Call me old fashioned but!
My favourite and best remembered article ever was written by Katherine Whitehorn in the Observer in the early 60's. In 2011 she wrote again in the Observer
"I feel I have to defend the word "slut". There have been parades of women defending the right to be sluttish, meaning sexually so; but the word can mean several things. In the 60s, when women were supposed to be efficient and clean, with white collars, unladdered stockings and meals punctually on the table, I wrote an article defending us sluts: those of us whose collars were dirty, who left cups in the bedroom and shoes in the kitchen and took back clothes from the dirty linen basket because they had become, relatively, the cleaner thing. And Observer readers wrote in their droves saying: "Me, too" - one woman had found herself wiping the kitchen table with the kitten, another said she'd used the buttons off her husband's pyjamas for suspender buttons until he sewed them on again, and so forth. We had to use "slob" for American consumption, because to them a slut meant not so much a woman whose knicker elastic let her down as one who let down her own knickers (always assuming she was wearing any), as understood by this SlutWalk.
But our meaning of slut - struggling slattern or mucker - is not to be taken from us. There are still plenty of us about, even if we've cleaned up a bit over the years.
And if you want more on Katherine's wisdom read this written on Sunday 13 November 2011
I might have known it: the housing crisis is not due to second homes, oligarchs buying up London, council housing policy or anything to do with the green belt. It's all our fault - elderly widows who insist on living in their own homes while would-be first-time buyers are forced to sleep in dustbins. But one aspect of this scenario is left out, which is that the woman allegedly alone in the house is quite often nothing of the kind. Many grans are invaluable in taking the grandchildren off the weary hands of their offspring. If the gran lives in London, or pretty countryside, everyone comes to stay; and even one spare room may stop her having to go into a care home.
My widowed mother had, first, a student paying very little rent to keep an eye on her, make the odd hot water bottle or cuppa; later someone spending more time and paying no rent; finally there was room for a carer. Homeshare matches such homes with singles who couldn't afford a mortgage anyway; there are plenty of ways to use the extra space without turfing the widow out. The only real drawback to my staying put is that when I go, the detritus of half a century - every single book, belt and bits of old kitchen implements - will be left to my heirs to sort out. But that is hardly a reason for hoofing me out.
The Katharine Whitehorn experience
