A Midsummer Letch!

 A few days back I thought that I would pop for a breather among the grass and trees. Just soak in a bit of peace among the chaos of moving house. I was looking forward to listening to the birds (the feathered kind by the way) in the sunshine. Could I do that? No. Enter Mr Letch. ‘’Hello darling. Hello? Hello? Are you here to see me?’’, Letchy repeated over and over. I nearly left the little park, but then I thought, no, why should I? I opened my mouth and asked him to leave me alone. I do get absolutely sick of letchy men! And before some of you say, ‘not every man’, of course not every man but in normal pre pandemic times, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t endured, letchy harassment and my female identifying friends say the same. I cannot remember a time that I haven’t experienced anxiety while walking home after dark, wherever I was living at the time. We, as women, were and are preconditioned to almost accept that we are not safe walking around alone, from being young girls and teenagers. I don’t know a single woman who doesn’t hold their keys in their knuckles while walking home in the evening. Even at 4pm in winter! We are over half of the population, and yet this has and is allowed to continue.

I have been kerb crawled, followed, surrounded by groups of men while walking to my bus stop at 5pm, had my boobs grabbed by randoms who just think that it is their right. I have been sexually assaulted by someone in a position of power when I was 20. I have even been beaten up and left with a broken nose because I wasn’t interested in accepting a man’s advances. A man who I would find sitting on my bed in the shared house that I was living in at the time. A man who would just walk into my room, a man who would not stop trying to touch me wherever in the house we happened to be. The latter did go to court, and I found out from someone else that a colleague of his had ripped this man’s beard off because they were sick of his lecherous ways towards their female colleagues. I have to admit to being slightly pleased about that news. Violence isn’t right, but this man had been getting away with horrendous behaviour for too long. I was 22.  And this is just a short list of what I have experienced. Anyway, I digress. Why was this allowed to happen in the first place? Why are we as a society allowing this to continue?

So there you have it. A serious blog from me this time. Hope you won’t bee too disappointed that I haven’t written in my usual tongue in cheek style!  Right, I am off to get some quotes from removal companies, and yes, I am still surrounded by boxes. How is it that two women without children, have so much stuff?!

Until next time,

A Real Northern Hermia x