#atinylife shoes – a guest post by Joanne Baird, Portobello Book Blog

There’s been a lot of debate about girls’ shoes lately.

The stereotypical names – “Dance Honey”, “Dolly Babe”

Their impractical flimsy nature which doesn’t allow for splashing, running, playing

Unlike the corresponding boys’ styles – “Long Jump”, “Harlem Racer”

Does it get better with ladies’ shoes?

I don’t want fashionable.

I want shoes I can wear for more than one season.

I don’t do heels. Ever. I want practical not painful.

I don’t want to pay £70 or more for something that falls apart after one summer.

I want shoes that don’t look like my granny’s, without costing a fortune.

Too much to ask? It seems so.

Men have it easy. Everything is strong, practical, functional.

There’s too much choice, yet not enough.

I don’t fit the stereotype – and I hate shoe shopping!

While we’re on the subject, I don’t do handbags either…..

 

#atinylife140 CoffeeShops

On the radio, the man says

‘You’ve just had a baby,

so you’ll be in loads of coffee shops

right?’

 

‘I’m back at work like you!’ she says.

True.

She’s owning him, on the radio.

He thinks

motherhood is easy,

and coffee shops are full of easy woman and their babies.

 

Then

the man says

‘You told me

you’d had an NCT coffee

earlier.’

 

The audience laugh.

 

You could’ve let her be right.

How hard it is:

having a baby, being freelance.

Women wanting to work,

men ripped from their babies,

two weeks later.

Everyone’s guilt.

 

None of it is any good.

 

You know –

it’s no fun in a coffee shop

with a tiny baby.

Getting half a conversation. At best.

But we’re sitting about,

having lovely coffees all day.

 

You could’ve left it.

We get enough of all that.

 

 

#atinylife Tuna

The tuna steaks were a bit over done.

I don’t eat tuna anyway, but I was on a fast day, so hadn’t even been responsible. It’s not like Mr HB. Slap dash is how we refer to my cooking, not his.

But as I scrubbed out the tuna pan, I remembered. He’d come to help me bring in the laundry. The smell of tuna had filled the house once we returned. It was why I put the clean clothes into the hall, not the kitchen.

I’m keeping this memory as proof. It’s not that I am not good at cooking, or couldn’t be, if I wasn’t doing 100 other things at the same time. If the actual labour doesn’t distract me, the emotional labour does.

This isn’t a ‘women’s’ thing. If you are distracted, then the tuna will be over done.

 

#atinylife Hoovering

‘Can you do the hoovering?’

I’ve been ill for a week, (I know, I’ll stop going on about it soon, I promise). Once I could look around me again, I saw the familiar piles of earth from school shoe grips, little pieces of paper from the last craft project, and the wispy dust that seems to come up from the floor itself.

‘Can you do the hoovering?’

On the second day, I was well enough to hoover myself. But it was the principle of the thing. Why should I hoover now? Why hadn’t he hoovered while I was in bed? Why is the hoovering ‘my’ job?

‘Can you do the hoovering?’

The third day, I asked this of myself. He can’t do the hoovering. But he’s always working – against the box he was put in as a boy. It’s enough.