End Piece

My draft notes, made at the start of this project, identified the over-arching theme as one of sexism – so it's been a great pleasure that a second theme, my respect for people in the past, has bubbled up unplanned, that I recognised it and made it explicit. I feel that it's helped me to recognise and celebrate some of my roots. But now returning to the intended theme …

I've known for a long time that it was my childhood awareness of sexism which honed my feminist antenna and that I'm quick to see examples of it. And, sadly, age has widened my awareness of discrimination and, in addition to personal experiences of sexism, I can now add personal experiences of age-ism and able-ism. But looking around me, I also see racism, genderism, a pervading fear of otherness – of ethnicity, religion, language, class, education, poverty …

What a depressing, unending list.

One of the 'Looking Back' pieces was headed 'plus ca change' and it would be easy, I think, to be filled with despair.

Martin Luther King had a 'Dream' in 1963 but, in 2013, we still needed the Black Lives Matter movement – and that need continues today

'Reclaim the Night Marches' started here in Leeds in 1977 after a spate of local murders led to the police advising women to stay indoors after dark. But male violence against women continues, and the need to march was just as great in 2021

But then I notice those small, 'Random Acts of Kindness' around me.

A group of excited youngsters in the park, coming from their football game, who stood back and gave us space to pass through their midst with the wheelchair

A lad in the park – a waiter at The Mansion cafe – who ran out to return a forgotten cap to its elderly owner. And rather than rush up behind the man, and risk alarming him, the lad made a detour to come into the man's eyeline, and approach him from the front

So next time I hear that negative voice in my head, (exactly echoing my father's intonation) making disparaging comments about the 'youth of today' I'll remember those youngsters and that lad – and others like Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai – and remember to talk about them with a smile in my voice.

And hold onto the hope that those 'youth of today' will achieve a more healthy society (and planet) than our generation ever did.

I really hope that they can make a difference, that they really will make a difference.

Stay safe

Paddy xxxx