Off Air... with Jane and Fi - I didn't take up much space and I wasn't any bother

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

If you didn't study geography, would still have gone on all the trips? Jane did?Also, historian Katy Hessel discusses the power of the lost women of the art world with her new book 'A history of art without men'.If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Radio Producer: Rosie CutlerPodcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think he had a bit of a moment today and I didn't know where it was going to go. I think you had a bit of a moment today, and I didn't know where it was going to go. I did have a bit of a moment. It was when we were discussing the history of art. Yes. With reference to the relative absence of women artists in the history of art. Yes.

We were talking to a fantastic contributor, well, Katie Hessel, I should say, and her book is called The Story of Art Without Men. And, well, we're about to hear, we will hear the interview, won't we? So we don't need to talk too much more about it. But there was a point when I was trying to ask a question with my sort of BBC balance head on, wondering whether, because men don't just dominate the world of art,

they stand astride it in a way that is ridiculous when you actually think about it. So I was just trying to put into words, could there possibly be a reason that they overachieve in art? Might there be a possibility? I'm struggling to explain. They might be better at art. Honestly, you never, you never stop surprising me.

Because as you started on your question, I just thought, what's going on here? We're approaching the crossroads, we haven't signalled the light's on red we're going to go over it, no we're not breaking, what's going to happen? It's a plain fact that there are more men clustered

in the overachievers section of our global life, aren't there? Yes. And that is quite possibly because, yes, they've had more opportunities. They've had more time to do stuff, to invent stuff, to... I'm thinking, you know, all the space pioneers. There isn't a woman amongst them, the trillionaires

who are dictating the future of space travel and all the rest of it. Anyway, I wish you hadn't asked me that question. No, no, no. No, it's just funny. It's just funny because I could see you heading towards it. I was losing faith in my question even before I started. You just don't need to ask that. It's fine.

We know. I think when I took it home with me last night, if I could be really honest, I think when I took it home with me last night, if I could be really honest, I thought I'll read bits and pieces of it because just the title suggests a thesis and I kind of agree with it and that'll be that. But I found myself completely lost in it because there are just so many examples of really, really brilliant female artists and crafters. Yes, I must admit, in other places I've worked, we did spend time, and I always thought it was really valuable time, talking about women and craft. And there is a whole world of achievement out there, which goes not entirely uncelebrated, but women who quilt.

I think you mentioned quilting. And then there's the incredible and funny world of guerrilla knitting. Women who just make this extraordinary stuff, some of which ends up on the top of post boxes and all that kind of thing. I love that. It's so creative. It's such fun. And it harms absolutely nobody. I suppose if you're going to get, I suppose the sheep have given of themselves. Oh, no, I don't. I think even the sheep say it's fine. But things like pottery and they're all sort of somewhat dismissed by some snooty ignoramuses

because it tends to be women who succeed in those worlds. But they're very, very important worlds. And Britain, again, punches above its weight in that sort of thing as well. We're really good at it. I tried going to a quilt- making class when i was in america i had a brief attempt at living in manhattan which went very badly wrong i thought me and manhattan just didn't get along at all why not um oh do you know what okay serious answer uh i just it was the wrong time in my life to go i went in my early 30s and i think if i'd gone

maybe about five years earlier i would have enjoyed it but I just found it very lonely it's quite a busy city and I've gone there to write a book and I think you need to be part of something else when you're writing a book because your days are quite long trying to drag something out of your head you know on your own so I just didn't I didn't enjoy it but I did join lots of classes for exactly that reason. So I did stitch and bitch on the Upper East Side with my friend Rachel, which was hilarious because it was just lots of people really, really bitching. There's very little stitching.

It's just so much bitching. I'm not going to use the term. What did you talk about? Well, everybody just talked about, you know, people on TV that they saw. I mean, it was just, you know, it's a funny name. So what year are we in? We're in 2004.

Okay. But they also talked about all of the medications that they were taking. And we did find that quite eye-popping. I think we're much more used to being open about medication in this country now. But back then in 2004, 2004 you know literally people would have 45 minute conversations comparing the side effects of various things that they were taking and when they'd stop taking it and which bit of them had dropped off and all that kind of stuff it was fascinating my knitting remains absolutely rubbish yes but my bitching is great yes but i did quilting

as well and i was just amazed by the standard of quilting i I thought it was, you know, I was going to kind of just enjoy doing a bit of patchwork, but it's just so much more than that. And as a result, I did give up after about six weeks because I wasn't on the same kind of level as the quilters who were there. Beautiful, beautiful works of art. In all the films, when a British woman goes to live in Manhattan, she, you know, there's some early, and quite early in her stay, romantic encounter. Yeah. Or there's a sort of ditzy incident that leads indirectly or directly to the love of her life holding interview.

Or somebody just talks incessantly about your gorgeous accent. Did any of those things happen? No, not really. I mean, there's a lot of accent picking up, you know, going on. I think the first time that I asked for a coffee, the guy in the coffee shop just kept on asking me to repeat coffee and just laughing inanely at the way I said coffee. New York is you think it's a place where you're going to make stories because you're drawn by the stories but I think it's very hard to make your stories there Dolly Alderton has written

exactly the same kind of experience of Manhattan in her latest drama hasn't she oh yes in everything I know about love yes oh yes I've forgotten about that bit there is that bit isn't there so the expectation is high my reality was low lots of other people absolutely love it and I think if I'd gone there in my 20s maybe i would have done but no i scuttled

home very happily bearing a patchwork quilt that my mum now has in oh so you did make a whole but it's patchwork it's not quilting it's patchwork there is a difference oh is that oh sorry right okay oh well that's um that's very interesting it very interesting. It's not a long way from a conversation about art. So perhaps we'll get into that now. Why don't you introduce the interview? Oh, OK. So the historian Katie Hessel came in to talk about her book, The Story of Art with Ant-Man.

And, OK, that's not going to work. So it's, again, it's happened again. Her first answer is not going to work. So again, it's happened again. Her first answer is not going to work with the question Anousheh began by walking us through the moment he was captured. No, it's not, is it? It's really not. But it could be very confusing for the listener, Ben. Katie has not been captured.

Because her answer is about being at an art fair in October 2015. But as far as we know know she went there of her own volition and she came out alive so we'll keep that bit in but note to self Ben. So she started by talking about an art fair she'd been to in October 2015 where she noticed something extraordinary. something extraordinary. So I was 21 years old. I'd just finished my BA at UCL, studying art history.

And I walked into an art fair and out of the thousands of artworks in front of me, I suddenly had this literal epiphany that none of these works were by women artists. And then I asked myself, could I name 20 women artists off the top of my head?

And the answer was no. So I literally went home that night, couldn't sleep and opened up Instagram as every 21 year old does, typed in the words women artists and nothing appeared. So I started an Instagram account and I've been doing it pretty much every single day for seven and a half years. And it's grown into this book, The Story of Art Without Men. So that is astonishing that as somebody who had actually made a study of this, you still couldn't find in your mind and your expertise the same number of female artists. Because where art is at the moment would suggest that an equality has been achieved. Would that be fair to say?

I think we have so much work to do. You know, when I state certain statistics like you know how many how much of the National Gallery do you think is made up of women artists oh it's a shocking statistic isn't it well I know this because I've yes because I've read the book it's it's one percent one percent exactly and the Royal Academy of Arts an incredible institution has yet to host a female artist solo exhibition in their main space Marina Abr Abramovich, you are right, yes. But when we talk about equality, there is so much work to be done. And I think especially in a subject like art, which has historically been seen as elitist, clearly it's been seen as elitist for one reason is the sense that we're very much focusing on a

certain demographic of society and we're not letting other voices in. So can we cast our mind way back because you write the book in a chronology don't you so if you take us all the way back to the renaissance and your book made me realize it was very much a renaissance for men. Can you explain a bit more about how that world might treat let's say a 20 year old talented young man and a 20 year old talented young woman? Of course. So the thing is, is that in the Renaissance, if you were a man, you could join a workshop or you could be an apprentice to an artist. You know, Michelangelo, he wasn't born rich, but he was born, people

noticed his sort of child prodigy skills, and they sent him to work with famous artists. Now, that wouldn't happen with women because they were illiterate. They were told they couldn't be artists, they couldn't be professionals. And so in order to actually bypass the norms, a woman artist actually had to have a very powerful man looking after her. You know, either her father was an artist and she could grow up in his workshop, and that's the way that she would even see artworks. Because to be a woman in the Renaissance, you weren't even allowed to go out unchaperoned. I mean, you weren't even allowed to go out unchaperoned until the end of the 19th century. So how were women able to actually sit in cathedrals, churches, galleries, and actually just look at these works and study them? And then when you, you know, think about

anatomical skill, when we look at these grand paintings, multi-figured paintings, you know, attention to anatomy is so important. And that is all from studying the nude from life. And women artists couldn't even enter the nude life room until the 1890s. And so they were completely restricted. But what's amazing is that the fact that so many women completely bypassed the norms, restricted. But what's amazing is that the fact that so many women completely bypassed the norms, jumped over all these hurdles, broke down every barrier and are still remembered. And I think it's them who we should be celebrating. Can we have some names then? Who are, I mean, Fee's already just said how incredibly inspired she was by that image that she saw in your book. It was the first time you'd seen that, wasn't it? It was, yes. Yeah. So what are the other names

and what are some of the other images that people will absolutely delight in, if only they knew about them? So if we cast your mind back to 1555, in the Renaissance chapter, I look at an artist called Sofianisba Anguissola, who's an extraordinary painter. And interestingly, her father wasn't an artist, but he was very canny and almost her PR person.

So he noticed that she had this great talent from a young age and would send her sketches off to Michelangelo and, you know, make sure the most prominent people of the day would see them. And she was a portraitist because also if women weren't allowed into the life room, they had to, you know, use what they had in front of them and they had themselves. So there's this extraordinary self-portrait with her teacher in one of the early chapters. And what she does, what we're looking at first is it looks likerait with her teacher in one of the early chapters and what she does what we're looking at first is it looks like it's her teacher painting her appearance but obviously it's her dictating

her teachers dictating her teacher dictating her appearance and she's painted herself 1.5 times as big as him uh she's got him painting the embellishment of the jacket something that an apprentice would normally do and so she's's, you know, thinking about these, switching up gender conventions so brilliantly this early on. How many of the works of art that hang in, you know, the great museums and galleries around the world under the name of a man might actually be the hand of a woman who had to sign as a man or a man took over that picture in order for the art to actually

be seen? Well, I mean, it's a great question, because this idea of misattribution is so common in art history, especially with women, of course. And so, for example, there's this great painting of this young woman from the year 1800. And it was thought that it was by Jacques-Louis David, who was the kind of most prominent neoclassical artist at the time. And the Metropolitan Museum of Art bought it for $200,000 in 1917. And, you know, everyone was calling it, you know, the greatest work of all time, you know, it was perfection, everything. And then, actually, when the decades went on, they realised it was in fact by a woman called Marie Denis-Villiers and actually what happened was art historians backtracked on there realised it wasn't much

they were like sorry this would not contain the high calibre that David would have actually I completely take back what I said so where does the perception come from that men are better artists than women could it possibly come from men i absolutely agree with you because it's about it's about who has dictated the story well okay i don't know oh gosh it's i'm gonna put myself in a rare position of speaking up for the male of the species but i don't know you just wonder whether there are extreme there are thought to be extremes aren't there there are more women sort of towards the top of the iq spectrum for example but at the very very top there are more men than women might it be possible that oh my

goodness i don't know i might i'm trying desperately to think of an explanation other than just rampant sexism that means that men have been allowed to make so much money from their art over the centuries but that's very different to them being better i suppose of course it is yeah also you've Marxism, that means that men have been allowed to make so much money from their art over the centuries. But that's very different to them being better. Of course it is. Yeah. Also, you've got to ask yourself, what does greatness even mean? Oh, well, that's another very good question. And so the thing is, is that we have been dictated this story, which is essentially the history of patriarchy instead of the history of art. Yes, you're right. Because my book takes its title from a very famous book called The Story of Art by E.H. Gombrich.

And if anyone studied art history at university, they would have been given this. It's kind of the introductory Bible to art history. And it was written in 1950, and it didn't include a single woman artist in it. See, that is just out there. Well, how many women artists were you taught in your art history degree? Zero.

You see, and that's recently. Yes, I know. I'm only 28. And that's in London in the 21st century. You did a history, art history degree, and you studied not a single female artist. I mean, it's common, but I really think in the last eight years, things have massively changed with university courses. And the attention to non-male artists, queer artists, artists of colour has really been implemented.

I mean, there is obviously so much work still to do, but I think we are seeing a huge change. Katie Hessel's book is called The Story of Art Without Men. It is fair to say, isn't it, that the depiction of women throughout the history of art can be one of us being supine, the objects of sexual desire. Given what we're talking about, the lack of women's gaze on men, that is quite a distortion, actually, isn't it? Absolutely. And it's so interesting when you actually compare these famous stories by men and by women. So, for example, you know, these biblical characters such as a Susanna. So a story called Susanna and the Elders, which is essentially these two men who try to encroach on Susanna while she's bathing semi-nude in her garden. It's repeated thousands. If you go to the Louvre, the National Gallery, anywhere, you'll see a Susanna and the Elders.

Because thousands, if you go to the Louvre, the National Gallery, anywhere, you'll see a Susanna and the Elders. And so oftentimes it's actually, you know, painted by men for the reason of it being a, you know, the sort of sexualized gaze on the semi-naked Susanna. And there's this extraordinary artist called Artemisia Dentileschi from the Baroque period who was active at the cusp of the 1600s. And she was this amazing artist. She kind of painted Judith's sort of soaring holofernes his necks off and everything and she made this extraordinary painting when she was just 17 of Susanna and the elders and for the first time in history what she did was actually focus it on Susanna's psyche and what it must have been like to be a woman in the 17th century and have these men try and sort of seduce her so this woman is sort of turning away she's not sexualized at all and it's so interesting when you have a comparison

of a very famous story by a man and a woman mimi has a question for you she asks did any women artists in history just masquerade as men gosh i mean like writers did as she points out i mean there were so the royal academy of arts was founded in 1768 and there were actually two female founding members mary mosa and angelica kaufman and but they were never sort of really properly admitted and there was an artist called laura herford uh in i think the 19th the 19th century and she was actually the first woman to be admitted as a royal academy edition um but because she put under the initials LH, and then she was kicked out because they realised that she wasn't a woman.

I'm just picking up on Fi's point about the impact of the male gaze on the way women view themselves. I think I did see one image in the book of a male nude by a female artist. I'm sure there are others. Is it commonly done? And how do male art critics view that sort of thing? I mean, the thing is, to even paint a male nude, you know, you had to have that anatomical skill. So already women were already, you know, hindered in that respect. But I'm talking contemporary artists, other contemporary artists who routinely do male nudes. I mean, there was in the 70s, I really sort of, in my 70s chapter on feminism, I really focus on what happened.

You know, how did they actually switch up painting conventions? So there's this amazing painting, I think you're referring to Sylvia Sleaze. The Man Lying. Yes, yes. So he looks like a reclining Venus. Yeah. And it's kind of, he's got these amazing hair.

I don't know why I noticed that, actually. It's very striking. It's very striking. But, you know know this was one of the first time in history that women had actually said you know what i'm going to project the female gaze yes almost onto them and similarly in that chapter we look at alice neal who was a fantastic portrait artist these really expressive works and she painted these you know men almost kind of emasculated but in a way it wasn't about sort of sexualizing and use them as a sort of commodity like um you know you know like history always has done with men uh depicting

women it was more the fact that they were almost celebrating them but also having fun with it as well yes yeah uh can we talk about some of the other people who you flag up because it's just so wonderful for them to become better known and to you know to to they're very deserving of our time actually lady butler i'd never come across before can you tell us about her absolutely so lady butler who was born elizabeth thompson um became famous because in 1874 she is she submitted this painting called the roll call to the royal academy of arts and it was a painting that was based on the Crimean War. And oftentimes with battle scenes, you know, when we think of a battle scene in our head, we think of kind of heroic men on horseback,

you know, striving out into the distance. And her painting, The Roll Call, was actually of these soldiers who were fallen. They were broken. They were exhausted. It exudes pathos, but it also exudes strength. And when it was submitted to the Royal Academy, it caused the biggest sensation the museum

had ever seen in their summer exhibition and queues um you know formed outside the gallery security was bought in Queen Victoria bought the painting it was so popular and you know this was a time when she could have become the most famous artist of her day but sort of in a classic tokenistic way she completely fell out she fell into obscurity after this but i thought that was so telling because what she has painted is is often the female experience of war which is of grief and of loss it's not the male experience you know which can be obviously incredibly painful but can also be viewed as triumphant and victorious. So the fact that people queued to see it, you know, didn't it tell them something on the spreadsheet that there was, you know, there was more in that understanding, in

that vision of the world? I also think people are hungry for these stories. And they're hungry to see something that isn't triumphant the whole time. Because as again, like you said, the women's perception of war, there's a fantastic exhibition at the Royal Academy on right now called Making Modernism, where they focus on an artist called Katja Kollwitz, who is this fantastic German expressionist working in printmaking. And she also captures grief, you know, within the First World War. So she actually concentrates on the mothers who lost their children, the children who lost their parents, you know, and actually, she was so popular in her day because people saw emotion in her work. Okay, so can we say with absolute certainty, then that women don't just paint

differently and don't just do art in a different way. They feature different subjects. It is a different gaze altogether. And that's why it's so important that it's celebrated and just included. I mean, I completely agree with you. I mean, it's interesting because how much can you say, you know, what is really the difference between any genders who paint anything? Yes, that's what I, yeah. I mean, could you, I know this is a hackney question, but could you tell that a piece of art has been done by a woman or a man?

I mean, I don't know. I just don't think you could. could you could you i don't know i do think that there is there is something i mean in this book you know i mean i'm literally in love with every single piece of work piece of work on it but i do think there is something inherently i guess i mean maybe female or feminine but in a way that it's not you know it's like i say in the book, you know, some of the artists will sort of detest the idea of me putting them in this book with women, because they were like, you know, I am an artist, I'm not a woman artist. And of course,

I agree with that. But at the same time, you know, today, the idea of being a woman is charged with power. You know, in the 50s and 60s, when the abstract expressionists like Lee Krasner and Helen Frankenthaler were working, they were, they didn't want to be seen as different from the men. But actually, you know, now it's not a derogatory term. Can we talk a bit more about posthumous reputation? Because although some of the women might have been renowned in their lifetime, it's also the tragedy is that their work is not bought. It's not valued by dealers. It doesn't go on to be hung in galleries. So actually, the tale of their reputation is not long, is it? It just goes.

It dies with them. Totally. And also, like, you know, we're saying misattribution because so much of the time in the 19th century, especially, you know, dealers would scratch out a woman's name and replace it with a man's because it was easier to sell. You know, women, if you look at auction results today, you know, the highest work to ever fetch an auction by a man is Leonardo Salvador Mundi. We don't even know if it's by Leonardo or not, which is $450 million. Whereas Georgia O'Keeffe is the highest earning woman,

obviously now dead, but her work went for $44.44 million so it's just 10 percent you know we've still got so much and the similar Jenny Savler is the highest earning living female artist and her work just went for 11 million as opposed to David Hockney's what went for it was just 11 percent of David Hockney's yeah do many female artists have muses in the same way that male artists have had oh that's such a good question. I mean, I think someone like Alice Neel, who was this incredible portrait artist whose life very much ran concurrently with the 20th century.

And what she did, she painted, you know, New York society, but she didn't sort of, she painted the glittering people like Andy Warhol, but she also painted those who were around her, like her landlord's son, her cleaners. And what she did was almost make these ordinary people her muses. And I think that's extraordinary, because actually, you see then a portrait of America. Because also, it's not just about the people who have dictated the paintings. It's also about the sitters. If we don't see people from a large

range of society, then we're just not seeing art history as a whole. I'm still absolutely incandescent with rage about the national gallery statistic and i just wonder where where is the outcry and why hasn't someone suggested that in order to mark international women's day for example uh they just take down a load of male art and replace it with female artists make it up to 50 and just for a start see if anybody notices yeah it'd be great if they did probably even better if they didn't. But why don't they just do it? It's a great idea. You should suggest it.

Just have. If only if we had a radio programme and this was going out live. I didn't realise how much I cared. The whole conversation listening to you two has made me just really passionate about this. I just think it's infuriating. And I guess we as consumers of art, because we all see it, we're complicit, aren't we? Unless we create a stink. And also, it just becomes the norm and we become accepted of this. And also, you know, it's the fact that non-male people have never really written sort

of tomes of art history. So all the books we do read are by men and they have dictated the narrative for far too long. That is the fantastic historian and just overall A1 contributor, Katie Hessel. And her book is The Story of Art Without Men. I won an award, actually, for Book of the Year from Waterstones. And actually, it's really interesting. If you're on Instagram, I'm not a massive fan of Instagram, but it's just still full of friends of mine having a better time than I think they actually have had.

Well, I cling to that belief anyway but if you want to follow you want to follow Katie on Instagram it's at the great women artists and that's where Instagram does come into its own actually um if I could take better photographs I'd do more with Instagram but I'm useless um and Katie offers a genuine service there there's something to enjoy every day on at the great women artists shall we do some emails yes okay we haven't won any prizes

for our pace well sometimes I think we go a little bit of a clippity clop and it's over far too soon can I do the one from Cher Jane and Fee hello Cher by the way. Yes, hello, hello. Cher's a long-time listener.

Once again, I write to you about the gun violence in my country. Growing up in the 70s and 80s, our kitchen had a gun cabinet in it. It wasn't locked and it was filled with loaded guns. My father was a police officer in our small rural town. He hunted rabbit and squirrel and quail, as well as taking us target shooting every now and then. We never touched those guns without him there. As a teenager, many of the pickup trucks in the parking lot at school had gun racks in the back windows with rifles in them.

Fights didn't end in shootings. No one ever had a meeting about bringing guns on school property. I don't understand when everything changed because it seems like a switch was flipped. But I know it's not that simple. I don't believe anything will ever change in my country. Evaldi, Sandy Hook and on and on and on. So our sympathies to you, Cher, but it's a good question. You know, when when did it change? When did the switch flip into what is now regarded as one of America's, I think President Obama called it an endemic, didn't he?

It's a disease in America and there just isn't anything that we can say over here, I think, that doesn't sound trite and patronising. We don't offer a solution and we send our sympathies. But we're also, we do seem to have the same end, we have this, unfortunately,

we will have the conversation we've just had now, again, a few times, I suspect, before the end of the year, won't we? And that in itself is, and I don't want poor old Cher to feel that she has to email us every time one of these god-awful things happens. But it's obviously, I mean, perhaps other contributors,

other listeners in America will contribute as well, their own experiences. But thank's obviously, I mean, perhaps other contributors, other listeners in America will contribute as well, their own experiences. But thank you very much for that. Naomi says, I've been a massive fan of you both. We don't normally read those bits out, but I enjoy your fabulous use of the English language. I'm often banking and pocketing small phrases to use myself. Jane's, you're reversing down the motorway of regret, has to win an Oscar for the most agile verbal sentence ever. Well, infuriatingly, although I'd love to take credit for that one, that was Fee.

And actually, what was the full quote? Something to do with traffic cones, because it was good. Irritatingly. God. It was in Elizabeth Day's podcast with us, wasn't it? It was in Elizabeth Day's podcast with us, wasn't it? I think I couldn't reverse more slowly down the motorway of life, picking up the cones of regret.

That's it. Brilliant. Yes, it's good. In light of this, my reason for emailing you is to ask a small favour. My 15-year-old daughter is a competitive swimmer and she has to write a 1,000-word personal reflective essay. She's chosen to do it on standing on the blocks before the start of a race and the horrific feelings that conjures up. She needs a bunch of descriptive elements in there and although what she's written so far I think is really good, I think who better than the queens of the English language to furnish her with some colourful ideas. She's also an oboist, gosh, and I love open water swimming fee, so I reckon we could be friends already. Any help gratefully received. Gosh, that's

an interesting one. I cannot think of anything more scary than those moments standing on the blocks before the start of a competitive swimming race. So what would you advise there? God, I don't know. That's quite a challenge isn't it you've got to think about things like adrenaline tension a degree of excitement as well um the um your your muscles how would your muscles be would they be getting taught would they be would you be trying to relax them would you be shuffling your shoulders around? All of that sort of stuff. That's the moment where everything just stands still isn't it? It's actually a fraction of a second when everybody isn't exactly the same. Everyone is silent in the swimming pool. Yeah, the same place in their heads. That's quite a

mesmerizing moment isn't it? Oh I don't know I'm gonna have to think about that a little bit. Off the top of my head I can't add any words of great kind of challenging wisdom to that. I would say, if it helps you or your daughter in any way, Naomi, that sort of very special pause, that sort of very special silence that surrounds an event about to happen. Do you know what I mean? Because then they all splash into the water, and novices like us can't tell who's splashed first and who hasn't.

But it must be incredibly tense. That's such a good point, actually, because then, you know when the klaxon goes or a starting gun goes, because it's been so super quiet before, I always think that noise, it almost feels like it's pushing the air. Do you know what I mean? It's almost a physical thing as well as the noise. I hope this has helped.

I doubt it. I doubt it too. I'm not a swimmer, though I do, as I've mentioned before, have the bronze medal for life-saving. And I was always the kid who would sign up for the school swimming gala if somebody dropped out, but because I couldn't dive, they used to allow me to start in the water. needless to say meant i always came very firm last yes okay but it's nice that they let you join in even if you so you you didn't want to do the standing on the blocks thing

no i did i couldn't dive okay because i would just have had to have jumped straight and then pushed off i mean i was a strange child. I mean, I didn't do geography, but did go on all the geography trips. Because I didn't take up much space and I wasn't any bother. So they didn't mind. I'd always go. Do you know what you did? Tell me once that sometimes your friends would come round to ask you to play

and you'd just say, no, I'm reading a good book. That's still true. What child does that? I did. Rina says, here's a window. Oh, this is great, Rina. Thank you for this. Here's a window into my life in Berkeley, California.

Is it Berkeley or Berkeley? Berkeley, I think. Berkeley, yes, of course, where I've lived with my family for 14 years. My partner and I moved from London, and so the kids are settled, and I guess this is where we'll stay. I'm a social worker, and today's Monday, so it's my day off. After school drop-off, I did the big shop, I came home, I put away the groceries, and I did some batch cooking for the week.

Upma, which is a South Indian semolina-based savoury dish, Upma, is that right? With veggies and nuts, banana bread granola, lemon pickle and dal with spinach. Then I sorted through the kids' clothes for donation and gave the bunnies more hay. I was done five hours later and I finally took a shower and lay down on the sofa for a bit. All of the above was achieved with you both in my ears. Thanks for the company.

Driving down the hill to pick up the kids from school today, Carl the Fog hung low over the San Francisco Bay and the Golden Gate Bridge. I work with survivors of trafficking, mainly people from Central America, and I feel really privileged to do a job I love, surrounded by incredible people. My partner and I sometimes worry that we made a bad decision staying here, mainly because of the gun violence. But the one thing that gives me hope is my community, good people, activists and educators who love this country and work tirelessly to help others and are cultivating the California I love and the America we long for.

Rina, thank you so much for that. And I hope Cher actually has been comforted by such positivity coming your way, coming our way from you, Rina. That's a really nice email, isn't it? It's beautiful. There are two other things I love in that. I mean, what a lot you've packed in to your day off. That puts me to shame. What do you do on your days off? Oh, I don't. As I say,

I just continue to think. If you have a mind like mine, darling, there's no such thing as a day off. Okay. Well, I just, you know, whatever. I think I would do what passes for batch cooking, but I'm not nowhere near as accomplished. Sometimes, you know, I must be honest,

on a day when I don't have a lot on, there's nothing I enjoy more than the kitchen to myself and a few pretty simple things just to stick in the freezer. I actually genuinely love that. The second thing that I love about Rina's email is Carl the Fog. Pretty simple things just to stick in the freezer. Yeah. I actually genuinely love that. The second thing that I love about Rina's email is Carl the Fog. I didn't realise that in San Francisco they had a name for the fog. Yeah. And she's also doing what sounds like a really important job in that social work arena,

working with survivors of trafficking. And actually, that gives us the option to talk about Inside Job. Yes, which is a new feature on the programme. On the radio show. Where we would just like to talk to people about what their job really entails. And we started it off with a cracker today, didn't we? Well, we talked today to Eta O'Brien, who is an intimacy coordinator who advised Olivia Coleman. And she's done loads of work on all sorts of shows, notably Sex Education.

So she really does uh know her stuff but she's kind of the inventor of the intimacy guidelines yep which I'd love to read not in a kind of way but it um it would be very informative wouldn't it it would be yes do you know what I'm going home to read tonight? I dread to think. What is it? Well, it should have arrived. My copy should have arrived at home tonight. Okay. Can I set you a little challenge? So, Jane's going home to read the seminal work by Prince

Harold Spare. Could you find just two small passages... That nobody else has mentioned so far. ...to bring to the podcast tomorrow? Oh, no. And we won't give them any kind of a fanfare. We won't accompany it with a thoughtful discussion about But nobody else has mentioned it so far. To bring you to the podcast tomorrow. And we won't give them any kind of a fanfare. We won't accompany it with a thoughtful discussion about the future of the monarchy, about the difficulties of sibling rivalry,

about the nuances of a multiracial family. We will just hear two small passages about other stuff, please. Is that okay? Well, you've set me quite the task there. I might be doing batch cooking tonight instead. I could have got the audio book, but I find his voice a bit boring. Okay!

Then I could have batch cooked along with Harold, but I'm not going to get the option. Right. Lovely of you to spend time in our company. If you'd like to email us, it's. Lovely of you to spend time in our company. If you'd like to email us, it's janeandfee at times.radio. We will take emails from all over the world. I have to say there's a little bit of me that's always tickled pink that people listen in America and Australia.

It just seems terribly, terribly glamorous. And sometimes I think about that as I'm trundling home on the Jubilee line. Yes, I think sometimes we need that little injection of sunshine, don't we? Yeah, and just other people's lives. Well, I don't because I'm enormously glamorous. Do you know, it was before seven o'clock this morning, I'd already hand-washed a bra. Oh, don't start that one again. Sometimes just bank these sorts of things, people.

Right. Have a very interesting 24 hours. Just bank these sorts of things, people. Right. Have a very interesting 24 hours. We'll be back in your ears tomorrow. Good night. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts. And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can.

Monday to Thursday, three to five on Times Radio. this but live then you can monday to thursday three to five times radio yeah embrace the live radio jeopardy thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon goodbye