Katy's box

I don’t think I fully understood the term schadenfreude until last week. Granted we all have unattractive characteristics, but taking pleasure in the misery of others, now that’s a stinker. But the economy went pop and suddenly yummy mummies were cancelling appointments to have their highlights done and looked a little less secure in their Chelsea tractors. And I felt a wry smile.

And I’m not the only one expressing feelings other than fear and panic. Reading and listening to various commentators there have been expressions of guilt for the style over substance decade: guilt for the greed, not simply of rampant consumerism, but as expressed by (anonymous) bankers and brokers that shock horror, they may have put their needs before those of the shareholders or companies. Come on, let’s face it, being a trader is surely the same as having a 4 year old in charge of a sweet shop: one should not necessarily expect to see a profit.

But we all seem to have a rather short memories: there have been signs of pulling in the purse strings for some time now. Not simply for financial reasons, but also for ethical twinges and the post Christmas lunch feeling that we’d overindulged. (Repeat a hundred times: champagne should be a treat!). Bored of shopping and newness, we’d started knitting, growing our own veg, eating animals from head to toe, using hessian bags and shopping for ‘vintage’.

We’d started resenting the inbuilt obsolescence that made it cheaper to buy a new dvd player than get the old one repaired and the pace of technology that has meant we’ve had to waste money and time on new products to enjoy the music and films we’d already bought; we were feeling guilty about clothes mountains, that Primark prices and our desire for novelty had created.

So we were already exhausted from competitive purchasing. Let’s face it, these last few years has meant not only are we keeping up with the Digby-Joneses in terms of cars and making sure the front garden was ‘kept nice’, but we’d felt obliged to take exotic, long haul, frankly exhausting experiential holidays, install bespoke kitchens and extra bathrooms and endlessly decorate. By the time we had our stainless styled minimalism sorted, we had to rip it all out and stuff our houses with flock wallpaper, chandeliers and mooseheads.

Maybe we can return to slightly cheaper pleasures: a walk in the park; a board game with friends; libraries and maybe the time to actually read the book. And an unfashionable kitchen can still provide us with a good stockpot.

So let’s remember there was something in the air anyway, and I’m pretty sure it’s not just me that’s uttering a small sigh of relief that we can get off the gym membership treadmill and put away our status anxiety for a few years. I’m knackered: bring on the recession.

Ok ok, the world is awash with Bond. It's Craig Crazy out in media land. And no I'm not stiffling a yawn, though I'm sure Danny boy must be as he answers catalogues of inane questions. But I love reading his press, because he just sounds so normal. There's very little pr puff about DC or Yum Yum Let Me Lick You All Over, as he's come to be known in my house.

I like him because circa Casino Royale, he admitted to chilling out playing video games and being a bit too tight to buy a house cos he thought prices were excessive (turns out he was right).

He can obviously do proper PR when necessary as he did for the film, Flashbacks of a Fool where it clearly mattered that a small independent movie got all the attention it could, and also his mate was directing and he was a producer. However for Bond, I suppose YY could be reading out the ingredients of a pot noodle in an interview and we'd still go and see the film.

And I like him this time as I can sort of see through it. I half smile as I watch that ridiculous Sony HD advert where increasingly extreme explosions fail to knock him off his perch. I just watch him react to the CGI and imagine the filming of the advert as he flung himself about in front of blue screen in response to being prodded by a long stick with a boxing glove on the end.

But one of the things I like about YY most, is that he swears in a particularly British out with your mates for a beer, fashion. And that’s very endearing. And the antithesis of Bond. Because really, Bond's just not crap enough for me. I like real men who can laugh at themselves and YY seems more than capable of doing that.

There's a great line in one of the best sitcoms ever, Paul Whitehouse's Happiness, where the disgruntled best mate goads his wife on hearing she's going to the Baftas that 'even if you met and slept with George Cloony, it wouldn't be like, y’know, sleeping with George Cloony!' and he made a very valid point. However I think if you slept with Daniel Craig, it would actually be better than sleeping with Daniel Craig, as it would be much more of a laugh.

Anyway YY, in the name of research I'm prepared to give it a go.

Not being a mother, and to be honest a pretty rubbish godmother, my knowledge of changing nappies, disposable or otherwise is strictly limited. And of all the pros and cons of parenthood I’ve considered I’m sure no-one disagree surely this is one of the downsides.

I vaguely remember my sister’s nappy being changed some time around the Queen’s silver jubilee (clearly it was changed more than once otherwise we’d have been in a social services situation) and this was still terrycloth time. Other than the requisite safety pins and nappy rash cream, it involved something, which even to me at the age of 7, seemed particularly ineffective, the nappy liner: an A5 sized sheet of sheer webbed material, presumably to either keep the terrycloth away from child’s rear, or prevent the worst of the expulsion seeping too far into the terrycloth, thus rendering it forever green.

However recent wisdom has been that terry is best and disposable nappies are almost single-arsedly responsible for global warming. Filling up landfill with their filthy vile contents, the green mummy martyrs sneer smugly at their disposable counterparts while their unfortunate children chafe in their morally superior nappies.

However, you might as well rescue your children from nappy rash as apparently disposable IS better for the environment. Yes, you heard it. All those years of expensive laundering services, or washing shitty nappies yourself, you were actually doing more harm than if you’d been using pampers-pull-me-up-little-miss-huggies.

According to a £50k nappy research project by the DEFRA (Department of Environment Food and Rural Affairs) in order to make them worthwhile and deliver a smaller carbon footprint than the more convenient alternative, you’d have to dry them outdoors all year round, wash them at no hotter than 60 degrees (probably not the best if you’ve had a particularly nasty expulsion), use the same nappies on about 5 children and then probably use them as tea-towels afterwards.

This is of course quite embarrassing for the Govt so it’s not exactly been publicising the findings. But mums, time to chuck out your pegs.

However, as Tony once said, there is a third way. In the 1950s children were often out of nappies soon after learning to sit up. It’s become later and later as the decades have passed.

If parents – let’s face it, usually mums – are able to pick up signals more effectively early on, known as mind-mindedness and critical for all parent child connections, then as Maggie Howells said in a Woman’s Hour feature last year, if you know what you’re looking for, it’s possible to have your child using the pot from the age of 5 days. That’s right: 5 daysQ It’s currently about 3 years in the UK – think how may nappies and shit in your fingernail moments that would save.

Recognising those key times such as after nap, or noticing signals the child gives you in the same way you’d learn to recognise tiredness or hunger will enable you to put the child on the pot at the right time and this will then just be completely routine for the child if not completely possible at all times.

Much earlier toilet training is just utterly normal in many African and Eastern cultures with children in China wearing pants with a split in them for easy access to the loo. So, it seems it’s just us filthy freaks in the West who allow our children to fester in their own faeces for years on end.

So terry or disposable, if you can get the training out of the way incredibly early on, then you’ll have a tiny carbon footprint and presumably a few less shitty finger nail moments.

A little bit of false modesty from Mr Fry on this evening’s trip round North Carolina in his cab. On visiting a body farm, a grisly but fascinating research centre for studying human decomposition, he mused that he might consider leaving his body to such a place on the grounds that his body had done so very little worthwhile whilst alive, it might as well do some good when his spirit had flown. I think some might beg to differ and I suspect you know that, Stephen my sweet. But oh how you’re forgiven.

Looking to download 'the age of aquarius' which I believed to be from the Musical hair, I mistyped hiar which brought up a single song, Hiartabua, by the following mythical creature. This is Hansi Hinterseer, also known as Peter the Goat herd in his latter years. He's blond, he lives in a snowdome (check out his house below) and he yoddles. Could anything be lovelier other than finding a picture of Hansi in liederhosen? I live in hope and in the meantime when I'm feeling crunched by credit I will again mistype hair and give myself a little Hansi pick me up. I highly recommend the track, 'Wenn i won der Alm obageh' - it really shows off his yoddling tonsils to perfection. Who could be miserable when listening to this waistcoated Richard Clayderman bring joy to a million bavarians? Run little ones, gamble and frolic like lambs on a mountain top running through cool crystal clear streams with hearts and souls as light as air. Let Hansi take you by the hansi and lighten these dark days with some yoddling oompahpah.

Having wondered why such a hothouse had not yet been created, I was pleasantly chuffed to hear Prof Brian Cox on Any Questions (rad 4, 17 oct) propose a manhattan type project to address climate change. He suggested it might look at finally solving nuclear fusion, the process of creating nuclear energy where all the materials emerge as energy leaving no dangerous byproduct to be shipped to some poverty stricken country.

He suggests of budget of 140 billion would be necessary and considering the numbers that have been bandied around in the past couple of weeks, this seems like small change to most governments and could probably be found down the back of Gordon Brown’s sofa. We seem able to find the money when necessary with suprisingly little fuss from the public, possibly keen to do anything to shore up their personal investments, savings and homes.

At the end of the WW2 when the original Manhattan Project was pulled into existence by allied forces to race the Germans to creating a nuclear bomb, the greatest physicists were taken to the dessert, and essentially told to stay there til they come up with the solution.

The impetus of war clearly focuses the mind, in the same way that the threat of immeninet economic collapse stokes political will.

But why is there little political appetite to fund such a project to address climate change and provide clean, cheap fuel? Why couldn’t such research be funded by the G7, the UN, the IMF or, as in CERN, funding from various governments.

The time span of Einstein’s paper proving e=mc2 to splitting the atom to creating the atomic bomb – the unfortunate culmination of that research – was a 40 years. And that was with the carrot and stick of WW2 to drive it forward. Unfortunately, rather than lead us to the conclusion of unlocking the secret to endless energy, we ended up in the cul de sac of the cold war. however, if we wait another 40 years, we in London may be swimming to work. Unfortunately, the creeping quality of climate change means we don’t see the threat so vividly, hence to lack of response. No one wants to commit to reducing carbon emissions because of the supposed strangulation on the economy. However investing in fusion, or frankly any type of clean energy does require a well funded hothouse of research which should enable us to cut emissions without going back to the dark ages in terms of quality of life.

Is the oil lobby so strong and bursting at the seams with the indiscretions of so many politicians they dare not do anything to rattle it?

As we’ve seen lately, where there’s a will there’s a way. However, in this instance, the will seems to be mere hot air, which can only hasten global warming.