Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Someone Bossy...

Anyone who knows me well will tell you I love a good wedding. I love the ceremony (sweepstakes have been taken on how long before I blub). I love the food, the outfits, the kids skidding across the dance-floor in their socks, the mums and dads jiving, the nonagenarians shaking maracas to Barry Manilow (no? just my wedding? oh well). I've been a bridesmaid so many times (purple, lycra, ruched number you say? count me in!) I had to turn down the latest request for fear of it turning into an actual compulsion.

And I love, love, loved every minute of my wedding day.

But I was a gibbering, highly-strung, highly-irrational loon beforehand.

I like to think more Bridezuki than Bridezilla but, still, the smallest detail created the biggest headache (bows on 100 favours not tied quite right? Pass the valium!), I had precious little sleep due to the nightmares about my dress being too big/venue being closed/guests not showing up. I must have left friends and family wondering where the rational, reasonably intelligent woman they knew had gone and who had dropped Mariah Carey into their midst.

And this is normal. The anxiety dreams, the fixating on insignificant details, the spreadsheets, lists, stand-by lists - all of it perfectly normal. There are whole industries created just to heighten the anxiety. Magazines that require you to re-mortgage your house just to purchase them will tell you what you MUST wear, who you MUST invite, what you MUST eat. And it takes a strong willed woman not to fall for it.

So what must it be like for Kate (Catherine?) Middleton? Everyone has an opinion on her wedding, even if that opinion is just that the whole thing's a bit of a giggle. Republicans getting cross about the fact that we have a Royal Family, Royalists getting cross at Republicans, fashion magazines speculating on her dress, weight, hair, honeymoon wardrobe. I can't imagine the anxiety dreams that poor woman must be having.

I think if I had the Daily Mail commentating on my wedding preparations I would quite cheerfully have entered a nunnery. I'd certainly have had more than the mild pacing-round-the-walk-in-wardrobe-in-just-your-tulle-underskirt-hyperventilating type pre-wedding jitters (you know who you are).

And then there's Carole. My mum tied herself in knots over her MoB outfit; hair, accessories, whether she'd clash with the Mother of the Groom, whether what she was wearing was age-appropriate. Carole's opposite number is only the bloomin' People's Princess for pity's sake. Immortalised in beaded Valentino and tiara! Not going to be able to top that with a Jacques Vert two-piece and matching fascinator is she?

Speaking (typing?) of the People's Princess; I watched footage of Princess Di walking down the aisle yesterday and thought the poor love looked absolutely terrified. She was having visible palpitations. There was a woman who had been having major-league anxiety dreams. No amount of spreadsheets and rescue remedy were going to save her poor frazzled nerves. Contrast with footage of Fergie - resplendent in '80's perm and shoulderpads - looking like she was having a blast, grinning and waving as she skipped down the carpet.

I wish I could say that kind of carefree joie-de-vivre was just down to being the second sibling but I know my husband's baby sister (who walks down the aisle 8 days after Kate) is having all the same nightmares that I did. So just for her (and Kate, if she's reading) here are my top-tip handy-hints for Bridezukis to be:

1. Get the best wing-man you can possibly have. Doesn't have to be your sister or Maid of Honour, but they do need to be someone you'd trust with your life. Mine was (is) a rock. Calm under fire, bossy when necessary and totally selfless in making sure I had the best day possible. 
2. Don't expect to get a drink... or to need one. I was so intoxicated by the day itself I didn't need any of the bubbly or cocktails we'd laid on. Which is just as well because getting to the bar if you're a bride is like a rather more fancily dressed version of British Bulldog.
3. Shit will happen. People will let you down (fail to turn up, turn up late, jump off the balcony and break their legs), Liz Hurley will attempt to upstage you in split-to-crotch Versace, random family members will join the receiving line, not everything will go to military-precision plan.
4. It won't matter. One. Little. Bit. 
5. Focus on the part that's really important - the part when its just you, him and the Vicar/Archbishop of Canterbury. That's what you're there for. Relish every word, savour every moment. Everything else is just noise.

And that's the trick: as long as you've got that one big decision right, the one about the chap you're walking back down the aisle with, everything else is details. 

So Liz (Elizabeth), Kate (Catherine): knock 'em dead girls. A bit more Fergie, a little less Di. Make the most of every little moment. 

Best of British. 

L xxx

Why I hated PE, but love School Sport

Hands up who hated PE at school? I did. Navy synthetic knickers, sadistic PE teachers, being picked last for just about everything. Hideous. Any bullying that occurred in the science lab, or English lesson, seemed to be amplified on the sports field. I developed avoidance tactics for cross-country replicated only in those my cat displays for her basket and the prospect of a trip to the vets. It would probably have been no surprise whatsoever had I left school overweight, under-confident and with a fear of physical exercise to carry with me for the rest of my life.


Why didn't I? Because my run-of-the-mill comprehensive employed a dance teacher alongside the typical hockey, netball & football fanatic PE teachers. I was good at dance and finding that talent did more for my confidence, social skills and self-belief than a string of UCAS points ever would. As anyone who is good at anything (baking, programming, fly-fishing) will tell you; finding your talent gives you an outlet, a way of both losing yourself in and expressing yourself to the world. As Paula Abdul would say: it gives you a niche. 


Finding that niche for me was total fluke. Imagine if my talent had been archery, or rowing, or cycling or some other less common form of physical exercise. Imagine if my headteacher saw no value in encouraging kids to exercise (perhaps a PE-hater themselves). Or if they were a rugger-playing traditionalist who thought that only competitive sport mattered. My life would have been different without a shadow of a doubt.


Now imagine that, on a national basis, someone somewhere had the foresight to recognise that what happened with me didn't need to be a fluke. That giving kids the opportunity to engage in a form of physical exercise that they were passionate about could have really fantastic consequences. That it mattered immensely. That kids who had the opportunity to fall in love with physical exercise acted up less, concentrated better, performed better. That it was the kind of thing that changed lives and so was worth investing in. Not a huge sum of money. Say 2% of the education budget overall. 


Utopia? Nope. That's exactly what the School Sports Partnerships existed for. 450 people dedicated nationally to giving children access to the widest variety of sport and physical exercise the UK education system has ever provided. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of kids participating in two hours or more of sport and physical exercise through school increased from 23% to 94%. For £17 per child per year.


They weren't perfect. Some head teachers still don't think sport is important enough to spend money on. Some teachers still don't want to be trained to deliver sport. Some of the people working in the SSP weren't very good (show me a workplace where that ain't the case). Every so often the Daily Mail would run a horror-story piece about how much public money was being wasted teaching kids Dodge-ball. But they were working. They were working because we put a value and a focus on engaging kids in all forms of physical exercise, not just the sort they play at Eton. They were working because the majority of people running them were experts in both spotting talent and igniting a passion for sport in the previously disengaged. Experts in managing regional and national competitions and festivals, providing training and equipment to schools, linking schools with sports clubs, managing teams of qualified coaches, juggling budgets and evaluating success and adapting accordingly. For £17 per child per year.


A folly? A luxury we can ill afford in these austere times? Personally I reserve those labels for things like M.P.'s duck houses, Trident and Prince Andrew. I happen to think that School Sport is an essential. My 8-year-old self would laugh in my face at that statement, as would our current Education Secretary. And I'd credit them both with roughly the same level of understanding about these things.


Those who know me know that I have a personal interest in SSPs because my husband manages one and will, in all likelihood, lose his job as a result of aforementioned Education Secretary's slash-and-burn approach to School Sport. And I am pretty angry about that - particularly as his school seem to be managing the redundancy process as if UK Employment Law has the same relevance to them that nuclear physics does to Jedward. But I have faith in Mr. L. I see his brilliance and know he will find his niche (Paula, or no Paula). 


But I'm actually really bloody angry that no-one seems to think giving all kids the opportunity to discover a physical activity that they love is important enough to save properly, and for the long term. I'm hopping mad that politicians and celebrities seem to pick up a cause-du-jour, make a fuss until the government pretends to make a U-turn, and then promptly forget it. But mainly I'm door-slammingly furious at the way the whole thing has been handled.


Initially, Mr Gove attempted to paint the SSPs as another failed Labour initiative that had wasted taxpayers' money on needless bureaucracy. Then, when hundreds of thousands of children, teachers, parents and Olympians pointed out that this was boohickey, he claimed that he wasn't actually going to abandon them. No; he had a better plan. As far as I can see this is another one of those 'better plans' cobbled together on the back of a Houses of Parliament napkin after it becomes glaringly obvious that something really PR-damaging might be about to happen (see NHS & EMA 'u-turns' for similar examples). This 'better plan' involves spending just 84p per child per year holding a few sports days in the run up to the Olympics. After which... well... it seems no-one's actually found that bit of the napkin yet. 


I don't think this is good enough. I'm not daft, I know we need to make cuts. I know we need to be more efficient. I know some things aren't working. I'd just like to have faith that those people who end up making the decisions on what we do and how we do it might give it more than just a cursory thought. Y'know; do what we pay them to do. Think it through, have an actual strategy, plan for the long term. Be honest about their intentions and ideologies. Stop effing around with stuff that actually works just because it was initiated by the previous administration. Stop trying to razzle-dazzle us with pretend U-turns and pretend 'consultations'. Stop throwing the baby out with the bath water. Or maybe that's Utopia.

My glass house is bigger than yours.

Generalisations are a dangerous thing: muslims are terrorists, priests are paedophiles, soldiers are heroes, teenagers are lazy, people on benefits spend it on fags & booze, Tories are scum, politicians are liars, blondes are bimbos... I could go on

And yet, we all indulge in them. We make value judgements about people based on one facet of what makes them them, or worse; based on our opinion of the societal or demographical pigeonhole we put them in.  I noticed this particularly in responses to the recent TUC march in London. From the ill-informed “These people should get a job”, to the hateful “Work-shy scroungers”, to the scornful “These liberal idealists don’t understand the real world”.  

It’s a nice comfortable way to think about those who hold a different opinion: "I disagree with you on this subject; ergo you are not like me in any way".  If we can dismiss all Tories as pampered aristocrats, or all protesters as violent anarchists we can make ourselves feel better about our own world-view and in this heated political and economic climate it is happening more and more.

But people don’t operate on two opposing poles. We’re a spectrum. We all view the world through a unique lens and just because you think mine is rather too rose-tinted and I think yours has given you myopia doesn’t mean either of us has 20/20 vision all the time.

And you know what else? It doesn’t mean that we can’t have a healthy debate about it – we each may learn something along the way.  It also doesn’t mean that we couldn't share a restaurant table, or bottle of wine and find numerous common interests and viewpoints that exist alongside our differences.  

In my first post, I wrote about the need to make a debate personal. I meant that we need to appeal to (and remember) each others’ humanity.  We probably shouldn’t assume that because we don’t see eye to eye on every subject, that we don’t have anything in common.

There are some that doubtless think because I have left-leaning politics and I get angry about injustice that I’m naive or ill-informed, and that therefore makes all my opinions on pretty much everything woolly, lefty, unrealistic, pie-in-the-sky. It may surprise them to learn that in the past week I’ve read the Telegraph, Harvard Business Review and the Economist as well as the Guardian and found things to agree and disagree with in all of them. I believe our public sector is inefficient and weighed down in places by poor management but I’ve seen the exact same faults in private corporations that I’ve worked for.  I think 400,000 people marching peacefully for something they believe in is a beautiful thing but that mindless violence is abhorrent. I can believe that some kids spend their EMA on drugs but I went to school with intelligent people who left at 16 because they couldn't afford not to work. I have more faith in the Keynesian economic model that rebuilt Britain after WW2 than the Classical economic model that contributed to the banking crisis. I hate tall poppy syndrome but don't think success can be measured by one's alma mater or bank balance. I admire Katie Price’s chutzpah but not how she uses it.  I think cheap shoes are a false economy but wear £1 socks from Sainsburys.

I bet you didn't agree with everything I wrote there. But I’d also bet that you didn’t universally disagree either.  And I also bet that if you’re reading this it’s because on some level we are friends – facebook, twitter, work, university. We have some things in common, others that we disagree on.  Putting people in a box labelled "Always wrong and to be ridiculed" because they aren’t 100% like you is as dangerous as believing absolutely everything they say because you happen to like the cut of their jib.