June, 2005

In public greens, residential streets and alleyways across Belfast (and indeed all of Northern Ireland) piles of wooden fork-lift palettes are growing high. Scruffy sofas, lamed tables with missing legs and all manner of discarded household items conspire to trip up the innocent passer-by.

Are the binmen on strike? No, naive tourist, it’s July in Northern Ireland. Look closer and you’ll see makeshift signs tied to lampposts inviting you to “Dump Wood Here”. You might also notice a few more flags than usual, and the kerbstones will proudly show off a fresh coat of red, white and blue paint.

Ah, marching season. Tattoo-clad paramilitary psychotics striding alongside their more moderate kinsmen, their thick necks reddened by the blistering sun that the Almighty will send to light their righteous path. Be under no illusion, there are people who march in the name of tradition - I wish them well, although I disagree with the cause. It’s the “Red-Hand Luke’s” I have a problem with: Those who strut through Nationalist areas with the intention of stirring up trouble. The triumphalism. The bravado.

A few years ago, before we were married, Mrs Levee and I took a trip on the Twelfth of July. We took a train from Belfast to Ballymoney. Further up the coach, a rowdy Loyalist mob could be easily identified by the blue plastic bags, the smell of booze and the loud chanting of sectarian *cough* anthems. Across the aisle, a demented-looking little man in a bowler hat was sitting and before long he’d engaged us in conversation about The Twelfth.

He was on his way up to Portrush, he told us. Lovely day. Big Ian would be there. Hoping for a good turnout. Came over from England every year to support the boys. And were we headed for a march, he asked us, assuming that any right-minded Catholics were safely barricaded in their houses.

Trying to keep a low profile, we nodded to pass ourselves and politely allowed the man to ramble on until we reached Ballymoney. His conversation became increasingly sectarian as time went on, and I know we felt angry, even if we didn’t show it. We wanted to keep a low profile, particularly with our sash-singing travel companions up the carriage!

I know that there are people who have a genuine love of the Twelfth of July celebrations, but these are the people who represent it for me: drunken yobs, football hooligans by any other name and bigotted little men who still believe that flags line the path to righteousness.

So, dear tourist, when you’re out an about in Northern Ireland over the next month, enjoy the lovely colours, marvel at the parades that bring in marching bands from far and wide. A unique spectacle is about to unfold. My only hope is that it passes off peacefully - for eveybody’s sake!

Monday, June 27th, 2005 // Northern Ireland: Politics

The night-time antics of our daughter are frustrating sometimes. She rarely goes to sleep straight away, preferring to play an extended game of “Daddy/Mummy, come here”. On the other hand, there are occassions where she can be very funny. Tonight was one of them.

Ray is almost four years old, and has been without dummy (Americans: read pacifier/soother) for about a year now. She’s currently sharing a room with Jay who only has a dummy when sleeping. Little Ray isn’t stupid. She steals Jay’s dummy on a nightly basis. When she’s not stealing this, she pulls her bed across to the wardrobe (where the secret dummy stash resides), stands on the end of the bed and reaches up to the top.

Tonight was a rare exception. Both kids went to sleep immediately. No messing. No fussing. Brilliant!

So, Mrs Levee comes in, and we chat for a while about some of the cute things the children did today. Feeling all lovey toward them, I popped my head in the door of the room to find my sleeping angels. Except Ray wasn’t asleep. No, she was surveying her hoard of stolen dummies! She’d stolen Jay’s, then taken another two off the wardrobe.

Caught in the act, she bluffed that she had ‘found’ them. Yeah, right. Just happened to stumble across the top of the wardrobe, did we? Anyway, I snapped up the lot, returning one to Jay before leaving the room.

About ten minutes later, she appeared at my door for a ‘hug and a kiss’. Nothing unusual in that. Sometimes she’ll do that before settling down for the night. I was working on the computer when she came in, so I explained that I was working on a website. She pretended to be interested for a minute, then asked to be put back to bed.

I could see from the landing that she’d been busy. After I left the room the first time, she’d pulled the bed over to the wardrobe to get the dummies back. When she discovered they weren’t there, she headed out to the landing (Mrs Levee sometimes keeps dummies there). After a pretty poor harvest, she had finally came to see me!

The beauty of it all is that Jay was sound asleep while all this was happening! The wee man’s always been a sound sleeper, so he almost always misses out on the bedtime antics of little Miss Levee!

Monday, June 20th, 2005 // Family Life

Although there is an abundance of well-written, informative material out there on the Internet, there is a shocking amount of dross in circulation also! I don’t know where theLeveeBreaks stands in the midst of these extremes, but my aim is for the content to be interesting, engaging, informative and above all, easy to understand!

Writing creatively is difficult for me, because of my technical background. My use of language sometimes resembles an incomprehensible computer manual!

I recently discovered the Poynter Online website and Roy Peter Clark’s Fifty Writing Tools. Granted, the site is for journalists, but it tackles basic writing techniques that many of us are unaware of. I’m hoping to use this to improve my writing skills. Here’s why:

If you maintain a blog, it’s fair to assume that you expect other people to read your entries from time-to-time. Unless you are anti-social, generally you’d hope they will return regularly, and even recommend your writing to others. That’s what a blog is about: You write. Other people read. Make comments. Recommend you to others.

Without going off on a rant, it’s been a while since my last English lesson. Fifty tools = fifty articles = too much information! If you’re interested in sharpening up your writing skills, sign up for the email newsletter. This gives you a ‘tool’ a week, which you can start working into your writing.

Monday, June 20th, 2005 // Creativity

I’ve not been feeling so well today, so I took the day off work. I spent some time watching a couple of “sick-day” movies - Runaway Jury and Rock Star, and ate some food which made me feel even worse. . .

Anyway, about midway through the day, Mrs Levee phoned to say she would keep the kids out a bit longer to allow me to rest. But, would I be so kind as to sort out the pile of clean washing in our room? Just fold them up and put them into piles.

So, reluctantly I went about my task, feeling a bit iffy just standing up. As I sorted and folded the washing, I had a pile for everyone - Mrs Levee, Ray, Jay and myself. After a while, though, I noticed a fifth pile starting to grow off to one side. Clothes that were definately to small for Jay. . .

I must say, a little smile crossed my face the moment I realised that newborn baby clothes have already crept into our laundry!

Monday, June 13th, 2005 // Family Life

What on earth possses people to be so openly negative? I was at my daughters nursery open day yesterday when I got talking to a woman who I have met before a handful of times at most. She obviously noticed I was pregnant and began offer me her sympathies as according to her the third child is the worst. She herself has 4 but says she almost had a nervous breakdown after her third because of all the upheaval it caused in the household. She assures me that this is the case for everyone, and went on to cite many of her friends experiences.

I am under no illusions, obviously another child will bring more work, and things will be a little more hectic (if thats possible!) but I have been trying to stay positive throughout the pregnancy as I really don’t believe in worrying or obsessing about things that you cannot change. I am also hoping that 3 children will = 3 times more love and happiness in the house. Children aren’t just there to be fed, dressed, washed and brought to school, its not just a chore to me, I get immense pleasure from spending time with and watching over my brood and I am hoping that along with the extra tasks a new baby will bring, this pleasure will increase accordingly.

But its hard to stay positive if all you are hearing is horror stories, people are so quick to tell me that I will have my hands full, and how hard things will be for me. Yet for all these sympathisers very few will ever offer a helping hand. I was extremely tired yesterday and not on top form, to hear from yet another mum how hard things are going to be really brought me down. Why do people need to do that? I would never do that to another person, especially one I didn’t know very well.

The whole scenario reminds me of the months leading up to my wedding. While we were planning the wedding people often congratulated us and gushed about the arrangements and our future ahead. But that all changed as soon as the rings were on the fingers! After that all we got were commiserations, Mr Levee was bombarded with comments about the ball and chain and women felt compelled to tell me of their experiences of marriage, very few of them were positive.

I know this has turned into a bit of a ramble, maybe it won’t even make sense to anyone else, but I have just been so frustrated by people always looking for the clouds rather than the silver lining. If people are truly that negative they need to keep it to themselves, I don’t want them to bring me down with them!

Wednesday, June 8th, 2005 // Family Life, Spirituality & Stuff

I am a little worried. Mr levee has recently started growing his hair long again. I know its an attempt to grasp back some of that lost youth and up until now I think I have been very supportive to our own resident ageing rocker, but enough is enough! While making dinner earlier this evening I turned to ask Mr Levee a question only to notice that he was wearing our young daughters pink and white striped hairband. You can imagine my surprise. I though it might have been a joke, but 4 hours on and its still on top of his head, I think he has become quite attached.

So what does this mean?? Is my husband secretly gay or have hairbands become the in thing without me noticing. I remember Stu from last years Big Brother (yes I know I’m sad but wasn’t it infinitely better than the sorry attempt at entertainment this year!) wore hairbands and bandanas quite often but I don’t think they were pink striped and anyway I always thought he was a little feminine.

Heres hoping its just a passing phase! My God he’ll be wearing pink jumpers and mesh t-shirts next!

Saturday, June 4th, 2005 // Family Life

I just read Scott Berkun’s essay on How To Survive A Bad Manager. Scott’s stuff is always a good read, particularly for office drones like me. Some of the situations he writes about make you sit up and say, “Hey, that’s me!”

Anyway, toward the end of the article, Scott suggests trading off the frustrations of bad management against the benefits of better work-life balance:

Meaningfulness pop quiz: Is what you are doing today going to mean anything to anyone, yourself included, in a month? a year? 5 years? 20?

Now, if you’ve read this blog before, you’ll know my thoughts on work/life balance. Can you think of things you obsessed about in work five years ago? Were they worth it? What else could you have been doing?

Friday, June 3rd, 2005 // Family Life

Not long ago, we went to the open evening for Ray’s new nursery school. She’ll be starting in September.

We weren’t there for more than an hour. The principal of the school carried out a presentation, and after this we got a chance to visit the classrooms where our daughter will spend the next year of her life.

At the presentation, I couldn’t help looking around at the other parents. Whatever their age, their social circumstances, their job status, they’ve been going through roughly the same parenting experiences as we have for the last 3-4 years. Mrs Levee overheard two couples discussing how one father had cut down his hours in work in order to spend more time with the family. “Yes” they said, “we’d love to move further out into the country, but that’d mean getting a bigger mortgage and we don’t want to get into that right now.” So we’re not alone in our quest to abandon the rat race!

Anyway, sitting there in the little assembly hall, I couldn’t help but feel excited for our little girl. She’s really looking forward to going, because (in her own words) then she’ll be a big girl!

Friday, June 3rd, 2005 // Family Life