Last night, in the late evening, I tuned in to a conversation between my daughter and Granddaughter Number One, on our group messaging thing. The main message was checking that Granddaughter Number one had closed her skylight window, which she tends to open in the evening to cool the room down before going to bed. Torrential rain was falling over my daughter’s house and was almost certainly on the way to Granddaughter Number One’s house, just a few miles away. She managed to close the skyline just in time - she has a tendency to open it really wide and has been know to have a bit of a flood before now - and recorded the sound of rain hammering down.
Not much later, the rain arrived here. I too was planning to sleep on the attic, which I often do. The rain was so loud that I decided to continue reading my book, putting off going to sleep until the noise had abated some. I was reading a tale set in Scotland, on the Isle of Skye in the 19th century, a story of people collecting folk tales which were rapidly disappearing as the Highland Clearances moved people away from their old communities, the local language was banned in schools and the church set about eradicating superstitious beliefs in fairies and spirits and the like. Girls were disappearing and, of course, in the end there was a perfectly nasty explanation, not involving fairies or spirits at all. Almost all of the male characters were nasty pieces of work, either exploiting vulnerable young women or condescendingly “protecting” them. Early on in the book I had my suspicion about one of these men; all I needed to do was find put exactly how he was operating. Not quite a feminist tract but a reasonable read.
I finished the book. The rain eventually stopped and I went to sleep. Today dawned fine but cloudy and the rain came back for a while later.
And it seems that Harry and Meghan are out and about making speeches on this and that again. I saw them on the news last night, on Manchester apparently, talking to an international bunch of young people, very happy to be back in the uk apparently. There was some speculation about whether they would be seeing family during their visit. The queen has been a bit busy at Balmoral today. And there was a report in today’s Guardian about them arriving in Germany. So maybe there have been no family reunions. Which is a bit sad. When your old grandma is 96 and you live on the other side of tHe globe you would think you would make an effort to see her. But, hey, families vary!
In one of her speeches Meghan seemingly talked about doing a project when she was 14, a project that involved planning her wedding, not her actual wedding to Harry, of course. This was set as a religious studies assignment! Really! Quite how wedding planning is part of religious studies remains a mystery. She went on to say, “The message even at my feminist all-girls school was as traditional as it gets. First comes love. Then comes marriage.”
I’m sorry Meghan, just because your school is an all girls school that does not make it feminist! And I suspect that even less so if it was a church-run school. I think my all girls state grammar school, a generation before, was probably more feminist. Our headmistress expected us all, all “her girls” to go on and do great things. Nobody asked us to plan our weddings!
And we have a new female prime minister but I don’t think that is necessarily a triumphnfor feminism either!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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