I've lived with depression for many years – since my teens at the very least. And it's not as a result of anything. No childhood trauma, no lack of love. It's worsened by stress, but not caused by it, and no amount of tree hugging or walking barefoot in the grass, or eating clean will cure it. It just is. I have had counselling and CBT, I take medication, and I run. And together they help me manage it. Depression comes in waves. I can feel when it's coming on, the slide down. It's sometimes triggered by something small like a squabble on social media, or not being able to do something I should be able to do perfectly well, or actually nothing specific at all. And I know it's on its way, and I know I need just to ride it out, keep doing what I'm doing, until I feel the start of the climb up. When I'm low, all the colour seeps out and it feels like the world has become black and white. Sounds are muffled and my brain fogs. I'm very good at putting a mask on, and I can work and function perfectly well. Before I was first formally diagnosed I assumed that I couldn't be clinically depressed, because I got out of bed, kept myself clean and tidy, and went to work every day where I met my deadlines perfectly adequately. After all, everyone knows that people with depression can't get out of bed. The day that the gym being closed unexpectedly left me sobbing, curled up in a ball on the floor in the corner behind my bed, should have told me something was wrong. It took a wonderful and kind friend who made me go to the doctor, and a gentle GP and patient counsellor, to make me realise that not only was there something wrong but that it could be faced up to, and it could even be fixed. Or at least managed. I am now in a slightly more complicated world, seven months on after losing my beloved Tim. Tim understood depression. He understood that it couldn't be fixed, but that it could be contained with care and the wave surfed. He would hold me while I cried, hug me when I just felt melancholy, and then make me laugh at the ridiculousness of it all at just the right moment. And now he's gone. And so I live with depression and grief. Whereas depression is a world without colour, and smells and tastes of mud, grief is a different thing. It is greeny-yellow, and tastes bitter. It is sharper-edged than depression. And while both come in waves, grief waves I can't see coming. They crash in out of nowhere, sweep me off my feet, and leave me breathless and gasping. They are triggered by the smallest things – while I can put my big girl pants on and be 'brave' for a birthday or an anniversary, I can't prepare myself for opening a box and finding the piece of paper that he left on my desk with yellow roses, celebrating the anniversary of our first kiss. Or the realisation that now a load of washing contains only my clothes, not both of ours. Or seeing the half-made Airfix model or the half-read book. Some days they are both there, and I can visualise the colours, intertwining but separate. I know the difference between the two. Those days are hard. I feel that I should be able to wrap this up with a neat conclusion. An answer. A solution. Something bright and hopeful. But really, like so many things in this year of firsts, it is what it is. I'm not brave. I'm not wonderful or amazing. I am just me, dealing with each day as I can. One foot in front of the other and one breath at a time.
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As I make my way through my first year of being a widow, there are a lot of 'today I should have'. Tim and I were my life version 2.1 and we spent a lot of time going to motor races together, particularly classic motor races. There were to be four major race meetings this year, and sadly we didn't get to any of them. Tim was buried on the first day of the Goodwood Members Meeting, wearing his Bentley Drivers' Club tie, and with his entrance badge in his lapel and his programme voucher in his pocket. I couldn't face Le Mans 24 or Le Mans Classic, and yesterday should have been our first day at Goodwood Revival. Instead, in life version 3, I had planned to run the Great North Run, and today I should have been heading up to Newcastle with my friends Sue and Pete. However, a bout of viral gastroenteritis, and perhaps my body telling me to have a break, put paid to that. So, because of all this it's been a tough week. And on top of it all the dreams have been difficult. One where I was wandering through a house full of people and I couldn't stop crying. And another where Tim came back and told me it was a mistake, and when I woke up I turned to see if he was there. This morning, when I went to the doorstep to pick up the milk that Sue had dropped off before she left, I found a bunch of glorious yellow roses. Yellow roses are important to me. The day my dad asked my mum to marry him, he picked a yellow rose off a bush and gave it to her, and somewhere I have that rose. Dad would buy mum yellow roses on their anniversary, and Tim would buy me yellow roses to make me smile. Mum, Dad and Tim were all remembered by yellow roses. So, though I am sad, and my heart is definitely elsewhere today, I do have yellow roses by my side. I'm having a grief attack today. They happen now and then, and as the Grieving and healing in the afterloss page says, they are not setbacks but part of the grieving experience. It started with the Lancaster flight across Tideswell. Standing at the very top of the garden, in the glorious sunshine with friends, we heard the low rumble of the four distant Merlin engines. And then the beautiful Lancaster flew across with a sound that vibrates deep inside you. Three sweeps across the village, grey against the china blue sky, the final right over my head. Tim would have so loved it. Would have known where it was based, its history. And would have done a far better job of explaining how the bombs worked to a friend's young cousin. I feel I have lost so much – so much knowledge, so many stories, so much love. And now I'm just about to disassemble the bed that Tim died in. I have ordered a new bed and mattress, new bedding and new bedlinens that are all arriving on Monday. I need to do this, as part of… something that's hard to describe. It's not moving on. It's not working through. It's not getting over. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's part of being brave, living life 3.0 to the best of my abilities. I was excited about all this newness. A waxed pine bedframe. A wool mattress, duvet and pillows. But now it has come to it, I'm no longer sure. It feels like I am giving a part of him away. That the room will be my bedroom rather than our bedroom. I know that I can't make the house a shrine to Tim. And that making changes will help me to cope in the longer term. But there is always a cost. For part one, go to Tales for Tim: The Bare Arms weekend #1 My darling Tim I signed off the last letter about feeling the odd one out. I was feeling alone and sorry for myself and very much out of my depth. And I sat with Jules and I cried about you, about feeling alone, and about being unfit, old, inadequate, afraid, shy, overweight, out of my comfort zone. All my inner demons came out and sat on my shoulder. But over a glorious shared supper of local food we all started to talk, to learn about each other, to tease and to joke. I also found a fellow petrolhead and talked about motor racing and the joy of classic car racing. We then went to sit outside the 'pub' – a garden shed with a couple of barrels of rather nice local beer – and I talked about how I had handled the bullets and the tactility, the sound, the smell of it all, the words that had danced in my head. I talked about your synaesthesia and about the amazing conversations we had about words and smells and tastes. The glorious sensory world you lived in. And people listened, joined in, made me feel part of the team. And I realised how wrong I had been. It also made me wonder – how many of us were sitting there thinking that we were the odd one out? An early night in a pretty room shared with the amazing Kelley, a breakfast of cereal and fruit with fresh local milk that you would have loved, and then back to the classroom. A morning of firearms law, initially so complex that it made my head spin and then it started to fall into place. Civilians can have sporting and hunting rifles and shotguns, as they can't be hidden as easily as handguns, and they have a maximum of three rounds – while they can be lethal, they are not weapons for mass use. Revolvers, pistols, machine guns, and (perhaps not surprisingly) rocket launchers and cannons are more tightly restricted. Weapons for productions and rehearsals are generally real but adapted for blanks and supervised by an armorer. And then we were handed assault rifles. AR15s. M4s C8s. M16s. Lighter, sharper, looking less like an antique and more like something that means business, but still effectively a bolt-action rifle in a party dress. Why rewrite a 1916 classic. These are designed to do mass damage – 30 rounds in a magazine and one in the chamber – with an automatic reload fuelled by the exhaust gases from the previous shot. We learned to check the state of the weapon. Safety catch on, remove the magazine, open the bolt and three-point check, and hand it over open. Then ready to go – push the magazine in, a pull to check. It's loaded. Cock it – pull the bolt back and let it go. It's hot, or ready, or cocked, and you have to focus. Next were the pistols, which are effectively the middle section of an assault rifle. So if the AR15 is a Lee Enfield in a party frock, the Glock is a little black number. Small, sleek, satin black, with the slide at the top that acts as a cocking handle and threatens to take your fingertips when you pull it back and let go if you hold it wrong. Even more so when you fire it. (Sorry, Bags. You told me that almost as often as you told me to take my finger off the trigger. See, I remember it now…) The Glock is semiautomatic and has no safety catch, as it is designed for rapid fire. Its role is as a primary weapon for the secret services or armed police, and as a secondary weapon for soldiers. Slip the catch (takes practice), load the magazine, pull the slide and let it go to cock the weapon. Once we were down at the range, we loaded and fired, blanks for the Glock and live shells for the rifle. And I finally got my eye in and hit the target. James Bond has nothing to fear from me, and to be fair the enemy would still get off lightly, but I was so proud of my perforated sheets of paper. And the rifle didn't have the kick of the Lee Enfield, which had left me with an awesome bruise. Another night chatting in the pub, enjoying the beer and the company. Talking about cars, how writers think in words and dancers think in movement. About the tactility of swimming, feeling the flow of the water. Discussing films. Listening to stories about sets and stages. Enjoying being in a place that was outside of my still very new normal. And the morning of the last day. What had seemed to stretch far away was suddenly there. We talked about marksmanship and movement. This is all about poise and balance and focusing on breathing. Standing or kneeling or laying in a stable position, with the weapon pointing naturally and without effort, the sight picture correct and movement kept as small as possible. Walking with a weapon needs to be smooth and silent, the head remaining level. We practiced fast exchanges between a rifle and a pistol. Think John Wick. Aim the rifle, shoot, out of ammunition, turn to the side to check the weapon, down to the hip with the rifle with the left hand and draw the pistol with the right, making it as smooth and fluid. And then loading and firing the pump action shotgun with dummy rounds, bringing out my inner Arnie and leaving me with a grin on my face that disturbed quite a few people… The whole weekend was a work up to the final scenario, where we had to move through enemy territory and transition between four different guns, three with live rounds. Choregraphed movement has always makes me feel vulnerable and self-conscious. It has been mentioned that I have all the grace of a fairy elephant, and as a child it was suggested that I could trip over a shadow on the ground. It felt like the combination of just before an interview and being picked last for PE. But I did my very best to get inside the mind of my character and the 'mind' of the gun. To move silently and smoothly. To see the jungle and the buildings and the 'bad people' with the guns. And just before this, the final assault, I leaned over to Jules and said 'For Tim'. Because I wouldn't have dome it if you hadn't persuaded me to. We began with firing a sniper rifle at a very distant target, and then loading and holstering a semi-automatic and a Glock. Moving and shooting five rounds with the semi-automatic rifle, switching to three rounds with the pistol, and finally picking up an abandoned pump action shotgun and being Rambo. It felt like being inside an impossibly loud computer game. The buzz was incredible. I wouldn't say that I kicked ass but I certainly nudged bottom. We went through the scenario twice and after the second time I hid in the corner shaking with the adrenaline and weeping silently that I could never tell you about it. But I know that you would have been proud of me. And startled. But mostly proud. I wondered whether it would make me understand the power of guns and why people feel so empowered by them. But it didn't. It left me with respect for the people who can handle them safely and smoothly, and an understanding of the hours and hours of practice it requires. And respect for the mind of an actor (and of a soldier) that can be fully immersed in the now. I'm not sure how many live rounds I shot, but you will be glad to know that the only blood I saw was when I scraped my finger shifting a piece of scenery. I am so glad I did this. It gave me the opportunity to meet some amazing and charming professional actors who were very kind and welcoming to this writer and amateur thesp. Thank you to Bags and Al and to all of my fellow Bare Arms students for your patience, humour, talent and encouragement. And thank you my darling for encouraging me to go. Love you and miss you. For always, your Suzanne. This afternoon I stole an hour from work to plant up a bed I cleared and dug over on Sunday, putting in flowering plants for the bees, and enjoying the rainbows drifting in the spray as I watered the soil. I usually plug myself into a podcast but this time I didn't and that left me space for thinking, something that I often tend to try to avoid these days. I have done Life v2.0 already. It was when I was in a marriage where I was so low that at one point I wondered whether there was a purpose in me being there any longer. Because if I wasn't, it would mean that my then husband could go off with the women I thought he wanted to be with. And then at least two of the three of us would be happy. I was in a job that made me unhappy as well, but I figured that at least I had a job, which was the one constant in my life. And then I was made redundant. That was me plunged into Life v2.0. But I was brave enough to leave the marriage, move somewhere new completely on my own, and set up as a freelancer. And then Tim and I got together, after having known each other as friends for many years, and we had eight years of marriage. Those were some of the happiest years of my life. Life v2.1 I guess. And then he died, and I'm left in the limbo of Life v3.0. I don't want to be here. I liked Life v2.1. I don't know whether there's ever going to be a Life v3.1. But I've decided that if I could be brave before I'm going to be brave again. And it's not the 'Oh, you are so brave, I don't know how I would cope without [insert name here]'. It's a brave with the stitches showing and the glue not quite set. It's a broken and mended brave. It's a Kintsugi bowl repaired with gold brave, a brave that sees the beauty in the flaws. And while it's a kind of brave that doesn't always withstand a puff of wind, I'm hoping it might be the kind that will stand up to a storm. Everyone has a comfort zone. Everyone steps outside their comfort zone sometimes. Well, I've just been so far outside of my comfort zone that I think I ended up approaching it from the other side. I've come back from one of the most demanding and exhilarating weekends of my life, a firearms for theatricals course with the incredibly patient and proficient people at Bare Arms. I am bruised and exhausted and amazed. But… the hardest thing was not being able to report it all to Tim. So my friend Carrie suggested that I write it as if I was telling him. And call it Tales for Tim.
My darling Tim You remember that night I called Jules to see how he was, and ended up sitting on the stairs talking through a sticky plot point in his latest screenplay for an hour. And he told me about the crazy drama firearms training course he was going on. And I said it sounded fun. And he said that there was a spare place on it. And I decided that it was too scary and too expensive, and you persuaded me to go for it. You said it would be good for me, an amazing experience, and a chance to spend an entire weekend with Jules. Well. I've just come back from it. Amazed and dazed and bruised and exhausted and still giddy on adrenaline two days later. After Thursday working in Manchester and a drive down to Dorset via every single set of roadworks in the entire UK I emerged blinking into the night, at Monkton Wyld Court, once a Victorian rectory for a country vicar and his brood of many children and now a sustainable living centre. And accommodation location for 7 actors, an am-dram actor-cum-writer, Ben, an ex-Army officer, and Al, an RAF officer. I'm not sure that the nice people who were there to volunteer in the grounds or attend a shamanic course in the village hall quite knew what had hit them. Friday started with theory. Well actually, Friday started with the indignity of being the only person who couldn't fit into a Bare Arms boiler suit after being told that they fitted everyone, but we will park that one there. Suffice to say at that point I wanted to go home. But I didn't. I knew you would be cross with me if I did. So – Friday started with theory. How guns work. What the parts of a gun are (leaving me with 'Naming of Parts' by Henry Reed dancing in my head). What is (and isn't) a bullet. What makes up a shell, and how it fires. And the science and engineering part of me loved it. And then the writer part took over – while the others went for a coffee, I felt the weight and coolness of the shells and noted how they warmed up in my hand. Looked at the colours of the copper bullet jacket and the brass shell case. Smelled the whiff of cordite, tasted the tang of copper on my fingers, bitter like the smell of pennies. Heard the sound the shells made as they rolled together in my hand. What would your synesthetic brain make of the sounds and the words? Next – the Lee-Enfield. Or to give it its full name, the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield bolt-action, magazine-fed, repeating rifle. This appeared on our desks, bigger and heavier that certainly I expected. The guns were World War I vintage, and the wood was smooth with handling, pitted with use. The shell – I keep on wanting to call it a bullet, and I know it's wrong – was large, heavy, pointed. Designed to do damage. We practiced loading and unloading, hearing the satisfying click as the bullets – no – shells pushed down from the clip into the magazine, making ready, the feeling as the bolt pulled up, back, forward, down, chambering the shell, making the gun hot, ready to fire. The reassurance of the safety catch. And all of this with dummies, but we knew that next it would be for real. We learned how to be safe around guns. How dangerous even blank firing guns are. How to recognise the state of a gun and make it safe. Safety catch on, magazine off, shell ejected from the chamber. Three point check. And yes I know you know all of this, but let me show off a little my newly-learned skills. Finally, we headed down into the range, a road tunnel left derelict after the building of a bypass and now made into The Tunnel shooting centre. Surreally, the road's centre markings still run down the middle of the 100 m shooting range. And then we got busy. Learning how to hold the guns. Where to tuck them into our shoulders. Aiming standing, kneeling, lying prone, always with the gun ready. Surrounded by actors from their 20s upwards, martial arts experts, dancers (both ballet and pole), lithe and fit, I felt every bit of my 50-year-old size 18 body protesting – however fit I am as a runner, my flexibility and lack of upper body strength was slowing me down. And yes – I can hear you – I just haven't lifted enough boxes of books lately. And then we were handed shells. The target was an orange sheet with a German soldier of dubious vintage, with a pointy hat, a bayonet and a dodgy moustache. I loaded with slightly shaky hands, made the gun ready, and lay down on the floor in an approximation of the position I had been shown. Wedged the rifle into my shoulder and squinted down the sights, completely wrongly, as it turned out later. Slipped the safety catch and squeezed the trigger as gently as I could. I felt the shot deep in my gut and the recoil hard into my shoulder, enough to bruise. Heard it through the heavy ear defenders. Smelled the cordite and tasted the rusty tang of blood where I had bitten my lip. Four shots prone. Two shots kneeling, two shots standing. Ben patiently talking us through it. Shell cases falling to the ground with a metallic tinkle. And my status as a pacifist is confirmed. I missed every time. As I said to the proper actors, I'm just there to make them look good. But I have now handled and fired a gun for the first time in my life. And there were some tears in the quiet. For feeling the odd one out. For missing the target. But most of all for not being able to call you and tell you what I had done. More soon. Love you for always and miss you for ever Suzanne Part 2 is here I'm late planting the bulbs this year. They should have gone in before Christmas and as I won't have time to prepare the beds until next week, I'm putting them into large pots to give them a head start, just in case the weather and the workload pushes it all back again. The bulbs are a gift from my sister, to provide early feed for my bees. That is perhaps why I have put off the planting, as the storm last month ripped apart one hive and left two chilled into silence. Sad heaps of tiny bodies already breaking down into the soil. The bees I nurtured, gone to the Derbyshire winter, the challenge of nature, and perhaps, to my regret, the novice's mistakes. I try not to anthropomorphise. They are livestock, neither wild animals nor pets, simply a flying flock to manage and harvest, much as people keep chickens for eggs or a pig for the winter larder. Feed and medicate. Provide housing. But in reality it does go deeper than that. I knew the colouring of the three different colonies; could recognise them as they foraged on flowers as I walked around the village. I photographed them as they drank, balanced on moss in an old cutlery tray. I watched them fly in and out of the hive on a summer evening. I studied them when they landed on my gloved fingers, felt the warmth and breathed in deep as I opened up their dark, honey-scented hives. And so I have mourned my bees. The skins of the bulbs are delicate, papery. They rustle as I drop them into my hand, and scraps of pale brown drift down onto the darker compost like miniature drifts of autumn leaves. Tiny shoots of cream and pale yellowish-green poke blindly out of the tops of the bulbs, pushing towards the daylight. I push the bulbs into compost, soft and dark, smelling of fruitcake and autumn, and the tiny shoots make me think of spring. And so I'm going to begin again. The fourth colony still clings on. These were rescued from a gooseberry bush in the local allotments, a cluster of brown and yellow buzzing softly and clinging onto a branch. The queen a lighter shade, longer and fatter, surrounded safe in the depth of the colony, both protecting and protected. The cluster fizzing like champagne in my hands as I scooped it into its new home. And hopefully these will make it through to the spring. A new colony arrives in May, from a breeder in the Peak District hills this time rather than the lower lands of South Yorkshire. And perhaps another swarm will make its way to the empty hives, which will still smell of last year's bee and wax and honey and summer to a queen and her scouts seeking a new home. And the garden will be full of the scent of my late-planted bulbs. This was written on 28 April 2015, the day I returned from Bergen-Belsen from the 70th anniversary commemoration, and the day my father died. In May 1945, my mother, not yet 25, entered the gates of the Bergen Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony, Germany. She was in the Queen Alexandra's Imperial Military Nursing Service (QAIMNS), the 29th General Hospital, and a qualified nurse. My mother spoke little of this time – I have pieced together things from a couple of conversations and the only two letters we still have. She sent these to her husband of less than a year, my father. One was sent the week before her transport to the camp, one a day or two later.
The hardest thing about these letters from Captain Kathleen Elvidge is that they are in the hand I know so well, from the notes that got me off PE, the letters that lightened days at college when I was homesick, and the birthday cards that I still miss. And here this beloved handwriting talks of brutality and hatred and pain and suffering. For the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen in April 2015, Tim and I stayed in Celle, a few miles from the camp and a beautiful mediaeval town full of timbered and decorated houses and shops from the 1400s and 1500s. My mother mentioned the town in her letter, and it was a strange feeling that I walked amongst the buildings where she would have walked too. Sitting outside a cafe in the sun, I looked at the older people there and wondered who had been there then, either in the camp, or outside in the 'real' world. I think what was so shocking at first about the camp was the beauty. The wooded glades, the open grassed area, the birdsong and the sunshine. And then I realised that not a single tree trunk was bigger than a span wide; nothing older than a handful of decades, and the grassed areas, bounded by low walls, were the mass graves. 'Hier ruhen 1000 tote'. 'Hier ruhen 5000 tote'. A total of at least 23,200 dead. I couldn't take much in, that first day, just a feel for the place, the beauty and the horror, and a feeling of disconnect. The day of the ceremony it rained. As I walked across the camp under a now dark and cloudy sky, I could hear the haunting strains of a Jewish choir, and see the wreaths laid by groups around the area and around the world. At the gathering under the towering obelisk, people spoke in German and in English. In Roma languages. In Hebrew, Hungarian and French. Much of it I didn't understand, but some things just don't need words. I laid a yellow tulip by one of the mass graves, and the disconnect was gone. The exhibition tells the story of the camp, from its early days as a prisoner of war camp, through the horrors of the time as a concentration camp, where gas chambers weren't needed, because it was enough to let the starvation and the disease do the work, to the liberation and beyond as a displaced person's camp. The stories are captured in words, while they are beyond words – tales of inhumanity and terrible, terrible death, with pictures of twisted and emaciated bodies where it is hard to tell the alive from the dying and the dead. And around this are the elderly people who survived, some alone and subdued, some with families. Some greeting each other with the feel of a school reunion, or of meeting long-lost relatives from family long separated. Sadness and joy. Bitterness and love. In these awful images, I saw only a fraction of the horror that must have greeted my mother. Despite her arrival at Belsen being around a month after liberation, the camp was still strewn with bodies, and she had to watch the ex-camp warders throwing bodies into mass graves and covering them with earth using bulldozers. The nurses made sure that the dead were at least dignified by a wrapping of clean cloth, and ensured that their passing was marked with a prayer from the padre. She worked at the emergency hospital established at the military barracks that made up part of the camp, now making up part of a British Army base. The prisoners – dissidents and homosexuals, Roma and Sinti, Jews and anti-Nazi Christians, Poles, Russians and Hungarians, children and babies – were beyond bone-thin. They had been given only the meagerest of meagre rations, including watery turnip soup and bread, and my mother spoke of how hard it was to hold back food from people who were starving, but whose bodies could not cope with anything other than tiny portions. She also talked of women stealing bread from others, and from the dead, to feed their children, even after food was available. They were scarred physically and emotionally, diseased, lice-ridden and afraid. While I was there, I mourned my mother's loss all over again, but also feel closer to her than ever before, because I have seen a little of what she saw, and walked a few of the places where she walked. Perhaps I have laid a few ghosts. And now I'm back, with a feeling that something has irrevocably changed, and so I wonder why the rest of the world is carrying on as normal. It's like coming back from hospital the morning my mother died, and wondering how other people could drink tea with friends, and shop, and call to their children, as if nothing had happened. Because of course for them, nothing had. I just need a little time. I spoke at the Science March Manchester on Earth Day - 22 April 2017 - and here is the text of my talk.
It's amazing to see you all here. But why am I here? Protesting is new to me. I wasn't a protester at college. I wrote a few letters. I signed a few petitions. I got on with the rest of my life. But then things changed. I learned about echo chambers, and people's views on the elite, and on experts. And I started to cling tightly to science, because I understood that when I didn't understand the changing world. But I heard that we were now in post-truth world. I learned about 'alternative facts. And so I started to feel that I should do something. I crocheted a pussy hat for the women's march in Washington. I moderated a TweetChat for #WomenInScience and met, virtually, some amazing women and scientists. And in February, I joined a line of protesters for the first time in my life, at the LassWar protest at the Northern Powerhouse conference here in Manchester, protesting about the lack of women speakers at the conference. So, back to the March for Science. I'm sure you all have different reasons for being here, but mine is simple. I love science, and I always have. I feel like I have been a scientist as long as I have been alive – I've always loved finding out how things work, growing things and understanding things, taking things apart and putting them back together (sometimes even successfully!). I was really lucky – my mum was a nurse and my dad was an engineer, and they always encouraged me to learn, to find out, and to be curious. And that led me to studying biochemistry and pharmacology, and finally to becoming a science journalist. I have written on subjects from the science of making cheese to women CEOs in biotech, and from the physics of bubbles to the danger of antimicrobial resistance and the possibility of a post-antibiotic world. I have travelled as far south as Hawaii and as far north as the Arctic Circle to hear scientists talk about the topics they love and how they are going to change the world for the better. What I love about science is that it gives me a window on the world, from the incredibly tiny to the impossibly huge and the incredibly distant. It gives me a glimpse into my own instruction manual. And it means that I can learn something new every single day. This week I learned that mole rats can survive for over 15 minutes without oxygen, and cope by burning fructose like a plant; that physicists have created a liquid with negative mass; and that a shipworm is a five foot long bivalve. And that was just in one week… I asked a friend of mine why she liked science and she said: "I think science really allows you to understand so much about everyday things, such as why food goes off, or doesn't; why a lorry needs a longer stopping distance than a small car; how to get curry stains out of clothes; why custard powder behaves in that weird way; what makes fireworks different colours; and how an MRI scanner works, among many other things." One of the great things about science is that it is all about finding out. Science is about both facts and ideas. It can be about immutable truths, but it can also be about admitting that we just don't know, but that we are working hard to find out. People might ask you "What has science ever done for us?" Healthcare is science. My mum survived multiple heart attacks and lived until she was 90 because of science. My dad had cancer, and his pain was controlled through science. I can see you all clearly because of science. Forensic analysis is science. Genetics is science. Climate change is science. Computer programming is science. But so is farming, and cooking, and cleaning, and gardening, and hairdressing, and bird watching and car maintenance. Science is a part of everything. And science isn't just about science. Science can be art, and it can be philosophy. It can be poetry and fiction and music. Science also teaches us how to think logically, analyse problems, find solutions and argue intelligently. And that's not just in science, but in other areas too, like politics, economics and business, and believe me, those are pretty important at the moment. It unites people around the world and allows them to work together through the common language of science. We are here because we already know this. But we need to spread the word, and encourage everyone to take an interest, to find out and to learn. We need to influence politicians and policy makers, not from a political perspective but from a scientific perspective. We need to make sure that investment continues in science, and that it's across all sciences, not just the ones with outcomes that are perceived as practical. We need to encourage both boys and girls to study science and to stay in science, even if they don't want to have a career in science, because it will influence their outlook on the world for the better. We need to tell people that anyone can get interested in science, however young or old, and whether they have formally studied science or not. All it takes is the curiosity to ask why and the desire to learn more about the world. There is some amazing writing and documentary on science out there. But we do also need to remind them that not everything on the internet is true. We need to communicate that truth matters. That there are no such things as alternative facts. That the world is round, climate change is real and homeopathy isn't. That antibiotics don't work against colds, and microwave ovens don't give you cancer. Lemmings don't commit mass suicide (or explode). Red hair isn't becoming extinct. And vaccines really, really, really don't cause autism. And finally don't let people tell you that you don't need experts. Experts keep your heart beating, your food safe, and your car's brakes working. Brian Cox is worth listening to. Stephen Hawking is worth listening to. But always remember – you are here because you are a scientist or a supporter of science, and you are worth listening to as well. In this world of fake news and alternative facts, we all need to make ourselves heard. I went to my first ever protest today. I wasn't a protesting type as a student. I wrote a few letters, I signed a few petitions, but I mostly studied. Since then I have been involved – I have campaigned and fundraised, but never protested. But 2016 happened, along with Donald Trump and Brexit. I learned about echo chambers, and the elite, and experts, and post-truth. I heard about 'alternative facts'. I saw hatred for people because they were Eastern European, or brown, or female, or educated, or simply had different views. And it seemed like everything that I thought I knew about the civilised and intelligent world just wasn't true.
And all of this made me sad. It hurt, like I had lost something I cared about, or someone had pared my outer skin away. I clung onto science, because I understood that. And I grieved, as every news story showed me that the world was getting worse, not better. But then… a friend of mine suggested I make a pussy hat for the women's march in Washington. Our hats went in the post to unknown women and I felt like I had made a tiny bit of a difference. And then someone asked me to moderate a #WomenInScience tweet chat, and I met, virtually, some amazing women. And today, I joined a line of protestors for the first time in my life for #lasswar. We dressed in jackets, shirts and ties, wore hard hats and hi-viz jackets, and challenged the organisers and delegates of the Northern Powerhouse about the lack of women speaking at the conference and sitting on panels – of 98 speakers, only 13 were women, and all 15 speakers highlighted in the press release were men. And we seem to have made a difference. We made it into The Guardian. The organisers opened the meeting with an apology, and some of the delegates joined the lunchtime protest. Women speakers opened their sessions with a mention of the imbalance. And the conference has promised to do better next time. Next. The satellite #ScienceMarch in Manchester on 22 April, to support the worldwide movement of celebration of the passion for science and a call to support and safeguard the scientific community. My sister is knitting me a brain hat. Anyone coming? |