Woman's Hour - 50:50 Parliament. Women and wargaming. Developing language skills. Christmas social burn out.

Episode Date: December 19, 2019

Since last week's Election, a thousand women have signed up with 50:50 Parliament to register their interest in standing as an MP next time. What's inspiring them to get involved ?For the last five years, Annie Norman has been on a mission to make women more visible in the wargaming world. She tells us about the inspiration behind her latest collection of minitures.Professor Usha Goswami, an expert on children’s language development on how much babies understand, and why rhythm so important for developing language skills.And if keeping up with all the festive celebrations is getting too much, tips on how to avoid "social burnout".Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Professor Usha Goswami Guest; Annie Norman Guest; Frances Scott, Guest; Lucrece Grehoua Guest; Olivia Petter Guest; Louise Tyler.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. I'm Natalia Melman-Petrozzella, and from the BBC, this is Extreme Peak Danger. The most beautiful mountain in the world. If you die on the mountain, you stay on the mountain. This is the story of what happened when 11 climbers died on one of the world's deadliest mountains, K2. And of the risks we'll take to feel truly alive. If I tell all the details, you won't believe it anymore. Extreme. Peak danger. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast. Good morning. It's Christmas party week and you may have woken up with a hangover and are wondering how to say no to the next set of invitations. How best to deal with the burnout caused by an overactive festive social life. An award for research into how children develop language and why some suffer from dyslexia. Professor Usha Goswami is director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education. And the kind of war game where you move miniature figures around a board. Ali Norman has introduced some female miniatures who might have served in World War II.

Now, the MPs who won seats in last week's election have been signing up to Parliament in the past couple of days, and 220 of them are women. A record number of female MPs, but still a long way from equal numbers of men and women. It's 34% female and 66% male. Well, an organisation called 50-50 Parliament was launched six years ago in 2013, and they now report an influx of new members since the election. A thousand women have signed up with a clear interest in standing next time. Lucrèce Gregoire signed up during the election campaign a month ago. Frances Scott is the

founder and director of 5050. Why, Frances, do you suppose so many have been prompted to sign up with you since the election? Well, obviously, this is a time of political turmoil. And sometimes political turmoil leads to radical change. It took a world war for women to get the right to vote. And I think there's been a huge amount of discussion about politics and democracy recently. And we want to build a better democracy that draws upon the widest possible pool of talent. We want women to have equal seats and equal say. So we've launched the Ask Her to Stand and the Sign Up to Stand campaign. And as you rightly say, we've had record numbers of women signing up to stand during this election.

We, during the election, around 50 women who were standing had been inspired by our work. And actually around nine women who were elected to Parliament had been inspired by our events and got to Parliament this time. Lucrez, what made you decide to join? Well, actually, I knew about 50-50 Parliament quite a while ago. I'd seen it on Twitter, but I didn't really see myself in the Houses of Parliament. A lot of the time we see it's just very manly. And when we see it on TV, it looks extremely boring. Politics looks boring, especially as a young person. And so when I saw at 50-50 Parliament were including women and including young women

and including a diverse range of young women, I thought, wow, this is really for me and it can be for me. So I decided to sign up to stand. And ever since I've just been excited at the prospect of me standing for Parliament. But what made you decide politics might not be boring? Well, I think everybody has a politician within them because we all get anger

about something. But unfortunately, when we see it, it's all jargon. It's not words that we can understand as even just as a working class person who hasn't, you know, been to a private school and who's come from a disadvantaged background. And so I realised, you know, politics is for absolutely everybody. It's just the way that you speak about it that has to be tailored to everyone. Frances, what are you able to offer? I mean, we're talking here about young hopefuls, but I know there are some older hopefuls as well. What can you do for them? Okay, so when a woman signs up to stand with us, we are sort of putting in place a new girls network of buddies. And we're creating a personal profile for each woman with a kind of guidance notes about the steps that they need to take. And we're buddying each woman up with a buddy to effectively cheer each other along the way.

So that's the kind of support that we're offering and starting to implement. Lucrezia, there was a lot of abuse directed particularly at female MPs in the past year. Why were you not put off by the fear that's been expressed by some of those who actually stood down? Yeah, you know, I totally appreciate that it is such a harmful thing, social media trolling. But at the same time, I find that it's extremely childish, and it's nothing to do with who I am, it's just about to do, it's just about that particular person. And so I don't think that that should put me off from standing for a wider cause. And so, unfortunately, or fortunately, for me, it doesn't put me off at all.

Have you had experience of it, though? Because, I mean, even school children have had terrible experience of trolling. I have, yeah. I've had so much experience of trolling. And so for me, it's again, it's childish. It's not something, it's something I'm experienced with and it's something I can, I know how to brush off now. So... How do you brush it off? I think you just ignore it. You know, it's so frequent now that it's like,

okay, you know that these people are so low. And so for us as a generation, as a young generation, we just know that this is just a way of life for some people. And unfortunately, it's one of those things you just put aside and you just move on from. What do you do to help with this abuse question, which clearly, you know, we have had one MP, Jo Cox, who died and lots of people being threatened. Yeah, absolutely. I think this has to be taken very seriously. And obviously, it's great that the police are supporting female MPs and MPs in general. And I think we do need to call the social media companies to account, Facebook and Twitter, etc. I'm very interested by what Lucrez says.

I do think that the younger generation have kind of learned to live with it. I'm not suggesting that's good, but I think there's a sort of cultural change there. And I hope Lucrez hasn't actually received threats or vitriol since she's been part of 50-50. I think it came when she was younger. I think our kids are learning to live with it. But I have to say that Twitter has also provided us with fantastic opportunities. It was through Twitter that I met Rosie Duffield in 2015, when I was talking about 5050 at Canterbury University. And she sent me, she DM'd me via Twitter and said, Hey, can we meet

for a coffee? And we met and she was a young woman, a single mum, a teaching assistant who clearly knew a lot about politics. So I said, you know, Rosie, you should stand. And what do you know, you know, two years later, we kept in touch and she was selected and elected. And that was kind of the start of our Ask a Stand campaign. And she's now been a fantastic ambassador for our work and kind of proves that it works. Women need to be asked three times, apparently, before they will consider standing for elected office. So I'm afraid I would love people to go to our website.

If you know a woman who you think would make a good MP, ask her to stand, just click on the button. And it's not just about young women. I mean, obviously, we're delighted that we've got young women like Lucrez signing up, and it's important to get on the path as soon as possible. But we need more mothers in Parliament. We want to draw upon the widest possible pool of talent and experience. And so we would, you know, politics makes a great second career. And so we really would urge women who've had some life experience to consider this because we need women's wisdom at Westminster. You're 24. I am. I've seen pictures in the papers this morning of three of the new MPs all holding their babies as they were signing in. That's wonderful.

Stella Creasy being one of them. Absolutely. But what reaction have your peers had to your sudden enthusiasm for politics? I think that they've always known that I've had this fervour for politics, but they have never, ever seen it as a thing that would actually manifest. And so now that I'm actually doing it, they're extremely proud, but they're also extremely shocked and they don't know what to expect. I know that it's going to be, you know, a positive and a great journey. But again, because you don't see so many women at the forefront of politics, it's just something that you just, it's just something you don't see. And so, I mean, I guess I'm going to prove to them that this is something that you can do. How keen Toronto, are you on women-only shortlists? I mean, the Labour Party is now 51% female. They had such shortlists in 1997.

Well, I think throughout history, we've lived with all-male shortlists. And I think it would be to be expected, statistically, frankly, with female talent coming through, that we will get all-female shortlists. For example, Canterbury, the conservative shortlist there was all women. So I think we have to understand that, of course, sometimes in some cases, the most talented candidates might all be female. And that ain't such a surprise. I think at the very least, we ought to have 50-50 shortlists, because I think that the selection committees need to get used to seeing women on the platform. So personally, we, you know, 50 50 Parliament are not dictating the change. It's a bit like when you're setting off on a journey, you need to put your destination into the sat nav.

There are many different routes to achieve this and the parties have to decide and we're taking the only action we can with ask her to stand and sign up to stand. Now Boris Johnson has said that he's committed to bringing the Conservatives to 50-50 candidates at the next election. How likely then is it for a 50-50 Parliament to be achieved as you want it in a decade? Well, I mean, I think it is likely. You know, I think we live in an age with social media and all the technology that we have where change can happen quickly. And we need to grab this opportunity.

We need to sort of seize the moment with these wonderful women signing up to stand and support them as best we can on the way to Westminster. So we need everybody behind this. Frances Scott and Lucrez Grahoor, the best of luck to you with your potential career in politics. And thank you both very much indeed for being with us. And we'd like to hear from you. Are you likely to ask a friend to stand? You can tweet us, you can email us to get in touch.

Now, how much can a young baby understand? You talk to them, you read to them, but they have no language, so they can't respond. How do they develop language themselves, learn to read, but in some cases find it's not so easy and have dyslexia. Well, it's for studying these questions that Professor Usha Goswami has been awarded the Yidam Prize 2019 for creating a better world through education. She's director of the Centre for Neuroscience in Education. Usha, congratulations on your prize. But how young are the babies you studied? I saw one picture of one that looked maybe about four or

five months old with neuroscience things all over its head to test its brain. It's a brain imaging project. We actually start at two months. The photo I sent you was a two month old. And when they're that tiny, actually, it doesn't matter if they're asleep when we're doing the recordings, because your brain automatically processes sound even when you're asleep. So it means even in the womb, the baby can hear the sounds of the mother's voice. So how easy is it to work with babies? Fine if they're asleep, I suppose. Not so fine if they're not asleep. I would say it's much more challenging than when we work with primary school children, but it's also great fun. So the key with babies is always distraction.

So if they're not paying attention to the paradigm, we're trying to do the brain recording about we might blow some bubbles or give them five minutes off, they have something to eat, then we start again. And it's interesting, but half my research team have been on maternity leave since the project started. There's clearly something very engaging about babies that brings out our broody side. Now, you call the project the Baby Rhythm Project. Why is rhythm so important for babies to learn how to acquire language?

Rhythm is absolutely fundamental to the way the speech signal is structured. So when we're talking, we're creating a pressure wave in the air. It's like a sound wave. It comes to the brain. The brain has its own intrinsic brain rhythms or brain waves. And effectively, what happens is that through automatic synchronization processes, the brain waves at different speeds align themselves with these energy changes in the speech signal that are also occurring at different speeds. And that's how you in the speech signal that are also occurring at different speeds and that's how you process the speech signal. It's actually the most complex processing that your brain does. It's more complex than vision. So what do you see when you're

looking at this baby's brain and the parent or whoever might be saying something like a bird and the baby is picking up on the rhythm. Maybe it's a nursery rhyme they're getting. But what is the baby seeing? Because they don't know what bird is. No, they don't know what bird is. But what would be happening? So a lot of our stimuli are singing nursery rhymes because then the synchrony or the patterning is aligned very perfectly in terms of these different speeds of energy change in the signal. And from the point of view of the baby, if the brain can automatically lock on, so it's like the brainwaves are almost surfing the sound waves,

if they're doing it in temporal alignment, so they're very perfectly synchronized, then you have a very rich stimulus from which you can start picking out words and phrases because these rhythm patterns actually automatically... In English, for example, we have strong-weak rhythm patterns, mummy, daddy, baby. So once you learn that patterning, you know where a word starts. It always starts with a strong syllable. And effectively, you automatically start segmenting speech.

So those are the words that a baby is likely to speak first, is it? The first word they learn is their own name, actually. So again, as our methods get better, we keep finding that babies are doing things earlier and earlier. But certainly by four months, babies recognise their own name and they know it's salient. And then that can be a kind of anchor point in a sentence for what comes next in the phrase. So, you know, this is Donny's milk. This is Donny's milk. And then Donny knows his name and then he can pick milk and other words. What sort of communication do you recommend?

I mean, a lot of people say, oh, don't use baby talk. You know, don't say, oh, look, there's a moo cow or a wolf wolf. You know, that's a dog. You must use baby talk. Really? I think it's very interesting that we change words like dog into doggy when we're talking to babies, because, again, we're keeping this rhythm pattern going. And we've analysed the structure of baby talk and we've shown that there are a set of statistics in terms of these energy patterns which are optimised in baby talk. And we also know from studies where, so you can now put a little transmitter on the baby's bib and you can

analyse all the language input they get over, say, 24 hours or a week. And babies who hear more baby talk meet their language milestones faster. It really, really matters. Baby talk matters and actually singing matters as well because then you get this temporal alignment again of these synchronous patterns. What do you say to people? I sometimes drive around and I get really cross because I see parents coming out of school and they're picking up their older children and they've got a baby in a buggy

and they're facing away from the parent and the parent's on the phone. What's happening to that baby's development if a parent is behaving in that way? I would say it's not optimal because the brain behaves differently if you're looking at someone when you talk to them. So we know that for very young children, eye-to-eye contact and live language is very important. The TV is not going to do it for you. Having someone play you nursery rhymes on a tape deck isn't going to do it for you because we have a social brain. You have to be looking. Somehow the eye gaze, which usually is automatic when you're interacting with someone, amplifies the way the brain learns these sound patterns. What have you learned then about the causes of dyslexia which is another part of your research? Well that's what led me to the baby

work actually because I'd noticed there was a problem with speech rhythm perception in dyslexia and I wanted to know why that was happening in the brain and unfortunately what we've found in language after language is that children with dyslexia, the sort of automatic triggering cues that make your brainwaves surf the sound waves, are not working very well just at one of these speeds. But that, of course, has knock-on consequences for the way the brain represents all the different energy patterns in this rhythm structures. And since reading is basically speech written down, these speech processing problems come into play when the child learns to read. They don't stop you learning language. It's like being colourblind. You can still see. But there's aspects of the visual world like is it red or is it green that you can't really tell.

For these children with dyslexia, and this seems to be true in every language we've tested, you can't really tell is it a strong syllable or is it a weak syllable. You can't really hear these rhythm patterns and that then affects your ability to segment syllables or rhyme patterns or single letter sound correspondences. But if that's the case and rhythm is so important, why is it that a child can be dyslexic and yet be absolutely brilliant at music? Yes, so the more music training you can give the child, the better. But what you tend to find, at least anecdotally, in schools for children with dyslexia is it's very hard to have a school orchestra

because you can't be in time with the other instruments. So these energy changes that I'm talking about, they have a different shape if you're playing, say, the trumpet or the flute. And the timing is always so important, this temporal synchrony. So it's quite hard for the child playing the flute, who might be fantastic at that, but to be in time with the child playing the trumpet, who's also fantastic at that.

I know you're also trying to understand dyspraxia, which is difficulty in movement, where that's uncoordinated. What are you learning about that? Well, dyspraxia is the study that I will be funding by the Yidan Award, actually. So I haven't started with that yet. But I think speech is multimodal. So there's motor rhythm, visual rhythm, because when we're speaking, there's cues on our face to what we're saying. And then also, of course, the acoustic rhythm.

And there's a very direct link in the brain between the motor and the sound. And so I think that's why it's important when you're, say, doing nursery rhymes that you also clap them out or play drums or march along to the Grand Old Duke of York, because it's all multimodal learning for the brain, helping the precision of those rhythm patterns. So because dyspraxia often goes with spoken language problems, it could be that there's something in that motor auditory link that's atypical for these children and that's affecting the speech learning. Now you said earlier that face-to-face communication is what's really important. We know that a lot of people are using technology now, whether it's an iPad or whether it's having a story read to you on tape, as it used to be, to get you to sleep.

Are you completely dismissive of that kind of technology? It depends on your goal. So if you're listening to a story to fall asleep because it's emotionally soothing, that's very positive. But if you're saying, will that story tape help with the language learning job of the brain? It won't help as much as interacting with a live person. And I think we shouldn't get drawn away by this idea that technology is going to optimise everything for the under fives. The under fives need people talking to them, looking at them, interacting with them.

They need conversations. They need to be part of the conversation. And just briefly, to what extent does your theory about rhythm and the face-to-face communication apply in all languages? It's fundamental to all languages because we all have the same articulators. So we all make the speech signal using the same parts of our body. And that's why this amplitude modulation patterning is so important, because that's how everybody creates a sound wave of speech.

And then in different languages, it's not the slower parts of that sound wave, the speech rhythm parts, so much as the faster bits that can be different. So if you hear Chinese, it sounds very phonetically different to English, but it's still got these rhythm patterns that the brain can lock onto right at the outset of learning. So this is important in the early years. It doesn't mean that it's still important, you know, when you're 50, but if you want your system to get going in the optimal way, it's very important. Professor Usha Goswami, thank you very much for being with us and many congratulations on your award. Thank you very much. Now still to come in today's programme, new figures on the war gaming table.

The creation of female miniatures who would have been involved in the Second World War. And the fourth episode of the serial Subterranean Homesick Blues. And a little reminder of our frequent discussions containing advice for parents. There's a new article on the Women's Hour website which has seven of the best tips for parents offered on the programme throughout 2019. And don't forget, if you do miss the live programme,

you can always catch up by downloading the BBC Sounds app. So this is the time of year when you're likely to be invited out more than at any other. There'll be parties, drinks with friends, the family get-togethers over Christmas itself, and then, of course, there's New Year to come. How likely is it that you'll end up suffering from some sort of burnout because you just can't accept another invitation and then get up for work in the morning? How do you learn to simply say no? Well, Olivia Petter writes about lifestyle at The Independent. Louise Tyler is a member of the British Association of Counselling and psychotherapy. Louise, how would you describe social burnout?

Well, social burnout has similar symptoms to any kind of burnout. It's basically an emotional, physical and mental exhaustion caused by too much of anything. In this case, it's around this holiday period. It's just too much added on to the burden that many women often have you know a lot of people lots of women are operating and men as well but particularly women operating already at 100% trying to fit everything in juggle work-life balance and then this added party season just just can tip them over the edge. Olivia I know you've suffered from it. What did it feel like? Well, for me, it kind of comes about in two parts. So there's the physical symptoms.

For example, I was in bed with a throat infection all week last week after a week of too many Christmas parties. But also there is the mental and psychological side of things where you sort of just feel pressured to say yes to every single invitation and when inevitably things clash or when things just sort of become too much and you have to say no you can become riddled with guilt at the last minute so my tactic which is something I would not advise is to just send a message saying I'm not feeling up to it, turn my phone off and then sort of hide my phone under a pillow for a while until I feel a little bit better. So what sort of social life was it that brought it on?

I mean, how many parties were you being invited to and going to? And how hungover were you when you woke up in the morning? Well, I try not to drink too much at these parties during the week because obviously I have a full-time job so I'm just sort of trying to balance it out a bit but I find it really hard to say no to things because I don't want to let people down I don't want to let my friends down there's also this irrational fear I have that I think a lot of my peers have that if you don't go to this party, maybe that group of friends won't invite you to the next one, which is ridiculous. But it's sort of just a mix of office parties and, you know, catching up with old friends for drinks because a lot of people are in town this time of year that maybe aren't usually. pressure to attend everything and not just attend everything but to be on your best form and to be

really chatty and to be really effervescent and bubbly um but it's just not possible why are louise people so afraid of kind of missing out i mean i think it's not just missing out on friends and uh you know having a nice happy time but maybe if it's not just missing out on friends and, you know, having a nice, happy time. But maybe if it's a work party, meeting the right person who might help you get on. Is that what's going on as well? I think we live in a time where there's an expectation for us to be seen to be busy and productive at all times. We're not too good at doing downtime anymore. I think we've lost the ability to do downtime.

I think people also can have poor boundaries where they just, as the other caller said, aren't able to say... Olivia. Olivia, I'm sorry. As Olivia just said, aren't able to say no. And reasons such as needing to be liked, lack of assertiveness, putting others and other people first, a tendency to feel guilty for not being able to do it all.

These are all reasons why people seem to not be able to just draw the line at a certain point and say, I can't do any more. I'm just going to have to be able to say no. What is the best way to say no? I mean, Olivia has to say she's poorly or indeed be poorly. How do you say no without offending anybody? So that's a great question. So I help my clients to do something, to practice a kind of assertiveness, which I call a negative sandwich.

So that means that you say something that's kind of positive in the first place, which might be something along the lines of that drinks party or that get together sounds really great fun. And I'd absolutely love to come. However, I'll have to pass this year because, quite frankly, I'm feeling rather overwhelmed. But let's speak again in the new year and try and sort something out for perhaps in the spring when things calm down a bit. So there's a way of saying no that's easier than just feeling that you're letting people down. You're kind of acknowledging that you're really pleased to be asked and that you'd love to do something another time. But quite frankly, at the moment, you just't possibly you you just can't fit in anymore and I think that people come up with all sorts of elaborate excuses when they're not able to

go to drinks parties sometimes it's honesty is is quite frankly the best option just be honest and say sorry it's just too much for me right now how helpful is that yeah i know it's very helpful i think also it's just about trying to forward plan and not immediately saying yes to every single thing because you know there are only so many weeknights and only so many weekends in december so it's inevitable that there will be clashes and then you find yourself in a position where you've said yes to two things on the same day and my tactic is to always please both people and try and do both um but it's it's just it just ends up making you more exhausted and you never have fun at either party really because you're sort of just feeling like you're only there for a little bit of it uh so yeah i think being assertive

when you say no and just being selective is the best thing you can do really. What other practical ideas do you have Louise for trying to prevent this kind of burnout? Well look people are generally as I said on the edge of burnout a lot of the time in any case and there's very little wiggle room for something like the festive party season so I think people as Olivia said, need to identify their own physical, emotional and mental limits in general. And I think maybe use this time of year to reflect whether you're actually got more of a general sense of imbalance in your life. Do you generally spend more time exhausted with little or no time for downtime or self-care and in that case what changes could you make? So some practical ideas are that people could get used to delegating a little more. I think

sometimes we're our own worst enemies, we feel like we've got to do it all and do everything and do it perfectly but I think sometimes we might be better delegating certain things so that we do have some time for downtime and enjoyment and seeing friends. I think avoiding perfectionism, be very mindful. Are you trying to do everything perfectly? Work to, you know, perfect degree, be the perfect friend, run the perfect home, etc. Just have a little think about who you're trying to impress. Are you following your own set of values? Are you trying to live up to some kind of Instagram ideal of what the perfect Christmas should look like?

So be mindful of yourself and your limits. I think that's very key. Olivia, how true do you reckon it is that those who attend the parties and are good at circulating have more successful professional lives? I think unfortunately it's probably more true than we'd like it to be just because the people who are the ones who are you know sort of out there putting themselves out there and being really open with people and really chatty are more likely to then get to a point in a conversation where it does become about your career.

And you find out maybe you meet someone who works in a similar industry to you. And if you have the confidence to say, well, I do this, you know, maybe we can work together on a project in some capacity. It will really benefit you because, you know, you're much more likely to actually get something tangible out of a conversation than just a blank, you know, an email, a cold email or a phone call. When you actually meet someone face to face, you're more likely to have a result, I think. So Louise, the fear of missing out is real. It really is, yes. But I try and speak to my clients about JOMO, which is sometimes the joy of missing out. I agree that in a workplace

situation, you might find yourself having to or wanting to attend these kind of networking drinks type parties. And it's true that you're going to make some good connections. But I think you've just got to be overall quite mindful of your limits and work out what it is that if you if you are needing to put workplace socialising first what else can you drop so rather than having it all it's what bits can I get rid of what bits can I lose as I as I often say to my clients you do not have to do everything tonight nothing wrong Olivia with occasionally sitting home with your feet up watching the tell, right? Yes, that is definitely, I take quite a lot of joy in that. That's my plan for you for tonight. Olivia Petter and Louise Tyler, thank you very much indeed. And

again, we'd like to hear from you. How do you manage to get through these busy periods without burning out. Thank you. Now, I think most of us think that wargaming means something that happens on a computer, but no. There's a whole community of people who do their wargames on a board or a table, moving miniatures around to carry out their battles. Now, Annie Norman thought there weren't enough female figures

on the board, so she's created miniatures to represent those women who would have been active in World War II. Annie, how would you describe your form of war gaming? How does it actually work? So it's quite a broad... I've just passed you those goodies. Pass me the box of figures. I've got the box of goodies with me. It's quite a broad hobby. So you can play historically, you can play fantasy, sci-fi, so any sort of setting that you like. And I guess a good comparison would be

a cross between video games and board games. So instead of playing digitally, you've got little people that represent the people. The figures that would be in the wall. Yeah. So usually there's different scales you can play. Most common and mine are around three centimetres tall. And you get them.

Part of the hobby is the painting and assembling of them and then there's the playing part as well so some people just paint some people just collect them and what I really like about it as a hobby is that you can you can play it with people so it can be social or it can be a just a lone chill out thing as well so you can you know you can sit at home after a long day and paint some miniatures up how did you get involved with it because it does seem to be a hobby that on the whole is dominated by men um it's kind of by fluke really um when i was about 10 my mum had brought back some some magazines which were part of the so games workshop warhammer which

a lot of people might have seen the shop in the streets but not quite seen what it is they're the the massive massive company to the most well known she'd brought some of the magazines of that so I found a little bit of a flick through went oh these look cool and then it just sort of escalated from there so it's it's been part of most of my life, really. And then from that, I found smaller companies and different games. And once you learn how many, there's probably hundreds or thousands of small companies like myself. Now, I have in my hand a little round piece of land with grass on it. And there are one, two, three, four, five women who I suspect are land girls.

They sure are. Why did you decide to make a group of land girls? I've made so many land girls. I'm really, really happy about it. So there's not so much representation of women in the historical war games. So that's a huge... The historical is the most exciting part for me. So I wanted to represent them and not just,

even though the games are built around combat, I wanted to also include civilian types and people that are relatable to every day. So my nan was in the land army and I really wanted to, and it was something that's always been of interest to me. So to be able to represent that and have people have those on the battlefield, or even in the scenery. So yeah, some people just do them as a hobby

just to build the little scenes because it's really fun learning how to paint, developing your hobby skills with that too. Looking through this box of lovely little figures, there is an incredible mixture. There's an American Indian woman here, I think. She's from feudal Japan. Oh, she's Japanese.

She's got lots of beads and things on. And an amazing hairdo with her hair tied up in a top knot. And who is this one? This one is a woman in a flowery skirt and a jumper. And she looks English to me. She's quite chubby. And she's got a gun in her hand, held high. Who is she?

She has been the most talked about in the green room just now. She's a non-named civilian. So I've packs of just everyday people as well as well-known, not celebrities, women of history. She's part of a women's home defence gang that I have. And the idea is that that particular pack, they have improvised weapons because perhaps when you're playing a game, you could have a scenario such as a German plane's gone down

and it's just the ladies in the village that are left to sort of go and investigate. So they've grabbed whatever they can find and that one hasn't put a cup of tea down either because it's very important to have your cup of tea and and this one um has a shield over her left arm and a sword held high who's she she's one of the shield maidens which is one of the larger rangers that we do and that was what got me to start the company in the first place so i went to play some dark age war games for some some women and i went to the dark company in the first place. So I went to play some Dark Age war games for some women.

And I went to the dark part, not the quite dark part of the internet, but page two of Google and then page three of Google. And I couldn't find what I assumed would be really easy to find. And then over time, I thought instead of complaining about it, I could actually do something. So I set up to make female shieldmaidens and it kind of exploded from there.

So that was the very start of it. But it's brought me so much interest in all the different historical times and places that just the research to make the miniatures has just blown my mind, basically. How do you use them if you're actually playing a war game? You have to set up a whole story on your board don't you in order to use these figures? So it depends depends on the game so there's quite a lot there's some games where you'll need tons and tons of figures but

it's getting um there's a lot of games right now where you need maybe about 10 figures so it's a lot more accessible and uh it depends on the some of them have lots of complexity in the past they were very complex but there's there's a lot now where you can just dive in very simple rules and they represent your person so you can you'll roll some dice they've got stats the same as any other sort of games so you know that'll make a strength or a amount of hit points which is all similar to video games that people are familiar with. And then use tape measure and represent whatever they're doing. So they could be fighting, but there's also games where you're collecting treasure or there's a baggage train that you need to go and get the baggage from.

So there's just a whole world of possibilities. Now, these ones that I'm handling, they're quite heavy. They're manufactured, aren't they? But how do you make them the original piece? So the original sculpture, there's a lot of digital now, but I still use mostly traditional methods. So I have a team of sculptors. I'd like to mention Alan Marsh because he's done most of the ones you've got here he's excellent but they sculpt them actual size so that small in green putty they're then cast up into variety of materials

so I use metal as well as resin and then some of the larger companies will use plastic the same way as Airfix kits and then you can make as many as possible Are they hand painted? They are yes same way as airfix kits and then you can make as many as as many as possible as many as possible are they hand painted they are yes um they're all painted by john morris who is excellent and listening so how does the community the war game community like your miniature females it's gone down a treat i was very unsure at the start because some people were

saying, well, it doesn't exist because it doesn't work and people don't want it. So I decided to take that risk myself of delving into it. I expected some uptake and I thought, well, if it all goes to pot, I've got some shield maidens that I can use for my games, but it's just exploded. And the diversity of the people that like them has been really, really encouraging. Negative responses? Men saying, stop these women getting into our game. There was a bit at the start. There still is. I liked what Lucrez said at the start about the trolls and just ignoring them. And that was a really good point about it's it's about them so it took a while to toughen up to it to be fair but no it's um it's just gone down a treat and i love it it gives me a lot of faith in humanity

i must mention that what is what looks to me like a wild boar yes and there's a horse and is the horse a girl um i don't know to be honest there's no evidence underneath to tell us what it might be they're parts of the the other ones in there so the boar is hildsvini who is um the boar of freya so she i've got the norse goddess freya in the box and the horse belongs to Queen Elizabeth I, who is delivering her Tilbury speech. And this is she? Yeah, there's her on foot and there's also one that sits on the back of

the horse as well. I'm so glad you've included Queen Elizabeth I and the Tilbury speech. And what's this? That's one of my hair clips that I took out. And as we were going in, I said, Jenny's going to pick that up wondering what it is. And she did.

And I'm sorry. I now hold Queen Elizabeth I in my hand and put her close to her white horse, who is dressed in red. Yes. Very regal. Beautiful. She's one of my favourite characters i have to say she's all mine

as well i'm very pleased that you've got her in there annie norman absolutely fascinating thank you very much thank you so much for being with us i was talking to annie norman uh we had lots of response from you on the 50 50 parliament sarah payne said in an email, I decided recently that I wanted to get involved in politics. I became totally fed up about a year ago and decided I wanted to do something about it. Over the last few weeks, I've done my utmost to get involved in as much campaigning as possible. The general election has given me a great chance to learn and experience this aspect of politics. Realistically, I think it could take me 10 years to even get a reasonable chance at standing for a winnable seat, but I am not

deterred. I intend to get involved in local issues and try and make a difference in the issues I'm passionate about. And then on Professor Usha Goswami, Richard Jackson said on Twitter, what a fascinating study. It's not a secret that Christmas comes at the same time each year. And if you don't want to go out, just say no. It's not difficult. You won't lose friends or be thought less of. And if you aren't invited again, then, well, what a relief. Do join me for tomorrow's programme when I'll be talking to two eminent women, now in their 80s, Marlena Hobsbawm and Ursula Owen. They've recently published their memoirs. Both were born to Jewish families who left Vienna and Berlin respectively

and settled in England before the Second World War. Why a memoir now? Join me tomorrow, two minutes past ten if you can. Until then, bye-bye. Henry Akeley disappeared from his home on the edge of Rendlesham Forest somewhere around the end of June 2019. They come every night now. The police don't believe me. Please, I just need you to get in touch. What we uncovered is a mystery that has sent us deep into England's past. To an area steeped in witchcraft, the occult, secret government operations. Now we have multiple sites of five lights with a similar shape.

And something that might indeed be altogether otherworldly. This is The Whisperer in Darkness. Available now on BBC Sounds. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know.

It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.