I'm still haunted by the images and stories from the Grenfell Tower disaster, nearly three weeks ago.
On the 14th June, just before 1am, a faulty fridge-freezer caught fire in a flat on the fourth floor of this 24-storey tower block of public housing flats in North Kensington. The residents were some of the poorest people, living in one of the richest boroughs of London.
The fire services told all the families in the block to stay in their flats as the fire would be contained, and the one stairwell needed to be clear for the emergency services.
The fire, however, spread rapidly, via (it is thought) the newly applied cladding on the outside of the tower which was not fire resistant.
At least eighty people died that night, in a fire that raged for sixty hours despite the efforts of hundreds of firefighters and forty-five fire engines - men, women and children, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters.
The pictures that emerged straight after the Grenfell disaster were horrific enough, the numbers and the details of that night even worse. But what is truly haunting is the personal stories that are, as the smoke clears, being told.
Jessica Urbano was only twelve years old, about the same age as my eldest daughter. She lived with her mum on the twentieth floor.
That night her mum, as usual, had gone to work with one of the many unseen, unconsidered, groups of people, who clean the city's offices overnight.
A few hours into her shift she got a call telling her that the tower was on fire. She raced home and ran towards the tower entrance. The firefighters would not, could not, let her in.
Jessica called from a neighbour's mobile. She sobbed "Mum, please come and get me!" but all Jessica's mum could do was to watch the flames roaring up the side of the building and hope and pray that her daughter would make it down the stairs and walk through the entrance.
She never did.
We never know when disaster might strike us, or one of our friends or family. Although, thankfully, these terrible events are rare, they seem to be occurring more and more in London at the moment.
One of the things that, finally, prompted me to stop drinking was the thought that something terrible might happen to one of my children - an accident or an illness - and that I would not be sober enough to deal with it as well as I should.
I would never have forgiven myself.
Many times when my children were small, they would cry in the night because they were hungry, or had a bad dream, and - more often than not - Mr SM would wake up, as I, after a few glasses of wine, was sleeping too deeply to hear them.
Imagine if he had not been there. Imagine if they'd woken, not because of a bad dream but because of smoke or flames.
The Grenfell Tower disaster does have a light side as well as a dark side.
The bravery and dedication of the fire service, who removed (against all regulations) their own face masks to help people escaping down the stairwell. The generosity and spirit of the local community who have worked tirelessly distributing food, clothing and money. The stories of the people who did make it to the ground - the survivors.
Love SM x
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Showing posts with label London. Show all posts
Sunday, 2 July 2017
Thursday, 11 June 2015
Drinking and Sexism
Day 102 (a long way to go before another milestone....)
Ever since I've become obsessed with reading every newspaper or magazine article I can find about alcohol and alcoholics, I've been aware of a worrying discrepancy between the way we talk about male drinkers and female drinkers.
It appears I'm not the only one to notice, because this was among the discussion topics on Radio 4's Woman's Hour yesterday. The fabulous Lucy Rocca - founder of Soberistas.com - was one of the interviewees.
The event that sparked the debate was Kate Moss being escorted off an EasyJet flight (yes, she really was flying EasyJet! Who knew?) for 'having a meltdown' over a lack of sandwiches, and drinking from a bottle of vodka she'd stashed in her hand luggage.
(Do you remember those bouts of self righteous anger that would strike like a red mist when you were drinking? They were, at least in my case, usually due to some imagined 'unfairness', very much like a toddler's strop. Totally out of proportion. See my post on Jeremy Clarkson and alcohol induced rage for more).
Now, despite the fact that fellow passengers have subsequently claimed 'the model's behaviour was not aggressive and crew’s response was disproportionate', Mossy was pilloried in the Daily Mail, and The Sun ran a front page article with the headline "KATE MESS!"
Kate Moss was escorted from her plane by uniformed police. Unlike another famously drunk airplane passenger, Gerard Depardieu, who despite weeing all over the carpet of an aeroplane and delaying the flight for two hours, was not arrested. The press coverage of this incident was all rather jovial. He's a bon viveur! A character! He's French! Who cares if he drinks 5 bottles of wine a day? (yes, you heard me right: FIVE!)
Imagine, for a moment, if a Hollywood actress had decided to pee in the aisle of an aeroplane. She would never work again! She would have gone straight to the Betty Ford Clinic and never come out. Meanwhile, Gerald's career goes from strength to strength.
Tom Ford was interviewed in the Evening Standard yesterday under the headline "If I'd carried on drinking I would have died." The article was hugely respectful, and Tom came across as a creative genius (which he is) successfully battling his demons (which he did).
(Incidentally, Tom Ford blames living in London for aiding and abetting his drink problem. He says "You can very easily consume 10 drinks a day and be considered absolutely normal.... Sometimes I'd say to friends "I think I have a drinking problem," and they'd say "oh, you don't have a drinking problem! Have another drink!")
Do you think for one moment that the story would have looked similar if Victoria Beckham admitted to having a drink problem? No way! Journalists would have fallen over each other to pull her off her pedestal. "Victoria's Perfect Life a Sham!" "Victoria Beckham in Drunken Lush Shame!"
Winston Churchill's habit of starting the day with whisky and water, and drinking constantly until bed time (see Why Ex Drinkers Rock. Part 2 for more) was seen as evidence of his quirky, eccentric genius. If Margaret Thatcher had done the same (apologies if you're now picturing Thatcher in bed) she would have been booted out well before her second term.
And we can't blame the men. In fact women seem to be the first to condemn each other. We revel in the schadenfreude of discovering that our female icons have feet of clay (and livers of yellow fat).
We are particularly hard on women who have children. Now, you and I know that you would have to drink an awful lot to get to the stage where you would let your children suffer one iota from your habit, but the assumption is that we are terrible, neglectful mothers.
It's no wonder that there are so many secret female drinkers out there. Not only are we worried about being pilloried for being weak willed, selfish drunks, but we run a very real risk of having our children taken away.
It was also pointed out on Woman's Hour that if a woman is physically dependant on alcohol and needs a medically supervised detox, there are no longer any mother-and-child units in the UK. She needs to find someone else to look after her children for several weeks or they are taken into care.
We know how difficult it is to fight the wine witch alone. In secret. But, until we can do something about the rampant sexism surrounding drinking, more and more women will fail to get the support they badly need.
Love SM x
Ever since I've become obsessed with reading every newspaper or magazine article I can find about alcohol and alcoholics, I've been aware of a worrying discrepancy between the way we talk about male drinkers and female drinkers.
It appears I'm not the only one to notice, because this was among the discussion topics on Radio 4's Woman's Hour yesterday. The fabulous Lucy Rocca - founder of Soberistas.com - was one of the interviewees.
The event that sparked the debate was Kate Moss being escorted off an EasyJet flight (yes, she really was flying EasyJet! Who knew?) for 'having a meltdown' over a lack of sandwiches, and drinking from a bottle of vodka she'd stashed in her hand luggage.
(Do you remember those bouts of self righteous anger that would strike like a red mist when you were drinking? They were, at least in my case, usually due to some imagined 'unfairness', very much like a toddler's strop. Totally out of proportion. See my post on Jeremy Clarkson and alcohol induced rage for more).
Now, despite the fact that fellow passengers have subsequently claimed 'the model's behaviour was not aggressive and crew’s response was disproportionate', Mossy was pilloried in the Daily Mail, and The Sun ran a front page article with the headline "KATE MESS!"
Kate Moss was escorted from her plane by uniformed police. Unlike another famously drunk airplane passenger, Gerard Depardieu, who despite weeing all over the carpet of an aeroplane and delaying the flight for two hours, was not arrested. The press coverage of this incident was all rather jovial. He's a bon viveur! A character! He's French! Who cares if he drinks 5 bottles of wine a day? (yes, you heard me right: FIVE!)
Imagine, for a moment, if a Hollywood actress had decided to pee in the aisle of an aeroplane. She would never work again! She would have gone straight to the Betty Ford Clinic and never come out. Meanwhile, Gerald's career goes from strength to strength.
Tom Ford was interviewed in the Evening Standard yesterday under the headline "If I'd carried on drinking I would have died." The article was hugely respectful, and Tom came across as a creative genius (which he is) successfully battling his demons (which he did).
(Incidentally, Tom Ford blames living in London for aiding and abetting his drink problem. He says "You can very easily consume 10 drinks a day and be considered absolutely normal.... Sometimes I'd say to friends "I think I have a drinking problem," and they'd say "oh, you don't have a drinking problem! Have another drink!")
Do you think for one moment that the story would have looked similar if Victoria Beckham admitted to having a drink problem? No way! Journalists would have fallen over each other to pull her off her pedestal. "Victoria's Perfect Life a Sham!" "Victoria Beckham in Drunken Lush Shame!"
Winston Churchill's habit of starting the day with whisky and water, and drinking constantly until bed time (see Why Ex Drinkers Rock. Part 2 for more) was seen as evidence of his quirky, eccentric genius. If Margaret Thatcher had done the same (apologies if you're now picturing Thatcher in bed) she would have been booted out well before her second term.
And we can't blame the men. In fact women seem to be the first to condemn each other. We revel in the schadenfreude of discovering that our female icons have feet of clay (and livers of yellow fat).
We are particularly hard on women who have children. Now, you and I know that you would have to drink an awful lot to get to the stage where you would let your children suffer one iota from your habit, but the assumption is that we are terrible, neglectful mothers.
It's no wonder that there are so many secret female drinkers out there. Not only are we worried about being pilloried for being weak willed, selfish drunks, but we run a very real risk of having our children taken away.
It was also pointed out on Woman's Hour that if a woman is physically dependant on alcohol and needs a medically supervised detox, there are no longer any mother-and-child units in the UK. She needs to find someone else to look after her children for several weeks or they are taken into care.
We know how difficult it is to fight the wine witch alone. In secret. But, until we can do something about the rampant sexism surrounding drinking, more and more women will fail to get the support they badly need.
Love SM x
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