Sunday 9 March 2014

Some People Say I've Done All Right (for a girl)

Oh yeah yeah yeah. Why do we need an International Women's Day? Why is achievment - of almost any sort - more remarkable when it is a woman's rather than a man's? Why do we (and that includes women) expect less from women than from men? And why do women want to do not just the good things men do, but the bad ones too?
A few years ago I decided to make some marmalade from the many 'nerantzia' - Seville oranges - that grow here and are regarded by the Greeks as inedible, so they fall from the trees and rot. (The nerantzia, not the Greeks. Though come to think of it ...) The only ingredients are nerantzia and sugar, but you need equal weights of each and I have no scales. I discussed the problem (over a whisky; the WD40 of the imagination) with the young woman behind the bar. She thought for a moment and said 'Get a piece of wood and find its mid-point, and...' 'Bravo!' I interrupted, catching the idea, 'You have a male mind!' I suppose I'd meant to compliment her but realized at once I had insulted her.
Is it too much to hope that today of all days I will get some readers' answers to the questions I opened with?

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