Hooray for tying two ideas together
and getting “names” to tell us on Mother’s Day (10 March) what book (World Book Day 7 March) their mothers gave them. Women (International Women’s Day 8 March) don’t get in there but it was probably decided that it risked being contentious. And we had already had pictures of Helen Mirren (rapidly approaching opening of an envelope time) and Margot Robbie with suitably personalised Barbie dolls. Spare me. Shades of Britt Ekland saying “Every girl wants to look like Barbie” – no I never did.
Do you ever imagine a sort of hangar with busy people, sleeves rolled up, endlessly checking the international and cultural references to come up with MD (originally Mothering Sunday, Christian,
when you return to the church where you were baptised to celebrate being a child of that church), WBD (started by the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) in 1995, two dates – 1997 in the UK, different names cited, different aims given – terrific good intentions open to all sorts of interpretation – even glorious Google is not clear on this):
and IWD
(begun by feminists of different nationalities in France, 1911, dated in honour of the 40th anniversary of the Paris Commune which controlled a briefly socialist France and immediately extended to support working women locked in to the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York a few days later), now transposed into marketing with a side order of social responsibility ? I wonder, who chooses the dates ? Are they often transposed to work better ? And isn’t three in a week a bit much ?
How can you celebrate a book day except by giving books, reading books, making books available whether by gift or book token, encouraging everybody to read and think (the two go often together) ? Inevitably to interest children we offer dressing up and acting out but this isn’t reading – while in the background libraries strive to remain open. And until you can read well, books depend on being taught to read.
Books were part of my life as far back as I can remember – borrowed from the library and school, given by other children, collected by one parent or the other “Don’t you want that? My daughter would love it …” Inherited – bashed up Beatrix Potter from my sister years before, a couple of my mother’s books from Edwardian childhood, the books my father was awarded as prizes … Like food. Essential.
Mothering Sunday meant something when I was younger – flowers, a card, visiting my splendid mother – but my son and I laugh gently about it. When he rings me on Mothering Sunday, I tease him about guilt. The child of a church ? My church is the sky, the natural world
– good, bad and foreign to me as well as beautiful, comforting and inspirational.
This year for the first time in my life I was sent flowers for International Women’s Day – flowers I might have chosen, from my Italian friend, just returned there. I was transfixed. I wrote to thank her and to the company who sent them, praising them, and received acknowledgement. That’s a business that should flourish. But the day is only a nudge in a direction I already travel. I do think about women in other countries – no not to the detriment of men – but because much of what women do is yet taken for granted. You can’t get round the reality of labour, no matter how many machines and technologies and when you respect labour, it works so much better.
I had to go for an annual glaucoma checkup at Moorfields and it was the smallest clinic I have been in in five years – not more than a dozen of us being processed through at any one time. So time to speak, time for the various enormously skilled technicians to behave in a human way … No this is not an attack on the NHS, not even slightly, just the reality that if you treat people like people, most of them turn out to be human. I heard four people thank the receptionist before they left, each quite different one from another. It was terrific. Shoulders were straightened, smiles exchanged, the air softened. And we all breathed.
Annalog 