From Bath to Cork with Baby Grace

There will be an election in RoI (Republic of Ireland) in early 2007.

I’ve been invited to contribute to a new blog: Irishelection.com. (I meant to say ‘a blog that is new to me; I haven’t checked the site’s ancestry) Found the site yesterday and left a comment on it about what had struck me so far about the Irish political landscape. Today, I get an email inviting me to post on the site. I’m flattered, honoured and challenged.

I’m going to become a political commentator, as well as a creche worker, a father and a management consultant.

The government won’t fall before this year.

So there is plenty of time for me to practice. We are in the run up. The parties are selecting their candidates. And in Ireland this is a lot more complex than in UK. Here, the parties have to select a team to contest each constituency. This team has to gel, so that each of their supporters (those who vote for them) transfer their second and third preference votes to other members of the same team.

That’s a mouthful of a sentence and a mountain of a task. Each of the parties has a bevvy of experts who “know” how to get the voters to pull together. By comparison, the UK system is kindergarten stuff. First past the post simplicity: you just decide which party you support and hope other voters agree with you. Each candidate only has to think of two things: their own vote and their party interest. Irish candidates need to have labyrinthine skills.

I’ll need to re-tune my analytic skills in order to half-way understand the electoral prospects here. If anyone looks to me to forecast the result, they will be disappointed. It’s all too much for me to read the tea leaves. But I might be better the election after next.

Everything I write will be tongue in cheek. I’m going to try to be provocative and controversial, in the hope of attracting readers. I certainly hope I have no influence on the result. I couldn’t bear the responsibility of having played even a tiny part in determining the victors.

Because of this I am sure: it doesn’t matter much who wins (except of course to the friends and family of the elected parties). The huge challenges will remain to be grappled with, and I don’t see any sign of anyone in particular being fit to do battle with the key levers of societal wellbeing.

I hear fancy words and flamboyant gestures. Otherwise I smell invective and ineffectivity.

This is only a first impression. I retain the right to change my view. I even retain the authority to weigh in behind one of the parties, or independents. I might yet become a mouthpiece for Birtie or Pat Rabbitt, Sinn Fein or whatshisname.

My intention was to continue where I left off about fathers.

But yesterday was interesting and I’d like to capture it. I can take some time out to think more about what it’s like to be a father. Meanwhile, if you want to read some really good stuff about fathers, try this lovely writing from That Girl (March 21 2006).

Yesterday I took the day off. Put Grace in creche at 1040, after her sleep, nappy change and hasty steaming of cod fillet. I mashed up some carrots I’d cooked the night before and stirred in the cod, terrified I might include a fishbone. Imagine her with a fishbone stuck in the creche while I was on the road to Limerick…

Off with me to meet the lads for a game of golf. This is the same group with whom I did the Lisbon research.

The drive from Douglas to Limerick, through the Jack Lynch Tunnel, and on through Mallow was fabulous: I listened to Gerry Ryan on radio 2 FM. He’s new to me and he had an intense discussion about management companies on Irish estates. Gerry ending up saying: I don’t think Irish people are able to cope with management companies; they don’t want to know about them; they’re not even able to agree things among themselves; they don’t tell the truth; they are out for themselves… and so on.

There was a guy on the programme who was an expert on management companies. He knew loads and he knew that they worked in many places. He also knew that there had been some terrible rows on estates which ended up preventing important things getting done. The more the argument between this guy and a caller went on, the more Gerry despaired.

Management companies were all too legalistic for the Irish “individual” who wasn’t going to pay her bin charges unless the brickwork was repaired… Anyway she (or he) wasn’t going to pay for a communal charge if it would be cheaper to stay separate. It seems that many management companies do nothing because the residents can’t agree among themselves.

I was glued to this. It was so passionate. Gerry was so dramatic. I’d found a new tribal force.

But Gerry’s point about the Irish being unable to cope with systems, policies and ground-rules, reminded me of something.

This golf game I was going to play, it was fixed up at the last minute. I’d spoken to one of my brothers about it and he’d said that it was impossible to plan. People would make up their minds at the last minute. Certainly it wouldn’t be clear until Saturday whether there would be two groups or one on Wednesday.

I don’t know a single Irish man who walks round with a diary. The diary is either at home, or it’s on the computer or it does not exist. Irish men don’t plan their lives. Certainly they don’t make arrangements to do things on a certain day in August.

When I try to fix anything up, it takes ages for a committment to emerge. Eventually it does. Things do happen but I have to wait for a long time to find out whether I have that date free or not.

I think I picked up one major habit in UK. I got into the habit of making arrangements in advance and making things happen. If two of us wanted to do something, even if it was ages in advance, we would need to consult others. We would both do that, and then we would make a date. As far as I was concerned, that was that. I was no longer free on that day.

Yes, at times, people would back out at the last minute. I hated that, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

You can only plan things with people who share your sense of planning, your sense of commitment, your sense of obligation to your word. The more I think about the few Irish men I know, the more I think that there isn’t one of them (except perhaps another brother) with whom I share the trait of being a planner of my social life.

I apply the same rules to my social life as I do to my work life. I have a diary full of the dates of the World Cup Final, the Ryder Cup, the Lisdoonvarna Matchmaking Festival, Wexford Opera Festival, Wiffe’s birthday, Grace’s birthday, Kinsale Food Festival. These are the stars through which I glide and by which I steer. I fix things up around them.

Also I have work dates, dates when I have to go to Galway, Dublin, Perth and London.

I am available for dates.

What is it about Irish men? Is it only the small unrepresentative sample that are drawn from my family, friends, acquaintanaces and synchronistic meetings?

Being a contrary fellow, I spent quite a lot of Mothers’ Day thinking about fathers.

So did Pol O Conghaile in the Irish Independent “Weekend” magazine. Beginning with
“Is ours a golden age for fathers, or a grotesquely stressful one?”

I also read the Financial Times “Weekend” article by Amy Raphael which began with the mini headline: “Is a mother’s place with her child or is attachment theory an unfair burden for modern women?”

I cut out several other pieces for future reference.

G0 West Young Man:

Most of my thinking was done in Co Clare. On impulse, we decided on Saturday to get up early on Sunday and drive to Lahinch with a bunch of daffodils for one of the mothers. It was harder to find daffodils in Cork than a fancy bunch of flowers. So I wrapped the daffs in FT paper and spent chunks of the next 40 hours thinking about what I think about modern fathers.

Given that the title of a new book on display in the Douglas Shopping Centre bookshop is “Are men really necessary?“, it makes sense to sort out what I think before it is too late.

So far this I where I’ve got to:

There are more fathers than ever looking after their children. As I walk round Douglas, and Mahon Point, I see men with buggies. I nod to them. I haven’t yet stopped to talk to a man who’s been with child. But I have struck up quite a few conversations with mothers.

We’ve discussed the merits of different types of bottles, disposible and re-usable nappies, tactics for promoting sleep, where you can find a good swimming pool, what it’s like to be a stay-at-home-dad, what solid food is next on the agenda…

I wonder what it would be like to talk to a man about this sort of stuff.

Older men

Sometimes I see an older man with a child and I wonder if he’s a grandfather or the father. I imagine many people wonder the same about me. So I try to look as if I’m a full time father by doing some shopping at the same time.

All this has made me think about the last time I had children. J was born in 1982 and B in 1987. I wasn’t the main childcarer then, though I did enjoy going out with the buggie. I remember getting a great kick out of going to a morning gathering of about 7 women with children, and loading mine up for the group photo on the sofa. There weren’t enough of those sort of mornings. In those days my main job was to earn money and to help out as best I could.

Modern Man:

Now I’m not a helper. I’m the main man, the one who is responsible for childcare during the day. However, I am a great disappointment to myself because I am not very good at the nights. So long as Grace stays asleep, I am first rate. But if she wakes up, I find it hard to move towards her.

The middle of the night is a confusing time. You don’t know what you think, and you easily forget what you intended. Before nightfall you have a planning session with herself and jointly decide what you’ll do if the child wakes up during the night. Great. Clarity. A plan. Easy peasy…

The burbling starts any time between 2 and 5. It’s nothing at first, but it wakes herself and me too. You lie there not talking to each other, each hoping the noise will go away. It builds. Burbling begets babbling. Babbling begets bloody whining. Whining begets crying and at the time I have been head down into the pillow.

It’s always the mother who starts to get out of the bed to relieve the distressed child. The father in me is slow to action. It’s cross with the child, cross with the situation. It’s tired and pissed off, wishing we had a bigger house with a lovely child’s room at the other end of a long corridor.

Joint decision making in the middle of the night is awful. All previous plans go out the window and the moment is all. The woman has born(e) the baby. The man has looked on. I’ve not only been at the birth (like 9/10 Irish dads, according to Pol O Conghaile) but I’ve been an extra pair of arms and legs, an extra intelligence, an extra memory, an extra resolution and the world’s greatest cheerleader. But that’s not enough to make me equal with the woman. Nothing can ever undo the reality that the baby grew inside her organically and such a bond can never be replicated in male form. I am a different snowflake.

So I am inclined to support the woman’s instincts and intuition rather than challenge. If she insists on going to the child, that’s fine with me, whatever I feel. I might be pissed off that we are cracking too early, that we are changing the plan. But ultimately I know that I will always give way to herself. A god by day, an angel by night…

Warfare and Childcare:

It is such a wonderful battle, the battle for supremacy in childcare. The parents must win at this stage. Whatever we do, it must be right and proper and adequate. We must find a way with which we adults can live, otherwise the child will rule and we will all be ruined. The child is a mass of emotions without a shred of deferred gratification. The adults need to be able to stand back a bit and let the child cry, suffer, experience distress and recover from wanting it all now.

Men and women working together, eh? You don’t know what it’s going to be like until you try it. No amount of intelligent discussion is a substitute for going through it together and discovering your personal and joint level of tolerance and patience. Prepare yourself for a host of surprises: you are tougher, softer, lazier, more desperate, more flexible than you expected. She is not the woman you fancied in the first place. You are working with a different person in the middle of that noisy night. You have a different partner than you ever imagined. Is that a blessing? Of course it is, if you can find the breath to take it all in and process it. Above all, you need time to think reflectively and humbly about what a wonderfully difficult thing it is to parent.

“It’s such a great thing - your first child - that it brightens up your life. I just don’t buy this thing with people going on about the stresses. You do have to make changes. Otherwise you’d go mad.“, says Barry Andrews TD (member of the national parliament) in the Irish Independent feature.

He is right about the madness. You go mad if you don’t deal with the challenge to change and the challenge to accept the change that emerges in your woman. The child is easy, and runs by far simpler rules.

Clerical Interference?

I was very surprised to see a priest quoted as a child psycholigist and co-author of Parenting (1991): “The closer the father is to the child, the more secure the child is, the more intellectualy curious, the more independent, ready to explore and ready to take risks…” (Fr Paul Andrews SJ)

What would he know about it? He might be right but I feel like checking him out. Astonishing to see a priest quoted by Pol as some sort of authority in this area. How can you be an authority unless you have sat there in the middle of the night feeling confused and grumpy about the prediciment?

The Project…

I’m a long way from where I started. Back in Clare, I intended to pull together all I’d learned about being a father into a few pithy words of my wisdom. Now I feel I’ve only scratched the surface of my experience and haven’t yet reached one word of wisdom.

To be continued…

The proposed sale of Aer Lingus is an important issue.

Blank Paige has written an excellent introduction to the issue. I was going to ignore the issue and leave it to others to fight over.

But I can’t get it out of my mind.

Selling Aer Lingus is a cultural rite of passage. If it goes ahead, it will be the end of an Irish national airline. Aer Lingus will become another airline fighting for its commercial future with RyanAir, British Airways etc. The airline will have been stripped of layers of cultural significence.

There is a man in Boston living in the suburbs. He’s been there for three generations. He’s never been to Ireland. But he’s Irish. When the plane flies overhead he can look up and connect with the green fields of his ancestry. He has tangible evidence of the Irish diaspora. He can say to himself: we may be small but we pack a big punch…

National airlines have been more than commerial operations; they have been more than landing slots. They have been an element of the national psyche. They have been symbolic and tangible. They have been a promise of greatness, as well as evidence of greatness.

All the arguments being put forward by trade unions against the sale (and it is the trade unions in Ireland that are leading the critique of the flotation) are boring. They may be valid but that doesn’t make them interesting or gripping. They come from one vested interest. They are unlikely to grip the public imagination of the modern Irish.

British Airways was sold, by Thatcher. A massive flotation followed by a major programme to transform the airline into a customer centred business. It use to be BOAC (British Oversees Aircraft Corporation). It was part of the British diaspora. It was a hangover from Empire. It was every bit as culturally significant to the UK as Air Lingus.

British Airways was well led through the transformation. Lord King (Chairman) and someone whose name escapes me (Chief Executive) did a brilliant job. I was in charge of a big corporate change programme in London and drew inspiration from what they achieved. I was invited by British Airways to be a guest at one of their organisation development programmes. They treated me well and showed a huge commitment to breaking down “silo” thinking.

Thatcher pushed through the sale of state assets all over the place. For her, the sale of BA was only a small part of the picture. I can’t remember how much money the UK exchequer got from the sale of BA. At the time the UK government was in the grip of monitarist economic fundamentalists. It was important to them the strip the state of its role in running an airline. They wanted to control the economy by controlling the money supply and the public sector borrowing requirement.

I don’t see any economic fundamentalists in Ireland. No one is arguing about controlling the money supply. It seems that the government, the taxpayer, won’t get a big cut from the sale.

But if Aer Lingus is sold, it’ll take civil servants out of the loop. Politicians will have their fingers cut back from business decisions. The governement will have a limited but important role in dealing with standards on health & safety and fair competition.

See how easy it is to get drawn into the slippery slope of economic thinking.

I think we could all usefully dwell on the historic identity aspect. Perhaps the Ireland of today has grown to the point where it does not need an national airline to symbolise its aspiration.

Perhaps it feels it is truely grown up now, and has proved itself already.

What do you think?

This is an advertisement.

Before you do anything else, read this.

If you did what you were told, you are probably killing me for taking up so much of your time.

If you read it all, you are probably feeling educated, certainly stretched.

I’ve read quite a lot of stuff about bloggers and blogging. The recent Financial Times feature led me to read stuff about blogging from all round the world. So, on this, I am not a narrow-minded, insular, parochial vested interest.

I can tell you that you have read thinking of the highest quality. You won’t find better anywhere on this topic. You can risk dining out on it. No one will say: “ah, that’s nothing, you should have read the really good article about blogging in …..”

If you absorbed all that interview, you have immersed yourself in the pool and dived down to the depths where the treasure is kept. (This idea of comparing a great read to the ultimate struggle in Beowulf I owe to David Whyte.) You have come face to face with your own thinking.

You have done well.

Now, if you skipped the task I offered you, go back to the beginning, get a cup of tea, a firm-backed chair, and improve yourself. You’ll thank me for it.

It’s a moist day in Cork. The sky thick like a heavy sheet. The wind on holiday.

The Farmers’ Market crowd sparce with empty spaces, where Frank the Pole from Schull and Joe the breadboy used to be.

Grace chewing the plastic Sainsbury bag, reminding herself of her English roots.

It all began very well with a rush from home, Douglas to Mahon Point, one nappy change to brunch. As we drove in, in the off-white Saab, there was one great parking space. An orange sign above it with a symbol proclaiming that it was earmarked for someone with a child.

Hope abounding, then crushed as a man who looked every bit as if he was in from his hill, nipped in front. Like all bachelor farmers, he was alone in his vehicle. He looked intently everywhere except at me. My entreating eyes tightened and formed a firm frame of fiery fury. “I’ll make you talk to me, I will…”

So I pressed the electronic gyzmo that controls the windows. We would face each other without an impermeable membrane, iris to iris.

He had no chance. He was easy beef. I was too used to using chilli.

“Hi. You’re in the place that’s reserved for people with infants, like me.” I made sure he could see Grace in her carseat behind me.

“Isn’t she lovely?”, the unspoken implication. “Wouldn’t you like to be the one to set her off crying?”, the implication.

“For people with little children…”, in case he was still clogged up with mist in his ears.

“Oh” or was is “Ah”?

He got back into his muddy car, slammed the door and turned his wheel.

That was the last we saw of him.

I’ll be blogging from Lisdoonvarna all September. I’ll be talking to Willie Daly in the Matchmaker bar. There’s one tall dark farmer, with a dark suit and the stain of a yoke on his slieve, that I’ll be able to recommend for his sensitivity to the needs of elderly parents with daughters.

He might be a fine catch.

[ps The website for the Farmers’ Market in Cork is out of date. There is a Farmers’ Market in Mahon Point every Thursday, in the car park of Tesco.]

(1) Immitation, the sincerest form of flattery…

J L Pagano blogs. Blogs brilliantly and inspirationally. You can click on his blog from my righthand list. He’s the one who helped me hyperlink. So far that’s all I can do. I can’t put up photos, podcasts, drawings, videos… I’m a novice blogger and I’m thrilled to have won a Award. Bless him.

(2) Bob the Builder educates…

I watched Bob this moring for the first time. I was shocked. I learnt about solar panelling and water butts. I learnt about getting on with the job. I learnt to be positive about everything you do. Grace was glued to it. I hope all of it has stuck.

(3) Padington’s Label…

My favourite teddy is Paddington. The red hat, the blue duffle jacket, the hat, the paws… and the label: “DARKEST PERU To London England via Paddington Stn… Please look after this bear Thank you.” Never thought about the label before. It’s for Grace to put in her mouth. Inspired.

(4) Ireland Festival Events Calendar January06 - December06

For 1 euro you can buy this book (187 pages) from Failte Ireland. Just out, it’s the best value I know. All bloggers should have one. It’ll give you advance notice of where to go to blog. Sponsored by National Tourism Development Authority, Northern Ireland Tourist Board and National Development Plan.

(5) Big Dublinism

I was taken aback by one of my favourite Irish bloggers. She wrote about the controversy over creches. Said she couldn’t find any Irish newspaper writing about this. Didn’t know it was the Irish Examiner that produced the story. Why? Was it because the Irish Examiner used to be the Cork Examiner?

(6) House search in Cork

Yesterday I went around south-west Cork city with Therese from Corporate Care Relocation. We went around Grange Road, Bishopstown and Ballincolig (a new town, 13kms out). Eye-opening. I used to think I was a south-east Cork city person. Now I’m a south Cork person.

(7) Galway Art Festival Conspiracy

It’s rumoured the committee of Galway Arts Festival have new plan to revitalise Festival. Two leading lights have been sent to set up a Fringe Festival (Protest06) in opposition. Padraig Brennan says “Lads, you’ve lost your way… too much in hock to the corporates… it’s time to abolish the Art sFestival…”

(8) The Leaving Cert Guides

I read the Irish Times L.C. Guide for students. If only such Guides were there when I was doing the Leaving (1968), I’d have got an Honour or two… Fabulous advice, especially from last year’s A students. I was so impressed with the quality of their advice.

(9) Sport is Rampant

Coming your way is the World Cup (tune into JL Pagano’s blog: 17 March). Also the Heiniken Cup Rugby, the one-day cricket series in India, and Sawgrass… Better still there is Augusta (6-9 April), Irish Golf Open (18-21 May) and the World Bog Snorkling Championship.

(10) The Apprentice sucks

This is a cruel programme. Alan Sugar setting people up to be fired. Some of them are fired with ambition, others with self-opinion. Last night a man who thought he was a “world class presenter”: he was a ridiculous big head. Another man believed himself inspired. Pity he wasn’t fired.

I blogged about the minister’s abuse of parliamentary time and culture.

I was wrong. The jibe he made at Mr Bruton, about him being like Goebbels, that jibe was not made in the Dail. It was made at a press conference.

So he did not damage parliamentary democracy from within the chamber. I apologise for making that mistake.

I played the man before I mastered the tune.

I won’t do that again, promise.

Grace went off to the creche a few minutes ago with a huge smile on her face.

Her team, England, had just beaten India. This meant that the 3-match series of test cricket ended in a draw 1-1. That was, for England, a magnificent result. Four of their most experienced talented players were off injured: Harmison (bowler), Vaughan (opening bat and captain), Jones (wicketkeeper) and Triscothic (wrong spelling, opening bat and vice-captain).

As a UK citizen Grace cheered for England. As an Irish citizen, Grace cheered for England. She is too young to subscribe to the old-fashioned catholic nationalist mantra: England’s difficulty, Ireland’s opportunity. Grace belongs to the new generation which stands for supporting your neighbour and good community relations.

As a child, I supported England’s cricket team. (I also supported Spurs.) I got up early, before 0500, to listen to the ball-by-ball commentary from Australia. I can still recall the English pace attack steaming in to bowl to Bill Lawry, Neil Harvey et al. If you want to find out who else played in those wonderful games down under, read Wisden, the cricket Bible. Following cricket on the radio developed my memory skills, my imagination skills, my analytic skills and my forecasting skills. That passion for the brown ball with the straight seam and the sound of the willow has stood me in good stead throughout many an adventure in domestic and business life. It now involves me in watching SKY.

I never thought I’d ever be so lucky as to have SKY. The TV in our house is a vintage model: 14 inches, powered by the first generation of electricity. It must be the oldest tube in service. There is no TV in the kitchen. No TV in the loo. Not even a TV in the bathroom. Certainly no TV in the bedroom, or even in Grace’s bedroom. Does this make us pre-Pope children or post-Pope? I’m waiting for post-plazma technology.

The wiffe would not entertain SKY. I was too likely to be glued to Augusta, Sawgrass, the PGA, the British Open. The Ryder Cup was unlikely to be played in our house. So, imagine my shock when I came back from Scotland and heard her confession. The wiffe confessed that she’s gone and got SKY. Those of you who have SKY probably think this is no big deal but, if I’d been given a hundred guesses, I’d never have predicted that.

She got it for the au pair. We had an au pair who went round the house twitching. I don’t mean looking for the birds. I mean itching, the sort of nervous behaviour that an adict exhibits. Barcelona were playing Chelsea and our au pair was feeling withdrawal symptoms. She thought the match was only on SKY and she could not concentrate on anything while that match was being broadcast. The wiffe lost her will. She was overwhelmed by the prospect of losing the au pair. She rang up and signed up to SKY.

Then she discovered that the match was on terrestrial. But it was too late to cancel, and when I got back she confessed she had over-spent the household budget.

I now can watch all the cricket I like. Grace can follow her national team. (She was born in Bath, England, UK) There is harmony in the house.

But we only have it for one month…

The au pair has gone back to Limerick and Lahinch. She will come back again, and it won’t be because she is Grace’s grandmother. It’ll be the SKY that brings her back.

Meanwhile, I must go have a quick look at the replay. What a magnificent performance by England to bowl India out for only 100 to win the match and square the series. Now where did I put my batting averages book? Grace will be looking for that some day.

She’s going to play cricket for Ireland.

Is the minister for justice impressive?

Until this morning, I was profoundly unimpressed with Michael McDowell. Everyone I’ve spoken to since November 2005 has told me that he has formidable intellect. I’ve seen no evidence of it.

But, on radio, shortly after I got up to prepare Grace’s bottle, I heard him apoligise for the way he spoke in the Dail (parliament) yesterday.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a politician apologise so well, so comprehensively, so genuinely.

For those of you outside Ireland, who won’t know the context: he called the opposition spokesman some sort of Goebbels figure.

This morning the minister said he hadn’t slept well. He said he’d “played the man not the ball”. He said he had a personal liking for the opposition spokesman. Listening to the apology, which he said he had no reservation about giving in person or in the Dail, I tried to remember a more comprehensive apology from a parliamentarian.

Then I realised the minister was barking up the wrong tree.

He made the wrong apology. He should have been apologising to the electorate, not to the individual. The real damage which the minister had done by his behaviour was damage to the reputation of parliament and parliamentary democracy.

People listening to the minister debating the issue of public safety (how many police there are, or have been during this government?) will have said to themselves: a plague on both your houses…

People are cynical about politicians. People are cynical about the Dail and all its processes. People are bored by the level of debate among politicians.

This isn’t an Irish phenomenon. They are cynical in UK too. The electorate in EU countries are cynical.

Because parliamentary democracy is clearly better than monarchy or military rule, we are all inclined to take it forgranted.

But people fought for parliamentary democracy as a mechanism for good and progress. People valued it enough to go on revolutions for it. It has been in incredibly important advance in civilization. That’s my view and I am confident that’s not a minority perspective.

The minister spoke in a boring, purile, infantile and reprehensible way in the national parliament. He abused his position as a public representative. He failed to raise the level of pubic debate to a stage on which people could sort out their views and formulate policy.

Politicians are elected for several purposes. Yes, they are elected so that the rest of us can get on with our day to day lives, without having to think about public policy all the time. Yes, we expect them to make our daily lives a bit easier. We expect them to sort out the complex business of living in society.

But there is one key feature of parliamentary democracy that we entrust to our politicians: we give them the job of holding an educated debate about issues, so that we can learn from them what we think and value ourselves. We want them to accept this responsibility even though we don’t spell this out to them. We hope that they are sufficiently honourable to address this need rather than their own personal hang-ups.

The minister may have been neglected during his childhood. He may have baggage to carry. He may feel that unless he talks in a dramatic manner no one will pay attention to him. He may be so needy that he had to have his fix: a cheapskate attack on the opposition, a personal jibe, a totally irresponsible abuse of parliamentary time.

That is his private business. He was not elected to behave like a pub brawler, a smart alex, too clever for his own boots. (He forgot that most of the electorate haven’t a clue who Joseph Goebbels was.)

It is the cynics who have had their views confirmed. He is employed as a minister to challenge cynics into engaging with the issues. That’s his mission. He funked it.

I suspect he funked it because he is too needy. He needs to be the centre of attention and can’t bear the long hard struggle to engage with the electorate on a serious level.

In fairness to him, I also suspect he is not the only politician guilty of such behaviour, or suffering from such neurosis. But he did capture my attention this morning and showed that he has some of the skills needed for parliamentary debate.

What he needs now is improved focus.

I run a creche. And I’m very concerned about the recent spate of negative publicity.

First you have a new book warning parents against putting their children into creches.

Then you have the Irish Times collecting information about Health & Safety Executive (HSE) reports on creches.

Now you have the Irish Examiner headlines: EVERY PARENT’S NIGHTMARE
REVEALED: THE DISTURBING DETAIL OF NEGLECT AND ABUSE IN OUR NATION’S CRECHES.

Finally you have the RTE Q&A TV programme ignoring creches: no mention of creches on tonight’s programme.

I have deliberately limited the intake into my creche. The legal ratio of adult to infant is 3:1. In my creche, it is 1:1.

Before I’d consider increasing the number of children in my cheche, I’d have to interview the parents to see whether their child-rearing habits were acceptable.

Children in my cheche sleep from 0900 to 0950, from 1200 to 1400, and from 1645-1715. At night they sleep from 1900-0700. Only children who sleep that much are ready for my creche.

Parents whose children don’t sleep that much would not fit in with the ethos of my cheche.

There is one child in my creche who has recently been waking up during the night, looking for a soother. Her parents are on their last warning: either they fix the problem or they will have to find another place for their little treasure.

I’ve advised the child’s mother that her daughter is showing signs of tired mother. I have insisted that she go to bed early for the next few nights, in a separate bed, so that she catch up with her sleep. I have recommended that the child be left in her father’s care, so that he ensures the infant sleeps through without any waking for anything.

When I said goodbye to the father, I could see that he had a serious look on his face, the look of a man determined that his child would not lose her place in my creche.

You have to use a firm hand with parents. They so often flip flop from one strategy to another when it comes to nightworking. One of my children’s parents decided to let the baby cry rather than go to her during the night. Then they changed their minds during the night and went to her with a soother. Next thing I heard on the grapevine that they were intending to go to her the second she woke in order to stop her crying.

That’s just the kind of shilly-shallying that I won’t have in my creche. Those parents know that I am drafting my report to HSE. They know that I may very well cite them.

It’s tough running a creche, but it is fulfilling. The standards we creche volk stand by are the standards the next generation need.

DO YOU KNOW WHAT GOES ON IN YOUR CHILD’S CRECHE?

Most of those who read this blog will know nothing of the views I am expressing as comments on other blogs.

Passing comments on other people’s blogs is an essential part of the blogger’s experience. So, in order to be open, authentic, integrated and honest, I am publishing, for your amusement, something I have just written on Fiona deLondras’s blog.

Fiona is an important blog person: her blog is well established and all the ’serious’ bloggers know her work. To me, she looks like one of the inner circle of Irish bloggers. She feels like in intellectual and is definitely serious. I’ve never contacted her before, and she might not appreciate me highlighting her on my blog.

Fiona,
I came across your blog when it was advertised by Blank Paige(on March 14). I’m delighted to find it and I hope that the discussion which you provoked will continue in some form.

Keep it up.

10:10 AM
Delete

I came across an extraordinary place.

An ordinary large house in Dunfermline, down the road from Perth towards Edinburgh. You’d walk past it in the suburb without looking twice.

It was snowing hard the Thursday I went there, in a van with a group of men. The men were on a training course for supervisors, all about teamworking. They were going to this house in order to build a gazebo or summer house. Also they were going to build a big glasshouse (greenhouse) and get rid of an old delapidated one. They were doing this as an exercise in leadership and teamworking

Not such an unusual activity. There are many training courses for managers covering teamwork which involve participants doing something. The remarkable aspect of this project was that the work was being done at a house used by people with mental illnesses.

It was impossible to tell who was staff and who was a ‘patient’ in this house.

I started talking to two women in the kitchen. I couldn’t tell whether either of them was staff, whether both of them were staff, or whether just one of them was. It was brilliantly confusing. The ethos of the house was that all were equally valued and treated. It was deliberately confusing for outsiders like me.

The guys on the training course did a fantastic job. The people from the house were moved to tears with gratitude. The trainee managers kept going through snowfall and freezing wind. They didn’t want to stop the work. They didn’t want to go home early.

Throughout the day, cups of tea were produced by people from the house. Gradually, as I talked to many of them, I realised that the house people had a variety of mental illnesses. This was a place where they could come every day, from 1000 until 1700. They could work in the house, cleaning, cooking, decorating, repairing and using the computer (which had broadband).

The house people had a meeting every afternoon. Everyone in the house had a daily plan with targets. They worked together, not as isolated individuals, but interdependently. The house was like a job. It needed to be run. It provided services, like lunch, for visitors who paid.

I’d never been to such a place before.

I’ve had mental illness. I’ve had days when I couldn’t go out of my house, when I was afraid to talk to other people. I’ve had days when I was alone and only felt safe away from others. If there had been a house like this, I might have gone out to it and done something positive with my time. I might have got better quicker.

It’s an American idea. There is a worldwide network of such houses. There are five of them in Ireland, four around Dublin and one in Sligo. I heard mention of them on a radio programme shortly before going off to work in Scotland.

I was photographer for the day. I took about 120 photos of the men at work. I’ve never seen a group so engaged with their task, so aware of the benefit their work was going to bring to their “customers”. The people from the house wandered round during the day admiring the progress. At the end of the work, the guys presented the house with about £200 they had collected in coins from bus drivers and engineers in depots in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Falkirk. In all, the 13 supervisors fundraised the best part of £900, and left behind some legacy.

One of the people from the house, who told me he had depression, told a joke to one of the guys. (It is relevant that all the people building the gazebo and greenhouse were from a bus company.)

“How to you spell bus?”
“B U S”
“How does it start?”
Puzzled look on the face of the man from the bus company…
“With a B”
“No… with a key!”