Issue 7: Bloody Hell

Bloody Hell, it’s Issue 7.  We’d like to use this opportunity to celebrate our first anniversary this Women’s History Month  (well, it was last month but every month should be WHM) through the medium of good old-fashioned English swearing.  Yes, we’ve kept this jumble sale on the road – or pitched up in the church hall -  and kept on writing, gaining new contributors, readers and follwers along the way.

Over the last 12 months, we have brought you 43 new pieces of original writing, by 15 writers.  We’ve been read by 2,447 people, and have 10 followers.  If you enjoy our endeavours, please feel free to tell us, follow us or befriend us in one way or another.  And please feel free to write for us.  The theme for next time is Bloody Parties and the deadline for submissions is 31 May.

Bloody Hell brings you some juicy bits and pieces covering the tedium and horror of religion, ritual and faith; the many circles of hell brought on by pain and suffering; and some strong arguments that support  Mr Simone De Beauvoir’s assertion: hell really is other people, whether friends, foes or family.

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  CONTENTS

All Suffering Soon to End – by Emily

Friday Night and  Saturday Morning – by Celia

Intensive Care – by Jim

Saying the Creed - by Jane

Dad Weekend - by Emily

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ALL SUFFERING SOON TO END – by Emily

Usually I get my fix of Jehovah-approved illustrations, messages and graphics from smartly dressed men in suits who get me out of bed on a Saturday morning, all smiles, and simply “sharing the message” as they hand over their leaflets.  Or from glamorous young women with immaculate makeup and expensive weaves who walk the streets in pairs and reward my leaflet-acceptance with dazzling smiles.  Sometimes cheerful children join them as they go about their mild-mannered mission. Perhaps they are genuinely grateful that I don’t tell them where to go, that I do accept their printed matter.  Surely they don’t see me as a likely convert, but perhaps everyone who accepts their “personal invitation” to “remember Jesus” or whatever, represents an outside possibility of another soul saved.  I don’t know what their reward is for spreading the “good” news that we’re all going to hell, perhaps some kind of celestial points system.  I could find out but I’m not prepared to put the research time in. Or read the pamphlets.

What they probably don’t know is that I take the leaflets and flyers for the same reason that I buy postcards of the Virgin Mary when I visit Catholic countries.  I’m fascinated by the aesthetics of different religious traditions, the peculiarities designed to broadcast the specific message of each.  Jehovah’s Witnesses’ peculiar images would be at home in a Ladybird book from the 1960s: happy, smiling, multi-cultural people and animals, painted in an over-enthusiastic technicolour palette.  As with all religious art and design, I am very taken with the humanity of the creation.  No other evangelical religion offers such marvellous illustrations.  Perhaps they actually even help persuade some non-believers to see the light, but not this one – I find them entertaining, amusing and quite beautiful in a weird, spooky way.

I received my latest copy of Watchtower in quite different circumstances.  It must have been obvious I was an in-patient.  If my greenish-white complexion didn’t give it away, then my dressing gown and slippers would have.  I had shuffled down the long hospital corridor to the tea bar with my sister, mostly to get away from the eternal four-hour hell of visiting time and the Other Peoples’ Families this brought, but also because they don’t give you anywhere near enough tea in hospital.  A woman with a shopping trolley came past while I waited for my sister to bring the tea, and thrust a magazine at me.  It was titled What Can We Learn From Abraham? I had no idea what was going on – morphine, pain and the excitement of leaving my ward had left me rather hazy and seasick.  As the woman trolleyed on to find another potential recipient I realised that she was here, doing her duty to actually save people who might die any day.  She gave me the magazine in the hopes that I would read it and realise before it really was too late.  She was here, alone, in the evening, targeting the vulnerable, the sick, the anxious, hoping that she was making a difference to the eternal future of complete strangers.  This is how she spends her free time.  That’s how much she believes that without her intervention we really are all going to hell.

When I found the magazine in my hopsital bag once I’d got home, I was suddenly struck by the sadness of her beliefs, this pointless waste of her life.  All her time and energy spent focusing on an afterlife, and taking it upon herself to help others join her in this nonexistant future.  I looked at the cover of the magazine.  I didn’t know or care who Abraham was, or think I could learn anything from him. The illustrator has made him look rather like Clint Eastwood with a big beard and hood. It’s a bold painting, a classic from the Jehovah’s Witness school of illustration, but I feel too saddened to find it amusing.

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FRIDAY NIGHT AND SATURDAY MORNING – by Celia

I met Gemma Beck when I started secondary school. The things we pined for were Dr Marten boots, Adidas stripes and the weekly issue of Just 17 magazine which we would buy after school every Wednesday. We would then wait together for our separate buses across the road from the shops.

Gemma lived in a newly-built house on the outskirts of Manchester. One Thursday night after school, Gemma’s mum phoned my mum and asked if I would like to come for a sleepover on Saturday night. I would have to wait until after sunset for my mum to drive me to the house because Gemma was  from an Orthodox Jewish family and had to wait until the end of the Sabbath to watch TV and switch on the lights.

Before we left, my mum put make up and perfume on, which I rarely saw her do.  When we arrived at the house, Gemma’s mum greeted us at the door. She was tanned and had a short fashionable haircut. I could hear her and my mum laughing together on the doorstep as I headed inside to see Gemma. We watched the Eurovision song contest and ate pizza which Gemma’s mum had phoned for and a man brought it round, I had never had a dial- a- pizza before and it tasted wonderful.

I had a hole in my sock and Gemma’s mum said she would throw it away fro me. I was shocked as my mum always sewed up my socks with different coloured cotton when they got holes in them, but I handed the socks over.

When it was time to go to sleep, we slept in Gemma’s bunkbed. I slept on the bottom bunk and Gemma on the top. The mattress felt lumpy and uncomfortable.  I reached down the side and felt the cold smooth sensation of a magazine page. Gemma’s mum did not allow Just 17 in the house because of concern over the explicit nature of the problem page so Gemma had to stash the issues under the two mattresses of her bunk bed. The next morning we played Duckhunt on Gemma’s computer until it was time for my mum to pick me up.

I was happy when I got an invite to Gemma’s Bat Mitzvah disco. It was held in a big hall at her synagogue. Gemma had modelled her outfit on the film ‘Clueless’ and wore silver Mary Janes and knee socks with a long pink silk shirt. I looked down at my long blue hippy dress and blushed slightly. All of the boys wore ties and stood on the other side of the hall. The wooden panels of the walls were decorated by children’s paintings of animals that were labelled as Kosher (reindeer, goat)  and non-Kosher (owl, seal, tortoise).

Not long after the disco, Gemma started smoking with the older girls. She put her make up on in the changing room toilets after school and I saw a copy of More! magazine sticking out of her bag. She smelt of Dewberry body-spray layered over stale Marlboro Lights. I tried to speak to her at the bus stop and she turned to the older girls, one of whom was rumoured to have a tattoo,  and they all burst out laughing. I waited for my bus with blazing cheeks.

I remember making the note in Physics one afternoon. It consisted of one word ‘BITCH’ which I had written in block capitals across a page ripped from my exercise book and then repeated in small  joined up writing in different colours around the central design. I then angrily scrawled a much bigger ‘BITCH‘  across the whole page, obscuring some of the more delicate ‘bitches’ on the finished paper.

While Gemma was returning her lightbulb and crocodile clips to the box at the front, I let it fall from my hand into her pocket where it rested on top of her green lighter. The elderly teacher saw what had happened and asked for the note to be brought to the front and for both of us to stay behind after class. She seemed equally annoyed with both of us and told us that if we could not be friends, then we simply should not speak to each other again. We remained in school for a further four years without a word passing between us, looking away quickly whenever our eyes met. I found Gemma on Facebook recently. She is thin with golden hair and lives in Israel with her three children. My friend request is still pending.

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INTENSIVE CARE – by Jim

“Andy doesn’t look his best at the moment,” the nurse warned Brenda on her first visit.

The Intensive Care Unit was a strange netherworld, unlike ordinary wards, a lightless dungeon with the beds  arranged in a grid, each patient an island in his own hi-tech limbo.

“Is he sleeping?”

“He’s very sedated, but he might still know you’re there even if he can’t show it.”

Brenda looked round at the other patients.  Like Andy, they were unmoving and quiet but for the ghostly whisper of their attachments – the gadgets and gizmos that were keeping them alive. Fighting for their lives were these poor souls, in the martial parlance of disease – there was always someone in the news losing their battle with cancer, struggling with their inner demons or starting a fight-back against addiction – but she wondered how much being tough actually had to do with anything.

From time to time Andy’s eyes would flicker and she took this as a hopeful sign that the life force was still there.  He’d certainly always had his share of true grit, the amount of wildcat strikes, walk-outs, sit-ins and protest marches he’d led.  If character really did influence life expectancy, he was still in with a shout, but Brenda suspected fate, in combination with the wonders of modern medicine, would either eke him out a bit longer or usher him more hastily to his appointed hour.  Looking at her watch, and thinking about the Red Cross Hotel room that awaited her, she wondered if Andy might even be meeting his maker before the night was out – not that he believed in such a thing.  Perhaps he’d be meeting Karl Marx instead.  He’d always respected her faith, though, and had even persuaded their Martin to keep attending Mass long after he’d started kicking up a teenaged fuss about it.  Martin had taken his confirmation name – Francis – from a Celtic player and  thought it was all a great joke, but he hadn’t got that attitude from his father, not really.

They’d always been close, the two men in her life, but it was difficult for Martin to get back all the way from Dubai at a moment’s notice, she understood that.

It was impossible to distinguish day from night in this place, but Andy had an idea his wife was beside him during the day.  At other times when he woke there was no one except a nurse or two and he surmised that this was the night shift.

Then again, he seemed to be zigzagging back and forth in space and time, at times waking up a few days in the past on one ward, sometimes back in the future on another. He didn’t know if he’d had the operation or was still waiting, whether he was getting better or going downhill.  None of the places he woke up in were very nice.  He would try to speak to the nurses but they ignored him.  One of them had shaved him, but she didn’t speak or smile while doing so, like he was an object. Sometimes, in the night, when there were no visitors or doctors, the nurses would stoop so low as to mock their helpless patients, pull faces and sneer, even dance around the ward in hysterics.  It was hard to verify some of this in such poor light and without his glasses;  he wasn’t even sure some of it was happening.

Mercifully, there was one person on the wards who did speak to him – a jovial male nurse with a strong Aberdonian accent, obviously gay, a laugh a minute and, unlike the others, reassuring, but with an unfortunate habit of hovering in mid-air as a sort of party piece, and a tendency to make his exit through the nearest wall.  This sadly undermined the kind things he had said because it showed that, out of all these characters, he was the one least likely to be real.

There was a particular ward sister, though, who Andy was sure was no illusion.  So arrogant, the way she strode past when you were trying to grab her attention.  It was like being back iat school, feeling repulsive but desperate to be liked by the teachers and the popular kids.  He never believed he was worth loving till he met whats-her-name, the lady sitting next to him now.  After that, knowing what it was like to be bullied had become a kind of asset.  Andy promised himself that if he ever got out of here he would come back and sort that sister out, like he’d done so many other Little Hitlers, such as his first ever foreman.  “I need to ask if you’re a catholic or a protestant” the bloke had said , “because we keep the two persuasions apart on this job.”  “Well you don’t  have to worry about me,” Andy had told him.  “I’m an atheist.”  “Does that mean you’re a communist?” the gaffer fired back.  Turned out, commie or no, he was the only qualified applicant for the job.  Once in the door, he had sworn to end sectarian practices in that factory and, though it took a year or two, when it finally came to the vote, right prevailed.

But his days of winning arguments with religion were now long gone.  In fact, he was starting to realise that everything he’d ever stood for had been a delusion.  His missus’ way of thinking was closer to the truth; evil did exist after all.  He could feel it as a dark power throughout his body and see it in the uncaring faces of the nurses. The real twist in the tail was that the opposing force of Good actually didn’t exist.  God and Satan were one and the same, the whole universe an experiment in sadism and the hope of salvation just part of the joke. It was becoming clear that, as cruel as this world could be, there really was a hell for later on, and that’s where we were all headed, every one of us.  The other place, with the angels and harps, was a fairy tale – he’d got that part right.

One thing alone made him doubt his new consciousness and that was the presence of his wife.  No matter what she was called, united they’d stood for forty years, he knew that much, and he knew her very existence proved love was real.  He would like to have shown her just how he felt about her if only he could move his arms – he tried hard but seemed to have no muscles or nerves left anywhere. He was fairly sure he’d had a child with this woman too, a son.  Maybe that was the young man he could see floating around in the distance behind her.

Andy knew he was drifting off again.  Hopefully when he woke up it would be in the same time and place and she would still be there with him.  Or better still he would wake up earlier, much earlier – maybe on their honeymoon in Cummerlees.  He started to laugh in his mind, at the old codgers they’d landed amongst in that god-awful guest house.  If he saw them now they’d probably look like spring chickens.

When she went back the next day, they showed her to a different ward, to a little room where Andy was all on his own.  She noticed they had shaved him, which was a nice touch.   The nurse squeezed Brenda’s shoulder and told her visiting hours no longer applied, she could stay as long as she liked.   She knew none of these were good signs.  Andy’s eyes were shut, his breathing shallow and rattly.

Someone else laid his hand on her and she turned to find Martin standing there, so you can imagine the great flood of relief that unleashed.  She had the feeling Andy might know they were both there because he seemed for a second to be trying to rouse himself.  Still fighting, right to the end, and with his closest supporters right behind him.  She stroked his arm.  ‘You’ll never walk alone,” she said, thinking that was as close a thing to a hymn as either Andy or Martin were ever likely to sing.

She noticed Martin was crying.  “It means so much you coukd make it,” she said, looking from her weeping son to the pale, gently croaking figure of her husband and thanking God all three of them had been able to be here, together in a show of strength.

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SAYING THE CREED – by Jane

‘I saw that. Your foot went on the line. You’re out! She’s out!’

Hurry up all of you; we don’t want to be late.

(Don’t we?)

We believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty,

The maker of heaven and earth,

Of all that is seen and unseen.

‘I said you’re out! Don’t let her have another turn. Stop trying to join in or I’ll tell mum. Mum! Tell her – she’s really annoying us.’

That’s enough, get a move on, and tidy yourselves up a bit.

The dawdling, dread journey of the young Apostles, on their way to Sunday Mass. Arriving (too soon) at the bland brick building, solid and conspicuous, set in Holy grounds. On Sydenham High St.

—

A Catholic mother from Bow

Had kids’ whose Faith she must grow

And though Mass was dire

She didn’t require

That they liked it or wanted to go

—

On the way in they check for childish initials once scratched on the Presbytery wall, round the side of the house, where ‘She’ hangs out the Their washing.

She does live with them, yes, but only as their housekeeper.

(Yeah right. Can’t they do their own washing?)

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God,

Eternally begotten of the Father.

In through heavy wooden doors,

dipping grubby hands in cold (but Holy) water,

making a liquid Sign of the Cross that trickles down smooth young brows, (quickly wiped away with unholy sleeves).

And then a familiar attack on the senses:

the hit of incense (that fragrant smoke of purification),

the jarring practice chords of the organ,

the chill on the skin from the dark, unheated interior

(Where did all the Light go?),

the passing smiles of classmates and not-so friends.

Take your gloves off but keep your coats on.

God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,

Begotten, not made, one in being with the Father.

And through Him all things were made.

Hand round the hymn books, go on, quickly. They’re over there in a pile.

 

And then we’re off.

Out He comes, a Big Man and florid, followed by the shabby shuffle

of his all-male entourage, the would-be priests and alter-serving boys.

For goodness sake! His trainers are filthy under that cassock. He hasn’t changed them since football. I told him to bring his shoes. What does he look like?

The organ crashes into the first hymn.

Our Grandmother, on high in the choir loft

Playing all of the right notes

(but, like Les Dawson, not necessarily in the right order).

Dad, out at the front, alone in the aisle,

valiantly ‘conducting’ the reluctant congregation,

Mum leading the singing, her eyes urging us to join in

(Oh God, please no).

What’s that in your mouth? You’re not chewing are you? You haven’t eaten anything this morning have you?

No (Yes)

You know you can’t go to Communion if you have?

(Jesus doesn’t like his body and blood mixed up with Weetabix).

I haven’t (I have)

—

There once was a good Catholic bunch

Who believed God was much more than a hunch

They went often to mass

Though it was boring and crass

And had nothing to eat until lunch.

—

We sit. Our bottoms slide on the hard backed, polished benches,

feet propped on kneelers that will support us in our Most Prayful Mode,

and dig into our knees.

Can I light a candle after Mass?

Who are you going to light it for? You won’t forget to say a prayer will you?

(A prayer and a candle for somebody dead, because that will probably cheer them up in Purgatory, and, of course, light their way through the Darkness).

Have you got any money? You won’t forget to put it in the box won’t you? You can’t just light one without putting in the money.

—

There was a young girl bored at mass

Who found the priest an unbearable ass

It was dreary to do

Just to stand in a pew

And the candles were 6p alas.

—

Is that your stomach rumbling? Shhh.

And on it goes.

We arrive at The Big Mad Chant (which means we’re three quarters through):

“We will now stand and say together the Creed”.

We stand. To say together the Creed, the stating of our Faith.

Zealous, inspiring, mortifying words.

We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,

Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.

And together with the Father and the Son,

He is worshiped and glorified.

Mum?

Shhh…it’s not long now.

 

We kneel. For the final act, of Transubstantiation, that weekly magic trick!

(Jesus follows the action unblinking from his crucifix, painted blood dripping from hands and feet).

He, a true son of Cork, sweeps across his stage – up and down the Pulpit, in and out of the Nave, resplendent in full-length Holy Glad Rags – a vision in green and white, (occasionally its purple and white, we know the different colours Mean Something, but we’re not quite sure what).

Rinsing out the goblet, He dries it slowly, always slowly,

with a large, white, housekeeper-starched hanky.

(He doesn’t use it as a hanky).

Hands outstretched. Palms up. Reciting the Word of God.

He drinks down the blood of Christ (our Grandmother says it’s mead not sherry), but we know the Magic has worked, It’s the Real Thing now.

Like Coca Cola.

A big gulp, He likes the taste of Jesus’s blood.

My brother smirks as he stands by, swinging the smoking liturgical vessel in muddy trainers. Sniggering at The Big Gulp.

I snigger too. From my pew.

—

A young footballing boy from Penge West

Found alter-serving a test

While this made him a sinner

(though in sport quite a winner)

He swung incense like one of the best

—

We stand and file out of the pew, heads bowed, silent,

Joining the long shoe-shuffle to Communion.

Tongue out! Don’t chew (it offends God you know).

We believe in one, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.

We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sins.

We look for the resurrection of the dead,

And the life of the world to come.

Amen.

Collect in the hymn books and go and light that candle then, quickly.

Afterwards, we stand outside in the winter sunshine, waiting for our Grandmother to make her slow, creaking descent from the choir loft. The congregation chatters in the cold; a gathering of the local Catholic mafia.

Teenage girls flirt hormonally with the Parish’s latest Godly intern; a shy, red faced, redhead, fresh out of the seminary. And out of his depth.

Slowly the holy huddle drifts off, home, with thoughts of Sunday lunch.

Shall we play it again on the way home? Come on, let’s walk ahead. Quick, so she won’t catch us up, she can walk back with mum.

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DAD WEEKEND – by Emily

Sometimes we knew the people, got on with the children of the household.  Other times we’d never met them before.  The time we went to Bath was one of these and there was the slight dread about meeting and staying with strangers, the inevitable strain of awkward mealtimes and forced camaraderie with unknown children, different rules, habits, smells and food. My sister, Lou, always seemed to fit in better than me.  Perhaps she tried harder. This time, though, my anxiety about these unknowns was diluted, because Bath was special.  Whatever the trials ahead, I felt sure they would be worth it.

Before they moved into sheltered accommodation, Granny and Granddad had lived in Bath.  Visiting them in their regency council flat at number 18 The Circus was always sparklingly special.  As a young child I had not understood why it was called The Circus, as there were no trapeze artists there, or clowns, or sad looking animals.  But it was a circular street with carved acorns on the top of each house; it had a green in the middle with enormous, ancient conker trees.  The stairs up to the flat smelt of polish and linoleum and whenever we visited, breathing in that scent was like breathing in a kind of magic. Everything about the flat was exotic and different from home.  A small chandelier hung in the entrance hall, the poshest thing I had ever seen that close-up.  There were nylon covers on the sofa and chairs.  Granddad’s ashtray was on a stand next to one of these chairs. A tin of toffees always sat on a doily on a table.  We weren’t allowed to jump from the sofa onto the leather pouffe, however tempting, because the ladies downstairs didn’t like noise.

Granny had lots of fascinating things: a pink wooden darning mushroom, an egg-slicer, Parma Violets in her bedside drawer.  There were toys and books that she got out when we came: an ancient teddy bear wearing plastic pants that had been Dad’s, a dolly that cried when you pulled the string and lots of story books about a little girl called Josephine.  When we stayed there we slept in a room with ghosts and assorted ornaments on a shelf.  In the bathroom there was scratchy toilet paper and a Charlie Chaplin-shaped talcum powder bottle.  A ship’s clock ticked sternly on the dining room wall and mealtimes were kept shipshape by Granddad.  The breakfast table was mysteriously already set before anyone was up, and we ate cornflakes with as much sugar as we liked.  At teatime we had doughboys and gravy and had to drink milk, like it or not, from cups with big blue flowers on the side.

Games of rummy and whist, having our hair brushed and ribboned, being given sweets when mum wasn’t looking; it was familiar and exciting, the rituals of these visits rich and wonderful. Outside the flat, Bath opened its magical doors to us.  It wasn’t a usual city, but like a made-up place from a fairytale.  Like the flat, everything here was different and wondrous. The toyshop was the highlight of our adventures in these grand limestone streets.  We spent pocket money on fortune-telling fish and plastic flies.  Mum and Dad always took us to the Francis Hotel on Saturday afternoons to meet Granny and Granddad after we’d been out exploring.  Granny would have half a Guinness, and wore her best brooch and hat. We had crisps and lemonade and tried to sit still on the velvet couches.

The memories of earlier childhood, happier times, family intact, easily occupied my thoughts on the long car journey that Friday night.  I sat in the front, Lou in the back and we listened to Dad’s compilation tape Nice Songs twice on both sides.  I remembered the time we watched Jaws at Granny and Granddad’s, from behind cushions, having begged the adults to let our cousins stay an extra night to watch it with us.  I turned round to ask Lou if she remembered and she awoke from her reverie – perhaps she had been thinking about happy times too.  We talked about that and our plans for the weekend. Although tired from the relentlessness of school, we were excited, getting on well, looking forward to revisiting our beloved city, perhaps we would somehow catch a glimpse of our former lives. Dad seemed cheerful too, which was a relief.

We arrived late at our destination. The house was large, typically Bath, rising three storeys above a raised pavement.  Looking over the streets of this otherworldly pale stone enveloped me in a sad familiarity, a childish nostalgia that I felt in my guts. We were welcomed in to a basement kitchen and fed a delicious  Marks and Spencers ready meal. The children of the house were already in bed, so Lou and I had the slight awkwardness of being kids at an adult meal. The adults drank wine and we pretended to be grown up, feeling shy and tired. There were interesting posters in frames on the kitchen walls and a shelf with lots of teapots, but it was hard to feel we belonged there.

Dad took us out the next day for our anticipated adventure down memory lane. We went to The Circus, but it wasn’t the same visiting without being able go inside and up those fragrant stairs.  Lou and I found we had no desire to play on the circular green, we didn’t really know what to do there.  We enjoyed going to the toyshop, but I was too old to buy pocket money toys now, and left empty-handed.  We walked past The Francis, but didn’t go in.  We wandered about without much purpose, the streets familiar but somehow lacking their old magic. Dad didn’t really know where to take us. He seemed distracted and sad.  This annoyed me and made Lou cling onto his arm in that annoying way.

By the end of the weekend, even Lou had not become friends with the children at the house, and I felt oddly alienated in the spare bedroom.  I was relieved when it came time to pack and knew I would be pleased to get home to my own bed and familiar mess at Mum’s house.  I urged Lou to hurry up and pack while I chucked my stuff into a bag.  Then I noticed that she was wearing a pair of my socks. She denied it, said they were hers and when she refused to take them off, I was overwhelmed with anger. Something inside me cracked violently and I hit her, hard.  She cried out and hit me back before running down the stairs, past the kids’ bedrooms.  I followed, kicking her at the bottom of the stairs, my rage a primal, overwhelming and physical force.  She escaped into the front room where she tried to shut me out; a usual tactic of hers in our fights.  I forced my way in and hit her again, a thump that echoed and after a short pause made her scream.  I screamed back at her to admit she was wearing my socks. When she refused I grabbed her by the hair and threw her to the ground, from where she kicked me hard in the stomach. As I fended her off with my arms, she scratched my hands, nails digging in, drawing blood.  I kicked her, over and over as she tried to grab my foot. We were both red-faced, crying, screaming and fighting as if our lived depended on it.  We were out of control, unable to stop, the thought of it never ending was terrifying but I had no idea how.

But it did stop when Lou tried to get up and I pushed her violently against a sideboard, with a force that brought a teapot crashing to the floor.  In this mortifying moment, the woman of the house and collector of the teapots strode into the room, witnessing our crime.  “Bloody hell!” she shouted.  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” We froze, shocked, an adult we barely knew was swearing at us.  “Now get out of my house.  You’re frightening my children.” She then pushed us out of the front door and onto the raised pavement, where we half-heartedly continued our fight, and waited for Dad, cold without our coats. We had never been thrown out of anyone’s house before.

When he eventually came, he was grim-faced, carrying our bags.  I told him about the socks. He said I was being silly and didn’t want to know any more.  I didn’t ask where he had been while we had tried to kill each other. The drive home was mostly in silence, accompanied by the boring drone of Radio 4.  I was confused at the injustice, at Lou’s refusal to admit she had lied. I saw her face in the rear-view mirror, sad.  I was ashamed of losing control like that.  Battered and exhausted, I wept for our fractured family, that I didn’t feel I belonged to any more. When Dad dropped us off at Mum’s, he said we had to write letters of apology to the Bath family and when I saw tears in his eyes I knew there was no point trying to understand adults. Or why everything seemed so painful, bewildering and bleak. I held no hope of ever speaking to my sister again.  We never visited Bath again.

Issue 6: Bloody Work

Yes, we know we’re a bit late for issue 6, but the bus was on a diversion and  we’ll work through lunch to make the time up, OK?  Welcome back to the Feminist Jumble Sale, the place where you can rummage through  peoples’ donations of stories, reflections, moans and tragi-comedies, all loosely tied to that most January-esque of themes;  Bloody Work. 

Here you’ll find work by five writers, some usual suspects and one brand new contributor, all of whom have been gainfully employed in a range of weird and wonderful capacities.  We cover amongst other things: backstage tantrums, Saturday jobs, sleeping with colleagues, inappropriate over-sharing and office politics. We hope that our assortment eases those hurried sandwich-at-your-desk lunchtimes.

We’ve made our back issues easier to find, made it simpler for you to like us on Facebook, and a piece of cake to follow us – please check out the new and improved sidebar over there.

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Issue 7 is due out at the end of March.  We’ll be celebrating not only 101 years of International Women’s Day, but 1 year of the Feminist Jumble Sale.  Bloody Hell! We’d like to receive your donations on the all-encompassing, free-for-all theme of Bloody Hell!  Please get them in by 25 March for consideration.

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BLOODY WORK  CONTENTS

Greasepaint- by Zoe

Team Bonding Exercise  – by Celia

Tuesday – by Emily

Colin Walker’s Dirty Secret – by Jane

Empire State Biscuits – by Jim

Saturday  – by Zoe

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Greasepaint – by Zoe

It was a bad summer season, 1994 – we were held to ransom by the sponsors. I was all the more annoyed ‘cause 1995 was our big anniversary year. I had plans. Something ambitious – maybe even a musical – ‘Stepping Out’ on the cards. Vicki Michelle or Su Pollard.

He was a good kid, Jimmy Clarke. The things he put up with that year, whew. Yep, that was tough.

He got the gig ‘cause he was some school friend of the daughter of our chief patron, so we didn’t hold out much hope at first.

We started with the usual initiation – sending him down town to get a glass hammer and some sparks. We even sent him on the ‘publicity run’ (designed to tire you out so completely that you’d be on the verge of collapse and all for nothing. If it didn’t drive you to drink it should at least teach you why profanity is so rife in the theatre). We usually only used that one on the adults. Still, he could see then that it weren’t all lah di dah.

When he came in the next morning, without a word, we knew he was alright. Lianne even bought him a choc ice and she’s tighter than Scrooge. Lianne is my deputy and it was her who found Jimmy that night – just in time.

We were starting the season with this show ‘Enlightenment’ with some crap magician. Our sponsorship would only stretch so far that year and the producer had got seduced into blowing most of it on a no-name sit-com extra and a director for the Ayckbourn with ideas above his station and a part for his wife.

Mefisto was an act as old as the minstrels – ‘bout as politically correct too.

Even though I got the geezer’s number straight off – alkie, wife left him, kind who’d have pork pie crumbs from the eighties in his pockets  it was obvious from Jimmy’s face that he ain’t never seen the like. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad for him to see it takes all sorts.

Mefisto didn’t have an assistant on account of no woman being able to stand being around him, The old producer  – he really was daft as a brush y’know – said Lianne might fancy being a soft touch an’ step in – just for one show. He obviously ‘adn’t ever spoke to Lianne before.  Magicians should have assistants.

I’d been down the Greensward for a smoke. There was a wind shelter like a miniature half-timbered house where I liked to sit. No-one ever bothered you – didn’t even see anyone – ‘cept one or other of the old dears carrying their dachshund. They made such a fuss of sausage dogs in that town. They had bed jackets and berets and miniature parasols.

Back at the theatre, everyone was milling around gearing up for the evening –the second to last night of the run. Mefisto really hit the bottle. He had a litre of Vladivar – a step up in brand and volume.

I should have clocked that something could be starting, when he ignored his five minute call, but I was a bit fuzzy and giggly. I was cursing him as I loitered out the back. ‘One more night of this and that’s it.’

30 seconds before curtain Lianne had already sussed something weren’t right. I ran through to the green room and found her and old Fred, the sound guy trying to prise Mefisto away from Jimmy. Fred was really struggling (Mind you, he’s getting on a bit. Last time me and Fred toured, we went to eat at a joint called ‘Dig in the Ribs.’ That name nearly finished him off, like that geezer in Mary Poppins). The lad was tied to an ironing board with this black stuff like giant bag ties that hold dolls in their boxes and he had words written on his face in greasepaint. At that moment, Mefisto was trying to set light to Jimmy’s hair.

We had to make Jimmy swear that he wouldn’t tell anyone about it – we didn’t want to lose our licence see- next year being our anniversary. He’s a good lad, Jimmy. Never breathed a word.

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TEAM BONDING EXERCISE  – by Celia

Sam awoke. Only dared to open one eye. Looked up at a pristine magnolia wall. Where the hell was she? A chink of light shone through the centre of the heavy blackout drapes. The anodyne framed print of a terracotta vase containing a  wilting posy confirmed that she was not at home. Yes, of course, the conference.

The sheets were cold against her back. She realised she didn’t have her fleecy pyjamas on or any clothes at all for that matter. Looked down at the floor. She saw a condom, used, had been tied in a knot and left there.

The conference had begun in a more dignified manner two days earlier. During the last session of the last seminar they had “mitched off”, as Yvonne called it, to the bar for happy hour bottles of Pinot Grigio. Sam always enjoyed a drink with Yvonne and Benita, her older work colleagues and they got through several bottles, occasionally popping out to smoke Lambert and Butlers under an outdoor heater. She knew that a bag of Salt and Vinegar crisps did not constitute an adequate dinner, even if they were McCoys.

They were already flushed and giddy by the time the other delegates arrived in the bar. There was no one travelling through this particular corner of Northampton it seemed and the hotel was occupied solely by the delegates of the Southern regional division.

Sam gave Nigel a deferential nod as he strolled into the bar. They had been paired off during a workshop session after morning coffee to discuss the rolling out of various operating systems across the network. Sam thought he was lovely. She had looked at his Facebook during lunch break on her iPhone and although she had noticed his wedding ring in his profile picture, which he had taken by holding his own iPhone up in front of a mirror, she still thought he was gorgeous.

The women continued laughing and smoking, glad to be away for one more night until tomorrow’s networking breakfast after which they would drive home in their cars listening to Smooth Radio and smoking out of the window. Nigel had approached the table and squeezed himself in next to Sam on the banquette against the wall.

Lying in the room Sam found it difficult to remember what had happened beyond that happy haze. Her mouth was dry and bitter and her skin felt paper thin and grubby. Looking at the red numbers on the digital alarm clock next to the bed she knew she had missed the networking breakfast.

She got up a bit too suddenly and steadied herself against the wall. She found her earrings on the bedside table and her bra, suit jacket and shirt rolled up under a chair. She continued to look for her trousers and pants. She looked everywhere in fact, behind the curtains, in and under the bed, in the bath, the minibar and the trouser press. They were nowhere to be seen.

She sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed and remembered. Nigel. Packing hurriedly in the middle of the night, scooping up clothes in the dark into his suitcase muttering then carefully closing the door to his room behind him. Oh God. She could hear people outside vacating their rooms, the maids coming to change the sheets.

She looked in her jacket pocket and  grabbed her phone, shaking as she typed in the password on its touch screen. The battery was very nearly dead. On the verge of tears, she called Yvonne. Yvonne had her on speakerphone as she was already on the drive back. “I’m coming back for you babes, I’ll nip into Primarni in Daventry on the way, pick you up some trousers. They’ll only be cheap. Size 14, yeah?” Heart of gold that woman. Sam made a makeshift skirt out of a bed sheet as she waited for Yvonne to return.

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TUESDAY - by Emily

Patricia was pacing the kitchen, gesticulating, angry while mum scrubbed potatoes at the sink.  I hesitated before entering the room, and sighed in an exaggerated, teenaged fashion.  She was going on and on about bloody work.  Again. “ …so I told her, ‘that’s a projection’, but the old cow denied it – can you believe it? She told me to cool off and discuss it later, but there’s no way – not after what I had to deal with today.  Yer woman doesn’t know her arse from her elbow. That wee gobshite Mark was at his fecking worst, too – biting, hitting, the whole carry-on.” Mum carried on scrubbing, while I waited in the doorway, of the kitchen to get a chance to speak, my dramatic sigh unheard.  Or ignored. I barely understood these daily rants, didn’t really try.  I knew she worked with difficult, frightening-sounding children in the hospital.  I knew it seemed to make her angry, sometimes with her colleagues, sometimes with the children, usually with both.

Patricia got the shoe-whitening stuff out of the cupboard under the sink, and sat down to do her leatherette trainers. I grasped my chance to greet mum, making a point of not saying hello to Pat, and asked her what time tea would be. I stepped onto the quarry tiled floor and felt the familiar cold creeping through my school socks. “Oh about half an hour,” she replied, not looking up from the sink, throwing the scrubbed potatoes into a pan on the draining board.  I turned and left, heading to my room to do my insulin injection, but before I could get away, Patricia said to me, “Don’t forget those bloody cups.” I decided to ignore this, but she came after me, leaving her shoes on some newspaper.  “I meant it,” she said, her voice rising to the same angry pitch as she’d been using for her work rant.  “We will start fining you if you don’t get your arse in gear and bring your dirty mugs to the kitchen, and wash them too.” I looked to mum, to see if she would defend me, but she just gave me a look, to show that she agreed with Pat.  I said nothing, the hatred rising inside me like poison, and slammed the door behind me.

On my way to my room, I stopped by the front room where I knew my sister Lou would be watching telly.  It might be Star Trek, or a Harold Lloyd film.  It turned out to be Battle Star Galactica.  She would watch anything.  I found this annoying, but kind of understood that she needed to escape from our reality to retro visions of outer space or 1930s New York, when the world, like our TV, was all black and white. She was lying on the sofa, sucking her thumb, the gas fire on the wall opposite blazing. I sat next to her.  “That fucking bitch has just threatened to fine me again,” I said.  “She’s taking out all her work problems on us. Who cares about a few mugs, even if they are going mouldy?  It’s only mould.” My sister tore her eyes away from the screen with some effort. “Oh God,” she said, looking concerned.  “You’d better do what she says, though. You know what she’s like.”  I couldn’t believe this, it seemed everyone was against me.  I left, slamming the door, knowing this would upset  Lou, and that mum would accuse me of creating wham bam.  I didn’t care.

In my room, as I sat on the bed to do my injection, I looked round counting up the mugs.  There were only four, no, five, and only a couple of them were mouldy.  What’s the big fucking deal, I thought. After I’d finished with the syringe, I pressed play on my tape player.  Not in the mood for the Cult,  I turned the tape over to rewind the Cocteau twins on the other side.  I needed Liz Fraser to calm me down before I had to go and face the inevitable next round of confrontation.

This room, the smallest in the house, was my sanctuary. Every wall was covered in pictures, postcards, posters.  The wall I was proudest of had only black and white pictures that I’d collected and cut out from copies of The Face magazine, round at dad’s flat. Most of the floor was covered with school books, art materials, magazines, sketchbooks and clothes.  My dressing table heaved under a mass of make up, hairspray, crimpers, jewellery.  It was messy, but I roughly knew where everything was, and anyway, it was my chaos.  It was where I escaped the people I lived with, where I wrote endless volumes of my diary, thought and wept about boys, experimented with Sun-In and Boots 17 and occasionally wised I was dead.

This room had been mine almost all my life, my parents had decorated it with psychedelic purple, pink and orange wallpaper before they moved my cot in here when I was one. Amazing fat birds and giant flowers covered one wall, guarded my infancy. The curtains that mum made for me when I was about seven had had wild animals and trees, beautiful, delicate flowers and wading birds.  I had got rid of all that now, and painted the room white, but sometimes at night I missed the birds and animals, the patterns of the past.

When my sister came to tell me it was tea time, I was lying face down on the bed, dreading the discomfort of the meal that lay ahead.  I had decided to take the mugs down.  I could not afford to lose any precious pocket money.  I would need it at the weekend to spend on Marlboros and Liebfraumilch.  “It’s OK, you don’t have to persuade me,” I told her, collecting the mugs.  I couldn’t bring myself to do as I was told by that woman, though, so I left one partcularly encrusted cup carefully hidden under my bed.  That would show her, I thought. We headed downstairs and I slammed them on the sideboard. Pat raised her eyebrows, lips pursed, but said nothing.

Tea was boiled cabbage and boiled potatoes.  Mum had lost interest in cooking in the last few years, and we either had this or convenience food like frozen pizzas or Findus Crispy Pancakes, which Lou and I secretly loved after a lentil-based upbringing.  Pat  cooked about twice a year.  She could make salad or vegetarian chilli, but since the last chilli gave me food poisoning, she didn’t make it any more. I watched butter melting on my potatoes so I didn’t have to make eye contact with anyone.

It wasn’t long before she was off again, talking about work.  “Mark was crazy today!” she announced, to no-one in particular, laughing.  She often spoke about this disturbed and damaged little boy in the psychiatric unit where she worked.  “The wee eejit bit me, kicked the wall, and was about to start throwing things when I managed to restrain him.  The second time it took two of us! So we had to put him in the isolation room.”  She seemed to think that we would think her heroic for holding down a child and locking him up. “Is that like when you restrained Lou?” I asked, hot fear of asking this terrifying question turning my face red.  “Oh we don’t need to talk about that again.  She brought that on herself, and you know it.  With Mark it’s a whole different thing. That kid would carry on like there’s no tomorrow.  He’d hurt the otehr kids.  Or himself.” I glanced at my sister.  She looked upset.  “I didn’t…” Lou began, but decided against finishing her sentence. I finished my food, feeling anew the shock at the home life we had somehow ended up with.  I had stopped trying to work out why, it was easier to simply hate them than to try and understand adults.

After some grim silence, mum managed to change the subject, asked us about school.  Lou spoke about some boys in her class flashing at the back of the science lab.  She made it sound funny, but I knew it wasn’t really.  I mentioned something about how much I hated hockey and the hockey teacher and all the girls who cared about hockey, and the hockey kit. I didn’t talk about having been sent to the deputy headmistress for wearing makeup (again) or how I was upset that Frank didn’t speak to me in art (again), or the fact that I was sent out of maths for being rude to the teacher (again).

As soon as she’d finished her food, Patricia got up and put on her denim jacket and newly-whitened trainers to go and smoke a B&H outside the back door.  Moody and glowering, I could see her through the window, pacing, her face set in a usual frown.  I went to the sink to deal with the mouldy mugs while mum cleared the table, my sister back to the front room for whatever was on telly next.

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COLIN WALKER’S DIRTY SECRET – by Jane

Colin Walker stood in front of the bathroom mirror looking at the invitation propped against it. He was oblivious to the usual jarring debris of shared living – the clutter of opened wash bags on the windowsill, a damp line of mismatched towels hanging odorously from the shower rail. He looked down at a bar of soap sitting in its slimy swill on the edge of the washbasin. He grimaced and looked away. He stood a while longer, gripping the sides of the basin, sleeves rolled to the elbow, watching the water as it splashed and sparkled, creeping its way up the sides of the bowl.

In August 1984 Colin Walker had shaken hands with Freddie Mercury in a brief exchange of hero worship on one side and rock star courtesy on the other. Colin, then a shy young man of 19, was working as a marshal at Queen’s much-anticipated Wembley comeback concert. From his position at the temporary railings he attempted to steer the audience towards their seats, hoping the authority of his high-visibility marshal’s tabard would be enough for the wayward crowd to follow his instructions. During the performance Colin mouthed every word of every song. Nothing could be better than this. Except that it could.

Towards the end of the set he heard his name being shouted above the noise and turned to see the head marshal, Ian, beckoning to him in agitated semaphore. As a rule Ian found the mix of inexperience and over-confidence of his young team of marshals tiresome, but he liked Colin for his singular lack of cockiness, and was aware of his devotion to Queen. Ian gestured that Colin should follow him backstage, and as the band finished their final encore he positioned him, glazed with terrified anticipation, at the foot of the stairway, telling him to wait for the band to go past as they left the stage.

Moments later Colin heard the audience’s final climatic roar and then there was Freddie, heading down the stairs towards him. As he passed, Colin held out his hand. “That was brilliant,” he said, the words sticking to the sides of his dry mouth. “Why thank you” said Freddie, smiling in Colin’s general direction as their hands locked in a sweaty, fleeting meeting of palms. Freddie walked on but the electricity of the moment stayed with Colin. He had met, spoken to, and touched, his idol.

Colin had never believed the rumours of Freddie Mercury’s homosexuality but quickly recalibrated his mental biography after his idol ‘came out’. Colin loved Queen for their musical virtuosity and Freddie in particular for his giftedness as a songwriter and showman. But he had never been comfortable with his hero’s more pantomimic antics, the infamous cross-dressing video a particular low point. Indeed, Colin would have preferred it if Freddie had not wanted to break free.

Nevertheless Colin was devastated when, on the 24th November 1991, six years after meeting his idol, Freddie Mercury died from bronchia-pneumonia, one of the opportunistic infections that had attacked his enfeebled body, and just a day after he had made public his HIV status. Colin contributed to the official fan club tribute publication, with the words:

”Mercury was a genius and a legend whose music will go on, lighting up the airwaves like a comet illuminating the sky. He Will, Queen Will, Rock You!!”

Colin found it hard to get over Freddie’s death. He spent time talking with fellow fans, and many hours putting together a scrap-book from the collection of cuttings, photos and other Queen-ephemera he had amassed over the years. But it wasn’t enough. Colin wanted to make a more personal, tangible, and permanent contribution to Freddie’s memory. He considered a tattoo but this was becoming quite common among fan club members. At length he decided on a more dramatic, physical tribute to the hero whose sweaty hand had shaken his. He would never wash his right hand again.

Colin had been a quiet boy at school, and a quieter young man at university, where he spent three years in the halls of residence. He liked the food and the domestic comforts, and while he enjoyed his own company, he welcomed the annual arrival of new faces at the halls, in part for the lack of firmer friendships their company disguised. He left university with a good degree in Industrial Engineering and was quickly taken on by a manufacturing company in Reading. He enjoyed the work and, while not ambitious, he was good at his job. But after his decision of 1991, he realised he could no longer continue with it, his hands too often oily from the mechanical components he handled. So, to the disappointment of his colleagues, who liked him (and enjoyed teasing him with predictable outbursts from Queen’s back catalogue), and to the bemusement of his manager, who valued his quiet diligence, he left.

Over time detritus built up on his right hand, causing painful cracks in his finger joints and unsightly dark stains on his palm. Colin began to wear gloves. And for this reason, coupled with his natural reticence, it took him some time to find another job. Eventually he found work in the local Housing Office, but soon his gloved hands became an unwelcome talking point. His colleagues were a larky bunch, young and friendly, with a relentless after-work social life. Colin found them overbearing, and their persistent curiosity about his gloves difficult to fend off. Worse was their collective derision of Queen, whom they dismissed as preposterous, old-fashioned and shamefully operatic. It was too much; to his colleagues’ dismay, (as though they enjoyed teasing him, they liked Colin and had tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade him to join their nightly booze-ups), he left.

Colin’s gloves protected his hand from exposure to dirt and the elements, but they also limited his activity. He stopped jogging (too sweaty) and swimming (too wet), though he had never been much of an athlete, so this was no real hardship. However, he began to gain weight. He knew he needed a physical, outdoor job, one that offered him greater solitude and the opportunity to wear gloves without seeming out of place. He considered becoming a dustman but the proximity to so much filth would only have made his life harder. So he applied instead to the local council’s Environmental & Recreational Department, and in the summer of 1992 began working as a Parks & Gardens Assistant in a large, suburban London park.

The job suited him and for two years Colin cleared leaves with an unwieldy electric blow-hose and dredged the man-made lake for condoms, plastic bottles and nappies. Gradually he learned how to plant out in spring and how to prune the gnarled flowering shrubs that clambered determinedly up walls and across wooden pergolas. Colin learned quickly and enjoyed the work.

He continued listening to Queen, usually on a Walkman wedged into the front pocket of his overalls, and his gloved hands were rarely noticed or remarked upon. Better still, no one made fun of Queen. The small team at the Parks Department were older men who, if not actually fans, were happy enough to spend occasional lunch hours ranking the band’s hits into an all-time top ten, or debating their position in the rock canon, (Colin arguing hard for their place at the top).

At the weekends Colin visited the great central London parks, noting down hard landscaping ideas and planting schemes. Sometimes he met up with fan club members to plan events and talk about the band. Not quite friends, but not far from it. Occasionally he went home to see his parents and the younger sister who still lived with them. His parents had been older when they had started a family, and were now definitely elderly. They were a quiet, self-contained couple, whose continued independence was secured by their daughter’s lack of it. On these visits, Colin would retreat to his old bedroom, though Queen posters no longer lining the re-papered walls, and the room was now a guest bedroom, though Colin was the only guest to have used it. Sitting on the bed he would go through the scrapbook he had made after Freddie’s death, and which remained at his parents’ house for safekeeping. He was glad when these visits were over and he could return to the large, airy room he rented in a South London Victorian terrace.

He shared the house with various post-grads and young professionals who came and went over the years, and who treated Colin with a friendliness that didn’t extend to invitations to shared meals in the communal kitchen. And, on the whole, Colin was content with this situation and enjoyed the routine of his work and quiet social life.

But in July 2004, Jackie Elliot, a small, smiling young woman with a BA Hons in Horticultural Science, joined the Parks & Gardens Department. At first her presence alarmed the all male team, but she surprised them by settling in quickly and was soon considered by them as one of their own. Jackie was warm and easy-going, with the sensitivity not to undermine her colleagues with her superior knowledge and skills. In return they liked her and treated her with (previously unrealised) avuncularity. Colin, the youngest man in the team, also liked Jackie and, gradually the two of them began working together. Colin enjoyed her enthusiasm and the quiet generosity with which she shared her greater skills.

A few months after Jackie joined the team, while she and Colin were bagging fallen leaves, she told him about her son. “I wanted to tell you before, it’s just that I hadn’t mentioned him at my interview, I thought they might not take me on if they knew I was a single mum. But guess what – he’s called Fred, isn’t that weird? I didn’t name him after Freddie Mercury but it’s a coincidence isn’t it? He’s nearly five now”. She showed Colin a photo of a smiling young boy on a swing. “He looks like you”, said Colin, “he’s got your eyes”.

As the gardening year continued, Colin and Jackie worked increasingly closely. She taught him how to prune the more delicate herbaceous shrubs and to propagate cuttings. Their colleagues noticed and embarrassed Colin with their tool-shed teasing: “Making a cuppa for your girlfriend are you Freddie?” Colin had learned to make tea expertly using just his ungloved left hand, and secretly enjoyed his nickname, which they had given him soon after he joined the team.

One day, as he was repairing an electrical pruning saw (his background in engineering had turned out to be useful, and had given him status within the team), Jackie approached him, holding out a brightly coloured card. “It’s an invitation to Fred’s fifth birthday, at the lido. He’s just learned swim so he’s really excited. Please come, he’d love to meet you.” Colin looked at the invitation. He liked Jackie, he liked her more than any woman he had met before, but it had never occurred to him that she might want to include him in her life outside the park. As he looked at the invitation he allowed an image to play across his mind, of him chasing a delighted Fred through the water, Jackie looking on happily from the side of the pool. But the image was quickly replaced by panic. He tried to cover his agitation, studying the invitation more closely. Jackie smiled encouragingly, and reached out to touch his gloved hand, “Colin, it would mean so much to me if you came, and Fred would be delighted, I’ve told him all about you”. Colin flinched at the pressure of her hand on his gloved hand, but in his mind he had already begun planning a taped mix of Queen’s greatest hits (his own favourites, not something taken from a compilation LP), which he would give Fred as a present. Still looking down at the invitation, and despite his anxiety, Colin thanked her and said he would love to go.

On the afternoon of the party, Colin stood in the bathroom, staring at the invitation propped against the mirror. He took off his gloves, wafting away the cloud of dead skin flakes and dust that flew around him, lit up against the sunlight from the bathroom window. He looked down at his right hand: white and hairy through lack of exposure to sunlight, with deep grooves of grime and flaking skin. He smelled the strong, familiar odour that came from it and looked away, returning his attention to the invitation.

Colin arrived late to Fred’s party. Jackie waved across the pool at him when she saw him, beckoning him over to where she was standing with a group of other women. Colin skirted the edge of the pool and joined her near a table piled with presents, crisp packets and the remains of a guitar-shaped birthday cake. He was introduced to the group of smiling women, mothers of other children at the party. He handed Jackie the tape he had made for Fred and noticed her quick glance at his right hand which was stuffed into the pocket of his jacket. He moved away, towards the table, asking if he could try the cake.

Colin stood holding a piece of unusually brown iced birthday cake in his left hand, watching the children in the pool. He recognised Fred at the centre of a group of boys floating excitedly on a raft of inflatable animals, being pushed through the water at some speed by some enthusiastic men; ‘dads’ he supposed.

“Hi there Colin, I’m Sue, Ollie’s mum. I’ve heard so much about you from Jackie, she says you like Queen”. One of the smiling mothers was standing next to him. “Um, yes,” said Colin. “Which are your favourites?’ she continued, “I absolutely love Seven Seas of Rye. What do you think? Is that a good one?” “Um, yes, yes it is,” Colin replied. He tried to think of something he could ask her in return but couldn’t. She carried on, asking him how long he had known Jackie and whether he had any children, but by now he was struggling, anxious that his answers were too short and agitated by the cacophony of the lido. After a while she retreated. Colin continued to stand by the pool, relieved. He had no desire to rejoin the smiling mums and a strong urge to block his ears from the children’s shouting, the dreadful music coming from the speakers, and the boisterous animal impressions of the party dads.

“Hi you’re Colin aren’t you? Colin looked down to see Fred looking up at him from the water near his feet, his elbows propped over the side of the pool. “Have you brought your swimming things, are you coming in?” Jackie appeared next to Colin, smiling. “What do you think Fred, can we persuade him? Or shall I just push him in?” Fred laughed and began chanting ‘IN, IN. IN”. Colin stepped back from the water’s edge, “No, no chance I’m afraid, I’m fine where I am thanks”. Fred looked up at him, screwing his nose in bemusement, “You look funny standing there like that. Why have you got your hand in your pocket? Is there something wrong with your hand?” “Fred!” Jackie broke in, but just as she spoke Fred’s name was called for the water-bumps and he headed off with splashing enthusiasm to join his friends. Jackie glanced at Colin and, saying something about needing to find her camera, she left him still standing by the pool.

Colin moved away from the party when all eyes were on Fred being flung wildly in the air by the party dads. He stopped and looked back at Jackie, laughing, holding her camera to her eye to capture the moment. He turned towards the exit and started walking, and as he walked he took his right hand from his pocket and held it up, scrubbed and ghostly, to the slanting autumn sunshine. He looked at the daylight appearing and disappearing between his fingers as he opened and closed them. Turning back he waved in the general direction of the party, feeling the cool air brushing his open palm. And to the sound of Happy Birthday sung to a happy splashing five year old, he left.

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EMPIRE STATE BISCUITS  – by Jim

The swimming pool attendants worshipped a carrier bag.  It could be seen through the high windows above the pool, flapping from the tree it had been stuck to for as long as anyone could remember.  They believed that while the bag remained there, none of them could ever leave.  Like the Picture of Dorian Gray, it represented their souls – stranded, disintegrating, but eternally hopeful that a wind of change strong enough would eventually blast it free.

As usual I passed below the bag at quarter past eight, crossed the road and looked through the big windows to see the musclebound Sean on duty at poolside.   Just as I was making a ‘wanker’ hand gesture at him, something struck me hard on the right ear.  It was a snowball, which knocked my furry hat off.

‘Fuck off skinhead,’ shouted a wee guy, running up the street with his mates laughing.  I could see Sean  was equally amused.   If you’re going to sport flamboyant headgear on a snowy day in Glasgow, what can you expect?   Still, it seemed to confirm my worst fears for the year ahead: the portents were not good.

It was the first day back after New Year and Carol’s desk was still festooned with Christmas cards, many of them with a cat theme.  I had already binned the one card I had personally received, ‘from all at Offrex Office Supplies’, so my side of the office was bare, apart from a pile of new membership applications waiting to be processed.

At two minutes to nine, the clack of high heels and a gust of cold air announced Carol’s sweeping entrance.  Her face was pale white, haloed in ginger under a black velvet hood, her mouth a shocking gash of scarlet twisted in disdain.  She dropped her sodden umbrella into the metal bin with a remorseless clang.

‘I think we need to talk,’ she pronounced coldly, doffing her cloak to reveal the legendary bust that crowned her petite frame.  As famous as her breasts were,  they were never ever mentioned in front of  Carol herself, which was  why my remark at the Christmas party had been such a horrible own goal.  But there are a couple of points, or should I say a pair of erect nipples, I’d like to make in my own defence.

In the six months since starting as her assistant, I’d had to withstand a bombardment of innuendo from the receptionists about me and Carol.  Of course none of this was for the consumption of Carol, who they claimed to know was still a virgin at 32.  They kept her on a diet of light teasing about hunky men and eligible batchelors and saved the smut for me.  In a sick way I enjoyed it, because in my mind I was trumping every comment with something more graphic.  I just made the mistake of verbalising one of these thoughts when Margaret caught me off guard with two empire biscuits at the staffroom get-together.

‘I knew you’d  appreciate these,’ she said, proffering the pair of cherry-clad cakes.  The symbolism was clear and I could no longer be bothered with the nudge nudge wink wink routine.

‘That’s supposed to be Carol’s tits, isn’t it?’ was my petulant response. I immediately knew I’d blown it and, sure enough, Margaret wasted no time in cornering Carol, feigning hilarity but well aware she was about to stir things up big time.

‘Carol, you’ll never guess what he’s said now….’

I didn’t stick around to hear Carol’s response, hoping against hope that two weeks off would allow the incident to recede into insignificance.

‘I’ll be making a written report about what happened at Christmas,’ she now told me. ‘I’m not going to let people speak about me like that. I’m making a formal complaint of harassment.’

I wanted to hand her a Battenberg cake in the shape of a phallus, but all I could manage was, ‘Happy New Year, Carol’.

‘In the meantime,’ she continued, ‘you know those posters out front?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve used blu tak.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘What should you do when posters are facing out the way, through the windows?’

‘Is this a trick question?’

Carol was keeping her composure. ‘We spoke about this.’

I pretended to have to think about it.  ‘You should use white tak?’

‘That’s right. So if you wouldn’t mind changing them.’

Equipped with the requisite ball of white putty,  I trudged to reception.

‘What’s she got you doing now, son?’ asked Margaret, in a tone of sympathetic exasperation.

‘Bit of a faux pas on the temporary adhesives front,’ I informed the receptionists.  ‘Fixatives should be camouflaged whenever possible,’ I quoted from a fictitious manual, as highfalutin language to describe the absurd tasks Carol liked to set me was a running joke between us.  ‘By the way, thanks for setting me up with those empire biscuits.  I’m going to be disciplined.’

‘Surely not!’ cried Margaret. ‘That was never my intention… ‘  But they were loving it.  Getting Carol on her high horse was something like a national sport at reception.

Just then, a Swedish netball team arrived and it was my job to give them a tour of the building.  I stopped at the swimming pool viewing area and pointed out the sacred carrier bag.  Sean, who was scrubbing tiles, clocked what I was doing and started to pray, muslim-style, to the bag.  I then made a tea-break gesture and he nodded. The Swedes were oblivious to what was going on, but, unbeknown to me, Gavin, the operational supervisor, was not.

To many, Gavin was the acceptable face of chauvinism – a charming sexist with a cheery line in sectarian bigotry.  Like most of the attendants he had a tribal tattoo, but his was a disguised form of the Rangers FC emblem.  Although he used expressions like Nae Bother and Cheers Big Man, it came out in the posh-tough accent of a Radio Clyde sports presenter, or a Strathclyde CID man.  He was 24 going on 50.  The attendants thought he was the Anti-Christ; Carol loved him.

I was in the tearoom trying to explain the gravity of the situation to Sean.

‘It’s a storm in a D-cup,’ he laughed.

‘Very funny,’ I replied. ‘ ‘Sexual harassment of a poisoned dwarf’, how d’you like that on your CV?’

‘About as much as I’d like ‘total smart arse’,’ said Gavin, piling through the door.   ‘You better keep the in-jokes to yourself.  Even if the punters don’t realise you’re taking the piss, the rest of us do.  Now report to my office.’

Carol and Margaret were already waiting there.

‘As you know we expect certain professional standards of behaviour in here,’ said Gavin, ‘so I want you two to apologise to Carol.’

‘Sorry Carol, there was no offence meant,’ said Margaret.

‘Aye, me too.  Sorry, Carol.’

‘In return, Carol,’ said Gavin, pointing at me. ‘ I’d like you to ease off on Captain Clever Clogs here.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I think you know what I mean. We’ve all got to get along in this place.’

At that point Gavin’s phone rang.

‘It would seem there is a situation at the front of the building which requires your expertise,’ he said to Carol as he replaced the receiver.

Outside, some firemen were rescuing a cat from a tree. This combined two of Carol’s major interests: she was a leading light in the Cats Protection League and, for the benefit of the receptionists, claimed to have a thing about firemen. A crowd had gathered to watch a fire fighter trying to grab the cat, while the owner, an old lady, stood on the pavement below, where she was soon joined by a supportive Carol.

‘This is unreal,’ I commented to Sean and Gavin. ‘These guys actually come out for cats?’

‘Looks like it,’ said Gavin, ‘must cost the tax payer a fortune.’

‘Will they do it for other pets?’ I asked. ‘I mean, what if it was a gerbil stuck up there?’

‘There’s a minimum size limit,’ explained Sean. ‘They won’t come out for anything that would fit in a jam jar.’

At this point I noticed the ladder man was only about twenty feet away from our religious icon.  I nudged Sean, nodded towards the tattered bag and made scissor fingers.

‘I definitely don’t think they rescue plastic bags,’ he said.

But Carol was ahead of us.  She had already switched into giggly mode and no sooner had the cat been brought down than the fireman was being raised into the neighbouring tree.  As we watched in amazement, he homed in on our totem, then tugged and unravelled it off the branch. Carol almost curtsied as she took it from him and, following more hair tossing and laughter, she crossed the road to us.

‘I hereby declare you free,’ she said, dumping the fankle of dirty, wet plastic into my arms.

‘How did you manage that?’ asked Sean.

‘I told them it was spoiling a photo we wanted to take of the building and that there was a free swim and sauna for the entire crew in return.’

Then she walked past us into the foyer and held up a piece of paper to the receptionists.             ‘His mobile number,’ she announced, to a ripple of applause and a few winks and ‘well done’s.

Back in the office, I placed the remains of the bag on my desk.

‘Happy endings all round,’ said Carol.  ‘I got a fireman’s phone number and you got your plastic bag.’

‘It’s been quite a day,’ I agreed, reaching for the scissors.  I wasn’t sure whether to cut the bag into relics, or just bin it.

‘By the way,’ said Carol. ‘I noticed they’re out of programmes at the front desk.  Would you mind taking some more out?’

As I headed for reception, Carol picked up the phone and punched in a number.  It was the first in a long list of calls to her network of friends, who I knew would be waiting to lap up her fireman anecdote in offices all over the city.

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SATURDAY  – by Zoe

I used to love Saturdays. They came with a sense of luxury, that knowing that you didn’t have to answer to any crabby or pedantic teachers, wear an oppressive uniform or endure the torturous journey on the school bus.

I never had any serious plans; probably watch a bit of ‘Going Live!,’ groan at Trevor & Simon’s jokes and the inanity of the phone-in questions; help dad wash the car then go on a low-key day trip, maybe to Sittingbourne or Canterbury.

That all changed on October 20^th 1994, when I walked, falteringly, through the staff entrance to Woolworth’s on Chatham High Street.

When I was first issued with the regulation staff uniform, it was how I imagined a wrongfully accused female prisoner might feel as she hands over her clothes to the warden in exchange for the standard, unflattering utilitarian garb, with no proclivity to fashion.  A navy and white striped shirt – the shirt was ok, if kind of scratchy – but the pinafore, my God. It was like the smocks you saw fallen schoolgirls wear in convents in the sixties, where they’d been sent away to disguise their shame.

Well, I was certainly not disguising my shame. It was flaming in my cheeks as I stepped out onto the shop floor, the voluminous fabric of the dress more than capable of concealing a couple of toddlers, a dehumidifying unit or ET. I was mortified and that was before the actual work had even started. Oh God. How many people were going to see me? It seemed entirely possible that almost, at least half my year would pass in to the shop at some point during the day. I had an Alice band in, black velour, which didn’t help the look at all, but my hair was going through an unruly stage, so I couldn’t bear to remove it.

I saw two other girls, swishing their smocks miserably stood around by the tillpoint. They didn’t look any better. I’d taken the job without really thinking. Well, I’d been thinking a bit, about how much I needed some money to get clothes I wanted and to save for driving lessons. I hadn’t expected that it would mean manning the pick’n’mix dressed like a member of a Christian folk group. No-one would ever ask me out now.

By lunchtime of the third day, I could already tell that I hated it and after six weeks, in the prelude to Christmas, the week they made us wear reindeer antlers, I was sure I was in hell.

That was when Ben Bulmer came in, with those lads he knocked about with. The idyll of Saturdays lost seemed like a documentary about the past I couldn’t quite recall.

Ben was in my French class – I didn’t really know know him, just that he was mouthy and often in detention, or outside the head’s office. Not for doing anything really bad, but for his backchat. He had two friends, tall, lolloping lads, who weren’t as smart as Ben, but were tough. Ben was quite small, so they looked like his bodyguards.

They sauntered around, pausing by the Sega Megadrive demo to watch the child prodigy who came in and played it every Saturday. Whenever I arrived for work; always a few minutes early so as I could customise my uniform as best I possibly could, there Sega guy would be on the step, waiting for Dave, the assistant manager to unlock the doors.

Ben was wearing a Wu-tang Clan sweatshirt which drowned him and the bodyguards had army trousers with oblong pockets. I was wearing reindeer antlers and a huge scowl, as I stuck my hand into the shrimp compartment to remove the remains of some half-chewed free samples allocated to themselves by some eight year old brats who had dared each other to help themselves. They would lose their nerve after plucking the sweet out and putting it in their mouth, as though spitting it out again before it was finished in some way redeemed them.

I should’ve guessed what trousers with big pockets meant, but in my naivety and sulk at the gooey remnants of a child’s half chewed sweet at the forefront of my mind, my focus wasn’t attuned to the obvious.

I saw them swipe the Panini first. They were over, the other side of the Ladybird section from the confectionary. Ben’s whistling caught my attention and I gazed over at the exact moment he slipped them into his hoodie. That wasn’t all. They sidled back over to the pre-packaged sweets and from where I skulked behind the Pick’n’mix structure, I could see them slipping strawberry laces and Animal Bars into the roomy pockets of their cargo pants.

I didn’t want to see this! This made me a witness. But I  couldn’t bring myself to look away. We’d been shown a video in week two about ‘what to do, if confronted with crime.’

I looked at the security guard at the door, bored and not standing to attention, then back to Ben. They were laden down with a good selection of Woolworth’s stock by now, and sure to make a run for it in the next five minutes.

There was vague talk of some sort of a reward; like if you retained a bankers card that had come up on the epos system as stolen or fraudulent. It would be good if there was a possibility of extra cash. I don’t  know though – it is Christmas. Good will to all men, especially sort-of-hard- nuts from school who don’t even know your name.

I took a moment’s pause in the pathetic excuse for a staff room. Someone’s soup had exploded in the microwave again and there was a liquid burnt on bowl on the side. The peeling walls and coverless seats in an airless room made me feel sick.

As I knocked on the door of the manager’s office all I could think was that after I told them I was going to ask for a transfer to the record bar.

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Issue 5: Bloody London

Fight your way through the braying hordes, head up the escalators (remembering to stand on the right) into the light and rejoice with another issue of the Feminist Jumble Sale!!  The usual birthday sharing crew are here, along with an occasional contributor, and not one, but two brand new donators to our cause.  The nation’s capital is discussed and explored through love and loss, violence and liberation, filth, shock and not too much moaning.

Remember we are now all over twitter @FeministJumble, have a few comments posted on previous editions but would LOVE some more, and really fancy some more writers to add to our mix.  Come on in and get amongst it!

Next Issue will be out in the new year.  Watch this space for the theme – coming soon.

CONTENTS

BLAME IT ON THE POLLUTION – by Louise

FUCKING FLAT HUNTING – by Rosie

OK STUPID: TALES OF LONDON DATING – by Celia

BLOODY PRISON – by Juliette

WELCOME TO EAST LONDON – by Emily

THE DAY I WENT BERSERK – by Jim

LONDON BRIDGE – by Louise

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BLAME IT ON THE POLLUTION – by Louise

I heard through friends that you’d moved away. That explains why all the heart has    seeped away from the city.
I still think of you.

At least when I wake up crying, I can blame it on the pollution.

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FUCKING FLAT HUNTING  – by Rosie

I’ve moved 5 times in last 6 years. I know the drill. You find a place, you like it, you move fast, you move in. Simple.

Not in London. London is a whole new flathunting ball game. You find a place, you like it, it’s already gone. All the places on the internet; rightmove, zoopla, all posted within the last few hours… already gone. You view a place, think about blinking, it’s gone. The early bird may have caught the worm, but trying to find somewhere hospitable to live in London requires the luck of the Gods.

Demand is ridiculously high for property in London for two main reasons. House prices are high, and quality is low. No-one can afford to buy, and London is falling apart at the seams. Rooms are generally grotty, expensive and the size of a shoe-box. My current abode is caving in on itself to the point that my bookshelves have a surrealist triptastic lean. Every sink leaks, every celling has a hole, and the landlord doesn’t care. As long has he gets his rent every month, he’s happy.

My boyfriend and I have recently had the pleasure of flathunting in September. September is notoriously the busiest moving month; people are back from holidays and starting new jobs, students are starting courses and the kids are back in school. Everyone wants to move in September, which makes the process even more painful.

Our flathunting journey started with calling and emailing every agency in London that in the area that we were looking. None replied. Those that eventually did, offered flats out of our budget, out of the requested area, and available now. What is the deal with London properties being available now? Why do agencies and landlords leave everything to the last minute and expect everyone else to be able to vacate and move-in the same day? Does no-one forward plan any more?

The answer is because all of the best properties go the same day they are listed. Agents will call, describe the property over the phone, check images and google street view and people are so desperate they will take it over the phone. Without even viewing it. Were they nuts? No. They were potentially homeless.

We were the first people to view our new pad. After the ten minute viewing we were running around half of London trying to secure it before the next yuppish couple came and stole our dream flat away from us. It was on the market for total of two hours when we signed the reservation documents. I feel sorry for the couple who were probably viewing the flat the moment we took it, and probably had their hearts broken by a commission hungry estate agent. They could have easily of been us.

Nothing prepared us for the hoops we still had to jump through. Because the flat was registered with a ridiculously posh agency, one of us (not even a combined income) needed to be earning over 29,000 to take the flat. This income figure would have been lower if we were married – because married couples are ‘obviously’ more dependable. Because I have a succession of temporary contracts – a normality for someone working in the media industry – we still needed a home-owning guarantor to say we could pay the rent. I thought finding somewhere to live was the hard part. I’ve never sweated more awaiting the results of my credential analysis from the person that will grudgingly put me into rent poverty.

Those looking for a house-share go through similar but a more gut-wrenching scrutiny. It’s one thing trying to find the perfect room, another to find the perfect housemates, who are vaccously judging your entire existence on whether you like Marmite or Bovril, or prefer Red stripe over Red wine. It’s as cringe-worthy Take Me Out, but minus the cheap dresses, where every viewing ends in disappointment.

Now we have our flat, we hopefully never have to move again. Until next year. Then we have the fun and games all over again. And the Olympic tourists to play with.

More from Rosie at: http://rosiemrogers.co.uk/      —————————————————————————————

OK STUPID: Tales of London Dating – by Celia

# 1. We met at a bar in Soho. You were a cowboy. Except you were German and showed up on a mountain bike, not a horse. You wore a checked shirt, jeans and faded tan cowboy boots. You left me badly punctuated short stories to keep me occupied while you went to the toilet. You had a strange accent: sharp German consonants and vowels lengthened by years in Hackney. We stayed friends; I came over to your flat once for tea and to see your collection of cacti.

#2. On your profile picture you appeared dark and brooding and sported a pair of oversized fashionable glasses. You were a goth. When we met, you were warm and animated. As we drank endless pints of cheap lager, you regaled me with the saga of your family life, including your father who had been married four times and had just converted to Judaism for his fourth wife, Ruth. You drank so much you fell asleep face down on the table and I had to leave you there.  I saw you months later through a restaurant window walking through the night on your own.

#3. You worked in a book shop. I didn’t fancy you, but you were persistent. We met for a coffee. I was carrying a box of books I had just picked up from an ex-boyfriend. I thought you had a nice face and you were reading a battered copy of a JG Ballard novel. I told you that I hadn’t tasted coffee until age 22 when someone brought one to my table in a cafe by mistake and said I may as well have it for free. I remember feeling the caffeine and sugar pumping through my veins, making me alert, ready to spring up from my seat and go out into the world.  You pointed through the cafe window to the flat you had shared with your ex-girlfriend until two weeks ago. I saw you a few months later in a pub in Soho. You had grown a beard and looked exhausted as you sat talking to a girl dressed in pink.

#4. You were a Londoner now living in Tuscany. You didn’t work, I’m not sure how you got by or if you ever left the house. You did yoga all day and trawled the internet for new bands. We never met, but we talked on Skype almost every night for two months. Reassuring each other about the present and that everything would surely come out alright in the future. Gradually the contact dwindled. I think you moved to America to be with a girl you met online. I sold my webcam and moved house.

#5. You were a librarian. You knew a guy I went out with when I was 19 who was also a librarian in a different city. Your clothes were cool: knitted jumpers, leather jackets, cuban heels, but your eyes were sad. Your only friend seemed to be your ex- girlfriend who was Spanish and very beautiful.You told me you had tried to make your own gherkins by putting some cucumbers in a jar of vinegar and leaving them there, but it hadn’t worked and the cucumbers had disintegrated. You called me up on your birthday and sobbed. Months later you texted me at 2.30am and woke me up. I found a message saying there was a monkey being held in a cage in your neighbour’s back garden which was keeping you awake. The next day I replied telling you not to bother me anymore.

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A FEMINIST JUMBLE SALE SPECIAL CALL-OUT!

We’d love to hear your dating disasters; real, imagined, terrible, perfect, exaggerated or dreaded or dreamed-of here at the Feminist Jumble. Email them over to  feministjumble@hotmail.co.uk or tweet them at us flash fiction style to @FeministJumble

We’ll collect them up in our archives for a future publication.

Beats Guardian SoulDestroyers anyday!

——————————————————————————————————————————————————- BLOODY PRISON – by Juliette

Below is an extract from Bread & Duty, a novel about the life of Eliza Fenwick, a radical woman writer and early feminist who emigrated from London to Barbados in 1814. The scene below is a conversation between Eliza and her good friend, the writer Mary Hays, just after Eliza has told her husband that she’s leaving him. 

Holborn, London, 1814

 

‘Dear God. Eliza.’ Mary makes an enormous ‘O’ shape with her mouth as soon as she opens the door. ‘What in heaven?’

‘Bloody London!’ I say to her through clamped teeth. My feet are soaking, the hem of my gown is ringed with mud. No coach would stop for me looking like this.

Mary bundles me up the steps and into the house.

‘Come in, come in! They’re all at the meeting. No one’s here but me and Mabel’s gone for the night.’

It’s not much warmer inside, but it’s dry.

‘What’s happened Eliza? Tell me.’

Mary cocks her head, her blonde curls haloed by the light of the lantern on the wall. I look at her and can hardly speak – my cheeks and lips and nose are stiff with cold.  Summer’s promise of sunshine and warmth has failed us again. Mary makes a tutting sound with her tongue on her teeth and shakes her head.

‘Right. Never mind that now.’ She peels my cape from my shoulders and leads me by the hand. ‘Come – there’s a fire going upstairs.’

In the sitting room Mary takes my bonnet from me and turns it over in her hands, thumbing the fraying felt at the rim and circling her finger over the mildew spot on the crown. She puts it down to dry out by the hearth.  I sit on the sofa, slump my hands in my lap and stare at the grate.

‘It’s a ridiculous hat for this time of year,’ I say.

‘Where’s Lanno?’ asks Mary.

‘Mrs Robson’s keeping an eye on him – he was already asleep when I left. The boy’s exhausted – I had him help me write up the books all day at Skinner Street. A stock take to keep Evans off the fiddle, the horrible little man. We cleaned down every one of the shelves afterwards. Top to bottom. Coal-black with dust they were. Mrs Turton came in with her girls and complained at the filth caught on Amelia’s cashmere pelisse.  Said she’d send me the bill for her laundress’s time. Bloody cheek.’

‘Eliza. What’s happened to your shoes?’ Mary nods at my feet.

I stretch my legs out in front of me and lift my feet up from the floor. The sole of the left shoe is hanging off, the one on the right has entirely disappeared.  I close my eyes and allow my head to drop to the back of the sofa.  I let a deep sigh go in the room.

‘Oh Mary, I’ve done something terrible.’

‘Come on Lize, it can’t be that bad.’

Mary takes my fingers in hers and pulls me gently to my feet.  She unbuttons my dress, slips it over my head and lays it over a chair by the fire.  I sit back down in my chemise and short stays. I smell of wet dog. What a mess.

‘I lost my temper with John. Went after him in The Lamb.’

Mary puts a fresh log on the fire, takes a seat next to me and takes hold of my hand.

‘Hard times, eh?’ she says.

‘Worse than that. I threw my wedding ring in his face.’ I can feel the tears rising up so I hold my hand over my eyes and massage my temples with middle finger and thumb. The tears seem to recede.  ‘I’ve had enough.  Enough of his lying and thieving – enough of his bloody useless lounging around.  If he were a dog he’d lean his head against the wall to bark! Never, ever, will I involve myself with him again if I can find a way to support my family by my own industry.  Never.’

Mary squeezes my fingers.

‘Do you know that he was with another woman when I walked in there?’ I smack the flat of my free hand down on the arm of the sofa. ‘Not that it matters. I wasn’t surprised – I didn’t even feel shame. Just a kind of bland resignation.’

‘I’ll kill him,’ says Mary, ‘I’ll kill that man when I see him.’

‘What would be the point? He’s as good as dead to us already. Things have got so bad lately that when I looked out our breakfast this morning, there was nothing but a single crust of stale bread in the sideboard. It’s pathetic. We haven’t had a hot meal for days.  It seems not a week can pass but that we are forced to fight against something – be that creditors, the cold, destitution, depression. John himself got a running sore on his leg a fortnight ago as bad as any you’ll see at the workhouse. Mr Dyke’s refusing Lanno’s instruction. Thomas Holcroft came banging down the door at the Library today demanding his ten pounds. TEN POUNDS, Mary! This is not the future we had planned for ourselves.’

‘I know, darling, I know.’ Mary squeezes my forearm. The feel of her warm palm on my skin almost sets me off crying again.

‘Time was I thought we might be able to muddle our way through, work things out, but I think twenty-five years is enough, don’t you?  He was always so charming, so much fun. Too much fun. What was I thinking? I’ve been a bloody idiot Mary. Imagine – thinking that he would ever find the means – or the time – to take care of us, to give the children a good start in life, a permanent home; give me the time to write – properly. Not the dross I’ve churned out for the Library.’

‘You were in love,’ Mary reminds me. ‘There’s no shame in that. Many a woman lives her whole life without knowing what it might be to love.’

Her words hold there between us a moment before falling away.

‘But it’s all gone now,’ I say. ‘All of it. Gone.’

There is quiet between us for a short while. The fire pops and we both look at the logs as they burn, blazing bright orange and blue, their edges flaking away in white curls.

‘Would you like to know what I think?’ asks Mary.

‘What do you think, Mary Hays?’

‘I think you’ve done the right thing, Eliza Fenwick. I think it’s about time. And I think that you are going to be all right.’

I loop my right arm through hers and pat her wrist with my left hand.

‘What are you going to do?’ she asks.

I’m not sure.  I haven’t thought about it yet.

‘Well, I wouldn’t mind going into cheap lodgings. It wouldn’t be hard to find something. I could try around here or maybe come down to you at Camberwell when you get back there.  But then there’s the problem of work.  And what about Lanno?’

‘He’s getting to that age now Liza.  He needs opportunity – a profession.’

I nod. I know.

‘What about Bella?’ she asks.

‘I got a letter from her last week.  Imagine – being so ashamed at her father’s conduct that she found it necessary to take herself off to the other side of the world!  Still, she is going on very well. Doesn’t care much for the mosquitoes, she says, but she seems very happy with her Mr Haverford.  The salary’s decent and I’m told they’re calling her their Little Idol in Bridge Town. Quite a comfortable life, I think. She plays Beatrice in Much Ado next month.’

Another pause.

‘I miss her,’ I say.

‘What about going out there?’ says Mary.

I unloop my arm from hers and turn myself around to look Mary square in the face.

‘Impossible. I couldn’t do that.’

The fire pops again and an ember leaps onto the rug.  Mary darts forward on her haunches, picks it up in her fingers and shoots it back into the fire.

‘Why not?’ She brushes the ash from her hands before sitting back down by my side.

‘Well… You know how I feel about the colonies. All that indulgence, all that grasping at wealth. No. And slavery? Living amongst it day in, day out?’ I shudder. ‘No.’

‘I am sure I could assist with the passage.’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘It needn’t be forever.  Besides, I want you back in London for our old age remember?’

‘Five cats and a budgerigar on the banks of the River Thames?’ I remind her.

‘Yes!’

We smile at each other. I lean back into the sofa.

‘I have contacts – there was a gentleman at the Lamb’s the other day. A planter – progressive type. Said he was in despair at the calibre of agents to be found in Barbados and then his wife went on to say they were spending a fortune on removing the children to England on account of the lack of good day schools.’

I don’t say anything. You can’t make a snap decision about something like this – setting sail half way round the world with nothing but references and the hope of good fortune tucked in your stays.

‘You can write to me of slavery, Liza. Every month. We need more evidence – stories to remind people what’s going on out there – by what means all this sugar and tea and tobacco and cotton arrives at our shores.  You know how hard it is for us. And what better than a regular eye witness account? We could start a column!’

I still don’t reply. I flex and relax the fingers of my right hand. The bruising has started to cloud beneath the graze where I hit John round the face.

‘Think about it Lize. You can leave all this trouble and start a new life -  you can break free of this bloody prison, London!  To be on the reach of the seas is to be in reach of the world, Eliza –there really is nothing to stop you now.’ Mary grabs hold of my arms and looks me firmly in the eye. ‘You must go Liza. You can go and you must.’

 

Juliette Myers is a writer, sporadic blogger and hostess of creative retreats.  www.juliettemyers.blogspot.com  Twitter: @Twinkaloo. Facebook: WritingSpace.—————————————————————————————————————————-

WELCOME TO EAST LONDON – by Emily

I moved to London on an overcast, pale grey day in September.  Driving through grimy streets, a kind of grime I was not yet familiar with, my excitement was just about countered my growing apprehension.  Reaching the place I would be calling home, the place I thought I’d call home for my first year at university, my third ever home, was a journey like no other.

The dirty streets of small terraced houses, shabby Victorian ones with flaking paint and bad double glazing jobs interspersed with even shabbier 1960s blocks, where rubbish seemed piled up, and peeling posters overlapped on each spare wall, gave way to post-industrial wasteland.  High-fenced recreation grounds, train tracks, lorry parks and pylons, small factory units went past on either side of the road.  I couldn’t imagine a home at the other side of this, but down the track, past the concrete travellers’ site with small boys on bikes outside, after the rotting mattress, the burnt-out tyres, old cookers and scrubby trees loomed a red brick estate. Perhaps it would be an oasis in this desert of deprivation.

Two tower blocks rose at the centre of the estate, surrounded by a horseshoe of square houses, each with its square of grass behind.  The bricks were quite unlike the mottled, patterned red brick of East Anglia, but a modern, artificial-looking, too-perfect red; each rectangle the same.  A pair of phone boxes flanked the entrance to this domestic enclave; a mass of electricity pylons rose above, on all sides, framing the scene. I hadn’t known it was possible to get this close to a pylon, remembering a terrifying advert from the 1970s involving a boy and a kite and electricity lines.

Having asked to be housed in a “mixed” house, I had no idea what the mixture would consist of. There was no one else there yet, as I unpacked my duvet from its bin bag, plugged in my record player, unpacked clothes, books, art materials.  My room was a small rectangle with a single bed, a desk and a small wardrobe.  Newly decorated, there was a veto on Blu-tak .  I sat on my bed and wondered how I would make this bleakly functional space my own.

Later in the kitchen I met Theo, who seemed friendly, offered me tea, which I was grateful for until I saw him throw the used teabags at the wall roughly in the direction of the dustbin, instead of putting them in it.  Later I met Mike, a mature student with a beard who said hello very loudly because he was listening to Radio 4 on headphones.  I didn’t meet the final member of the mixed house, Amy, until later.  She was upset that she hadn’t been placed in a lesbian house.  Apart from studying at the same university we didn’t seem to have anything in common.  Apart from the lino-floored, utilitarian kitchen there was no communal space in the house.

The university had bought the derelict housing estate at a bargain price from the council.  Dysfunctional for social housing, the university thought it ideal for students.  I had signed up without seeing it, as there were no halls of residence and I thought at least I’d meet other students here, avoid the hassle of finding a room in this city I knew I loved but didn’t yet understand.  That first night, in shock, I queued up at the one working phone box, hoping to get through to my sister, friends, anyone who I could connect with.  Standing there, in this alien landscape, I felt like an alien.  The others in the queue looked about as shocked as I felt.

I discovered that night that the walls were plasterboard-thin; Theo was up crashing around his room all night.  I even heard him pissing in the toilet next to my head, on the other side of a wall.  How was I going to be able to live here?  I had no idea even how to speak to him about it.

I had a few days before registration at university.  I explored, finding the nearest shop was twenty minutes away and looked closed even when it was open, barricaded with shutters, sold nothing I could imagine wanting.  The streets were badly lit on the way to the bus stop.  The buses infrequent and the nearest tube half an hour’s walk.  Stratford shopping centre was my new town centre, with its mercifully cheap vegetable stalls, a charity shop and rain that came through the roof.

The freight terminal next to our house was busiest between two and six in the morning, I soon discovered.  Theo was up all night, every night and slept all day, and every noisy time he used the toilet, he pissed all over the seat.  I couldn’t imagine what kind of an upbringing would produce this, didn’t want to imagine, but guessed his drug of choice was speed.  I barely saw him.  Amy was at her girlfriend’s most of the time, Mike largely oblivious to everyone and everything, laughing along to Radio 4 comedies while stirring pans of tinned soup. Theo’s frying pans of congealed animal fat and greasy plates stacked up in the kitchen, as the teabag stains on the wall near the bin darkened, the drips layering, spreading.  At least we didn’t have cockroaches like the students in the tower blocks.  Or at least not as many.

Term started and the cycle ride to university was all main roads.  I arrived each day, happy to be out of that house, enthusiastic but tired. The art building was an ex YMCA hostel in Plaistow, shabbily fitted out but with lots of light studio space. I was ready to paint and draw and sculpt.  It was disappointing to notice the apathy in other students, the absence of tutors, but I did my best to ignore this.  Evenings I spent drawing, weekends visiting museums, armed with an A-Z and a travelcard.  I soaked up galleries and markets, parks and sights. This why I was here, I filled myself with inspiration, like a fortification.

Each evening I got home, down the dirty dark, streets past the travellers’ site, which as the nights drew in felt increasingly threatening.  Only a few months earlier my bike ride home from college had been across Midsummer Common, past trees and beautiful flowerbeds, over the Cam, down neatly-kept Edwardian terraced streets.  That seemed another world, another life. I questioned my decision not to apply to Chelsea or the Slade, couldn’t understand why I had felt the need to throw myself into this harsh world, like it was some kind of test I had to pass.

I didn’t care that I’d lost two months rent that I’d paid up front to the university, I felt that test had been passed when I solved my situation, by moving in with Pete, a third year sculpture student.  It was grotty, but I could put my pictures up, made my room cosy, felt spoilt as we had a sitting room and a phone.  No more queuing up at the phone box, no more freight terminal racket, or cleaning up other peoples’ piss or crackling under pylons. I celebrated my relief every day in this new flat.

One freezing night in December, it was Pete’s birthday and he went off to the pub.  I declined, having a painting I wanted to finish.  It was two weeks after I’d moved in, and while I was on the phone, the candle I’d been painting by caught the cardboard box I was using as a bedside table alight.  I heard a weird crackling from the sitting room and returning to my room found my bed on fire.  When Pete returned from his birthday drinks, he found me shivering in the cab of the fire engine. Half the flat was gone.

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THE DAY I WENT BERSERK – by Jim

We unearthed a Viking burial together. A warrior in his boat, carefully arranged with sword and shield, along with a silver bracelet, amber beads and a whalebone comb.  A violent man, maybe, but loved.  Then, having raised the dead, you went back south as summer waned and left me in the sand dunes, until the night I got your e-mail: ‘Wish you were here.’

Next day, I flew 600 miles from the island airstrip, fought through the rush hour crowds, asked a news vendor which platform for Tottenham – ‘What do I look like, a fuckin map?’ – and was swept up in an angry tumult, herded by police, their riot shields flashing blue light. Thinking it was a protest against student fees or capitalism, I bowled along into a shopping centre that was all screaming alarms and hooded shoppers:  a mob stripping an electrics store, while next door two young women tried on sandals and a boy held up a pink top as if imagining his girlfriend in it.  I took something for the sake of blending in, partly, but also wanting a token to bring to you, some sign of a passion more current than the Dark Ages. Then, nearly caught, I scaled a six foot fence with an Alsatian on my arse and bundled an old man into his hydrangeas.

The rioters weren’t all gang members from single parent homes – that was just the ones they recognised. There were plenty that didn’t have form, so didn’t get traced, thank God.  Especially when all I came away with was a box of chocolates from WH Smith’s. That could have got me six months.  And to think I actually went back for them after a masked passer-by dissed my first choice.  “Fuck Celebrations,” he said, squeezing past with an armful of cigarettes and a children’s encyclopaedia. “They’ve stopped doing Topics.”

Finding your address at last, I stood in torn trousers and held out the loot. “And all because the lady loves…” But you weren’t impressed.  “I’d have preferred the other ones,” you said.  It turned out you hadn’t meant everything you said in your e-mail, but it was all worth it for that one night we spent together while the city burned. I think of those doing longer than normal sentences now and know I have no special right to be free, but I don’t feel guilty and I have no regrets. They could bury me now if they liked; with a trowel, a laptop and a box of Mini Heroes on my chest.

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LONDON BRIDGE – by Louise

It was the worst kiss. Unwanted, unbidden. The product of a date that she didn’t really want to go on but had convinced herself she should because ‘it’s so hard to meet people in London, isn’t it?’ Unavoidable:  the face too close, the hand on the back of the neck, the arrogant unquestioning sense of entitlement.  A too fat, too wet, too eager tongue.

Her mind drifts, an attempt to escape, remembering the others…
Albert was delicate, romantic.
Tower was a convenient meeting on a night full of possibility, intoxicated by an unfamiliar part of the city, a grand sweeping gesture.
Kew was the grand passion, all consuming and doomed, as fascinating, beautiful and dangerous as fire.

London Bridge has busy hands, squirming under the edges of her clothes now, but she barely notices. She is far away, staring across the glittering Thames.

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Issue 4: Bloody Heritage

You are most welcome to Issue 4 of The Feminist Jumble Sale.  Have a rifle through Bloody Heritage to find the usual mish mash of fact and fiction, by three writers.  Here you’ll find heritage explored through the remnants and rubble of national heritage, some almost-forgotten pieces of family heritage, a jaunt to see the  international heritage industry up close, and an unpleasant visit to the bloody heritage of East London in the company of a Ripperologist.

As always, both genders are represnted in our blogzine, but this time only one star sign. We hope you enjoy our offerings. We are looking for new contributers to our next issue on the theme of Bloody London, which is due out in early November.  Plenty of fodder there for your haikus, rants, limericks, essays or stories – please send them by Hallowe’en to feministjumble@hotmail.co.uk for ourconsideration.  Especially if your birthday isn’t 24th November.

Plus check us out now on twitter @FeministJumble

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CONTENTS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU AND WHOSE (TERRACOTTA) ARMY? – by Celia

THE FINAL INDIGNITY (JACK THE RIPPEROLOGIST)  – by Emily

THE LAST BASTION – by Jim

INHERITANCE – by Emily

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YOU AND WHOSE (TERRACOTTA) ARMY? - by Celia

I was on a 24 hour  train ride to Xi’an to see the Terracotta Warriors. I had wanted to fly there, but the  English Language school I was working at had commandeered my passport for some undisclosed bureaucratic process and  so armed with nothing but my maroon ‘Foreign Experts’ License’, I headed for Xi’an by train.

I shared my compartment with an age-mismatched couple. Her, with a chubby face and light shining from her wet eyes  behind thick spectacles and him,  hunched and liver-spotted. They fought all night,  hissing at each other in the darkened cabin. Then came morning, they cooed and fawned over each other, finally acknowledging my presence and eager to pose for snaps with me on our bunks.

Looking out at the endless cultivated fields, not a strip of land not utilised, I contemplated what had brought me here. Perhaps it was watching those Michael Palin documentaries at a young age, wondering how the camera crew had caught up with him after filming him leaving on the last ship for four months from the edge of a distant harbour. Maybe it was the boyfriend who left me for a girl he met at the Science and Industry Museum who had made me take off suddenly for somewhere more different than I could have ever imagined. After a few months, I couldn’t remember what my house back in Britain looked like or what the streets had been like. China made me feel free. At times I felt famous, people stared, even followed me down the street and asked to have their picture taken with me. At the same time, I grew up quickly, realising my own mortality and that I was just one person on an Earth home to many billions.

I arrived late and found my youth hostel. The next morning I woke up early. The man in the bottom bunk who was off to climb Everest was still asleep in his woolly hat. It was still dark as I waited outside the Youth Hostel  for the minibus to take me on the excursion. Sitting on the dusty bench and staring up at the city walls, I was about to visit a World Heritage Site. I had been due to travel to Xi’an with two other English teachers, an American nerd type with his super domineering Czech girlfriend. I had met them a months before at a gig, ‘Shit Sandwich’, who were a Beijing punk band. However, the night before our trip the boy had inserted a Q-tip cotton bud into his ear and the top had snapped off so they had to go to hospital to have it removed.

The minibus arrived and I climbed in. I sat at the front in the middle with my feet up on the gearbox. I nodded and smiled at the bemused Chinese holidaymakers crammed in behind me. When we stopped on the road for petrol, all the men leapt out with their leather carrying cases to spark up extra strength cigarettes from red packets. The tour guide suggested we all introduce ourselves. I used 50% of my existing Chinese vocabulary to tell everyone my name and that I was an English teacher, deciding that my other phrases “I’m very drunk” and “Pass me the ashtray” could wait until later.

The tour group came mainly from Southern China and seemed as excited as I was to be visiting such a miraculous sight. I anticipated it to be dramatic in such a way that is would make me sign in wonder and I would feel my heart soar, as I had done when climbing to the top of the giant Leshan Buddha or the Great Wall.

After an hour we arrived at a vast car park and climbed out of the bus. A polite queue formed to have pictures taken with me, this time with members of another tour group who all wore identical yellow baseball caps. There was a young couple selling popcorn which they made in an adapted oil drum. I bought a bag and we headed towards the building housing the warriors.

We climbed up on to a rickety platform constructed of scaffolding poles. There was a white tarpaulin roof covering the pit which we overlooked. It was a lot smaller than I expected and a sandy colour which I had not anticipated either.  Each soldier was unique. Many of them were in an advanced state of decay.  We were told that the visible warriors that had been excavated were only a tiny fraction of the tomb. We were also told that the actual tomb was as big as Brussels. I remembered a boy on a bus remarking how Beijing was as big as Belgium. I hadn’t ever visited Belgium so such comparisons were wasted on me.

The tour guide told us that the Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor had been discovered by an illiterate farmer in the 1970s who had brought up a bucket of water from his well to find it contained a stone hand. She told us that this man was still alive and it would be a great privilege to meet him and on rare occasions he  appeared at the site. The guide also informed us as an aside that all the hundreds of thousands of  workers who had built  the tomb had been killed off and  buried alongside the Emperor at the time of his death.

I turned the corner and saw a group of tourists crowding to get within there was a man wearing a blue jacket with dark wrinkled skin. The tour guide got very excited and told us it was him, the farmer who discovered the warriors! He was signing thick guidebooks full of photographs for a gathered group. We all rushed forward to get one too.

After a while I became tired of listening to the guide who would speak in Mandarin for a long time, then translate a few sentences for me. I wandered away to buy a Chinese take on the Magnum ice lolly, which tasted of off milk and  contained  black beans.

I rounded a corner and saw a group of tourists crowding to get within hearing distance of a seated figure. Nudging forward, I realised it was another man in a blue jacket signing books and smiling for the cameras with another tour guide saying “This is a great honour, he rarely appears here!” I smiled ruefully and make my way back to my own tour group, who I realised had just disappeared into a sea of identical mini-buses in a car park half the size of Belgium.

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THE FINAL INDIGNITY (JACK THE RIPPEROLOGIST) – by Emily, with thanks to Helen

Why do people go on Jack the Ripper Tours of London’s East End? Why do at least fifteen companies provide tours every evening of the week, pretty much every week of the year?  Why are they usually fully booked, making it the most popular history tour in the capital, with an estimated industry turnover of well into six figures per year?  And when they sign up for a tour, what are they hoping to get from it?

I have always been vehemently (to the point of arguing with people I’ve only just met) against the very idea of going on a tour which ghoulishly glorifies the murder of women who worked in the arse end of London’s Victorian sex industry. The fact that the Whitechapel Murders took place 113 years ago makes them no less horrifying to me than the Ipswich murders which took place only five years ago.  And I obviously wouldn’t dream of visiting Suffolk in a tour of Steve Wright’s murderous tyre tracks.

So I can only imagine why the tours and the subject remain so popular.  Books, TV and film have relived and re-imagined the unsolved murders countless times and certainly help prop up the cult of the East End’s most notorious killer.  People do seem to be attracted to thrilling, chilling experiences; there is a whole Fright Industry to cater for these urges.  But Jack the Ripper provides so much more than the London Dungeon ever could.

Firstly, the setting: the filmic fantasy of Victorian lamplit streets, cobbled and misty; dark alley ways; working class pubs and slum housing.  The added bonus is that unlike other parts of London which hold shady, crime-ridden pasts, parts of the East End remain as grim and poverty-ridden as they were a century ago.  Then, the people; the imagined supporting cast of the top-hatted gents, flat-capped barrowboys, bonneted ladies, raucous drunks and bawdy landladies, historical poverty tourism. The stars of the show, however are the main attraction: while the Ripper himself remains shrouded in eternal mystery, his victims are well-known, notorious and crucially lacking in innocence and purity.

Women working in the oldest profession, who picked up clients in the Ten Bells or on the streets, working for their gin or a room for the night by providing cheap knee-tremblers and hand jobs.  And the fact that such women were brutally murdered while doing their last client, killed because of their trade, because of their “fallen” status, because they are women.  And everyone knows that the allure of a sexually motivated murder of women far outweighs any other type of murder – as the popularity of detective shows, from Morse to The Killing clearly indicate.

Although one of my day jobs is in heritage and I am a self-confessed history fanatic, with a passion for East London history in particular, you would never have seen me dead traipsing around Spitalfields with a load of American tourists, looking at patches of tarmac where in 1888 some women’s corpses were found. But, in order to write about this subject for this issue’s Bloody Heritage theme, I unfortunately had to sign myself up and experience a Ripper tour for myself.

I found a willing companion in Helen, and picked a tour at random from the richly competitive selection on offer.  I was slightly worried I might be proved wrong in my preconceptions, that I may find it fascinating or intelligently and sensitively delivered, but decided to keep an open mind when I turned up at Aldgate East Station on a rainy evening in August.

Our guide, a Ripperologist we’ll call Jack, began by gathering the twenty six rain-sodden tourists in an alley next to the Whitechapel Gallery for a historical preamble, delivered in a slightly angry tone, with a West Country twang, in the manner of a cabaret performer who despises their audience.  It included offensive jokes about ethnic cleansing in 19^th Century Russia and Poland leading to the overcrowding of the East End.  As an elderly Bengali woman shuffled through our group with a walking stick, we were treated to Jack’s opinion of 19^th Century street prostitutes: “Forget young Keira Knightlies, with lovely long hair and pretty faces.  Think Susan Boyle before the makeover.” This exercise in historical contextualisation also included a warning about the local hoodies, (“don’t say come on , then,  because they will”) and finished with some advice for the “gents”, that the “pros still work some of the same streets and alleys, so if you’ve got £20…”  The tone was duly set; Helen and  I stared at each other, aghast.  If not on a self-imposed research trip, I would have left then and there.

As Jack led us to our next stop, he announced, no screamed, that that was enough of all the history stuff, we were now going to find out about “whores being murdered – because that’s what you came for!” Much as the popular press’s coverage of Steve Wright’s killing spree, or any other instance of sex industry workers being murdered throughout history, the victims are defined entirely by their profession; they are whores or vice-girls first, women or people second. The fact that they work as prostitutes is all we apparently need to know about them, for it explains their vulnerability, disposability and morally-deserved ends.

Our guide does provide us with a little more detail about the women, however, as we “meet” each one at or close to the place of her death. Our first victim was “5’3” and fat” and was murdered in an alleyway having received 39 stab wounds, which Jack helpfully acted out for us, before mock-dying and laughing.  The next victim was described as being 43, with five children and five teeth missing: “Five was obviously her lucky number!”  We were then unnecessarily informed that this impoverished, homeless, alcoholic single parent even had the audacity to wear a new bonnet on the day she died, in an obviously futile attempt to make her look more attractive.  The insinuation clearly that she was so lacking in desirability, she deserved to be brutally murdered and disembowelled, or as Jack preferred to put it, “turned into a jigsaw puzzle”.  But he says the Ripper wasn’t a sadist, because most of the violence was perpetrated after the women were dead.  How he arrived at this psychological assessment was not made clear.

It was around now that Jack explained his profession as a Ripperologist, and does the first plug of his “bestselling” book on the subject.  Helen was particularly appalled by the term, saying that Ripperology is the pseudo-science of revelling in the violent deaths of women working in prostitution.  Giving themselves this professional-sounding title is an attempt to give credence to their misogynistic obsession by making it sound like some kind of criminology/sociology/psychology combination.  But there was nothing in the tour that fell into any of those categories, there being absolutely no analysis or theories offered or even contextualising in terms of other psychopaths.  The tour was pure gory description, an excuse to promote hatred of women in general, and particularly women who happen to be ugly, fat, bad tempered, alcoholics or prostitutes.

The next woman we found out about was the Ripper’s oldest victim, at 47, and as her post mortem showed advanced TB, “she was going to die anyway.”  There is no discussion of how and why a terminally ill, older woman is still forced to sell her body in highly dangerous circumstances, and the obvious desperation this indicates.  The poor woman’s extensive and brutal disembowelment and genital mutilation are described in detail, but according to Jack, the final indignity she suffered was that rings were taken from her dead fingers.  I would have thought that in the dignity stakes having property stolen somewhat pales into insignificance when compared to being repeatedly stabbed in the vagina.

I was feeling sick by now.  As we gathered in the former Dorset Street, now a car park next to Spitalfields Market, we are treated to a description of the spot’s 26-year old victim.  Jack omits to rate this woman’s appearance, but instead focuses on her personality.  Perhaps her post-mortem police photograph shows a pretty face. We are informed that she had a terrible temper, so terrible that her common-law husband left her.  The fact that she lived in the “worst street in London”, had to have sex with strangers to pay her rent, was alcohol-dependent and an extremely harsh life are not put forward as reasons for her temper, and we are not given information on the husband and his moods.  The night she died this young woman had apparently met a friend and fellow prostitute, Mary Ann Cox; Jack can’t resist dazzling us with his woman-hating wit: “interesting surname considering her job!”

We now reach the peak of Jack’s theatrical misogyny, are shown an optional photograph of the woman’s corpse, which is passed round face down, for those of us “chicken” enough not to want to see it, while Jack lists in graphic detail all the victim’s injuries.  A second photograph is shown, which shows internal organs on a table next to a body.  Our guide delights in the details, the brutality, the blood and the guts.  Most of the crowd are frowning and looking worried.  We are implored to put ourselves in the shoes of the poor photographer, who had to live with that image for the rest of his life.  And to pity the poor policemen who attended the scene. Every man mentioned in the historical narrative is presented sympathetically, but not once throughout the whole tour are we asked to empathise with any of the Ripper’s victims.

As police vans screeched past, tourists looked nervously over their shoulders while Jack exclaimed that he was standing exactly where the bad tempered, murdered woman’s body had been discovered.  At this point a young member of the tour actually fainted, falling hard on the tarmac and hitting her head.  Jack was visibly alarmed, probably fearful of litigation (the woman was American) and he spent some time fussing with water and tissues, giving my compadre a grateful opportunity for a cigarette.  When the fainter was deemed fit, our guide started up the “comedy” again, declaring that he’d definitely be mentioning it in future tours.  He clearly took the fainting as a compliment to his theatrical horror skills.  He’s probably bragging about it to a group on that spot right now.

Crossing Middlesex Street, and therefore the boundary between the East End and the City, we hilariously gain a 50% increase in our life expectancy (poverty is so funny).  St Botolph’s church at Aldgate East was apparently known as the “Whore’s Church” in Victorian London, because a blind eye was turned to soliciting in this area, as long as street workers kept walking.  So, we were invited to imagine visiting the area in the 1880s, when we would have seen a load of “tired old slappers walking round and round the church.”

The final victim we learned about was a widowed Swedish single mother, whose alcoholic husband had died in the workhouse.  The night she died, she had apparently been warned to be careful, but ended up dead with a face so severely mutilated she could only be identified by her hair.  The tour reached its blessed conclusion in Mitre Square, where there was a lot of very dull cobblestone-related talk, some shouted opinions about how all the theories about the Ripper’s identity are wrong, and the full book promotion, with the kind offer to sign copies.  We didn’t stay long enough to know whether Jack made any sales.

During the course of the evening, we passed at least six other tour parties, one with a group of at least fifty people trailing along.  As Helen and I headed in search of an urgent and very large drink, (not in the Ten Bells), we wondered whether any of the other tours had been subjected to such an extraordinarily appalling performance for their £8. And wondered whether all the attendees of our tour had got what they wanted from the experience.  If so, then I had been worryingly wrong about why people go on these tours.

The Ripper’s victims were people, women with mothers, fathers, lovers, children and friends, women who wouldn’t or couldn’t work in the factories of dirty, grim industrial London, who relied on drink to ease their discomforts and relied on prostitution to pay for their drink and feed their kids.  Their job was to walk the streets and alleyways of cholera-ridden and labyrinthine East London, and met their extreme, desperately unfortunate ends performing their last job with the wrong client.  Jack’s narrative implied that each of the women he discussed deserved to die: for being ugly, for being old, for being ill, for being bad tempered, for not being careful; for working in the sex industry.  What these women’s other life or work options may have been was not mentioned.

Victorian prostitutes were more independent than married women, and earned more than matchbox makers or textiles workers, just as women working in the trade today may earn more than unskilled minimum-wage labour opportunities.  But they were unprotected, then as now, by the society which both needed and despised their services.  Unprotected, assumed to be unwanted and therefore unmissed, women working as prostitutes have frequently been targeted by psychopathic killers throughout history.  Our tour guide did not discuss the possible reasons why male serial killers select sex workers as their targets, what kind of insanity or hatred or misogyny may have led the Ripper to commit these crimes.

Helen and I ended the evening feeling that the same motivations which led the Ripper to commit his extreme crimes must have inspired Jack to take up his pseudoscience and make a living from shouting at people about “dead whores!” night after night.  Helen queried whether to be a Ripperologist you had to already be dead inside – or whether choosing this “profession” leads you to become dead inside. Whichever, people like him and his industry continue to promote the view that women are somehow deserving of violence. Women living in poverty and being sold or forced into prostitution is as rife now as it was in the 19^th Century, society’s attitudes just as prejudiced, and the dangers just as real.  The “pros” Jack promoted at the start of the evening will all have stories, reasons for ending up where they are in life; perhaps trafficked, perhaps owned by violent pimps, perhaps addicted to crack or smack or perhaps just trying to feed their children.

The Ripperologist, shares and promotes the Ripper’s own views of women as punishable by death and disembowelment. He actually keeps the Ripper’s work alive, and worse, makes a tidy profit from it. This tour really was the final indignity to the Ripper’s victims, to all female victims of male violence, to all women everywhere, prostitutes or not.

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THE LAST BASTION – by Jim

  As the man behind the bar I’ve got full control of the big flat-screen on the far wall.  During the day it’s like an all-male care home I’m running in here and I don’t think pish like Celebrity Flog It! gives them enough dignity in their old age, so I just stick the sport on.  My favourite thing is the interview with the defeated football manager right after the game. Forget the smug, victorious ones who refuse to single anyone out – give me the guys who are trying their very best to say it’s a big ask to come to a place like this and get a result, but look like they want to tear the reporter’s throat out and can’t quite stop themselves questioning their own goalie’s commitment and the referee’s integrity.

Sometimes, when it’s really quiet, I plug my boy’s Playstation in – he’s found other forms of amusement recently – and play Premiership Manager.  It’s all buying and selling, tactics and strategy.  I’ve also got a shoot ’em up, Operation Valkyrie, where you have to try and assassinate Hitler.  It’s appropriate to have a bit of military history on show, because this is the British Legion.  Around the walls, between the fruit machines and the dart board, are pictures of Britain’s finest hours – the Dambusters, Dunkirk, Scots Greys giving the malky to Napoleon’s men – and a load of regimental coats of arms.  A lot of the regulars have been Jocks at some time or another and there is still a bit of friendly rivalry going around, though one old boy took it too personal when I called him a sheep shagger – the nickname for the Black Watch – and actually swung for me.  He half-connected, threw himself off balance and landed on the floor.  ‘Everybody gets one shot at the title, Rab,’ I said, picking him up.  ‘Now sit down and have a drink.’  I reckon I’m the only one that’s seen active service more recent than Korea.  Fourteen contacts, in total, in five different conflicts.  A contact, in case you didn’t know, is when someone tries to kill you.  The net result is that I’m still here and a few other people, from various parts of the world, are not.

It’s probably the furthest flung Legion in the country, this one, and you would sometimes even wonder if you were still in Britain. The real locals barely speak English themselves, and the rest of us are a bunch of mercenaries and vagabonds. Come to think of it, a few more of the punters might count as ex-army if you included armies other than the British one.  A couple of the barstool diehards are IRA men, or claim to be, who got into too much trouble with the wrong people and came here to avoid being knee-capped.  Their idea of supporting the nationalist cause now is refusing to buy a poppy.  Then you’ve got your former Warsaw Pact people coming in and a couple of blokes from the Indian who like a game of snooker.  Watch out for suicide bombers, say the regulars, but I’ve noticed these particular guys like a fly pint, so that would rule them out as serious Taliban suspects.

Another thing that’s changed in recent years is the sheer number of gay people  in the place – well, at least one couple of either persuasion.  Everybody knows the hairdresser and his pal from the shopping centre, and now we’ve got the two paramedic women.  Fair play to them, it was that pair who stepped in and gave big Eddie the kiss of life during the last Old Firm game.

As far as my own love life’s concerned, I’ve been relegated to the settee since coming home.  I wasn’t there for her while our kids were growing up – now the boy’s in all sorts of trouble just when she’s got her hands full trying to look after her mother, and what do I do now I’m back but drink beer and watch Formula 1? She stopped short of throwing me out because she feels sorry for me, trying to deal with money and housing all by myself after a lifetime in the army. There was a rumour that she was seeing one of the guys in the pipe band during my last tour, though she denies it.  Good luck to him, I say, because they’ve not got a lot to shout about in the band ever since coming last in a national competition, even after the Legion paid for a trouble-shooter to come up from the mainland and help them tune their pipes.  It costs a fair few bob to run a pipe band, so they know their sporrans are on shaky nails.

In my book, whatever people believe and whoever they’re sleeping with, it’s live and let live.  Like when that u-boat commander turned up for the unveiling of a memorial to a ship he personally had sunk.  ‘Gotcha!’ he must have thought, in German.  It’s all within the rules of war.  In saying that, the one exception is probably Bosnia.  Our unit found a village full of bodies – men and women, grannies and kids. I never did get the bloodstains out of the boots I was wearing that day.  I reckon we were partly to blame, the amount of standing around we did before the order finally came to take the blue covers off our helmets.  We let rip then, good and proper, though it didn’t really put things right.  I’ve been in two other wars since, but that’s the one that still keeps me awake at night, despite all the counselling and the various tablets.

After commanding 30 men in battle, it’s a bit of a comedown to be looking after a roomful of geriatric drunks for less money than my own daughter gets in Tesco’s.  But knowing how to conduct a house to house search or deal with an improvised explosive device are not skills you see on the person spec for most of the local vacancies.  Security work – that’s what a lot of the guys end up doing and I had a go at it for a while, patrolling the oil terminal.  I came across a fellow in a tent one morning, just outside the perimeter fence, a young bloke.  There was no point getting heavy because he was obviously a lost soul.  I took him to the tea hut and he turned out to be ex-Marines, not long back from Helmand.  He’d lost two of his buddies in a rocket attack – friendly fire from a drone.  It’s all very well, modern warfare, without the kilts and bayonets, until some nerdy wee guy in a command centre in the States, with his thumbs on something like a Playstation console, selects the wrong target.  Then it’s Game Over for a bunch of your mates.  The upshot for the young marine was that he couldn’t hack staying in a house any more. The boss thought he might be a green protester and started to call the cops, until I took the phone off him and hung up. The boss is a great one for showing you who’s wearing the trousers and up to that point I’d been taking it off him, but I knew the boy was on the level.  It’s the post-traumatic stress.  I could actually see the appeal of it, wandering round with a rucksack and a tent –  an option worth considering.  Anyway, as it was Friday, I invited everyone to the Legion, including the marine and the boss.  It was going okay until the boss gets a drink in him and starts complaining about my attitude, tries to give me a dressing down in front of the lad and everyone else in the bar.  That’s when I decided to make a new fire exit with his head.  I got three months for that, but I met some decent blokes inside. What a place for veterans – it was more like a Legion than the Legion – though no one else with the final rank of Sergeant, it has to be said.  It should have been Sergeant Major, incidentally, but I got into a dust-up with an RSM and lost a stripe.  Oops.  It affected my pension, but, as I say, it doesn’t do to be backing down all the time.  Still, me getting the jail put the tin lid on things as far as the wife was concerned, what with the boy already awaiting trial for possession with intent to supply.  In the end my three months was reduced to six weeks and our lad got a suspended sentence, so that was a relief.  It wouldn’t have been that funny if we’d ended up as cell mates.

It was while I was in there that I learned to play computer games, which gave me an interest, though my virtual football team made a disastrous start to the season with a 6-0 defeat at home to Stoke.  All I did was send the assistant manager out to handle the media while I locked the door and knocked seven bells out of the whole team, including Ronaldo, who was on loan from Madrid but looked like he was more interested in his hairstyle than anything else. Now I’m a free man again and they’ve given me this job in the Legion, even though the dent I made in the wall with the security boss is still there, so I can’t really complain.

I was standing in here earlier listening to Sir Alex Ferguson describe Wayne Rooney as a great lad who has just been led astray at times, when they cut to a news flash about a tsunami in Japan.   The room went quiet as we watched the sea sweeping in, wiping out everything in its path, then lying like a colossal body-bag over the whole landscape.  Awesome.  Mind you, it sort of put me off the tent idea – what chance would you have?  Not that the Jap buildings stood up to it for long, even though it’s  part of their heritage, isn’t it, earthquakes and tidal waves?  The survivors did just seem to be accepting it, trying to pick up the pieces, and there’s a lesson to be learned there – when shit happens you have to pull together.  That’s what you tell your troops and it’s what I’m going to say to the family when I get home tonight.  It’ll be like a half-time team talk, though if I’m being honest, with all that’s been going on, this is probably one of those times in life when sport becomes irrelevant.

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INHERITANCE – by Emily

Emily (1901)

Our mother says I was lucky to get this job, and she’s most likely right, but I don’t like him, the butcher.  Being a maid these days is being a glorified dogsbody, and I knew I’d be helping with the baby and cooking and cleaning, and helping missus with all the household work, but he has me washing down the shop floor every day too – all that blood and sawdust.  I am lucky to get some tripe to take home to ma and Bea, though, so I shouldn’t complain.  And the little boy is bonny.  I love it when missus sends me on an errand with the baby in the pram; I like to take a long walk along the docks. I like to count the masts and wonder what’s come in on all the ships, or watch the fishermen unloading their nets.

I wear my coat and best hat for these excursions, and stay out as long as I can if the weather’s fair.  I feel proud to be a working woman, pushing the pram and letting the ladies I pass by admire the baby. When he’s asleep I like to stare out at the muddy Hull, and watch the bridges being operated to let the ships in and out.  Sometimes I wonder what will become of me.  I’m seventeen and hope I won’t have to be in service for ever.  Will I have my own bonny baby one day?

The sailors and dockers are awfully friendly, but I know I mustn’t talk to them much; people would talk.  Having the baby in the pram makes me respectable, but I still have to walk on by when they call out to me.  I wonder if I’ll ever get to go courting with one of these young fellows.  Chance would be a fine thing.  I have to get back to make the baby his tea and do the ironing and missus will be wondering where the groceries are.  Hopefully I’ll be too late to help scrub down those butchers’ blocks. Sometimes it’s worth mister’s anger if it gives me a break from that smell. I’d rather the smell of mud and fish and the sea any day.

Doreen (1979)

A nice piece of cake and a nice cup of tea.  I love Songs of Praise and I love singing! And tea.  Muriel says I make the best cup of tea in Hull.  I’m not very good at making cake but it’s alright if Muriel helps me.  But I’m very good at knitting!  I like making blankets and shawls, Muriel taught me when I was little. At church this morning we sang For Those in Peril on the Sea – which is my favourite.  It was my dad’s favourite too.  I learnt the words from a book that we got at the library.  A big book full of songs.  It’s my favourite book.  We sit down, Muriel and me, and we watch Songs of Praise.  Sunday is the best day of the week.  I’ve got my best dress on and my new beads from the charity shop where I sometimes help out.  And we sang my favourite.  Dad used to hum it when we went to visit him at the bridge.  He had a very important job, making the bridge go up and down.  Muriel would take me there when we were out shopping.  He doesn’t do it any more. He died. I saw all my friends in church.  The minister said I can help out at the Christmas fair – on the tea stall! I’m good at making tea, Muriel says so.  And I can help with the cakes too. And take the money from the customers – and count it all up at the end.

Muriel (1931)

It was a bright September morning, and Doreen had shiny new shoes for her first day at school.  I walk the familiar route, holding my little sister’s hand tightly. In case she stumbles. I must’ve walked this way a thousand times, more – when I was at school, and when I used to take and collect little Ron.  Now at last it’s Doreen’s turn.  Doreen is laughing to herself, and trying to disentangle her hand but I won’t let her.  “Stop being so daft!,” I say, and she giggles.

Ma had combed her youngest daughter’s hair this morning and tied a new, blue ribbon.  She checked her nails were clean, tucked a clean hankie into the little cardigan pocket and as she kissed her on the head at the door, said “You be good now, our Doreen.  I don’t want to hear from the teacher that you were naughty at school today.” I saw her wipe a tear from her eye as she waved us off.

I could tell Doreen was excited but she didn’t really know why.  I explained that that she’d be learning lots of new things like her ABCs and meeting lots of other boys and girls.  I knew she’d be a slow learner, but had no doubt that she could learn. As we got closer to those old school gates, I started thinking, wondering what I might do now that Doreen would be at school.

Perhaps I’d be able to go to secretarial college, or get a part time job in a shop.  Secretly I’ve always wanted to work in the haberdashery department at the department store.  She loved sewing and imagined the feel of those big shears slicing through some fine fabric.  She’d be good at that.  She certainly didn’t want to go into service like her mother, but not so many girls were doing that now anyway.  Girls! How silly I am – I’m 20 now, no longer a girl. But there aren’t many jobs, times are hard, I imagine I won’t be able to be that choosy.

As we retrace our steps back home, I replay the head mistress’s words.  I’m terribly sorry, but we can’t take a Mongol child at our school.  She’s different to all the other boys and girls and just won’t fit in. She can’t learn like normal children.  We can’t help her at all.  You do know there are special institutions?  Many families find it best to just forget when they have a child like that.

Too shocked to speak for a while, when we neared our front door, I said to my bewildered sister, “Right, our Doreen, it looks like I’ll be teaching you your ABCs instead”.  She laughed, saying “A, B, C, A, B, C.”

Muriel (1990)

If I’d had children, I’m sure they’d think of me as a bit of an old burden by now.  But my nephews are good to me.  I was sad to say goodbye to the family house, but they were right, I couldn’t really manage the stairs any longer, and it had felt so empty since Doreen died.  I was happy for a while in my little flat, but time came in the end to move here.  The last stop on the line, I call it.  I don’t like it, but I’m not as young as I was! I still see my friends – those who are left – and a couple of the ladies in here are alright for a game of gin rummy, or as company to watch Songs of Praise with. But, although it’s called a “Home”, it will never be home to me.  Home is where there’s people you love, people who love you, where you all muck in together.

There’s not much love here. No one mucks in.  The carers come round with tea that’s always a bit cold and over-stewed, or shout loudly to ask if we’ve taken our pills.  It’s embarrassing.  I try to just ignore it, or have a laugh to myself. Most of the people just sit there, asleep or half asleep.  I’m glad I’ve got my knitting, my crochet and my books for company.  One of the other ladies and I are knitting squares to make up into blankets for the poor babies in Africa. It’s quite simple, and I miss doing finer work, but my hands are too stiff for smocking now.  Neither of us has grandchildren and our nieces and nephews – and even their children, my goodness –  are all grown up now.  I like to get letters. And I like writing back.  But there’s not much doing here.  And the telly’s always too loud in the lounge.

Muriel (1926)

Now little Ron was at school, and my big brothers left home, I was delighted that there’s be another new baby in the house.  With four brothers, I really hoped it would be a girl.  I imagined brushing her hair and making her clothes, teaching her things.  Our mother said I mustn’t wish for a girl or a boy – that I must just hope it’s healthy, and delivered safely.  The most important thing is that it’s loved, she said.  I had no doubt, could not imagine that this late, unexpected addition to our family would not be loved.

When the day came, I was sent for the midwife.  There was no money for a nursing home, but our father had insisted that we get a midwife, what with Emily being an older mother this time.  I had to help with getting some spare linen ready, filling the baby bath with hot water, making sweet tea for our mother and the midwife.  She had been much younger when Ron was born, and had been sent to the neighbour’s that day.  I paced the house, awaiting the next instruction, trying not to hear the moaning, the shouting, my mother in terrible pain.  I made myself busy, peeling potatoes for the family’s tea, pegging out the washing in the back garden.  I so wanted to go and see our father at the bridge, where he worked, operating the machine so that it opened when the ships came in.  But I was needed here.  I peeled enough potatoes for two or three family teas.  I counted the hours until he’d be home.

Later that evening, when I’d fed Ron and washed up, our ma called down.  “Muriel, come and say hello to your sister.” I raced up to see them, my mother propped up on pillows, holding a tiny bundle, the midwife packing up her bag.  “What shall we call her, ma?” I asked.  Emily sighed, “I like Doreen.  Such a pretty name for my new little girl.  But we’ll have to see what your dad thinks.”

Emily (1926)

She mustn’t let Muriel or Ron see her crying at the sink as she scrapes the carrots.  She’d told them everything would be fine, that as long as they all loved her, that Doreen would be fine, they’d all be fine.  But she knew it would be hard, having a Mongol child.  She was tired, so tired, and felt old, worn out. This baby will be slow to develop, she’ll be prone to illnesses, the nurses said.  Even feeding her takes an eternity.  How would she be able to keep caring for a handicapped child into her old age?  Although maybe Doreen wouldn’t live that long – Mongols don’t have a long life expectancy, she’d been told. The doctor had said there are institutions, “homes” for “abnormal children like her”.  She was proud of William when he said firmly to the doctor that no child of his would be going to an institution.  He didn’t explain to the doctor why he felt so strongly, but Emily knew.  He had never spoken much about his childhood, but she knew that he and his brother were sent to the Sailors’ Orphan Home when their mother could no longer feed the family.  She knew that was how he got his apprenticeship.  But there was no way he would send his daughter away.  They would love her and care for her at home.

When I discovered I was in the family way again, my heart sank.  We thought after Ron that our family was complete, and I was getting on a bit now, hadn’t expected another child to come along.  I did want another girl, of course, but worried about another mouth to feed, another little soul to take care of.  But when I told William, and he was over the moon, I let myself look forward to the baby.  He was so delighted he twirled me round the kitchen like we were 21 again.  I began to ask around for baby binders and a cot – we’d got rid of all the baby things when Ron was out of nappies.

Muriel will of course be a help.  She’s already helped so much with Ron.  With all my other boys grown up, some of them married now, I knew I’d have to rely on Muriel.

Muriel

Oh I got used to the taunts – “Your sister’s a Mongol – put her in a home!”.  I’d say, “She is in a home.  Our home.  Where we look after her and love her.”  Silly people.  I got used to taking my little sister everywhere with me, in a pram, walking along the docks or around the town.  Mother was so tired, I liked to give her a break whenever I could.  And Doreen was nearly two before she could sit up properly, so that pram was used for years. We’d always go to wave at our dad at the bridge.  Doreen loved this – especially when we caught the bridge going up or down.  She would point and laugh.

When she could walk, she used to follow me around everywhere, and loved to play at helping.  She got under my feet and would laugh when I told her to mind out the way – it made her get in the way even more; it was her sense of humour.  I taught her to count and she liked to help pay at the shops, and count the change.

I used to wonder what would become of us, but nothing much did.  We got through the war, unlike many families. We looked after our dad after our mother died and after he died, it was just the two of us in that house.  People still stared at Doreen sometimes when we were out and about.  But she never noticed, and I didn’t care. She was my blessing and my burden.  I could have done with more of a hand from some family members, of course, although I did get the odd holiday – went on my jollies with friends to Bridlington, or Blackpool, ate ice creams on the pier and had a change from my daily life.  But I never once wished my little sister away.  The day she was born, my future was decided; she was my inheritance.  I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.

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Issue 3: Bloody Weddings

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The Feminist Jumble Sale cordially requests your presence (and presents) at the wedding of the century! There’ll be jiltings,  bad dancing, tears at the altar and shattered dreams in abundance.  Please take your seats amongst the elegantly  suited and booted, yet rather tipsy, extended family members for the Feminist Jumble Sale Bloody Weddings edition. Our third offering features new contributors Nicola and Louise and our first playlist courtesy of this issue’s  token man, Matt (and Spotify).

CONTENTS:

Our Song by Nicola

Bloody Weddings Playlist by Matt

Landlocked Blues by Celia

The Best Day of My Life by Emily

A list of all the things I have done for you this year by Louise

Bloody Wedding Dresses by Emily

Issue 4 Heads Up

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OUR SONG by Nicola

Weddings ~ the first dance ~ our song. Is this just a coupley conceit or does uniting over a tune really strengthen and prolong a happy healthy relationship? From first date until separation (or not), ‘relationship experts’ would say it’s important to have shared interests and music in particular is an art-form worth bonding over… well it depends on the song obviously, especially if you expect me to come to your wedding and smile approvingly as you fawn all over each other on the dance floor.

Not being romantic in the traditional sense of the word, I’ve never found myself in the situation of picking one song to represent the passionate and undying love between me and another.  (The fact that I have never been encouraged to do so may indicate that I date similarly unsentimental types!) And if ever asked by a friend/colleague/market researcher what the first dance at my wedding would be I’m usually stumped for an answer, though the stock reply of ‘Love will Tear us Apart’ has passed my lips in particularly uninspired moments.

To be honest the thought of having to pick a three-minute song with a few verses and a chorus (and possibly a middle eight) to summarise my feelings for someone else does not appeal much. Firstly because I am prone to putting my foot in it – a recent dedication of ‘You’re the One for Me Fatty’ being a case in point – but also because I know that whatever I choose will stay with me for the rest of my life, or at least until I get divorced. My dad apparently proposed during ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ and regularly joked that this was the colour he turned when my mum said ‘yes’. After 34 years of marriage the joke never wore thin… for my dad at least.

Having said all that my mind has returned to the subject on occasion, during the first fresh blooms of a new romance or on a quiet day at work for instance, and the sound of 1960s girl groups do tend to resonate around the heart and head. Songs by the Ronettes, Crystals, Shang-ri La’s, Chiffons, Marvelettes, Velvelettes, Shirelles etc perfectly capture that feeling of being young and besotted. For me, ‘Be My baby’, ‘He’s Sure the Boy I Love’ and ‘Great Big Kiss’ remind me of having the most overwhelming crushes – both as a girl and more recently as a more worldly (read: jaded) lady. Those pleading lyrics, backed up by a phenomenal wall of sound, perfectly capture the process of the emotional becoming physical: the burning desire for attention, the aching need for reciprocation and the devastation of loss.

If I were writing this with a grounding in feminist critique instead of from a platform of ignorance known as ‘personal opinion’, I would go on to dissect the problem of young and poor Afro-American girls singing songs written by older white males and the question of exploitation that this throws up. I know the influence of Phil Spector in particular is an eyebrow raiser given his behaviour towards women both inside and outside the recording studio. However, in terms of putting into words and executing perfectly in melody those feelings that have both amazed and crazed me there is none finer than these popstrels. I just don’t know whether dancing to ‘Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow’ on your wedding day is recommended practice.

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Bloody Weddings reception disco megamix by Matt

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LAND LOCKED BLUES by Celia

He was standing in a call box on Portmadoc high street when she told him the wedding was off.

He had never seemed able to keep any credit on his mobile since they had started seeing each other so he had taken to using the local phone boxes quite a bit of late. They were different these days, requiring somewhere in the region of eight pounds worth of change to be deposited before beginning the call and often, in a vain attempt to compete with smartphones, had keyboards for  you to email and update others on your progress through life via the ever-changing myriad of social networking sites. This one had dirty windows and smelt of what he was desperately trying to convince himself was Farley’s Rusks, but was much more likely to be piss.

They had sent the invites out and everything. She had bought the dress, a mint green sari. Neither of them were of Asian descent, she had just quite fancied it. Something different, like her. She had also invested in an elaborate feather headdress which he later found out was known as a ‘fascinator’. The name delighted him.

Hanging up the receiver and listening to the coins dropping down, he turned to open the door. Even with both palms on the smeared glass it was difficult, all his strength seemed to have suddenly evaporated now that the news he had been half-expecting had finally broken.

He walked over the bridge in a daze. Past the yachts and fishing boats. Past the record shop where he had spent his Saturday afternoons as a youth, flipping through the racks and which now survived on selling second hand vinyl over the internet. He focussed on a seagull high up in the sky, just floating on the currents without any purpose. He looked like he was having fun.  He was passed by a gang of women on a hen do coming in the opposite direction. They spanned at least three generations, yet all wore bright pink leotards and tutus and smelt strongly of spilt cider. Most of them looked extremely fed up and quite a number of them were crying; their liquid eye liner, mascara and lip gloss in various states of decay: across, around and down their faces.

As he walked, he visualised one wall of the room that he was on his way back to. It had been  decorated by him, covered completely with photos of her in every guise. Sexy in that red strapless dress. Effortlessly sultry and eating a yoghurt. Just woken up and grumpy, wearing an over-washed Joy Division T shirt with her hair piled up on top of her head and sticking out in all directions.

When he reached the house, he put the key in the lock,  let himself in and tiptoed upstairs. His parents would both be asleep in their separate bedrooms by now. He ran a bath and robotically climbed in, barely feeling the nearly too hot water envelop his skin and turn it bright pink. He thought maybe one of the reasons his teenage years had been so debilitating and had seemed to take so long was because his parents had never invested in a shower. He had spent so many hours lying in that very same enamel tub with the green tear mark below the hot tap, reflecting on so many things, quite literally navel gazing for what would have been hours, had the water not got cold and his Dad hadn’t banged on the door and told him to get out and do something with his life. Showers for him still seemed to belong to the realm of the dynamic go-getter; he had still never quite mastered the art of not getting water all over the floor when he took a shower at a hotel or at her house.

His parents had never married. He thought maybe that was why he had wanted to so much. None of his friends were married. Blake, who was to have been his best man, had had a girlfriend for a while and they had even gone and got matching tattoos at a tattoo convention in Southport, but they had never seemed keen to tie the knot.

He lay in bed. The duvet covered his whole body and head. He stuck one full leg out of the side as he was too hot, but he liked the feeling of pressure and mild panic the duvet brought on. It made him feel inexplicably secure. In his ribcage bubbled swathes of guilt and regret, but only from time to time. He felt permanently distracted, as if his bodily systems were not willing to let him feel the full impact of the news just yet. When he did feel bad, it was largely due to the practical anxiety of cancelled flights and lost deposits. He anticipated the slow trawling through of emails to contact caterers, photographers and florists and telling them not to bother. It wasn’t to have been a big do, just a registry office with some friends and family.

At last he slept, face down and dribbling into the pillow case that had once belonged to his late grandmother. He dreamt vivid versions of a hyper-reality: of washing up, e-mailing, watching TV.  He was awakened a couple of hours later by foxes copulating loudly in next door’s garden. It began to rain. He thought he was going to have to take the photos down, but decided to put this off for another day.

They had met on an  internet dating website. They had bonded over music and after a particularly animated discussion about Bright Eyes on the dating site’s instant messaging service, had agreed to meet at a pub in Manchester.  He had been early and sat in the pub reading Eric Hobsbawn until she arrived. He had also made a CD for her and brought it with him. She had brought a series of her own poems on scrap paper which she left for him one by one when she went away to the toilet.  It turned out to be quiz night at the pub and they had a go, coming second to last due to their insufficient knowledge of 1970s TV presenters and Dr Who. They both felt sorry for a drunk old man who kept shouting out the answers and was slow hand clapped out of the premises by the new younger, trendier crowd that had recently come to dominate that area of the city. After last orders, they walked  arm in arm  around the streets, out of the inner city as far as the suburbs,  talking about what their lives had been about up to that point: work, friends, films, politics, books.

He was surprised when he found himself in love with her a few weeks later. It was a Thursday afternoon and he was sitting  in a traffic jam on the way back from work. At the temporary traffic lights, listening to the Beta Band on the car stereo, it hit him all of a sudden and that was it. She was so different to anyone else he had been out with, he hadn’t expected to feel like this. The feeling of wanting to be with her and never let her go led him to propose a few months later. She had seemed shocked, but had said yes straight away. His friend Andrea whom he had worked at the library with until both their jobs had been cut had seemed morally outraged that he would agree to marry someone before cohabiting. But to him it made perfect sense, at least in the less rational side of his brain. She was really beautiful and funny, so funny.  Andrea was probably just feeling neglected and envious because he never went down the pub after work anymore.  He had to drive to Manchester every Friday night now to see her. His friends had become a distant memory, he never had any credit to ring them, but he reckoned they would be happy that he had met someone.

After a few weeks of being together, they had started to argue. Only over really trivial things like him not putting things back in the fridge or closing cupboard doors. He had taken  this as a sign of their closeness and suitability for each other. She had seemed very busy and aloof for the past few months; he had known something was up, but had no idea where to begin to make it better.

Now he was in his bed and she was gone. He stayed in that bed for some time. Not just hours, but days and weeks. The redundancy money from the library was enough to keep him going for a while. Some of the pictures began to peel away from the wall, blu-tacked corner by blu-tacked corner. He began to  look beyond her to the details in the photos. The Muller Fruit Corner with the lid partially peeled back. The faint tan line on her shoulder. A slight imprint of a pillow under her eye.

His parents were quiet at the news and treated him with respect and distance. Blake and his mum did their best to cancel the plans that had been made and preserve his apparent tranquility in the wake of the break up. His dad had always been distant, but now bowed his head in sad reverence whenever they passed each other in the kitchen or outside the bathroom.  In his bed, his daydreams consumed and healed him, began to make him strong again.

After some time he awoke one morning with a strong urge  to leave his bedroom and  venture into town. Crossing the bridge he spotted the sign painted in red,  intricate yet  bold as a Bob and Roberta Smith artwork: BOAT FOR SALE. He stood there and was transported into a catatonic state.

He would return home via Somerfield where he would pick up enough cardboard Pampers boxes to fit his entire record collection. Leaving only the B-52s and Sparks albums behind, he would  drive back down to the record shop and emerge with just enough money for the transaction. He would then hand this over to a silent, wrinkled old man with a pipe and beard and the sailing boat would be his!

He would climb aboard wearing a stripey turtle neck jumper and a bright yellow lifejacket. She would be ringing him on his smartphone; his parents having presented him with one prior to their tearful farewell due to its top notch GPS tracking facility and pre-installed round the world sailing app. There would  already be numerous missed calls and five answer phone messages, all from her. She would be ringing and ringing. Suddenly there would be a gust of wind and the boom of the boat would swing to the side. The phone would shoot out of his hand and land, not in slow motion, but very quickly, in the bay. He would feel a sense of calm as the phone floated down below the surface and  out of sight.  He would look out into international waters, proud as a decorated soldier saluting a fly past and  he would pull up the anchor,  guide the boat expertly away from the quay and out to sea.

He did attempt to dial the number for the boat’s owner, but realised he had no credit before he even pressed the call button. His daydream made him grin widely as he headed back up to his parents’ house with his record collection intact in the same bedroom of his youth.

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THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE by Emily

Which would you like to see first – the video or the slideshow?  Let’s start with the video.  I know it off by heart now!  Every time Mister (that’s what I call him now – and he calls me Misses!)  and I sit down to watch it we still can’t quite believe that it’s captured you, arriving late – having held me up!  You come rushing in, all flustered, you’ll see in a minute.  No, don’t be sorry, we laugh about it.  Now.  But you had no idea how long I had to wait in the car, for the latecomers to get into the church so I could make my entrance.  Obviously the bride must come in last!  Anyway, here we are – isn’t it a lovely church?  We chose it because it was so quintessentially English, oh, and here you are – bursting in.  You look like you’re wondering if you got the right wedding!  And your hair’s all over the place.

So this is my favourite bit, just before I walk in, the camera sweeping over all our friends and families, everyone looking really excited but, you know, serious at the same time.  Da-na – here comes the bride!  Look how sweet the bridesmaids look in their royal blue dresses, and I am still so pleased with the dress.  Such a perfect dress; I see finding it as one of my personal triumphs, that I’ll always look back on with pride. Obviously I wanted to wear white, it had to be  a traditional dress, but with my own personality stamped on it, do you know what I mean?  So it was my idea to add a bustle and a royal blue bow to match the bridesmaids.  This bit’s nice – you can see one of the bridesmaids drops her posy – bless! –and the other one pick it up for her.  Ahh.  And now, look, we get to see my Husband at the altar!  I’m still getting used to calling him my that – sounds so grown up doesn’t it?  I’d never seen him looking so smart, and do you like the way his cravat matches the blue theme?  I had to choose the suits, of course, because men don’t have a clue about these things do they? And look at the best man, Mister’s best mate of course – I bet you’re used to seeing him looking like a right scruff, down the pub, – but look at him all suited and booted.  Didn’t you have some kind of thing with him once?  I seem to remember a rumour, or was that your sister?

The ceremony was just perfect, wasn’t it?  The poems and readings and hymns – we selected them to make sure everyone felt a kind of blessing on the day, you know?  I know you’re not a believer, but I bet even you felt it was a really special, spiritual occasion.  Didn’t you?  I think everyone did.  Look it’s bringing a tear to my eye even now and I’ve seen this umpteen times!  It’s the bit where he says “I do” – gets me every time.  Doesn’t it make you want to get married?  Are you seeing anyone at the moment?  Oh well, I’m sure Mr Right will come along soon, you won’t be on the shelf forever.  Actually when he does, you’ll be the last member of your family to marry won’t you?  All your cousins, your sisters, all settled down now.  Well, it’ll certainly be a big celebration when you do!  I promise not to be late!

Did you enjoy that?  I could order you a copy if you like.  While I’m sorting out the computer,  let me just tell you about how much fun it was spending the vouchers we got as wedding presents.  It’s such a big decision choosing the plates you’ll eat from as a married couple, possibly for your whole married life.  We couldn’t decide whether to go for classic or modern, and in the end kind of compromised.  The important thing was that it was a decision we made together, as husband and wife.  I’ll make you a cup of tea in a minute and you’ll see what we chose.  I think you’ll be jealous – wouldn’t you love to be able to get all new stuff and be able to throw away all that mis-matched charity shop china?  Surely that’s enough to make you hurry up and find someone special.  Ha!

So here are the piccies – I’ll do it as a slide show – everyone drinking champagne at the start of the reception.  Look!  There’s you – I think you’re on your first or second there.  And there are the bridesmaids – they’ve had enough of their flower garlands by now – and there’s your mum and your nieces and cousin.  You look quite similar don’t you?  Except their hair is their natural colours.  And here are a few shots of the dinner.  I hope you didn’t mind the table we put you on.  It’s so hard getting the seating plan right, especially where to put the single people!  Not to mention when there are broken families to deal with!  Nightmare.  At least that’s not a problem on my side of the family! We didn’t think you’d want to be on a table full of kids, so we put you with Mister’s friend from work.  Actually, he was meant to come with his other half but they split up recently, and we thought you’d be able to cheer him up.  Actually we were trying to do a bit of matchmaking – any luck? No, I suppose he was a bit depressed, it was soon after his break up.  Unfortunately he was the only single man there, apart from my brother’s gay friend, but he doesn’t count!  Shame, but you can’t say we didn’t try! And those other couples, actually they were friends of my mum’s, all nice people, I’m sure you found something to talk about.  There you all are, saying cheers to the camera.  The wine bottle on your table went down quite quickly didn’t it!  You certainly look like you’ve had a few by then!

The speeches were lovely weren’t they?  You missed most of the best man’s one – you weren’t deliberately avoiding it were you?  Shame as it was really funny, you know, really personal but he only overstepped the mark a couple of times.  It was especially near the knuckle about me!  His girlfriend told him off after, but we all laughed.  My dad’s not much of a public speaker but I loved what he said about me being his princess – and finally off his hands!  Every woman should feel like a princess on their wedding day, shouldn’t they?  We’re all little girls at heart, really.  Aren’t we?

Actually it was about at this point that I almost had to pinch myself – I couldn’t quite believe it was really happening, that the best day of my life was finally here.  I knew i’d get him in the end, but there were doubts, especially the first time we split up.  He came back to me because, as he said, he’s a man and he has his needs!  After he came back to me the second time, I decided I was never going to let him go again and by the end of that year I had the engagement ring to prove it. And now, look, this wedding ring that puts the seal on it. Forever.

The next pictures are all of the dance floor and there are some great ones of all my sisters doing a routine, and your uncle freestyling – there!  All the kids are running around by now.  That’s our first dance.  I think this was the most romantic part of the day for me, because the church bit was the solemn and serious bit.  We did practise, but we all know he can’t dance.  But I made it clear it was expected – it was our wedding day!  His mates all hit the dancefloor in this one, they’ve all had a few.  And is that you in the background there,  yes, you’re dancing with the best man.  Where was his girlfriend while you two were dancing like that!  I’d better make sure she doesn’t see this one!  I don’t think there are any more of you.  Or him. Had you had enough of dancing by then?

I was so glad I saved the bouquet-throwing until the disco, it made it more fun.  Shame you weren’t there to try and catch it.  I was really pleased my cousin caught it.  Although she’s only 16, she might be the next one to get married!  And she was so pleased.  thinking back, I think I was about her age when I first caught a bouquet – the first of many! – and I wasn’t the next to marry.  But never mind, I got there in the end.

Actually there is one more with you in – look you’re in the corner there, you look like you’ve been crying.  Probably with happiness, right?

So fingers crossed it’ll be the christening next!  No, no happy news yet, but hopefully soon.  Unlike some, we like to do things in the right order, so now we’re married I’m really keen to start trying.  Biological clock and all that.  And I’d hate to be an old mother.  No, I know I’ve still got a while, but I don’t want to take any chances.  How old are you now?  Oh.

Anyway, Mister and the best man will be back from the pub soon.  I’ve been trying to get him to cut down now we’re married, but he seems to go even more often!  Me and best man’s girlfriend often watch telly together now, we call ourselves pub widows! Not that they are married; she’s still waiting for him to pop the question.  Do you think he will? Shall I show you the pictures that we’ve chosen for the album?  Are you sure you can’t stay? They’d love to see you. I haven’t even made you that cup of tea yet, what am I like?

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A LIST OF THINGS I HAVE DONE FOR YOU THIS YEAR by Louise

Spent a substantial sum of money and several hours travelling to a ‘luxury’ destination that I had no interest in going to in the first place.

Contacted all of your old friends and asked them to send photos of you and write nice messages to you which I compiled in an expensive photo album. You took this entirely for granted.

Listened to your tales of seating plan controversies and the merits of melon versus mozzarella salad.

Wrote nice things about you and a man I hardly know in an overpriced and tastefully chosen card card – which you did not acknowledge receipt of.

Spent a very boring day sitting on a chair with an inexplicable bow tied around it, saying nice things about you to complete strangers.

Smiled through gritted teeth as middle aged women patted my arm and said reassuringly, ‘Don’t worry, dear, it’ll be you next’. I have no wish to be next. Ever.

Had my bottom pinched more times than I care to mention by ‘hilarious’ uncle Arthur.

Made nice comments about the catering which was the likely cause of the compulsive vomiting which afflicted me throughout the journey home.

Sent you a note when I got home (once the vomiting had finally stopped) to say thank you for inviting me to share such a special moment in your life.

…since you ask, a simple thank you would have been nice.

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BLOODY WEDDING DRESSES by Emily

On a recent plane journey I had the misfortune of catching part of an American “reality” wedding-related show called Say Yes to the Dress.  I have no idea how representative it is of the current state of the current American TV offer, but I did find myself morbidly fascinated for about ten minutes, before it stopped  killing time, instead seemed to extend it eternally.

The premise of the show is entirely lacking in drama or relevance to anything: some women are getting married; they need dresses; said dresses must be purchased from the wedding dress emporium on which the show centres.  The programme makers have found, somewhere at the bottom of the barrel, some small dramatic pressures; that of time (the dresses must be ready in time for the appointed wedding date) and money (the brides must be able to afford their choice).  Basically it’s a show about shopping, and the only reason I can think that this is enough of a reason for the programme’s existence is that its focus the semi-mystical cult of the bride, represented by enormous, expensive white garments.

We meet the shop’s proprietor, an overly-groomed and very camp,  sneering wedding-dress Nazi.  To counteract him slightly are two good-cop assistants who show token quantities of humanity towards the hapless belles.  So this is the team that the women are up against – an unnecessary combination of supporter and adversary, which still fails to increase the dramatic tension in any measurable way.

Next we are treated to an introduction to the women, and here some slight further dramatic obstacles are introduced into the mix.  X has to find a wedding dress that will work with her bump, because shock! Horror! She’s pregnant! Y must find a frock that is short enough for her to dance all night in, as her Latin roots demand, and Z has a tight deadline.  Her betrothed is a soldier and they must marry on his next home leave.  These are obviously all extremely tough challenges for a team of professional dress-shop assistants, but they bravely take all the women on and the search for the dream dresses commences.

I endured part of Z’s story before turning over to watch Avatar again (it was a long flight).  We are allowed a little of her backstory: She was raised by her dad, mom having left when she was small.  She remains daddy’s little girl, but is marrying her soldier boy so that he has a wife waiting for him rather than a mere girlfriend, when next away in I-Raq, dodging friendly fire or massacring insurgents or whatever it is he is paid to do there.  Explaining this to the camera brings a tear to Z’s pretty young eyes.  But that’s enough about her life, family and personal choices: the show is about dresses and we are on a deadline, remember.

The reason her dress has to be perfect, we are told, is that Z has been planning her wedding day since she was 12.  Will the shop be able to fulfil her childhood fantasy?  I’m obviously on the edge of my economy class seat by now, as Z explains her requirements.  We cut to the good-cop assistants, who explain that the hardest part of their job is to help women very slightly rethink their ideas.  Wedding dress Nazi steps in to proclaim that whatever women say they want, he always knows best.

Accompanied by these weird people, we sweep through the massive shop that is a sea of white, cream and ivory satin, silk and nylon.  In the cult of the bride, the only colour is white, and the law seems to decree that all frocks must be encrusted with beads, lace, frills and ribbons.  As the cult followers are grown women who have stuck rigidly to their childhood fantasies, wedding dresses must conform to Disney’s warped vision, obviously.

A selection of dresses is brought to the waiting bride, who is being supported by a whole entourage of cult followers, including her dad and her chief bridesmaid.  Z tries on a frock and parades in front of her team, who all promptly cry about how beautiful she looks, while the wedding dress Nazi looks on, cynically.

Quite how the programme makers introduce some obstacle to this being The dress I will never know, as I can bear it no longer.  I will also never know how X and Y get on with their choices, but I have a feeling that all the women went home several thousand dollars poorer, toting massive bags of frothing white tulle, maybe having shed a few tears at some point in their “journey” towards buying a dress.  But I am left wondering why I took so much notice of the programme.

The cult of the bride is a fairly modern phenomenon.  In the last century women married in order to live with their boyfriends.  They wore a nice dress for the occasion, had some sarnies , cake a glass of wine and that was that.  The cult is obviously heavily supported by the wedding industry, a lucrative business, which promotes the infantalising of women. Listening to Z’s explanation of her 12-year-old self’s dream wedding dress, I was upset for several reasons: that she wasn’t embarrassed to be admitting that she is sticking to ideas she had about her future which she developed in pre-adolescence; that the whole programme and hence industry validates her wish for immaturity; that this possibly intelligent, grown woman wishes to be a waiting wife for her soldier husband.

This woman, along with X and Y, is in fact making a decision which will affect her entire future.  An emotional, sexual, financial, familial and legal choice, which will make breaking up expensive and unnecessarily complex.  Her life choice is reduced to a 12 year old’s dream of being a princess for a day, worshipped by all the cult followers, being the desperately needy centre of attention, before the realities and drudgeries of married life leave the photos as the only reminder of fantastical perfection.  It is unspeakably ridiculous.

Imagine a male equivalent of this programme.  Three grown men are asked what they had wanted to be when they grew up.  They then have the opportunity to dress up and pretend to be a policeman, fireman or astronaut for the day, in a special shop.  Everyone cries that they got to live out their childhood fantasies, and then they go back to their normal lives.  Mr Benn aside, somehow I don’t think it’s a goer.

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ISSUE 4 HEADS UP

The fourth edition of the Feminist Jumble Sale is due out in early September, and we are pleased to announce the theme of Bloody Heritage. We’d love your musings and creative outpourings on this theme by the August Bank Holiday weekend.  please send to feministjumble@hotmail.co.uk

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Issue 2: Bloody Women

Welcome to Issue 2 of the Feminist Jumble Sale.  This edition’s mixed bags of donated goods have been unpacked to reveal another lovely selection of story, essay and review on the promised thorny theme of Bloody Women. We’ve laid out our stalls below for your enjoyment: 8 pieces of new writing by 6 people, at least three of whom share a birthday, including two new contributors and not one but two token men.

The Feminist Jumble Sale needs you – we relish and welcome your comments, donations and ideas for future themes.  Please send writings to feministjumble@hotmail.co.uk and post your comments and theme ideas on the blog.  Issue 3 on the theme of Bloody Weddings (plenty of fodder there - thanks Irvine W) will be out in early July.

Bloody Women Contents:

Slap – by Emily

Scooter – by Charlotte

The Duchess of Duke Street - by Celia

Anniversaries – by Jim

The Gift – by Amanda

Down Amongst the Vines – by David

Picnic at Alwalton Lock – by Emily

Red Riding Hood Film Review – by Amanda

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SLAP by Emily

Any situation involving mass human contact can bring on a bout of misanthropy, but there’s nothing quite like a journey on public transport to exacerbate a mild underlying irritation to the point of murderous rage.  Normal annoyances become monstrous when people are forced into each others’ personal space and trapped in a metal box, usually under some kind of time pressure, forcing us up against the worst examples of bad manners, inconsideration, gormlessness.  Annoying people doing annoying things literally in your face is an unpleasant start to many peoples’ working days.  Of all the many offending behaviours, from gum-chewing to phone-based rudeness, from litter-dropping to snogging, the one which drives me to distraction – and to moving seats if at all possible -  is bloody women putting on their bloody make up on their way to work.  I must stress that I’m talking about a quick re-application of a bit of lippy, or a mirror-check for smudged eyeliner.  I’m talking about women doing the whole thing from scratch.

My irritation at this is complex, and I go through a number of responses every time I see it happen, which is on most bus commutes to work (ie several times a week).  Here I aim to get to the bottom of why seeing women putting on their faces causes me so much aggravation.

Firstly, there’s the obvious thought: why the hell didn’t she get up 20 minutes earlier?  The rest of us on the bus managed to make ourselves look presentable before leaving the house, so why can’t she?  Lazy cow. This is pure jealousy; of course I could have done with half an hour more kip before another day at work, if only I could get over my issues of the wrongness of public make-up application.  But imagine if every woman on the bus were doing it?  It would be like a mobile backstage dressing room and would actually be ridiculous.  The few women who do do this must think they are special.  And this makes me hate them.

Then there’s the issue that really, no-one should have to see anyone else’s “make-up face”.  Applying creams, powders and pigments to various parts of the visage requires some facial acrobatics; fact.  The grimaces and rictus grins rendered necessary look stupid; another fact.  No-one looks good while coating their eyelashes in shellac or their cheeks in rouge.  They look like fools, gurning at themselves into tiny mirrors and everyone seems to have their own special faces to pull depending on what is being applied and where.  This whole ridiculous exercise is embarrassing and should be done in private, like nose-picking or toenail-cutting.

More fundamental is the transgression of private and public; a social rule being blatantly broken. She is performing an extremely personal, intimate act in a public space and this makes me feel uncomfortable, like I do if I see someone pissing behind the bins on my estate, or fondling their lover’s ear for an entire bus journey (both of which I have experienced this week). I recently witnessed an offender on a 243 applying not just make up, but starting right from the beginning with a big pot of moisturiser.  Massaging creamy lotions into one’s skin is a private and intimate action and for the sake of common decency should be kept in its place: the bathroom or boudoir.  From moisturiser to finished face it took all the way from Dalston Junction to Clerkenwell.  In the morning rush hour this is quite a while.

This transgression connects to another aspect of the problem: the exhibitionism of it, the brazenness.  Some offenders take out vast make-up bags, and an array of “professional” brushes, applicators and products.  This is showing off, pure exhibitionism, and acts as a judgement on those of us who learnt our make-up skills from reading Just 17 when we were 12.  I imagine that these women want us to watch, learn and admire, as they show us how it should be done, note their skills at perfect eyeliner application while rammed up against fellow passengers on a heavily-braking 254. Well, they can fuck off.  I didn’t ask for a make-up tutorial on my journey to work.  I just want to read the paper or gaze out of the window.  Women who insist on treating the top deck like their dressing-table disrupt any possibility of reverie.

The exhibitionism of it is also a kind of public narcissism.  Witnessing a woman gazing intently, admiringly or critically, at her own face in a small mirror is quite horrible; the self-absorption and evident self-love is unpleasant to be forced to view.  Imagine if men sat on the bus gazing at themselves like that in mirrors?  The very idea is preposterous. This brings me to another question which I can’t help notice flying through my head when witnessing the public application of slap: What on earth do men think when they see this behaviour? I’m slightly disturbed by my own question here. Who cares what men think?  They probably don’t notice, or care, and certainly don’t judge, like women do.  I think this thought stems from embarrassment again; I feel embarrassed as a woman, as if these public-maker-uppers represent my gender and show it in a bad light to the other gender. And these thoughts prove I do care.

Of course, all of this leads me to consider my own relationship with cosmetics. I first fell in love with make up at about the age of 10 when I tried out my auntie’s mascara.  I grew up in a make-up free home, and discovering her stash of eyelash enhancements by the hall mirror, I felt I’d entered some kind of exciting and new world.  The love affair continued; the night I first kissed a boy I was wearing cheap market-bought mascara which smeared all down my cheeks  and no-one told me. By 13 I was hanging around the cheap make-up counters at Boots on a Saturday, spending hours deciding which products to but with my paper round money.  By 14 I was experimenting with all sorts of colours and designs, Siouxsie Sioux being my inspiration.  Tessa Rigby showed me the best way to apply eyeliner in the public toilets in Cathedral Square one drunken Saturday afternoon.  At school I was never without my powder compact, and served many a detention for insisting on wearing make up daily to school.  Since then, apart from a weird phase in my late teens, I’ve been enhancing/hiding/transforming my face with all sorts of powders and creams and pencils.  I enjoy it – it’s a creative act, allowing me to look how I want to, like who I want to be.

But it is not simply a creative act.  It’s a much more complex ritual, creative self-expression somewhat negated by the more sinister conforming to certain norms or standards of beauty, acceptability.  Beginning with pale concealer on dark circles, blotches and pigmentation patches, the next step is foundation, set with powder: this provides my blank, primed canvas.  This stage is all about correction implying that my face is somehow mistaken or wrong in its natural state.  My eyelids then get some colour – a powder, usually a blend of two or more colours: greys or purples or greens.  There is no correcting going on here – this is the fun part – deciding what colour to be today, whether to match my eyes in any way with my tights or top or jewellery choices.  Eyeliner follows, and while that dries, eyebrows get some pencil, brushing and tidying.  I hate doing this, but find I need to define my brows otherwise they are so pale they don’t really show…AS IF ANYONE ELSE NOTICES OR CARES!! Lastly, it’s mascara time, which I always overdo, I can’t help it, I’m still 10 when it comes to this product, my desert island make up.

Once I’ve done all this, I have my public face on, ready to face work or friends or the shop assistant at the corner shop.  I rarely go out without this face – certainly never to a social or professional situation.  I rarely see my own face naked, sometimes when I do I don’t recognise myself; I look younger and also older – more tired, unkempt, raw and vulnerable. Make up can never make eyes sparkle, but it can brighten a hungover, tired or heartbroken face, conceal the tell-tale signs of kissing someone who hasn’t shaved.  So, this activity is both about concealment and enhancement, introversion and extroversion, creativity and self confidence. I love seeing other women who have made themselves look fantastic with a particular swoop of eyeliner, or a lipstick colour that suits them.  I also judge women for putting on too much, or wearing false eyelashes in the daytime, or wearing brash and hideous colours and sheens, blushers and highlighters, ridiculously re-positioned eyebrows.  Likewise, I sometimes find myself thinking when I see a woman with no cosmetics if only she’d just make a bit of effort… I feel sad when i see a woman stuck in a make-up timewarp, and wonder when this will happen to me.

When I see advertising for make up it makes me feel embarrassed that I am so shallow as to be a target for these ads.  Products that promise “perfection”, “radiance”, “flawlessness”, “purity” (foundations) or “millionised”, “maxed-up”, “volume” (mascara), or “intrigue”, “allure” and “confidence” (lipstick) I feel disgusted by the marketing and the promise and, worse, the fact that these ideas appeal to me. Can make up really make a woman more beautiful?  Does any amount of slap increase a girl’s physical appeal?  Is it not purely the way a woman feels that shows on her face, whether it is “corrected” or “enhanced” or not? Beauty, after all is supposedly in the eye of the beholder. But perhaps not if the beholder is forced to witness the gurning and lengthy process of facial transgormation.

No wonder seeing other women perform these private rituals of transformation in public cause my mental anguish of a morning: for all these complex associations, and for giving away our secrets, our insecurities and our guilty pleasures.  The act of slapping it on on the bus is a betrayal.  It exposes us.

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SCOOTER by Charlotte

My mother, the 1970s feminist

Recently said to my son, “you can’t ride your sister’s scooter,

Because it’s pink.”

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THE DUCHESS OF DUKE STREET  by Celia

You and me. We look up from our Google maps print out with rosy cheeks and friendly grins on our faces. A result of the intoxication of our burgeoning  friendship and of venturing somewhere new: a quiet side street just a few steps from the heavy footfall of shoppers and tourists on Oxford Street. That is, until she decides to wipe our smiles away as best she knows how.

We look up at her, our eyes scanning her red dress. It  has been carefully crafted by a master couturier just enough until it looks like it has been picked up from a PDSA charity shop in Hebden Bridge. She holds a long black cigarette holder which strangely bears no cigarette. Clearly, she herself has not drawn the style parallels with Cruella DeVille. A raised eyebrow tops off the vision.

“Is this the place you are looking for?” Her intonation implies she may  be dubious that her question would have any remote possibility of being answered in the affirmative.

“Erm, yes, I think it is” I look down at the map again.  ” ‘Le Chambre d’Aout’. Oh yes, that’s the one” I bumble in my chirpy teacher’s voice; the one I usually reserve for attempting to pacify confrontational teenage girls during form time.

“Have you booked a table?” Again, the extremely doubtful tone, this time combined with a running down over the clipboard with the empty cigarette holder.

“Well, no, we just wanted to watch the band. Can we stand at the bar or something?” This is your teacher’s voice now, perhaps last unveiled for the group of Hackney youngsters who you took on a tour of the churchyard, only to discover later that one of them had pinched the large padlock from the door of the vestry.

She doesn’t really make it clear that we can now enter, she merely resumes her conversation with a tall blond boy with hair in his eyes. We slip past with heads bowed and enter the room.

It is beautiful and so grand that a mist seems to hang in the air above the diners at the small circular tables all the way up to the eaves of the curved high  ceiling. People whisper to each other in the pearly hue  of spherical lamps. There are plants, flowers, even a tree. Everywhere it seems there is  ivy over the walls and ceiling.

We headed straight for the bar. It isn’t like bars I am used to, with beer: lager, ales on tap. Maybe a J2O or Corona in the fridge behind. Everything is chrome and there are no visible drinks to point to and say “Can I have one of those please?” There is a dark blue piece of card. It  has a velvety feel. We turn it over and it was a menu. “Maybe we could get a cocktail each” you say tentatively.

We start to laugh at the vodka. It is £200 for a bottle. Suddenly the bar man is upon us. “Ah, the vodka, an excellent choice.”

I tell him with a laugh that I work in the public sector and it is a bit out of my price range. He raises an eyebrow and asks, “Oh, you’re a public servant, are you?” We choose a couple of extortionately priced bottles of Japanese lager and try to find a seat.

I try perching at the end of a long table occupied by two girls wearing twin sets at the opposite end. One of them clicks her fingers at me and makes a sweeping gesture across the empty table, calling, “every one of these seats is occupied!” A credit card receipt for £300 flutters to the floor on the breeze. I hope for a myriad of bad things to happen to her, knowing that they probably won’t.

We end up sitting in the gangway to the kitchen on two plastic chairs behind a pillar in the corner. Waiters rush by with endless plates on which lie minuscule portions of burnt fish.

The alcohol fails to have any effect. We sit and take in the atmosphere. It had been your idea to come here. A Friday night out after a busy week. A temporary  ‘pop up’ club in a former Chapel in the Centre of town, to drink, watch bands and enjoy ourselves.  Maybe you read it in Time Out or a very distant friend of a friend  sent you an invite on Facebook. And so here we are.

The band comes to the stage. There are two people in the  band. A slim girl with straight peroxide hair stands at the front. She is  wearing a floor length yellow crocheted dress and has wild eyes.  A man with stubble and shoulder length dark hair sits behind her. He plays the drums and she sings and strums a mint green electric guitar with bitten nails flaked with chipped red nail polish. She addresses the inattentive crowd in a broad Lancashire accent. The song they are about to play is about how her and the man had been in bed eating a sandwich and an olive had fallen out of the sandwich. They are married. I have never tried an olive in a sandwich, but I vow to give it a go on her recommendation.

An extremely drunk Malaysian businesswoman in a gold suit moves towards the girl at the foot of the stage and tries to look up her dress. The music gets louder and faster until the feedback is so much that everyone has to put their fingers in their ears. Suddenly there is a flash and a loud bang and a puff of smoke as if a magician has just performed his final trick. The sound system  blows out and up and the girl and the boy leave the stage looking sheepish. We are enamoured with the brief performance and rush to the front to pick up the warn drumsticks that the man has just flung from the stage. One for you and one for me, we will treasure them.

We are queuing for one toilet. There is another cubicle, but the light isn’t working. I can hear voices. I think there are two people in the one cubicle we are waiting for. Suddenly a girl emerges from this cubicle and barges past the queue and out of the door. She quickly returns and goes straight back  into the cubicle. I think maybe her and her friend are  doing a pregnancy test so I don’t want to disturb them and bang on the door. Suddenly the blond haired boy from outside bursts into the women’s toilet. He goes straight to the front of the queue and begins banging on the cubicle door. “Tash!” he cries “Tash, where’s my Charlie? Where’s my Charlie, Tash?” At first I think  Charlie to be a small boy, like Charlie Brown from Peanuts or a boy from my primary school. But of course in the next instant I know, class A drugs. Expensive ones you stick up your nose. The one that made that former soap star’s nose fall out so she just had one massive nostril in the middle of her face.

Finally Tash emerges.  It’s her. Cruella from the door has a name.

They are all talking at the same time. It seems as if their jaws can’t keep up with all the words that they want to come out of their mouths. One girl is insisting on the cinematographic supremacy of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. Another boy seems to be saying lots of unconnected  words with intonation suggesting enthusiasm for his subject. Tash turns to look at us, she is sweating and her pupils are enormous. Suddenly she bucks and vomits all over the floor, her friends now stand silent and slackjawed, looking at her with disapproval and embarrassment. We jostle past them and escape to the street heaving with laughter and running for the night bus.

When I cycle past a few months later, there is no trace at all of the Chambre D’Aout except a few stray leaves of ivy in a builder’s bucket in front of a derelict building with white washed windows.

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ANNIVERSAIES by Jim

I let the heavy door fall onto its latch and stood in the pitch dark.  Your eyes don’t adjust in that kind of blackout – it was like the deepest corner of an abandoned mine – but I could sense a presence and was trying to get a fix on it.  Something moved to my left, in the corner where my room was.

‘Are you there?’  I asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Can you let me by?’

I edged along the wall, opened my door and got the light on. Michael’s angelic face was revealed, floating in the outer space of our hall.  He hung around out there a lot, often just a glowing point of orange as he dragged on another fag. There was a high turnover of characters in these bedsits – who knew how they all ended up here? I gave him a friendly wave and closed the door, sat down and once again looked up at the picture of Jane and the baby, stuck to the cupboard above the sink.

There was a loud clunk as Malky, my neighbour, plugged in his sound system. He had pretty diverse tastes, but today he was going for hardcore dance.  I decided to make a social call.  With the exception of his psychiatric nurse’s uniform, which always hung neatly from the wardrobe door, Malky’s room was like a library that had been ransacked by a chain-smoking, junk-food bingeing alcoholic.  Inexplicably, he was kneeling in the middle of this mess, stripped to the waist and flexing a metal bar in front of his chest.  I perched on his bed and picked a textbook off the floor.

‘ “Time does not heal all wounds. There is no significance in the first or second anniversary of a loss”.  Who writes this crap?’

‘It’s nearly a year since your missus threw you out, I take it?’

He put his arms back and squeezed the gizmo behind himself, head bowed in a gesture of penitence.  His nickname was the Dalai Malky and he doubled as the flat guru.  I pretended to have to think for a minute. ‘Aye.  It was Guy Fawkes Night.  A year today.’

‘Well I don’t agree with the book,’ Malky reassured me.  ‘It builds people’s confidence, knowing they can get through a whole year after something heavy.’

I watched him contort himself into a weird balletic pose with the exercise tool.

‘Have you met someone?’  I asked.  I’d noticed that whenever Malky did something out of character, say for example wash his hair, there was usually a woman involved.  He tossed the muscle spring into a corner, fished a jumper out of a pile on his chair and performed a smell-check for freshness.  ‘Who is it?  Another nurse?’

‘No.’

I looked on as Malky dressed in a corner of his cramped boudoir.  Like his music and book collections, his wardrobe had been assembled from second hand shops, but not with the same arty finesse – it was just a right heap of tat.  Nevertheless, tonight he had created a definite look.  With a holey black polo neck, greying jeans with the knees gone and scuffed boots, he looked like the Milk Tray man after being shipwrecked for three months.

When someone knocked on the door, Malky kicked a curry carton under his bed and adjusted the curtains.  He opened up and in slouched Suzie, the sexy-but-scary Goth who had recently moved in.  Of course!   Malky’s black outfit must be designed to match hers. There was a tendency for him to mimic his girlfriends in some way, dabbling in their addictions or their belief systems.  Like his ‘therapeutic relationship’  with a displaced Basque separatist he’d med on the detox ward, which looked set to destroy his liver until, one night, in the nick of time, she emptied his pockets and left.  This had been followed by an agonizingly chaste affair with a Pentecostal student nurse.  That one came to grief during a sunbathing trip to the park, when she sleepily opened her eyes to find him staring like a madman at her groin.

‘Hey,’ Suzie husked, slinking round the hazards of the room and settling beside me on the edge of the bed. ‘Coming to the game?’ she asked me.

There was a telly in the hall and sometimes we would get together on a battered couch to watch a film or a big match. ‘Probably,’ I said, edging my way out.  ‘Maybe see you later.’  Closing the door on them, I silently wished Malky luck.  He might be heading for another fall, but he’d had more of those than the FTSE index and still he was emotionally solvent.   No sooner had I re-located the door of my room than Malky burst out of his.

‘Have you got any coffee or that?’ he asked.

‘Sure.’

‘Oh and two mugs.  Clean ones.’

‘What’s going on?’

‘I invited her round for coffee, but I’ve not got any.  Plus I don’t have any milk or sugar.  Or mugs.’  Unfortunately, The Art of Home Entertaining had never made it onto Malky’s reading list.

‘Right. I’ll bring them through, okay?’

‘Aw, cheers.  That’s great.  Just milk in hers.’

I looked up once again at Jane and the wee one – nearly two now.   It would soon be Christmas…

‘Oh, just in time, black with two sugars.’  Ted, the elder statesman of the place, had found his way in and I realised I’d been stirring the coffees for some seconds.

‘Sorry, these are for the customers in Booth Two. Back in a mo.’

When I returned from delivering the drinks, Ted was standing patiently at the window, enjoying the panoramic view of Glasgow.  His cropped white hair, weather-beaten sports jacket, zippo and cheap cigar gave him the air of a burnt-out hack.  He divided his time between bookies and pub and I was expecting him to tap me, but for once I was wrong.

‘Listen, do I owe you any money?’ he asked, proffering a wallet-full of notes.

‘No, actually, we’re all square.  Good day at the office?’

‘Aye. What do you think of this?’   He produced a games console from his pocket.

‘Nice, but not really my thing…’

‘It’s Michael’s birthday the morra.  Do you think he’ll like it?’

‘Oh, sure.  You’ve taken an interest in him, eh?’

‘I don’t think he’s had many breaks.”

‘You were saying he was in a home.’

‘Aye.’ Ted looked out the window. ‘ “There’s a thousand stories in the naked city”,’ he chuckled, and the pair of us stood there, watching as fireworks exploded across the skyline.

Later on, I returned from my nightly meeting to be greeted by a row of faces, aglow in front of the telly.  Apart from Malky, who was on night shift, everyone had gathered in the hall for the late kick-off.  Ted had already made a fair dent in his carry-out.  I squeezed in at the end of the settee, next to Suzie.   Scotland were away to some former Soviet republic that none of us had heard of and were being completely outclassed.  Well before the first goal went in, I had started to focus most of my attention on how tightly Suzie’s leg was pressed against mine.   It was strange to have the familiar sadness of following Scotland accompanied by strong feelings of arousal.   Ted started an ironic chorus of ‘Bonnie Scotland…’, but none of us joined in.  By the final whistle he was out for the count and Michael had disappeared, but Suzie was still huddled against me.  She woke the old guy up while I switched the telly off and we guided him to his room in the lingering phosphorescence.

‘Think the landlord’s every going to fix this light?’ I asked Suzie, when we found ourselves alone in the dark.

‘Dunno. Care for a nightcap?’

‘Well, as long as it’s Ovaltine.  You know I don’t drink.’

Suzie’s room was a kind of bat cave, full of black clothes, posters, make-up and CDs.  As she made us hot chocolate, I felt a growing excitement, mixed with disloyalty towards Malky and even Jane.

‘I wanted a word about Malky,’ she said.

‘Oh, aye?’

‘I think he’s falling for this girl I know.’

‘Uh-huh.’

‘It’s just that I know he’s definitely a lot more interested than she is.’

‘Sounds familiar.’

‘I’ve tried to warn him not to get his hopes up, but I’m afraid he’s going to get hurt.’

‘Malky’s a lot tougher than you think.’

‘He thinks the world of you, you know.’

‘He thinks the world of me?’

‘Sure, why not?’  She gave me a long look.   ‘We all know you’re a bit messed up about your ex, but…’

‘Yeah, well,’ I cleared my throat.  ‘I’m getting there.  Malky’s been great.’

‘I feel better knowing you’re there for him too.   We all need a bit of support sometimes, eh?  Speaking of which, we’re playing on Friday night.  It would be good to see you there.’  She handed me a flier for her band, Fear of Death.

‘Thanks, I’d love to come.’

‘Cool, and don’t worry, I’m not asking you out, okay?   Not because you’re not cute – it’s just that I’m seeing someone at the moment.  The bassist,’ she added, pointing him out in the picture.

‘Nice one.’

When I got up to leave, Suzie gave me a lingering hug, which did nothing for my confused emotional state.

Out in the hall, a disembodied roll-up was burning in a corner.  ‘Goodnight Michael,’ I said, before checking on my luminous watch face that it was after midnight. ‘And happy birthday.’

‘Thanks.’

For once, entering my room, I avoided Jane’s gaze and walked over to the window.  A rocket flashed on the horizon as I closed the curtains.

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THE GIFT by Amanda

They walked the length of a drizzly afternoon. Jo had never liked the rain, but Katie enjoyed splashing through the puddles, sending up waves of muddy water against her mother’s legs. The familiar park seemed sad and tired in the grey November weather- few flowers poked their heads above the soil, and piles of sodden leaves dotted the paths.

“Look!” called out Katie, dropping to a crouch and picking up something from the side of the path.

“What is it?” asked Jo, trying to inject some enthusiasm into her voice.

Katie’s small fist unfurled and there was the body of a mouse, limp and bloody on her palm. Jo shuddered inwardly but obediently bent to examine it.

“Can I take it home? I want to show it to dad.”

For a moment, Jo had a mental picture of her husband’s face, nose wrinkled in distaste at the sight of the small body.

“Course you can,” Jo said “we can get a box to put it in, we could even put some wrapping paper on it if you like.”

Mother and daughter headed home, both splashing happily through the rain.

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DOWN AMONGST THE VINES  by David

There was something disquieting about the way those hills jutted out from the earth. Perhaps it was their resemblance to the craggy knuckles of an old man’s fist or the way they drew his gaze upwards into the glare of the late summer sun that made him feel giddy, diminished and child-like; vulnerable to forces beyond his control.

He downed the half glass of good red wine in one gulp and turned his back on the hills as if a decision had been reached.

He scanned the wedding party for his uncle. It was Freddy’s daughter’s wedding day, his cousin’s, and, Keith reasoned, a small favour was there for the asking. The night before he’d met a girl- no, a woman- and he wanted to ask her, with Freddy’s permission, to join him for the remainder of the celebrations.

They’d met at a bar in the well-to-do little town where Keith, his parents and his younger brother and sister were all staying, spread out over a couple of motel rooms, for the duration of the wedding; an extravagant, expense-be-damned, two day affair in the heart of some very expensive wine country.

His brother was a painter and his sister a psychiatrist and they had both come down from the city for the weekend. Keith didn’t see either of them very often so they had all gone out to the pub to catch up.

Keith felt his younger siblings looked down on him. He still lived in the same town they were raised in, he had worked for their father in the family business since dropping out of university ten years earlier. He drank too much and they all knew it, from the long distance phone calls with their worried mother, from the way he would disappear just after Christmas lunch and return sullen and irritable hours later, from the red lines that crowded his cheeks like the map of an ever-growing slum.

They had chatted amicably for an hour or so but, after a few rounds, talk moved on to Dom and Amy’s lives in the city and Keith felt his stomach knot with a familiar anxiety.  Dom mentioned he’d sold a painting for a couple of hundred dollars, his first sale that year.

“Two hundred bucks? That it, is it? Not packing in yer day job anytime soon, then?”

“Na, spose not.”

Dom looked down into his glass of beer. He never raised his voice, never retaliated. Their mother put it down to sensitivity, shyness, but Keith always suspected that Dom just didn’t sufficiently give a fuck, would never lower himself to rise to Keith’s antagonism. Amy had no such qualms.

“Don’t be an arsehole, Keith. Dom’s working hard, he’s good. The money will come”

“The money doesn’t matter.” Dom continued to study the contents of his glass.

“Tell that to yer landlord do ya? ‘Yeah, sorry mate, I know the rent’s due and that but, ya know, money doesn’t matter, eh?’”

Keith snorted as he pitched his voice up an octave in imitation of his softly spoken brother.

“That what ya tell him is it Dommy?”

“Yeah, that’s what I tell him Keith. Well, that or I could always get an advance from work, I suppose,  but, oh no, that’s right, I don’t work for my Dad. Night Amy.”

Dom finished his beer, gently placed the glass down on the bar, thanked the waitress and left.

“Good one Keith, see you tomorrow, eh?” Amy kissed him on the cheek, looked him in the eye and shook her head. They’d been close once, the two of them, now there was only pity left between them and an inexhaustible well of practiced, knowing sighs.

He was a good looking man, olive skinned with a strong jaw, only recently softened by the onset of jowls. He had been a top athlete at high school; rugby, athletics, swimming, and his lithe, muscular frame had yet to be entirely ruined. Fully clothed and in silhouette he could still pass for a twenty year old.

He had no trouble attracting women.  With his siblings gone he scanned the bar for a little company- even after all these years he still preferred not to drink alone.

He couldn’t remember much of the rest of the evening. He recalled approaching Helen (Yes, Helen, that’s right, that’s her name) and her friend, how they’d chatted, Keith being sure to keep his eyes fixed on her, the younger and prettier of the two. He had the vague impression he’d been more than usually charming, that they’d laughed at his jokes, that eventually Helen’s friend had gone home and that they’d stayed talking until closing time. Yes, he thought, she seemed to get him. She understood him better after a couple of hours than his last girlfriend, the mother of his daughter, ever had over their three years together. She understood more than Mum, more than Amy, with all her professional condescension, and certainly more than Dom- jumped up little shit.

As he wandered around the grounds of the vineyard which Freddy had so lavishly hired for the day, he fantasised a little about his and Helen’s future together. He imagined how her love and understanding would help him cut back on the booze, just a glass or two of wine at night over dinner from then on. How, with her support, he’d leave his job with his father, find something further north, not in the city maybe but closer to it. She’d be his rock, the piece of the jigsaw he’d been missing all this time, his lover and confidant, daughter to his mother (he was sure they‘d hit it off, they seemed so alike), mother to his daughter. One day at least, he thought, these things took time.

He found the bar before he found Freddy.

He eventually caught up with his uncle in the marquee, talking to a few elderly relatives from the groom’s family.

“Freddy mate, could I, uh, borrow you for a minute?”

“Yeah sure Keith, you alright mate? You look a bit flushed.”

“Yeah, na, I’m fine. Just wanted to ask you a favour…”

“Shoot.”

Keith laid out the situation to his uncle. Freddy seemed to waver a little but he was a good bloke and, besides, he didn’t really want to spend his only daughter’s wedding day talking to Keith about a bird.

“Well there’s two hundred here, I suppose, may as well make it 201, eh?”

“Cheers Fred. I’ll let her know.”

He texted Helen, giving her the address and offering to pay her taxi fare.

He fought down various, encroaching misgivings and moved through the neat rows of vines, climbing up to shoulder height and weighed down with ripe, black fruit; back to the coolness of the winery and the bar.

An hour passed before she phoned to let him know she was on her way. Keith made his way out to the car park where he was once again confronted with a view of those monstrous hills. His head swam a little with the heat and he could feel a wave of prickling sensations run from his scalp down to his neck and back. He cursed the heat and the hills and the drink then straightened as he watched a taxi wind its way up the olive tree-lined drive.

He kissed her awkwardly on the cheek as she got out the front, passenger-side door. As his lips brushed her ear he caught a note of cheap perfume, too-heavily applied and lingered a little longer than was necessary to disguise a wince. As he leaned in to pay, the driver winked leeringly at him,

“You kids have fun now.”

In the pitiless afternoon light she looked older than she had the previous night, older than him in fact, maybe by five or six years. She’d put on make-up in a hurry and it left her looking blotchy and smeared, out of focus. Her hair was lank in places and beginning to frizz in others. Her dress was too short.

Keith looked up at that great knuckle of rock just as a jet of hot, liquid vomit lurched up from his gut and into his mouth.

“Fuck” he managed to think to himself as a putrid, red mist exploded from between his clamped-shut lips. He was already retreating into himself, into his own bubble of drunken, soporific oblivion when the scream came. He was distantly aware of a few limp blows peppering his chest and jaw. Of a woman, a stranger, a total non-person, covered in a foul-smelling, viscous film hurling obscenities, her face distorted by shame and disgust.

Then his mother was at his side, wiping his face with a cool, damp handkerchief, not speaking, not looking at him. The asphalt beneath his body burnt a little but in a pleasing, soothing way- assuring him that whatever else lay ahead of him that day, at least he wouldn’t be cold.

He watched as his sister led away that angry pink-stained woman. He thought of pickled beetroot. The way it stained everything it sat on a plate with,  making pink potatoes, pink chicken, pink coleslaw, the very plate itself stained a hyper-real, sickly pink.

He looked up at his mother and for the first time in his life thought she looked old. Her mascara had started to run a little and two thin trails of soot had scarred her cheeks. They were like shadows of the lines and creases that criss-crossed her face. The overall effect, he thought, was rather beautiful.

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PICNIC AT ALWALTON LOCK by Emily

It’s the middle of August and I find it impossible to know what to wear.  The sky is white, the air still, sticky, warm but a summery cotton dress doesn’t seem right.  I rummage through some tee shirts; I never know what to wear anyway any more.  My clothes don’t quite fit, I feel as awkward in them as I do in my end-of-childhood skin.  I put something on: skirt, tee shirt, sandals although I don’t know what I’m meant to look like, or who I’m supposed to be. I put the brush through my long hair to get out the tangles.  The styling of adolescent self-expression, of crimping and back combing, gelling and spraying is still, like any idea of fashion,  a couple of years off.

I join my mum and sister in the kitchen and find them gathering food for the Women’s Group Picnic, our planned excursion for the day.  I volunteer to make my new signature dish of hoummous from tinned chickpeas, mum is pleased as it’s one less thing for her to do.  I’d first had this exotic dish earlier in the year when one of mum’s friends brought some round. My sister is cutting up cucumbers, mum suddenly decides to make sandwiches.  There’s a slight atmosphere of panic that I don’t understand, I’m not used to my mum seeming nervous, but there’s obviously something on her mind.  But I don’t know how to ask her what’s up any more.  Instead I concentrate on my task.

In the car on the way to Alwalton Lock, my sister asks what the picnic’s in aid of, is it a celebration, someone’s birthday? No, we just thought it would be nice to have a get together.  There’ll be lots of other kids there.  It’ll be fun! Our mum persuades.  This news cheers my little sister, but makes me feel nervous.  I know I won’t really know anyone there.

We arrive and carry our bags of food and picnic blanket along a dusty track beside a high hedge, the air hanging heavy in the vast fenland sky.  Crows fly  above distant treetops, and there is the hum and buzz of insects. I regret my clothes already, wish I was wearing trousers, my skirt is last summer’s and feels too short.  My sister seems to be skipping a bit, something I’m far too old to do, but feel secretly envious of her childish abandon, her innocence.  We spot some of the other picnickers putting blankets down across the field and head towards them.  I recognise a couple of women from CND demonstrations or occasional visits to our house.  We lay out our blanket and settle down, unpack our plastic containers, mum greets the other women, introduces me to some I don’t know. I look round at the offspring of mum’s Women’s Group friends in the hopes of some other kids my age.  Most are younger and already running around.  One girl is clinging onto her mother’s arm and whining. There’s another child, of indeterminate gender, intently reading a book buried in its cross legged lap, back turned to everyone else.  One older-looking girl is lying on a blanket at the edge of the group, possibly unwell.  This is worse than I’d feared.

The Women’s Group is a mixture of women, mostly single mothers who have outgrown the drudgery of their marriages or escaped abusive partners, or who were always lone parents who meet for political, social and supportive reasons.  They set up advice groups, campaign on women’s issues, talk earnestly and seriously.  They raise money for the Greenham Common women, but none are quite hardcore enough to join the camp. They meet to wonder where feminism has left them, all having read The Female Eunuch a few years before.  Not much laughter takes place when they get together.  Perhaps this picnic is an attempt to change that.  They assume their kids will all get on, that they’ll have a nice day out, share food, sit in the sun.  It doesn’t occur to them to go somewhere where there is stuff for kids to do.

I don’t really know who to talk to, whether to try and join in with the younger children or talk to the women.  As well as the mothers and their children are a few women on their own.  One, wearing denim jeans and a denim jacket, seems to be hanging around my mum, but I don’t get introduced. I’ve never met anyone wearing so much denim before, although I had seen this look on American TV shows. She seems to know the other women, some of whom glance at me when they see her making my mum laugh.  I hadn’t noticed anything funny in her conversation.  One of the women I vaguely know asks me about school.  Despite the boring subject, I’m pleased to be asked.

When the last blankets are put down, Tupperware boxes are opened and food is shared.  It’s a relief; there’s something to focus on for a while. There’s over-enthusiasm for my hoummous, although I know it is better than some of the other attempts that seem to lack vital ingredients, like salt.  There’s salad of rice and raisins, chunky sticks of carrots, marmite sandwiches aplenty.  Apples and flapjacks represent pudding.  I wished it had been someone’s birthday because there might have been cake.

Once the contents of most of the picnic bags has been consumed, lids are put back on boxes and there is now nothing to do. My sister returns to the younger children’s games, the woman in denim sits on the edge of the blanket smoking Silk Cuts, the book-reading child goes back to reading and I’m jealous. I’m on a tartan blanket in a field, surrounded by people but I don’t think in all of my ten years I’ve ever felt so alone.

I get up and say I’m going to walk by the river.  That seems OK by mum, who seems to be making a daisy chain, so I head towards the lock, confused at my feelings.  I haven’t reached the perfect moods of adolescence yet, but not understanding what is going on around me or what my place in the world is is confusing and horrible.  As I walk, I want to cry, but won’t allow the tears because I don’t understand why I’m upset. I wonder what we’d be doing if it were a Dad weekend.  Probably away visiting some people we didn’t know, expected to get on with their children, until we’re returned, late, Dad crying in the car, my sister and I having argued all the way home. I look at the expanse of the horizon, the white sky hanging above and realise that actually the sky is usually white, rarely blue.  That it’s blue is one of those picture-book myths; one of the many lies adults tell children. I feel an alien bitterness at the back of my mouth as I wonder how many more such myths there are yet to be shattered. I screw my face up against its glare.

The river is thickly green, lined with reeds and burst bulrushes.  I walk along its edge up towards the lock, which I always found so exciting on visits here when I was younger.  The way the water drops in a sheer, rushing wall to the lower level, the trapped water seeming ready to burst but held fast by the lock.  Standing near the edge I feel the exhilaration of fear of falling in, the same rush as I get when on a cliff or at the top of a tall building.  I step back and walk on, heading for the old mill house round the bend in the river.  There’s no-one around; the picnicking women now out of sight, I catch myself beginning to enjoy my own company.

On the millpond are moorhens, coots, the water reflecting crows flying across the sky. More bulrushes line the edges, below the surface lurk dark green weeds.  Dragonflies fly low across the pond’s barely rippling surface, flashes of otherworldly turquoise. Water boatmen skate on the water, something I’ve always found magical.  I crouch down to have a better look when a rodent darts across the corner of my vision, a water rat probably, making me jump and I lose my footing at the edge of the pond, and suddenly I’m in the water with a massive splash, shocked, gasping, winded.  I cry out and move my arms in a frantic movement, kicking my legs, shouting again.  A good swimmer, I find panic has rendered me a pathetic doggy-paddler, arms flailing.  The weeds and reeds feel slimy against my skin, my clothes filling with dark brown water. I have to get out, but I’m too shocked to work out how, and just keep shouting, until I swallow a mothfull of earthy pond water. The fear begins to subside as I imagine my imminent rescue, surely my shouts and cries will have been heard,  someone will come and help me out.  They will be shocked and feel sorry for me.

This doesn’t seem to be happening, and I am now crying, sobbing, as I try to find a place on the bank to hoist myself out.  I grab handfuls of reeds, touch plants that hurt my palms with their sharp edges and tough fibrous leaves. I manage to get my other hand up onto a bit of stone pond edge which is lower, broken down.  I find a muddy foothold, my feet slipping, skidding, but I am determined and the reeds help me hoist myself up onto my front, from where I can get a knee up properly onto the wall of the pond.  I pull myself out and up to a sitting position, panting, still half expecting that someone would come to find me, responding to my cries.

Once my sobbing has subsided a little, my breath back, I stand and wring out the front of my tee shirt, take off my sodden skirt to squeeze.  My legs are smeared with mud and algae and blood from where I scraped my knee.  I put the skirt back on and, still shocked, shivering, start to walk back.  No one witnessed my drama, my terror, no one shared my salvation. I can see my sister sitting on my mum’s knee.  God, she’s such a baby, I think. I see the woman in denim smoking, and someone opening another plastic container. I wonder when any of them will notice, how close I’ll be before they know something happened.  I trudge towards them dripping, to tell my story.

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RED RIDING HOOD Film Review by Amanda

Fairytales, like a good steak, should be consumed rare, slightly bloody. The makers of the new version of Red Riding Hood seem to have grasped this, the blood certainly flows freely in this film. Red Riding Hood herself, here called Valerie, is prepared to get her own hands bloody too. When we first see her, as a small child, she’s hiding in the woods, watching a white rabbit, not admiring its cuteness, but planning how to accessorise her outfit with its fur.

In this version of tale, Red’s village is plagued by a werewolf who’s killed her sister. The story becomes a who-dunnit, or rather, a who is it, as the audience is drawn into deducing the human identity of the wolf.

The story is a well known one. It originated as a folk tale, where the girl escapes the wolf through her own cunning. The earliest printed version is by Charles Perrault in the 17^th century. In Perrault’s story, the wolf not only disguises himself as Red’s grandmother, but consumes Red too. The brothers Grimm in the 19^th century revised the ending to be slightly more upbeat; the girl is rescued by a hunter who kills the wolf. But the common denominator between all the versions is the girl’s red cloak or hood. Red, the colour of blood, perhaps signifying that the girl is on the verge of puberty and the onset of her menses. In this reading of the story, arguably the wolf signifies men who want to ‘consume’ women sexually.

This new film makes great visual use of the red cloak, its bright scarlet striking to the eye against the snow covering the log cabins of the village. The theme of sexuality is central here, as the heroine is about to be married off to the son of a rich family, although her heart belongs to another, the village ‘bad boy’. The film reverts to, and builds on, the earliest versions of the story, with Valerie exacting her bloody revenge on the werewolf that has decimated her family.

I went to see it quite prepared to splutter with derision, after all the Guardian Guide called it ‘laughable’, but bit by bit it seduced me. The story is carried by some excellent actors including Gary Oldman as the sinister, wolf hunting priest Solomon, and Julie Christie as the grandmother. It’s visually appealing, and gives a very familiar story a modern twist.

Issue 1: Bloody Men

Welcome to Issue 1 of The Feminist Jumble Sale.

The phrase bloody men is a popular, somewhat sexist pair of words often heard in common parlance, particularly in conversations between women.  Have a rummage amongst the contributions below and see how various writers have used the written word to explore the reasons for the popularity of the phrase.  Why and how is just under half of the human race damned so easily, so frequently and so casually?

Bloody women is also heard, somewhat less frequently, but we do look forward to unpacking that bag in issue 2.

Contents:

And Another Bloody Thing… by Clare Pollard

How to Have Your First Kiss by Celia

Have You Ever? by Emily

Leader of the Pack (Vroom Vroom) by Zoe

New Man by Charlotte

Stink of the Dumped by Celia

Who Needs Them? by Emily

Fucking Carnage by David

Bus by Celia

Professional Heartbreak (Bloody Men) by Emily

The Ultimate Romantic Comedy by Helen

Call for Contributions: Feminist Jumble Sale Playlist

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AND ANOTHER BLOODY THING… By Clare Pollard
(after Wendy Cope)

Bloody men are like bloody cigarettes–
A habit you swear to crack,
Then you find you’ve snuck out of the office
To suck one off round the back

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HOW TO HAVE YOUR FIRST KISS by Celia

Accept an invitation from Joanna Barker, a girl in your class,  to go swimming at the local baths. It’s the summer holidays between primary and secondary school. Feel your age for the first time, feel excited, yet feel comfortable in your new found maturity. You are now allowed to go to the pool without your parents.

Cram into the cubicle along with Joanna and change into your navy blue Speedo swimming costume with bright pink side stripe. Notice how flat your chest is in comparison with Joanna who you know has ‘started’ in the past year and has a sizeable half- adolescent- half-  puppy- fat bosom developing. Stick out your ribcage to compensate and walk pigeon-chested to the edge of the pool.

Grasp Joanna’s hand as you count to three in unison then jump into the deep end of the Victorian pool. Don’t fret about putting your head under water, you don’t yet have to wear the contact lenses which prevent this pleasure.

Nor do you have to swim laps in order to attempt to tone your upper arms and let out frustration brought on by cruel employers or thoughtless lovers, so doggy paddle, do handstands and somersaults. Attempt an entire width of the pool underwater. Fail.

When a boy asks his friend to ask Joanna to ask you if you will ‘go with him’, eagerly accept, even though you are not totally sure of what this suggestion entails.

Get changed into your black cycling shorts and white T shirt with a picture of a tomato on the front.

Head for the neighbouring park where the boy waits by the gate. The park where you attended playgroup. The park you will walk through on the way to the doctor’s to discuss your progress on your latest round of medication. Leave Joanna to look on enviously as he leads you around the back of the electricity substation. Anchor your bubble gum behind your back teeth and pucker up. You may think you are too young to experience an existential crisis. At the feeling of an over eager tongue slathering across the remainder of your milk teeth, I assure you that you won’t be. Open your eyes mid kiss to see a hedge, a fence, his eyes closed. Run back to Joanna and grin as she says “you are so lucky.”

You’ll have to wait three years for the next one as single sex secondary school, braces on your teeth and thick glasses will steal this from you for the next few years. Enjoy it while you can.

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HAVE YOU EVER? by Emily

Have you ever met a woman who has never been sexually abused, misused or assaulted by a man? Do you know a woman who has never been intrusively touched by a stranger? Who has never been subjected to sexually harassing or explicit phonecalls, or been groped on public transport, or on a dance floor, or groomed and exploited by a teacher? A woman who has never been dealt violence during a one-night stand, or been forced into unwanted sexual acts the morning after?  Or been sexually assaulted by a friend or acquaintance?  A woman who has never been raped by a friend of a friend or a lover or a stranger?  Have you ever met a woman who has never been abused by a male family member, as a one-off event or a systematic reoccurrence over years and years?  Have you met a woman who has never been gang-raped, stalked or chased? A woman who has never been flashed at in public, or close to her home, or who has never been sexually assaulted by an intruder who climbed in through her bedroom window and touched her while she slept?  A woman who has never been filmed or photographed and exhibited to others, or dragged into a ditch and exposed?  Have you ever met a woman who has never been sexually insulted by school-mates or colleagues, or had their underwear stolen from her washing-line, or been bought or sold or trafficked or threatened?  A woman who has never had sexually abusive visual material forced on her?  Or objectified or beaten? A woman who has never been leered at or whistled at or jeered at as she goes about her business?  Have you ever met a woman who has not been upset or saddened or utterly depressed by being sexually mistreated by a man?  A woman who has not been forced to scream, or shout, or weep silently or keep quiet? Have you ever met a woman who has not felt frightened?  Do you know a woman who isn’t angry, even if she hides it well?

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LEADER OF THE PACK (VROOM VROOM) by Zoe

I wasn’t sure, but I thought he’d be waiting for me. He would be cross of course. Daddy had a notoriously bad temper.  But he’d calm down and he’d know what to do wouldn’t he? Daddy had always rescued me before and I hadn’t meant to disobey him.

It was about Alfie you see; I couldn’t not like him, could I? And he was so beautiful, in that moment. He could’ve had me and I’d’ve even stood up to Daddy a bit more, over time.

If he hadn’t crossed me, it would’ve turned out differently.

I saw the lights then; I wasn’t quite ready.

Daddy sometimes behaved in a way you weren’t really expecting. I didn’t want him to shout for too long.

He’ll be on edge and foaming at the mouth.

He should be glad – he didn’t like Alfie anyway.

Daddy was there, by the window looking out from behind the curtains that weren’t quite pulled to, and I didn’t think I could get away with it by creeping up the stairs. I’ll just have to try and shut out some of the volume.

‘What time do you call this?’

He didn’t allow time for an answer and continued:

‘You’re playing me, young lady. I’m getting sick of you disobeying everything I say. You will respect me now.’ He was very emphatic about the ‘will’.

‘ I’m your father and you are not yet ready to look after yourself…’

And blah, blah. I wanted to appease him, but I was feeling annoyed now, so I antagonised instead.

‘Why are you sitting here in the dark?. Was it to catch me out? Really Daddy. Don’t you trust me?’

This set him off of course.

‘It’s my house. I can sit in the dark if I bloody well want to. Don’t you get smart with me. I asked you what you’ve been playing at.’

‘No you didn’t daddy. You asked me what time I thought it was. You just have to start shouting don’t you. How about look first and shout after? Oh no, it’s not as though there’d be a perfectly reasonable explanation or anything. Well, it’s not perfect, or reasonable. It is, however, a reason. I’m not just late to spite you.’

I was playing up a bit here, trying to reach that special part of his brain that caved in to his only daughter beyond his reason.

‘You’ve been with him. Haven’t you.’ Daddy broke off because he’d finally seen me in the light. I’d been in the unlit hallway until now.

‘What in God’s name has happened? You’re covered in blood. You look like Carrie. What’s happened?”

Now he was paying attention, I could play it out a little.

‘I’m going to sit down. I don’t feel so good daddy.’

‘My god, you’re losing it. What is it child? I’m going to get you some sugary tea.’

Daddy was back quick as a flash, so I sipped my tea and allowed the sugar rush to push me forward.

‘I asked him not to drive fast. There was thunder and lightning over Shoreham. It wasn’t far away. It’d reach us within the hour.’

I glanced up. Still no clue. Daddy wasn’t picking this up at all.

‘You never gave Alfie a chance. You didn’t want me on that bike…’

‘He wasn’t good enough for you.’

No Daddy, he wasn’t, but I won’t admit that to you yet…

‘Wasting your time on him. You’ll see right enough.’

‘Well. There’ll be none of my time wasted now.’

This got his attention.

‘This is his blood.’

‘What?’ Daddy looks surprised, like it wasn’t what he’d ever expected.

‘I’ve been sat here all bloody and still you didn’t address what’s happened to me. What he did. Is it because you know something already? It’s like you’ve caused it somehow. Or made it happen. Cut the brake cable and relax in the knowledge that it would only be a matter of time.’

Brilliant. I didn’t think of this before, but I can infer that he did something, that I wasn’t just spurned, accusing someone who works for him.

‘Is someone hurt Alice.’ He sounds more urgent now. ‘Do we need to let anyone know? Can you tell them what happened?’

‘Why did you have to interfere? If you hadn’t have told him to go this wouldn’t have happened.’

‘He probably never got his bike serviced regular anyway.’

‘Daddy, are you saying that somehow this could be his fault?’

The adrenaline is pumping now, I’m going to get away with it.

‘What is it that could be his fault darling. What is it that’s happened?’

‘Listen Daddy. He was outside the milkshake bar on Gardner Street. I know you won’t like it, but I thought that it was so brave of him to be looking for me after all that you said to him. But then, he didn’t speak to me when he came in. He didn’t even look over. So I ran across to hug him, to show him that it was alright and he turned away to Tracey Upchurch. I don’t really know what caused it and I remember it being really hot all of a sudden and I’d launched myself across the room; I was pummelling his chest and pulling at his hair and screaming so loud that I thought my own voice was a tannoy system that I wasn’t connected to.’

I paused for a moment for dramatic effect. Daddy looked strange.

‘ He left and got on his bike. Revved the engine. I told him I was sorry. I was looking at him really hard, hoping that he’d see that I would’ve gone with him if I could. But I wasn’t ready. It’s slippery up the path when it’s glistening with raindrops. He didn’t look like he was going to care, that he could speed through it and up the hill to Rottingdean then on to an escape route.’

Daddy isn’t quite sure – I can see him thinking and looking at me.

‘Where is he? Did he check for a pulse? Alice. You need to call an ambulance.’

‘It’s very simple daddy. If I can’t have him, then no-one can.’

‘Alice.’

I told the police on the phone that there was a bike crash. That I think there’s a fatality. That’s what they say on The Bill. I didn’t move the body, but I held it for a minute and there’s blood. A lot of it.

I said that I know you don’t take the helmet off – we learnt that in health and social care before the Easter holidays.

Do I know who it is?

Yes. It’s Alfie Turner. He’s 20 and lives up Whitehawk.

No, no-one special, I’m just reporting it.

I think it’s possible that someone maybe tampered with his bike.

He shouldn’t have dropped me just like that, like I was no-one.

Daddy won’t let them ask any more questions. He doesn’t need to know any more about it. He’s good at cleaning up messes.

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I’M A… by Charlotte

I’m a new man,

I’ll pick the kids up from school, darling,

If I’m working at home

And you remind me when to go

.

I’m a new man,

Of course i help around the house, dear,

Didn’t you see?

I put my bowl in the sink this morning

.

I’m a new man,

Yes I’ll look after the kids,

But my work is so important, love,

I can’t possibly turn my laptop off

.

I’m a new man,

I’ll absolutely support you, dearest,

With whatever you want to do

But darling, let’s not talk about it now

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STINK OF THE DUMPED by Celia

I awoke to find him sitting at the end of my bed. February. I had arrived in the country a few hours earlier. I wore a knitted grey jumper and two day old green eye make up was smeared down my face. My mouth tasted horrific and I could feel a rim of unpleasant sludge on the inside of my bottom lip.

He had put on weight and was clean shaven. He smiled awkwardly and bit the side of his thumb.

I sat up in bed and looked at him. His face was sort of off centre, a bit wonky really. I think that’s why I had fallen for him. I had liked the books he had too: Bob and Roberta Smith, Catch 22, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists.

We met when he was a student at the art college where I worked. He was making a slide show about memory and came up to me and asked to borrow the blue cagoule I always wore so it could feature in one of his memory tableaux.  I agreed. By the opening night of his graduation show we were an item and he had  his arm firmly wrapped around me as we both beamed at his well wishers and admirers.

We moved in together. We had big oval 1960s plates and when we got a ‘chippy tea’ on Fridays, they were perfect for unwrapping the chips on and digging in straight away. Occasionally  I got a fishcake, but he shouted ‘murderer’ at me as a joke because he was a vegetarian. He said he was a vegetarian because Morrissey was one, but I’m not sure if he meant that or not. He put pictures of his meals on Facebook so his mum could check he was eating properly. The food always looked so drab and made me feel a bit sad.

We didn’t have a shower so I would take long baths with bubble bath. The bottle was in the shape of a sailor and reminded me of childhood. I washed the bubbles off by pouring a stolen pint glass of water over myself. It was difficult to turn the hot tap off and I had to use a dainty cake fork to lever the plug out of the bath once I was finished.

His ex girlfriend’s name was Belinda Plimsoll. She had red hair, as I did, but hers went right down her back. She had broken up with him while she was sitting on the toilet and his mum was in the other room. She became a lesbian and ran off with a police constable from Doncaster.

Sometimes we all went out together, me, him, the ex and the copper. Belinda grabbed two barstools and lay down across them on her front and shouted “World, are you ready for Belinda?” She wore a sailor suit and pink tights, although she would often bring another outfit in her bag and change in the toilets.  Once he introduced me to his work mates and called me her name by mistake, but I don’t think anyone noticed.

There he sat at the end of my bed. He told me it wasn’t as good as it used to be and thought we should break up. I was resigned to it, but despite myself, I cried. I had an inkling which was later confirmed that he had met someone else. Our mutual friends had become distant and he had accidentally left one of my books at a girl’s house whose name I hadn’t heard before. He ended it so he could take her out for Valentines’ night. She had red hair too. He gave me a Malcolm Middleton balloon with a face on it to say sorry. I stayed in bed for the rest of the week.

The day I emerged was when my mum chose to tell me her top advice regarding the uglier sex:  “the best way to get over an old boyfriend is to get under a new one”. I often find myself reflecting on this guidance or sharing it with a heartbroken mate who is always grateful for its wisdom.

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WHO NEEDS THEM? by Emily

Liz holds the phone away from her ear and rolls her eyes.  She sighs, thinking Oh God he’s still going on about his dog. She knows he has nothing new to say: Mickey’s dog  is still elderly, still needs  care, he is still fretting.  Liz also knows her own views remain unchanged.  Leave the poor creature alone to die in peace, stop all these interventions, put her out of her misery.  She’s over a hundred in dog years for Christ’s sake. More to the point leave me alone with these  one-sided updates.  She lets him go on, though, because she knows how much he loves the dog, and he’s only talking about it so much because he’s upset.

Mickey came along just before Liz had a nasty post-viral illness a couple of winters before, which had her laid up for a while.  He made himself indispensable; she was grateful for all his help, she doesn’t know how she’d have got through that time without him.  She’d answered his message on the online dating site because he had seemed nice, kind.  She liked the smile in the picture that she hoped wasn’t 10 years old.  And because she’d promised her best friend that she would at least give dating a try.  He seemed harmless enough, friendly, eager and somehow always there.  But what began as a search for a bit of male company, a companion for the cinema, someone to help fill those long Sunday afternoons had become this. A relationship.  She hadn’t felt ready for one of those, but it had crept up on her. When she had  needed him, she’d given him a spare key, and he brought her shopping or came to help with the garden or the cleaning.  He popped round, unannounced, just slightly too frequently; sometimes he  seemed to appear out of nowhere, always a bit too smiley, awkwardly chirpy.  But so kind and helpful, she couldn’t complain.  And he always had to get back to his ailing dog, so although frequent, his visits never lasted too long.

The love of Liz’s life had been Edward, the handsome, charismatic salesman who had swept her off her feet when she was only 16.  Her previous boyfriends had been boys. Ed was a real man, he made her feel special.  She was just 18 when they married.  She wore a long, printed dress and looked young and bursting with excitement in the autumn sunshine.  She still has the photo in a frame on the book case, a little faded now. Even through the very worst times, she never could put it away.  Liz felt her life was about to begin the day she married Ed.  It was 1970.

She’d been just too young to enjoy the swinging ‘60s and was happy to spend the ‘70s raising her family, being a devoted wife.  Some of her friends thought her approach a little old-fashioned, hadn’t she heard of feminism? But she didn’t care – she loved her children, and Ed was the centre of her world.  This devotion was tested a few years in to their marriage as she endured Ed’s unexplained absences, mysterious phone calls and sudden business trips.  She ignored her suspicions at first, and was so tired with the demands of bringing up young children, she didn’t have the energy to confront him.  Liz concentrated on making sure the kids were blissfully ignorant and happy.  Arguments did erupt, occasionally, creating tension in the family home; but these always eventually led to a passionate reconciliation.  Liz had no idea who the other woman was, or was it women?  She learned that asking wouldn’t get her anywhere.

As the children grew older, Liz had some affairs of her own, but her heart was never in it.  No one could compare. She knew Ed would always come back to her.  They had an unspoken bargain.  They needed each other and that was that. Even when she hated him, he could still make her laugh. Liz saw the marriages of  sisters and friends fall apart, but somehow she and Ed kept theirs together.  And the good times were good enough for her to forget the bad, every time. He filled the house with the antiques he collected; she cooked comforting family meals  and only sometimes caught herself staring into space.

As they grew older, their children grown up, Ed seemed to calm and was around more as work commitments gradually diminished.  Perhaps they’d run out of energy for secret lovers, infidelities, other lives. Liz hoped it was more than this, a new era seemed to be beginning. They had stuck together for so long, perhaps they really could make this work now. She remembered the excitement about her future that made her glow on their wedding day.  She had forgiven a lot since then, and now it was beginning to feel worth it. After all, he was the love of her life.  They started talking about moving to the countryside, selling the family home, making a fresh start.  He wanted space for his antiques and maybe a dog; she pictured a big front garden with delphiniums, nasturtiums, climbing roses. Lots of space for the children and grandchildren to stay.  She would get back into her watercolours and they would go for long walks together. They grew close in their planning, held hands across the table like they used to many years before.  They laughed at the realisation that their planned move would commemorate their 40^th wedding anniversary.

Then Ed died, suddenly.  He was hit by a car and died instantly.  Liz’s entire world collapsed, like a massive hole had been blasted through her.  The vastness of the loss was unfathomable, unquantifiable, it had no edges, no bottom.  As she began to surface from the shock, she thought of her own mother, a woman who had given up on life when her husband died and spent her last ten years wishing herself out of existence.  Liz had never understood that, had tried to help her mother find reason to live, not to fall into the void, had felt frustrated and impatient.  Now she understood.  She longed for the simplicity of non-existence. She hated him for all the pain he’d caused her, hated him for making her feel the acuteness of his loss, hated him for bloody well going and dying.  She wanted her mother, new grief digging up old.

Recovery was gradual, slow, helped by her  friends and children.  The first time she felt genuine happiness was when her first grandchild came along, here was some hope, some idea of a future, although it also made the space where Ed should have been even starker. When she discovered from the solicitor that Ed had had another flat, a secret love nest, she was hurt again, but not really surprised.  Fucking bastard she allowed herself to think. Bloody men. There was no point wondering who he’d taken there, or how recently, or whether he was ever going to tell her.  She used the anger to help her sell this flat and keep going.

It was a couple of years until she signed up to the dating site.  She had no enthusiasm whatsoever, but promised her friend, did it for her.  She admitted to herself that she did miss male company.  Maybe she’d meet someone nice, or maybe she’d make some new friends.  No one could fill the gaping hole left by Ed’s death.  She’d known and married and lost the love of her life.  Mickey was obviously keen, and it was nice to have someone interested, looking out for her.  It didn’t have to be a big deal.  She found the word “date” laughable, but they did some nice things together. And they had a few things in common, things to talk about.  She cooked him dinner the third time they met and it felt good to have someone to take care of again.

He always stays a touch too close to her when they do anything social.  She tries to edge away, but he’s persistent, and she’s getting used to it.  He insists on accompanying her to almost everything she does, and somehow always does this nicely. Liz thinks he’s a kind man, but she has started lying about her whereabouts occasionally just to get some peace, some time with her own thoughts and memories.  Some time when she doesn’t have to listen to the latest developments on his dog’s health.  She worries that when the poor old mutt finally gives up on life, he’ll be bereft, will need her to help him through the grief.  She braces herself for this, wonders how she’ll manage, hopes the latest canine treatment helps prolong the inevitable death for a while yet.

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FUCKING CARNAGE by David

Billy closed the door behind him and turned the key. He leaned back into the peeling paint, drew in a deep breath and listened to the last of the cackles and wolf-whistles coming from the kitchen on the other side of the door. He was wearing a shrunken, once-white bath towel and nothing else.

His girlfriend, Fran, had finished her fourth nightshift of the week at the local hospital and was celebrating her coming weekend with two fellow nurses- Moira and Sue. It was 8 in the morning and they had been drinking since 5, first some wine left over from Christmas and now they were on to his whisky. The good stuff mind. They were mixing it with coke which Fran knew pissed him off.

Billy walked over to the basin and took a look at himself in the mirror. He was a big man and had to crouch and bend to see his reflection. Fran and her cronies had woken him when they came in and he’d lain awake ever since. There were black rings round his eyes which were in turn swollen and bloodshot. He’d been off work sick for the last couple of days and a good covering of stubble had settled on his cheeks and jaw. He hated shaving but if he went in looking like this his foreman, or forewoman, or boss or whatever- Annie- would make him put one of those hair nets over his face like the Sikhs had to wear. He didn’t want that.

The sound of drunken laughter crept under the door. Billy had often noticed how groups of women laughed differently to the way he and his friends laughed. Men laughed like a pack of dogs barked; simultaneously but separately, without reference to each other.

Women’s laughter he thought was more like music, not that it sounded any easier on the ear, but rather in the way the different voices would weave around each other, sometimes higher, sometimes lower but always changing in relation to the others to show, he supposed, that they were listening, that they were all there together.

He took his razor down from the shelf and inspected it. The blade could really  do with changing but the fresh ones were out there in kitchen and damned if he was going out there again.

He could hear Fran lower her voice and the others grow silent. He knew she was talking about him and didn’t want him to hear. Her voice grew deeper when she tried to speak softly so the sound carried better. He bent his ear and listened as he applied the soap to his face.

So Billy right? He might look impressive what with his size and all but when you get down to it he’s a bloody baby. As soft as shite. Turns out he’s afraid of frogs. Yeah I know, frogs. If he sees one he turns green. Like fucking Kermit himself and will run a mile, screaming, literally screaming.

Billy began scraping the blunt blade over his cheeks absentmindedly. He nicked himself just below the ear but paid no attention. The basin hadn’t been white the entire time they’d lived there but there was still a drama of colour as the first drop of blood hit the porcelain.

His Mum, Liz, we’re close me and her, we get on, ya know? She told me how he got to be like that. Where they’re from, up north, there’s this, whatchya call it? Migratory path for all the frogs, from one river to the next, part of their breeding cycle or whatever. Anyway it runs right next to where Billy grew up.

So in the summer, when Liz was walking Billy to school, every morning there’d be this great fucking parade of frogs going over the main road. Fucking carnage she reckoned. And the smell could get pretty bad when it didn’t rain for a while, hundreds of squashed frogs in the middle of July? Not ideal.

At the words ‘squashed frogs’ Billy winced and cut himself again, just under the  nose. He bent down to examine it in the mirror and saw two more wells of red on his neck beneath the jaw-line. He could hear the faint pitter patter on the basin now like misty drizzle on double glazing.

So anyway, none of this used to worry Billy, he was used to it, live frogs, dead frogs all the same to him, right? Then one day Liz and Billy were walking along the road on the way to school as usual and they’re coming up to this frog crossing.

Billy could feel a twitching behind his left eye. Like there was a tadpole wiggling away back there. He didn’t really want to listen to what Fran was saying anymore so he turned on the tap, but the watery blood spiralling down the plug hole made him feel sick so he turned it off again. He tried to focus on the scrape of the razor on his skin. “Every shave is a meditation”, he’d heard that once. Might have been in a Gillette ad or something like that, he supposed.

Now, one side of this road is all houses with backyards and then farmland going back to a river and the other side is just sort of woodland I suppose. Ya know, pissy little trees and shrubs and the odd tossed washing machine, that sort of thing,  and then this other little river where all the frogs are heading for.

Liz and Billy are walking along the side with all the houses and they’re just about to get to the frog crossing when Liz sees something out of the corner of her eye in the woods. She almost doesn’t want to look right, cause in a way she knows what’s there and part of her wants to just keep walking, eyes front. But she’s only human. So she looks. And there he is, this bloke swinging from one of the sturdier trees, and it looks like he’s been there a while cause she can see from where she’s standing that he’s gone all purple and green, like a bunch of grapes she said. And the smell, there’s this frog smell of course but just at that moment she notices something else on top of that, something sweeter and heavier. And she starts screaming. She picks up Billy and pushes his face into her chest and still she can’t stop this screaming. And of course Billy’s shitting himself and going “Mummy Mummy what’s wrong” and all she can think of saying is “The frogs, close your eyes and don’t look at the frogs whatever you do.” And ever since then he goes ballistic whenever there’s a frog anywhere near him. They had to move away and everything.

A dull thud came from behind the bathroom door and Fran realised she had to pee.

Billy! What the hell’s he up to in there. Billy I need the toilet, hurry up will ya.

She was answered by silence.

Selective hearing that one. Only hears what he wants to hear. Typical. Bloody men, eh?

Billy rested his hot cheek on the cold, damp tiling of the bathroom floor. The hardness was a million miles away from the sticky softness of a squashed frog on hot tarmac and the way his naked body touched the floor at nearly every available point stopped his mind from tracing the arc of a deadweight slowly swinging in the heavy, high summer air.

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BUS by Celia

The small girl sits upstairs at the front of the bus with her mum. She wears a violet anorak with her hood up. There is a white fur lining around the hood.

She kneels on the seat and faces the window. In the condensation, she begins to draw heart shapes with her finger.

Then, with a sudden, sweeping movement, she uses her balled up fist to cross through the hearts and exclaims “Not anymore!”

“Not anymore!” she squeals again. “Like you and my dad.”

The woman turns, gives an obliging half- smile and nods her head.

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PROFESSIONAL HEARTBREAK (BLOODY MEN) by Emily

I could tell something was amiss when I first saw her in the office that day.  Something about the way she held herself, holding herself together.  “How was your weekend?” I asked.  She paused, sighed and came up with “Interesting…” Not looking at me, she seemed to be slightly holding her breath, bit her lip. I was hanging up my jacket, unpacking my diary and work stuff from my bag; she was sorting some papers.  “Anything to do with bloody men?” I asked.  She caught my eye briefly, and I regretted laughing as I’d said it.  “Yes” she said, adding “Ask me about it in a couple of weeks.”

I switched on my computer, got out my notebooks and settled into the day’s lists, emails, priorities, and glanced across at her, to see if she was OK.  I knew nothing about what had happened, or who the bloody man in question was.  A few weeks before one lunch time she’d mentioned a guy she was “kind of seeing.”  I translated this from experience as meaning  mean a bloke she liked too much was messing her around. Bad news.  Without  actually knowing anything, I had enough information to know exactly what she was going through.

Having to focus and pretend everything is fine, be professional, hold it all together when what had hurt you so badly, the events of the weekend: the unanswered messages, or the words you’ve been dreading, the gutting realisation,  are all that is in your head.  Of course as well as heartbroken, you feel like a fool, your self-torturous mental refrain why did I let this happen again? Getting ready for work you have to force yourself to care about what you look like, tell yourself that going to work will do you good, promise yourself you won’t cry onto your keyboard, or make a twat of yourself in a meeting.  You wish your eyes weren’t puffy as you use extra concealer to hide the dark circles, but lay off the eyeliner in case of tears later (you know yourself well enough by now), smile at yourself in the mirror as practise for the day ahead, but barely recognise the pathetic, wrecked reflection that falsely smiles back. Make yourself listen to something uplifting on your way in, and read something trashy on the bus to take your mind off it, off him, find yourself rereading the same sentence and nothing making sense.  As the work day wears on catch yourself having forgotten all about him briefly, but this realisation brings you back to it all again.

You feel relieved when the working day is over, you can let go if you want, find yourself weeping on the bus, as you plan a strategy of how to get through the evening.  You know the pain will subside, it always does in the end, but everything is hard work while you’re in the middle of it, however sure you are that he is not worth any of this.  Friends may try to be nice but sympathy makes you feel worse, so it’s best to keep your heartbreak to yourself.  You know you’ll be able to laugh about it one day but that just seems like a ridiculous theory.

I caught her in the kitchen later and tried to say something funny, while looking sympathetic.  The effort was too obvious and I could tell she was grateful but understood when she didn’t hang around.  I couldn’t help feeling glad not to be her, glad not to have been through this in a while, and slightly smug: vindicated in my decision to forget all about men, have nothing more to do with the bastards.  I’ll never have to deal with pretending to be professional while suffering from a broken heart again.

A few weeks later, I was making tea while she made coffee and I felt I could ask her if she’d got the bloody man out of her system yet.  To my relief she laughed and said she was getting there.  She looked at me and said “thanks.” I never found out who he was,  what he did or what happened, but was so pleased to see her emerging from the pits of disappointment and rejection.  She was getting over the bastard.

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THE ULTIMATE ROMANTIC COMEDY by Helen

This Christmas, along with half the population, I picked up the ‘flu virus. There are worse times to be ill, I didn’t need to feel guilty about work because the office was closed, the relatives we visited all had a sofa for me to lie on and friends and family brought regular cups of tea and doses of Nightnurse.  There was also the bonus of the holiday television scheduling. I was enjoying the endless Santa Claus movies and the odd black and white classic until Richard Curtis popped up and ruined it all.

I had seen the film before, I think I may even have to admit to enjoying it, but bleary eyed and sniffing I saw a different side to “The Ultimate Romantic Comedy”.

Love, Actually follows in the Richard Curtis cannon of sentimental British Romcoms that began with the box office winning formula of Four Weddings and a Funeral was eeked out in the eponymous Notting Hill and finally scraped the very bottom of the barrel with Love, Actually.

Love, Actually may be dubbed as a collection of loosely interrelated tales of Love at Christmas time but they can also be seen as seven loosely interrelated stories that represent all the stories that humanity has to offer. If you strip back all of the stories, folktales, myths and legends in the world you will find they fit into the following categories: overcoming the monster, rags to riches, the quest, voyage and return, comedy, tragedy, and rebirth. The diversity stems from the way the stories are endlessly interpreted by each age, society and culture in order to explore, reflect, criticise or condone.

Rags to riches

The most prominent storyline falls into the “rags to riches” category. Hugh Grant plays a disturbingly Cameronesque Prime minister who falls for his working class tea lady; Martine McCutcheon.  Essentially reprising her role from My Fair Lady but without the pretence of any educational self improvement McCutcheon is the one to rise from the rags of employed servitude to the riches of domestic servitude. Her social and financial mobility entirely down to the desire and whims of Hugh Grant’s character who at one point moves her like a chess piece to another department without explanation because he is unable to control himself around her. The romance only enhanced by the continual references to McCutcheon’s physical stature. How lucky she is to be loved even though she is all of a size 12, there is hope for us all.

Comedy

The comedy in this romantic comedy falls largely to the “porn star” storyline. Two jobbing actors used as place markers in the prelims for the porn film. In the cinema I remember this scenario leading to nervous titters.  John and Judy naked and simulating the sex act while attempting to remain polite and reserved relies upon incongruity for its comedic impetus. We are surprised to find two, polite middle class actors involved in a porn film but this somehow relies upon us knowing that the industry is not based on politeness and reservation and then asks us to accept again that it is in order for the plotline to work. Not unlike the leap of faith the porn industry asks people to make when they watch pornography. This is violent and damaging, this is fantasy that hurts nobody.

Tragedy

For a romantic comedy there are a surprising number of tragic storylines in the film. Not entirely surprisingly they all concentrate on motherhood or mothering and martyrdom. Liam Neeson and his step-son suffer the loss of the wife and mother but get on very well without her. Laura Linney, studious, hard working, modestly dressed and desperately seeking romantic love gives up on having anything for herself to look after her mentally unwell brother. Stay at home mum Emma Thompson suffers the humiliation of her husband’s affair with what is rather obviously framed as the office tart and despite declaring “You have made a fool of me, you have made the life I live foolish too” she stays and becomes a paid up martyr to the cause of domestic enslavement. No doubt crossing her fingers that next year she will get something more than the Joni Mitchell CD.

Voyage and return

Colin Firth’s story of the cuckolded husband setting out on his voyage to Portugal could also easily be seen fit the rags to riches category. Running away from a failed marriage and the embarrassment of his wife sleeping with his brother Colin Firth retreats to a country villa in Portugal and promptly falls in love with his impoverished Portuguese housemaid. The perfect antidote to a sexually unruly wife, the virginal housekeeper, paid to make his life comfortable, unable to converse or state an opinion and economically reliant on his good will. The voyage as well as geographical is also symbolic of a return to an earlier more traditional time when women knew their place; which man they were supposed to be under.

The quest

There are two candidates for the quest storyline. Liam Neeson’s on screen Sam looking to win the love of his classmate before she leaves for the States and Kris Marshall himself leaving for the States on a quest to find women stupid enough to jump into bed with him for his British accent; they are it turns out; in abundant supply.

Overcoming the monster

In the ageing rockstar storyline we find Bill Nighy overcoming the monstrous attractions of fame, eschewing the temptations of his unlikely female fans and instead re-affirming his homosocial bonds his loyal long suffering manager. There are obvious and unattractive parallels with the Emma Thompson storyline here.

Rebirth

Liam Neeson is delivered of his grief for his dead wife by the obliging Claudia Schiffer.

If the endless interpretation of these seven stories can be used to show the current view, philosophy, political stand point of the society or culture that tells them then Love, Actually says something extremely unappealing.  The women in the Ultimate Romantic Comedy have their sexuality, financial security, entire purpose defined by their relationship to their male counterparts. They are waiting for knights in shining armour to rescue them and then enslave them in a life of domestic drudgery, the clever, independent ones will never find love, only our pity and the overtly sexual will be scorned and condemned. It certainly fills one with a warm glow.

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OUR SONGS

What’s on the Feminist Jumble Sale gramophone?

We need your help! Have a look through your stack of old LPs and singles, ancient mix tapes and bootleg CDs and submit your favourite Bloody Men anthem: be it bitches and hoes in a wicky wild style, a silicone enhanced pop tart being a little bit too  needy for her own good, a patronising git of a bloody man or a corker of an anthem that gets you through any breakup.

Email your top pop picks, with a small piece of accompanying text to feministjumble@hotmail.co.uk and we will pop-pick the best of the bunch to publish on the blog at the end of the month.