two weeks ago at the last Toe Jam photomeet at the Dublin Maritime Festival and finally here are some of the images of the day. It was another great photomeet, with outrageously wonderful weather. Not only were there some Toe Jam regulars, our new name, some new snappers came along from boards.ie as well as someone who read about the meet on Dublin Blog.
I will come back and edit this with everyone's links, but for now I'll just post some pics to prove I have actually posted them at long last.
As ever it has been cool to see everyone else's contribution from the day in our Flickr group. On the day itself there were hoards of people at the festival which made taking photographs rather tough but I suppose on the other hand it made you work harder for images.
There are more days out planned and if you fancy coming along check out the Facebook group, or our Flickr group as well as keeping an eye here and on Dublin Blog for details of the next one, which I imagine will be sooner rather than later.
So over to the images.
CAN'T talk, full, had barbecue. In the meantime, here's a pic. Still have pics from last week to process, more soon.
IT has been a very busy week for me hence the derth in posts. I've been out and about taking pics for work which take time afterwards to go through leaving me completely unmotivated in the evenings to do any internet-related other than to quickly check emails. Course we had the photomeet over the lovely long weekend which I will get to. I haven't managed to even get to those pics yet but needless to say we had another good afternoon with new and not-so-new faces and fantastic weather. More on that and soon, if I'm honest I haven't even looked at them yet but I will.
One thing that did get sorted last week was payment from the Herald. Once I managed to get my hands on a copy, thanks to Dermot, I contacted them and spoke to some one, not some one who could actually help and who sounded irritated to be phoned. That was a little amusing to me and I called again, this time talking to a very helpful woman on reception who told me who I needed to talk to.
After getting in touch with them I was given an amount for the photograph I didn't agree with and, incidentally through Twitter, got some great advice on what I should expect or push for and why. At that stage the Herald contacted me about invoicing them for payment. After a couple of emails where everything was explained, people were helpful, obliging and it was all sorted out and I'm happy. I got an email earlier saying I should get a payment in a couple of weeks which is great. So looking forward to that :)
I love a happy ending, don't you?
Incidentally if by any stretch of the imagination you know this woman by how she munches her cereal, will you give her a smack around the head.
I'M doing something here that I haven't done before and publish a pic of myself. Course the icon I use on most sites is from a photograph of me as a child and I love it but all you can see is my legs scarpering off to the side. The next one is another one from my childhood, one of not too many photographs with me in them, I was the third child and the shine was off taking pics. Every now and again someone in the family comes across them and this one was sent by my Mum/Nanny via my Uncle and I just have to show it off. That's my Grandad in the pic, he passed away when I was seven. I have few memories of him but there's one special memory I have and somewhere there is a pic of that day.
I would have been about three and was wearing a red tartan trouser suit; it was the 1970s and was scrapping out the last of some jelly from one of those green tupperware bowls sitting on my Grandad's knee. I remember him telling me that I would be sick and I remember thinking 'how can you be sick eating jelly!?*. It made no sense to me, sure jelly is lovely, you couldn't be sick on something lovely like jelly. The photograph preserves that memory even more because I am so young in it, barely older than a toddler, with short curly red hair and jelly all over my face. I hope it isn't lost as I haven't seen it in so long.
Anyway back to the photo posted here, I'm with my Grandad and my uncle who looks like a handsome Freddy Mercury and it was taken in my grandparents' back garden which I loved exploring. I hope more turn up :)
