Even once their children are big enough to spend most of the day at school or
Even once their children are big enough to spend most of the day at school, or after they have been shipped off to a boarding-school, family life – drinks and dinner parties, a circle of like-minded friends, holidays in the Dordogne – becomes a sort of extension of their own personalities They are buoyed up by a sense of self-sacrifice. “I had a job before the children came along,” I have heard one betsy say “Then I worked my socks off bringing them up. Now it’s time for me – I’m damned if I’m going back to work.”So it goes on, in middle-class circles all over the country. Instead of career advancement, there is, for really quite a lot of women, the task of looking after the family home, playing tennis, boasting about the children, and perhaps indulging in a spot of quiet, recreational adultery. On the whole, their husbands are perfectly content with the arrangement.Somewhere between the Government’s heartless work ethic and the home-worship of betsydom, the family happiness to which Patricia Hewitt refers may possibly reside.terblacker aol
More from Terence Blacker.
Gordon Brown is in exuberant good spirits, he’s no fun to watch any more. He’s smiling, he’s laughing, he’s making jokes, he’s laughing at his own jokes. “There’s not quite 25 of them, I didn’t think that number was allowed to meet in one place.”That was the Chancellor’s reference to the administrative mechanism for changing the Tory leadership. That’s where the action is, that’s what gets Mr Brown going: Third World poverty, Aids deaths, child mortality, Tory leadership jokes. It takes his mind off Labour leadership jokes.Now, there’s a debt-relief programme pronounced Hippick and a new retail price index pronounced Hiccup.
Michael Howard asked on Hippick and Gordon Brown answered on Hiccup. Both must have had their reasons for this as there are many domestic activities more urgent than Hippicking and more interesting than Hiccuping, but – and it probably has something to do with the leadership questions hanging over both their parties – they Hippicked and Hiccupped their uncontroversial way through, around and over the order paper.It fell to Bob Spink, the MP for Castle Point, to introduce a theme that may underlie a Tory revival, if such a thing can be imagined. Mr Spink, blameless to the point of inconspicuousness, has one of the most peculiar names in the House. As a strong verb, its principal parts are both kinky and filthy (don’t try and work that out if you’re under 18).
