I've been watching Russell Brand's orations on the hypocrisies of modern politics and media, and while he doesn't hold any answers to the complex problems, at least he elucidates where we go wrong. He takes risks, he splits the critics, and he speaks for millions, including me (although I would always vote, even if it means voting for the least bad option).
Anyway, I keep wishing someone would speak out for the daily paradoxes of domestic family life. There are many mores of motherhood that I rail against inwardly, before I compromise or conform. And each time, I conform, I tell myself I shall start a counter revolution. How? Umm.
Who's going to risk accusations of kill-joy Scrooge-ery and oppose the Plastic-ification of Christmas?
Can I really be the only one who feels depressed by the mountain of plastic toys brought into kids' homes by 'Santa'? This morning I finally threw out a bulging bag full of mottled plastic bath toys that had been hanging on a hook in our bathroom for a year. This was over and above the toys that still linger daily in the bath.
All these trinkets are unrecyclable (our council only take plastic bottles). A family with no toys could have played with them, but I can hardly send a padded envelope of grubby ex-bath toys to a mythical mud hut somewhere, where kids play with sticks and yams, and may indeed gain more from that.
So, I want to resist buying more planet-harming plastic, yet I don't want our kids to feel bereft. It's like trying to live in LA when you don't want to dye your hair, let alone get your face lifted. Are we mad, people?
And, now, the revolution is grinding to a halt, as I have to go and make the kids' dinner. See? That's how it works round here.
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