Which of us would stand and fight like Ukrainians?
EVERY day we learn more of the havoc and bloodshed suffered in Ukraine. The destruction in Bucha and Mariupol is unbearable, even for those of us only experiencing it via newspapers and television. How would we behave if it was happening to us here?
Two months ago, the majority of the Ukraine was functioning in much the same way we do – men, women and children going about their daily business with hopes and plans for the future.
Now those same women and children are hiding in damp, freezing, waterless basements waiting for escape. And the men? The men are fighting.
Would your average British man take up arms with such immediate determination against such a fearsome foe? In this age of gender equality – Sharon Nesmith was appointed to the second highest military post of Deputy Chief of the General Staff last week – would women also join up? Would I?
The scenario is unimaginable, probably much as it was only a short time back in the cafes of Kyiv and restaurants of Lviv. Latterday boomers like myself and our children have been lucky enough to have lived our whole lives in peace – warfare confined to the movies and computer games.
Most of us don’t even know how to hold a gun, let alone fire one. Many of us claim to suffer mental health issues such as stress and anxiety in our relatively well organised and comparatively peaceful existences. Heaven knows what we would feel if we heard bombs crashing relentlessly a few miles away and learnt of rape and torture in neighbouring towns.
There are many in Britain who I suspect – and hope – would rise instantly to the challenge. They would want to protect their family and country and also prove to themselves that they were up to it and wouldn’t balk at the starting post.
We have all heard stories from those who thought their finest hours were during wartime and that life afterwards has been a paler imitation, lacking the same intensity. But the thought of my son being one of the fighters fills me with absolute horror.
As for myself, while I can imagine being one of those brave Ukrainian women concocting thousands of Molotov cocktails to repel the Russians, I can’t be sure I’d be
among those crouched behind the sandbanks with a gun.
But perhaps I would. It’s impossible to know what you might be moved to do when your whole existence is under threat.
Until now, such a scenario was almost unthinkable. But the invasion of Ukraine has reminded us that even seemingly implausible catastrophes can strike – and do.
Anne can’t win on this Royal tour
PRINCESS Anne drew the short straw when she was allocated this month’s Royal tour of Papua New Guinea. After the furore surrounding the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s recent Caribbean visit, she can hardly be looking forward to similar harping about the Royal Family. The whole trip will be a minefield of avoiding offence.
The Princess is known for her robust approach to critics and will be rolling up her sleeves and getting on with it. But even so, her minders will have been fine-tuning the plans to avoid any backlash.
I wonder if they’ll scrub the traditional visit to the country’s indigenous peoples, who sport fabulous face painting, more than a dash of nudity, bone nose jewellery and amazing feathered head-dresses.
Any such meeting would no doubt be deemed a further display of the monarchy’s insensitivity and white privilege. Instead, she’s more likely to be spending time in schools with children in neat white, Westernstyle shirts.
Only fit for Oxfam... my designer clothes
A FRIEND is organising a vintage clothing sale in aid of Oxfam so I have been sorting out a few things to donate. Just before packing them up, I had another quick look through and started to get cold feet. Hmm?
Did I really want to give away that lovely silk skirt that never fitted comfortably but I hoped to squeeze into one day? Am I going to regret donating the Chanel raincoat still in its dry-cleaning wrapper from 20 years ago? And that navy cashmere jacket which has always looked a bit boxy – might it be perfect at some point?
Most of the clothes I’d set aside hadn’t been worn in ages but were a familiar sight in my wardrobe. Like an old picture taken from the wall, it’s sad to look at the rails without them. But I knew returning them to the cupboards would feel like defeat… so off they’ve gone.
Lost in a cloud of nuclear neurosis
THERE’S been a rush on iodine tablets by neurotic types who are fretting about a nuclear cloud drifting west from Ukraine. It reminds me of being at the fashion shows in Milan just after 9/11 when the American journalists spent most of their time trawling around pharmacies hoping to get hold of Cipro antibiotics. They’d been told the tablets would help in case of an anthrax attack they expected round every corner – but which, of course, never came.
A compliment from my man? Fat chance
WHEN my partner David read that our waist should measure less than half our height, he did a quick calculation. Was he, by these standards, on the podgy side? Yup. I did the same and just scraped in under the obesity bar. Did he greet this news with a gallant compliment? Far from it, he shrieked that it couldn’t be true. I was far fatter than him, surely. Some might consider such rudeness, not to mention what is obviously an extreme case of body dysmorphia, a reason for this partnership to end.
Get Bridgerton chic with a walking stick
FORGET bodices, corsets and damasks, the item that Bridgerton has done the most to revitalise is the cane. As she navigates her way around the higher echelons, Adjoa Andoh’s Lady Danbury wields her walking stick with such elan and imperious authority that she has turned this work-a-day aid back into the desirable and chic accessory it once was.