Posts by Emma Hart
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Much as I love begging...
Okay. The famous snow dalek.
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Capture: Cats Love Cameras, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Are you sure he isn't trying to soften the harsh angles created by the corner of the deck
Concerned about the Hounds of Tindalos?
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Hard News: Nobody wanted #EQNZ for Christmas, in reply to Lilith __,
No! Leave their glorious headlines alone! (They fixed this one, but the original headline is still in the url.)
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Up Front: The Aunties, in reply to Isabel Hitchings,
I think they need to hear those stories that show that their parents once had lives that were separate from them.
Is, this is pretty much what my mother said (in a rare moment of Bitchy) about my cousin's children a few years ago: that they needed to know that their mother'd had a life before they were born. That she was a person independent of being a parent. I was in my teens before I grasped this about my own mother, and started thinking of her as someone who'd been a student, who'd had issues with her own parents, who'd drunk and dated and fallen in love. And my aunties were an integral part of that realisation.
What I think about my own children is that perhaps I should take them aside and caution them that their mother wasn't quite as big a slapper as her friends' Edited Highlights Reel sometimes makes it sound.
Now you have me wondering whether I missed out.
I keep thinking about this. And I hope I haven't sounded prescriptive. Surely, one can appreciate having had something without feeling that everyone else needs to have it too.
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Capture: Cats Love Cameras, in reply to Isaac Freeman,
No more late-night silly-names-for-the-new-kitten competitions for me.
This is exactly how I ended up with a cat called Smirnoff.
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Up Front: The Aunties, in reply to Tom Beard,
Yes, the best friends always give good succour.
And that example is pretty much my definition of friendship.
One of my Canadian friends, who's been having some Serious Issues in her relationship lately, recently told me, "No matter how bad it gets, you can always make me laugh." That's my job. I'm not good with sympathy, I seldom have constructive advice or practical help I can offer, but if you want to be distracted? I'm up for it.
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Up Front: The Aunties, in reply to Megan Wegan,
Based on Christmas, it does. For me, at least.
We had Christmas with Megan, my dear friend Susan and her husband, and my partner and kids. It was just like Christmas except without the passive aggression and casual drunken racism and misogyny.
It was utterly wonderful, and after my last Christmas, pretty much a life-saver for me.
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Up Front: The Aunties, in reply to Jackie Clark,
more true, more loyal, and more loving and supportive, than the one that raises you in your youth.
This was particularly sharply true for my mother, whose friends stood by her when her family actively disowned her. Bev and Jean also went to lengths to conceal Mum's relationship with Peter (her first, Catholic, husband) from her parents while they were dating. She had houses in Lyttleton, Dunedin and Timaru where she could pretend to be "staying with a friend" whenever he was in port.
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Up Front: The Aunties, in reply to Islander,
I cant know what it's like, not being part of a large extended family: it is part of the sadness of life that all the aunts & the uncles have died-
I had two actual aunts. One lives in Australia and I've only seen her twice, and the other was fifty-six when I was born, quiet, frail and neurotic. So I can't know what it's like being part of a large extended family, and neither can my children. What we give them instead is the extended tribe of our friends and their children, and hope it serves some of the same purpose.
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Capture: Cats Love Cameras, in reply to Rebecca Leathem,
Our real cats were initially very suspicious of the less mobile cat, but after a bit they came to an accommodation.
