Girls v boys (warning, contains penes)

Now don’t get me wrong on this.  First things first: I adore my son. Totally, utterly adore him. But I do sometimes wish I’d had a daughter as well.  I always thought I would.  Way back, when my sister was having her fourth (or was it fifth?) child she said, very firmly, ‘I can see you with one child.  A girl. I just know it.’  Now, see, maybe this is why I’ve always been a bit wary of the psychic malarkey.   Cos while she got the one bit right, I have ended up being the only female in the house – yup, even the dogs have dicks.

But anyhow. I don’t have a daughter and, unless I become one of those ancient mothers with babies (which SO isn’t going to happen) it’s going to stay that way.

I was going to crash in front of the fire but, having successfully ignored the phone ringing, I caught a late tweet (perils of Twitter) from Charlie:

nice, innit? particularly without us being noisy

‘It’s Rachel’s birthday; you’re ignoring the phone! Just join us at the Thai. Now!’ 
What can you do?  So I whizzed down the pub to tell Adrian and James I was off out - again.  Problem with the pub is that you can’t whizz.  So, by the time I’d wriggled away and got to the restaurant, they were finishing off the noodles. 

Their youngest, G, is my godson and he’s delicious. But oh, I do love their girls so much:  The Mistress of All Evil and Princess Delicious.  The MoAE wanted to talk books and music and fashion.  The PD was keen to tell me how she’d pulled a fast one on the MoAE who now owed her a small fortune (plus interest).  I admired the PD for her business acumen but felt a stab of pity for MoAE who has as corrosive an Amazon habit as I do – books, music, shoes – we’re soul sisters.  She wanted to know about Samael – she was my first beta reader, inhaling every chapter as I wrote it.  So I told her about the rewrite: she wasn’t impressed.

‘But I loved the surfers, and the crusties.’

‘Yeah, but what the zombie beheading and the crucifixion and that unseemly tussle at the gates of Hell?’ I said with a sad shrug.

‘Oh God, yeah! You haven’t…??  You HAVEN'T???? But those were the best bits….’

I explained that editors seemed to think the book was too complex, had too many sub-plots, was too dark.

‘But we teens love horror!  We devour dark,’ she said with venom, with a firm emphasis on ‘we teens’ (when you’re thirteen that teen bit is mega important). ‘We love complex stuff.  We teens are deep.  Dumbing it down is just patronising.’

Well, couldn’t argue with that.  She did a great eyeroll (told you we were soul sisters). ‘I can’t think about it,' she said flapping her hands. 'Let's listen to this instead.’ She pulled me down and stuck an ear-bud in my ear. 

‘Are you trying to shock Jane?’ said her mother, ‘Cos it won’t work.’

‘I know, silly,’ said the MoAE. ‘She’s cool and trendy….’  See why I love this girl? 

‘You’ll love this,’ she continued. ‘It’s called….’ She dropped her voice…’I’ve Just Had Sex.’

So we listened to it together. Catchy tune so we started jigging around a bit.  And then I just howled with laughter.

‘Penis. He said penis….’ I covered my mouth with my hand. ‘Shit, sorry.’ (flapping my hands guiltily in the direction of my young godson). Rachel gave me The Look. ‘The penis bit was okay…’ she said witheringly.  ‘….the shit wasn’t.’  Damnit, bad godmother again.

‘But, but…you can’t say ‘penis’ in a song; it’s just such a ridiculous word.’
‘I know,’ said the MoAE happily.  ‘It’s hilarious.’

And it was and we just howled with laughter.  And then laughed more about hair and friends and how ridiculous boys can be.  And tried on sandals and considered doing the helium out of the birthday balloons, like we did last year. 

I left with the biggest smile on my face.  Big hugs from everyone apart from my godson who took my hand very carefully, bent over and gave it a soft, respectful kiss (he always does this – it is just edible).  When I got home, I asked James if he’d heard the Penis song. He frowned with total disdain. ‘God no. That’s disgusting. Why on earth would I listen to something like that?’

Girls and boys. Different creatures.   

But, but…just watch the video – it cracks me up.  Maybe it's a girl thing.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/lQlIhraqL7o

A different story...

A few days ago I received an email about Mother’s Day that took me back twelve years to when James was born.


Like many first-time eager-beaver parents-to-be, Adrian and I went to NCT classes. We did quizzes about pain relief, stifled giggles as we watched breasts being constructed out of bits of ribbon and beading and practiced panting. We discussed water births, pondered the perfect aromatherapy oils with which to welcome our baby into the world and drew up birth plans with stern invectives against nasty drugs and rotten old doctors intervening. And I’m sure that, for many people, that works just fine and dandy. Not for us.

It went pear-shaped. Pear is probably the wrong word as I simply don’t have child-bearing hips and James, it transpired, was one gargantuan baby (12lbs 8oz). It was an equation which, frankly, was never going to balance. To cut a 14-hour story short, he got wedged, we both got into difficulties and I ended up being hurtled into surgery. I remember clearly being annoyed that the surgeons wouldn’t let me watch my own C-section. Adrian, meanwhile, turned several shades of green. I had transfusions; James had a ridge round his head but, by heck, we were alive and, really, that was all that mattered.

But I do wonder. What if? We lived in a very remote place back then. If I hadn’t been in hospital? Would the air ambulance have got to me in time? Would we be alive today?

And then, this email. From AMREF, the African Medical and Research Foundation, asking if I could help raise awareness of the 280,000 mothers who die each year in pregnancy and childbirth in Africa because they lack basic medical care. What does that mean? We’re not even talking about mothers like me, who needed rapid surgical intervention, but hale healthy normal women who died from lack of basic midwifery and hygiene. I ponder charity requests very carefully but this one chimed and friends in Africa said that, yes, AMREF do great work. So I asked them to tell me more – and they sent me a matchbox. Yup, a matchbox. In it were the items needed to deliver a baby safely. 

• A piece of plastic sheeting to lay on the floor.

• A sliver of soap and cotton wool for hygiene.

• A piece of string to tie the umbilical cord.

• A razor blade to cut the cord.

• Matches to sterilise the blade.

That’s it. That and a trained birth attendant.  The keys to saving a mother’s life and that of her child. All it might take to turn a potential tragedy into a happy ending.


I’m not going to pontificate. If you are interested, check out their website 
It's not just about seeking donations.  It's about spreading awareness and they’re running a campaign at the moment called Status of Africa - linking in with Facebook and other social media. You choose a mother or midwife with whom to share your Facebook status for five days – twice a day the app will update your status to show theirs. By lending your status, you can let your followers know what it’s like to be a mother in Africa.

So, this Mother’s Day, I’m going to be grateful for being a mother. I'm going to be grateful for being alive and for my strapping very much alive twelve-year old. I’m going to be grateful to the midwives and nurses and doctors and surgeons who helped me and my baby. And I’m going to be finding out what it’s like to be a mother in Africa.  What it's like giving birth without all those people on hand...but hopefully with trained midwives and a matchbox of hope.

Me, me, me....

It's my birthday and so I am not apologising for shamelessly nicking this idea....


How many good songs are there that mention your name?  I loathed my name at school - there were four Janes in my class alone - but the upside is that I get some cracking tunes....

First up Sweet Jane - Lou Reed


Famous Blue Raincoat – Leonard Cohen (got to love Leonard, every which way).


Happy Birthday Jane – The Enemy (new to me, this one, but perfect for today)


The Diary of Jane – Breaking Benjamin (change of pace)


Hazey Jane I - Nick Drake (adore Nick Drake)



Lady Jane – The Rolling Stones (so so lovely)



Sooo.....did I miss any other great Jane songs?  What great songs mention your name?