The world from my window

It's International Women's Day today, a day that takes on more significance this year as women across the world press for change. The history of this named day is interesting if you want to find out more. But I've taken to the blog today not to talk about the women who inspired me (my mother, my teacher-aunts, my big sisters and Anne Boleyn. Anne Boleyn? Yes, I always did back the underdog) but to talk about the companions of my childhood in the 1960s. Dolls. I still have two of mine - Holly and Milly. The latter was named after the My Boy Lollipop singer.  I hadn't taken on board that, unlike me, she was black. She was just my doll. I had another doll called Abigail who came from a toy shop in Ilminster (as did Randy, my teddy bear named after the cowhand in The Virginian ). But Abigail was not made from as stern a stuff as Holly and Milly. She finally went to doll heaven when I was in my twenties. (As a Somerset girl, I used to pronounce the word ...

'Isn't it lovely?' I said, smiling to a young girl. She was going back home to get into warmer and waterproof clothes, ready for a bit of sledging down the hill with her friend. By the time we got there, Arty and I, most of the sledgers had gone. My dear dog ran around in it, never having see snow before, and then met her old friend, Ted, for a quick swoosh around the slopes.  She looked like a woolly mammoth without the trunk and tusks. 'It's great, isn't it?' said one of my neighbours, coming up the hill to find his daughter. 'Everyone's talking to each other and smiling.' It was true. This long-awaited snow reached us on Thursday afternoon. We'd had plenty of warning and were ready and waiting. We'd be snowed in for about two days, we reckoned, and that blitz spirit would see us through until the weekend. The red of the village phone box stood out against the blizzard, a beacon of Englishness in the village square. ...