What kind of women's voices can you hear?

On this day in 1431 Joan of Arc was burned at the stake. Her life was so interesting that this blog could cover anything from the power of religion in wartime, to visions of angels, to the Hundred Years War, but I'm more concerned here with the power of her voice.

When she first took charge of an army in 1429 she insisted on the removal of all camp prostitutes. She forced the men to attend Church. She banned swearing and the looting of local civilians. The result was not an uproar from the French army but a boost in morale. They were now fighting with a powerful woman, a saint-like figure, at their head rather than the unsuccessful Charles VII. Yet, ultimately she paid the price for her powerful voice.

Move on to this day one hundred years ago. Emily Davison would have been planning her great bid to make England's leaders listen to her and her fellow Suffragettes. She had not planned to kill herself. She had a return train ticket in her pocket when, on 4th June 1913, she fell beneath the hooves of the King's horse but she intended to make the headlines, to make sure that women's voices would be heard.

Fast forward to today. We may have votes for women but only four of the UK Government's twenty-seven cabinet ministers are female, such a disgraceful statistic that it has earned a paragraph all to itself.

So what kind of women's voices can I hear? Ones that tell of girls being groomed by men for under-age sex, forced marriages, child brides, refusals for women bishops while yet more stories emerge of priests abusing children. I could continue but it's far too depressing so I'll end with a question, albeit a rhetorical one...

When will women's voices tell a more positive story?

A Week of Adventures

Our adventuring began last Sunday in Manchester with one of the GrandLittles. She wanted to build a bear for her birthday so we took her on Manchester’s amazing Metro system to the vast Arndale Shopping Centre. Who knew that bear-building would involve so many decisions?

• what kind of bear
• what clothes will it wear 
• what will it smell like
• will it have a voice
• should it be stuffed hard or soft
• what wish should be said over the tiny red heart before it disappears inside the bear-body
• what name will go on the birth certificate [yes, a birth certificate!]
• will the bear need a handbag, a hair brush, a passport [they know how to capture a young girl’s imagination and, of course, yes, it needed all those things!]

The Manchester trip was a success, a lovely new bear had been 'born' plus we'd had lots of cuddles with youngest GrandLittle to round things off before we drove back home down the Motorway.

Hardly had we returned from Manchester than we were on the road again heading down South to London. As some of you may know, Mr A has to have regular health checks at a hospital unit that specialises in Amyloidosis. The results were good. He doesn’t have to go back for a whole year so that was a relief and we managed to squeeze in a few more adventures in-between all the testing.

First of all I rang @CarolJhedges on the off chance that she might be able to meet for a coffee. The coffee wasn’t logistically possible but we had such a good chat that I felt as if I was talking to an old friend who I'd know for years. [Don’t you just love the Internet?] And we will meet up some time soon, we really will!

We usually go for the London hospital tests by train but this time we took the car so we were able to drive off and explore. There’s something exciting about driving past places that you only normally see on a Monopoly Board, plus we met up with family, went out for a lovely supper in Hampstead and were even able to pop in to see Daughter on the way back home.

But now I have work to do, washing to be sorted, no food in the house and so…

Just a quick addition: Thanks to Lizy for pointing out that it looks like we did it all in one day. Mr A has two days of hospital tests and we were in Manchester all of last weekend.

Dad's Garden

When I was 9 years old we moved from a small terraced house with a backyard to a semi-detached house with a real garden. That was when our Dad became a gardener. He had never owned a garden before and so he started with plants that he knew.

First of all Dad planted rose bushes.
I have some lovely rose bushes in my garden especially one that my sister bought for a rather large and special birthday.

Next he moved on to annuals; blue lobelia, white allysum and small marigolds that he planted in a neat row every spring.
I don't have marigolds. The slugs love them too much. But I do have lobelia and allysum each year and they always remind me of Dad.

Dad soon became more adventurous. I'll never forget the day he came home with a Broom. Its name gave me the giggles. How could a broom be a bush?
Now I too have a Broom. It's a smaller variety than the one Dad bought but it's beautiful. It smells headily sweet at this time of the year and it reminds me of Dad and his first ever garden.

Nooo!! Not more Snooow!

It is now officially Spring. Snow feels so wrong and yet they've forecast more snow for Leicester UK.

BUT Did you know that:

• It often snows in March [So why are we all so surprised when it happens?]

• The heaviest recorded snowfall in London was in 1695. It snowed every day for 5 weeks and didn't clear until mid-April. [No repeats this year, please!]

• Eskimos do NOT have 100 different words for snow. [Why would anyone need that many words?]

• Chionophobia is a fear of snow. [Oh no! I think I'm suffering from that!]

Do you draw the curtains and curl up in front of the fire when it snows?

Or are you out in the garden building a monster snowman?

Spontaneous Photography

It's that time of year again when I keep bursting into spontaneous attacks of photography.

I'm sure you recognise these flowers from last year but you do realise that...

...they're not the exact same flowers as last year, don't you?

I mean, these flowers have appeared from the bare earth in our garden 

and even though it happens every year...

...it makes me wonder why people don't believe in magic... 

...because it doesn't get more magical than this, now does it!

Thinking about Food

After last week's blog post poem I've been giving 'stomach-gate' some serious thought. I recently saw an advertisement on the TV for a Food Smart - Change 4 Life campaign. I signed up and received a bright yellow pop-up recipe book with lots of healthy recipe ideas. I even downloaded their 'Be Food Smart' app on my iPad... and yet... and yet...

Why do I keep finding myself sitting beside an empty cake/chocolate wrapper with incriminating crumbs around my mouth? Is it enough to blame it on comfort eating? Is it? No, I don't think so either.

One of the main messages in the Food Smart campaign is to cook from scratch as there is so much hidden salt, sugar and saturated fats in ready-made foods. I do usually cook from scratch, except when we go for the occasional restaurant meal. Restaurant food isn't the healthiest way to eat. I watched a famous chef on the TV the other evening making a 'really tasty' shepherds pie. He used equal amounts of butter and potato when making his mash. Gaaah!! All that cholesterol!

My major problem is snacking in-between meals. The Food Smart campaign suggests exchanging chocolate and cake for fresh fruit but I know, truly in my heart I know, that I wouldn't stick to it. I love fruit but I have it as well as the chocolate and cake and so I'm going to try and change the ratio bit by teeny bit and see if I can kid my body into accepting the 'fruity' in place of the 'sugary'. Well, it's worth a try and it's recommended in today's Guardian in this article Healthy Food: can you train yourself to like it?

Look! I'm even experimenting with new fruit.
Anyone know how you eat sharon fruit?
It's a bit solid!

As for exercise, the suggestion in my poem that I do sit-ups is now out of the question as I've pulled something very painful in my lower back. [You see, I said it was intolerable!] And so I'm going to start walking more and see if that makes a difference. Watch this space!

What do you do when/if a similar stomach-gate looms large in your life?

Have we stopped listening to older people?

The headline in The Guardian on Tuesday 13^th February said,

      “Francis Report shows we have stopped listening to older people.”

The Francis Report, published on 6^th February 2013, sets out 290 recommendations for improvements in the NHS. This was in response to the neglect and unacceptably high death rate in the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust hospitals.

One of those recommendations is that there needs to be more of a culture of care in the nursing profession.

I wonder how many experts it took to come to that conclusion. I hate to repeat myself but two years ago I was screaming - literally screaming because my Mum was being neglected! I was screaming about the fact that nurses in charge of caring for my mother, were not caring. From where I was sitting, standing or pacing up and down, they were not rushing around caring for other patients either. They were propping up their work station, chatting, drinking coffee, or they were nowhere to be seen. I accept that this was only one ward in a huge hospital but I saw it happening again and again and it infuriated me.

I blogged about my series of official complaints two years ago. I even got as far as two telephone interviews with the Chief Executive of the local NHS Trust. He had the grace to be shocked by my revelations, or perhaps this wasn’t grace. Perhaps it was political distancing. Was his reaction a part of the culture of fear highlighted in the Francis Report?

• Let us stop, as a nation, being afraid to complain.

• Let us start, as human beings, to listen sympathetically to the needs of others.

• Let us hope that if we witness such neglect in the future, we can report it in the confident knowledge that there will be no repercussions on us or on our elderly, hospitalised relatives and that someone will listen, someone will care and someone will do something about it.

[I shall now step off my soap box and stop shouting... for the time being.]