"I FEEL LIKE THE WORD SHATTER".. Daily Email
I bought organic food, insisted on the boys eating fruit and vegetables daily, slathered them in sunscreen 365 days a year, donated to save-a-whale, recycled when it was neither hip nor cool, cried over the plight of refugees, built lego airports and Thomas the Tank stations for hours on carpeted floors and had a permanent supply of Johnsons-No-Tears shampoo. I bought the BBC’s recommended children books, supervised Santa letter writing and posted them to the North Pole, subscribed to BBC Good Food Guide for healthy kids snacks and only bought sugary drinks for high days and holidays, I made homemade Christmas decorations and was the proud owner of a family of boys whom all wore Boden (�) pyjamas for the Christmas card shot, I read endless bed-time stories, made Halloween costumes, owned multiple glue guns, scrapbooks and home-made card making kits, worked hard to provide, ticked all the boxes that the Good Mother Memo said I needed to tick before I could put on the tiara of sisterhood that we must wear at the school gate, church barbecue and social gatherings to fit into some false narrative that I believed existed.
The best way of keeping a secret is to pretend there isn't one.” ― Margaret Atwood, The new series of Handmaid’s Tale landed on HBO this week and as a lover of all things Atwood, we tuned in. The story, acclaimed dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood, published in 1985 is set in New England in the near future and posits a Christian fundamentalist theocratic regime in the former United States that arose as a response to a fertility crisis. The Republic of Gilead strips women of all statuses, of their rights, forcing them to live out lives of servitude in a patriarchal society. The handmaids are not called by their own names in the series, their Gilead names are creating by adding “Of” to the name of their commanders, their overlords whom they serve. They’re completely stripped of their identities, taking on a moniker that reflects their status as property of the men they serve.
‘Of’ coupled with the name of the one they serve...... Ofwine, Ofvodka. Ofwhiskey. Ofbourbon. Ofalcohol. Ofbeer. Ofwineoclock. I sat and watched last night and although I know that I wasn’t forced to be ‘of’ anything other than my name, for a decade-plus I could have been called Ofirishcoffee or Ofwine or Ofwineoclock and it would have fit as I rendered myself powerless and mute in the grip of a wine bottle-a-night. I was living in my own distorted world while functioning in the world, holding down a marriage, a family, a job, travelling, making decisions, driving a car, having meatless Mondays, doing all the things that make up a life yet all the time on the way to a hangover or on the way out of one and leading a life of servitude to wine o'clock.
Ofwineoclock.
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