If The Donald Can Become President Then......

Maybe anyone can...

Here's my manifesto:

1) Each school day would begin with 30 minutes of activity for pupils and staff, whether it's a (shorter) parkrun style cross country run with the aim of maintaining or beating their PB or a bit of basketball, yoga, or just plain PLAYING for goodness sake. We're never too old for that!
Reasons: improves concentration for the rest of the day and builds healthy habits. Staff get involved to role model those healthy habits.

2) Tax breaks for purveyors of healthier products and I don't mean sugar loaded dried fruits, yoghurts and cereal bars. I mean high protein cheeses, fish, whole grains and anything paleo.

3) A ban on programmes where sweet manufacturers go in to schools for a day - to teach them what?

4) We work three days a week and have four days off 😀😀😀

IS THIS A THING, OR HAVE I JUST INVENTED IT?

One of the things we got talking about at today's UK Health Bloggers event at the fabulous Primal Roost in Bagshot (which sells the best coffee for miles around BTW) was the lack of luscious-looking recipes for savoury foods.

We're all trying to eat less or no sugar, fewer or no grains and maybe little or no dairy, but the foods that are most drool-worth are the glossy-looking cupcakes and bakes that abound all over Instagram.

So I thought I'd share something that I've been living off for a while in case it's useful to someone else. It stemmed from this: you know how there's a fad for overnight oats in pretty pots or mason jars? Well this is the lunchtime version. I just need to find a name for it...  Do chip in with your ideas. How about Protein Lunch Pot for now?

Here's how you make one: 

Cottage cheese, tuna, pine nuts, tomatoes

Layer a couple of tablespoons of cottage cheese in the bottom of your lunch box. I use a brand called Arla because it's higher in protein. 
Then add a layer of tuna - the no drain version with basil is good, but you could also add cooked, shredded chicken or turkey, tofu or salmon. 

Quinoa, cucumber and other veggies

You might want to add some cooked wholegrain rice or quinoa for texture next, to include some roughage and vitamin B in your meal. There are plenty of varieties of the pre-packed stuff around now or you might have some leftovers. You could also add chunks of feta or goat's cheese. You could also add cooked roasted peppers, aubergine, chick peas, black beans - whatever floats your boat!

Then decorate with halved cherry tomatoes, grated carrot, lettuce and maybe some flaked almonds or pine nuts. I've just gone for carrot and cucumber with tuna here, because my fridge was bare! Drizzle some vinaigrette over the top - home-made of course! And there you go. Just keep it chilled until 10 minutes before you need to eat it and voila!  

The finished product!

POST HASTE

Hello old friends! It’s been three years since my last blog post. (And even longer since my last confession… in case your brain leapt to that same turn of phrase that mine just did!)

I had a hiatus due to the sort of job I had (which didn't permit me to blog), illness (idiopathic thyroid eye disease - just hideous), and the feeling that I'd outgrown the mum blogging community because my children are now older.

Now I have a new job, new outlook and now there’s this - a blog group for bloggers in their 40s! Now you know my age, which is what the oversharing world of blogging is all about!!

I also didn’t have the time - such a common theme! Now, I’ve got a few more hours back in my life each week 😄 

I’m managing to fill them no problem at all but I'm also keen to have the time to think, breathe and write again. Why am I saying again? I can’t actually remember the last time I had proper thinking time! Bizarrely, it was probably during my commute when I time to read a bit - Ruby Wax ‘Taming the Mind’ being the latest book to have intrigued me.

She manages to get across the message that you can control your thought processes not the other way round, while being candid about her own mental illness and describing how intricate parts of the brain work in a very digestible way.

Better than I can because I’ve just implied that the brain digests things, which is not what even my rudimentary understanding of human biology meant to suggest at all!

So head over to her book to get these things right!!

POST HASTE, OR RATHER, NO BLOG POST AT ALL

I've got to be out of the door in literally five minutes.  I wanted to write two posts, one about internet safety for kids and another about the lack of support for parents of teenagers.  But they both involve research - probably online, ironically, - and I need to get going.  So this will have to wait.  Next week is massively busy so when I'll actually get the time to do it I don't know…..  

This is just so symbolic of what I’d like to do, but the reality of what I’ve got time to do is totally different. Anyone else in the same boat?

KICKING OFF

Sport has always been part of my family’s life.  My great grandfather was a county tennis player, his son - my grandad - played tennis until he was in his 80s and my dad, now in his 70s, still plays tennis, runs regularly on his treadmill, and swims three times a week. 
I played for various teams at school and love a good yell at the telly when the Olympics or World Cup is on. My husband claims to have two left feet but he runs a lot and he’s a very loyal football fan - whether that’s for Stoke City (I know!) or for the local clubs our sons play for. But I don't know why we do it.  So I was really interested to read Lynne Truss’s book “Get Her Off The Pitch” about her inauguration into the world of sports reporting - as someone who knew nothing about the subject prior to that experiment.  She made her first foray into the profession by writing sports columns for The Times from 1996-2000 and was later shortlisted for Sports Writer of the Year in 1997.

Previously best known for giving the red card to those who fail to punctuate their sentences correctly, as author of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”, she says this new book is "a mixture of memoir, essay, whingeing after the fact, and recollected drama."

She said: "When I met the sports editor and his deputy to discuss their Euro 96 idea (that she write about sport from an 'unknowing' viewpoint), they were very, very impressed - and not entirely in a good way - by the extent of my apathy and innocence where football was concerned.

"I asked myself - Does sport educate the emotions, or just make you miserable? Does it broaden the mind, or the opposite? Does it help with geography, or does it just make you feel terrible that you've now been to Coventry umpteen times and still never seen the cathedral? Do facts about sport displace other knowledge? I know for a fact that football warped my brain, because there was a day when I saw the headline "Adams in talks" in a newspaper and I assumed it was a story about Tony Adams, the footballer. When I realised it was about Gerry Adams (and merely referred to a breakthrough in Northern Ireland politics), I was actually much less interested."

Lynne is from Petersham in Surrey and worked as a librarian, for the Times Educational Supplement, the Radio Times, as literary editor of The Listener and as a writer for the Independent on Sunday and then The Times. She's been team captain on Radio 4's The Write Stuff, written three novels and numerous radio plays. This book was serialised as Book of the Week in 2009, but it’s out in paperback in time for the furore building up to this year's world cup.

She got into sports’ writing and football reporting in particular because of the drama involved, which she said applied as much to darts as to dog agility.  Week after week, history was made and added to that team’s statistics and anecdotal storytelling - especially in cricket.  

But it was a tough and lonely job for a "middle-aged and practically friendless woman in profoundly alien territory”.  She said she initially had zero respect from fellow sports writers.

Luckily, she wasn't expected to write like the other people in the press box. 
"No one wanted me to deliver terse 600-word match reports about how Giggs volleyed from 25 yards and grazed the crossbar in the 19th minute. But I relished the fact that every sporting occasion contained so much potential for commentary and analysis."

It’s a very personal book, she says, and in the end, it's about perspective - and how sport ultimately isn't a good enough place to hide from the realities of life. 

She said: "They say no one ever went to his grave wishing he'd had less sex. But I think it would be right and proper for many people to confront death accepting the fact that they really, really should have watched less football. I don't for a second regret saying "Ooh, why not?" when I was invited into this world.

“I fell in love with the fact that sport is the best subject in the world to write about, if you like seeing how little things relate to big things (which I do). But I was wrong to think the job wouldn't change me, because it did.

"Looking back, I think I was jolly reckless with my mental wellbeing: it took a huge battering over those four years on the road. But the trouble was, sport turned out to be the best subject matter in the world.

"Ultimately, my book is about the tribulations a writer will willingly endure once she realises that rereading Clarissa is a very, very poor substitute for watching Dennis Bergkamp score a last-minute goal against Argentina.”

A great book and a real insight for anyone who’s married to or parent of or friends with someone who’s a sports fan in any shape or form!

LONG TIME, NO BLOG - AGAIN!

Ok, so I haven't posted on here since May.  Well, it's been a bit hectic.  Thank goodness for three days' leave over half term to try to catch up!

Though still working for the BBC, I've now got a year-long contract with BBC Children in Need.  Hurray!  No more night shifts, no more keyboard face, no more 12-hour days and stressful phone calls to friends about childcare.  Well, the 12-hour days will be back with a vengeance in just three weeks' time, when the appeal show itself is around the corner - save the date: Friday November 18th. But, mostly, for the first time in three years, things are actually manageable again in this household!

My Other Half has taken over the majority of the school runs, parents' evenings and soccer dad drop-offs.  In fact, I can smell his efforts now.  Even though I'm on leave for a few days, he's dug out the saucepans and is crafting a carbonara, bless him.  Meanwhile, when I AM working, I tend to stumble home around 8-ish demanding my dinner and a beer!  Well, not quite, but it's tempting!

I absolutely love my new job - except for the bureauctic bits of treacle we inevitably have to wade through - and the whole family seems happier.  The children have been a lot more affectionate when they haven't seen me around so much.  But that's a good thing, right?

And didn't 'Raising Boys' guru Steve Biddulph say boys needed their dad around more after the age of seven?  Right.  So I refuse to feel guilty about this.  There's a tad more dust around but I'm trying not to notice and it's never been a high priority of mine to live in a house as neat as a new pin anyway.  So, onwards and upwards, with more time to blog soon, I hope.

FIVE YEARS’ TIME

I wrote this piece for my old blog and for a magazine I edited at the time, under the theme of Five Years' Time. It's beyond that five years now - so how many boxes have I ticked?!

SUNDAY, MARCH 19, 2006

Wherever I Lay My Hat

As a child, I thought that by the age I am now, I might be just-about married and would be spending my days filing a newspaper column from an untidy spare room - chained to a computer and chain-smoking. 

Although some of that rings true, I never expected that I would already have nearly ten years of marriage behind me by this age and that I would be spending my days looking after two young sons as a freelance journalist living in Portugal. How did I get here, and where will I be in five years' time? 

It sounds a long way off now, but the first thing I have realised is that it isn't. Because only five years ago, I was living in a cottage with a six-month old puppy and an even younger baby, on a steep hillside above a beautiful creek in south east Cornwall. 
While on maternity leave, I realised that although I had known my job back-to-front, I was very much a learner when it came to motherhood! 

Learning experience number one: Not good to get puppy when pregnant! 
My dog-loving husband thought a furry four-legged creature would complete our growing family and give me some company while I wasn't working - especially as he was often away. We bought him from a woman who lived just up the hill from us. As she was also expecting, Alison and I became firm friends. I suspect that she and my husband deliberately didn’t tell me how lively and attention-seeking a Springer spaniel would be! Meanwhile, my hormone-addled brain envisaged an utterly obedient dog trotting beside my well-oiled, pristine pushchair which contained a similarly obedient child, thus enabling me to get some exercise to reduce my post-baby bulges! The reality entailed mud; a very disobedient, disappearing-into-every-bush puppy; howling winds and rain; more mud and heaving my protesting body and similarly squeaking pushchair up the aforementioned steep hill.  (This was just before the era of designer buggies made by Land Rover and co., you understand!)

Seeking respite halfway up this hill on the return journey, I popped in to see Alison. We had tea, her ever-present, home-made biscuits and anguished chats about how little our sons seemed to sleep. None of this helped to reduce our waistlines and nor would she have her puppy back! But I hugely valued the friendships I made with her and other new mums.  They were my equivalent of the village elder, imparting their wisdom on child-rearing.  As we get older or move home, there seem to be fewer opportunities to make close ties with people because we have already experienced many of the life events that can bond us.  I'm hoping that in five years' time, I will have made more close bonds with other mums - and dads!  And maybe I’ll have a more obedient dog too.

Learning experience number two: Multi-tasking doesn’t matter. 
If you are used to accomplishing several things in one day at the office, you feel like you have not achieved very much when you are at home and all you have done all day is feed and change a baby – and, given time, yourself. In fact, you have kept a whole other human being alive for twenty-four hours – despite its smells and its inexplicable screams – which is no mean feat! Nevertheless, you try to do lots of things at once so that you have a sense of achievement. So, even when I was feeding the baby I made sure I was eating a snack at the same time (another waistline-inflating tactic), or tying myself in knots trying to read the paper too, so I wouldn’t be ‘wasting time’.  With hindsight, I wish I had been lazier! But as soon after the birth as I felt able and while my mum was still around to help, I was out at the shops or in the park, road-testing shopping trolleys, car seats and all the other baby paraphernalia I had acquired. I was excited and also thought that if I wore out the dog and gave the baby lots of fresh air, I could then have a restful day. Instead, I wore myself out; the puppy grew bigger and stronger each day and my son habitually slept in his papoose during dog-walks in the daytime and not much at night! If only I had conserved my energy for what lay ahead. Namely, his brother!

Learning experience number three: Oops!
Just as I thought I knew what I was doing with number one son, the telltale nausea of pregnancy set in! Another thing that didn’t quite go to plan! We had wanted a second child but thought a good age-gap would be about four years. Besides the obvious lesson in contraception, now I had to waddle around with a bump, a toddler and a dog. So going back to work and letting someone else do most of that seemed the lesser of two evils!  After I fell at home while my son was in his highchair, I realised I was very isolated. No one would have noticed if I hadn't left the house for a few days if I’d hit my head, say, instead of injuring my leg. Alison was busy and we met irregularly.  So, we decided to move to a the military 'patch' while we looked for our dream home at some point.  Second Son was unintentionally born at our new military house in a bit of a hurry – but that’s another story! 

Now

After six months off, I went back to work part-time and things got back to normal. Life was a blur of nursery drop-offs, walks round the park, slow cooker meals, leaving notes for the dog-walker or childminder - and ocasionally getting them the wrong way round!  Before long, both boys could walk, talk, sleep quite well and, delight of delights, were nappy-free! I even had the energy to resume a social life, of sorts. Then along came the opportunity to move to Portugal….. To stay or to go?

I had moved around a lot as a child, because of my father’s job, so the plan was for me and the children to stay put. Wasn’t it? But then that seemed boring. Giving up my job, home, network of friends and moving yet further away from my family was a huge wrench and a big risk on many counts. But the thought of the climate, learning a new language, mixing with dozens of different nationalities and working as a freelance was very appealing.  Part of me still wanted to cling on to good old Blighty and my old identity.  But here I am now in a kind of Gap Year (or two!) enjoying this idyllic setting, the virtually constant blue skies, the social life and some “pre-occupations” – a term I use to describe the things I am having a go at in order to prepare myself for the ‘real world’ back home.  I have also decided to use the move as an opportunity to realise my ambition of working on national news in London. So I was interviewed by ITN and am now on their list of freelancers, getting week-long stints of work every month or so on their news planning desk.  It is unusual but hugely satisfying to be able to do home things and career things without the pressures of both combined – even though it means flying in from Lisbon, worrying about leaving the children behind with scribbled instructions to my husband magnetised to the fridge and scrounging accommodation from whichever London friend will have me!

So, looking ahead to 2010/2011, the plan is for me to leave Portugal with a fluent accent; that still unattained trim physique and an address book full of multi-national new friends. The idea is that I will work in London and that we will somehow be able to afford to buy our own home – a home that we will lovingly decorate because we will be staying in it for the next ten years.  But don’t hold me to that! If the past is anything to go by, I will have been as idealistic as ever but will be perfectly content whether I get halfway there or head off on some other tangent!

As published in 'A Janela' - March 2006.

POST SCRIPT:  
Fluent accent? Not quite!
Trim physique? Fitter than ever, thanks to www.britmilfit.com but there's still work to do!
Multi-national friends? Tick!  Don't you just love Facebook?!
London job? Well, half a job.  Half a tick.  
Our own home? Tick!
Lovingly decorated?  A work in progress...!