In praise of Mild Mannered Intellectual Husband

MMIH often jokes that there is a comfortingly predictable template to my blog posts. Whether I'm talking about diets, diamonds or dead playwrights, the typical structure of any piece goes something along the lines: I was thinking about X the other day and it reminded me of yet another way in which men are shite.

My 20 readers will forgive me the indulgence of devoting a brief post just to him, to put some things in context.

By the time I bumped into MMIH, or rather, shopped for him online on a highly reputable and suitably intellectual internet site, I had been 'dating' for about 20 years, as our American friends say, 15 of those in Britain.

Teenage dating in Italy was bad enough: emotionally abusive AND suicidal boyfriends and the mothers who loved them, the near-date rapes in every conceivable type of parked car (who needed kickboxing to keep fit then? Happy days..), the struggle to conform to the silent simpering girlfriend stereotype.

But it was dating in Britain that really honed my survival skills: 15 years of invisibility to men folk who did not ever make eye contact, made a pass only when staggeringly drunk, talked all over you to other men at parties.

Then it all got virtual anyway, as people stopped meeting, talking and, you know, calling, in favour of oblique texts about their expected presence at some bar 20 minutes from now.

The last five years were just brutal: sexual politics having escalated into a sort of cold war, with men deeply reluctant to even have a casual fling in case you wanted to impregnate them with a mortgage and five kids. My last boyfriend (admittedly an Italian) even refused me a bed in central London the night the of the 7/7 attack in case "I should get ideas" about our status as a couple.

That's when MMIH entered the story. A guitar playing, orc-slaying philosopher prince with a floppy fringe and a lovely smile. Loving, sincere, demonstrative, generous. Tigger-esque, Muppet-y, benign, a force for good. I have never felt lonely, neglected or unloved for a single minute since. *

We talk non-stop: mainly we discuss completely theoretical stuff: Obamacare, the chances of Labour ever returning to power, that kind of thing. Often you will find us in restaurants arguing animatedly about nuances of tone in an editorial or who actually said what in an interview - without breaking our eating stride at all.

In between we bicker incessantly about just about everything:

his illogical thinking (Reader, you be the judge: is the set of keys marked "Ines and Dan" in our kitchen drawer more likely to A) belong to Inez and Dan, next door or B) be a spare set our key which we had, at some point, intended to give to Ines and Dan for safe-keeping but have since thought the better of it? Yes, you are right, I do have the patience of a saint.), 

my irrational and debilitating fixation with bella figura, which to an Englishman translates roughly as a' hypocrite's etiquette manual',

who's doing any job in the house,

who should be doing it,

who did it last week,

where to go on a mini break

who should book the mini break,

who booked the last mini-break,

whether that lipstick/skirt makes me look like a Neapolitan stripper (it does),

whether he should buy another ukulele (he shouldn't),

why he should be throwing away socks with holes and under no circumstance wear them in places where we shall be taking our shoes off (doh?!)...

You get the gist.

Together we have travelled a good portion of the safe, clean, non war-torn, civilized world; eaten several hundred times our body weight in lovely food, spent several months hugging like hibernating moles, watched about a year of phenomenal films, walked hundreds of miles, holding hands, singing silly songs, shouting at each other, and occasionally crying. 

My nephew, the Mouse, born two years before we met, doesn't remember a time without him and I'm beginning to forget those 20 years out in the cold myself.

Yes, I've struck some sort of (forgetful, clumsy, timid) gold and it's those other men who are crap but here's the cherry on the cake: his love has made me safer and therefore louder and angrier.  

Instead of counting my blessings I look around and see the shameful way some men still treat some women (and society treats all women) and it makes me want to shout.

And he not only 'lets me' but kind of enjoys it too, a little bit.

* Exasperated yes, often.

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RIP Nora Ephron: a reflection on death, romance and southern European politics.

At the risk of turning this infrequently written blog into an obit column, I wanted to reflect on the sad news that Nora Ephron has died.

Her films played in the background of my life as I became a woman , peopled by unforgettable female protagonists who were old enough to get served alcohol in a US bar and had three dimensions, at least one career and a string of sassy repartees.

That was before the soft patriarchy of low expectations (to coin a phrase) set in and screen women were turned into simpering semi clad perpetual teenagers, mainly playing the starved and joyless aspiring girlfriends of the Real Characters.

When Harry Met Sally in particular is one of my favourite films- I watch it every five years or so and I measure my reactions to it through the prism of different ages. It never gets old.

The wholesome, tiresome, quirky Meg Ryan (pre-surgery, pre joyless rictus grin of the compulsory teen ager) sobs inconsolably at the news of her ex' engagement: "And I'm going to be forty!" Billy Crystal replies: "Yes, in eight years' time!" You are totally with her when she shoots back: "But it's sitting there, waiting for me..."

Here is the gender war in one unassuming little exchange.

Men have no 'future gene', their inability to even imagine the future insulating them from fear, prudence, inhibitions. (My brother in law believed becoming a father would give him "time to write" on top of a full time job, if you can believe it. And off to the study he shuffled to write several novels while my sister's idea of time out became going to the loo sans enfant.)

Women, on the other hand, live with their sexual/reproductive/societal sell-by-date tattooed on their soul. There is nothing but future (calculations of how long it will take to accomplish things, sort stuff out, put on another washing, gestate, find another suitable male, how bloated will you be for the party in two days' time if you eat this muffin now, whatever) from the moment you open your eyes in the morning. Grim realism making us forever cautious, self defeating and prone to sacrifice ourselves preventively, whether someone has asked or not.

Ephron's movies were refreshingly about love, friendship, family stuff and not so much about status, money, material aspiration. Her characters got on with their generally fulfilling jobs and no one obsessed too much about ensnaring a millionaire. That was not the point. Although society was changing at that very time and becoming conspicuously more unequal Ephron reflected the sunny aspirations of a previous age. Wall Street did not seem to dominate everything and being a banker's wife was not yet the codified posh alternative to high class hooker.

But let's go back to death for a minute, lest I should be accused of excessive jollity. When I heard the announcement on the radio this morning they simply said she had died, aged 71. I immediately wondered: but what has she died of?

That got me thinking. What is the cut off point for death not having to be explained, contextualised in the language of lost battles with cancer and so on? Seventy one seems awfully young to simply leave it at old age being the cause of death, don't you think? I mean, seventy one is positively JUVENILE in Greek Cabinet or Italian tecnocrats' terms.

Why did she have to go and die like that? Who signed the memo, who processed the request? How can Nora Ephron, a woman who was writing about her worries about a lined neck only two or three years ago, be expectde to...you know...decompose? How can one go from wondering if she can still 'get away' with wearing a polo neck to being old enough that death deserves no further explanation in that space of time?

Perhaps the truth is much more terrifying: people do die at 70, left right and centre and at the same time half of southern Europe (the insolvent half) is being run by male geriatrics who could keel off at any moment, yet remain unable to visualise the simple fact that death is indeed sitting there, waiting for them. Summit or no summit.

Passing

Even though I do nothing all day but "communicate" and consume news, newspapers scattered everywhere, computer blinking at me, Twitter tweetering and the telly permanently on BBC News in the background, I managed to completely miss the sad news of my former colleague David Walter's death.

I was told by another ex-colleague in a sweet email inquiring if I was aware of David's "passing".

Death is so hidden in today's world, we speak of it so rarely, that I'm struck each time by how gentle and tentative the language is. Passing seems to be a lithe, playful, transient way to describe something so definitive, so final .

I once went to Naples with David on a story and we arrived a day early to recce (I imagine none of the words in this sentence make any sense to a young BBC reporter today ). The phone rang while we were tackling an ice cream and I remember the twinkle in David's eye as he replied to our boss: "Oh yes, everything is fine. We are working ever so hard!".

David was superbly sympathetic, warm and believable on screen but also - uniquely in an industry mostly populated by egotistical monsters - managed to be the same person off air. He was as English as they come but keenly interested in Europe, not in the stereotypes so much but in the real story. Again, look away young journalistic bucks.

He was very good to me when I had nothing but a strong accent and grating levels of naivety and enthusiasm. Years later he was very good to me again when I was on the verge of leaving the BBC -downcast, scared and with my sanity hanging by a thread.

He came (and seemd in great form) to my leaving do but when I saw him next, at an event I had organised in my new job, I could tell he had been ill. He was the same sweet self, unassuming, friendly, yet right about most things he commented upon in our chat.

Turns out that right at the time when I thought my life was over he had begun to die for real.

I don't really know what to make of this realisation. The cliches don't actually help. Life, I find, doesn't seem any sweeter now I know for sure that I too will be passing some day, just a little bit more pointless. The deaths of other people weirdly fail to make me feel more alive - just a bit more alone.

Boy, what a treat old age is going to be, should I be lucky enough to get there.

Philanthropists: please feel free to love your fellow men after showing respect for your fellow citizens by PAYING TAX

It's not often that The Independent's editorials and the Guardian's letters page sound sceptical on the subject of charities (their needs and wants) and it is very rare indeed that I find myself in agreement with a Tory Minister, as I did while listening to Treasury Minister David Gauke on Today this morning.

But here it is: when people of modest and middle income pay tax - as they all have to - they have no choice as to what proportion of their money goes to the NHS, say, as oppose to finance wars they might not believe in or R&D projects they might not personally care about.

To paraphrase Danny de Vito speaking about money * it's called tax because everybody pays it, whether they feel like that or not; the state collects it centrally and distributes it as it sees fit, on your behalf and for the greater good of society as a whole- however the government in power happens to define it. If you live in a democracy and you have bothered to vote you will have played some role in deciding the broad brush of what that looks like.

So I do not think that while the majority of the little people see their hard earned cash spent re-tarmacing some stretch of motorway on the other side of the country or rehabilitating unpleasant young offenders, the very rich should pick and choose what and who they 'donate' to instead of paying tax. Will it be a new wing of a prestigious art gallery? Perhaps a season of ballet? Or even, why not, research into some impossibly rare and glamorous genetic condition which plagued grand-mamma's existence?

Tax does not imply generosity or personal glory: it's a civic duty and what it gets you in return is a stake in citizenship - everyone should be made to have that stake in the country they reside in. If you want to be generous on top of that, and maybe get something named after you into the bargain, be my guest.

I do not care how I get my art and culture: I'm very happy indeed if museums and theatres get sponsored to the tunes of millions by the rich, and they are welcome to the recognition, the gala opening, the special seats, the benefit dinners. But I do not want services to turn into charities, something that relies on a few rich people's generosity instead of the ability of the collectivity to provide.

For the record, I'd be interested to see (and the fact I have not seen this anywhere yet might be the answer to my question) how many of the unglamorous, non-artistic causes do in fact rely heavily on rich donors: how may women's refuges or local libraries or day care centres for severely disabled adults. My guess is not many. Meanwhile we know for sure many of these services have been severely reduced or cut down altogether in parts of the country because the state simply cannot afford to keep them going (having democratically made the political choice to cut the budget rather than raise taxes) .

As for those lefties, such as my husband, who unaccountably choose this issue to suddenly become realists ("We need to deal with the world as it is, not as we would like it to be: some amazing charities and institutions will suffer if you discourage rich people to donate)") I say: be the change you want to see in the world; don't just curl up and cave in to the worst version of what we, as a society, can be.

So the National Theatre (and you readers know how I love it) can cry me a river, frankly. If they have to schedule one fewer performance of Waiting for Godot in Armenian, so be it. The truth is, there will always be enough people, rich or otherwise, interested in theatre enough to keep some form of it afloat.

For everything else there is tax. It puts out fire, clears drains, trains policemen and nurses. It takes care of you even if you are smelly and old, and cures you even if you brought your sickness upon yourself. It doesn't judge you or rate you: it looks into your pockets and takes what you can give to pay for what you will need. That's why it's called tax.

(*"You need money? Everybody needs money! That's why it's called money!!!!", from the film Heist)

Ten thousand steps

The journey to success or salvation varies in length, depending on the traveller.

It's a small step for man (albeit an astronaut) to hurl the whole of mankind on the surface on the moon. It takes twelve steps (albeit over several years) for an addict to shed his or her sick skin. But it takes ten thousand steps - a day - for the average fat person to regain control of their weight and shape.

That, and the revolutionary ELBF formula, of course. A more entrepreneurial girl than I might be tempted to trademark it and repackage it in pretty colours before setting up a franchise empire but I'm willing to give away for free: Eat Less Bloody Food.

So let's recap: walk more, lots more, every day. Eat less, a lot less, every day. Forever. Simple, non? Well not quite.

We live in 'obesogenic' societies: physical effort - even of the walking kind, is pared down to a minimum, exceedingly calorific food is available everywhere, all the time, and before we even realise we are being greedy we are swallowing (and let's not forget the drinking side) so many calories there aren't enough hours in the day to burn them all.

Our society has become a distorting mirror. Very overweight is the new normal. I was very thin as a girl and a normal weight for quite a long time as a young woman. Yet it's taken me five years to realise I'm now quite seriously overweight because I'm surrounded by much heavier people and images of skeletal models, neither of which I feel have anything to do with me. I feel normal you see. But I am not.

I'm also beginning to think that fat is a feminist issue in a radically new way from what Susie Orbach intended.
People overeat and under-exercise for all sorts of reasons: lack of money, education, time. Caitlin Moran writes movingly in her excellent memoir "How to be a Woman" about the "quietly over-eating mums", who console and medicate themselves with food, the cheapest, less disruptive addiction available -- less disruptive to others that it, as it allows them to function, take care of others, whilst becoming larger and therefore more invisible to society at large.

But none of these scenarios really applies to me, if I'm honest. I'm a middle class, child-free feminist fattie. I have disposable income and tonnes of 'me' time. I have read acres of newsprint about nutrition, weight loss and so on, not just the cheap magazine stories about miracle crash diets.

I think the feminist critique on our 'lookist' society has had a perverse effect on me. Busy as I was fighting the objectification of women as pretty playthings, rejecting the obscene role models of the fashion industry, in an effort not to be reduced to the sum of my body parts in a sexist world I kind of lost track of my body as a body, a precious vessel made of flesh and bones, a mortal mechanism, the place I inhabit.

But once you are unable to skip down the street, cross your legs properly, wear what you like (not what you can find in your size), wish to even look at yourself in the mirror and have photos taken of you, once you regularly injure yourself through spasmodic bouts of exercise because of the sheer bloody extra weight you are carrying around, isn't your body dominating you, restricting you and defining you more and worse than if it were just an object of male desire and dominance?

I'm asking because I genuinely don't know anymore. I have had a sort of Damascene conversion during the visit of my lite, Jiminy Cricket-wise younger sister and I am exploring totally new feelings and ideas here.

I think it's been easier for me, up to a point, to shrug off my feelings about my own weight as vain, superficial and patriarchy-induced, and to keep stuffing my gob with food that I didn't need and that didn't make my job more secure, my bank balance bigger or my marriage smoother. It was just food, it turns out, eaten mechanically, often in front of the telly, because no one wants to read the novel I am not writing.

Gotta go. I still have 5200 steps ahead of me to accomplish my daily goal. Yesterday I managed 9772, then I simply run out of road and found myself outside my house.

It was late, it was dark, I was tired. I felt too self-conscious and silly to turn around , go back up the road for ten minutes and come back. So I only nearly met my goal. Nearly doesn't get you on the moon. Nearly doesn't free you of crack cocaine.

It was close, but no meringue.. I mean, cigar.

Have the men had enough?

I hope you all had a splendid International Women's Day... Now, tell me, what constitutes a 'feminist issue' in a First World democracy in 2012? Try this definition: any human rights outrage perpetrated despite the presence of great-sounding legislation. Something we all accept should not be allowed to happen and that can therefore be safely ignored by the half of the population not directly effected.

The gender pay gap, currently hovering around an EU average of 20pc *, is a case in point: we have had Equal Pay legislation for 37 years. Nice, reasonable men are happy for women to work and be paid the same as them and therefore can't quite phantom what we are still banging on about. What's been missing is the willingness of nice, reasonable men to share the burden of childrearing, which has de facto consigned many women to part time careers encompassing little more than carrot-peeling and bottom-wiping.

A new Eurobarometer survey just released on the perception of gender inequality across Europe reveals that the pay gap is still the number two concern when it comes to gender equality for women in Europe. Would you like to know what the first one is? Violence against women. Trafficking and sexual exploitation comes at number three on the list.

Men are aware of those things too (46pc of men mentioned male violence vs 50pc of women, not far off) but where - in the public discourse, in the media, in the culture - is the male outrage towards the misery caused by those at Neanderthal end of their gender's spectrum?

It's not enough for the nice, reasonable guys in our lives not to hit us/rape us/ traffic us/pimp us/exploit us though pornography - they must make themselves angry about of the violence women still face from other men, men they presumably work and socialise with every day.

Yes, there are laws and all that. No, we are not actually fighting for the vote, or the abolition of apartheid or anything. But we still need men to get up and get exercised alongside us. This is still about the violation of the basic human rights of half the population.

Some time ago a nice reasonable man and I were discussing a depressing news story about a sexual assault. "What I don't understand," he said, (and please feel free to imagine him metaphorically widening his innocent eyes and batting his eyelashes at me, "is how you can actually force a woman to perform oral sex on you. I can see how you can literally penetrate someone against their will, but blowjobs? "

"Mmm..." I replied, "I suppose it depends on how hard you punch her, on what you threaten to do to her children, on whether you've got a knife to her face.."

"Oh dear..." , he gulped, defeated.

God bless! Imagine living in the safety of a worldview where rape (a bad, bad thing, don't get me wrong) only happens as a result of some mild forcing of oneself upon another. He hadn't thought about it on those nasty terms, the reality of male violence against women a hazy concept to him, not something he has had to worry about every day of his life.

Yet men are partners, husbands, brothers and fathers of women. How can they allow themselves to carry on in this blissful ignorance of the awful things women suffer at the hand of some men?

When will the (nice, reasonable) men have had enough?

* The Gender pay gap in the member states of the European Union- Belgian Presidency report 2010

Clare'sLaw? No thanks, just 'the law' for me will do

We are told that Clare's Law, a much talked about domestic violence disclosure scheme, is to be piloted in four areas around the country.

If you are a woman living in one of those and are worried about a new partner's potential violent tendencies you can now stalk him preventively online with the help of the local police force.

Chances are your average violent bloke has never been charged and convicted of any domestic violence offence, so your new squeeze won't feature on the list and you can go ahead and date him, confident that the thing that happens when he has had a few drinks/is bored/ you have PROVOKED him is not domestic violence, just him slapping you around a bit. Congratulations, you got yourself a keeper!

If he is on the list, boy he must have serious form, but when you try to leave him and he starts beating you up chances are the police still won't turn up. If they do and they arrest him, chances are the courts still won't convict him or give him a serious custodial sentence. And sure as hell there won't be any refuges to escape to if he comes after you because they have to shut down for lack of funding.

But you will feel so empowered, because basically it will all have been your fault for having gotten yourself involved with a bit of rough.

As Sandra Horley wrote in the Guardian this week, we do not need new, expensive but ultimately tokenistic schemes - we need to keep spending the serious money and effort needed to ensure the police bother to apply the law as it stands.

The fact that the announcement came on the week when legal aid for domestic violence victims was under threat was the cherry on the manure cake for me.

Just to make my feelings absolutely clear (I know I can be so hard to read sometimes!) I don't just disagree with Clare's Law as a policy. I find it profoundly irritating and patronising as a concept.

Generally speaking one should be highly suspicious of laws with female names attached. For one thing, there is a whiff of impotent (but terrifying) pitchfork-waving about any measure taken in the name of an individual victim. Sarah's Law , as you might recall, pretty soon led to paediatricians being chased from their homes, having been endearingly confused with paedophiles. Not what I would call a result.

Secondly, it almost inevitably constitutes a cheap crocodile-tear-type answer to the genuine grief and injustice suffered by a family (briefly capturing the sympathy of the nation) for a crime that was supremely avoidable. We all feel vindicated; something is being done in the name of brave Clare, poor Sarah - but nothing that will save another Clare or Sarah.

Clare Wood, whose name graces the current initiative, begged the police to save her from her violent boyfriend on a number of occasions, including after a sexual assault, before finally being murdered by him. I know her heart-broken father fought hard for this initiative- something being better than nothing, in his words. But does he not deserve more than this?

Finally it smacks of yet another example of the outsourcing of effort, cost and responsibility from the provider/company/state to the user/customer/citizen.

Being routinely asked to check out my own groceries is insulting enough (I don't work here, Sainsbury/Boots/Tesco!!!!) but I draw the line at being told that, basically, it's up to me to keep myself safe by giving potential or actual criminals a wide berth after conducting my own mini-policing investigations.

We are already been paternalistically advised not to dress like sluts, not to go out late, not to live our lives without some form of male chaperoning and protection. Enough with making violence against us being our problem to solve. (I do not recall for instance an equivalent Sebastian's law scheme for the self-prevention of corporate fraud or theft. Football fans are not encouraged to ring John's Register and stay away from games when hooligans might be present. Men are not told that the crimes they tend to be the victims of are their problem).

So this is Peebi's Message to the Home Office: you do your job and keep the violent crims behind bars. Train the police to recognise women as people, not noisy thinghies or asking-for-it would-be-whores (oh, and maybe have another look at the rape stats while you are at it) and equip them to turn up and fight crime.

I, for my part, will pay my taxes and date whoever I like. Or not, in my case, because I'm already married - to someone, incidentally, who only sporadically does the hoovering, despite the promises of those heady, crazy early days. I don't suppose there is a register I could have him slapped on for that?