A decent proposal

Spanish brandy - Julio helped us demolish a nearly full
bottle of Le Panto in just two sittings

Taking Sally back to Mallorca for a week in September was a real pleasure.  We love the island and it has special significance to Sally, as she lived there on and off for more than 20 years with her partner, Orlando.

Sally used to live in a village called Genova, just outside Palma. If you go ‘downhill’ from Genova you come to Cala Major, and that’s where we stayed this year. It has a couple of beaches, and is on the Number 3 bus route which makes it easy to get into Palma.

We managed to fit in quite a bit, even though Sally is slower now (she’s 83) and has macular degeneration, which impairs her sight considerably. There’s no stopping her though!

Sally next to some framed pictures of
her designs at Theatre Zero

We managed to fit a lot in to our week – a catch up with Lizzie, a long-time friend of Sally’s and trips into Palma to the lovely Theatro Sans, where Sally is known and loved. She spent many years working with them, designing and making costumes, and teaching. We went to the theatre one evening to see a fantastic flamenco show.  We managed a beach trip and a swim in the sea, and a couple of evenings we ate in the hotel bar, down by the swimming pool.  

One evening, sitting by the pool between a lovely lemon tree and a bright red hibiscus, we got chatting with Julio, the bar manager. I don’t speak much Spanish, and Sally can understand but finds it hard to speak.  Julio didn’t speak much English, but we still had lovely conversations.

Though Julio works at the hotel, it’s not his vocation, his first love is music! He is a pianist and was a DJ at Cala Major beach, and the owner of the club asked him to help out one day at the hotel. That was 16 years ago. I told him I was a bass player, and that my daughter played music too. Julio said Sally reminded him of his mother. She is 94 and was a dancer. His father, long gone, was a circus clown.  Julio’s daughter, Maria, worked in the hotel too, when Julio had a day off. Julio came over even though he wasn’t working. We had a lovely evening, and agreed that he and I should get married. But there wasn’t enough time this trip, so if I go back next year (and Sally does want to return, of course), I have a decent proposal on the table!

How the casa used to look

We also ate at a local café where we were served by a delightful young waitress (about the same age as my daughter) who was practicing her English. We ate there three times, for light lunches, and on our last day she was there with a friend on her day off. Even so she came over to say hello and wish us a good journey home. Yes, we tipped her nicely, and were given a most delicious Herbas after our last meal at no charge.

How the casa looks now

It was a good week. We saw old friends, made new friends, and got some sorely needed sunshine. The saddest part of our trip was a visit to the Casa where she had lived. We knew it had been sold, but had hoped the frontage would be protected. I’m sure the house will be lovely when it’s finished, and will make someone a fabulous home, but it was sad to lose the history of Casa Martinez.

I probably won’t marry Julio, but isn’t it nice to have been asked, even in fun.  

NB – I changed Julio’s name, just in case he’s proposed to another tourist since; I wouldn’t want to embarrass him.

All photos (C) me. 

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El Toro

Plaza de Espana

My favourite place in Seville is the Parque de María Luisa, and the Plaza de España. For those of you who may be Star Wars fans, it featured as a city on the planet Naboo.  The amazing tile work is beautiful, and if you go to Seville, it is one of the ‘must see’ locations. My friend and I, visiting for a long weekend, went to the Bull Ring – the Plaza Del Toros.

Wooden heads used for jousting

This magnificent bullring is considered to be one of the finest in Spain and is one of the oldest and most important in the world. It took around a hundred years to complete, and it looks very much like the Coliseum in Rome. The 'Catedral del Toreo' is spectacular – and shows how little we have changed over the last 2,000 years. We were given a tour of the ring, that included a visit to the museum of bullfighting. ‘There are strict rules, the bull can only be fought for 20 minutes. Then it must be killed, so that there is humane treatment’ our guide said several times, somewhat defensively I thought. 

The history of the bullfight was interesting. Originally they took place in the streets, and the slain bull’s meat was given to the poor. Consequently, the people loved bullfights, because meat was a rare treat. One king decided that he would replace it with knightly sports – the hitting of target heads with a lance, or the grabbing of a ribbon from a ring – exchanging blood sports for skill sports. But this was very elitist, compared to bullfighting and, most importantly, there was no meat for the people. As soon as that king passed on, so did his noble jousting, and back came the bullfights.

Bull leaping

Humanity has a history of challenging the bull – an animal we admire yet seek to defeat. From the ancient bull leapers, to the contemporary Pamplona Bull run  and bullfights, we seem to want to show that we can outsmart these powerful animals. Perhaps that’s it – we don’t like to think that anything is stronger than us so we must show our superiority in other ways. I’m sure there is plenty of research on the psychology of hunters; perhaps a similar psychology applies to bullfighters. 

I understand how the spectacle, the bravery and the blood may appeal to some, but not to me. I was glad we visited and gained an understanding of the history, of how it evolved and why, for so many, it was (and is) so popular. But I remain against the practice of taunting, spearing, and killing of animals purely for our entertainment.  

Dinosaurs, sharks and children

Like me, many mothers with sons are likely to have an ‘above average’ knowledge of dinosaurs and sharks.  Some of this knowledge stays with you even as the boys grow into men – and some of it stays with them no doubt, if not crowded out by hormones etc.

Aside from the seminal film ‘Jaws’ tainting the Great White with a human-hating personality, and the dubious invention of ‘Sharktopus’, most of what I have seen on sharks is documentary. My son was riveted by Discovery Channel’s Shark Week and we had at least two model sharks (though seriously outmatched by a whole zoo of plastic dinosaurs). 

Ichthyosaur

I visit the Cambridge University museums often – particularly the Sedgwick which houses prehistoric relics from the region and a full-size replica of an iguanodon skeleton. I love looking at the model recreations of small dinosaurs, and the skeletal remains of ichthyosaurs that are a step towards our modern sharks. I say modern, but sharks in fact pre-date dinosaurs by several million years.

Sharks are apex predators – an essential part of the complex ecosystems that live in our oceans. Though I’m relieved that the megalodon (a prehistoric shark which might have been as long as 67 feet) is extinct, it is concerning that we are losing our current populations of sharks. At current rates several species may join the megalodon in extinction very soon.

Why? What is happening to our sharks, and what is the impact of losing them? This apex predator is itself being predated. It is being hunted and consumed by an animal with no predator to manage its population – or its hunger for wildlife: humans. Millions of sharks are fished for their meat, skin and liver oil, whilst some are taken just for their fins.

Shark fishing

Many are aware of the precarious nature of fish stocks in our oceans and fishing quotas, marine reserves and many other regulations have been put into place to try and preserve our dwindling wild fish stocks. But shark fishing (and bycatch, where sharks are incidentally caught when fishing for other species) has been largely unregulated until relatively recently.

Sharks continue to fascinate me – they are living prehistoric relics, essential to the balance of life in the ocean. Sharks, rays and chimaera (another close relative) are now under threat, and it’s not just the Asian market for shark fin soup that is driving their decline. Europe’s penchant for eating skate and many other fish products that contain shark meat is contributing to the decline of these amazing creatures (Europe is in fact the third largest consumer of wildlife products after Asia and the USA).

If you have time, listen to Glenn in the video below talking about the work that he and his team are doing. It’s thanks to passionate individuals like Glenn and the many like him in conservation organisations around the world, that we might actually stand a chance of saving endangered species.

What can you do? You can support wildlife charities, you can sign petitions and lobby government to protect our oceans. You can eat only MSC certified fish, and learn more about our oceans so that you can make informed choices on what seafood you choose to consume - and educate your children. It’s their world we are destroying.

I loved learning about dinosaurs as a child and as a mother. I love learning about sharks and other wildlife as a conservation professional. I do hope that we can help preserve these less than loveable creatures for the sake of our children, and the planet.

Further reading:

• TRAFFIC: http://www.traffic.org/sharks/
• Support TRAFFIC’s shark work: www.traffic.org/donate
• WWF: http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/endangered_species/sharks/
• IUCN: http://www.iucn.org/?14311/A-quarter-sharks-and-rays-threatened-with-extinction
• Oceana’s shark encyclopaedia: http://oceana.org/marine-life/sharks-rays/

Picture credits:

Ichthyosaur: http://walkingwith.wikia.com/wiki/Ichthyosaurs

Shark and fisherman: https://www.flickr.com/photos/zjmac - with kind permission

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Tea with Aunt May

What better way to occupy ourselves on a Bank Holiday Monday than to go to the park with a super bouncy ball! My friend Chris and I had done some serious shelf-organising (and dust-rearranging) and needed some fresh air. A trip to the local park with a rubber ball seemed like a good way to blow away the cobwebs we’d accumulated from the morning’s houseworkery.

Picture this – two senior women playing bouncy ball in the park. Then along comes May, on her electric buggy, complete with Sally the Yorkshire terrier. May drove up to us and said ‘Can I play?’ Of course!  So we included May in the game and she wasn’t at all bad, though it was harder for her to retrieve missed catches as she climbed out of her buggy to fetch the ball. She was a good thrower though, and we had a fun fifteen minutes. ‘Good exercise for me to get out of the chair,’ she said ‘I used to love playing ball with my nephews’.

 After a bit May became tired and waved a cheery goodbye, thanking us for including her in our game. 10 year old Sally climbed back on board and away they drove. I watched her trundle towards the park gates, and stop. The battery to her nifty vehicle had run flat. She was extremely embarrassed, but very grateful when we offered to push her home. It wasn’t far, so Chris and I took it in turns to get her home.

May is 95 years old. She certainly didn’t look it and although she asked us where we live a couple of times, on the whole she was bright, alert, and a lovely character. ‘Would you like to come in for a cup of tea when we get home?’ she asked. We said yes, and we needed it after pushing the heavy buggy. Thank goodness she didn’t live at the top of a hill!

We went down the road, then turned down a little lane. At the bottom was her tiny little terrace house; almost cottage like. She’d lived in it since 1970, originally with her father and older sister. She showed us in and instructed us to visit the garden – it was delightful! Narrow but well-tended, with Solomon’s seal, bleeding heart, peony and some beautiful shrubs, tomatoes in the greenhouse, rhubarb and runner beans in the beds; it was evident she has a green thumb. ‘But I get a chap in once a week, to help out.’  

Whilst we were in the garden, she went back out the front of the house and put her buggy on charge. She’d only ever run out of juice once before she said, about 20 years ago.  

We were given tea and cake (she didn’t make it – ‘can’t stand cooking’) and sat down for a chat in a homely little front-room full of bits and pieces. Not nick knacks or ‘tut’ (as my Welsh relative insists on calling such paraphernalia) but papers, books, photographs and a magnificent old bracket clock. We had noted a photograph of her in evening dress with a man with a huge gold chain around his neck – her father, it turned out – the Mayor of Poplar in his day.

She had never married, and nor had her sister. Her mother had been blind and so the girls had taken on family duties. May had joined the RAF then trained as a nurse whilst her sister cared for her parents. ‘Never had time for men’ she said. She was grateful for our taking her home and no doubt the chance for a natter, and we were grateful for the tea and cake and the opportunity to meet such an interesting lady. I’m sure she would have had many more tales to tell, if we had been able to stay longer.

An unplanned afternoon, but tea with Aunt May was very pleasant indeed.

Photo: Priory Gardens, from www.rightmove.co.uk 

By the sea

Happisburgh

I love being by the sea. I try to make it to the seaside  at least once every year - more if I can. Not always a seaside holiday, but a visit just long enough to hear that crash of surf, to taste the tang of salt in the air, and to enjoy the view of open sea and beach.

Today I went to Happisburg (check pronounciation, it'll amaze) in Norfolk. Only a short visit, but long enough to let my eyes stretch over the blue - for the sky and the sea to meet, for clouds to loom and lower, and for distant seagulls to appear like flotsam upon the waves. I got my fix.

Many years ago I wrote a song with the lines 'I hear the sea and it calls to me, I feel the sea and it draws me in, I am beckoned by the ocean like the wolf is by the moon'. That is how I feel when I see the sea - it's like the sirens are there, calling me, saying come into the water, into the arms of the loving ocean. Of course I don't go, I am tied to the mast of reality and the call is like an echo, not the irresistible voice of the siren but a memory of the desire.

Brighton - our vanity in ruins

That may sound a little crazy, but how many people do you know who want to live or retire and be by the sea? Why do we populate the shores of this small island where our houses might (and do) fall into the sea, where a rising tide can flood our homes, and where the storms can strike our presence from the very soil upon which we build? I think it is an island people thing. This is a small country, and wherever you are you don't have to go too far to find the sea.

I don't want to retire to the seaside though; I love the remote beaches where no penny-arcade has yet dared to plant its glittering lights, yet I fear the bleak emptiness of isolation and the power of a sea unchecked. There must be some place that fits between the two - not too commercial, yet not too remote, but I haven't found it yet.

Seaside visits do me just fine in the meantime. I can birdwatch, if the weather is fine I can paddle or swim, and if I were to have children with me again (and even if I did not), then I could build sandcastles and a mock Stonehenge from beach stones and driftwood.

If you want to see me thoughtful, but in truth happy, just take me to the sea.

Photos: all (C) Carolyn Sheppard.

Letter to Philip

Dear Phil

Before I start my letter, just a quick aside to anyone reading this who isn’t you. If you are wondering why I am writing to my brother on here, it’s quite simple. I don’t know where he is so this is how I write to him. 

I was reminded of something that happened when we were kids. My friend told me about a girl who walked into a pond covered in duckweed and hadn’t realised it wasn’t solid ground. I remember Nick’s dog, Dusty, doing almost the same thing at Hope Cove. At least I think that’s where it was – where the in-shore pond by the rocks that was filled with weed when the tide went out looked like a small green lawn. And Dusty, enthusiastic dog that she was, ran full pelt into it expecting it to be solid ground. Dog’s faces can show surprise.

Hope Cove

It was good to have those two dogs, Dusty and Petra, in our childhood. I remember Petra jumping from the bridge at the Pig and Whistle on the way down to Devon. We would often stop there as our half-way point. No M4 in those days. Were we in a big old Humber, or were we in the Reliant?  I only just remember the Reliant, sliding about in the back on yellow plastic mats. No seats, let alone seat belts.

I’m sure you remember these things better than I do; my memories of childhood aren’t that many. I remember certain things that could be constructed memories (from stories or photographs), and I remember things that can only have been my memories – such as riding a tricycle in the ward at Great Ormond Street hospital, and a huge room where I had to go with mum for ‘breathing practice’.

Sally told me about taking me to the psychiatrist for my asthma – and of me rolling out plasticine into long rolls. “Very phallic” the doc is supposed to have said. And mother, now, says ‘and of course I just plonked you into a bath with your brother. Phallic indeed – what else can you do with plasticine except roll it out?’  Although I would argue that now (I make faces and animals out of blu-tac all the time), I would think when I was four it probably was all I could do with it. I don’t think sharing a bath when we were kids was the cause of my asthma somehow. 

Why am I going over these memories? Because they are far and few between I guess, and maybe me talking about some of the stuff I do remember will trigger more memories, and some in you too. Hopefully good ones.  

Enough of the past – a quick update on my life: My new job is with a wildlife conservation charity. I love fundraising; some people think it’s a horrible job about just asking people for money, but it’s about a lot more than that to me. It’s about taking responsibility, and taking action. I enjoyed my time at the medical research charity, but I’m back in the area that I feel most passionate about, so I am happy, even though this job is very busy and demanding. I am learning a lot too. It’s all good; I have never liked being bored in a job. 

Well, they say that internet posts shouldn’t be much more than 500 words, so I guess letters on line shouldn’t either.

I know it’s your choice to remain unfound, and I respect that Phil. But I do still think of you, often. 

Photo credit: www.open.edu

The American Signal Crayfish – a parable for our times

White Claw Crayfish

In the UK we have a neat little crayfish called the White Claw Crayfish (though its claw doesn't look very white in this picture). It’s smaller than its American cousin, the Signal Crayfish, and was widely dispersed around the UK as recently as 2002. But things have changed.

On a recent episode of the BBCs Winterwatch, Chris Packham visited a stream in Devon that is now not only devoid of our native crayfish, but is devoid of anything other than the Signal. In the example we saw in Devon, they have eaten everything out of one stream so that the only recourse left to them is cannibalism.

So what happened?

The American Signal crayfish was brought over to the UK for the restaurant trade – some were let loose (perhaps to build up a local stock for consumption) and being the adaptable creature that it is, it didn’t take long for this small crustacean to take over new territories, including most of the UK and a lot of Europe (read this paper for more technical descriptions of how the crayfish spread and are welcome, and unwelcome, across Europe).

Signal Crayfish

The fact that the crayfish adapted well to our environment is no surprise, we already had our own crayfish, so the habitat was ideal. What wasn’t known when crayfish were introduced in Europe is that they carried a ‘crayfish plague’. Not only are their voracious appetites causing our indigenous crayfish to decline, they are also infecting them with a deadly disease.

We can eat crayfish, in fact eating the Signal is positively encouraged on some websites. But you need a licence, because our White Claw is now an endangered species.  The estimate is that it has declined by around 95% since the 1970s. That may seem like a long period, but follow the projections through and our native crayfish is likely to be extinct in a few decades, if not sooner.

So we have the introduced species who were quite happy and thriving in their own environment (the USA).  They have arrived in new lovely habitats with virtually no predators and an abundant food source. And they are devastating the habitat with no thought to their future (of course, they are base animals, they cannot think ahead), and destroying the other living creatures around them. Where there are limited resources, their long term future is rather dubious.

I work in conservation – in an organisation who specialise in wildlife trade monitoring. I see rhinos poached to the brink of extinction, I see wild plants being harvested so that seeking natural medicines in a forest that may have taken a villager a day, now takes a week. I have seen forests destroyed (by legal and illegal logging) and palm oil planted, displacing orang-utans and other native forest dwellers. I see a growing human population: if everyone consumed food at the rate (and volume of meat) that we do in the West, it would take several planet earths to feed us all.  The species that turns from symbiotic to parasitic has a limited future, unless we can change. Unlike the crayfish, we can see into the future – and at the moment, I’m not so sure that we won’t suffer the same fate as the cannibalistic Devon invaders.

Photo credits:

Signal Crayfish: Open University

White Claw Crayfish: BBC Wales

Further reading:

From this blog:

Food security

From the web:

Scary facts on consumption by the USA

Food for all

ARKive – facts about the Signal Crayfish

IUCN Red List

Of geese and goslings

Last summer I enjoyed the company of geese. The Canada geese and, sometimes, Brent geese, would come to the lake and spend their days enjoying the peace on our science park.

One afternoon I decided to share my lunch with the Canada geese and the ducks. They enjoyed it with gusto, so I brought in proper bird food - seeds and grain - which they also partook of very happily.

The Canada geese had their youngsters with them, and I very quickly got to know one family rather well. 'Hissy Momma' was a very assertive goose who would let her goslings come and eat from my provisions, whilst hissing loudly at every other goose, duck or passer by who dared even suggest that they may interrupt her youngsters repast. She would race after other geese, chasing them into the water and snapping at their tails - every other goose on the lake was terrified of her. She was partnered by 'Pop' who, though as big as his wife (and I am assuming gender here, I must admit), would just stand guard and watch me and the kids, whilst Momma was chasing away all others.

I named a few of them - my favourite being the littlest, Ranzo. After him I liked Brutus - he was the boldest of the goslings. Brutus and Ranzo eventually let me stroke them - yes, wild geese! Hissy Momma of course announced her disaproval, but as long I was dishing out the grub (which she sometimes stopped hissing enough to eat herself), she would accept my presence. If I had offered even a hint of threat, I am sure I would have been in serious trouble with her!

Hissy Mommna

The others would take food from my hand, and I would always approach and talk to them so they got to know my voice. This probably had two outcomes - firstly potentially none whatsoever because who knows if geese would recognise my voice and secondly, my colleagues and other passers by probably thought I was nuts.

Either way, I felt privileged to have those geese as company - even if just for a season. Good luck this summer my friends, I am sure Ranzo and the gang will be bringing their own brood back to the lake again this year.

Hesitant Brent Goose

Ranzo

All photos my own copyright. No downloading or use without express permission.

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Conspiracy theory

Sometimes the world conspires for you (that's a corrupted quote from Paul Coelho's 'The Alchemist'). Though I spent three and a half happy years at my last employer, the time had come to move on.

Getting close to nature

As you may know (if you know me or from my blog posts), I am a lover of the natural world. I spend a lot of my time out bird watching, walking in woods or even by the sea if I get a chance. I worked for a conservation organisation for a year (the wonderful Fauna & Flora International) and subscribe to the RSPB, Butterfly Conservation and my local Wildlife Trust.

When it comes to looking for fundraising jobs - the obvious place is London where many of the major (and minor) charities are based. The thought of a commute into town didn't really appeal, but I've done it before, and I'm not that bothered. But the cost! Oh my, that did make a difference to my job hunt.

Fate, luck, chance, good timing. Whatever you care to attribute the confluence of circumstances to, I found my 'perfect job':

Factor one - it was in conservation!
Factor two - it was local!
Factor three - it was a wider remit than my previous job and would make full use of my recently acquired Diploma in Fundraising.

However, I discovered that my friend had also applied. She had been my boss at Fauna & Flora International. She was well qualified, lived nearby, and was a great candidate.

Fate? Luck? Here we go again ... the world conspiring. My friend had her eyes on a different job, which she really wanted. Actually, she invented the job - the employer didn't know how much they needed her, but she persuaded them and they hired her. So she did not want to interview for the job we had both applied to. And in her 'I'm sorry I can't attend' email, she also kindly wrote me a nice reference.

The long and the short of it is that I now work for a most exciting and interesting conservation organisation who are unique in their field. I have a huge challenge ahead of me, but one I shall relish.

Watch this space. I shall have more stories to tell.

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Looking back

On 3 January 1974 I went to see 'Mary Poppins' at the cinema with my friend Paul. I was 13. I can't remember if Paul and I went on our own, or if we went with Paul's dad, but the reason was to get me out of the house.

During the night, my father had died. Aged just 53. He'd had a massive heart attack. My brother spent the remainder of the night lying in front of my door, to make sure I didn't come out and get involved in whatever was going on. He must have been 17. My mother was just 41.

I understand why I was sent to the cinema - to get me 'out the way' - but I don't remember if I knew what exactly what was going on. I can't remember if I was told my father was dead, or ill, or that I just needed to go out. I think I was told that he had died, but it was a long time ago and my memory isn't clear.

I do remember the funeral, in Bath. My father was buried in a cemetery in Bathwick and afterwards we went to my aunt's flat in the city. I remember  great anger and frustration because everyone was having a party, and my dad was dead. I know that the vicar came in to see my to try and explain that we were celebrating his life, not his death, but I don't really think I understood at 13 (and I was a young 13).

I never knew my father as an old man. He never knew me as an adult. There's a lot of grieving I still haven't done, there's a lot of things I wish I knew, I wish he'd known, but things are as they are. Life for my mother was not easy, and I had to grow up very quickly.

My brother must have had a hard time too, but it wasn't something we ever really spoke about. I wonder what his memories of that day, those times, are?

I wish I could end this piece on some great understanding, some words of wisdom, but the truth is I'm just thinking, and sometimes just writing is enough.

I remember my dad, I loved my dad, and I miss my dad.

What a difference a word makes

I listened to the radio on my way to a meeting this morning and heard Karen Blackett, CEO of Mediacom, talking about part time working. The one thing she said which really struck a chord with me involved changing one word. Let’s go back a step first though (a big step to start): 

Anubis weighing a heart.

National Geographic, Ancient Egyptians - Book of the Dead

As long ago as 3000 years BC, sophisticated weights and measures were standardised. Amongst the intriguing early equipment excavated from ancient sites there are many sets of scales and weights. The ancient Egyptians believed that Anubis measured your heart against a feather in the afterlife, to see if you were worthy of entry into heaven.  

Scales work by achieving balance; things are measured against each other and an even weight for each achieved through adjustment. Balance, visually and by implication, suggests (to me) exclusivity. If you have a pound of gold on one side, and a pound of steel on the other, though they weigh the same, they are different. You would not balance the scale by putting some gold on with the steel, or vice versa.

But back to Karen and her talk about the workplace. The current popular phrase for how people cope with their work and home life is ‘work life balance’. This implies that you cannot combine the two – that you have work, or you have home, and never the twain shall meet.  That may have been true in past times, in an industrialised era when the knocker-upper woke you for your shift at the factory, and the whistle blew for knocking off time. A period of ‘hard knocks’, to say the least. But is it true now?

A knocker upper

Today we still have industrialised occupations, but we also have a much wider world of work which includes remote working, home working, even virtual working. We can attend conferences without leaving our desk, or even without leaving our homes. As we become more digitised, as communications have rushed us into the 21st century (not exactly kicking and screaming but more tweeting and streaming), so our working lives have also changed.

Karen used the term ‘work life blend’ – and the substitution of that one word (balance for blend) makes a world of difference. Home life and work life are a combination – and frequently flow into each other instead of being mutually exclusive.  Work doesn’t just begin when you get to the office; individuals are ‘clocking on’ before they even leave home (Mozy, 2012). 

Though this one word may seem quite a simple change, it has an impact on perception. Conflicting demands of work and home can cause excessive stress (Health & Safety Executive, 2014). And research suggests further stress - ‘a conflict between high-performance practices and work-life balance policies’ (White, 2003).  It is understandable, therefore, that many individuals seek to reduce the stress that an ever-demanding working life puts on them.  

If you change the word ‘balance’, which implies juggling, struggling, with ‘blend’, which implies combination and mutuality, you are instantly addressing the challenge with a positive starting attitude. Sometimes the change can be small – just one word – but the difference it could make may be huge.

References

Health & Safety Executive. (2014). What about stress at home? Retrieved from Health & Safety Exeuctive: http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/furtheradvice/stressathome.htm 

Mozy. (2012). The New 9 to 5. Retrieved November 2014, from http://mozy.co.uk/about/news/reports/9-5

White, M. H. (2003). High-performance’ Management Practices, Working Hours and Work–Life Balance'. British Journal of Industrial Relations.

Further reading

Health and Safety Executive – Work Related Stress

Guardian – How to achieve a good work life balance

CIPD - Working life – balance, blend or bedlam?

Wikipedia - Knocker uppers 

Knocker upper photo courtesy of http://www.laboiteverte.fr/photos-mysteres-n74/