No time to spare

Another government initiative announced by Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith says that health visitors will be given training in how to “recognise and respond” to signs of relationship difficulties between new parents.

Has anyone actually thought this through?

Health visitors already have enough on their plates. They haven’t got time to be agony aunts as well, especially in a 20-minute visit with a screaming baby in the background.

Health visitors are an amazing lifeline to new mothers – the voice of sanity and common sense when your world’s just been thrown into chaos by a small squawking person.

I still remember mine with pathetic gratitude. Just by turning up she made things better.

But there’s a national shortage of midwives and health visitors, despite an increase in recent years and plans for another 4,200 by next year. There just aren’t enough to go round.

In an ideal world, health visitors could be a good first person to help new parents and their rocky relationships.

But not until there are far many more health visitors with time enough to do their own job as well as they – and mothers – would like.

Once that problem’s solved, only then can we ask them to mend society too.

Round the bend

WHEN the A1 closed on Saturday it caused absolute chaos in our village and many others, as cars whizzed through at 60mph or more, ignoring the 20mph limit and the Give Way signs.

The signage for the diversion was incredibly confusing – for the A1 south, motorists were sent north, where they found signs sending them south, where they found signs sending them north… I had visions of drivers spending all day going round and round in circles.

No wonder that when they finally broke out from that circle of Hell and through Middleton Tyas they were in a bit of a hurry.

Tolerant society?

So we think we live in a society where anything goes, nobody’s shocked and not much is out of bounds. Yes?

Yet some mother in Richmond was so desperate to hide what had happened, that she still put her baby in a wheelie bin.

Permissive, tolerant society? Not for that mother and baby.

Nativity play

If anything is ever going to get you to the heart of the meaning of Christmas it’s watching your child’s infant class piping their tiny way through the nativity play. Such hope and innocence – even if Mary’s showing her knickers and the Angel Gabriel’s picking his nose. Brilliant.

But now more schools are dropping the nativity play in favour of plays and pantos instead. Shame. You might not know the ending but they’ll never get that same sense of connection with an age-old story and something far bigger than themselves and yes, what Christmas is meant to be about.

Apart from a Roman soldier once – in a red skirt from Richmond market – and smallest king – in Granny’s best silk dressing gown – my boys never made it much beyond the shuffling band of sheep and shepherds at the back of the stage.

Until smaller son’s last year in primary school, when he was chosen to play God, which is even better than Joseph or the innkeeper.

Best of all, it meant that I was in a way, if only briefly, the mother of God. I quite liked that…

Feeling festive all year round

When shops started Christmas early – cards in September, decorations before Bonfire Night, all those jaunty carols sung in American as soon as the clocks went back – we all used to complain. Not any more. Now we’re joining in.

Christmas trees have been going up in front rooms and lights in gardens when it was still misty murky November. Not just a few – there were always a few – but a lot. And we’ve already had a mantelpiece full of cards.

Suddenly, everyone seems to have brought Christmas forward a month. Which leaves an awful dark gap at the start of next year, with Twelfth Night long a lost cause. The sooner the build-up starts, the sooner we’re bored with it.

Even Christmas food has become boring, nothing special. Like over-indulged Roman emperors, our palates are jaded and we crave novelty.

We have to make things extra special to mark them out as different from the everyday. And it’s in danger of getting ridiculous. Once a turkey was enough, now even supermarkets offer turkey stuffed with chicken stuffed with duck stuffed with pheasant.

Not just mince pies, but varieties with clementine, brandy, ginger, lemon, even raspberries and meringues. And cranberries, of course. Cranberries are everywhere. And Christmas puddings have to have a “surprise” – an orange, toffee or chocolate bombe as otherwise, it’s just so boring, darling.

Flavours and booze and any possible extras are all poured into each single product as though to taste of just one thing is not enough. Then there’s gold and sparkle and glitz on every mouthful. Henry VII would have loved it. Our festive food is getting fancier and Christmas is getting earlier.

Any more of this and we’ll soon be eating cranberry-flavoured larks’ tongues in August, while the fairylights twinkle in the summer sun.

Christmas at the Blair's

There are many things to say about the Blairs’ strange Christmas card – where he looks as though he’s about to lamp the photographer and she looks as though she’s trying to stop him – but the only question to ask is, ‘Was that really the best picture of them taken all year?’ Makes you wonder what the rest were like… 

What's in a name...

New parents are apparently avoiding the name George for their baby boys as they don’t want to be seen copying the royals. Fair enough. But that doesn’t explain why so many are opting instead for the strange names from Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad instead.

Daenerys or Skyler? George would be so much easier…

Backchat: Snow chaos ruined Christmas

Dear Sharon,

We remember the Christmas of 2010 all too well. We’d never spent Christmas with our son and his family, as they’d lived near Aberdeen and the risk of bad weather over the festive season was too great.

When they moved to Oxfordshire, we thought it was safe to make plans. The weather had been bad but a lull was forecast so we went early.

I don’t know where they got the idea of a lull from as I’ve never seen such snow. The M1 ground to a halt and we couldn’t see the car in front. It was very cold and very frightening. It took us 15 hours to get to his home and even then we had to abandon the car at the end of his road as the snow was about three feet deep.

We can laugh about it now but at the time it was a nightmare and now we all stay in our own homes at Christmas and plan family get-togethers for the summer.

Emily Robson (by email)