50 C O N T E X T 1 2 8 : M A R C H 2 0 1 3 Notes from the chair It’s decision time In the Evans family decision making is shared out. I don’t mean we all reach decisions together. That would be too time consuming and messy. No, we are each responsible for separate decisions. For example, I always decide what we eat. This is because Mr E does not cook. He is capable of the rudiments if pushed; if I am away or incapacitated. However, it can be hit and miss. There are mothers of our acquaintance who still talk about the time a few years ago when the girls were much younger when Mr E gave our daughters cold pizza and Haribos (jelly sweets) for breakfast, ‘because that’s what they wanted’. I returned from the IHBC school to pitying looks in the playground from those who did not quite see how this could fit into his grand plan for parenting. So usually he has no input at all into meal times but is an appreciative and enthusiastic consumer of the food provided. He is extremely gratifying to feed, preferring casseroles and steamed puddings but equally happy when offered the product of some gastronomic experiment that may not have turned out quite as expected. But he rarely decides what we eat. In the garden he is king of all he surveys. The garden looks as lovely as it does because he spends nearly all his spare time working on it. Mr E has a grand plan for the garden and his mantra is if you have a plan, implement it. Fences, summer houses, raised planters (they really are works of art), wood stores and hard landscaping go up like magic with very little warning. I like to think I am a keen gardener and, yes, I do know the names of most of the plants and their growing habits. But when it comes to cutting and pruning he knows much more. That is because apparently gardening is a battle between him and the plants, and he has to show them who is in charge. I have qualms about his enthusiastic cutting back and pruning, and I have tried to introduce some shared decision making into this part of the garden routine. But that is not allowed. He does it when I am not there. The decision has been made. As I said, I like to think of myself as the gardener but in fact I just dabble. I don’t do any of it during the winter. Come April I go out and inspect my lovely collection of pots (emptied, cleaned and stored from the frost by Mr E) and put a few lovely, gorgeous things in them, and then spend the summer rearranging my pots to best effect according to flowering times and the heat. I talk a lot about the extent and the contribution of my efforts. I am allowed to do the pots. He has made that decision. Sometimes you can find that decision making is not undertaken by those you might expect. Last summer I had to take my eldest to the doctor regarding a Duke of Edinburgh related injury. I don’t mean she had got into a tussle with the monarch’s consort and came off worse. I know what you are thinking: binge-drinking teenagers and boozed-up royals, it happens all the time in Surrey. No, this was an injury sustained on Box Hill as part of her efforts towards the Duke of Edinburgh Award. A few weeks after the Box Hill expedition her foot looked rather poorly so off we popped to the doc. As he inspected the mangled limb he offered her a range of possible treatments. I thought he was simply explaining what he was planning to do. But no, he was asking her what she wanted him to do. ‘Make it better’ was my unspoken response. I was astonished. He has the medical qualification, not my daughter.Why ask her? If he wanted to know how to refresh your tumblr page to ensure the maximum number of followers or the lyrics to all the songs from the great 1980s laureate, Morrissey, then she’s your girl. But medical procedures? She is probably not sufficiently equipped to decide on that. While we are on the subject of who makes decisions I am going to mention Radio 3 and 4 again.You and Yours does not require an entire hour every day. It is simply not warranted. We need more episodes of Cabin Pressure – sheer genius. Further, who is responsible for moving Rob Cowan from the breakfast slot on Radio 3?
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