This is a man's world?

"Mind the maternity gap"

"Male bonuses double those of women says study" 

"Working mothers risk damaging their child's prospects" 

(That last one was the Daily Mail....just saying)

This issue is all over the media at the moment. I have been asked to be a guest on a BBC Radio Cambridge programme on the subject next week which I am delighted about because it is a subject I am very passionate about. 

Feminists hate it when women say that they are not feminists and if you take the dictionary definition of the word then, yes, I am one. I do believe women should be allowed the same rights, power and opportunities as men and should be treated in the same way. I do not however, believe that feminism should be a crusade or a cause. I hate the prospect of female quotas on boards. I am vehmently for equal opportunities and I firmly believe it is then up to each individual to make the most of those opportunities. I would really like the focus to be less on whether there is a glass ceiling for women or a gender pay gap to address and more on making sure that our business environments are conducive to career development for everyone and that our girls are coming out of school fired up with confidence and ambition.

I've blogged on the subject before but I work for money, for me and so I can be the role model I want to be for my daughter. She gets lots of quality time with me but, in addition, I can demonstrate to her that women and girls can be whoever they want to be. I want her to see me enjoying work and I then use my fulfilment to be a more engaging parent to her. It's not a one size fits all, but it fits me. 

It's just my view but I believe we should embrace what makes us men or women and use those attributes to create a balanced workplace. Women trying to compete with men, blaming glass ceilings for lack of progression and shouting about gender pay gaps and inequality need to sit down and re-evaluate their focus. I think we should all focus on what motivates us rather than what we think is holding us back. Blaming someone else for not achieving what we think we should will never see us prosper in the way we want to. We should embrace failure as another experience and get on with it. Don't get me wrong. I cry, get upset and sulk with the best of them but once I've revived my logical mind, I move on.

I consider myself to be a big supporter of women in the workplace, reasonably good at my work, reasonably successful and reasonably ambitious. Despite all this I still recognise my own character traits which prevent me from being able to ruthlessly claw my way to the top in the style of Miranda Priestly in The Devil Wears Prada. Alpha female, I am not. These traits are:

1. I cry easily. Kelly Cutrone (alpha female and very successful business woman) wrote a book 'If you have to cry, go outside'. She would emotionally flatten me. I'd be outside all day.

2. I think I'm good at my job but will never ask for more money to do it. You won't change that about me (people have tried).

3. I hate upsetting people and can't deal with anyone thinking badly of me. So much so that I verge on pathetic sometimes.

4. I want people who work for me to be the best that they can and that sometimes distracts me from myself.

5. I don't want to be one of the boys. I'm happy being a girl and really don't mind making the coffee (shhh).

Feminist crusaders' heads will be exploding everywhere with that last one but it's true. Along with all of the above I want to succeed. I thrive on building a successful business and I want to be the best I can be.

I am not denying that the glass ceiling and gender pay gap exist and even that discrimination happens. I am simply suggesting that these issues may not have all been constructed by sexist men to keep us out of the boardroom and to keep all the money for themselves. Instead I think that they might be phenomenons which have formed naturally over years of some women making the perfectly valid and personal decision to focus on motherhood over their careers, some women not pushing themselves forward for pay rises as readily as their male counterparts, some women having a lack of confidence to apply for the top jobs and some girls rising from school into the workplace with less ambition than the boys. It's not wrong, it's just the way it is. So, in my humble opinion, the number of women in the top jobs is lower than the number of men for no sinister reason. It's just nature and life. The jobs are there for the taking though girls. Let's just look at ourselves first if we don't end up taking them.

My inspiration ~ Molly Rose High at 2 years and 10 months

“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren't" ~ Margaret Thatcher

"A girl should be two things: who and what she wants" ~ Coco Chanel

"I don't mind living in a man's world, as long as I can be a woman in it" - Marilyn Monroe

What's happening to me?

Here I recall when everything went a bit weird, and why.

I was utterly convinced that I'd give birth and be one of those women who still looked pregnant, forever. I'm not lucky when it comes to how I look and I have to try quite hard to look nice so I was sure I'd probably quadruple in size in pregnancy and never revert to normal. You can, therefore, imagine my surprise and delight when my beautiful baby was born and I was back to my pre-pregnancy size. Not skinny, because I never was, but I hadn't quadrupled in size and I hadn't morphed into a weird Mr Blobby shaped version of myself. That was all I could have hoped for.

Unfortunately the delight at not being permanently huge was short lived because now I had to work out how to keep this little human alive. No plump faced, homely, warm smiled apparition of a fairy godmother appeared to tell me how on earth to do this so I had to work it out myself. Somehow, despite the lack of apparition, I managed. We bumped along together, Molly working out the world around her and me working out her.

When Molly was 5 months old I went back to work. After a few tears, at the thought of my baby wondering where I'd gone and me not being able to explain to her, I settled back into work with minimal upheaval. I likened that bit to the uncanny ability of a situation such as animals being lead into a truck to go to slaughter, or a dog to the vets, or a child for vaccinations to reduce me to tears without fail. I am just not programmed to deal with another person or animal thinking everything's ok and as it was, when it isn't. It really gets to me. This felt like that.

As we all adapted to our new regime I became less and less able to cope with everyday stuff, with life. I was putting on loads of weight, couldn't stay awake and could not stop crying. With the 'able' assistance of Google I managed to persuade myself I had postnatal depression. Or was it anaemia? I'm always anaemic. That makes me tired and cold. Not fat though. Shit, was I eating too much because I was cold and tired. Or was it postnatal depression? Depression, really? I've heard that can make you fat. But I am one of those people who don't believe in depression, for me anyway. I am not denying it in others. I just don't get depressed. I get on with stuff. It's what I do. Anyway, I wasn't right so I went to the doctors. Something else I never do. 

The NHS website will tell you that 'An underactive thyroid means your thyroid gland, located in the neck, does not produce enough hormones. Common signs of an underactive thyroid are tiredness, weight gain and feeling depressed.' Why did nobody tell me? Textbook broken thyroid. Phew. I had armed myself with every possible defence I could in case he tried to put me on anti-depressants but luckily he, being a doctor, was able to spot a very obvious textbook condition. The relief swelled up around me and washed away all my irrational fears that motherhood had somehow broken me. I could go back to working out how to help my baby to grow, to be happy and to discover the world around her, which was what I was trying to do when it all went weird.

Just over 2 years in and I am much better on medication which replaces the hormone that my thyroid gland can't be bothered to produce anymore. It needs tweaking from time to time because it is a hormone issue and the body is constantly chucking in curve balls to mess with the hormones therefore you can't assume that the levels of the drugs will stay correct. I still fall asleep a lot and get fat easily and, apparently, I am allowed to blame the Hypothyroidism but I have to make sure that I balance that with the effects of working too hard and eating too much. Other afflictions of mine.   

Mums on the run!

Sometimes it feels like I am falling through life and some of the people I pass make contact and stick and others don't get close enough and fade back into memory. The ones that stick are my friends. The ones that, for whatever reason, have become the people I share my life with. The people I bump along with sharing good times, hard times, trying times and just time. I like making my friends happy and I try not to annoy them and I think those are the ingredients for friendships that can stand the test of time. Only time can prove or disprove that one.

So, in my eternal quest for happy friends and a happy me I planned to to take one of them to London for her birthday. As I have got older, and since we both had children, I have favoured experiences over gifts. There is something much more important about building memories with the people close to you than just buying them another scarf.

We got into London just before midday. We had a lovely sunny stroll from the underground to Bankside past St Paul's Cathedral. St Paul's is an iconic, religious symbol of London. To some it is synonomous with royal weddings, to me it's Mary Poppins.

Time for a coffee outside Tate Modern watching the world go by. At that moment in time the world consisted of a man with a microphone talking about writing, a man with a string loop on sticks making massive misshapen bubbles, a gold man posing as a statue and an American Dad failing to point out St Paul's across the river to his disinterested kids.

Next we wandered round the collections in Tate Modern. Some amazing works, some famous works and some which remained a mystery to our untrained eyes. Louisa had a couple of giggling fits at people earnestly searching for the meaning of an art installation that we thought was part of the building! Based in the former Bankside Power Station, the building itself  is an integral part of the whole experience. It's vast amazing spaces are a perfect backdrop to the subject matter.

We had lunch at The Swan Bar & Chophouse at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre. It was perfectly balanced. Informal but civilised. Light and airy with a warm atmosphere. Busy but sociable with a long sharing table which encouraged light interaction with other diners, but only if you wanted it.

After lunch, a boat trip down the Thames to Millbank, past the London Eye and Westminster, was the best way to travel to Tate Britain. We had a look around the public collection there, the Pre-Raphaelite works taking me, as always, back to age 17 and my sixth form art class. Sun streaming through the open window, the smell of linseed oil hanging in the air and where I first began to understand these amazing works and why the movement happened.

Then we had time for a glass of wine in the shady gardens of the gallery surrounded by trees and pink roses. 

We finished our day with Lowry at the Tate. The exhibition we'd built our day on. I'm not an art critic, or even close to it, but I have always loved Lowry. To fully understand that love you need to be aware of my weird longing for 'the industrial north'. Moors, valleys, mining towns, rows of terraced houses. The irreducible spirit of people and families juxtaposed against the cold, hard reality of industry and of bleak landscapes is real and beautiful to me. Lowry painted everyday life depicted against that immediate, imposing backdrop of heavy industry and captured poverty, pain, anguish, love and resilience in his work.

Why do I have this affinity with the north of England? It might be my love of the Brontes and their haunting descriptions of wild moors and harsh conditions, or my childhood memories of meandering canal holidays through rolling countryside interspersed with the industrial centres of northern cities or The Railway Children. A childhood favourite of mine which captures the essence of being a child perfectly....and is set in Yorkshire. Or, most likely, it is a combination of all these things. The exhibition was everything I hoped it would be and rounded our day off perfectly.

So that was our day. Another memory formed rather than another scarf on the scarf hook and, best of all, the Dads didn't kill the kids!

"The most important thing in life is family. Sometimes it's the family you're born into and sometimes it's the one you make for yourself" 

"A strange uncivilised little place" ~ Charlotte Bronte

Today I went to Haworth again.

A windswept land of moors and heather surrounds the space where Haworth is nestled. Crooked rows of grey brick shops and homes line the steep cobbled street running through Haworth's heart. Front doors open onto the street and worn down stone doorsteps reflect the years of men, women and children who have come and gone about their daily business. 

The Bronte association is why I, like so many others, am drawn to this place, to Haworth, to Yorkshire. Without the Bronte association Haworth would be just another small Yorkshire village. As it is the literary pilgrimage has changed the fortune of this village which just about clings on to its original charm (if you ignore Ye Olde Bronte Tearooms and the dated Bronte Hotel and other slightly lame tourist attractions hanging their hats on the Bronte connection).

Haworth, to me, is one big warm home surrounded by cold, foreboding, bleak and harsh moorland. A fireplace in a lounge through a window at night in winter is what I see when I come into Haworth. It may sound as though I am taking its picturesque charm on a sunny day and romanticising it but I'm truly not. Well aware of its past blighted by poverty, workhouses, child labour, illness and premature death I see its resilience and dogged determination to carry on in the face of such hardship as a beautiful and real tribute to its character.

This place was the home to three of my favourite writers all taken too young by the darker side of the village and the time in which they lived. Before it took them it inspired them. It inspired them to write some of the greatest novels ever written in which they all use the natural beauty and hardships around them to examine the states of their own lives, relationships and psyches. 

Their tragic stories of lives cut short are overshadowed by their incredible talents  and by the fact that they fought against society's barriers to gain recognition as women in the literary world whilst remaining firmly rooted in this unassuming little village in Yorkshire. 

"If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger: I should not seem a part of it." ~ Emily Bronte (Wuthering Heights, 1845-1846)

"I would always rather be happy than dignified" ~ Charlotte Bronte (Jane Eyre, 1847)

“It is foolish to wish for beauty. Sensible people never either desire it for themselves or care about it in others. If the mind be but well cultivated, and the heart well disposed, no one ever cares for the exterior.” ~ Anne Bronte (Agnes Grey, 1847)

Concrete jungle where dreams are made of...

I've only been once, in 2008, but this city is now firmly entrenched in my heart and is up there with the places I will go back to one day. New York is most definitely my city of dreams.

I can not write this blog post without a nod to our very favourite Americans, Sean and Allison Adrian. Without their incredible hospitality and amazing planning our NYC experience would have been a tenth of what it actually was. So, thank you Adrians. One day we will repay the favour with a British extravaganza in your honour...although now there will be smaller people in tow so there may be less Guinness and cocktails drunk, less sailor and fireman hats stolen, and worn (proudly!) and more Zoos visited.

Allison and me out and about

Nick and Sean on the night of the British invasion!

We packed a lot into our short break and there's still a million things we didn't do. We saw the bulk of the main sites from the obligatory open top city tour bus. We climbed the Empire State Building. We visited Ground Zero. Not much to see back then but being in the district, on the street where the World Trade Centre once stood was a somber, unreal experience. No one can believe that what happened actually happened that day in 2001. We took a boat out to the Statue of Liberty. We had dinner in Tao, a fabulous restaurant between Madison Avenue and Park Avenue. We watched Van Halen at Madison Square Gardens. We saw the NY Yankees play baseball at the old Yankee Stadium. We took a horse and cart round Central Park. We drunk cocktails at the Museum of Modern Art and we ate burgers at The Corner Bistro in West Greenwich Village. We shopped in Macy's, we walked down Wall Street and we wandered round Times Square, by day and by night. 

Times Square is at the end of the road we stayed on and became the crossroads of our trip. More famously known as "the crossroads of the world"  this junction of Broadway and Seventh Avenue is instantly recognisable with its brightly illuminated signs showing world financial market information, new M&M flavours, what's on Broadway and many a Coca Cola advert. The famous intersection is so iconic that I felt totally at home, like I'd been there before. 

Of course, this feeling of déjà vu is everywhere in New York and is partly attributable to the wealth of films that have been set there. From West Side Story to Breakfast at Tiffany's to Ghostbusters to You've Got Mail to Big. Round nearly every corner is a familiar scene from a film you've once seen.

Although my existence there was transient, whilst I was there my New York was friendly, bohemian, cosmopolitan, eccentric, colourful, rebellious, and inviting. I like the anonymity of cities. I like the culture, stories, lives and people that inhabit their insides and make up their souls. For as long as I can remember, travel has brought about a childlike feeling inside of me. A feeling of "wow, my feet are actually standing here." This feeling was there in bucket loads in New York. I still can't believe I was there. People say it's noisy but it was noise I wanted to hear. Each to their own but there was nothing in this city that I didn't want more of.

"One belongs to New York instantly, one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years"