Nailing my colours to the mast

I wasn't going to do it. But then Alice posted and she was right - the silence in my blogging community about the election is deafening. I have to admit I have felt very exposed writing this post, and I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with me.

I first started getting hot under the collar after the announcement that the Conservatives would allow married people to transfer a portion of their unused tax allowance to their spouse. So if both Mr Coffee and I earned £10,000 each we wouldn't qualify. But if Mr Coffee earned £40,000 and I stayed at home we'd get an extra £150. Most families have to sit down and work out just how much more money a second wage will bring in, after childcare. The Conservative policy throws in £150 in favour of not going back to work, along with the threat of cutting the tax credits that help with childcare costs. I read recently this post with which I completely sympathise, regarding the lack of financial provision for stay at home parents. But we are who we are, and as a feminist I believe that my ability to work part-time - and to arrange that work so that I can pick my children up from school - is important. If there were just as many stay-at-home dads as stay-at-home mums, maybe I wouldn't be so cross. But that isn't the case.

The Conservatives, in opposition, voted against extended maternity leave, against paternity leave, against the right to request flexible working. These are modern, family-friendly policies which allow women to strike a balance and continue their careers - if they so wish - after having children.

When Eldest was diagnosed as having cerebral palsy I had just returned to work. I'd decided not to return to my old job - one with very fixed working hours - but to work in an organisation with a flexi-time system. There were many medical appointments, many missed days and made-up hours, and I believe that if I had returned to my old job I would simply have had to hand in my notice.

Now, as the parent of a disabled child, I have the right - along with my husband - to take up to 18 weeks' parental leave until her 18th birthday, changes made under a Labour government. Not that I expect David Cameron, for all his family experience, to do anything to help parents of disabled children, any more than I expected Margaret Thatcher to help women. (And what guarantee of special needs inclusion would we have in his proposed community-run schools? His insistence in a recent news story that "we will end the bias towards the inclusion of children with special needs in mainstream schools" has sent a massive chill down my spine. Because I have a very happy disabled child in a mainstream school and secondary school choices are not too far away.)

The £150 tax break is also ominously useless for single parents, and having been brought up by a single mother who held down three part-time jobs to support me as a child, I find that insulting. But anything I wished to say about the Conservative Party's views on single mothers has been far more eloquently said by the author JK Rowling in The Times, so there's no need for me to go over it again.

The last few years under Labour haven't been that groundbreaking. But my honest belief is that a lot was achieved in the first few years, and they can't keep endlessly pulling new rabbits out of hats just to make people gasp in amazement. David Cameron may look fluffy, but I really do fear the rabbits he's poised to pull out of that top hat he's got stashed under his podium. I really, really do.

A call for bad behaviour

When he was a boy, Mr Coffee stole a packet of segs from a shop. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but the walk home was a killer - every step filled with terror and regret. By eleven years old, he knew he was not a recidivist.

I must have been about the same age when I went to our corner shop with a girl from school, who began to demonstrate her own much more practiced method of shoplifting. I was beyond shocked, and though we didn't use the phrase 'comfort zone' then, I knew enough to know that I was out of mine. As a child, I was terrified and regretful even when I hadn't even done anything. The most exciting thing I remember doing was walking to the other side of my village with my friend Joanne. It was so far away! (Over half a mile!) We came back, giggling uncontrollably and amazed at how far we could reach in the world.

Yesterday I took the Lattes to an activity day for disabled children and their families. I don't usually go to these things, but as my family grows up, I'm getting less able to pretend that our life is completely normal except for the addition of a few pieces of equipment. The sun is out, and everyone is heading to the park and to the beach - but the other nine-year-olds are getting independent, nipping to the shops and hanging out with each other. Their mothers aren't lifting them onto the swings or taking them to the toilet.

At this activity day I was chatting to a service provider of activities for children with additional needs. The ultimate aim, he said, would be equality to the point where disabled children got to hang around on street corners. And I said yes. Yes. YES. I want my child to be able to hang around on street corners.

Eldest has access to a range of meticulously planned activities with helpful and caring adult support. Though I'm very grateful for the opportunities offered - filling the after-school hours without resorting to TV and shouting is a challenge for any parent, special needs child or no - there is something overly wholesome about the thought of it. I don't worry that she won't get chance to go horse-riding, or play sports, or learn to play an instrument (that opportunity includes abandoning the instrument that you're learning to play - another important rite of passage for most of us). I worry that she won't hang about, having fun with friends, doing nothing, with every chance to get up to no good.

It might seem strange, to parents who worry about these things, to hear someone calling 'bring it on' to boundary-pushing behaviour. But freedom is where we find out who we are - what our limits are, when we've pushed them a bit too far for comfort. It's where we learn what it's right to be afraid of, and what's not worth worrying about.

And where we realise, if we're lucky, that we're not cut out to be a thief.

Born to bowl

The Eldest Latte always wins at bowling.

She is a crack shot with a bowling ball guide ramp. But then she found out about angles from an early age, having learned to walk in a fixed wheel walking frame. At the age of three and four, Eldest would take aim with her frame, hoist her weight up into her arms, and with a few scoots of her feet would propel herself towards her destination in a straight line.

Fetching everyone's bowling balls is the perfect job for the Littlest Latte, who chose as a tot to take most of her first steps whilst carrying heavy objects, such as tape recorders and small pieces of furniture.

Me? As the sun shines and the spring winds bite, I abandon my pretence of being outdoorsy. Being in a gloomy, artificially lit building on one of the sunniest days of the year so far is absolutely fine with me.

Things you may or may not wish to know

• I've been avoiding blogging for fear I will not be able to stop myself launching into a 80-paragraph feminist rant about Conservative plans for a tax break for married couples. As far as I can tell, my corner of blogland has not turned into a sloth of angry politicised bears. But if any of you want to see one, let me know.
  

• The good thing about the General Election is that there is more of The Now Show, which is now playing every night. I do love a nice bit of satire, and once a week just doesn't cut it. But why all the men? Why do Mock the Week and QI and Have I Got News for You constantly present deskfuls of men, men and only men? I'm quite willing to believe that David Mitchell and Dara O'Briain are funnier than anyone else on the planet, but I'm pretty sure you could find any number of women who were funnier than Jeremy Clarkson, even if they had had their heads surgically removed.
  
  
• Eldest has to make a World in a Box, complete with a river, before going back to school on Tuesday. I have no clue how to go about this. I think I'm going to have to ask for your help again - I call, ye sorceresses, &c, &c...

• A friend and I took our children crab fishing. These are the crabs we caught.
  
  
  
  
  
  What makes this even more tragic is that we took three buckets with us to collect them in. But finding out that you could amuse children for an hour by giving them a string with a bit of raw bacon on the end? That was worth doing.

Crafts for children - the talentlessness continues

On the last day of term, the Lattes had the option of taking decorated eggs into school. (We made these, but I'll leave you to imagine what ours actually looked like.)

When we arrived at school we found a small posse of children gathered around another child's egg. The egg in question was barely visible, due to being surrounded by a custom-made pink stretch limo, made of card, and complete with tinted windows.

I slid our egg surreptitiously into the hand of Eldest's teacher. "Here is our pitiful egg," I said to her. "I'm going to go home now, and we can pretend you never saw it."

I have made a pretty good fist of craft so far - for someone so woefully without talent, patience or imagination. Little effort was required - throw some sparkly bits and some glue on the table, add a few empty boxes, some paint, and a cup of coffee, and sit back making helpful suggestions. It was perfect idle parenting - and the evidence could be quickly put into the recycling after sunset.

But the bar is raising, thanks to other children and their damnable talented parents. They are oustripping my abilities, and my store of craft blogs (most of which seem to be aimed towards the pre-school end of the market.) If stretch limos are needed, I am well and truly screwed.

I am consoling myself with a hysterical amount of Easter cheeriness, after a mammoth session with scraps of felt and ribbon from The Parcel, and the production of an enormous amount of highly unnecessary baked items.

From here and here

Image and recipe here.

The buns looked nothing like the picture either. But somehow, I can't quite bring myself to care.

Have a happy Easter.