Babies At The Olympics
There was a right-old cat-fight on BBC Breakfast, this morning about whether babies should be allowed in free with their mothers at the Olympics.
I can understand the problem, as what do you do, if you’ve bought tickets and your baby has now arrived.
I am a season ticket holder at Ipswich and I’ve never seen a baby near where I sit at Home matches. There are a few ladies of child-bearing age around where I sit, and I can remember a few youngsters of about five coming in and being a bit bored. But babies no, as I suppose if you have one, you leave it at home. Which in Ipswich’s case is probably less than an hour away or so, as most season ticket holders are probably fairly local.
But when it comes to away matches it is rather different. I’ve seen several, often dressed in an Ipswich baby suit. No-one has been bothered, but then although Ipswich usually take a fair number of supporters, there is often quite a few spare seats, so the stewards don’t mind if an extra one is used for a bag with all the baby things. The local effect probably comes into play too, as you might be an Ipswich fan living in say Bristol and this is your one chance to see the team every season.
I should also say, I’ve never seen a baby behaving as to annoy anybody, but then football is a game of two forty-five minute halves with plenty of time before, in the middle and at the end to attend to the baby.
You could also argue it’s good for the baby, as they get used to being in a crowd.
Remember, too, I’ve been to a lot of horse-race meetings. Babies are generally welcomed and all children under 16 are let in free. However, this may not apply to the biggest of meetings like the Derby, although when I went this year, there were a few prams about in the cheaper enclosure I was in.
But the Olympics will be different, as some events like the athletics are quite long and you wouldn’t want to inflict that on a baby and the people around you.
On a personal note, I would prefer to sit next to a woman with a baby, than say someone eating popcorn or a burger, as I can’t abide the smell of either.
Or they could take a leaf out of horse racing’s book and have a free creche.
Christmas, Bloody Christmas
Oh! How I hate Christmas!
I shall have lunch with my son and his friends.
On the other hand, it doesn’t cost me much. I will buy just three presents and a couple of good bottles of wine for Christmas lunch.
I can’t even get to the football on Boxing Day, as there are no trains and I can’t drive.
I think this could be my worst Christmas ever!
Let’s ban it!
After all, the only people who like it are children and I don’t know any of them!
Christmas has never been the same, since you could go down Spurs on Christmas morning to see the match and then come home to a late Christmas lunch!
And now it appears the Underground will be on strike on Boxing Day! They were last year and that was a day to forget. It incidentally looks to be the same argument about triple pay and a day off as well.
The sooner we take the numan element out of the trains the better.
The Scandal of Adoption
Or should it be the scandal of non-adoption. According to this article and many others, only 60 babies were adopted in England last year.
C who was adopted and handled many such cases in her legal career, would be spitting blood at the news today. As she’s not here, I’ll do the spitting for her.
I have met many people, who were adopted. Not all are white too! But none regret what happened to them. C didn’t.
Do Successful Women Have a House Husband?
A news item in the Sunday Times today is headed Top women need ‘him indoors’
It goes on to discuss how quite a few of the top women in the City have husbands who are at home.
I will not answer my question directly, but talk about my relationship of forty years with C. Or more particularly our careers.
For the first few years, we were very typical although, some would say that your early twenties are too young to have children. We had three before I was 25 and C was 24. I worked hard to get on and by that time I was starting my first business. I was working at least 24 hours a day, seven days a week and we were living in a fouuth floor walk up flat in St. John’s Wood. So if you have to live in crap housing make sure it’s in a good location. Just north of Regent’s Park can’t really be better.
When I sold my first business, we moved to the Barbican and C went to UCL to do a law degree, as Politics from Liverpool, where your tutor was Robert Kilroy-Silk, doesn’t really prepare you for the world of real work.
For the next fifteen years or so, I was part of the team creating Artemis, whilst C was getting her career together as a barrister. We were both working hard and I got the financial rewards when the company was sold. C meanwhile gained a reputation as one of East Anglia’s foremost family barristers.
When we moved to Newmarket to start the stud, we started to evolve a new way of working together. We still had our individual careers and interests, but I would spend more time on other things, as C was now very much the major wage owner. It allowed me to develop ideas, some of which worked and some didn’t. And then when she moved to Chambers in Cambridge, which was very much Internet based, I became much more of her support at home.
As we didn’t have young children anymore, I couldn’t be described as anything more than home support.
So in some ways we’d almost come full circle.
I suspect our model has not been untypical and I’d recommend it. As the major wage-earner changes over the years, does it really demean the man to be the one who oooks after the house, when his wife can earn three or four times he can.
But we also did a lot of things together.
Shopping for instance. Some of my friends are incredulous, that for most of our life together we did the general shopping together too. When we were in the Barbican, we’d push the children up to Chapel Market next to the Waitrose I now use. So life has now come full circle in more ways than one.
Clothes shopping was often together too. C was better at choosing clothes for me and in many cases the reverse was true. I remember the year she died being in Zara and C was looking at a sun dress on a hanger. She said that it was awful and I then picked it up, realising that it would be just her size and style. She bought it and wore it all the summer. Remember that I am a designer and also an unusual man, who was taught to make clothes by his mother.
If I have any regrets about our relationship, it was that I dodn’t do more cooking. I taught myself in a few days after she died and like doing it.
So I would suspect that although house-husband is too strong a word for it, most successful women and successful men for that matter have a strong partner at home, who can help or even take charge of the mundane and suggest other ways in the serious part of their career. As an example in the latter, I helped in a few of C’s cases, by using my knowledge and experience to improve her arguments and in some other cases, I have suggested ways of improving her returns from the work.
And then there’s the need for a cuddle and more, that we all need!
Living alone is not a choice we would make for ourselves.
Libby Purves on Sharon Shoesmith
This is the best comment I’ve seen on the Sharon Shoesmith case. If you can find a copy of The Times for Monday, then read it.
Basically, she’s just saying that despite everything, the buck stops with Ms. Shoesmith, as she was in charge and should have done something about the problems in her department.
The article is also mentioned in this post in a blog. Shoesmith, Blatter and Mladic are all mentioned in the same post, which must be a first.
Jilly Cooper on Life
Jilly Cooper and her daughter, Emily, are featured in the Sunday Times Magazine Relative Values interview today.
Her daughter said of Jilly.
In October 1999 Mum was in that terrible Paddington train crash. Miraculously she managed to climb out of the carriage, covered in someone else’s blood, cleaned herself up and went off to her meeting. Later she was offered counselling, but said: “Why on earth would I want that. I’m alive aren’t I?” In Mum’s book, life is for living, and that’s something I absolutely love about her.
Jilly is so right. After a tragedy, you just have to pick yourself up, dust yourself down and start all over again!
Perhaps the strangest thing about the interview is how the young Jilly Cooper looks so much like her daughter now. It’s strange because Emily and her brother were adopted.
But then C was adopted and unless you have experienced it at a close level as I obviously have, there is nothing so unlike what you think it might be, than the relationship between parents and their adopted children.
Let’s Ban Mother’s Day
Signs like this really get my goat.
Mother's Day Promotion
After all, I haven’t got a mother and C, the mother of my sons died three years ago.
And I bet the free meal on offer doesn’t have a gluten-free option.
How about a widows day?
A Celebration of a Life
Yesterday was Brian‘s funeral in Amersham. Or more properly, it was a humanist celebration of a life lived well and to the full!
I’ll remember it for ever, just as I’ll remember Brian for all he did for me, both in business and personally in the last few years.
I think though he would have approved of some of the more light-hearted things that were done and said. Someone said, that it was a pity that the funeral cars were Mercedes and not Jaguars, as Brian was very much a fan and had owned several of the latter. I think, he would have hated it, if his funeral had been bland, well-meaning and lacking any humour and fun.
I normally don’t wear a black tie for funerals, but a flowery Ferragamo one, that I bought in Florence, soon after C’s death. However out of respect for Brian, I did wear black yesterday, but decided to change it just before I left to get the train back to London. I then asked his daughter, if I should have worn it. She said yes and showed me her nail varnish. She said Brian called it Tart’s Red. Sometimes when she tried another shade, she’d show it to her father and he’d say, he preferred the Tart’s Red. Yesterday, all his girls, as he called them; his wife, his daughter and two grand-daughters, had had their nails in Tart’s Red in respect for Brian.
But did Brian have the last laugh?
It was said in the service that he was a Spurs supporter. But coming from Edmonton, this should have been obvious, even if he didn’t tell everybody about it.
I said in an e-mail last night, that I would put a small bet on Spurs to beat Milan in memory of Brian. Spurs won, but I didn’t put the bet on.
A Letter on Adoption
This was a letter from Ian Storey on adoption in yesterday’s Times.
Babies in need of adoption are not born with racial preferences or prejudices. They are born with a need to be cared for so they can flourish, rather than slip into compromised lives. Every sidelined child can easily become a needlessly tragic tale.
Well said.
C was adopted and was a complete believer in the system, even it did have the odd flaw. But then show me a perfect system for anything and I’ll show you a liar.
Where C Used to Work
C was a family barrister and this picture shows one of the places, where her important cases used to end up, The Principle Registry of the Family Division.
The Principle Registry of the Family Division
It is rather anonymous building for such an important court. For many years the court was in the grandeur of Somerset House and then in a less grand building by Holborn Tube Station. I think it is true to say that the later buildings were chosen for cost rather than legal gravitas reasons.
The Anonymous Widower 