Disconnecting

I realise the irony; blogging about switching off.  I should probably be writing in a notebook with a pen, but hey, blogging is the best way I know of talking about something interesting to other people who might be interested.

So, I recently read a book called The Winter of our Disconnect. It’s about an American/Aussie mum and three teenagers who switch off their screens for six months.  There were loopholes allowed, like cinema visits and internet cafes, but at home, they had no screens at all, and only corded phones.

I was an early adopter of the internet, had it at home in 1994.  But I was an adopter, an adult when I became acquainted.  Children growing up today see the internet as essential as television, they were born in the land of the internet.  It’s as natural to them as breathing.  And it worries me a bit, it’s all happened so fast, how do we know it’ll be OK?

It reminds me a bit of TV in South East Asia.  When we stayed in a village in Borneo, they’d only had electricity, and therefore TV, for four years.  They asked if our kids would like to watch TV and we said yes please, because our kids are always happy to watch TV.  They put on an inappropriately violent war film, which I switched off at the soonest opportunity, even though their four year old and one year old were watching quite happily.

A while later, I had a conversation with an American living in Luang Prabang, Laos.  She said that the speed of progress was a massive issue.  Parents who had grown up without electricity, not only had no idea how to manage their children’s media usage, they simply didn’t know that you should keep an eye on these things.  All kinds of problems are potentially being stored up for the near future.

Maybe I’m digressing.  But the point is, it feels like too much too fast.  iPhones, iPads, kids with laptops, texting, iMessaging, BBMing.  Constant contact without real connection.  I’m the first person to admit to loving the internet, but switching off sounds more and more appealing, however wedded to my phone I am.

So what did they discover, these Aussies who switched off?  None of it was rocket science, but all of it had me nodding in recognition.  First up – multitasking is rubbish.  We all like to think that we can work productively whilst listening to the radio, checking twitter every minute, liking pictures on FB and texting a friend.  We can’t.  We are far more productive if we concentrate on one thing at a time.  During the six month period, the author’s kids, who are bright kids and were doing fine, did much better at school, their concentration levels improved and so did their grades.

Secondly, the children, particularly the youngest who was 14 at the time, slept much better.  With screens removed from bedrooms, their quality and quantity of sleep dramatically improved.  The author reckons that her youngest daughter had been sleep deprived for years and she finally caught up.

Thirdly, they had time.  Time to rekindle old friendships, time to become proficient musicians, time to read.  The author’s sixteen year old son, who’s leisure time had previously been entirely given over to online gaming,  became a bookworm, who was delighted to receive a library of books for his birthday.

That’s it really, like I said, not rocket science.  I’m no luddite, but I can’t help thinking that the all pervasiveness of modern technology isn’t always a good thing.  My gut instincts tell me that less is more.

Re-valued

It started with buttons.  They used to be precious, you know.  In the days when they were made from shells collected from the sea bed by Japanese divers who didn’t use oxygen.  Japanese divers many miles from home on the edge of the red desert in North Western Australia.  A place so far from anywhere else it defies imagination.  Days and days and days from the next town if you’re travelling by boat, or camel.  And you wouldn’t be travelling any other way.  Buttons made fortunes and cost lives.  Now they’re made from plastic and cost pennies.  But they used to be precious.

Then there were some photographs.  Just snaps, black and white, filled with laughing people and significant moments.  The people in them are grandpas, mums, daughters, brothers.  Someone loved these people once, but the photos didn’t belong to anyone anymore, so I took them home.

Religious charms too, a little St. Christopher, Virgins, scallop shells.  Found in a flea market.  Things that had once been deeply valued, worn next to a warm, loving, beating heart, trusted to keep their owner safe.  Now discarded in a box of cheap jewellery in a freezing Brussels square, snow falling gently on cobbles.

Then a hand.  A small ceramic hand, probably from a religious statue, found washed up on the banks of the Thames amongst the mud, clay pipes and coke cans.  It was probably thrown out as rubbish about a hundred years ago.  That’s what the Thames was for in those days, a repository for things people didn’t want or need.

So many things that were once important, valuable, meaningful.  I’m going to rescue more treasures; from eBay, charity shops and flea markets.  I’m going to give them new life, new meaning.  I’m going to give them a new value.

Dennis Severs’ House

Do you believe in ghosts?

I do.  I don’t mean that I think you can see floaty sheet covered people wandering around of an evening.  But that that people leave something of themselves in the places they’ve been, they imbue the walls of a house with their spirit, their footsteps echo in the tunnels of a city, layers of wall paper in a cupboard and layers of soot in a fireplace provide an unbroken link with the people who lived there before.

Dennis Severs’ House is a place where ghosts live.  It’s like stepping into a beautiful eighteenth century oil painting.  Lit solely by candles, oil lamps and firelight, it smells of beeswax, oranges and toast cooked over the fire, and you can hear church bells ringing in the distance and a maid making up the fire in the next room.

You are instructed to walk around in silence, to better use your eyes, ears and nose.  Shake off the rushing and jangling of modern life.  Adjust to seeing by candlelight and breathing deeply.

The house belongs to a Huguenot weaving family, but there are references to Dickens in the pages of writing on the desk in the corner of the drafty, dusty, sparely furnished attic; to Hogarth in the abandoned debris of last night’s dinner party in the dining room; to Queen Victoria in the nicely stuffed sitting room with invitations jostling for space on the mantle; and, I fancy, to The Tailor of Gloucester, in the cosy kitchen, where sugar mice peep from under the sparkly glazing of the cups on the dresser.  The house cat watches accusingly as you pick your way carefully around his home.

In their promotional material, they caution that it’s not a museum, and you must not expect to see neatly labelled artefacts.  This is it’s strength.  It’s an experience, a way of seeing things, a mediation.

It’s enchanting.

Fire

 

I do love a fire. I don’t care if it’s in a cobalt tiled grate for roasting chestnuts and marshmallows, on a windswept, frozen inky beach after at botched attempt at lighting a floating lantern, in a metal bucket in the garden for cooking bread or accompanied by fireworks and the smell of cooking onions on the common.

This fire was on a Yorkshire beach in February.  We were frozen.  But the magical, flickering light and the sticky, sweetness of the toasted marshmallows warmed our cockles.

On being 40

I like being 40, it’s concentrated the mind.  I am no longer young.  Rather than wailing and gnashing my teeth about this fact, it’s made me realise that I’d better hurry up and do some of the things I’ve meant to do for ever.

I’ve never had a hankering for leaping off buildings or experimenting with drugs.  Instead my year has been filled with quietly pleasing activities like learning to sail a dinghy, inspired by a childhood love of Swallows and Amazons, and starting a new jewellery business, something I’d never have imagined doing a few years ago.

In the last year, I have discovered that I love opera, become a dog owner, learnt to knit, rediscovered an appreciation for Shakespeare having finally set foot inside the Globe after years of walking past, taken up running, been bowling, had a drawing lesson, seen and wept at Warhorse and revelled in the Olympics.  Who knew I’d love watching live sport so much?

I think underpinning all of this is the fact that I am different.  I’ve made it through the baby years and out the other side.  I now get to sleep through the night and have free hours when they’re at school.  But it’s more than that.  I’m not so nervous of life, unwilling to push myself forward, worried about what other people think.  Life seems less like a struggle and more like something to be enjoyed.  We don’t have long on this earth, we might as well make the most of it.

Second class citizens

I’m gobsmacked.  Don’t understand how they can get it so wrong.  How they can seriously think it’s OK.  I don’t claim to be much of a Church goer, and I’m not sure what I believe about the firmament and our place in it; but I certainly don’t feel comfortable with making children part of an organisation which so blatantly says that women are not good enough.

Our local Church has a female vicar, I think she does her job pretty well in my limited experience.  But the issue is not how well she does her job.  The issue is that she can’t even be considered for a role that she may or may not be very good at.  I don’t know exactly what a Bishop does, except for in the very loosest sense, but  I’m pretty sure it’s not a role that requires you to use your testicles.  As far as I’m aware you’re supposed to keep your genitals entirely out of it.  But because of her lack of testicles, our local vicar would not be allowed to do it all the same.

As a country, we were delighted that a woman from Saudi Arabia participated in the Olympics, and that we won the first ever women’s boxing gold medal.  The UK is far from perfect on the equality front, but changes have been and are being made, most people have their hearts in the right place.  Women can be doctors, astronauts, army officers, Prime Ministers, Monarchs.  But not Bishops.

I think they’ve made a huge mistake.  The Church is withering, a shadow of it’s former self.  We don’t go any more, or not very often. When I say we, I mean all of us, the British people.  And we’ll continue to not go.  Why would we?

I, for one, don’t want to be part of an organisation that sees me as a second class citizen.

Value

I’ve spent the last few weeks in a quandary.  About money.

I’ve been making and selling jewellery for a few months now.  I make to commission, rather than in bulk, and I generally have about one sale a week.  This suits me nicely, I could up it to three or four sales a week, but not much more.  Everything I make takes time and I want to make sure my customers are happy.  What with nativity costumes, sorting out the dodgy drainage in the kitchen sink, dog walking and writing work, I’m pretty busy.

I think my pieces are quite expensive.  £50 for rings and necklaces feels like a lot to me; I don’t often spend that kind of money on myself.  It’s certainly a lot more than you can buy pretty things for from a shop like White Stuff, but then I work in precious metals, so my base costs are quite high.

When I look around me on the internet to see what other people are charging, it seems like I’m quite expensive.  There are a gazillion jewellers on Etsy, all charging prices that I don’t understand.  Sterling silver rings for a price that must just about cover the silver and nothing else.  No taking account of the time, effort and design skills that must have gone into it.  I’ve never been able to bring myself to charge prices like that, but it’s also constrained me.  How can I justify charging more than twice what other people are charging?

I also have a niggling feeling that I’m not worth it.  Why would people spend £70, £80, £100 on something that I’ve made?  I’m competent, but I’m just me.  I think undervaluing yourself is a female thing.  But it’s also a stay-at-home-for-ten-years-mother thing.  It’s really hard starting a business selling something you’ve made, you’re basically asking people for approval in a slightly needy way.  Do you love me?  If I charge you too much then maybe you won’t.

Then my tutor got involved.  She’s been saying for weeks that I need to think about prices.  Whenever I make something for sale, she asks me how much for then sucks her teeth a bit.  Well, she doesn’t actually suck her teeth, but you know what I mean.  I mumble a bit and carry on with what I’m doing without changing a thing.

This week she got strict.  She sat down next to me and picked up a ring.  £50 isn’t enough for that, she said.  You should be charging £80.  A lot of work and care has gone into it.  I know but it’s just me.  Look, she said, if you were a really experienced jeweller, you’d be charging £120 for it.  £80 is not a lot.  If you don’t charge enough for it people won’t value your skills.

And she’s right you know.  I may be working at my kitchen table but I have skills, and it’s only fair that I’m paid accordingly.  I don’t shop in Primark because I don’t agree with people being paid peanuts.  Yet I’m doing exactly the same thing with my own business.

So, I’m putting my prices up.  Because I’m worth it.

*runs and hides*