Keris Stainton's Blog, page 21

May 2004: Anna’s not lovin’ it

You’ve got to admire McDonalds (well, you haven’t really, you’ve got to hate them) but you’ve got to admire the lengths they’re going to to change their image. The following advert in She made me laugh.

(On the left-hand page)

New Food: Quorn Premiere

Our mouth-watering … blah … even better than it looks … blah … one of the surprises on our all-new Salads Plus menu … blah. 

(On the right-hand page)

New People: Anna

Aromatherapist Anna is typical of the new breed of customer attracted to McDonald’s by our Salads Plus menu. Anna hates football, but loves Thierry Henry. She hates alcohol, but loves bars. She hates going by bus, but loves not having to worry about finding a parking space. She hates her job, but loves her boss. She hates rabbit food, but loves the new Chicken Caesar Salad at McDonald’s. 

I hate Anna

But then there’s an asterisk and, at the bottom of the page:

Anna is intended to illustrate a possible customer-type and is not a real person.

Poor Anna.

March 2004: Overactive imagination

My name – Keris – is, as I’m sure you know, a Welsh name.  But the Welsh spelling is Cerys.  My entire life I’ve had people either asking me where my name comes from or asking me if I’m Welsh.  A couple of years ago me and David went to Cardiff for the Carling Cup Final (or whatever it was called those days – oh, yes – Worthington Cup).  We were talking to a Welsh friend of ours (well, his – she was a right pain) and I suddenly had the disconcerting realisation that I also thought of myself as Welsh.  In fact, I think I even started to say something about being Welsh and then stopped myself when I realised that I .. erm .. wasn’t.  How weird is that?

I bring it up because I discovered another example of my overactive imagination this morning.  I’ve been testing the baby – Harry to his friends – with music.  I’ve noticed he responds to certain types of music and I figured if Peter Andre turns out to rock his world I’ll have to start smacking it out of him now.  We sat this morning trawling through the music channels on Sky.  His favourite seemed to be some R&B track with rappers and women in hot pants bending over and shaking their booties.  (Is that the correct plural of booty?  Doesn’t seem right somehow.)  Anyway he didn’t think much of Christina Aguilera – neither Can’t Hold Us Down nor (surprisingly) Dirty.

Then we got in the car and I put on Catatonia’s International Velvet.  He liked I Am the Mob (bit concerned about these “gangsta” tastes already!).  But he really liked Strange Glue.  Well, he went mad anyway.  And this is where the realisation hit.  I’ll transcribe my thought process:

Ooh, he likes this one.  Must be cos he can tell it’s mummy’s favourite.  Or maybe it’s because I’ve turned it up so loud it made him jump and he fell out of his hammock.  Wonder if he can feel my responses to music that I … hammock? 

Yes, my warped little mind thinks that my baby son is sleeping in my uterus in a hammock.  Of course then my warped little mind felt the need to furnish him a whole room – well, if you’ve got a hammock you need a minibar and a plasma screen TV.

Really, I shoudn’t be having a child.  Sigh.

March 2004: Happiness

Yesterday I read a shocking thing in the latest issue of O magazine (dedicated to ‘Happiness’):  “A child laughs, experts say, about 400 times a day; adults, only 15 times”.  That’s terrible!  Terrible!  I’m pretty sure – I hope – I laugh more than 15 times a day.  If you don’t then you need to get in some guaranteed-laugh DVDs: Black Books, Spaced, I’m Alan Partridge (first series), The Paul & Pauline Calf Video Diaries.  Failing any of these, then Friends, Will & Grace, my new favourite (about which, more later) Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.  Read The Onion and read Mil Millington’s Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About (the funniest book I’ve ever read).

And … I don’t know if you’re familiar with Richard Herring.  David introduced me to his and Stuart Lee’s TV show This Morning With Richard Not Judy a few years ago (you may have heard of Lee & Herring’s Fist of Fun?).  TMWRNJ (as we fans call it!) gave me probably my only proper student moment.  When you go to University aged 27, married and working full-time, you tend to miss out on all the usual student behaviours of getting drunk, missing lectures, sitting in pubs boring everyone stupid reciting Monty Python sketches.  But one evening I was sitting in the Moon Under Water on Deansgate, drinking £1 a pint Carlsberg with some fellow mature students, when someone said ‘Ah …’ and I said, ‘No, not ah …’ and James and I spent the next half hour boring everyone else reciting bits of TMWRNJ – ‘They’re all Howler monkeys when I’ve finished with them’, ‘Saying it in a high-pitched voice doesn’t make it any more true’. Etc. Ah, happy days …

The other reason I mention him is that last night I dreamt about him.  You know when you have a nice dream about someone and you think about them all day?  Well in my dream we were going out together and he sort of worshipped me.  I like this in a man.  Particularly since my husband’s current pet name for me is ‘Big Unit’.  And, in my dream, he (Richard Herring) was very funny, he made me laugh a lot (as does my husband, otherwise he couldn’t get away with calling me what he calls me).  And, twice, I laughed myself awake.  Now I think this is definitely a very good thing.  If the average adult only laughs 15 times per day, laughing yourself awake twice in one night is good going.

And … he has a weblog.  And it makes me laugh every day.  (In fact if I read 15 of the archived ones, any further laughs would be a bonus!)

July 2003: Eeeeeek!

Well, the mouse is back. That’s if he ever went away. Can’t remember if I mentioned it before (and can’t be bothered to check) but we had a mouse in our kitchen, for a while we thought it might be a rat – it seemed to be very strong and it ate the best part of a bag of pasta and about ten Penguins – but, thankfully, it’s just a mouse. So we bought a little plug-in sonar thing that’s meant to drive them away, and we kept the fridge pulled out (cos he likes to do his eating behind the fridge) and we put all perishables and nibbleables into tupperware. And there was no sign of him. No more little poos, nothing.

And then, night before last, I wandered into the kitchen and there was the mouse, sauntering along as if he owned the place. I chased him behind the cupboard with some demented notion of catching him (then I realised, what would I do with him if I did? and gave up). But I shone the torch behind the cupboard and he was sitting there, looking up at me, cute as you like. And at that moment, it was love.  For me anyway, I think he was probably terrified.

So I vowed that we wouldn’t kill him. I hadn’t planned to anyway for reasons of squeamishness, David had no such qualms, but now I decided I definitely wouldn’t. Too cute. Then last night I was in the kitchen cutting myself a piece of cheese (cheese!) and he ran over my foot. My bare foot. And I’m afraid I swore at him quite violently. Then I apologised. Then I realised I am probably quite mad. I’m still not killing him, though. I don’t see why we can’t just get along. (But if anyone has any suggestions for getting rid of himhumanely, I’d be happy to hear them.)

May 2003: Crazy Salad/Secretary

I’ve been reading Crazy Salad, a collection of Nora Ephron’s journalism from the seventies. The thing that strikes (and disturbs) me most about it is that very little appears to have changed. Apart from the fact that she talks about the ‘Women’s Movement’ and ‘Women’s Liberation’, the battles women were fighting then we’re still fighting now – 30 years later. I mention it because last night we went to see a film called Secretary.

It’s about a woman – Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) – who is released from a psychiatric hospital and has a history of self-mutilation. She goes to work for a lawyer – E Edward Gray (James Spader). To begin with he seems a little odd, nervy, bullying, but he soon realises that she enjoys his control and the freedom from responsibility it gives her. It builds until he’s spanking her on his desk as a punishment for typos. And even when she spots the typos, she leaves them in. I’ve read reviews that have described it as a kinky love story. I loved it. It was weird, funny, sexy, and we talked about it all the way home. Maggie Gyllenhaal is brilliant – like a twisted combination of Olive Oyl and Doris Day. James Spader is amazing too. What other actor chooses his roles by whether he gets to simulate masturbation or not, eh?

Maggie Gyllenhaal claims it’s a feminist film and I can see her point.  Lee is transformed – happy and powerful for the first time in her life. The power shifts totally from Edward to Lee until Edward is afraid of her and of his feelings for her. But then again …

This is Nora Ephron writing in 1972 about women’s sexual fantasies:

‘It is possible, through sheer willpower, to stop having unhealthy sex fantasies.  I have several friends who did just that.  “What do you have instead?” I asked.  “Nothing,” they replied.  Well, I don’t know.  I’m not at all sure I wouldn’t rather have an unhealthy sex fantasy than no sex fantasy at all.  But my real question is whether it is possible, having discarded the fantasy, to discard the thinking and expectations it represents.  … I doubt that it will ever be possible for the women of my generation to escape from our own particular slave mentality.  For the next generation, life may indeed be freer.  After all, if society changes, the fantasies will change; where women are truly equal, where their status has nothing to do with whom they marry, when the issues of masculine/feminine cease to exist, some of this absurd reliance on role playing will be eliminated.’

So we’re not there yet then. In fact, perhaps it’s a step back that a young actress who considers herself a feminist, can appear in a film like Secretary and believe it to be a feminist act. I don’t know. I know that I enjoyed Secretary and that Maggie Gyllenhaal was brilliant. I just don’t know that it’s a feminist film.

A couple of afterthoughts:  Maggie Gyllenhaal did fight against the poster which makes it look like soft porn, which it definitely isn’t. And why is her website within her brother’s (the address is jake-gyllenhaal.com/maggie)?

April 2003: A microcosm

I know, I know.  I haven’t had a chance to do this for – eek! – a week.  But I’ve changed my hours at work so I now work 8-4.15, instead of 9-5.15 and so I’ve only got a frantic half an hour from when David drops me off instead of the leisurely hour and a half I used to have.  And I haven’t done anything interesting in the past week so I’ll tell you what I did this morning instead.  They’re good these little microcosms (?) of people’s lives.  Makes us all feel part of a worldwide community.  Apparently.  So …

Got up at – shudder – 5.45am and had a shower.  Put the news on and actually left it on instead of turning to E! News Live like I usually do.  Dressed, did make-up, dried hair, etc.  Drank glass of carrot juice and filled water bottle for the journey.  Blah.  Rowed with David not long after setting off because someone over-took us and instead of just muttering ‘tosser’, my lovely husband flashed his lights about, oh, ten times, which caused the tosser to slow right down (hang on, I thought he was in a hurry?), so David sped right up his arse at which point I was yelling like a fishwife (at my husband, not at the tosser, although my point was that surely his behaviour was startlingly similar to that of the tosser).  Rest of journey passed without incident while I alternately read The Sunday Times Travel magazine (not the supplement from the paper, the actual magazine they’ve brought out – it’s very good) and more baby research.

After being dropped at Deansgate station I interval walked (normal walking interspersed with fast walking and short steps which makes me look like I’m trying to get to a loo before having an accident) to Sainsbury’s (love these new “urban supermarkets”) where I bought (let me just have a look) (this really is a microcosm, isn’t it) Sainsbury’s magazine (can’t resist a magazine that only costs £1), tiger prawns, artichoke hearts, runner beans (reduced), a pecan shortbread (couldn’t resist) and a paw-paw (reduced).  Marched the rest of the way to work (singing ‘The Bear Necessities’), switched on my computer, got a glass of water, and here we are.

February 2003: Cagney & Lacey

I’m spending the weekend and the in-laws in Blackburn and I’m full of cold. I’m a one-woman snot-making machine. This afternoon, David went to the match and I sat on the sofa with a Beechams, a pile of newspapers and books, and two boxes of tissues. After a while I got a bit bored and the house was too quiet so I put the telly on and ended up watching an episode of Cagney & Lacey from 1983.

It started with Lacey being annoyed with Cagney who was trying to ingratiate herself with the men by joining in when they’d hired a stripper for someone’s birthday. Then a woman came in and asked specifically to see female cops. She told them she’d been date raped. I was only half watching and still flicking through the papers until this point, but I was surprised to find a date rape case on Cagney & Lacey. I remember loving the programme, but I don’t remember it covering serious issues.

So they’re discussing it with the other cops who are all sceptical and then the lieutenant says, “How come when Rhett Butler throws Scarlett on the bed, that’s romance, but when some poor schlub does it, that’s rape?” and Tyne Daly says, “If you don’t know the difference between rape and romance then you’ve got a serious problem.” And she walks out. And the lieutenant says, “Is it her time of the month or what?”

At this point I was seriously suprised and started making notes. When I did the access course at college one of my Media Studies essays was a comparison of sexism in an episode of The Sweeney, remembered for lines like “Get your knickers on and make us a cup of tea,” and The Bill, supposedly a “modern” programme. Well, like for like, The Bill was more sexist. I’d compared a programme from the 70s and one from the 90s, so I was interested in the 80s take.

The episode of Cagney & Lacey went onto have the “guys” fixing someone up with a female impersonator as a joke, and then, as revenge for the joke, setting the Lieutenant up with a hooker. And all the time Mary Beth is questioning this. (“Excuse me, I thought you were a cop, not some Gloria Steinem” was one of the comments she received.) I was 12 in 1983 and, as I watched the programme today, I wondered what I would have made of it aged 12.

Would I have questioned any of it? Whose side would I have been on? Would I have thought, like everyone else did (even Harvey!) that Mary Beth was taking it all too seriously? Could that have been the first time I became aware that these issues even existed? Has anything even changed in the past 20 years? Later, I was back to reading The Telegraph and in the travel section I found my answer:  ‘Noel Josephides, Managing Director of Sunvil Holidays, a specialist in Greece, blamed the “disco culture” for the increasing violence, saying: “Youngsters go to these resorts, get drunk and wear next to nothing, so it’s not suprising that these things happen …”.’ He was commenting on 34 reported rapes of British citizens in Greece last year.

10th Blogaversary, baby!

My first ever blog post. 6 February 2003.

For the rest of the month, I’m going to be posting old posts from the last ten years. So if you’ve been following me for ten years (no one has), you should probably skip the rest of Feb and come back in March…

Happy Friday

You’ve probably all seen this already, but just in case…

Women and heart attacks – do you know the symptoms?

Yesterday the boys and I went to a first aid session arranged by the home ed forum I’m a member of. First we learned what to do if someone is choking and then we watched a short video about heart attacks. The video featured a woman who suddenly clutched her chest and staggered around, saying it was probably indigestion, you know, the usual thing we see on TV and in film when someone’s having a heart attack.

But around about this time last year, I heard this reported on the radio:

Fewer women than men suffering from a heart attack appear to experience chest pain symptoms, according to a study of more than one million people in the US.

Overall men have significantly more heart attacks, but under the age of 55 women are more likely to die from one.

Without displaying the classic chest pain symptoms of a heart attack, researchers say some women may not be getting the right kind of treatment.

Dr Kevin F Fox, a consultant cardiologist at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust and speaking for the Royal College of Physicians, said that overall the number of heart attacks and associated deaths were falling, but that when young women had heart attacks the outcomes were not good.

“The paper has shown that women, and in particular younger women, under 55 years of age, often do not have the typical presenting symptom of chest pain compared to men when they have a heart attack.

“Although heart attack survival is improving overall, doctors, health care professionals and the public need to be aware and vigilant that women can have a heart attack without the typical chest pain that we all think of as the main symptom.”

It rang a bell with me – I was sure I’d heard that before – so when I got home, I looked it up.

It was in O magazine. In 2006. Heart Health: Men vs Women

Men: Often the first sign of heart disease is a heart attack itself, a feeling like the chest is being run over by a Mack truck.

Women: Women’s first warning signs are much more subtle and often hard to pinpoint. They may feel fatigue when doing something that they used to do easily, such as play tennis, run to catch a train, change sheets, or walk up two flights of stairs. Sometimes heart disease registers in women as a feeling of mild indigestion. Often there’s no chest pain whatsoever.

So why, seven years later, are we still saying there is? Back to the BBC report:

The US researchers describe the results of their work as “provocative” and urge further study, but say that for the moment there should be no change in the public health message that chest pain and discomfort could be symptoms of a heart attack.

“For the moment.” I’ve been aware of it for seven years, which suggests the health industry has known about it for a lot longer. How much longer does it need to be researched? How many women have died in the meantime? How many women need to die before they change the message?

Women are more likely than men to have atypical symptoms such as:

Back, neck, shoulder, jaw, lower chest, or upper belly pain or discomfort

Nausea or vomiting

Shortness of breath

Dizziness or lightheadedness

Fatigue

(From here and here.)

(I actually wrote about this on Facebook when I heard it on the BBC last year, but I thought I’d put it here now since another year has gone by with, apparently, no change.)