What’s wrong with a bunch of daffs? (From The Northern Echo)

What’s wrong with a bunch of daffs?

12:02pm Wednesday 10th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

MOTHERS are people too. They may even have rights. Especially on Mothers’ Day. Or are they expected to spend their special day baking cupcakes for other people?

Okay, Mothers’ Day as we know it now is a huge commercial rip-off.

Which is why I’m a great believer in the simple bunch of daffs and a card approach. You know, a little recognition and appreciation – but not singlehandedly restoring the ailing high street profits from children’s pocket money.

What’s depressing is the lack of originality. I know you can never have too much chocolate or smellies. On the other hand, the vast number of pink hearts out there for mother makes it feel too much like a job lot left over from Valentine’s Day. Leftovers.

That’ll do for mum.

But that was nothing to the book suggestions I spotted this week. Now your mother might like a light romance, a grisly thriller, a political biography or the latest Joanna Trollope.

What she’ll get – according to the suggestions piled high in one book shop – is a recipe book. So she can slave over a hot stove for her family.

Or a book on Make Do and Mend.

Well – that will make her feel really special, won’t it? Why not just give her a roll of sackcloth for a new pinny while you’re about it? Or a new scrubbing brush? Keep her in her place.

In any case, lumping all mothers into one identikit group is doomed to failure. It’s not their motherhood that’s important – even on Mothers’ Day – but the fact they are individuals with their own strong likes or dislikes, who just happen to have given birth.

But instead of going for the chainstore suggestions, you could stop for a moment, think about your mother as a person – now that’s a thought – and about what she might actually like.

One of my sons once bought me a glorious bit of kitsch religious art – it lit up and flashed while playing a tinny version of Ave Maria. It was truly gruesome and I loved it – as he knew I would. But I guess that probably has a bit of a specialised appeal and wouldn’t fit easily into the pink flowery offerings.

And if you must buy a recipe book, then fine, go ahead and buy it. But only if you use it, you cook something from it and serve it up to mum on Sunday, while she sits with her feet up and a large glass of her favourite tipple.

And you do the washing up afterwards.

Or you could just stick to a card and a bunch of daffs.

IN the last few months of her life, Jade Goody made as much money as she could for the sake of her young sons, Bobby and Freddy. Now we know that she left them £3m – more than enough to give them a decent start and the private education She wanted for them.

Meanwhile, her mother has received just £10,000 and her second husband Jack, who is awaiting trail for rape, got her car.

We laughed a lot at Jade’s ignorance.

But she was pretty smart, wasn’t she?

THERE is something primitive about the hysteria surrounding Jon Venables. It makes you realise how easily a lynch mob can be roused. When the two boys came to trial and hysterical adults were screaming and banging on the sides of the prison van. What would they have done if they’d got in – ripped two ten-year-old children limb from limb?

Is that civilisation?

We were sentimental about Baby P and his grim short life – conveniently forgetting the long-term effect his lack of care could have had on him as he grew up.

We were rightly horrified at what happened to Jamie Bulger. And he and his family deserve justice. Coolheaded, even-handed justice.

Jon Venables was, quite rightly, given a second chance by the state and its attempt at substitute parenting.

If he has blown that, then he should face justice and the rule of law – not the hysterical frenzy of the mob.

Justice, not revenge, is the mark of a civilised society.

Oscar for best revenge...

FILM director James Cameron left his wife, Kathryn Bigelow, for a younger woman. Both he and his ex-wife were nominated for Oscars. All the way along they have been generous to each other, staying good friends. And when Kathryn Bigelow won and James Cameron didn’t, he was gracious in defeat.

But despite the civilised behaviour, I still bet as she clutched the Oscar that he wanted, there was a bit of Kathryn that was going triumphantly “Yess!”

When a man leaves you, however civilised, you still want to hit him where it hurts. And that Oscar may have hurt quite a lot.

Parents need to take control on Facebook

DO you actually know what Facebook is and how it works? You should. Especially if you have children.

It’s easy to miss out on the latest crazes.

Technology moves so quickly that if you just stop paying attention for a moment and you’re left miles behind. Especially if you’re a grown-up.

Then we get all dismissive about it and say “What does it matter, anyway?” “Who cares about Facebook, whatever that is exactly? It’s nothing to do with me. I’m not interested.”

But your children will be interested and you need to know and understand just what they could be doing, so that you can keep them safe.

You wouldn’t send a toddler out to play with the traffic alone. Letting a teenager loose on the internet can be just as dangerous – as murdered 17-year-old Ashleigh Hall’s friends and family now know all too well.

This is the world as it is today, the world our children have to deal with. We have to know about it. We have to help them.

We have to prepare them.

And that means that we have to get a grip on it first – if only to explain the dangers our children would never suspect.

Our bright and beautiful children, who think they are invincible, might know about computers, but in other ways they are as innocent as Little Red Riding Hood setting out into the forest.

And only the grown-ups know how dark and dangerous the world can be.

Backchat

Dear Sharon,
I WAS determined not to be like my elder sister, who was pregnant and married at 18. Instead, I went on to university and taught for several years before I started having my children in my 30s and then went on to work as a college lecturer.

My sister, like your friend, went on to college later in life and she, too, became a teacher. We ended up with similar careers. Hers was more of a struggle at the start and she and her husband did not have an easy life when their children were small, but now we are both coming up to retirement she has had the great pleasure of grandchildren, two of whom live close to her, while I fear I will be too old to enjoy my grandchildren, should my children ever become parents (unlikely at the moment.) For years I was convinced that my way was the better choice. Now I have to say I am no longer so sure.

AT, Darlington