Yesterday was international Women’s Day. Errrr, 2019. Probably. Which is a massive day in the life of all… international women. Local ones can carry on ironing and cooking and getting pipes and slippers ready for when their ‘man’ comes home from work, whisky in her hand. I celebrated this day myself by living it as a woman. Not in any ‘trans’ kind of way, though that was my original idea but was vetoed when I broke six pairs of Mel’s kitten shoes with the extra-strength shoe-horn. But I’m such a rampant, re-constituted post-feminist that I simply had to show my support and love and understanding of my co-women’s plight in life.

So the first thing I did was to make a list. Of all the things Mel should be doing today. A long one. I then spent a lot of the day asking people to remove lids, change light bulbs and for help when the ‘computer’s gone wrong again’. Then I got on the phone for a few hours. On the tube I went to the ‘priority seat’ where some scruffy, 17 year-old urchin was superglued to his phone, tapped him on the shoulder and said: ‘oy! muthafucka! Show some respect and give up your chair for someone empathising with women or I’ll shove your phone where only Michael Jackson would try and reach it’. He moved, I sat, cross-legged, like a lady.

Then I was over it. It’s easy being a woman. But I wondered when ‘International Men’s Day’ was likely to be? Oh, (2 answers here): 1. There isn’t one!!! How discriminatory. Or 2. There are 364 Men’s Day’s; so fuck off!

In my mind International Women’s Day is the genderised version of Brexit. It’s divisive. It accentuates the differences, polarises the factions and creates a whole load of bollocks (in the non-gender context) about virtually nothing. And in all reality I am seriously a feminist. We have no glass ceilings in our house, which has only ever been filled with me and women. And now Lila. Also a woman-to-be. Which is probably why she creates so much mess. I didn’t mean that. And if we had any glass ceilings I’d have smashed them with a football decades ago, as I smash virtually anything of value, given sufficient time.

So as I prepare for our dinner guests tonight with my signature dessert, make the salads, set the table, all whilst keeping at least one eye on the football scores, have some sympathy for the poor, downtrodden men of this world. Who are so repressed that they don’t even get their own ‘day’.

Happy Not-Men’s Day

A xxxx