That zoom juggle

I often seem to be on Zoom calls in the evening- I’m sure they call it work life balance because you don’t have to pay for a babysitter. I’m not sure what my children call it, as I wave them away out of shot with their nose bleeds and questions.

Last night I was chairing a Tunbridge Wells Labour Women’s Branch zoom. In between cooking dinner and reaching my laptop, my daughter said she wanted to do my hair for me. “I want to nourish it,” she said. It seemed a small penance to pay. I sat patiently while she clipped, brushed and arranged my hair. In the end I thought it was Maid Marion in style - and there are worse things than that.

Our guest speaker was the new MP for Rochester & Strood Lauren Edwards, and it was lovely & refreshing to hear her take on the GE campaign & her first few weeks as MP. Her cat came to say hello, which was friendly. She answered our questions & concerns about the 2 child cap on benefits & tackling child poverty & I’m glad we had the opportunity to congratulate her on becoming an MP and tell her how we felt about important issues.

Also on the agenda was the concerning rise in the Reform vote and how we might combat the party’s hostile narratives. I was in awe of Cllr Vic Jones, who in her day job is a senior policy officer for the TUC focusing on equalities, as she held her two year old refusing sleep and spoke coherently on this important issue. In my email inviting people to the meeting I had warned that Vic’s participation in the meeting was dependent on her child sleeping, and it makes me wonder - is it the right thing to make clear our challenges in getting to the meetings in the first place? I sense there is a school of thought that says to be professional we should hide the mad background juggling and make the surface appear smooth. Personally I’m all for making the juggle obvious- why not? Until we admit that people have lives beyond their work, we will never make progress. And a thing I’m sure of is that nobody minded last night; and I’m so grateful to Vic for joining us while navigating bed time - it definitely isn’t easy and she did it with lots of grace.