Woman's Hour - Attic memories; Afghanistan; Food and climate; ME and Covid; Neanderthals

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

What should we do with all our attic memorabilia? Vicki from South Wales talks about the joy of clearing our her attic with her daughters and Maryam from Rotherham talks about her mother's suitcase brought over from Pakistan in the 1950s.The desperation of many thousands of people trying to get out of Afghanistan in the last couple of weeks has been on our screens and the front page of our newspapers for days now. Many, outside of the country, are trying to do what they can to help get their colleagues, friends, loved ones get out – as Alice Bromage, previously a Major in the UK army , told us yesterday. She talked about the Sandhurst Sisterhood, around 2500 ex-army women officers, who are constantly being messaged by women, and men, who they have trained and worked with in Afghanistan. Jude, as an ex-military officer, is one of the network. Based in Dubai, she and her husband, an ex-Royal marine of 24 years, run a small local security business in Kabul, and have done for about a decade now. What role are they playing in the ongoing evacuation?What are the best food choices to make for the environment? And can going vegetarian or vegan really help with the issue of climate change? That's what Woman's Hour listener Judith wants to know - so Sarah Bridle, physics professor at Manchester University and author of Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air is on hand with some answers! She joins Emma to crunch the numbers and give some practical advice on ways to make our breakfast, lunch and tea less harmful for the planet.About a quarter of a million people in the UK suffer from myalgic encepahalomyelitis (ME), also known as chronic fatigue syndrome. It's a condition that affects more women than men, but patients still face doubts about their symptoms and there is controversy about treatment. Since the pandemic began, as many as two million people in the UK may have long Covid, with women 1.5 times more likely to experience ongoing symptoms than men. The symptoms of long Covid range from fatigue and muscle pain to coughs and headaches and have been linked to ME. Scientists and ME/CFS patients hope that research into long Covid will be an opportunity to learn more about long term consequences of viral infections. Dr Nina Muirhead, specialist surgeon in dermatology who has ME and Dr David Strain, the British Medical Association's lead on Long Covid and medical advisor to Action for ME discuss the links between long Covid and treatment of ME/CFS.What was it like to be a Neanderthal woman? That's what listener Hannah wants to know. She emailed asking to hear from female archeologists, such as Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes, about their view on the Neanderthal female lifestyle and how it compares to our own. So, we asked Dr Rebecca Wragg Sykes to come on the programme to tell us. Did they hunt? Did they look after the children? Did they have the menopause? Her book, Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art, aims to tell a completely new story about Neanderthals.

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, I'm Emma Barnett and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to today's programme, the second day of the annual Woman's Hour Listener Week where you take charge of the programme's content. And today I can promise you everything from ham sandwiches through to rage about ME and long COVID. But due to several of you getting in touch about clearing out attics, cupboards, even whole homes, well, what else was there to do over the last 17 months for some of us? We're going to talk to two listeners who've gone about it in different ways and to hear about their emotional, funny and nostalgic journeys from clearing out their mum's things after she has died

or doing it together with older family members while they're still with us. How about you? What have you cleared out? What have you found? If you went through a family's attic or a cupboard that you'd never been in, were there some discoveries you were surprised by, moved by? Any top tips, because this is one of the questions that came in from one of your fellow listeners, about what to do with those things. Do you keep them? Do you try and do something different with them? Do you take them down the charity shop? What is it that you have done? Let's get wiser together. Tell us now, 84844 on the number you need to text, on social media. You can get in touch with me via at BBC Women's Hour, or you can email through our website. We're coming to that

discussion very shortly, so I'd love to hear from you in advance of that with your tips and experiences. You've also continued getting in touch about the plight of Afghan women and girls and wanting to know how you can help and how others are helping too. The US President Joe Biden is understood to be deciding within the next 24 hours whether to extend the amount of time

US troops stay in Afghanistan. A G7 summit hosted by Boris Johnson today will focus on this, with America's allies putting the pressure on to delay its withdrawal in order to allow more time for evacuating those who want to flee the country. Many outside of Afghanistan are trying to do what they can to help their colleagues, friends, loved ones get out, as Alice Bromage, previously a major in the UK Army, told us yesterday. She talked about the Sandhurst sisterhood, around two and a half thousand ex-army women officers who are constantly being messaged by women and men who they trained and worked with in Afghanistan. We've now just disappeared at a very short notice with no explanation.

And that personal touch, the Female Veterans Network is trying massively. There's a lady in Afghanistan at the moment who's helping run safe hotels. I think she's got three hotels that they've put security around doing security runs to the airport. Like I say, one of my peers yesterday had two female officers from the Afghan army who'd been hiding in a sewage trench for four hours waiting for a British soldier to come on to the gate at the airport and therefore on the telephone back to the UK was able to speak to the lady who trained them and say, please confirm we are bona fide Afghan army women officers.

And the two of those ladies and their families are now in a safe house. That was Alice Bromwich talking about some of the desperate stories she and her former colleagues have been hearing from women on the ground. If you missed that interview, you can hear the full interview on BBC Sounds. But Jude, as an ex-military officer, is one of those in that network that Alice is describing. Based in Dubai, she works in the security industry herself but has been supporting evacuation efforts through her husband's company, an Afghan-based security and logistics business based out of Kabul.

Jude joins us now. Good morning. Good morning. How are you? Well, I think I should ask you that, first of all, because I can imagine it's quite an extraordinary time. It's been a tough week and quite surreal, actually. I don't think, you know, when I woke up seven days ago, I would have fully appreciated, you know, what I would have been doing and what others would have been doing, given the current situation. And what are you doing, to describe it to our listeners?

So we've got a local security company operating in Afghanistan, based out of Kabul, but reach elsewhere. And obviously, as the Taliban have moved through the provinces and into Kabul, the international security providers and expats have been forced to leave. That's left us in a very, I'd say, unique position because we're a local company, a business partner and a local influential gentleman. He was the former governor of Kunduz province and he's incredibly local influential gentleman. He was the former governor of Konduts province and he's incredibly well-networked. And what that's meant is it's allowed us to continue operating in some form,

supporting evacuations, you know, through secure transport to the airport, through provinces, to border crossings in some cases, and through, as Alice mentioned, not safe hotels as such but safe houses and where I've been perhaps able to help and I've come in in this regard is because you know we've got that international reach both through the Santa Sisterhood Network and elsewhere it's truly been overwhelming the amount of people and companies and NGOs that have been in touch

and just to give you a sense of the scale and how many you know people there are and who these people are and I made a few notes just to kind of try and get it into my head you know we're talking teachers doctors musicians and orchestral band athletes uh you know personnel that have been associated with the government vulnerable groups uh interpreters and it's it's almost easy to say who hasn't been in touch um we've been engaged from uh companies across the world germany the the US, the UK, Romania, the Ukraine, you know, people trying to help and say, what can we do? We've got this group, you know, we need to get them to the airport. They've got the paperwork. They don't know how to get there.

Can you help? And where we can, that's what we've been doing and trying to achieve over the last, you know, six, seven days in very difficult and stressful circumstances. But, you know, we're doing what we can. Do you know how many people you've actually been able to move? Honestly, I haven't sort of counted and they've been coming in through all avenues. So, you know, my husband and I, for example, we're generally fielding these calls, explaining and trying to manage expectations as well, because it's a chaotic situation. You know, we're, you know, also trying to engage, you know, with the military, with the government, with the embassy, because actually there's a disconnect between what's going on in the inside.

And you've got these troops that have flown in and have been given almost an impossible task I mean can you imagine you know secure a perimeter and process 20,000 people um you know and and a lot of these lads actually that have flown out it's they've probably not been to Afghanistan before of course the senior NCOs have but you know we've been there for 20 years so your young 17, 18, 19, 20 year old they've not been there before so we've been there for 20 years so your young 17 18 19 20 year old they've not been there before so they've been given a really tough task and they're having to concentrate very much on on the job in hand and and we on the other hand have these huge groups who are coming to us as you know unbelievable as that perhaps sounds and sort of say, can you get us there? So we're

trying to, you know, connect the dots and kind of, you know, navigate our way through this, you know, through clearing routes, engaging with the right people, making sure we can facilitate through checkpoints. And again, I think, you know, where we've been uniquely placed is that engagement that we've been able to have with certain people and the wrong people in some cases but you know we've got to do what we need to do in order to get these people out of here. I was going to say did you ever imagine you'd be in this situation with with this sort of urgency and this sort of overwhelming sense of you know just people coming at you from all directions? Well you know know, the mind kind of boggles.

You know, we had this date that, you know, people were aware of this withdrawal. And there's been a lot of, you know, talk about, you know, the investment in there, the billions of dollars and, you know, the lives lost. But to get to a point where this, you know, frantic desperation of individuals and, you know, I'm getting messages through the night, you know, from individual families, you know, here's my wife, here's my kids, passport photos, visas, you know, I worked with so and so,

can you help me? I didn't sleep last night because we had a family of athletes and I wasn't sure if they got picked up or not because, you know, we're doing what we can, but, you know, we've got people all over sort of asking for our help and we can't help everyone, you know. You know, we're doing what we can and trying to, you know, give people as clear instruction as we can as to, you know, what they should be doing. But it's a it's an incredibly tough time for them. And, you know, what's been heartwarming out of this is if you can draw any good news of what has been a desperate week is the amount of people that care.

You know, all the female veteran groups so many getting in touch but you know male former army officers ngos lawyers human rights groups you know saying you know we've got this group what can we do and people do care and i hope that message gets across to uh you know these these women and families that have had to leave, you know, leave in the most awful of circumstances. We've committed to a country and, you know, I can only imagine how abandoned, frankly, they feel. You know, we've made these promises to them and these commitments. We've drawn them out of, you know, their previous lives where, you know, women weren't being educated and asked them, you know, put yourself forward,

get out into society, engage, you know, train as a veterinarian. And I was just going to say, though, you know, because you're having this experience now and having been in the 40s, I mean, what's your reaction to this on a human level? I mean, how are you feeling? How are you you doing this week you're getting these messages through the night i i kind of i thought you would ask me that and and almost actually yesterday when i was asked to do the interview and i actually initially said i didn't want to do it it's for a couple of reasons

i think um you know at the moment i'm trying to i've kind of gone into operations mode i can sort of see that in the way you're talking. Yeah, I kind of, you know, it's not about me. It's not about how I feel, frankly. You know, let's get what we need to do done. And then I'll kind of reflect on, you know, you know, a point where we can. But, you know, my husband, I mean, he was all marines he was 24 years in the war marines um he was you know in afghanistan in 2002 i did two operational tours in helen province in the green zone and and uh in kandahar you know we we all lost friends and people we knew

um you know i was thinking very much um in the last week of my friend lisa head and she was an ammunition technical officer she was killed in april 2011 um you know and grave you know gravely injured and and we managed to kind of get her back to the uk in time for her mom and her sister to say goodbye to her but we've all got those stories um you know we we kind of fought over inches of ground in provinces where many people will never go from the uk i mean you know not many people have been to helmand and and you kind of to see you know how swift you know the taliban swept through it was kind of startling and i kind of thought you know why the Taliban swept through, it was kind of startling. And I kind of thought, you know, why am I feeling so sad last week? Which sounds rather strange, but I work in the security industry. I've been living in the Middle East and operating in all sorts of environments for many

years. And, you know, it kind of just really hit me, you know, what was this all for? Tom Turgeon, you know, he said, it's not just, you know, the military, you know, NGOs, journalists, what's been clear with the amount of people getting in touch is, you know, how integrated we've been in every level of society, it was more than just this decisive victory, you know, sort of, you know, capturing the enemy and, you know, trying to eliminate that threat, we were trying to imprint and have been, you know, values and allowing a generation of women to grow. So, you know, they're upset. But ultimately, you know, my feelings are with the Afghan people.

And if I may, I sort of, you know, thought just the other day and perhaps for some of the listeners that haven't been engaged in Afghanistan and, you know, and are thought to leave with. You know, I've got a three-year-old, I've got a seven-month-old. My parents hadn't met him and, you know, with COVID, I managed to get back to the UK a few weeks ago and, you know, it was a flight to Madrid and then on to Menorca and we stayed there and to the UK and I had the snacks packed, the water, the nappy, you know,

ready to go. A bag full of stuff to keep my toddler occupied. And I was like, oh, you know, so stressful. Can you imagine for a moment leaving your home with a bag, frightened with a three year old and a seven month baby, trying to navigate your way through Taliban checkpoints where people are firing in the air, 88 degrees heat, you know, you might get whipped, you might get sent back, you know, do you stay at home, is it better to stay at home, is it safer to stay at home, you make the decision to go and then you're stuck in this crowd, a wave of people that have been crushed to death in the hope that

you can get on an aeroplane, you know, there's been no sanitary conditions when they were stuck there for two or three days. Horrendous. And then, you know, onward to Dubai or Qatar or Bahrain to perhaps be in an air hangar for two days to be processed, to go to a country that you've never been to before with no friends and and perhaps not all of your family i can't imagine that and so as alice said yesterday you know what we need to do now is make sure that afghanistan stays on the front pages of the news that those women are not forgotten uh you know they're educated they're doctors they can contribute to our society but what we should be focusing on is ensuring that they can get back to afghanistan should they wish to and that they can make the country the place that that they you know i i've

no doubt dreamed and hoped it would be and it's been an utter and i've thought i've thought so absolutely absolutely and and there's lots of people that don't want to give that up. So I'm just hoping that, you know, that message stays, you know, you know, on point. It stays current. Well, with your help. That's why I'm very grateful. We all are that you decided to come and talk to us today and come and do this interview with me. And I know that you're busy and we're taking you away from that. But I do think actually just giving that experience and also that that viewpoint from you your time serving and who you're talking to is very important so I hope you feel it was a good

use of your time to to as you say communicate an insight to people who've never and will never go to that part of Afghanistan in their lives and see that Jude thank you very much indeed and all the best to you and then to those that you're. Jude, they're giving an insight into what you were asking more about yesterday, which was how are people helping? How can people help someone very much on the front line in a very different way to the way she had been before? And as I say, if you missed that interview yesterday, do catch back up on BBC Sounds where you could hear from Alice Bromwich,

previously a major in the UK Army, and about her tours in Afghanistan and what she's doing right now. Keep your messages coming in, of course, and one from Charlotte just to share what a completely admirable woman Jude is. Well, it is Listener Week and we are being driven by those messages and the emails and the texts and the tweets that come in. And in an email entitled, I don't know why I bother, Alyssa wrote in to Woman's Hour asking for us to talk about ME, having lived with it for 10 years. And as she put it, spent at least seven of them nagging Woman's Hour to discuss it. So we are.

And in light of long COVID too, because as she writes in her passionate email, the ME community has been flagging up the connection between what we experience, a post-viral illness which robs us of our lives, and long COVID. Even before long COVID started to emerge, the ME community was discussing the dangers of a post-viral chronic illness arising from exposure to the COVID virus. So that's from Alyssa. I certainly hope Alyssa is listening live this morning because we are listening to her. Another listener, Judith, has asked for the same discussion, suggesting a guest, which is always very helpful, Dr. Nina Muirhead, a dermatological surgeon, who, as she says, is taking a lead on educating doctors about ME. Well, I'm very happy to say Dr. Nina joins us now. She has ME herself and is a director at Doctors with ME. Our listener,

Judith, says it's also a women's issue because three out of four ME sufferers are female and women are also more likely to experience long COVID than men. And we're also joined by Dr. David Strain, who has long COVID himself, British Medical Association's lead on long COVID and medical advisor to Action for ME. So a warm welcome to both of you. Nina, if I could start with you with the absolute basics, what is ME? So ME is a complex neurological disease and it's characterised by debilitating fatigue, post-exertional malaise or symptom exacerbation after doing mental or physical tasks where for hours, days or weeks afterwards, you have multi-system symptoms, unrefreshing or disturbed sleep and cognitive impairment. But actually, the list of symptoms is endless. It involves dizziness, palpitations, fainting, chest pain, shortness of breath, hot flushes, chills, inability to do what you could normally do in the weeks or years before getting ill. You can't do it to the same level again. And most people then have to reassess what they can do in terms of their work, in terms of their social life. It is completely debilitating

for some people who end up bed bound and tube fed. And yes, and I think, you know, that range is important to communicate, isn't it? Because it can affect people in different ways and to different degrees. Is it true that you had scepticism about this before you yourself experienced it? Yes. So as an NHS doctor, I probably saw hundreds of patients with this condition before I got ill myself. And firstly, I had no empathy for how severe it was. And secondly, I didn't recognise it in many patients who presented with all of these symptoms. Having become ill myself following glandular fever, it is very obvious the symptom pattern. And the biggest gap

is in education. Doctors aren't taught to recognise this disease or even empathise with how severe it can impact the patient and their family members. Do you think that because of long COVID then, that there will be better recognition or it will lead to something positive because of that? I hope so. There are approximately an estimated quarter of a million patients with ME-CFS in the UK, and they have been treated for years with neglect and misunderstanding. And the new wave of post-viral patients with multi-system symptoms who are not wanting to be dismissed as anxious by healthcare professionals will hopefully shine a

light on the plight of all of those who've been ignored and left in darkened rooms. David, let me bring you into this. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How widely accepted is it or has it been in the past that ME is caused by viruses? Amongst those working in the CFS ME arena, it is recognised as a post-viral syndrome. One of the hallmarks of CFS and ME are that other blood tests are normal. And that has led to part of the problem that Nina was describing. Because there is this almost undying faith in existing medical technology, if tests all come back normal, then the assumption was for many in medical school that normal tests equal not a physical problem and it was easier to accept that than it was to accept the fact that we just don't have the right

test yet that we just don't fully fully understand what the body does go through during infection what it goes through in healing for the infection and what the aftermath of that healing process would be one of the advantages that we've got with seeing long covid is that all of the people who are suffering yet the two million or so that have suffered long covid have all had the same trigger and of course that's been something that's not there for cfsme there are many different viral triggers that can cause these long-term conditions that Nina described so eloquently. And just thinking about that your listener wrote about that three out of four people suffering with CFS and ME are women.

That's also the case for long COVID. We're seeing far more women with long COVID. And this is a massive disease area that actually, if it had been appropriately researched 10 to 15 years ago, when people like Nina were first getting this, we'd be a lot further ahead with long COVID today. Do we know why, David, that it's more women than men? We don't. We believe that this is an autoimmune disease. We believe that it is something to do with your body not finishing its activation against your infection. And there are many other examples of autoimmune diseases that are more prevalent in women. There are clear genetic differences that account for this. And there are diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn's disease, these sorts of

diseases that are very well recognized because we have identified the antibody that says that these are more common in women. We believe that long COVID is more prevalent in women. The great team at Imperial have demonstrated a few of the antibodies that are there. The problem with CFS and ME is because there are so many different viruses that can trigger it, it likely that there are going to be several different antibodies, autoantibodies that are created

that all give a similar effect but have a different underlying nature, which means there isn't one unique identifier across the board. Nina, just to come back to, as you're talking about this I'm aware that we're hearing chronic fatigue syndrome mentioned and ME and are they interchangeable? No most of the patients like to have this disease referred to as myalgic encephalomyelitis or

encephalopathy which reflects the neurological definition of the disease. Chronic fatigue is a real underestimate, and it often causes general public to assume that the illness is not as severe as it is. So with exercise, people with ME have reduced cardiopulmonary function, reduction in their anaerobic threshold, cognitive impairment, which is exacerbated after exercise and a prolonged recovery time and increased acidosis. Exercise makes these people sicker. So that's a distinction that we need to be very clear about because of how it affects treatment. Absolutely. It affects treatment, which is why patients report that graded exercise is making them worse.

And it is something that needs to be taught at medical school and to medical and health care professionals. Let's get on to treatments then, because new NICE guidelines, National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, that's the body responsible advising doctors on treatments, which was meant to come out last week for ME, have been delayed. It must have been called an unprecedented move. There's been serious disagreement over how to treat those with ME. David, what do you think the treatment should be or where do you come out on this? So, as Nina says, exercise makes people with this worse it does cause symptoms to get worse it takes longer for people to recover from a bout of exercise than the actual improvement in aerobic capacity that they could potentially get from that exercise

and so it has to go down this pacing route now I say this and there are some people who would suggest this is controversial there are some people who would suggest this is controversial. There are some people who would say the exercise has been the fix for them. And there are other sources of fatigue that exercise would be the source for. But as Nina says, myalgic encephalomyelitis or myelopathy, basically, that is a physical condition that means that the body doesn't respond naturally. So it has to be pacing. It has to be doing things in small batches. The analogy that we use in clinic quite regularly is that it's like having an old smartphone

that you know that the battery is going to die very, very quickly. Even if you start the day with a full battery, 20 minutes in, you could be exhausted. And if you wait until the battery is dead, if you wait until there's nothing in there, it takes much longer to reboot the phone than it does from sitting down when you're at 20 or 30%, recharging it at that point, and then going on using it. And it's this whole pacing concept but the problem is that the the research hasn't really focused on the right treatment for this disease and part of that is with the the stigma that's gone behind it is the the so-called yuppie flu as it was called in the 80s when i was in medical school and we were taught that this is a functional disease with no abnormalities

so so we need research. You need the research. Nina, what would you say in terms of that treatment question? Well, I agree completely with David. We need far more research. There are supportive treatments for symptoms, melatonin, anti-inflammatories, symptom treatment for orthostatic hypertension, pox medications medications beta blockers

evabrogen midodrine they can be really helpful for patients to get some increased function and quality of life but actually in the first place doctors have to believe the patients they have to listen to how badly they are affected, because what they see in the medical encounter is not representative of how ill that person is. Have you got hope now, Nina, if I can just cut in there for a moment, because of the long COVID elements of this, that perhaps that research will now be forthcoming and this will be taken more seriously? Because the anger in Alyssa's email was palpable. I've always had hope and I do have a lot of hope, but I think there are major, major problems and the nice delay is the tip of the iceberg. What's happened here is there has been a lack of infrastructure set up in the NHS to actually deal with these patients. They need a consultant-led

service. GPs need to be better educated and equipped to deal with day-to-day problems. Patients need regular reviews. Many of these patients have comorbidities and other autoimmune conditions or family history of autoimmune disease, which also needs dealing with separately. They can get urine infections, chest infections infections just like everybody else but often present late or delayed or don't present for cancer screening because they're too sick to attend so the whole infrastructure of the service to provide access to these patients is not well equipped. And it has come to a head over long COVID. If we'd have sorted this out, like David said, 15, 20 years ago, we wouldn't be struggling to provide a multidisciplinary team service

for long COVID patients now. Dr. Nina Muirhead, thank you. And Dr. David Strane, thank you to you. And I hope to Alyssa, to Judith and to anyone else who wrote in, because there were several of you, that perhaps goes some way to explaining how things may change and why things haven't so now and what needs to be done to move forward. A huge response coming in about the clearing out of people's belongings, often not your own, those older than you, if they've either died or you're now trying to help them in their older years, what do you do? Any tips? Let's talk about

the attic, shall we? All those cupboards stuffed full that you can't bear to open. Lots of emails have come in about family memories and artefacts found whilst clearing out the attic, all those cupboards and drawers and what to do with them when a parent or an in-law dies, we're left to sift through their belongings and ask the questions sometimes we wish we could have asked them when they were still here why did my mum keep this who are all these people in this black and white photo crucially what should i do with this stuff i'll come to some of your messages in just a moment because they're absolutely brilliant and also some of them very funny and some are very emotional but one person who got in touch and has been able to have this conversation with her daughters is Vicky Edmonds from Bridgend in South Wales. Good morning, Vicky.

Good morning. Good morning, Emma. You decided to do this now? Yes. Well, during COVID, you know, during the lockdown. Why? And tell us what you were clearing out. Well, it wasn't my idea. I was sitting there minding my own business. And my daughter said to me, she said, Mum, when you're dead, we're going to have a lot of stuff to go through in the attic. And I said, oh, lovely. I said, I think we should make a start now.

I said, oh, OK. And then she comes down with all these suitcases and black bags and filled my living room with stuff. And I thoroughly enjoyed it. And I thought, I'm glad I'm alive to see that. And I thought, more people should be alive and not dead when you go through your attic life. What did you find? Was there something that really you'd either forgotten you had or now's out on the sideboard? Oh, there's a lot.

Yeah, I have got my little tortoise that I had, a little china-coloured tortoise. What on earth that was doing in the attic? I don't know. That was very dear to me. And then, so I've got that in my bedroom now. And of course, there was a typewriter my dad gave to me when I was about 11.

Wow. Because I said I wanted to be a journalist. And he died shortly after that, actually, in a road accident. So that's very dear to me, that typewriter. But that was in the attic. Is that now downstairs? Oh, no, no, no. It's back in the attic.

Right, that's gone back up, but the tortoises live to see another day downstairs. But I also imagine there was a lot of laughter as well as some emotion. Oh, yes. Oh, loads of laughter. Oh, my goodness me. There was a dolly.

This suitcase had been shut for 24 years because it had the date on it. Closed 24 years ago. And when we opened it, there was this little scraggy-looking dolly in there. And she opened her eyes when we picked it up and my daughter said, ooh, that's the first time she's opened her eyes when we picked it up and my daughter said oh that's the

first time she's opened her eyes in 24 years and she looked dreadful dread she had terrible hair not a stitch of clothing on her she was in a terrible state well does she belong to you when you were younger no that was my oldest daughter's uh little dolly that was i don't think she even had a name but she put her in the suitcase 24 years ago, and there she was. So tell me, what have you done? That's a good example. What have you done with that doll? You know, I would imagine it's in my daughter's garage now, because I refuse to put her back in the attic. So wait, it's moved from one attic to the garage?

To my daughter's garage, yes. Have you actually got rid of anything? Oh, yes. No, we did. Yes, we did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There was, because they had the bright idea of putting some stuff on eBay. You know, an old camera went to Germany for £65.

An old, what do you call those things, organ things? Keyboards. Yes. An old, old keyboard went for over £100. And it didn't even work so it is i'm sorry it is literally cash in the attic well i suppose it well yes i suppose it was in the end i was saying i'm not throwing that out and so they said well how would you feel about putting it on ebay and i said all right because i was as they were pulling stuff out i was putting

stuff back in you know, that's the thing. That's probably the only downside of you being there is they probably can't be as ruthless about some of that stuff because you're the one that's got the sentimentality attached to it. Lovely to hear your story there, Vicky. Thank you for getting in touch and to have you on the programme. Let me bring in Mariam Shah from Rotherham in South Yorkshire. And I know, Mariam, you did this in a different way, didn't you?

Yes, I did. I've absolutely loved hearing Vicky's story. And I only wish that I could have done something similar. Unfortunately, I lost my mum and but we we also had an attic full of stuff. And over the years, it accumulated a huge amount of things. But there was one thing in particular that I remember from my childhood, and that was the suitcase of my mum. She had one of those big trunk chests. And every so often she would disappear into the attic and she would look through it. And when she came over to the 60s, in the 60s, she came over to the UK during the Commonwealth to join my dad and begin a family.

And she brought some things with her, obviously, to settle in a new place. I can only imagine what went through her mind when she was packing for this journey, because she was going to a place that she had no idea about the culture, about the place, about the weather. So it was completely unknown um so over the years my mum accumulated quite a few things that she would keep in her suitcase such as old clothes there was a there was a silk scarf my dad was in the navy and on his travels he picked up a beautiful silk scarf and she kept that uh as a you know a keepsake for many many years and there were old letters that in those days you didn't get the post as frequently as you wanted to. So when she heard of relatives passing away, especially a mother, it was about three weeks later.

So some of those letters held some really sad memories. And she kept all of that in her suitcase. Wow. It must have been really, really emotional to look kept all of that in her suitcase wow it must have been really really emotional to look through all of that and powerful yes it was and to be honest I have so many questions I wish I could have asked her um you know just just as a young woman what was she thinking that she needed to go and start off in a new country how was she going to feel about leaving her her her village my mum was quite adventurous from what she told us what I can remember she used to go horse riding she used to go fishing um they

were they lived in um in the countryside so they had access to nature and they were always doing things and it sounded so exciting and I've grown up in an urban area and have to kind of go really out of town to access those kinds of things and it was all on her doorstep so how did she how did she have the heart to leave all of that beauty because it is such a beautiful place where she lives in Kashmir where she lived in Kashmir so um so yeah I've got so many questions I would have loved to have asked her but but didn't get the chance unfortunately so I kind of envy you Vicky I think it's a wonderful thing that you've got this opportunity to spend that time with your children to go through all of this.

Because what I've done, what I've learned from this is I now keep a memory box. And as I'm going along and as I do things and I get involved in things or there's something that I can put in my memory box, I'm gathering this for my children um i have four children i'm gathering this so that when when i'm not around basically they can look in that box and see and learn more about me if i don't get the chance to tell them about it i do tell them stuff and they do see me do stuff but there'll be some things that perhaps they don't when you know obviously uh when i was a teenager and that kind of thing so so yeah i think it's well i was just going to say my room it's very poignant because obviously we were just hearing from jude right at the beginning of the show about women in Afghanistan, you know, packing a bag and leaving and what you put into that bag and trying to leave, I should say. So it's really poignant, that story that you share.

And also, you know, what those things say about you and why you choose to take what you take. What have you done with your mum's suitcase there so um a few a couple of friends and i have um we had a lot of conversations around do you remember what was in your attic and do you remember did your mum ever had you remember those big silver trunk chests and and the conversation started from there i and a close friend of mine called zainab Rasool, she came up with the idea of designing an exhibition. So I'm an oral historian. She's doing her PhD research in communities. And we've got another friend who's called Shaheen, and she is a visual artist.

She was the visual artist. So we went round and we collected lots of artifacts, as many as we could from the 60s. And what we found was there were quite a few people in the community who arrived in the same way, who migrated to the UK, who were still holding on to some of these wonderful artefacts. And a lot of people had got rid of a lot of stuff over the years because obviously they decorated and threw things out that they didn't think that they needed and that sort of thing.

So we then created an exhibition and it was called the Suitcase Exhibition. And it's to describe the journey of those women that came over in the 60s, the sacrifices that they gave, how they raised their children. And those children are now doctors, lawyers, dentists. You know, they came from rural parts of Pakistan and Kashmir, were uneducated themselves,

but have raised professional children and contributed to society so much. So we don't want to forget that. So we wanted to share that story. And it was first, the exhibition was held in a place called Wentworth House, which is in Rotherham. And it's a beautiful, great, big,

they filmed Downton Abbey there. You know, they do a lot of the period dramas. That's a beautiful place and they gave us a space to hold an exhibition and people were invited from all over the community, different communities to come and have a look at those things that perhaps women would have brought such as

clothes, spices, you wouldn't have been able to get spices in the UK in the 60s so they brought spices, perfumes books, you know a whole manner of things and and now we are very fortunate that there's a there's a local park in my in my hometown rothran which i love um and uh clifton park have given us a space to have the exhibition in their museum and we're hoping to launch it over the next couple of weeks well just playing this interview i think we will

have secured it you me, me and Vicky. They've got to say yes now. I hope that you do have that success. What an amazing story. Thank you for coming on and telling us about it, Mariam. And well done to you for actually, you know, doing something with it. I'm sure your mum, if I'm allowed to say, would be incredibly proud and also commemorating those other women's stories.

So thank you to you. Thank you to Vicky. So many messages coming in. Dionne says, after losing so many people in my life, I ended up doing lots of reflecting. I ended up writing a blog called Sentimentality is a Trap

and it helped a lot. It's a great subject to discuss as it affects most of us. And we've got lots of tips that have come in as well around the actual processes of doing this. If you're doing a whole property, we had to move my mum three times

in the last eight years from a three bed house to independent independent living to a care home and finally a nursing home and each time we're to honour her wishes as far as was safe none of her belongings went to landfill items have gone to a combination of family friends auction which has helped fund her care charity shops it's taken time energy and the support of siblings and if we'd not gone through things we would have missed some amazing items not of value per se in terms of money, but precious to us. Tip is, if cleaning, if clearing, excuse me, without person there, take a little time, take breaks, plan breaks, and, you know, share the load if you can. And more tips to that effect. And also another message

coming in here saying, you know, it's incredibly hard to do this when you're working with people who aren't very well and you want to be able to ask them but it's almost pointless how do you deal with the guilt of clearing parents house when they've got dementia and they're in care you feel deceitful not being able to discuss it but it would be pointless a couple of messages along those lines and another one here try clearing out a house with four generations worth of stuff and a few laughing emojis there. A lot of you can relate. And I'm sure some of you will be able to relate to this because this question has come in around the consequences of our food choices.

Could a ham sandwich, this isn't the question, but could a ham sandwich be better for the environment than a cheese one? Vegetarianism and veganism has increased massively in recent years. Exact figures are hard to come by but according to the vegetarian society around two to three percent of the population are veggie or vegan a hundred percent of the time and worldwide apparently two-thirds of vegans are women and two of the most common reasons for reducing or cutting out meat and dairy are animal welfare and concern for the climate but judith wrote in to ask i'd like to hear more about the consequences of our

food choices especially with regard to vegetarian and vegan diets is it the best choice for the climate. But Judith wrote in to ask, I'd like to hear more about the consequences of our food choices, especially with regard to vegetarian and vegan diets. Is it the best choice for the environment, biodiversity and carbon footprint? Avocado versus mushrooms, salad crops grown commercially under plastic, strawberries all year round, almond milk versus local cow's milk. Well, Sarah Bridle, a professor of physics at the University of Manchester and the author of Manchester and the author of Food and Climate Change Without the Hot Air is on hand. Sarah, what can you tell

our listener in terms of where she can come out on this? What would you say is your piece of advice to Judith? Well, there's loads of great questions there. And certainly in terms of different diets, then they do cause different climate impacts. But I just want to emphasise, you know, that food causes about one third of all climate change. So it's an incredibly important thing. And in the future, you know, if we cut fossil fuel, fossil fuel usage, food is going to be the biggest cause of climate change. So we do need to start thinking about our diets and really changing diets, not just individually, but across the world. And so if we look at vegetarianism versus veganism, which you'll have asked about, then going vegetarian on average, obviously it depends massively on what you're eating,

but on average causes about 40% less emissions than a sort of omnivore diet. And then vegans on average cause about half the impact, so 50% less than an omnivore diet. And yet, a ham sandwich better than a cheese. Tell me. Yeah, that is true. I mean, obviously, that does depend a lot on the production practices. But on average, globally, we look at cheese versus ham, then cheese comes out a bit higher. So, yeah, if you were an omnivore eating lots of ham and then you switched all that to cheese and went vegetarian that way, then you would actually cause more emissions than you were you were causing before why so in terms of cheese and cheese comes from cows cows but methane which is a powerful greenhouse gas you need 10 kilos of milk to produce one kilo of cheese and so it all adds up really in terms of how those cows are

contributing to climate change pigs Pigs, you have to feed the pigs and they have manure. So those are the main causes of why ham contributes to climate change. And all these things can be improved a bit, but still they're relatively high in terms of climate impacts of food. So I suppose, can you significantly reduce your impact on the planet without going exclusively vegan or veggie? I mean, there's really, in terms of climate impacts of food, all food contributes a bit to climate change, right? So if you have, you know, a bit of meat once a week or, you know, once a year, then it's just a small additive. You know, if you have a tiny drop of milk in your tea every day, it's just a small contribution to your daily, you know,

amount of climate change impact from food. So I suppose the question is very complicated, isn't that the point with what Judith's asking here? You know, for instance, if you're looking at milk, you know, there seems to be, in terms of sustainability in the environment, there seems to be a hierarchy. Oat, almond, cow's milk. I mean, what would you say to that for someone who's a bit confused? Yeah, I mean, certainly in terms of milk, it's relatively clear cut that dairy milk causes roughly, you know, double or more times the climate impact of plant milks. Then when you look at different plant milks, people often ask me which plant milk should I get?

And it's really then comes down to how it's produced. And you're just sitting there thinking, I just want a cup of tea. Can you just leave me alone? Yeah, no, go on. I do get people coming and telling me what they've been eating today it's quite sorry sorry god so different different types of milk yeah but it really comes down to you know the packaging the transport all those other things once you've got the ingredients um to be plant-based then that the ingredients in the milk tends to not cause such a big impact um whereas if you look at say um you know people then having dairy milk

and very pleased about having it in a bottle, for example, well, actually, if you had a one-pint plastic container of dairy milk, that, in contribution to climate change from the packaging, is less than one-twentieth of the climate impact of the milk itself. So when you get to dairy milks, then it's much more important that it's dairy versus plant rather than the packaging. What would you say to those who, and I'm just mindful of the fact that yesterday

Extinction Rebellion started a couple of weeks of protests. What would you say to those who are listening thinking, you know, little old me is not going to change anything. We need big, as they would probably argue, maybe we'll get some of them on this week, big systemic change. You know, big companies and organisations, they're the ones creating these issues. It's not and shouldn't be politically, philosophically down to the individual.

Yeah, I agree that, you know, we can't expect all individuals to suddenly learn all about different climate impacts, different foods and change. But it is important for people to know about this. So, for example, in the recent National Food Strategy, they mentioned a meat tax, you know, as a potential solution. But then they say we can't do that because it's way too unpopular. And then you get, you know, the idea of changing the way that food is subsidised or taxed is deeply unpopular. But actually, it's incredibly important to do something on a system level. And then financial incentives is one of those ways of doing it. And we need public support and we need public pressure to actually achieve those systemic

changes. I suppose the other issue is that, you know, most people are just trying to get by. They aren't thinking about this when they're eating. You know, food is fuel. They're busy. And, you know, this isn't something perhaps they can even think. You know, food is fuel, they're busy. And, you know, this isn't something perhaps they can even think they can afford, which is sort of what you're getting to financially, as well as, you know, in terms of what they know. And, you know, other people are also very concerned about the greenwashing, so-called greenwashing done by companies who want to cash in on our perhaps eco aspirations. Yeah, I mean, we do need to regulate any changes, for example, food labelling with climate impacts.

I'd love to see something like that, but it would have to be very carefully monitored to make sure it's really accurate. But if we, you know, people, you know, obviously do have a lot of different aspects to think about when it comes to food. But if we just think about something like plastic, if we look five years ago and how things are now,

people are driving the changes in terms of reducing plastic and changing to bioplastic, for example. So people have a huge impact when they demand things. And I'd love to see that same kind of sea change in public opinion about the importance of food on climate change and the importance of improving production practices and changing the balance of different sorts of food in our diets. Well Judith's got a lot to chew on literally there. Thank you very much Sarah Pridle for putting us in some of the picture but it is a complex one it's not as simple it seems as going vegan or vegetarian or not with some of those choices that you're making all of the time. Thank you for helping us navigate it. We'll go and let you have a cup of tea with whatever milk you desire, or no milk at all. Now, we do talk a lot on Women's Hour, of course,

about the lives and issues facing modern women, the clues in the name, but I'm not sure if we've fully explored, perhaps we have a while ago, the programme has been going 75 years, but I'm not sure if we've fully explored what it was like to be a Neanderthal woman. But it's Listener Week and I'm at your service. And Hannah emailed in asking to hear from female archaeologists about their view on the Neanderthal female lifestyle and how it compares to our own. Did they hunt? Did they look after the children? Did they go through the menopause? Dr Rebecca Rags Sykes, archaeologist and honorary fellow at the University of Liverpool, I hope can help me,

not least because she's written the book Kindred, Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Great question. Obviously, you think that, but I also share some intrigue here, not being very in the know about this. Tell us about the first Neanderthal skull to be found. I believe a woman's in 1848 in a cave in Gibraltar is that right? Yeah that that was actually the second. Oh the second okay. Well the weird thing about Neanderthals is we we sort of had the first recognised one in the middle of the 19th century

but there are two others found earlier but not recognised and the Gibraltar skull is one of those so that was found in 1848 but not actually recognized as anything out of the ordinary until the 1860s um and sort of in that same decade Neanderthals were actually named and became sort of a species but yeah the history of our knowledge about them goes back 165 years now okay so so not that long in terms of when we're talking about they were around. When were they around? And in terms of when and we evolved in Africa. So that's the key difference. And they carried on until about 40,000 years ago, which is the point at which we no longer see any of their fossils or the archaeology that they're associated with. So what do we know about how the women lived?

Well, it's really tricky. We don't have masses of remains that we can be certain were female, certainly in terms of the complete skeletons. There's only a couple where the key thing when you're doing archaeology really is that you need a pelvis to help you identify if it's female. But more recent years, we've had ancient genetics, which has helped us as well. So, for example, the Gibraltar skull was believed possibly to be female based on the size of the skull, but then it was confirmed very recently with genetics. But in terms of what we can say about how they lived, certainly they would have been extremely physically capable. All Neanderthals were hunting and gathering peoples, no matter the environment they lived in. They had a huge range in Eurasia and from where I am in Wales right through into Central Asia and Siberia.

Lots of different climates as well over that span of time. So they lived in woodlands like we have today or, you know, steppe tundra. And no matter the sort of landscape around them them they would have had a very intensive lifestyle just to make a living basically. So for Neanderthal women I think we should assume at this point that some of them at least were doing some hunting because that's what we see when we look at recent hunter-gatherers for example example. But in terms of their overall physique, they would have been impressive. A bit shorter than us, but probably highly muscled, and you wouldn't want to take one on in an arm wrestling match.

And hunting, what, with their children on them? Or what do we know about the role of children? Well, it's interesting. When we look at recent hunter-gatherers, most of the time you don't see women going off and hunting large animals by themselves. It's quite common, though, for groups take babies with them on their backs in wraps. Other times they will be leaving them back at a camp with older siblings or with grandparents and things like this. So it's going to be variable. And I always think with Neanderthals, you know, we talk about them as the Neanderthals. And in fact, we should be expecting variation in the ways that they lived their lives as well. But children would have been what we would expect

just based on sort of how population sizes work, that children would have been a large part of every group. In fact, we have footprint sites which confirm this. We have a number of sites, one which was recently found from spain actually um and we can see you know very small children sort of toddler size out and about helping probably with gathering things and sort of um perhaps not actually the hunting um but just out and about but then we have other footprint sites where it looks like it's just

you know the youngsters and teenagers right through to little kids and those are the ones out exploring their landscape so that's kind of a nice idea if you go out with kids today they're always shooting ahead they're like the scouts yes and so you know we can imagine something similar and and you mentioned grandparents they're good to know nothing changes with the child care needs and who might be able to be drafted in to help but the the menopause that was also part of the question here would that be something or do we know anything about older women neanderthals um i think given that there have been sort of ideas for a long time that neanderthals didn't live very long um you know sort of short nasty uh nasty and brutish

that idea that doesn't really sort of hold up when you look at the fossils. For example, the Gibraltar women was at least 40, probably 50 plus, you know, so older women were definitely about. And assuming that their biology was reasonably similar to ours, because they're, you know, they're no way like a missing link between us and sort of our common ancestor with chimps. They're far closer to us in in chronology so we should expect the biology to be quite similar and so probably some of those older women had experienced menopause and yeah that's one of the things that elders um bring to traditional societies they bring um you know decades of knowledge you can think about elephants in fact

as a comparison um it's the elderly females actually that store the knowledge of how you use the land and but yes also um potentially sort of um looking after children keeping an eye on them and and perhaps also teaching because neanderthal technology was really sophisticated a lot more than people think um not only their stone working but for example they knew how to make glues they had recipes recipes for making glues. That's quite a high level of sort of know-how. And, you know, you wonder whether sort of different individuals had different sort of skills and how that got passed on. Wow. Well, thank you very much. A hugely interesting insight. And Hannah, I hope that answers some of your many questions that you sent in to us.

Dr. Rebecca Ragsides, thank you for that. Taking us into the world of what we know about female Neanderthals. Talking about clearing things out and what you found. My goodness, just let me end the programme on this. We found a letter that congratulated my parents on their adoption. We then found out my eldest brother was adopted. My goodness, talking about what people have found. And a lot of you getting in touch saying, do try and do it together. It is an amazing thing to be able to go through belongings and hear those stories firsthand. And some of you being inspired even by

the idea of exhibitions. Thank you so much for all of your contributions. I'll be back with you tomorrow at 10. That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Thank you so much for your time. Join us again for the next one. and a top stand-up comedian who is eager to learn more. And we have a host of brand new episodes coming up, including episodes on Ivan the Terrible, Nell Gwynn and Ramesses the Great. And we'll be joined by comedians including Sally Phillips, Jessica Knappett, Olga Koch and Sophie Duker, amongst many other fantastic names. So if you want to laugh and learn, then search for You're Dead to Me 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, 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.