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I have come to the realisation that I can't keep expecting a prince charming when I'm not fucking princess.

Oool

Judith Kerr

I just fancied doing a bit of a fun blog post, and share one of my favorite people.

This is Judith Kerr, and while you might not recognize her face, you might recognize the characters she is famous for creating. Mog the forgetful cat was recently bought back to life in this years Christmas advert for Sainsbury's. Mog was the basis for a series of childrens books which were part of my own childhood. She also wrote the Tiger Who Came to Tea, which was a favorite in my house as well as many others I'm sure. I could totally nerd over how much I used to love her books when I was little, and I will always appreciate that it was her words that my mum used to read to me to make me fall asleep, but she is so much more than that. 

Judith Kerr is the most amazing person, she was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1923, she spent, a great deal of her childhood, moving around, living in hotels with her only worldly possessions in the suitcase she carried while her family fled the Nazi's. She went to 11 different schools before her family eventually ended up in England where she still lives today. What I love about her is her outlook on everything, her endless positivity and wisdom. She would have loved to have a terrible childhood, because all great writers have had bad childhoods and that's how they write so well. But despite everything, she doesn't say she had a bad childhood, to her, her family was together, always, and that was all that mattered. 

Even now, she is an elderly lady and her husband passed away in 2006. She has spent her most recent years writing like crazy and says that it has been the saving of her, because she has had nothing else to do. 

She was the subject of a BBC documentary a couple of years ago which is when I fell in love with her. It was called "Hitler the Tiger and Me" and I knew it had something to do with the Tiger who Came to Tea and that is all that peaked my interest. Towards the end of the documentary, she is visiting GEIS 17 a train station where thousands of Jews were taken to board trains that would take them to concentration camps. Judiths family, were extremely lucky and were warned with enough time to escape to Switzerland before Hitler came into power, they reached Zurich the day the Nazi's went to their house in Berlin for their passports. She comments on how her happy life, she has been able to live, has all been down to that warning, and her father making the decision to leave when he did. She looks at the memorial sculptures and says "the way you feel now, we owe it to them, to make something of our lives". Something I found so profound. The idea that if you are lucky enough to have lived, where others haven't been so lucky, you owe it to them to do something with your life. I think of everything that is going on in the world right now, babies being washed up in beaches because their parents are fleeing war torn countries, people in Africa, just getting over the ebola crisis again, and just yesterday the terrorist attacks in Paris. These people have lost their lives because of situations that are out of their control, wars that they didn't create, diseases that they can't fight alone. 

I have non of their problems, I owe it to all of them to do something with my life, to not give up, to keep running, to keep speaking out, to not be afraid to fight, and to make the most of the opportunity that could just as easily be taken from me.

Mog the Forgetful Cat 

Mog is the star of her own book series which in recent years came to end when Mog dies of old age in a book called "Goodbye Mog". Some might disagree that mortality is something that should be in a children's book, I personally think that it's necessary and it makes me love Judith all the more for doing it in the way she has. Mog has however been given a new life in Sainsbury's Christmas Advert for 2015. And I love it!

This book made me want to have a pet tiger, and I always looked in the Supermarket for tins of Tiger food. Apparently Judith wrote this to be a metaphor for the Gestapo coming into her life without warning and messing everything up. Powerful stuff for a kids book!

I strongly recommend her as an author, obviously if you have young kids then brilliant, but she has also written some semi biographical novels which are a brilliant read, again so profound and hopeful in time where so many had no hope at all. 

Derogatory Comments in the Workplace. - SOME SEXISM AT ME!!

I recently started working for a new company, I have the same job as I had before but a new contractor has taken over the work and so a handful of staff were transferred over, to their new office. The company itself, while being new to this particular contract, has been in business for some years, with various fingers in various other pies and so is fairly well established.
On my first day. I was sent for a Health and Safety seminar, in Manchester. Out of the five staff members being taken, and who were there with me that day, I happened to be the only female. I'm used to this. At the previous company, I was one of only 3 women in a sector of around 50 people, and it had never been something that was ever bought to my attention, we were all just 'the staff'.
For the safety seminar, our new Health and Safety manager bought us all into the boardroom for our standard policy PowerPoint presentation about the rules. We all knew what to expect, like all safety meetings this would be a 40 minute speech telling us how to not be idiots, which we all already knew, but we understand the procedure. Our Health and Safety manager started his presentation, and had given us a run down of the company history and core beliefs and was just going into office safety and employee responsibility. It was at this point that it happened.......
HSM was telling us all about how it's "down to employees to take responsibility for safety" and how "your actions can effect others around you, so it's important to think about that". He went on to say "for example if you're in the office with your tools and you put your tools in on the floor...." at which point he looked directly at me, the only woman in the room, and said "........ Or you're shopping".
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And it didn't end there, oh no no no. This guy was determined. He then went on to discuss "proper footwear", you might have expected him to discuss the importance of steel toe caps if going on site, or closed toe shoes to protect feet should anything fall on them. Oh no, this guy took a good look at my trusty brown brogues and said, "nice to see you've got a decent pair of shoes on you there love, (LOVE?)most of the others (other what? Humans?) like to walk around in silly high heels all the time and they wonder why they fall over!". Oh HA HA HA HA HA! Yes! Us women, we are relentlessly stupid fucks aren't we, it's hilarious!

Not long after this, he was required to take our ID photographs, and of course, ladies first. I walked over to the blank piece of wall where the photo could be taken, stood up straight, trying, after the previous comments, to not make any fuss or draw more attention to myself. I hoped he would just take the photo so I could sit back down, but to this particular gentleman, the fact that I was a woman, just needed to be commented on as if it where some stupendous irregularity, as if I were famous or royal. I got the impression that he just couldn't get over it. Before raising the camera, he asked me if i were sure I didn't want to check my make up, because most women like to check their hair and things. 

The whole scenario really put me on edge. Particularly as it was the first day in the new company, it made me very worried that this would be an ongoing problem, thankfully, this wasn't the case. I don't think this is the first time this has happened to me, but this is certainly the most uncomfortable I've ever been made to feel about being a woman. I felt like this man, had to make me aware that I was the only one there who was female, as if it were some obscenely ridiculous thing to be. I can't tell you how I reacted, I think I must have just looked shocked, because that's how I felt. He kept repeating "oh I'm not trying to be stereotypical (meaning he wasn't stereotyping me)" so I obviously didn't react in a way that he was used to. It made me really disheartened to know that he has probably been like this with other women in this company and that they had probably just laughed it off, disregarded it banter when they should have given him the same unimpressed frown I gave him for being so discriminating. I felt like my colleagues were suddenly looking at me in a different way, like my gender had previously gone unnoticed because I was one of them, and now this person had told them the big secret so they all knew I was different, that I was excluded. I realized that this is the first time I'd ever been made to feel like a minority, and I suddenly felt a rush of sympathy for anyone has ever been the odd one out. 

In a day and age where everyone has gone crazy with political correctness, and equality in the workplace, I didn't expect to come across this type of old fashioned attitude. I can only think that this can only be allowed to happen if people accept it. Since this incident, I've seen this mad around the office a number of times and he avoids eye contact with me. Maybe he's like that with all women, lord knows, he certainly doesn't know how to react to them, but maybe it's because I am by far the youngest woman in the company, and possibly the first to show an utter contempt for his barefaced sexism. I would encourage others, not to laugh it off. Don't make out that it's okay, let these people know that it isn't! I don't want to come across as a bitch anymore than anyone does. I don't want people to think I can't take a joke, I can, if it IS a joke. But I would rather that these small minded, bid mouthed people who have outdated opinions think I have a rod up my arse than have them think I'm going to bend over spread my legs and take this bollocks! 

Yes I am a woman, yes I work is an industry that is highly populated my men, and yes I burp out loud and tell disgusting jokes and banter with my work colleagues, but that doesn't make me 'one of the lads'. I wear dresses and skirts and lipstick, just as often as I wear trousers and brogues, because I like clothes, and because weather changes. I work bloody hard at my job....... most of the time, and I am important, people need me to turn up every day, and it pisses me off that I am made to feel like my job isn't worth doing if it's something that's so unimportant they gave it to a woman to do. It's not cool and I don't accept, no one should. Rant over.