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History running out of previously unknown inspirational women

HISTORIANS have warned that supplies of previously unknown women who can be held up as inspirational figures are about to be exhausted. 

Archivists have spent the last decade strip-mining the past for inspirational women, inspirational black women, inspirational brown women, inspirational trans women and inspirational women who can plausibly be described as ‘neurospicy’.

Professor Mary Fisher said: “Let me illustrate my mindset: I found records of a 17th century female abortionist who only killed 40 per cent of her patients and said ‘Yay!’

“That’s what we’re reduced to. Post-Mary Seacole there’s been a gold rush. Demand for historical women with achievements we approve of is unrelenting. I mean if you want nuns who converted thousands to Catholicism I’ve got plenty, but they’re not in vogue.

“Even worse is when we discover a pioneer who fought for women’s rights then find she was a massive racist who campaigned for lesbians to be lobotomised. Stupid past people, not meeting our standards.

“I’ve got a Polish woman who was very bad at painting who I’m going to claim was a groundbreaking surrealist. After her I’ll have to start making them up.”

Primary teacher Susan Traherne said: “I’m fine with them being made up.”

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Great, a storm named after my ex-f**king-girlfriend

FANTASTIC. Just what I needed. A full day’s deliveries to do in the face of heavy rain and 95mph winds from a storm named after my ex-girlfriend.

It’s not like it’s easy being an Ocado driver in the West Highlands anyway. Miles of lonely road to traverse before every stop. Time for the mind to dwell on insults, put-downs, and the ragged ends of relationships. And that’s without Storm Amy in my f**king face.

‘You should have been more attentive,’ she howls, as I drive through the glen. ‘Played less Destiny,’ she whispers through the crack around the van’s door. ‘I’m going to ruin your visibility so you drive into a river and die,’ she screams with her torrential rain.

Of course I answer back. I spend all day alone in a van in unpopulated areas, you think I don’t talk to myself? ‘You dumped me,’ I yell at the rain blattering the windscreen, ‘and right after I bought Runrig tickets. Well, a Runrig tribute but they’re very good.’

‘Why, Amy, why?’ I shout. ‘Why did you have to leave me, and then come back in the form of a yellow severe weather warning? And you’re blowing all over Northern Ireland first, which makes me suspicious of that guy called Rory you said was your cousin.’

Her answer? A terrific gust that almost blows the van into a ditch where I would die alone. Though I’m in an Ocado van, it’s pretty well-stocked, I’d be fine until January.

But while Storm Amy rages just like her namesake, and ruins reception for BBC Scotland which in fairness her namesake was unable to do, it can’t penetrate the cab. And as the miles roll on, I find myself reaching a new understanding.

Amy can’t hurt me. She’s all bluster. The storm of her tears can be ridden out. I’ll get through this. I feel better than I have for a long, long while. Until she brings a f**king tree down on me.

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