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March Winds

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MARCH WINDS When in Rome…. In ancient Rome, March began with festivals to celebrate the start of the military campaigning season. They were dedicated to Mars, the god of war (his name is for ever linked with the month), who became the focus of religious and military cults across Europe. Now, in March 2026, wars rage and powerful men sit in gold encrusted rooms showing footage of real war interspersed with clips from action movies and describing ‘beautiful B2 bombers’ or dismissing their enemy as ‘toast and they know it’. It’s a bit worrying that the worship and cults of Mars seem actually less deranged than the present day. Mars was esteemed for his virtue, was the protector of agriculture, had a romantic liaison with Venus and was father to Cupid, as well as Romulus and Remus. However, he wasn’t actually real, unlike the men bashing each other’s countries to bits at the moment. Music for marching So having set this dismal context for March 2026, we should pause for a moment and look a...
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Some Rain Must Fall

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  February has not been a lot of fun so far, has it? Certainly not as far as the weather is concerned, offering us a salad of mud, sodden ground, floods and a miserable pervading damp. But, given the state of the world at the moment, it’s probably more enjoyable to meditate on rain and write about rain than it is to grapple with iniquities of humanity. So, let’s indulge in a few ponderings on women and inclement weather. The Mud March February 2026 might be a bit damp, but February 1907 (and specifically February 9, 1907) was particularly memorable for the women who took part in the infamous ‘Mud March’ from Hyde Park to Exeter Hall in the Strand. It was organised by Millicent Fawcett and the Suffragist movement, with 3,000 women joining to demonstrate their support for a bill on women’s suffrage due to be presented in the House of Commons. Kate Frye , who had joined the suffragists in 1906, described the weather in her diary: ‘…was my utter disgust – and disappointment- to hear t...
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Trusting the Evidence

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DELIVERING JUSTICE DCI Vera Stanhope, wearing her battered hat and sturdy wellies, follows her cases with grim determination. She uses her sharp wits, intuition and empathy to solve each crime. But there always comes a point where she needs the hard evidence and demands answers from the team around her – from the pathology lab and from the long-suffering Jac, Joe and Kenny. They don the blue gloves, search the crime scenes, make the phone calls and spend hours poring over camera footage – finding the information that Vera needs to secure a prosecution. Countless television crime series have made us familiar with the paraphernalia of forensic science, down to the goriest details. We all know and understand the importance of evidence, don’t we? The blue gloves, the white suits, the shoe covers, the endless scrolling through data – we see these every day on screen. Television may offer us an increasing number of women scientists and investigators, but it is in the real world that women ar...
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
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Just To Say - Thank You!

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The days are short and it’s the time of the year for endless distractions, obligations, conversations and jollifications. So, this is a short blog, a quick pause for a few reflections before off we go, on with the motley, staggering onwards to Twelfth Night, the winter sales, the return to work, trying out Veganuary or making resolutions that are instantly broken. And hoping, all the time, that things SHOULD get better, WILL get better, MUST get better….  THE MEANINGLESS THANK YOU Even if you have tried your best to avoid social media and limit the time you spend looking at emails, you will be lucky to escape the onslaught of hollow messages purporting to thank you for your custom during the holiday season. ‘Thank you for choosing us’ burbles a supermarket, while a shoe shop issues a ‘heartfelt thankyou to all our customers’ and a pharmaceutical company insists that ‘we really appreciate your time and feedback’ as they make yet another request for you to review the tube of toothpas...
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Taking Action in November

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  In 1844, Thomas Hood didn’t think too much of November when he wrote: No sun - no moon!  No morn - no noon -  No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day.  No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,  No comfortable feel in any member -  No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,  No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! -  November! Well, perhaps. Sometimes. But November 2025 hasn’t quite reflected Thomas Hood’s experience. For one thing we’ve had mild temperatures - up to mid November anyway - and gardens, though sodden, remained colourful for longer. Birds still cheerfully sing as the streetlights create a false dawn for them, and the occasional bee pushes itself to its limits to get to the last of the nectar. It is all a bit weird and worrying and if you are becoming increasingly concerned about climate change, the evidence is right there in your back garden. As you have no doubt observed, this blog is focusing on November. It’s being ...
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
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No intention of going gently. Women in later life.

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Three artists Louise Bourgeois was 88 years old when she created Maman , a giant sculpture of a spider. The work was 30 feet high and 33 feet across and it was first exhibited in the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern in the year 2000. Louise Bourgeois died in 2010 at the age of 98. 'The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever.'  Edna O’Brien was born in 1930 and died in 2024. When she was in her 80s, she travelled to Nigeria twice, to speak to some of the girls who had been victims of the Boko Haram abductions. The visits provided the basis for her last novel, Girl, published in 2019, which is a harrowing account of the kidnappings and rapes, and starts with the chilling sentence:  ‘I was a girl once, but not any more’ .  Edna O’Brien spoke later about how the focus of all her writin...
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
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Persist and Resist

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  Persist and Resist The quietly polite phrase ‘ I prefer not to’ appears repeatedly in a strange short story by Herman Melville (yes, he of Moby Dick fame ). The story ‘ Bartelby the Scrivener’ written in 1883, concerns an unassuming clerk in a law firm, who, when asked to do a routine task one day simply replies, ‘ I prefer not to’. After that, he responds to every request with the same phrase, and the result is chaos, incomprehension and tragedy. It’s a story that has been interpreted in different ways, and the meaning of his response has been the subject of intense argument. Although it seems to be a fairly ordinary low-key statement that simply indicates a courteous refusal, the Slovenian philosopher Zizek , for example, says that its use in the story suggests that actually doing nothing can be more powerful than violent resistance. Resisting Oppression: Women and the Arts Women are often associated with quiet and persistent opposition, using different methods and strategies...
Location: Milton Keynes, UK
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