so, why don't I feel like forwarding an email with such a great story

This is one I've seen before, it's about a brave woman called Irena Sendler, who saved Jewish children in Nazi-occupied Poland and paid a high price when she was caught.

And I checked it on Snopes and it's true. A true story about a brave woman - what's not to like?

So why was I feeling uneasy? I read the Snopes entry and pondered a bit. The one thing that Snopes say they can't verify is whether or not it's true that she was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize, because that information is not actually publicly available. So this claim is possibly true but we can't know for sure.

Snopes also quote a statement from the International Federation of Social Workers, who expressed disappointment that she didn't get this prize. With that I have no problem - anyone is entitled to express disappointment with a result that they're not happy with.

Here's what I'm not comfortable with in the email that's being circulated:

Last year Irena was up for the Nobel Peace Prize.

She was not selected.

Al Gore won --- for a slide show on Global Warming.

The implication being: aren't those people terrible, to award the prize to that man for such a piddly thing instead of giving it to this wonderful brave woman.

Now, I'm not particularly an Al Gore fan, and I'm not quite convinced about the Global Warming theory, but I don't like the way his efforts are made fun of by calling his movie "a slide show", and more importantly, I don't like the way this value judgement is being tied in with the whole thing, so that people will feel like they really ought to forward this email because Irena Sendler was such an amazing woman, and thus they're being manipulated into signing up for this value judgement about Al Gore at the same time - if you want to honour this woman, can't you do it without rubbishing another human being who is, whether you agree with him or not, trying to do something for stuff he believes is important?

It's this mixing of different issues that I don't like, bringing the Al Gore issue in through the back door so you don't notice because your eyes are too moist from thinking of this brave woman's sacrifice - I don't think that's actually honouring to her memory.

(and being a nitpicker I can't fail to notice that it says this Nobel prize thing happened "last year" - which means this story has been circulating on the email since 2008.) (lesson no.37: don't believe everything you read on the email, but most importantly do not trust what they say about how long ago stuff happened.)

grumble grumble

some thoughts on half-empty glasses

today we said goodbye to John, our assistant pastor, who is moving on to serve elsewhere. I went up to John to thank him personally - his preaching was my first impression of this church, it was one of the things that drew me there, I had felt starved of good teaching and it was wonderful to find that there was a church in this town where I could get fed.

and tonight he preached about grumbling, and I find myself thinking:

I do grumble a bit, here and there, about stuff to do with our church - mostly just to myself, but I do. But back then I didn't - back then I was seeing the positive stuff and was very excited about it. And, hey, the positive stuff is still there - it hasn't changed.

John mentioned the Israelites in the wilderness, who grumbled when they got thirsty, even though they had only recently seen God perform amazing miracles, including parting the water for them to pass through and then drowning the Egyptian army who was pursuing them. You'd have thought they'd still remember how amazing God is and that they'd think: we're thirsty, ok, no doubt God will provide us with water.

But isn't this the way we humans tend to be? We can experience amazing things, and get very excited about them, but then - the excitement wears off, and we start taking things for granted. We get used to the good stuff, forget how amazed we were when we first experienced it, and then we're ready to grumble about the stuff that isn't so good. It's a question of which bits we notice, which bits we're focused on. Like that old glass half-full or half-empty analogy.

Imagine you're thirsty. Very very very thirsty. You've been running a marathon and it's been an unbearably hot day. You get to the end of the race, and someone offers you some water.

You are very very grateful. At that moment, that's your focus: someone has given me water. wonderful. thank you.

Then you go home and have a shower and a rest, and you're telling your wife/husband/friends/whoever about the marathon. You tell them how hot you were, and how wonderful it was to get a drink of water at the end. And how wonderful it feels now to be home and showered and changed and rested.

You appreciate all these things. Right now, it's all fresh in your mind.

How long before you get back to normal, and start grumbling when you have to wait more than two minutes in the queue for your latte at Starbucks?

Or how about romance - boy meets girl, he asks her out and she is very starry-eyed, this guy seems so nice, he's funny and intelligent and warm and caring and everything she's ever wanted in a man. She has been feeling kind of low since her previous boyfriend left her for someone else, in a very hurtful way. She is now basking in this new guy's attention, she is excited about this new love, she is full of hope. It all seems wonderful.

How long until she starts grumbling about how he leaves his dirty socks on the floor?

But the guy hasn't changed (at least in my analogy he hasn't) - he still is funny and intelligent and warm and caring, he still is doing all those things that she appreciated so much early on. But they've been living together for a while and she's now so focused on his dirty socks habit that when he brings her flowers she doesn't get excited, she hardly notices what the flowers look like. Because at some point she got used to all the positive stuff, so now she can grumble about the stuff she doesn't like.

My husband and I have been married for nearly seven years now, and of course there are better moments and less fantastic moments. In one of the less fantastic moments I did an exercise just for myself - I took a sheet of paper and started writing down things about him that I value.

I started just jotting down whatever came to mind, with no particular order. At some point I had to go over to the other side of the page.

That helped, because it shifted my focus - instead of looking at the empty half of the glass I was staring at the full half, and it was beautiful. In fact, it looked like a lot more than half a glass.

some thoughts on work, rest and play

I read an interesting article in yesterday's paper about some recent research suggesting that mothers who go out to work have 30 hours free time per week, to which the reactions from mumsnetters were obviously along the lines of: you've got to be joking...

Not being in that category myself, I can't say much more than that about the lives of working mothers, but what grabbed my attention was the method used to reach this conclusion.

First, here's the part that I think makes sense:

Rather than ask people to estimate how much time they spend on certain activities per day or per week, those taking part in this research were asked to keep time diaries, logging in detail all the stuff they were doing during a 24-hour period, so that later the researchers could allocate the activities to the appropriate categories and arrive at a real total of how many minutes the person actually devoted to e.g. housework, childcare, work at whatever their job is, shopping, cooking, watching TV, commuting, etc. I think this makes much more sense than asking people for an estimate, because it's unlikely that a person will have a good objective idea of how much time they spend on each of these things.

But where I think their method is lacking is in the either/or attitude to the use of time. The article gave a list of activities that this sociologist files under "leisure activities" and others that are filed under "non-leisure activities", and these lists include stuff like:

Shopping - under non-leisure, no matter what kind of shopping you're doing. which is ridiculous considering that so many women do regard shopping as a fun and enjoyable pastime, something they do just to cheer themselves up a bit. (No, I'm not talking about wheeling your trolley round a supermarket, I'm talking about treating yourself to new clothes or makeup or a handbag or whatever - or, if you are me, letting yourself loose in a stationery shop...)

Personal grooming - again, they place it in the non-leisure category. Can you honestly tell me that for the average busy working mother, having a manicure or a facial is not a wonderful bit of me-time snatched in between her errands?

On the other hand, volunteering is placed in the leisure section. Huh?

And keeping fit is in the leisure section, even if you hate exercise.

At least with reading they show a bit more discernment, and say reading is under "leisure" but not if you're reading work stuff.

But with childcare, they lump everything you do with your kids under "non-leisure", even if you're having loads of fun, even if you're just taking them along to something you enjoy doing, or using them as an excuse to play...

And commuting is placed clearly under non-leisure, but from what I remember from my commuting days, it was a mixed bag - though some of it was certainly stressful (London Underground in the morning rush hour), some of it was a great chance to unwind on your way home after a day's work, reading the newspaper or a book and basically not having to do anything from the moment you got on the train and sat down to the moment you got up at the end of the journey.

I think if you want a real picture of how people use their time, you need to allow for certain time slots to go under more than one category. The trouble is, of course, you'd end up with a total of more than 24 hours per day... But seriously, I've always had a problem with these sorts of approaches to recording use of time - they're fine when you're doing a clear-cut job, when you're focused on a specific task at each given moment, but trying to apply that to women at home... sorry, how do you record those minutes when you're talking to a friend on the cordless phone whilst cooking a meal?

not to mention that some activities are restful/relaxing/recharging for one person, and a chore for another. if your husband loves tennis and insists you go play every weekend, does this count as leisure time for you? if you have an annoying neighbour who keeps popping round for a cup of tea and a chat, do you have to file that under "leisure" because you are sitting down and having a cuppa and socialising? and then, on the other hand, say you actually have a job that involves doing the stuff you love doing - is that strictly work time?

I don't find life is quite so black and white.

Looking for a good NormalSpeak course, preferably by correspondence

want to watch a fish seriously out of water? place an introvert in a social gathering consisting of more than, I'd say, six people and you will see someone seriously struggling to breathe. and it's so much worse when you're actually surrounded by people that you do generally like and want to communicate with. it would be different if it was something you were doing just out of duty - a work drinks party that you just go to for a short while so as not to offend whoever's birthday it is, or a boring conference that everyone moans about having to attend. but yesterday I was at the graduation ceremony for my counselling course and I was surrounded by my classmates, who are all people that I feel in some way connected to with this special bond of people who have survived something really tough together. of course you connect more closely with some than with others, but there's no one in my class who I wasn't pleased to see there, each of these people has become special to me and, in some peculiar way, I love them all.

after the ceremony there was afternoon tea - sandwiches, cakes, tea, coffee, some kind of cold drinks which I didn't explore as they looked kind of chemical so I got water from the machine instead. it was a hot and sunny afternoon and we all headed outdoors, shunning the comfy sofas and armchairs of the lounge in favour of the garden furniture or, for those young and fit enough, the grass.

I did manage to have a few really good conversations with some people, and that's what made it worth the effort. But I find it so hard to actually get a good conversation in these situations. First of all, you come outside with your drink and look around and have to somehow decide which group of people to head for, and then you have to try and somehow edge your way into the conversation, and it all stays at the shallow end for ages. Once you've worked out that this is all that's ever going to happen round this table, you use some excuse to get up - going to get another drink/more cake/whatever - and hope to collide with someone who does actually want to talk for real.

That process can continue for a long while, having a whole load of non-conversations with people until - at last - you find a soul mate and sit down happily to talk about what's really been going on in your lives.

until someone else turns up, of course...

But you may be wondering what that stuff in the title was about.

The thing is, in all these various conversations you have in these kind of situations, things come up and I absolutely know that my reaction was totally weird but I have no idea what normal people would have said.

Like, what do you say when you meet a girl you haven't seen for half a year except for facebook and the last you heard was she'd finally broken up with that guy and she is now standing in front of you with a very nice looking bloke by her side and after you and she chat for a bit she suddenly remembers about introductions and says: This is [insert name here], my new man.

These are the sorts of times when I know that if this was happening on multiply or on facebook I'd be fine because I'd have all the time in the world to think about a response.

or, later, when I bumped into someone I hadn't seen for even longer - she was in our first year but not in the second, and was there as a guest this time - and she said she's getting married next month.

I think the word I was fumbling for was "congratulations", but it definitely didn't come out at the time. I was trying to think what to ask, and I still haven't a clue what would be an appropriate question. I mean, what I want to know is: who is he? But how do you ask that, in a way that doesn't sound like you're completely surprised that there actually is someone who is marrying her?

*sigh* if you do hear of a good course in NormalSpeak do let me know, but as an introvert I would much prefer if it was a correspondence course - having to go out and meet people is... well... you see what I mean...

not fair?

So I open today's Times and unsurprisingly there's stuff in there about the World Cup, including even an editorial. The editorial got all philosophical and started musing about who should win the World Cup "if sport was fair, and championships were decided according to need rather than skill" - at which point I got into major quibbling mode.

I guess the question is how one defines fairness.

I can understand someone talking about, say, distribution of food in terms of it being fair to distribute it according to people's needs. Food is the first example that springs to my mind, but more generally this could apply to all sorts of things that are necessary and where there's a limited amount of stuff to go round. But championships? prizes? surely the only fair way of distributing those is according to skill shown through achievement, that's the whole point of prizes! The teams in the World Cup have been putting huge efforts into training and will be giving all they've got in the games, and the whole idea behind this is that the team that plays best will be awarded for playing best. That's their motivation - knowing that there is a reward for doing well. I fail to see anything unfair about that.