Woman's Hour - Primates, Domestic Violence, Woman's Hour Corona Diaries, Dreams

Episode Date: April 27, 2020

The Commons Home Affairs Committee warned that without urgent steps to address the issue of domestic violence, families and communities would be dealing with the "devastating consequences" for a generation to come. Jane hears from Yvette Cooper, Chair of the committee. From the bald-headed white uakari to the Tapanuli orangutan - Nikki Waldron, a producer and director of BBC1 series Primates talks about capturing rarely seen species on film. We also hear from the primatologist Dr Cat Hobaiter, who is studying the gestures of chimpanzees. How do you care for your mental health when the normal support services are no longer available? Lindsay lives in Glasgow, and for today’s Woman’s Hour Corona Diaries she talks about the difficulties of helping her mum cope with bipolar from a distance – and how she’s been dealing with her own anxiety while adapting to home schooling two young children.Glenda Young published her debut novel, a saga called Belle of the Back Streets set in her hometown of Ryhope, aged 54. She explains why all her books are set in the same year, the influence of Coronation Street on her writing and how she stopped hiding her writing at the back of her knicker drawer. Some people are experiencing fitful nights in lockdown, with a number of social media users reporting unusually vivid dreams. What is the science behind dreaming? Dr. Megan Crawford from the Sleep Research Unit at Strathclyde University, and the psychotherapist Lucy Beresford discuss. Presenter: Jane Garvey Producer: Dianne McGregor

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, a very good morning to you today. We'll celebrate a saga writer, a woman called Glenda Young, who writes the sorts of books that people absolutely adore. So you can hear from Glenda Young on the programme today. We have another slice of corona life this morning in the company of Lindsay from Glasgow. Lindsay has a complicated life, I guess you could say at the moment we all have pretty much, but Lindsay's story is a

particularly involving one and I'm really looking forward to talking to her live later in the programme today. And anecdotally, it would seem that we are all dreaming more. Why might that be? We'll have a full-bodied conversation about dreams on Woman's Hour before the end of the programme today. Also, primates, if you saw that on BBC One last night, we'll talk about that in detail as well today on the programme. Quite fantastic show on BBC One last night and still available on iPlay, of course. Now, you heard the Prime Minister back behind his desk in Downing Street earlier in the news at 10 o'clock, in fact, wasn't he? And he discussed then the fact that there would certainly for the time being be no easing of the lockdown.

Something this programme has focused on is the increase in domestic violence during this period. The figures are absolutely diabolical. Fourteen women and two children killed in the first three weeks of lockdown. Calls to abuse helplines up by nearly 50%. Now, a report by the Home Affairs Select Committee says, and I'm quoting, that a comprehensive government strategy is needed or we'll be dealing with serious consequences for a generation.

The chair of that committee is Yvette Cooper, Labour MP. Yvette Cooper, what is it that you want the government to do that it isn't already doing? Because in terms of financial commitment, well, we've heard millions of pounds being put into this sector. Good morning, Jane. Well, what we need to see is funding directly for this sector. We know that there is funding for charities in general, but many of the organisations we heard from are still facing real pressure because charitable funding has dropped substantially. And these are crucial support services which need to be expanded. So we want the government to make sure that there's a ring-fenced amount of that funding that directly goes to tackling domestic

abuse. And it's crucial. So you can see why this is so important. While the nation is staying home to save lives, for some people, home is just not safe. And that means perpetrators can exploit a lockdown to increase control, to increase abuse. So you need the additional funding, but we also need some other practical measures as well. We want to see more outreach. We want to see new ways for people to be able to access help and support. If you can't currently just chat to the staff at the GP surgery when you go for an appointment or talk to friends at the school gate or those kinds of ways people might otherwise have asked for help. Instead, you need the help to be available maybe

in pharmacies or supermarkets, other practical things that people can do. Right. Can I just read a brief statement from the Safeguarding Minister, Victoria Atkins? She's been on Women's Hour recently, in fact. This statement today says the government's prioritised those at risk in this national health emergency. This has included a dedicated national campaign to provide practical help to victims and supporting charities by giving them the funding and the resources they specifically said they needed to help people through this crisis. You would argue that yes, that indeed has happened,

but the money hasn't been ring fenced. And what about, for example, places in refuges? What would you say about that? We need to expand refuges. I mean, look, the government's information campaign is welcome. That's a £2 million information look, the government's information campaign is welcome. That's a £2 million information and helpline fund. That's welcome. But we need much, much more than that. So we heard from support and refuge services who were telling us they had a £48 million shortfall over the next six months. It's really important that there is dedicated funding for those services, but also that they can expand.

We heard from refuges who were saying that they were full, they didn't have additional places. So we need the expansion of investment in the refuges, but also we need local government and national government to be working with hotels and hostels. There has to be a guarantee of immediate safe housing for anyone facing abuse during the lockdown. You mentioned, for example, supermarkets and pharmacies. What do you imagine would happen? Let's say I was in the desperately unfortunate position of being the victim of domestic abuse. I'd managed to get out of the house, perhaps to go to a chemist. What happens? So there is a French programme that's already

running. Of course, this has to be done properly. And there's a French programme that's now being run in supermarkets where staff are trained basically to be able to contact the helpline. If someone comes up to them and asks for help, they know who to call to get the specialist services and the specialist support available. It's a bit similar to the Ask for Angela scheme that runs in many pubs and clubs to support people who might be feeling threatened in the situation in a pub or club and could be done. The government's already looking at maybe being able to do something like this through pharmacies, but we just need much faster action. Bear in mind, this is not just about a period where you have lockdown. We've heard from the government that the social distancing arrangements may last for quite a long time. And we also know that the period after lockdown can also be a real risk period and also a time of high need. Because when people are seeking help, when victims are seeking help for the first time, that can also be when they face huge threats.

This will have been in the government's thinking, though, won't it, right from the start? Because we know, all of us know, that lockdown is a challenge for everybody and for a chunk of the population. Home isn't safe. It's never been safe. And it will continue to be a dangerous environment. So it's not as if the government don't care and are not aware. What is it you really want to get to here? We need an action plan, a serious, urgent action plan, and it needs to be integrated in the government's emergency planning.

And you feel they just haven't done that yet? No, they haven't done that as part of the whole COBRA planning. So we've got an information campaign that is very welcome, but we need the practical steps to underpin it. We need a practical programme to make sure, for example, that vulnerable children are still being reached and that there are proper home visits involving schools and social services and the police. We think that there's a lot of good intentions. There's a lot of commitment and rightly people understanding the seriousness of this, but we've not yet seen the practical measures and the practical funding in place to make sure that support is available. You said at the beginning of this report, you've seen the calls to the

helplines hugely surging. We've seen the number of women and children killed increasing. When you're faced with that kind of crisis, we need much more urgent action, much more systematic action. And it needs to be right across the country as a crucial part of that emergency planning. What are you hearing from your own constituents in terms of, for example, social workers? We've talked on the programme to them and we've heard about them. And in some cases, they're being asked to make assessments of vulnerable children via FaceTime. I think they are being put in a very difficult position. I think they also need proper PPE because they need to make sure that they've got the protection they need in order to be able to do home visits where they need to do that.

We need also, I think, schools and the police and others working together on this. I've heard of some police forces where the police are proactively just visiting, dropping by on households that have faced serious problems in the past. I've heard other cases where charities and organisations are working together to make sure that that contact is in place and working with schools as well. You can't just abandon families at such a difficult time. And what do you make of the information from government, the information coming out of government in terms of the easing of the lockdown? It was quite an interesting, you heard Boris Johnson in the news at 10 o'clock and Jacinda Ardern, slightly different modes of operating, I think you would say. What would you, how would you assess the way the British government is behaving?

Well, I think obviously it's very welcome the Prime Minister's recovered from coronavirus because it was an awful, awful disease. I think the government does need to be much more open and transparent. I've said for a long time they needed to publish more of the scientific research. They needed to be clear about what's happening. And also, I think just be clear about what they think the next steps are and be honest about the fact that things will be uncertain. Nobody is expecting them to have all of the answers, but we just need to know what the different options are and what the different considerations and evidence is going to be. Because I think that everybody is standing together in this. People have been abiding by the regulations, even though it's really difficult for a lot of families.

And everybody wants the country to come through this but the government needs to share that information with the public and not just hide behind closed doors. And you think it would make us the majority of the population more likely to comply if we understood more about the government's thinking? I think what we've seen the evidence is actually that most people are complying with the regulations because people want to support the NHS. Certainly, if you looked around at the weekend, things appeared to be changing slightly. Yeah, I think the truth is that if the government is going to get the decisions right, they actually need to be more public about their thinking. They need to be more public about the scientific advice they've been drawing on. You know, if you think about many

of the decisions that have taken place over the last two months, I think if some of the scientific advice the government had been drawing on had been available earlier, we might have also got more effective and swift decision making as part of it as well. So I think it's just a good thing for government to be transparent in the middle of a crisis and also to be kind of open with people about where things are going. But look, let's not any of us pretend that the government is going to have an easy answer and an easy set of things that everybody can do that's going to solve this. This is a a difficult time, it's why our report today is about making sure we are facing up to those difficulties and making sure that those who need it have that added support urgently. Thank you very much for coming on. That's the Labour MP and chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee, Yvette Cooper, at BBC Women's Hour. If you want to contact us on Twitter or Instagram, obviously, men can also be victims of domestic violence.

We should say, though, that of the people killed in the first three weeks of the lockdown, 14 were women and two were children. There are links if you want to help and advice via the Women's Hour website, bbc.co.uk forward slash Women's Hour. Now, last night, Primates was absolutely compelling television on BBC One. It is all about the 500 different species of primates. And we can talk now to Nicky Waldron, who is a producer. And you're actually the director of last night's episode, weren't you, Nicky? Good morning to you. Good morning.

Yes, producer. We all direct across the team. We all chip in. But yes, the first program was the one I put together Well it was absolutely amazing so thank you for it and also with us the primatologist Dr Kat Hobater who spent years studying the gestures

of chimpanzees and we'll talk to Kat in a moment but Nicky for anyone who didn't see last night's episode and obviously it's still available on the iPlayer, how would you attempt to sum it up? Oh wow well what we've attempted to do across the series which is three programmes on BBC One is to give a sort of portrait of the primate family or the order of primates but with so many species it's a really tricky ask to pick just the number that we can show you in detail. So hopefully the first episode

we've looked at some of the kind of really smart different strategies that primates use for survival so whether that's tool using capuchin monkeys who use stone tools to break open nuts and sticks to wrinkle prey out or some of the strategies where a silverback gorilla appears really fierce and dominant, but actually new science is revealing that the more playful fathers actually seem to be more attractive to the females and can attract more female attention. So the fathers who play with their young are five times, even raised five times as many offspring. The passage that really stuck with me from last night was the poor old discarded drill who'd been left to fend for himself toothless and alone on a beach. Tell us more about that. Yeah unfortunately he had a bit of a tough time. So a drill's a large monkey and it looks a little bit like a very similar to mandrills if you're familiar with Rafiki from the Lion King it's that kind of

creature and this particular species live in a number of places in West Africa but we filmed them on the island of Bioko and they're incredibly shy forest creatures so we had to capture the sequence using lots of camera officers in hide sort of filming tents really where they weren't able to be seen by the monkeys at all and using camera traps and this poor male we we found he's obviously an older guy his teeth had worn right down drills you should have enormous impressive canines and he'd sort of been kicked out of the family group sort of he wasn't old enough he wasn't strong enough to compete with the with the current alpha male so he's left on his own on the beach and came across another young male

who's sort of on his way up, waiting to go and challenge for a place in the forest. And the two of them formed this uneasy alliance where one of them's got the teeth to break open a coconut. So the old boy has to go in and scavenge for scraps. Yes, it was- But they're fantastic looking monkeys. Yes, a genuinely pathetic episode.

It really was. And I mean that in the true sense of the term. Kat, tell us about your research. First of all, the intriguing thing is you studied the signs used by the Tapanuli orangutans, didn't you? And the way that you study it is by, well, just explain briefly how you do it, because it's about when the gestures stop, that's how you understand what the gestures meant. Hi Kat can you hear me? That's a real shame because she is absolutely brilliant so we'll go back to Nikki. Nikki what did strike me last night was that in the primate

kingdom I suppose the use of the word kingdom is a good illustration of this the patriarchy is alive and well um yeah in some species that's true within the primate order um you get quite a lot of what we call sexual dimorphism in some species where the male is physically a lot lot larger than the female and their alpha males tend to tend to fight the fair bit um but in there are a number of different primary species where the females are also feminine they've got the leaner species it tends to be where there's less of the sexual dimorphism um and you'll see more examples of of females playing more of a key role in next week's episode called family matters where you we feature um white cheek spider monkeys where

the sort of grandmother figure helps show the family the way to access a special food supply or a grey slender loris a very strange nocturnal creature that is a single mother and has to abandon her twins and go off foraging by herself so there are plenty of interesting stories out there really primates do mirror every part of our society as in right i mean well yes they definitely they clearly do and i i think it's a measure of how narcissistic we humans are that we when we look at creatures like this we we are looking for similarities to ourselves all the time aren't we we just can't help ourselves yeah it's um it's it's inescapable, really. I think across the series, we didn't really ever say, look at this monkey and how it behaves like us, because it's just not necessary.

When you start to sit back and you observe them behaving, you catch them catching each other's eye or some of the hand gestures. It's just uncanny. It really is. It's uncanny. But you know what I mean about us being so such egomaniacs that we are just constantly looking for links to ourselves. I think we can now talk to Kat. Now, Kat, it was actually chimpanzees and their signs that you were studying. Can you just give us one example of something that you witnessed and what it turned out to mean? Yes, absolutely. I mean, chimpanzees and really all the great apes use about 80 different signs.

So we've got tons of different gestures. And that might be something as familiar to us as sort of reaching out your palm to beg to ask for somebody to give you something or flinging your hand to say get lost. But it also involves things like pirouettes and somersaults and shaking your leg and all sorts of different ones. But it also involves, in practical terms, you spending hours or days more or less on your own in these quite challenging environments? It can be. I mean, I've spent about 15 years and I spend anywhere from six to eight or ten months a year out in the forest. I work with a fantastic staff in all of the field sites. So we have assistants who are there every single day of the year following these chimpanzees.

And I'm really benefiting from their hard work as well. But it also does involve sometimes being very isolated in these very remote, very, very beautiful, but certainly off-the-grid type places. And is there any resentment from local populations or are you welcomed? I think it depends really on the approach the different sites have taken. And in the old school conservation approach, there was certainly this tendency to say, we know best, we're going to protect this forest and everybody should stay out.

I think thankfully, a lot of the newer sites and the new ways of engaging in conservation recognize that that's just never going to work. It's not appropriate but it's also just not effective if we want to conserve these primates. We have to work with local people who are needing to use the resources in these forests often for whom these forests you you know, these are their forests. And by working together and by being able to sort of share that resource, so I can show just how similar the chimpanzees are to us

and that little window on what it's like to be a chimpanzee and they can teach me so much about what the forest is like and what that means for the chimpanzees themselves. It's really the best way forward. Well, it's quite remarkable for the chimpanzees themselves. It's really the best way forward. Well, it's quite remarkable, the signs that you interpret. You should say that you are involved in episode three of this series, which runs out for the next couple of weeks.

Just absolutely, it's so involving. It's really very moving. We also, I suppose, need to ask whether our primates are at risk from the coronavirus, for example. Is that something that should concern us? What would you say? They are absolutely at risk. So we know that in the past, chimpanzees have actually caught a different coronavirus from humans and it wasn't quite as dangerous. But that means that they have done

some really quick DNA work now that suggests that all of the great apes, most of the old world monkeys and some of the new world monkeys are all vulnerable to coronavirus, to COVID-19 specifically. And actually, from what we understand in past outbreaks, it is very likely to be very lethal in those populations.

So we're really concerned right now. Pretty much all research is shut down, and we're just scrambling to make sure that we can monitor their health, give them the maximum protection, also monitor them and collaborate with the local communities who are there, who are also in many cases very vulnerable to COVID-19. They don't have the health care support systems that we do. And so really by protecting human health and primate health, it's got to be this one health approach. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you very much. And of course, this is one of those programmes that couldn't be made at the moment, just wouldn't be possible. So let's make the most of it. Primates on BBC One started last night. That was Dr Kat Hobater.

You also heard from producer and director Nicky Waldron. Now, Glenda Young's debut novel only came out in 2018. It was called Bell of the Back Streets. It was followed by The Toppeny Child and then a book called Pearl of Pit Lane. Now, Glenda is somebody who writes real sagas with female characters right at the very heart. They're all set in the early 20th century. And when I talked to Glenda, I mentioned that she wasn't exactly like one of her own plucky heroines, but she did have a bit of a struggle to get her work out there.

I'm in my mid-50s now and I've only recently been published in the last couple of years, but I've always loved writing ever since I was a child. You know, I used to write poems and stories and then stick them at the back of my knicker drawer, like I think so many women do, because they're embarrassed to show people. And then when you get the confidence up to show members of your family, they'll say things like, oh, that's nice. So that's lovely. So I didn't really get kind of feedback that what I was doing was actually good. And I went into office jobs, worked in universities, but all the time had this burning desire to write. And I used to write sort of in my spare time. I did a degree as a very mature student when I was in my 30s, which was one of the most scary yet wonderful things I've ever done. Now, your books are, they're stories.

And that sounds, as soon as I say that, it sounds dismissive. But I don't mean it to be because they're stories with a real heart. And, well, always a happy ending, is that? Or a resolution of some sort? Yeah, there's always a happy ending, is that, or a resolution of some sort? Yeah, there's always a resolution. And no, you're right, they are absolutely stories. They're set in a village that I grew up in, but set at the end of the First World War.

So it's a time of a lot of change, but at the heart of each book is a real romp of a story because from the first page you just get carried away with, you're really rooting for the main character, you want them to overcome all of the obstacles I chuck at them and I do chuck everything and the kitchen sink at these poor girls so they are stories and I absolutely love the world of soap opera as well and I've been lucky enough to write a few books for ITV Coronation Street well don't just hang on don't dismiss that because you wrote the Deirdre Barlow story, didn't you? Well, yes.

Being a huge Corrie fan, when the actress Anne Kirkbride passed away, she played the iconic Deirdre Barlow, Deirdre with the perm and the glasses. When she passed away, sadly, ITV got in touch with me and asked me if I'd like to write the official tribute book to Deidre Barlow so so that book when I was actually when I was writing the Deidre book because I I poured every ounce of of love for Coronation Street into that book and I thought you know what I'd love to write my own story I really would um Deidre's being put through the mill but it's she's not my character and I didn't create her. This is

someone else's creation. And I thought, I really want to make my own characters, my own heroines. And finally, I've got a chance to do that now. Your stories, your books are set in a specific year, 1919. Why? 1919, it's the end of the First World War. Lots of change going on. Soldiers are returning home physically and mentally broken. Women are being forced out of their jobs that they've had for the first time back into the home. So there's lots going on in society. Some women have been given the vote that year as well. So I focus on the wider changes in society and then narrow it down to one specific northeast village. And it's the village where I grew up in. It was a mining community and they also had a large farming community as well.

So there were two very different sides to that village. Your women are, you've said yourself, you throw any number of challenges at them. Your women are really, really up against it. And reading it, it struck me it's 100 years ago, isn't it? 101 years ago now. It's just the sheer physical graft expected of women at that time. It's one of the things that struck me reading your book yesterday. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. You know, the women are there to do the real heavy lifting work and in just unspeakable circumstances. When I was doing the research for the books, one of the main things that guided me was looking at a map, the old Ordnance Servier map of the village, and finding out where the pit row houses were. There was just these parallel lines, long

lines of squashed up houses. And in each of the back lanes for these houses there were the netties the toilets we call them netties up here so these women had to share a toilet in the back lane there was one toilet for the whole of the back lane and you just think from that beginning I just thought how horrible is that and then from there I've just kind of built this world where it's really gritty it's dirty, it's quite dangerous. And it's the women who really pull the story through. The women are the ones who look after the family, who look after their mining husbands and who the whole of the action in my books revolves around. Do your neighbours in the village read them, do you know?

Oh, yes, they do. I don't live in the village any longer. I still live in Sunderland, but in a different part of Sunderland although my family is still in Ryup the books are really really popular I'm now a member of Ripe Heritage Society so I go there to give a talks on my books and I've actually just recently with the lockdown and what have you I've donated a huge box full of books as well to the church because the church were going around delivering food parcels to people who couldn't get out of the house. Well, I'm sure they'd appreciate them because these books are very companionable and the characters, you're such a good writer that you're drawn in and you start caring about these

women before you've got to the end of page five. I mean, you just you are rooting for them. So what's intriguing about The Tappany Child is that it's set against the backdrop of the Spanish flu, where millions of people died. It's so strange, because like I say, I've been researching these books and writing them now for a couple of years. Spanish flu features in all of my books, because it was prevalent at that time. And, you know, doing all the research and looking at pictures with, you know, hospital staff with their masks on and people dying. And it's just horrible now to be thinking that we're going through this now.

You know, obviously I had no idea this was going to be happening when I started researching. And you just think Spanish flu happened. You know, something like this could never possibly happen again. And yet here we are. Truth be told, until all this started, I don't think many of us were really aware of the Spanish flu, were we? I mean, you might have been, but I'm not sure it was something that everybody even heard of. No, I don't think so. Looking back at the old newspaper reports, the daily newspapers used to have a daily toll of lives lost through Spanish flu. It's exactly the same.

Exactly. It's absolutely heartbreaking. And what would your advice be to any woman who feels like you did, that there are stories in them they want to get out? What do they do, apart from the obvious, which I guess is sitting down and actually doing it? Yeah, I would say join a local writers group. It might not be possible at the moment, but there might be writers groups online you can get in touch with. If you can just connect with other people who know what you're going through, who know you've got that frustration inside you that you want to get your stories out, it just makes what you're feeling quite normal. And just write, write and write and write and keep writing. It doesn't have to be good. You don't have to show anybody, but just keep going until you feel ready. Perhaps you want to submit it to a competition. There's lots of competitions online.

You can enter or submit stories to women's magazines. I mean, that's how I started. I started writing short stories for the People's Friend magazine, which is the longest running women's magazine in the world. And I now write my very own soap opera that's been going for a couple of years now in the people's friend and I just love it just once you start it's like the brain is a muscle just like any other so once you start you'll get better at it and yeah just keep going what was it like just describe to me how it felt to be told for the first time perhaps by the people's friend that they wanted your stuff and they were going to pay for it? Oh, I almost fell off my chair. I've still got the email that they sent me. This was about three years ago. I just tipped back in my chair. I was almost on the floor. It's a feeling

you never forget. And even though I've had possibly more than a hundred stories in the People's Friend and other women's magazines as well. It's always a thrill. Isn't she fantastic? That's the writer Glenda Young, whose debut novel, Belle of the Back Streets, came out in 2018. And now, as you've heard there, she's written a few more as well. So well worth exploring. Let's catch up with listener Lindsay, who lives in Glasgow.

She is taking part in today's Woman's Hour Corona Diaries. Lindsay, good morning to you. Good morning, Jane. Now, I reminded myself of your story, rereading your email again this morning. You've had an incredibly challenging last couple of years. So just tell us about yourself and your family. Yeah, well, I think, you know, probably common to a number of families up and down the country. We were sort of adjusting to a new normal of our own pre-Covid.

So at the time, I had a parent at the time who was in hospital on sort of long term as an inpatient who suffers from bipolar disorder. And also we suffered a bereavement when my husband's dad passed away suddenly just before Christmas. It sort of left us with a number of different things to have to take care of as normally would happen when there's a death, but also businesses to begin to run. So that was a sort of backdrop. And throughout this time, I'm a parent with two young girls, one five and one eight. I've been receiving psychotherapy through the NHS to manage my own anxiety and panic. So obviously I was really leaning heavily on that service at the time that the pandemic hit. Are you still able to get help?

I am, thankfully. In that hinterland, just as we were all starting to get used to what the pandemic would mean for the services involved, That was via phone call. And then quickly the offer of the Zoom call was put in place, which actually doesn't necessarily thrill me. So I've stuck with phone calls actually, and therefore can feel that I'm still able to be supported at this time, which is so valuable.

Yes, I'm sure it is. I mean, your little girls are five and eight. Yes. So I guess they're at an age where if they get on, they can play a little bit together. They do. I'm so fortunate that they are such good pals. You know, they have spent a lot of time actually bonding

over this short while. I think, you know, they would be, you know, the same as the rest of us in busy families, chips in the night, you know, breakfast together, tea together, a bit of a play, but then a hurried bath straight to bed. And the weekends would be the time that they would hang out. But I feel like this time has really been valuable for them to cement their friendship, their relationship.

The younger one's about to go to school. If everything goes to plan by August, that would be the hope. But it's been lovely, actually, in so many ways. It's been nice to be able to take a bit of time, to take stock and enjoy them, which is something that I have to say with my anxiety issues wasn't necessarily always as possible as I would have liked it to be. Now, your late father-in-law did die suddenly, as you mentioned,

and that meant that you and your husband have inherited a business. In this case, it's a hotel. Yes, that's right, a hotel in Aberdeen. So we live in Glasgow, so the hotel is two and a half hours' drive north. So it's been pretty hard to be hands-on over the last couple of months anyway. My husband would spend time up there for part of the week and then travel back down to Glasgow and so on. He'd had to take a hurried sabbatical from his own employer in order to be able to take the reins really suddenly.

And now we're having to run that from Glasgow. We've been really fortunate, actually, because the local authority in Aberdeen had approached us with an offer to take on the hotel in order to be able to still provide emergency crisis accommodation to residents within the local authority. And that's just recently been extended until June. So we were sort of on a week by week basis seeing how that was, you know, if it was still suitable for them, if it was still something that they would be keen to do. And that means that we can cover the running costs of the hotel, the basic running costs. We can begin to pay those furloughed members of staff.

We've got a bit of cash flow, which is a huge relief for us at this time. Wow. I mean, honestly, I'm breathless just hearing that. There is just so much going on. And you've mentioned very honestly, and I appreciate your honesty here, managing your own anxiety and trying to go about it in slightly different ways. There'll be other people listening who will share that experience with you, Lindsay. What would your advice be right now? Well, again, I'm so fortunate that I had been able to access a service prior to the lockdown and the day-to-day anxiety you know the kind of low thrum that's always there you know I think you have to sort of befriend it in some respects and if you're not able to access a service as

such at this moment in time or you're not potentially taking medication to support yourself through it then you know again it comes back to the basic self-care type things that we all know can be good for us, but sometimes it can be really difficult to enact. Yes, very difficult to enact. And I can see a tweet about exactly that right now, actually, in front of me on at BBC Women's Hour. You, though, Lindsay, are at a point in your life when other people,

your husband's mourning his dad, your mum isn't in the best of health, you've got two young kids, everyone's looking to you, aren't they? The mental load, and I think that has always been the pressure for me. You know, I grew up with a parent with mental health issues. I was a young carer. You know, I had my children fairly young. And so I think that that caring sandwich responsibility, you know, has been a feature of my adult life so far. And it's thrown into focus, I think that that caring sandwich responsibility, you know, has been a feature of my adult life so far.

And it's thrown into focus, I think, when something like this happens, when we're, you know, no longer able to provide the kinds of support that we might want to. And, you know, that's obviously from my point of view, I'm there for my children now in a way that maybe I haven't been able to be entirely. But that's at the expense of the support that I might be able to offer to my mum. So as you rightly say, you know, she suffers from bipolar and at the moment is in a fairly sort of low mood and has very little access to the kinds of support mechanisms

that I know are useful for her at times like this. You know, she doesn't have a visit from the community psychiatric nurse. She does have access to sort of phone consultations and so on, but that's not particularly therapeutic for her at this time. And so we're obviously feeling very helpless as a family. It's really hard to be able to reach out when actually all she really needs is a visitor, someone to pop past. She does have a partner who she lives with, and the weight falls to him at this time.

But that's huge. It is. It is huge. And, Lindsay, you've given us really important insight into just one family, one woman, one set of circumstances. Thank you very, very much for talking to us. Not at all. Thanks, Jean. Take care of yourself and your little girls and your husband as well, and your mum. Now, is it true? Are we all dreaming more?

At this point, it would be absolutely brilliant if I could hurl a broadcastable dream experience to bore you into the mix, but I can't. I can't remember anything that happened last night at all.

Dr. Megan Crawford is from the Sleep Research Unit at Strathclyde University and Lucy Beresford, the psychotherapist, is with us as well. Megan, first of all, people are saying they're dreaming more. Are they right?

Well, I think certainly so, but I think it's a combination of a few different things. So, first of all, to say it's not an alarming thing to be dreaming more is probably a function of sleeping more. So we know that if we are REM sleep, which is where the stage of sleep where we do most of our dreaming, occurs in the second part of the night. And so what people are tending to do now, because most of us don't have a routine and don't have anything to get up for, is they tend to sleep more in the morning and sleep in. So they might be

having more of that REM sleep, more of that dreaming sleep. And we also know there's something called REM rebound. So if we're often if we get up too early and to kind of deprive ourselves of that REM sleep. And when we go back to having more opportunity to sleep, we find that we dream more and have maybe more vivid dreams. So that might be one thing. Another thing is that we might be sleeping poorly at this stage at the moment. And that's a natural thing, of course, as well, because we're anxious. There's a lot of uncertainty. And sort of listening to Lindsay's story just now, I couldn't, I wouldn't be surprised if she had problems sleeping.

And so being woken up in the middle of the night and if especially you wake up during that REM sleep you're more likely to actually recall that those dreams and so it might be a function of that as well. Right Lucy is this something you are hearing from your clients and are some of them more concerned than they ought to be about this? I'm definitely having all of my clients reporting dreams, which is quite unusual, even though usually when I start working with someone, I will often say to them, oh, and of course, if you have a dream, do mention it to me, because it's quite refreshing to have someone say to me, tell me your dream. It's a bit like when you were saying in the introduction, you didn't want to tell your dream in case you bored us. I'm sure you wouldn't have

done. But I think it was Henry James who said, tell a dream, lose a reader, because other people's dreams can be very uninteresting. You're telling me they are the most single boring anecdote you're ever going to hear, aren't they? But I have to say, certainly when a patient discovers from me that I'm really keen to hear them, then they're obviously a bit more open about it. But right now, so many people are bringing not just saying that they can remember their dreams, but that they're obviously a bit more open about it. But right now, so many people are bringing not just saying that they can remember their dreams, but that they're very different. They're much more vivid. They're almost like long movies or episodes of a soap opera. I'm seeing some very big themes as well. Lots of people dreaming about washing, hand washing, as you can imagine, clearing out cupboards, getting rid of of dirt lots of people dreaming about

an ex so lots of quite erotically charged dreams and also lots of dreams of frustration I've had one where someone couldn't find their way out of the changing room to play sport for England you know that that level of frustration but also dreams around success so what we would call wish fulfillment dreams, where you actually want to triumph over something. So really, people are being quite saturated by their dreams. Right. Megan, what do you make of that? Saturated by their dreams, says Lucy.

Well, I think it's interesting to sort of hear that, and it echoes what sort of anecdotally is appearing in social media, for example. And I think, you know, it's easily explained by this phenomenon that what happens during the day, we kind of take over into our night, into our dream. So if we're very anxious during the day, then, of course, we're going to be anxious in our dreams and that's sort of reflected. So that's the kind of phenomenon that we experience. Yeah, I mean, how would you interpret dreaming about your ex at this time? Why do you think, Megan,

if Lucy's right, more people are doing that? Well, I think it's, I wouldn't want to say anything about specific dreams and interpreting them. I mean, it's tricky. I can understand in a therapeutic situation that might be very different. And it's really interesting. There's some research showing that if you actually tell your dream, one of the theories is that you have some more empathy from or induced empathy from the other counterpart. So I can see how that could enhance a therapeutic relationship. But in terms of interpretation from the sort of science, unfortunately, there aren't any very large clinical trials and well-controlled trials that show that interpretation of dreams

really means very much or is very effective in that sense. That was Dr Megan Crawford from the Sleep Research Unit at Strathclyde University. And you also heard from Lucy Beresford, the psychotherapist. A lot of people are taking issue with my theory, for what it's worth, that all you ever think about when somebody else wants to tell you about their dream is that you immediately think about nodding off and returning to dreamland yourself because fundamentally it is my belief that other people's dreams are deeply boring

unless you yourself make an appearance in someone else's dream, in which case they become marginally more interesting. But a couple of you just said, basically, my dreams are fantastic, Jane, and you should be very, very grateful indeed if I chose to bestow one upon you by telling you all about it. Also, there's a website where you can look at what other people have dreamt about,

and a lot of people dream about the Archers, so that is interesting. I think Jill Archer in particular seems very prominent in the celebrity section of this particular dream website that somebody brought to our attention. We should say that Alison tweeted to say, GP services and mental health services

are still available now, mostly by phone. No one should be struggling in silence. If they need help, talk to your GP. And that was with reference to the conversation I had with Lindsay, our listener who is providing the corona diary today for us. And Lindsay, as she said herself, is simply somebody, a woman, up against it at the moment in terms of other people in the family

looking to her for help. And she herself had struggled with anxiety. So, yes, it's a very important point to make, Alison. So thank you for reiterating that you can still get help and you should contact your GP if you need it. On the subject of domestic abuse, Karen said, I feel it must be followed up immediately when schools reopen. This issue needs to be discussed in the classrooms at all secondary schools urgently. It is the young potential perpetrators that need to be educated. Realistically, in every classroom,

there's either a victim or a potential abuser, and it's crucial that they're taught to notice it in others and to make sure that they speak out. From Carol, I work with a domestic violence charity which is now shut because of a lack of funding. The question is, why are the perpetrators not removed from the household? They can be stopped from returning more easily at this time. It feels like a form of victim blaming for women to be put in less than optimal accommodation especially if they have children. A bit more on dreams. Sarah says I dreamt about an old friend

last night but no idea what happened as I struggled to remember dreams. But it did prompt me to get in touch with her and we had a lovely text chat just this morning with pledges to meet up when the crisis is over. There you go, that's a positive. Shirley says, two nights ago I dreamt of my family. We were sitting in my grandmother's garden with everybody there. I was about 15 and

my mother was talking to me she asked if i remembered the war and what did i remember about it well i told her about the doodle bugs and diving under my desk at school with glass flying around and the underground shelter in the garden i was sure that she was trying to tell me that we came out of the war and assured me that we will come out of this one too. Well, yeah, that's good. You see, you can always take a positive, can't you, from these sorts of situations. And you've chosen to go with that. So it was a message of reassurance. And why not? I think we all need a bit of that right now. Something to cheer everybody up later in the week is that we're going to talk about babies laughing.

And I'm going to be talking on Friday to the psychologist Caspar Adyman. He's written a book called The Laughing Baby. And so for your delectation and delight, here is that baby had just found out that my contract has been renewed and it was completely beside itself. You can probably understand why. Coincidentally, I was only talking on Zoom to my cousin in Australia yesterday and it was her mother, my Auntie Mary, who made me laugh for the first time by tickling my feet so there we go i've managed to shoehorn myself back into this conversation so um it is

interesting isn't what is the first thing that makes babies laugh what was the first thing that made your baby laugh do you know when you first laughed and who caused it or what caused it um we also would love the sounds of babies laughing so if you can possibly record and then ping over to us via email the sound of your baby laughing that would be absolutely great i'm looking to technical support here how do people go about this you email it via the woman's our website and you attach what an audio file and you attach an audio file and you keep it very short you keep it very short. You keep it very short. Okay. So we don't want three hours worth of the family's treasure and delight gurgling away.

Just a couple of seconds would be absolutely brilliant. But we do all need something to keep us laughing in this trying time. So we'll do that on Friday's edition of the programme. Thanks very much for listening. I am back tomorrow, two minutes past ten, and of course in the Woman's Hour podcast at a time that suits you. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies.

I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more 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.