The rain stretched time, confining us to the sitting room where paperback Westerns, Louis L’Amour, J T Edson, the adventures of Dusty Fogg in a dry and dusty climate, lined the shelves, spines creased.  Jigsaw puzzle pieces were spread over the round table, The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, Zeus enthroned, dwarfing his worshippers.  Proceed from the outside in and never succumb to frustration.

In the hallway, the bannister provided a groove just wide enough to send a Corgi die-cast metal car  careering down to smash against the wall (or latterly a hamster could clamber up or down for exercise depending on which direction he was faced in).  The entertainment value of the constant banging was lost on the adults, who shouted at us to play Old Maid or patience, but were reluctant to chase us outdoors, knowing that our wellies would quickly acquire thick crusts of mud, which would inevitably end up on the hallway carpet.  We would never take shelter in the barn for fear of the rats.  When the jets came thundering down the valley on their low altitude practice runs we would watch the rodents leap across the gap separating their customary abode amongst the pile of hay from the abandoned cottage, sent into panic by the din.

The next obstacle on the way down to the shore was the byre with its corrugated iron roof where the Old Bull lived out his retirement.  His enormous black head and nose ring intimidated us, though curiosity rather than malice prompted him to snort at us as we hurried by, hardly daring to look at him, the fence separating us too rickety for comfort.  Even now, so many years after he has passed into the realm of childhood memory, vivid emotionally, yet blurred like an ancient Polaroid snapped by an unsteady hand, his presence lingers on, in spite of the stable being converted to a boat shed.  All the cows have likewise departed, along with the clover patches by the front doorstep I scanned for four-leafed specimens to press between the pages of my dictionary.

The kitchen was the heart of the cottage, where we ate round a table (at home the imperatives of our respective timetables precluded such coordination, my brother and I devouring our mince and tatties in front of the telly, wooden trays resting on our laps).  My Mother and Auntie Cathy kept the kettle boiling for mugs of tea on demand, with water from the spring.  The stain left behind testifying to the strength of the brew.  A drop of milk only, no sugar for my Mother, my Father adding three tiny Hermesetas to the two heaped teaspoons of marginally less artificial sweetener.

The approach of teatime (our cousins, brought up in their refined Edinburgh milieu might have eaten lunch, but our meals were known as breakfast, dinner, tea and supper) was signalled by the spreading of a dishcloth over the draining board upon which to deposit the freshly peeled potatoes before transferring them to the chip pan.  Spry Crisp ‘n Dry, sheets of kitchen roll on a large plate to soak up any oil in excess of what the slogan claimed.  The radio with its impressive array of dials and exotic names of foreign broadcasters, our sole link to the world beyond the stone walls and boundary fences, was switched on by Uncle Ronnie who filled the room with the sickly fragrance of tobacco from his pipe as he listened to the news in the armchair beside the range, wader-swathed legs stretched out to assert his dominance through occupation of the maximum amount of space.

I would drift off to sleep in the bed at the top of the landing once the stars had become visible through the skylight to the sound of big band music and the laughter of competitive team whist punctuated by Ronnie’s clamouring for yet another dram.

My Mother’s alcohol consumption was restricted to a couple of glasses of sherry at Hogmanay.  I would half-wake before turning back to the wall as she made her way downstairs to wash any dishes left from the evening before.  These were the few precious moments to herself with no one to interrupt her thoughts (even the locked toilet door did not act as a deterrent to our persistent demands and impatient knocking).  She would smoke an Embassy Regal and stare out of the window in the groggy morning light that staggered through the pane but could not muster the strength to banish the shadows.  The steam from the spout of the kettle could not dispel the chill, the crumpled newspapers and kindling in the range stove nestled beneath lumps of coal awaiting combustion.  She felt a prickling at the back of her neck and turned round to see a stranger ensconced in Ronnie’s chair.  The old man said nothing and she turned back to the sink, pouring boiling water into the teapot for the unexpected guest.  When the leaves had infused to her satisfaction, she placed the silver strainer over the cup, picking up the jug to allow him to determine for himself how much milk he wanted, but he was gone.

The swifts darted in and out of their mud nests in the barn’s rafters on the brighter mornings, but she would never be startled again by the botach as he shared her respite, always dressed the same, ready for a day’s work on the croft, a bonnet for warmth and sturdy boots.  In anticipation of his arrival, she would leave a cup out for him, and he would always have vanished prior to the creaking of the stairs that heralded imminent interruption.

During one of our last stays in the cottage, we were awakened by a scream of undiluted terror.  Ronnie had been stirred from his slumber by the ache of a full bladder and slipped out of bed to head for the bathroom, accessed through the kitchen.  In the light of the embers, he had spotted an intruder, impossible given that he had locked the front door himself.  Once we children had been persuaded that the commotion was nothing to worry about, my Mother admitted to her knowledge of the apparition, that he was quite harmless.

Today the cottage has been gutted, refurbished beyond recognition to a luxury holiday rental, the range reduced from functionality to the status of decorative feature, the mirror from the sitting room fixed to the wall above it.  The olive-green carpet with its layers of accumulated dirt long since ousted by a soulless yet easily mopped laminate, upon which even the merest toast crumb would offend the eye, the sharp glare of halogen lights casting out the encroaching gloom of twilight.  Bar stools replace the leather armchair with its tartan blanket, offering nowhere for an old man to settle and reminisce.  Only sometimes, when the house has fallen silent and all the lights but for the one on the bedside table have been extinguished, might you be disturbed by a sudden draught from the kitchen as you turn to climb the stairs.

Bunches of grapes hang improbably from the naked vines that drape the fence, some maintaining the deception of succulence, others wizened, shrinking away from the wind’s icy probings.  The progress of pedestrians towards the bus stop is charted in sound by the barking of dogs banished to gardens, the raised hackles of guard duty, a display of ferocity encouraged by the protective barrier of the gate.

Our arrival had proven smoother than anticipated, the airport authorities having imported scabs from elsewhere in Europe to alleviate the chaos caused by the strike, throngs of disgruntled passengers queuing to pass through the metal detectors.

We removed out outdoor shoes, but not our coats or scarves, as the heating could not be coaxed into life, turning the thermostat dial to full blast nothing more than an exercise in misplaced optimism.  Even taking refuge beneath double eiderdown-filled duvets offered little comfort (and after the plumber had shown us how to bleed the pipes several hours elapsed before we noticed any difference in temperature, G dragging a foam mattress and bedding down to the boiler room’s dark yet warm confines).

Mass redundancies and industrial action exacerbate the winter gloom.  “Balkan wages, EU prices!” the slogan neatly encapsulating the woes of the average Hungarian.  According to Professor László Bogár, the cost of the weekly shop is 20% cheaper in Austria, whilst salaries across the border are over four times higher.

A dead swallow putrefies slowly in front of the conservatory pane, the agent of its demise.

Having unloaded the provisions, four 750g jars of Speculoos paste and Cherry Bakewells (which have ousted Bramley Apple Pies in my son’s fickle teenage affections), we clambered into the fostalicska [diarrhoea wheelbarrow], alternatively nicknamed the Commiemobile (in spite of having been manufactured in the decadent capitalist West), our conveyance for the duration of the holiday, to pick up G the following morning.  Halfway round the ring road (with the recently opened elegant suspension bridge, not named according to the outcome of the public poll, after Chuck Norris, the will of the people having been deemed too vulgar, though one of the other suggestions, Géza Hofi, would have been a fitting tribute to the much-loved comedian), the car, which boasts the dubious distinction of being the cheapest four-wheel drive vehicle in the entire country, a 22-year-old Toyota Tercel, began shuddering and simultaneously producing alarming metallic clanking noises, as if imminently about to blow itself to bits (I kept on peering through the back window, expecting to see the exhaust pipe being unceremoniously jettisoned onto the pristine tarmac, a strange repetition of when my Mother had driven me to be interviewed at Herriot-Watt University in her Austin Allegro, Sam).  Somehow the Hungarian managed to cajole it as far as the car park, half an hour after G had landed.

The final breakdown only happened a third of the way along the main road from the airport.  It wasn’t the fault of the bone-juddering potholes, between which drivers of more delicate or expensive vehicles swerve in the Demszky slalom, as the fostalicska has amply demonstrated its imperviousness to such punishment.  We pulled over onto a mud track running parallel to the official lane, plunging into puddles before grinding to a definitive halt beneath a hoarding with a gleaming-toothed beauty seductively sipping coffee (conveniently near a bus stop, although, this being Hungary, you cannot purchase a ticket on board, and we were able to ascertain from a friendly passer-by that neither an orange BKV machine nor a trafik kiosk was within easy walking distance).   Right on cue, when our initial amusement at the misfortune that had befallen us was on the brink of turning sour, a taxi appeared (we joked that the fare home would almost exceed the value of the Commiemobile).  We wondered whether, having just filled the tank, we would return with a tow to discover that it had been siphoned into a jerry can – nothing would really have surprised us by that stage, as, when we had lent the car to our friend Predator, someone had attempted to break in, making it impossible to open the front door on the passenger side (consigning me to the back seat, only G being lithe enough to clamber over).  Beyond a rancid old blanket, the only conceivable booty could be the built-in radio, as ancient as the car itself.  Nobody but the truly desperate would consider stealing it.

In an effort to salvage some cheer after our minor mishaps, G and the Hungarian brought back a trophy of the seasonal slaughter of immature firs, a magnificent specimen from Norway, which we proceeded to decorate in breach of local tradition (the custom here involves adorning the tree with tinsel and baubles on the evening of the 24th).  We had managed a trip to the hypermarket prior to heading for the airport, filling several carrier bags with szaloncukor, which we attached to threads and draped over the branches.  The Hungarian has an annoying habit of plundering the contents of the shiny wrappers but not removing them, so that numerous disappointments precede chocolatey gratification.  This year, the sweets are colour-coded: silver for yoghurt flavour, red with silver bells and blue bows for rum and cocoa and red with stars for strawberry-jelly.

Welcome to the pre-festive edition of the Britblog Roundup, where the relative dearth of nominations suggests that shopping delirium (jostling for bargains or the must-have toy of the year, unless you prefer the less stressful, sedentary online version, so accurately described by Gordon McLean of Informationally Overloaded in Sneaky) has taken hold.  Not that I am  the annual blues-banishing splurge.   Think of this week’s Roundup as a seasonal tin of Quality Street without the cracknel (I implore you not to clutter the comments box with protestations if the red-wrappered delight was your favourite).

Politics

Jim Jay of The Daily (Maybe), in The terror of unlicensed paperboys, highlights yet another grossly disproportionate application of anti-terror legislation by a local council to a situation, which does not by any stretch of the imagination warrant such a response.  In essence, a couple of newsagents were hauled before court following a covert surveillance operation because of some minor irregularity with the required paperwork.  The grotesque absurdity of it cannot help but remind me of Terry Gilliam’s only too prophetic masterpiece Brazil…when Sam is visited by rogue heating engineer Harry Tuttle and the authorised Central Services operatives, whom he is able to send packing with a strategic demand for a 27B/6.

Jim rhetorically mulls over which of the possible courses of remedying the hiccup would have been the more sensible:

"Option one: phone them up and ask them to sort out the paperwork.  After all there is no question of fraud being involved or improper behaviour, it’s just some forms that need to be signed.  There’s not even any money owed as far as I can work out.

Option two: let’s get James Bond on their asses!  Yeah, it costs more.  Yeah, it’s heavy handed and unnecessary.  Yeah, it turns the council from the servant of the community into a domineering, out of control watchdog.  But on the plus side you get to play at spies!"

It’s enough to make you positively hanker after the good old days when the power-crazed park wardens stalked the children straying across their territory on the way home from school ready to pounce on the litterbug who had the temerity to drop an empty crisp packet.  Nowadays, such wrongdoers would probably acquire a criminal record and have DNA samples taken to be stored in the national database in perpetuity on the fatuous assumption that trivial breaches betray a propensity towards escalation, today’s miscreant spitting flavour-spent chewing gum onto the pavement mutating into tomorrow’s serial killer.

Diamond Geezer displays a gift for satire with a hilarious parody of The State Opening of Parliament, ably cutting through the mystifications of pomp and circumstance to venture a guess at what might actually have been going through Her Majesty’s mind whilst reading her script.  A tiny excerpt to illustrate:

"My Government will waffle on a lot about fairness.  My Government will ban pubs and bars from running extra specially cheap drinks promotions, although it’ll still be possible to binge drink on value lager from the corner shop.  My Government had better not raise duty on sherry, else that’s one’s Christmas ruined".

Two Doctors examine the practical impact of recent policy to lift us out of the financial doldrums in VAT boost in Parliament canteen.

Philip Booth of Ruscombe Green deplores the Shameful decision to expand Gloucestershire’s Airport.  Campaigners gathered to articulate their views with humour: "(…) there was a peaceful demonstration, by opponents of the plans, on the steps of the Council offices.  featuring a cheque made out to the ‘Gloucestershire Airport White Elephant’ for ‘Many many millions of pounds’ and a banner featuring a flaying white elephant emitting clouds of CO2 from its behind".

Derek Wall, of Another Green World, reviews a British anarchist periodical in Black Flag: pirates with a purpose, a task which he approaches with  scrupulous fairness, declaring his own affiliations before proceeding to his appraisal.

 

Feminism (Motherhood, Murder and Madness)

Motherhood

"The psychoanalysts had constructed the ideal mother to go with the permissively raised child – one who would find passionate fulfillment in the details of child care.  Through her newfound biological instincts, this new ‘libidinal mother’ was an even better match than the ‘household engineer’ for the liberated child of permissive theory.  Not only would she naturally fulfil her child’s needs, but she would find her own fulfillment only in meeting the needs of the child.  The libidinal mother would rejoice in pregnancy and breast-feeding.  She would seek no richer companionship than that of her own child, no more serious concern than the daily details of child care.  She instinctively needed her child as much as her child needed her.  She would avoid outside commitments so as not to ‘miss’ a fascinating stage of development, or ‘deprive’ herself of a rewarding phase of motherhood.  No longer would motherhood be reckoned as a ‘duty’, or child raising as a disciplined profession.  Instead, mother and child could enjoy each other, fulfilling one another’s needs perfectly, instinctively, as if Nature in her infinite wisdom had created them, two happily matched consumers consuming each other"

Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts’ Advice to Women, New York, Anchor Books, 2005, p243 (emphasis in original)

Far from being static, notions of ideal motherhood expand and contract to fit the exigencies of the moment as snugly as certain nappies claim to envelop an infant’s bottom, as the above example shows.

At The F-Word, Victoria Dutchman-Smith dismisses the lazy supposition that rejecting the dominant cultural construct of motherhood constitutes an attack on motherhood itself in Why feminists shouldn’t have to keep mum:

"While I love being a mother, I resent the current cult of motherhood in our society.  It’s something feminists need to challenge, instead of feeling it’s a thing they need to adapt to and be oh-so-polite about.  When I was on maternity leave following the birth of my son, the loneliness I felt at being out of the workplace and spending all day with someone who couldn’t talk was compounded by the fact that when I did meet with other mothers, the contemporary cult of motherhood required me to hold my tongue.  It’s not that no-one talks about the physical and mental challenges of being a mother.  Women do, all the time (even though the same discussions on cracked nipples and tantrums in Sainsbury’s are treated as ‘taboo breaking’ each time they arise).  The trouble is, while we’re all allowed to say how difficult it is, no-one’s allowed to say that it’s too difficult and needs to change, because that would be seen as undermining the very roles with which we’re struggling.  So we get nowhere or, worse, we learn to seek value in all the things that could be so much better if only we’d try to alter them".

She continues: "Feminism has a long tradition of promoting fairness, equality and choice, things that enable women to be respected as complete human beings worth just as much as men.  If we ask feminists to sympathise with cultural trends that militate against such ideals, we weaken the fight for equality to the extent of it becoming meaningless.  For instance, it is not reasonable to ask feminists to treat essentialist and non-essentialist views on the roles of mothers and fathers as though they are equal, just because not to do so will offend some mothers and fathers.  It doesn’t matter to me how you choose to run your own household.  It does, however, matter that the view that mummy does one thing, daddy does another, currently holds sway over our parental leave laws and limits the freedom of individuals to make their own choices.  It matters that many children are being brought up with restricted views of what women and men do, simply because the essentialist views of their parents are held to be off-limits in feminist debate.  It might upset some mothers to say that their femaleness is not intrinsic to how they act as parents.  But it isn’t, and to claim otherwise isn’t to take a neutral ‘all things are equal’ approach.  It’s to say mixed-gender couples who achieve an equal division of labour and perform similar roles are somehow doing it wrong.  And why should we put up with that, just so that others feel their personal choices, choices we have no interest in challenging, are viewed as superior?  I don’t care if an individual woman chooses to take on all childcare responsibilities, if this is the division of labour that works for her and her partner.  I do, however, care if this particular allocation of roles is claimed to be ‘natural’ and any deviation from this taken as a personal insult.  If we believe in choices, we cannot validate one person’s choice at the expense of everyone else’s.  That leaves us with no choice at all".

Aminatta Forna, in her 1998 book Mother of All Myths (London, Harper Collins): "Nothing exemplifies the paradox of motherhood as a state which is both revered and reviled, natural and yet policed, more clearly than the issue of breastfeeding.  Bottle-feeding is frowned upon and the pressure on mothers to breastfeed is immense, yet there are still very many people in the UK who regard the sight of a breastfeeding woman as obscene.  In August 1997  a woman breastfeeding her child in a courtyard had water thrown over her by a disgusted shopkeeper.  She turned out to be an Express newspaper journalist and the story, which was carried on the front page the next day’s newspaper, prompted a national discussion.  many people, including Anne Winterton MP, supported the shopkeeper’s view that women should breastfeed out of sight, but in Britain there are extremely few public breastfeeding facilities and the combined effect of public disapproval and lack of facilities keeps breastfeeding mothers virtually homebound" (pp7-8).

Since then depressingly little has changed (although, as Britblog’s own cabalamat points out, legislation has been passed in Scotland to prevent the kind of unpleasant incident catalogued below from occurring).

Laurie Penny, at Liberal Conspiracy, wins the Most Excruciating Pun of the Week for the title of her post on the politics of breastfeeding, No thanks for the mammaries (the cross-posting at her own website has a slightly less groanworthy version, Milking it), not that this should deter you from reading an important denunciation of hypocrisy and its pernicious impact on women’s lives, a piece prompted by the expulsion of a nursing mother from a Soho café.  Laurie writes:

"Breasts are the most fetishised part of the human body, bar none.  They have been drawn, painted, photographed, filmed, fantasised, mythologised and obsessed over by the men who are told to desire them and by the women who are taught to ‘make the most’ of them for centuries.  Most girls’ and women’s rooms are stuffed with apparatus to push them out, plump them up, pull them apart, squeeze them together, flatten them down and otherwise force them to resemble the platonic ideal of the fantasy pneumatic breast, currently achievable only by surgery and a certain type of mesomorphic 19-year-old.  Walk down any street, open any newspaper and you’ll be confronted with bosom after computer-enhanced, barely-concealed bosom.  And yet, whenever there’s the slightest risk of boobs being exposed in the course of their most natural function, we whip ourselves up into a moral frenzy.

Many cafés, restaurants and other social spaces, along with a significant part of the population in general, have a problem with breastfeeding in public.  And occasionally, this will enter the public domain, feminists will clamour their protest, a legion of (mostly male) prudes will harp on about hygiene and social decency and the fact that it just isn’t done, and when everyone has calmed down nothing will have changed.  breastfeeding – the biological function of the human mammary gland – has remained socially unacceptable in public, a distasteful function of feminine biology seen as akin to leaving a streaming open wound unbandaged".

Alongside the issues highlighted by Laurie of male "ownership" of and "entitlement" to women’s bodies and breastfeeding as a form of labour, I would add that of women’s freedom of movement and equal occupation of public space.  Nursing mothers should not be relegated to the home, condemned to the isolation and stultification that caring for an infant involves simply because a delicate builder might swoon on the scaffolding at the sight of a suckling babe.

Murder

Why bother with The Daily Mail as a feminist when you know, you just know before you even that it will make your blood boil?  The short answer is that you cannot engage in cultural critique and cannot bring about change if you simply ignore anything you don’t like, that makes you seethe.  That represents the unsavoury antithesis of your most cherished beliefs.  Its circulation figures put the Middle-England Gazette in a different league to, say, Socialist Worker, when it comes to influencing, or perhaps more accurately, cementing attitudes further.  On his mission to discover the essence of the English mind in its contemporary manifestation, Julian Baggini regarded the paper as the Oracle, the Fount of All Popular Wisdom: "But if we are to really understand the English philosophy, we need to know the values that, together with these facts, produce the folk political philosophy.  You can find clues to what these values are by reading the Mail and the Sun.  During my stay in S66 I read only these papers and their Sunday equivalents regularly.  The reason for this was that these are far and away the most popular newspapers in the country, and as such reflect the reality of mainstream English opinion more accurately than others.  The Sun sells over three million copies each day, while the Daily Mail alone sells in excess of two million – more than The Times, Telegraph, Guardian and Independent combined.  The tabloid press does have the power to shape opinion, but this power is not limitless.  The papers that do best are those which reflect the basic values their readers already have.  If they fail to strike a chord, they just won’t sell.  That’s why, although imperfect, they are more reliable barometers of national opinion than many would like to think" (Welcome to Everytown: A Journey into the English Mind, London, Granta Books, 2007, p62).

By way of a footnote concerning the paper’s appeal: "Its main purpose seems to be to inspire fear.  The reason for this is that it serves a segment of the population that wants to maintain its middle-class status yet is only one step removed from the traditional working-class.  No one who was truly secure in their middle-class status would be so anxious to proclaim it so loudly and feel it was under such a threat" (Baggini, op. cit., p27).

Kate Smurthwaite of Cruella Blog dissects Jon Ronson’s article claiming to explore the motives behind Chris Foster’s murders in The Daily Male Blame Game.  She fulminates with moral outrage inspired by the sympathy for his actions expressed by his friend:

"Are you hearing what I’m hearing?  That the reason Chris Foster murdered his wife and daughter was because of the difficulties of getting divorced?  The article glosses over things like his being a member of a shooting club where all the members tell obscene jokes and talk about suicide.  The article doesn’t bother to expand on the risks of the fact that he collected guns as a hobby.  And when his career is mentioned it is to suggest that the state has no right to reclaim money owed by Foster".

However, Mrs Foster had not deserted him: "But most incredibly of all after all this: Chris Foster wasn’t getting divorced.  His wife knew he had no less than eight mistresses and yet still ‘played the dutiful wife’.  Clearly she would have been much much MUCH better off if she had gotten divorced a long time ago.  But that’s not what the ‘Femail’ section is there to tell women, is it?  Not when they can have a male journalist tell them it’s their own fault when they’re murdered".

Having ploughed my way through it in the interests of informed comment, might I venture an alternative reading, without wishing to undermine the Kate’s criticisms of the more egregious flaws in Ronson’s effort.  The original piece focuses on trying to figure out what made Foster tick, what could drive a seemingly ordinary and inoffensive man to the brutal and meticulously planned execution of those whom he was supposed to cherish most.  It is concerned with "humanising" him (which some might feel is a reprehensible undertaking in itself, particularly taking into account the type of denigratory vocabulary reserved for young hooligans running riot on council estates) and is pervaded by a prurient fascination about his wealth and lifestyle, which, far from being gratuitous, explains the timing of publication (the murders were committed in August) as well as revealing the author’s actual agenda. 

From the very outset, Ronson concentrates on social class and respectability, Foster and his family living in the midst of an elite of self-made millionaires.  He is more than slightly irked on arrival by the police tailing him, their suspicion aroused because he gives the appearance of being an undesirable intruder, too scruffy to be a journalist, lowering the tone of the neighbourhood, the poshness of which is reiterated again and again. 

We are told the story of how he acquired his wealth: an inspired idea.  Eager to purchase all the trappings of his new-found status (some of which, such as the personalised number plates for his wife’s car, we are encouraged to view as rather vulgar), he moved in with the smart gated community set.  Indeed, he was profligate to the extent that his business was ruined. 

What we are being invited to contemplate is the unfathomability of evil in plush, respectable surroundings.  It contradicts all the cliches about wife-battering and spouse murder being the preserve of the "lower orders", wealth and education miraculously inoculating you against the disease.  Bafflement prevails amongst his acquaintances and neighbours.  The ability of Foster’s close friend to empathise with his crime indeed smacks of an insidious let-off clause.  According to this conventional line of argument, Foster was acting out of character under extreme pressure, the classic "she drove him to it" with incessant nagging, infidelity or whatever other handy excuse presents itself (see Helena Kennedy, Eve was Framed, London, Chatto and Windus, 1992, pp68-9: "Half of all female murder victims are killed by a husband or lover.  In the majority of these cases male defendants mount of defence of provocation: that their wives’ conduct drove them to a sudden loss of control.  Within the male stronghold of the court it is all too easy to create the feeling that the woman had it coming to her.  Pictures of nagging, reproachful, bitter termagants who turn domestic life into a hell on earth are painted before the jury.  Manhaters skilled in the art of cruelty are summoned up to haunt the trials of men pushed to their limits" and, in relation to rape, pp106-199; see also Sue Lees, Naggers, Whores and Libbers: Provoking Men to Kill in Jill Radford and Diana E.H. Russell  (eds.), Femicide: The Politics of Woman Killing, Buckingham, Open University Press, 1992, pp 267-88).

In reality, Foster was tormented by the knowledge of the impending loss of the accoutrements of his success; he was about to be stripped of his possessions by bailiffs and thereby face public humiliation.   Outward respectability conceals inner turmoil, yet by flashing his cash, Foster had turned his back on the prudence of his origins, the values of caution and "saving for a rainy day".  He was not born into privilege, his upward mobility achieved through intelligence/ingenuity.  The long-term forward planning held dear in his class of origin was jettisoned in favour of reckless spending.  His prodigious infidelity further marked his rejection of sensible, stolid middle-class values, to which his wife tenaciously clung, reverting to the "long-suffering, stand by your man" doormat/default mode required of her (if there had been the slightest hint of her having "deserved" her fate by petulantly threatening to walk out on him, or having sought refuge in the more appreciative arms of a rival these facts would have been endlessly pored over and the moral of the tragic tale would have been a cautionary one to women.  As Kate concludes, there is precious little by way of comfort to salvage for women readers: the conduct of Foster’s wife was irreproachable, she played according to the rules, yet still her life was snuffed out).

What we have then, is a chronicle of inflated pride and greed, an unremarkable rise-and-fall narrative with the twist of the credit crunch (hence the revival of the story now).  True, the financial turmoil was a long way off in the sunny days of summer, but Foster’s circumstances (living beyond one’s means, the spectre of ruin and disgrace, boom and bust on the markets mirrored in the case study of its fatal effects) give rise to the question Ronson implicitly addresses to the men in his audience (in spite of the article being carried in the Femail section): what would you have done in his shoes?  This is the reason why the victims are neglected.  They are irrelevant.  Foster is being portrayed as the real victim, their suffering is incidental, collateral damage, nothing more.

In a misplaced gesture of male solidarity, Ronson too apologises for the murderer: "The truth is, holding a gun does something to you.  It awakens in you some weird, dormant, fetishistic man-gene.  You feel alive and special.  You feel – as Homer Simpson once said – like God would feel if God were holding a gun".

To a greater or lesser extent all the male interviewees identify with Foster’s predicament, even the solution he resorted to.  What I find disturbing is the reaction of the members at the clay pigeon shooting club.  They steadfastly refuse to eject him from their company posthumously; they have refrained from branding him a "monster" or "pure evil". 

Ronson’s article does contain a critique of cultural stereotypes of masculine stoicism, the stiff upper lip of a bygone age.  Foster’s friend complains about the relentless pressures on the hapless males of today: "’We’re supposed to be manly,’ he replies.  ‘We’re not supposed to get upset.  We’re supposed to be the breadwinners and the providers, especially in our children’s eyes.  We’re supposed to do miracles’".  As Kate remarks, this is curiously out of date and certainly bears no relationship to what a feminist would expect.

To conclude, the subject matter of Ronson’s article is not the victims, but the Daily Mail readers themselves.  His mandate is to reassure them that they might not be as successful as the likes of Foster, but their loyalty to staunchly middle-class ideals renders them morally superior.  This virtuousness will enable them to weather the buffetings of the financial storm accordingly.  What we are conffronted with is a true Emperor’s new clothes scenario with more than a dash of Schadenfreude.  We may not be spectacularly wealthy, but contentment is to be found in the lore of our forefathers, bred into our bones.  Thrift, not the in-your-face ostentation of the show-off, is the route to genuine fulfillment.  There is no need to covet Foster’s vast array of material effects, no need to emulate him.  In this regard, Ronson is only too happy to swathe himself in the mantle of the readers’ representative: "I seemed too scruffy for these exclusive, nouveau riche surroundings, but it dawns on me that perhaps – like Letwin – the people of Maesbrook actually have nothing but overdrafts and all these fancy cars and mansions are just an illusion.  maybe, with my meagre savings, I’m the richest man in town".

Madness

By way of a preface to an excellent submission, allow me to cite Jane Ussher: "The concept of madness implicitly locates the problem within the individual who is sick, a contention strongly contested by the critics who would locate the sickness within the system, the society.  The discourse of madness serves to divert attention away from the problems within society, focusing attention on to the individual, who is suffering only as a direct result of societal pressures.  The symptoms labelled as part of the illness called madness are thus seen as a reflection of the inequalities and conflicts within society.  The mental health professionals disguise the reality of the misery experienced by individuals, and add to their oppression by providing individualised technological solutions for social problems" (Women’s Madness: Misogyny or Mental Illness? Hemel Hempstead, Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991, p148).

What is classified as a pathology may be no more than a sublimated response to an intolerable and (in the mind of the sufferer) inalterable reality: "The socialisation of women can be seen to prepare women for the mask of madness, the ‘desperate communication of the powerless’ [Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady, London, Virago, 1987, p5].  Having no legitimate outlet for feelings of frustration, anger and misery evoked by the reality of living in a patriarchal society, women fall into the psychiatric trap.  Madness in the twentieth century has become institutionalised as a discourse which legitimates the positioning of women as good/bad – attractive and seductive, dangerous and fearful.  The discourse, associated with the fear of women and the confining power of madness in the nineteenth century, has merely taken on a tougher veneer of respectability, as well as extending its authority to greater numbers of women.

Thus the labels applied to women, labels which so cleverly place the problem within her as a person, distracting from the social reality of her life, serve to mystify the reality of her oppression, a process buttressed by the gender bias in psychiatric nosology, the labelling process itself" (Ussher, op. cit., pp167-8).

Failure to conform to prevalent social standards of appropriate behaviour can exact a heavy price: "Although masculinity is associated with more positive mental health, it seems that this is only for men; and women who are adventurous, competitive, sexually active, independent, women who reject the role of wife and mother, to name but a few examples, may be at risk of being designated psychiatrically ill.  In fact, the woman who reports symptoms which are seen as ‘male’, such as alcohol abuse or aggressive antisocial behaviour, will be seen as much more psychologically disturbed than the man who exhibits the same symptoms" (Ussher, op. cit., p168).

Ussher neatly encapsulates my own doubts concerning therapy as a containment exercise, reconciling the patient to docile acceptance rather than looking to tackle the problems of systemic inequality and its invalidation of female protest: "In the feminist view, therapy is not gender-neutral.  It is based on patriarchal principles and supports a patriarchal and misogynistic culture.  The transformation of oppression into illness during the course of therapy is seen as rewriting women’s lives, women’s pain, within a framework which conceals misogynistic control of women, encouraging women to conform and be controlled.  The ‘helping professions’ are seen as agents who coerce women into accepting situations they do not want and that they are unhappy with.  The woman herself is taught to see her misery as illness, and to direct attention and cure at herself.  This means that women fail to look to factors outside themselves, factors outside their own madness, for explanations for unhappiness" (Ussher, op. cit., p176).

In Ussher’s sobering assessment, there is no magic bullet, no easy solution (pp292-3): "Psychiatrists might suggest that dopamine is deficient, that neural pathways are malfunctioning.  Psychologists might argue that women in distress are troubled by negative cognitions, making dysfunctional attributions which result in depression, or exhibiting learned helplessness.  A sociologist (or socially orientated psychologist) might argue that lack of social support and poor living conditions were of aetiological significance, and that the answer lies in social and political change.  The dissenters might argue that women, alongside men, are victims of a stigmatising labelling process, which function as a means of social control, pathologising behaviour which is defined unacceptable; that society is disposing of such people through the label of ‘mental illness’ and incarceration in the metaphorical strait-jacket of psychiatric categorisation or professionally mediated treatment.  A feminist might argue that women are victims of patriarchal oppression, of misogyny, and that madness is an understandable and natural reaction to the demeaning role enforced upon women, the protest of the powerless, or that labels of madness are merely tools of patriarchy and that our position as other within phallocentric discourse, makes us mad" (Ussher, op. cit., pp289-90).

Laurie Penny provides personal testimony of how these are not mere abstract debates, but have a devastating impact on ordinary lives in her moving and courageous Gender fucked: what does ‘healthy womanhood’ look like?

"When I was in a mental institution, a lot of otherwise well-meaning medical professionals conspired to screw up my gender identity pretty much permanently, for the best of reasons (they wanted to help me get better) and the worst (they believed that conforming to received ideas of ‘feminine’ behaviour was the best way for me to demonstrate a new, mentally healthy outlook).  They were wrong.  I am incredibly grateful for the inpatient treatment I received, which probably saved my life, but my political and personal feminism took a massive battering, and that’s less than entirely forgivable".

One woman’s "well-adjusted" is another woman’s "brainwashed": "Instead of analysing why we might be unwilling to go through the process of self-subsumation that represents the western journey into ‘womanhood’, the doctors prescribed a strict programme of feminisation for me.  I was told in no uncertain terms to grow out my hair, throw away my old baggy black clothes, start wearing skirts, pretty shoes and make-up, sit with my knees together and be less ballsy and confrontational.  The other women on my ward, with nothing to do all day, were only too happy to dress me up like a tiny mannequin, teaching me to paint my face and nails and lending me foofy dresses until I was allowed off the ward to buy my own.

Pretty soon, as a day patient, I was getting regular compliments from leery men on the Tube about my nice pink low-cut tops and nice tights and nice impression of absolute submission.  This represented progress, my doctors told me.  Wolf-whistles were something I should be proud of.  I was nearly at my target weight: the attention of men in public places, wanted or unwanted, was proof that I was nearly ready to return to normal society as a ‘proper grown-up lady’".

Culture 

KT Dodge of the eponymous blog informs us that Ratings drop since John Sergeant exit.  Although for me Strictly Come Dancing is the perfect cure for insomnia, even I could not help but notice the controversy concerning his departure and I certainly agree with the author that the panel of judges could benefit from lightening up.

Chris Partridge of the ever-informative and delightful Ornamental Passions enlightens us as to the personages gracing the facades of the College of Preceptors in 2 Bloomsbury Square, WC1.

With his unfailing aptitude for providing us with the solace of nostalgia in an unkind world, Jonathan Calder of Liberal England looks back over the career of one of Britain’s finest broadcasters, In praise of Brian Matthew.

Natalie Bennett of My London, Your London, an indispensable guide to the exhibitions and events which often fills the ex-pat (I know, I have only myself to blame for my self-imposed exile, plus the total absence of well-paid jobs for my particular skills in my native tracts) with homesick melancholy and a more than slight twinge of envy at the sheer abundance of entertainments on offer, reassures me that not every production is equally worth watching in Theatre Review: The Tragedy of Thomas Hobbes by the RSC at the Wilton Music Hall: "But there was a wise warning from the Bard that the playwright here, Adriano Shaplin, forgot: ‘the play’s the thing’.  In telling the story of the struggle between the ‘traditional’ philosopher Thomas Hobbes and his rival ‘natural philosophers’ of the Royal Society, particularly of the brilliant but erratic Robert Hooke (and this play might better have been called Hooke’s tragedy), against the detailed background of the political and practical history of the time, Shaplin apparently forgot that this wasn’t a school lesson".

Guest-blogging at Heresy Corner, the magnificently-pseudonymed Valdemar Squelch (I agree that Dave, his real name, doesn’t have quite the same ring to it), provides the uninitiated with an excellent and thoroughly enjoyable introduction to the fiction of Montague Rhodes James in The Hairy Claws of the Vengeful Dead, placing the stories within the wider cultural context: "James could hardly have been unaware of the prolonged intellectual ferment that followed the publication of Darwin’s ideas.  The great debate spanned the early decades of James’ life.  As a Christian by upbringing and inclination, M.R. James believed in the immortal soul.  Yet as a man of his time – and a very intelligent one – he could not have been untouched (untainted?) by the materialistic outlook of the new science of biology.  Disraeli said the question was whether Man was an Ape or an Angel and famously came down ‘on the side of the Angels’.  James does not seem so sure, in his fiction at least.  he offers us spirits that are bestial, yet still in a horrible way human – human enough to be dangerous, with just enough mind to nurse a grievance".

Hopefully, this week’s compendium will have sufficed to silence the detractors of blogging, albeit temporarily, about the merits of our output.

I include one final nomination by way of demonstrating that I take my duty of strict adherence to the principle of inclusiveness as a host seriously.  I am not sure whether this site is touting cycling equipment or dodgy gurus (as an atheist I am not discriminating against cults, rejecting all superstition with equal fervour) and am not remotely convinced that it is a genuine blog, as it has the look of an elaborate marketing ploy, but the Cycling Photos of the Year are innocuous enough in themselves.  I leave it to your discernment, this was just the public health warning.

Next week’s Roundup will be hosted by Mr Eugenides.  As ever, nominations should be sent to britblog [at] gmail [dot] com.  A full statement of editorial policy and the hosting rota may be found at the Britblog Central website.