Morning:
8°c
This week, we have been mostly watching Annie. On a loop. Every night. My three-year-old is obsessed with it, to the point that I can now sing a word-perfect rendition of It's A Hard-Knock Life, should Jay-Z ever wish to reprise his 1998 hit single with a duet.
Nothing can prepare you for a child's capacity for repetitious behaviour: it starts in the cradle and continues to the grave. Because we're all at it, aren't we? While she is busy watching Annie, my husband is busy checking emails and I'm busy Googling mattresses, duvet covers and hypoallergenic pillows like a loon.
A typical week-night in our house: put daughter to bed, eat dinner, move upstairs to watch TV, flick through channels, proclaim TV “rubbish”, then settle down on our respective sofas with our laptops. There's always something to do: an email to reply to, a Facebook page to update, a ticket to book, a household object to buy. And when there isn't, I swear I invent one.
Do I live in the present? Rarely. Maybe when I'm writing, but even then I break off frequently to check emails and ebay and mumsnet and bbc.co.uk in a futile attempt to calibrate the myriad random thoughts that pop into my mind.
How many tabs were open on your computer today? Four? Five? Why? Did you only look out of the window because your eyes were so dry and your head so fuzzy that you couldn't scroll any more? Life has shrunk to the pale blue oblong of a computer screen.
A recent survey claims that more than a quarter of secondary school pupils are spending over six hours a day on the computer. Surely this is hardly surprising, when computers are now used routinely in the classroom and for homework. Compared with the 10-plus hours I spend on mine, it seems fairly moderate. Obviously, children will follow where adults lead.
So news that a London clinic is to start treating children as young as 12 for addictions to technology only prompts the thought “What took you so long?” I wonder whether the parents seeking treatment for these children are the same ones who plonked a TV in their rooms so they can watch their own DVDs without bothering mum and dad. To your average parent, addiction to TV seems more benign than addiction to computer games or the internet, because we are more complicit in it.
I bet the concerned parents freaking out over their children's gaming/internet usage are those who don't partake very much in either. Those who do probably wouldn't even notice.
None of us is aware of how bizarre, relentless and all-encompassing our computer usage has become. Tonight, I shall watch Annie with fresh eyes, a closed laptop and the bittersweet know-ledge that soon, my daughter will be singing the words to songs I don't know, with friends I'll never meet, who inhabit an online netherworld, just as we do.
Finally, the truth about diets
At last, an actress prepared to shatter the myth that her thinness is down to good genes/ fast metabolism/running around after the kids. Speaking in Esquire about how she maintains her size six frame, Amanda Seyfried confesses of her raw food diet: “It's intense. And sort of awful. Yesterday for lunch? Spinach. Just spinach, and some seeds.”
Compare this with Nadine Coyle, the Girls Aloud member who was recently photographed looking as though her legs had snapped from the effort of walking down some stairs, but who claims she “eats normally” and has “put weight on”. Nobody who eats normally is that thin, and Nadine's poor young fans would be far better served if they knew just how much suffering lay behind her eviscerated body. The price of fame might be high, but the price of thinness is far higher, and more worryingly maintained.
Caught in the circle of hell
I realise I'm not as sylph-like as I used to be, but even Nadine Coyle would have trouble slotting herself into a Circle line carriage at rush hour.
News that the intervals between trains have increased since the Circle became a lasso comes as no surprise to anyone who has the misfortune of travelling on it. Going one stop is still enough to tip you over the edge if you are eight months pregnant/disabled/don't have retractable legs and arms. If your place of employment happens to be on the Circle line, you're screwed.
London is one of the richest cities in the world, yet its inhabitants travel in conditions that wouldn't dignify cattle. Clearly, those with the power to change things don't use public transport. They should try it some day — preferably between 7 and 9am.
I can't afford days like this
I've just bought a pack of Easter cards. I went into Paperchase to buy some wrapping paper, but was guilt-tripped into the Easter cards by the vast and lavish selection of pink bunnies, fluffy chicks, papier-mâché eggs and other ephemera that seemed to take up the whole ground floor.
When did Easter become such a big deal? Mother's Day has only just been and gone (more cards, flowers, chocolates), but at least that feels more personal. Jesus would weep to see the marketing opportunities being bandied in his name.
Then, browsing through the Ocado brochure last night, I was devastated to see that I had gone and missed British Pie Week (1-7 March), and the opportunity to purchase an overpriced heart attack in a box. St Patrick's Day passed without any expenditure (can't drink, not Irish) but World Book Day did guilt-trip me into Waterstone's (Room on the Broom, £7.99).
Next up? Veggie Month, Earth Day and my favourite, National Bed Month. At least that sounds pretty cheap.
Reader views (1)
Quite right, Laura,
The genie has been let out of the bottle, the Internet is here to stay, BUT, yes, it is down to the parents to not allow excessive (or any) use of computers and the insidious mobile technodrug their children all seem to be glued to nowadays.
Mothers, just say NO, even if you’re addicted yourselves, and, as all "texters", are in denial.
Whoever sold the mantra "It’s good to talk" KNEW what they were creating, advertising types aren’t as daft as we might like to think.
They, like any addictive drug supplier should be brought to account, and parents should seriously consider this;
It MAY be good to talk, but to actual real people face to face about things worthy of speech, and not endlessly waffling textually to strangers whilst hunched over a screen unsupervised in a darkened room.
Time for a change.
- Darius, London, 18/03/2010 13:01
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