Let me just say, first and foremost, that I am a staunch union girl through and through. They've supported me through tricky times, and I've held the line for them. I will always hold the line for them even though I am technically now 'management' (whatever that means)....
BUT my local union branch has decided that as a way of registering protest against a programme of redundancies in one department we will all participate in a 'teach-in' in the student union. Excuse me? WTF? So, let me get this straight, instead of WITHDRAWING our labour in protest, we are going to DONATE IT FOR FREE? I mean, we're social scientists, did we not see this might not be the most effective tool to get management to take us seriously? Also, I am on research leave, so what am I supposed to do? A research-in? Should I move my labour from my office to the library in protest? Or go out and do some fieldwork but make it clear, somehow, that this is unpaid? How will this be distinguishable from what I do anyway?? I don't have set hours as an academic, and as a result do a huge amount of work in 'my own time'. I don't think academics ever actually switch off or retire properly.
It does beggar belief. I would take it home and open it up to debate at the Family Committee level but I don't think they'd take me seriously, plus we'd have to have a meeting to set up the agenda, and then have the meeting to show that we have properly consulted all the stakeholders on the agenda, and then another one to decide which was reserved and unreserved business, and whose responsibility it was to minute the unreserved business, by which point I have banged my head on the table until my forehead bleeds and lost the will to live.
Instead, at home, we decide things on the time honoured combination of who shouts loudest/whines the most/gets fed up first/has the most authority. On all counts, this is my 5 year old daughter. Girl Power!
Monday, 14 March 2011
Sunday, 13 March 2011
One Day Like This a Year....
Sometimes, it just all comes together. Shortly after 8 year old beat me at chess - proper beating, not me letting him win beating (well, ok, at one point I had to stop him and say No-look-at-the-WHOLE-board-what-could-you-do-with-your-queen-now-instead but it still counts) - went upstairs to check eerie silence, which usually means someone is buried deep inside my jewellry box or is busy 'correcting' my exam scripts in permanent marker...
Eldest son, 12, is lying on his stomach listening to Bach and doing his English homework. Daughter, 5, has carefully pulled her own clothes out of the teetering piles of clean(ish) laundry and is carefully folding them up to use as blankets in the dolly hospital she has built from and old cardboard box, a picnic rug and a beanbag, But my heart really stops when I get to middle son, 8, who has built himself a den out of a duvet and is reading a book with a head torch on eating an apple.
EITHER this is one of those moments when the soundtrack to your mayhem life is Elbow's One Day Like This, OR aliens have come down and kidnapped my real children and left zombie clones in their place....watch this space
Eldest son, 12, is lying on his stomach listening to Bach and doing his English homework. Daughter, 5, has carefully pulled her own clothes out of the teetering piles of clean(ish) laundry and is carefully folding them up to use as blankets in the dolly hospital she has built from and old cardboard box, a picnic rug and a beanbag, But my heart really stops when I get to middle son, 8, who has built himself a den out of a duvet and is reading a book with a head torch on eating an apple.
EITHER this is one of those moments when the soundtrack to your mayhem life is Elbow's One Day Like This, OR aliens have come down and kidnapped my real children and left zombie clones in their place....watch this space
Friday, 11 March 2011
Working mother dilemmas
'Working' mother obviously tautology. Actually, compared to the work involved in the 'mother' bit, 'work' is a breeze. I just have to turn up and be vaguely competent at stuff. I even get to drink coffee while it is still hot. Although my students do sometimes ask questions that slightly tax me, they are often distracted by me directing them to the library or suggesting that if they attended the odd lecture, these things might become clearer. This does not work for the following problems:
a) Why you can't get a magic wand in Argos that actually turns older brothers into frogs
b) How to unslink a slinky
c) Why the closed and locked parental bedroom door is the universally acknowledged signal that right now would be a good time to try and flush your sister's teddy down the loo
d) Why a sibling should be allowed to Breathe Your Air
Unusually picked up middle son (8) from school (usually it is done by husband who works from home) only to have son's friend look at me open-mouthed for a bit, then turn to son and say "Is this your mam? I didn't know you had a mam!"
No-one would say that if a working DAD picked his son up. *sigh*
a) Why you can't get a magic wand in Argos that actually turns older brothers into frogs
b) How to unslink a slinky
c) Why the closed and locked parental bedroom door is the universally acknowledged signal that right now would be a good time to try and flush your sister's teddy down the loo
d) Why a sibling should be allowed to Breathe Your Air
Unusually picked up middle son (8) from school (usually it is done by husband who works from home) only to have son's friend look at me open-mouthed for a bit, then turn to son and say "Is this your mam? I didn't know you had a mam!"
No-one would say that if a working DAD picked his son up. *sigh*
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