Well I’ll Go To The Foot Of My Stairs…

Filched from my dear sister V…

June 2, 2009 · 15 Comments

…a bit of pointless  relief.

Instructions:
1) Bold those you have read.
2) *Star the ones you loved.
3) Italicise those you plan on reading.”


1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte*

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee*
6 The Bible  (bits of)
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien*

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame*

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis*
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis*
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini*

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere (three pages – couldn’t stand it.)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery (and the rest…)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood****
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert*
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett*

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker*
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton*

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

So what does that say about me then?

Feel free to have a go…

→ 15 CommentsCategories: Uncategorized

Women, united, will never be divided…

May 25, 2009 · 7 Comments

sheila is my sister

Hat tip Allecto

→ 7 CommentsCategories: Uncategorized

Shock horror…

May 5, 2009 · 10 Comments

…we have 28 confirmed cases of swine ‘flu in this country now.

Of course I realise that this is potentially dodgy for the very young, the elderly, people with respiratory problems, etc. Globally, the situation is becoming so worrisome that the World Health Organisation might raise its pandemic level from five to six – its highest alert.

28 cases…

Yet, statistcally, 100 women and girls were subjected to sexual violence in this country today alone. And there’ll be another 100 tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that… Last week 700 women and girls were subjected to sexual violence in this country and this time next week the tally will be 1400 since April 28th. And that’s just on our tiny little isle. Globally, the situation is terrifying.

But, hey, who’s panicking?

That’s right; no-one. It’s just business as usual.

→ 10 CommentsCategories: Comment

Me and some chums….

April 18, 2009 · 20 Comments

…went out in our pj’s tonight.

We went for a meal and the thinking was that we’d be far more comfortable in pj’s because:
a) we won’t have to do any of that “getting ready for bed” shit when we stumble in

b) we won’t have to do any of that “Sorry, got to let my waistband out a bit” rubbish when our day/evening clothes couldn’t accommodate the intake of nice nosh we were subjecting them to. And

c) having to bother about all that looking ‘nice’ bolleaux.

I tell you what; there are few more liberating feelings than sitting in a restaurant full of other people in their ‘nice’ clothes on a Friday night in your pj’s and slippers tucking in to a plateful of fab food in good, likeminded company and NOT GIVING A SHIT about how you’re perceived.

It was fab. I might just go out in my pj’s from now on.

→ 20 CommentsCategories: Uncategorized

I love a bit of sax, me….

April 10, 2009 · 13 Comments

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is…think about it
Woman is the nigger of the world
Think about it…do something about it

We make her paint her face and dance
If she won’t be a slave, we say that she don’t love us
If she’s real, we say she’s trying to be a man
While putting her down, we pretend so hard that shes above us

Woman is the nigger of the world…yes she is
If you don’t believe me, take a look at the one you’re with
Woman is the slave of the slaves
Ah, yeah…you better scream about it

We make her bear and raise our children
And then we leave her flat for being a fat old mother hen
We tell her home is the only place she should be
Then we complain that she’s too unworldly to be our friend

Woman is the nigger of the world…yes she is
If you don’t believe me, take a look at the one you’re with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yeah…you better scream about it

We insult her every day on tv
And wonder why she has no guts or confidence
When she’s young we kill her will to be free
While telling her not to be so smart we put her down for being so dumb

Woman is the nigger of the world
Yes she is…if you don’t believe me, take a look at the one you’re with
Woman is the slave to the slaves
Yes she is…if you believe me, you better scream about it

We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance
We make her paint her face and dance

“I had to find out more about myself and my attitude to women…” kinda speaks volumes, don’t you think?

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MILLION WOMEN RISE 2009

March 9, 2009 · 20 Comments

Funny, the things you can learn on a sunny Spring Saturday in the centre of London. I learnt that the pubs don’t open till midday… some capital city that is.

On the other hand, a lot of people learnt that

042

because we made it clear.

05

In a fun way


All through the retail centre of a major Western capital city

22

women and girls marched and shouted and whistled and chanted

s9

while shoppers and tourists looked on, took pictures and couldn’t help but hear us.

Well, it’d be difficult to avoid hearing us….

(”Shrill” is fucking excellent as far as I’m concerned)

The message is clear.

23

We have had enough of male violence against women and girls – in all it’s forms.

I marched with Sharkbait, Stormy, rmott and Fanny Blood – and thousands of other women who all feel the same. Regent Street is pretty wide in places, it being an alter to patriarchal capitalism and all that, but yesterday lunchtime it was filled from edge to edge by shouty women and girls who were making their feelings known.

We should do this every day – until the violence stops.

Hope you had a happy International Women’s Day.

Hope you’re fighting for those who didn’t.

→ 20 CommentsCategories: Activism

You know, there are some people…

December 25, 2008 · 6 Comments

…who would leave a huge gap in the world if they ever stopped writing.

It’s Wednesday and this is a Wow that more than makes up for the general lack of Wows at the foot of my stairs this year.
Amananta, thank you. You rock.

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All that you have is your soul…

November 15, 2008 · 8 Comments

Hunger only for a taste of justice, hunger only for a world of truth. All that you have is your soul.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoNtYC_XDC8]

→ 8 CommentsCategories: Personal suff

“We want a natural life, a society that revolves around women…

October 25, 2008 · 9 Comments

….one where women and men are equal, a society without pressure, without inequality, where all differences between people are eliminated

“…if we are really trying to create a new society, we have to develop women. If women are enslaved, then so are men.”

How could we have lived like this for so long? How could we have accepted this for so long?”

All quotes from here. (Hat-tip amananta.)

I don’t profess to know a great deal about the Kurdish struggles. I understand that Saddam Hussain attempted to annhialate the Kurdish people in Iraq with toxic gasses and I know a little about Kurdish traditions, customs and culture from Kurdish women and children I’ve met in my line of work but that’s about it. I’m not pretending to set myself up as a spokesperson for the Kurdish nation or anything quite so bourgeoise considering my Western privilege. In fact, the point of this post has very little to do with the Kurdish nation per se although the racism they face – just like racism everywhere – is abhorrent.

I looked at the picture at the top of that report. Women with guns. I’ve always thought of guns as mainly a man thing because I’ve always thought of being able to kill another person as something men readily accept – whether in the line of ‘duty’ or to protect their ‘property’, (which amounts to much the same thing, really) – but that women generally shy away from unless backed into a corner.

Then I read the report.

The people who said the words I’ve quoted above are simply Freedom Fighters but even their Kurdish Regional Government is attempting to distance itself from their egalitarian stance because they’re no longer fighting for just Kurdish freedom but they are now “fighting to generate dramatic social change“.

They’re fighting to defeat patriarchy.

They believe that “global crises and injustice are a result of millennia of male-dominated rule“. I believe that too but am I prepared to become an outlaw, take to the hills and be part of an armed struggle to “get rid of society’s ingrained enslavement“? The Home Counties is a very different place to the Turkish mountains but the essence of the struggle is the same. I don’t carry a gun and the actions I take don’t kill people but the things I do and say as a radical feminist would seem to firmly place me in the ‘outlaw’ category and our goals seem very similar.

I could/would never claim political solidarity with the PKK although I somehow feel it. They’re driven by the same passion that drives radical feminism. The passion to witness human beings – female and male – living their lives free from patriarchal oppression; the willingness to be deemed completely a non-person, totally expendable, as a result.

Globally, radical feminism has many guises. Some of them don’t even use the word “feminism”.

“…they say that it was because they are driven by passion that they have survived this long.”

→ 9 CommentsCategories: Feminism

I’ve just watched…

October 9, 2008 · 9 Comments

…’The Hidden World of Lap Dancing’ on TV and you know what? It didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.

And I’m in two minds.

Part of me is thinking “fair play to Despatches for sending hidden cameras into strip clubs and broadcasting evidence of the widespread disregard of licence conditions, the seemingly mandatory breaking of all kinds of ‘rules’ that the proprieters write down in order to dupe the licensing authorities and the abject dehumanisation of women who work in such places”. The other part of me is thinking “do we actually have to see yet more nakedly sexualised women crawling over strange, fully clothed men and pretending that they’re rilly, rilly turned on? Has the point not been made already?”

Part of me understands why Despatches chose to do it that way. It unequivocally demonstrated that Local Authority licensing committees are utterly and completely stupid for believing that pimps and pornographers tell anything like the truth in their licence applications. From the West Country to sleepy market towns in the Black Country, from the big stripping-women chain stores like Secrets to small one-offs just starting out, they all lied. They all knowingly broke the terms of their licences to the extent that their expressed intention to comply was laughable. I guess they all know that breaking the terms of their licence doesn’t really matter; after all why worry about a Local Authority licence inspector who might come round in a year or so – and is likely to be a bloke anyway…

It also unequivocally demonstrated that the female ’sexuality’ that’s so sought after by the male patrons of such establishments is nothing but a sham. It’s a plastic effigy of something that doesn’t exist outside of their pornified imagination anyway.

The programme did have its lighter points though. It made me laugh out loud when I heard the Government view that the relaxation of licensing laws was made in an attempt that urban Britain should emulate Milan’s cafe society. They apparently wanted to see happy, healthy people sitting at oil-clothed tables in the streets outside buzzing cafes during the evenings; they wanted to see whole families frequenting art galleries (with dad, natch) after work. They apparently wanted to raise British ‘culcha’ above that of the lager lout leering and yelling sexual abuse at every passing female and puking in the street or the pissed up city gent crashing his car on the way home to abuse his wife. So they relaxed the licensing laws and, in doing so, enabled pimps to ply their trade with a licence! I guess I laughed with embarassment a bit – I was embarassed for the ignorance and aspiration of the Government of this country who seemingly have absolutely no idea of what it’s like for ordinary people in the street during the evenings – or at any other time, come to that.

The findings of the Profitable Exploits: Lap Dancing in the UK report by Julie Bindel and the Child and Women Abuse Studies Unit of London’s Metropolitan University in 2004 were exactly the same as the Despatches programme I watched this evening. That report was published four years ago. I’m wondering if action will be taken now because filmed footage of exactly the same things that were described in that report has been broadcast on (Freeview) national TV.

The upshot of Despatches tonight was that the evidence showed that “gentlemen’s” ‘clubs’ (however you care to name them) were outlets for prostitution. The question asked was “In licensing these establishments, are the UK Government licensing prostitution?”

Damn good question, if you ask me, and I’m ears agog to hear their answer. I don’t expect I will but my vote is YES, they are.

I’m kinda go, go, Ch4 because, essentially, I think they did good but I’m going to shower now. Really feeling all the scum, iykwim.

→ 9 CommentsCategories: Feminism · Uncategorized