Day 240 (125 to go!)

The warrior and the princess. (seen at the Essex Music Festival)

How these roles are thrust upon us, and sometimes we just get inside them like a costume that we never take off. 

Having raised two girls and then later two boys, I can attest to the fact that boys and girls are innately different. 

Girls say, "Let's play Forest Families" (which were little animal [tiger, elephant, hippo, dog etc.] sort-of-figurine toys, for the uninitiated, that you could accumulate in families of mother, father and one or two children - Emma and Jess had about 50 that they collected over a period of two or three years) and then they would sit and play imaginary games with these little creatures as the protagonists.  For hours.  Or they would draw long narrative drawings.  For hours.  Or they would swing on the swings, and climb the loquat tree, but more often than not they were playing some collaborative imaginary game involving some characters.  They developed an entire game of paper people, where they drew the people with elaborate costumes, cut them out, and then invented whole intersecting lives for them.  They kept these paper people in boxes, they had probably over a hundred people at the height of their popularity.  Or else they were begging me to film their "stories" or 'dances' which starred them and their friends.  When girls fought, they called each other bad names and the worst insult they could say was, "I'll never be your friend again and you can't play with me anymore!"

Boys rush around toting weapons, sticks which are guns or swords, depending on the game at hand, and they are constantly arguing about who is the leader.  When I suggested once that the three friends should all be captains, and they could be captain number 1, captain number 2, etc., it immediately prompted an argument about who would be captain number 1!  They are constantly digging holes to find dinosaur bones, climbing the loquat tree and stepping across a large gap in order to get on to the roof, then dancing along the roof like little tightrope walkers, teaching younger kids how to climb up on their own rooves, then cutting the neighbour's telephone and cable wires.  When they work collaboratively it is to carry a heavy ladder between the two of them so that they can climb on the roof and not use the tree!  When I tried to teach them to read, as I had done so easily with the girls, they made it into a game in which they would both pack up laughing at each alphabet letter or word, so that after a few such episodes I gave up and let them learn at school!  They draw aeroplanes and rockets, swords and robots, and then they get up and rush about again. 

But we are all a mixture, aren't we?  My girls have the warrior in their souls, and my boys have the sensitivity which beholds beauty and is amazed.

And it is dangerous to stereotype, which does not lead to understanding.  Each sex has qualities which are different from the other, and perhaps this is why we work well together sometimes, and why we roil against one another too.

So here, at the end of the day, the third day on which I have not run (although I have walked many miles) I offer a very stupid little illustration (I am very very tired) of a wonderful Goethe saying, "One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."  He would have been 261 today if he was still alive.