The Donkey line was full of fungi.
Well, when I say full, I mean that I had to stop every hundred yards or so to take a picture.
By the time we got back the cloud had moved in. I must keep an eye on the weather as I have washing on the line. The weather app is only suggesting 2% or 3% chance of rain though, so maybe I shouldn’t worry.
I am currently reading Salman Rushdie’s “Quichotte”. It’s an odd story with some commentary on modern society. But then, the original “Don Quijote”, which I read many years ago as a student at university, is an odd story with commentary on the society of the time. The Dulcinea character in Rushdie’s novel, Salma R, talks at one point about women making themselves invisible:
“‘I want to take myself out of the studio. I want to look out into the reddest parts of red-state America and be the person to whom bigotry happens.’
“You’re too famous,’ they told her, ‘ your recognisability will get in the way.’
‘My grandmother the movie legend always told me she had two different ways of walking out of her front door,’ she said. ‘She showed me. First she walked out as the great movie star and everybody went insane, cars crashed into one another, so did people. Then later she walked out “as nobody”, that’s how she put it. And this time nobody looked and she walked down the street unnoticed.’”
Years ago I read a similar passage in one of Doris Lessing’s “Children of violence” novels. A young woman walked quite provocatively along the road past a building site, consciously projecting her sexuality. The workmen whistled and shouted. Later, dressed in the same clothes, she walked calmly along the same street, provoking no reaction.
Both of them made me think of rape victims who are criticised for being provocative. It’s not so much a matter of being provocative; it’s more a case of walking confidently, often enough to get a woman noticed! All women can choose to attract attention. So can men. I found it interesting that Salmon Rushdie wrote in a book published in 2019 about a sociological phenomenon that Doris Lessing wrote about in the 1950s.
News broadcaster Kirstie Walk was featured in the “This much I know” bit of the weekend Guardian. She too comments on how women are perceived:
“Acting was my dream, but my parents steered me in another direction. I applied to university and drama school, and was offered places at both. I often wonder what might have happened had things gone the other way.
At a university careers fair, I’d said I wanted to work for the BBC. Young women, I was told, only join to be secretaries. I applied, but it didn’t appeal. Thankfully, a friend sent me a job advert for graduate journalists. I was accepted, and have never looked back.”
She also talked about her children:
“My children are my greatest achievement. My husband would say I indulge them, and that’s not unfair. When I went to university, Mum wrote once a week and sent fortnightly food parcels. My approach is different: constant communication. Honestly? They nurture me.”
I too swopped weekly letters with my parents when I went to university, but nobody sent me food parcels. Our Granddaughter Number Two has just flown the nest to go away to university in York - not too far away. She’s in almost daily contact with her mother, and more intermittently with us, through the magic of internet. She also sends requests for information she can use in assignments of her Social and apolitical Sciences course. We have become a learning resource!
Life goes on. Stay safe and well, everyone!
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