Something reminded me the other day about the Women's Liberation Movement (I think it was a newspaper article about how today's young women are indifferent to feminism, finding it irrelevant). Looking back I see it as something that was a fashion, something you did, because everyone else did. I know that I was very enthusiastic , buying The Female Eunuch and marvelling at it. I also read Kate Millett and some others whose names I can't quite remember at the moment, though I'm sure I'd recognise them if someone reminded me. Oh, I know - Jill Tweedie in the Guardian and of course pioneers like Mary Stott.
Anyway, I started to trawl my memory - I went along to weekly meetings of the local Women's Lib group with a couple of friends, one of which was a New Zealander, Heather, who arrived on our doorstep at the squat in Oxford that myself and my boyfriend had just moved into. She'd been looking for somewhere to live and someone had told her. She was, at the time, a radical feminist, dressed glamorously in an ankle-length ex-Nazi leather coat she'd picked up in an Amsterdam flea-market. She was as thin as a rake and stood on our doorstep, smoking a roll-up. 'Hi - I'm Heather', were her first words, in the broadest Kiwi accent. I'd never met anyone like her before. and her direct, down-to-earth Antipodean good sense soon sorted our flaccid hippy haven.
She introduced me to the burgeoning feminist movement and, along with a few others, went along with Heather to the early meeitings of the local Women's Liberation group. It was in a small church hall type of place and we all sat round in a circle and talked, and sometimes shouted. Our boyfriends would come along with us and sit in the garden of a nearby pub waiting for us, with an air of amused tolerance. Anyway, I don't remember much of what we discussed, except one occasion when someone brought along a film of miners' wives, and the support systems they'd created to help their husbands and their communities during the recent miners' strike (this was around 1973-4, so we were right in the middle of the ill-fated Heath government). This film caused a right storm - I think the woman who'd brought it along had intended to show us that working-class women were as capable of organisation as us middle-class types, but someone got up and angrily asked the group why we sitting watching stuff about a load of housewives, who, of course, were slaves to servility. There was a huge row about the direction feminism should go in - anywa, it was all pretty unedifying, and as someone, probably the only person in the room apart from Heather, also from a humble background, who had some personal experience of working-class life. I don't remember any other meetings, and we soon lost interest in going, though not before we'd participated in an event that still brings me out in a cold sweat every time I think about it.
The group had heard that the students at St Catherine's College, Oxford had hired a stripper to 'perform' in their Junior Common Room (JCR), so it was decided that we'd infiltrate the event and disrupt it. Although the college was all-male in those days, the students had been allowed to bring women to this event so it was pretty easy to get in and sit there unnoticed. What transpired was truly scary - the stripper got going and this was the cue for us to stand up and start shouting things like 'this degrades women' and chanting. There were quite a few of us, but the room was crowded and there were a hell of a lot of students. They went ballistic and chased us out - I don't know what happened because I fled into the nearest ladies' loo and cowered until the mayhem died down and I could slink out unnoticed. The noise was terrific and what was most scary was the bile and viciousness that emanated from the thwarted crowd. I suppose they'd worked themselves up into a state of high sexual anticipation and excitement, and we'd thwarted them. Anyway, I was terrified, not only of the students, but of being found out by my braver colleagues and labelled a coward, which of course I was. The whole episode told me that political activism was not for me and I went on to have babies and acquire the status of the dreaded housewife.
I wonder what happened to everyone there? I know that one of the group went on to marry a vicar and become a well-known writer, and Heather went on to forge a great career at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation after many ups and downs, becoming an Australian in the process. She's stayed a good friend and we've kept in close touch, but I sometimes think about all those other young feminists and wonder where they are....
Monday, 29 December 2008
Monday, 22 December 2008
Woollies
The news of the demise of Woolworths brought back many memories for me. I haven't set foot in Woollies for years so it was hardly part of my emotional landscape, but it provided me with my earliest work experience, so I have some long-ago, fond memories of the place.
I was 14, and in those days you could work legally for 2 hours a dayso I did Friday evenings. It was a small branch in a typical 60s shopping precinct and opened until 7pm on Fridays only in those far-off days before extended opening. Even that was considered pretty revolutionary.
The staff consisted of a handful of embittered regulars and the rest were schoolgirls. We had few customers, and our most frequent visitors were a gang of Rockers (we're talking about the mid-60s, so there were still Mods and Rockers, in the days before there were hippies) who would loaf around, shoplift and drop off stink bombs.
My memories are pretty fragmentary, but I seem to have spent most of my time there working on the biscuit counter, where we had those old-fashioned tins ranged in front of us, and we'd sell them loose. And of course there were the famous tins of broken biscuits. It seems unimaginable now, but people used to buy them! Why can't we be as frugal nowadays? I suppose we may have to be in the coming months as the credit crunch starts to bite, but Woollies will be long gone.
After we'd finished work, we used to go over to Lewis Separates which stayed open a bit later, and spend all our wages on clothes. We were Mods, of course, or tried to be - anyway, clothes, and music (increasingly) were all we thought about (boys weren't quite so important). Looking good, and knowing the latest dance steps were what was really important. I do remember vividly the exhilarating feeling of having my own money after years of a few coins pocket money and the unconfined joy of spending it on whatever I wanted - bliss! I felt I had the world at my feet.
So, while I can't feel much emotion at Woollies demise, I have fond memories, and I'm sure I'm not the only one as not many places were willing to employ girls as young as us. I know my brother found it much easier to work, and he seemed to have loads of jobs.
Anyway, once I was 15 I graduated to working all day Saturday, but that didn't last long. I got a much-coveted job usheretting at the Oxford Playhouse, but that's another story.....
I was 14, and in those days you could work legally for 2 hours a dayso I did Friday evenings. It was a small branch in a typical 60s shopping precinct and opened until 7pm on Fridays only in those far-off days before extended opening. Even that was considered pretty revolutionary.
The staff consisted of a handful of embittered regulars and the rest were schoolgirls. We had few customers, and our most frequent visitors were a gang of Rockers (we're talking about the mid-60s, so there were still Mods and Rockers, in the days before there were hippies) who would loaf around, shoplift and drop off stink bombs.
My memories are pretty fragmentary, but I seem to have spent most of my time there working on the biscuit counter, where we had those old-fashioned tins ranged in front of us, and we'd sell them loose. And of course there were the famous tins of broken biscuits. It seems unimaginable now, but people used to buy them! Why can't we be as frugal nowadays? I suppose we may have to be in the coming months as the credit crunch starts to bite, but Woollies will be long gone.
After we'd finished work, we used to go over to Lewis Separates which stayed open a bit later, and spend all our wages on clothes. We were Mods, of course, or tried to be - anyway, clothes, and music (increasingly) were all we thought about (boys weren't quite so important). Looking good, and knowing the latest dance steps were what was really important. I do remember vividly the exhilarating feeling of having my own money after years of a few coins pocket money and the unconfined joy of spending it on whatever I wanted - bliss! I felt I had the world at my feet.
So, while I can't feel much emotion at Woollies demise, I have fond memories, and I'm sure I'm not the only one as not many places were willing to employ girls as young as us. I know my brother found it much easier to work, and he seemed to have loads of jobs.
Anyway, once I was 15 I graduated to working all day Saturday, but that didn't last long. I got a much-coveted job usheretting at the Oxford Playhouse, but that's another story.....
Sunday, 7 December 2008
stationary
I was thinking about stationary the other day as I was writing my diary. My diary's a beautifully designed moleskin-bound thing from Paperchase, with an elastic bookmark. It's heavy, luxurious, and perfectly-formed. I'm about to start on my second one - though I've been writing a diary for a few years using other designs, I finally discovered these lovely objects in the Paperchase concession in Borders.
It got me thinking, and reminiscing about stationary. Now, I'm one of those people who love stationary, who have a bit of a fetish about it. I know that it's a syndrome as I remember reading an article about stationary-addiction, so I know I'm not alone. In fact there was an article in The Times the other day about a love, no, need for lovely leather-bound diaries in today's era of email and text.
Anyway, stationary-addiction can be defined, if such a thing can be defined, as a love of paper, pens, diaries, and all ancillary items. Computer stuff does not count. But where does this love of everything to do with writing come from?
I can only speak for myself, but I can trace it right back to childhood. I would go into town with my parents, and rather than drag me round Sainsbury's or the Co-Op, they would leave me in a wonderful emporium which I don't think had changed since the Edwardian era, called something like Oxford Educational Bookshop. At least I think it was called that but I may be wrong, but it was something like that. It was a two-story emporium - dark and overflowing with stationary stuff. The ground floor was relatively uninteresting, full of rubbers and pencils, but upstairs was where the action was. Or rather, inaction. It was usually empty of people, apart from me and the occasional browser, but it was full of piles of paper, exercise books - stationary. I would wander its aisles, such as they were, fingering the stuff, looking at it, stroking it, reading it, and, I guess, fetishizing it. I would spend hours there. And I could. No-one ever challenged or questioned my right to be there, in fact I don't remember the presence of any staff.
The funny thing is, when my daughter left school at 18, and decided that she wanted to work for a year to save up enough money to go to Australia for a year, she ended up working in - guess what? A stationary shop! And it was a wonderfully old-fashioned place that hadn't changed in decades. Not quite the Edwardian emporium of my memory but a 1970s-type of place with absolutely no 80s ambience at all. Anyway she spent a very happy year there, and still returns every now and again to see the staff. And it still hasn't changed. Though whether it'll survive the economic storm that's coming remains to be seen.
Anyway, one thing I've found in adulthood is that I'm definitely not alone - in fact I imagine that it may become more prevalent as stationary becomes a bit of an endangered species. Nothing can possibly replace the joy of pen on paper, especially moleskin-bound paper. And of course, the pen has to be a green Pentel rollerball pen with black ink. I've just discovered the WH Smith website so have been able to buy a big job lot of them. It's one of my biggest secret terrors that they'll be discontinued. Along with black notebooks!
It got me thinking, and reminiscing about stationary. Now, I'm one of those people who love stationary, who have a bit of a fetish about it. I know that it's a syndrome as I remember reading an article about stationary-addiction, so I know I'm not alone. In fact there was an article in The Times the other day about a love, no, need for lovely leather-bound diaries in today's era of email and text.
Anyway, stationary-addiction can be defined, if such a thing can be defined, as a love of paper, pens, diaries, and all ancillary items. Computer stuff does not count. But where does this love of everything to do with writing come from?
I can only speak for myself, but I can trace it right back to childhood. I would go into town with my parents, and rather than drag me round Sainsbury's or the Co-Op, they would leave me in a wonderful emporium which I don't think had changed since the Edwardian era, called something like Oxford Educational Bookshop. At least I think it was called that but I may be wrong, but it was something like that. It was a two-story emporium - dark and overflowing with stationary stuff. The ground floor was relatively uninteresting, full of rubbers and pencils, but upstairs was where the action was. Or rather, inaction. It was usually empty of people, apart from me and the occasional browser, but it was full of piles of paper, exercise books - stationary. I would wander its aisles, such as they were, fingering the stuff, looking at it, stroking it, reading it, and, I guess, fetishizing it. I would spend hours there. And I could. No-one ever challenged or questioned my right to be there, in fact I don't remember the presence of any staff.
The funny thing is, when my daughter left school at 18, and decided that she wanted to work for a year to save up enough money to go to Australia for a year, she ended up working in - guess what? A stationary shop! And it was a wonderfully old-fashioned place that hadn't changed in decades. Not quite the Edwardian emporium of my memory but a 1970s-type of place with absolutely no 80s ambience at all. Anyway she spent a very happy year there, and still returns every now and again to see the staff. And it still hasn't changed. Though whether it'll survive the economic storm that's coming remains to be seen.
Anyway, one thing I've found in adulthood is that I'm definitely not alone - in fact I imagine that it may become more prevalent as stationary becomes a bit of an endangered species. Nothing can possibly replace the joy of pen on paper, especially moleskin-bound paper. And of course, the pen has to be a green Pentel rollerball pen with black ink. I've just discovered the WH Smith website so have been able to buy a big job lot of them. It's one of my biggest secret terrors that they'll be discontinued. Along with black notebooks!
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