International Women's Day

Chances are you've already seen this, but loving this video for International Women's Day:



1. You get to look at Daniel Craig.
2. You get to listen to Judi Dench's voice.
3. It's very short.
4. You get to hear why, alas, we still need an International Women's Day, and you don't crawl out the other end feeling patronised or bored.

I've heard a few people asking why there isn't an International Men's Day. There is, it's on November 19th. Perhaps you can get a video of Angelina Jolie in a really nice trouser suit talking about teenage suicide statistics. Or indeed a rerun of this excellent Rachel Stevens public service announcement:

Novel covers: a gripe

Today I am mostly: irritated by book marketing. As in patronising, gendered, and belittling of women's work.

Let's examine a case study: 'The Sorrows of an American' by Siri Hustvedt. This is an important, elegant, intelligent literary novel whose scope includes the Scandinavian immigrant experience in early 20th Century America, the uses and limitations of psychoanalysis, stalking in its many forms, the love and silences between parents and children and brothers and sisters, art, photography, the cult of literary personality, and the ache of grief that comes with the loss of a parent or partner. It is brilliant, as is the other novel of hers I have read, 'What I Loved'. I have no idea why Siri Hustvedt is not on all those 'Great American novelist' lists with the likes of Philip Roth and Jonathan Franzen.

Here is the jacket of The Sorrows of an American:



Pretty. Maybe slightly sinister, given facelessness of girl, and the serpentine seething at the bottom of her dress. Quite appealing.

But I don't think you'd guess from this cover that the narrator of the book is a tall, forty-something male Norwegian psychologist mourning the death of his father.

But wait! There are some female characters in the book! Maybe it is one of them? narrator's love interest - who is black, and has short hair? No. His sister - a serious academic writer, just shy of fifty, given to smart suits? No. His elderly mother? No. The strange, reclusive old lady who holds a secret about his father's past? No. The friendly, overweight undertaker who favours elasticated slacks? No.

No, it's just a pretty, or at least slim and flowing-haired, girl in a slightly strange but pretty dress who bears no relation to the novel whatsoever. But women like books with girls in pretty dresses on the front don't they? So it doesn't really matter, as long as women buy it?

Any more ideas as to why why Hustvedt isn't taken seriously as a great American novelist?

Hour for Good - please vote today

Today's post is a copy and paste regarding my friend Robyn's excellent Hour for Good campaign. I've cunningly changed all the "I"s to "she"s. You'd never have known if I hadn't told you. I am honest like that. I also took the liberty of putting end of today in capitals. Voting closes END OF TODAY. AT THE END. OF TODAY. Anyway, here we go -

Imagine we could get the world's smartest people working on the world's biggest problems.

This is possible - and not at sometime in the future but this year.

Hour for Good's mission is to get employees in the world's biggest companies to each spend one hour a week working for a social enterprise, of their choice, that's tackling one of the world's biggest problems.

It's a modest figure, but if just 10% of people in the world's top 500 companies spent 1 hour a week working for a social enterprise, it would release 100,000,000 hours a year!

The idea came out of a question Bill Gates posted on Facebook. He tweeted afterwards that he liked the idea. Since then some great companies have said they're interested and Robyn is working on creating a non-profit organisation, Hour for Good, to make it happen.

If you like the idea, please help Robyn, in just 1 minute, by voting for her video in a competition get a place at Davos. This will give Robyn an opportunity to raise the idea with heads of companies and non-profit leaders.

Voting is at http://www.youtube.com/thedavosquestion (you can find the video by searching for "hour" in the bottom right search box)

Voting closes END OF TODAY, 13th January.

Every vote really matters as the competition is pretty heated. Robyn's video quickly - and bizarrely - had more negative votes than it had views, so it seems people are getting their friends to vote down videos without even watching them. (NB, please don't do this!)

Thank you!

Music Monday: Miliband special

So for one selfish reason at least I am glad that Ed Miliband won, because it gives my 'time I met him at a barbecue' anecdote so much more currency. Maybe I should save it until he's Prime Minister, but seeing as that's not exactly guaranteed, I will tell it now. It was around the time that Gordon Brown took over from Blair, but before we all hated Gordon; we were in Hay on Wye; he had a stinking cold.

Him: Hi, I'm Ed.
Me: Hi Ed. So what do you do?

(I paraphrase. We may have discussed the sausages and the quality of literary entertainment on offer first.)

Him: I'm an MP.
Me: Really? That must be very interesting. God, it's hard becoming an MP isn't it? How did you manage to get selected for your seat?
Him: I work very closely with Gordon Brown.

(Hear that sound? It's the sound of a penny not dropping.)

Me: Oh, now is a good time to be on Team Gordon. I like Gordon Brown. He reminds me of my dad.

(Gordon Brown does not remind me of my dad. They both have the same colour hair and that's about it.)

Him: So what do you do?
Me: I'm an author.
Him: I never read fiction.

(I like to think he said this so that he, too, would have contributed something idiotic to the conversation.)

Me: Oh well you should read my book anyway. In fact, what you should do is, when you have constituency surgeries in - where's your constituency?
Him: Doncaster.
Me: Is that in the north? Anyway, when you have constituency surgeries in Doncaster, you should always be reading Gods Behaving Badly when people come in, and be laughing loudly, and then put it cover side up on your desk and wipe your eyes and say "That's such a funny book. What can I do for you?"
Him: Please excuse me. I need to go to the loo now.

I have seen Ed Miliband in Hay on Wye on a number of occasions since, and every single time, I have hidden.

This is the song that I got stuck in my head when the leadership was announced. It is not by the Steve Miller Band but I'm glad to see that joke's still trucking along. No visuals, sadly all the ones where you can see the sequence from Cabaret have had their embedding disabled.

The Trouser Elections: results, plus Music Monday on a Tuesday on a Friday special

It's a hung wardrobe. Which means either a Lib-Lab pact (jeggings):



Or a Con-Lib pact (harem/legging hybrid - harging? Legem?):



The jeggings look a hell of a lot more appetising to me. But the people have spoken and what they have said is: Nick Clegg, we want to see you dressed like MC Hammer. But you didn't get enough votes, so I'm afraid you can't touch this. Stop! Cameron time.

I feel a song coming on. Not one by MC Hammer either. All together now: if you gotta run, run from hope!



As for me, I'll be in pyjamas. Wake me up in five years.

The General Election Is A lot Like Trousers

It's the UK general election today - well actually it isn't; I'm writing this the Sunday before, and right now I haven't even decided who to vote for yet. But it's the general election at the time of you reading this (assuming you read my blog the day it is published - what, there are people who don't?) so what better day than today to be writing about trousers?

When I was ill at the end of last year, I lost a lot of weight, and though I am slowly putting it back on, I am still too thin for the majority of my clothes from last summer. Tops are OK because they look fine loose, but my trousers won't stay up and are insanely baggy round the legs and bum when belted. I know I know, everybody wants to be thin and I shouldn't be complaining etc, but nobody talks you through how expensive buying a whole new weight-loss wardrobe is. And also what a nightmare it is when the entire world appears to have been taken over by TROUSER MADNESS.

Observe the insanity of the harem pant:



This, for those of you who have not been shopping for ladies' trousers recently, is the fashionable shape for trousers at the moment. Look at them. I mean, look at them. They are hideous. And not only hideous, but designed to make even a person who is currently clothes-shopping because she is too thin look hugely, disproportionately fat around the bum and thighs. I was hysterical with laughter when I finally gave in tried on a relatively un-extreme pair in Whistles and looked like a young pony-mad girl in a Thelwell cartoon:



I did not purchase them.

Your only other choices at the moment are jeans, leggings or linen trousers. Jeans are great. I love jeans. This is why I already have jeans. They are, however, a bit heavy for summer. Leggings can be fine, but they only really look tolerable with boots and a long top to hide what I will henceforth be calling the "Thelwell Area". And linen trousers look nice on the hanger but crease deeply and instantly across the crotch the moment you put them on. And that's basically it. Sure, there are a few other options around the lunatic fringes but I'm not sure that anyone alive can pull off the tracksuit-bottom-and-stilletos look and I'm not about to volunteer to try.

The general election is a lot like trousers. Yes, it is. It *is*. Labour are my old jeans, once much loved but gone a bit saggy and I'm not sure they're right for the current climate. The Lib Dems are the leggings and linen trousers, good in theory but I'm worried about how well they will suit me once I've bought them and taken them home. And the Tories, obviously, are the harem pants. Just because somebody's told you there's an eighties revival going on, that doesn't mean you have to buy into it. You will look back on yourself now and think WHAT IN THE NAME OF RUSSELL HARTY WAS I THINKING INVESTING IN THOSE.

But sadly, in the general election, I can't do what I've decided to do in the trouser department: give up and wear a skirt.

On Fatherhood and Holy Books

I have just come back from watching my father be sworn in as the first ever President of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom. (If you want to watch him be sworn in too, you can do so here.) I've never blogged about my dad before because I was worried that people might think of me differently if they knew that he's not Mr but Lord Phillips (though it's something I've never hidden and it's easy enough to find out), but I am too proud of him today not to mention it and he is wonderful and I love him and if people think of me differently because my dad has a title then really that's their problem.

The ceremony swearing in all the justices to the new Supreme Court was short and simple but I felt honoured to be there in the brand new court, watching the first ever Supreme Court judges begin their roles. They sat in a row, in their never-before-worn robes which will be handed down from judge to judge for generations, and one by one took their oaths and signed their names in the book where all the Supreme Court judges will sign their names for years to come. My father's name is the very first name in that book. It is a big book, with a lot of gilt-edged pages, and it will take a very long time to fill. All the judges who sign it over hundreds of years will be able to turn back the pages and see my father's signature there, at the top of the first page, in handwriting I know as well as my own.

During the swearing in ceremony I noticed that three different books were sworn on by the judges, two Bibles - I think one judge brought his own - and a Torah. The atheist judges did not have a book to swear on. This got me thinking, if you had to take a solemn and binding oath on any non-religious book, what would you choose? This is not the same as asking for your favourite book, but for a book whose values you would find impossible to sully by reneging on your promise. In honour of today, I am choosing Winnie the Pooh, which symbolises for me the innocence and happiness of childhood. In particular I am choosing the hardback edition of Winnie the Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner from which my father used to read my bedtime stories to me when I was very young.

And you?

Sexist Come Birthing

Sorry, it's another feminist one. Just coincidence that it's two in a row.

Dr Denis Walsh, one of the country's most senior midwives, has published a paper saying that fewer women ought to have epidurals. Here's the piece about it in the Observer. I am not a doctor or a midwife, and I have never given birth (although I am somewhat more likely to do so than Doctor Walsh), and so I will not comment on what he writes about risk factors such as lengthening the labour process, the positioning of the baby's head, increased need for interventions etc. No doubt he is right about those. Indeed the risks are well-known and several of my friends have chosen not to have pain relief during their labour because of those risks. I entirely support them in that choice. But note: "chosen". "Choice".

No, what I want to take up with Dr Walsh is the following:

"A large number of women want to avoid pain. Some just don't fancy the pain. More women should be prepared to withstand pain... Pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing, which has quite a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby.

"Over recent decades there has been a loss of 'rites of passage' meaning to childbirth, so that pain and stress are viewed negatively." Patients should be told that labour pain is a timeless component of the "rites of passage" transition to motherhood... Pain prepares women for the demands of motherhood.

This is guff. The reason childbirth huts so much has got nothing to do with rites of passage and priming women for motherhood. Labour pain is biological, it's like any other pain. If you look at the evolution of apes into hominids (and I have studied this at degree level), one of the key differences is that humans are bipedal (walk upright) and apes walk in a knuckle-drag stance. This is made possible by the unique positioning of our hips - in line with our torsoes, not out to the sides. Because of this, human labour is much more complex, painful and difficult than ape labour. In fact studies show that in you examine monkey and ape gestation, for a human baby to be born at equivalent development, size and alertness, it should have a gestational period of one year. However, the size of the baby would make it impossible for it to come out of the human birth canal without killing the mother. On the other hand, if a baby is born too small, it will have all the complications of prematurity, leading to a huge increase in infant mortality. A human baby, gestated for nine months, is as large as it can be without killing the mother: it's an evolutionary compromise.

So back to this crap about preparing women for the responsibility of childbirth: that is not what labour pain is "for". Labour pain isn't "for" anything. It's just pain. Do people really think that if women have pain relief they are more likely to mistreat their children? Think about the people you know who've had epidurals: is this remotely true? And how should we prepare men for the awesome responsibility of having a baby? Knee them repeatedly in the nuts over several hours? Or do we think they are capable of being responsible and loving parents without undergoing extensive pain? The latter, obviously.

In short, giving birth hurts because you are pushing something out of your vagina which is the exact largest it can be without tearing you in half. Make your decisions about pain relief in accordance with advice over medical risk, but please, do not allow yourself to be bullied into a natural birth because of this misguided emotional blackmail.

Sexist Come Dancing

It's a bit early in the year to be discussing Strictly Come Dancing, a show that's essentially one long sequined advent calender for Christmas, but I could not resist discussing news that Alesha Dixon is to take over from Arlene Phillips on the judging panel.

You can read an entire article about it here.

The essence of the story is that Arlene Phillips (66, professional choreographer, wrinkly, much given to making comments about male dancers' hip movements) has been sacked from Strictly and replaced by Alesha Dixon (30, singer, the winner from a couple of years ago, flawlessly beautiful, no real knowledge of dancing at all) in order to "refresh the brand". The "brand" took a nasty knock last season when John Sergeant walked out mid-series, a decision which may or may not have been related to the judging panel's bullying comments, many but by no means all of which were ascribed to Arlene. Alesha is likely to be a nicer presence than Arlene. But lots of people could be a nicer presence than Arlene, and there are things Arlene brought to the table that Alesha can't provide, the most obvious one of which is having any proper understanding of ballroom dance technique.

It doesn't take the most paranoid of feminists to ask questions about an older, opinionated woman being knocked out of the panel in favour of a younger, more agreeable one, particularly when that panel is already weighted 3 to 1 male to female. Last season, Strictly fell behind in the ratings against X Factor, who had "refreshed" their brand by replacing older, opinionated Sharon Osborne with younger, more agreeable Cheryl Cole. The obvious difference is that Cheryl Cole, no matter what you might think of her, is a working professional singer, whereas Alesha Dixon, charming as she is, is just someone who once won a reality dance show, with a lot of help from her professional dance partner.

Ah yes, the professional dance partner. If they really did want to appeal to the Cheryl Cole demographic, why not move one of the professional dancers across, who is young and sympathetic but who can also provide informed commentary to the audience and advice for the contestants?

But Jay Hunt, the controller of BBC1, batted away accusations of ageism by saying "the average age of the BBC1 viewer is 52, so why would I take older women off the channel?" (although what exactly is the average age of the Strictly viewer - and what age would they like it to be?) - so it must just be coincidence that the new judge is so young and gorgeous. If Alesha Dixon has not been chosen because she's young and beautiful, what has she been chosen for? Hunt says: "Alesha has lived through it, we've still got all the experts who understand the technicalities of the Argentinian tango."

In other words, she's been on the show herself, so she understands what it's like, and she hasn't been chosen for her expertise but for her empathy. Which means she's there to be the most sympathetic, likeable and uncritical of judges.

But having the only woman on the panel be the one who is there to be sympathetic, likeable and uncritical is just as bad as having one there for eye candy. It's 2009. Are we still so frightened of a woman with an opinion?

Better start packing...

I took the UK Citizenship test and failed. Got a pathetically unpatriotic 54%. The pass mark is 75%. Next stop deportation.

How about you?

Three Cheers For Carol Ann

I have never really seen the point of having a Poet Laureate, mainly because I don't like most poetry, which, like bad Gewurztraminer, tends to be over-floral and leaves me with a headache. The poetry Andrew Motion wrote while Laureate was awful, and I can't believe that it's the best of his work; in fact, I am sure it must be the worst, and it is only because I am put off by reading the poetry Andrew Motion wrote as Laureate that I can't bring myself to go and read more Andrew Motion to check.

A Poet Laureate, anyway, is a national poet who is supposed to write poems about national things. A sort of poet-in-residence for the whole of Britain. The very idea of it makes me cringe. Every time a member of the Royal Family has a baby, this person will be wheeled out to compose the official haiku which encapsulates what how we all feel about it. Something like:

Don't care don't care don't
care don't care don't care don't care
don't care just don't care.

A few months back, Carol Ann Duffy was appointed Poet Laureate, which I found an intriguing choice. I met her a few years ago and saw her perform; I remember her being lovely and down-to-earth, and I was so struck by her poem Valentine as to have never forgotten about it -

Not a red rose or a satin heart.

I give you an onion.
It is a moon wrapped in brown paper.
It promises light
like the careful undressing of love.

Here.
It will blind you with tears
like a lover.
It will make your reflection
a wobbling photo of grief.

I am trying to be truthful.

Not a cute card or kissogram.

I give you an onion.
Its fierce kiss will stay on your lips,
possessive and faithful
as we are,
for as long as we are.

Take it.
Its platinum loops shrink to a wedding ring,
if you like.
Lethal.
Its scent will cling to your fingers,
cling to your knife.

Even so I wasn't convinced she would be able to withstand the horrors of having to compose the Official Someone Royal Has Reproduced poem every however often.

Today her first poem as Laureate was published. Of course, it was the Queen's official birthday this weekend, so no doubt she had taken the chance to pen a sickly ditty devoted to Her Maj. Right?

Perhaps not. Perhaps, like the rest of us, she has other things on her mind. Perhaps, for once, we actually have a Laureate worthy of the position, who is actually capable of speaking for the nation - or at least for me - in verse. Hurrah for Ms Duffy for making me believe in poetry again.

'Politics'

How it makes of your face a stone

that aches to weep, of your heart a fist,

clenched or thumping, sweating blood, of your tongue

an iron latch with no door. How it makes of your right hand

a gauntlet, a glove-puppet of the left, of your laugh

a dry leaf blowing in the wind, of your desert island discs

hiss hiss hiss, makes of the words on your lips dice

that can throw no six. How it takes the breath

away, the piss, makes of your kiss a dropped pound coin,

makes of your promises latin, gibberish, feedback, static,

of your hair a wig, of your gait a plankwalk. How it says this –

politics – to your education education education; shouts this –

Politics! – to your health and wealth; how it roars, to your

conscience moral compass truth, POLITICS POLITICS POLITICS.

Miss Phillips Goes To Downing St

So, to Downing St.

Although by now I reckon I am pretty high up the list to get into the cabinet - my initails, after all, are MP and that's really all you need - I was in fact there with the excellent charity Chance UK, which I am a supporter of. It was a drinks reception, celebrating their brilliance and chatting up potential donors and councils who might want to extend the programme to their areas. It's a mentoring charity that works with primary school age kids with behavioural difficulties, aiming to get them back on the straight and narrow before they get to the age where they might be vulnerable to criminality, dropping out of school etc, and so helping them to be fulfilled, happy and safe, as well as safeguarding local communities against crime in the future. They have excellent, proven results in improving kids' behaviour and well-being. You can find out more about this brilliant charity, including how to be a mentor, here. (Indeed, if you enjoy this post, why not make a donation?)

What's that? Fascinated as you are with Chance UK, you want to hear about 10 Downing St itself?

OK. Let's get the important stuff out of the way first. The canapes were absolutely delicious (I loved the miniature hoisin duck wraps) and the wine was Berry Bros house red and white, which is so tasty and only £5.30 a bottle (though I reckon Downing St get a discount) that I might order some in myself. So we can all rest assured that the snacks and drinks representing Britain are not letting us down. Something to be proud of at last!

As you can imagine, going to Downing St there is a lot of security to pass. Policemen at the entrance to the road itself, another checkpoint where you have to have everything x-rayed a la airport (did not have to put all fluids in clear plastic bags though) and the policeman on the door itself of course. Then there is all the "soft" security, ie there's about a hundred flunkies in there greeting you and telling you where to go, and it does all feel like you are important and special until you realise that they are actually there to stop you from wandering off by yourself and nosing around the kitchens / stealing the silver (they don't X-ray you on the way *out* / having a bath.

You walk up the stairs (wall-colour: yellow) to the reception rooms on the first floor. The stairs are lined with pictures of old prime ministers. The one of Tony Blair is wistful, looking into the distance; John Major looks full-on into the camera, as if to say 'hey, I'm a straight kind of guy'; Margaret Thatcher has the exact concerned, sympathetic expression on her face that you would imagine the witch in the gingerbread house did, just before she lured Hansel and Gretel in. The rest of them all have the exact same slightly bouffant grey combover, aside from David Lloyd George, who sports a rather funky longer style, like a bob just below his ears.

Then you cram into the reception rooms and around comes the wine and food. Plenty of it too; no stinginess here. Brilliantly, they open up all the public rooms on the first floor, even the ones they aren't using for the party, so you can have a proper snoop around. It's worth snooping; the design is by John Soane (gorgeous vaulted ceiling) and features a double-flued fireplace below a window, which looks glorious, only apparently the heat used to melt the window putty and the glass kept falling out.

Bollocks to John Soane's double-flued fireplace! What about the loos, I hear you cry. Well, I didn't really need to go to the loo, but I went anyway, because I knew you'd ask. They are very average, but clean. Interestingly, they feature tampon machines, which I had not expected, but must be handy for Sarah Brown when she's caught short. But no condom machines. Make of that what you will.

Sarah Brown, incidentally, is lovely, and much prettier than she looks in photos. In fact she was so nice that my estimation of Gordon went up several notches (the "reverse Cherie Blair" effect). Apparently they have rehearsals for the trooping of the colour and changing of the guard outside day and night, so the reason the Prime Minister always looks so tired is not because he's having a construct a cabinet from second-string cast members of the Muppet Show, but because they have military brass band music played outside their windows at 3am.

I think that's all really. We left, took each other's photos outside (I'm afraid that's a fake knock in the picture - the door was open when I got there, I guess they knew I was coming), I chatted up the policeman outside a bit (he looked bored, but not as bored as the three paparazzi that are permanently stationed on the other side of the road.)

Any questions?

Things to look forward to when I get back:

A full explanation of this picture:

(With apologies to those on Twitter and Facebook who are probably mighty sick of it already.)

Fringe Party Party

Cold still going strong, and I've run out of tissues, so I'm delighted that a bunch of leaflets from bonkers fringe parties have just popped through my letterbox, giving me something to blow my nose on.

First up, the good old BNP, current slogan: "Because *we've* earned the right". Not you, you horrible brown-coloured lot. WE. So bugger off to your own crappy countries. (What gurkhas?) Anyway, I'm particularly enjoying the BNP evoking the spirit of the Blitz to garner votes. "The NEW Battle for Britain", it trumpets, next to a picture of a Spitfire. "Trafalgar, The Somme, Dunkirk, D-Day, The Falklands" - entirely fought by the white, don't you know. And what better way to evoke that wartime cameraderie than borrowing all your policies off the Nazis? You know where the Nazis went wrong? By being German. If only they'd been British, we wouldn't have had to kill them. Such a missed opportunity.

Next up, UKIP. Sad when all you have going for you is that you're less evil than the BNP. Their message: the EU sucks. And: nothing else. Their choice of illustration: Winston Churchill. Basically, nothing worthwhile has occurred in this country since 1945, so vote for us and it will be as if the last fifty years never happened. Hurrah!

Offering stiff competition to UKIP is the snappily-named 'No2EU: Yes to Democracy' party. Otherwise known as UKIP for lefties. No pictures of Churchill or any other WW2 icons, no nasty embarrassment of having to align yourself with Robert Kilroy-Silk, no racism, but lots of cheap black and white photocopying, several detailed paragraphs of policy and one small photograph of Bob Crow. It's quite charmingly old-fashioned but someone should probably have a chat with them about marketing. I find myself actually slightly convinced by their propaganda, which is a surprise, and instantly makes me suspicious.

Lastly: the grammatically confusing 'We Can Europe' (Verb! Verb!) which claims not to be a political party but "a movement which believes that political parties have become part of the problem", but is nevertheless fielding a bunch of candidates. Hmm. Images used: shaky building sites, splatty-looking pictures of politicians. First flick through the leaflet - hang on, it's not a leaflet, apparently it's a "multi-media experience", cunningly disguised as a leaflet - fails to reveal whether they are for Europe or against it (Verb! *Please*!) Closer reading leaves me no wiser. Very flashy, lots of new-speak ("WE CAN EUROPE is about starting the process of developing new forms of participation and communication in order to change politics"), lots of marketing, but content utterly baffling. Appears mainly to be advocating use of websites. Strongly feel that We Can Europe and No2EU : Yes To Democracy should consider doing some skill-sharing.

Meanwhile, it's two weeks to the election and I am yet to hear a word from anything that could be defined as a normal party. Either they have totally given up, or they have spent all their money on flatscreen TVs for their second homes and can no longer afford to pay for leaflets.

To Claim Or Not To Claim?

I am concerned about expenses.

The normal way, obviously, like everyone else. (People who run our country and whose wages we already pay also think it is OK to claim for moat-cleaning?) But also because, being self-employed, I am allowed to claim my business expenses against tax, ie I do not have to pay tax on income which goes on my expenses, so effectively you the British taxpayer cover 22% of my expenses - the rest I pay for myself. (Is that right? or is it just that the Treasury has 22% of my expenses less to play with? I was never good at maths.)

But it is not immediately clear what counts as a legitimate business expense. Paper obviously, and pens, writer-y stuff like that. Library membership, maybe? Internet access? The electricity I use to run the computer that I write on and the gas to heat the room that I sit in? Stuff your employer would usually pay for, basically. Stuff I can't do my job without.

How about this: after some moderate but bulky shopping in NYC (new winter coat: J'accuse) I suffered the indignity of having my suitcase burst apart at the seams on the flight home, turning up forlorn on the luggage carousel wrapped in accusatory bright orange Virgin Atlantic parcel tape. (Me: "That's my case! - Oh, no it isn't - Oh god, it really is.") So today I went out to buy a new suitcase, because I need it to go to the Hay Literary Festival at the end of the month (I am not reading there, but I am seeing other writers read, and using the opportunity to do some schmoozing of publishers, journos, etc - business trip? Fun weekend jaunt? Who can say?), to Milan in June (book tour, 100% business) and to France in the summer (holiday, 100% fun.) I didn't buy the most expensive case, nor did I buy the cheapest. (In fact I bought the lightest, because of budget airline weight restrictions and so I can lift it in and out of the loft by myself. Also, it is a bit bigger than my old suitcase, but not so much bigger that I will lose my mind. That's the idea, anyway.)

My point is: is a suitcase a business expense? I can't do my job without it; on the other hand, if I never went on another work trip again, I would still need a suitcase, plus I think that people who go on lots of business trips in normal jobs are not provided with luggage by their bosses (correct me if I am wrong.) Before the whole MP expenses scandal I would probably have claimed it without another thought: at least 22% of my travel is work-related. But now I feel sleazy and tainted by association. I feel like Hazel Blears. I do not want to feel like Hazel Blears. God prevent me from feeling like Hazel Blears. The value of not feeling like Hazel Blears is surely at least one quarter of a suitcase. (Hazel Blears: the kind of vomit you get from eating too much Nutella?)

Anyway, I don't know. Is it legitimate? Is it illegitimate? This is as confusing as Prince Harry. And multiply that by everything I buy which I sort of use for work but also use for other things - filing cabinet? *Assembly* of filing cabinet? I can sense it's going to be a very soul-searching, guilt-inducing tax return this year.

And don't even get me started on the leaky pipe underneath my tennis court. Totally interfering with my concentration on my second novel.

Another day, another depressing serial rape story.

Only weeks after taxi driver John Warboys was convicted for a series of rapes that the police had failed to act on, another serial rapist emerges who was left free to attack women for years due to shoddy police work. As with the Warboys case, police believe that dozens more women may have been attacked who have not, as yet, come forward.

I am of the opinion that we barely know how many sex attacks take place every day. I know a number of women who have been raped - and those are only the ones who have told me about it, I am sure there are others amongst my acquaintance who haven't shared their stories with me. They were all raped by people they knew - though not necessarily people they knew well - and not one of them reported the attack to the police. Either they did not wish to relive the experience or they didn't think they would be believed.

Then there is the category of 'sexual assault'. How bad does an assault have to be to be considered a crime? I have no idea. I do know that I've had a number of deeply unpleasant experiences that it would never have occurred to me to report:

1. Walking down the street, a passing man reached over, grabbed hold of one of my nipples, and squeezed. I had the presence of mind to shout at him.

2. While I was in a queue in a restaurant, a man put his hand between my buttocks and pressed his finger against my vagina. I was so shocked and embarrassed that I laughed, and it took me years to forgive myself for it.

3. In a bar, a man pushed me down on a table and, holding me down by the head and the small of my back, proceeded to lick all over my bare back above the top of the strapless dress I was wearing, while the people around laughed and clapped. But hey, I knew him, so that's OK, right? Right? On this occasion I tried to get away but he was too strong, so I just gave in and waited until he'd finished. Oddly enough I had a very similar experience in my first ever job, when a senior producer took it upon himself to lick my sunburnt back. But he was gay, so that doesn't count, right? Right?

4. I was surrounded by a group of young men in the street who made a series of threatening comments about the smell of my "unwashed c*nt". Who knows what they would have done if I hadn't seen a couple on the other side of the road and ran away towards them. This happened in Australia: I told an Australian friend, and she was astonished that I was upset about it. This may have been the most troubling aspect of the whole experience.

5. I interrupted a man masturbating in the street who then chased me.

6. I was flashed at outside my school.

7. As a young child, I was followed by a strange man around WHSmith until I went and found my mum.

Which is not to even begin on the more everyday occurrences of having my bum felt in pubs, clubs and on crowded tubes, of having sexually explicit comments shouted at me in the street on a fairly regular basis, of drunk men grabbing me and shoving their tongues in my mouth for some spurious reason (England scores), and, of course, of being sexually propositioned - though fortunately no more than that - by the very cab driver I was trusting to get me home safe. There seemed little point in complaining about any of it.

I would say that my experiences are by no means atypical. In fact, I would actually count myself as lucky that this is all that I have had to endure. My guess - and it has to be a guess, because this is something which is rarely openly discussed - is that most of the women reading this will have a set of similar stories to share, whereas most of the men will be horrified because they have no idea that this is daily life for women, especially young women.

If we are going to understand rape, and why men like Warboys and Reid get away with it for so long, we need to understand the entire picture of sexual harassment and intimidation, which means that women - and for that matter men - will need to start talking about their experiences of sexual bullying. Rape, sadly, is part of a continuum, and some of the people who get away with this type of lower-key intimidation will carry on to do much, much worse. Equally a woman who has been subjected to a lifetime of minor sexual assaults without anybody - including themselves - taking them seriously may simply not see the point of reporting a rape.

No doubt the Warboys / Reid cases will result in an overhaul of police approaches to rape, but I would argue that it's time consider whether we have the right approach to assaults at the other end of the scale.

Where Are The Bafta Babes?

Watched the whole of the Baftas last night. I find awards ceremonies more mesmerising than I should. I love playing Fug or Fab with the dresses, being surprised by which of the award presenters were terrified (Matthew McFadyen) and unsurprised by which were drunk / stoned / insane (Sharon Stone), I love guessing who will win (it was obvious Slumdog Millionaire would go home with everything) and getting irate when the deserving are robbed (Kristin Scott Thomas! Kristin Scott Thomas!) and there is always an excellent speech or two (Mickey Rourke). This year's bonus ball was a sprightly Mick Jagger presenting best film and making a very witty speech beforehand too.

Here's my gripe though (there had to be one): where were the women? I mean, it was a slightly less all-white affair this year, thanks to the Indian crew of Slumdog Millionaire, plus Noel Clarke and Steve McQueen picking up gongs, but aside from the actress categories, the only female winners were Jean Black and Colleen Callaghan for make-up and hair on Benjamin Button, plus one female producer (Esther May Campbell) on the two-person team who won the award for best short film. This means they were almost outnumbered by the two studios who won an award. Surely inanimate objects should not be competing for prize numbers with female humans? And checking the list of nominees there were very few women there either.

Now I know it's boring to be feminist feminist bang on drum, and we supposedly live in a post-feminist era where all opportunities are equal etc etc, but don't tell me that this is because women are not interested in film-making. (I'm assuming nobody here will go down the women are not good enough route.) I will accept a tiny nod towards film-making involving anti-social hours that are hard if you have young kids. Though they seem to get actresses enough. Not to mention hair and make-up. (Maybe that's the real question here: why don't more men go into hair and make-up? Oh, my mistake, almost all the other nominees for that category were men as well.) It's incredibly depressing that almost ten years into the 21st century film is still a man's game, and largely a white man's game at that.

I may mention all this a few years hence when I'm picking up my Best Screenplay Bafta for mumble mumble haven't started it yet. Watch out male-dominated film world! Here I come! Also, I am shit at hair and make-up.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

My dear friend Karen at Cinnamon Brainstorm did this fantastic bit of photomontage for me, so that now I am totally channeling Aretha. I have to say, when times are troubled, when the world looks bleak, the only way forward is to fix yourself up with a really fantastic hat. And if times aren't at all troubled and the world looks pretty good, just think (think!) how *even more* brilliant you'd feel in a hat like this!

Yes He Did

Yesterday I put aside my natural kneejerk cynicism for long enough to watch Barack Obama's inauguration and allow myself to be filled with the kind of hope which is - yes - audacious. It's beyond one man, even a man as powerful as the President of the United States, to be able to heal all the complex problems of global politics and economics, but equally such problems will never begin to be addressed without great leadership and it seems that great leadership might be what we are finally getting. At the very least he has managed the first part: making people want him to lead them. Not grudgingly allow him to lead them, but actively, desperately, hopefully want.

After the ceremony - the speech (appropriately sober and inspiring though not as gloriously moving as his acceptance speech), the godawful poet who came after him, and the brilliant civil rights activist who spoke after that - the lunch (I blame freezing cold and then overcharged central heating for the senatorial bodycount) and the incredibly dull parade, we watched Aretha and her hat sing again on YouTube:



Then at a friend's suggestion, the equally incredible Nina Simone singing a very appropriate choice of song some years before:



And then a brilliant excerpt of a speech by James Baldwin some time before that:



Which kept us all in contemplative mood.

Contemplative and uncynical as I was, I still couldn't help a few stray thoughts from crossing my mind. Like relief that Michelle Obama had chosen a decent outfit this time, and a mental note that Barack Obama's coat was rather gorgeous, and also the briefest hint of suspicion that he might be wearing a thermal vest or two. His shirt did look a bit padded. Also, that the chap who did the prayer at the start of the inaugural lunch sounded a lot like Darth Vader.

Afterwards, we all had dinner and the Obamas headed off to TEN balls. They had to pose for pictures and do a first dance for each one, like getting married over and over again, and indeed Michelle had changed into something not unlike a wedding dress by then. I hope she was wearing comfortable shoes. Barack can almost dance, although he moves his hands in a funny way when getting down, which is a relief. The President should not be *too* groovy. But they look so sweet together that I am in danger of developing a serious couple crush on them. So happy! So in love! I bet she is not averse to telling him off when necessary either. She should get her own nuclear codes (which is not what I always say when I have a couple crush.)

You can see extracts from the ten balls over here. You'll notice that Etta James's At Last is played more than once, and it is indeed a very good choice of song for the occasion. But I'm sure you people can choose better. What's the best possible song to dance to for your first shimmy as First Couple? And the worst?

Please Watch This Film

Panorama: Addicted to Aid, November 24th 2008. You can probably only watch in the UK, and only for up to a week from transmission, ie until Sunday November 30th. It's about aid in Africa, and from my (albeit limited) experience it is bang on the money, as it were. The last few seconds are particularly thought-provoking.