On Thursday, I attended a sold-out panel event organised by the feminist organisation, Woman’s Place UK. The subject for discussion was women and the press, and I was there to support good friends who were speaking, among them my colleague Sonia Sodha.
So far, so normal. Except, these are strange times. Those organising events around the war in Gaza complain of how hard it is to get venues; of the tight security involved. But they’re hardly the only ones. In 2023, women who want to meet to talk good-naturedly about their rights will not be informed where they will actually be doing this until mere hours before kick-off. On the door, there will be men with armbands; no one will walk through it who does not have the right email. I find this bizarre and enraging, though I have to admit it only added to the sense of solidarity inside, where hundreds of women, and a few men, of all ages were gathered.
It was (if I’m allowed to say this) cosy as well as inspiring, something good in the air as well as bad, and for me personally a kind of kismet. As we finally stood up to go, the woman next to me announced herself as a girl who’d been at school with me in Jaffa, Israel, 40 years ago. “And now we’re both here,” she told me, delightedly, no more needing to be said.
Cry ‘God for Caramac!’
When I’m 64… I’ll be sent to Dignitas by a heartless Swiss multinational conglomerate. Yes, Nestlé, the world’s biggest food company, is about to end production of Caramac, a sweet first made by Mackintosh in 1959. Single bars have already been withdrawn; multipacks – three for a bargain £1.25, an addict writes – will be on sale only until the end of the year.
With so many terrible things going on in the world, perhaps my disproportionate sadness over the Caramac’s imminent demise is what the head doctors call displacement. But feelings are feelings, and I want sugar, not therapy. Why can’t our Swiss overlords allow us our uniquely British confectionery, however peculiar and lowly they may find it?
While Caramac is not chocolate (no soy), its combination of butter, condensed milk and treacle means it tastes a bit like Scottish tablet, minus the grittiness. I love its sweetness, and its slimness, which works dubiously to eliminate guilt, and would rather eat it than any posh truffles.
Would a one-woman sales spike change minds in Crawley? (Nestlé’s UK’s headquarters is near Gatwick.) It’s surely worth a try. Today, I march on my newsagent, on Sainsbury’s and on Iceland. Cry “God for Caramac, the dentist and St Joseph of Wicks!”
Turn up for the book
I’m quite an anxious party giver, but at the launch of my new book last week, nerves were kept at bay by the setting. I’d booked the London Welsh Centre, which has stood on Gray’s Inn Road since the 1930s, its mission to promote Welsh culture and language, and whose building, with its mullioned windows and cosy, old-fashioned bar, reminds me of the former Co-op ballroom in Sheffield, where my granny used sometimes to take me to Ramblers’ Association dances (we’re talking waltz and quickstep, not disco).
In this lovely, timeless bubble – I mean it as praise when I say we might not even have been in London – people from all the different parts of my life gently mingled, the sight of them doing so only occasionally making me feel dizzy.
Diolch to everyone who has helped me with this book – and to Rhiannon and her bar staff, for keeping glasses full.
• Rachel Cooke is an Observer columnist
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