Just Stop Oil 0 : Barbie 1

By popular request, here is the backstory. 

But before I start, another story. I was at school, maybe 14 or 15, and we were doing some kind of skit in the drama room. There wasn't an audience, it was just the class (and the teacher), the sort of environment where in-jokes are part of the deal. And I was playing the games teacher. I went out into the corridor to prepare, then I strolled into the room and there was a strangled dead silence. 

I was wearing green tracksuit bottoms, and I'd stuffed my jumper down the back of them to give myself a large, low-slung arse. The games teacher was short, like me, wore green tracksuit bottoms all the time, and had a large, low-slung arse. I thought this was physical comedy. Everybody talked about her arse. People had done impressions of her before. 

Yeah, but not *out loud*. Not in even semi-public. On the bus, or while smoking in the toilets, but not on official time. So I got a proper telling off and I took the jumper out of my tracksuit bottoms. And you could say that it's not kind or fair to highlight people's physical afflictions for laughs, and even then I would have agreed with you -- except, EXCEPT -- she did it to me *all the time*. This is the woman who likened me to a dead body. She was horrible to me for years, in front of other people, including other teachers.* So I thought her big arse was fair game, and I thought everyone else did too, but it wasn't, and they didn't, because she had authority and we were kids. I hadn't learnt that part. 

It's not the only time I've been the person who's gone there and I still haven't learnt that part. I don't think I have to anymore, but it's still a surprise when you turn round and your audience is like woahhh, she went there. Sorry not sorry. 

So. Welcome. You can leave any time you like. 

Here in Ecoville, most of us don't have washing machines in our little eco-houses. Instead, we have a communal laundry room, equipped with three commercial Miele machines. They are a joy to use, and they have done tens of thousands of washes over the years with very little complaint. But they need basic maintenance, and various of us have attended to this over the years. You need to keep track of what's been done to which machine and when, and there is a calendar on the wall of the laundry to facilitate this. 

If this all sounds uncontroversial, well, you'd think, yes. At some point in early January someone puts a calendar in there -- on occasion that's been me, as we used to get free ones from Abel & Cole that we didn't use, others look like unwanted gifts or maybe charity calendars. It's not hard to find a calendar at the turn of the year, it was never (as far as I'm aware, even in a place that seems to be able to make a Thing out of thin air) a Thing. 

Until this year. This year, a Just Stop Oil calendar appeared. It was *massive* and glossy and contained giant photos of JSO activists gluing themselves to things, handcuffing themselves to things, zip-tying themselves to things, blowing clouds of orange stuff across things, and getting dragged away by the police.  

I didn't realise this at the time, but the calendar was a fundraiser, and it cost £25. It was also designed as a LOOK AT US provocation, and it worked. The page has now gone from the JSO website, and I really hate to link to the Daily Mail, but if you want to see what they wrote about it (and many photos of it) it's here. 

I don't actually have a problem with Just Stop Oil per se -- I'm of the view that the climate emergency is real and urgent and there isn't any one response that will be sufficient, so let's try everything. (Within reason, but I count non-violent direct action as within reason). I can also empathise with the powerlessness that many people feel and the urge to do something visible, to stand up and be counted. I work in sustainability these days, after many years in international development (which intersects strongly) and the yards to meaningful change are hard. A lot of the time, it can feel like everything is broken. We need to do something NOW. 

So while JSO's throw soup and get arrested theory of change is not one I personally subscribe to, I can see why it's attractive to people. I know people who have been on their training and taken part in their actions. I think they have every right to do it and (as someone who's currently reading Prophet Song) am thankful we live somewhere where they can do that in reasonable safety. 

But I also think other people have the right to get really fucking annoyed when their football match / snooker game / day out with their family is disrupted by these actions *and* the right not to want to be confronted by graphic evidence of them day in and day out. The thing is, climate anxiety is real. It can be disabling. I am living with it, I know other people who are living with it, some of whom are really struggling. You want to make a noise about the climate emergency? Great. But I do actually know it's happening, and many of the choices I make about how I live and what I do are shaped by it already, so, you know, get out of my face while I'm doing my laundry? 

I have a particular loathing for smug virtue signalling, so I hated this calendar from the moment it appeared. Hated it. But I am only one person, and I don't usually do laundry with anyone else, so while I flinched every time I went in there and wondered which of my neighbours thought this was a fine thing to put in a communal area, I basically ignored it all the way through January and February. 

The March photo was particularly jarring though, and I started mentioning it to people. And I discovered that lots of people hated that calendar. One person was avoiding the laundry room almost completely, a couple of others were avoiding looking at that wall when they were in there. And someone else said they turned the calendar to the wall while they were doing stuff in there (turning it back when they left). 

That's an interesting idea, I thought, and I started doing the same, though leaving it turned to the wall when I left. I thought that was a good way to keep the utility of the calendar (it was being used to track machine maintenance) while not giving us daily reminders of the burning planet as we wash our natural fibre clothes at 30 degrees and refill our eco laundry detergent bottles. 

After a while, it caught on, and the calendar was often turned to the wall. But it was always turned back, sometimes within minutes, which made me think that either a lot of people thought we needed to be REGULARLY REMINDED of the precarity of our existence, or that there was one person who did a LOT OF LAUNDRY who felt that way. I wasn't sure, but by the time March ticked over into April, the calendar was swinging back and forth on a daily basis, and I was pretty sure I knew whose it was. 

I had started chatting with someone who *really* hated it, maybe even more than I did. We wondered if the person who'd put it there would actually have it in their house. We wondered what their motivation was. We wondered how it looked to visitors (we have regular tours as well as friends and family here) -- what did it say about us? What if we don't want to be represented in this way? We need a calendar there, we agreed, but it doesn't have to be *that* calendar. 

We started sharing links to 2024 calendars that were still available in April. There was one that was photos of cats with their balls out, which we liked a lot, but we thought that would just antagonise a different set of people. There were arty ones, but they were expensive. There were utilitarian ones on Amazon, but we all know Amazon's business model is part of the problem. 

Then we found Barbie. She was half price at Argos, click and collect in Sainsbury's. I placed the order. 

I collected her on a Monday. I checked out the April photo and I laughed so hard I had to sit down. I looked at all of the other photos and I kept laughing. I couldn't stop. This, I thought, is absolutely 100 per cent perfect non-violent direct action. 

I came late to Barbie -- I never had one as a child, I really wasn't interested, she wasn't book-shaped, though I did have one friend who had the entire Barbie universe (such as it was in the late 1970s anyway) and there was fun to be had there, there's always fun when there are enough accessories. And as soon as I became aware of the beauty industrial complex (thanks in no small part to pre-batshit Naomi Wolf) and the adult-world prevalence of brands like Playboy, I couldn't get far enough away from that particular stripe of make believe. 

But Barbie grew up, it turns out, and turns out I had room for various of her incarnations in my pantheon. Art Activist Barbie caught my attention first, and then I slowly realised there was a whole world of Barbie diversity that I hadn't been paying attention to. It's a little Spice Girls, maybe, but the Spice Girls changed lives. Not everyone wants to live in dungarees. But if you do, there's a Barbie for you as well. 

And while I could critique the Barbie movie in multiple feminist ways, as indeed multiple feminists have, I actually don't want to. I saw it on the opening night, at a 6 pm showing stuffed full of 8 year old girls watching a 12A, with four of the most gender-aware folk I know. And WE LOVED IT. It brought power and humour and joy and fun to the complexity of the game we all have to play at some level, win or lose. 

Barbie was perfect. April Barbie was exquisitely perfect. This is a 10/10 winner, I thought. Everyone's going to think it's LOL hilarious, I thought. Even the person who's been joylessly JSOing us for a whole quarter will think haha, fair play, I thought. I shared the photo of April Barbie in the laundry with my close confidantes, I giggled a bunch more on the sofa, I went to bed. I wasn't even drunk, Barbie was enough for me that night. 

And, well, as my Significant Ex used to say to me on occasion (not without justification), it's amazing how wrong one person can be. 

Tuesday morning dawned, and M rose early to go for a walk with an early riser friend and neighbour. I am not an early riser but I enjoy this time, I starfish out in the bed, go back to sleep, and try and finish off my dreams in a way that feels healthy for my psyche. And I was spark out when I was woken up by a loud repetitive banging. We'd recently had the doorbell fixed, and I'm pretty sure it would have woken me, but maybe not. This had an urgency. A you are needed right now feeling. There's an emergency, or a delivery from a driver who is extremely on the clock - we're at the accessible end of the street, and both of these things happen. 

So I tumble out of bed and head downstairs - I'm wearing a t-shirt and pants, nothing else, and I don't have my glasses on. I'm not really awake, and I'm not really dressed, but if it's important, that doesn't matter, says my limbic brain. (My mother once greeted a priest in the actual nip when she slept through nursery pickup while she was working nights and he brought me home, so there's precedent). 

I could hear and kind of see that there was someone thumping on the door - it's fully glass, but I couldn't tell who it was. There was also a pink blur (I am very short sighted) and I thought oh, maybe it's someone I sent the photo to come to tell me how hilarious April is. Haha great! And so it was that I opened the door half naked, half blind and with a big smile. Mwa ha ha. Ha ha. 

Ha. 

Over the next... 30 seconds? Less? I watched the person who'd got me out of bed rip the Barbie calendar into pieces. I think they were also grinning, but then I did start it. I was trying to focus and process what was happening, and then they threw the pieces at my feet and shouted FUCK YOU! and strode off. 

The calendar had been there for barely eight hours, all of which were at night, so I think it's fair to say that I was a) disappointed that Barbie didn't reach a wider audience, for the comedy, and b) quite taken aback by the vitriol of the response of the person I wasn't even sure was the person who had JSO'd us, and surprised they was so sure that I was the person who'd Barbie'd their ass. 

I photographed the evidence (for the socials!) and went back to bed, but was woken again by the Fish Man, who (I cannot lie) loves a bit of WTAF, as so many folk who have tangential connections with Ecoville do. Hey, I said, come and look at what happened an hour ago! 

You're kidding me, Jo, he said, as M and Y (she prefers a pseudonym I think) appeared round the corner, fresh from the walking that is much better for mental health than taking shade from Mx Angry before you've even brushed your teeth. 

So it was that there was a small gathering around the Barbie shreds on the doormat when Mx Angry themself stomped down the street back towards us. I will not lie, I was glad I was fully dressed and had some love and fondness around me, even as I still knew what I did was by any measure I call sane a) funny and b) appropriate, given this person's overly aggressive response to basically anything that isn't entirely in line with their very niche in my opinion view of normal.** 

I didn't say anything. But M said (with that little catch in his voice that indicates he's very very upset) "Mx Angry, that was about the least neighbourly thing I've seen anyone do since I've lived here." <beat> "And there's been some stiff competition." 

They carried on through, and tossed a MOVE OUT! over their shoulder as they left our collective earshot. 

I mean, literally not gonna. As Cypress Hill would say, I ain't going out like that (I have now got that on a t-shirt, just in case anyone's in any doubt). 

BUT. I killed the JSO calendar.*** And Mx Angry killed the Barbie calendar. 

After I called them an Entitled Busy Parent on Facebook, Mx Angry sent me a warning. DO NOT WRITE ABOUT ME ON FACEBOOK EVER AGAIN OR I WILL DO SOMETHING, they wrote (I'm paraphrasing). I can deal with a direct request. Even if I can't adhere to one, I respect them. In that instance, I knew I was still FB friends with their partner and I factored in that they might therefore read what I'd written. I wanted them to. I am not, like, Quaker about any of this. But I recognised that was a bit shitty, so I unfriended their partner. I kinda wanted to anyway, their partner was also joyless, ain't no big loss. 

But and so, I'm not writing about them on Facebook. I'm writing about them here, and they won't see it unless someone directs them to it, and if they want to do that I don't fucking care. I'm not doing it for them. I'm doing it for me and in fact for anyone who tolerates intolerance because they feel they have to. As Paul Weller once said (yes I am old), you don't have to take this crap, you don't have to sit back and relax. And as Lester Freamon also once said, all the pieces matter. 

New government, new vibes guys. Let's make it a little bit better. 

joella

* I was well into adulthood before I found an accommodation with my physical self. That's not all down to her, but a fair chunk of it is. 

** This person had already yelled at me on several occasions, including telling me that a thing I was planning to do was not ok with me, and not ok with the community. Have you asked the community? Who is the community? I shouted after them as they stropped off down the street. Answer, came there none. I'm always extremely wary of anyone who claims an us. I don't really have an us. I don't think this person does either. 

*** Mx A destroyed my Barbie calendar. I may or may not have kept their JSO calendar for making some great paperchains with the kids for the holiday season

Three big things, two gold rings, one resolution.

The ingenues in their early days. The lobster, scarf, wall hanging and cardigan are still with us. The gin, we drank. 

People say that bad news comes in threes. I think a lot of things come in threes, but maybe that's because I strongly prefer odd numbers (especially 3, 7, 19 and 23, which are also all prime numbers) and three is the first odd number that, to my mind, counts as a proper number. 

Here are three things that have been various shades of news to me over the last couple of years, about which I have and have had varying degrees of control. Not all bad, but all big. 

1. In 2018, M was diagnosed with bladder cancer, via the traditional blood-in-piss route. Do not ignore blood in your piss, do not. I can remember where I was when he called me to tell me about the blood, and I remember that I knew that the little squirt of (I'm guessing) adrenaline that I experienced, in the Northern Quarter of Manchester while preparing to buy fancy glasses to appear more employable as I'd recently been made redundant as a result of the sexual abuse and exploitation scandal at NGO X, was significant. And I wasn't wrong. He had low stage, high grade cancer. The tumour was removed, and then he was treated in the recommended manner, though the treatment -- BCG into the bladder -- had to be stopped early, as he had extreme side effects. He had regular follow ups - first every three months, then every six, all through the pandemic. It almost went away, just a thing he did. But then, after nearly five years, it came back. Cancer that has come back is a different beast. 

He's doing ok. But that was the first big thing. 

2. We got together in 1998, so 2023 marked 25 years of whatever this is. We'd talked vaguely about celebrating, having a party... we never had a party when we left Oxford in 2012, we meant to, but we had a lot on. We assumed we'd return and do it, but then my mum got ill and everything tilted around. And then we were trying to settle into our new life up north. There were parties, but they weren't our parties, not like that. We should, you know, we kept saying, but life just kept getting harder (see above, and also the Ecoville Food Wars / Brexit / Trump / losing my job). I did organise a big thing for my 50th, and it was a joy, but it was also in early 2020, and we all know what happened after that. My dad barely made it through, many, many other people's loved ones did not, the government got worse, everything got more expensive, the climate slid further into chaos, we all got, as Pink Floyd say shorter of breath and one day closer to death. 

A school friend of mine -- not a close one, but we were Facebook friends and chatted occasionally -- died suddenly in June 2022. Her funeral was in Blackpool on a bright sunny day. On the way there we had to detour because of a fatal road accident. We ran into the church behind the coffin. Afterwards, I gave her mum a card that contained messages from all of the school friends I am still in touch with, as I was the only one who could make it to the service. It was every kind of sad. After we left, we drove to the Promenade and went to look at the function rooms at the Imperial Hotel. By the time we got home, I'd decided we were getting civilly partnered in the Washington Suite, which is basically a Victorian ballroom that has Seen Some Parties. It took M a little longer to come around to the idea of a major life event happening in Blackpool (he would have preferred a mystical woodland glade), but I have my ways. 

And we did. We invited somewhere around 100 of our favourite people and we layered our party onto the decades of parties and it was great. We had our rings made by a jewellery designer called Myia Bonner, and they are recycled rose and yellow gold, and I love them. There was food and drink and poetry and vows and live music and dancing and speeches and laughing and all around a lot of love in the room. I learnt that fake flowers and real candles do not mix, but I learnt a lot more about the joy of celebrating things while you can. 

3. I've written about menopausing before. That's not new. But over the years it's been happening to me I've become increasingly aware of all of my senses, and not in a good way. Certain sounds especially, but also textures, tastes, smells and lighting that used to be mildly irritating have become almost overwhelming. I have found myself rocking, with my hands over my ears. I have found myself curled up in a ball under the duvet in the middle of the day. I have found myself unable to eat something too sweet, or too fatty, or too bready, or too anything, really. When M asks me what I want for dinner, I have become incredibly precise. I have given up underwired bras, most of my socks, anything that is remotely itchy. And occasionally, I have found myself shutting down. I've always had what I call Full Pyjama Days, but these are a bit different. I simply can't do anything for a while. 

At the same time, I'm still attracting the kind of feedback that makes me want to burn things to the ground. People read me as rude when I'm trying to be clear. Or assume I haven't done my research (I have almost always done my research) and tell me stuff that I have known for literally decades, that is so integral to my thinking that I don't bother to mention it. "I think you might have misunderstood..." is something I hear a lot, especially from men. No. I understand, I just think you're categorically wrong.

Long story short, I went to the GP. She looked tired. I felt bad, I wasn't ill. I think I might be autistic, I said. Well, she said, what makes you think that? I gave her the story. Honestly, she said, I'm surprised this is only coming up for you now, but I don't know very much about it. So we'll do a referral. 

I was grateful -- GPs can be amazing, but they can also not take you seriously. I've been very lucky, on the whole, but my Significant Ex had abdominal pain dismissed in his mid 20s and ended up with an explosive gall bladder. And he's posh as all get out. 

Anyway, the first step was a one page screening assessment that they sent me in the post. I read it and it *had the answers* - it was actually designed to be asked by a practitioner. But I did it myself without cheating, and then I asked M how he would rate me. He only disagreed with me on one statement, which was basically "I collect lots of weird stuff" yes/no. But the stuff I collect isn't weird, I protested, and he rolled his eyes and gestured at the train tickets, the basket of wine corks, the Encona bottles, the drawer of veg box string and the tower of tuna cans. 

You've got a piano!! I said. 

But kids, it doesn't work like that. I passed/failed the assessment (depending on your perspective) and then I waited for my appointment with a psychologist. This took about nine months, which I gather is pretty good. When they got in touch, they said they wanted to speak with a parent. But I'm 53, I said. It's important to know what you were like as a child, they said. 

So I did ask my dad a few questions (he wasn't well at the time and he was nearly 80 ffs) and it was actually hilarious. "Well, you could read and write before you went to school, we only really sent you because we thought it might help you socialise. But it didn't." 

My limited memories of primary school really are "what is the point of this, I could be reading books", except for the fact that the food was excellent. God love my mother, but she was not a great cook, and those dinner ladies and their chips, and their carrot and swede mash, and their beefy sausages, and their chocolate sponge and peppermint custard: they made it all worthwhile. Chicken supreme, Manchester tart, mince crumble, pickled red cabbage, I loved almost everything that came out of that kitchen (except the roast parsnips). I also loved the parquet floor and the curtains in the gym / assembly hall / dining room, which were *exquisitely* 1970s, but I hated pretty much all the rest of it. A tiny example: I was cast as Snow White in the school play because I had the correct colouring, but I was so terrible an actor that by the time it was staged I only had two words left (a yes and a no), which I delivered with such vehemence the audience laughed, and it wasn't supposed to be funny. 

So with hindsight, maybe the signs were there, but no one was looking. 

But in 2023, they were slightly better equipped, and I guess I was doing the looking myself. And it turns out that yes, I am, by current diagnostic criteria, an autistic person. And with only a modicum of deeper research, it transpires that autistic girls with "low support needs" (who can essentially function independently if idiosyncratically) just pass as oddballs for years and figure that everyone else is better at normal life than they are (but don't care that much) until BAM!! hello menopause! The gift that keeps on giving! 

I'm glad I sought a diagnosis and I'm glad I've got one. A whoooole lot of things make more sense now. It's weird to see yourself as someone with a disorder, or even a disability, especially if you've secretly thought it's almost everyone else who's batshit. But then you look at the things you have tried and failed at over and over again, and the assumptions people have made, and the questions no one has ever asked, and the endless fucking battle to be seen, heard and taken seriously even as a middle class white woman. 

And it's kinda heartbreaking: not so much for myself now -- knowledge is power, mofos -- but for my younger self. She was so comprehensively thwarted, so many times, for reasons she did not understand. She was fucked over by people she trusted because she took things at face value. She was so often playing a different game, and didn't know the rules of everyone else's. 

But she's working on that, the grief. It's a thing, apparently. She's getting some help with that. She's going to be fine. 

All of this to say, though, I arrived in 2024 with a new prescription in my life glasses, man. There are some things that I started to write but stopped because I thought well... does this still hold? Am I still making sense? Where I'm at four months in is that I think I've never made more sense. To myself, anyway. And this is where I get to say my stuff, so. 

That's the resolution: to speak my mind. I always kind of have, but now I think it's even more important. 

joella