Author: Annie Turner

Simone Biles is…a sort of human miracle. It’s hard to find the words. I’m dazzled. The twenty-two year old gymnast has just won her sixth US title, but the real news is she performed two world firsts on the way through.

Dismouting from the balance beam she did a double double, never before done by a female gymnast in a competition. That means she did two end-over-end revolutions, while simultaneously completing two 360 degree sideways spins to dismount the beam, from a standing start.

On the floor, she did a triple-double – three sideways spins and two end-to-end revolutions. I feel giddy even thinking about it and utterly defeated by the physics. Fab watching it in slow motion on Twitter.

What can you say about the strength, coordination, spatial awareness, imagination, blistering talent and physical courage of the woman?

Her bravery goes way, way beyond that, though. Just over 18 months ago she revealed she’d been one of many athletes abused by Dr Larry Nassar, USA Gymnastics’ former sports doctor. He was accused of molesting at least 250 young women and girls, as well as a young man starting as far back as 1992. He was finally convicted and jailed for the rest of his life in 2018.

Before the US championships began, she lost her usual composure a little, becoming tearful when describing how she felt about representing an organisation that so spectacularly failed to protect the people it exists to serve.

She didn’t pull any punches: “It’s hard coming here for an organisation having had them fail us so many times. And we had one goal and we’ve done everything that they’ve asked us for, even when we didn’t want to and they couldn’t do one damn job. You had one job. You literally had one job and you couldn’t protect us.”

She also said, “it’s not easy being out here. I feel every day is a reminder of what I went through and what I’ve been through and what I’m going through and how I’ve come out of it.”

She’s also suffered negative comments about her body’s shape and weight in her time in the spotlight. The world is full of fools.

Go and watch Ms Biles fly on YouTube. You’ve never seen anything like it.

On the way to the Vodafone shop in Preston today*, AJ and I passed a woman in a burka in Saint George’s Shopping Centre. I wondered how she feels about having the man who referred to Muslim women wearing burkas “looking like letter boxes” as Prime Minister?

I am so scared of the ongoing normalisation of all shapes of horriblenessand holding on tight to the joyous images of Congresswoman Ilhan Oman being welcomed back to her home state of Minnesota after being racially abused by the President of the United States and told, along with Congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley.

I  think about my mother too, who would’ve been 83 yesterday – she loved to say her birthday was on the twenty-twoth according to Auntie T – and how excited we all were by St George’s Shopping Centre opening in 1966. It seemed so modern, so with it, so hopeful. It gave us a feeling of coming up in the world, until we all crashed to earth spectacularly the year after when she died of cancer and who cared about shopping centres then?

Monica Wells was a small, bright and lively child during the Second World War fought against fascism. One of my biggest memories of being with her is us watching Sir Winston Churchill’s state funeral on a tiny black and white TV with a fuzzy picture. The crane jibs nodded as the barge bearing Churchill’s coffin passed Hays Wharf docks.

I was rather baffled by all the fuss. The long solemn funeral and the thousands of people who lined the streets, weeping. Mum explained Churchill had won the war for us. This seemed highly unlikely – how could any one person do that? She tried to explain how he’d been an inspirational leader and given the country the heart to fight.

I wonder what she’d make of  politicians intentionally stirring hatred and deep divisions.

*Yes, I know, yet another telecoms saga – if I got all the time back from the struggles I’ve had with operators collectively, I’d still be in my 40s.

I have been soundly and roundly cursing the sudden explosion of wasps that are infesting my garden and house, not to mention the large and scary uber-version,  hornets, that for the last week have appeared at night when the outside security light goes on. Like so many other ignorant people, I have often wondered just what role wasps do. According to Philip Hoare, a whole lot.

Read Philip’s lovely article for the full details but in short: they are: pollinators on whom our global economy relies ; all seven specicies are beautiful; they are highly organised and outstanding engineers; and in the UK they collectively scoff 14 million kg of insects like caterpillars and greenflies that otherwise would destroy our food.

And they don’t sting unless you attack them, which we tend to do in panic. I try not to kill them. I have whisking them out of the kitchen window with a light teatowel down to a T and I keep wasp-catching equipment on the landing (a glass and postcard that in the evening magically transform into a humane moth and daddylonglegs trapping kit) and I put my captives back outside.

As Mr Hoare suggests, they are a lot more useful and much less destructive than us. Gotta go, I can hear the buzz of yet another small stripey thing trapped behind the blinds…

In a Kelsey Grammer interview in The Guardian he talks about a his lack of relationship with his second oldest daughter, the actor Greer Grammer, who

grew into lovely, busy blonde.

That was written by the female interviewer – not in quotation marks or indirectly attributed. One woman reducing another woman to her hair colour (busy’s not worth mentioning as who isn’t)? Baffled.

Given my own minor, middle-aged revolt, was delighted by this: when Chidera Eggerue was a teenager she wanted a boob job because hers didn’t look like they were ‘supposed’ to – you know, a matching pair (nb our logo is v deliberately not!), round, high, no skin tags or wonky nipples etc.

As she got older, she came to and decided that larger breasted women without stereotype breasts should or shouldn’t wear a bra as they chose, without censure or being gawped at and/or being told to cover up. This prompted her to launch her blog the slumflower for people who don’t relate to or comply with the very narrow idea of what we should look like promulgated by the mainstream fashion industry.

This branched into how to be independent in various areas of life from your looks, to relationships and more – with Chidera dispensing unsentimental advice to those who request it. I did wince a bit when she was reported saying that even women of 50 (dear god!) have connected with her. But when you’re young, 50 is so so old. Remember having a bit of a fit about turning 30. Or was it 40?

Her blog, and now her debut book (at 23), What a Time to Be Alone, are an antidote to the proliferation of middleclass self-help stuff. The book is in three parts – You (“celebrate yourself”); Them (“don’t worry about them”); and Us (“feel the togetherness”).

As soon as I find my reading glasses, I’ll be on it.

The city of Geel in Belgium has a history of what has been called “radical kindness” dating back to the thirteenth century – taking people with mental illness into their homes as permanent ‘guests’ and looking after them for life. Although according to this cheering article in today’s Guardian, the practice is dying out, all kinds of researchers from around the world are looking to Geel’s age-old tradition of caring for inspiration.

Feeling deeply in awe and ashamed – I’m someone who is irked by visitors’ muddy footprints on my bedroom carpets and cup rings on my furniture. Watch the video.

The Deputy Governor of the Bank of England, Ben Broadbent, built on his reputation for revolting people on Wednesday by saying the UK economy looked “menopausal”. He kindly explained, in a Daily Telegraph interview, that he meant “past [its] peak and no longer as potent”. Naturally this provoked an angry response, followed by the obligatory apology, which I’m sure was heartfelt. Previously Broadbent was infamous, according to the FT, [subscription needed] for his “prodigous rhinotillexis [picking his snout] habit in meetings” in the decade he spent at Goldman Sachs. Oh well at least we learned a new word.

Hot, hot, hot

Great response from Jayne-Anne Gadhia, CEO, Virgin Money UK, who said, “When I read this I thought about my own menopause and was sure he meant that the future is hard work, challenging, renewing, worth fighting for, 100% positive and constantly HOT!”

Personally not so sure about the 100% positive, but yeah.

My joy at it being May and the hope of better weather evaporated rather sharply this morning when I saw this.  After studyingt he sales of  2 million books, those by women are sold at just over half the price of those written by men. You can read the gories here. Might be worth having something at hand to smash.

What a classy response: the two black men who were arrested on 12 April for refusing to leave a Starbucks in Philadelphia have accepted a dollar each as nominal compensation – and $200,000 from the company to set up a programme for young entrepreneurs.

In the first place the two young business partners – Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson – were sitting in Starbucks without ordering anything because they were waiting for the arrival of a third man to have a meeting about a possible property deal…

Both said when they were arrested they had been scared for their lives #BlackLivesMatter

Margaret Atwood: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them; women are afraid that men will kill them.” With good reason. The man who killed 10 people and injured 13 others in Toronto by running them down in a van seems to have belonged to Incel (for involuntarily celebate). An underground internet group, they blame women – who they perceive as holding the power – for depriving them of sex, which they see as a fundamental right.

But they hate everybody who has sex.

They accept that they are undesirable or as they prefer, untouchable. The lowest caste. But, according to Zoe Williams writing in The Guardian, “Basically, their virginity is a discrimination or apartheid issue, and only a state-distributed girlfriend programme, outlawing multiple partners, can rectify this grand injustice.”

Zero concept of woman as people, but something to be distributed – shared around ‘fairly’ among all men – allocated by the state.

No wonder I cannot bring myself to reread Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale nor watch the fabulous Elisabeth Moss in the lead role of the TV series. It’s too close to reality for many women in the world and not a distant enough possibility for the rest of us.