fourth floor feminism | sociable speculation

Susan Without Sue I would never have come to London at all and for that alone I owe her absolutely everything that was great about the last two years. Jen facilitated the idea too, but it was Sue’s six weeks in Australia during which she offered me the chance to look after her house in London that got me out of Perth in nine weeks flat. Sue is one of the handful of friends I have over here that makes a truly profound impression on all who meet her, each person who talks to her comes to me with a hushed ‘oh my god, Sue is so cool …’ I hesitate to try and sum up her character in one sentence, but I think it is because Sue is entirely awake to herself that she is so admired. Sue will always epitomise for me awe inspiring cooking, asides that make your eyes bug out and (and I use the word advisedly) an earthiness that makes you feel like you have found someone who really knows where her towel is. Jacinta I actually cemented my friendship with Jacinta under entirely false pretences. O...

Last July, when I mentioned that my first year in London was drawing to a close to Matt, he reminded me that I had not done the last year by myself. He was too right - housemates, drinking(!) buddies, travelling companions, old friends from home, new friends from home, new friends from London, visitors from home – each person that entered my life over here formed a memory that ties my heart that little more to this land and I am eternally grateful that they provided for me that cocoon of a great group of friends. Last year I got a few people a small token of my appreciation for their part in making my first year in London bearable. My personal debt to my friends over here has increased quite a bit in the past year, however, and I want to officially give my heartfelt thanks to the people that have BEEN London for me. Friendships when you are travelling are a truly wonderful experience. Firstly you have the Perthites, people with whom you can swap that special currency of ‘Perth hey?...

I have only six more weeks to go in London and I really should be starting and ending each day with wailing and the gnashing of teeth. Instead I am having night after night of brilliant conversations with friends who are already becoming a wrench to leave behind, and it is entirely because I am leaving that I am having such a good time. I was afraid that my moment of fear, which inspired the entry below of the same name, was going to be a permanent state. That my fear of the known would hamper my ability to settle my affairs over here. Yet the limits of my time here and finality of my imminent departure from my real life has woken something unusual in me.I have become a grinning martyr to my love of Britain. Instead of wallowing, I am barefacedly declaring that I am leaving a fulfilling life behind to be buried in a cultural backwater. I am declaiming right, left and center my ambitious plans for my stay in Perth, the writing and the reviewing and the wonderfulness that I will br...

It’s been a week since I read this little gem from Alan Coren’s column in the Times, but now that Wimbledon has actually started and Henman has won his first game, I think it is time to bring to your attention one of Coren’s Corkers. Tim Henman is, right after Jonny Wilkinson, my favourite English sportsman because he symbolises for me an inexplicable aspect of the English psyche. Henman is the best English tennis player at the moment, he has been ranked 4th in the world, he is currently 21st, he holds eleven titles and he gets to the quarter, semi and finals on a regular basis. But he has not won Wimbledon, and for that little oversight, all his overseas achievements are ignored. The love / hate relationship between England and Henman is epic in its dichotomy, the country prepares to back him to the hilt, but are completely resigned to him crashing out before the finals. Every Wimbledon, the whole of England manages to say exactly the same sentence at least once … ‘Henman is p...

I am being stalked. My last weeks in London are being lived in parallel, one with me frantically running hungry eyes over my beloved London trying to remember everything, one finding me freezing at inopportune moments with the overwhelming knowledge of going home. My thoughts of home are stalking me through my work day, my bus rides, my dinners, my sleep and each of my conversations. At any moment I may say something or see something or hear something that triggers a memory of home and my stomach disappears, my lungs turn to concrete and I seem to exist outside time for the split second that it takes for one of two crushing feelings to rip my throat out. I can never tell which of my two stalkers will pounce on me next. The fear is like one of our famous venomous snakes lurking in the dark, ready to sink its’ fangs straight into my chest and freeze my blood. I stand on Pall Mall each morning, admiring the sight of the National Gallery and will find myself mentally standing in ...

PART ONE HERE Gloriously Normal Our B&B was a working Hereford farm called The Grove Farm run by Lynne Lloyd and her husband (we never caught his name so he became Farmer John). Our fellow guests were two Yummy Mummies from Kingston and they were such caricatures, with their white linen trousers, primary colored designer leather handbags and condescension to Lynne. We had a fascinating conversation on politics on Sunday morning in which these two women were racist, hypocritical and snobbish with complete aplomb and without a trace of irony. I was particularly conscious of their particular brand of Londonitis because I had gone for a little trek around the farm earlier in the morning with Farmer John and had had a fabulously earthy conversation about animal husbandry and cropping in our two different countries. It is so frightfully nice to talk to someone who is not from London … Michael Buerk Jen and I were assigned to the largest venue for Sunday’s penultimate sessions, consis...

We packed sneakers (they should have been wellies), we drove a Vauxhall (it should have been a Range Rover) and we had tongue-in-cheek nicknames (Kiki and Bunty). The Hay-On-Wye Literary Festival was never going to know what hit it (and it didn’t because they couldn’t tell what our accent was!). The Great Escape It took us six hours to get from Kingston to our Farmhouse B&B, including a tense 45 minutes around midnight winding our way through Herefordshire lanes one car wide with hedges so tall they seemed to close over our heads. I always love the journey out of London, from the smell of the grey prison of London to the smell of the green grass of England. We drove over the Severn Bridge , painted a luminescent baby blue, its struts fanning out in your peripheral vision like a peacocks’ tail as we drove over it. Jen was duly impressed with the Welsh hills, the hills of South Wales just as clean-cut and handsome as those around Snowdonia . Setting the Scene We had to wear sexy D...