(c) ShotDeadintheHead

Mad Men time (or related ephemera) again … an offer to buy one of these mugs has just popped into my in-box ( available as a t-shirt too – why, hello, Peggy).

You can also get Mr Sterling, Mr Campbell (why, though?), Mr Draper,  Little Miss Betty and Little Miss Peggy immortalised in earthenware and 100% cotton.

And I received a copy of this book – Women’s Roles in Twentieth Century America – through the actual post today – together with an invitation to go along to the launch of the new Sky TV channel,  Sky Atlantic and attend a cinema based screening of their 1920s set flagship series Boardwalk Empire.

I was very excited,  as I don’t usually get to hang out at such meeja events, but, due to the PR connectivity of the TV channel and the book,  I’m somehow on the guest list as a blogger.  Fame at last.  However,  upon closer examination of the invitation (“we’d love to take you for a drink first before Prohibition kicks in …”) – I see that the meeting point is at that oh-so-glamorous venue,  Yates Wine Bar.

British readers will sense my hesitation immediately;  American readers: it’s somewhat the equivalent of holding an event in a Denny’s,  ie,  dialled down a fair way on the Glam-o-Meter.

(Unless of course that’s the point and it’s been converted into a speakeasy,  where they’re serving gin in teacups and the like).

Still,  at least I won’t have to dress up … I hope. No mention made of fancy dress required.

Watch this space … will report back –  if I can get there in time from my interim job on the other side of London.

(Similarly, photos of Joan now inevitably accompany an article about “curvy figures”.)

Dr. Catherine Hakim’s recently published report – Feminist Myths and Magic Medicine: The Flawed Thinking Behind Calls for Further Equality – which concludes that mainstream feminist thinking is defective and that the UK government should stop trying to promote it (there’s an accurate, if somewhat right wing summary of her arguments here in this Daily Telegraph article) and that women tend to marry for money rather than love – has caused a rash of newspaper reports, published from London to Sydney and (probably) all points between – and the two highlighted here both feature lovely photos of the former Mrs Draper, as does a recent article along similar lines in Grazia.

Tanya Gold’s piece in the Guardian:  

“Inequality between the sexes is not a big deal any more, a new study tells us. That is only true if you are happy for women to have less than men …”

- does at least make some fleeting Mad Men reference to the assumptions in the report, commenting that perhaps Dr Hakim’s work is:

“ … based on a weird, Mad Men themed dream she had on Boxing Day …”

Female writers across the world have decided that actually, it’s OK to want to marry for money, to not have your own career or income and to stay at home, surrounded by items from Cath Kidston and Emma Bridgwater (ironically, two women who manage to be married and have their own eponymous businesses). And of course, yes, it is fine, I suppose. But this lifestyle framework is surely only OK if there’s someone to fund it – and what happens if that someone isn’t there anymore – either through death, divorce, a change in their own or their employer’s financial circumstances?

(This rather gloomy article from 2008 suggests a potential increase in divorce due to the credit crunch, with:

“… about 80 percent of those surveyed believe that the turmoil — and lower bonus payments — will prompt more women to seek a divorce before their husbands’ wealth evaporates further.” )

Obviously, nobody goes into marriage or life as a stay at home mum thinking “one day we’ll split up or he’ll lose all his money in some huge, unprecedented global melt down and then what will happen to me?”.

But as this cautionary tale, Regrets of a stay-at- home Mom, recently published on salon.com shows, it can happen:

“Fourteen years ago, I “opted out” to focus on my family. Now I’m broke.”

(For more on the wildly radical idea that “a man is not a financial plan”, check out The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up too Much?  by Leslie Bennets on the Recommended reading tab above).

* * * * *

In other news … the flyer I designed for Educators’ Trust India has now been printed up and is ready for use – if you’d like to see what they’re giving out to tourists in Goa in order to raise awareness of the issues of child poverty and of the need for literacy programmes, you can take a look and download a copy from my freelance writing site, Collaborative Lines.

The screen has fractured and it’s unreadable.

This is,  of course,  the absolute downside of relying on one device for all of your reading needs – when it dies,  so do your hopes of doing any reading while you’re away.

So I am disconsolate and without decent reading material – and also engaged in all sorts of crap customer service exchanges with Amazon,  who don’t seem to appreciate at all that

• I’m away,
• have very limited internet access (all of their “report this problem” protocols are URL based)
• and want me to call a UK free phone 0800 number – and I can’t.

Watch this space …

Reading Material-less in Goa

One of the books I’ve read and particularly enjoyed (on my Kindle!) since arriving here in Goa has been Sanjeev Bhaskar’s account of his trip around India in 2007.  A second generation British born Indian,  Bhaskar had visited the country many times as a child on family holidays,  but decided to return (with a BBC film crew in tow) and see the modern India at around the time that the country was celebrating 60 years of independence.  He specifically wanted to see the area of the Punjab from where his family had fled at the time of Partition;  they were Hindus,  living in an Indian village which became,  overnight in August 1947,  part of the newly created Muslim state of Pakistan and so they left their homes and became part of the Hindu Diaspora migrating to India – passing on their way hundreds of thousands of Muslims making the same journey in reverse.

Other books (I particularly recommend Indian Summer: The Secret History of the End of an Empire by Alex von Tunzelman, which I blogged about here earlier this year) cover the politics and history of this turbulent and tragic period of Indian history in more detail and context,  but Bhaskar’s wonderful book provides a human story and brings it alive – he’s a fine writer.

“… those of us born as second generation Indians in England are the children of Partition – it’s odd to think that without that tumultuous moment of upheaval 60 years ago, my family might never made the journey that brought my sister and me into being as the modern Britons we are today.”

A favourite feature of the Kindle is the way in which you can clip and mark sections of your books as you read them,  and I did this a lot with Sanjeev Bhaskar’s India.  When he described India as:

“ … a country that breaks your heart in a new way every day … fractures you in ways you didn’t even realise you could be broken …”

… it very much resonated with me. I had my heart fractured the other day when I met Jyoti and her friend Anita on the beach.  It was about 4.30pm and I was just considering packing up and heading back for a shower,  when a shadow fell across my sun lounger.  I looked up to see a small girl holding a large basket filled with newspaper wrapped twists of peanuts and packets of crisps.  Just as the words “no, thank you” were forming on my lips,  she laid the basket down and asked,  very politely,  if she could please have some water?

(This happens a lot on the beach,  and I usually buy an extra bottle of water for the kids whenever I buy one for myself).

Of course,  I said and handed it over. To my surprise,  she didn’t drink the water,  but instead put the bottle down, and removed first a plastic bag and then several layers of grimy, bloodied newspaper from her right foot.  She then poured the water all over her foot,  and attempted to clean it up with fresh newspaper. When I asked what she had done to her foot,  she showed me a deep gash in her sole – a cut which looked dirty and inflamed;  a cut which would have any one of us at the doctor,  asking for stitches and antibiotics.  She had cut her foot on a piece of metal (“I think,  from a boat?”)  whilst walking on the beach and of course, was unable to keep it either clean or sterile.  All she could do was keep it covered with her improvised bandage and hope it healed.

Her name is Jyoti and she is 11 years old.  I felt very helpless,  but I helped her to first clean her foot with some of my baby wipes and to then dress it with Savlon from my capacious beach bag.  She then re-wrapped it with fresh newspaper and a different plastic bag; I bought her a sandwich and a Fanta,  which both disappeared in an instant.  Whilst all this was going on,  her friend Anita (12) appeared with her matching basket of goods and showed great concern as to the state of poor Jyoti’s foot.  At no point did either of them attempt to sell me anything or to ask me for money;  they just seemed grateful for the rest in the shade of my beach umbrella and for the food and drink.  I bought Anita a Coke and gave them my remaining fruit (scrupulously divided between them both by Anita) and a bottle of water each.

“Do you go to school?” I asked,  almost knowing the answer.

“Yes!” said Anita, proudly.  “School is good.  Better than beach. But in Karnataka,  not here.  When we are here,  we must work.”

Further questioning elicited the fact that they each travel with their families to Goa every October and work on the beach during the season – so until May.  They then return to Karnataka and attend school for almost 6 months,  before taking a 19 hour bus journey back to Goa,  back to the beach.

Jyoti was clearly in some pain at this time,  and she curled up on an adjacent sun bed and went to sleep.  Anita,  older,  more confident and chatty,  told me the somewhat amazing story that she is one of SEVEN sisters and one younger brother.  She,  her parents and sisters all travel to Goa to work,  but her brother remains at home with an aunt so that he can continue his education.

Further proof of the (lack of) esteem in which girls and their education are held in this huge, bewildering, heartbreaking country.  Here’s the last word from Sanjeev:

“India remains a dizzying edifice of extremes.  Goddesses are worshipped and women have occupied the most powerful positions in the land,  and yet it is a male-dominated society.  It is the largest democracy in the world and yet a significant proportion of the population are illiterate.  The wealth divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ is increasing dramatically as India becomes a global player.  The destitute number almost 500 million – and that’s a hell of a lot of ‘have nots’.”

As a word of warning to any other non-US passport holders: be prepared for delays and possible problems at Immigration if you’ve changed your passport recently.  TLS and I landed at Miami at 4pm local time last Thursday,  very much looking forward to our week’s holiday here over the 4^th July weekend. We’d had an uneventful flight, which had landed on time and we were early in the immigration queue.  I was processed with no problems and went on ahead to retrieve our bags,  but TLS was asked to accompany a Homeland Security employee to an office for what was described as a “brief chat” in order to “discuss” an apparent discrepancy on his passport.

He managed to tell me all of this via text before he (and he alone, out of the hundred-odd other people in the holding pen) had his phone confiscated … and we then spent FOUR HOURS sitting in separate parts of Miami airport each wondering what was happening. I was going out of my mind with worry, particularly after an airline official took the time and trouble to tell me that he might be deported (!) – a great start to our much anticipated holiday.

It eventually transpired that there are still apparently teething problems with the new ESTA system – the recently introduced on-line visa waiver process which replaces the old green form which one used to have to fill in on the plane.  We each applied for ESTAs (and were granted them) last September when we went over to California.  Since then,  TLS has replaced his passport,  so he naturally applied for a new ESTA – and, again,  was granted one on-line. Unfortunately, the ESTA software isn’t sophisticated enough (or perhaps doesn’t “talk” to other systems)  and doesn’t know when a passport has expired – all it sees is that there are TWO ESTAs live in the system,  each attached to different passports.

Ding ding!

Problem!

Arrest the innocent traveller and treat him like a criminal! Retain him in a hot, airless room with no facilities for four hours,  accuse him of applying for a new ESTA with an old passport … then accept that actually,  the correct passport was used – and then release him without a single word of apology.

So that was how our holiday started.

We were so exhausted by the time we got to our eventual destination in Fort Lauderdale that I didn’t even notice (or care) that we’d been allocated a room over the valet parking desk …. not the tranquil location for which we’d been hoping.

But we have subsequently learned that the one time when everyone will want to use valet parking is when there’s heavy rain – and what have we had for the majority of our time here? That’s right: the heaviest rain seen in this area for about 60 years!  Whilst London basks in blue skies and balmy temperatures,  southern Florida has 90 degrees F heat, 99% humidity and,  yesterday at least,  the most rain falling in one day since 1952.

But it’s not all bad news … we are two blocks from a branch of Borders (where the in-house coffee shop prepares delicious cinnamon lattes) and I’ve been doing a lot of reading,  due to being trapped indoors by the rain.  Here’s some of the books I’ve bought:

Half the Sky – Nicholas D Kristof & Sheryl WuDunn: not available in paperback in the UK for another month,  I’ve been wanting to read this ever since it first came out.

“A brilliantly argued case for investing in the health and autonomy of women worldwide …”

Every Last One – Anna Quindlen : a new novel from one of my favourite novelists, a brilliantly nuanced portrayal of family life and shocking, terrifying change.

1959 – The Year Everything Changed – Fred Kaplan : Not the 1960s, apparently,  but the year earlier which  “ushered in the wave of tremendous cultural, political, and scientific shifts that would play out in the decades that followed …”

Purchased because it was placed (nice work, Borders) on the table adjacent to:

Mad Men and Philosophy – edited by Ron Carveth and James B South: a series of essays which look at the philosophical themes and issues which underpin my favourite TV show.

A Short History of Women – Kate Walbert: Tracing five generations of one family from 1899 through the present, this shows the myriad ways in which women have challenged the status quo, succumbed to it, or made their statements, for better or worse –  their stories here existing almost as a series of interrelated short stories.

And finally:

Hope in a Jar – Beth Harbison: this was perfect fluffy reading for a very wet, stuck indoors afternoon; not great,  but it did give me the earworm of the holiday. It’s the story of two high school friends, Allie and Olivia who have gone their separate ways as adults but who (** cliché alert **) reconnect at their high school reunion. Each chapter starts with a tag line from a past or current ad campaign for a beauty product (“Because you’re worth it!”) and one such chapter got me first singing “It’s gonna be an Avivance night …” and then rushing to YouTube to view the original 70s advert.

Check it out, feel amazed at the world it portrays (housewife whipping off headscarf and apron, adding scent and lipstick,  welcoming home her husband …) and then try and stop it going roundandroundandround in. Your. Head.

I wonder if this is the type of campaign on which Peggy Olson worked in the 1970s?

In the spirit of full disclosure,  I should probably mention that I’ve known Avivah for three years; I organised the corporate sponsorship of her previous book’s launches in London, New York and Toronto back in 2008 (it’s called “Why Women Mean Business“,  is co-authored with Alison Maitland and is still the most compelling book out there if you need cold hard FACTS to assist you make a business case for gender diversity)  - and I also contributed an in-book endorsement to the cover of this volume (referenced  elsewhere on the blog under Recommended reading).

So,  moving on – it’s a great book and my review of it and the Nomura-hosted launch event is now on-line here at The Glass Hammer.

I’ve heard her speak lots of times,  I’ve met her a few times,  she featured (and was fabulous) in the film, “Closing the Gender Gap”,  on which I served as Executive Producer in 2008 and, well,  I just happen to think she’s great.  She’s smart, funny, makes some great points around the business and social benefits of gender diversity and is a fabulous advocate for women in leadership.

And now she has a new book out, The Loudest Duck,  in which she reflects on how the Noah’s Ark approach that many organisations take isn’t working. (“If we could only get two of each in the Ark, we’ll have our diversity.”)

Check out her guest entry over on the Catalyst blog and see what you think.

(Emberin founder and CEO Maureen Frank,  the woman I have previously described as “so charismatic she could found her own cult”,  has just published an updated version of her bestselling book “You Go Girlfriend” and has sent me some review copies – so I’ll be reading and reviewing it later this month and offering up a couple of copies to anyone who … OK,  I need to think about that.  But anyway.  Free books,  imminently).

Whilst in France,  I spent a week at this magical place,  the Circle of Misse, on a fiction writing “boot camp” course. Although I’ve been blogging and writing non-fiction for years,  the last time I wrote a “story” was at school and so the disciplines and techniques of writing fiction were a complete mystery to me.  But I came back from Goa a few months ago with a story and a host of characters who just wouldn’t go away – what was I to do with them,  how could I bring them alive on the page?  Just as I was wrestling with this,  I received an email flyer offering a 10% discount on the Circle of Misse “Get Writing!” course and,  before I knew it,  I’d signed up and committed myself to sending through a sample of 3000 words of fiction to the tutor ahead of the course start date.

(c) Circle of Misse, with grateful thanks

In the context of A Room of One’s Own – I discovered that maybe I can write,  a bit. The course, hosts and setting were fabulous; Aaron and Wayne run writing, painting and cookery courses at their beautiful house in the Loire valley and I whole heartedly recommend the Circle of Misse experience for anyone interested in those disciplines who wants to perhaps do what I did – take a kernel of an idea and run with it – and see where you end up.  In my case,  I arrived with a concept,  a few characters and my 3000 words,  and left with closer to 20,000 words,  a fully formed plot and a far greater understanding of the techniques of novel writing.

(I think I’m still rubbish at writing dialogue,  but at least I now know that and can focus on improving those skills.)

Of course,  whilst I was away,  we had VolcanoGate and yes,  I got caught up in it – although it did mean that I still haven’t flown Ryanair,  which perhaps isn’t so bad after all. In common with thousands of other people,  I was stranded in France when my flight back from Tours was cancelled and so we (me and N, the guy from my course) had a highly improvised journey home consisting of a five hour car journey to Le Havre, courtesy of the C of M team, a NINE hour ferry crossing and a two hour drive back to London. And,  although the ferry crossing was e-x-t-r-e-m-e-l-y slow and it was frustrating to have that “so close but yet so far” feeling,  from a writer’s point of view, it was a fascinating experience. 

Subsequently,  I described the boat as a ship of stories, because I heard so many tales of life on the road from people squashed onto the upper deck with me.  The ferry was absolutely heaving with a vast cross-section of travellers,  who had quite literally ended up there from all over the world.  I chatted to one family of four (this was on a Sunday evening) who had left Florida the previous Wednesday, expecting to fly Orlando to Gatwick, change there and fly home to Edinburgh. Five days later, they had flown Orlando to Detroit (?), Detroit to Amsterdam, caught a train from Amsterdam to Brussels,  another train to Paris and then hired a taxi to get them to Le Havre. After we disembarked the ferry,  they were collecting a hire car in Portsmouth and then driving through the night to get back to Scotland.  They hadn’t seen their cases since Florida,  they had only what they were wearing or carrying as hand luggage and Mum reckoned that this “adventure” had cost them in the region of £2000 – more if you add on the fact that their dog had had to stay in kennels for a further 6 days! 

I also met a very dishevelled Irish man in a suit,  who’d flown to Frankfurt the previous Tuesday for a 48 hour trip (he sold sandpaper … but I expect that that was the least of his worries) and who had hitchhiked, trained and bussed his way across Europe to Le Havre; from Portsmouth,  he was catching a cross-country train to the Welsh coast from where he would catch another ferry back to Ireland. So I guess that N and I got off very lightly,  all things considered,  although I am still c. £200 out of pocket and will doubtless remain so unless and until Ryanair cough up a refund for my cancelled flight.

Apart from getting news updates from TLS on volcano and travel related issues,  I was in a complete news avoidance bubble whilst I was in France and I’m still catching up.  It’s a mere four days to the UK’s keenly anticipated General Election and,  in some ways,  nothing much has changed:  the debate is still between three main parties,  led by three white guys,  who all still use the sound bite of “hard working families” (yes, Lib Dems,  even you) at every opportunity.

The Labour Party’s campaign has been challenged by one woman, namely Mrs Duffy from Rochdale – and the current shape of the media is indicated by two things: Mrs Duffy has her own PR rep and the Tories are streaming their anti-Brown Twitter feed onto a moving billboard on London’s A40 (westbound,  just before Hanger Lane,  if you should happen to be stuck in traffic there this week).

And mentioning Twitter …. check out the hilarious #nickcleggsfault hashtag on there … he’s responsible for everything, apparently, according to the right wing press,  including having been spotted poking an Icelandic volcano with a stick in early April.

Busy guy.

Meanwhile,  the Fawcett Society’s What About Women? campaign has been doing a sterling job of keeping women’s issues and concerns front and centre,  even if the all-too-frequent references (not by Fawcett) to this election as the “Mumsnet Election” serves to enrage those of us who aren’t mothers and,  as pointed out in this extremely tart and on-point Guardian column … “reinforce gender stereotypes”  by making women’s concerns focussed on childcare …or Sarah Brown’s footwear.

The Gender Blog  is now streaming to a newly established website, Missive, which has been set up to bring together women who write about politics.  The two founders, Caroline and Sarah,  aim to make it a way for women who write about politics to reach a wider audience.  If you can think of any female bloggers who ought to be on there – please let me know via the Comments function below.

I picked this up as a way of (belatedly) obtaining some much-needed background and understanding of the history behind the end of the British Raj and the creation of Pakistan, and the book delivers both with both barrels. Threaded throughout the story is Edwina Mountbatten, socialite wife of the “Last Viceroy”,  whose personal (in evey sense of the word,  allegedly) friendships with both Ghandi and Jawaharlal Nehru contributed so much to this era of Anglo-Indian history.

Here’s an interesting passage on women in India in c. 1947:

Women were prominent in India politics, which Edwina Mountbatten, along with many Indian women, attributed to Ghandism.  Non-violence, passive resistance and boycotts were all tactics which could be practised by women without breaking social conventions; and Nehru had insisted as early as 1937 that the Congress manifesto pledge to remove all social, economic and political discrimination against women. As a result,  there were more powerful women in India’s Congress than there were in Britain’s Labour Party or in America’s Democratic Party at the time.

As Edwina would later tell an audience in London, “We shall have to wake up in this country when we see how the women of India have achieved emancipation to such a remarkable degree in spite of the backwardness of the country, the illiteracy of the people, the low standard of life, and all kinds of disadvantages … “

Highly recommended reading,  anyway – definitely one of the best books on India I’ve read to date.

She noted at one point that the Indian people are famously direct and this struck such a chord with me,  as I read that particular page of the book on the day that the comment marked * below was uttered. I know that some comments are made due to lack of language facility … but honestly? I really think that others are made out of a wish to know the answer,  coupled with a different cultural approach to asking what we might perceive to be more personal questions. The comments noted here were put to me by both men and woman and I’ve changed or obscured a few of my answers in order to protect the innocent (me).

So here are a few recent examples,  all sent my way over the last ten days:   

“This dress I have in very big size, it will fit even you, Madam”.

“Where is Husband?”   London.

“Why he is not with you in Goa?”  He is working.

“Are you sure you have Husband? Perhaps you are split up, separated, divorced?”

“Why don’t you have children?” [I’ve actually lost count of the number of times I’ve been asked this on my many trips to different parts of India;  trying to keep a tally is like trying to count grains of sand or bicycles in Amsterdam – an impossible and infinite task].

“Children are good and a blessing; you are not a woman without children.  It is a big shame that you are now being too old for children.  I feel much sorrow for your husband.”

“This is a very nice photo of you,  but now you are much fatter.”  *

“Who is teaching you Hindi?  Your accent is very bad.”

“How old are you?

[Answer withheld]

“I am thinking you were maybe very beautiful when you were younger.”

“Every time I am seeing you madam,  you are reading a different book.  Perhaps this is why Husband is not coming to Goa with you, is it – you are reading too much?”

On the plus side,  I use this in my favour to ask my own questions of the woman I meet; I figure what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.  So I abandon all British sense of privacy and get nosy with the best of ‘em: how old are you,  how many children do you have,  are they boys or girls, do they go to school (and if not, why not?), how old were you when you got married,  what is your husband’s job,  where are you from,  and so on.