Category Archives: Rants&Rambles

Rants&Rambles

Tattle Tale

If your son sent an unsolicited dick pic, would you want to know?

Would it change your answer if they were 14 or 24 years old? 34 or 44 years old? Does it change your answer if you have a teenage daughter who has just been sent such a picture?

Someone sent my daughter an unsolicited dick pic in her first year at university. She was 18 and he was probably the same age. It was neither the first nor the last unwanted picture of a man’s genitals she has received.

The man involved was someone whose name she knew. She had come across him at some social event, but hadn’t had any kind of conversation with him. He was entirely peripheral to her experience that evening. Two days later he sent her a few pictures of his penis. & when I received a picture file on-line from an unknown telephone number, his name was mentioned in passing. His pictures were unsolicited but not anonymous.

& knowing his name, meant that I could look him up on the usual social media sites, so I know he has parents (also easily contacted on-line) and siblings, though not a sister.

I wonder whether his mother knows or would want to know what her son is doing to random young women. & I wonder how big a step it is from sending unsolicited pictures, to making unsolicited comments, threats and abuse on-line. How big a step is it from on-line abuse to real-life abuse?

When did the kind of behaviour ever start to seem reasonable?

Home, Rants&Rambles

Vaccines

My entire family is vaccinated against most common illnesses but that wasn’t always the case.

We didn’t routinely vaccinate or get the standard baby batch vaccinations and even now, there are some that I probably wouldn’t bother with if they weren’t part of a batch vaccine with something more useful.

As long as we’re in the UK, polio is pretty much pointless as a vaccination since it’s a disease eradicated from our country, though it was one we signed up to straight away once we started traveling around the world with the kids.

Pertussis or whooping cough has a vaccine with limited efficacy requiring a booster shot every 4-5 years but since it’s part of the DTP shot, we keep up to date with it.

There are some other vaccines that just aren’t very effective such as the flu vaccine so the elder members of our family have thought hard about using them. At the end of the day, there are just too many versions of flu around for any shot to cover everything but the downsides to this vaccine are low to non-existent side-effects outweighed by any coverage to catching flu so it’s worth having the shot for the elderly.

Standard UK vaccinations include diphtheria, tetanus, whooping cough (DTP) polio, Hib (Haemophilus influenzae type b) and hepatitis B. My daughters, like most girls in the UK, are also vaccinated against HPV. Since we’ve all caught chickenpox, we should have lifelong immunity.

Travel vaccinations that we’ve also added to our list include HepA and obviously we all take antimalarials where necessary.

We have never fallen sick (beyond my uncomfortable food poisoning in Laos travelling up the Mekon) and considering that we’ve been visiting developing countries since our kids were toddlers, that’s a pretty good outcome.

It’s something we attribute in large part to decent preventative measures such as basic hygiene i.e. eating only hot cooked food, hot drinks, bottled water for drinking and brushing of teeth, water purifying tablets if required etc. and the use of preventatives such as nets over beds, insecticide sprays around rooms, and ones designed to sprayed on the body as well as basic long sleeves and trousers. It’s pretty simple stuff bit always surprising to find out how many people seem to get it wrong.

I’m not convinced that I’d vaccinate my kids if I didn’t think there was a direct risk of them catching the diseases listed i.e. if we weren’t travelling. Herd immunity, the protection of other people’s kids, is a cold reason to stick a needle into your baby and I’m just selfish enough for it not to weigh too heavily.

But the risk of catching one of these diseases is very real given the places we travel and the results of catching those disease can be horrendous, so we vaccinated.

Other, better, less selfish parents should vaccinate immediately. They work 85-95% of the time. The vaccine side effects are minimal whilst the effects of catching the diseases themselves can be devastating. Your baby will cry, possibly scream, when they get the shot but that can be countered with an ice cream. They may even have a slight temperature which will need some calpol (baby paracetamol). These symptoms are nothing compared to the actual symptoms of any of these diseases.

As the cases of measles rise in the UK, it’s worth remembering the symptoms. Measles lasts 7-10 days, starting with flu like symptoms, a runny or blocked nose, sneezing, watery eyes and swollen eyelids, sore and red eyes, a high temperature of upto 40C, small greyish spots in the mouth, cough, no appetite, tiredness, irritability and a general lack of energy.

This is followed by a rash around 2 to 4 days after initial symptoms.

Complications can include liver infection, misalignment of the eyes if the virus affects the nerves and muscles of the eye infection of the membranes surrounding the brain and spinal cord or infection of the brain itself.

Some children will die from contracting measles. A vaccine is a small price to pay to reduce that risk for my kids.

Rants&Rambles, Travel

Desert

For a very very wet country, Iceland felt very similar to some of the many deserts we’ve visited over the years.

Lava Fields with moss, Iceland

In large part, though for obviously different reasons, it felt very barren and obviously very empty. The almost complete lack of anyone else around us as we made our way around the country still surprises.


Driving through the uplands, across the lava fields with nothing and no one in sight, just reminded us of countless drives across the salt flats of Etosha, Namibia or Uyuni, Bolivia

Or long ago, across the desert in Yemen.

We even found the remains of trees, very reminiscent of Namibia. Iceland was essentially deforested with the original influx of people from Scandinavia.

Perhaps it was just the scale of the landscape, the huge empty spaces and vast skies.

But there was also a surprising overlap in terms of the cliffs in the Negev and the cliffs of Iceland.

Negev cliffs
Iceland cliffs
Negev Cliffs

Or even the mountains of the Yemen or Namibian hills.

Yemen

And obviously there are signs of volcanic activity across many of the parts of the world we’ve visited.

Basalt columns, South Iceland
Negev, Basalt Column
Namibia Basalt

Even the glaciers reminded me of the dunes carving their way through the African landscape.

There is something mesmerising about empty landscape, something very very beautiful. I’m not sure many of us would be comfortable in that stark landscape, aside from the obvious difficulties of surviving the environment but it’s certainly an environment plenty of us find very satisfying to visit.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Grief

Turns out that the best explanation of my personal experience of the brexit process so far is the five stages of grief. Obviously it is neither sensible nor appropriate to equate a political decision to the personal loss of a loved one, but the process of coming to terms with brexit does seem to be moving through the same five stages

DENIAL

Denial is the first of the five stages of grief and brexit – surely this cannot be happening? There has to be some sort of mistake. In this stage, the world became somewhat meaningless and overwhelming. Life mades no sense. We were in a state of shock and denial. Numb. Initially the focus was just on finding a way to get through the day. Denial and shock help us to cope and make survival possible by helping us to pace our feelings of grief. There is a grace in denial. As you accept the reality of the loss and start to ask yourself questions, you begin the healing process. You are become stronger, and denial is beginning to fade. But as you proceed, all the feelings you were denying begin to surface.

ANGER

Anger is a necessary stage of any healing process. Be willing to feel your anger, even though it may seem endless. The more you truly feel it, the more it will begin to dissipate and the more you will heal. There are many other emotions under the anger and you will get to them in time, but anger is the emotion we are most used to managing.

The truth is that anger has no limits. It can extend not only to your friends, the doctors, your family, yourself and your loved one who died, but also to God. You may ask, “Where is God in this? Underneath anger is pain, your pain. It is natural to feel deserted and abandoned, but we live in a society that fears anger. Anger is strength and it can be an anchor, giving temporary structure to the nothingness of loss. At first grief feels like being lost at sea: no connection to anything. Then you get angry at someone, maybe a person who didn’t attend the funeral, maybe a person who isn’t around, maybe a person who is different now that your loved one has died. Suddenly you have a structure – – your anger toward them. The anger becomes a bridge over the open sea, a connection from you to them. It is something to hold onto; and a connection made from the strength of anger feels better than nothing.We usually know more about suppressing anger than feeling it. The anger is just another indication of the intensity of your love.

BARGAINING

After a loss, bargaining may take the form of a temporary truce. “What if we hold a second referendum. Then can I wake up and realize this has all been a bad dream?” We become lost in a maze of “If only…” or “What if…” statements. We want life returned to what is was; we want our life and country restored. We want to go back in time: find the political tumor sooner, recognize the illness more quickly, stop the accident from happening…if only, if only, if only.

Guilt is often bargaining’s companion. The “if onlys” cause us to find fault in ourselves and what we “think” we could have done differently. We may even bargain with the pain.

We will do anything not to feel the pain of this loss. We remain in the past, trying to negotiate our way out of the hurt. People often think of the stages as lasting weeks or months. They forget that the stages are responses to feelings that can last for minutes or hours as we flip in and out of one and then another. We do not enter and leave each individual stage in a linear fashion. We may feel one, then another and back again to the first one.

DEPRESSION

After bargaining, our attention moves squarely into the present. Empty feelings present themselves, and grief enters our lives on a deeper level, deeper than we ever imagined. This depressive stage feels as though it will last forever. It’s important to understand that this depression is not a sign of mental illness. It is the appropriate response to a great loss.

We withdraw from life, left in a fog of intense sadness, wondering, perhaps, if there is any point in going on alone? Why go on at all? Depression after a loss is too often seen as unnatural: a state to be fixed, something to snap out of.

The first question to ask yourself is whether or not the situation you’re in is actually depressing. The loss of a loved one is a very depressing situation, and depression is a normal and appropriate response. To not experience depression after a loved one dies would be unusual. When a loss fully settles in your soul, the realization that your loved one didn’t get better this time and is not coming back is understandably depressing. If grief is a process of healing, then depression is one of the many necessary steps along the way.

ACCEPTANCE

Acceptance is often confused with the notion of being “all right” or “OK” with what has happened. This is not the case.

Most people don’t ever feel OK or all right about the loss of a loved one. This stage is about accepting the reality that our loved one is physically gone and recognizing that this new reality is the permanent reality. Thus people who voted to remain in the EU may well accept that we’re leaving but they won’t ever be ok with leaving and will never like this reality. We may learn to live with it. It is the new norm with which we must learn to live.

In resisting this new norm, at first many people want to maintain life as it was before a loved one died. In time, through bits and pieces of acceptance, however, we see that we cannot maintain the past intact. It has been forever changed and we must readjust. We must learn to reorganise. Finding acceptance may be just having more good days than bad ones.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Heels

Rolling over in bed before going to sleep should not result in stabbing pain in your heel, yet apparently it’s a thing, plantar fasciitis, for a moderately active woman of a certain age.

Just to re-state the obvious: menopause is crap. Growing old is not for wimps.

A few different factors can lead to heel pain, including sciatica and the heel version of carpel tunnel syndrome but one of the most common causes is plantar fasciitis.

Luckily self-care treatments can help reduce the pain and inflammation linked to plantar fasciitis so I’m going to try the obvious before panic sets in.

plantar fasciitis

The following treatments are available to self-administer at home:

  • Ice: Advice is to apply ice three or four times a day for about 15 minutes at a time. It’s advisable to wrap an ice pack in a damp towel and place it on the heel. Since ice seems to be making things feel worse (though it is the best advice) I’m going to try relaxing with heat packs as well. My coach recommends an alternating sequence of heat and ice.
  • Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs):  NSAISs may also help reduce discomfort and inflammation. Ibuprofen and paracetamol combined are my go-to pain relief so they’re definitely on the menu for the next few days
  • Orthotics: Foot orthotics are custom foot supports to places them in the shoes. Orthotics can support the arch, which helps evenly distribute the weight placed on the heel when a person walks. But since I spend my life in flats, and definitely use decent sports shoes, I’m going to passion these for now
  • Splint: Wearing a splint at night might also help. The splint stretches the arch and calf, and may decrease discomfort. At the moment this sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
  • Switching activities: It might also be helpful for people to switch from high-impact activities, such as running, to exercise that is easier on the heel. Low-impact options include swimming and walking. Since I hate these and love tennis, this just isn’t going to happen

Exercises

stretching heel pain

Certain stretches can help heel pain.

Plantar fasciitis can disrupt workout routines.

Continuing to partake in certain activities can make heel pain worse, but remaining idle and avoiding exercise is not beneficial.

Exercise is still possible when dealing with plantar fasciitis. The key is to avoid activities that place a lot of force on the heel.

Stretches for plantar fasciitis

According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, certain stretches can help reduce heel pain and prevent plantar fasciitis from reoccurring.

People who have plantar fasciitis pain in the morning might want to carry out the following stretches as soon as they wake up.

Seated Fascia Stretch (this worked like a miracle of pain relief for as long as I held the stretch)

  1. Sit in a cross-legged position at the end of the bed or a chair.
  2. Place the affected foot over the knee of the other leg.
  3. Grab the heel of the painful foot with one hand and the toes with the other hand.
  4. Gently pull up on the toes, while at the same time pulling up on the heel. Bending the toes up stretches the fascia.
  5. Bending the ankle up stretches the Achilles tendon, which may help decrease pain.
  6. Hold the stretch for about 10 seconds.
  7. Relax the foot and repeat 10 to 20 times. If both feet are experiencing pain, repeat the exercise on the other foot.

Seated Ankle Pumps (this hurt like hell a few times into the repetition)

  1. Sitting in a chair, hold the leg out straight and flex and extend at the ankle joint.
  2. This exercise stretches both the fascia and the calf muscle.
  3. Hold the stretch for 5 seconds and repeat 10 times on each foot.

Standing Calf Stretch (felt it in my calf but not the heel)

  1. Place both hands on a wall, keep the back leg straight, and place the heel down.
  2. Pull the hips forward towards the wall until the stretch is felt in the back of the lower leg.
  3. Hold for 10 seconds and repeat several times.
  4. If the heel on the opposite leg hurts, repeat the stretch on that leg too.

Medical treatment options

Although home treatments can be enough to decrease heel pain from plantar fasciitis, they might not always have the desired effect.

If home treatment is not successful, a doctor might recommend additional medical treatments, such as:

  • Steroid injections: When heel pain persists, steroid injections are an option. The doctor injects an anti-inflammatory steroid medication into the heel. Frequent steroid injections can weaken the fascia, so injections cannot be given too frequently.
  • Surgery: This can be a possible last resort. There are several different surgical procedures for reducing heel pain. For example, a procedure called a plantar fascia release involves partially cutting the fascia to reduce the tension of the tissue.

Visiting a physiotherapist worked with tennis elbow (from housework rather than tennis) so I may make some appointments with my local recommended physiotherapist to see if she can work on my heel. I’ll certainly try this long before I visit the doctor for injections or the hospital for surgery.

Causes

The plantar fascia is a ligament that runs underneath the soles of the feet. It connects the heel bones to the front of the feet and also supports the arch.

The fascia normally serves as a shock absorber, but repeated stress to the heel can lead to small tears in the tissue. This tissue damage causes inflammation in the fascia known as plantar fasciitis.

There are a few different causes of plantar fasciitis. The ligament can become inflamed due to repeated force from high-impact activities and sports that involve a lot of jumping. Wearing high heels may also place stress on the fascia.

Having a job that requires a lot of standing or walking increases the chances of developing the condition. People with flat feet may also be more likely to develop plantar fasciitis. Flat feet can cause an uneven distribution of weight when someone walks, which puts added stress and pressure on the fascia.

Prevention

comfortable shoes

Choosing comfortable shoes can help reduce symptoms of heel pain.

Stretching can be helpful in decreasing the symptoms of plantar fasciitis and also preventing the condition from developing. In addition to stretching, a few steps might help prevent plantar fasciitis.

People can start by wearing the right shoes. Avoid high heels as they can place stress on the heel. Shoes with a moderate heel and sturdy arch support can help.

Be sure to always wear footwear and avoid being barefoot for long stretches of time. The lack of support could lead to heel pain.

Athletic shoes provide good support and cushion the feet. A 2011 study suggests that running or athletic shoes should be replaced every 500 miles. Start exercise slowly and gradually increase intensity to prevent plantar fasciitis.

Symptoms

The most common symptom of plantar fasciitis is pain in the heel and sometimes the arch of the foot.

The pain usually starts mild, and people often feel it when stepping out of bed in the morning, as well as after sitting for a long period. Although pain levels can vary, discomfort often decreases after walking around for a while.

The pain from plantar fasciitis can last a long time, and complications can develop. Continued inflammation of the fascia can lead to the development of scar tissue. This can make the condition harder to treat.

Plantar fasciitis can also cause pain elsewhere in the body. For example, when someone has heel pain, they might adjust the way they walk without realizing it.

Knee, hip, and back problems can develop due to changing body movements.

Rants&Rambles

Playing

Playing with a website is a fun but frustrating experience.

I cannot stress how grateful I am to the guys at WordPress for making the whole process around building a website so very very straightforward and for introducing me to an entirely new world of themes and widgets.

But as the themes change, widgets stop working so there comes a point where even change averse people like myself are forced to go looking for a new piece of code or widget to replace an existing a now no longer functioning widget.

Looking for feeds from the usual social networking sites, to sit neatly in my left column to the front page of this site was both surprisingly easy and confusing. My attempts to set up a tumblr link resulted in endless posts not only to my website but also through to twitter. Weird.

Pinterest and twitter feeds to the lead page took next to no effort to set up at all. Weirder. & to be honest, I don’t want to link through to Facebook so that’s probably as far as I’ll go.

Now I’ve been reduced to looking online for reviews or articles of the best widgets.

Rants&Rambles

Mythic

There are few things less useful or more commonplace than myths about menstruation, starting with the basic building block idea that women experience a 28 day menstrual cycle.

Seriously? What women, living on what planet? Because I know absolutely no women with a 28 day cycle and I know lots of women.

Saying “women” have a 28 day cycle is a bit like saying “men” have 5 inch dicks and expecting that to mean something.

At best it’s talking about averages, not reality. It doesn’t give any idea of how variable either menstrual cycles or dicks actually are in practice and says nothing at all about how the real life people with said menstrual cycle or dicks actually experience them.

I have never had a 28 day menstrual cycle but for most of my 20s and 30s could be reasonably described as having a 35 day cycle i.e. 4 weeks plus one week of menstruation. As a result each of my pregnancies was automatically calculated by midwives as a couple of weeks overdue, or would have been if we hadn’t adjusted the second time around.

My midwives who could hardly be regarded as ignorant about the whole reproductive system didn’t ask when I missed my period but rather asked for the date of my last period and added 28 days to estimate the missed date to come up with an estimated due date. Since an overdue pregnancy inevitably leads to pressure for inductions or forced labour, it can be an assumption with traumatic consequences.

Unlike many of my friends and one of my daughters, my periods were at least regular as clockwork. For most people the idea of a calendar schedule for periods is more an ambition than a reality. Mostly women have a vague idea of when they’ll start to bleed rather than a firm calendar commitment.

So you may expect a period to start sometime this week, but it could be any day Monday though Wednesday, and each day will require you to be prepared.

For most of my life my periods also followed a fairly straightforward pattern, starting light and never really progressing much beyond. Mostly I had some basic cramps to start with and then nothing. I was lucky. After childbirth my periods became heavier but still relatively easy to manage.

My personal luck meant that I was entirely unprepared for the physical pain my daughters experience with intense cramps, migraines and debilitating blood loss, each and every month. For tiny women, they’re bodies seem pretty extreme. We rapidly acquired paracetamol, ibuprofen, endless hot water bottles and lots of pairs of black pants.

Of course my honeymoon period eventually ended and my physical life fell off the menopausal cliff not that long ago. Whilst I remain relatively regular and true to the 35 day cycle, there is no saying from month to month what that cycle will entail, whether a barely noticeable breakthrough bleeding or full out flooding with enough force to send a tampon shooting out of my vagina with a sudden flush of blood.

Other symptoms come and go, from hot feet at night through to a burning sensation on my skin at the beginning of my period and an almost permanent deadening sensation of the nerves on one side of my hips. My belly now becomes tender and distended with water retention just before a period such that I sometimes feel as if I’m about to burst.

More generally, I’m physically also less coordinated, my timing just slightly off when it comes to playing tennis if I don’t focus very deliberately and intellectually I can be a bit distracted when playing a game such as bridge.

And obviously there will be plenty of people who regard all of this as an entirely personal issue to deal with but….

This stuff happens to 52% of the population. It isn’t an individual issue but one that impacts that majority of people in society directly and everyone indirectly, so it seems a bit silly to suggest that it isn’t everyone’s issue or that we shouldn’t talk about these things.

At the very minimum we should be clear when we’re talking about averages and expectations when applying to them to more than half of the population and at least acknowledge the variation that can render such assumptions as useful as any other myth or fairy tale.

Political, Rants&Rambles

Expectations

Beyond tired of brexit, like most people however they voted, I still couldn’t describe myself as resigned.

Certainly I would not characterise myself as wanting my MP and the government to push ahead with the current brexit plan to “get it over with” not least because we haven’t even started the trade negotiations with the EU yet so this process is going to run for years.

But I have been trying to work out what to expect next.

There seem to be two scenarios coming into focus: a shitty deal where limits to immigration are prioritised followed by trade in goods or leaving with no deal at all.

Since the UK makes most of its money overseas from trade in services, even with the shotty deal now being discussed, our economy will obviously be damaged and as the negotiations go by, more and more compromises will be required to limit the damage to our economy from setting those two priorities.

Each one of those real-poilitik compromises will be met with horror by those currently cheerleading for brexit. The lack of transparency by the UK government means people have been allowed to keep their illusions so when each and one of those illusions fractures, people will be looking for someone to blame. Never themselves. They will claim that leaving with any deal at all was the mistake, not leaving itself. WTO rules only will become the mantra because unhappiness needs a meaningless slogan to coalesce around.

So politics will stay fundamentally divided and fractious. Society will remain divided and fractious. And people will still split between “remainers” and “leavers”. Economically things will get worse. Nothing will be fixed.

If we leave with no deal at all, then things will get difficult quickly. A developed country will see empty supermarket shelves for the first time in a generation. We will risk medicine shortages and see immediate price rises as WTO tariffs are applied to all imports.

But the world won’t come to an end. We are wealthy and the cost increases won’t stop us eating what we want when we want. Food used to talk cup 30% of people’s disposable income compared to today’s 10% so maybe it will just rise, offset by falling housing costs. Neither will the increased costs stop us taking holidays and living our lives much as today. We will have less but we won’t have nothing. Plenty of people will be significantly worse off. London will be damaged, but it is wealthier and perhaps more able to mitigate that damage.

Our children are maybe now more likely to go and work and live overseas.

We will see a slow decline of our economy relative to the rest of the world. Initially we’ll be able to pretend it’s a worldwide phenomena as we pull the EU down with us, as the US-China trade war starts to bite.

Away from the sheer anger that brexit creates, I’m left with just a sad resignation. For my generation the walls came down, the threat of war receded and we all felt we were going to be richer, healthier and better. For my children’s generation, that is no longer true. The walls are going up, the threat of war is rising and they will be poorer, less healthy and generally worse off.

My expectations are sad.

Home, Rants&Rambles

Money Gap

It’s quite trendy to talk about the gender gap but in the UK at least it’s still culturally difficult to talk about money, especially personal money. It is considered less rude (though still not advisable) to ask about someone’s sex life than their salary in my country, which might be just one of the reasons that women continue to be so badly served by the financial system.

Finance is a feminist issue. There are many reasons for why women are not well served by the financial sector, some historical many due to the sheer inertia and failure to adapt of a famously adaptable business sector.

The gender pay disparity is put down to the disruptive effects of raising a family on a woman’s career prospects and earnings potential. Whilst obviously making a family takes two people most usually representing both genders, the cost of having a family is borne almost exclusively by the woman . The astronomical cost of childcare and the stress of juggling work and family life are further factors — big problems, with no easy solutions.

But the imbalance in earnings is then further magnified by the “gender pensions gap”, which many women won’t fully wake up to for decades to come.

So what can be done? Maybe the biggest solution is raising awareness. The problems are not women’s “fault” and the consequences will fall on both women and the people in their lives, their partners, their parents, their children and friends – we are social creatures at the end of the day and society fails when we make one group disproportionately bear the cost.

Mistake 1: Not saving enough for retirement

The “gender pensions gap” is nearly 40% — more than double the gender pay gap. Let’s take defined contribution pensions. Workers build up a pot of savings over their lifetime, which can be accessed in retirement — but when you’ve spent it, that’s it. Women have a double problem here. Not only do they save less (factors include lower pay, the impact of career breaks and part-time working) they also live for longer. The obvious solution is saving more, but that can be tricky (see above).

Starting to save earlier will help. Higher earners could fund a pension for their partners. If you’re taking a career break to raise the kids, make sure that your partner is also funding pension contributions for you. They can contribute the maximum of £2,880 a year for a non-tax payer. Tax relief is added to your contribution so if you pay £2,880, a total of £3,600 a year will be paid into your pension scheme.

Older, wealthier readers could consider funding a stakeholder pension for their daughters and granddaughters. My daughters both have existing pensions, started on minimum contributions when they were born and annually topped up whenever we could – let time do the heavy lifting. Whilst at one level they will find it frustrating to have money set aside that they can’t touch until they’re at least 55, it should provide some comfort in their middle age when they’re busy funding their kids and struggling to save for themselves.

The UK government’s much-lauded policy of automatically enrolling workers into a company pension excludes millions of low earners and part-time workers unless they specifically opt in. Many of these will be women. Three-quarters of women have “no idea” how much pension income they need to retire and nearly half said they were relying solely on the state pension as they “couldn’t afford to pay into another pension”. This means women could be losing out on “free money” from an employer’s pension contributions too. The answer here is to be aware and prioritise pension saving appropriately. If your partner has a pension, then you need one as well.

Mistake 2: Pensions, marriage and divorce. The pensions system hasn’t kept up with modern family life.

Couples today are more likely to cohabit than get married or form a civil partnership, which can present serious problems if one of you dies — see the case of Denise Brewster in Northern Ireland who successfully took her late partner’s employer to court when they failed to grant her survivor’s pension benefits. Make sure that you have a will in place that specifies who inherits what in the sad event that one of you dies.

One obvious action point is to make sure all of your pension providers have an up-to-date “nominated beneficiaries” form. Since my partner doesn’t need my pension assets, my daughters are my nominated beneficiaries. Over time, when they become self-sufficient maybe this will become my granddaughters. If you are unmarried and cohabiting in a property over £325,000 in value, also consider the impact of inheritance tax if one of you were to die suddenly. Be aware and make plans.

Pensions assets are also often overlooked in divorce. Research by Royal London found that divorced women have, on average, one-third of the pensions wealth enjoyed by married couples. Pension assets should be regarded, along with the main residence, as assets to be valued and shared in the event of a divorce.

If you are financially independent by the time you marry, and hold significant assets either a residence or pension pots, then consider a pre-marital agreement. Make sure both of you take appropriate legal advice. It will only be regarded as advisory in the UK, and will obviously be adjusted to take into account the interests of any children, but with one in three marriages ending in divorce, usually to the financial detriment of women, it’s important to protect yourself.

Mistake 3: Not claiming child benefit If one half of a couple earns more than £60,000 then you lose your entitlement to child benefit.

Stay-at-home parents with a high-earning partner will lose out on valuable state pension credits if they fail to register online — even if they do not qualify for child benefit. Make sure you sign up — and while you’re at it, click here to sign the petition to reform the system and allow backdated claims.

Check your contribution record for the state pension via HMRC and keep your contributions up to date. The UK state pension is not overly generous at around £8,500 pa but it is worth having. It would cost a lot of capital to generate that amount of annual income, index linked from an annuity. It takes 35 years to accrue that full amount, but it is possible to “buy” missing years’ contributions to boost your record. The cost per year varies, but with each extra year worth around £240, you don’t have to live very many years post retirement age for it to be worthwhile

Mistake 4: Being too fond of cash

Another reason women can end up with less in retirement are the poor returns on cash savings compared to stock market-linked investments. HMRC statistics show that women save much more into cash Isas, where years of poor interest rates and inflation have hampered performance, whereas men are more likely to hold a stocks and shares Isa. The stats also show that women are more likely to favour cash for children’s Junior Isa accounts. Considering Jisas are designed to be invested for up to 18 years, returns on stocks and shares are likely to be far superior.

Mistake 5: Not having a ‘f*** off fund’

This term was defined by the US writer Paulette Perhach as having enough money to leave a bad job or failing relationship, and her article on the subject should be compulsory reading for all young people regardless of gender. In it, she chronicles how prioritising saving over spending causes short-term pain, but long-term gains in the form of financial independence — far more fashionable than a splurge in the mall.

If you have daughters or granddaughters consider setting them up with a savings account with enough “drop dead” money to give them some choices for the hard times.

Mistake 6: Not asking for a pay rise

The only good thing about the gender pay gap is that many companies are much more receptive to boosting women’s career prospects and pay packets. But if you don’t ask, you won’t necessarily get. And whilst asking for a raise, consider asking for training too, as we all need to invest in building our skills for the future as well as our retirement funds.

And if you’re not working, make sure that the income earned by your partner is fairly distributed to include adequate savings in your own name. Make sure that when they receive a pay rise, so do you and salt that away into a pension or other savings – value yourself and your contribution to the family at least as well as that of your partner.

Because you’re worth it!

Rants&Rambles

Sorry

What’s the worst part of apologizing?

A) Working up the courage to admit we were wrong.

B) Standing in front of the other person and saying that we’re sorry.

C) Waiting for a reaction from the other person after we’ve spoken.

You’re on your own for (A) and (C) but there’s some quite good advice out there about (B).

The winning suggestion is a simple “why-because-and” framework.

Start by looking the other person in the eye and say why you’re sorry. 

For example: “I’m sorry I couldn’t make it to your party …” or

“I’m sorry I handed in my work late …”

Explain the because behind your remorse, which is not the reason you screwed up, but the reason why it was a screw up – an apology is not actually all about you. 

For example: “… because I know you were so excited and wanted to celebrate…” or

“… because I know you need that detail to figure out the budget …”

Finish with an and. 

For example: “… and when you have another party, I’ll be there.”

or “… and I’ll send you the information tomorrow and I’ll be sure to meet all future deadlines.”

In cases such as a silver-wedding anniversary dinner, there is no obvious and to offer, but you can say something like “… and I’d love to celebrate with you and Mary in the future.”

Through your words and tone of voice, you should make it clear that you’ve thought about your actions and you’re truly sorry.

Which is obviously the key point, and maybe why we all struggle so much with apologies:

you need to genuinely feel sorry rather than simply trying to get through some social awkwardness. You need to understand and empathise with the person you have offended and/or upset because that is what apology means.