Chris has some thoughts about near-40ness which we all share… In related news (80s nostalgia plus Robbie Coltrane), it is well worth watching eight minutes of the first episode of Tutti Frutti. Fantastic film-making, acting and screenplay that you don’t often see (you would be right to note that there are few words).
On getting away: from watching other newish parents, it is both a marvellous and horrendous break to be fully away from the kids. The vague perspective of what life used to be like coupled with understandable worry about the children doesn’t make for an easy time. But definitely an important step to be able to have personal time; both for the parents’ relationship and to help the kids fit in to adult lives.
On naivety: I think we are in an interesting place vis-a-vis citizen-driven change. The Carter-Ruck / Trafigura affair has (hopefully) caused some light to be shed on super-injunctions. People can say sorry: I liked Stephen Fry admitting and apologising for a thoughtless comment, Obama saying that he needed some time to think before commenting on an issue (it was AIG as I remember, I can’t find a link), you can read sides of arguments you might not have found otherwise (a good Royal Mail example: I can’t understand why we don’t use automatic sorters, but I have some sympathy for workers hit by what appear to be manipulated targets).
It would be interesting to see how many Twitter-storms this year (for example) were for issues that would still seem valid days or weeks later.
I am looking forward to the next elections. Without doubt there will be a way of checking whether your incumbent MP fiddled their expenses or not and how they reacted to the Telegaph and to Legg. I’ll use that as factor in my decision-making, as will many others, I guess.
Reminds me of a semi-drunken argument I had many years ago: I have a suspicion that democracy is not a very good system (of allocating resources?), it’s just the best one we have been able to come up with as yet. Humans never fail to astound, so I’m sure there are new ones bubbling under all over the place.
40 is a bit cataclysmic one way and another, I found, but everyone’s mileage varies. To some it’s managing a car wreck, to others, it’s changing routes without creating too much havoc, and to others it’s improving existing matters past all recognition. All challenging.
Thanks for the Robbie Coltrane link. For all sorts of reasons.
Once a parent, always a parent, for a high proportion of the population, anyway. We still check to make sure ours is breathing 🙂 although he’s well past the SIDS age. Apparently, one rarely gets over wondering where they are and if they’re OK.