An informal note to New Blogger

Dear New Blogger, I hate you. My PC hates you. My iPad hates you. You don't work on either. Your design is horrible. I don't like orange. I WANT OLD BLOGGER BACK! (Pretty please...)

Coming soon to a house near you...

...a gender party! After the baby shower, the "gender reveal party"; the happy occasion when the proud parents reveal to their friends the sex of their unborn baby. The answer's in the cake. A cake is made with white or chocolate icing, but when it's cut, it reveals - da-da! - pink or blue filling! Clever, eh?

An advanced slant on this is for not even the parents to know. The person who has scanned the baby lets the cake shop know what sex it's going to be, and the cake is then made, and the parents don't find out until the cake is cut.

Guests can apparently attend wearing pink or blue clothes, depending on what gender they think the baby is going to be, and there are pink and blue balloons, and baby-themed party games. There's no end to the fun.

But will it end there? I think the time will come when the baby can be conceived and developed in a laboratory, and then produced (out of a cake. Why not?) fully-formed. Even better, it could stay in the lab until it's potty-trained, or better still, fully-grown, with a university degree. A gender-cum-graduation party. I suggest a pink or blue cake, with a mortar board on top.

I can't wait.

Yes, yes, YES!

No. I'm not doing a Meg Ryan, but I've just this minute heard that my ancient and neglected ( but loved. I call it tough love) Ford Ka has passed its MOT ( it can be seen hiding behind Titch above). I was told a year ago that this was unlikely to happen, so I'm delighted (and, to be honest, gobsmacked).

Well, not quite passed. It needs ( you'll like this bit) a top mount for the Macpherson strut, an anti rollbar link arm, and a rack end (yes. I thought that was something culinary, too. But it appears I was wrong).

Good news on a horrible wet day! We shall celebrate tonight.

Sean's story

Maria is a single mother, devoted to her son Sean. She is separated from Sean's father,Ian, but Ian had regular access to his son.

When Sean was four-and-a-half, Maria was becoming concerned at his increasing reluctance to see his father. Ian appeared devoted to Sean, and there seemed to be no problems. But finally, the situation became so bad that she managed to extract from Sean his "secret" (he had been told that his mother would die if he told anyone what was happening). Ian had been systematically sexually abusing Sean - in a swimming pool, so that all the evidence was immediately destroyed.

Maria was totally distraught, and sought help. Everyone blelieved Sean; his teacher, his GP, social workers, his family. The experiences he described were far too graphic to have been invented by so young a child. But - and here was the biggest problem of all - because of his young age, his evidence could not be accepted in a court of law. The physical damage to Sean could, it was said, have been caused by constipation. Ian remained free and at large.

Eventually, Maria was introduced to a family courts lawyer, who said she MUST pursue the matter through the family courts. This she did. The judge believed Sean, and a restraining order was imposed on Ian, preventing him from going anywhere near his son. When, a year later, the civil courts finally decided to take action, Ian's computer was clean (after all, he'd had a long time in which to see to that), and any other evidence was long gone.

Sean is now eight, and is finally beginning to be able to put some of his trauma behind him. Time will tell how much lasting damage has been inflicted upon him, but he has a close and happy relationship with his mother - who is still very traumatised at what happened to her son - and his extended family.

The last I heard of Ian was that he had a new girlfriend. With young children.

A disturbing book, and the subject of sexual abuse of children

I have just finished this novel - It's me, Anna - by Elbie Lotter, and a very disturbing read it is. Written in spare prose, telling the story as it is, with little if any embelishment, it is a fictionalised account of the author's sexual abuse as a child.

In my years of relationship counselling, I came across very many victims of sexual abuse, and this book really brings alive the fear, the helplssness and the despair of child victims. Nothing so accentuates the total vulnerability of children as abuse, be it physical, verbal or sexual, and this harrowing story could only have been told my someone who had herself suffered. These children are almost always abused by someone they know, and if the abuse takes place in their own home, as Anna's does, there is literally nowhere to go. One of my clients said to me :"home was meant to be safe, but my home was never safe". Usually the child has been threatened with dire consequences if she betrays the "little secret" between her and the abuser, and if she does tell anyone, as Anna does, then she is often not believed.

There are too many myths about paedophiles. We live in a society where people are terrified to let their children go anywhere on their own, and there seems to be the belief that a child molester lurks round every corner (in fact, research has shown that there is a 1:200,000 chance of a child on its own being abducted). We fear to help a child on its own in case we are accused of trying to harm it, and in the meantime, thousands of us have a stack of useless CRB checks to "prove" that we are harmless.

Meanwhile, the real perpetrators often go free. To demonstrate this, I shall continue tomorrow with the appalling story of what happened to a child known to my family.

Horse diaries (requested by the horse)

Titch: so you've finished that - that challenge thing?
Me: Yes
Titch: And you mentioned me?
Me: I told you I did!
Titch: Only my grandfather, though. Not me.
Me: That's near enough.
Titch: No pictures of me?
Me: I've done pictures of you!.

But Titch sighed. He was obviously disappointed. So I told me that for a limited period only, his photo could have pride of place on this blog.

Titch (pleased): Hmmm. Though I say it myself...
Me: You're always saying it. And okay. Yes. You're beautiful.
Titch: That's all right, then. Got any carrots?

Plus ca change.

This picture could save you £60

Apparently a German police officer has been suspended because he accepted a picture of a woman's bottom in lieu of a fine.

Now, if this can happen in a disciplined country like Germany, maybe, just maybe, it could happen here. Where we live, we have no parking rights, no drive, no garage. There are some free parking spaces, without time limits, but otherwise we have to play an ongoing game of parking roulette with the local traffic wardens, moving cars every two hours, switching number plates (only joking), wondering which of us (the TW or us) will reach the car first (there is also the problem of forgetting where you've parked the car, but that's another matter).

But - if I fill my pockets with a selection of spicy pictures, do you think it's possible that I could trade them in rather than receive a ticket? (Worse than a ticket is a speeding course. I've been on one of those, and believe me, it makes watching paint dry positively thrilling.)

Just a thought.