fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Love can hijack your otherwise normal life with only a rusty bent teaspoon and a packet of clothes pegs - the wooden ones that start out a pleasing pine colour and end up a slimy grey-green from the weather. Love can drive you barmy with its relentless weeks of monotony that prepares you for throwing it all in and getting a real life, and then it flattens all your objections with a broadside of pure bliss so iridescent that you are blinded for days and your mind is invincible in the afterglow. I betrayed my great love the other week for a few days, as I sulked about the lack of a visa and in a fit of pique I threatened my mind with going home and starting another undergraduate course in the history of another country, one that would give me a visa. I even contemplated, god forbid, Australian history. But you can’t rage against what is in your blood, what is hard-wired into your brain, what brings you your greatest joy. And so I am stuck with being irretrievably in love with Britain, ...

From the ages of 5 to 16 years old I wanted to be an archaeologist, nattily attired in khaki, under the baking sun, slowing brushing away red dirt to reveal priceless treasures . When I gave up that dream, I replaced it with another one, that of marrying an archaeologist. This occurred to me when, collating some of my favourite quotes to facilitate the delivery of a pithy yet educated aside in polite conversation, I came across Agatha Christie’s assessment of life with an archaeologist; An archaeologist is the best husband a woman could have. The older she gets, the more interested he is in her. Dame Christie was my top author for many years and I still experience the thrill of meeting up with an old friend when Poirot and Captain Hastings converse in their sitting room at the start of each story, much like those other most famous of sleuths, Holmes and Dr Watson. Such was my admiration that, believing imitation was indeed the sincerest form of flattery, I once tried to create my...