Who are we?

 Saturday, 8th October 2011

                Not so long ago we both got talking about the same idea. Where, or how, could we gather together people we know to talk about things we find interesting as women in our mid-thirties making our way in the world. What we meant was, things that didn’t involve reality TV or footballers wives (often the same subject). We wanted to do something, or build something, but we didn’t know what ‘it’ was, or what it should stand for, or what it might be. It stumped us alone, and then it stumped us together. So we agreed we’d better just get started on it or we’d never find out. So here we are – you and us. Who else might come along, or where we might go, we don’t know.

                We do know our ideas have been stirred by the year 2011. This year has been one of intense record. Just as we untangled ourselves from the financial wreckage of 2008 we watched several European neighbours roll into the same ditch. In London we cheered ourselves up with the royal wedding in April. On the other side of that celebrity coin we saw the self-immolation of News of the World as the phone hacking scandal finally got our attention. In their Arab Spring, Egyptians literally swept up Tahrir Square after throwing out Hosni Mubarak. It was as if, quietly, a long suffering aunt finally lost patience with an over-indulged nephew. What next for Egypt nobody knows.

                The London riots showed us closer to home what ribbon-like structures hold our lives together – really just threads of understanding and agreement. We have seen those delicate connections exposed before, recently, in the collapse of our banks, and physical buildings. Last month, September 2011, millions of people commemorated the 9/11 bombings a decade on. Others will celebrate it.

                This blog is our response to all of this, though we wouldn’t be able to tell you why eloquently. But we need to start in order to find out. It’s something to do with the times we live in, in which our friends are in so many places around the world, and something to do with writing, which we love but never do enough of, and something to do with urgency, which might be because, in our mid-thirties, we have just enough experience to share a useful opinion. And finally because we are feminists (with a big, strident wave to writer, Caitlin Moran) and we wanted to create a space for all the talented women and men we know to write about Things, stuff, big ideas, small ideas, difficult ideas, fun ideas. There’s a lot to talk about and people are doing such interesting things. We can’t all meet in the same bar so this can be our meeting place. And we’re always saying ‘I really need to write more often’. So here we go.

Gabrielle and Katherine.