Off Air... with Jane and Fi - Spiritual blockages

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

Jane and Fi discuss whether they would stuff their cats, and reflect on some sad aquariums and zoos. They also reveal the next book for their book club!Follow us on Instagram! @janeandfiIf you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail].  Assistant Producers: Megan McElroyTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, welcome to Off Air, which is going to be slightly shorter than your usual dollop because our guest today was the gender activist and author Gina Martin, who for quite complicated reasons didn't actually make it to the studio. So do we know what the reasons were? I think we just... Are they transport related? I think probably public transport related. Although I have to say that you'd be going some to find a location

better connected to London's public transport system than the place I currently find myself sitting. We're in a hub, Gina. We're in a hub. We're in a transport hub. We're more or less at a railway station. In fact, two. Yeah, but sometimes you can't, you're not in charge of the delays and stuff, are you?

No, no, no. So sadly, Gina Martin couldn't make it, so there's no big interview, but we've got a lot to cover, haven't we? So we'll use this as just a kind of... Well, can we start, actually? A round-up edition. Yes, let's just start with the Mel Stride. This is Britain's Work and Pension Secretary,

for those of you listening elsewhere in the world. And Melvin Stride, I'm assuming that is his name, Melvin. I think it's unlike to... It won't be Melon, will it? And it won't be Melanie. No. So we'll settle on Melvin. And he is... It's a good name, that Mel Stride. He's in his early 60s. I did check this.

And he is work and pension secretary, I think. And he said today that it would be a jolly good idea if some of Britain's economically inactive over 50s got out there and did a job with, for example, Deliveroo. Or an Amazon driver. Yes. In other words, plunged into the gig economy and earned a living that way. And, of course, there is absolutely nothing wrong with doing so.

I would just venture to suggest that it's a bit of a tough call on people in the later stages of their working life. But there was something else as well which you found, on people in the later stages of their working life. But there was something else as well which you found, this business about how you should avoid political conversations. What is this? So this was just further to the basic announcement where Stride urged employers to give older workers greater flexibility to attract them back to the workplace

and suggested that companies should avoid getting dragged into political debates to make older workers feel at home. And I just couldn't feel more patronised than when I read that because it's basically saying, you know, don't mention the war. Don't mention anything to do with pronouns, to do with gender, to do with any ism at all. Just don't mention it because the old people won't understand and it'll cause terrible controversy in your workplace.

And that's not fair, Jane. No, it isn't. It's not fair on anybody, is it? No, it's making loads and loads of assumptions about how older people think and how younger people think. And I just thought it was just a really, just a daft thing to say. Well, you were there, was it yesterday, where we had a really interesting conversation in the office?

Because we've said before that we are a lot older than the people we work with now. Quite often we are twice the age of people we work alongside. But I'm really enjoying that aspect of the whole side of being here. It's actually really nice. But but everybody was talking yesterday, not for you, about the size of their student loans. And, you know, I'm not going to break any confidences, but there's some astonishing sums of money. And I know people say, well, it's not really a debt and you need to think of it in another way and blah, blah, blah. And I get all that. But it's just that it really does strike me and I don't think about it often enough that those of us who went to university in the

1980s and left with our in my case lacklustre degree in English I've never really in financial terms I've never thought about it again and that was looking back an immense privilege. So are you saying that you are valuing the insight into a different generation? That's what I mean. Shoves your own thoughts around. Yeah, absolutely. Just makes you reconsider some of, I mean, it was, there were some things that were a lot worse in the 1980s, particularly for women. But I definitely think that there are things that we took for granted that are now not available to today's younger people. Like buying a home, all that stuff.

This notion of not talking about things just in case it gets a little bit frisky is really ridiculous because it was always the case in the workplace. When I first started work in my 20s, which was in a kind of archive department of the BBC. So first kind of proper job, not all the temp jobs I did and stuff. It was run by people who were in their 50s and 60s. There were a whole bunch of us who had either just left university or actually still studying

or weren't going to go to university at all. So we were half their age. They had different viewpoints to us, but there was no friction. There wasn't an assumption that they shouldn't talk about anything that we would want to talk about in case it all went off. So I just don't think that's particularly good advice. And also, if you are going to make that assumption about there being an enormous generational divide at the moment, then perhaps say something a little bit more helpful about it. Not just, you know, try not to go there because it's really difficult. If it's within your brief to try and get, you know, older people back into the workforce and you see that as being a problem, maybe have a solution to it, mate.

V was saying earlier that it all just feels a little bit too close to the end of term here. It's very end of term. People will be bringing games in, I think, next week. I'm going to come in my own clothes next week. Your own clothes? Well, that is unusual. I'll bring in Kaplunk on Monday. What are you bringing in on Tuesday?

Mousetrap? No, I think I will be bringing in what was that fantastic one where you had to spin the man in the magnet? Action Man. We didn't have that up north. No, did you not? No. Oh, someone will be able to tell.

So you put the bloke in the middle. It was a magnetic device and you had to see where... Was it definitely a bloke? Yep, it was. And you had to see where his kind of magnetic north took him and then you answered a question. I'm pretty sure it was called something to do with action. Anyway, yeah, we'll be bringing in all of those

and I'll be bringing in some flowers for the teacher and then we'll be saying goodbye, clearing out our lockers. Yeah, but not, we should say, we've got two more weeks at work yet. Yeah, I think we've gone a bit too soon. Something I discovered today is the length of a red panda pregnancy A mere three months How did they make them in that time? Did they come out quite big?

Well, no, 114 grams these were And that's each, and there were two of them because they're twins So I'm going to say I think that's on the small side That's actually tiny, I'm so sorry That's absolutely minute But three months, I mean I could do that I could feel as though I could do that again Just three months of pregnancy Nine months is just cruel And it's actually. But three months, I mean, I could do that. I could feel as though I could do that again,

just three months of pregnancy. Nine months is just cruel. And it's actually longer than nine months, isn't it? Isn't there another week they tag on at the end and don't tell you about? I think it is longer than nine months. But maybe that's deliberate, because otherwise we would all just be popping out too many. Well, yeah, OK, if you say so.

I think I have put that behind me now as i say i've lost the baby weight and i'm moving on with my life right um we are still enjoying your stories of terrible family holidays uh because it's great we don't really some people have got the wrong idea and are telling us about good no we don't have any holidays no well we i will be nice and read one of them out but or at least reference it but this is from a listener who says that she's been heartened to hear about the nightmare summer family holidays of old. I'm currently reeling at my desk with the apocalyptic rain outside and our recent trip to France with friends. Thankfully, slowly distancing in my mind. It seemed like a nice idea when we were asked to join a year

prior to the actual event. I would have accepted an invitation to the moon at that point, so entrenched was I in babydom and wrangling a school-aged child. Key highlights from our week include me driving around a French town for over two hours trying to find parking to no avail, culminating in clipping the wing mirror of another woman's adjacent vehicle, at which point I promptly burst into tears, complained about my husband who'd been ejected from the car, together with my elder child to join the other family who had somewhat smugly found parking. The other driver's response to my moment of weakness was simply, oh la la. I can't actually

believe that. That's what this French person came up with. Other highlights include in no particular order traipsing up and down an A road where our villa was located to get anywhere accompanied by said friend chiming how she thought the location was wonderful as we had proximity to the airport booked by her to curtail driving time to and from the airport in order to assuage her car-sick children, vomiting after a booze-fuelled evening of wine and my husband nonchalantly bringing me a bit of mouldy bread and visiting a questionable Museum des Oceans, a somewhat brutalist building made even more austere in the sodden rain. My husband remarked it was delightful. I then disappeared around dark corners

of various maritime paraphernalia to weep. Okay, I'm just going to say there are some truly dire attractions, not just in France, although I have memories of aquariums in France. I'm just going to say there are some truly dire attractions, not just in France, although I have memories of aquariums in France on really, really wet days. And there's also a really sad zoo near a holiday location I went to once. terrible museums aren't there which i think often uh the the kind of the warning exhibit is the very badly done taxidermy exhibit so we used to go to a museum all of the time up glen esk in squabland glen esk okay and it featured an awful lot of mannequins wearing kind of old dress which just looked musty and horrible and just so many stuffed stoats weasels eagles or you know all the kind of glassy eye are falling out and raggedy fur nasty untrimmed claws i mean taxidermy is an art isn't it yeah but this was like my first taxidermy and it ended up in a museum.

It was just, I have just actually properly terrifying memories. I suppose also because when you're small, you're kind of at that height, aren't you? You're just looking straight into a badly stuffed weasel's eye. Taxidermy, I've got a feeling we haven't disappeared down that cul-de-sac. So if anybody knows anything about taxidermy, I mean, as V said, when you see taxidermy done badly, you know that it's very much a skill that needs to be acquired over, I imagine, many, many years. Isn't there a place, I'm pointing, isn't there a place in North London? I'm going to say in Islington. It's on the corner of Upper Street and Cross Street. That's right. And what do they sell there? Well, so it's a shop that has got some extraordinary taxidermy

in. I believe that the owner may have not had the licence for some of the animals in it. It's been a contentious shop for a very long time. But for a while there was a polar bear standing on his hind legs. Oh, good Lord. I mean, all kinds of things. It looks like a miniature zoo in there. But me and my kids, we had to walk past it very, very fast always because it is really terrifying. Taxidermy gives me the creeps, I would just say that.

And because they're just always, well, I mean, you just, for obvious reasons, you haven't caught the animal dying happy. I mean, they're all really unhappy when they die. And it shows, Jane. Yes, but I think some people do have their much-loved pet stuffed, don't they? Could you stuff Dora? Listen, when she has a go at me, she has a particular issue with flip-flops, that animal.

If she spots bare feet in flip-flops, that's it. Is she better with Birkensocks? Marginally. But seriously, would you have her stuffed when her time is gone? No, I wouldn't. I don't want to talk about it, but the idea of her time being gone is simply too difficult to contemplate. She's only three.

Oh, it was her birthday last week. Oh, my word. Did you give her a present? No, I didn't even remember until just now. Not even a tiny dreamy? Well, she's on a... She has to have... You can only have...

I looked on the packet. Is it 12 dreamies a day? Maximum. Okay, what happens if you have 13? Well, who knows? She could become even more demonic. She's currently demolishing a cheese-flavoured bag of dreamies. You turn into Night Mary.

Yeah. Good morning, Fee and Jane. Love you, Pod. I was listening to your email of the family that holiday together, which reminded me of a holiday I had with my in-laws 20 years ago. We all went down to Cornwall, my husband and I, and my one-year-old baby being a first-time mum. I was being over-the-top with organic this and hummus that.

My mother-in-law, on our unpacking of food, said I've bought the baby some Tropicana orange juice. I replied thinking she would be impressed. Oh, I've bought my juicer and oranges. Anyway, I thought we had a nice day together until we all went to bed in this very old cottage. My in-laws slept downstairs underneath our bedroom and when my husband and I switched the light off

through the gaps in the floorboards, we heard for the next hour my mother-in-law slagging me off. We heard, who does she think she is? And don't get me started on that bloody dirty juicer. With my father-in-law replying, oh yes, I know, from time to time. I was upset as I thought we'd had a nice day. In the morning I did check the juicer, which did have a dirty wire,

which was given a good clean. My husband did speak with his mum, who denied the slagging off session, to which my husband replied, we heard every word. Anyway, we all put it behind us. How? No, you didn't.

How did you put that behind you? And did have a lovely day of the week. Never use the juicer on said holiday. I think you just mean lovely week. 20 years on, both in-laws have passed away, but the memory just makes me giggle. We did go on more holidays with them, which were all lovely. They always paid for them. And I learned to let my mum-in-law take the lead and kept my gob shut at the appropriate times. Well, you're a very nice person. You are. I'll leave you anonymous because I think she comes out of it badly. You come out of it well.

And how kind of you to let her take the lead. And I'm very glad, though, that your husband stood up for you and had a word with her. Not always a given. No, not. No. And it is interesting, isn't it? I hate to say this, but I do think, generally speaking,

the sort of conflict is between women in those domestic settings. Is that fair? Well, I think there's quite often a territorial thing going down. If you have, let's be honest, if you have a heterosexual couple and you have the mum, the mother-in-law... Yes, there is a set dynamic there, isn't there? Yeah, and there's a mother-hen thing, isn't there? And you can't mother a mother-hen.

But you can also... The daughter-in-law can often forge quite a useful union with her father-in-law. Careful now. No, I didn't mean that. I mean, you know, like an alliance. You've got a little bit the young and the restless, I think. I think it must be a bloody joke. Oh, God., like an alliance. You've got a little bit the young and the restless, I think. I think it must be bloody true. Oh, God. Oh, come on, you must have thought about it. No, I haven't.

Juliet, my husband's Australian. His entire family live in Australia, so we don't see them very often. Now, isn't that handy? Our first holiday is a whole family, parents-in-law, both 80, two sisters-in-law, one with three children, the other with four, my husband and I and his two boys, we all stayed in the same house, a beautiful place on the Gold Coast. Now, we don't see each other very often and the sisters wanted to spend as much time with their brother as possible. He's the oldest and very much the golden child. I wasn't so keen to spend my entire holiday with all of them, so that did cause some friction. My husband and I wanted to book trips to the Barrier Reef and another island with a beautiful beach,

and he said, well, let's wait to ask everyone else what they want to do. But I refused and booked it anyway. The rest of the family were then so desperate to book it at the same time as us, which did in fact happen and wasn't all that bad. But the main issues were the same as many other people have mentioned. The dreaded dinner time when we were all together on the veranda and also observing other people's parenting. There was a great deal of tongue biting and alcohol consumption. Luckily, it was only for 10 days, by which time I was done and heartily glad to see the back of

them all um juliet says she totes loves the show you remind me so much of myself and friends when we get together i generally listen when i walk dennis my jack russell he's not so impressed if i'm honest but i'm working on him we'll try harder juliet because i think we have quite a lot of cats listening but probably not anywhere near as many jack Russells as we should have and everybody counts. I've always been rather scared of the Jack Russell. They're nippy little dogs. They're ankle biter dogs in my imagination and actually in my reality I think. I don't think I've ever been close to a Jack Russell. Have you not? No. Wasn't there an England cricketer called Jack Russell? Quite possibly. Yeah I not? No. Wasn't there an England cricketer called Jack Russell?

Quite possibly. Yeah, I think there was. If my memory serves me right, he was a wicketkeeper who also painted. This is intriguing from Diana, who says, thank you for your book club pod.

I don't know whether to read the book or not. Am I more like Fee or Jane? It's like a thesis, that one. My suggestion for your next read is Ferdinand Mount's 2020 book, Kiss Myself, Goodbye, The Many Lives of Aunt Munker.

Wait, wait, wait. It's an extraordinary tale and true, although that's hard to believe. If I listed what it includes, you'd be amazed, but then those would be spoilers. But it does include the tragic story of David Dimbleby's lost great love.

I know. I inaugurated a book club last year and chose this as our first book. It divided the group. One woman hated it and couldn't finish it, although the rest of us loved it. Well, Diana, our book club choice is coming up right at the end of this podcast edition. Yes, we will do that.

We were talking about alcohol and not drinking as a student and how difficult it could be. This correspondent says my 20 year old daughter can't drink because of a chronic disease, in her case, chronic pancreatitis. And it was really hard for her to accept this as a student. I'm not at all surprised to hear that. However, her last drink, two vodkas on holiday in Spain, resulted in 10 days in agony in hospital and then an emergency repatriation. I really feel for her because so much of youth culture is focused around drinking and most people don't understand why she doesn't drink and have never heard of her problem. I was equally guilty of that as her father who died a couple of years ago. He had the same problem and I thought he was being OTT. So obsessed was he about never touching a drop of alcohol. We do need more tolerance of people who don't want to or can't for whatever reason drink.

By the way I'm English but I've lived in France for 24 years and I'm addicted to your podcast. I love it. And it really helps in dark times when my daughter hasn't been well. I've also read all of Valerie Perrin's books in French and I love them all. Sorry, Jane. We'll keep you anonymous, as I said. Thank you very much for that email. I'm really sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope she's doing OK at the moment. That was the great thing about Valerie Perrin. You're right, I really couldn't stand the book, but I totally appreciate that other people loved it.

How kind of you. We'll let Valerie know. That's me. I'm big-hearted. I can't help it, Fee. I hope Valerie wasn't listening to that. No, I actually hope she wasn't. She might be a vendetta sort of a friend.

No, she won't. Because you were really nice about it and so were lots of other people. I stepped in. Actually, I didn't have to because I genuinely loved it. Hi, Jane and Fee. On the subject of Jane's inability to burp,

my partner had the same problem. His mother believes it to be a spiritual blockage. Yes, well, I'm going with this. I think it goes without saying that we haven't planned any family holidays together any time soon after the pet says Sarah. I love the idea that because you can't have a really good fart, you've got some kind of a terrible spiritual blockage.

Oh, Lordy. There might come a day where, like the poor person who ended up in an ambulance being rushed to hospital, all of your spirituality comes out, Jane, and I don't want to be there. Actually, you mentioned that, and I'm going to bring in Marion, who says, here's a lovely turn around following a listener's story about an ambulance rushing her friend, I think friend, to hospital with a suspected emergency, only to find that the ailment was nothing more than a case of trapped wind. We did do that, you're right, resulting in a fart on the examination table. Fantastic. That alone really tickled me, says Marion, plus hearing that the listener now thinks of that story whenever she

hears an ambulance siren. This is a real bonus for me as a couple of years ago we had an unsettling medical experience in the family requiring an ambulance. And since then I have flinched whenever one passes, but not this morning. As I was out walking, an ambulance passed with siren blaring and I too smiled to myself, recalling the fart story. So there we go. That's public service. It is. So, you know, jobs done, really, for this week. We've helped transform the triggering experience of an ambulance going past. And it's funny that our correspondent said that, because I did think exactly the same yesterday

as two ambulances just howled past. I mean, they just, they go at such terrifying speed in London. I really, you know, everybody just just you just hold your breath don't you until they've gone past. But I did I did think I wonder whether it's a fart and obviously it wouldn't have been. So we have got a new choice. Hang on let's do it should we do a drum roll? Enough we're not paid to do that. So we've got a new book for our book club number two, and it is... Well, apart from anything else, it's been suggested by, I think, four or five people have suggested this. The most recent recommendation is from Teresa, who is in Delhi.

Welcome, Teresa. Lovely to hear from you. Way out there in Delhi. Is that an appropriate thing to say? It is. And the book choice is going to be My Sister, the Serial Killer by Ayinkan Brathwaite. Now, the reason we've picked it is it's a paperback. My voice went croaky. It's a paperback. So you should have no trouble getting hold of it. It's relatively modern but not this year, I don't think. I think it might be the year before last. It has been sold to us as a more slight read than Valérie Perrin

because Valérie Perrin, Fresh Water for Flowers, was quite a long read. It was a good 300 or so pages, wasn't it? I think this is a shorter read. It certainly tested me. It was a good kind of 300 or so pages, wasn't it? I think this is a shorter read. It certainly tested me. And I think this book has got a great title.

There's simply no getting away from that. Superb title. My Sister, the Serial Killer is a cracking title for any book. So it is about crime, I'm told. But it doesn't have gore in it because what we'd specifically asked for were recommendations of crime fiction or a thriller that didn't have lots of gouged female bodies at the beginning and scary stuff in woods.

I mean, just don't go into the woods. Don't go into the woods, girls, ever. So, a Yinkan Brathwaite, My Sister the Serial Killer. Get reading. I hope you can find it in a library if that's where you really should find it should be able to and we're going to give that a good kind of uh five weeks actually aren't we because you're not back from your holidays your

final holidays until the second week in september so we've got a lot of time to read it teresa does say i could not be less interested in Serial Killers, but I loved it. We did it at my book club here in New Delhi. It's a great read, not gloomy. It's clever. It's unusual. I've been going around recommending it to people

who've never even heard of it. So there you go. Well, that is a superb recommendation, isn't it? Huge thanks to you, Teresa, for bothering to contact us about that. So we hope that that's a good choice for everybody. And if you don't like it, then we welcome your opinions about it too, because that's a point of book club, isn't it?

Yes. I mean, I'm not going to follow my pattern of not liking it. Well, I say pattern. I just didn't like the first one. Well, don't prejudge it. You might not like this one either. You don't have to like it. We don't have to take it in turns.

I'm just such a maverick. I just might change my mind. Oh, dear. I'm going to put you in charge of nibbles. Oh, really? Yes. It's a bit of a responsibility for me. I'm not really an organiser. It's a huge

responsibility. Well, I don't do that sort of thing. You know that you're the admin person. No, I'm not the admin person, but I am the hospitality person. I'm quite happy to take on hospitality. Okay, we'll swap then. So I'll do nibbles and I don't know what you can do. We'll find something. Provide the intellectual heft.

Of course. Your weekend homework is to make the case for taxidermy, if you're so minded, and get hold of a copy of My Sister the Serial Killer. I tell you what, on the taxidermy thing, if anyone's got photographs of bad taxidermy, we'll happily take those. Well, they're right up there with bad waxworks, aren't they? Yeah. No, they're actually funnier of bad taxidermy we'll happily take those well they're right up there with bad wax works aren't they yes no with actually they're actually funnier

okay good night everybody sleep well you did it elite listener status for you for getting through another half hour or so of our whimsical ramblings otherwise known as the hugely successful podcast off air with jane garvey and we missed the modesty class our times Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler, the podcast executive producer. It's a man. It's Henry Tribe. Yeah, he's an executive. Now, if you want even more, and let's face it, who wouldn't, then stick Times Radio on at 3 o'clock Monday until Thursday every week

and you can hear our take on the big news stories of the day as well as a genuinely interesting mix of brilliant and entertaining guests on all sorts of subjects. Thank you for bearing with us and we hope you can join us again on Off Air very soon.