Marketing gone mad

Given that I'm a PR luvvy dahling (well ex now), I understand that the entire year is simply a series of marketing opportunities. What - you weren't aware of that? You thought life was actually about living? Bless. Let me educate you.

Christmas, New Year, Valentines Day, Mother's Day, April Fool's Day, Easter, Father's Day, Grandparents Day, Bank holiday Weekends, summer holidays, Back to School, Halloween, Bonfire Night - and those are just the biggies. Don't forget National Talk Like a Pirate Day, National Egg/baking/curry/meat/lentils/insert anything Week, World Book Day, Safety Awareness Week, International Make Up a Day Day. You get the point.

Marketers don't think like normal people. They live permanently a few months ahead of everyone else. While you might be washing the sand out of your sandals after that fab summer holiday thinking how lovely it was to spend time with your family, marketers are putting the finishing touches on their Christmas campaigns and are well into planning their New Year New You items and probably have Easter in the bag too.

I do understand that they can't exactly wake up on 1 December and suddenly think: 'Oh, there are just 24 shopping days till Christmas, perhaps we should have a chat about what products to make and then figure out how to package them and get them made and shipped to shops all before Christmas'. They have to work in advance.

But there is advance. And there's ADVANCE.

I took this picture in our local supermarket during the first week of September.

Are there actually people who buy their Christmas chocolates in the first week of September? Are these the same organised people who buy their 'back to school stuff' in June leaving the dregs for the rest of us who think their children will probably grow at least 10 inches over the summer? And let's not forget Easter eggs and hot cross buns being available right after Christmas. Because Lord knows we need another religious holiday to start stockpiling for months in advance, just in case the end of the world comes and we haven't got any Cadbury's cream eggs.

But it goes beyond how ridiculously far in advance they promote these 'marketing moments'. It's the extent to which marketers jump onto an idea (no matter how irrelevant it is to their business) and KTAOOI (that is an acronym I made up because I like the onomatopoeiac sound it makes - go on, say it out loud - it stands for Kick The Arse Out Of It).

There are many examples of this (all of which I'm now making up so that I don't get sued).

Things like: 'Sick of the nagging? With Christmas approaching, now's the time to get your divorce sorted out. Use Quickie Divorce and make every night a silent night.'

Or

'It's Back to School at your local car dealership. Read our great prices, do the maths and get an A+ car deal.'

Or

'It's pancake day. The perfect time to buy not just a frying pan, but an entire new kitchen. We'll throw in the free eggs.'

But today while I was out at the supermarket (again) I spotted what has to be my personal favourite completely irrelevant marketing link. Take a look:

Yes folks - that's Halloween-themed loo roll.

So, let me know what you think Andrex's thinking behind this innovation was:

a) Halloween party hosts pay attention to the finest details

b) It's a themed bog roll for 'wrap the mummy' games at halloween parties

c) It's part of a new campaign to celebrate special days. Because your bottom shouldn't be left out of the festivities. Wait for the Father Christmas and Easter bunny range to be pampering your bum soon.

d) For those phantom poos that you know you've done but cannot see in the toilet bowl

e) Halloween is so scary that you'll shit yourself

Go on, give me your pay off line. I might even buy the winning entry a pack of Halloween themed toilet paper.

PS - in case you're wondering, this is absolutely not a sponsored post.

Occupation: House person

I wish I had some news to report about what my Next Big Thing is going to be.

I don't.

However, last night I got to experience the full force of my newly unemployed status. I was on the phone to the bank trying to set up a joint bank account with my husband (so that I can steal his money when I run out of my own). The lady on the phone was going through my personal details.

Bank Lady: "Occupation? It says here that you're self employed. Is that correct?"

Me: Mulls this over.... "Actually, technically I'm not. I did have a business and I sold it. And now I'm trying to figure out what to do next. I might get a job. Or I might start another business. Which would then make me self employed again. But I'm not too sure what that's going to be yet. It's really hard trying to figure it out you know. So no, I'm not really self employed any more. But I might get employed by someone else but I don't know in which career that is going to be yet. Which makes me sound a bit pathetic doesn't it? Gosh, I'm not really too sure how to answer that question."

Long suffering Bank Lady: "Shall we say 'House Person'?"

Me: "A what?"

Bank Lady: "A House Person. You know, someone who stays at home."

Me: "Er... yes, I guess that's exactly what I am."

How crushing. A House Person. Not even a House Wife or Mother. It would be politically incorrect to make either of those assumptions but they at least indicate that you might be helping to make the lives of some other people easier. Just a House Person. I guess that is better than being a Homeless Person. And I do like Houses. My pre-occupation with Right Move is testimony to that.

But House Person doesn't sound terrifically glamorous does it?

Luckily, as I've recently discovered in a marvellous book called Watching the English by Kate Fox, it is rude to ask what someone does for a living (unless you're a bank lady setting up a bank account). In a section titled The Guessing-Game Rule, Kate says: "It is not considered entirely polite, for example, to ask someone directly 'What do you do?'.....The guessing game, which is played at almost every middle-class social gathering where people are meeting each other for the first time, involves attempting to guess a person's occupation from 'clues' in remarks made about other matters." 

So in a dinner party situation where a high achieving individual is trying to winkle out what I do, I could quite legitimately say, "I'm a House Person". And according to Kate, "when two or three possible occupations are indicated, it is polite to name the highest-status one as a first guess". So their response would have to be something like: "A House Person. Fascinating - do you invest in property then? No. You're a property search consultant or an interior designer perhaps? Please don't tell me you're an estate agent?" (Kate has an entire chapter on why the English hate estate agents).

And I can just laugh and say, "Of course I'm not an estate agent!" and whisk off leaving them none the wiser that I actually spend my days loafing about trying to figure out what I want to be when I'm big.

Be somebody

My husband has been away for what feels like an eternity. But one good thing that comes of his trips abroad is that I get to watch a LOT of trash TV, stuff that wouldn't ordinarily be allowed to flicker across our screens.

While watching the X-Factor and Pushy Mums, I kept hearing the same sentence expressed over and over again:

'I want to be somebody'


This line was usually followed with words like:
"I can't go back to my old life of being a nobody."
 "Why would anybody want to be a nobody?"
"I want to be special"
"I want to be a somebody like Katie Price" (this last one is particularly worrying!)

I take no issue with people having ambition. But there are two things that sadden and worry me about the sentiment behind these words.

1. Firstly, these people view being famous as 'being somebody'. They don't want to be 'somebody' who can invent a cure for cancer or enable world peace or even simply be a really good singer for singing sake. 'Somebody' means having people recognising you in the street and screaming your name. They want the wealth, luxury, status and ego that goes with being 'somebody'.

Steve Jobs - he was a somebody. He invented products that have changed the way we as a society communicate, work and play. Now that's being somebody. Yet you don't get kids queuing up to be Britain's Best Inventor, bursting into floods of tears when their science experiments get the chop at boot camp (maybe ITV has this reality show in the pipeline - if not, perhaps I'll suggest it).

But would kids today think Steve Jobs was somebody? I asked my boys if they knew who Steve Jobs was. They didn't. I asked if they knew who the company was that made daddy's ipad. They said Apple. So they knew something. Intrigued about how much more they knew, I asked if they knew who the founder of Microsoft was. They asked: 'What's Microsoft?' A sign of the app-based times perhaps?

Isn't it a shame that children can name famous footballers and pop stars and actors but have barely heard of the great innovators in the world? I suppose they'd be ridiculed as geeks if they had posters of Bill Gates and Michael Dell and Steve Jobs and Richard Branson and James Dyson stuck on their walls. But imagine how different the world would be if kids believed that innovating and using your brain was cool instead of being able to warble a tune or kick a ball?

2. Secondly, what really, really saddened me is how so many of the people on these shows believe that without fame, they are nothing. A nobody.

Don't they realise that they are someone's child, someone's mum or dad, someone's brother/sister/teacher/work colleague/congregation member/member of society? Don't they realise that every single person has the potential to be something great and that greatness can be incredibly quiet and unassuming?

I know that secretly I would love to be able to achieve something extraordinary - no matter what that is - so that on my deathbed I could look back and feel proud that I made the most of my life. But it's highly likely that I won't invent the next big thing or become a world famous singer. I'll live an ordinary, unremarkable life. One that the people on those TV shows would describe as 'a nobody'.

But I know the truth. I am a somebody. To the people who matter the most. And that's what counts.

Love

Breathe in. Breathe out. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. 

Breathe in. Breathe out. 

I watch you sleep.

A quiet tongue-clicking noise. A flutter of lashes. A turn of head just a fraction to the left so that the light picks up the perfect lattice work of your skin. Hair tousled and slightly damp with sweat. Smooth, unlined forehead, not yet worried by life. Almond shaped eyes decorated with a curtain of curled lashes. A nose that dips away before gently sloping upwards to make a perfect button. Full lips slightly puckered, dehydrated from the air passing in and out. Smooth cheeks dotted with a collection of small freckles, nonchalantly scattered with perfect precision.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Your throat swallows, an angel sigh. My eyes follow the line down your long neck, spreading out to a soft expanse of virgin skin on your chest. Soft as butter on top, hard as wood beneath. Sinew and lean potential-packed muscle lie at rest while your chest subtly rises and falls. Rises and falls. Your arms are splayed, fingers curled into fists as though you're fighting an unseen foe.

I lightly touch your forehead with a finger tip. Sticky, soft and warm. I lean over and breathe in the smell of you. Sleep. Soap. Little boy. I kiss the tip of your nose. It wrinkles. I long to kiss you again but don't want to wake you. 

So I just watch instead. 

Breathe in. 

Breathe out.

What do SAHMs do all day?

SAHM (or Stay At Home Mums as they're known in the parenting biz) are often ever-so-slightly sneered at by WAHMs or WMs (that's Work At Home Mums or Working Mums - do keep up). 'Gosh, what do you do all day? I'd get so bored. I simply have to work.'

But by the same token SAHMs are very often quick to paint WMs as disinterested mums who put themselves before their children. I'm paraphrasing here. Just read the Daily Mail or go to Mumsnet to see the arguments in action.

Until very recently I've been a WAHM, in my opinion, the best of both worlds. You work AND are there for your kids and you can whip up a casserole while taking a tea break. Which means you get to wear The Halo of Smugness.

Now that I've replaced the W with an S in my acronym, I am realising what SAHMs do all day. Take today for example:

I got up, had coffee, put on some laundry, made the kids pancakes and apple sauce, got their school clothes ironed, bags packed and walked them up to school. All of which I could have done as a WAHM, only I'd have been checking emails in between.

Then I joined two other members of the PTA for a two mile walk to plot out a family fun day. After that, I came home, hung up washing and then headed up to the school to join them for community lunch.  I've since come back and had a long chat on the phone to my husband who is abroad, arsed around on Facebook for a while, am writing this blog post and am then off to town to pick up dry cleaning and get some BBQ food to celebrate our very, very late summer.

Then it will be time to pick the kids up, do a bit of homework, feed them, get them off to Beavers, back home and into bed. I'll spend my evening doing the ironing pile (which still holds no appeal, regardless of having less work to do) and watching some rubbish on TV.

So there you have it - an average day in the life of a SAHM. I'm sure there are SAHMs who also clean the house vigorously (I don't) and who exercise (I do) and who meet up with friends for coffee (something I've done a couple of times). They might even do charity work. But trust me, the day goes by in the blink of an eye and you're left wondering how on earth you ever managed to fit work in.

And don't get me wrong, it is pleasant. You can enjoy the sunshine (like today) and not wake up with a feeling of dread, thinking: Urg, I've got to do that presentation today. You have the freedom (certainly if you have school aged kids) to do pretty much whatever you like during the day - browse galleries, go shopping, spend hours in the downward dog pose at yoga.

But something is missing in all of this for me. It's a purpose. It's a point. It's knowing that I have to get up and get on with things because lurking at the back of my mind is that fear that I might end up being one of those mums taking their kids to school still wearing their dressing gown before coming back to watch Jeremy Kyle.

When I used to work full time in an office, I always used to wonder what happened out in the world while I was chained to my desk. I felt as though I was missing out on life. Now I have 'life' in spades, but it's emptier that I expected. Literally. No-one is around because they're all at work. I can feel this energetic buzz just brimming over the horizon where people are working and creating things and fixing things and doing things. And I'm not.

There are sacrifices that come with working. There are sacrifices that come with staying at home. The challenge is trying to figure out which sacrifice you're prepared to make. Tricky. Very tricky.

Highly sensitive children - my lightbulb parenting moment

We're at a pub with friends for a Sunday lunch. Their baby is snoozing peacefully in his buggy. We're taking turns walking up and down, pat shushing, trying to settle our screaming baby. Again.

Toddler group. All the children are sitting on the floor singing the wheels on the bus, merrily making the actions. My son is sitting on my lap sobbing, trying to cover his ears.

We head off to a pre-school mini football class. The other children all shriek and run around after the balls having a whale of time. My son won't come out from behind my chair and when I finally manage to coax him out and get him to kick a ball to me, he cries if I take a step from his side.

It's his fourth birthday. We've hired a magician and he's got to dress up like a pirate. He doesn't want to be the magician's helper. He reluctantly joins in the party games. He cries when everyone sings happy birthday to him.

He's getting dressed for school. Or rather, he isn't. He's making a fuss and not putting his shirt on. Eventually I ask him why he won't put his shirt on. Apparently the badge on the shirt is scratchy. I get him a shirt without a badge on it. He puts it on happily.

It's the dreaded time of day - school drop off. I take him into the playground. He clings to me, like every other day for the last year. He cries. He says he feels sick. A teacher has to peel him off me. He screams and tries to escape. I have to just walk away and it breaks my heart. They assure me at pick up that he was fine once I left.

'Your son doesn't say much in class, but when he does, it is stunningly well thought out as though he has thought very deeply about the answer and is almost adult in his approach,' to quote his reception year teacher.

Monday afternoons, our worst day of the week. Swimming lessons. He shouts and yells that he isn't going. 'I hate it,' he screams. I get him in the pool, refusing to negotiate on this point. The swimming instructor tells off the little girl next to my son for not listening. My son bursts into tears, his lip wobbling for the rest of his lesson while his goggles fill with tears.

This is my son. I have written about him before:
What to do when you don't like your child
When we send him off to camp
School Battles

For seven years I have been at a loss to know what to do with him. Nothing seemed to work. I'd always known he was sensitive, but as he got older, it seemed to me that many really undesirable qualities were coming to the fore: selfishness, laziness, aggression, drama queen tendencies.

But last week I was in a book shop and saw a book called The Highly Sensitive Person. It just seemed to leap off the shelf at me. I didn't buy it but went home and googled Highly Sensitive Children. And hey presto, up popped a web site with a quiz in which you answered questions about whether you have a highly sensitive child. So I did it. And no surprises, but he ticked just about every box. I ordered the book - Highly Sensitive Children by Elaine Aron - immediately and have spent the last few days reading it cover to cover.

It made me weep. Genuine sobbing and an immense feeling of guilt. How could I not have seen this in my child? How is it that I'd never heard of this as an issue? How could I have made so many mistakes with him? I wished with all my heart that I could take back the years and do them over again.

In case you, like me, were not aware of Highly Sensitive Children (HSCs), they make up 15 to 20% of the population, too big a proportion for this to be so unknown. It's NOT a disorder. It is NOT aspergers or autism.  In short, a highly sensitive person absorbs more and processes everything more thoroughly. To quote the book:

"HSCs are born with a nervous system that causes them to prefer to observe all the subtleties in a situation and to process all of this information deeply before acting. As a result, HSCs tend to be highly reflective, intuitive and creative (having a strong sense of how things came to be how they are and what could happen next); conscientious and concerned about fairness and what others are feeling; and aware of subtle changes, details or 'what's missing in this picture'. The trait also causes them to be more easily overwhelmed and hurt, both physically and emotionally; slower to warm up or join in; and sometimes quiet and unwilling to speak (in groups).


They are more easily overwhelmed by 'high volume' or large quantities of input arriving at once. They try to avoid this and thus seem shy or timid or party poopers. When they cannot avoid overstimulation, they seem easily upset or 'too sensitive'."


So my crying baby didn't have colic. There was just too much stimulation for him out and about.

My clingy toddler and pre-schooler wasn't being shy or wimpy, he couldn't take in all the noise and activity going on around him. He was hanging back to observe, process it and then venture forth (normally at about the time he had to leave which then caused him frustration and brought on massive tantrums).

My little boy wasn't being a party pooper when he cried at his party - he just couldn't take all of it in and couldn't stand the attention of everyone looking at him.

He doesn't hate swimming. He just hates the shock of the cold water, the splashing from multiple children, the gruffness of the instructor's tone.

Imagine it. Imagine that everytime you hear something, it sounds louder and you spend more time interpreting what that loud sound is. And imagine if every time you put on a scratchy jumper, it didn't just niggle you but really felt unbearable against your skin. And imagine if you didn't want to put that jumper on but your parents got annoyed with you for making another fuss and insisted on it. And imagine being forced to not wait and observe a brand new school with brand new people and lots of new rules and information, but being forced to go in because the bell is going and that's just what you have to do. Hell on earth.

Since reading this book I have looked at my son in an entirely different light. I can feel so much more empathy towards him now. I no longer feel that he is 'acting out' just because he's trying to wind me up. He is just a little boy trying to make sense of a very loud, overwhelming world that his nervous system battles to cope with.

In the last few days I have changed the way I am with him. I don't shout. I don't even raise my voice. I have lowered my expectations as to what to expect of him. I've helped him more. I've been infinitely more patient. I've explained why things have to happen simply and clearly. I've let go of the sense that he's trying to do things to get at me. I feel greater pride in the things he does do - like reading a poem in church for harvest festival. And the change has been phenomenal.

He is a completely different child. A happy child. Someone who is finally comfortable and able to deal with things because it's getting presented to him in the right way. Because he is super sensitive, he can feel the difference emanating from me. There's less frustration and disappointment and anger coming from his primary care giver. He is picking up on that positivity and literally blossoming in front of my eyes.

I know it's early days and it's going to require a great deal of patience to maintain the level of calm, fair parenting that a child like this needs. And it is going to be particularly hard trying to prepare him for a world that is quite simply not designed with sensitive people in mind - particularly for little boys who are viewed as cry babies or sissys instead of the macho role required by today's society. But I now know how I can help him and can see the utterly beautiful gifts his level of sensitivity brings.

I only wish I had known about this before. I hate myself for misinterpreting and misunderstanding him all these years, for not having the patience needed, for caring too much about what the rest of the world thought instead of doing what was right for him.

I promise to make it up to him by doing my very, very best to help him thrive in this busy, crazy world.

If you are the parent of a highly sensitive child, please share your stories with me.

Civic duty

Ah yes. We have reached that age. And it's all going to go downhill from here.

Let me back up and explain.

As a younger person with a sky-rocketing executive job, there isn't much time to think about the larger community. After all, there are rungs of career ladders to climb, business travel to enjoy and post work drinks to consume.

Then you have children and you start to get sucked into things that you didn't even know existed. Like toddler groups. Who need people to run them. Your role of sleep-deprived attendee making banal conversation about the colour of poo starts to take on a more substantial mantle as you get suckered into becoming assistant toy packer-away person, then co-chair and then chair. 

When you finally manage to sucker someone else into taking on the job, your children head off to pre-school and kazam! You innocently think joining the committee might be a good way to meet the other mums and before you know it, you're running the pre-school lucky dip stall at the village fete and helping arrange 70s style discos. It's all good fun though and after all, it will help buy some new mats for the little cherubs to sit on.

Before you know it, your little darling has entered the realms of big school. All new parents are of course invited to attend the PTA meetings, and being a stupid concerned individual, you once again fall for the honey trap of thinking it's a friendly thing to do. You even convince yourself that they may serve wine at PTA meetings. (They don't).

In the blink of an eye you go from being a bog standard PTA member to co-fund-raising organiser person, rustling up bingo prizes and stringing up bunting at barn dances. 

At this point, most of this 'social involvement' seems to land squarely on the women's shoulders. Men, somehow manage to keep their heads well below the line of fire. 

Until their wives, fed up of the inequality of it all, force suggest they might want to get involved. And so they do. They join the local cricket club and spend every Sunday playing cricket. All. Day. Sure he offers to coach the kids occasionally but mainly it's all about him and the fun he's having playing cricket for the first time since his uni days.

That's how it was in our house, until the cricket club asked me if I'd like to be treasurer. Oh how I laughed and chortled and frankly lay on the floor clutching my sides trying to picture it (accounts and I don't really see eye to eye). Not to mention that it was slightly unfair that my husband was going to get to play while I get to do the work. So I said no. Well done me. And my husband, deeply embarrassed by his cackling wife swiftly volunteered himself for the job.

But it doesn't end there. No sirree bob. Word got out that a new Parish counsellor was needed for our village. Husband, enjoying his new social responsibility cloak, put himself forward. 

I'm now proud to say that not only is he treasurer of the cricket club and a parish counsellor, but he's also  (and you have to say this in a nasal jobsworth type voice) 'the secretary of the allotment sub-committee'. Oh how the evenings fly by.

But wait, that's not all. A 'friend' has just volunteered my services to do some marketing for the school, while another has become chief fund-raiser for the village hall and has every intention of roping me in. 

Just when I thought we could comfortably sit back and polish our civic duty halos, I get a call. Someone has suggested that I might make the perfect village rep for a new initiative to fight Grundon from putting up a huge incinerator in our local area, an area of outstanding natural beauty (you can read about it here if you like - might as well start doing my new job now). So I shall now be leafleting the village and attending meetings to find out how we might thwart this plan going ahead. I feel I might wear a special super hero cape for these meetings. With a mask. And possibly carry a sword made of foam.

And that is how we find ourselves. I am going to make us some business cards. His will read:

Cricket Club Treasurer

Parish Counsellor

Allotment Sub-committee secretary

Sucker

Mine will read:

PTA Fund-raising second in command

Village Hall fund-raising second assistant

Village representative for the fight against giant smelly incinerator.

Fool

We have made the mistake of putting ourselves forward. We shall now spend the remainder of our lives trying to undo this error but no doubt becoming ensnared in the heady world of WI bake off judging, giant marrow contest measuring and church bazaar organisers. Just you wait and see if we don't.