Scottish Roundup

If you’ve ever stopped by my little corner of the internet you will have noticed that I generally talk about my girls, books, and more than the odd cake baking episode. Being invited to edit this can make you feel like a very small fish in a rather large pond.

Little fish or no, the Scottish blogosphere is making me a better mummy. Really. Honest to goodness. Sometimes the connection is obvious, spending time with so many parents it can be easy to judge the parents and children around you. Softthistle talks this week about being on the other end of that judgement and perhaps we are ignorant of what’s really going on. A fact that Paul Johnston also picks up on and feels the current support for those with Autism needs reviewed. Parenting can be tough, even without the constant peer pressure but it’s no excuse to turn to the bottle as the Burd cogently argues.

If you’ve ever spent more than five minutes with an average 6 year old you will know that awkward questions and statements abound. “Mummy, can a girl love another girl like you love daddy?” Well, that is a tricky one but as Andrew discusses you can love whoever you like and that’s okay, even when you want to go on holiday. How about “Mummy, do you believe in Jesus?” A question, I learned, that has been asked since before the publication of Darwin’s “Origin of the Species” as Gordon discovered. And for the hat trick- “What happens when you are dead?”, Jings nothing like facing your mortality before breakfast and Ellen has been thinking similar thoughts about what people will remember of her when she’s gone.

Phew, school run over for another morning! Just time for a quick cuppa and catch up on the papers, the only question this time is my own- what to read? Can any of our press really claim to be clean of the “blagging” that’s brought on the resignation of Andy Coulson, not likely according to Love and Garbage. It’s not even safe for me to turn on the TV as both the Lallands Peat Worrier and my daughter noticed this week, as I harrumphed at our First Minister yet again, the SNP and women have a  complicated relationship.

I sometimes wonder what my children will remember as the event that made them realise that the world was bigger than just their lives, for me that event was Lockerbie, and I wonder if they will still be reading about it- as I am- almost a quarter of a century later as Robert Black QC discusses why the handling of the case continues to be despicable. There is one thing I know my daughters won’t have to think about- what was their dad doing when they were growing up. Luckily for them he’s almost exclusively a stay at home dad and now more new fathers will have the opportunity to give full time parenting a chance as Jeff at Better Nation asks Nick Clegg to stand up and take a bow for tackling a key change in parental rights.

Ah well, best collect them from school. It’s time for yet more of those insightful questions spurred on by a day of learning. “Mummy, we’re learning a poem by Rabbie Burns, he’s the best poet isn’t he?” Now, I know if I wanted a quiet life I’d murmur yes and move on to getting home but that’s not my style (can any blogger leave a blanket statement like that alone?). Well, there’s the new Makar, Liz Lochhead, for one and Scots Whay Hae picks out a couple of her best along with the Burd and Lallands Peat Worrier. However, we’re a lyrical nation- the Happy Poet penned a short verse in praise of Virginia Woolf this week along with Nettie Thomson who posted some stanzas in a Glaswegian dialect on that most common of poetical theme- the rubbish uplift. Rabbie’s good, but the best, we’ll see.

So you can see that the prose and poetry of Scotland has made this suburban mummy a little more knowledgeable and clever with her answers to the next generation of Scots but you also made me snort with laughter, even if I won’t be taking up the dietary advice of Better Oot than In. But after Caron’s post this week I won’t be able to look at Ed Miliband without singing to myself-

“Caron and Ed up a tree… K.I.S.S.I.N.G”

Maybe I should get out more.

Clair