Day 123

The mystery of the coffee machine is solved. Each pod has a bar code on it, and the machine has a bar code reader right where you put the pods in. How far technology has come since I started working for a business in 1985 that had a whole separate clean room for a 20Mb hard disk as large as a street-side telecoms cabinet. Good coffee, too.

This morning I turn the news on to hear that leaks suggest that the US Supreme has voted to overturn the Roe vs Wade abortion law. For a long time I have been so angry that women’s control over their own bodies continues to be threatened by the patriarchy, because, let’s be clear, this is what this is. Men in power have always felt threatened by women – trace a line directly from this leak back to witch-finding and back again to the continuing normalisation of men’s murders of women, and the objectification of women.

I have tried, always, to instil in my daughters the importance of being independent women, and in my son to instil respect for women and their independence. It’s not always easy, and I have fallen at many hurdles, especially when my mental health was at its poorest and started to threaten my own relationship with M. But my belief in the independence of women, the rights of women, has always been there, even through those rough times. That’s why all my novels have as their main characters strong independent women who fight their corner, fight for their rights. But that’s fiction, and however many universal truths fiction may carry, it’s still just fiction, and the reality is painfully different.

Because the reality is that women are once again being threatened with disenfranchisement, that women have never been given true equality, that women have never been able to draw breath in this fight against the oppressive patriarchy. There is tragedy as well as irony here; it is a well-established fact that if women had more power and more influence, the world would be a much more peaceful place.

AGGIE’S ART OF HAPPINESS – CHAPTER 79