A clear "no-thank you"

No!

In the cafe:

A: He started to take liberties on the dance floor.  So I stopped the dance, made some verbal objection and stormed off the floor in the middle of the track, a la television tango.
Guys:  Really?  You minded?
A: !!  Of course I minded!
Guys [incredulous]:  We wouldn't mind at all if somebody did that to us.  We'd think it was our lucky day...


In the ladies:

A: He started to take liberties on the dance floor.  So I stopped the dance, made some verbal objection and stormed off the floor in the middle of the track.
B: Quite right! I'm so glad you did
A: Anyway, tell me about that other guy.
B: I looked at him and he saw me.  If he didn't want to dance he should have looked away, which is clear.
A: Right.
B: But the guy didn't do this.  He looked around and up and down.
A: Oh!
B: If you're going to say "I'm not going to invite you" by look you should at least be clear about it.
A: He was being clear!
B: I think it's helpful to be more direct.
A: So what did you do?
B: I just kept looking at him firmly and directly...
A: You didn't want to dance with him by now?
B: No, obviously, if he didn't want to dance with me.
A: To keep looking at him, that's mean!
B: No it's not.  I just wanted to see if he'd refuse properly.
A: [Laughing] Oh dear.  Perhaps he's just the shy type who knows what he does and doesn't want but has trouble saying no.  So what did happen?
B: Well, eventually he got up and moved away.
A: You don't say! Do you think he got the point about how to say "no thank you"?
B: I don't know.  Perhaps I'll find out next time!

The Empathy Gap

In an interview the British novelist Martin Amis referred to the writer WG Sebald saying that no serious person should think about anything but the Holocaust. He said it was supposed to be ironic but that at some level he meant it, as, said, Amis, do I. It was a relief to hear this because I had considered myself odd in thinking considerably about the Holocaust, after reading some of the works on that event. Christopher Burney's book, The Dungeon Democracy, is his account of life as a British officer in Buchenwald.  He often gives little moral quarter to the prisoners themselves.  A prison guard might appear reasonably benign compared to the dog-eat-dog life of most prisoners. His point was more that people end up in various stations in life but it is their character that counts. 

Excerpt: The Dungeon Democracy

 Burney's point towards the end, as I recall, remembering now many years back, was that most of us have a capacity for extraordinary evil and that we should build our education systems with that fact in mind so that nothing like the Holocaust happens again. Amis in another interview on the controversial idea that a writer should not write about the Holocaust also says that the justification for it is so that it never happens again.

It was when I read The Dungeon Democracy and Viktor Frankl I think last year that I suddenly understood why Christopher Burney had been so anxious to publish: he knew very well that the traits of all the people who propped up that regime existed in ordinary people - the desire to control, to persecute, to rule, to oppress, to exploit, to lie and cheat and deceive, to use people as means and all for power or status or money. I looked around [a milonga] and I saw those very traits in operation, thinly masked. I realised how, in certain conditions those traits could all thrive again. So it's not just a question of preventing those conditions in society because who can predict how they come about, the danger is as much or more in the human traits themselves. [Correspondence, 2016]

Once aware of these traits and what they can become the Holocaust and related iniquities of human behaviour are never, mentally, too far away. Perhaps that is what Amis and Sebald perhaps meant. that is also why two of my key preoccupations are death and freedom. Freedom is life: freedom from so that there is freedom to. The ultimate control, the ultimate restriction, the ultimate imposition is taking away someone's life, harming their body or their mind but taking away someone's freedom is a kind of living death. 

 We endure unreasonable impositions constantly: on our time, on our freedom, women even endure them on their person and too often we put up with it for the sake of norms, so called civilized behaviour whereas we should question far more - is this reasonable, is this useful, is this fair? Death and freedom, the two great preoccupations.

Amis talks about the incomprehensibility of the Holocaust. The thing to be very alert to is when we encounter the incomprehensibility of someone's behaviour because it is a warning you have to heed. I call it the empathy gap. It is when two people find themselves on either side of a psychological chasm. It happens when you simply cannot comprehend how someone could act in that way because you cannot conceive of doing something of that nature yourself. I can't imagine being a paramedic, but I admire paramedics, so there's no empathy gap there. But when I think of the Holocaust, or Argentina's Dirty War, or the Colombian "false positives", or the common and garden capitalist exploitation of people, of the planet for profit, there is an empathy gap there. It is when you fail to understand how people can act in despicably inhumane ways. The empathy gap can be over huge, world-shaking events or the dispiriting inhumanities practised by individuals on a daily basis.

I encountered it recently and for days afterwards could not acclimatise to the idea that someone could repeatedly refuse to leave someone alone, to the point of trapping them, deliberately cornering them, as they later said to the point of extreme physical and psychological distress.  Even one of the apologies said in chilling, controlling language, they were "not going to allow another miscommunication" - as if, after everything, there was still some future, as if it was all a misunderstanding.  I felt shocked, horrified, appalled.

That shock manifested physically and I am still trying to come to terms with it.  Despite excruciating muscular pain in my neck, left shoulder collarbone, chest and arm as far as the hand it did not even occur to me for over two weeks that exercise and stretching might bring relief.  It was as though the shock had caused some psychological and mental freeze that prevented me from thinking normally.  Today exercise brings relief but whatever it is that connects all those parts is still contracted and needs daily stretching.  

It took days to mentally adjust to the fact that for some people ignoring the wishes of others, trampling repeatedly over their simplest request - to be left alone - is a right. I should have realised. I have an online advert for multi-lingual conversation exchange which, when I am busy, will say in caps lock, that I am not looking for partners at present, yet I am still bombarded with requests.  This is startling in itself but you do not expect blatant, egotistical disregard from people you know and have helped.

The key thing I learned is to spot those traits early, distance yourself and if that doesn't work don't do nothing; take some other measure because you need a plan.  You have to somehow imagine yourself on the other side of the empathy gap, to anticipate what appears to you unthinkable within your own moral scope because without that anticipation you will have no plan to deal with what can arise.  The first problem of course is realising that you are that empathy gap, before it is too late.

Might

Junction beside a school, Perth 

There are many forms of force, control, imposition:  sexual, social, even conversational. 

Any doubt as to how prevalent people imposing their will on others is, can be dispelled by considering our streets. The Highway code changed on 29 January 2022. There is now a "hierarchy of road users". The idea is to make clearer, to lend more weight to the obvious idea that some people are more vulnerable than others and that we need to take care of them. Pedestrians are clearly more vulnerable than someone inside a ton of metal and among pedestrians, children, and anyone with physical limitations are the more vulnerable "road users". 

My street, on our town's ring road.  To the right, a park.

So far, so straightforward. Why is spelling this out in the Highway Code necessary? Because there are many who refuse to acknowledge it and are even angered by the concept of anything but cars on a road.

In the UK, road fatalities have been dropping for decades, currently under 2000 a year.  But 2000 is quite a lot.  

PeteEastern, Wikipedia

If we include those seriously injured, that number jumps to 27,500 (in 2021), according to data released by the Department for Transport. Some 5,400 of those killed or seriously injured (KSIs) were pedestrians, and more than 4,400 cyclists. (Citymonitor) That's 35%.

Tolerable? If the military were suffering that annually, would we tolerate it?  What are the military's casualty figures, out of interest? In 2022, 67 soldiers died. 

 

The Highway Code now says “At a junction you should give way to pedestrians crossing or waiting to cross a road into which or from which you are turning.” Previously, drivers were only supposed to give way when a pedestrian had started to cross a road. It's a gesture, but even in 2023 in the UK, in my town certainly, drivers take precedence all the time, as a rule in fact, even when children are trying to cross the road.

I took the headline picture of this piece while campaigning during 2021 to try to get this junction near my boys' school improved for kids walking to school. For ten minutes at the beginning and end of every day about 100 pupils and between 50 and 60 vehicles battle it out on this junction, with between a fifth and a quarter of of vehicles failing to give way even when there are large groups trying to cross.  The children on the road had been in the middle of crossing but were forced back by the van, which took priority. The black car also failed to give way even though there are ten children waiting to cross and two still on the road. I cannot emphasise how common this is.  Besides being dangerous and selfish towards vulnerable people who also don't pollute our shared air, it teaches our children to perpetuate this behaviour.

I saw countless cars going round this roundabout the wrong way or cutting the corner.  I saw another van go round the roundabout the wrong way and drive straight at a group of kids like the one above.  I saw my own son nearly end up on the bonnet of a car that drove straight at him and his friends. They all froze, believing they were going to be hit. I had picked this spot on his nearly two mile journey because he himself had said it was the most dangerous point. 

Even buses don't always give way. These kids were already on the road when the bus took priority - because it can.

Unfortunately, despite having a campaign group, despite recording statistics of pedestrians and traffic in detail over time, despite photo and video evidence of many near misses, despite engaging road safety organisations, despite someone from the council coming out to assess the junction and despite agreement that it was not ideal, nothing has been done about this junction.

Strangely, on zebra crossings a driver is still not obliged to give way to someone waiting to cross (though many do), only when someone has started to cross. I was already in the middle of this zebra crossing with my dog last week when a woman driver approaching exactly like this black car, clearly saw me and simply chose not stop. I am well aware of the behaviour of a minority of drivers on this crossing and took preventative action. I know a pedestrian however who has been maimed for life from coming off worst, as all pedestrians do, when she was hit by a vehicle.

The kind of motorist behaviour exhibited on the crossing or at that school junction is a black distillation of arrogance and egocentricity but it is as common as blinking. It is when it becomes automatic that it is most iniquitous.  While some road users will, when not curbed, give free reign to their baser instincts, having zero regard for vulnerable road users is not something hardwired in humans - it is spread through cultural tolerance. 

Spain is an example of a car-loving culture which nevertheless uses zebra crossings to a far greater extent than the UK and which respects pedestrians, to the point where I would rather my kids cross roads in Spain, than the UK:

In the Netherlands, of course, respect for all kinds of road users is so normal it is built into their infrastructure:

Road use is just an analogy for  something that happens in many contexts:  the imposition of will on someone else, especially someone more vulnerable. I suppose the first step is being aware of those behaviours, in others as well as in ourselves, the second is doing something about it. There are few better and quieter catalysts for change than good models: seeing someone else behaving in an admirable way, or seeing respect for such behaviour in someone we ourselves respect.

This blog is about lessons I have learnt about life through the lens of the milonga, or sometimes the other way around. At a certain point, one sees each as reflections of the other. Apart from a good physical environment for dancing, is there anything more essential to good dancing than awareness of, care of our partner and of the other dancers in the ronda?  Awareness of the music, too.  Awareness is a term that is often interchangeable with listening, in its broadest sense.  An article in Psychology Today suggests that coffee is not the hardest thing to give up.

Bandolera / Ojos negros

Wikimedia

The lovely song, Ojos Negros, famously interpreted by Francisco Canaro's tango orchestra (1935) with the singer Roberto Maida has a long history - there is an article about this by Dmitry Pruss.

Many numbers we think of as "tango" or "milonga" have lives outside our world.  The Puerto Rican pianist Noro Morales also covered Dark Eyes in an interesting mambo version (1964) as well as Niebla del Riachuelo (1960).  What we think of Canaro's Milonga Sentimental was covered by the salsa orchestra El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, in 1982.  Recently I heard Las Cuarenta - the best danceable tango versions are by Canaro/Maida (1941) and Lomuto / Omar (1937) - in a bolero version by Rolando Laserie.  I particularly like Lucio Demare's 1968 piano versions of many famous tangos.  They have a retrospective air which never falls into sentimentality.

During that difficult time I was listening to a lot of salsa. Bandolera, by Héctor Lavoe contains a long section of improvisation in which Ojos Negros, is referenced musically (5.27).  I asked Camilo if he could identify any other pieces in that improvisation.  He heard Historia de un amor (4.09) and Obsesión (5.16).  I would be interested if anyone can identify anything else.

The two he mentioned are apparently both boleros, love songs, which is interesting in the context of Bandolera, a song whose lyrics are in part, shockingly, about a man hitting a woman:

Pau, pau, pau
Te voy a dar
Te voy a dar una pela
[...]
Pau, pau, pau
Te vuelvo a dar
Te voy a dar pa' que aprendas
[...]
Te voy a pegar, te voy a pegar, te voy a pegar, te voy a pegar, te voy a pegar

Some of the salsa lyrics I heard at that time were apt to the situation I was trapped in:

Y por los celos, los celos, los celos
A mí el corazón me arde, me arde
Y por los celos, los celos, los celos
A mí el corazón me arde, me arde

(Gitana, Willie Colon)

There was a lie, and attempts to manipulate situations with people I dance with.

Quien dice una mentira dice dos
Y dice cien, se inventa mil
Dice un millón
El ser que ya nació para engañar
Te engaña a ti, me engaña a mí
Me engaña a mí

(Bandolera, Héctor Lavoe)

Because of these interventions, I was losing those dance partners.  I dance with new people who come to the práctica and introduce them to others, that they may discover the dance and there is pleasure in that, but people dance tango many ways and there are few enough who dance for and with the kind of musicality and connection that I enjoy.  These I value. 

So I drew a line.

(Me liberé, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico)

Blocking communication channels was easy, and so, I thought, effective. I had seen enough and had caught the scent of danger, even if I didn’t yet know the gravity of it.

Aléjate bandolera
Aléjate bandolera
Aléjate bandolera

(Bandolera)


It was sad…

Cuando en el alma se siente un dolor
Por la traición que te brinde un amigo /
En ese momento piensa que todo es posible

(Indestructible, Ray Barretto)

…but it was also scary.

I was contorting my life to avoid harassment. I cancelled my first práctica and an invitation to a party. They said they weren't going, so I could go, tranquilamante. But my trust was shot, I didn't and I cancelled the second práctica. Then I understood they were quitting tango. I felt huge relief, published the next práctica and thought I was free.

Me liberé, me liberé
Gracias a Dios, me liberé
Me liberé, me liberé
Gracias al cielo, me liberé
Me liberé de mujeres perversas que quieren hacer mi vida de cuadritos
Me liberé de chicas sin escrúpulos,

(Me liberé, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico)

I was wrong.  A month on, while much improved, the physical effects of that day of imposition, control and entrapment are still with me. The weeks leading up to that day are associated now with these salsa numbers and, by association, Ojos negros, particularly the chilling line, "ojos negros, que dominan".  With luck, one day some great dance will replace them.

Mono v inter

One of the legacies of the patriarchy is that the guy still speaks more: in life, in business, in politics, in committees, in dance. They impose, everywhere. We even talk about an imposing guy as though that is admirable, virile. Men often speak to other men, ignoring women. I would hazard a guess that 100% of women in western societies have been patronised and talked down to by a guy because they are a woman, probably many times.

We see it too in those vexed English terms in dance: leader and follower. The idea is that this is supposed to be more inclusive, because women can now “lead”. But the fact is, men still mostly lead, so it just entrenches the idea that the person who makes most of the decisions, who decides the direction, initiates, who does most of the “talking”, is the guy, the “leader”, the boss.

Nearly all women in the “leading” role do “lead”. They are rough and forceful, especially when they have been to class and impose their moves on you. Tragically, this is true even of women who are lovely to dance with in the traditional woman’s role.

Sometimes some people engage in monologues because they think a societal norm, like “leading” in dance, endorses it. Some on the autistic spectrum, aware their personality does not conform with societal norms, sometimes confess, with a heart-breaking embarrassment, that they know they are talking too much. People can do it when they angry or hurt. Egotists and narcissists do it. They are easily identified because they also show next to no interest in their so-called interlocutor, ask no questions unless they pertain to their own interests.

How many of us have sat silently stuck in interminable “conversations” saying next to nothing because that’s how the other person likes it, has patently loved it when you bite your tongue. If you are trapped, setting a timer to see for how long the other speaks is a distracting game, distances yourself from the situation and at least allows you some autonomy in what can be an abusive situation. That’s when you decide never again or start that painful negotiation with yourself about trade-offs. On such days, I have seen my Fitbit stress management levels drop by a whole 10 points. Voiceless, you may not be doing much, but it clearly has a psychological and consequent physiological effect.

Do guys do this do to other guys? I think they see women differently and know we are more likely to tolerate it. They know the more fragile among us may even think the problem must be us.

What is a great conversationalist? Someone who asks questions and not just questions to which they know the answers, because that is just another form of talking down to you. They are genuinely interested in the other. Great conversationalists answer questions, and not at too much length. Most of all, they make space for the other person. When there is space, there is room for interplay. That is when fun and interesting things happen between people: Interesting:  inter "between" + esse "to be".

Nearly slapped

Motto of the royal Stuarts and the Jacobites

Here's another perspective on those tales of "abandonment".

I have abandoned the guy, walked off the floor, only rarely. I try my hardest not to leave mid-tanda. I make an excuse, as though it's my fault - a dodgy knee, playing up, usually. It's not ideal but with an excuse, face is saved as much as it can be.

But guys can take it very badly and these you remember - warnings I suppose. I made a mistake in a choice of guy while dancing away, after Christmas, enduring two excruciating - "dances" is hardly the word, during which this large and heavy man stood on my toes - twice. I simply could not bear it any more and excused myself as politely as I possibly could. I thanked my stars that that second track ended at a discreet exit point from the floor. I guessed he was the type who, for all his considerable urbane charm, would not take it well and had I had to leave him stranded at a very visible point on the floor, things would have been much worse. Were I to have I considered this beforehand it might have helped me in my choice. I passed him shortly afterwards at his table and made a point of smiling, albeit briefly, but my friends said that after I left the floor his face was like thunder. It's better to avoid getting to that point, because as Oscar Casas says, the milonga is a very visual place.

That is why accepting an invitation needs so much care and why painful lessons are worthwhile. That good piece of advice to stop dancing "whenever you feel uncomfortable" has stayed with me. Oscar talks about Argentines who take advantage of tourists floundering in a strange place and making them feel uncomfortable. He also makes a point of saying that some Argentines don't tolerate it which is nice to hear, although it would be nicer to see more of that in practice. I felt very alone in those Buenos Aires milongas. The men know that, the games are more grown up and until we find my feet we are, potentially, prey.

Quarter of an hour in an embrace you don't want to be in is 14 minutes and 55 seconds too long. That's a very long time. Dancing the last track of a tanda with someone new means "let's see", because even three minutes in an embrace you don't want to be in is much too long. If someone is too proud to only dance the last track, there's your answer about what that dance probably would have been like.

Milonga people know that leaving a partner mid-tanda is just about the strongest message you can send in the milonga. Even if accompanied by "Thank you very much" it still means "That was so horrendous as to be insulting. We will never dance again". Leaving a partner mid-tanda effectively means: "you have insulted me and I cannot tolerate it." How can a dance be insulting? I guess it comes down to the guy invited someone he should not have and that is a risk you take in that role. I say this with some experience: the first woman, I danced with, spontaneously, in a class with insufficient men - she was far too experienced for me - didn't exactly abandon me and as I recall didn't say much, but made me feel so small I didn't dance in that role for another year at least, maybe two.

"The most dramatic time I didn't finish a tanda was at an inauspicious event in the famous Blackpool ballroom.

Blackpool Tower

This was two full years before I failed to do the same in Buenos Aires when I should have. It illustrates how easy it can be to lose your bearings, even your sense of self, in a new place. An older guy I already knew slightly started feeling up my neck as we danced.  I stopped the dance immediately and walked off the floor mid track.  The urge to slap him was almost irresistible. He came to apologise later. I accepted the apology but never danced with him again. That seedy, sleazy town was at least a fitting context for that moment. Argentine tango has, in Britain that "ooh-er" reputation but we who dance know it's not like that and men who behave inappropriately, who try to take advantage of women, who push the envelope, who are, actually or potentially abusive sexual predators, are known about. Either they don't last long or they are avoided by experienced women.

I wish more women and more men stood up to these guys but essentially you have to defend yourself.  Apart from which, if you let guys treat you badly, they will keep doing it, it encourages others to do the same to you.

During my first placement in school before Christmas we were discussing sexual violence in a poem. A fifteen year old then said to me she had been groped at the local fair and asked - asked - if that was sexual harassment. In the UK, 71% of women experience sexual harassment in a public place.

Coercing women, taking advantage of women any way at all on the dance floor is another form of force, imposition and sexual harassment. 95% of incidents of sexual harassment in a public place go unreported.

Imposition

Johnny Hughes

Freedom was the title of the first post in this blog back in 2014. Agreement and consent are the social friends of freedom. I have written often about its antithesis e.g. Obligation.

Grown up milongas (as opposed to the kindergarten version) are, above all, places of choice. Dancers come and go when they like, nobody probes for full names or even real names, or into personal circumstances.   Women don’t mug guys for dances and guys don't do walk-up, hand-proferring invitations.  Neither “begs” for dances through conversation.  Most of all, they are places where no-one imposes themselves on anyone else.  There is no use of force. 

When one person forces themselves on another, physically, psychologically, socially, any way at all, it is hard to think of more grotesque, dangerous or sickening behaviour, even more so when it is thinly disguised within a civilized setting.

The absolute cornerstone of milonga culture is freedom of discreet invitation and equally discreet acceptance or refusal. This all happens by look (the inviter's cabeceo, the accepter's mirada). It is also one of the most obvious codes (accepted milonga behaviours).

Some people don't truly understand this code. They can't cope with it, but are alert enough to have learned its importance. These types look for stratagems to get round it. This is manipulation: they will manipulate people to get what they want. People who are deaf and blind to the many freedoms that make a good milonga are those who impose themselves on others, who try to oblige others to attend to them, who use others to satisfy their needs. 

Why don't these people adhere to the code like everyone else? Because perhaps they are impatient to dance or ambitious in dance, because they are not at peace, because they are insecure. They need attention, all the time. Consider: what happens to these people if they do adhere to the code but don't manage to dance? They will not have a perhaps understandably disappointing evening, they won't, more resourcefully, instead of dancing, enjoy the music, or the spectacle or the company, or the conversation because that is too objective - it wouldn't be about them. No, this person will have a calamitously bad time because they are not getting that attention. This is a classic narcissistic personality. Their reaction? Probably histrionic, moody, emotional.

How do they get round the code? Both men and women will show off, in their dance, or their clothes or their behaviour. They will demand attention. Until recently while I recognised (except when, catastrophically, I didn't) the danger signs of these types I never really understood why - because I didn't need to. I just avoided them.

So what happens if they don't get dances? Instead of just shrugging, accepting it, not taking it personally, moving on, they will be hostile and resentful, especially if they have been turned down. This is another sign of the immature personality.

Young and pretty female versions might do the indoor equivalent of standing on a street corner. They flirt and chat not for the pleasure of that but as a stratagem to pick up dances because they can't truly relax, find peace in the milonga. They feel awkward unless they are dancing all the time. They don't realise how transparent they are to experienced dancers and so they pick up the dregs they deserve.

To get round the code, men just walk up which fulfils this pathological need for attention in the most obvious way. They aren't patient enough or able to get a dance the accepted way. They get the praise they need simply by getting a woman to accept their proffered hand while the rest of us cringe. The guy who walks up isn't simply a bad dancer, he is sending a warning about his personality.

I have written often about that diabolical triad that motivates so many:  money or power or status.  They are found in these controlling, demanding narcissistic types. Such people are constitutionally unsuited to good milongas.  They will never fit because these traits seem to be hardwired into them.   The focus on money and power are both types of ambition but both of these are really about status.  Attention seekers are just childish versions of adult status seekers.  And status seekers are essentially, profoundly insecure.

What are the characteristics of people who invite by look, who don't use stratagems, who don't impose themselves on others? Respectful and empathetic certainly. Altruistic? Undemanding? Understanding? Calm? Quiet? Patient? Grounded? Observant? Take your pick. They are all excellent models of behaviour. These are signs of listeners, people with an outward focus that is not on themselves, good partners in conversation, in dance and in life.

Kindergarten milongas: Custom versus imposition

(Three track tandas II)

“A good custom is surer than law”

Four tracks to a tango tanda I think just emerged in the traditional milongas of Buenos Aires as being the thing that worked best for people who like to dance traditional tango music in the environment best suited for it. That is the difference between the traditional four track tango tanda which came about through custom and the non-traditional three track tandas which are imposed on dancers in kindergarten milongas, whether the dancers like it or no.

There are connections between coercion, control, imposition, "knowing what's best" for the dancers and these sorts of milongas.

Obligation (I)

-

This photo of my son (used with permission) was taken when we climbed Ben Vrackie (2760 feet) with friends in the Easter holidays.  It's only about five miles, a distance we matched and easily surpassed several times later that holiday while on woodland walks with other friends including a five year old girl. But the conditions and weather are different on Ben Vrackie and it is steeper. The photo above is actually past the stage of obligation:  this is realisation about what you are going to have to do.

Besides having a PhD in brain science, a regular job and two small boys my friend Hannah is in the Mountain Rescue.  

She also runs up hills - for pleasure; sixteen miles the other day she told me.  

When we decided to go hillwalking with our children she described Ben Vrackie as a “proper hill”. Three of us had no inkling of all the steps to come.   

We were new to hillwalking. It started off gentle and satisfying, with great views around Pitlochry:

The photo below is perhaps half way. I still don't think I had realised where we going. At the bottom of that distant hill, the wind got up, it started to rain and turned surprisingly cold. "We won't need waterproofs will we" I had said in the carpark. Always take waterproofs!

The other children flew or strolled up the steps but Henry objected.  No surprise because in the inclement weather he was wearing his brother’s waterproof overtrousers about three sizes too big, an adult cagoule and skiing mittens and was evidently tiring.

I suspect the moderate enthusiasm that informed my own effort up that hill was largely from trying to persuade my son up it too.  Then the thought struck him that he had missed out on the motivational sweetie round at the bottom of the hill and that could he but right that omission all would be well.  Since this would clearly spur him up the hill far more effectively than any chat with me “What a good idea”, I said.  But Hannah had the sweets.  “You’ll have to catch up with her”.  He bounded away, paused beside her for a few moments and darted off again as only a six year old can in such clothing.  After that I found it decidedly strenuous.  Ten minutes later I caught up with three of the four boys, chatting and laughing together:

Hannah said, wryly, it’s not about the view, it’s not even about the walk, it’s not about the experience so much as it’s about getting to the top.  I wasn’t quite sure how much to believe her.  Men say that, I said nonplussed.  “Oh, they do” she agreed.  Another time I remembered saying in similar perplexity “The “advanced”  hillwalking groups are full of men.  And you.”   She’d laughed.   I just don’t seem to be made psychologically quite the same way, with quite the same focus and determination or perhaps just in different things. She did that walk carrying not only mountain survival gear, masses of food, drinks and spare clothing probably for all of us, but also her old dog, Maisie up that hill.

Still, a lot of it is about getting to the top.

We couldn’t have left Henry half-way up the hill:  “No problem, you just sit here, enjoy the view and we’ll pick you up on the way down”.  It doesn’t happen.  Of course you try first to reason with, persuade and eventually as the case becomes more desperate, cajole, bribe and demand your children do things. What is the difference between a bribe and a reward anyway?  It strikes me it's simply the way you pitch it and beyond any objective difference that it’s more about your own view of yourself, the way you appear to others and your relationship with your children.

Sometimes - quite often -   children have other ideas.  Sometimes it seems you just have to tell them, boringly repetitive:  

I:  Here you are (handing to child - usually food)

Child takes offered thing

I: Pardon?

Child: Thank you.

Seven years, nine years we have been performing this daily sketch.

Or: “Turn off the Xbox please”. Off. Now. Your shoes.  Put on your shoes. Please. Now.  “Er, where are you going?” “WOULD YOU PLEASE WALK OUT OF THE DOOR”. Though as the years roll on I'm more inclined to adopt the position my father took: “I'll be sitting in the car and at <time t>” I will be leaving.  I should say “try to adopt”.   It’s hard to square that approach with the mothering side:  But have you brushed your teeth. Really? Can I see please?  It’s that or face cavities and reproachful looks from the dentist.  If only that were the half of it:  And you’ll have been to the loo/ put your plate away/ watered the hamster/ made your bed/ done your homework?   Fathers in general apparently tend to ignore most of that stuff.  

In fact my children are helpful: they tidy up after themselves and don’t even always need to be asked. They set the table, help clear up after meals, clean out the hamsters and take out the bin.  But it is a routine, not natural behaviour.  Natural behaviour seems to be to drop coat/shoes/laundry/towels on the floor and usually in front of doorways.  It’s a relief when I hear this borne out by many mothers of boys.  

Strikingly, the best motivation, as evinced by Henry’s sudden flight up Ben Vrackie, the only motivation that really works, comes from within themselves.  Somehow in the general grind of parenting the answer seems to be to try to find what it is that motivates children from within.  I don’t mean in the big stuff.  Children are so naturally curious, energetic and engaged that I find that takes care of itself. I mean in participating in the essential tasks of daily life.  Often I can think of no puzzle more intransigent.  

One reason though children do need to do what they’re told is because it is seldom that I find that the thing to which my sons can object to so vehemently is as stomach-churningly unpleasant as they’d have you believe at the time. At the weekend the younger one threw a blue fit about going to a party which invitation he’d accepted.  I don’t believe in forcing children to try things they aren’t keen on but if they’ve decided to do something, arrangements are made and then they try to renege on it at the last minute my patience thins at such poor manners.  He was marched out of the house but returned later all smiles, and contradicting, not uncommonly, everything he had said and having had a super time.  I love by the way, that plasticity of mind that accepts with a simple shrug that they were mistaken before and now things are different.  There is none of the obdurateness you find in some adults, the kind who can never be wrong, who are.unable to view something from different sides and who are determined to stick to their position come what may,

There is an obvious if I feel spurious rejoinder:  if parents didn’t oblige their children to do things perhaps they would do less of the same once they become adults.  This is the sort of thing somebody might say who hasn’t raised children for years continually in their home.   But if you do think that children and adults need to be similarly obliged or not obliged to do things I would love to hear it.

Thanks to Hannah for permission to use these photos.