Woman's Hour - Natalya Romaniw; Party political conference season, Essex Girls, the women behind the first hydrogen train.

Episode Date: October 7, 2020

The opera singer Natalya Romaniw joins Jane to talk about the challenges performing live in the Covid-era and her latest role as Mimi in the ENO’s La Bohème at Alexandra Palace in London. As the political party conference season comes to a close Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff and Katy Balls from the Spectator consider what, if any, policies are on the table for women. Men are disproportionately affected by Covid 19 in health terms but it is women who seem to be bearing the brunt of the economic fallout of the pandemic as well as taking on a larger share of domestic work and childcare. Is the virus a step back for women’s rights? And what are the political parties planning to do about it? Apart from walking and cycling, the train is the greenest way of getting around. Trains, especially diesel ones, still emit carbon dioxide though. But, last week the first hydrogen train in the UK took its maiden journey. It’s 100% clean. There’s still a lot to do like making room for the batteries underneath the train, and increasing the speed. Jane talks to Helen Simpson and Chandra Morbey, two women – who do a jobshare – behind project.We explore the issue of Essex Girls – the butt of countless jokes and preconceptions – with the Oxford English Dictionary referring to her as "unintelligent, promiscuous, and materialistic", while Collins adds "devoid of taste" to the mix. The author Sarah Perry has just penned a book in praise of the Essex Girl aimed at “profane and opinionated women everywhere” and she’s joined by the food writer and political campaigner Jack Monroe and a proud fellow Essex Girl. Natalya Romaniw photo - copyright Patrick Allen.Presented by Jane Garvey. Produced by Louise Corley Editor: Karen Dalziel

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. Hi, this is Jane Garvey and I've got to be quick today. Do apologise. This is the Woman's Hour podcast. Wednesday, the 7th of October 2020. Hello, a very good Wednesday morning to you. Welcome to the programme. Today we're going to be talking to two women behind the Hydrogen Train Project. We did mention that on the programme yesterday.

And thanks to everybody who has made suggestions for the Women's Hour 2020 Power List. We closed two suggestions at midnight last night. Hundreds have come in. Brilliant. Looking forward to putting all those names on the list or as many as we can. And we'll reveal those names on the 16th of November. The Power List this year is all about our planet and brilliant women committing huge amounts of their time, in many cases for no money at all, for the good of the environment.

Also today, the opera singer Natalia Romanu will talk to her too and Essex Girls, Sarah Perry, the novelist, and Jack Munro, top chef, will discuss their pride at being Essex Girls on Women's Hour today. And if you want to join in, at BBC Women's Hour on social media. Now, let's just mark, well, the beginning of the end, really, of the virtual party conference season, the SNP conference still to come. The Guardian columnist Gabby Hinsliff joins us, Katie Balls from The Spectator. What we'd really like to know, I guess, is what's on the table for women and to what degree did Women's Lives feature in the virtual conference season? All very peculiar this year,

of course. You may have seen some of the Prime Minister's address yesterday in an empty room, not easy to do. Gabby and Katie, good morning to you both. How are you? Good morning. Good to have you on. Let's start with you, Gabby, if you don't mind. What have you noticed about women or perhaps the absence of women during the conference season

or what passes for it this year? As you say, it's been a very odd sort of truncated conference season, and it's been very policy light. I mean, you've got Labour still very much in listening mode, sort of trying to earn back the right to be heard. So it's mostly making sympathetic noises rather than outlining policy. And for the Tories, obviously, just had a manifesto published a year ago that they haven't managed to implement yet, mostly. So, you know, they're not sort of setting out anything new. a gafodd y ffestr yn gyhoeddi blwyddyn yn ôl ac nad ydynt wedi gallu ei ddefnyddio o'r ffordd, felly nid ydynt yn sefydlu unrhyw beth newydd. Ond o'r Lleidydd, roedden ni'n cael y cyfnod ar ddiweddol. Roedd ganddo gyfweliad i'r gwirfoddol yn ystod y cyfnod cyntaf ac roedden ni'n dal i gael hynny.

Felly roedd Gylif Sadiq yn siarad am y pethau am y bywyd o'r sector ysbytio, yn amlwg yn dod drwy'r pandemig, a Liza Dodds yn si about the way COVID's impacted on women, more women seeking furlough or worrying about their jobs because they couldn't juggle looking after the kids and working from home at the same time during lockdown. Keir Starmer calling himself a feminist. But it didn't really amount, there wasn't a sort of concrete, and here's what we're going to do, take home policy from that. And neither was there really from government.

You get the sense that we're still in very much a holding pattern where normal politics has not resumed no okay um to what degree katie do you think the conservative party conference acknowledged in any way that women have been more adversely affected by lockdown and by covid than men and i'm not talking about the health implications we know in many cases it's been significantly harder on men I mean I don't think it was um the issue I don't think it was front and center I think that it's a little bit harder um when it's obviously a virtual conference to see all the things that are sometimes on the side so I think that the fact it wasn't a physical conference when that uh often you do have that moment in the conference hall when lots of the new female MPs go up and they talk about issues.

And I think that in a way, because it was a dialed-down version, you missed some of that. In terms of specific policies, I think that, again, it was not the case that the focus in the Treasury and the Chancellor when they're talking about balancing the books was looking at the gap in terms of women getting back into the workforce. I think it is an issue behind the scenes, but I don't think that anyone who's been following it over the past few days can really say that was one of the core things they were trying to get across. Right. Which significant female MPs did have a presence at that virtual Conservative conference.

Priti Patel certainly made a speech, the Home Secretary. Yes, Priti Patel made a speech about law and order, about immigration. And I think, as tends to be the case with Priti Patel, it was a pretty divisive speech. Those who, like her, thought it was very strong and the right rhetoric. And others were pretty alienated by it um i think in terms of uh you know the top people in this government we get back to something that we've seen throughout the coronavirus process which is often that the people in the senior positions are male and they're the ones making the big decisions so um clearly with the labour

conference you have annalise dodds female shadow chancellor you don't conference, you have Anneliese Dodds, female shadow chancellor. You don't have that. You have health secretaries, male, Matt Hancock, Rishi Sunak, the chancellor is male. So I think some of these big slots just do lack that in a sense, because of that, because of the way of the positions. There are some stark differences, though. I was really struck by data from the Office of National Statistics from September about the number of women over 65. Over 79,000 fewer women over 65 were in work between May to July than in the previous quarter. And that's so much higher than the 13,000 fewer men of the same age in employment during that period. Now, Gabby, you could argue, of course, that nobody over 65 would want to be working. I appreciate some over 65s do want to

work, but there'll be many who are working because they have to. But that is a big difference, isn't it? What does it tell us about the difference in the lives of older women and men? I think we need to know a lot more about what's going on there. And it could be that some of those are, you know, people who they're the age group that's most at risk from Covid so you know they don't feel safe going out to work but then that would apply to men as well you think I suspect what's going on there that is a key group for being responsible for care of their own parents their spouses you know elderly relatives and we know that during lockdown families have had to step into the breach a lot more you know you've had day know that during lockdown families have had to step into

the breach a lot more you know you've had daycare centres closing less availability of home helps than usual and lots of families worried about if you're getting to that stage where you know you've got an elderly relative who maybe does need to go into a care home you don't want to put them in one in the middle of a pandemic you know we've seen how dangerous that can be so I wonder if that's not a lot more women sort of having to take on more caring responsibilities and not being able to work as well. And as you say, if you wanted to retire at 66 or 67, you know, that's great, but a lot of people can't afford to. And we're talking about this is the waspy generation of women, you know, they they're not retiring at 65 anymore,

they're needing to work for longer to get their pensions and some of them need to stay and work for as long as they physically can so that they have comfortable retirements themselves and and to a degree they are the women who are forgotten um i suspect they're actually far too busy to draw attention to themselves because they've got too much going on we are more likely to pay attention to younger women perhaps with access to social media but they have also um paid a price for what's been going on more likely significantly to have quit or lost their job or to have been furloughed especially if they're mothers Gabby. Yes so I think you've got two separate two separate

sort of aspects of care going on for that age group sort of 30s and 40s and women in their 30s and 40s it's absolutely about um trying to when your kids are out of school during lockdown trying to simultaneously work and parent and do everything from your space of your kind of living room and i interviewed a lot of women in those circumstances for a couple of pieces i wrote for the guardian about the the impact of covid on women and what came across really strongly was this feeling this fear that you were going to be seen as unreliable because of it that you know if in a sort of tough economic climate where people thought there would be redundancies will your boss think you're just not up to it because your kid keeps wandering into your zoom meeting or because you can't do

the things that you could do um before and in that feeling of you know will people be vulnerable when it comes to decisions being made about who gets the job? I think we've yet to see that coming through in in unemployment figures. But it's something that you really want the government to be keeping a very close eye on. We know pregnancy discrimination, maternal discrimination exists at the best of times. So why wouldn't it exist in a pandemic? Yeah, of course. Well, listeners to Radio 4, if they've stayed listening from today, they might well have heard Liz Truss, who Katie Balls is the longest serving cabinet minister at the moment. International trade was what she was talking about this morning, but she is also equalities minister.

And in that role, what has she done or said about the difference between the ways women's lives and men's lives have panned out in the last six months? Well, I think Liz Truss has an interesting approach to this brief in the sense there's lots of rumours doing the rounds in Westminster, for example, that gender inequalities could eventually be rolled across various departments rather than being its own office. And I think that she's quite different to her predecessors on this. I think in terms of what she's been doing on getting you know I suppose drawing awareness to the difficulties on women I think what she's been making the news more for to be honest is the Gender Recognition Act. I don't think there's been huge levels of work on those other areas. I think that one thing that is on the government's mind, however, and this crosses over to Treasury, is clearly in the sense of we're talking about older women.

And that's clearly a big issue if you look at the initial figures and what we're expecting, but also just in terms of childcare. Those are parents who rely and lots of mothers on after school clubs. And I think all this stuff is negatively impacting and I think it is something there is an awareness of, particularly because earlier on in this pandemic, I think there was a speech by the Prime Minister, you know, where he talked about people getting back to work

and an address to the nation and childcare did not come up. So I think that they are learning that they have to think more about those things. But I think in terms of lots of these concrete issues, we're hearing about, you funding gaps for um child carers we're you know hearing about the difficulties for those who are now particularly in local lockdown areas uh wondering what they can do with their children in terms of other households and i think all that stuff is adding up and clearly is going to have an impact yeah um i mean it's an increase an increasing awareness is all very well, but will anything change? Katie?

I mean, I think I'd have to do something for it to change. So at the moment, I don't think we have concrete policies. Because they're simply fighting on a different front. Yeah, I mean, I think that it clearly is an issue. And I think it goes across various departments. And I think you have something where people say, well, actually, you know, that's something for the Treasury to look at. No, it crosses over to this department. But as far as I understand it, there is not yet a concrete development of what they are going to do to that. But also, I think that's partly because this is such a fluid situation.

I don't think the government know yet what the restrictions are going to be, you know, in X, X weeks time. So with some of this stuff, I think that it's there's still the sense that they're in the fog. Yeah, well, to a degree, of course, we all are. Katie, thank you very much for that. Quick word from you, Gabby, on another very significant British female politician, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, who is announcing new restrictions this afternoon in Scotland. And Scotland does tend to get in earlier. It doesn't mean that the situation is any better in Scotland and Scotland does tend to get in earlier it doesn't mean that the situation is any better in Scotland but Nicola Sturgeon is a convincing communicator isn't she? I think she does two things very well firstly is that she as I said she has the absolute

you know gift of clear confident fluent communication you feel like she's levelling with you you feel I think that engenders trust you feel like she's leveling with you you feel um i think that engenders trust you feel like she sounds like she knows what she's doing um and i think scotland has also made good judgment calls on um some things you know it has it's sensible for example that children are excluded from the rule of six in scotland but they don't count towards um the limits on gatherings because people feel that, you know, he's a bit mad, including babies in that rule, for example.

And I think it's made some sensible decisions about proceeding more cautiously with opening up pubs and restaurants. But as you say, it's not necessarily helped in terms of management of the disease. I mean, Scotland is having to announce fresh lockdowns today for very good reason, which is that the number of cases is shooting up again. y gofod. Mae Cymru yn gorfod cyhoeddi gwych-dynion heddiw am ddewr iawn, sef bod nifer y casau yn cymryd ei gynnal eto. Felly, o ran y ffyniadau naturiol Cymru

dros Lloegr, mae'n fwy cyffredin ac yn fwy arferol, byddwch yn disgwyl i Cymru gwneud llawer gwell na'r restr o'r wlad. Nid yw hynny wedi digwydd. Mae ffyniad yno, yn y bwysig, rhwng ei hyfforddiant fel arweinydd, to be doing a great deal better in some ways than the rest of the country and that hasn't quite happened so there's a gap there potentially between you know her performance as a leader her leadership skills and how much difference that's actually made to the pandemic is it that there's some you know there's an underlying thing that drives pandemics or underlying factors that drive pandemics which are not so easily influenced thank you very much um gabby hinsliff who writes as a columnist for The Guardian.

And you also heard from Katie Balls, who is somebody who writes for The Spectator magazine at BBC Women's Hour. That's where you can reach us on social media. You can email the programme via our website. And loads of you did exactly that yesterday when we were talking about our Power List 2020. Our planet is the subject this year and some brilliant suggestions from you of women we should know about for that list who are doing wonderful things for the environment. Now during the programme yesterday when three of our Power List judges answered your questions we talked to Alice Larkin, Professor of Climate Science and Energy Policy at Manchester University and Alice is absolutely straight about this. She just doesn't fly anymore and she goes everywhere by train.

And the cost of rail travel came up during that programme. In the UK at least, rail travel can really be expensive. Well, last week, the first hydrogen train took its maiden UK journey. And we can talk to two of the women who are at the forefront of this project, Helen Simpson and Chandra Morby, our Joint Innovation and Projects Directors at the company Porterbrook. Helen and Chandra, good morning to you both. How are you? Very well, thank you.

Good, good, great. Now, actually, before we get onto the train itself, I'm really intrigued by the way you two work together. You both have the same job title, but Helen, you have slightly different specialisms within the roles, don't you? That's right. My favourite part about my job is the innovation and development of new technologies and trying to get those onto trains. And Chandra has a real passion for project management and delivery of critical projects. And Chandra, how did you meet Helen? Well, we actually met, first of all, because we were neighbours, not realising that we were both chartered engineers. So it's quite

a funny story. Did you really meet in the street? Well, yes, in the back gardens, actually. So eventually we ended up working at the same company. And after we'd both had children, we were both struggling working part time because we felt we weren't really able to give the job the focus it needed. So we decided to team up as a job share and apply for jobs, various jobs, which we got. And we've been doing that for about 15 years now. Right. OK okay fantastic. Helen tell us a bit then about the science behind this. How does a hydrogen fuel train work? Well there are three main components that you need and on this project we've worked closely

with the University of Birmingham who had pioneered some early development in hydrogen fuel cell technology. The three parts you need are somewhere to store the hydrogen, so there's some hydrogen storage tanks. The second part is a hydrogen fuel cell, and the third part is some batteries, and then there's a lot of complicated electronic control system to make the three things integrate together. And what happens is the hydrogen fuel goes into the fuel cell and it's combining hydrogen with oxygen from the air to make pure water and electricity and it's that electricity that goes into the batteries and powers the train. Okay Chandra is this entirely clean energy? Well that's the idea is that it's zero emissions. There's no diesel burnt, for example.

And so it's just pure water is the byproduct. OK, I only ask the question because I've got an email here from a listener who asks, can you get someone to explain the science behind this? When hydrogen burns, it makes water vapour. This is a greenhouse gas. And when it cools, it makes rain. One consequence of climate change is too much rain in some places as well as droughts in others. Why is it safe to pump

vast amounts of water vapour into the atmosphere? Chandra? So it's Helen actually, but that's fine. So the output is water. Greenhouse gas emissions are caused by carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, other methane gases, so hydrocarbon gases. And that's what's causing the climate change emergency. So what we're trying to do here is emit water vapour. It does fall as rain, but that's not the trigger of climate change itself. Right. And here we're trying to showcase that rail transport in the future could be powered by a completely green, zero emission power source. Right. It was your maiden journey last week, Chandra. How did it go?

Well, it was very exciting. It needed a lot of planning to get the train onto the track and a big team worked very hard to make that happen. And Helen was there and with lots of VIPs and I'm sure Helen can tell you exactly how it went on the day. Helen, any incidents? No, it was fine. There were a few technical last minute things that always happen on this type of project. But the team absolutely pulled together and we managed to go between a little siding that we work out of near Long Marston in Warwickshire all the way through to Evesham and got a top speed of 50 miles an hour, which was amazing for the because the the train is a prototype at the moment right so you cross the border from warwickshire into worcestershire um for the trip and 50 miles an hour how i mean that actually strikes me as reasonably quick but how how fast do so-called

normal trains manage well what we're looking at is whether hydrogen is really the solution for routes that aren't electrified, particularly for speeds up to around 75 miles an hour. So we think the main use of this technology will be on more rural routes where it's expensive to electrify the railway or difficult in some way. And this would be a real technology of the future that's going to allow us to have a completely zero emission railway. But I understand that the batteries required are, are they at the moment, Chandra, pretty bulky? Yes, that's right. So because we were making a prototype train, we were able to use

kind of all the space we needed. So the next step is to move into a, is to move the design into something that can be productionised and that will fit into what we call the space envelope, as in the gaps that we have. The space envelope? Oh, yes, that's a technical term. Yes. So as in the shape and the size of something that you need to fit it into. So we've got to find all the space on the underframe and then we've got to work out a way of making the design fit into that gap. Right. And that's the next step that we're working on now.

Right. So what's your time frame? So what we're doing is we're repackaging all that equipment that Chandra talked about so that it fits underneath the train and therefore there'd be more space for passengers upstairs. And that's eventually what the trains would look like. And as a passenger, you wouldn't see any difference. It would just look like any other train to you travelling around. We're currently working with the University of Birmingham on the next stage of repackaging all that equipment. It will fit underneath two of the vehicles on this particular train.

And we're hoping in the next couple of years to get that into a production design and into a build phase for looking at to roll out after that into passenger service. Right, brilliant. And I mean, as we were talking about the cost of train travel on the programme yesterday, is there any reason, Chandra, why this would be a more expensive form of rail travel? Well, you'd have to work out all the pricing points, which we don't know at the moment exactly, because it's still in the prototype stage. But in terms of the cost of

the fuel, then that is a key thing. And as I know, the government is really keen on promoting the hydrogen economy and where we're going with that, then I think in the future we might see hydrogen as a very cost-effective fuel. Right, OK. And of course, partly because Britain was a rail innovator as a nation, curiously, it's now rather hard to innovate in Britain because I think a lot of our infrastructure is elderly, Helen, or vintage. Well, rather than being vintage, it's the space available. So all of our tunnels and equipment on the roofs that you just can't do in the UK because of the size of our tunnels. Yeah, I've got to say, this has really got the listeners going on Twitter. I just want to put this to you from a listener called, what's this, Stuart.

Hydrogen can only be produced by using energy. Fuel cells themselves are not efficient. So although noxious emissions are reduced unless a lot of renewable electricity is used it doesn't reduce greenhouse gas production either of you this this is a really interesting question so that that it there is some some truth in what's said there that the part of hydrogen production at the moment can either be through a by-product of chemical process but the ultimate goal here is to move towards this hydrogen economy and generating for the uk hydrogen by use of off-peak energy from wind farms so imagine all the wind farms running at four o'clock in the

morning and nobody needs that demand of electricity we transfer that energy into hydrogen and store it although it's inefficient that's wasted energy at the moment and we can store it as hydrogen and use it at peak times for transportation purposes so there's a there's a whole economy emerging in this and we're seeing a lot of that in Europe and we're hoping for you know government direction on hydrogen investment in the UK to drive forward this change. Thank you both so much. Really enjoyed that. And it's clear that you take great pride in your work, as you should, of course. Helen Simpson and Chandra Morby, Joint Innovation and Projects Directors

at the company Porterbrook, and they are looking at hydrogen trains. And just to emphasise, it's great to get your tweets and your questions and your points. I can see them all. So do tweet away during the course of the programme at BBC Women's Hour. Not dogs abuse, please. I mean, I'm very fragile. Now, dating apps have opened up who we meet and how we meet them. And there's always been the suggestion that the world of internet dating is a world in which younger men and older women might get on with each other.

But many of us have been led to believe that men on the whole want younger women. Well, tomorrow we'll discuss what's really going on. We're going to be talking to a man we're calling Richard. He's 28. He's attracted to women in their 40s and 50s, and he thinks older women and younger men are quite simply sexually compatible. When a woman approaches menopause, her body has a last push to get pregnant, which means that older women have a surge of hormones and a massively

increased sex drive. And the effects are, you know, quite obvious and quite enjoyable. I think everybody likes to feel wanted. And whereas with a younger woman, typically there might be this give and take, this courtship dance. An older woman will just devour you. And then there's just certain obvious things like practice makes perfect. If someone's been doing something for 50 years versus someone's been doing something for 10, then you can imagine

the one with the more experience might be better at it that's richard he sounds quite tired doesn't he but based on what he said there um no wonder that's uh tomorrow uh he's that's not his real name richard uh also tomorrow uh we're teaching uh teaching resilience how you can become more resilient and i'm looking forward to that. One of my guests is Elizabeth Day, who's written about failure. Her podcast, How to Fail, is very excellent, in fact. And Elizabeth is also a novelist. She's one of our guests tomorrow.

Now, Natalia Romanu is an opera singer from South Wales. She's just won the Young Artist of the Year Award from this year's Gramophone Awards. And her latest role was Mimi in the ENO's LabOM at Alexandra Palace in London. Natalia, good morning to you. Good morning. How are you? I'm very well indeed. Thank you. How are you? Yes, I'm very well. Thank you.

You sound in excellent form. Now, how did you do LabOM? How did that happen? Well, we had to, of course, you know, be very innovative about how we stage performance within, you know, the COVID guidelines. And so we had to do that outdoors, which, of course, brought along with it the challenges of the British weather. And of course, you know, social distancing, you know, we, you know, above all, we needed to be safe while we were doing this and we you know as an industry really need to maintain that we you know we prove we can we can exist in a covid world and I think we did it rather successfully you know we had social distancing in in place on stage with a chorus the the main cast, and indeed the orchestra.

In fact, the orchestra, you know, were behind us on levels, on tiers, upstage. And the conductor was rather unusually in a cherry picker. So not only behind us, but elevated as well, you know. And of course, the main aspect of all of this was that our audience were in cars. And so, you know, one might think that you sort of lose that connection, the intimacy that one generally has as a performer with the audience. And it's an important one. It's, you know, a huge connection for both parties, actually. But it only made the focus on stage more intense. And it was just so wonderful to

perform live music again. Yeah, I'm sure that was. But can you explain, I'm really interested in what it does even to the sound. Is it different? Yes, I mean, of course we were mic'd, which, you know, we're not really accustomed to being. Well, you don't need to. No, we don't need to. We train so hard so that, you know, we have a very solid technique that carries over the orchestra. And, you know, it was no different. We didn't sing any differently.

Technically, it was all the same. It's just that, of course, we didn't have that natural acoustic that the theatre brings to sort of bounce off. Instead, you know, we had fallback from the monitors at the front of the stage. And, yeah, it was rather sort of, you know, I felt at times like a rock star, particularly with the hip hop dancing element, which was added to the production. I'm sure it was amazing. I was it was last night I was reading a newspaper interview. I think it was in The Telegraph. Forgive me if I got that wrong from earlier this year. And I don't know whether you have these experiences, but I very occasionally have a Corona moment where I kind of come to and just get depressed by everything I can

see and everything going on around me and this interview really made me sad because it was in February and it was you quite routinely outlining what lay ahead for you this year and of course that world no longer exists and we don't really know when we're going to get back to it. Do you recall your working life before all this? Yes very much so so. And in fact, I've just had, I've been, you know, I hold a very privileged position at the moment that I'm quite aware of, that I've just had a little taste of what it was, but in the new normal, quite recently. And in fact, I'm sort of in the post-show blues phase at the moment,

having just finished doing an opera. But, yeah, I remember I was mid-run of Madam Butterfly at English National Opera when we were shut down. But, I mean, again, I count myself quite fortunate because we were six shows in and there are many shows across the board that didn't even get to see the stage, you know. I know. But it is a bit bleak, isn't it? Sometimes I think we just need to allow ourselves a moment just to feel sad about everything um oh completely and and actually for artists to really channel that then even more so into our performance you know we're

we're all sort of um informed and shaped by our you you know, our human experiences, our emotions. And I think it'll, well, I know it will. It will make us all stronger as artists. You know, we will come back in full force. Well, let's hear a little bit of you. This is from Natalia's album, Arian, with Lada Valasova on the piano. This is Nympha by Rimsky-Korsakov. Razumit, tajnaem, objemi dvoh pavcu, tam nimfa druslaja, sraspozhinaj posaia, Ano zakryta jo, Vyloce na saboia, O, roi, o, pizd bagat,

Prosok, svaid losa. Listening to that, Natalia, it's... Oh, I felt terrible for interrupting you there. It's so mature and, forgive me, it doesn't sound like you, if you see what I mean. I know it is you. No, I know my speaking voice is rather different to my singing voice. Well, yes, but it's an amazing control you have of your voice. Obviously, you've been an accomplished singer for a long, long time. But when was it that someone said to you, OK, you're not just someone who's good in school shows.

You're somebody very, very special? I think I was generally unaware of that until I went to the Guildhall, which in itself is a wonderful feeling to be so sort of, you know, vulnerable and naive because, you know, you don't feel any fear and you have no inhibitions and you're able to sort of, you know, just go for it. But, yeah, it was sort of made clear to me when I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama and it was my of made clear to me when I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. And it was my teacher there, John Evans, and various coaches who pointed out to me that, you know,

they used to joke because I would often have to work in Marks and Spencers one day a week while I was studying there. And they were very, you know, understanding about that in order so that I could, you know, continue to study and finances went so tough. That, you know, you don't have to work in Marks and Spencers all your life, you know, Natalia, you can, you could probably make quite a good go of it. And, you know, I was really, really sort of hugely supported and encouraged by the Guildhall School. I think people will be intrigued. You're probably fed up with answering this question, by your name, but they will be intrigued by your name, because you actually sound like it's an opera singer's name to me.

You're from Swansea, aren't you? I am from Swansea. My grandfather was Ukrainian and my mother didn't marry, so that gave me the fortune of having the surname Romanyu. And the first name comes from being named after a Russian ballerina who was very sort of hot of the press at the time in 1987 when I was born. Yeah, well, your mother was obviously was a very intuitive about what lay ahead for you because it's just a brilliant name. Well, you know, she thought I was going to be a rock star, she said, because I kicked so hard in her belly that she thought I was going to come out sort of, you know, with an epic amount of hair and playing the guitar and, you know, just rocking out. But yeah, it slightly went down a different path. Yeah, but a brilliant path all the same. So what lies ahead for you just for today?

Give us an idea. How many hours of practice lie ahead for you today? Well, today I'm going to be translating and phoneticising a little bit of Shostakovich 14. So, yeah, I need to need to get round to that. But also I need to go to the gym because I can't stay in the flat. We're in local lockdown here in Cardiff, you see. And so, you know, I do need to get out and about. But in terms of work, my next known concert will be in December in Katowice with the Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra.

Wow, sounds fantastic. Well, I'm sure that will happen. And so you're in local lockdown, but you can go to the gym in Wales. We can. we have 50 minute slots which is absolutely enough time for me a bit more than enough for me yeah okay yeah and of course it's important for you to keep fit isn't it because you well you've got to be fit to do your job well yes because you know our instruments are our bodies and you know um I

think it generally works that you know happy, happy, healthy body and mind. The more, you know, it sort of reflects in your singing. Yes. And in that spirit, I will be tottering off to Pilates later on today. Natalia, really brilliant to talk to you and the best of luck in the future. Thank you. You too. Thank you very much. That's Natalia Romanu, opera singer from Swansea in South Wales. I love Swansea. I also love Essex, she said quickly. But Essex girls have been over the years

the butt of countless jokes. Well, we're not having any of that. Let's talk to the novelist Sarah Perry, who's just published a book in praise of the Essex girl, aimed at profane and opinionated women everywhere, she says. Essex Girls is the name of the book, appropriately. Sarah, good morning to you. Good morning.

And also joining us, a political campaigner and epic food writer, Jack Munro, a native of Southend-on-Sea. Jack, good morning. Can we make contact with Southend? Jack, are you there? No, she disappeared for the time being. We'll go back to her. Sarah, you have written all sorts of important novels. Why do this non-fiction short book very enjoyable

about the appeal of the Essex girl? I had been thinking about my own Essex identity for a little while because I think in common with loads of people from Essex I was so sick of the stereotypes and the jokes about Sharons and Trac's that I thought have ignored it for most of my life. And then a couple of years ago, I gave a lecture on radical political women, and realised that I could sort of feel that I had companionship and an identity if I embraced the Essex girl instead of trying to pretend that I wasn't one. So that's kind of how the book started. All right. Had you been in denial about being an Essex girl?

Oh totally, I had I think a snobbish and unsophisticated response to the jokes and most Essex girls, certainly ones who grew up in the 80s and 90s will be familiar with having been looked up and down with total contempt when you say that you're from Essex and there'll be immediately unrepeatable jokes and they'll ask if you wear white stilettos and so on and so like many of us I sort of stopped admitting to it I would sometimes say that I came from London and I did live in London for 11 years but I certainly wasn't from there and then I started to look into it and thought, actually, this stereotype of women who are too loud and irritating

and don't dress correctly and don't speak correctly, maybe those are all extraordinary things. Maybe if you don't care about your reputation and you don't care about annoying people in power, maybe you're capable

of doing extraordinary things. So I went on the hunt for ethics girls to admire and found more than I could fit into one sort of quite slender volume. Okay, just name one woman whose name we should know. Everybody should know about Anne Knight, who is from my hometown Chelmsford. She was born at the end of the 18th century and she was a Victorian woman as Victorian women were and not as we think them to be. She was a Quaker,

an abolitionist, a political radical. She travelled very widely. She had a very big social conscience and she was a real pain. She would turn up to dinner parties and if people started saying dreadful things about politics or were unsupportive of abolitionism

she would bring out pamphlets and kind of wave them at them and ruin the dinner party with her politics. So she was the best kind of irritating Essex woman. Yeah, our kind of woman, by the sound of things. And Jack Munro, there's a streak of the radical in you, isn't there? Apparently so. And what do you make of the Essex girl trope thing? Well, I went to an all-girls school in Essex,

and we were kind of brought up to feel as though we should detach ourselves from the Essex girl stereotype as far as possible. We were basically taught to drop our accents in drama classes. We were taught to speak nicely, stand nicely, pronounce our T's. And that's something I carried with me right into my early career when I hit sort of the limelight as a single mum writing recipes. So I look back at my early interviews and I've got a real kind of plummy accent

because I was still holding on to the kind of shame of being from Essex. I've got to a point where I'm comfortable and confident in myself enough now to just be like, you know what, this is who I am. This is my accent. This is how I talk. People want to write me off as thick or unintelligent or whatever because

how I talk belies the place of my birth and they're not people that I want to talk to. I think I'm proud to be from Essex and to be part of a history of women with, you know, bold ideas. Yeah, I mean, it's an intersection of class and misogyny, isn't it, this actually, this Essex girl? Absolutely, and it's sort of one of the last bastions of stereotyping that we're yet to kind of reclaim isn't it people still make the essex

girl jokes even even now if they're wary from essex oh have you got a pair of white stilettos no i don't actually but even if i did what difference would it make well quite um well sarah i mean you you also write about women who are honorary essex girls in effect. And one is Kim Kardashian, who on the face of it is all, well, is anything but substance. But in fact, she's achieved rather a lot of unexpected things. Well, I think this is the important thing about it all. And just as Jack so rightly said, we are trained to reject the glamour and the sexualisation and so on

and to be prim and proper and to be as anti-ethics girl as possible. But there is nothing to prevent a woman from being, like Kim Kardashian, fantastically glamorous and nakedly materialistic and kind of practically actually naked much of the time and also having a profound social and political conscience. And one of the things that people don't know is that Kardashian has personally petitioned the President of the United States

for clemency for black women that have been wrongly imprisoned. She has done more than anybody else in the public eye to remind people about the Armenian genocide in 1916. It is quite possible for her to be, in effect, kind of the epitome, the archetype of the Essex girl, and also have a great intelligence and a desire to kind of disrupt things. That's right.

I think that's what I've come to understand, is that you don't have to choose. No, well, you don't. But, Sarah, thank you very much. That's Sarah Perry. Essex Girls is the name of her slender but fascinating volume. Jack, I guess in brief, if you don't mind, we just like women in particular to fit in a box and to stay in it.

Yes, that's absolutely true. People have very narrow definitions of how women are supposed to, expected to behave and i think one of the things that makes people uncomfortable about essex girls is that we don't necessarily want to sit in that nice pretty neat little quiet well-spoken box so like well we are who we are jack monroe and sarah perry talking about essex girls um I have a theory that Essex girls are the scousers of the South. And if we'd had more time this morning, I would have put that theory to our guests.

But we ran out of time. And I've got to be honest with you, we're running out of studio time today because Broadcasting House, although scarcely occupied by anybody since all this started, is quite a busy place still. And somebody else, can you believe it, needs the Woman's Hour studio. Unbelievable.

So forgive me for the brevity of the podcast today. I do like to usually offer additional content to our regular podcasters. And we're very grateful to you, by the way, for continuing to download the Woman's Hour podcast. Thank you, because you've done so in increasing numbers during this peculiar period of our lives. Alison says, My daughter, born in Romford,

was having her graduation photographs taken at Warwick. The photographer asked where she was from and he bent down and said, I'm looking for your white stilettos. Her fake smile and tears as she came out means that I have never displayed the photos. Well, how dare he? That's so infuriating. Oh God, I'm livid on your behalf. Sandy says, I'm a proud Essex girl of nearly 72 and as I've

grown older, I've become more so. I still visit Turling, my home village, even though I left there 50 years ago. We've got to be very proud of a lot of people and achievements from the people of Essex. And I'm including Jack Munro, says Sandy. Thank you very much. And I just wanted to mention this from Nicola. I happened to catch the interview with Natalia, the opera singer, this morning. And I have to say that her comment that she was told that she wouldn't have to work in M&S her entire life didn't reflect terribly well on her and was probably quite offensive to quite a lot of people. I don't work in retail myself but a lot of people do and there's absolutely

nothing wrong with it. Her implication was that she was better than that and it came off very poorly to me as a casual listener. I'd be willing to bet there are more supermarket workers who listen to Woman's Hour than opera singers. Yeah, OK. Do you know what? I don't know Natalia. My experience of her is based entirely on that interview. I thought she was lovely and she's incredibly talented

and I just don't think she meant it in that way. I really, really don't. It's so difficult to be interviewed and to come across authentically. And I just, I thought she did it really well. I think she's obviously a very talented young woman. I just don't think she meant it that way. If you were offended by it, then I apologise. But no, I just don't think that was what she meant. We've also got loads of stuff from you on hydrogen and hydrogen-fuelled trains. Really interesting that so many of you are interested and invested in this subject.

If we had more time, I would read them out. We just don't have that time today. But I'm so delighted that there's just been so much interest in our power list this year as well. I think we've really hit the spot with this one. Our Planet is the name of our power list. Names to be revealed on the 16th of November. Thank you all and I'm back tomorrow. 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's 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.