Time for a couple of days off?

You know it is probably time you took a few days off campaigning when your four year old spontaneously bursts into 'BBC, walk the plank!' while you're wandering round Primark looking for a new cardie!

The first week

I've had good days and bad days over the last week. Well, that's not entirely true. It's been more like good and bad hours, to be honest. But mainly good, I have to say... For the  most part the positivity of my post written last Saturday has remained, but I have had moments of despair, as I look at the size of the mountain I need to climb and the obstacles that are being erected upon it, and I've had moments of frustration and anger.

On Saturday afternoon we took ourselves off to the coast to try to let the sea air blow away the cobwebs. It worked well.

At least it worked better than staying home moping...

It was clear from all social media that the Yes movement had had its one day of mourning on the 19th but that we had all woken up on the 20th with the sudden and joint realization that we may not have been on the winning side, but we were on the right side so we had no choice but to roll up our sleeves and carry on. Maybe we're just a little ahead of the curve... After all the SNP was never meant to get that majority that forced the Indyref this soon in the first place. After a few more years of cuts and austerity, a few more illegal wars, a few more years of rule by an elite group of millionaires who can't even begin to understand our day to day lives, it might have been easier.

Of course Day 1 had seen the 3 stoogies break their first promise but there was no surprise there.

By five days in the ever-so-efficient journalists at the BBC had finally managed to lay their hands on the positive report I tweeted and facebooked on August 22nd about the Clair oilfield.

Interestingly the BBC reported this negative story on the left hand side, on the very day I found the positive one. But how could BBC journalists be expected to find something like that on a big, complicated Internet when it takes a busy mum of five a few hours to track it down?!

Since this revelation we've had parliament recalled to voted on bombing Iraq. Of course last week there was no intention of starting any more illegal wars but today, all that seems to have changed. Last week we were too skint to pay for weapons, but now we, the people are getting to pay for the foodbanks, because they the politicians are busy spending our new oil money on our very own UK WMDs. We didn't see that coming, did we?

And good old fracking across the central belt has been rubber-stamped this week too. We did jump up and down for two years pointing out to people that if we took control over our own affairs, we would have the power to allow or outlaw fracking as we saw fit but hey, wasn't it all simply about Eck being a fat w@nk?! Today I had to bite my tongue long and hard when I saw several BT and no-leaning acquaintances on facebook and twitter sharing the 'Sign the petition to ban fracking in Scotland' URL. Give me strength! You voted for it a week ago and now you want me to sign a petition against it? I already signed against it with a wee cross in the YES BOX on the 18th!!!!!!

Oh and I hear we're rumoured to be upping the retirement age to 70 as well. That's a hoot in a city where some parts have a life expectancy of 59. And Labour are trying to get people to join up the their party by telling people it'll save the NHS... would that be the same NHS that was safe with a No this time last week?

We've had Scottish budget cuts, we've had let's get rid of the Barnett altogether, we've had right-wing nutters burning Saltires in George square. Need I go on?

Angry and facetious, me? Never!

But (as you can see this is one of my more cynical hours of despair at the moment...) taking several deep breaths and counting slowly to ten, I remind myself that in just a week all the pro-Indy parties have doubled or tripled in membership. Marcel and I both joined up this week too, without mentioning to each other! And I have never been a member of a political party in my life! People who have simply voted up to now have suddenly decided to become activists in their own right and the tidal wave is hard to stop. Marcel has also notice a distinct unease amongst his no-voting friends as each and every one of his predictions has come true, not over the year he had estimated but arrogantly within less than a week, accompanied by the monarch's happy purring. Sigh! He said by Wednesday they were looking decidedly sheepish and they were hurriedly trying to change the focus of any conversation he seemed to be steering in that direction.

Thomas has been to two Yes meetings already and there is some very positive stuff appearing around the idea of finally infiltrating the Scottish media so we don't need to put up with the BBC bias any more. Ordinary people have picked themselves up, dusted themselves down and decided this is worth fighting for. No one is for taking off the car stickers and when the Yes bar in Glasgow suggested reverting to its old names thousands had tweeted to disagree within hours. I think they are slowly realizing that they are the Yes bar and will be till Independence day. There are marches and meetings springing up all over facebook too and my kids are already asking when we can go on a nice flag-waving, face-painting day out in Edinburgh, so all-in-all it feels good. My main issue is that I am suffering from a lack of patience. I am already at the place another 5% of us need to get to and waiting for them to catch up is frustrating.

I've also seen a great number of different sources starting to question what will happen in 2017 if Scotland and England vote differently in the EU in/out referendum. Scotland needs its EU subsidies and knows it, England, for the most part, needs them too but given London doesn't, it and the tabloids together could force them out. I don't see us simply sitting back and watching England drag us out... but I'll be watching carefully how that develops.

Of course some things never change. The BBC is still trying to pretend we don't exist:

Notice how the news reader suddenly moves to her left during tonight's report when someone holds up a 45+ sign in blue behind her on live TV! But we are working on that, and we are stubbornly attached to our goal of a fairer, more equal Scotland, so long-term, I don't rate their chances. We're watching you BBC! (Well, not literally, I am deliberately no longer watching them at all, but we're watching what they're up to!)

The most amusing thing this week is the gutter press down south stirring up such a frenzy against us 'subsidy junkies' up here that the English are now starting to demand their own indyref! Hahaha, bring it on! 

Great view today

I was over at Whitelee again this morning taking a walk when I noticed it was much clearer than usual. It was so clear, in fact, that I could see not only the Ailsa Craig but also Arran and

Ben Lomond. . It's a shame I only had my phone with me and not my proper camera.

Civic nationalism

One of the things that angered me most was the media's attempt whenever possible to gloss over the difference between civic nationalism and that horrible right wing version down south that we see in Farage's party, and that we saw from the extreme unionists in George square on the night after the referendum.

I,  a Scottish woman with a Danish Yes campaigner for a husband; someone who has lived in France, Italy and Germany, who has studied foreign languages and culture, someone who has been married to a French person in the past and who currently has family in Denmark, France, Germany and Italy could be taken as a nationalist? I was asked on the day after the European elections this year if I had voted for those 'racist Scottish Nationalists?' by someone who should have been well enough educated to check facts of this basic type. If Farage has his way in a couple of years my husband isn't even eligible to live here with his Scottish-born children under his current European right to work arrangement. I also have Scottish friends living on UK passports in Germany, Spain and other places who are suddenly left at the mercy of EU governments letting them stay if England pulls us pro-EU Scottish inhabitants out of the EU. These are amongst my most prominent reasons for supporting Yes from the outset. Right wing nationalism and civic nationalism are at opposite ends of the tolerance spectrum. It is such a shame the two types haven't more diverse names. I am a civic nationalist and as we said all along in the Yes movement and will continue to say, for us 'A Scot is someone born here, and anyone who has paid us the compliment of settling here.' 

So when I came across this today and it made me smile because it showed me my Scotland.

Chuggy fun

It's just for fun, but Fiat have introduced a chuggy-patterning app. It's nice to do something mindless to ease the pain of the last few days...

So I started with covering the new one in old ones...

And then I tried some odd combos like Léon's eyes and Amaia's face!

Sweet little girl

So I'm lying in the bath this morning when Amaia appears in the doorway:

Amaia: What's your favourite animal, mum?

I think it through and assume she wants the answer 'hamster' given we have one. 

Me: Hamsters
Amaia: That's my favourite too... but I have two other favourite animals too!
Me: Yeah?
Amaia: I like chickens.
Me: Really?
Amaia: Yeah, chickens lay eggs and I like eggs, so I like chickens.
Me: Oh
Amaia: And I like pigs a lot too. Because pigs lay bacon!

Gathering strength, post Indyref #1

I've taken myself by surprise this morning...

I was asleep, or rather dozing at 5am when Thomas came in from counting votes in East Renfrewshire in the early hours of the 19th. He didn't waken me. I knew instantly we must have lost. I lay in bed dazed. I don't know why it surprised me given we'd been the subjects of much hate and lies in every part of the press every day for more than two years, but I am an optimist, and I had been in George Square the night before where optimism was buzzing.

I got up to do the school run. The little ones asked the result. Charlotte and Marcel had been following it through the night on social media, so knew already. Léon's face crumpled over his cereal bowl and he started to wail: How can people choose bombs over us kids? he sobbed. Anna, tears leaving her eyes in a perpendicular trajectory, shrieked: How can I be expected to pay for uni if they bring in tuition fees? Quite clued up for a six year old, really! I tried smiling optimism, kind of like you do if you're telling your kids someone died, or you're divorcing their father. They weren't fully convinced but went with it for the duration of breakfast, at least. Léon then claimed he felt too ill to go to school, but I felt too deflated to deal with him, so told him school was on.

I drove the biggies to high school and dropped them at the gate, no issue there. I drove the little ones to primary and dropped them at the gate too. I had to say hi to the janitor who was on the patrol. That was harder. I've known him 12 years. I barely nodded and legged it back to the car. I drove Amaia to nursery. I had to sit in the car and compose myself for a full five minutes before I went in. I live in a wealthy 'no-leaning' area so most parents were greeting each other in a happy enough manner. I was concentrating on getting in, walking to the correct room, getting Amaia's shoes and jacket changed and putting on her badge, signing her in and saying hello to her teacher and the head of her room without bursting into hysterical tears and falling to the ground in a heap. I walked through smiling little four year old faces and all I could think was how close they had got to a rosy future and how it had been stolen from them. I wanted to hug each individual child and apologize for the failings of the adults around them. I got back out and sat crying in the car, unable to move off because I couldn't see to drive.

On my way back the petrol light came on in the car. I would need petrol to go back to nursery for pickup. I considered it. I realized I could not physically bring myself to buy petrol because firstly I'd need to greet the garage till attendant without crying and secondly I would need to walk past the stand of thirty newspapers lying some more and gloating at me from the stand. I could not bear to watch TV or read newspapers to see their spin on the whole thing. I couldn't even look at facebook. I was actually physically incapable of doing so. I opted to drive my people carrier for the rest of the day despite its diesel-guzzling 2.7 litre engine. And at 3pm, I sent Charlotte to pick up the kids from primary because I knew I couldn't stand there at the gate without sobbing my heart out and quite honestly making a spectacle of myself.

I went home after nursery at 9. I went back under my duvet and I wept like a baby. Fortunately I had no work that day - the advantages of freelancing! I didn't eat. I didn't drink. I lay in bed and cried all day. And I tried to work out how to move away. I went through all the problems of where I could go that all my kids speak the language (the biggies are French-speaking, the littlies Danish.) Marcel is applying to uni here - I didn't want to live in a different country from him. I didn't see how I could go anywhere till after Lots finishes school as she's already in third year at high school but by then I would have two here and potentially children as old as twelve having to pick up schooling in another language... and that's without even considering my poor mum who lives alone, round the corner. I felt utterly trapped.

 The last time I felt like that was nine years ago. Thomas and I were best friends and had been for many years. I had begun to realize I was in love with him but I was married, albeit very unhappily, to someone else. I wasn't sure if he was aware of my feelings towards him and he had never told me either if he saw me as anything more than his best friend. Somehow we got into a conversation about the state of my marriage and his lack of partner and it all came out. His reaction towards me was fine that day but the next he popped up on MSN and told me that he would never find a partner if I continued to be his best friend because he couldn't see past me and he told me I should try to fix my marriage. He said he had decided he could no longer be my friend and that he intended never to speak to me again. It was a revealing conversation as it gave me the jolt I needed to realize I had to leave my husband but from the day he told me we could no longer be friends to the day we decided to talk about an alternative to his proposed plan (this was a period of nearly a month) I felt the way I did yesterday. My life had been snatched away from me. It had become meaningless. So having felt this way once before I fully expected to wake up feeling the same today. I even optimistically remembered I'd lost 10kg in the month Thomas had stopped being my friend and was already mentally clothes shopping two sizes smaller for the end of October!

So I woke up this morning and I was no longer crying. My eyes were dry and I jumped out of bed. Today I woke up with a 'let me at them' attitude that took me completely by surprise. Instead of giving up, I'm already angry enough now to ask myself what more I can do next time round. It was too good a movement to die. And my kids deserve the future I'd got close enough to touch. Too many lies and broken promises marred it this time round and we now know we need to find a road into the media. So I sat on Facebook and Twitter regrouping with the people who had inspired me. I sought out friends of friends I had met and been inspired by and I decided I didn't need heavy baggage so I also decided to unfriend those who bring me down and stress me out and one or two others who I actually enjoy talking to but who had mentioned they no longer wanted to see indyref posts. I knew I couldn't adhere to that and the cause was more important to me! I was amazed to see National Collective, Wings, Ginger Dug, the Common Weal people and all the others had woken up in the same state. We had managed to galvanize 45% of the national vote despite being demonized and marginalized, despite being lied about and vilified. In a single day the SNP, the Greens and the SSP have added a third new members. Despite never having been a member of a political party, I suddenly find myself googling join-up pages. If that's what it takes, I'll work on it from the inside! With a media presence we'll manage it next time round.

As I watched the Orange Order and the BNPites fill George (Independence) Square with hatred just 24 hours after the photo above, full of hope for our babies' futures was taken, I vowed that I will fight this cause until my dying breath or until we achieve it. 54% of those under 65 voted for this. The over 65s are the ones who had no real access to the truth as they read only newspapers and watched the TV news. They were lied to about pensions and threatened about benefits so we can hardly blame them. We need to find a way to adapt to their needs so they get the same information as we did. Failing that it should be possible in my lifetime and if it isn't at least no one will say I didn't try.

Time for pragmatism

I have a million reasons I am voting Yes tomorrow that you can find if you got through this blog or my husband's... hope, prosperity, democracy, tuition fees, trident, NHS, my kids having an opportunity to work in Scotland, elitism, social justice etc etc the list is endless. I have absolutely no fear - the media has been so OTT, it has become irrelevant. But if you're still on the fence maybe a simple pragmatic calculation should be made:

There are 4 possible outcomes, as I see it.

1. A huge win for No
2. A tiny win for No
3. A huge win for Yes
4. A tiny win for Yes

Let's take each one. One isn't going to happen. It was Westminster's intention at the outset - to put the question to bed for a generation but they hadn't counted on people power or the charisma of hope.We're neck and neck in the polls and people are beyond scunnered. If they've decided they've got the balls, few will bottle in after the last week's threats and panicked empty promises. 

Three is also unlikely. It could have happened but every newspaper (except the Sunday Herald) has printed exaggerated accounts of Armageddon for two years now, lying through their teeth about our wonderful peaceful, intellectual renaissance, branding us Cybernats from hell, so three is not going to happen. 

So two and four are most likely. 

Four will cause a wee market wobble. If Yes wins say 51/49 markets won't be happy but there's no going back so once the negotiating teams are established, things will stabilize. 

That leaves two. Say No win 51/49. Nothing will be put to bed. Those who voted no because of the offer of powers will quickly become angry when they are voted down by backbenchers - remember the Libdem pledge on tuition fees? I voted for that one - ha! Those who believed the newspapers will also feel robbed. The tiny percentage of people who just voted no because of fear will quickly become disenchanted and start to look into joining the Independence movement, which will not be going away. Too many of us have invested too much in this and will feel cheated. That will lead to claims for a new referendum, next year, in ten years, in twenty. (Look at the history of Quebec). Over and over again. It will not be put to bed with a 51/49 win for No so the markets will wobble and keep wobbling. Some companies will pull out of Scotland and the UK while they have the chance so they aren't mired in the instability for decades. 

So basically, pragmatically the only bearable outcome from this is actually number four. Think of that if you're on the fence.

Still undecided?

May I suggest you read these two posts by my husband:

A letter from a No future
A letter from a Yes future

A sweet misundrstanding

As the kids were getting dressed for school this morning, Thomas was preparing breakfast for me. The conversation went like this:

Me: What are you making?
Thomas: Idlis
Me: ok
Thomas: I've found the mango chutney, have you seen the idli mix anywhere?
Léon (rather shocked): You're having 'Tiddly winks' for breakfast?!!!

HAHAHAHAHA

A feel for how things really are

Every time I open a newspaper, turn on the TV or radio or go on the Internet I hear how we on the Yes side are an aggressive mob who go about intimidating all the poor No voters who are afraid to leave their homes. Did it ever occur to anyone that when 100% of the mainstream media is on the No side, they are only likely to report misdemeanours on the Yes side? It would be nice to see the truth in black and white for a change. That truth as far as I have encountered it is that if you walk about in a Yes badge or drive about in a car with a Yes sticker someone will shout abuse at you occasionally but for the most part you simply get a sour look as if you smell bad. The same is true presumably of the other side. So we're talking about 99% good tolerant-natured people on both sides and 1% idiots also on BOTH sides. Sadly the 'no' baddies don't exist, of course, because they don't get mentioned in the media.

Anyway I saw this video from George square yesterday and I thought I'd share it because it feels in nature to be exactly the same as all the rallies I have attended - for instance the BBC bias one that I keep reading was 'terrifyingly aggressive'. Maybe you could take five minutes out and watch it, if you'd like to decide on the truth using your own eyes, for once? Does this feel like an aggressive mob, or does it simply feel like a crowd of people full of hope enjoying a sing-song?

A reply to the Times

The Times newspaper decided to write an article today covering yesterday's BBC bias demo using a photo of my three youngest children to illustrate it. So I feel, given they didn't ask me my permission to use my kids in their 'article', I feel I am quite justified in rewriting their article from my point of view. I'll add a photo of it so you don't need to waste your money on their paywall. Let's take in paragraph by paragraph.

Firstly, I have to say I think there's a slight exaggeration in the title. Yes, there were a number of people outside the office but I hardly call a few thousand people singing and giving talks for approximately two hours 'under siege'. Don't worry, no one starved to death waiting for supplies to get in, no large wooden horses were used and we would have allowed them to leave the building at the end of their shift, had anyone come out, which they didn't.

Now, moving on to the article itself. Anger didn't boil anywhere. People are indeed frustrated with the BBC (and the rest of the media) but there was definitely no boiling of anger. People met up at George square and walked to the BBC. They sang Flower of Scotland and Caledonia. They sang 'we're all voting Yes' to the tune of 'She'll be coming round the mountain when she comes'. We cheered the words 'Yes', and 'Scotland' but mostly we walked fairly quietly along the route being cheered and tooted at by passing cars with saltires and Yes stickers. We were clapped and cheered back and enjoyed the positive atmosphere that has been everywhere in Glasgow these last few sunny weekends while we await our fate full of hope and anticipation, positively buzzing with excitement.

The second paragraph tells me the police are scrutinizing the protest, juxtaposing this with a mention of violence, hinting the protest was violent. The protest, as you can see from my many, many photos consisted of many women, small children, babies, people in wheelchairs etc. I didn't photoshop all 125 of them in the past 24 hours, I have better things to do with my time! Ironically, I even mentioned to my husband after the event yesterday, (he'd been away on a different Yes mission) that in all the protest marches I've ever been on (and there were a good number when I was a student and recently for the Indy movement) that I had never, ever seen the police so cheerful, relaxed and joking on a march. They beamed at us and chatted away in a way I have never experienced on a march in 30 years. But the Times thinks all us mums, kids and couples are in need of scrutinizing!

The anti-BBC slogans in paragraph 3 were the ever so sinister and terrifying 'BBC Shame on you!' and 'You can shove you TV licence up your arse!' (Again to the coming round the mountain tune.) I looked round as they sang that one. It was started by a bloke with a deep voice, then it was taken up by the teenagers, giggling at their own naughtiness and finally on the fourth or fifth chorus I saw a wee old granny standing alone on my left looking like it was the most daring thing she had ever done, joining in and blushing slightly. I fell about laughing, and certainly didn't feel intimidated! It was done in good, childish humour. We did shout 'Booooo' about three times, maybe that's what scared then? Or perhaps when we sang 'Where's your cameras BBC?' after sitting there for an hour and not being reported, only to then be told they'd reported 350 of us were outside! (Yeah, and the rest! I thought they were under siege!?) Sounds well worth police scrutiny, if you ask me.

As for Nick Robinson... there was a banner going round but even if the BBC 'believe[s] that [their] coverage of the referendum has been fair and impartial' we are all at liberty to make our own decision on that, watching the Youtube clip. I actually made an official complaint about this item to the BBC, something I have only done three times in all my years of BBC watching. And it isn't an isolated slip.

And then we come to the inevitable paragraph... as always we start on 'Alex Salmond and his fellow Nationalists'. Are they ever going to change that boring, boring tune? No, of course not, because by pretending that only Alex and Nationalists are interested in this cause, you can demonize and marginalize it. But doing some scrutinizing of my own, I can honestly say I didn't see a single SNP-related banner (check all 125 photos, taken randomly in all directions). There was a CND presence, especially at George square and some Gaza protesters, there were many simple Yes banners, homemade banners, Socialist ones and Radical Independence ones. I saw a few rainbow LGBT ones. I saw a few Green ones. Women for Indy were there too. I saw jokey ones and ones full of hope but nothing connecting anyone to Alex or the SNP.

 

It's easy to dismiss us as 'the SNP'. I often meet that opinion when I say I'm YES. 'Here comes the Nat', they say, without even ascertaining whether or not I have indeed ever voted SNP in my life. Many of us have simply come to the conclusion that Independence is necessary with no party affiliation. We've read the hard facts, we like the idea of democracy and the ability to vote for change and have your vote count, not just this once but forever more. I am 46 years old. I have never once voted in an election where my vote changed the outcome. I am not a member of the SNP or any other party and never have been. I will vote at every election after having read the party manifestos on offer, not based on an idea that I 'always' vote one party or another. Sorry, if that doesn't fit in with the stereotype you want, but unlike patronizing BT lady, I do have time to sit down and spend more than 2 minutes on my political decisions, or rather I make time, because they matter and that is despite having five kids and a business to run.

'If they think you are against them they go on the attack'. No one was on the attack. Look at the photo above you used to illustrate it - an 8, 6 and 4 year old holding balloons!!!! What were they going to do? Bite someone's ankle? Balloons and flags were par for the course for the whole afternoon.

There were many, many children and young teenagers all sitting happily around. This was a singing, cheerful, family day out!

'...the Nationalists want a Salmond Broadcasting Service'. How dare he? No one mentioned Salmond. We don't want Nationalist propaganda on the TV because we are a movement, not a party. From Labour for Indy through Greens and everyone else, we want impartiality. Complaining about the issues I linked to above doesn't mean we want Alex Salmond or any other political person setting the TV schedule. Alex is quite frankly irrelevant to most of us. We want Independence so we can vote for our own futures not just during Alex's lifetime but for generations to come. It is simple to lump us all in together, but it's lies and you know it, Mr Ian Davidson. I actually, ironically, saw more Labour for Indy people yesterday than people affiliated to the SNP. It's underhand and lazy to assume to opposite.

On to the next paragraph I am told tempers were fraying yesterday. If they were, they weren't fraying at Pacific Quay. Would I have taken my babies to a place where people felt in any way intimidated? Look at the photos above! Babies on shoulders, in papooses and in buggies! And they are content-looking babies. Does the baby in the papoose above, look in any way distressed? Do my kids?

As for the rest of the article. I have no idea what the police have or have not been told to do after Thursday so I won't comment. But all in all this article does not in any way represent the march and rally I attended with four of my kids and my old friend from uni yesterday afternoon. Thanks, once again, to the mainstream media for letting us down. The description I put on my demo photos as I uploaded them to flickr before I saw your article sums things up quite nicely: One thing's for sure - win or lose on Thurs - the mainstream media will not be trusted by half the population ever again - not good.

Accountability

I worry about accountability: I heard one of Léon's friends (8) say yesterday 'I don't believe I'll have to pay for uni when I'm bigger and I don't believe that we pay a fortune for nuclear bombs at the moment, like you say Léon, because if those two things were true, my mum and dad wouldn't be voting for them'. It'll be interesting to hear what those neighbours have to say in 8 years time when that child reaches uni age. Especially in the context of this article by someone from Quebec. This paragraph really resonated with me: "Scotland is not Quebec. The UK is not Canada, and Europe is not North America. But believe me, if there’s one thing you don’t want to have to tell your grandchildren 34 years from now, it’s that you thought you were protecting them when you decided to make them experience the next era’s world as spectators, not players."

What I'll say to my kids

Whether we win or lose next week I will be proud to tell my kids and theirs that I did not stand shoulder to shoulder with the Tory elite - the millionaires who auctioned off the NHS while millions queued at food banks in one of the richest countries in the world. I rejected the call to stand with UKIP, the BNP, the Orange lodge and Britain First, the xenophobes and racists who want my foreign husband ejected from the country his kids were born in. I stayed away from the insipid Libdems who lost their souls the day the reneged on student fees and Labour who call them socialists while calling free tuition and medical care 'a something for nothing' culture. I will have tried to rise above the BBC and its lies and manipulation and I will have ignored the gutter press for the piece of toilet paper it is.

I will have stood shoulder to shoulder with those who have been striving for social justice, for a future where young people can learn without taking on loans that will mar their entire lives, where women with degrees can get a job because childcare isn't 70% of their salary. I will have prioritised that childcare over paying for a 1980s style nuclear deterrent in my own back garden, that is so out of sync with the world I live in today. Millions are spent of WMDs while millions queue at food banks. I will have stood with those who have fought for the sick, and the disabled. I want my children to grow up knowing that they will only have to leave their country of birth if they choose to, rather than growing up with that as an inevitability if they want to succeed in their careers. It shouldn't be like that. I don't want to have to be a once-a-year granny one day, just because there were no graduate jobs in this country for my kids. I will have been part of one of the most vibrant, inclusive, intellectual and inspirational movements in Scottish history that will live on whatever the outcome.

I have asked myself one question from the outset: Is this really the best my country can be? And I have concluded it is very far from that. 

I will have taken Mandela's advice to prioritise my hopes over my fears and I will be happy to look at myself in the mirror.

Old pink chuggies

I was looking through Flickr today for a photo of the new pink Fiat 500 to show Anna when I came across these original Fiat 500s in pink. I want one!

Such a sweet little boy

Léon has been writing his birthday wishlist. He turns 9 in 18 days. My other two kids were both quite mature and wordlywise at 9. They both remembered my divorce so had to grow up a bit quicker. They'd also grown up during a boom, when I had been much better off. Léon doesn't remember the divorce or the boom times and it makes me feel quite privileged when I see he is still quite a little boy, really, and a thoughtful one, at that.

What a list! It melts my heart to see that in this age of technology, he puts 'granny hug', 'mummy and daddy hug' on as he can see they are as precious as to him as the material things most children his age have become accustomed to. He still wants cuddly toys to sleep with, and though he craves the usual PS3 type nonsense, as they all do, they are minor points on his horizon. I do like the wee chancer in him too... I almost didn't notice he'd squeezed on 'a holiday to Spain!' hahahaha

The last week before my divorce... and Scotland's?

I'm divorced. You probably know that! So I've been through that last week of a relationship before. And like this one, it was a fairly big step, ending that relationship. We'd met when I was 17 and he was nearly 22 and at the point I walked out we were 38 and 43. We didn't remember a time before but things had been going wrong for a while, our paths diverging. I still felt young and vibrant, he had become middle-aged, conservative (with a small c) and jaded. He constantly wanted me to 'act my age' - that meant no blogging (and here I am still doing it eight years on - what a rebel!), no Flickr, no tweeting, you name it. I was meant to work fulltime, then come home, and do everything at home and everything with the kids. I was actually meant to be Mrs Career Woman and Patronising BT lady all rolled into one. Anyway, I'm off on a tangent. We saw our futures in very different places, a bit like you would if one of you wanted to lurch to the right politically and the other was still striving for a socially just society.

The last week was a roller coaster. I had flowers bought for me. They were beautiful. I hated them. I remember thinking it was ironic that in 20 years I had never been given anything like these flowers, not when I'd had our babies, not when I'd  had special birthdays or anniversaries, just when I told him I intended to leave. I also had a laptop thrown at me. He'd installed spyware on my machine to monitor my emails and didn't like what I'd been writing. I was offered expensive jewellery, I was offered a car. I was hissed at in anger. He frothed at the mouth as he told me I was a worthless person who would amount to nothing alone and that I would come back on my knees begging both forgiveness and a second chance and that he'd decide at that point whether he felt like granting me it or not. I was told I needed his money. I was told he'd take me to court, have my children taken from me as I was the 'worst mother in the world'. I was offered holidays, meals in restaurants... It was a surreal week. The night I told him I had made up my mind and nothing would stop me, he asked me to stay just till the morning because it would be easier to leave in the day light.

But left at nearly midnight. I found the courage and I walked away. I was calm and somehow I knew that no matter where I ended up, it would be better than continuing to live with my wealthy husband, in our middle-class house with our foreign holidays and café lifestyle. I was right. Eight years on I sit here and I shiver at the thought of what would have happened if I'd stayed just till the morning, and then just till the next. Our problems were insurmountable and without him I am me again. The promises, the abuse, the ignoring, the diverging viewpoints would simply have got worse over time. I would have danced on eggshells, embarrassingly and pathetically while he toggled between abuse and ignoring, seething self-righteousness and condescending nastiness. And I would have regretted over and over my passing up of that one chance to change my one life on this planet for the better. Once you get to that last week, once your mind is made up, threats, bullying and rushed empty promises are not reasons to change your mind.

Now you see them, now you don't!

Charlotte goes really quite freckly in the summer, especially if we go abroad. When I was playing around with this year's summer photos, I decided to turn a few black and white. I accidentally hit the black and white with red filter button, instead of the normal black and white and suddenly 90% of her freckles disappeared! It was odd to see a summer Charlotte with no freckles for a change. Even she was amazed at the effect.

Family words

It all started when we extended the lawn in the summer. We'd always had way too much mono-blocking and I'd been nagging Thomas to change it when our next door neighbour had his lawn dug up and thrown in a skip outside the house. I noticed as they were about to remove the skip, so 'acquired' it and added a few strips from B&Q to fill in the rest. Feeling smug that we'd managed to double the size of the back garden for less than £100 made us more than happy, especially after our neighbour told us how much he'd paid for his new lawn (which was a third of the size (and more than three times the price)).

On the second morning I noticed the new strips had been turned over at the corners. And on the third whole chunks had been overturned. I was at a loss as to what was causing it. I went through the possibilities - kids, foxes, wind etc and still couldn't work it out until a week in Amaia came running and shaking into the living room and very seriously exclaimed 'Oh, the badness of birds!' I looked outside in time to see a humongous crow picking at the grass, looking for worms. For a week I put heavy objects on all the corners to try to annoy the crows but often Amaia and I would be forced to open the window and shoo them. It became the norm to pass each other in the kitchen, shaking our heads and proclaiming to each other 'oh the badness of birds'. It never occurred to me, however, that Amaia might misconstrue things. After a couple of weeks the crows stopped attacking my lawn and life went back to normal.

Recently the weather has improved again and we've been sitting outside a lot. A couple of days ago a crow landed on the garage. 'Look mummy,' she said, pointing, 'a badness of birds.' I didn't really pay much attention. Today two landed on the lamppost beside the house. 'What's that up there?' I asked, just to check my hunch. 'Two badness of birds.' came the reply. So we have a new family words. Crows will henceforth be know in the Buchanan-Widmann household, not as crows, but as 'badness of birds (n inv)'.

Another good Indy article

I've been reading this. I really agree with her - is this the best such a rich country can provide its kids? No.

I know I'm a bit of a one-track bore at the moment, but this matters to me! So tough!

Amaia

My baby is starting to look much more grown-up suddenly. In this Instragram from today, I can almost imagine her ten years into the future already.

Another nice one

For A'That from Fraser Croall on Vimeo.

I'm Yes because...

Flashmob fun

Well, there we were in Buchanan bus station renewing the kids' school bus passes when we got notice of an imminent flash mob opportunity just the other side of the Royal Opera building - what else could we do but whip out a few flags Thomas had prepared earlier and join in. The atmosphere was electric. You could feel the lurv! ;-)

I think I'd like to work for Ikea!

Granny and her grandchildren

I think we're running out of space on the couch! Here's mum with all her grandchildren: Anna (6), Alasdair (4), Amaia (4), Charlotte (14), Léon (8), Marcel (17), Mum, Catriona (2), Gordon (8).

Humans of New York

I've raved about Humans of New York before. Now he's gone on a UN mission, some of his posts just stop you in your tracks and really humble you. They are well worth a coffee-break, that's for sure.

Italian baby food

I consider myself European, always have, so when everyone was in a tizzy last year about the Tesco horse scandal I did find myself looking on as an alien. To me, if you eat cow, why not eat horse? Anyway, wandering round the Coop in Bibbiena on holiday this year I loved the little jars of horse-flavoured babyfood smiling down at me from the shelf. I wanted to transport them (and the rabbit ones) back to the shelves of my UK supermarket, just for their shock value! Tee hee.

Too wee to remember

I was talking the other week about how the two or three youngest children would have very few memories of Denmark and their grandparents' manse because they came along just as they retired.

Tonight Léon was doing his homework and one of the words he had to write a sentence about was 'pray'. He wrote down 'My Danish granny likes to pray because she used to be a minister'. He read it out, and Anna looked completely blank. 'Farmor used to be a minister????' she asked, really surprised. 'I always thought she just wrote dictionaries like everyone else in the family and she just tells us about religion because she likes god!' I guess it is hardly surprising given Anna was last in the manse when she was eleven months old, but it is odd to think she doesn't know that side of her grandmother at all. As we are not religious as a family, that topic rarely comes up. To Anna, Brita is more a lady who lives in the Tuscan hills tending her roses, than a Church of Denmark minister!

US journalist discussing Indyref

How refreshing to final hear it with the UK media bias stripped away.

Science Centre fun

This topsy-turvy room in Glasgow Science Centre definitely offers endless possibilities for the fun photographer!

Hamster wheel

I have a new-found respect for Rosie the hamster. Having watched Thomas, Charlotte and Léon attempt the Glasgow Science Centre hamster wheel at the weekend, I have to say she makes it look so much easier. Yes, the humans can get it going but they have no notion of how to stop it again in anything resembling a dignified manner. They invariably fall on their face, whereas Rosie calmly slows down and happily rocks from side to side smiling out at us!

Charlotte, my millennium baby

I like this photo: Charlotte, a millennial herself (born less than 73 hours into this millennium), as she captures nearly two millennia of history in a way that really represents this decade, and this one alone!

Grammatical slip-ups

They ask you the sweetest questions sometimes:

Léon: Mum, are your earrings venison?
Me: I think you mean Venetian Léon! 
(And yes, they are, well-spotted!)

Isn't it cute trying to form the adjective from Venice and ending up with 'venison'. Though the idea of wandering about with a hunk of meat hanging from my earlobe does not really appeal!

I've got style

I love it when little kids start to experiment with style. Anna is currently going through the 'trying to look like what she imagines a teenager wants to look like stage'. Amaia has sussed that things look good coordinated or contrasted so some days we get a blue t-shirt and skirt, other days we might get a white top with black leggings and today she came down dressed like this, having completely overlooked the colour scheme and announced - 'I chose this because cats (the dress) go with dogs (the leggings)'. It's very cute!

Two videos from this week

Which one can you relate to?



Or maybe?



I may have one kid more and no cats (for now) but I can definitely relate to her as I sit up at 1am working on a translation or some proofreading to pay for their futures. We discuss politics at the table and the teenagers don't even hide in their phones. I don't think the best time of the day is when I get peace - it's when I have a deep conversation with one of my 5 that shows me they are becoming involved and responsible members of society. That beats a cup of tea any day. Even my 8 year old started a playground referendum debate on Tuesday then came home in tears saying his friends' parents wanted to vote no (the downside of living in Newton Mearns) and he couldn't understand why his future in the EU (we're half Danish) and tuition fees etc were not in their minds. I swear he's better informed than them. Even my 4 year old points at every Yes sticker in a window and says that means 'Scotland'. They are never too young to engage.

A Nordic thing

There I was doing gardening when my Finnish friend walked past clutching her bag of goodies from the newly opened 'Home Bargains' store. She called over to me, almost teary-eyed with excitement. 'You have to tell your husband' she said, rifling in her bag. I waited to see what she was going to produce. Out she pulled a bag of salt liquorice and, almost sniffing, announced - 'It's real. It's Finnish! And it's 69p!' The poor woman hasn't been back to Finland much in recent years and it was like she'd discovered a little piece of home in Greenlaw Village shopping precinct. It was a truly moving experience, so I didn't have the heart to tell her my husband is one of only very few Danes I have ever met who doesn't like salt liquorice!

Please read this

Two child families

My three youngest kids were invited to stay at their cousin's house on Saturday night because it was their cousin's birthday. That meant Thomas and I only had two kids for the first time since the older three stopped visiting their father over two years ago. I know most people only have two so would quite like a night off occasionally, but when you have five, having two is almost a night off - well it is as near to it as you're realistically going to get!

As we drove home from dropping them in town, it already felt weird - the car felt surprisingly spacious for starters. We got in late, 7ish so quickly threw some dinner together. Sitting down at the dining table was odd too, as we only took up half the seats but it was the silence that was most unsettling. Not once did we say 'use your fork', 'sit on your bottom', 'sit down', 'one more potato' 'turn and face the table' etc, etc. Dinner was actually a calm, philosophical discussion rather than a set of commands barked over the general din on dinner. Cooking for four was not something Charlotte was used to either so we ended up with a little too much of everything and when it got to dishes we were surprised to find the dishwasher even had space in it for a second meal! Is this what other people do every day? How very strange! After dinner was back to normal for me unfortunately because of a pressing work deadline but Thomas even got to go out for two hours after dinner instead of reading Danish and giving Léon a violin lesson. Is this what life will be like in ten years once we're down to two?

Finally Marcel remarked. 'This must be what other people live like: kids nearly the same age, quiet adult conversations, no tiny kids around your feet asking silly questions and going on about kiddie nonsense. It just doesn't feel right. It's spookily quiet. It doesn't feel like our family.' He just didn't feel at home without the chaotic lifestyle we call normality!

Did I blink and nearly miss it?

Twelve years ago I walked this little boy to school for the very first time, his two year old sister in tow. We posed for the obligatory first ever 'starting school' photo on the front lawn. It feels like yesterday. I still remember the warmth of the air that day and the anticipation. I remember him waiting in line to go into his class, alone: no parents on the first day. I remember hanging about to pick him up when he came out, proudly having drawn a self portrait entitled 'My first day at school'.

So much time has passed in his life since then, so little in my own. My 'back to school' photos now have a line-up of five, not two and my boy now towers over me by twenty centimetres but it is hard to believe today's was already the last ever full-family 'back to school photo'. They were never all at school at the same time. Amaia could, of course, have started today but partly because she is so small and still too tired for a whole day, and also because I know how quickly this thirteen year period passes, I have deferred her school start till next summer. Marcel won't start uni until around October next year so has promised to come outside next August and stand in the 'back to school' line up wearing his dressing gown and slippers. I hope to convince him by then that wearing his 'Leaver 15' sweatshirt might make for a slightly more presentable picture!

I saw many friends last night on Facebook sharing poems about how hard it is to take them to school that first time and start the process of letting them go. It doesn't get any easier when you know the next step in letting go is watching them leave your house forever, to make their own home, however proud that makes you feel. So I wish him well in his last ever year at school, and await with dread and anticipation when he announces next year, where he is planning to go and study!

A sunny, Mediterranean, Scandinavian place

Thomas and I are slowly coming to the conclusion we had our kids too late... I know I couldn't have had them much earlier, given when we first met and there was the small matter of getting he who shall not be named out of the picture first but in an ideal world it wasn't quite right... It is not that I am one for regrets and I do enjoy our summer trips to the warmth but from a linguistic and cultural point of view, the kids are not getting to know Denmark at all.

Because their farmor retired within months of Anna's birth she lost her big manse and at the same time we lost our base in Denmark and our ties to it. As a family, I am the first to admit we are an overwhelming (if friendly and helpful!) package and therefore can't really impose ourselves on people who are not family, but when Thomas's parents moved to a one bedroom flat, we simply no longer fitted. Of course things were further complicated by their larger, holiday home being in Tuscany. Most kids' school holidays are in the summer and they are always in Italy in summer and that's where there is room for us so Denmark was out. The upshot is that each of the three little ones has only set foot in Denmark one single time since their (respective) 2nd birthdays. So none has a real feel for Denmark as a country and culture. Although they are being brought up speaking Danish, they have almost no contact with Danes and none with Danish children their own age. Of course they are spoken to in Danish in Tuscany (and Scotland) by Thomas and his parents but all around them the conversations in the shops, the parks and the cafés are in Italian. When we are invited to dinner in Tuscany it is either by Italians

or my father-in-law's German relatives

 so instead of sitting for hours at the dinner table taking in at the Danish being spoken, they sit somewhat lost and restless as everyone speaks Italian or German (which  they do not understand). It is a shame because I remember well how much my older two benefited from sitting in the family house(s) in France with everyone inside and out conversing in French and the TV on in the corned of the room also in French.

I can see very little opportunity in the future either to visit Denmark, especially as my in-laws are imminently moving to Italy for more of the year, so Denmark will become a strange, mythical place to them. I've been to Copenhagen a couple of times and think Marcel would love to study there, at least one year, but he hasn't so it is not on his radar despite his fairly decent passive Danish. I also feel my own Danish has hit a wall I will not get over without ever setting foot in Denmark. I was last there over four years ago. I understand almost all of what is said around me but my grammar and my ability to pronounce the strange sounds of that language drown in the Italian that comes much more naturally to me (I have a degree in Italian). It saddens me so must be soul-destroying for Thomas to know the kids will never really know their background fully. I doubt the little ones will consider Denmark as a destination in the future either as it will not evoke warm childhood memories for them, but strangely neither will Italy because the place they hold dear is a strange sunny, Danish-speaking house lost in the Italian mountains. I don't think they fully grasp what Denmark and Italy are - they are condemned forever to be in a strange cultural and linguistic limbo.

Foreign blood

You can tell my kids aren't fully Scottish when you are in a big city at over 30 degrees and running around madly after pigeons seems far more important than sitting in the shade complaining that it is too hot in the sun! :-)

Robin Williams

It's funny - today so many people are devastated that the comic genius is gone but am I the only one who couldn't watch his comedy? I tried often enough but I always felt like a voyeur watching the most tragic clown on the planet almost self destruct. I found his comedy too painful to watch because it seemed profoundly sad to me - as if he was desperately trying (and for me, failing) to hide his sadness from the world. All his manic movements, his noises and silly faces made me want to scream at the screen - "stop that, calm down, get help."

But I am sad, because for me his drama succeeded where his comedy failed - it seemed real, and so poignant you could watch him, transfixed. He moved me to tears in Dead Poet's Society and Good Will Hunting. I no longer needed to squirm uncomfortably because in drama he was deeply believable.

The clown is finally at peace but the world has lost a dramatist.

More from Amaia

Another quote from our shared bath this evening. Pointing at my boobs:
"Mummy, do you remember when I was little and you used to give me milk from your knuckles?!"

(Tee hee)

Through the eyes of a child

I just had the sweetest conversation with Amaia...

Although it's been months since she last saw Monsters Inc, she suddenly decided to talk about it in the bath. If you haven't seen it, the monster above (Celia) becomes contaminated while out on a date, hence the veterinary cone. When she first meets Mike afterwards (who she'd been on the date with), she is somewhat irate and shouts at him. Amaia had totally misunderstood the cone, given we have no large pets, so she'd taken it to be a megaphone!

"Remember that bit mummy, when Celia is so mad at Mike she puts on that shouty cone so she can shout louder at him?"

How adorable is that?!

Marcel at 17

I was trying to think about what to write about Marcel today. But I think this (doctored to remove candidate numbers) speaks for itself:

Despite having to cope with a fair amount of upheaval in his 17 years - my divorce, the death of his beloved Pumpa over two of the most important years of his schooling, his abandonment by three members of his French family, the complete breakdown of his relationship to his father, who he hasn't seen in over 2 years, our own financial difficulties since the start of the economic downturn and their effect on him - he was one of very few kids in his school who had to work every morning before school since the age of 13 and who now works weekends and evenings in a shop to support himself, he has managed to achieve school results, the likes of which I have never seen. The brightest Scottish kids take 5 Highers in their 5th year and uni entrance is based on these results. Very, very few get 5 As - so few they make the front pages of local newspapers. Marcel decided, completely of his own choosing and determination, that he didn't want to take 5 Highers, but instead to take 6 and also schedule in one Advanced Higher (something you don't sit till a year later). Of course the school timetable only allowed time for classes in five, so he took it upon himself to teach himself both Spanish and Chemistry from a book, with no tutor and no teacher. A few times we asked if he hadn't bitten off more than he could chew, especially given his work commitments and because he's a popular and sociable kid too, who enjoys a great social life but he stuck with it and got not 5 As, which was the best possible result in the country but 5 As including an A in the Spanish he taught himself and a further C in Chemistry (how you can teach yourself that without a science lab is beyond me!) and an A in his Advanced Higher too. Seven exams in one sitting, six at grade A is not something I have ever read about any pupil in Scotland achieving, so what can I say? Proud doesn't come close. 

I love my little boy, even though he's now my big boy. I imagine this transcript will open many doors to him at the end of school next year. I hope that whatever he chooses to do with these results will bring him peace and happiness in his life. Well done!