Woman's Hour - Weekend Woman’s Hour: Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny discuss their new novel, the Singer Ella Eyre & the Science of Knitting

Episode Date: October 23, 2021

The former presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton has a new book out, “State of Terror”, a political thriller written with the award winning author Louise Penny. The two women were already friends before deciding to pen the novel which features a President who “smells of meat” and appears to resemble Donald Trump and a British Prime Minister who’s “a twit” and seems to have a more than a passing resemblance to Boris Johnson. According to a new survey on mental wellbeing in agriculture, 58% of women in farming experience anxiety compared to 44% of men. What's the reason behind it? How much impact has Brexit and the pandemic had on the problem? We discuss with Alicia Chivers, Chief Executive of the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution, and East Yorkshire pig farmer Kate Moore.Campaigner Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is raising awareness of asthma and the health problems that can be caused by air pollution. Last year her daughter, Ella, became the first person in Britain to have air pollution listed as the cause of death after an inquest. She died in 2013 aged nine. Now Rosamund is calling on Boris Johnson to “set an example for the whole world” with ambitious clear air goals. Are you a keen knitter? Have you ever considered that patterns for knitting your jumpers, hats or gloves could be seen as having parallels to computer coding? Do we undervalue the scientific aspects of some female-dominated skills? Emma speaks to Shetland knitter and pattern writer Hazel Tindall - aka World's Fastest Knitter - and to Sue Montgomery, who went viral in 2019 for knitting data into a shawl.After undergoing vocal cord surgery, MOBO and Brit award-winning singer songwriter Ella Eyre is back on her first headline tour in six years. She reveals how she's had to learn how to sing again - and how the experience has inspired a new musical direction.Presenter: Anita Rani Producer: Rabeka Nurmahomed

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

BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Anita Rani and welcome to Woman's Hour from BBC Radio 4. Hello and welcome to Weekend Woman's Hour. In a moment, we'll hear from Hillary Rodham Clinton. How's that for a name drop? The former presidential candidate, Secretary of State and First Lady of the United States and the award winning author Louise Penny. And we'll discuss the ongoing issues faced by women working in farming.

The average farming person is feeling stressed by at least six factors, one of which about 30% of our respondents included not feeling valued by the public around them. Everybody can play a really important part here of ensuring that you make the farming people around you feel valued. We'll also hear from the environmental campaigner Rosamund Adukissa-Debra and why knitting, the hobby of so many women, is often undervalued. I got a lot of criticism for knitting in council. It actually helps me focus when I'm knitting. I can actually pay

attention to hours and hours and hours of debate in council. And I'm probably the only one out of all 65 councillors who could tell you what's being discussed. Now on Friday, I was joined in the studio by two exceptional women. You could say they've broken a few boundaries between them, just a few. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former presidential candidate, Secretary of State and First Lady of the United States, and Louise Penny, the award-winning author known for her Chief Inspector, Amand Gamache thrillers, which sell around the world. Together, they've written a new book.

It's Secretary Clinton's first novel and Louise's 18th. State of Terror is a fast-paced political thriller spanning the UK, Europe, America, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran. I started by asking how the book came about. I have to confess I had you know I've never written fiction. I was somewhat apprehensive. I didn't want to do anything that was you know beyond my capacity to do and I didn't want to do anything that was, you know, beyond my capacity to do. And I didn't want to, in any way, endanger my friendship with Louise. And she had a different set of issues, one of which is that she'd written, you know, these amazing books, but always on her own, never with a collaborator. No, no, no, exactly. It was completely, I had no idea how to write with a collaborator. And

generally, when I write, nobody sees it except me until it gets like the five or sixth, because my first drafts are soft and smelly. They are soft and smelly. They are really bad. So I thought now Hillary is going to see how awful I am. And I often think of it as like a tennis, you know, you go from playing singles to suddenly having to play doubles. And I thought, I am going to hit Hillary Clinton on the back of the head with tennis balls for like six months. And even worse, she's going to be hitting me. But we wrote, what happened was, because our publishers, of course, quite rightly had no faith that we could do it either. And they suggested, demanded that we write a synopsis.

And that was really the turning point, wasn't it? It was, you know, it was so important, because we didn't have a plot, we didn't have characters, we were just sort of casting about and the discipline of working on an outline, and the pandemic hit. So we were not even able to get together to work on it. Do you remember? We had dreams fueled by you. So you weren't in the same room as all different countries? No, no.

Our border was closed. So she was in Canada. I was in the U.S. So it was all FaceTime and phone calls and everything. Actually, though, being locked down made it possible for us to do this because we both had the time to really concentrate on it. And doing the outline, which ended up being 19 pages, single space, as I remember, it was so dense, you know, got us going. And we then began having fun with it, Anita. Yes. Because, okay, what about this?

And what about that? And no, I don't like that so much, but hey, maybe this. It was great. And we knew we could then that proved that we could work together. Exactly. At least it certainly proved to me and I think to you as well that we could not only come up with an idea, but that we were safe together. We could be creative. We could take risks together.

And you can trust each other. That's exactly. And interestingly enough, trust became a leitmotif through the book as well. Who do you trust? So the plot centers around Ellen, who is Secretary of State, which is equivalent of our Foreign Secretary, and her best friend, Betsy,

who is her counselor, and how there is a terrorist threat to America and they go on this global adventure to try and find who's behind it. Right. Right. Oh, it's good. It's a female buddy. Oh, I mean, how often do you get that in a political thriller? You've already broken a boundary right there. I mean, on top of all the other boundaries you've broken between you, we have to just go straight to this female friendship that's at the core of it. And that was very important to us. I mean, I think we made explicit what we felt implicitly, you know, we were brought together as friends, we

also had the opportunity to expand our circle of friends together. I met really good friends of Louise, she met very good friends of mine. And friendship is at the core of the story. And that was what drove the character development. And for any of your listeners who've read Louise's Gamache series, it's the characters that you keep coming back to. Yes, there are murders and all kinds of terrible things that happen, but it's the characters who grab your heart. And that's one of the things that both Louise and I were so determined to do. We've read a lot of thrillers. I've read, you know, many, many hundreds of them, and I love them. But at the end of it, it's the action. It's not

the character so much that one remembers at the end. And so we wanted people to come to this. And yes, there's terrorists getting a hold of, you know, nuclear weapons and all kinds of other really scary things happening. But at the core are these two women. Yes. And their friendship. And Ellen, who plays the secretary, is the secretary of state, you say, is based on your friend, Senator Ellen Tauscher, who also passed away in 2019. Right. But there must be a bit of you in there as well.

Well, there certainly are a bit of you in there as well, Hilary. Well, there certainly are a lot of my experiences. And Ellen was a member of Congress. And then she was the person in the State Department who had responsibility for nuclear weapons. So she was someone I thought about constantly when we were writing, like, you know, how would she deal with this? And one of the many things I loved about her is how she knew how to take being underestimated as a woman. And so when

she was negotiating with the Russians on our behalf in the Obama administration to get a deal on lowering the number of nuclear weapons, didn't bother her a bit to have somebody say, well, I want to, you know, I think, well, let's go get coffee. And she said, No, I'll do that. But when I get back, we're going to make a decision on this. I mean, she knew exactly how to have a very positive attitude toward whatever was thrown at her in the high stakes world of politics and diplomacy. And that is our Ellen in the book as well. You know, she does have incredible composure. The opening scene of the book, which is phenomenal. She's just on her way back. She flies back in Air Force Three from North Korea. It's not going very well. She's covered in mud. She has to get to what is a State of the Union

address, but it's not. So she's going to be in full show, TV cameras there. She's covered in mud. Let me just repeat that. Takes her heels off. What I'm struck by is that inner dialogue of hers where she says, right, I've just got to hold it together. And it just made me think of you, Hilary, in situations where you have had President Trump looming over you. You've had people chanting, lock her up. How do you keep your composure? What do you tell yourself to make sure that you hold it down in that situation? Well, Anita, that's absolutely right. I mean, you have to keep focused on what your purpose, your mission is, and not let all of the noise from the outside knock you off your center and make you unsure. I was telling Louise the other day, I was thinking about when I was Secretary of State

and I'd be flying around. I went to 112 countries in four years and it was constant travel. And lots of times you would get off the plane at the crack of dawn, you'd get back on at midnight, you'd get off the next day at the crack of dawn. And I was landing in a European country that shall remain nameless. And I went to this meeting and I'm on the plane. I'd been on the plane for literally like four days stopping and going. So I pulled my hair back.

I thought it looked fine. You know, got a little height on it and pulled it back. I go to the meeting and I get ushered into the room and the prime minister is sitting on the other side of the table and he's staring at me, not saying anything. And I'm wondering, what is going on? And finally, I said, prime minister, is there something you want to raise before we start the formal meeting? And he goes, well, I was told if your hair is pulled back, you're in a bad mood. I said, no, prime minister, it's a bad hair day. There's a difference. But it's that kind of constant incoming information and distractions that you have to keep powering

through. And scrutiny that you get that the men don't. Yes. And it's all about the levels of scrutiny that women are put under, the harsh scrutiny that, including right now, we look at Kamala Harris. And as vice president, the first woman to be vice president, the first woman of color. How much of the criticism that's faced that she gets is to do with the fact that she's a woman of color? And how much is it because of the job that she's doing? You know, it's truly clear to me that a lot of the criticism is motivated by her being our first woman vice president and a woman by all kinds of, you know, concerns that have little to do with the job she's doing. And it's really something that you just have to power through. We were talking about how do you deal with it. And for all of the people listening,

you know, women have to become experts in dealing with unfair criticism or double standards or implicit bias, because sadly, that's still part of the world in which we live. And, you know, she continues to, you know, just do her job and show up and be gracious and incredibly, you know, focused on what she is being asked to take responsibility for. And you just have to hope that at the end of the day, there are enough fair-minded people who say, wait a minute, that's good. I like that.

I have to ask you because there's something else in the book that's incredibly prescient. The former president, President Dunn, pulls out of Afghanistan. But of course, in real life, it's happened under President Biden. And I just wonder, Hilary, as somebody who has consistently and relentlessly fought for women's rights, when you hear the stories and you see what is happening and the pullback from the 20 years of good work for women who are in education, who are in the judiciary, who now have to go into hiding. I wonder what your thoughts are. Well, I'm heartbroken. But I just want to, you know, make clear that we wrote this book before the election. We didn't know who the president would be. We certainly wrote it before anything actually happened in Afghanistan. The decision to leave was made by Trump, and he actually signed an agreement with the Taliban.

So when Biden came in, and Biden wanted to wind the war down, too. He clearly thought that we needed to get out. But he inherited a deadline, not a plan, but a deadline. know, incredibly difficult to watch because the Taliban under Trump had been told American troops would leave May 1st. Biden said, I can't do it by then. Understandably, it's hard to make all that happen. And we will get out by September because there was this agreement. And the Taliban basically said, OK, we won't start killing people again until you're out. I mean, that was the threat. So yes, the evacuation happened. And it turned out to be quite an amazing achievement in terms of the numbers of people evacuated. But the sites were so difficult to watch. And the aftermath is so hard. I believed all that was

happening. I told Louise that when we were writing the book, because once Trump signed the agreement, I knew the Taliban would be back in power. There was no getting around it, whether it was going to be as quickly as it turned out or a little bit longer, it was going to happen. And I thought there were two big concerns. One, we cannot, and this is the U.S., U.K., everyone who responded after 9-11, we cannot let Afghanistan become a launching pad for terrorist attacks again. And we were going to see a lot of heart an incredible group of people to help evacuate women who were at risk of being killed, you know, by the Taliban. And it's just, you know, it's a very big concern. But I don't want people to overlook Al-Qaeda's back. ISIS is back. You just had this horrible murder of one of your MPs by someone who allegedly is inspired by ISIS. You know, we've had a bit of a lull and we've kept a lot of that worst terrorism away from the U.K., away from the U.S. and other places.

But we can't relax our vigilance. And if you read the, and I know you have, the acknowledgements at the end and Hillary's acknowledgements, which are just beautiful, but we end the book with you saying it's up to all of us to make sure that this fiction that we write about, the nuclear bombs in the hands of terrorists, doesn't become fact. And it is. It's up to all of us. It's not just up to the people in power. It behooves all of us to stand up for what we believe in.

As we are back to the book, will there be a part two of State of Terror? I mean, I'm asking for myself here because I need to read the second part. Well, I mean, it sort of left a little open-ended at the end. But the fact is, I think, you know, Hilary and I are just having a blast right now. And, you know, I think we've sort of, you know, gosh, it was stressful and it was through the pandemic and we took a lot of chances and now it's out.

It's number one in North America, thank God. And we're just taking a breath and having fun. And, you know, someone has just got in touch to say, interesting to hear a powerful woman talking about the issues we all face and experience, the bad hair day. Yes. I'm quite an expert on that. Hillary Clinton and Louise Penny there.

Now, a shortage of butchers at industrial slaughterhouses has led to warnings that 10,000 pigs a week would have to be needlessly culled. While the National Pig Association has welcomed the government's announcement to offer temporary visas for 800 butchers to work in UK plants and a private storage aid scheme alongside a one-month pork levy holiday, there is still a concern that it's too little too late, compounding the stress on farmers and those working in farming. And a new survey about mental wellbeing in agriculture found that women in farming are more likely to suffer from anxiety or depression. Kate Moore is a pig farmer from

East Yorkshire who made an impassioned plea to Boris Johnson on BBC News which went viral and Alicia Chivers is the chief executive of the Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution which conducted that survey with Exeter University. What does it say about the stress on women in farming? We have obviously identified an unfortunately low level of mental well-being across the board but it was interesting as you say that women presented particularly poorly and there were clear differentials between the levels of depression and anxiety with women in farming as opposed to men and that was particularly differentiated in the age group 25 to 44, which is clearly sort of where you're looking at the

child raising sort of status. And that sort of whilst, you know, it's a generalisation, but actually there are still very strongly held gender roles within the farming community. And often farming women on top of taking a direct or supportive role in the farm business. They are often dealing with very stressful paperwork. They're a confidant for the partner or spouse. And they're also often the primary caregiver. And I think that the survey has really given us an indicator as to how that basket of stressors is really impacting on women in farming. So, you know, if we look at the statistics, you know, around 48% of farming women who responded to our survey at that age group were probably or possibly depressed.

And nearly two thirds were experiencing relatively severe or moderate anxiety. And we need to think about how we can deal with that. two thirds were experiencing relatively severe or moderate anxiety. And we need to think about how we can deal with that. And as you said, this is before the current crisis that Kate and those in the pig sector are experiencing at the moment. And please, let's not underestimate the emotional impact that this is going to have on farming people in that sector of having to cull your livestock on farm? Yeah, I think the difference for farmers is the fact that it's our livelihood as well. We live where we work. And a lot in agriculture, we don't actually know how much we're going to get paid for a product that we're producing, be it an animal or a crop, until we actually harvest it. So we've put in a lot of the time, the effort,

the money, and we have no idea how much we're going to get paid for that. It's quite a scary prospect. You do this with your sisters, is that right? Yes, that's correct. And how is it, you know, with you and in terms of how you share that load and how you distribute that concern, I suppose, in some ways. I think that I'm very fortunate that it's a family business because we can talk to each other and we can share the load, I suppose, exactly what you said. But yeah, we all look after different areas of the business. And so it does fall on different people depending on what the problem is. A message came in and we're talking about, you know, kindness, but there's also tough questions, I suppose, from Enda straight away when I mentioned your name and what's been going on. And the question was, could you ask the pig

farmer why she is now complaining about the predicted outcomes of Brexit when she gleefully welcomed Brexit? Does she now regret her support for leaving the EU? Now, of course, I've got no idea how you voted. And I'm not sure this person does either. But there's a feeling there, certainly that some people are tapping into and I wanted to give you the chance to respond. I think that this is something that came to light on Friday that people like to troll people on social media, which is really unfair. Yes, I did vote for Brexit. But I can assure everybody that's listening that I did not vote for this. I voted for people to be more patriotic.

I voted for the government to look after ourselves, to put border controls in. There's a number of things I voted. I went to a number of meetings, nearly one a week. I was very educated in my vote and I respect other people's vote and they should respect my vote. And I suppose on that point, when you say this isn't what you voted for, and of course, there's been a pandemic as well in this, but there are very specific issues related to Brexit. I don't have time to go into all of those now. And that's not why you're here necessarily. But how does that play into what you feel about what's going on right now, bearing in mind how you did vote? You know, the pandemic has definitely played its part in this. The EU workers quite rightly want

to go home. And actually, it's the processors that have had the problem. They didn't get their staff sorted. They knew they had 60% of EU people working in their factories. So it's completely out of my control. And actually, the new butchers that are coming, I've been told a lot on social media, why would EU people want to come over here? Well, actually, they're not coming from the EU. They're coming from South America and Asia. The EU countries have got their economical country

is a lot better than it was 10 years ago. And so they've got jobs in their country, which is fair enough. They can sustain themselves themselves there are you feeling any better this week yes i am there's still a huge amount of worry we are nowhere near the end um we still don't know when these butchers are going to come we don't know when the storage is going to open you know there's still going to be a lot of colleagues that do have to kill pigs on farm. And that's just criminal. Are you going to have to? I've done a lot of work on it over the weekend.

I'm hoping that we can juggle enough to not. But it depends a lot on the detail. But this is ultimately about a pig's life. This is not about Brexit, coronavirus or anything. It is purely about a pig's life that I bred to feed the nation. Alicia, talking there, she hopes, Kate, she's made the changes to hopefully alleviate strain. And again, as I say, we don't have time to go into those debates per se, but it's about the emotional backdrop that you were looking at that farmers are dealing with. And men are greatly struggling too.

Absolutely. Across the board, we have higher levels of poor mental and physical wellbeing in the farming community. And it's something that as a community, we know Kate and everybody in farming and around farming need to be part of the solution to this. And actually even outside of that, picking up something Kate said very quickly, one of the stresses, and on average, there were six stress factors. So whether that was, as I said, outside this crisis, Brexit is a part of that. But the average farming person is feeling stressed by at least six factors, one of which about 30% of our respondents included not feeling valued by the public around them. And I think that's where we can all have a part.

There are lots of support organisations for people like Kate, for their emotional wellbeing, but actually everybody can play a really important part here of ensuring that you make the farming people around you feel valued. They are providing, they are another primary service provider. We cannot manage without them, and they are not feeling supported by the British public. Alicia Chivers and Kate Moore were talking to Emma there.

Still to come on the programme, how knitting and coding go hand in hand and the singer Ella Eyre. Next is a guest who is on a mission to change the Prime Minister's mind over the air we breathe. Describing the high levels of pollution in the air as a pandemic, Rosamund Adu Kisar-Debra has written to Boris Johnson ahead of the COP26 Global Climate Summit in Glasgow next week, urging him to commit to World Health Organisation targets on poisonous particles. Her driving force? The memory of her daughter Ella, who became the first person in Britain to have air pollution listed as the cause of death after an inquest last year. Ella died aged just nine in 2013 from severe asthma.

What does Rosamund want the prime minister to do? My concern is the particulate matter that the coroner said they need to tackle is going out to a consultation. And my message to Rebecca and George Eustice and the Prime Minister is, if we wait to October 2022, up to 24 children would have died from asthma in the United Kingdom. And I do not find that acceptable. And my children looked at me yesterday

when we lost the vote and said, what are you going to do now? I don't know. I have appealed to the Prime Minister. I would like him to meet me with Sir Stephen Holgate, who was the expert witness in my daughter's case, but he's also the government's clean air champion. I was with Stephen Holgate very recently. We both spoke at a conference and he tells me this matter is a public health emergency and I need to press on.

So although I feel a bit defeated this morning, and sorry, I've always looked forward to seeing you, but I feel a bit defeated this morning. It was a bruising encounter. But there are many MPs who support me. Sir Bob Neill yesterday from Bromley, just down the road, he actually said for a coroner to issue a prevention of future death report, a coroner would not do that likely. The verdict came in in December 2020. It took him until April. That's four months he had to consider it. This

is a matter of urgency. In areas, you know, my message to the health secretary, in areas of high air pollution, there is more COVID deaths. The air needs to be cleaner. We can wear masks, we can social distance, we can have vaccine, but as long as the air continues to be filthy, this virus is going to still continue. Let me just break in there for people who aren't aware of what you're talking about with regards to the defeat. Environmental campaigners across the board have expressed disappointment after the government confirmed it would reject almost all changes made to the Environment Bill by the House of Lords. That's what you're talking about.

It wasn't just, of course, those changes weren't just about air. There was also greater protection for ancient woodland, a legal duty on water companies, for instance, to reduce sewage damage to rivers. And what the government said is it will be bringing forward its own changes to the bill to demonstrate, quote, global leadership before the COP26 conference in Glasgow. You're shaking your head. I'm going to read to you what we got from

the government who have been informed of our interview this morning. They say, air pollution has reduced significantly since 2010 at a national level. Emissions of fine particulate matter have fallen by 11%, while emissions of nitrogen oxides are at their lowest level since records began. To continue to drive forward tangible and long-lasting improvements to air quality, we are committed to setting stretching and ambitious targets on air quality through our Environment Bill. Your head is in your hands. That is the comment from the government. What would you like to say to that? There is a reason why WHO have updated their guidelines. There is no such thing as a safe limit. Worldwide, one in five people die prematurely due

to air pollution. And the WHO have now tightened the guidelines. If our air is so clean, and it's all so wonderful, why do we not implement the new WHO guidelines now? We have nothing to fear. We're going to COP26. We're meant to be world leaders. I want the government to show the rest of the world this is the way forward. Even United Nations now have committed to the healthy environment, which does include clean air. We are still a little bit far away from turning clean air into a human right, which it should be. So I appeal to the Prime Minister again. You've written him a letter. This is the second time and I am very grateful. He did respond to my first letter. Like I said, this is nothing personal. He knows what is at stake. He was

the mayor of London when my late daughter passed away. So he knows about this case. I have written to him again to appeal to him, to get his MPs to vote for this. And I accept the environment bill is huge and so many things went through. But you can understand for me, it's all about air quality. It's linked to biodiversity, global warming, acid rain. So what I say to people is, if we clean up the air, then part of the issue with climate change is going to be resolved. If we don't clean up the air, climate change is never going to be resolved. And that's why I am passionate about it. And I'm not going to stop talking about it. No. Some of our listeners will also know you from the fact that you came third on the Woman's Hour Power List in 2020. I wasn't here then, but I was a keen

listener. You are a formidable campaigner, if I may say that. Oh, thank you. In the sense of your drive, your passion, of course, your command of the facts. But you have been put there in a, you know, in a very terrible reason. And that is obviously a huge driving force for you. And I just wondered how you're doing in all of this, because you've obviously got a lot of spirit and strength, but it must also get tiring. Or you tell me. Ella would have been 17 now. We've got Christmas coming, Emma. It's not going to be great, is it?

Next year is a major milestone. She would have turned 18. Goodness me, I don't know yet how we're going to cope and deal with that as a family. My friends will come out and support us ever. To say I miss her every day is an understatement. When I look at my children's faces, I see hair in them because they all really look alike. And they're doing so well and I am incredibly proud of them.

How old are they now? They are 14. There you go. You've managed to get that out of me. People ask me all the time. And the only reason why i don't say is they've been through the worst trauma ever they were right there when she died in front of them and i try and protect them so there's no secret or anything i just need them to try and get on with what they're getting on they're going to come um to cop with me because I want them to see

the enormity and I want them to know that their sister didn't die in vain and she suffered dreadfully. She sort of suffocated really in her own mucus for 28 months and I thought they'd been through enough and that's why I don't put them in front of the media. There is no other reason, but they're going to be at COP, so we can talk about them. And that's the decision they have made as well to come. They could stay behind, but they actually want to come.

And they know, so for example, they take COVID so seriously. And that is because what we've been through. And it's been very hard this past 18 months, watching people struggle to breathe like she did. It's been completely heartbreaking. And Stephen Holgate was right. Ella is the canary in the coal mine.

And if we go back to what happened to her, there was a doctor. One of her doctors rang me last March and said to me, what would you say if I said to you, there are lots of people in hospital who are struggling to breathe like your daughter? I sort of chuckled because not because I thought it was funny. I sort of said, you will never be able to cope because she used to shut down a whole A&E. So I just couldn't imagine how doctors could manage a hundred, apparently yesterday, 8,000 people in hospital, obviously with varying degrees of COVID. And the unimaginable has happened. And unfortunately, I'm really, really sad. And my heart goes out to, you know, the 139,000 people and their families that they've

had to go through, sadly, something similar, because air pollution and Covid, you know, they're both pandemics. I have to believe eventually the Prime Minister will see this is what the British public want. Rosamund Adukisi-Debra there. Now, are you a knitter? Have you ever considered that patterns for knitting your jumpers, hats or gloves could be seen as having parallels to computer coding? This was a thought shared last week on Radio 4's Day of the Scientist

by Dr Emily Dawson, a lecturer at University College London. That line of thought prompted a lot of emails from you about the idea of knitting being connected to science and coding. Emma talked to Sue Montgomery, a councillor in Montreal in Canada who gets through her politics meetings by knitting, and Hazel Tindall, a Shetland knitwear designer and knitting pattern tutor. How did Sue's knitting go viral? I was a new councillor in City Council in Montreal and I noticed that despite us having parity, almost equal number of men and women, the men tended to talk a lot more than women. So I decided to track that by knitting in red when men spoke and in green when

the women spoke. And my shawl ended up being mainly red. So it was sort of like data in real time. And some people called it rage crafting, which I particularly liked. I tried speaking to some of these men after the meeting and saying, you know, why do you talk so much? You don't need to repeat your point 10 different ways. And they said, no, no, I don't talk that much. And like they had no self-awareness. So I thought this was a really good way to demonstrate to them by showing them the chunks of red that demonstrated their speech. But of course, they still didn't believe me, even after seeing the live data. Even though you created a shawl to show the code, as it were.

What do you make of that comparison to coding? Well, I think it's a, and I'm not the only person to do this with knitting. I saw another woman, I think she was in England, actually, where she knitted the train delays into her shawls. Like every time her commuter train was late, she would sit there and knit. And that showed different times of the train. I've also seen it done for climate change of different temperatures. So they use different colours for the hotter temperatures of our planet.

It's a fantastic way to show data and it's very visual and quite accurate. Hazel, I believe you've held the title of the world's fastest knitter is that right? Well as far as I know it I still hold it but nobody's taught me otherwise. You keep it then I'm definitely not taking it away from you. How did your love and fascination with knitting and creating patterns begin? Well I started probably as soon as I could focus on movement, I would have been watching the ladies in the family knitting. And then I started knitting myself before I went to school. What do you make of the idea then of the parallels between knitting and code?

Because you also teach people and write patterns, right? Yeah, yeah. Well, you're speaking to somebody that dropped science at the age of 13 or 14. So it's a bit of a strange world for me. But I can understand, yes, coding, because there is a language for knitting patterns that's gone a long way back. Well, I was going to say, I know that you could perhaps read me and read all of us a line of instructions and translate. So this would be for sizes three and five,

round nine, asterisk, K1, K2, comma, open brackets, K3, comma, K2, tug, close brackets twice comma open brackets k4 comma k2together close brackets 35 times comma nip2

comma slmx colon rep from asterisk once more I so hope someone Hazel has only just tuned in at that exact moment and really thinks everything's changed. And we're speaking in knitting code, knitting pattern. What did that mean? A little bit of?

It's a decrease row in a Fair Isle yoke. So it's telling you how many stitches you knit and how often you do the decreases. You know, we have a message that's just come in from Jemima who says, I am not good at following knitting patterns unless I can rewrite them as code. I learned coding during my computer science artificial intelligence degree and I found it made knitting much easier. It's creative engineering in yarn and I see no reason why it should be undervalued. Sue, do you think it is undervalued?

Absolutely, like most things women do is undervalued. I got a lot of criticism for knitting in council, but in fact, it actually helps me focus when I'm knitting. I can actually pay attention to hours and hours and hours of debate in council. And I'm probably the only one out of all 65 councillors who could tell you what's being discussed because I'm actually paying attention thanks to my knitting. But you may have just been criticised because people think you're not focused, you're multitasking. Isn't it the equivalent of perhaps doodling, looking like you're not focused you're multitasking isn't it the equivalent of perhaps doodling looking like you're not tuned in no for sure like but people it just shows that people

don't understand and there was a time in history during the war when women would knit messages to the allies it was like morse code into their patterns to help out the allies to tell them where the Nazis were. So it's a very useful tool to pass on messages. Sue Montgomery and Hazel Tindall speaking to Emma there, and your emails came in. Kay says, my maternal grandmother was a great knitter. All my memories of her in the 60s, she was either knitting or smoking. I later learned from my mum that both these activities helped with her nerves. One of my fondest memories was sitting in the back of a mini car and knitting with my grandmother aged seven or eight. She died when I was 10 of lung cancer. It's a pity she didn't smoke less and knit more. I'm convinced she was addicted to both. If you would like to

share your thoughts on any of the stories you hear on Women's Hour, we'd love to hear from you. You can email us by going to our website or contact us via our social media. It's at BBC Woman's Hour. Now to a pop star responsible for hits such as these. Ella Eyre is the British singer-songwriter who was last on the programme in 2015 when she was just about to release her debut album Feline at the age of 21. A lot's happened since then. Ella has signed to a new label, released a slew of new music, undergone vocal cord surgery

and is currently embarking on her first headline tour in six years. First, Ella spoke about the vocal cord surgery. It meant that I had to take six months out. It was really painful, not physically, but just mentally. Tedious rehab, where I wasn't allowed to speak for a full month. And then after that, I was allowed to do... You couldn't speak? No, I wasn't allowed to speak to anyone for a whole month.

I don't know what I would do uh I mean I taught for a living but that would be very hard it was great practice because it's not something I've ever been able to do very well anyway so were you just writing notes to people and text yeah I had an app and so I had an app where I could speak or type into it and it would speak for me yes and um I just got a dog at the time as well and I'd done a sound app where I could speak or type into it and it would speak for me. And I just got a dog at the time as well. And I'd done a soundboard so I could like, I'd recorded my voice saying, sit and lie down and Iggy, come here. Oh, that's clever. Very clever. I mean, on a serious note, it must have been terrifying to know if your voice was going to come back in terms of your singing voice.

Because I understand quite a few singers have had this sort of operation. Not many people really talk about it. And I guess it is a bit of a taboo. So you obviously do feel like that is something that could happen. And it is something that could happen. But I had the most amazing surgeon who was recommended to me by everybody and kept me very calm and surrounded me with the best team for the post-op as well. And it just meant that I just had to have complete faith in him, complete faith in myself. And eventually we got there in the end. And how is your voice, your singing voice now?

I wouldn't say that it's the best right now because I've just finished three shows in a row. It's my first day off since we started the tour. So it's definitely due a day off today, but it's amazing. I think it's taken live shows for me to a whole new level because it means that I can just really enjoy it and not be worrying about that now. Well, talking about finding your voice in a different way, I mentioned you changed label. You've been in this industry since you were really young. How important has it been for

you to do that and to perhaps take back some control? I guess, you know, as you get older, you really do learn a lot more about yourself. And, you know, I started at a really young age. I was 16 when I first got my managers and I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I'd never done it before. And I think by the time that I signed to my next label, I'd sort of done all that. So I knew what I was looking for. I knew what I wanted.

I was a lot more sure in myself. And I realised, you know, this is a really tricky business to survive in. And it's about who you surround yourself with. And I realised that I had two male managers who were lovely. this is a really tricky business to survive in and it's about who you surround yourself with and I realized that I had two male managers who were lovely but as a woman as a young girl I really needed to surround myself with women that you know can understand how I might be feeling a situation you know I think it's really important to have people around you that can understand you and your psyche and what's going on to help get get the best out of you really you were speaking

um on a on youtube as part of a series i believe that was sponsored by a dating app and you revealed that an ex-boyfriend broke up with you because you earned more than him i mean is that is that is that good fodder for for another track oh god maybe i guess there was quite a few fodder from that relationship but it wasn't necessarily specifically because of that. But I think there was definitely a dynamic in the relationship that was quite difficult. And I think for some people, that's something that's not something that they're able to do. And that's just something I had to accept. Well, we're looking forward to hearing the new music. Any hints?

What's it about? I don't know if I could give you any hints in a succinct way, but it definitely really feels like I'm taking this new lease of life, this new voice and making the most of it. I think it's something that I've always wanted to do is to make music that really shows off my voice and presents it in a much more forward light. That's all from me today. And remember, if Hillary Rodham Clinton can style out a bad hair day, so can you. Have a lovely rest of the weekend.

That's all for today's Woman's Hour. Join us again next time. I'm Sarah Treleaven, and for over a year, I've been working on one of the most complex stories I've ever covered. There was somebody out there who was faking pregnancies. I started, like, warning everybody. Every doula that I know. It was fake. No pregnancy. And the deeper I dig, the more questions I unearth. How long has she been doing this? What does she have to gain from this? From CBC and the BBC World Service, The Con, Caitlin's Baby. It's a long story, settle in. Available now.