Benefit Street, Brighton.

  It was her name that first drew me to Lady Mary Wortley Montagu.  In it the Christian, the Old English and the French  mixed together to encapsulate her families passage down through the years. And also just because I like the sounds it makes. As is the way with a name or a concept one has recently encountered, the name kept cropping up in different contexts ranging from the poetic to the scientific, to the medical; and as a feminist. She was being revealed as one of those brave, rebellious Early Modern women whom I was winkling out from under the dusty pall of almost unexplored dismissal.  Mary was born c1689 in the reign of William and Mary of Orange, so no doubt she was one of hundreds of baby girls all over England who were given that same name. From a young age she was resentful of  the expensive education to which her brothers had access but which was forbidden her because of her sex. However, she had complete access to her father's remarkable library an...

                                                  The last blog I published was about the indomitable  Marina Raskova. Because now that Youtubers have discovered The 588th Squadron's exploits, the woman who is responsible for the existence of all three all-female squadrons of the Soviet Air Force, is getting overshadowed by the exploits of the 588th.  Whom one could claim, without hyperbole, are legendary.  These were the women of the most feared and lethal air-borne squadrons of WWII: the squad that prompted the German Military to offer the Iron Cross to any German who shot one down. The squad the Germans called the "die Nachthexen": The Night Witches. The 1930's was a decade in which aeroplanes came into their own - changes in performance, design, composition attracted crowds to Air Shows; and women like Amelia Earhart  in the West and ...

  Much to my chagrin,someone the other day reminded me of my intention to do my bit to let people know that history includes women - women just like us - who did remarkable things,who are role models, and an inspiration to girls & women everywhere. We grow up knowing so few of them, many have turned for emulation to a family of women about whom there is nothing outstanding except their bottoms! But, to date, you pretty much have to go to University to learn about female soldiers; female doctors, scientists, spies, housewives, artists, agitators, pirates... ...And I had One of Those Moments. (I utterly refuse to have an Epiphany. Especially in public.) Last time I sent a missive to the waiting throng I explained about my inability to write...or do much else right now. (http://benefitstbrighton.blogspot.com/2022/02/mental-health-education-me.html) But I suddenly realised, standing at the register in a tiny Coffee Cafe...yes I could! Because writing about "my" ladies brin...

I was a miracle baby. Not that such a phrase would ever have come from the lips of either of my parents. "Oh for gods' sake stop being histrionic." my mother Phyl would have laughed dismissively. While my father, George, would have drily say something  that would  make me the butt of the joke. Both of them had been married before and in each case it had been disastrous. Phyl had been consistently sexually abused by her first husband and, as a result, had been told before she married George that she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. As she was over 40 any cessation of her menses would be down to menopause; not pregnancy, she was informed.   So it was rather a surprise all round when George was called in to visit the RAF doctor. "Ah, yes, George, old man. Marvellous to see you looking so well." "You could have seen how well I was looking at the Mess to-night." George raised an eyebrow. "Yes, yes, jolly good idea. But I thought I'd better tel...

              The day I stood before the door leading to the first classroom I ever entered in China, I paused with my hand on the door handle for quite some time before my brain stopped sending down the "Panic! Run away! Disappear through a hole in the floor!" messages and switched to "Open door". I was already floored to find out that lectures here took place in large school classrooms, were furnished with old-fashioned desks with hinged lids, green chalk-boards and adults sitting scrunched into them so thickly there wasn't a spare seat in the house. Like so much in China, the architecturally modern, streamlined exterior wasn't necessarily any indication of what pertained behind that public presentation. I was unprepared also for lugging armfulls of forms and books and notes and schedules up six flights of stairs, in a stone building whose cold cement treads struck through thin sandals on a hot late-summer day. But most of all I was unprepared for...

  No I haven't gone back into Alice-country again; and no, paws actually don't have anything to do with anything at all I'm wittering on about. In fact neither of the two nouns in that sentences have ever played a vital role in my life. And that's pretty much a common experience: there are some things in life we are only familiar with at second-hand, because they are characteristics associated with other species. From White rabbits to seals the common factor is not the apparatus which enables locomotion. It's whiskers. The very first entry on a basic on-line search for the word "whiskers" brings up the information: "one of several long stiff hairs that grow near the mouth of some animals." The example sentence follows: "The cat licked its whiskers. "  Now I'm not one to credit conspiracy theories; I spent years as an investigative journalist. But, this thing about the whiskers? It just seems so fishy to me. I think it's cheap so...

When you've spent the last five years in a fog I expect suddenly bursting back into clarity again is going to be an illuminating experience in any circumstances. To have done it in the Spring is to add all those tropes of rebirth,  and leaving the Underworld that happen to be circulating around from about March. Anyone who is not totally insensate at this time of year is genetically programmed to rise to the call of Nature triumphant. But to do it in this lockdown has proved exciting, and thrilling, and illuminating by turns - and sometimes all at the same time so I really do, like a girl in a Romcom, gasp audibly and stop in my tracks; quite often. I have twice, unconsciously, but ever so theatrically, raised a hand to my bosom while doing so. (Apart from the conviction that I was certifiable insane, the Fog really seemed to draw a sort of dark oily fuzz over the perceptions. Imagine then, what it's been like to round a bend and come face-to-face with a bawdy, lusty...