Currently, at Oxbridge there is an outcry against men’s private
drinking clubs and the way power is brokered there, while women are admitted
only as sex objects.
However, over the last few years, I have been delighted to
discover an exclusive club for middle-aged women, where men are not admitted
and where woman speaks only to woman. I
was there again at Cambridge University on Saturday night.
The context was an extraordinary student production of Euripides’ devastating tragedy, “The Trojan
Women”. All this was at close quarters
in the tiny space of Corpus playroom. Bethany and I
happened to notice that Carol Ann Duffy was in the row in front, but in a very
British way, we left her unmolested.
However, I should say that I love her poetry so much that it is actually
pinned to my kitchen cupboards, so I did kinda yearn to speak to her.
The production was so intense that I wept. Afterwards, I had to ask young Bethany, “Are you alright?”
She could only nod.
“What you’re feeling right now – that’s catharsis.”
Reeling from catharsis myself, I went to the ladies’
loo. When I came out of my cubicle,
Carol Ann Duffy was there, queueing as a middle-aged woman must. I had my two minute conversation with her
after all. Her daughter had been one of
the actors.
“Amazing production.”
“Yes, wonderful.”
Nor is she the first well-known woman I have met under
similar circumstances. So there you have
it. Our exclusive club. How soon before privileged young males start
to complain about being excluded from the women’s loos where the Wise Women hang out?
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