Struggling

Moving to The Nook in August 2017 was an exciting but daunting prospect. I had moved to Somerset in 1997 in a determined effort to get away from my parents - it backfired; they bought a house down there where I lived for 19.5 years. Moving back to Reading was exciting because it offered me so many more opportunities (especially coinciding with my youngest going off to uni and my own graduation) but it also represented a huge step backwards.

I haven't moved back to square one exactly...I am in the house next door. So much closer to my dad than I would ever choose to be. But approaching 40 and still working part time as a cleaner, and with my parents in their 70s, I acknowledged it was the only logical thing to do.

Perhaps in some regards I have caused my own misery - I planned the move for 2.5 years, I bought new and new-to-me things to put in it, I imagined joining the local Egyptology society, finding a half decent job. Even after I realised my eldest would be moving in after uni I thought we're two adults sharing, I can have my life back.

And that is saying a lot. I went from an unhappy childhood to lone teenage parenthood where I stayed until my kids were full grown ready-to-vote adults. It's not a matter of getting my life BACK so much as finally being able to BEGIN.

How it actually worked out wasn't too bad, to begin with. The elder beastie and I found jobs straight off. Neither job was especially fabulous but Erin got a decent wage while I was gaining vitally important experience - I'd already been told I couldn't get my dream job because I had no experience of cash-handling or customer service. Those boxes were finally getting ticked. Six weeks later I graduated; a month after that it was Erin's turn. Autumn 2017 was all mortarboards and gowns ;)

We had a first Christmas at The Nook - the first time I had had a 'full' family Christmas since I was a nipper. There were only six of us but that was double the usual and it felt so important.

In March I had my 40th birthday. I don't mind being 40 but 41 still feels a step too far, which is unfortunate as it is now approaching particularly rapidly. By this point I was particularly stressed with work - my 4 hours a week sales assistant contract having been totally disregarded I was now often working 40+ hours and running the whole shop several days a week. I don't know how much clearer I could have been that I did not feel trained or prepared for such a level of responsibility...I was actively looking for another job.

Then it all changed.

I've already blogged about my mum's stroke but so newbies don't have to trawl through all my opinionated potato wafflings the basics are:

My mum suffered a severe stroke on 16th April 2018 affecting both hemispheres. She was not treated as such because they failed to diagnose her for 24 hours (apparently the NHS can only recognise strokes if they only affect one hemisphere, despite the fact it was bloody obvious to us laypersons and we said so repeatedly) they just offered support and physio through the worst of the aftermath. She was in hospital for 9.5 weeks.

There was never any question that she would come and live with me after. There just weren't any other options. Her flat was inaccessible to her.
Her partner's health was too poor to be her carer - he's been hospitalised several times already this year - and his house would have required adaptations. My stepdad rings every day to check in but I get so frustrated at hearing about him spending time with his mates or going out to play boules (or whatever it is). Does he think I *want* to hear that?! He has his freedom because I have the responsibility; I likely won't be seeing my friends again. TBH if it was down to him my mum would've had to go into a home cos he just couldn't have done the things I do. 
Even if she and my dad had still been together whilst his health is better he's still mid 70s, and again the house would need adapting. Even he talks about the difference all this makes to his life...he literally visits my mum an hour or two a day. From right next door. Yeah, sure, this has made a HUGE difference to your daily routine! 
I have no siblings. 

My house however needed no alterations although arrangements had to be made for Erin as my mum needed her bedroom. Also, I was her named next of kin and there was an Enduring Power of Attorney set up so I could take care of everything.
I gave notice at work although my coworkers struggled to understand - one coworker had a mother who was still independent after multiple strokes and, as is inevitable, people do see things through the lens of their own experiences. Even my aunt (my mother's sister) thought she would bounce back like her husband had. He had three strokes that March and by the time my mum had hers he was pottering at home again. That would have been fair enough but their father had suffered a severe stroke...I thought she would understand what we were facing.
One of the more difficult moments was when my dad acknowledged that my mum's stroke was much worse than her dad's. He lived 16 years with what seemed a very poor quality of life. They didn't know he'd suffered further strokes until after he died. Meanwhile, we're fairly sure my mum has already had subsequent strokes...

But I am not cut out to be a carer. Being stuck at home with my own kids drove me demented. I HATED IT. And I had every expectation of them growing up and leaving...I know damn well that there's only one way this can go...and when it's over I have my dad and my stepdad (who came into our lives when I was 29), both of whom have signed Power of Attorney documents putting me in charge. I feel crushed under the weight of responsibility I just don't want.
The stress is chronic. I want to run away, to be free, to live MY life at long last. I feel like I can't BREATHE.

Basically, I'm in mourning. For the life I never had. For the life I never will have. 
My kids' dad was nothing to write home about but there's a blog here somewhere if you really want to know. He was TOTALLY out of our lives when I was 20, before our youngest was born. Zero contact, zero child support. I've been on my own ever since. Now I have to accept being alone forever - even if I met someone (which I can't as I'm stuck at home) my mum wouldn't allow it.
The degree I worked my arse off for won't lead to anything. My CV is decades behind my chronological age. I'll never buy a house, or learn to drive or even just pay for a holiday. Anything I ever have will be inherited, I can't achieve anything for myself - not even a pension now.
No relationships, no friends, no career; not even a bog-standard job. None of those life landmark achievement things.

The best my life has ever been was my mid-life crisis (age 33-38 in my case). It was the point my kids were old enough to do their own thing while I could enjoy the little disposable income I had going to rock gigs, fucking up my hair and getting tattoos.
Dealing with the fact that was it, all the life of my own I'm gonna get, is something I just can't wrap my head around.
What's more is that in that time I lost a load of weight and actually whipped my fat butt into a halfway decent shape. Now I can't get out I'm getting fat again. And I'm drinking a helluva lot.

I don't want my mum to go but I know it's gonna happen, sooner rather than later most likely. I know that what she's going through is worse than what I'm going through but...

• when she's gone her sufferings will be over; I will still have responsibility for my dad (EPoA to be activated) and stepdad (LPoA pending). There isn't an end when the end comes.
• My mum's mum died of stroke, albeit at 95; as I mentioned above her dad died 16 years after a severe stroke. From the day it happened I've been feeling a nasty fear that this is also my personal future...and not one that can be avoided by any means. So who gives a fuck about the diet and alcohol?

I feel like I'm being selfish but I *am* doing the best I can by my mum. I just want there to be something for ME as well, y'know?!

Ex libro (vel mente) de Heggie

(Apologies if my title is wrong - I dropped out of Latin so I have to use Google translate. It was inspired by my mother's annoyance many years ago at seeing "ex libro" - meaning 'from the book of' - painted somewhat illogically on the wall of a pub...I pointed out that it was probably someone's idea of a joke - or else a mistranslation - because the building was a former library.)

I have been having some fabulous arguments over on Twitter on the subject of the UK's public libraries.
This has lead me to quite a few interesting things which I thought I'd like to share.
I want to say at the outset that I bloody love books. I am desperately trying to get back into reading for pleasure - a habit I broke studying for my degree, and which has been difficult for me given the stress following my mother's stroke. But it has long been my opinion that public libraries in their current form are often antiquated and unfit for purpose. Throwing public money at them will not fix the fundamental issues with them. Sure there are good libraries but that doesn't mean the poor ones ought to be saved, especially at the tax payer's expense.

In 1850 the Public Libraries Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_Libraries_Act_1850) established the principal of free libraries for the masses. From Wikipedia, pros included:

• Public libraries would provide facilities for self-improvement through books and reading for all classes, not just those who were wealthy enough to afford their own private libraries and collections.
• The greater levels of education attained by providing public libraries would result in lower crime rates.

Cons included:

• Although the boroughs were represented by elected bodies, many people argued that the Act enforced taxation without consent.
• There was opposition to the Act simply on the grounds that founding and maintaining the new libraries would mean an increase in taxation at all, consensual or otherwise.

• Others felt that there were more pressing concerns, and wondered about the necessity for a library when literacy levels were so low.

According to this source (https://www1.umassd.edu/ir/resources/laboreducation/literacy.pdf) male literacy in 1850 was 70% and for females it was 55%. I can't find any data for what percentage of the population could afford books but it's fairly safe to assume it was pretty low. Today we have 99% literacy and books are dirt-cheap.
I have had THAT particular argument numerous times in the past 36 hours... You can get e-books free, the internet provides endless reading opportunities, ebay and Amazon sell books for pennies and charity shops are a great resource for poorer people. The number of people who've told me charity shops don't sell books at 99p is incredible. Obviously I can't speak for the entire country but I know charity shops in several areas that sell books extremely cheaply - my last purchase, in December 2018, from my local Sue Ryder shop (in a fairly affluent small town), got me four paperback novels (padding out my Simon Brett collection) for £2.98...£27.96 to buy new.
Someone accused me of hoarding books - which is true enough - but somehow misses the point that charity shops are stocked with DONATED books. You can share the resource by passing unwanted books on to others - donate them back to charity, local residential homes, hospices, hospitals etc. children's books can go to schools. preschools and daycare centres. Honestly finding the fact that I got criticised for supporting charities rather than supporting my local library (which only makes money out of me if I incur fees) utterly ludicrous!

This 2017 article is very interesting (https://www.theguardian.com/voluntary-sector-network/2017/oct/19/uk-national-public-library-system-community). There are a bunch of knee-jerk reactions you could make from it - like blaming the Tories for closures - but the truth is libraries haven't been adequately funded in decades. That and a financial crisis that required implementing austerity measures across the board. The need for public libraries has declined with increased literacy and the availability of affordable literature. Poorly stocked libraries with inadequate resources are threatened with closure for actual reasons. Many are now completely unstaffed and looking at the shelves you might think it was still the mid 70s; my old local library didn't even have a proper reference section. You often can't request books from other libraries because of either staff shortages or the lack of networking as per the article above.
As for community services, that very much depends on where you are. I took an IT class hosted at my local library in the mid noughties...the computers weren't up to scratch so they had to bring in laptops...they eventually relocated the classes completely, presumably as the facility wasn't fit for the purpose. Did I sign the petition to keep it open? No I did not. There was a bigger one barely a mile away and even that was pretty useless! I think libraries need to branch out into becoming community resource centres in order to survive; I suspect the many threatened with closure are principally the ones that don't have the scope to do so.

People keep arguing that the government had 'loads of money' for things like libraries. Have they really not noticed the 'austerity measures' that have been a running theme through most of the last decade? And such people can blame that on the Tories all they like - financial mismanagement is a problem of successive governments and local authorities, not just one time period or political party. The whole damn country needs an overhaul.
As of writing our national debt is approaching £2.2 TRILLION (http://www.nationaldebtclock.co.uk/) and all our essential services are under threats of cutbacks and closures. Twitter user @ABosseChitty messaged me (regarding the issue that libraries don't make money):

Yup. The era when not everything was judged on whether it made money.

Hospitals are a drain on resources, too.

So are schools.

So is the probation service.

So is the police.

So is the justice system.

Etc.

Hence the Tories' desire to privatise them all.

Wake up.

Hospitals provide an essential, lifesaving service...libraries don't. Schools educate, libraries allow for self education - and as school libraries are often an utter disgrace I'd rather any love for books got focused that direction. The probation service, the police, the justice system all protect public safety...libraries do not. The 1850 idea that education would lower crime rates turned out to be a false hope: education has been compulsory for decades and still crime is a serious problem of our society. All these services are cash-strapped, all provide far more valuable services to our society.

I get that people all have their own biases - nurses will defend the NHS, PCs will demand greater funding for the police, ditto parents and teachers re: schools. And they all have valid points. But libraries? REALLY? Just as in 1850 people argued that there were more pressing concerns so too do I.

People can read online, most can afford cheap charity shop books - what the average person can't do, for example, is build their own swimming pool. Now THAT is a valuable public resource that has been stripped away for many. The area in which I live has closed all the public pools for miles. The one in my town has been demolished without planning for a replacement facility. The nearest must be a good five miles away - at least three in that radius have been permanently closed.

Twitter user @sefkhet messaged me: 

And you can say that parents will provide books for their children if its important to them, but what if it’s not important to them? Kids shouldn’t have their options limited by what their parents are willing to provide.

*SIGH* Parents who don't think providing books is a priority aren't the kind of people to take their kids to a library. Kids can't just take themselves off to libraries and they need parental consent to become members. Will people who don't prioritise books, or who are 'too poor' to afford them, really do so??? I even took my kids' schools to task over the requirement that I was liable for any losses, damages or late fees incurred by my kids when borrowing from the school library - I couldn't afford to pay for their mistakes.

I also received the comments that poorer families might not have computers and internet access...well, their kids are gonna fail at school anyway then. Much homework HAS to be done online or with online research nowadays. The area where my kids grew up limited use of its computers to half hour slots, even when one was available (and they didn't have many) it wouldn't allow time for a kid to do their homework. Perhaps existing library funding could be put to use providing IT resource centres or grants to get low income families online?

I have received comments such as that I am lucky to be able to afford books (I bought cheap books from charity shops during TWO DECADES on welfare) that I am fortunate to have escaped poverty (I am on a zero income as a carer to my mother). My kids grew up 'disadvantaged', we didn't use our local library because it was rubbish, we always had books in the house so it must be possible for poor people to acquire them. Also, having books didn't seem to do my kids an awful lot of good - for all I tried to encourage them they struggled at school - even so they both ended up going to uni but I'm fairly sure it wasn't my buying them Horrible Histories or Harry Potter that got them there...

I am impressed that people seem so passionate about defending our libraries but I am bemused that they also think books are the only source of knowledge and learning. There has been much discussion of print heading for obsolescence in recent years, so many things are becoming paper-free - universities are ditching printed materials in favour of online resources and schools are reducing the teaching of handwriting as typing skills are considered more relevant.

I don't LIKE the fact that books and handwriting are going obsolete but they are. The overheads of maintaining buildings and paying staff keep going up even without providing new books or computers, meanwhile putting a resource online costs peanuts.

Why are we so keen to retain an initiative of the early Victorian era?! Lots of things were great at the time but have failed to move with the times. Then we feel obliged to keep them - misplaced nostalgia? - without full consideration of whether it's really worth the effort.

I'll finish with my absolute favourite response - unfortunately it seems to have been deleted so I shan't @ name the user who sent it but it started something along the lines of "I see from your profile that you are a recent graduate so you must have had access to a great library". Bonus points for actually looking at my profile to get an idea about who I am (I love that thing where people find themselves 'mansplaining' to actual legit experts in their fields) and the logic is actually good but curiously turns out to be completely wrong:-

I got my degree with the Open University - no access to an actual library (the OU are also ditching printed materials). There was an online library resource service - at no time in my 5.5 years of study (Feb 2012 - Jun 2017) could I get the bloody system to work. And at no point during my studies did I step foot in a public library, I used online resources (loads of academic sources there) and my own books. 

On a teenage mother who has seriously f*ck*d up

Never one to shy away from the controversial this opinionated potato is now contemplating the Shamima Begum case...here's a few sources to get started:

• Plea for return: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47260916
• Block return: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shamima-begum-isis-bride-latest-uk-return-home-secretary-sajid-javid-syria-a8780401.html
• Could face prosecution: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-47237051
• Has given birth: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2019/feb/17/shamima-begum-who-fled-uk-to-join-isis-has-given-birth-say-family

Quick summary: Shamima Begum is a 19 year old British national who, 

having been indoctrinated, ran off (age 15) to support IS in Syria 

(as a jihadi bride). At 9 months pregnant with her third child

(her older two having recently died) she made headlines

for wanting to come home...despite still holding IS sympathies.

This has understandably provoked strong negative reactions.

But lets have a proper look at this, shall we?

First of all, does the UK even have the right or power to strip a citizen of that status? 

Begum is believed to be a British-born citizen, which in the past would have prevented the Government from stripping her of her nationality.
Only dual-nationals or those who had become British citizens— known as “naturalisation” — could be hit with “deprivation orders” removing their UK status.

It emerged the legal test to exclude the wife of an ISIS fighter from the UK is whether she is eligible to claim citizenship elsewhere. Her parents are from Bangladesh — raising the bar to re-entry here.

(Source: https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/8431345/jihadi-bride-exclusion-british-citizenship/)

I am decidedly dubious about this. Just because someone could potentially claim citizenship elsewhere doesn't mean that they should be obliged to...or that the other nation is obliged to take them surely? It can't be right to deliberately render someone stateless.
If Shamima's parents are indeed Bangladeshi she might've been entitled to automatic citizenship as a child...but she is not a child now. And are the parents STILL Bangladeshi or did they surrender their citizenship? Can Bangladesh be forced to take her? And does Shamima even have any links to the country?! There's also the point that her husband is a Dutch national; surely THAT claim would supersede her parents origins. 
One of the most disgusting things about deportation and 'repatriation' is the idea that someone can just go live in a country because they (or in this case their parents) were born there like they necessarily know anything about the language or the law or the culture of that place. We've found this 'logic' abhorrent in terms of the Windrush scandal. If anything we belong to the place(s) we were raised, the places we know - this idea of belonging to your ancestral nation smacks of the racist phrase "go back where you came from", whether anyone likes it or not she came from the UK.

Secondly the use of emotive and prejudicial language: a line in The Sun article cited above (about her desire to return to the UK) starts "shameless Shamima Begum whined..." EXCUSE ME? There's not even an effort toward impartiality here. Shameless? Right or wrong should she be obliged to express shame for her beliefs? Obviously I'm not gonna defend IS but "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" - it all just depends on your viewpoint. 
Condemning people on their actions is one thing but condemning them on their ideologies just increases feelings of disenfranchisement and people feeling marginalised and oppressed leads inevitably to more crime, civil unrest and violence.
Are sympathisers inherently evil? I don't think so. Every conflict in history has sympathisers on both sides. Also, she hasn't even undergone any de-radicalisation as yet. Whining? She's a bereaved young woman who has been through more in the last 4 years than most of us will endure in a lifetime. And we whine when the wifi is slow. A bit of perspective here would go a long way.

Thirdly, her age. She was 15 when she ran away, lots of 15 year olds run away from home. If they turned up again four years later how would we judge parents who did not welcome them home with open arms? Here we talking about a nation refusing to allow her home to her family. IF she is tried for crimes she will have to face charges as a minor - unless they can prove any of her actions since turning 18 was criminal.
The lack of understanding that she is a young woman who, whatever she may have done, was still legally a child when this situation started and she has had little chance to address. Frankly I'm astonished - can people not remember the shit they got up to in their teens? Can they not imagine having a teenage daughter they'd want treated fairly but with sympathy? I'm not one for fuzzy maternal feelings - if my kid got up to no good I'd expect them to face the consequences...but not this mob mentality.

Fourthly, the assumption of criminality. Maybe I'm wrong but I don't recall British citizens being ousted for having sympathies with the IRA in the not-so-distant past. If people are to be persecuted for their politics it at least ought to apply equally to all terrorist organisations.
Shamima left the UK to be a jihadi BRIDE, not (so far as anyone seems to have any evidence of as yet) to take part in any terrorist activities. Perhaps she can be charged as an accessory but that requires due process, courts, a war crimes tribunal perhaps. Stripping her citizenship is at the very least premature if she has not been convicted of anything.

Fifthly the rights of her child and her concerns as a parent.
One of the stupidest claims I saw argued (before her new son was born) was that she wanted to come back to give birth on the NHS. How dumb are people?! At nine months pregnant that was NEVER an option. She could neither have flown nor endured an overland journey.
A woman who has lost two children is going to be quite reasonably terrified for the wellbeing of her child. If she will risk coming home and facing prosecution and / or being stripped of custody of that child in order to ensure it's survival why should that be frowned upon?!
The child is born of a British mother and a Dutch father - he is an EU citizen, not a Syrian. Should he not have a right to life regardless of his parentage? There is enough criticism of EU nations not taking in Syrian refugee children - rejecting a child who has every right to be here is beyond the pale.

Shamima's second child, her son Jarah, died aged 8 months in December 2018 of malnutrition; her elder child, daughter Sarayah, died in January 2019 aged 21 months. Losing a child is generally held to be one of the worst things that can happen to you; losing two so closely together must be beyond words. Losing your existing children when you are pregnant with another must be terrifying. Losing your children when you are little more than a child yourself...well, I would have imagined that people could stretch to a little more empathy.

I shouldn't be astonished at how judgmental people are...humans are, in my humble opinion, bloody awful. Maybe Shamima Begum is an exceptionally awful person but everyone deserves a fair hearing and the chance of redemption. It says a lot about a society that we seem to be collectively willing to condemn her without trial...and to leave her child in danger. Perhaps there would be a security risk allowing her home but we have procedures in place for that. Even if she'd been a mature adult when she went out there she is just as deserving of justice through due process as anyone else; the child should not suffer for his parents mistakes.

UPDATE
Predictably Bangladesh denied she had any right to citizenship and the Netherlands (her husband's nation) blocked her too. This means that the UK had indeed made her illegally stateless - in all honesty, revoking someone's citizenship BEFORE an alternative citizenship has been set up is always going to be wrong.

On March 8th news broke that Shamima's third child - a two week old son named Jarrah after her firstborn - had died.
Given the predominant public opinion of her case I expected comments condemning her, calling it 'karma', maybe even saying her kid was better off dead than with her as a mother...
THREE CHILDREN DEAD is beyond anything most of us can imagine, and in three separate incidents in the space of three months is just too awful contemplate. No mother deserves that; no child deserves to die.
I was fully gearing up to unfollow people for the comments I expected to see, given the opinions expressed earlier in the case.
Actually, public opinion has swung about and the gov't - especially Sajid Javid - Home Secretary (Conservative) who took the decision - are now being heavily criticised for their harsh action. This only annoys me more because this was a predictable outcome. It was a bad call before a child died, and he may have died anyway, but the failure to see Shamima FROM THE OUTSET as a vulnerable young woman who needs help, rehabilitation and justice - for what she has done and what has been done to her - utterly appals me.

A tweet from Anna Soubry - MP for Broxtowe (Liberal Party):

"It was wrong to take away Shamima Begum's British citizenship

in the first place @sajidjavid must now restore it

& she must be able to come home.

Shamima Begum is our responsibility

whatever she may or may not have done

however abhorrent her views"

A tweet from Twitter user @0Calamity:

"I don't care how unpopular this will make me.

Shamima Begum was groomed as a 15 yr old,

and after, effectively, being a sex-slave, has now lost her third child. And our govt.'s response is to persecute her

instead of seeking to rehabilitate her. Hard to find words."

The top listed response to this (from @MickDavies1968) reads:

"It shows the sorry state of this country

that you felt the need to include your first sentence."

And that is absolutely it - where the hell are we if the perceived unpopular opinion is one of compassion and the hope of redemption??? Why did it take the death of her third child to change public opinion?!

Parts of a Heggie - new edition

I was scrolling through old blogs to see if I'd already written about something but, being me, I got distracted and forgot what I was looking for!

Anyway, I stumbled across a post entitled "The Parts of a Heggie" dated 30th May 2013. In it I discuss my identity based on my twitter bio and it seemed like a good idea to do a sequel of sorts. After all, twitter bios change over time and mine had gone through several variants since that blog.

I also found that I wanted to write an update because during the whole shit-storm referenced in my last post "Unequal Equality" some asshat - since blocked - made some comment that my whole twitter profile offended them.

• I like to think that I am very much the same person online as I am in real life. More expressive perhaps, I find it easier to type than to talk to people, but I don't hide behind a 'persona'. I am who I am.
• If you don't like me that's fine - I'd rather that than pretend to be someone else. My twitter profile doesn't exist to make friends and influence people. I don't WANT to be some popular account by sticking to 'safe' topics and going with popular opinions. 
• I'm offended by people who've gone out of their way, for no reason whatsoever, to be offended by my existence while I'm just being myself over here .

I'm going to write this assuming you haven't read my blogs or follow me on twitter, simply because it's easier to just explain stuff as I go.

First things first. WHAT IS MY CURRENT TWITTER PROFILE?

Heggitha ;;

@HeggieTBK

Opinionated potato. Agender. Slytherin [snake emoji]

Mother of adults. Graduated 2017 [graduation cap emoji]

Ordained. Attorney. Carer.

Hedgehogs & coelacanths. Praise the Aten.

Location: Looks like hell, but colder

Joined: October 2009

USERNAMES

Heggitha - Yes, Heggie is my 'real' name, I changed it (aged 15) back in 1993 and never used my birthname for anything official. This nickname was given to me by Drew Woolnough, former bassist of Fearless Vampire Killers (FVK), now of The Broken Kings. 

;; - the typed version of FVK's fangs logo.

@HeggieTBK - formerly @Heggie 42, @Heggie31 & @HeggieFVK - 42 was for 'Life, The Universe and Everything', 31 was the age I was when I restarted my account, FVK for Fearless Vampire Killers and after they disbanded three of the five members became The Broken Kings...ergo, TBK.

So far so straightforward. No ambiguous user names or aliases here; just my own real world identity. As a matter of fact I tend to use 'Heggie' alone as I have a problem with my surname - it's the name of my mother's former husband from long before I was born so I have no connection with it. Using my surname only reminds me that I am a bastard.

PROFILE

My avi is a photo from my graduation - I am the green haired one in robes in the middle, my dark haired younger daughter is on the left and my blondish haired older beastie is on the right of the shot. My header is a montage of ten pics of me with my celebrity crush - Laurence Beveridge (formerly of FVK, now of TBK).

Okay so these pics aren't exactly recent. My graduation was September 2017; the pics with Laurence date from April 2013 to July 2016. Hair colours vary and none of them are natural (which hasn't been seen since 2012). But I am not a no avi pic anonymous tweeter like a bunch of the people who've given me grief. Nor do I have a bitmoji avi (although I did when they were the in thing) or a pic of a celebrity or whatever.

BIO

Opinionated Potato - a big ol' clue there. My twitter is a lot of me ranting about whatever's got my knickers in a twist that particular day. I call myself a potato cos I am ugly.

Agender - I don't much like labels but since I realised this was me I think it's worth a mention. I do not conform to gender stereotypes and I think basing any kind of assumption about a person based on their biology or how they present makes no sense to me...so don't expect me to accept your ideas of gender norms. For the record I am perfectly fine with female pronouns - I didn't even hear the term 'agender' until my late 30s so I am really used to it.

Slytherin - this tells you two things...I love Harry Potter and I think my house fits. Slytherins are much maligned - traits are considered to be pride, cunning, ambition, determination & resourcefulness. I have not been a go-getter in my life, yet I do what I have to do to get things done - whether it's to raise my kids as a fully single parent or to get my degree from the Open University while raising aforementioned kids and working two jobs. Yes, I am selfish as Slytherins are often thought to be. Why? Because I have no one else who is going to consider my needs, let alone put me first. (I am very VERY single. Practically a nun.) I am a strong believer that if you don't take care of yourself you'll be of no use to anyone else.

Mother of Adults - I'm not actually allowed to watch GoT anymore (my daughter decided it was too scary for me - and she is so right, I am a wimp!) but obviously this is paraphrasing Daenerys' 'Mother of Dragons' title. My 'kids' are now 20 & 23. Being involved in a music fandom where a lot of the people are a helluva lot younger than me I like to own my age so as no one suddenly 'finds out' and thinks it weird. I think being older and a parent goes some way to explaining the opinions I express too. A lot of tweeters work on the erroneous assumption that everyone on the platform is under 30.

Graduated 2017 - My BA (Hons) Humanities with Classical Studies from the Open University is probably the only thing I will ever achieve in my life so yes, this is definitely getting a mention.

Ordained - you know that thing when you suddenly start wondering HOW people get ordained on the internet in the middle of the night? Well, yes, that kind of went further than I expected. It's a nod to my spiritual and philosophical outlook. It's also in respect of the really weird shit my life is made up of.

Attorney - again with the weird. Attorney doesn't just mean 'solicitor' or 'lawyer', it simply means 'representative'. I have Enduring Power of Attorney - a legal status to take care of my mother's affairs.

Carer - my mother had a severe stroke on 16th April 2018; I now look after her full time. Not only does this mean I don't have a job anymore but I'm also not able to pursue my other interests - such as art and reading - fully at this time. I am struggling emotionally with the unexpected change in circumstances.

Hedgehogs & coelacanths - I am a hodgeheggie. Prickly outside, squishy underbelly, unhealthy relationship with slugs (I am limaxaphobic) and generally in decline. I have a bunch of hedgehogs in my bedroom; I was going with a woodland theme for my home - owls for my eldest, foxes for my youngest and a theme of poppies and cornflowers for the story 'Sleeping Murder' which made me a real Agatha Christie fan. Coelacanths are my favourite animal - I have been fascinated by their rediscovery since I was 7 - and they have been the subject of several of my paintings.

Praise the Aten - I'm not a sun worshiper in the traditional sense, I have an interest in Egyptology and since my mum took me and my kids on a Nile cruise for my 30th I have had a particular fascination for the sun cult of Akhenaten. My elder daughter and I designed tattoos for each other - the one I got includes an Aten.

So as I said in my previous edition - I am a Heggie of many parts. Is this all I am? No. Is it representative? I hope so. I chose key words and phrases carefully to sum myself up as best as I could with a limited character count. It's a bit of a mishmash but then who isn't?!

And if, after all this, you agree with that random asshat who was offended by my profile...BYE!!!

Unequal Equality

Over the last few days I've been getting a fair bit of hassle over a tweet. Specifically:

Somewhat vexed that the disappearance of Libby Squire (21, Hull Uni)

seems to be getting more coverage than that of

Daniel Williams (19, Reading Uni). Everyday sexism?

- @HeggieTBK; 10:24pm 4th February 2019

I have been called disgusting, despicable, bloody awful etc for it...why? Because I dared to suggest a man might be disadvantaged based on gender. Equality, it seems, is only attractive if it applies to our preconceived ideas of the underdog.

First of all lets just go over the facts. Both disappearances involved young white British university students. Daniel disappeared first - he was last seen alive around 1am on Thursday January 31st 2019. Sadly his body was found in a lake on campus five days later but he was still missing at the time of the tweet. Libby vanished less than 24 hours later - last seen at 11:40pm. At the time of blogging she remains unfound. 

Let me go through a few key points for a moment here...

• Neither student has been flagged in the media for being an especially at-risk individual (eg. medical issues or disability) which would be an acceptable contributing factor to the discrepancy in coverage. In short, both cases are strikingly similar and noteworthy for being the same day - making an assessment of the coverage that bit easier. However, I certainly acknowledge that what I personally have seen is just a partial sample. I deliberately wrote that it 'seems' to be a difference in coverage, not an absolute statement that this was the case.
• Contrary to what people inferred I never stated that the reason for any discrepancy was sexism. The question mark after 'everyday sexism' is significant here; I was SUGGESTING it as a cause or at least a contributing factor.
• A few people claimed that Libby's case got more coverage because she had gone missing more recently. At the time, Daniel had been missing 22 hours longer, not that a matter of hours should matter - if one had been already missing weeks or months it would be different. Indeed, at least one person claimed Daniel had been missing since New Year's Eve, confusing his case with another. A genuine mistake or perhaps another sign that Daniel's case really was less reported?
• Several people asserted that Daniel's family wanted privacy and that was the reason his case got less media attention. This may be so - but is it acceptable that a missing young person should get more or less attention based on their family's interaction with the press? I certainly understand that some families actively drive media campaigns, especially after the first flush of interest dies down but just because a distressed family aren't keen to talk to journalists or make TV appearances doesn't mean their loved-one shouldn't still be front page news. The missing person should take precidence over their family's actions / inactions.

One of the weirdest accusations leveled against me was that I was "trying to score points" off these people's disappearances. What the hell is that even supposed to MEAN? It's not a game. I was commenting on my perception of current affairs. I could comment until the cows come home on how historically the disappearances of various young people have been handled in the press - girls and young women getting far more attention than boys, men and older women; whites getting more attention than other ethnicities; well-off getting more attention than the poor. I have nothing to gain from my speculation, it merely bothered me that the lad at a university geographically close to me seemed to be getting mentioned as a footnote to a girl's disappearance. I would not be happy if my child's disappearance only seemed to be mentioned as an afterthought in the coverage of another person's case.

For many the problem seems to be applying the word 'sexism' to a scenario where the male is disadvantaged on grounds of gender. Men ARE disadvantaged in many ways in our society; they are inherently distrusted, a woman's word is valued more highly; men are disadvantaged in many careers and in custody hearings. But people seem to find acknowledging this distasteful.

Now, those of you who have read my blogs will know that I am agender. I am biologically (and presenting) female but I don't identify as such - my sex has nothing to do with who I am as a human being. I don't expect to be treated better or worse for being biologically female; the only reason that should matter is in terms of sex-differentiated medical conditions. I am also the parent of two biologically female offspring - one is at uni, the other has graduated. I don't expect them to be treated any differently based on their biological sex or gender identities either! I am not beyond imagining myself to be the parent of male offspring who I also would not want treated any differently based on gender. This is what equality means to me.

The only reasons to treat people differently in this scenario is if one was at more risk than another - one is an insulin-dependent diabetic, for example, or if there are specific indications of foul play. It makes me mad to think that a young woman is considered to be at greater risk than a young man purely because she is female. Like men cannot be victims of sexual assault or violence. It makes me mad that people think their fathers / brothers / husbands / sons deserve anything different than their mothers / sisters / wives / daughters.

I have commented a number of times that I dislike 'feminism' and prefer the term 'egalitarian'. Strictly speaking the one is a branch of the other but to me, feminism implies firstly the necessity of a female identity (and there are self-identified feminists who disregard non-cis females - there are also groups of feminists who disregard the problems specific to women of colour - feminism is not especially inclusive) and also a strong suggestion that women are inherently disadvantaged and victimised. On this second point I disagree. I know that my own experiences of being female aren't an absolute but I cannot relate to issues such as cat-calling or being disrespected on ground of gender. I am not saying these things are not common but at 40 years old I can only say that I have not experienced them - I can be indignant that others have suffered but so many interpretations of feminism start from a position of victimhood that I cannot identify with...and even if I could, I do not find strength in victimhood. I prefer to assume I have power; that I am equal to anyone else.

Now obviously, that is all about me and why I look at things the way I do. I understand that others are different, of course I do. But I find it confusing how my tweet calling for actual meaningful equality resulted in personal attacks on me. That their are women who think wanting males to be treated equally is unacceptable is both weird and disturbing but the fact that men responded angrily to my tweet I find utterly baffling. Is that toxic masculinity - men who are offended that any man could be considered as vulnerable as a female? Or is it toxic feminism - convincing men that their needs are less than those of women?

Maybe Daniel and Libby's disappearances were treated equally in the press...but why are people (of a non journalist persuasion) so offended by the suggestion that they weren't? In my humble opinion this is why true equality is a long way off for our society - because we still can't acknowledge that certain forms of inequality even exist. I for one only want equality if it really is the same set of rights and privileges for everyone.

UPDATE
Libby Squire's body was found in the Humber 7 weeks after her disappearance and is being treated as a potential homicide.
Daniel Williams' death was considered misadventure - drowning under the influence of alcohol.
I'm not saying Daniel didn't die in a tragic accident or that Libby wasn't murdered but it still seems odd from my outside perspective that the cases STILL strikingly similar seem to be considered so differently - that the male caused his own death but that the girl must've been hurt by someone else? Presumably there is some evidence but what evidence would there be if a drunk lad was pushed into a freezing lake? I also wonder what evidence of foul play they might have in Libby's case as nearly 2 months in the water isn't good for preserving traces...

Thinking You Know Stuff That You Don't Actually Know and Presuming Stupidity In Others

I think most people probably suffer from this weird condition whereby our brains produce an explanation for why something is as it is and, regardless of plausibility, our brains then accept this explanation, even without any kind of supporting evidence, as true.

Take flat earthers as an example: 

• Child looks at the horizon, it looks flat; ergo the earth is flat.
• Child looks at the horizon, they can't see the city they visited last week with grandma; ergo the earth is at very least curved.
• Child overhears the expression "all corners of the world"; ergo the world is a CUBE.

Most of our more improbable assumptions are quickly corrected by schooling or other information we are exposed to. Which is why we point and laugh at adult flat earthers who've somehow managed to miss or ignore the memo. But there are many other things we believe we know, often without realising we have only assumed them.

The 'today years old' meme is an example of this: things that were out there being obvious but people never thought about because we tend to accept things as they are. https://www.buzzfeed.com/mikespohr/x-mind-blowing-facts-people-learned-when-they-were-today

Part of the point of these things is that they don't actually MATTER to most of us either way. I mean, what DIFFERENCE would it make to your personal life if the earth is flat, round or oblong (yes, I was watching the repeat of the Midsomer Murders episode 'The Oblong Murders' a few nights ago)? Unless you're an astrophysicist or something the truthful answer is probably 'none at all'. Similarly the bit in Sherlock where it doesn't matter to him if the earth goes round the sun or 'round and round the garden like a teddy bear'.

It is because of this that articles are written debunking urban myths and explaining commonly held but misinformed beliefs...and I don't have a problem with that, only the assumption that I the reader am as dumb as the writer thinks!

And the reason I'm thinking of this was stumbling across this 'Cats in Ancient Egypt didn't look the way you think' article from Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidanderson/2019/01/29/cats-in-ancient-egypt-didnt-look-the-way-you-think/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
From the title I thought it would be something about the evolution of domesticated cats - even in my lifetime Siamese cats, for example, have changed appearance quite dramatically due to the way they are bred. I assumed (there's that word again) that it would be about Ancient Egyptian cats more closely resembling their wild ancestors than modern moggies.
But no. 
I'm not sure who the writer was talking about but apparently there are people who assume Ancient Egyptian cats were exclusively BLACK. Why? Because most statuettes of cats are rendered in black stone or dark bronze. *FACEPALM* As the article sites paintings of cats in tabby colouring a similarly wrong hypothesis that all Ancient Egyptian cats were black or tabby could be proposed! 
This in turn reminded me of my Open University studies where the course books would prattle on for several pages about some wholly absurd hypothesis - which would invariably enrage me to all caps comments and angry face doodles in the margins about how bloody stupid and utterly wrong it all was - before belatedly debunking it. Those detours along assumptions I had never made drove me loopy.
It just seemed such an odd premise for an article to start with... By all means write an article explaining how it might be assumed...but honestly, it's not an assumption I would have imagined anyone could make! Maybe it's because I have an interest in Egyptology and learned at primary school how Egyptian art (excluding the Amarna period aka Akhenaton's reign) is stylised and unified by convention, not realistic. Or perhaps because this is something I had previously shared on Facebook:

There's another one I have come across in a similar vein. There are those who assume Ancient Egyptian people were red-skinned because of artistic conventions and those who assume Ancient Egyptians were black-skinned because Egypt is in Africa... *sigh* What's more, I've encountered people who accuse the discipline of Egyptology of 'whitewashing' and who do things like assert (on no evidence) that all pharaohs (including Cleopatra VII who as a Ptolemy might be reasonably supposed to be of largely Greek ancestry) were in fact black.
Where do I even begin with that?! First off there's basic geography. Yes, Egypt is on the African continent but depending on how old the Sahara Desert is there has long been a barrier separating north and sub-Saharan Africans; meanwhile, even in antiquity Egypt had thriving ports on the Mediterranean coast meaning contact with paler skinned Europeans would be common. 
The Ancient Egyptians depicted themselves in art as paler skinned than their Nubian neighbours. Was this merely a convention to differentiate themselves? Was this an ancient form of colourism (where paler skin is perceived as more attractive)? Or was it FACT - just as modern Egyptians are lighter skinned north Africans, not all historic Africans were darker skinned sub-Saharans.
There have of course been DNA studies on mummies...and so far these have found that the Ancient Egyptians tested were less black African than the modern population. 
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/05/170530115141.htm
So Ancient Egyptian art conventions can be taken to be both fact-based and differentiating themselves from other populations...and yet clearly not realistic because, regardless of familial resemblance, not all pharaohs could have looked so alike. That, and the fact female pharaoh Hatshepsut was represented with a symbolic beard! 

Obviously, for people not well versed in Egyptian art this might well be counter-intuitive but the phrasing of an explanatory article makes a world of difference. Put it in terms of "Did you know...?" rather than "You know how you always thought...?" Quit dumbing things down to the lowest possible level and assuming your readers are as daft as a box of frogs. In my humble opinion anyone who assumes a thing must actually look the way it is drawn / painted / sculpted is pretty damn daft. Just look at the trouble Henry VIII had over Anne of Cleves!
I'm not the brightest spark and I've assumed I've known all sorts of things I didn't but I'm not about to assume other people have made the exact same mistakes either. By all means admit your failings if you feel the need but please stop short of assuming others did the same.

Complaining about what you can (and probably should) change: a rant from someone who is up shit creek without a paddle

Disclaimer: If that title doesn't tell you that this may not be the most well-balanced of arguments you might try Reading Comprehension 101. This is me, letting off steam that one career path is given a curiously privileged status.

This video is one of a set on the BBC site: "I wanted to crash my car to avoid teaching" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-england-hampshire-46738445/a-teacher-s-story-eat-sleep-teach-repeat 04 Jan 2019

Other titles include: Why teaching is making me ill (18 Sept 2018), More teachers seek help for stress (03 Sept 2018) and PE teacher left 'sobbing like baby' (17 Sept 2015).

*seething intensifies*

Stress happens in EVERY walk of life. The stresses this teacher talks of are stresses faced 24/7 by many parents - especially lone parents, and even more so homeschooling parents who aren't even getting funding for the materials their kids need, let alone a pay-cheque for doing the job.

You can argue that homeschoolers brought it on themselves but often parents homeschool because traditional schools can't don't or won't meet their kid's needs. I homeschooled my eldest after she'd been effectively excluded from the main body of the school because that was the easier path for them to take than to address the severe bullying she faced daily. I homeschooled my youngest because she was held back a year for being "too smart" to need the stimulation of being in the correct class. I homeschooled because professional teachers failed my kids.

*and breathe*

The point I really want to make is that teachers are well paid, highly qualified individuals with transferable skills. If teaching is so damn stressful change careers! Try being exhausted and stressed in a minimum wage job (7.5 years as a part time cleaner, struggling to keep afloat - 6 months of that homeschooling, another 5.5 years of it putting myself through uni in the hopes of a better future...yeah, that didn't work). Better yet, try being exhausted and stressed in a NO INCOME role such as welfare-dependent single-parent or full-time carer for an elderly & disabled parent. 

This is how I have spent virtually my entire working life. I have virtually no experience, minimal skills, no savings, no pension fund...my degree is just a piece of paper. I don't have the freedom to pursue a better future. If I have a breakdown (as I have before) I don't get 6 months off; I've never even had anti-depressants. Why? The NHS has failed me for 28 years of mental health problems. One ex GP told me in no uncertain terms he didn't care about mental health, I asked for help so many times that the rejections mean I'll never ask again.

My kids already have these problems and my youngest is still at uni. My eldest just quit her retail job cos the stress is too much...fortunately she has qualifications and transferable skills. Curiously, she is thinking of taking up teaching. 

*breathe*

Some people are in especially stressful public service jobs which deserve a bit of extra TLC - emergency services, air traffic control, ER staff, the armed forces... - but teachers? Maybe you've been lucky and had amazing teachers who've nurtured you / your children and done amazing things. My experience, my children's experiences, somewhat different. Some, of course have been good. A few have been very good. Most however, poor. Several, bloody dreadful.

Examples of our own experience include but are not limited to:

• Calling a child a liar in front of the class...because the teacher doesn't believe the kid is going to a particular place on holiday. Or, memorably, because a teacher decided what my cousin's wife's name was!
• Humiliating a kid in front of class for being illegitimate.
• Calling a child a cheat for getting answers right.
• Calling a child stupid for getting answers wrong.
• Deciding a child is a troublemaker because of their height...and then thinking it was okay to tell the parent that!
• Setting a class insane amounts of homework to counter the fact that the teacher just didn't bother teaching the class - literally sitting at the front telling the class to read in silence for the entirety of the lesson.
• Teaching a GCSE class one part of the syllabus only so they all flunked the exams...
• Dropping a GCSE class mid year (and so 'entrusting' their chances to the whims of various supply teachers) because writing a novel is more important than their futures.
• Calling kids names and making up nicknames for one particular child.
• Punishing one kid for the wrongdoings of the entire class.
• Punishing a child for being bullied.

Yes, I am 40 and my kids are 20 (tomorrow) and 23 (next week) so obviously a few of those things happened a good while ago but believe it or not many of those teachers will still be teaching; teachers in their 20s or 30s when I was in my mid teens would now be in their 50s and 60s.

In my years of education I had THREE really good teachers. And I went to four schools. Three. That's not a good proportion at all. Our kids deserve better and we're well aware that our cookie-cutter results-only education system is failing a proportion of kids that is scandalous. This is why I refuse to put teachers, as a whole, on a pedestal. 

*tense pause for glaring*

Teachers do not save lives, they do not put their lives on the line. And the moment Ofsted 'threatens' to hold them accountable for teaching standards they strike! Yes, teaching is an important job but it's also, supposedly, a vocation. What it is not is a life sentence - you can just hand in your notice and go do something else if the mood so takes you.

With this in mind, why is the stress experienced by teachers somehow a special case? Teachers have it easier than ever before with classroom assistants (didn't have those in my younger days), high tech teaching aids, and (generally) far smaller class sizes - an average of 20.4: "...the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) found that the UK had some of the smallest average class sizes in the developed world" (Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-38506305) and the same BBC article - from nearly two years ago - cites a year 9 maths class of 46 students...but when my mum was in primary school in the late 40s, early 50s that could be the size of a single form, not just one lesson, yet somehow teachers complain more than ever about their inability to cope. WHY? In what way is the job really harder and / or more stressful than it was in the past?!

One of the biggest complaints of teachers seems to be that the poor lambs they're struggling with performance targets and reviews...like that's not a nasty feature of most 21st century jobs! For heaven's sake, I worked as a cleaner in a school and it was all regular reviews and performance appraisals! My last job came with a whole bunch of unrealistic sales targets - partly cos you can't make customers by crap they don't want and partly cos the town was being redeveloped and people were largely going elsewhere so as to have a less stressful shopping experience. Unrealistic pressures, unreachable targets are just a fact of life nowadays. Also gonna say that I was put in charge of a shop (against my will) with virtually no training and minimal experience. I still think it's a minor miracle no one died on my watch! Teachers are at least trained and prepped for the job they do...and they sought to do it and are (contrary to their own PR) actually pretty well remunerated for it. 

I have struggled with depression virtually all my life and it is damn hard to see people act all hard done by for the career choices they made and could potentially change without much likelihood of difficulty. This is not to negate the stress they're under but I feel giving teachers some kind of special status it diminishes the stress suffered by others; their stress is not more important than anyone else's. EVERYONE who suffers stress should be entitled to support and help. There needs to be a shift in how we treat all workers in this country.

Even the headline annoys me - oh, so you wanted to crash your car to get off work? What about the emergency services called out to your rescue and NHS staff who'd have to look after you? What about the tax payer who has to cover your sick days, especially if you faked your injuries? What about the sub who has to cover your classes? What about the scare that'd give your students and the disruption to their learning?

INSERT HERE: I was run over at age 7,

my kids were at a school where a teacher died in an RTA.

At risk of sounding like a snowflake this is a really triggering thing to even suggest doing

to a class full of kids who might easily have a past trauma of this nature.

And more to my personal viewpoint...what about those in jobs where you're not entitled to paid sick leave? People who've struggled through incredibly painful shifts cos they simply don't have the luxury to recuperate. What about those struggling through life unable to drive and / or unable to afford a car? The sheer PRIVILEGE involved in that statement makes me livid.

Okay, so it's a wild statement born of severe mental distress rather than an actual action but all the same...

It will never not bug me that people who have the education, pay grade and personal freedoms to change their circumstances don't, and those of us at the bottom of the heap with no way out just have to make do. No one wants to hear about the stress of being a single parent, a cleaner, a sales assistant. We don't have the same allure, obviously.