The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Devastating glimpse of many women’s agony
ON her Monday morning BBC Radio 5 Live show, Naga Munchetty revealed she has lived with constant pain all her adult life. The broadcaster suffers from the debilitating womb condition adenomyosis. “Right now, as I sit here, I am in pain. Constant nagging pain. In my uterus. Around my pelvis. Sometimes it runs down my thighs.” Last weekend her husband called an ambulance. “The pain was so terrible I couldn’t move, turn over, sit up. I screamed non-stop for 45 minutes,” Munchetty said.
Munchetty spoke to woman after woman who were dealing with excruciating pain and had struggled for years to get a diagnosis. It was a devastating listen. Jo from Manchester phoned in to explain how she suffered throughout her 20s but was misdiagnosed with IBS. Eventually at 36 after an MRI scan she got a diagnosis of adenomyosis. Not that it solved much. “I’m 46 now and the last 10 years have been a living hell.”
I’d never heard of the condition, which as many as one in 10 women of reproductive age could have. “You can’t help feeling that if this is something men suffered from historically more would be known about it and more funding would have been put into researching this,” Jo pointed out. This was powerful, informative radio.
Does the Irish Republic want reunification, asked broadcaster
Andrea Catherwood on Radio 4
on Monday. It was a timely question in the wake of Sinn Fein winning the largest number of seats in Northern Ireland’s local elections. Is a united Ireland edging closer? Her answer was a decided “maybe, but maybe not”.
Polls suggest two-thirds of the population in the Republic of Ireland would vote for a united Ireland. What would happen when the reality of absorbing
Northern Ireland’s unionist community and the financial impact of reunification became clear? Would the Republic be up for changing symbols – the national anthem, the national flag – to make them seem more inclusive to reluctant unionists? Would any attempt at accommodation stretch as far as a Unionist veto in the newly reunified parliament?
The latter idea was given short shift. In a United Ireland, unionists would make up about 13% of the population. The other 87% are unlikely to offer up a veto. In the end, the historical desire to reunite the island of Ireland might win out in any future poll, but the politicians of Fianna Fail and Fine Gael are probably in no hurry for such a poll to happen. Westminster might think otherwise.
Or as one contributor put it: “The people who are supposed to own Northern Ireland don’t want to own it and the people who are supposed to buy Northern
Ireland don’t want to buy it.”
Finally, Nick Cave was John Wilson’s guest on Radio 4’s This Cultural Life last Saturday. The duo discussed Cave’s grief for the death of his sons as well as faith, love and dyeing your hair. “Allegedly dyeing my hair,” Cave pointed out when Wilson brought it up. He also discussed creativity. “When you’re young you don’t understand the ramifications of what you do. It’s a bit of a laugh. And that’s what makes young people’s records so wonderful,” he suggested.
“As you get older, that sense of play can dissipate because life becomes a serious matter, to quote Auden. So, the lyrics become kind of weighted down. A lot of Bad Seeds music, especially mid-period, they’re heavy lyrics and I don’t like those lyrics. You need to reinvent the playfulness of the creative process each time and I think that gets harder as you get older.”
You could say that about life. If anyone knows that, it’s Cave.