Eccentric Seal

I have a love hate relationship with Mumsnet. It’s always fascinating to me as the epicentre of a particular kind of engaged, intensive form of mothering with a particular focus on education. On Mumsnet I have seen posters ask “Doesn’t everyone teach their kids to read before they start school? Surely that just part of good parenting.”   I’ve seen long threads on the subject of what exactly constitutes “social capital” and how they can be sure to impart it. (Trips to the opera were mentioned.). I’ve seen debates on various types of secondary schools conducted from the starting point that everyone’s child would easily get into grammar school. No doubt because of the work already invested in “talking and reading to them when they were little” It’s a part of a particular kind of parenting which originates in the middle class. The basic strategy being to have fewer children and to invest more heavily in them in the hopes that they can become high earners and replicate the p...

In the early 200’s I was living on a traveller site and making my living from the Big Issue. I learnt a lot about evasiveness and manipulation there.   I leant why it was necessary and I learnt how to do it.  There was a grave yard a few miles away where a water tap was provided for relatives to tend the flowers on the graves. Of course, we collected our drinking water there. There must have been a few complaints because, by my time, there was a notice was pinned up saying “This water is provided for the users of graveyard- NOT for tramps!”  Because of this, we used the after tap less frequently and more circumspectly. We could probably have stopped using it altogether and driven a little further for water but people would have complained at that place too.  The logic of the situation encouraged us to tan the fuck out of any goodwill and then keep pushing the envelope long after the goodwill had dried up. Far, far beyond the point that a town...