Pretty things and body parts

 

 

"Dontopedalogy is the science of opening your mouth and putting your foot in it, a science which I have practised for a good many years." 

A quote from the late Prince Philip 

 

Prince Phillip and I had one thing in common. Putting our foot in it.

Have you ever said to a friend ‘I'll see you at the party on Friday.’  And they said ‘What party?’ At that point you want the ground to open up and swallow you.

I've just done a very similar thing by e-mail.

‘Sorry I couldn't spend much time with you at Crimefest but there was a lot going on. No doubt we shall catch up at the party on Friday.’

The answering e-mail said, ‘What party on Friday? Should I be somewhere? I don't think I've been invited.’

So I checked back to the date the invitations were emailed out, it was a long time ago. I know the e-mail address was slightly odd - it was office @ the publishing house rather than the name of the person @ publishing house. I emailed back to say ‘check your spam, it might have drifted off in there as it was a different email address.’

It was very strange that person would not be invited to the party as they were a stalwart of the publishing house.

Answering e-mail was ‘I've checked and there is no invite there so no doubt I have, in some way, blotted my copybook.’

My first thought was that this was a total oversight.

My second thought, which followed on very quickly from the first, was that this person who identifies as male might have offended somebody who does not.

I have no reason to think that except that this could be an example of the way things are these days.

Misandry.

It’s a possibility that arises when any of the genders get together.

Was my friend a victim of  cancel culture over something they knew nothing about?

Then I got angry.

Why is my friend, who is lovely, being treated like this?

(Bearing in mind, all of this was in my head, a crime writer's mind making the leaps and connections that only a crime writer can.)

I emailed the editor in chief of said publishing house and stated that while it was none of my business, I see that XXX has not been invited.

If the answer came back ‘Oh yes, that's correct, they didn't vote for Switzerland in the Eurovision Song Contest and by not voting for a neutral country, they took a political standpoint in a known political situation,’ or something like that, then I was going to decline my invite to the party and him indoors would have missed his 60th birthday treat of a tour round Churchill’s War Cabinet.

But the answer came back ‘Oh my God, what happened there? I'll call him now.’

My friend emailed me to say how nice it was to have proactive friends in very low places.

It turned out to all be a computer glitch.

Moving on, I was chatting to somebody about panel preparation and what to do if somebody says ‘I'm really offended by that.’  My answer would be genuinely, ‘that's good. People should be offended. It shows they're passionate about things and their heart is taking a moral standpoint.’

The problem arises when they want everybody to be offended by what they are offended by. At this point somebody said that it's a shame that young people today (I am now old enough to use that phrase) seem to struggle with the concept of resilience. Or maybe their resilience is just absorbed through the challenges they have from social media and being away from their I- phone for 2 minutes.

And thinking about resilience and good role models got me to thinking about one of the most inspirational people I’ve met, Cathy Ace and hopefully, she’s going to do a guest blog on here soon.

I first met Cathy years ago but I've had lots of conversations with her. We have fallen out with the same publishing house at roughly the same time but our situations were different. She was writing for a living, and I had other income streams. We solved the problem in a different way but I was very impressed by her directness without being rude, her passion without being offensive, her respect of her own hard work and her sense of self worth while being incredibly generous with her time to other upcoming writers. Before she started writing, she set up her own company and when she sold it, it was the biggest in Europe of that type of business. She knows what she wants out of life and she goes for it but she goes for it with sweeping enthusiasm and a good sense of humour. She has a passion for many things ;_writing, travel, life!

 I know that she's not had it easy but she has great resilience and bounces back. I think Paul Hogan once said if you could bottle Crocodile Dundee and market it as medicine, the world would be a better place. I think it's more women should look at woman like Cathy to see what space they should be inhabiting on the planet. And the jokes would be better too.

Oh yes the title of this blog was a quote from her panel. I thought it would be a good title for her memoirs and taken in a totally distant different context, it's an apt title for this blog.

Hope to see Catherine the Great on here soon!

Cheers

Caro