feminish

It’s dusk. An hour ago I leapt out of the car to check out the garage door - more demolished by the mason than we’d anticipated. After a day working my mind through feminist philosophy, I was suddenly worrying about grey cement and stones being not quite in the right place.

And then - bam! It’s arrived. I knocked it on my head, rubbed the silky smooth finish on my cheek and bashed it and boshed it to see how real it is. I shouted out loud and hit the front with my index finger - It’s real. It’s here. She’s really done it. A real proper, sassy, nails book. Allegra you rock.

So I stood, wedged between the cement mixer and the steel props, in the fading light, ravishing the black-on-white. I flew through the introduction - impatient to know the final Pitch… (there’s been a lot of proofs since Allegra and I chewed life and politics for 4 hours at the improbably patient -we only had coffee and cake- Story cafe)

It’s great. Telling it straight on these leaves of tree-pulp, bound by glue, matt-glossed with plastic…. Fearlessly stating to the anonymous reader exactly how-it-was - to be young, idealistic and political in 2003. The girl’s frank, honest and direct. The War Question was a tricky unspoken one between us, after that Saturday in February, raised only when there was safety in numbers (I remember a ranshackle collective of two-dozen party apparatchiks, young journalists and think tank interns grappling with the whole hog one late weekday evening, perched on Spitalfields Market vegetable pallets in the attic).

It’s true that the Disagreement motivated each of us and we’re each still playing out the logical conclusions of our position. I tried to make it to Iraq in the relative-peace of Winter 2003/4 (to interview the women excluded from the ‘democratic’ state-forming and capture as much DV footage as I could) but the insurgency exploded in Basra. I was forced to channel my determined, frustrated courage elsewhere. It ended up as persistent, outspoken principled opposition to war by men-in-suits - those within my Westminster newsroom and beyond. Meanwhile Allegra stuck to her guns, kept reading and asking questions, learnt Arabic, and saved her unpaid leave for the less dangerous corners of the Middle East. I saved mine for six months in retreat in a Zen monastery in France, with no newspapers and no politics.

I reasoned that if I have ideals this strong, about war or feminism or politics (and I got pretty worked up on behalf of the women in Iraq in spring 2004), I want to see them clearly - to know my inconsistencies, my anger, my frustration, and go beyond them to manifest myself in a way that’s more raw, more honest, more deep.

Which is why you can find me here, in a remote village among pierres taillees and bellowed shouts across the place (France are playing Portugal in the World Cup Semis), living out my pacifism and thinking out my feminism. And I’m fondly proud of my awesome friend Allegra, for living out her ideals and thinking out her thoughts on the dusty streets of Beirut and the in clatter of the political metropolis - and for realising the fruits of her quest in print. I’m sure that integrity and honesty - and fearless idealism - are where it’s at.

It’s dusk. An hour ago I leapt out of the car to check out the garage door - more demolished by the mason than we’d anticipated. After a day working my mind through feminist philosophy, I was suddenly worrying about grey cement and stones being not quite in the right place.

And then - bam! It’s arrived. I knocked it on my head, rubbed the silky smooth finish on my cheek and bashed it and boshed it to see how real it is. I shouted out loud and hit the front with my index finger - It’s real. It’s here. She’s really done it. A real proper, sassy, nails book. Allegra you rock.

So I stood, wedged between the cement mixer and the steel props, in the fading light, ravishing the black-on-white. I flew through the introduction - impatient to know the final Pitch… (there’s been a lot of proofs since Allegra and I chewed life and politics for 4 hours at the improbably patient -we only had coffee and cake- Story cafe)

It’s great. Telling it straight on these leaves of tree-pulp, bound by glue, matt-glossed with plastic…. Fearlessly stating to the anonymous reader exactly how-it-was - to be young, idealistic and political in 2003. The girl’s frank, honest and direct. The War Question was a tricky unspoken one between us, after that Saturday in February, raised only when there was safety in numbers (I remember a ranshackle collective of two-dozen party apparatchiks, young journalists and think tank interns grappling with the whole hog one late weekday evening, perched on Spitalfields Market vegetable pallets in the attic).

It’s true that the Disagreement motivated each of us and we’re each still playing out the logical conclusions of our position. I tried to make it to Iraq in the relative-peace of Winter 2003/4 (to interview the women excluded from the ‘democratic’ state-forming and capture as much DV footage as I could) but the insurgency exploded in Basra. I was forced to channel my determined, frustrated courage elsewhere. It ended up as persistent, outspoken principled opposition to war by men-in-suits - those within my Westminster newsroom and beyond. Meanwhile Allegra stuck to her guns, kept reading and asking questions, learnt Arabic, and saved her unpaid leave for the less dangerous corners of the Middle East. I saved mine for six months in retreat in a Zen monastery in France, with no newspapers and no politics.

I reasoned that if I have ideals this strong, about war or feminism or politics (and I got pretty worked up on behalf of the women in Iraq in spring 2004), I want to see them clearly - to know my inconsistencies, my anger, my frustration, and go beyond them to manifest myself in a way that’s more raw, more honest, more deep.

Which is why you can find me here, in a remote village among pierres taillees and bellowed shouts across the place (France are playing Portugal in the World Cup Semis), living out my pacifism and thinking out my feminism. And I’m fondly proud of my awesome friend Allegra, for living out her ideals and thinking out her thoughts on the dusty streets of Beirut and the in clatter of the political metropolis - and for realising the fruits of her quest in print. I’m sure that integrity and honesty - and fearless idealism - are where it’s at.