Call The Midwife gets it right
I was left shell-shocked over cooking a live lobster
SHOULD lobsters be boiled alive? Campaigners including TV wildlife presenter Chris Packham and comedian Bill Bailey are clear: absolutely not.
I agree. Years ago I bought a live lobster on Valentine’s Day to prepare for dinner with Judy. The man in the fish shop was very specific about how to cook it. “Make sure to put him in boiling water on his back,” he said. “Helps the flavour no end.”
A few paces from the shop my crustacean vigorously punching the inside of the carrier bag with his pincers, I THE BBC is in a dreadful sexist mess about equal pay, as Richard writes here today. So I thought it was endearingly brave of them to show last Sunday’s Call The Midwife, the central theme of which was the first ever beauty queen competition in East London. In contrast to today’s feverish feminist comments about gender, Miss Poplar 1963 was presented to us with only the odd disapproving caveat from the female members of the cast.
“You just want to see the girls in their smalls,” says Violet waspishly to Fred when he comes up with the idea. But there was no real hostility from anyone, even the nuns in Nonnatus House.
And how sweet and wholesome this local beauty contest was in those days before feminists disrupted the Miss World competition in 1970 – only seven years after the fictional Miss Poplar pageant. Call The Midwife hasn’t yet reached the stage of condemning the idea of women being judged on how they looked as insulting and demeaning. Bob Hope was the compere in 1970 and the Women’s Lib protesters shouted: “We’re not beautiful, we’re not ugly, we’re angry.”
In contrast the Call The Midwife contest was cosy and peaceful. The girls looked positively overdressed in their far-from-skimpy swimsuits. And they even had a home-made dress section! (How very 1960s. I made myself a frock once in paused. Then I went back. “It’s because he’ll try to climb out of the pan, isn’t it?” He gave a guilty nod.
Back home, my prize sitting on the kitchen table waving his claws in the air, I was at a loss. No way was I going to boil him alive. Then my stepson – a keen amateur chef – dropped needlework class at my girls’ high school. It was blue and white checked cotton, looked awful and I never once wore it.)
But charming and nonthreatening as CTM is, it doesn’t shrink from dealing with serious feminist issues. In last week’s episode the Turners’ au pair Magda had to go through the agony of a DIY abortion that nearly killed her. What shocked me almost more than that was the way she was refused contraception (in the form of a Dutch cap) when she visited a women’s advice centre.
The doctor told her she could only be given birth control if she was a married woman. Can you imagine a medic talking to women by. “Pop him in the freezer. He’ll feel right at home, like he’s on the Grand Banks, and go into a deep, terminal sleep. After two or three hours you can cook him. He won’t feel a thing.”
The RSPCA confirmed this. We enjoyed Valentine’s Day dinner untinged by guilt. like that today? And yet that was in 1963, hardly the dark ages.
It’s hard to balance the sheer scale of women’s problems as skilfully as this excellent series does each week. The writing is superb. How do you show a beauty contest so unthreateningly jolly alongside women’s inability to control their fertility unless they had a ring on their finger? Every time I watch CTM I am both touched and horrified. It says more about women and their vulnerability than a thousand #MeToo campaigns. And yet I’m tickled too when I watch the show because it conveys its message with a wry, tender smile on its face.
Which is why it sums up women so perfectly.
AmAzing she still gets out
WHY on earth should a woman who happens to look good at 47 – not FOR 47, just AT 47 – merit gushing praise, as if she’s a 90-something who has miraculously contrived to look 30-something?
That was actress Rachel Weisz’s fate this week. She looked terrific at the premiere of her movie, The Mercy. Why shouldn’t she? She’s a beautiful woman. She’s only in her fifth decade. But the way some commentators went on about her “agedefying” appearance you’d think she’d been let out of the old folk’s home for the evening.
Meanwhile co-star, Colin Firth, who’s 57, received no similar praise. No one said he looked “amazing” for a man his age. One website described him as “dapper”.
I think that the next time Weisz attends a premiere, it should be in a wicker bathchair. That’d shut them up.