tongue piercing

I haven't been spending much time with my daughter recently. I've been busy. One night, when I was going out, I'd been out several nights that week already, she said to me:

"I feel like I live alone".

Last night, I catered a gig. It was work. Badly paid. But work. I got home at midnight and, as usual, went into my daughter's bedroom. I saw her sleeping form, the soft pale skin, her little head of tumbled blonde hair, the slender hands ...I kissed her, breathing in her still child-like smell. I love her I thought. This is all that counts. I must spend more time with her. And more importantly, be present when I'm with her. Because even when I'm home, I'm not. My mind is elsewhere or I'm on the computer. Or I'm worrying. Or thinking. Or planning.

She asks me questions nowadays, interesting questions...

"Explain proportional representation."

We go through it. At first sight it looks like a good idea.

"Der" she announces, in her teenage way "of course it's better. Der. Why don't we just do it?"

And then I explain further. That with PR you also get the BNP...and the Greens and lots of little parties. They then have to form coalitions to be able to wield any power. So you end up with a big messy compromising party anyway.

Then, switching subjects rapidly she asks:

"Can I have my tongue pierced?"

I look at her. I feel stupidly anxious. I don't want her to have her tongue pierced. I want her to have brown long hair again, untouched by hair dye. I want to see her in her ballet outfit again. I want her to curl up in my arms at night. I want her to think I am the bestest most important fantastic loveable human being in the world again. Like she used to. I want to be called 'mummy' rather than 'muuuuum' or when she's annoyed, 'mother'. 

I say lightly, a little cruelly: "If you let your hair go back to it's natural colour, you can have your tongue pierced."

It was a joke. I then attempt a weak excuse like:

"Isn't it dangerous? Can't you get an infection?"

And even more weakly, grasping at straws...

"What if you get in a fight? They could, like, rip your tongue out".

She laughs:

"You said that about my pierced ears mum. And I've never been in a fight".

This morning she was leaving for school.

"Right Saturday afternoon my mate and I are dying my hair brown."

I'm still only half awake.

"Is it a good idea to keep dying it?" I ask gently "it will end up frizzy".

"Well I'm doing what you said."

I look non-plussed.

"I'm dying my hair brown so I can have my tongue pierced".

I gasp. "What? That was a joke".

Her expression changes. She mutters something. It sounds like 'bitch'. 

"What did you say?"

I'm thinking I've got to put a stop to this. The disrespectful way she talks to me. 

She explodes:

"You are TOTALLY evil. Oh my god you are a LIAR. You said I could have my tongue pierced. LIAR"

"It was a joke. You knew it was a joke!" 

She slams out of the front door, cursing, upset. She's got GSCE tests today. I'm worried. I don't want her to be upset. I'm also thinking, why do I want to control her appearance? You are only young once. Let her experiment. 

Brown bottom

In 1999, just as the solar eclipse was about to hit Britain, the first eclipse visible in this country for years, Gordon Brown, two years into being Chancellor of the Exchequer of the New Labour administration, decided to flog Britain's gold reserves. The announcement was made on 7/5/99. 

Nobody in the treasury could understand it. World leaders advised him not to do it. Still he pressed on.

This Times article, written in 2007, describes the efforts the journalist has made to have the details of this decision made public, with no result.

Brown sold the gold at public auctions, driving down the price of gold. Perhaps he wanted to buy euros. Some rumours say that he was bailing out friends at Goldman Sachs.

Astrologer Maggie Hyde, talking at The Company of Astrologers, puts up Gordon Brown's chart on the overhead projector. We also look at the chart of the Bank of England. 

Gordon Brown, I think it is now evident, is not leadership material. His chart backs this up. Nor, it emerges more and more plainly, was he Chancellor of the Exchequer material. His chart has no Earth in it. Earth is the element that rules material, earthly goods, such as money. Brown has most of his planets, a stellium, in the 12th house, the house of confinement, hospitals, prisons, spirituality and self-undoing. Brown's view of himself as a leader comes from his Moon in Leo. I am the king! His many years in waiting must have been very hurtful. His failure to cope with the leadership position must be even more so. Be careful of what you wish for...

Tony Blair actually would have made a better chancellor being a Taurus, the sign most associated with money. Coincidentally most of the major stock markets in the world were set up while the Sun was in Taurus.

The Bank of England chart is interesting. There are contacts between it, Gordon Brown's chart and the 1066 UK chart.

In one sense it's an ideal chart. Fit for purpose. On the other hand this institution is based on fiction and fantasy. It's worth remembering that usury is a sin in the bible and remains so in Islam.

Transits coming up to hit sensitive points in the Bank of England chart will bust this illusion wide open. Times they are a changin'

Our Madeleine

“We want a big event to raise awareness that she is still missing (...) It wouldn’t be a one-year anniversary, it will be sooner than that” (Gerry McCann on June 3, 2007, one month after Madeleine's disappearance.)

It is two years since Madeleine McCann went missing. From the very first interview with her parents, something struck me as peculiar about the official story. Generally I avoid news stories of missing and abused children. It's too painful. I don't want to know.

This time however, my antennae went up. Kate McCann did not act...sincerely... Some of her early comments regarding her 'missing' daughter were inappropriate "Whoever's got her, Madeleine will be giving them a piece of her mind". Asked to talk to Madeleine, after all, if abducted, she and the kidnapper could be watching TV, Kate looked down and said "she knows we love her". Not the behaviour of a mother seeking her child, more like the behaviour of a grieving frightened mother.

I have lots of theories about why the press have not properly reported on this 'abduction', why the McCanns have been treated with kid gloves. Several female TV presenters supported the McCanns. I believe this is down to working mother guilt; they saw themselves in Kate McCann, a professional woman who found it hard to cope with the loss of status entailed with becoming a stay-at-home mother. They wouldn't want to criticize another middle-class mother who relies heavily on nannies and paid help to bring up children. These exhausted mothers may also have had occasion to play fast and loose with the rules of wise parenting in the interests of having a break. It is little known but the McCanns left their children alone not just that fateful night, but every single night of their holiday. This is unheard of.

Two years ago I travelled around Mexico and Guatemala with my then 13 year old daughter. One night she had fallen asleep in the hotel room. I was hungry, I wanted to go out to find something to eat. But I didn't. There is no way that I would leave my 13 year old daughter alone in a hotel room in a foreign country. Some may call that over-protective.

I made mistakes when I was bringing up my daughter. I was alone. Unlike Kate McCann, I did not have a husband, several friends, the money to pay for creches when I went on holiday with my child. Once I fell asleep on a beach while my child, only three, played on the edge of the sea. She was wearing one of those swimming costumes stuffed with polystyrene, so she wouldn't have drowned. But I still feel guilty about that lapse to this day.

Bringing up children is a series of near-misses. Most of us get lucky.

I don't hate the McCanns. I feel sorry for them. I believe there was some kind of accident which they couldn't admit to, especially being abroad. I do wish they would put everybody out of their misery, themselves even, and especially the Portuguese, by telling the truth.

There are rumours of political pressure applied by Gordon Brown on the Portuguese government to drop the investigation into what happened to Madeleine McCann. Another black mark for Gordon.

Goncalo Amaral was the detective in charge of the case. He believes that Madeleine McCann died in the flat on the 3rd of May and her body was hidden. He was pulled off the case after he made the McCanns into 'arguidos', a Portuguese legal term which implies that they are not exactly suspects but hold sensitive information regarding the case. Here is the film he has made: he may be wrong, but it is certainly of interest:

>

A clearer case of child neglect, this time from the 'underclass', and this time gloves off from the press...The killer of baby P, it turns out, has also raped a two year old girl, most likely baby P's sister. Appalling though this is, I yearn to read a more nuanced report on the truth of this situation. Why did the mother, from some accounts a perfectly loving mother before she met her boyfriend, the killer, put up with his abuse of her children? What's the background of the killer? Was he abused as a child? Or is he just evil?

I came across a website in the last few days which talked about Baby P's mother in the most abusive terms. I've seen Facebook groups that want to form a lynch mob to kill Baby P's mother and the social workers. Do they think this is helpful?

I know social workers who will not work with children because of the pressure and the flak they will receive if they make a mistake. Social workers do not get enough funding. They are handling too many cases. Some of them are ham-strung by political correctness it seems. But whatever they do, they get criticized. In the Cleveland scandal of a few years back, social workers and hospital doctors were hounded for putting children into care, as suspected victims of sexual abuse. The young inexperienced social worker, Lisa Arthurworrey, from the Anna/Victoria Climbie case has been suicidal and house-bound for years since her mistake was exposed.

Now social workers are scorned for not removing children from families soon enough.

We feel frustrated and upset when we hear that young children are tortured and abused. We want to take it out on someone.

Bad things will always happen. Ultimately, if someone is determined to commit a crime, there's not much anybody can do about it.