Carpet of Contradictions

When my little Nan died I had just got to the age where I started to notice adults. As a small child, you are so wrapped up in yourself that you barely notice any difficulties that the adults in your life are having. This is why children from difficult backgrounds always blame themselves. Anyway, I noticed - a little. I watched my Dad sit at the dining room table with the bereavement admin, checking and re-checking the calculations. I noticed that Mum was a little more quiet than normal. I knew it was all a bit shit. Nan had died suddenly after successful treatment for breast cancer. Cancer has always been shit. Even then I was aware of the hope and disappointment, shame and fear one word can bring.

Some time later, after her bungalow with the avocado bathroom suite and geometric tiles (she was bang on trend was my Nan) was sold there was some money to be divided between the sisters. Dad had insisted that it was Mum’s money and told her that she needed to spend it in a way that made her happy. At the time I couldn’t understand how a shower (she was also bang on trend) and a new bedroom carpet would be what she would choose to spend her money on. Obviously, Dad fitted the shower himself, which did mean it always leaked a bit but Mum loved it.

“How can that make her happy?” I asked Dad, as we walked to plumbers shop at the parade of shops at end of the road.
It was a unusual shop, wedged between a post office and a butcher’s that was an Aladdin’s cave of pipe and smelled of solder.
“Two half inch compression elbow joints, please,” he said to the man behind the counter before turning to me and saying, “It’s about making home nice and safe.”
I didn’t really understand then, but once the new carpet was fitted something must have stuck in the back of my filing cabinet of a brain.
Mum and Dad had a huge bedroom and so Mum was thrilled to be able to choose a carpet that was exactly what she wanted. It was going to be expensive. She picked a soft bright cornflower blue, that was almost purple.
“Take your shoes off!” she shouted down the stairs as I came in from school, “And come and see this!”
She was standing in the middle of her room, squishing her toes into the carpet with a smile on her face that I hadn’t seen in months.
“Yeah right! I still don’t understand,” I muttered, as I sloped off to my room to listen to the Top 40 I’d taped from the radio and read my Jackie magazine.

What did I do with the money I inherited? Obviously, I got a new shower and bedroom carpet. I wanted to feel safe at home. I wanted my bedroom to be cosy and I wanted to be able to choose whatever I wanted without worrying.

Our renovations, however, were interrupted by the pandemic.

Yesterday, the carpet was fitted and I stood in the middle of my room squishing my toes into the long soft pile with a smile on my face that no one has seen for months.

There is only one problem.

This is a carpet of contradictions. The fitting of it has made me notice even more awful confusions about how this pandemic is being handled in this country.

I’m going to make a list because I like a list.
1. A strange and slightly dirty looking man can come into my house to fit a carpet, without washing his hands once but my children can’t have a single friend round and I can’t teach small children to play the flute in my almost separate room.
2. Pubs are going to open because people in pubs are well behaved but because people in theatres sit on each other’s laps, snog strangers in the interval and are generally rowdy you can’t go and watch Shakespeare at the Globe.
3. We’re all in this together. Except Leicester. Sorry Leicester, you’re on your own.
4. We are only going to take the next steps to ease lockdown if we can be sure we are going to avoid a second spike. What about Leicester? Oh don’t worry about Leicester, we can make that another country. There’s lots of foreigners there anyway.
5. When teachers questioned whether it was safe to go back to school Matt Hancock told them not to be silly, children don’t get coronavirus and if they do it’s mild and perfectly safe. However, when he was explaining how Leicester was going into lockdown he said that all schools would be closed there because children had been very badly affected.
6. Although we know that this virus targets certain ethnicities we are still not recording ethnic data when people have a test.

I do love my carpet of contradiction, though and so does the dog.

I can’t believe I chose a carpet that clashes with the dog.

Grandmothers

With yesterday’s goosgog harvest, I was transported back to the days when I was the child or even the grandchild. I thought about my mum’s puddings and bizarrely a dish that big Nan used to cook goosgog crumble in. It was a shallow, rectangular, pottery dish in beige with some kind of picture on the bottom. No matter how hard I try I can’t bring that picture into sharp focus. I can picture the kitchen with it’s distinctive smell of bleach, the larder filled with extra bags of sugar because, “I’m not getting caught out like that again!” I can picture Nan in her pinny, her bosom threatening to suffocate in a wonderful hug. However, the actual picture on the bottom of the dish swims in and out of focus. Maybe it’s because it’s covered in goosgog juice and flakes of crumble. Maybe it’s not important.

My other Nan didn’t really bake. I remember her getting the griddle pan out once. She was Welsh and claimed we did scones all wrong. Mostly, I remember swapping my sausages for extra veg with my Aunt, who was (and funnily enough still is) only 7 years older than me, French fancies and milk jelly (or blancmange if you’re not Welsh). She was the Nanny who tried to answer the difficult questions.
“If God made people, who made God?”
“The ancient people made him from matchsticks then they all died out.”
She was very creative when faced with a whybird.

I’m not sure when it happened but at some point in my growing up I decided that I wasn’t that keen on being a mother. It looked like too much hard work and would mean that if you wanted to do it properly you wouldn’t be able to have the glittering career I was obviously destined for. I think I made my decision when I was walking to school with my mum. We were playing the ‘which is the nicest garden/house‘ game.
I pointed to a beautiful big white house with a gravel path and said, “When I grow up, I’m going to live there.”
Then I pointed to the small bungalow next door with beautiful country cottage boarders and perfectly manicured lawn. The lupins were swaying gently in the breeze and I said, “And I’m going to buy that for you, so that you can look after my children.”
The snort that erupted from her nose started the Flores cyclone.
“I’m not looking after your children,” she said, “You can look after your own children! Forget that idea right now!”
For a long while after that I thought that maybe I wouldn’t bother being a mother and that maybe I could just be a grandmother.

I already have a large supply of knitting

Life doesn’t turn out the way you plan. There was no glittering career and I just enjoyed being a mum. However, I would still like to be a grandma one day.

I will be in my element. I can knit, bake, sing nursery rhymes and give them back to disturb someone else’s sleep. I’ll even get myself a dish with a picture on the bottom.

Goosgogs

It’s gooseberry season - maybe a little earlier than normal but we have had such lovely weather.

Before my Dad got his allotment we used to go fruit picking. There were lots of pick-your-own farms near us. The farmers would joke, before we went in for strawberries or raspberries that they should weigh us. They were probably right because we would leave with red berry juice smeared around our faces and permenant stains on our T-shirts. We also picked peas and then spent the rest of the day in the garden shelling them half into bowls and half into our mouths.

Gooseberry picking was never so much fun. They grow on prickly bushes and are a little tart for a child to eat straight from the bush. That didn’t stop us trying, which led to an afternoon of gripey tummy pains and frequent visit to the loo.

Despite all this, we loved them. We called them goosgogs and loved the puddings mum made from them for the few weeks of the season.
Goosgog crumble

Goosgog fool

Goosgog pie

Goosgog meringue

Goosgog cobbler

Goosgog cake

And finally to remind us of the beginning of July 

Goosgog Jam.

Is it wrong that I’m wildly excited about my first pot of goosgogs?

Twot

If you’re not able to work, it helps to have good weather.

This is what I said to people two years ago when they politely and falsely told me how well I was looking, as I stomped around the town, trying to ground myself and cope with the fact that the filing clerk in my brain had downed tools and shoved all the paperwork in random drawers. I didn’t look well. My eyes were wild and flitty and I had lost so much weight that I looked like a haunted skeleton. However, I did have a nice tan.

And here we are again. Not able to work, with a lot of death to think about and we have had nice weather. It helps.

Except that it  tipped from nice to twot.

It was twot to do anything productive.
It was twot to eat (anything except ice cream, chocolate, crisps)
It was twot to refuse any liquid refreshment that was offered.
It was twot not to rush to the coast for some sea breeze.
It was twot to put your rubbish in the bin
It was twot to remember to keep 2m apart
It was twot to use hot water to wash your hands properly
It was twot to worry about a virus.

Hopefully, the twot days are over and we can all go back to being grateful for nice weather, whether we are able to be at work or not and a few days of being twots won’t matter.

Health and Safety at a Home Act

People keep talking about the new normal’, as if the coronavirus has changed work forever. Companies, thrilled at being able to spend less on their offices are sending out hopeful emails asking their employees to list the benefits of working from home. A few people will love the idea, however a lot of people work for the companionship. 

There are other considerations too. People who love working from home now might not be so happy when their quarterly energy bills come in, or when internet providers realise just how much people need their good broadband speeds and hike the prices up. It might not be as much fun when the sun stops shining.

There are many other hidden problems, that the Health and Safety at Work Act was designed to protect. If you are working at home is your employer still responsible for making sure you are safe at work? Will they send round someone to PAT test your plugs? Will they make you have a fire extinguisher? What about checking that your computer is at the right height? And if it’s not and you get a dowager’s hump can you sue them for not protecting you? 

My daughter is currently working from our home and as she is the clumsiest person on the planet and too short for any chair or table we own, I do worry about our responsibilities. We have already had to buy blinds so that the temporary fix of a bed sheet over the top of the sheer curtains didn’t make it look like she had been taken hostage and have invented a cushion and stool system to save later osteopath bills. However, after an incident with the oven and a near miss with a knife, while she was making her lunch, I’m thinking of having some signs printed. I wonder if I could bill her company for them?

I know I’m old, with a holey brain but the long term effects of these Zoom (other platforms are available) calls are having on our brains worries me. It takes so much more processing power to interact in this way. Yesterday, I had been on 9 of these calls and by the evening I couldn’t properly form a sentence. 

“Chritty Whitty 39 rubbish beach steps.”

They laughed at me.

“You are not making any sense at all.”

“Difficult places sun.”

“Yes mum. I think you need to go to bed.”

The trouble is sleep doesn’t work when your brain is misfiring. 

Today could be interesting, especially as there is a lightening storm.

Where have all the Thirzas gone?

There’s another row on book Twitter that I don’t understand. This one is between Baroness Nicholson, Damian Barr, the Booker Prize, Asda and a lot of angry people. She said she thought that Asda shouldn’t have the statement “love has no age” on its literature because there clearly is an age of consent for sex (not love), Asda agreed, trans people got upset because the literature was about promoting LGBTQ rights, they called her a homophobic bigot (which she probably is - voting record confirms against gay marriage and publicly doesn’t want to share a bathroom with people who have a penis), Damian Barr (who is a lovely gentle writer and gay) commented and said that she shouldn’t be on the board of the Booker Prize because her views are outdated  and despite the fact she’s only there because her husband’s money founded the prize they agreed.

The anger divided along two lines.  People had to choose.  They were either for or against Emma Nicholson.  I use her first name on purpose. It's easier to hate a baroness than an Emma.  It's easier to hate a nameless middle-aged woman with outdated views than it is to hate someone with the same name as many people who disagree with her.  It was the same with JK Rowling. You had to decide which side you were on.  You might have loved the books but you don't have to have any empathy for a JK.

Pick a side.  Make sure it's the right one.  Don't delay now.  If you don't condemn everything about the person on the wrong side then you will be immediately tainted.  Careful now. Make your choice.  You can be modern and progressive or old and past it.  Which is it to be?  Hurry up.  Quick, quick.  No, you can't think about it.  If you do then you'll be on the wrong side.  Agree with some aspects but not others? Don't be ridiculous. It's a simple choice; black or white. This isn't 50 Shades of Grey. 

It is ridiculous, isn't it?  The world needs people with all sorts of views.  You don't have to agree with them but dissenting voices can help to make your own stronger.

I worry that there is a trend towards silencing (or trying to silence) the voices of older women.  It's like someone has a checklist of who can be listened to and older women are at the bottom of the list.  The value of post-menopausal women is less in society.

I have been looking at the court records for our town from 1898 and it is clear that women's voices have always been there but just not reported on.  Women were there, often being measured and calming.  They were the victims of theft and assault.  They owned business and fell foul of the same laws as men did, such as the weights and measures act.  They also were prosecuted for things that men got away with, such as employing men to work without a licence. 

One woman I have been quite obsessed with is Thirza Finch.  She took the headmaster of the National School in London Road to court for thrashing her son, Ebenezer.  He was caned for throwing a stone after school, which hit his teacher on the skirt. She was also, later, prosecuted for having faulty scales in her baker's shop. 

When I tell people about this work, they all comment on how names like Ebenezer and Adolphus have gone out of fashion.  We all know why.  History documents awful men.  I do wonder, though, what happened to the Thirzas.

Maybe someone called Thirza said something that young women disagreed with.  She could have suggested that women shouldn't get the vote, or she could have been responsible for suggesting that her husband oppose the married women's property act. 

If you google Thirza, then you find in the Urban dictionary that she might have been a Victorian Karen. 

Old lady names go out of fashion because no one wants to be an old lady but they usually come back.  Betty, Rose and Poppy are names I never thought would be fashionable again, just as you can't imagine a world of Susans, Julies and Karens and maybe they will all be back or maybe Karen will be permanently benched with Thirza.

Let’s Talk Balls

Last night was the end of the Daily Coronavirus briefings, which is a shame because they were still very much part of my routine. I’m one of the people who isn’t back at work properly and I did find that the briefing was a way to mark the end of my day. I’d log off Facebook at 5, watch the briefing and then make my dinner. Now that it’s all over how am I going to know when Facebook time is over?

The last briefing was a bit of a disappointment, as an end of series episode goes. When you’ve invested so much time in a series you hope that the last episode will tie up all the loose ends and leave you feeling satisfied.

I don’t want to be one of those people that’s very negative and bashes the government all the time. I am mostly hopeful that this virus will just become another mild disease in our library of human infections and we will be able to carry on paying about as much attention to it as we do cholera or diphtheria. I also think that a new infection is never easy for any government to manage and we won’t know how effectively they’ve done this for a while. Having had more deaths now might put us in a better position if there is another winter outbreak and allow us not to lockdown again because it was never really about saving all lives. It was only to save the lives that could have been saved if they needed a ventilator, so that no one was denied that treatment due to lack of capacity and to stop the NHS crashing under the pressure.

Having said all that I have to write about the last briefing because it was just so funny. It was the 92nd episode and had all the clarity of the water that was in the infamous Fambridge Road ditch in the 1890s (before they had a proper sewage system and when the council had refused to spend money on a new night cart and horse to remove the waste from the cess pits).

Chris Whitty looked like he was actually going to vomit as the Prime Minister outlined plans to reduced social distancing to 1m plus, allowing people to go into houses (in a slightly confusing way), and drink in pubs.
He didn’t share Boris Johnson’s optimism.
“It’s a balance of risk, it’s not risk free -absolutely not risk free. No one thinks it is.”
The Prime Minister, when questioned about this, couldn’t understand what we were all seeing.
“There’s much more agreement between us than you might expect.”
The scientific advice is clear: the virus hasn’t gone away, you could still catch it, you could still die, you must wash your hands (you filthy pigs), it would be better if you didn’t go near anyone ever again, you are in an Agatha Christie novel (specifically, the 39 steps).
The government message was also clear: we’ve done enough, you’re on your own now, spend money to get the economy going, we’ve decided which parts of the economy we would like to save, we don’t think love is important but if you do we are not going to prosecute you for it.

It takes some balls to make this your last episode.

While we are talking about balls let’s discuss the affinity of the coronavirus to the various types.

As we know, it doesn’t go anywhere near a football. Football is safe. You might be missing the crowd noise but don’t turn it on because noisy environments change all that. Whatever you do, don’t sing, don’t get the vuvuzela out. Check Chris Whitby’s 39 steps: the virus loves noise. However, footballers are perfectly safe. It’s a game you play outside. You stay 2 meters apart from your opponents at all times. It’s a big ball. There’s no risk.

Golf balls are so small, there can’t be any risk there. The old men are back on the course. They have to print off their own score cards, which they are very cross about and the 19th hole is closed until the 4th of July. Golf is safe. Get those octogenarians back out there. I know, Nick Watney and Cameron Champ tested positive in the first couple of days of the PGA tour but they felt fine, so there’s no risk.

Tennis balls are safe too. Every dog in the country has been trying to tell us that for a while. Corona virus can’t live on a tennis ball. Tennis is a great game, there’s always the distance of an extended trombone between you and your opponent and if you do touch the ball then never fear because the dog slobber will have killed off all the germs. There’s no risk with tennis.

Bowling balls are only safe outside. They are large and hard. No one really thinks a large hard ball is a good thing but we’ve got to give the over 80s something to do.

Rugby balls are an odd shape, so they will always be risky. Also, rugby players love a cuddle and we know that cuddling is never going to be allowed again.

Cricket balls are an odd one. You would have thought they would be fine. They are hard but so are golf balls. They are the size of a tennis ball, dogs will slobber on them if no other balls are available. People who play cricket tend to keep their distance from each other and always do it outside. It’s a great sport for a picnic, which we have learnt definitely beats the virus: just look at how fast the deaths have dropped since picnicking became the nation’s favourite pastime. It tends to be a quiet sport. It’s great on the radio. The sound of leather on willow, the tweeting of birds and whispering commentators discussing cake are the only things to punctuate the silence. You would think that there would be no risk with cricket. However, as a cliffhanger to the final series, Boris Johnson said that he was missing village cricket but he wouldn’t be getting back to it any time soon because the cricket ball was a “natural vector for the disease.”  Someone funnier than me noted on Twitter that it must be because it started in bats. The virus loves a bat. It’s a nice joke but  it doesn’t explain tennis.

Balls!

Hidden Release

This is a fascinating time to be a people watcher.

I’m disappointed that nobody has come up with a snappy new word for this current phase.

Lockdown made sense: there were clear rules that everyone (except Dominic Cummings and the MP who climbed a ladder to kiss his girlfriend) understood. People tried out words like Quarantine, which didn’t completely work because no one was ill and self isolation, which also didn’t work because people were staying in their homes together. Eventually, people settled on lockdown.

This new phase can’t be described as lockdown, but also it’s not a release. Government and that woman you know who thinks she knows everything have tried to pretend ‘it’s perfectly clear.’ It’s a gradual easing of restrictions. Why and how they are eased isn’t totally obvious or logical and people are breaking the rules, that are only actually guidance, all over the place.

Some people won’t have fully understood what the rules are, others won’t care. Some will break them accidentally and others will bend them only with a great deal of logical thought and care about why the rules are there in the first place. Not everyone watches every briefing, so second hand information always gets corrupted and even for those of us that do there is still confusion.

As a people watcher and with the aid of social media, I have absolutely loved observing behaviour during this phase. It’s the disconnect between a person’s actions and what they expect from others that I find most interesting. I have seen people in parks all dipping their hands into the same bag of crisps and not quite keeping two meters away from the other five people in their group tutting at another group of eight people who are all sitting apart and have brought their own food.

We are much more likely to forgive our own transgressions and those of the people we love. Actually, it’s more than that. We don’t even notice our own failures.

The people who post about not being able to hug their mum and then put a picture of a ‘socially distanced’ BBQ that has ended up in the house with the men on the X-box and the women with their arms around each other drunkenly singing to Robbie Williams are still likely to be really cross about the person who goes to the supermarket without a mask.

It’s really interesting to try and work out what people who are breaking/bending the rules are thinking. The other day I walked through the park at the end of the day, as people were packing up to go home. Some people hugged. One or two broke away immediately, looking horrified and so for them the intention to stick to the rules had been clear. The hug was an accidental human response.

Yesterday, on a field next to a little wood there was a large wild party of about twenty families. They were having a great time. The kids were running around playing ball games and doing handstands. The adults were drinking, chatting loudly and singing to music playing from Bluetooth speakers. As I walked passed I was confused. In normal times, they would have had that party at home. They would have gone to someone’s house, where they could be in the garden and use all the facilities of the house. Somehow, they must have thought that by being on a public field they were doing the right thing.

The government and the advisors to SAGE must have realised that behaviour would be on a spectrum  ranging from people who are overly cautious to those who, (in the words of Van Tam) rip the pants out of it. Luckily the deaths are still going down, so maybe it doesn’t matter and we could all be a little less judgmental.

As I was walking and trying to come up with a new word for the new phase a man wandered out of the little wood back to the party. He was chuckling.
“I’d give it a while, if I were you,” he said loudly and proudly to his friends and, accidentally, to me.
You see, if you are not going to have your party at home then you don’t have all the facilities you require and you have to improvise.

Maybe we should call this phase ‘Hidden Release.’

*Note* I would like to make it very clear that I do not condone shitting in the woods. Whilst I’m happy not to judge people if they hug their parents accidentally, or sleep with their girlfriend that they don’t live with, or have a party with more than 6 people in the garden, defecating in public spaces is not okay. It is a public health issue, let’s not replace Coronavirus with typhoid.

Father’s Day

I can’t remember if we marked Father’s Day when I was growing up. I remember Mother’s Day. I remember making cards in school and a teacher’s hushed whispers as she and a colleague discussed how they were going to handle it for Poor Penny Peters whose mum had run away with the milkman, “floozy” and left Poor Peter Peters to cope on his own. Peter Peters was, by all accounts, rather attractive and didn’t deserve that, so the teachers decided that Penny could make a Mother’s Day card for her Dad, “That man’s a saint.” I think he still had to have the flower design from the petals I was cutting out. That was how I heard the conversation. Being ‘good with scissors’ meant that in the Seventies you got to miss break and become the class TA, while the teachers gossiped and drank coffee.

Anyway, back to Father’s Day. As I say, I don’t remember. I have a vague recollection of a sniffy conversation with my Mum in a card shop.
“It’s just a silly American thing, to get you to buy things.”
“But wouldn’t it be nice...”
“It’s commercialism.”
If it had been a day when we celebrated Dads then mine would have got a packet of peanuts and a bag of nails, in a brown paper bag that I bought from Kitts. That’s what he got for other events. I remember going into the hardware shop and talking to the man behind the counter, who was wearing a brown pinny.
“I’d like some nails please, it’s my Dad’s birthday.”
“Yes, certainly, young lady. Do you know what kind he would like?”
I scanned the shelf, where items were kept in glass jars like sweeties.
“Nine inch. Flat head.”
My confidence was faked.
Dad always pretended to be thrilled with his nails. Maybe he was, who knows?
I’m the last few years, those nails became beer and liquorice all sorts. I still like to give the rose a drink of Old Speckled Hen on birthdays and Fathers Day.

These days that celebrate parents can be really hard for people who don’t have them around. This year could be difficult for a lot more, who are restricted by lockdown advice.

In our house, we are lucky because the Long Suffering Husband has had both of his children home since the beginning of lockdown. He has been able to wander round the house tutting phrases like, “treat this house like a hotel,” “Lights!” and “There’s no bowls left. I’d look in your room but I might get  dragged off by the huge rats that are probably living in there.”
The kids couldn’t be luckier, either. There’s nothing the LSH wouldn’t do for them. He’s just the best.

Happy Father’s Day to all the brilliant dads. I hope you enjoy your packet of nails.

Do make me laugh.

I missed a day and I’m still grumpy.
“So, will you be feeling better in the morning or....?” the Long Suffering Husband said before we went to bed.
Obviously, I hoped to be feeling happier, no one chooses this, do they? However, this morning no sleep miracle has occurred. Maybe I should try and work out why. I mean, really, I don’t have any reason. My life is pretty good.

However, I just have a growing sense of unease.

Maybe I preferred full lockdown. Shut in my little house, with my little family, except for long country walks, where nothing could go wrong. I probably did but I think it’s more than that. This half and half, in limbo stage is really hard.

I think I would have preferred to stay in for longer and then enable life to go back to normal. If this disease is so dangerous it would have been better to eradicate it. With thousands of new cases and hundreds of hospital admissions and deaths a day the virus is still very much with us, which means we have to continue to modify our natural behaviour to stop another exponential spread. It also means that the vulnerable will never get their normal life back.

I also feel a bit wobbly about how decisions are being made about who and what can re-open for business. It creates a them and us situation which is never good.

I’m in the half of the school that isn’t in and that feels weird. I say half because I’m including the children. Most staff are back in. Although it is lovely to be able to potter round the garden and choose when to work, I know that I and all the children at home are missing out on a shared experience. We will never be able to join in the conversations.
“Do you remember when Mr B tripped over the table?”
“Nope, I don’t because I was in year 3, my mum didn’t work in the school and the government decided there was no need to educate me. But do you remember that long hot summer where we had 5 months to make mud pies and watch the birds?”
You could argue that it works both ways, except that everyone’s experience of being at home is slightly different.
Yesterday, our school held a virtual assembly on Facebook Live. I found it very sad. It was too different and too distant. Obviously, I’ll never tell anyone that. “It was lovely,” I’ll say, “what a brilliant idea to keep a sense of community going,” which I suppose it is but it also felt like a slap in the face - a this is what we’ve got and you can’t have. I know! I’m an adult and should be more grown up about these things!

I also have a growing fear that what I do is never going to be allowed again. Gavin Williamson implied that in September all children will be back in school in bubbles of 30. I’m not sure how this will work in senior schools but the implication is that classes won’t mix and won’t move much. There are constant rumours that singing in groups is dangerous, which I think comes from the fact that a whole choir of octogenarians in Germany died. He also announced that schools were to make sure that their pupils ‘caught up.’ They haven’t said on what yet but you can almost guarantee it won’t be an understanding of how pitch, rhythm, musical notation work. I fear that music lessons will be scrapped in favour of extra spelling tests.

It has also worried me that the government only thinks about big business and forgets the little people at the bottom that make the big business work. For example, premier football but no smaller divisions. The arts industry in the UK is worth more than the sport industry and so the government will talk to the big business leaders of these industries. Luckily, Cameron MacIntosh and Andrew Lloyd Webber understand the grass roots needs of the industry, but those big businesses (where their wealth is tied up in huge central London property) is where they’ll start.

I know what I need to cheer myself up.

I’m sorry it’s taken this long.

I need a good laugh.

The government has started to talk to ALW and CM. This was their first suggestion:

Musicals could open without singing.

Ha ha. That’s better. I’m feeling happier already.

Libraries could open without books.
Ballet could be staged without dancing.
Social media could happen with blank screens.
Swimming pools could open without water.
Football could be played without balls.
Orchestras could play without instruments.
Perfume shops with no smelling.
Shoe shops without shoes.
Parliament could sit without MPs

Now, there’s a thought.

Grump

Gosh, I’m grumpy this morning. The rain, although welcome was too loud and I think I’m solar powered. Come on. Snap out of it. The pandemic is over. Cheer up. There must be something nice you can think about.

Nope. 

I tried. So instead I’m going to make a list of everything I’m grumpy about.

1. News: it’s breaking again and it’s all over my dining room table. When can news go back in the office? Rapes, stabbings and truck loads of illegal immigrants are filling my house. 

2. Borders: Seriously, if we can’t control our borders during a pandemic, so that a truck can be stopped on the M11 with 14 desperate people in the back, we really are useless.

3. Matt Hancock’s back slap: it really is one rule for them and another for us.

4. The arts: kept us all going during lockdown. Without Grayson Perry, Andrew Lloyd Webber and others less famous we would have been revolting much sooner but the government hasn’t even thought about how to get these industries working again. They’ve just decided to consult Cameron Macintosh, so that’ll help all the musicians and actors I know.

5. Macron’s visit: How come he doesn’t have to quarantine? Prince Charles will travel from Aberdeen and shake his hand to celebrate a speech by a leader who was hiding in another country during a war, eighty years ago. The business of celebrating things that don’t matter continues but you can’t see your 80year old dad blow out the candles on his birthday cake because the care home still has a no visitor policy because the virus hasn’t gone.

6. Tacky painted aeroplanes: £900,000 to paint a plane seems a lot to me. I have no more words about that except rude ones.

7. Catch up plans: schools can not be held responsible for what children did or didn’t do in lockdown.

8. Private schools: can open fully because they have space, resources and small class sizes. It’s all about protecting the most vulnerable. I can see that now.

9. Zoom/Hangout/Skype: It doesn’t matter which one I use, they all hurt my holey brain. The flicking between pictures, the sound that squeaks and whistles and doesn’t match up with the pictures. The pictures that freeze and flicker. It’s exhausting and even if someone does 25 push ups a day I don’t think that’s going to change. 

10. Hugging: All this talk of being able to hug again is making me twitchy. Do I have to?

That’s not everything but I’ve even bored myself now. I’m going to stand in the rain to see how much my courgettes (Water sponges) have grown.

They think it’s all over.....

If there was ever a phrase more ingrained into the British psyche than, “They think it’s all over....it is now.” I can’t think of what it might be. It was our moment of glory. We won something against the Germans.

The sports commentator said it as a warning. The time wasn’t up. The Germans could still win and then something happened and they couldn’t. (You can probably tell that I’m never going to be a football commentator).

Yesterday, the Prime Minister appeared on the briefing, full of bumbling excitement. He was supremely pleased with himself. He’d brought the scientists back to give the good news.

We’ve found a drug that works.

I watched and shouted at my family, “They think it’s all over.”

A sense of unease crept over me, worsening  the longer the scientist spoke. I was confused about my reaction because I’m normally such a Pollyanna.

Professor Horby, the head of the RECOVERY (Randomised Evaluation of COVid-19 thERapY - oh don’t you love how scientists have fun?) explained.

“We’ve looked at the numbers and if we treat eight patients in intensive care with this drug we will save one life.”

What? My anxiety chip started to flash.
One in eight! That means that if you get to intensive care then even with this drug you have a 7/8 chance of dying. That’s a lot worse than I thought it was. I thought it was less than flu, where about 50% survived but I thought about a third survived. Why didn’t they tell us this at the beginning when they wanted us to be scared? How can they be saving it as good news? Oh, my goodness, I’m never going out again, it’s all too risky.

It was a weird moment for me because I’m not normally anxious about dying. Normally, surviving mechanical ventilation and having to live a reduced life afterwards would be my worst fear.

A journalist asked the question on everyone’s lips. Something like, “Now we have this drug does that mean it’s all over.”
The Prime Minister looked pleased and tossed his blond locks aside making positive noises before he was interrupted by Sir Patrick Vallance, who pointed out that it doesn’t stop you catching the virus, or even stop you getting to intensive care, it just stops one in eight dying once they get there. 

I was so confused.
“It must be saving one in eight of those who would have died,” my daughter suggested, “But how do they know who would have died?”
I looked up a more scientific piece of writing https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/first-drug-to-reduce-mortality-in-hospitalised-patients-with-respiratory-complications-of-covid-19-found/25061
My daughter was right. Mortality on mechanical ventilators was 41% without the drug and a third less died who were given the drug.  I’m still not sure where the one in eight comes from but it might be an averaged out improvement amongst all the people they tried it on.

So now they know that they need to give everyone in ITU with COVID-19 this drug. That’s good news. I understand why the scientists are happy. They also found out that Hydroxochloroquinine is not effective in ITU patients. That will save the NHS a bit of money. Give the cheap drugs that work and let Donald Trump have the expensive ons for himself. I can definitely see why they are happy.

But there was still a nagging doubt. 

It was the drug itself. 

There was a little voice in the back of my head saying, “Surely, they’ve been giving this drug anyway?”
People in hospital are given drugs. Lots of them. No one would lie in hospital on mechanical ventilation without being pumped full of steroids and antibiotics. Those drugs might change if they weren’t working but they might not. 

I’ve heard of Dexamethasone. It took me back to the elephant wars, when my mum was being treated for cancer. I expect it was the mention of this drug that had triggered my anxiety and made me want to simultaneously hide under a blanket and run away. 

Dexamethasone is a drug they give to cancer patients to combat nausea. My mum loved it. It was the only thing that made her feel good. It gave her energy and allowed her to have a life. Everyone called it Dexy.

I love the fact that Dexy is being used to fight the Corona Eileen virus. It feels as though we have come full circle and are back to the beginning, where we are allowed to do everything except have fun.

Maybe they could discover a Geno therapy that stops the vulnerable catching it and we could have fun back.

A Tiger in the Tank

It was 1972 and I was in the car with my Dad. The weather was awful.It was a cold January day and sleet like steel poles fell from the sky.

My sister has just been born and we are keeping out of the way. He took me on an ‘emergency’, where I ran around the huge telephone exchange, with it’s strange electrical smell and super slidey floors. I sat on the swivel chairs with headphones on listening to the speaking clock, spinning until I felt sick. Eventually, he reappeared saying something like, “All fixed, it was just the switch.”

On the way home we stopped at the Coach and Horses. I sat in the car. It was a white Triumph Toledo. I remember because it was a newer, more sensible car because we had a new baby. I had the window wound down half way and the knobs that indicated the doors were locked were down. Dad appeared, smiling and happy and handed me a coke, in a glass bottle with a straw in and a packet of Salt and Vinegar.
“Won’t be long,” he said tapping his nose, “Just got to see a man about a dog.”
I sucked the straw a bit too hard and the fizz went up my nose. He was back before I’d finished my crisps.

“Better stop and get some petrol,” he said.
We drove into the one way system at Sun Corner and took the right hand lane instead of the left. The radio was on and we were singing along to, “I’d like to teach the world to sing.”
We edged onto the forecourt. You always seemed to have to queue for petrol in the Seventies.
“Thirty four pee a gallon!” Dad spluttered. “Daylight robbery.”
It didn’t seem that much to me. I’d just spend 25p of my pocket money on a book of Milly Molly Mandy Stories (I was always a precocious reader).
“You don’t just buy one gallon of petrol,” he laughed then he made me work out what ten times 34p would be. I agreed, that did sound like a lot.

He liked this garage because it was self-service. He had worked in the airport when he was younger and although he told stories of a horrible, bully boss and how doing ‘bump and grind’ circuits always made him sick, he did miss filling up the planes with fuel.

While he was gone I read all the adverts on the forecourt.
“Esso Blue - for smoke gets in your eyes”
“Put a Tiger in your tank.”
When Dad got back the windows were all steamed up and I was halfway through the song about smoke getting in your eyes and full of questions.
“Why do you get smoke in your eyes?”
“Is a paraffin heater the round thing Aunty Sue has that I burnt my fingers on?”
“Why would you put a tiger in the tank?”

He was always very patient with my questions and would answer every one with a twinkle in his upturned eyes.

“It’s just an advert,” he said, “it’s to make you think that their petrol is like a tiger.”
“Stripey?”
“No, powerful.”
“Furry?”
“No, fast.”
“Oh, okay.” I tried to process that. “It’s a bit silly isn’t it?”
“Maybe,” he said.
“Does the tiger have a name?”
“I don’t think he does.”
“Because Tony the Tiger is Grrrrreat,” I said trying to roll my Rs like they did on the Frosties advert.
“You know, when I was at Stone I met the brother of the man who trains the tiger on the Esso advert in the pub. It’s a real tiger, not a cartoon version like Tony, so it probably does have a name. Raj or something, I’s guess. Anyway, he’s from Durham.”
Just as I was trying to process that information Dad started up the car, on the second attempt after pulling the choke out a bit further and a car pulled up next to us. It has a tiger’s tail hanging from the petrol cap.

“Daaaaad?”
“I can’t answer that question,” he said, rolling his eyes, “There’s just no accounting for taste.”

I thought I’d share that memory with you, as Boris Johnson announced that he’s going to put a tiger in the tank of the Brexit talks. Apparently, it’s not done and they are being a bit difficult about letting us have everything we want.

Perspective

Can we just stop a second? Take a breath and ask ourselves if it’s really necessary to get angry about the thing? I know, I know. I can talk. Here I am, every day, writing a blog about what I think, getting it all off my chest and I do think there is a lot to be angry about. However, let’s not burst a blood vessel over it. Take a second, look at it from a different angle and see if you still feel the same.

I spent a whole day scrubbing woolly aphids  off my apple tree. I’ve got bug blood under my fingernails and they’re back again this morning. I’m trying to look it it from a different angle but I can’t. I hope you will all share my outrage. It’s just not right. If you can’t share my fury and lobby parliament for the harshest possible sentences for these thuggish creature then maybe you could help me put a different perspective on it.

I know I need to chill out a bit and remember lockdown was to save lives and that people’s health is what matters but I’m very cross about this and I think you should be too.

Testosterone and Tolerance

Before I saw today’s headlines I was thinking of giving this blog a title of ‘I predicted a riot and so did SAGE.’ We knew this was coming. Honestly, we did. Behavioural scientists know humans. We knew that after a certain period cooped up, living in fear, anger and boredom there would be civil unrest. I expect I’m not the only one who is surprised that riots haven’t happened sooner.

I say humans but I mean men, or rather people with excess testosterone.

The Daily Mail are surprised. Who would have thought it would be angry white men whose hormones got the better of them before angry black men?

No, seriously, they are surprised. Although, they have been whipping up hatred and fear of ‘others’, they thought they were on pretty safe ground. They thought white men would not blow first because black men have so much more to be angry about. 

Tolerance is such an odd word to use. It means, “We knew you wanted to kill them and drive them out of our country but we thought we’d taught you to put up with it.” No wonder these poor hormonal men are so cross and confused.

Testosterone is an understudied hormone. The links between it and aggression are clear, though. Doctors who treat patients for prostate cancer (where testosterone has to be suppressed) all note that their patients all become nicer. There have been some studies into what happens to the hormone with abstinence and it appears that lack of sex can cause a phenomenal spike after 7 days and an increased rise after three weeks. I’m not saying that all the aggressive men we saw on the news last night were single and living with their elderly parents, with less opportunities for self relief than they’d like. No. I’m not saying that at all but they clearly have a problem. 

Women have used hormone therapy for many years to treat their emotional state but men don’t see this hormonal balance as a problem.  Society pretends that something has gone wrong with tolerance or that black men are just revolting, when really, it’s an imbalance of male hormones.

This is why it’s ‘not all men’. 

There are things that naturally cause testosterone to drop. Things like taking on childcare, being around children or women (especially if they cry) and empathy.  There was never going to be this huge outpouring of violence from the Black Lives Matter protests because the testosterone was kept in check. That protest came out of empathy. No one could feel empathy for a statue.

I have a solution for these kinds of situations that I think would keep everyone happy. Police could hand out free beer with testosterone blockers in. I like to imagine a tattooed Tommy Robinson taking a sip, looking confused for a moment and saying, “Oh, look at that bird, isn’t it pretty?” as a secret service pigeon struts by to report on the success of the operation to his Commander in Chief at the top of Nelson’s Column.

Names (Specifically Street Names)

I can’t tell you how thrilled I was to discover that Hilary Mantel is calling her new essay collection Mantel Pieces. I felt heard. It’s how I’ve referred to all three of her Thomas Cromwell books and I’m so glad she liked my suggestion.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the past, recently. I have been working on a local history project to transcribe the court records. I keep saying that I don’t think I’m cut out for this work because I get totally absorbed and then distracted. I’ve only transcribed two cases because there are so many questions. I need to build up a picture of what the witnesses were like, where they lived, how old they were and what they did for a living. I spent a whole afternoon looking into records for a boy who had given evidence for the defence. He said 11 words but I needed to know more about him. He lived in London Road and grew up to become a court recorder. I like to think I’ve found his inspiration.

Yesterday, I got hold of a book, which is considered to be the bible for local historians. It’s called Maldon and the River Blackwater by EA Fitch. Fitch was quite a man but I don’t think I would have liked him. He was Mayor and commissioned the building of the Prom, although not the lake, which came later. In his book he says that the Prom cost £4000 - £5000 but I have read £3000 in other places. You would think he would know but maybe he was just exaggerating his wealth. We think History is set in stone but it always depends upon who is writing it.

People who want history to be remembered in a certain way do often try to set it in stone. It’s not comfortable to remember that this country made so much of its wealth through slavery and colonisation, so we re-framed these men as philanthropists and put up statues. But history has always been more fluid than that. Even stone statues can be moved.

I think the Black Lives Matter movement have been very clever in targeting statues. They have made us question the history that we believe is set in stone. Was Coulston a philanthropist or an evil gang master? Was Churchill the leader that saved us from Hitler or the person that invented the concentration camp? Was Baden-Powel a jolly little man who set up the scouts or a paedophile? (Sorry, I don’t think that’s the problem they are tackling with him).

They are also challenging street names. Both Brighton and Glasgow councils have agreed to look at the streets that are named after slave owners and consider renaming them. Some people are very cross about this but street names change all the time. There used to be loads of Black Boy lanes and Gropecunt streets but very few of these exist now.

Fitch’s book starts with a walk around the town, which hooked me immediately because that’s my favourite thing to do. It has been joked that, “she just walks,” would be the three words that would describe me.

I was stunned at how many street names had changed and how many more were known in several ways. I often wonder why a road is named as it it. I’ve been fascinated with this road for a while and assumed it was named because it was used as a cut-through or diversion.

My assumption bothered me because it seems to be in the middle of nowhere. Fitch, however, calls this road “Cut throat Lane,” hinting at a darker history.

Cromwell Lane used to be called Maypole Lane and Cromwell Hill was known as Back Hill. Queen Street was Essex Place and Fambridge Road was known as Pinchgut Hall Road.
In the High Street, next to the Rose and Crown (now a Wetherspoons) is a road called Butt Lane. This  road name has always intrigued me and it used to make my children laugh. Fitch says that it used to be called Crown Lane and before that Whang Poo Street.

Now, there’s a name for historical research. Was it to do with smelly faeces, hence the conversion to Butt, or does it hint at a Chinese connection to the Huangpu river in Shanghai? The road does lead down to our own river.

So, if anyone is getting cross about History being erased just remember you could be living in Whang Poo Lane if nothing ever changed.

Love Songs and Lollipops

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it but I love my job.

I’m sure these times will divide people. There will be those who find that the only thing they liked about their job was their colleagues and the social interaction it gave them, others will realise they hate their job so much they’d rather clean the oven and some will discover that they like the work but would rather not ever have to sit in a room with the other members of staff ever again. For lots of people, working at home is getting hard now. It’s hard for the children who haven’t gone back to school. They have now been told that they won’t be going back until September. Their parents have been told to go back to work but six year olds are meant to stay at home, or go to a theme park.

I miss being in school and making music with children. I’m already missing playing Over the Rainbow with my neighbour every week on a Thursday, now that we’ve stopped giving carers the clap. However, I am still able to be creative and work on the planning ideas, which is a bonus.

I am currently planning for a week’s work on Madagascar. It’s not somewhere I know much about, except that the flag is white, red and green. I didn’t even know it was in Africa or that it’s a huge island. I suspected that it had probably been colonised and was part of building someone’s empire but didn’t know that the French won it.

The thing about planning and the internet is that you never know where it might take you. If I didn’t have this job to do then I would never have found out about the lollipop situation in Madagascar.

It is really interesting, in a world pandemic, to observe how different countries deal with the same crisis. If the virus had burnt itself out within a couple of weeks then our ‘watch and wait’ approach would have been hailed as genius. We’ve heard a lot about the countries who fought this mathematically, by locking down and halting exponential growth and we’ve heard Trump’s suggestions of injecting bleach into your eyeballs but Madagascar’s preferred option has slipped under our news radar.

The scandal in Madagascar is that a government minister has been sacked for using $2m of the country’s budget to buy lollipops . It turns out that they are hitting the virus by suggesting everyone take a herbal remedy (preventively). The herbal drink is made from Artemisia, or sweet wormwood and it tastes disgusting. This herbal remedy is widely used and has been demonstrated to have some effect against SARS and is now being tested by the Max Planck Institute. The government minister bought lollipops so that school children could stomach their daily dose of  COVID-Organics, as they are calling it. You might laugh at this but with over 1000 cases and only seven deaths, you can see why the scientists are keen to test it.

I love my job. How else would I have found out about this?

In a spectacular case of life imitating art I also found this wonderful song. It’s like a love song to a lollipop.

I have often woken up wondering where I can get a guard penguin from (still no cases in Antarctica) I tell you, this virus is all about the penguins.

Sex Bubbles

I know you’ve all stopped listening to the daily coronavirus briefing but it’s still part of my daily routine. Yesterday, it was Boris and an announcement that even he didn’t seem clear on. They also changed the slides again and compared some figures from two weeks ago to make it look more favourable. The Prime Minister came across as a rabbit caught in the headlights and the scientists (yay, they’re back!) admitted that if they had to do it again they would lockdown earlier.

I fear that to other countries we look like fools. My cousin in Australia told me that they are very worried about the situation in the UK.

I’m trying to remind myself that none of this was going to be easy and that hindsight is a wonderful thing. All countries that have eased lockdown (except Mexico) have seen cases continue to fall. Ours are still falling slowly. Plagues don’t last forever, not even the one in 1666, where they didn’t understand the science/maths.

Anyway, back to Boris’s announcement.

“You can have sex in a bubble if you are a single person, living on your own but not in a reptile house.”

There you go. Clear as flamingo poo.

Actually, I’m mocking but it does make sense and it isn’t about sex, although if you live alone you can have sex with someone and can even, legitimately, drive to Durham to do it. It’s for all the lonely and recently bereaved grandparents who have been asking for weeks when they can hug their grandchildren. They are calling it a support bubble.

It is fraught with social difficulty, though because they can only pick one family as their support bubble.
“Why does grandma like Freddy and Emily more than me?”
“It’s not you, darling. It’s me. Susan was always her favourite!”

A lot of young people, missing their partners will be furious. Many young people, living in shared houses are very lonely and would be very grateful of a support bubble. Let’s hope they are the people to be thought of in the next round of lockdown easings.

A Place for Pigeons

I’m feeling a bit stuck at the moment. It feels as though we are on the edge of a transition and some are being forced to move through it, while others are being held back. It seems to me that this would be an ideal time to ask yourself what you want next. I think I’ve mentioned before that I have done one of Adrienne’s yoga workouts every day (for over 150 days). I finished the last set of 30 days a while ago and have been letting fate (or the YouTube algorithm) choose the one I need every day. Yesterday, it was a practise about transitions. At the end she said, “I invite you to finish this sentence, ‘I choose....’

I finished the sentence with, “toast!” This makes me think that I’m not ready for any kind of transition, so while the world moves on, gets angry, tears down statues and makes plans, I’m going to stay exactly where I am, with my little routines, eating toast for breakfast and watching the pigeons peck the heads of the squabbling starlings on the bird feeder.

It has taken me a while to love the pigeons. They just seemed to be big, fat, lazy pooping machines that annoyed the dog. However, they’ve grown on me. I’ve been watching them in my garden and they seem to have a grandpa intelligence. There they sit on the fence, in their cardigans, sucking a Werther‘s Original, watching the other birds get het up about everything. I like to think they have come to my garden to retire.

A few years ago, I was in London with my son and while he was having an interview that we are not allowed to talk about I wandered the streets getting upset about statues. I was cross that there were none that represented me. If statues are history then it was a very narrow history that they are telling. As I was wandering, I noticed the pigeons. They seemed to be using the statues for very important meetings. I sat in the park with my notebook and started to write an idea for a story (maybe a children’s picture book) where pigeons were part of the secret service, meeting on statues and keeping the world safe. In some ways, it helped me to be less cross about the statues because they became less about telling a faulty history and more about being places for pigeons to sit.

In my imagination, Fred, the pigeon has retired from his secret service job, where he had meetings on Churchill, decorating him daily with pigeon excrement. Fred has chosen my garden to spend his final years. 

We only have a small garden but it is a constant work-in-progress. We are currently moving things around to make room for a shed/workshop for the Long Suffering Husband. Yesterday, he started to make a new water feature to replace the old one. It’s not going to be very much different because we are going to reuse the materials we had. It will, when it’s finished be a waterfall made from reclaimed ridge tiles. This time he has decided to build a structure to put the tiles on. At the moment I’m not sure how it’s going to work but he is usually a design genius, so it will be fine.

Fred is camera shy

I took one look at it and said, “Next slide please.”

I’ve watched too many coronavirus briefings.

How nice of the LSH to build a waterslide for Fred to use in his retirement. 

Colonial Thinking

I was going to stop being political. I keep getting headaches from all the eye rolling I’m doing but I turned on the TV, so that scientists could reassure me that the government know what they are doing (where have they hidden the scientists?) and there was Priti Patel being smirkingly awful. She talked about thuggery at the protests and said,
“Your behaviour is shameful and you will face justice.”

Since the death of George Floyd, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about an inquest my daughter reported on at the beginning of her career. There was something about it that smelled wrong and we would chat about it every night. The man, Philmore Mills, had died in hospital and the autopsy showed that he had hypoxia at the time of his death.
https://www.sloughobserver.co.uk/news/14263734.wexham-park-hospital-nurse-was-frightened-by-uncharacteristic-aggression-from-philmore-mills-which-could-have-been-caused-by-confusion/
Seeing how the police restrained George Floyd has made me question this case. Without any video evidence it is impossible to tell whether Philmore Mill’s hypoxia and death was caused by the restraint or by his illness. However, if he hadn’t been black I wonder if a security guard would have been called to restrain an old man with lung cancer, no matter how much his eyes bulged.

With the constant language of ‘the violent black man’ we are conditioned to believe that we are in danger. Therefore, it is acceptable to be frightened or to respond with ‘reasonable force.’ If we are honest, we’ve all thought it. It’s important not to deny that. It’s not your fault. It’s how we’ve been conditioned. I’m sure it comes from our slave trading days. If we told people that black men were violent then we could legitimately restrain them in chains and irons. They could never protest about being sold, transported and beaten. They could never free themselves. They were never safe. If a black man was free in society, people were conditioned to believe they were dangerous and so society helped to enslave more black men. However, those days are over. We realised they were wrong.

Now it’s time to recognise that those ideas are old. We have no more to fear from a black man, than we do a white man, or an Asian man, or a Muslim or a Jewish man. The colour of the skin doesn’t cause the violence.

Priti Patel was wrong to make so much of any violence that happened at these protests. There are always smatterings of violence at any large protest and the Police in this country do a brilliant job of trying to protect life. It’s time to stop pitching one against the other and recognise that it is our past and old thinking patterns that is keeping us stuck.

It would also be great if men could stop being violent.

The world is very strange at the moment. We are living in turbulent times but I’m glad we are starting to have conversations about our involvement in the slave trade,  that there is one less statue of a white man and racists are confused that tea companies, who built their product on slavery, are refusing to back them. #solidatitea is an unusual hashtag but it’s a start.

William Hogarth - a harlot’s progress

 (part of the V&A collection about the links between slavery and tea)

TERF Wars

If you are on Twitter, you will notice that JK Rowling is in trouble again. A lot of angry people are calling her a TERF and frankly, I wouldn’t blame her if she just stopped listening. Shouting at and threatening people is never the way to get someone to understand your point of view. You can make the world change by bullying people but then they will become suppressed and unhappy and eventually revolt and trust me, there will be nothing scarier than a bunch of revolting women in their fifties.

As far as I can see, what JK Rowling has done is question the language on a headline about free sanitary products, which said for all who menstruate. She wondered if there was a word for that...woman, maybe? The headline is a much more accurate use of language than her suggestion, as I don’t think sanitary products are used by all, or even most women. As a lover of language, I’m sure she could have been easily persuaded that there was nothing wrong with the headline, except its lack of snappiness.

Obviously, the upset with Joanne goes deeper.

I’ve been seeing the word TERF flung around social media as an insult for middle aged women for a while now. It is something I have been trying, and failing, to understand. TERF, as a word, is short, violent and angry. It’s used with venom to shut down the debate. TERF, as an acronym, stands for Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. I can’t help thinking that’s a lot of things for one person to be and I’m quite disappointed that we’ve moved back to using the word Feminist as an insult.

It is true that feminists have often clashed. Activists often do. If you are passionate about something then it is too easy to stop seeing the bigger picture. You only have to read about Erin Pizzey, who started Refuge, to understand how complicated the feminist movements that changed the world are. It’s a bit like that scene in Life of Brian where they are arguing about the People’s Front of Judaea.

Radical Feminism is a small branch that believes that society is a patriarchy that suppressed women. on all aspects. They believe that radical means are required to overthrow male supremacy and reorder society.

I suspect that the main part of the anger comes because people believe that the author is trans-exclusionary, meaning that she wants to deny the existence and rights of trans people. There will be a small number of people who need sanitary protection who are not living as women and this is the reason people are so cross with her. She may believe that people who are born girls should live that way forever, I can’t say but I would be surprised having read her books and knowing her to be someone who is concerned with equal rights and fairness for all.

As a society, we are just at the beginning of our understanding and acceptance of people being able to choose what gender or sexuality they live with. There is a long way to go but shouting at women who have fought hard, their whole lives, to get women to be seen as valuable in their own right, or for equal pay, is not the way to do it. There is a history that needs to be worked with, not against. Some of us come from a time when women were erased from history, ignored and suppressed and there is a fear that by refusing to even use the word woman for who it might offend that will happen again.

I hesitated to write this blog. With so much anger, it’s tempting to not try to understand but to shut down and hold any personal beliefs in. I don’t think that will help in the long run, so here is a picture of some of my roses to distract you,

while I whisper quietly, “Leave JK Rowling alone. She wrote some books. She isn’t responsible for keeping everyone happy.”

John le Carré and a Wet Week in Wales

If you have a dog you go out in all weathers. You have the gear: waterproof coat, boots or wellies you can walk in, several layers to cope with any temperature and pockets in every item of clothing.
“You know what really makes that outfit, Mum? It’s the poo bag hanging out of the pocket of your dress?” In bad weather, you normally only see other dog walkers. Most people, rightly, reason that there will be better weather another day, or even that there will be another day.

Yesterday, the weather was awful. It was the first chilly day we’ve had since April and it rained. Most people’s lawns were so shocked that they showed everyone just how dead they actually were by going yellow. Birds tweeted excitedly and foxes gave birth noisily (I’m not sure if that’s related). Nature loved it. Humans not so much. It was the kind of weather for staying inside with the fire on, watching Disney films and eating cheese scones.

However, this was the first weekend people could legally make plans. All week, they had looked forward to going to see Great Aunt Mabel, having a BBQ in the garden with their old college mates or meeting up in the park with their families for a picnic. A lot of people faced these plans with grim determination.

Social media was full of pictures of people sitting with blankets and umbrella around a BBQ. There’s no way they were giving up those hard fought plans.

On our morning walk, the Long Suffering Husband, pointed out that it felt like a British Holiday down on the Quay. He was right, people were out, in the rain, determined to enjoy themselves. Groups stood with a beer and burger laughing about the rain. Grandchildren ran ahead ice cream in hand, while the two older generations discussed how anyone could want a 99 in this weather.
“I’ve never known anyone to take so long eating an ice cream,” Grandma said, while the little boy systematically worked the creamy swirl with his tiny tongue. “It’s a good job it’s not hot now.”
“Ha, you’re right, always look on the bright side,” the Mum replied.

I agreed with the LSH, there definitely was a British holiday vibe that wasn’t just to do with the rain. When you go on holiday, you’ve probably only got a week to see the places you want. You wake up, in your cottage on the Welsh coast, and it’s raining - again. Your choice is to sit in the cottage that doesn’t have all the comforts of home or get out there and do the things you’d planned. Obviously, it’s Wales, it’s going to rain tomorrow and you are only there for another 5 days, so you go to the beach. This is how many people in the park were treating yesterday.

We walked away from the quay and noticed another strange phenomenon. It was like being in a John le Carré spy novel. Men sat on either ends of benches, looking forward, as if they were pretending not to know each other. Often a small child would be playing in the foreground and both men would be watching him.
 At some point the younger man would say, “So, how have you been?”
The older man would look straight forward.
“He made you this,” the younger man would say before sliding a piece of paper along the bench between them.
The older man would pick it up, look at it and a tear would appear in his eye.

I can’t wait until people can make plans that they can take inside again and be confident that they can cancel those that they do have because there will be better weather and another day tomorrow.

Do All Lives Matter?

The Black Lives Matter Campaign and the recent protests have been brilliant in our house for making us confront some of our beliefs. We have had discussions that have been interesting and challenging. I think that accepting that some of your long held beliefs might be faulty is the first step towards change and it can be hard to accept that you might not be right.

We first saw the Black Lives Matter Campaign posters when we were in Boston in 2016. At the time everyone we spoke to in coffee shops was talking about the possibility that Trump would be elected. When we were there our country had just voted for Brexit. Everyone we spoke to couldn’t understand why. We explained how racism works in the UK and they suddenly feared the election of Trump. We, however, were confused about the BLM campaign.
“Surely, all lives matter?” said the Long Suffering Husband.
We talked around it for a while and concluded that racism had to be so much worse in America for that poster to be necessary in every church.

We came home feeling smug and whistling the tune to ‘Everyone’s a little bit racist’ from Avenue Q.

I feel differently about it now. This campaign has made me realise that while all lives matter, Black lives are under serious threat. This is particularly true at the moment in the UK, as well as the USA.
“The virus doesn’t discriminate,” was a favourite phrase of the politicians until they discovered that it did. Now, instead of accepting that and doing everything they can to protect the people it discriminates against they justify with a ‘yes but these people are poor, live together too closely, work in jobs we don’t want to do.’ I think if you say ‘yes but’ then you’ve stopped listening and started justifying. It can be hard to accept that you were wrong.

Only a few weeks ago our government were talking about trialling our Coronavirus vaccine and other not fully tested treatments in African countries. This is typical of our country. We hide this problem. We, too believe that black lives are less important but with our history of Empire and colonisation we just used black people in their own countries.

The LSH has been furious about every large gathering he’s seen. He is acutely aware that it will cause a spike in virus cases. When he watched the London BLM demonstration he was equally furious. We warned him to be careful about expressing that anger because it made him sound racist. He got angry and ended up sounding racist. “I can’t say anything,” he shouted as he stormed off up the stairs.

When he calmed down, my children explained that it was different. Going to Southend to sit on a beach, or to Durdle Door to throw yourself off a cliff, or to Clacton to see a dead whale, or Parliament to vote were not valid excuses for not socially distancing, however society seems to be much more forgiving. Protesting that if your skin is dark you are much more likely to die prematurely and possibly violently, probably is important.

Yesterday, my daughter had a call from her editor. “I’m sorry but I’ve got a horrible job for you,” he said.
They had written about the Black Lives Matters protest event that is due to take place locally this weekend. It was a factual piece, explaining the event, similar to the story about McDonalds reopening. They had shared it on their Facebook page. Facebook do not have the facility to turn comments off on pages (they do for groups) and so her job was to monitor the comments and remove any that were abusive or threatening. There were 19 comments under the McDonalds piece, when they posted it to Facebook, mostly tagging burger loving friends. There were hundreds of comments springing up on the story about the protest. She spent all day monitoring the most abusive, filthy language I’ve ever seen. She had to delete the story in the end because she couldn’t keep up with it. Determined not to allow the racists to win she wrote a native piece (don’t ask me what that is - it’s one of those words like furniture that journalists use that make no sense) to explain that they have had to remove it and that they will not tolerate abuse on their page. This piece then had thousands of awful comments, which she monitored until 9pm, when she finally took it off Facebook and stopped work.

She was totally exhausted.

“Imagine if this was your life?” she said.

I can’t stop thinking about that.