Strong Women

Somewhere in my house is a notebook – one of many- in which I have diarised significant events in my life.

Some notebooks are full of scribbled teenage angst, others are laden with self-doubt, offloaded confessions and repeated resolutions. But some of the best were written many years ago, when I was new to writing, when my letter formation was laboured and my spelling – non existent.

One such notebook has hit a nerve recently, and I spent several hours last week, during half term, trying to find the blessed thing. It IS somewhere, I know it. But as yet, it remains elusive. I was looking for it specifically because of one entry I made, all those years ago, that I wanted to draw upon. Because it is topical right now.

In the 1980s, I felt like the only child who knew about “the women at Greenham Common”. We visited friends in Newbury (I think!) from time to time, and on each journey, my mother would point things out along the way. I recall cries heralding tractors and fire engines, and occasionally cars with cool number plates like PEN 15.

I was never bored on car journeys. Sick, yes, but bored, no. I either looked out of the window and imagined myself astride a magnificent brown horse, alongside the car, leaping every ditch, every fence, every building, making the journey my own. Or I would make everyone listen to Wham, and sing along non-stop and word perfect to the genius that was George ‘n’ Andrew.

But occasionally, my mum would point out something that piqued my interest so much so that I paid heed, and even noted it down in my “news” book at school on the following Monday.

A case in point is the tale of  “The Women on Greenham Common”! It was with revered awe that Mum told us about them as we drove past what I remember as a compound, enclosed by high, steel spiked fencing. I knew not what these woman were, nor where they came from, but from what I recall Mum saying, they were protesting and they were in trouble with the police. And I think they may have been half naked sometimes.

I could tell my mum was impressed. Mum, like me, is a bit of a conundrum. She believes in love and peace and freedom, flowers in your hair and nudity. (I differ from her there). She admires strength, and fighting for a cause – cheers on the renegades. But she is also a stickler for the law and convention. And so one day, en route to Ruth and Roger‘s, my mum started telling us all about these Greenham Common women from the passenger seat of our middle class, company estate car, next to her husband, telling her 2.4 children in the back (one boy, one girl, one small dog) about something that was a million miles away from our lives, yet just behind that scary looking fence.

Mum approved and disapproved all at the same time, I think. In a different life, maybe she’d have been in there with them. I believe the women were protesting about war or something, and what mother of young children doesn’t want to free the world from weapons of mass destruction? But at the same time, maybe Mum was questioning how these women had the opportunity to be there, fighting for a cause like that. Didn’t they have families to look after? Floors to wash? Husbands to obey..?

It was the 1980s. Whilst we were making strides towards equality, it was a different world. It was a changing world – hence the protests, but I think the biggest part of the Greenham Common story is the fact that it was a protest by women. It was unusual in the South East of little England for such a thing to happen, and these women were viewed with suspicion, anger, awe and probably envy by many. They made the news. How many bored housewives would like to have ditched the Marigolds and run away to stand up for something they felt strongly about?

So, it wasn’t really the women that impressed me because I didn’t really know what the heck they were up to. I was six. But it was my mother’s reaction to them that I remember, and hence I committed it to history in one of my early journals:

“On Sunday we went to see the women at Greenham Common”.

To this day, I would love to know what my teacher thought. It wasn’t discussed, but I’m sure there were side glances of intrigue and admiration in my mother’s direction, coming from the largely female staff at my very middle class C of E primary school.

And so when, last week, I decided to give BBC’s Riot Women a try, and I heard the words Greenham and Common used together for the first time in over forty years, I knew I was going to like it. From the off, right at the start when that reference was made, I was hooked. The storyline is not all anti men, but it is very pro-women, and only in a good way. It shines a light on women supporting each other, being creative together, working things out. It breaches age and gender boundaries, tackles serious issues and gives us some seriously impressive music! I LOVED IT.

I think the world has moved on a fair bit since the 1980s. I certainly have. As for my mum – her world changed shortly after we marvelled at the strength and bravery of those Greenham women. Mum’s strong, independent streak was in there all along, thankfully, and it came in very handy when our family circumstances changed in the early nineties. Gone was the husband and the company estate car. In their place came my ever increasing respect for a woman who, only a few years before, was scared to drive anywhere.

My mum was never a riot woman, probably to her slight lamentation. But she has certainly shown she possesses grit, along with all the other strong women we know. Age may take away some of our physical strength, but it cannot erase what we have achieved in our lives.

Time passes, and my faded 80s diaries are from another era. Indeed, I am so grown up now that I had an x-ray today for suspected arthritis, and as he took the x-ray the young chap placed a steel ball on a stick alongside “so that if I need a hip replacement it will show what size”. FUUUU@K. Whilst it may seem like age is bent on reducing us somehow, we must not let it. We are still the same valid, important and significant wives, mothers, sisters, aunts and friends that we always have been. Even when we are old, tired and dependent.

Ageing is hard (arthritis being a case in point!), but it is inevitable. The loss of youth is arguably harder. Collagen, creatine, ashwallyganda, magic mushrooms, green bunge and the like are all thrust at us to try to help us to age slower, or better, or not at all. I’m on the fence about all of that right now.

All I do know is that inside my head, I am still the same: the six year-old who listened intently to the story of those women on Greenham Common who stood up for what they believed in and made the world a safer place by being in it. They were incredibly cool, and I want to be like them when I grow up.

🙂

(And so do the Four Little Seymours.)