Woman's Hour - Mercury retrograde. A new study into eating disorders. Clever working class women in the UK. Author Anne Enright.

Episode Date: February 26, 2020

Astrology concepts such as retrogrades and returns are no longer niche, they’re meme-worthy, and horoscopes have evolved from a bit of fun into revered life guidance. This isn’t the first time astrology has been part of the Zeitgeist, but it’s definitely enjoying a mainstream moment. So as Mercury the planet that rules technology, travel and communication is retrograde for the first time this year, we look at what that really means and the impact it could have on our life.An estimated 1.24 million people are affected by eating disorders in the UK, and less than half of those people make a full recovery. Yet the treatment and diagnosis is still comparatively misunderstood. We look at research which is just about to be launched that'll examine the possible genetic links.Clever working class women in the UK – how do they break through and how are they seen by their peers and those in power?Plus the author Anne Enright talks to us about her new novel "actress .Presenter Jenni Murray Producer Beverley PurcellGuest; Yasmin Boland Guest; Wendy Stacey Guest; Melanie Reynolds Guest; Panya Banjoko Guest; Kristin O’Donnell Guest; Anne Enright Guest; Dr Janet Treasure Guest; Andrew Radford

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, Jenny Murray welcoming you to the Woman's Hour podcast for Wednesday the 26th of February. Good morning. Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering in 2007. Today we'll discuss her new novel Actress set in Dublin in the 1970s. What does it mean when you're working class and called a clever girl? How does it influence your relationships, your education, your friendships and your work? And Mercury retrograde, as astrology becomes increasingly part of the zeitgeist and Mercury is retrograde until the 10th of March, what does it actually mean and what effect might it have on your life?

We've known for some time that there's a strong genetic element in obesity, but it was only last July that the results of an international study of anorexia were published and showed that it's not only the psychological disease we'd always assumed it to be, but has a genetic element too. The research is now being extended at King's College in London, and BEAT, the eating disorders charity, has expressed its excitement at the results so far. Andrew Radford is the charity's chief executive. Dr Janet Treasure is professor of psychiatry at King's and is leading the research.

Janet, why has a genetic element only recently really been confirmed? Well, over the centuries that these disorders have been discovered, there's been an oscillation between moral reasons and biological reasons. So we did a twin studies in the 80s and that was quite shocking to people that we should be doing that. But then this has evolved and we've been able to get a large cohort and find out exactly what are the risk factors and how much genetic and how much environmental. And how much, how is the balance? Well, the genetic element for the population is over 60%.

And so the rest is sort of environmental aspects. I said that BEAP was excited when those results first came out. How excited were you, Andrew? Well, it's an amazing first step on the pathway towards working out how to get much better treatments and ultimately work towards a place where we can prevent the illnesses from affecting so many people. What eating disorders, Janet, are you including in your research as you carry it on? Well, this is the very interesting aspect of this new study, because the first study was anorexia only and as you know there's been a expansion of eating disorders binge eating disorders bulimia nervosa and so we're going to be including all of those

and that'll be particularly interesting because we do think that there may be similarities but differences across that spectrum so what does the knowledge that there may be that there is a genetic element what impact does that have on diagnosis because I think at the moment diagnosis quite often comes very late. Yes I don't think it will perhaps affect diagnosis but it does have an impact on treatment and people coming forward because if there's no stigma about is this caused by myself is it really an illness people tend not to come forward and wonderful work done by beat has shown the duration of untreated illness is unfortunately over a year or more and we know that the longer the illness is untreated the more it embeds itself and makes itself difficult to treat.

So what difference Andrew do you expect to see now this new knowledge is coming and being accepted? Well what we're really looking for is the duration that Janet mentioned it's actually three and a half years on average from somebody falling ill to them actually starting treatment and that's an average it hides an awfully long range for some people for whom it's much much longer than that so if we can get better treatments reduce the stigma around the illness we can start shortening that duration between you know falling ill realizing that you've got the illness and starting treatment because it needs people to recognize that they're that they're ill to to make contact people like Beats Helpline so that we can help them get into treatment. And if we can get that delay down to less than 12 months, then it means that people will be much more likely to get an effective treatment more quickly,

with less suffering and for that recovery that they then have to become sustainable and they don't relapse. How available is effective treatment? Well, it depends where you live and it depends how old you are. So if you're under 18 and you're under the Children and Adolescent Services in England, things are improving quite a lot. There are targets and there's funding to reduce the waiting times. If you're a child outside England, it's not so good. And if you're an adult anyway,

you can wait an awfully long time. There is movement from the governments in the four countries, but it's slow and it needs more money and it needs a lot more staffing putting in place to actually spend the money in an effective way. How many sufferers do actually recover now? Well I don't think we can say with any great certainty but the estimates that I've seen say that around 50% will recover fully and then the other 50% will have some form of ongoing illness or be sort of managing their illness on a longer term basis. That will probably vary hugely between the different diagnoses of eating disorders, though. Yes. On average, the illness lasts 10 years.

But by 20 years, approximately 60% will have recovered both from bulimia and anorexia. But anorexia does tend to last a lot longer. When you're doing your research how are you going to carry it out now well this new project is going to get spit from patients where we then that's how we can look at the genes but also what's very interesting we are going to get some questionnaires looking at environmental factors because we know that it's probably an interaction between the environment and the genes that can trigger these disorders. What environmental

issues do you think are coming into play here? Well we have both the general ones of trauma and adversity that all psychiatric disorders have but there are also specific ones related to food and fat talk, bullying, concern about weight and shape that are more specific for eating disorders. Is there a possibility that as a result of your research, eating disorders might be prevented in the future? Well, I think perhaps not be prevented, but definitely a shorter illness secondary prevention early treatment as we were saying and not maintained for so long because one of the problems why it lasts so long is that there are all these secondary factors that bind the illness in how are you going to contribute into this research entry well beats role is getting the message out there, encouraging people

to sign up with the study all it takes is a donation of a very small sample of your own saliva, fill in a questionnaire and then you can really help the study and if people go to the website which is edgiuk

I'm going to have to say that again edgiuk.org going to have to say that again, aren't I? edgiuk.org and then all the information's there and you can participate and push forward to making this illness a lot better understood. Andrew Radford and Dr Janet Drescher, thank you

both very much indeed for being with us and there are, by the way, links for help and support for eating disorders you can find them of course on the woman's hour website now you might assume that being called a clever girl would be seen as a great compliment which would easily lead you on to great things but how many working class girls have been told they're clever and then found their families have warned them not to get above

themselves how many have worried that if they go to university with a northern accent they'll be ridiculed how many have been concerned that if they go on to higher education and get a good job they'll inevitably lose touch with their roots well three generations of women have described what it was like for them in a book called Clever Girls, edited by Jackie Good. Fourteen women wrote an essay about themselves, and three of them are Christine O'Donnell, a doctoral researcher in cultural memory, Pani Banjoku, who's a poet, and Dr Melanie Reynolds, who's an historian. Melanie, how comfortable are you with describing yourself as a clever girl? Not really. I don't like to dwell on it.

Why not? Because it's one of the things that I kind of gloss over, you know, if people say to me, you know, you're a doctor, I say, oh yeah, I am. But I'm more happy talking about my research rather than me being clever. You know, so my research to me is absolutely fascinating and that's what you know I love about it and if that makes me clever then fine but I don't dwell on that aspect. How conscious Panya were you of do I really want to be described as a clever girl when you were growing up? I don't think I ever thought about being clever as a child. No one ever told me I was clever. I still don't think I'm clever. Being from a Caribbean background and being the first

generation of children to actually go through the education system with English, not my first language. Again, that made me feel, you know, not clever. So there was lots of different things trying to negotiate a society with a different culture from the culture I was experiencing at home. Made me feel really, you know, quite dumb, to be honest. And I think to some extent that has stayed with me. So I don't ever see myself as clever. I see myself as determined, creative, persistent, all of these things, but not clever. Christine, as a Canadian, how are clever and working class perceived there?

I think class isn't as immediately obvious in Canada. It's particularly wealth-based. But growing up, being a clever girl, in Canada you might be referred to as a smarty-pants, and that's a sort of joking and affectionate, but it's also a of letting you in. It's also slightly undermining, isn't it? Absolutely, kind of marking your place.

Did you feel that you were perceived as a smarty pants, Melody? When I was younger, no, definitely not. Definitely not because when I went to Ruskin I only had a couple of GCSEs. If that's all I had, I didn't have anything, no A-levels, absolutely nothing. And so I just, you know, I didn't consider myself a smarty pants. Oh, and I don't think other people kind of perceive that. But what I did perceive was interest, you know, interest in history and i did kind of think well to myself does that make you know

make me kind of a you know a becoming to an intellectual and were you happy with being considered an intellectual it was really strange because when i went when i went to ruskin i when i got started reading these these books i was in my in my room reading these books and i was just immersed in how the beauty of the language they're absolutely fascinating stories of history you know people talk about fiction but to me nothing is better than history because nothing is you know that's that's where all the that's where all the action is, if you like. So it was absolutely beautiful reading all these books

and I thought to myself, blimey, you're reading it, you know, you're reading it and you have no qualifications or anything, but it's going in, it's actually going in and I couldn't believe it because I could actually speak of, you know, these things that I knew about, that I was learning. But Christine, how much do people assume, if you're an academic and you've got doctor in front of your name, that you must have a middle class background?

I think what's really interesting, what I tried to draw out in my chapter, is the kind of fluidity of my class experience. Because my accent doesn't give away my status, as obviously as a kind of regional accent might, there are times when I feel that I need to assert it in academic circles. I think partly that's a sort of guarding action to kind of avoid judgment

if I make some sort of class-based faux pas. And I think partly it's a kind of assertion of the structural inequalities that I felt that perhaps some of my middle class students didn't have to, or other students didn't have to deal with. So, for example, I worked at a supermarket throughout my degree. And there being working class was a point of identification. So it was during the Brexit referendum and people in the staff room would be kind of complaining about immigrants

and I would stand up and say, well, you know, remember I'm an immigrant too. And they would say, but you are not really foreign and you work. And so that sort of class-based identity is something that made me feel accepted there. Panya, I know you were spotted by the editor of the book when you were giving a talk in Nottingham at the library. What were you saying that stood out to her? I was talking about Nottingham Black Archive, which is the archive I founded,

and I was talking about the history of black writing in Nottingham because I am a writer, I'm a poet. And maybe the subject interested her, but I think what really caught her attention was that I came across as a very strong, focused woman and determined. And as part of my talk, I kind of was talking about my journey as well through through life and what led to me deciding to found Nottingham Black Archive.

So I talked about my educational experience as well and not having a great time at school and actually only leaving school with, you know, CSEs at that point, because black children like me weren't really encouraged to go on to achieve anything greater than that and and how I'd actually managed to overcome those barriers and go on to do an undergraduate degree having four children and so it was kind of these these kind of things and then going on to do two master's degrees and then talking about being a PhD researcher and I I guess she just sensed um that there was a clever girl hidden inside now interestingly Melanie you have held on to your Yorkshire accent which I'm ashamed to say I haven't um why why have you stuck with it because there was when I went to Oxford there was um was no accent or very, very few accents like mine.

And I thought, you know, do I want to change? Do I want to change? I did think about changing it. And there was a small part of me that thought, you know, OK, but it just took too much effort. You know, every time I wanted to open my mouth, I had to think, you know, how do I form these words? You know, just i just haven't a clue i just hadn't a clue so i just thought to myself well be yourself girl be yourself and that's the only thing you can do and then that you can hold

and hold on to your identity and i find it really important because as when i when i've taught there are no academics with any accent like mine. I've spoken to academics and they've deliberately changed it. They feel riven by it. And I think to myself, well, because I'm taught in the South, you see, and I thought, well, what does that say in a university, you know, that isn't acceptable of different accents? You know, what does that say to middle class students so you know you can only teach if you like you know if you've got this accent and i just thought no

i'm a teacher you know i am a teacher and i know my strengths and weaknesses and i am i have been a really good teacher and i've been why have you chosen that the history of working class women is what you wanted to do? Because when I went to, when I first went to Ruskin College, a wonderful teacher there, Hilda Keane, absolutely fantastic teacher. She said to me when I first went, when I knew absolutely nothing about history, working class people do do, you know, good things when you, because all I'd really heard about is, you know, working, working class women, they're criminals, they're bad mothers, etc, etc, etc. So I thought there must be somewhere a positivity in all this. in the Radcliffe camera when I walked down those steps and found those women's voices telling me that they had control over their lives that they were good mothers

that they weren't criminals that they did have agency to me it was just mind blowing I'd never read anything because feminist history feminist history is good but it tells us what women haven't done you know, feminist history. Feminist history is good, but it tells us what, you know,

what women kind of haven't done, you know, with victims, you know, and things like that. And I thought to myself, well, that's not really telling the full picture. So, Christy, let's go back to the start. Why is the term clever girl so loaded? You know, I'm struggling to answer that, really. I think as an adult woman being asked to take part in the project with the name, I was originally a little bit uncomfortable with the idea of being called a

girl rather than a woman. But I think it emphasizes the sort of socialization that begins in childhood. And for me, I'm from a very large family, one of the youngest. And so being a clever girl, as a young person was a really positive thing to me. It was only when I went to a kind of selective school in Canada, did the International Baccalaureate program, and I didn't complete it. Because when I was all of a sudden faced with all of these more middle class children, or young people, all of a sudden, I wasn't the clever girl anymore. And I switched off. And I actually didn't go to university until I was 28 or 29 because I kind of didn't feel like such a clever girl anymore.

Well, Christine O'Donnell, Pania Banjoko, Dr. Melanie Reynolds, thank you all very much indeed for being with us. And of course, we would like to hear from you. If you were called a clever girl, what impact did it have on you and what did you go on to do? You can text us, you can email us, you know the address. Still to come in today's programme, Mercury Retrograde and how

astrology has become fashionable. But what impact could a retrograde planet have on your life? And the serial episode three of The Quarry Wood. Now, you may have missed yesterday's discussion with Joan Smith and Amanda Taub about the

Weinstein Judgment, or on Monday, the latest in the Family Secrets series, a woman who brought her childhood abusers to justice as an adult. If you missed the live programme, all you have to do is go to BBC Sound, search for Woman's Hour, and there we are. It was in 2007 that Anne Enright won the Man Booker Prize for The Gathering,

and as she publishes her ninth work of fiction, she is described as one of the most significant writers of her generation a master her new novel is called actress in it a daughter Nora tells the story of her mother Catherine O'Dell who was a great film and theatre actress in the 1960s and 70s in America London and Dublin people ask me what was she like and I try to figure out if they mean as a normal person what was she like in her slippers eating toast and marmalade or what was she like? And I try to figure out if they mean as a normal person, what was she like in her slippers eating toast and marmalade? Or what was she like as a mother? Or what was she like as an actress who did not use the word star? Something happens as they talk to me. I'm used to it now. It works in them slowly, a growing wonder, as though recognising

an old flame after many years. You have her eyes, they say. People loved her. Strangers, I mean. I saw them looking at her and nodding, though they failed to hear a single word she said. And yes, I have her eyes. At least I have the same colour eyes as my mother. A hazel that in her case people like to call green. Indeed, whole paragraphs were penned about bog and field when journalists looked into my mother's eyes and we have the same way of blinking slow and fond as though thinking of something very beautiful. I know this because she taught me how to do it. Think about cherry blossoms she said drifting on the wind and sometimes I do. Such were the gifts I got from Catherine O'Dell, star of Stage and Screen.

Anne, why were you keen to write a novel about a mother-daughter relationship where there is deep, deep love? Because I'd done other kinds, I suppose, other kinds of mothers, other kinds of connections. And I had the opportunity in this one to show a daughter at that moment of idealisation, where the mother's behaviour is not denied. She's just continually idealised. It's something that I saw most specifically with single mothers sometimes, that their daughters wouldn't hear a word against them, that they adored their mothers. And this kind of romance that sometimes happens between mother and daughter was very interesting to me. And in Catherine O'Dell's case, the world agreed with her daughter, Nora,

that she was amazing. So she's in that unique position of, you know, when the world agrees with you that your mother is the most beautiful and glamorous thing on the planet. And what drew you to the theatre when the world agrees with you that your mother is the most beautiful and glamorous thing on the planet. And what drew you to the theatre, the film, the being a star? I actually resisted that for so long,

but I used to be involved in the theatre as a student and briefly as an actress in Dublin, an actor, a female actor in Dublin, very briefly. And I just could never really noodle my way into that world. It seemed too romantic and too tawdry and too colourful for me. I wanted to be more spare

and interesting than that. Of course, the theatre is full of stories and I write about stories as well as writing stories. So I had the opportunity to cycle this woman through a number of sort of second-hand fictions that were written by men. Actors, female actors have such a life you know. There's so many bad parts and so few

good ones. So I wanted to see what that might have been like maybe. How much of the Dublin in which they live Nora witnesses a car bomb at one stage is what you lived through yourself? Nora is 10 years older than me so when she's in her early 20s I would have been 10, 11, 12 and I do remember those times from a more unknowing angle. So it was interesting to me to dig into it a little bit.

Late in life, I'm a reluctant Irish woman and I live reluctantly in Ireland. And, you know, late in life, I've come to realise that I really love the place and that there's much to be celebrated there. And you make much of her not really being fully Irish, don't you? No, and I really wanted to do that. Catherine O'Dell is a mongrel.

She was born in London and she claimed Irishness as her artistic right. She felt too interesting to be merely English. She was a bohemian snob. She wanted a more rebellious sort of persona and more romantic persona. So she became that thing,

the red-headed Irish beauty in a plaid shawl looking out over the waves. I married an English man called Murphy. And that has, you know, given me pause at various gatherings where I have to explain myself. I mean, those Murphys were there since the 1840s. And so I'm really interested in that dovetailing of nationalities.

Ireland didn't become nationalistic in the way that we know from the, you know, from the 50s and 60s until sometime after independence. And before that, everything was a bit of a bit of a mixture. It was a colonial mix. And I'm not nostalgic for the colonial mix, but I am very suspicious of how we identify our nationality one way or the other. Why did you decide to write the novel in the style of a biography into which the writer's life as well as her subject is present? It is. Nora takes over from her mother in the book as we take over from our parents.

I think there is a tug there of who's in charge one way or the other. She writes it in response to a kind of academic who comes and wants to write a book about her mother. And she says, no, she'll write the book. So it's a kind of act of possession. And when the academic, a young woman called Holly, is asking her, what was she like? You know, was she very sadistic? Was she very narcissistic? Was she mommy dearest? And Nora says, she was mine. And so that sweetness of possession goes through the book. And I don't think she ever really wants to tell the reader who Catherine O'Dell was. I don't think she actually really knows herself. So she goes through the facts of her life

and the fictions with which she is engaged on the stage. And it's possible that we're not, I'm not going to say we're no further on, but it's possible that the mystery that is Catherine O'Dell remains intact at the end of the book. There's a tease, Ellie, in the book that Catherine shoots a man 40 years later. I'm not going to give away anything. She shoots a man of the book. There's a tease, Ellie, in the book that Catherine shoots a man, 40 years later. I'm not going to

give away anything. She shoots a man in the foot. Don't worry. What inspired that shooting? Well, she shoots a man because he stole her idea. I don't know if it's ever happened to you, but it's a very common thing to happen to women, that men take their

ideas like they're doing their ideas a compliment by having them themselves. And Catherine has been through so many bad fictions and she's trying to make her own fiction. She's trying to write her own screenplay. And the man says, that's lovely. Yes, I'll have it and just takes it. And she shoots him in the foot. I had been researching Siobhan McKenna, who is a wonderful Irish actress of monumental, iconic significance in the foot. I had been researching Siobhan McKenna who is a wonderful Irish actress of monumental, iconic significance in the Irish tradition

but I just wondered why I was going back to kind of Peggy and Mike and J.M. Singh and those tawdry, not tawdry, those gorgeous sort of unmovable, anyway I wondered why I was doing this woman

when I could be doing somebody I walked into a bookshop and there was a biography of Valerie Solanas who shot Andy Warhol and I said why am I not doing a book about a woman who shoots somebody that would be interesting so in a fit of impatience I made Catherine O'Dell shoot someone and then I thought

that was quite an interesting thing to pursue Now like Catherine you spent time in England and studied with Angela Carter. I did. What influence did she have on you? Well, she influenced me through the page as much as anything. I love, I still love her work. I still find it, I still miss her presence, actually, in English letters. And she didn't teach me much. She was of the opinion, clearly, that she couldn't really teach anyone.

You could only encourage them more, you know, ask them questions. So she was very benignly dismissive of my everything. She said, so what are you going to do? That was her entire mentorship. She wanted you to stay in London. I said, I'm going back to Ireland. And she said, well, why? Like Ireland is complete, as far as she was concerned, an intellectual backwater.

Maybe, I don't know if she was right or wrong, but it's still quite a creative place. And you did very well staying there. I did. Anne Enright, thank you so much for being with us this morning. And the book is called Actress. Thank you, Jenny. Now, it may surprise people who generally see me as a pretty level-headed and at times somewhat cynical individual that every morning I turn to the stars in the newspaper to see what my horoscope has in store. I know really that there's nothing in it, but interestingly, astrology seems to be enjoying something of a comeback.

No longer just a bit of fun, but for some people it's revered as guidance for life. Well, a book has just been published called Mercury Retrograde, a planetary activity which is happening now and is set to continue till March the 10th. But what does it mean? And what impact is it likely to have on the life of, say, a typical Taurian like me? Well, Wendy Stacey is the chair of the Astrological Association of Great Britain and Yasmin Boland is the author of the Mercury Retrograde book. Yasmin, what does Mercury Retrograde mean? Okay, Jenny, so I should just say I'm the co-author,

along with Kim Farnell, of this book. Mercury Retrograde, well, Mercury is the planet of communications, and up to four times a year it appears to go backwards in the skies, okay? So from that, astrologers get a lot of symbology, and it gives us a chance to basically redo, rethink, revise, re-edit, revisit, revamp. So it's basically a whole lot of second chances. However, Mercury is the trickster of the zodiac as well. So there's a lot of room for confusion and mayhem and madness. Wendy, what impact do you believe it can have on an individual's life?

Well, when Mercury goes retrograde it's a bit like having a jingle jangle morning if you like. It's when the dog gets into the neighbour's backyard, you lose your phone, the delivery puts a card through even though you're home and you're desperately needing it. Anyone that you're trying to get through to you can't. It's not dire, but it's an inconvenience. Why are people interested in Mercury in particular? There are other planets. I think it's because, particularly for millennials at the moment, it's something they can identify with in terms of what's going wrong in life. It gives some explanation as to the confusion, the chaos, and it's something fundamentally they can understand. It's a sort of a new interface, if you like, between the public

and astrology and provides some sort of explanation. Okay, yeah, then what could it mean for a typical Taurean? Well, actually, Jenny, before we came on air, you told me your birth date, which I will keep secret, but I now know you are a Sag rising, okay? Sagittarius. Sag. You're a Sag. Sag. Sagittarius rising. No, it's kind of the opposite because Sagittarius is the cheerful, happy, outgoing sign.

So you have Sag rising. So what that means for you is actually that the Mercury retrograde cycle we're in now is taking place in your fourth house, which is home and family. So it's a really good time for you to be redoing rethinking revisiting anything to do with home and family so if you've had a falling out with someone in your family now's a really good time to make up but also be aware there's extra room for confusion with family members great time to have a family reunion see family members you haven't seen for a long time that kind of thing why would you say astrology is having a bit of a moment at the moment okay so i'm asked this all

the time as i'm sure wendy is as well and everybody says oh it's because the world's going to hell in a handbasket and we're all so depressed and we all need something to help us get through it i actually disagree i think it's kind of a two-pronged thing. On the one hand, you know, people have been starting to meditate for the past few years and mindfulness practices come in and people are starting to open their minds through these practices, even if they did it because they were stressed. The result is your mind opens to the cosmos when you meditate. Add to this the fact that now with technology,

you can actually find out your chart in 2.5 nanoseconds for free on the internet and it's when you start to really look at your chart and understand it you start to go oh my gosh this stuff actually works and so I think that's what it really is it's because it works and now people can do their own chart whereas before you had to pay hundreds of pounds to go to an astrologer now you can do it for yourself and you can see, oh my goodness, this stuff is amazing. It will blow your mind. How did you get involved in it, Wendy?

I went for, when I was 19, which was 32 years ago, I went for a reading and within 10 minutes I said, oh my God, can I learn this? And that's pretty much where it started. And then I started classes like two weeks later and never went back. But what Ruth revealed in that reading that convinced you that this actually worked? Well, I think that when Yasmin said, you know, it works, and as astrologers we can see that it works,

and there was quite a few things within that first 10 minutes that related completely to my parents and to my siblings. And I thought, oh my gosh, how does he know that? How does he know that? So I was fascinated that anybody can learn astrology. You don't need to have any psychic skills or anything like that. You do need to have some fundamental knowledge of people, but not a gift as such what brought you to so i was a journalist and a girlfriend of mine who was an astrologer and a journalist was clearing out her she shed she had a shed and it was full of astrology books she was um she was really into astrology excuse me so she literally gave me all

her astrology books which were the best books that you can, that you could get. There's lots of classics in astrology and she gave them to me and she said, just read those. And so a few weeks later she said, how are you doing with the astrology books? I'm like, well, it's okay, but I don't really know how to apply it to my chart. So she gave me a chart program and I could apply it to my chart and I literally got sucked in. I started doing astrology straight away for about four hours a

day of study for years, for like two or three years. It just took over my life. But how much is it now just an extension of trends such as mindfulness, which everybody's talking about? You see, I don't think that mindfulness is a trend. I think that mindfulness is the fact that we have all started to realize that this crazy world we've created for ourselves, where we spend our lives in rooms without windows under artificial light. And, you know, this, we used to think this was the epitome of success to, you know, spend our lives away from nature. Now we're starting to realize, actually, you know what real success is when I have a chance to be by myself for five minutes and to meditate and to contemplate or to go for a walk in the woods.

That's what real success is, that I can actually look after myself. Self-care is like the ultimate luxury. So to me, it's more of an extension of that realisation by humans that, you know, we've kind of made a bit of a rod for our backs with modern life. So with Mercury retrograde right now, what would you say generally to people this means for them? Well, this particular Mercury retrograde is at a point in the zodiac that it will trigger certain things for certain people.

Mercury retrograde is sort of not always blanketed over the whole population. There are certain people it will pick up, and in different ways, as Yasmin described before. But, for example, the particular point where this mercury went retrograde is going to pick up people, for example, that are born on the 2nd of March, 2nd of June, 2nd of September, and 2nd of December. And, of course, it will pick up a lot of other people with other things in their chart as well.

But that's one thing we can say. Anyone that were born on those dates are going to be picked up by this Mercury retrograde, which means that, yeah, they're going to have sort of computer problems, phone problems, car problems, things like that. They'll lose their Oyster card. They'll lose their debit cards or things like that.

But like I said, it's not dire, it's just an inconvenience. So some people will be more heavily affected than others. OK, thank you very much. So with that warning, look after your phone and all of the rest of it. Now, just to mention, Yasmin also features in our latest video called Mercury Retrograde. What's it all about? Alongside some of our favourite Mercury Retrograde memes. And you can watch it on the website now or, of course, on the Instagram feed. I was talking to Wendy Stacey and Yasmin Boland.

Now, I had lots of response from you on the clever girls question. Barbara emailed, I was a clever girl in the 50s too. No one in my family had ever been to university. And at the grammar school I attended, I was obviously from a working class background and largely disregarded by the staff when it came to advice about further education. My father once said to me that it was good to be clever because that meant I could pass knowledge on to my children. So I left school at 16. But I did gain an open university

honours degree in my 30s and nurtured my children's intelligence alongside that. Someone called Lynn, who says now in Scotland, where loads of Yorkies are very happy, says, oh yes, I was a clever girl. And in my pit village near Rotherham, I was marked for life. My mother, a widow, was criticised for allowing me to go on to sixth form, should be out at work bringing money in. When I went to university, even she began to criticise my use of big words. At university, I didn't feel clever at all, but very limited by my lack of experience of travel, culture, socialising with the middle classes. That was at York, where many an Oxford or Cambridge wannabe went.

All this in the 60s and 70s. I've kept my accent, but learned to moderate my language as a professional depending on who I'm speaking to and what I judge their expectations of me to be. So, oh yes, being a clever girl or clever woman is a working class brand for life. Thanks for the rant. Kath said, I was always academically ahead growing up in a normal city secondary school in Portsmouth. I was called SWAT and BOF for all of my time there, so I learned to keep my head down and hide it to adopt whatever accent would make me less visible.

It's taken me until the age of 50 to celebrate having got where I am and to speak out. I'm now a chief executive of a charity and trying to tackle the root causes of poverty. I'm proud of being a clever girl, but shh, don't tell anybody, least of all my family. Pat said, I'm 76. I grew up in a small town in Northumberland.

I can't remember anyone saying clever girl except one teacher. I was from a relatively poor household in a town that was them and us. I was one of them. Took 11 and 12 plus, didn't pass. Couldn't have gone to grammar school anyway because of the cost of uniform, etc. However, I did my friend's maths homework who went to grammar school did my O levels when I was 40 carried on and did a degree access course and went to university at 50 attaining a BSc business and IT degree before that attained a counselling certificate then an ITD certificate in training and management skills. However, it was a different time.

Regards, Pat. Vivian said, I'm now retired but grew up as the eldest of four girls in a very poor working class family. As I went through primary school, I came out near the top in tests and loved reading and was a total bookworm. So I soon became the clever one in the sister hierarchy. I always saw it as a bit derogative, i.e. I was clever but no good at sports, and as a girl education might be wasted on me. When I got a place at university, my dad had a mixture of pride,

but also told me he didn't see the point in me going as I'd only get married and waste the degree. That and a strong desire to get out of poverty spurred me on and I ended up with a successful career as a town planner. And then Deborah said, A regional accent is not an indication of class, simply of geographical area. I'm exasperated by the BBC's assertion in much of its programming that the North equals working class. If a northern regional accent is part of a drama, for example, it's used as a device to indicate the speaker is uneducated, salt of the earth, or a character who's made something of themselves from a poor start. Have any of you ever been to North Yorkshire?

It is as culturally rich and diverse as any other area in the country and full of educated, intelligent people. Please, remind your guests of that fact. And that's from Deborah. And Cathy also said, please stop conflating a northern accent with

working class, lazy journalism. And then on Mercury Ret mercury retrograde Pat said during mercury retrograde my diary goes into meltdown lots of cancelled and rearranged appointments David writes in your intro you ask mercury's retrograde what does this mean it It means nothing. What next? Chicken entrails and the ducking stool?

As a supposedly responsible programme and organisation, I'm appalled that BBC's Woman's Hour is giving airtime to this unscientific, evidence-free claptrap for gullible idiots. Kindly stop it. And Richard quoted Patrick Moore, who apparently said, astrology proves one scientific fact, there's one born every minute. And he then said, can't believe women are interviewed an astrologer

without challenging this absolute nonsense. Now do join me tomorrow when we'll be discussing childhood cancer, which is rare. And the past few decades have seen huge improvements in the outlook for children who are diagnosed. Today more than three quarters of them survive. Well tomorrow we'll hear from three mothers, Sam, June and Jenny, whose children were diagnosed. How did they cope day to day watching their offspring struggle through endless treatments who was their biggest support and how has the experience affected their response to the world around them join me tomorrow two minutes past 10 for the live program if you can

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