Most patronising review ever?

This:

HOW IT ALL BEGAN
By Penelope Lively
Fig Tree, $35

AMONG English women novelists of the past 100 years, one can identify two major strands. There are the solidly crafted purveyors of domestic complications, with recognisably well-made plots and characters who compel our attention as they propel those plots. Prime exemplars include Elizabeth Taylor (not to be confused withthe late diamond collectress) and Barbara Pym. Then there are the more idiosyncratic, more venturesome likes of Beryl Bainbridge, Penelope Fitzgerald and their high priestess, Ivy Compton-Burnett.

Straddling these two lines is Penelope Lively. Her novels might be rooted in the familiar and the familial, with a keen eye for the revealing detail, but she seems increasingly willing to take risks in storytelling.

From http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/links-in-the-chain-of-life-20120120-1q9tw.html#ixzz1lTTdfSOM

is meant to be a positive review.

No prizes for guessing it was written by a man who I suspect was rather proud of being able to name that many english women novelists.

more money than...

'You do realise those bananas are $15 a kilo?' asked the assistant at the supermarket checkout.

I did.

But I wondered why she didn't think to ask me about my knowledge of the price of the lamb steak ($25.99)

or the organic fresh orange juice ($5.99 for 2 litres)

or the the weird novelty 'taste bomb' tomatoes ($2.99 a punnet and precisely the same price as the ordinary cherry tomatoes so not an extravagance)

or even the organic sweet potato crips I'd bought in desperation after scouring the shelves for the only acceptable brand of grain chips (I don't know)?

I happen to like bananas.

I was only buying three.

I swore I'd never be a 'don't kids say the darnedest things? blogger' but...

This morning, a conversation about who would be taking her to daycare took an unexpected turn.

'Mummy's taking you because I'm sick.'

'Are you going to die?'

'No, not yet. I'm just a bit sick.'

'But but but you said that you and Mummy are old and when your uncle died you said that he was old and sick and you're sick and when are you and Mummy going to die?

'Don't worry,' I said, 'We won't die till you're a big grown-up.'

'But but but (tears) I don't want you to die!!'

More tears, some sobbing.

'I want someone to love me!!!'

'Oh' I thought 'Don't we all?'

You've got at least a bit to answer for, Christos

So on Wednesday evening, after a long, tiring day and a 30-minute rush hour train trip to a place she didn't want to go, during which trip we had to stand the whole time to be near her stroller because not one of the apparently able-bodied* people had offered us a seat in the limited mobility section near the door, and two avuncular men had encouraged her in boisterousness by asking her name and where she was going and laughing when she jumped, my three-year-old was upset when I accidentally pressed the call button for the lift from the platform (despite knowing that that was her job, what was I thinking? tryng to get out of the crowded train station as quickly as possible maybe?), I told her she could press the button inside the lift instead.

I didn't really expect that a passenger from our carriage would deliberately press the button first then tell my outraged child that she needed a smack for complaining.

At least she didn't administer the smack herself.


* I know some people have difficulty with stairs and don't necessarily have any visible clues of this so I'd never actually ask anyone to move but there is a subset of train passengers who take up the limited mobility seating because they're too lazy to move further into the carriage. Such people annoy me. I vaguely recall a time when I didn't have to travel with a stroller and I could sit in any part of the train I wanted. I always went further into the carriage, not least because there were never any small children there.

Not quite a New York story

I had to fill in a form so last night I dug out my daughter's birth certificate for the first time in three years.

I realised it wasn't entirely accurate.

According to it, I lived at one address and her father lived somewhere else rather than our actual state of cohabitation. I mean we were both listed in the same block of units but whoever had typed the form mistook an 8 for a 3 so one of us had a false address in an entirely fictitious level of the building.

I wondered if that anonymous data entry person had speculated about why two people havinga child chose to live so close to each other and yet not together.

Did they think about how we met? Was it a romance begun in the car park or the lift lobby? Did we find each other on the train? Or we were like the erstwhile couple Mia Farrow and Woody Allen who deliberately had separate apartments they could look at each other across Central Park? Not that that turned out to be such a great way to raise a family....

But then I wondered whether, if we had the same surname, their quality control might have realised it was just bad handwriting rather than an unlikely coincidence.

Must work out how to get it fixed now.

Feminism in the Lower North Shore

The Leisure Centre where my daughter has swimming lessons* sent me an invitation to celebrate this, the 100th International Women's Day. Women are asked to:

Nurture your inner beauty and revitalise your body and mind for International Women's Day with fitness classes, health assessments, tours of the centre, posture analysis, nutrition advice and drop in massages, all free.

The invitation includes the logos of the local council and the NSW Government's Office for Women's Policy so someone has decided this is a good idea.

Now aside from these classes being scheduled from 9:30 till 1:30 and so completely irrelevant to me and other women working that day, I'm not really sure our feminist trailblazers ever envisaged IWD being spent learning how to Zumba.

Weren't they more interested in things like getting the vote, equal pay for equal work and paid maternity leave?

And yes I do know that women's health is important and not everyone works full time and encouraging us to learn about nutrition and the importance of maintaining an active lifestyle is going to contribute to our longevity so we can monopolise the remote control in the nursing home rec room

but

this seems to me at least

to be

just a little bit

um

patronising.

But hey, at least they're offering free childcare! I'm sure they'll be swamped.

*Not, I stress, the expensive and dodgy chain of gyms I give money to and pretend to attend. Something for free? Not likely

Product disclosure

Last week a colleague I don't know very well was going to Japan for a holiday. He said that he was spending a few days in a mountaintop monastery and was wondering how he'd cope with the silence.

This instantly made me think of David Mitchell's Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet.

I asked if he read fiction and would he like to take this book with him.

He did and he said he would

but

as I handed my copy over I had some serious qualms about whether I was acting in accordance with my workplace code of conduct.

I mean, the first chapter is a fairly graphic description of a very difficult childbirth and some other extraordinarilty nasty things happen especially in the mountaintop monastery in feudal Japan.

Was my loan going to ruin his holiday?

He said he'd take my warnings on board and we both admired the cover. All of David Mitchell's Australian editions are gorgeous to look at.

I'm still waiting for my postcard.