Nicci French Blog

A ps to what I wrote below

Nicci:

I was just talking with Sean about my perplexity as to where all the women have gone in politics. He mentioned Shirley Williams, whom I've always looked up to. She is humane, emotionally intelligent formidably clever, loveable and shrewd and honest - and yet in her recent autobiography, she writes about her painful lack of self-confidence. So is this another reason why women are not in power - that however brilliant they are and whatever moral authority they possess, they suffer from self-doubt? (Men, on the other hand, should sometimes have less self-confidence, more self-doubt.)

Where have all the women gone?

like almost everyone else I know, I have been in the grip of election fever - staying up all night to watch the results, listening to every news bulletin thereafter to see what the real result was going to be, reading blogs, following news unfolding on the web, snaffling up rumours and counter-rumours, ringing and texting friends several times a day to discuss what I didn't know - that agog, unsettled, tingling feeling of uncertainty and excitement and hope. When Brown stood outside 10 Downing Street yesterday evening and spoke with candour and emotion, be was the man he should have been through his turbulent years as Prime Minister: what a tragic story, to have wanted something so badly all his life and when he got it, to see it turn to ashes.

But all the time - as the negotiators and conspirators came and went, as Brown spoke, as Cameron spoke - I kept wondering: but where are all the women? Of course there were the three wives, mute and steadfast at their husband's sides. And there was the Queen, looking very cheery and small. And I know Theresa May is to be Home Secretary and I know that Harriet Harman is holding the fort until the new leader is decided (and she's ruled herself out). But in the main, what I saw was row upon row of clever, white, mostly privately-educated men in grey suits.

Why? Is it because the hours are so difficult for a woman with children to manage? (And if so, what does this say about the state of modern relationships?) is it because Parliament is still a boys' club and it's hard for women to shoulder their way in? Is it because women are somehow punished far more than their male counterparts for their failings (look at poor Jacqui Smith, humiliated and blamed and in the end voted out because she mistakenly claimed for two pornographic videos rented by her husband; look at the way the press jeered at Cherie Blair's smile or fixated upon Sarah Brown's toes; look at the way Harriet Harman is continually abused by the media not just for her views but for the way she looks or speaks....). Twenty years ago, Margaret Thatcher was the leader of the country. Today, a woman Prime Minister is hard to imagine.

Long Stories

One of my main vices, apart from crack cocaine, is reading long pieces of journalism on esoteric subjects. So this site seems to have been created entirely for me. If you haven't got anything to do - and you probably haven't - read this brilliant article which explained, way back in 1980, what was wrong with the space shuttle program.

And in the end...

This is wonderful. Some of the greatest session musicians in the business play (most of) side two of Abbey Road. At Abbey Road. It should be just a gimmick, but it isn't because:

1) This music was never intended to be played live but the Fab Faux manage it live, without overdubs.

2) In order to manage it they need to be - and are - better technical musicians than the Beatles were.

3) Somehow recreating the music with such precision becomes a wonderful commentary on the music and changes your perception of it.

4) In a very strange way, watching these musicians perform is more interesting than it would be to watch Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr and their backing band trying to perform it.

5) Borges captured what I'm trying to say in a story.

Interview

Here's an interview with Nicci (Gerrard, not French).