A local resident puts love hearts and slogans on the plastic that covers offensive graffiti on the vandalised mural of Manchester United striker and England player Marcus Rashford on the wall of a cafe on Copson Street, Withington on July 12, 2021 in Manchester, England. Rashford and other Black players on England’s national football team have been the target of racist abuse, largely on social media, after the team’s loss to Italy in the UEFA European Football Championship last night.
A defaced mural of Marcus Rashford is repaired by the artist Akse P19 on July 13, 2021 in Manchester, England.
People take a knee as they gather at the newly repaired mural of England footballer Marcus Rashford by the artist known as AKSE_P19. (13.7.21)
“I shall never forget the occasion where I was visiting a school as a writer and the whole place suddenly fell into an uproar because the school tomboy - a most splendid Britomart of a girl - had beaten up the school bully. Everything stopped in the staffroom while the teachers debated what to do. They wanted to give the tomboy a prize, but decided reluctantly that they had better punish her and the bully too. They knew that if, as a child, you do pluck up courage to hit the bully, it is an act of true heroism - as great as that of Beowulf in his old age. I remember passing the tomboy, sitting in her special place of punishment opposite the bully. She was blazing with her deed, as if she had actually been touched by a god. And I thought that this confirmed all my theories: a child in her position is open to any heroic myth I care to use; she is inward with folktales; she would feel the force of any magical or divine intervention.”
Ok so the first couple times i saw this quote i 100% thought that Britomart must be some sort of English grocery store, but i finally looked it up today and turns out she’s a lady knight from the 16th century epic poem The Faerie Queene. Here I am, an illiterate Fool, chuckling to myself thinking that Diana Wynne Jones was comparing this girl to a fucking supermarket…….. Broad as a Tesco, she was. The strength of a thousand Asdas. She could have bested both Marks AND Spencer
That made me smile. Just to point out that here in Auckland there IS a Britomart shopping centre, and a Britomart hotel and even a Britomart transport centre – it’s a downtown area filled with shops. And I suspect that of the people who realise that it gets its name from H.M.S. Britomart, the ship that did the first British survey of the area in the 1840s, which gave its name to Fort Britomart and then to the area, only a tiny handful also know that the ship was named after the warrior woman from The Faerie Queen.
“Much as peaches, once introduced, were spread across North America by indigenous people in a matter of decades, the pollen record shows that hazel (Corylus avellana) suddenly becomes ubiquitous across Europe as soon as the climate warmed, brought to every corner of the continent by hunter-gatherers. Hazel was the original Tree of Life for Mesolithic Europeans. The nuts are about 60% fat and 20% carbohydrates, and contain a wide range of proteins, vitamins and minerals - a few handfuls can cover most of a person’s daily energy needs. Its branches, tall and flexible but slender enough to cut with a flint axe, were used for tools and firewood. Mesolithic thatched huts were often made with hazelwood beams. From cradle to grave, the people of Mesolithic Europe relied on hazel more than any other single plant. Excavations of habitation sites from this period can turn up hundreds of thousands of roasted hazelnut shells. For over five thousand years, this single plant was the lifegiver to nearly all of Europe’s people.”
Let me start out by saying that I'm big fans of both you and your wife. Lately, I've noticed her commenting about being a single mother, I believe it was on a Facebook or Instagram post of her's, I dont recall. Anyway, how do you feel about her claims of being a single mother and life being hard because she works a lot. As a single mother I felt slightly offended because she is in fact not a single mother but has a husband who is well off and a part of their child's life.
I do understand why you are offended. I think what Amanda is saying is that she feels very much like a single mother right now. She’s in the US, with Ash. She dresses him and walks him to nursery school, picks him up, walks him home and looks after him until bed, and tries to get work done in the cracks, when he’s at school and after he’s asleep.
I’m in the UK right now, working 7 days a week 13-16 hours a day in order to get Good Omens over the finish line. I went home to the US for Thanksgiving, and at Xmas, but in the last 3 months I’ve been home for about 8 days altogether. And yes, I call home, and yes, I’m financially fine should Amanda not work (although Amanda makes her own money and does her own work, and has for much longer than I have known her, and is not stopping her album release schedule or touring plans because she has a child). But she’s being, in effect, a single mother right now, and one dealing with a small boy determined to go to London and see his dadda.
I go home on Saturday, if nothing untoward happens to keep me here, after working on Good Omens away from home full time in the UK and South Africa for 18 months. I cannot wait.
And then we will change roles.
It would not surprise me if, at times in the next 18 months, with Amanda on a world tour to support her upcoming album (It’s called There Will Be No Intermission) I wind up feeling a bit like a single father. (I won’t be. She will come back. But you can feel very lonely if you are looking after a child alone for a week or so, let alone for 3 months.)
(And yes, we are both privileged as hell and aware of that. She’s a songwriter and performer, and she’s successful, has a Patreon that supports her now better than an old-style record label ever would have done. I’m a bestselling author. We can afford food, places to live, and help, and we can afford babysitting and all the other things that make life as a parent less difficult. And we are grateful.)
