A Woman’s Work

As women we feel obligated to achieve the 1950s stereotype of perfect womanhood; immaculate dress, neat hair; cooking, cleaning, doing absolutely everything, and with a smile.  Women in the past had to be a monolith of effortless domestic strength and aptitude, but modern women shouldn’t feel inadequate by comparison, and should remember that most of those 1950s women didn’t have outside jobs. Their sole employment was to run their home and family, meaning that they had the time and energy to do it well.   

I am constantly amazed by the amount of vigour my 76 year-old grandmother still finds to spend every day ironing socks, and tea towels, and underpants, when I don’t even iron proper clothes.  As modern women, we have full-time jobs with very long hours, and the exhaustion of commuting, and far greater responsibilities and demands on our emotional and physical resources than in the past.  It should be considered an achievement if we have the energy to come home from work and cook something that isn’t a ready-meal, let alone do it in heels. 

My view of the domestic stereotype recently changed, and I realised that perhaps the past wasn’t as imbalanced as we think.  My Grandmother was telling me that my Grandad would never be expected to cook a meal, or pick up a hoover, or change a nappy, because those were women’s jobs.  However, as a woman, she would never be expected to take the bins out, or mow the lawn, or clean the gutters, or kill a spider.  Men’s jobs. The partnership was more equal than we think, it was just that men and women had more clearly defined roles, with each doing what was expected of them, and keeping up their end of the partnership bargain to take care of the other, both part of the household clockwork.

Whilst there were indeed immense pressures placed on women to create a picture-perfect, and spotlessly clean home, and perfectly turned-out family, there were also equally great pressures on men when it came to meeting masculine roles and expectations, and being the sole provider for the family.  This meant that women of the past weren’t challenged by many of the burdens that modern women face.  The man earned the money, and paid the bills, and mowed the lawn, and looked after the car, and the woman looked after the home and family.

Modern women, now that we stay single/unmarried for longer, and tend to live by ourselves for longer, are burdened with both feminine and masculine responsibilities, and we have to do it all by ourselves.  Even when we are in a partnership, the divide of responsibilities is more equally shared, and modern women are expected to change the tyres, and earn the money, as well as have a perfectly cooked meal on the table, and bath the children, and wear the heels and lipstick that make us attractive.  We have to kill the spiders.

Is it any wonder that in 2019 women come home from work, and collapse on the sofa; wearing pyjamas, and eating pizza, rather than cooking a casserole in 5 inch heels, and taffeta?  There just isn’t enough energy in one body to be both man and woman, and do everything all the time.  As modern human beings, we’re just trying to get through the day.  If we don’t get assaulted on the train home, that’s a victory, forget Victoria Sponge and Mac Ruby Woo on a Wednesday night.  We’re doing our best.  This goes for men, as well.  Men are coming home from a long day’s work and dealing with bathtime, and bedtime stories, and sharing the cooking, instead of reading the newspaper in an armchair by the fire until dinner is on the table.  The 21^st Century has been hard on both sexes, and demanded more of all of us.  Women know where the stopcock is, and men know who Mary Berry is.

The double-edged sword of equality, and feminism is that we have greater respect, higher wages, more freedom, more understanding, and a platform to speak that we didn’t have before, but we also have more responsibilities.  We have to open our own doors.  Fighting to be equal doesn’t just mean that your boss can’t call you sweetheart, it means that you unclog the drains instead of waiting for your husband.  Perhaps we didn’t think this through?

As much as I am grateful for being an enlightened, modern woman; single, and earning my own money, not answerable to anybody, able to make my own decisions, I do sometimes wonder whether they had the right idea back then.  Perhaps it would be quite nice to stay at home all day, putting lipstick on, and stirring a casserole, and then telling my husband when he comes home from work that the bins need seeing to, and the car needs filling up with petrol.  Oh, and there’s a wasp’s nest in the garage with your name on it, I’m off to read Harry Potter to the children.

Of-course, equality is a wonderful, and very hard-won thing.  You only have to look at countries who haven’t quite achieved it yet to appreciate how fortunate we are to be ‘woke’ in the UK.  Women are completely free to be badasses in the home, and in the workplace.  We can be boss, and mum, and still make a trifle with one hand, while paying the electricity bill online, and breastfeeding a child.  Women have infinite resources, and therefore infinite value.  It is simplistic to think that those women of years gone by were wasted, and unchallenged.  Running a home, and looking after a family so totally, and devotedly, takes enormous energy, strength, and mental acuity.  The housekeeping standards that were held are something we can only aspire to, and learn from.  I wish I had the time and energy to iron my socks, and hoover right into the corners, but I just don’t… but those women did. 

However, we must think of all the women over the years who would have been lawyers, and doctors, and engineers, and pilots, and members of parliament.  Many women missed their chance to change the world because they were only allowed to give birth, and change nappies, and make drinks for their husband’s colleagues.  All that wasted talent, and potential.  That is the true importance of equality; what could have been, and what might be.      

We would be living in a very different world if those women had been given the chance to do something else, something more.  Laws would be different, economies would be different.  I often think that our history as mankind until very recently has been governed by men, and those men made decisions in a very different way to women, based on violence.  History was decided with wars, and bombs, and guns, and tanks, and murder, and fighting, and terror, and executions.  Violence and death have dominated our progress as human beings.  Women would have done things very differently.  Women would not commit mass genocide.  Women would not invent mustard gas for the trenches.  Women would not build Auschwitz.  Women would not make men fight lions in arenas for entertainment.  Women would not nail Jesus to a cross, and watch him bleed.  I believe this is because women create life, and feel it growing inside them.  They feed life at their breast.  They also know how precarious and vulnerable life is.  They feel it disappear.  They see it slip away, carried from their sight in a dirty bundle.  Women know the true value of life, and so would not be so careless with it.  When you have waited for life every month, and every month felt the crushing blow of its absence with the stark reminder of blood, you would not invent the Kalashnikov/AK-47.  When you have loved a tiny life for nine months, and felt its every movement deep within your body, and planned every moment of its future, and then watched it being pulled away from you; cold and lifeless, you would not invent the electric chair to punish murderers.  You would not walk into a music arena in Manchester and explode nails at children dancing to their favourite song.  The world would be very different if it were governed by the people who understand how incredibly valuable a life is. 

How different the world would be if every nation were governed, and protected by a mother, who would nurture every life at her breast, and feel every loss as her own.

This Woman’s Work, Kate Bush.

Pray God you can cope
I stand outside this woman’s work
This woman’s world
Ooh, it’s hard on the man
Now his part is over
Now starts the craft of the father

I know you’ve got a little life in you yet
I know you’ve got a lot of strength left
I know you’ve got a little life in you yet
I know you’ve got a lot of strength left

I should be crying, but I just can’t let it show
I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking

Of all the things I should’ve said
That I never said
All the things we should’ve done
Though we never did
All the things I should’ve given
But I didn’t
Oh, darling, make it go
Make it go away

Give me these moments back
Give them back to me
Give me that little kiss
Give me your hand

I should be crying, but I just can’t let it show
I should be hoping, but I can’t stop thinking

Of all the things we should’ve said
That we never said
All the things we should’ve done
Though we never did
All the things that you needed from me
All the things that you wanted for me
All the things that I should’ve given
But I didn’t
Oh, darling, make it go away
Just make it go away now

Like a Girl

I was on New-Brighton Beach with my family last week, on May Bank Holiday Monday.

I heard a Father say to his son; “That’s not a proper jump, you little girl.”

As angry as I still am by what the Father said, I’m more angry with myself for doing nothing. I was so dumb-founded, all I could do was burn silently with internalised rage. I wish I’d been brave enough to stand up, and say to this Father; Have you ever seen a little girl jump, or run, or punch, or climb a tree? They’re like Olympian frogs. Also, don’t use “Girl” as an insult in front of your son, he’ll grow up to be a misogynist.

I’m still angry with myself, over a week later. Angry that I didn’t stand up to be counted. Angry that I wasn’t braver. In the Society we live in; a lot of women (including me) are afraid to stand up and be counted, for fear of looking stupid, which is unladylike, and unattractive. Men can say what they like; the stupider the better.

This is me around the age of seven.  My best friends were boys, and I spent all my time wearing a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles sweatshirt; climbing trees, running, and riding my bike. My knees were always bloody, and my hands were always black.   I grew up with a Father who taught me how to fight, and only ever called me “Mate” until I was twenty-five, never anything else, and a Grandad who let me dress up as Ming the Merciless, and shoot plastic suckers at his head at point-blank range, when we were playing Defenders of the Earth.

Why has the term Girl been used as an insult for so long?  Why do men have this pre-conception that girls can’t jump? Even the very girly-girls in frilly dresses, playing with Barbies, are strong enough to out-arm-wrestle a boy any day of the week. Little girls are a force of nature; formidable, indefatigable, fearless. They are Amazonian warriors, and wolf-mothers to whatever doll, or teddy is their baby that week. They are fireworks, exploding all the time. They’re fighters.

Anyone who has ever watched a little girl for five minutes will know that there is nothing weak, or feeble about them, whatsoever, so where did this idea come from? I would imagine from the same place as; “The weaker sex”, “The little woman”, “Her indoors”, “The fairer sex”, and every other limitation placed on women since the dawn of time.   You can also bet it was a man who invented all those words like petite, and dainty, and made women want to be them.

Try telling Olympic Hurdler Denise Lewis that girls can’t jump! Try telling Serena Williams that she hits like a girl. They would knock your pretty little head off, son.

One of the biggest, and very first breakthroughs in the current feminist revolution was the Like a Girl campaign by Always. I remember vividly the first time I watched the video when it appeared online, at the very crest of the current movement, and I was bursting with so many emotions. The film starts with an interviewer asking a selection of men and boys of varying ages, and disappointingly some women, to demonstrate how a girl would run, jump, fight, throw, etc. They all give farcical performances of stereotypically flouncy, weak, ditsy girls, with pathetic, flailing arms, and no strength. Then they ask young girls the same thing. The girls are strong, fast, and brave. There is no flailing, and nothing pathetic about them. The first reaction of the young girls is to carry out the physical task to the maximum of their ability; to jump as high as they can, to run has fast as they are able to; to draw their fists back, and punch as hard as they can muster. They are fierce. They are impressive, and beautiful.

It is incredibly sad that the boys they interviewed, boys who spend every day of their lives surrounded by, and being cared for; fed, loved, and protected by mothers, grandmothers, sisters, cousins, classmates, teachers, dinner ladies, lollypop ladies, and so many other strong, formidable female figures, rather than allowing that strength, and protection to form their opinion of what a woman is, instead allow the prejudices, and small-minded assumptions of their fathers, grandfathers, and male classmates, to colour their image of womanhood. The heritage passes to each new generation, creating wave after wave of men who think women are weak, because that’s just how things are.

I would wager that most of the men who hold these beliefs, and keep alight this mythical image of flapping femininity, have never seen a woman give birth, received treatment from a female paramedic, or been raised solely by a single mother. It would be very hard to witness the unimaginable strength of women in tough situations, and still hold the boorish view that women are the “weaker sex.”

Have these men ever seen a woman building a flatpack wardrobe? Have they ever watched the female athletes in the Olympics, and Paralympics? Have they ever seen Serena Williams playing Tennis… or Serena Williams doing anything? Or seen all the women running in marathons?

Have they ever met a woman who has just suffered a miscarriage, or has a bald head and flat chest from Breast Cancer, but still gets tea on the table for her children; still runs in their Sports Day race, because that’s what they need today?

Have they ever felt what a woman feels when she’s in a meeting with men, being totally ignored, or patronised? Ever felt what a woman feels when she’s dressed smartly in her best professional suit, and nice shoes, but still gets called sweetheart, or is presumed to be somebody’s secretary, rather than the person doing the job?

I wish I could have said all of this to the Father on the Beach. Actually, I wish I could have said it to his son. I wish I could have said; Have you ever seen a single mother doing the weekly shop, keeping three children under control, while trying to stretch every penny, because she doesn’t get any help, choosing which essentials to sacrifice because there isn’t enough money for everything they need, whilst simultaneously settling six arguments, and keeping three children alive, safe, and within eyesight, making sure they don’t miss the bus, so they’re not late for karate/school/a party, while making sure three school uniforms/football kits/party dresses are washed, ironed, and ready. All this before she goes to work for nine hours? Have you ever seen a woman doing that? She won’t break a sweat. She won’t swear at her children. She won’t cry. And they will all have a meal on the table at the necessary time, because that’s just what needs to be done. Or, what about the married woman, who gets abuse shouted at her in the carpark for being a stupid ‘woman driver’, whilst keeping three children under control in the back of the car, and doing the weekly shop, and getting home to clean the house, and cook a meal for her husband, who will walk through the door and lie down on the sofa until it’s ready, and then she’ll wash his clothes, and iron them, and then deal with the children, and then go to work for nine hours, all while keeping her hair neat, and lipstick on.

So, if you want to tell your son that he’s jumping like a little girl, you’d better bloody realise everything that that means, because little girls grow up to be warriors, and they’ll wipe the floor with you, and your chauvinistic bullshit. Please, tell your son that.

The second cultural lightning bolt which had a big impact on me personally, and fundamentally changed the way I think about the world, was a video by Mayim Bialik called “Girl” vs. Woman: Why Language Matters.” It’s really interesting that we call women ‘girl’ well into adulthood, probably until late 40s, or when they start going grey, and yet we generally stop calling boys “’boy” sometime during teens/secondary school. There are lots of transitional terms, and other words, such as ‘lad’, ‘bloke’, and ‘guy’ that enable us to define a male person between boyhood and manhood, but we only have ‘girl’ or ‘woman/lady’ to define a female person. I’m as guilty as anyone of using phrases like; “a girl at work”, “the girl in the shop”, “she’s a lovely girl” to describe women who have degrees, and PhDs, and important jobs; who wear suits to work, have mortgages, drive cars, and have husbands, and children. They are most definitely women, but we still call them ‘girl’ so widely. On the other hand, we would never refer to a man anywhere above twenty, who had a job, and wore a suit, and had a family, and a car, as a ‘boy’. Actually, we wouldn’t call a man who had none of those things a boy, either. It just feels wrong. Our mindset as a Society so naturally protects manhood, and masculinity, it goes against the grain.

The effect is to keep women small, in a state of childlike dependency; reliant on men for money, guidance, and protection. In reality, women don’t rely on men at all. Any woman who has raised a son, or any woman who has married a man who was too dependent on his mother, will know how heavily men rely on women for basic everyday care. I have always believed that instead of fathers walking their daughters down the aisle when they get married, mothers should give their sons away, because many men are just handed from mother to wife, and remain completely dependent on a woman, often any woman, for cooking, cleaning, buying underpants, and basic survival.

Language is a big defining factor in how we perceive each other, but it is not the words themselves that matter, but the intent behind them. If my Grandad calls me Sweetheart, because it’s clearly done with love, and affection, demonstrable in the intonation of his voice, and my prior assurance that my grandad respects me as a person, I don’t find anything negative, or offensive in the word whatsoever. It’s lovey, and a term of endearment. Whereas, if a Builder shouts Oi, Sweetheart from some scaffolding, I know that the intention is to deliberately and specifically make me feel small, and objectified, and therefore bad about myself, and so it’s offensive, because it works.

I was also really affected by a speech I saw recently made by Reese Witherspoon at the Woman of the Year Awards. She has started her own production company so that she can make films with strong, and varied female roles. She was tired that in so many films, where women are reduced to one-dimensional stock characters as the wife/girlfriend/assistant of the diverse and complex male character, there is so often a point in those films where the woman turns to the man, damsel in distress, and asks; “What are we going to do?”, and looks to the man for guidance, and protection, and a way out of the problem. Reese pointed out, quite correctly, that women in real life don’t go around asking for help from men, and not knowing what to do in situations. Women get shit done. She talked about how they teach children in schools that if they are ever lost, or in trouble, or in a disaster, or crisis, or dangerous situation, they should find a woman to ask for help. It’s the women who will look after them, and know what to do. Women in real life know what to do, so why don’t they in films?

The problem is not how women behave, it’s how the media portrays them, which constructs our pre-conceptions.

Take those stereotypical female secretaries in films from the 50s/60s/70s; the image of a perfectly turned out, airhead sex-kitten, who doesn’t know what day of the week it is, or where Japan is on a map, but has perfect nails. Women didn’t start acting like that, film producers invented that idea. Have you ever met a secretary in real life? They are terrifying. Granted, they will be well turned out, but they will know every person in the building, they will know their boss’s life better than his wife, and know what he needs before he does. They run his life, and the company, without being told what to do. If something needs to be done, they get it done. If something is impossible, they make it possible. Have you ever used their mug by mistake? Have you ever missed them off an email list? They will take you down. But somewhere along the line, Hollywood turned these intelligent, capable, ultra-efficient, hard-working titans, into plastic sex dolls without a thought in their head. They even made the word dirty.

At the time that Hollywood was creating these limiting stereotypes of single-faceted women, the real women in the outside world were dealing with World War II. They had no men, because they were all away fighting, and they had children to look after, and feed, but no food because everything was on ration. They kept their homes and families safe, they fed them inventively and healthily on very little food, they made their clothes themselves from patterns, and wore hand-me-down shoes. They built machines in the factories, so that we could carry on the war, they taught the children in schools, they looked after the injured soldiers in the hospitals, they cleaned up the Blitz, and kept an entire country running; women by themselves. They won the war just as much as the men fighting it. Without those capable women, what would the men have come home to? And yet, Hollywood reduced that generation of women, who had their sleeves rolled up, hair scraped back, covered in dirt and grease, carrying a child on each hip, boiling socks in a pan, to a generation of bimbos and airheads on film.

The wonderful thing that’s happening at the moment, thanks to #metoo #timesup #likeagirl, and all the women’s marches, and the fantastic feminist uprising over the last couple of years, spurred on by Donald Trump, Harvey Weinstein, et all, is that women are becoming less ashamed to be women. Women have lived in the dark for years; ordinary, working-class women, who carry too much shopping home on the bus, hiding a black eye with their fringe to protect their husband (because women are mothers, and mothers protect little boys), with no money in their purse, and holes in their tights, who curled up into themselves, trying to hide their womanhood from the world, because the world was men, and they were scared.

Slowly, timidly, those women are moving from a time, only a few decades ago, when my own grandmother wasn’t allowed to buy a washing machine on finance without her husband’s signature, which he wouldn’t give, into a time when Beyoncé posing as a majestic Madonna, in her heavily pregnant, heavenly photoshoot, is both completely normal/unremarkable, and also joyous, and momentous. When Beyoncé performed at The Grammy’s, the image of perfect, womanly motherhood, enormously pregnant with twins, but still working it, still owning the stage like the best performer the world has ever seen, being lowered electronically backwards on a specially made chair, just because it was daring, wearing massive heels, it was a big victory for all those women who had to spend their pregnancy in convalescence homes, being hidden away in asylums, or ‘laundries’, and all those women who were made to feel so ashamed of their womanhood, for all the women who had to hide away, under headscarves.

How can we be ashamed of something which is so inherently in ourselves, our very genetic and physical make-up, the body and bodily functions that we are born with, that we can’t choose, or control, but are forced to hide, and change, and fight against, and disguise, for the benefit of men? What’s more, why should we want to? Womanhood is the very thing that gives life. All those men who are so vehemently misogynistic, and fight fight fight against short skirts, and blood in Tampax adverts, and breastfeeding in Costa, who are incidentally the same men who enjoy Page 3 topless teenagers, and the extremely male fantasies portrayed by women in porn, and men’s magazines, wouldn’t have life itself without a mother; a woman who bled, and laboured, and birthed, and fed them at their breast, and nurtured them. That is, of-course, the eternal dichotomy. The little boxes that men have created, meaning that all women must be either wonton sex slaves, or perfect immaculate mothers; Mary Magdalene Whores, or Virgin Mary. Nothing in between.

In Beyoncé’s Grammy performance, she included words by poet Warsan Shire;

“Baptize me … now that reconciliation is possible. If we’re gonna heal, let it be glorious. 1,000 girls raise their arms. Do you remember being born? Are you thankful for the hips that cracked? The deep velvet of your mother and her mother and her mother? There is a curse that will be broken.”

Men, if you let women be women; flawed, often late, or early; leaking, covered in hastily applied make-up, with laddered tights, and bleeding, you will be much happier. We’re awesome, and we get shit done.

 

Maggie: The Passing of Part of Britain

Whether you agree with her policies, or have, or not have not, been affected by her actions, a woman has died. Understandably, many people of this Nation take a strong stand, one way or the other, because of how Thatcher affected their lives. I would be the last person to discredit, or detract from the raw anger still felt by the people affected by the decisions made by politicians. What I find hard to accept is that so many people are using the day, and subsequent days of someone’s death to dissect and analyse their policies. Surely, this is not the time to question whether a woman was right or wrong in their individual actions twenty years ago, but to allow a moment to pass; to acknowledge that a woman has died. Right or wrong, Margaret Thatcher was a woman, a mother, a grammar school girl, and as big a part of our history as you can get, for better or worse.

In the first few moments after I heard the news, I clicked on the Twitter hashtag for Margaret Thatcher, and found it almost entirely swamped with messages relating to Hillsborough, and a petition called No State Funeral for Margaret Thatcher. I was flabbergasted. Leaving aside whether it is right or wrong for people to attach this issue to the Hillsborough tragedy, making it more about that than the woman who is dead, why shouldn’t Margaret Thatcher have a state funeral? She was the first woman prime minister, longest serving prime minister in living history, she was part of this country for a very long period or time. Right or wrong, she is part of Britain. Why should she die and be carried away without dignity, and the acknowledgement any historical figure deserves? Because she is that, if nothing else. Right or wrong, we all know who she is, don’t we?

To see the images and slogans ‘rot in hell’, bandied all over the social media sites, and indeed the world, and press, to read the passionate vitriol directed at this figure, often by people who have no idea what she did or didn’t do, let alone were affected by it, saddens me. Can’t we allow a moment of respect? Be angry, be indignant, hurt, furious, vengeful, but ‘rot in hell?’

I heard today that ‘Ding Dong, The Witch is Dead’ by Judy Garland is Number 1 in the download charts. Villain she may be, but witch?

It has also been debated whether or not Maggie is a feminist icon. Long ago, when I was about seventeen, and I first created my Myspace profile, my heroes were listed as Oscar Wilde, Oskar Schindler, and Margaret Thatcher. After I wrote a pontificating piece to a local newspaper about the downfall of the town, a family friend gave me the nickname Maggie Thatcher, one which I hold very dear.

Feminism isn’t defined by what you believe, or which policies you support, it is something much more than that. Isn’t it be possible for a woman who argues in favour of staying at home to cook, clean, and look after the children, and a woman who argues in favour of a career, both to be feminist? They are both arguing for their own choice. Feminism is about the power of women, and the respect they are given, and how many women in history have won as much power and reverence as Thatcher? How many women have stood on such a high pedestal of their own accord, not as a wife, or daughter, but as themselves? How many women have been heard by the world?

Margaret Thatcher walked into Parliament amidst a sea of suits, and polished shoes; her own heels the lone click on the marble floor. She stood shoulder-to-shoulder with men, looked them in the eye, shouted them down, argued her corner. She stood in a room full of powerful men, and held her head every bit has high as they did. If Margaret Thatcher did one thing, she fought. She fought while they made jokes about her handbag, and tried to break her spirit. It only made her stronger.

Isn’t the emblem of everything English a lion? Margaret Thatcher fought for what she believed in with the heart of lion. Many politicians conjecture limpidly for what they think will win votes, or what is in the best interest of a particular agenda. Margaret Thatcher, right or wrong, fought for what she believed was right. How many politicians can we think of, to hand, that have fought as she did?

Maggie is a feminist hero, for me personally, because she equalled men. Someone said of Sylvia Plath that she was one of the only women to write as well as a man. It may sound very un-feminist to say that, but in a man’s world, it takes a big woman to stand with men. Men have innate confidence that doesn’t need to be learned, or fought for. Men have the security of being in the dominant position from birth, from the cot, to the playground, to the office. Few women have come along who haven’t asked for an allowance for being a woman, or to be treated differently. Margaret Thatcher stood with the men, not against them, or under them, or above them on a pedestal. She stood alongside them. She also, in my opinion, showed that a woman politician doesn’t fight with an agenda, she fights like a mother, to protect what she believes is right. She fought for every policy like a mother.

I think we should put aside what has gone before, leave the analysing of policies, and debating, and take a moment to acknowledge a great force in our history. Take a moment, each of us, to find the good. For everyone, there must be something to admire.

It is so easy to be swept along, onto the bandwagon, and quite often we’re arguing for untruths and axiom anathema. Most of us feel positively or negatively without even knowing the full facts. The red tops are hard to fight against. Let’s leave aside all the politics, and mourn the death of a great woman.

I hesitate to quote Harry Potter, but as it was said of Voldermort; ‘You Know Who did great things; terrible! Yes! but great’. Whether for good or bad, Maggie made a difference. How many politicians have done that? How many politicians, prime ministers even, have faded into insignificancy without making impact or memory, or even marking their name across the world?

Let’s mourn the passing of a British force; a woman with backbone, and balls, and big hair. A woman who fought hard, took no shit, and made people respect her as an equal. A woman who looked people in the eye.

Let’s allow a moment to remember Maggie, rather than Thatcher.