Woman's Hour - Caitlin Moran on How to Build a Girl. How to change your career. The school's fruit and veg scheme.

Episode Date: July 17, 2020

How To Build A Girl – based on Caitlin Moran’s non-fiction memoir of the same name - has now been turned into a film It introduces us to Johanna Morrigan, a young Wolverhampton local who’s struggling to get to grips with the “incredible unfolding” that comes with puberty. The screenplay is written by the woman herself and was filmed in and around the City. She joins Jenni to talk about what it means to see her story on screen.Do you want to change your life for the better? This summer Woman’s Hour will be helping you work out how. How to change career, how to be a better friend, how to end your relationship well and how to make time for yourself, guilt-free. We’ll bring together women with expertise and experience to guide you through some of those tricky turning points and blocked paths. Listen out for the How To series over the next few weeks..Today the key things you need to do to achieve both the immediate or the long term career change - identifying your transferable skills, working out the financial implications; weighing up the pro’s and con’s, polishing up your online presence – and taking the leap. Plus why England's School Fruit and Veg scheme will be back in September, thanks to mum turned campaigner Hannah Cameron McKenna . We'll hear about why she got involved in the campaign and from Zoe Griffiths a registered nutritionist about why eating more fruit and veg as a child is so important. Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Caitlin Moran Guest; Sarah Ellis Guest; Samantha Clarke Guest; Lucy Kellaway Guest; Hannah Cameron McKenna Guest; Zoe Griffiths

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BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Friday, July the 17th. Good morning. In today's programme, the first in a new series of how to change your life for the better. This morning, it's how to change your job or career if you don't love the one you have. The mothers who've campaigned for the government school fruit and veg scheme to be reinstated. It was suspended in March. It will return in September. And the serial, the final episode of Why Mummy Swears. Now, you may have read Kathleen Moran's memoir, How to Build a Girl, in 2014.

It's the more or less true story of how she, a 16-year-old Wolverhampton girl, struggles to get to grips with what she describes as the incredible unfolding that comes with puberty. She transforms herself and sets off for London to become a journalist writing about popular music. Well, she's now written the screenplay for the film of the book. Her character, Johanna Morrigan, who changes her name to Dolly Wilde, is played by Beanie Feldstein, a young American who made her name in Booksmart and Lady Bird. I spoke to Catlin earlier. How much of a gamble was turning such a successful book into a film? Well, I mean, I was very lucky. I hear terrible stories about women in the film industry

being sort of given terrible notes and being made to compromise themselves. But I had three incredibly strong female producers who sheltered me from all of that and just kept telling me, go as mad as you want, go for it. if you want to have a wall full of historical heroes uh like joe march and the bronte sisters and signor freud who come alive and give you a teenage hero and advice absolutely go for it and so i was like right okay i will go for it how free were you to write the screenplay your way because it's a little bit rude from time to time i mean it's much less rude than the book. The book opens with her, almost like a musical number, masturbating in bed next to her sleeping five-year-old brother

with pillows put down the side like the Berlin Wall in order to make it appropriate. And that was seen as super racy when it came out. I remember doing an interview on Newsnight and being asked, why did you open a book with a teenage girl masturbating? And I went, well, it's a very relaxing way to kick things off. And the presenter looked really scared, like I might start doing it at that point. So I realized that it was causing an impact elsewhere.

But I keep saying to people, like, it's just a really good hobby for a girl to have. Like, you know, it relaxes you. It doesn't make you put on weight. It means you're more able to cope with the stresses and vicissitudes of the following day um it's a perfect hobby for a teenage girl to have and nobody this time balked at that idea oh no god at one point we'd worked out a whole musical number for it to open with her masturbating uh in a library uh with a fantasy parade of uh things love objects such as aslan from narnia and the three sailors from the musical on the town uh that she would be thinking of while she was having a happy time in the library but in the end turns out you don't have the budget for that so it had to be more more impressionistic instead. Now Beanie Feldstein

who plays you obviously is American and was very successful in Booksmart how happy were you to have an American being a Wolverhampton girl? Well, it's interesting. We obviously wanted at first to cast a British actress. We wanted to find an unknown because if you're a big 16-year-old actress from the Midlands, chances are you won't have had any big roles before

because they tend not to write films about those kind of girls. So we did a whole sweep of the country, but we couldn't find anyone because I didn't realise when I was writing the script that I was writing something that was virtually uncastable because she has to start off as a innocent funny clever 16 year old girl uh go to london go through this massive transformation

where she turns into this kind of swaggering cape wearing bitch and then goes to this huge revelation and comes out the other side of it and that's a massive role for someone to play particularly if they've got no experience so we started looking to america and when one of our producers saw beanie in uh ladybird it was really obvious that she was a future star in the making. And Beanie was so keen to reassure us that it wasn't a problem for her being American. As she pointed out, quite rightly, most British actors would find a Wolverhampton accent difficult. It is a niche accent. So she was just like, I will just study this like I study everything else. And she, to give her credit, she is a grafter.

She moved to Wolverhampton for two weeks to study the accent, which was another advantage of casting someone from America. Because if you ask a British actor to go live in Wolverhampton for two weeks, they'll probably say no because they know where it is. But she didn't know. So she was like, yeah, that'll be fun. And apparently it's really screwed up her algorithms on her computer. She keeps getting sent offers for hotel stays and two-for-one meal deals in Wolverhampton while she's sitting in LA. Now the clothes and hats she wears when she decides to, I keep saying she, but it's you really, I know that, when she decides to apply to be a journalist are quite extraordinary. What did you look like when you did it? Pretty much like that. I mean, in the film, she wears a top hat and I wanted a top hat,

but I could not find a top hat because the only places I could go were Jumble Sales. And astonishingly, not many people were throwing out top hats to Jumble Sales in Wolverhampton in the 1980s. So that was my one bit of wish fulfilment. But otherwise, how she dresses is how I dressed. I would wear a frock coat and a frilly blouse. I wanted to look like a highwayman, a dandy highwayman, Doc Martens, bright red hair. I was aware that I would have to construct a persona in order to go to London and be part of this man's world. Because if I went as I was, which was a brown haired girl with her hair in plaits and NHS glasses, he was still a virgin and didn't really know anything, but that they would treat me differently. So I was like, no, I'm going to construct this persona as a fabulous, fast talking dame slash highwayman. They will respect me.

Now, the depiction of the journalists working in the music industry in the 80s, pretty much all men. How ghastly were they in real life? Oh, it was a mixed bag. I mean, some of them were so lovely that I married one of them. So one of my co-workers from the music press at the time is now my husband and father of our two children. But interestingly, it was often the writers who were the most sexist and rock and roll. Everyone thinks one of the reasons why I wanted to do the film is every other depiction I'd seen of rock stars in movies was just wrong. They always make them in tight leather trousers, drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels, being kind of like sexist and weird and falling over and troubled. And that wasn't the rock stars that I met in the early 90s in London.

They were all lovely, working class boys, very well read, who looked after me like a sister. I was so protected by them when I went on tour with them. And that was why I wanted to create the character of John Kite, who's played by Alfie Allen in the movie. But it was the journalists who were often more rock and roll and sort of often darker. So, yes, that's why there's some baddies in there that are writers. What was it like to go back and film in your own hometown?

That was, I didn't go to any of the location shoots in Wolverhampton because I was on a book tour at the time. So I only went down on set a couple of times when we were recreating some of the gigs. And that was incredible because gigs have changed so much in the last 30 years. Like when I used to go to gigs, for instance, everybody could smoke inside.

So when you got home from a gig, your clothes would be laminated with nicotine. They would be stiff and yellow with cigarette smoke. And you usually have to put them through the wash twice. So going to a recreation of a 90s gig where everyone was smoking and stage diving and stuff was a massive flashback. It was my Madeleine's Proust is someone smoking a cigarette at the front of a Manic Street Preachers gig.

What will your family make of being represented on screen? It's very different from being portrayed in a book. I very carefully made them all a bit different to who they are in real life, in a way so cunning, I hope that they won't realise who they are. And also I have the massive advantage that none of them want to watch any of the films or TV shows or books that I write because, as they point out, they're all about you.

We have enough of you in real life. We don't want to watch you in a movie or read about you in a book. So I would imagine they'll continue to draw the curtain, a polite curtain, across what I do and simply tease me over Christmas about what a big, posh London idiot I've become. Now, I know you really want teenagers like your own, maybe, to see the film and maybe see how a rather messy chaotic

working class life can turn around in journalism why is it important for them to see that in times when maybe it's not as easy as it was in the 80s well yeah that's the thing this is i'm going to explain to you how clever i am now so it seems like it's a very specific story about a very unusual thing, a 16-year-old girl becoming a music journalist, earning money, flying around the world with bands. But when I became a 16-year-old music journalist and I had a national platform in a newspaper where I could write my opinions, I was probably the only 16-year-old girl in the country who had that kind of platform. And the journey I went on was arriving there, enthusiastic, a fan of rock music, writing about how much I loved it, being told that that was inappropriate and that I needed to be more cynical and critical, turning into this horrible person who would write reviews where I imagined rock stars dead and would get emails, letters from their mums going, you made my son cry, realising I didn't want to be that person and becoming a more cheerful and optimistic and pleasant person. But now in 2020, every 16 year old in the world has a platform to write about their opinions. It's social media. And they go through exactly the same journey that I did back then. And Johanna goes through in the movie,

you start off on social media, being really cheerful and posting pictures of yourself looking cute and your dog and your breakfast. and then someone will attack you or say you're problematic or say that you look fat and then you become more cynical and you start attacking people and then at some point you realize that this armor of cynicism that you have put on has trapped you and that your life is unjoyful you can't grow in armor you can't dance in armor and you have to have the courage to break out of that armor and become a positive communicator again. The greatest thing humans can do is point at the things they love and go, that's brilliant. I want more of that, because if you just turn to an attacking, cynical thing on social media, it will ultimately destroy your soul.

I was talking to Kathleen Moran and How to Build a Girl will be released on Amazon Prime Video next Friday. Still to come in today's programme, the mothers who began a successful campaign to reinstate the government school fruit and veg scheme after it was suspended in March. It will return in September. And the serial, the final episode of Why Mummy Swears. Now, throughout the summer, we'll be running a series of discussions about how to change your life for the better. Unsurprisingly, given the current situation with the risk of unemployment faced by so many as a result of the pandemic,

we begin with how to change your job or your career. How do you identify what skills you have that may transfer to a different place of work? How do you figure out what the financial implications will be and how courageous do you have to be to take that leap? Well, I'm joined by Christy Lester and Lucy Kelleway, both of whom made a big change. Sarah Ellis, who's the author of the Squiggly Careers book and related podcast, and Samantha Clarke, who's the author of the Squiggly Careers book and related podcast, and Samantha Clarke, who's the author of Love It or Leave It. Sam, what do you mean by love it or leave it?

Hello. For me, I think that I work with a lot of individuals who are at a crossroads and there are key elements of their role that they actually do enjoy. And so for me, it wasn't just as cut as dry as leaving your role. And so with Love It, it's about creating better well-being within your current role, your current portfolio career, and looking at how to embrace opportunities within the company to solidify better relationships with your co-workers and create a more holistic

approach to how you're working and leave it is essentially identifying what are my transferable skills strengths values and passions and how do I parcel that up and move to a different opportunity a different industry or experiment with new ideas and create a portfolio career so I wanted to give people two options because there are individuals who fundamentally love the role, but maybe their approach or their attitude or their mindset has changed to the sector they're in. And maybe with just better skills around building their relationships with their co-workers, their job could become more enjoyable. And Sarah, how would you describe a squiggly career?

Well, I think perhaps when I started my career, I expected to be climbing the ladder. We've all heard that phrase before, and it's about moving step by step, and it's quite linear and predictable. And I think now the reality for all of us is that our careers are full of change, ambiguity, lots of uncertainty, and also lots of really interesting possibilities. I think what's definitely true for all of us is that we have more figuring out to do. We need to really think about for ourselves, what does success mean for us? What are our strengths? What are we good at? What really motivates and drives us? And also get, I think, more used to kind of taking accountability for kind of managing our careers ourselves, perhaps rather than expecting our organisations to tell us what to do or kind of where to go. So in some ways it's liberating, but it's also hard.

And how, Sarah, did you change your own career? So I've done probably three significant career changes. I spent about 15 years in really large organisations. I then moved to years in really large organizations. I then moved to be a managing director for a smaller company. And I now run my own company. But what's interesting is I actually started my company, Amazing If, seven years ago. And I did it as what would now be called a side project for at least five years before actually moving to it to kind of being my full-time role, which is what I now and so for me it wasn't about a big overnight change in my career it was much more about lots of small steps and lots of kind of deliberate learning along the way to kind of get me a bit closer to where I'd like to get to and actually just really thinking about what I often describe as bridging roles

so what are all the roles that are going to help me get a bit closer to where I'm hoping to go? And not worrying too much about exact job titles or job descriptions, because I think those things can actually be quite limiting. And particularly job descriptions, too often I think they read as wish lists. It's just a list of things that everybody wants versus actually just thinking about, how would I like to spend my time? If I could design my own day at work what would that look like and I think that's how for me I kind of managed to move into doing spending more time I guess doing things that I loved but also had

lots of I've had multiple redundancies and restructures along the way and I think that sort of change is a very different experience change that's happening to you versus change that you're in control of and sam what about you how have you made changes for me i found uh my career change to be a real deep dive reflection who am i who do i want to become and how is work shaping and growing me as an individual so I started my career in advertising and branding, and I was very keen to explore the other, I guess, multi-potential aspects of myself. And so to answer the question around what does it mean to be creative? How could I package up my skills differently? And so I started to take lots of courses in the evening and retrain. And I found myself in personal branding and development for individuals.

And I was introduced to somebody who was made redundant at the last recession. And she said, you know, you've got such a compassionate ear and you know how to really talk to people. And we got talking and he was looking for interviews. And the questions he was asking himself about how do I move on from being an employee under this particular brand? Do I think about starting my own thing or do I think about finding another job? And I found these questions fascinating. the Bhutanese philosophy of happiness and really started to weave this into coaching individuals, but also working within companies to create better happy practices in terms of how they look after their employees. Because, you know, like Sarah says, I do believe it's a two way conversation and that companies need to work on embracing happiness and career progression in the workplace.

But the individual themselves must feel empowered to ask richer questions what do i want how am i using my skills what could i be doing differently how could i trial different experiments inside and outside of work to be agile agile and flexible um and the way that the economy is the volatility that we are having at the moment we do need to be be flexible and bendy. We have to have an anti-fragile career. Now, Lucy, from financial journalist for I think about 30 years to teacher in your 50s, how easy was it to start something completely new at that age?

Well, I don't think easy is exactly the concept. I mean, it was more that, you know, I'd done something that was so enjoyable, I just kept doing it for really too long. So, yeah, 32 years in all. And I think that most of it, I mean, we haven't talked about motivation yet. They change over the course of a life.

You know, I was mainly interested in sort of showing off, and that was why journalism appealed to me. But by the time you reach your late 50s, you know, I was more interested in doing something that was actually useful. I had a mum who was a teacher and a daughter who was a teacher, and so I thought I had no idea if I had the relevant skills or any of the other things that we've heard about this morning. I just thought, I want to do this. I'm going to give it a go. So I decided to make it, you say, was it easy? Well, I decided to make it as hard for

myself as possible by setting up an organization called Now Teach to encourage all of those other people. I was sure there were loads out there who were sort of my age, maybe give or take a decade, who also wanted to do something more useful, but who thought maybe they were too old. So I started teaching alongside a whole lot of other guinea pigs who we had recruited in 2017. And here I am, I'm fully qualified and the idea of loving teaching, yes I do love it but look it is hard but what I wanted was something

useful and my goodness every day even on difficult days you feel I've done something so useful and the kids are a lot funnier than FT readers No offence to FT readers No offence to FT, Financial Times readers, obviously, which is where you work for a very long time.

Sam, we've mentioned how difficult the times are at the moment. We know so many people are losing their jobs, being made redundant. What's the most important thing to do first when you lose your job so the first thing that we work with individuals on is really kind of re-establishing your mindset and addressing the emotions that stem from becoming um you know being made redundant this setback in your career and i think a lot of people want to springboard into finding things fair Fair enough, there is the money aspect, but we need to take a moment and think about how this has affected us. You know, our work is sometimes this core signature identity of who we are. And we have tied so much emotion to the title, perhaps, to the company, to the people that we've

worked with. And suddenly, you might be feeling, you know, what's wrong with me? Why wasn't I kept? Why wasn't I allowed to stay? So addressing those emotions and getting things straight and then doing a reflection on, OK, what might my next steps be? How will I weave in and look after myself? How will I find the right support systems around me to structure that transition? And also, am I preparing my environment around me to set me up for success? So, you know, really stripping back and doing that reflective work sets you up for a stronger springboard before just launching into, you know, the random job search. And I think you also need to take time.

Sam, what's the best way to work out what you're good at what transferable skills you have yes so we offer several different activities the one is really thinking about first and foremost what are my strengths so what are the strengths the core strengths that I lean into and that I can do effectively and which ones perhaps drain me because I think sometimes we have strengths that we can naturally do and people tell us that we're good at but effectively they are drainers. It's also important to distill your skills when you've looked at your past job how could you almost do a success audit what worked well what situations did I find myself in have I got core relationship building skills?

Am I a great distiller of information? Do I love strategy? Who could I find out in my circle as well? Who could I speak to that could give me some insights about my skills? So maybe doing a Ask a Friend survey, circling past colleagues, friends, and thinking, you know, what am i best at what do you think are the core skills or strengths that you come to me for when you're in need of solving a problem and you can start to crystallize your brand in that way now christy you wrote to us to

tell us you'd heard us talking about this obviously you wrote to us to tell us you you'd heard us talking about this, obviously you wrote to us to tell us, you'd made a radical career change. What was your radical career change? So I went from working in events, kind of primarily in the sports industry, to being a software engineer in the financial services industry. What made you think you'd be a good engineer? I had a passing interest in cyber security

and I figured I was just going to teach myself how they do it, how can I protect myself from people that might want to hack my information. And so I started to teach myself how to code and I found that some of the transferable skills, the ordered thinking the quick adaptable approaches to problem solving thinking on your feet things like that from working in events transferred over really nicely to being a software engineer which is one of the big things that made me maybe make the leap and make that career 180. Now let me read another email which came to us obviously we asked for

you to tell us what problems you might be having this one was about a slow burn career change no name so it's anonymous but it says I'm desperate to change my career but have no idea where to start I'm a knowledgeable and experienced middle level higher education professional but I'm really unmotivated having previously been driven and ambitious. I've lost enthusiasm for my work and hate how cynical I've become about the sector. I don't know other sectors or jobs. I can see that I have a lot of transferable skills but when I do look at job descriptions a lot of transferable skills. But when I do look at job descriptions, a lot of them appear to be looking for people who can already do the job. So I feel I've missed the boat. I also get a lot of flexibility in my role for childcare and often feel anxious

that if I left my current role, I would lose that. So Sarah, where does she begin? So I think what you want to do, first of all, is kind of reignite that curiosity and passion for what you could do. And perhaps really think about, rather than worrying too much about the exact job change, but what skills would I like to learn? And actually, the World Economic Forum think that in the next two years, roughly 40% of the skills that we have today won't be relevant. So we all need to get used to continually learning, learning new things. And there's so many free things out there now, whether it's the Open University, whether it's LinkedIn Learning, that kind of help us to do that. So one thing that I think can just help you to start making some positive progress is think about, well, just what am I really curious about? What would I really

like to learn? The second thing I would think about is what are the some of the relationships some of the relevant relationships that I could build today that would give me a window into some worlds that I don't know very much about today so when I was thinking about moving from working in lots of really big organizations to running my own company that felt like such a significant change that I didn't have much insight to. So I really tried to seek out conversations with people who'd done something similar, perhaps in a different industry or in a different way, but just to have some kind of curious career conversations, not asking for a job, not being too intentional. And asking for

help is so important. I think we don't ask for help because we perhaps, you know, we get a bit apologetic and we think, oh, why would somebody want to help us? But people really enjoy helping other people. And just be really clear about what help you need and why that person would be useful. Now, Sam, here's someone else. This is from Natalie, who's in her 40s,

and asks, if you don't have an online presence, Twitter, Facebook or Instagram, is that going to be detrimental to your employability? Is it important to have an online presence so that people can spot you? Yes, I think it is really important that your work story is translatable online. But it's also more important to think, OK, the industry or the place I want to move to next, where are they positioned? Where are they finding out their news? If you're not on LinkedIn, Twitter, you know, could you start building your profile there so that you have something succinct to say? And also that when they go looking to research you, they can see

the cohesion between what you're applying for, what your interests are, what your values are. I do agree that we need to have presence on, you know, maybe an Instagram or whatever, if it's relatable to the visual industry or creative industry that you're going into. So really tailor it to where you think your potential employer or potential client might be residing. And for you also to get comfortable with putting yourself out there. In a very noisy world, we have to be open to understanding the art of sell and the art of distilling who we are across copy, across video, across audio. And if people can't find you um it's going to be very

difficult for you to tap into the opportunities that are available so sarah sarah how best would you say one should polish up an online profile is it important for instance to have your photograph there i think it is because we i think you want to feel like you're getting to know somebody online and I think when I look at somebody's LinkedIn profile I'm thinking can I spot their strengths can I figure out what they're good at can I work out what they're passionate about and one of the things on LinkedIn that often gets overlooked but I think is incredibly valuable is the recommendations so asking people that you've worked with previously just to write a couple of sentences about you, about working with you, just gives that really kind of personal

reflection of kind of who you are. And also it gives somebody the opportunity to just find out a bit more about what makes you distinctive. Too often I think we see people talking about their strengths in quite a generalized way, kind of making really big kind of sweeping statements that don't feel personal to them and it's really important that we kind of tell our stories and talk about well why why am i brilliant at this thing and don't get too caught up in your strengths being job specific exactly as we heard christy talk about sometimes you think all the things i'm good at are only relevant for the role I'm doing right now but actually when we really start to explore them we can see that yes you know Jenny you're an amazing interviewer but that also means that you've got amazing empathy you build brilliant relationships you're a really good listener and suddenly you've got these list of things that are

really helpful for loads of different roles and different careers. Now, Lucy, I think this one is for you on account of your financial background. This is Karen, who's 56, and says, I'm the main breadwinner in my household. No kids, don't have lots of savings behind me. I'm working on a plan to change jobs that involves training a six-year part-time herbalism course. I'm nearly at the end of year one.

But my current job is usually demanding and often overwhelming, so the coursework is often the thing that slips. When I'm overwhelmed, I want to leave. When I'm not, staying seems better because of the salary. Any advice on thinking this through in a more balanced way?

When I'm feeling brave, I want to change what I do, but I'm the main breadwinner and my husband is very attached to our lifestyle so how much of a financial cushion Lucy do you have to have to make a big change like this well I mean I think it depends how well padded you are yourself and how well you can take the bumps it depends you know how many other people you're supporting so these are really hard questions because they're different for absolutely everybody. But I think in the end, and as a general rule, not to have done something for purely financial reasons, to have stayed in something that you really don't like has got to, in end be the wrong outcome but you know obviously there's a lot of

fudging that you do along the way and that and that this particular woman maybe she just needs to go down a bit in hours and you know find some way that she is continuing with the part-time stuff because i think if she lets it lapse in the interest of learning a few more quid in the end she'll never um forgive herself how much of a financial cushion did you have yeah i mean so i feel guilty even as um even answering this question because i was the lucky one um you know i had i still had a final salary pension scheme if anyone is old enough to remember those um and i had paid off my mortgage my kids kids were grown up. So I did this without massive sacrifice. I wasn't taking that risk.

But actually, of the other people who train through NowTeach, quite a few were. Quite a few went from really quite substantial incomes to much, much lower ones, to being on a bursary while they were training. And of all of those people not one has said well teaching was great but actually the drop in salary was a downer um especially when you're in your 50s if you can find anything that you do that really interests you and sustains you so long as you're managing to eat and keep ends together i think that is the way to go what

was your first day in the classroom like um i think i slightly blanked it in the way that you blank childbirth um i i'd left the ft because i sort of i i wanted to be afraid again if that doesn't sound too masochistic you know i didn't want to be complacent anymore. I wanted to be afraid. And my goodness, I was. I had arrogantly thought that I did have those skills that we've been talking about earlier. I can chat away. I'm not, you know, do audiences and that sort of thing. But to realize how much you do not know, to look at 32 strange teenagers. You don't know their names. In my case, couldn't work the IT. Absolutely useless. I was then teaching maths.

I was sort of forgetting the equations because I was in such a panic of how to explain them. You know, there are so many little things that go wrong. I had the regular teacher, my mentor, at the back of the classroom writing my list of what went well, which was the only thing that went well was I had some sort of presence. Everything else was an even better if. In other words, what went badly. But yeah, so it was frightening, but I

wanted to be frightened. And the amazing thing, and I'm sure this applies to everybody who changes career if you start learning again you feel alive again um let's ask Christy Christy what what scared you most about yours going from events to engineering uh probably it was definitely the fear of failure um it was as we said it is a huge risk to take and just the idea that i would go and put myself through this retraining course and not succeed at the end of it um it's it it is very terrifying um but i 100 agree with lucy there it does make you feel completely alive and reinvigorated um as you're going along. And how did the money question go? How did you deal with that one? I was very, very lucky as well. I had support from my parents and had they not been able to

help me, I probably wouldn't have changed careers when I did. so I was very very lucky but it there was no guarantee of a job at the end of my course so I have to save I have to kind of take a hit my house deposit fund for example took a took a bit of a hit whilst I paid out all of my normal expenses and because I couldn't hold I couldn't have time to have another job whilst doing this course it was so intense as I was retraining. So it was a big consideration. I had to have a lot of conversations with my family around it. And no regret? None at all. I still pinch myself to see if it's all real sometimes.

Well, Christy Lester, Lucy Calloway, Sarah Elts, Samantha Clark, thank you all very much indeed for being with us this morning. And if you've done it if you've changed your job or your career or you're hoping to do it do let us know you can email us or of course you can send us a tweet and thanks to all of you for contributing this morning. Now for 16 years the government in England ran a scheme to provide fruit and vegetables in schools. It was suspended in March with no guarantee that it would be reinstated when schools were up and running again. Two mothers based in Bath began a campaign to have it start

and they've been successful. The Public Health Minister, Joe Churchill, has announced that the school fruit and vegetable scheme will resume as normal in the autumn when all children return to school, providing daily fresh produce for pupils and helping every child have a healthy start in life. Well, how important has this scheme been for children? I'm joined by the nutritionist Zoe Griffiths and by Hannah Cameron-McKenna, who led the campaign. Hannah, how surprised are you that the campaign has been successful?

Hi, Jenny. I am, well, obviously we're delighted that the campaign's been successful and that the scheme has been, will be reinstated in the autumn. We are still slightly concerned that we haven't had any clarity about the money that would have been spent on the scheme from March until now about where it's gone and we would like the government to commit to using those funds and extending this scheme beyond key stage one in the autumn. Because it's only for little ones isn't it at the moment four to six? Exactly yeah. What prompted you to start? So it all sort of started when we were getting ready for my son, Marlo,

to return to school in early June. We were asked by his school to send him in with a piece of fruit for a snack and we never had to do that before, so we questioned it with the school and we found out that the school were no longer receiving the free government fruit and veg. My friend Sarah confirmed the same thing was happening at her daughter's school in Bath. So I just called the school fruit and veg scheme directly, who told me it had been suspended in March.

And we were furious and decided to do something about it. Zoe, from a nutritionist perspective, how important is this scheme for little ones? One piece of fruit or one piece of vegetable? There's so many benefits to this scheme. It's not just about handing a piece of fruit and vegetable to the children. They're learning all about handling fruit and veg. We learn through our senses. So for children, when they're touching the fruit and vegetables,

they're learning about getting confident with food. And that makes them much more confident with eating. We find that children at school might eat something at school that they wouldn't normally at home. And also a lot of children are getting exposure to fruit and veg that they might never have seen before. But what real difference can only one piece of fruit or one piece of vegetable make? Well, at the moment, we know that children are mostly eating about three a day and we would like them to have five a day and so if we can just get one more into their diet in the day that really makes a big difference. Why did you think it was so important

Hannah from a nutritional perspective? So we know from the um northumbria university research that if children aren't at school that their fruit and veg intake is drastically reduced we must take any opportunity that we can get to get fruit and veg into kids um this is a brilliant scheme because it's available to all four and to six year old children but the reality is that without this scheme, it's the children from disadvantaged backgrounds who are going to suffer. Now, as we said, it is or has been and will be only open to children from four to six. How likely are you to manage to persuade an extension to older children um well based on the fact that we've managed to have it reinstated when uh seven weeks ago we believed um along with the food charities that we were working with that the plan was to cut it all together i will optimistically say that we are um you know

we'll keep trying um and i didn't ever think seven weeks ago that we would be in the position we are now so I'd like to believe that anything's possible. Zoe how concerned are you about the general impact of the lockdown on children's nutrition? Well we sorry we know that quite a lot of children are living in food insecure households anyway so before lockdown we thought it was about 20% of children who were not getting enough money to eat any food or enough food or to get a healthy diet so with lockdown happening we think that that may have even doubled perhaps and so it's very concerning we know that children come to school without eating breakfast in many households they They're hungry, they can't concentrate,

and obviously they're going to have to catch up on quite a lot of learning when they get back. So that's going to be a real concern for teachers. So how helpful was the scheme then, when they were having fruit and vegetables given to them, in dealing with that hunger problem? Is one apple enough to get you over feeling hungry and letting you get on with your work? Well, the snacks are generally given out at the first break, which is often quite early on in the morning, about 10 o'clock. And it's not just apples. There's a huge variety of fruit and vegetables that have been introduced.

So we've got bananas, carrots mini cucumbers sweet white peppers so there's lots of different fruit and veg available and i i have been in schools where a lot of the teaching staff will keep by extra fruit and veg spare that maybe the children are off sick and or they've got too much and they will give that to the children to take home that they know need it the most and how do you advise parents zo Zoe to try to make sure their children maybe get more than one of their five a day? Well there's lots of ways of introducing fruit and veg into the diet so adding it to meals having it as a snack but I think one of the most important things is starting as early as possible with children as you can to show them and get them

confident with food so not just about making them eat the food but actually getting them to grow their own fruit and veg they could cook with food and veg fruit and veg for all food just getting confident with food from an early age really makes children much more confident eaters and Hannah I know you're a freelance recipe taster which sounds like a really interesting job to me and how do you get more fruit and vegetable into the children when the children say i don't like vegetables or i don't want to eat fruit uh so it's not always easy obviously but um i've we've had two things really helpful so um a friend of mine gave me Nid yw'n bob amser yn hawdd yn aml, ond rydyn ni wedi cael ddwy bethau'n helpus iawn hefyd. Roedd ymddygiad o'r ffrind i mi ychydig blynedd yn ôl o roi plât o ffrindiau wedi'u llynu ar y ddwy neu mewn bwrdd ar gyfer pan fydd y plant yn dod yn ôl o'r ysgol neu'r nyrseri, ac nid yw'n gofyn amdano'r peth.

Ac os nad ydych chi'n rhoi unrhyw bwysau arno, rydyn ni wedi dod i ddweud, mewn gwirionedd, y byddant yn mynd yn ddifrifol i'w llwyddo'u ffordd trwy'r ffrindiau. Ac yn ail, rydyn ni'n ceisio'n anodd iawn i'w ddod â'i gilydd fel teulu lle byddwn ni'n gallu. their way through the veg. And secondly, we try really hard to just eat together as a family wherever we can. And it definitely makes a big difference to our children trying new things, including obviously vegetables. But, you know, you win some, you lose some. And have you got them cooking yet? Or are they too young for that? Yeah, no, they absolutely love cooking. Even the two-year-old has really, he's spent the most of lockdown cooking, actually. I was talking to Hannah Cameron McKenna and Zoe Griffiths.

Now, lots of you got in touch about how to change careers. Helen said, I loved switching on to hear this article today, my last day in a 27-year teaching career. In September, I will be moving into HR, and I've been doing a course all year. My disability has meant that I had to make a change for my own health. My daughter is going to university. We have no mortgage. So it was the right time to make a change. Like one of your speakers, I'm the main breadwinner. Thank you so much for this. Jill said, I wish I'd heard this 30 years ago.

Worked for nearly 30 years in a blue chip company. Hated the last 10. The bullying culture and with management only looking to put those with degrees of any kind in charge, but too scared to leave with a mortgage to pay, etc. Left on early release and retrained as a dog groomer which I did for 10 years until I was 67 but really left it too late to make it a paying career. Console myself for wasting all those years by saying that at least I have a pension which enables me to run a car and cope with bills. My advice to anyone in the same position is to go for it and at least

try to live your dream. Rhiannon emailed to say many thanks to you and your guests today for the inspiring piece about changing careers. I'm 35 and left my full-time career in 2016 to focus on recovery from anorexia and also to do some of the soul-searching that your guests have been talking about. I never really felt like I was in the right job. I'm a biologist by training and started my employment in academic research after I completed my PhD in 2010.

Then I moved into clinical trial management and although I do love science and research, I feel like I should be doing something more creative. My dream is to become a writer. I'm now bolstered with confidence after hearing stories of people who've changed their career paths at all ages. And then Simone shared her career change. I changed my career at the age of 36. I'm now 49. I worked as a dental nurse in Germany and the UK for 20 years and had an epiphany to become a tailor for opera. I'm now an established tailor costume cutter on feature movies,

007, Batman, Mission Impossible. It was not easy to start from the bottom, but I can't believe where this has taken me and can only encourage every woman to believe in the power of your dreams. A few of you, including Avril, emailed to say, I've just been listening to your item on career change and think you could or should have given your listeners the information that if they visit the website of the Career Development Institute, CDI, they'll find a register of career development professionals. They can search the register to find trained and qualified professional practitioners who can give impartial advice and guidance with the assurance that all members work to a public code of ethics.

And there was much love for Catlin Moran. Rachel said, taking Catlin's advice, I would like to point out this interview and say, that is brilliant. I want more of that. Kate Highmore on Twitter said, giggling fairly hysterically at something you said just now. Listening to Women's Hour in my headphones and my husband is on a call and I'm getting the look. And regarding Kathleen's enthusiastic celebration of teenage masturbation, Susanna pointed out, Tracey Emin raised this subject with Jenny a few

years ago and caused uproar. Kathleen Moran waxes lyrical on it for minutes on end and no one turns a hair except maybe in the privacy of their own kitchen. Times they are a changing. Indeed they are. Now do join me tomorrow for Weekend Woman's Hour when we'll discuss why black people are

more likely to end up in the mental health system and be sectioned. And we'll also hear from Karen Gibson, who's known as the godmother of gospel. She shot to worldwide fame in 2018 when she appeared conducting the Kingdom Choir at the Royal Wedding of Harry and Meghan. We'll talk about the choir's new single, Real Love, and we'll hear a bit of it. Join me tomorrow at four o'clock. Bye-bye. I'm Sarah Trelevan, 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.