Carers

Thursday

Mary Wakefield

I’m taking mental notes for my old age

I know straight away, from the look on my friend Alice’s face, whether it’s a ‘bad carer’ day. Five years ago Alice had a fall and she can’t now do stairs, so she lives just on the second floor of her maisonette in north London. When I drop round, the carer is usually in the kitchen and Alice in her bedroom/sitting room next door. If it’s a bad carer day, she’ll look towards the kitchen, do a thumbs-down sign, purse her lips and shake her head, then she’ll wriggle her shoulders – hoity toity – to indicate that she feels bossed about. Alice is entirely dependent on the care company

Tuesday

Margie Orford

A feminist finds fulfilment in derided ‘women’s work’

Marina Benjamin writes with a frankness, depth and wisdom that recalls the self-exploratory but world-revealing essays of Michel de Montaigne. In A Little Give, she turns her exacting philosopher’s mind, and opens her capacious heart to, her own life. Her essays, Tardis-like in their complexity, depth and range, scrutinise what has made and unmade her feminism, and then enabled her to make anew the feminism that has given her life both its personal and political trajectory: While I’ve never stopped identifying as a feminist, I am less and less certain what it means to live as one. I don’t mean how to organise and mobilise collectively. I mean simply how