I'll say it loud: My boy is a ginner"
In the past few weeks I've heard all the euphemisms for red hair, as friends visiting my baby boy, Sammy, have commented on is 'coppery', 'strawberry blonde', 'bright auburn' hair.
But I'll say it loud and proud: Sammy is ginger.
A Freudian psychologist might put it down to an early crush I had on a ginger-haired, and much-loved babysitter. Whatever the cause, I've always had a thing about red-haired women, which I can trace from obsessions with Carol Decker in the 80s rock band T'pau, through to the lovely Christina Hendricks who plays Joan in Mad Men.
There are other prominent redheaded women: Lily Cole, Isla Fisher, Florence Welsh.
But where are the famous, lusted-after red-haired men? Think of famous ginger blokes and you can't help but come up with Chris Evans and Mick Hucknall who, for all their undoubted talents, are probably successful in spite of rather than because of their looks.
There's the British actor Damien Lewis, and Ewan Mcgregor is almost ginger. Then you're down to Prince Harry and, erm, David Laws.
Historically, there's often something dodgy about redheaded men - Henry VIII, and according to an internet search on the subject, Judas.
(Biblical scholars might put me right on this, but I suspect Judas's 'red' hair was based on a rumour arising from an ancient prejudice about redheads, who were probably regarded as a bit weird and witchy.)
Being English, white, male and middle-class, it's not often I get to feel the righteous pain of being in a persecuted minority, so I can't claim to know how it feels to be ginger. But by the time Sammy starts coming home from school complaining about being bullied for being a 'ginner', I hope there will be more inspiring examples than David Laws I can use to cheer him up with.
l While I've avoided the World Cup, I've been engaged in a more sedate, but no less patriotic activity - discovering Charlotte Bront.
Reading the Bronts was always one of those things that seemed worth doing, but infinitely postponable, like upgrading the vacuum cleaner.
Now, nearing the end of Jane Eyre, I wish I'd discovered it earlier.
It's riveting stuff, full of passion, poetry and wisdom. And for me, the hot-blooded Rochester with his secret mad wife hidden in the attic is a far more intriguing hero than the brooding rich boys of Jane Austen's novels.
But I've always found the obsession with the Bronts as individuals bizarre. People come from all over the world to see the buildings where they lived and taught, and congregate with the devotion of pilgrims upon a spot in the River Calder where Patrick Bront saved a boy from drowning.
This interest in the lives of artists rather than their work is curious, and I wonder why devotees of the Brontes are particularly prone to it. Maybe, after I've moved from Charlotte's novels to Emily's to Ann's, and then got through the poetry, I'll find myself toddling up the cobbled streets of Haworth to visit the pub where Branwell drank, and walk the same moors that inspired Cathy and Heathcliffe.
I doubt it, though. The work of any great writer is usually more fascinating than their lives. We do them a disservice when we forget that.
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Weather for Cleckheaton
Sunday 12 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 6 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: West
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 3 C to 9 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
Wind direction: North west
