Happy International Women’s Day! A day to reflect on all the women we know, we like, we work with, we admire. Which is great. But it’s also the day on which we learn that the colour of Meghan Markle’s baby caused concern and she was suicidal thanks to how she was treated by the Royal Family, the press, the public, other women…
Every bit of this is awful. And as part of a mixed-race family, the issue of the colour of her baby resonates with me most. Not because this was ever a problem with my own family, but because it reminds me of a few choice comments by so called ‘friends’ when my children were young. ‘Your little chocolate drop’ was a regular. But, the one that will stay with me, which really stopped me in my tracks was: ‘I feel sorry for you. How can you bond with a child that doesn’t look like you?’
So, there’s that. And then there are the remarks I’ve received about my black husband. ‘Well, he’s very – noble looking.’ ‘Does he dance well?’ ‘We’d invite you round for dinner but we don’t know how he’d fit in with our friends.’ ‘Do you always go for black men?’ And of course, that old chestnut – ‘Is it true what they say about black men?’ (If you don’t know then you’re better off for it.) But maybe my favourite was during a game of Scruples with some friends. The question – ‘Would you mind if your daughter married a black man?’ To which one person answered after barely a pause. ‘Yes.’ Then remembering Mr S was there, added quickly, ‘You’re different, you’re a sanitised version of a black person.’
It makes me livid that even in this day and age, a young woman who’s done no harm to anyone, has been maligned with such vitriol by so many around the world merely because of the colour of her skin. So, International Women’s Day – great idea, but let’s celebrate women everywhere when we’re not so hung up on the colour of their skin.
This blog was going to be Thoughts on a Pandemic, but the issues that Meghan has to face cannot be swept under the carpet. Yes, the Royal Family are a bunch of stuffed ducks – inbred and outdated, their hypocrisy and ignorance common knowledge, the damage they inflict on those whose face doesn’t fit well-known, but it goes far wider than that. Racism exists everywhere. Even if your crowd is diverse and open-minded, I guarantee that one amongst you, someone you like, will have views that are just plain wrong. Maybe we should all play Scruples with everyone we meet – separate the wheat from the chaff before it’s too late. But failing that, if we do nothing else, friends or not, we must call the racists out. For it’s the throwaway remarks – sometimes so bold you wonder if you’ve misinterpreted or even heard correctly – that, like the tiniest of paper cuts, sting the most.
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Now off my soapbox and on to the original start…
A year ago today I was in Paris. A pandemic ‘situation’ was vaguely on our radar, so in my bag, I carried something I’d never carried before; a small bottle of antibac gel. There was the faintest whiff of unease – but not enough to spoil our trip. Hotels and museums were emptier than usual, but restaurants and bars were full. Home we came, delighted that we’d managed to get away. A couple of weeks later we started our first ever lockdown. Our last trip abroad for quite a while.
Yesterday I walked the dogs through the local countryside. Some weekends, landscape that used to be deserted has been as busy as summer on Hampstead Heath, but yesterday it was only us. And as I walked, I remembered a similar walk eleven months before. The anxiety I’d felt, the uncertainty of it all, the fear that maybe this was it, the world had ended, we’d all be wiped out. The silence of the streets, the absence of all cars, expecting zombies to appear any moment from across the fields.
Yet now, a year on, I’m negotiating our strange existence with greater ease. My expectations are lower, the slow lane my new norm. Yes, I’m weary of the same-old-same-old, but faintly optimistic as things begin to change.
I nearly cried, when the text came through to book my vaccination. The day I went for my jab at what used to be the local nightclub, I thought I’d drown in a surge of emotion as I walked across the old dance floor. Gratitude overwhelmed me – for the NHS, for the volunteers, welcoming with smiles, making a complex transformative process seem simple and light. All of us part of the vital change to our brave new world.
Ten months since my last blog and spring is here again. This time I’m ahead of the curve. I’m noticing it all – the budding snowdrops , the flowering daffodils, the crocuses pushing through. Not overwhelmed, not feeling panicked, just appreciating what fear made me miss same time last year.
Meanwhile, a big fat pigeon sits in the branches of the tree directly opposite my office window, purveying the garden. Sometimes it’s joined by its mate. And sometimes they battle for prime position. Over the course of last year, that pigeon got fatter and more complacent, its greatest concerns – avoiding Luna, our feral hound, and maintaining its place in the pigeon hierarchy.
March now here, I think back to New Year’s Eve. Then, grey and cold, the last day of 2020, I got dressed up to go and buy some gastro goodies. Maybe not a lot to celebrate, but if we couldn’t eat nice food what else could we do?
More than aware I’d been one of the privileged ones – full fridge, warm house, I’d had the virus fairly lightly but was for the most part remaining healthy – that morning, precisely because it was the last day of the year, it felt important to make an effort.
Perverse, it’s true. Because while I’d been negotiating my way through the tiers of the clowns, as restrictions got tighter, my clothes had got steadily looser.
In fact, were we to digress from my then-and-now musings and assess, instead, my Tier Dress Code it would look – between lyric wordplays – something like this:
Tier 1: When we could still listen to the music of the traffic in the city.
- Outfit: waistbands and proper fastenings, dresses or skirts that revealed a waist or legs… Rings, bracelets, necklaces…
- Makeup – more-is-more: primer and foundation and concealer, sparkly shadow andeyeliner and mascara, blusher and highlighter and powder, lipstick (Firecracker, In Love with Ginger, Bombshell Red) and setting spray.
Tier 2: When it was just another manic Monday.
- Outfit: jeans or trousers, a belt, jumper or T-shirt, jacket or coat, socks, boots or trainers. Rings.
- Makeup – natural (but better): primer – foundation – concealer – eyeshadow – eyeliner – mascara – blusher – lipstick (Watermelon, Mocha) – setting spray.
Tier 3: When the house wasn’t big enough for the both of us and there was nowhere to hide.
- Outfit: Zoom with a view: knitted trousers, elasticated waistbands, elasticated everything, (belt? Are you having a laugh), jumpers, sweatshirts, thermals and Ts, cosy loungewear, expanding-tummy wear, fur-lined slides pretending they’re not slippers.
- Makeup – what makeup: primer, BB cream, blusher, eyeshadow, mattifying powder (because – Zoom), mascara, lipstick (Vintage Pink, B52).
Tiers 4, 5, 6 (Lockdown), 7 (I May Never Go Out Again): When every day seems a little longer.
- Can’t be arsed: PJs and slippers, trackies and hoodies.
- What’s the point: Lipsyl and undereye cream. A full night’s sleep a thing of the past.
The last day of 2020, I bypassed Tiers 2 to 7 and jumped straight to Tier 1. And even though no one could see the lipstick (Firecracker FYI), I got to be creative (my face my canvas, my body in need of camouflage). And that was a consolation in itself. Because when the pandemic struck, for the first time in 12 years, I couldn’t write… Writer’s block? A creative jam? Pandemic brain? Not sure. Whatever it was, writing for pleasure was an impossible ask.
At work, I continued to pen magazine features and edit everyone else’s words. But could I work on my novel – bring life to my characters, give colour to their worlds, invent their dramas and resolve their conflicts? Not a chance. No not at all.
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Like a circle in a spiral
Like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning,
On an ever-spinning reel
As the images unwind
Like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind
The Windmills of Your Mind by Noel Harrison
To be continued…
daniellesimpson 