Up North

This is why the whole blog business deserves some credit, because a blog called "Wife in the North," written by a woman who has moved from London to far northern England with her husband, might be assumed to be a diaristic bore, but it's not; it's a reliable source of goodness. And perhaps she's not easy to find (until Andrew Sullivan links to her, which he did today), but its author is writing more entertaining (and insightful) fare than you'll find in most newspapers, to choose one medium, and she's doing it, almost certainly, for nothing.

Here's a sample:

To continue the political theme of this blog, the children have apparently been learning about special people -- like the Queen. This has involved drawing the Queen's jaggedy-toothed head on a stamp, making a corrugated cardboard crown, and a consequent lecture from mummy explaining that the Queen is not actually a special person (apologies to the royalists out there). She is in fact an ordinary person just like you and me who only got the job because she was born into a particular family and actually Helen Mirren could do it just as well.

If you cannot brainwash your own children, what is the point of having them?

And here she is accompanying her boys to a friend's birthday party:

As for sexual stereotyping, do not get me started on why all the boys were dressed as superheros while all the girls were in pink and mauve tuile with tiaras and glittery slippers.

"You know," I whispered to one Cinderella in a quiet corner. "You could be a superhero too next time."

She moved away to stand with Sleeping Beauty. They regarded me silently, holding hands and plucking at their opalescent sequinned trim.

"You don't have to be a princess, you know. You could fight for truth and goodness."

"But we look pretty," Sleeping Beauty told me and they skipped away.

(Via Andrew Sullivan)