Comments on: uptown girl

By: petite

petite — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:35:28 +0000

Thank you Geronimo, I am not enjoying the job much today.

I love my life right now. I love my neighbourhood, my lovingly painted flat, my writing studio, my friends, and I wouldn’t swap any of it for all the money in the world and an hôtel particulier in the marais.

So, I’ll take my life, Anna can keep hers, we can agree to differ on what factors shape children the most.

And of course you can all watch this space to see whether Tadpole’s life really does become a “tragedy of lost opportunity”.

By: andrew

andrew — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:07:35 +0000

Anna, are you going to take up petite’s challenge and tell her where you live and why it is so superior?
Go on, you know you want to!
;)

By: The B

The B — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:37:44 +0000

And what’s wrong with Tower Hamlets, anyway? I live in Hackney, which is apparently even worse, and in a part of it, Dalston, which is probably viewed as being one of the worst bits of Hackney, and it’s fabulous. What you’re doing when you dismiss an area is judging not the place but the people in it – and why should they be condemned? Let’s all mix it up a bit, and live in unexpected places.

By: Géronimo

Géronimo — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 17:07:14 +0000

Huzzas for Petite!
I first read about this blog, some months ago, from Maître Eolas’s webpage… and I have to confess that when I read Petite’s first posts about “l’affaire Petite Anglaise”, I refrained myself from commenting, feeling it hard to find anything to say that could make sense: Corporate Business Land being such a foreign country to me!

So I went here, curious about a Cause Célèbre…. and felt in the habit of coming back, mainly for Tadpole stories, yet as well for all these little sketches of Comédie Humaine Petite uses to delight her readers with.

Sometimes the human comedy bits shift from the blog to the comments. I must say I watched with great wonder Petite answering patiently and kindly to some poster’s in equal parts tactless, tasteless and pointless comment; receiving back, instead of apologies, even more offensive and misguided comments, and, not losing her temper, continuing answering courteously to this motley bunch of visitors her blog happens to attract… as the perfect maîtresse de maison it’s obvious she is!
Thanks, Petite, for the blogging manners lesson!

By: Alice

Alice — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:13:54 +0000

Just as a brief aside, I personally am stunned by this person’s quickness to judge someone else’s life simply from what she reads here — we all know that these are, as another reader has said and as Petite has herself stated, just “slices of her life.” I personally consider it a mantra to never judge others unless I have walked in their shoes… We all make choices, decisions, sometimes tough ones — life is fraught with so many challenges, on a personal or professional level; why must we get caught up in judging others in such a harsh way? And conveying such a sense of entitlement? Why can’t we respect each other’s differences and interests? I truly believe that attitudes like these lead to deeper-ingrained stereotypes, stereotypes that entrench our world in disaccord and intolerance.

Why can’t we agree to disagree? It is all so subjective when it comes down to it, choices of lifestyle, how to raise children, etc. I too believe that children can grow up very well-adjusted and well-educated in many different kinds of environments; I mean, it happens all around the world every day! Some of us have a good education and then continue to struggle to define ourselves and don’t decide to settle for one particular job just because it pays well, but also because we’re still trying to find our place in this world. Does that make us terrible, or lesser people? This is such a broad, philosophical question really… Obviously having children is a choice and a sacrifice, and you have to think about how you’re going to raise them, but I too agree that how they are raised has a greater influence on them than where. Some of our most gifted and most influential world figures may have come from lowly backgrounds and have gone on to do great things.

I don’t know, this kind of judgment about someone just makes me sad. And again, I’m sorry to stir up the pot, but I just wanted to share my two cents.

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 13:40:01 +0000

I bring up three children – two stepchildren of 11 and 9 and one of my own, of 2 who is bi-lingual, bi-ethnic, travels regularly. So I do have quite a bit of experience of how children’s lives are shaped and I am very concerned for, and involved in, the well-being of all my children.

I didn’t make that sweeping statement – you did!

By: Jude

Jude — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:37:00 +0000

I read this blog most days, have done for a long while, but only comment rarely. Often I find the comments rather sychophantic, but that’s ok; it is a great blog.
What I cannot get over is the arrogance, condescension and sheer rudeness of people who think they can make personal criticisms of petite, on her own blog, not only on her writing, but on her life choices – from where she chooses to live to whether or not she should wear glasses.
Petite is sharing “slices of her life”. She is not putting herself up as a target or inviting whatever flak some people seem to want to unload.
The problem with email, and writing on the internet, is that because it is so fast, and yet personal, people write and send without really thinking about it. They write what they would not dare to say to someone’s face.
A blog is like someone’s personal space. If we’re a guest in someone’s home would we tell them, uninvited, what a dump it is? Would we make personal comments uninvited?
As another poster said, no one has a gun held to their head to read this blog, so if you don’t like it, move on. And don’t leave an ungracious comment on the way out.

By: petite

petite — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 11:22:24 +0000

Anna – you have made your point and I think you should leave this alone now.

I for one am sick of hearing how you think my daughter’s life will be a tragedy of lost opportunity. She’s bilingual, she travels regularly, she attends lots of extra-curricular stuff and I’m saving so that she can attend good schools and go to the university (possibly in England) of her choice. In your eyes, this counts for nothing just because we live on the cusp of the 19th/20th. I wonder where you live and in what way it is so superior?

I’m surprised that as a parents yourself (I see from previous, very nice comments you left), you don’t understand how sensitive an issue it is to criticise the way someone else chooses to bring up theirs and why I felt my hackles rise when you did.

And what a sweeping statement. Every child who grows up in the Eastern arrondissements is doomed?!? I think not!

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 10:32:32 +0000

Stuart – I’m there once a week. And I hate what I have seen happen as they grow up to the once-adorable children (with loving parents) I knew 15 years ago in and around that area – 11th, 19th, 20th. Their lives have become a tragedy of lost opportunity.

By: Stuart Mudie

Stuart Mudie — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 08:33:24 +0000

I am a neighbour of Petite’s, the father of a young child, and to be frank the place where I’m bringing up my daughter is a world away from the council estate I grew up on in Scotland.

I’ve been living in this area for more than four years now, and so far I haven’t had anyone come up to me and try to sell me drugs on the street, for instance, as first happened to me on our estate when I was all of ten years old (and more than once after that). Nor have I seen any signs of the violence that was always hanging in the air whenever I ventured outside our house – not even during last year’s Paris riots.

The flat we live in is bigger than the flat my parents had when we were young, our neighbours are much friendlier (and don’t pee – or worse – on the stairs), we have a nice garden in our building, and if it’s such a terrible place to live, why is it that the cost of buying a decent-sized flat round here is beyond our budget when both my partner and I are reasonably well-off professionals? Could it be that where we live, rather than being the Parisian Tower Hamlets, is actually more of a “boboland“, as the second commenter suggests on this forum?

Anyway, I’m not sure when Anna was last in Belleville, or if she realises that “Belleville” extends a little further than the area around the metro station of the same name. But in any case, I don’t intend to move any time soon.