I Census Myself

'When I feel like that, I ask myself what would a young, white, confident man in tech ask for? ...' is the best advice I've been given in March. It helped me to leave a couple of the questions on the recent census unanswered, and to launch my Facebook page this week. 

Questionnaires, however well-designed, try to squeeze us (in the case of the UK census, all 66.65 million of us) into boxes. I'm averse to small spaces unless they are ones I step into of my own accord, zipping up the flap behind me. But it's mandatory to submit the 2021 census, so I clicked the required boxes on the online form last Sunday and pressed Send. 

The same day, I created a Facebook page in an attempt to offset some of the challenges of publicising a new book at a time when the pandemic has made the usual readings in bars, cafes, and libraries impossible. At an event pre-lockdown, I might sell 5 books following one of these (usually) free events, sometimes more, occasionally none. I offered a discount, signed the books as requested. It was a good exchange all-round.

The questions I didn't answer on the census were about religion and sexual orientation. In writing this, I have already given you more information than the National Office of Statistics will receive about me. Perhaps I was influenced by the recent graffiti (graffito?) I saw near the station which reads, JESUS WAS BISEXUAL. How odd, I thought, to choose that as a daub, but then again, it did get me thinking. So too the other graffito under the railway bridge: GREAT NESS IS BORING. How odd, I thought, to condemn a hamlet near Nesscliffe so specifically, and to travel ten miles or so into town to do so.  

Questions about sexual orientation are even less conducive to box-ticking than questions about religion. Under each of these census questions I clicked Why we ask this question to find out how it could be relevant, was told it will help the design of services. I simply do not believe this. What will help with the design of services is the campaigning work of organisations like SAND . The negative impacts of labelling continue: 'heterosexual', 'gay', 'lesbian', and 'bisexual' are not terms of equivalent meaning or stigma when we're standing up to be counted. I would daub that somewhere if it wasn't so long (when does graffito become graffiti?) and against the rules. 

One of the hesitations I felt about launching my Facebook page was that I had to think about which categories of people might like my work. The categories don't include those who don't like books: I've already been told. Aside from that, it's hard to be sure enough to tick boxes, although there has been a particular interest shown by people who went to Durham University, though that doesn't include a scattering of keen readers in Australia. Except for Penny. 

My main reluctance, however, was that, as I said to my young advisor, promoting my book feels like asking for money. 'When I feel like that,' she said, 'I think: what would a young, white, confident man in tech ask for?' And buoyed up by her refreshing, honest courage, but not in pursuit of greatness (which is *ohhhhh! that's what it means* boring) I pressed Go.

Drawing copyright John Rae

I Text The Poet Laureate

From - I Buy A New Washer - Liz Lefroy (2020) Mark Time Books

I Mother - We All Need Mothering

Mothering Sunday is celebrated today in the UK. There are some important points to note about this tradition - mainly that it's not, in its origins, all about being, or having, a mother, even if that has become its focus more recently. 

On Mothering Sunday, in the 16th century, Christians visited their mother church - their spiritual home. This was the church in which they were baptised. For me, this would be All Souls, Langham Place, London.

The connections between Mothering Sunday and mothers became clearer in the 1910s and '20s when (as Wikipedia puts it) Constance Adelaide Smith (not a mother herself) 'reinvigorated' Mothering Sunday in the British Isles, having heard of the way Mother's Day was introduced to celebrate the role of mothers in the USA. Rather than adopting a new festival, Smith amalgamated aspects of Mother's Day with Mothering Sunday and promoted it in her published works. Having stuck with Mothering Sunday, it means the day we celebrate motherhood isn't fixed - it moves with the ecclesiastical calendar: is always on the fourth Sunday in lent, mid-way between Ash Wednesday and Easter. 

Ahh Lent! The time for extra self-discipline. But even the church recognises we all need a break sometimes. So the first aspect of a traditional Mothering Sunday is that it is a legitimate break from fasting. I note this for my friend, who has birthday cake to finish up, and for my son, with whom I hope to do some baking later on. 

The second aspect of a traditional Mothering Sunday is that you don't have to be a mother, or to have a surviving mother, to mark it. We aren't told this - instead we're told that if we are bereaved or childless we can opt out of the flurry of marketing emails selling us Mother's Day merchandise. Big deal.

Many of us no longer have a mother church, or a mother place of worship from any religion. My parents left the west end of London when I was 6 months old, so my emotional connection with it as a place is close to none. I've needed to find a new way of homecoming, or mothering, being mothered. The Macmillan dictionary definition of mothering helps - it says that mothering is to treat someone with care and kindness as though they were a small child. 

According to this definition we can all mother and be mothered today - in fact, it's essential human behaviour, and transcends biological sex, gendered expectations, labels, and doing the washing up. We can all be 'as though' small children, especially now in this pandemic when we are  experiencing huge losses, so tired, downhearted, in a strop, miserable, over-wrought, anxious ... 

Sometimes, I forget to mother myself. I get lax about bedtime, about reading to myself, about baking. Sometimes, I forget how much we all need mothering.

Today, I am lucky enough to be able to lie around and read a book, then later, maybe I'll get my crayons out and draw myself a card. I'll bake with my son as part of a celebration not so much of motherhood, but of the human capacity to show care and kindness at a time when we all need to be, from time to time, given flowers, fed cake, encouraged to splash in puddles, hugged, listened to without judgement, reminded to lie down and rest, pretending to be a dozing cat: treated as if we were small children. 

Photograph © Mike Powell