Wind down the window, says Wendy Saunt

By Wendy Saunt

“Enjoy every stage of your life” is perhaps the single wisest piece of advice anyone can receive, at any age. It’s particularly pertinent, though, if the person it’s aimed at is in their 30s and thinks their life’s over.  

Having just nudged over from the safety of my mid-30s into the yawning abyss of my late 30s, it seems that this is the decade when you realise your perpetual youth doesn’t exist and the screaming fear sets in.

On a side rant, this is probably because we have a bad habit of fetishising youth and writing off experience as a peculiar affliction of those over, say, 25, but that’s not much help when you’re assessing your loss of collagen in the cold morning light. 

But that’s the point right there: it’s very easy to think about what you haven’t got - be it collagen, the boyfriend/job/flat of your dreams, or even just the sense that time’s on your side. It’s far harder to think about all you have – experiences, memories, nuances and, my God, polished edges, all garnered from the good and the bad bits of your life.

So, as much as this is going to make me sound like a Paulo Coehlo-reading world of pain I’m going to say it anyway: life is a journey. Wind the window down and stick your head out. 

Wendy Saunt is a interior designer, writer and art consultant. She lives in London. You can follow her on Twitter @Wendy__Saunt

Published as part of Not The Style Pages' SpeedBlog series 

Every time, wonders John-George Nicholson

By John-George Nicholson

Every football pitch, every diving board, every running track, every bed, every joystick, every church, every pub, every beach, every thought, every sheet, every screen, every ring, every phone, every hill, every scream, every dance, every drink, every punch, every blade, every tower, every swing, every want, every bleed, every lie, every bike, every kiss, every yes, every no, every giggle, every trip, every click, every song, every film, every shower, every squeeze, every Christmas, every candle, every tube, every bus, every meeting, every belly, every bye, every corner, every book, every word, every lolly, every stranger, every friend, every cage, every fuck, every love, every surprise, every clown, every promise, every purchase, every dream, every square, every bead, every wave, every swallow, every retch, every tear, every cog, every bottle, every can, every can’t, every apple, every cherry, every conviction, every escape, every sorry, every light, every rewind, every shoe, every dress, every speech, every moan, every wall, every fairground, every tooth, every hairdresser, every anchor, every rock, every flat, every burn, every scribble, every trampoline, every touch, every stink, every grin, every silence, every slide, every time I wonder was that really me.

Published as part of Not The Style Page's SpeedBlog series

Oh fuck it, says Alison Lidderdale

By Alison Lidderdale


I guess I am at the 'Oh fuck it' stage!

Things that mattered so very much are now addressed with either a way out or compromise, and that’s not the lazy solution. It often takes more of a challenge to address things, but, hey there is a result! Before, I didn’t always find a solution, and regrets on that - well I might have a few!

There is always a point when you just can't do any more: in the workplace before a big event, a major presentation or meeting. No matter how much you have tried to nail things, you have to pass things over and think, 'Well I have done my best.' The confidence to do that is there now - if people don’t know that one small detail is missing, will they ever find out?

It sounds sly but it's not. The realisation that if you are going to do a job and do it well you need to prioritise and be sure the important stuff is done first. It’s the same in day to day living. I am now probably over half way through a very colourful life, much of that has been lived disgracefully and why change it? All I want to do is be sure I stick to the theme. Priorities are important here too, saying no is tricky but it’s a good word in some instances. Rather than trying to do everything, why not commit to the first invitation and make it a blinding night? What’s the point of running ragged and not enjoying anything?

There are so may F words that mean so much: Focus, Fantastic, Feelings, and the F word remains my mantra for now.

Published as part of Not The Style Page's SpeedBlog series

My heroine, the Iron Lady.

By Simon Stilwell.

I love the Iron Lady. I do. I really do. She is my Heroine. She was, and remains, an inspiration and I cannot think of a single global figure who had such an influence on my life.

I know she’s not everybody’s cup of tea. She stole the free school milk; brilliant as far as I was concerned. I hated the nasty little bottles and the chore of being the milk monitor and having to drink warm curdling semi fluid. She closed the mines, and stood up to Scargill, which infuriated the Northern working population but meant Dad, a policeman, spent weeks guarding the picket lines and could buy the Volvo estate he craved with the unlimited overtime.

She took on the unions. She defeated the Argies. She stood up for her values and that never makes you popular with all.

I like strong women, principled women with well-thought views, enquiring women who seek out a broad view and see a rounded picture. Women who stand for what they think is right. I think there should be more women on company boards. I think pay inequality is a disgrace and I think the gender differential needs sorting.

I like strong women like my mother. She is tiny but Thatcheresque. Some of my earliest memories of her are on school PTA committees battling for things; more lollipop ladies, more school equipment, a swimming pool, after-school clubs, the defence of a teacher, the right to attend the best school available, not just that which was closest, basically anything that she felt strongly about. She was a reformer and an activist and no doubt a total pain in the arse for any headmaster who wanted an easy life.

She pushed me into rugby and judo for which I am eternally grateful. She made sacrifices and I learnt pretty quickly to make sure I got picked, or did well, so her sacrifices had a return. She took on the touchline bullies and saw them off with shaming looks and longer louder cheers.

So in 1979, when I was 11 and Maggie became Prime Minister, it seemed perfectly obvious to me that a woman should be running the country because I thought they were the invincible of the species.

I do remember election night. Not so much waiting for the results but the aftermath – in particular our next door neighbour’s concerns about a female PM and what might happen to the country. It was the beginning of the end, they said. Actually it was the beginning of a great era.

I loved music and would spend all of my pocket money on singles, new releases – the more obscure, the better. Unfortunately the great bands of the early eighties did not share my enthusiasm for Thatcher. Most of them were equally moody teenagers complaining about spiralling unemployment and the North-South divide, rising interest rates and the general demise of the country.  The Iron Lady was getting it from all angles but especially from Top of the Pops. In any case, it was very hard to dance to Ghost Town by the Specials having spent all night plucking up the courage to ask a girl a dance.

The riots of 1981 in Brixton and Toxteth were massive social events. It was society breaking under a new regime. It seemed totally alien to me but the images were pretty horrific. It became tangible when we were on holiday in France. At the same campsite was a group of teenagers from Newcastle and Liverpool who were racing motorbikes on a European tour. They were the first teenagers I encountered who spoke with true venom and hatred of my idol and why she was ruining the country. Me, the naïve Tory boy, wasn’t going to stand for any of it until one of them pinned me to a wall and threatened to stab me. He’d done it before he said, and I took him at his word. I learned a good lesson that night.

But my confidence in Thatcher surged again in 1982, a time of mid-puberty with testosterone flowing faster than the Severn Bore. The Argentineans invaded the Falklands. Big Mistake, huge mistake. I still get a heightened pulse when seeing the anniversary pictures 30 years later. I inhaled the news then. I loved the fact we went off to war, miles away, to protect British people. That was just what you did under Thatcher. No matter who you were, or where you were, she was there for you. I thought they were golden weeks of flag waving at ports as ships departed, soldiers heading off to fight with big moustaches and crap equipment, long range bombing, mid air refuelling, flash masks, news bulletins, tactical mastery, horrific casualties, sinking the Belgrano, Goose Green, Tumbledown, H Jones, trench foot, ‘tabbing’, ‘yomping’, VCs, the approach to Stanley and Victory. I think if I had been allowed on Mastermind in the summer of 1982 I would have had the Falkland War as my specialist subject and won my own emphatic victory. As a war leader she was up there with Churchill.

With hindsight it seems mad that the nation’s view of Thatcher changed on the outcome of the war, rather than the fiscal and economic reform she undertook. But who cared then? It was all big hair and blue suits and a job well done.

I have no doubt her attitude and determination to protect our country and citizens played a big part in me joining the Army later in life.

Thatcher dominated the early eighties, and my life, in other ways too. She had inflation under control, interest rates at respectable levels and unemployment was falling. To salute this efficient management ‘Maggie’ was our key call in rugby, and very effective it was too. Which other political leader has had a penalty move named after them by teenage boys? Mind you, if the Germans played rugby I bet they would have a Merkel right now. The ‘Maggie’ penalty move always utilised any space on the right wing and when it was called we all knew where to go, an entire pack of forwards charging like soldiers toward Mount Tumbledown screaming ‘Maggie, Maggie, Maggie’!. The opposition didn’t stand a chance. If you called a ‘Cameron’, a ‘Clegg’ or a ‘Milliband’ today your team would be trundling fruitlessly up the centre. Hopeless.

I confess my affections for the lady PM waned in my late teens and early student years but I was distracted and I was also living in world very different from my home town. Until I was 16 I had only been to the Isle of Wight and France. I was suddenly thrust into a world of gap year travellers, political activists, socialists, anarchists, atheists and, if it’s a word, apathists. There was too much else to do and unfortunately Thatcher fell out of focus for me and the country. By 1990 she was gone from power.

My passion was rekindled when, in 2007, I got to meet her. It was an invitation out of the blue and the most exciting night of my life. We had a very private conversation about Segolene Royal, another female right wing leader at the time standing against Sarkozy in the French elections. Thatcher was sharp, entertaining, withering with her look and altogether fabulous.  I could tell she thought Royal wasn’t a patch on her and she didn’t rate her chances.

I met her again one year later and again we had a good five minute chat – this time on the more mundane matters of the UK and Gordon Brown and how gutless he had been in not calling an election in late 2007. Later that night I was delighted to hear we looked so comfortable chatting to each other that another guest thought I was her assistant. I was in awe, a dream come true a second time. She was magnificent even when, as she was leaving, she said she was off to cook supper for her husband who of course had been dead since 2003. The publicised mental demise was true but I didn’t care. I’d seen enough to know who she was.

It was with all this history and personal experience in mind that I watched the Iron Lady at the cinema. It was a deserved Oscar winning portrayal but it didn’t do justice to one of Britain’s greatest leaders.

Thatcher touched my life twice more. Once was on the morning after my recent wedding when my wife appeared dressed in nothing more than a latex Maggie mask - quite a combination. Her friends had realised where my affections lay and thoughtfully presented her with the mask as a wedding present. And finally yesterday I saw a picture of Maggie in one of the broadsheets. She was sitting in the park looking serene and I thought, sadly, it won’t be long before the inevitable.

I am proud to be one of Thatcher’s children. The changes she made, example she set and the spirit she imbued have gone a long way to make me the person I am today. Long live the Iron Lady.

Speed blog #3: Enjoy every stage of life

One of the wisest, most fun and wonderful women I know once told me that the secret to a happy life (and still looking and feeling great at 70) is to enjoy every stage of life. Don't long for the past or future, she says, because every stage of life offers something wonderful.

What stage are you in? (You don't have to disclose your age, don't worry!) How does it distinguish itself from past stages and what makes it great? Or do you wholeheartedly disagree with this advice?

Usual rules apply: be loose with the theme but not the word limit (200 words).

Send your 200 words to notthestylepages@gmail.com
(Please include a one line bio and a link if you want one. Images welcome if you own the copyright.)

African women – heroines or hindrance?

African women do everything. I mean everything!

It’s a pretty sweeping statement, I know, and since I’ve only been to Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania, I can only really talk about east Africa. And I’ve only been here for six weeks so I am by no means claiming to be an expert on African women’s issues. Likewise, I don’t claim to have single-handedly solved the ‘Africa issue’.

With the disclaimers out of the way, however, let me share with you my observations on African society: African women do all the work while the men sit under trees, in the shade, making ‘decisions’.

No man moves fast in east Africa, unless he’s training for a marathon in Eldoret, that is. If you want something done, ask a woman. The only waiters I ever saw moving at more than a snail’s pace were the female ones.

And yet, women here are still regarded as the weaker sex. No matter that they build the houses (as is the case in the Maasi tribes), collect the water, tend the fields, cook the dinner, look after the kids and clean the house. I have seen women carrying at least 20 kilograms of goods on their heads, with both hands carrying bags at their sides and men walking next to them carrying zilch. Nothing. Nada. She’s a woman, let her do the work.

It’s no wonder they don’t share in the decision-making – they have no time! But is it really that they’re too busy to worry about advancing their rights in a society that survives on their shoulders? Can they really not insist their husbands wear a condom? Why can’t they just say, ‘If you don’t wear a condom I will not finish building this house, or fetch our water tomorrow, or harvest the crops or cook your dinner?’

African society would just collapse without them, so why can’t they use this power to change things? Are African women hindering the progress of all Africa by failing to stand up to their men?

I realise I’ve probably just offended a lot of people. I know I offended Jack Ojiambo when I said this to him. He said I really didn’t understand African society, or something like that, but in a much more polite manner. Then I figured out Jack’s mother is Kenya’s most famous feminist, earned a Masters degree from  Harvard University, was the first woman to earn a PhD from Nairobi University and became that university’s first female African lecturer and was Kenya’s first female assistant minister. I politely pointed out to him that his family did not fit the standard African mould. I’m pretty sure his mother didn’t have to walk seven kilometres to the river every morning just to pick up the day’s water while Jack was off at boarding school in England. He said I had a point.

I’m clearly not the only one to have made this observation. Many NGOs are already filtering money to families through the women. It’s a well-known fact that money given to women gets spent on the family, whereas money given to men gets spent on him alone. This is by no means unique to Africa but Africa is unique in its dependency on charity, which is why it becomes so important here. The Nike ‘Girl Effect’ programme targets adolescent girls in order to lift “the world” out of poverty. The programme emerged from the Girls Count research, which found that providing support to girls aged 10-18 dramatically improves their lives and also results in significant benefits to society at large.

Long drives through Africa provide ample thinking time. Watching out windows at field after field of women with hoes, women carrying extraordinary sized packages on their heads, women working everywhere and a lot of men sitting under trees, really makes you think.

Has it always been this way? Or did the women just say one day, ‘My family needs to eat and the blokes around here are useless so I will go and plant some vegetables.’ How did it get like this and why hasn’t it changed?

Is it right for the NGOs to make the decision that women are the ones to be trusted? Will it even work? To me, it makes perfect sense. Even to my Italian friend it made practical sense. Let me tell you his story.

Paolo went for a walk near Lake Bunyonyi in Uganda. He met two young boys who were funny and lively and he struck up a conversation with them. They told him that their parents were dead and they couldn’t afford to go to school and asked for some money. Paolo, being no fool, asked them what they needed it for. ‘To buy some dinner,’ they wisely told him.

‘No, if I give you money, you go and buy beer!’ he said.

‘No, no, we don’t buy beer!’ they insisted, but Paolo didn’t believe them. He asked them to show him their home and that only then would he give them some money.

At their home, he discovered they were at least partially telling the truth – their parents were dead but they should have been in school. As Paolo suspected, that money would have gone straight to the liquor store. Instead, Paolo met the boys’ sister. He got talking to her and she told him the straight truth, including not to give the boys money. So Paolo gave the money to her and she thanked him gratefully and told him what she was intended to buy with it – stuff for the whole family, of course.

Paolo doesn’t work for an NGO. He hasn’t got a degree in African studies. He’s a human being with intelligence and instinct and it made perfect sense to give a little girl money and no sense to give two little boys any.

Maybe I am enforcing my own values on a different society. And maybe the NGOs are too. Maybe the money shouldn’t be given before there’s adequate representation of women in parliament and adequate protection of women’s rights enshrined in law. Maybe African society needs the empowerment of women to truly lift it out of the state of poverty and corruption it is still mired in.

I genuinely don’t know the answers to these questions. All I know is that African women work bloody hard for no pay and they deserve better: from NGOs, from African men, from tourists, especially the ones who pay for sex, and from us – western women.

What I see here is a terrifying culture of dependency and women working bloody hard to keep their families alive. I would help if I could, but something tells me more charity from mzungus would be seriously counter-productive. It’s time more African women followed the lead of women such as Julia Ojiambo and her peers. And we support them from afar.

Sarah Farraway on IVF, snails and modern feminism. A belated New Year interview.

Sarah Farraway lives in Sydney, Australia.

What did you get up to in 2011?

I spent the first half of the year feeling quite pleased with myself as I came to realise I might finally (after many false starts) have worked out what I want to do when I grow up. I started studying psychology and loved it.  I feel sure that when the 15 or so years of study are completed, I will make an excellent psychologist....

I then spent the second half of 2011 trying to get pregnant - and no, that was nowhere as much fun as it sounds. IVF was hands-down, the least fun experience I've ever had (even worse than that time when I was 16 and a crazy Dr tried to 'extract' a huge cyst from one of my breasts through an enormous needle without any anaesthetic!). But it worked so worth it in the end.

What was your Most Useful Thought of the year?

You can feel married without needing to go to the bother of actually getting married. Oh, and backyard pools make great babysitters. 

What’s on your ‘to do’ list for 2012?

Well, I have to have this baby now!  It's amazing how time-consuming babies are before they have even arrived. I am also getting fit in preparation - lots of walking and pilates. I am also re-reading all the Harry Potter books, which has been a long-term goal. Please don't judge me. It's not all tragic, reading the Female Eunuch is also on my list and incidentally, I am really looking forward to hearing Germaine Greer speak in a couple of weeks time!

Which villain really yanked your chain in 2011?

Australian politicians. All this decision-making by focus group and pandering to minority views in marginal seats nonsense really annoys me. Also the US Government for wasting the opportunity to regulate the American banking industry. And Rupert Murdoch and his newspaper cronies. 

...and who was your hero?

All the protesters around the world bringing change to their countries and communities in dangerous circumstances. 

What book/s did you read this year that we might like?

I really recommend anything by Persephone Books. They are a tiny UK company, publishing obscure female writers and poets from the early 20th century. The stories are all wonderful. I read Someone at a Distance this year - brilliant. And How to Run Your Home Without Help has some great tips for the reluctant housewife.

What did you discover in 2011 the rest of us should know about?

That I can make an active and important contribution to modern feminism without having to write a book, publicly argue with other women, march in the street or grow my armpit hair. Just parent consciously and say no to all those stupid things women do without thinking about why, like waxing our pubes. 

Will you be secreting a slow or dirty vendetta in 2012?

I will soon be waging war on the snails which have invaded my life, destroying my herb garden and eating all my mail.

What could you do without in 2012?

All this bloody rain wrecking havoc around the country, not to mention ruining my summer