Monday 19 March 2012

It's Good To See Eliza Here

There's strong competition for the toddler pound in our local community, but one group has gone too far. 


One of the big challenges of office life is giving meaning to your day so you're not fire fighting the whole time. Having the ability to carve out identifiable time and space can make or break a career. At heart, I always thought that's what having a strategy was really all about.   


No surprise, life at home with the kids presents the same challenge. It's easy to find yourself spending the whole day calming tantrums and chasing peas around the floor. Having a purpose to the day, and getting out and about is vital. Luckily, our village is not short on things to do with small children. 


"...there is no messy play club."


[SPOILER ALERT: I'd like to stress that I have huge respect for all who run the groups below and they are a life line for me and many others. Any mild mocking should be taken entirely at my own expense.]

Toddlers (£2) on a Monday is a no nonsense affair. If it was a cup of coffee, it would be nescafe and infact that's what's on offer. Up to ten babies and toddlers plus mums and occasional dads in the local cricket pavillion. Sometimes the older kids roam the room grabbing toys, sometimes the babies take over and the smell of trapped poo is overpowering. 

Messy Play (£1), Tuesdays, seems to be a bit of a village institution. It's on every other week with occasional gaps for holidays. There's a sense of expectation and genuine excitement when details of the next date are released. People will catch your eye in the playground and say the delicious phrase, "Messy Play, it's on!" Held in the Baptist Hall with different activities laid out: sand pit, painting etc. Then a story (usually Bible based) and a sing song. If it was a coffee, it would be a nice but overfull  cup of filter. Though as you'd expect, they serve instant. 



Recently, it looks like the local CofE have spotted a gap in the market for the every other Tuesday slot when 'Messy' (as I've now learnt to call it) is not on. So they've launched 'Bears and Prayers', with songs, stories, prayers and playtime. Now, I'm not what you'd call an alpha male. If I was a cup of coffee, I'd be a latte not a machiato. But this one is over even my manhood limit. I just can't bring myself to go to a group called Bears and Prayers. I mean for goodness sake, I used to work for someone who worked for someone who worked for the Director General of the BBC (well, until we all got restructured). I've spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on pointless software at the click of my fingers. I've nodded at Jim Naughtie in the lifts of Broadcasting House, and he's nodded back! I have a reputation to maintain. So Eliza (who'd probably love it) won't get to see this one in action. Sorry Eliza. 

But, she will always get a place at Jumblies (£1.50). Held in a church in the next village along on a Wednesday, it's a very slick baby music group. Two sessions so you can choose your time. You get a name badge on the way in for you and offspring. The songs are themed to help give it purpose, and best of all we always start with a sung introduction for each child...

"It's good to see Robbie here,
It's good to see Eliza here,
It's good to see Sarah here,
how are you today?"

Now that's something I'd happily take back to working life. All good meetings start with everyone introducing themselves. Imagine how much more ice would break if it was sung? 



"You have to choose between the church and the pub..."




Earlier this week, a woman sidled up to me in the playground and gave me a key. Apparently I put my name down on a list and I'm 'opening up' for Toddlers on Monday. I have to unlock, buy the fruit for snack time and bring the milk for teas and coffees. It's a clever idea, I feel more involved already.  

All these groups are of course a huge help to a family like us finding our feet in a new location. It's also interesting to see the Churches reaching out to folk who I'd guess rarely set foot in the door on a Sunday. I think rural, or even semi-rural communities need the Church. As the song line has it, move to the country and you have to choose between the pub or the church. Pubs are rubbish for toddlers and with the Church declining, that just leaves the off licence. The novelty of the 5 'o' clock beer because I'm at home and I can hasn't worn off yet, and I don't think I'm the only dad to use it as an occasional way to structure the day. But it's not a strategy I'm keen to rely on with a toddler in tow, so I won't be founding the Beers and Tears group just yet.  

Saturday 10 March 2012

How to grow a Forest Garden on a North Facing Hill

It doesn't involve digging, the plants come back year after year and you grow things with great names like Szechuan Pepper or Jostaberries. We've read, we've planned, we're trying for a Forest Garden...


Martin Crawford's epic book.


With nearly a half acre of more or less virgin garden to tame, we've hit on creating a Forest Garden. At heart this is built on the idea of 'working with nature' to mimic the conditions in a forest.


Excitingly, it has an architectural side:

  • A canopy layer of trees or large shrubs (preferably edible)
  • Below this a shrub layer of,er, shrubs (preferably perennial and edible)
  • Then ground cover. Vigorous, low plants to fill in the gaps, stop the weeds and give everyone food. 
And it has some defining principles:

  • Get all the layers working together (ecosystem is the risky word) and they do lots of the hard graft for you. e.g. nitrogen fixing shrubs like Broom mean you don't need to add compost.  
  • Mostly plant perennials - they come back year after year, unlike annuals. 
  • Use a wider range of edible plants to add diversity and flexibility. We're planting a rose hedge as an edible wind break (Rosa Rugosa). 
But, we have a big complication.... We could only afford our half acre because it's on a steep north facing hill. The foothills of the Mendips to be precise. So this will be more trial and error than usual. 

The planting so far...

We've sheet mulched as much as we think we can handle this year. Used our removal boxes in one spot. We've planted four fruit trees (canopy layer). These are Victoria plum, 2*Pears and a Morello Cherry. We've planted a wind break hedge in a couple of places (it increases yields). 
We're adding shrubs slowly. A broom for nitrogen, a Jostaberry and a Redcurrant are in the post. Ground cover to follow but that'll need to come from seeds when we've got something to propogate them in. 

There are some great people/books/sites we're using to help:

Work in progress:


Bottom of the garden. Removal boxes as sheet mulch. Looks messy but seems to be working - pleasingly green. 

Victoria Plum added in the middle and a rear hedge of wild roses added this weekend (not in pic yet).


Spring is springing







Woody helps water new hedge
Wild rose hedge to be









Our soil is healthy but soggy (north facing slope)

We're planting shrubs late, may need more watering!

Friday 2 March 2012

We Are The Dads

Lunch out with a couple of other stay at home dads today. Mobbed by little old ladies. Apparently we're some kind of super race. Welcome, but undeserved. Maybe it's only ourselves we're saving. 


A new dawn for dads? Not really related to the post, but it was a nice picture...


Every now and again on a Friday I meet up with one or two other stay at home dads and their children. I launched in to this business cold when we moved to our village last Summer. I was hugely relieved to find I wasn't the only dad at playgroup or in the playground during the week. 'Does it really matter?' you might ask. 


It does matter! And here's why (for me at least):

  • A chance to start a conversation on common ground. Small talk is not something I (along with 90% of the world) find natural. Any extra pressure, e.g. 'you're a woman, I'm a man', can make it harder. 
  • Dads are still more likely to be anticipating going back to work or mixing child care with work. I know this one doesn't reflect well on what I'm doing here. I miss the identity that comes with a successful bit of work (conversely, I'm much happier without the lonely crap you get the majority of the time). It's more likely conversation will touch on work and it's strangely comforting to get back in to the language. 
  • I've been more honest about the difficulties of this role with the dads than with mums. There's also cathartic honesty about how relationships with your wife/partner have changed. This mostly seems to involve complaining about having to pick her clothes of the floor so they can go in to the wash.  
  • It increases the 'stranger praise' factor by 50% for every dad/child added to the group. Which brings me back to lunch.

"It's the mundanity that gets to me."
Sometimes we meet at a playground or petting zoo (animals, needless to say), and sometimes we have lunch. This one was a pub lunch to mark the return of one of the dads to full time work the next week. He was mostly relieved as far as I could gather, financially and identity wise. He has a slight Rob Brydon twang, and the first time we met he said 'it's the mundanity of it [child care] that gets to me'. I was in the first flush of staying at home at the time. Six months on and I know what he means. Monotony would be my word of choice, but it's the same cry for help. 

So, three dads and three kids, none older than three. We found our table and got on with chatting, ordering and keeping the kids busy with the usual range of crayons, books, cutlery and crawling under the table. It being a week day, most of the other tables were full of retired folk. There were a few business lunches going on, and it still makes my heart constrict to see a man in a suit at lunch. I hated business lunches.

An elderly woman who'd been dining with her husband stopped by our table on her way out, and that's when it came. A double barrel of praise and wonder at us being dads looking after our kids, and weren't they well behaved, surely that must be because they were with their fathers. Surely. 

Best of all, she assumed out loud that this was a one off and we were helping our other halves out for the day. When we explained this was our full time role, she nearly fainted, then explained she was nearly 80, and in her day men were not and could not be involved. I tried to catch her husbands glance to see if there was a glimmer of objection. But his eyes were dead. He hovered a pace behind her, silently, patiently waiting for her to finish, a mild smile set on his face. 

Is that the deal we've made, I wonder? It's a familiar sight of chatty older woman and patient partner waiting, not joining. Will that be reversed or equalised by at least sharing home building? I'm urging myself to make new friends and find playmates for Woody and Eliza. During the week I run the rhythm of the house (and pick up clothes from the floor). At the weekend my wife will step back in for some of this and the passivity I feel makes me sadly cross. During the week, this is my domain. 'You'll need to put those potatoes on now if we're going to eat before 6' is sometimes the best I manage at the weekend. But are we building an equal space for when/if we finally manage to retire? I hope so. 

Anyway, the praise was lovely of course. And I get it fairly often from the older generation, in playgrounds or post office queues. I'm guessing they don't randomly praise women out with their kids. What they're doing is normal, but we, apparently, are super dads. Of course we are... 


"Woody, stop fussing, I'll come and help you when I've finished writing my blog."