Yorkshire Post Articles

Here’s to the Breasts of the Ladies!

A touchy, as it were, subject for your Wednesday Yorkshire Post breakfast tale but it has been in the news a lot this last week, has the Breasts of the Ladies, and somebody has to speak up for them. I’m the volunteer. I’m your man. My qualification is that I have always, from very young, liked them very much and still do. I shall stand up for them.

I like them as they are. Not as they are expected and supposed to be like. Not as they are cracked up to be or wanted or hoped to be. No. Just as they are.

There are two that I have made friends with over the years and all our children know them well. We are all the better for it.

In my early twenties I was shocked by the conversations of the men who talked about women – “Who? You mean that Emily with the great big jugs on it?” Or “Her? Ace face but no Bristols, hah! Hah!” or ”She’s the one with the big nose and the squint but what a top deck, eh? Just close your eyes, what?”

How callous and crass. All those silly words that some men use: knockers, they say, or tits, boobs, bigguns, cherrybowls, suckers, dumplings. What men, what words.

My own favourite word for one of Mother Nature’s best inventions is (page 129 Concise Oxford Dictionary) – bosom: the enclosure formed by a woman’s breasts and arms; an emotional and physical centre, esp. as the source of an enfolding relationship; as in “the bosom of one’s family”, “a bosom friend”.

The existence of the Breasts of the Ladies has surfaced a bit in the past few days. I know that it surfaces everyday in the page threes of the Suns, Stars, Mails, Mirrors, Peoples, Penthouses and the dreary News of the Worlds, but those are not real breasts are they? They are not bosoms as we know them, not the ones we get our life out of? I’m talking about real breastwork here. I’m talking bosom. They aren’t. They are talking tit.

The Times, September 17; “Michaelangelo curves fail surgeons’ test.” American cosmetic body architecturalists reveal that the figures of Aurora and Notts in the Medici Chapel do not conform to the ideal of female shapeliness as we know it.

World in Action, last week: the injection of silicon and the insertion of foam rubber moulds into the mammaries and fixed to the tissue with the same adhesive that plumbers use for bathroom fixtures is inadequate (they work loose and start pointing in funny directions) and dangerous (ladies can get cancer with grouting in their restoration upper furniture).

Washington Post Advertising Pullout (September 23): “Jenkinson and Grin, acknowledged kings of the brassiere world announce their new reinforced ricepaper disposable model. Any size cup. Slip it on. Slip it off. And make a meal of it afterwards!”

The Medical Association of Australia solemnly reveals that breast-feeding (by that it meant what we have always known about: the good old snuggling up and cuddling business with suckling and licking, maybe a burp and kisses and we all fall to sleep together afterwards – you know) is “life-enhancing, providing nourishment, health and pleasure to all parties”.

Well. Bless my soul! I’d never have guessed! Life enhancing, eh?

Let us pity those ladies who feel that one way or another they must conform to the harassments and blandishings of charlatans, advertisers, page threes, quacks and callous men who say their breasts must be big and sticky-outy.

I met my first breasts when I was very young and went for them with hungry gums for the nourishment of it and the health and the pleasure to all parties. I have loved them since. Just as they are – life-giving. Not as they are expected to be, supposed to be, cracked up or jumped up or architectured to be. As they are. Here’s to the Breasts of the Ladies!

‘Folk are folk and women are women!’ I put my soup spoon down and gave him a hard look. What was he on about? Usually he waits till the cheese and biscuits to come out with homespun stuff like this. He is my good friend and mentor (Trubshawe, Arthur, Wing-Commander, Retd.).

We are only on the first course and here he is, already talking about women. Why so soon? We usually wait for that. Me and my pal, the Wing-Commander, Retd., meet and eat together in the Clarence Hotel of a Tuesday: (set lunch: pea and ham soup with dumplings; mutton pie and gravy with potatoes and seasonal veg; spotted dick in egg custard; five quid all in; cheese-board and biscuit basket with pot of tea – extra) and we have what he calls ‘a symposium’. Trubshawe is a stickler for getting things right.

“A symposium, my boy,” he goes, waving a dumpling, “is an eating and drinking party for men. Ancient Greeks did it most dinner times.

“The chaps go and sit around in some pub or other, eat the set menu, get drunkish and then philosophise. The tell each jokes, slap each other on the back, go Haw! Haw! and then settle down to talking about women.

“Plato and Socrates called this ‘A Symposium’, we call it nowadays a lunchtime booze-up with the boys. It’s nothing new. Ah, good! Here comes the pie and gravy!”

Previous to this, my friend and I had been talking over our pea and ham soup about the usual Tuesday stuff: bombs in Bagdad, bombs in London, bombs in Johannesburg, Armagh again, Sri Lanka and in a bullring in Columbia; all bombs, all death. Then, is Madonna pregnant? Then – “body of eight year-old girl found stabbed in water butt in Nottingham”.

Discussing the news over our soup on a Tuesday is always a grievous business. But then our Arthur cocks up his ears at what is going on at the next table where there is a bunch of lunching businessmen having their symposium. Already drunkish and into their puddings, they were past the philosophising and were now – “talking about women”.

You could tell this because of their body movements – arm, hand and finger gestures; heads rocking; mouths gaping; elbows going nudge and bellies going up and down. Oh yes, this was man talk.

We watched them for a bit. “There is, these days,” said Trubshawe to me through his mutton “something called the New Man. He likes women very much. He feels comfortable with their company, laughs with them, does not mock them behind their backs, admires their wisdom and, of course (more mutton pie and gravy) is only too happy to lie down with them and wriggle about together.

“Now I call that a proper symposium. Afterwards they’ll have a meal together, or a drink maybe, giggle and philosophise. New Man? I’ve been a New Man doing symposiums like that since I was 13. But them over there have always been Old Men”. I’m beginning to agree with him then these two things happen.

The little waitress comes and serves coffee to the charcoal greys. As she bends over and pours there is a suppressed silence. When she goes away there is a burst out of guffaws. It is men’s laughter. About a woman behind their back.

Trubshawe licks up the last of his egg custard and says: “You see? Old Men.” But then this happens: one of the suits gets up and goes to the waitress saying: “I do apologise. We were not laughing at you. I hope that you were not embarrassed by us.”

The Wing Commander, Retd., orders the pot of tea and is very gentlemanly to the waitress. “I think, my boy,” he is a stickler for getting things right is Trubshawe, “that we have just seen an Old New Man.” Women are indeed women. Trubshawes are Trubshawes. And folk are folk. That which there is nowt so queer as.

Sex. Sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sexism, sexualism, sextuplismics – that is something Swedish
In short, sex. In shorter, men and women together.
I do like the small town I live in because the men and women there get along very well indeed, thank you.
They like what they are and they like what the other ones are. They rub along nicely
Susannah is 19. She is a street girl. She works the streets. She does the square every day and the little ginnels that run off it.
Then she cleans up in the cattle market and finishes her shift round the back of the Town Hall.
She works hard. Also ,she looks terrific. She does it in frayed denim shorts, T-shirt and Doc Martens. She starts at 10 in the morning and finishes at eight at night which is a long day for a working girl.
She does a tidy job, Susannah. Everybody is most satisfied.
The four other street-sweepers are men and for most of the year, with their barrows and brushes, they keep our town clean.
But during the summer months the tourists pass through and say “oh, what a nice place this is” and then drop their bits of muck all over it and go away.
So Susannah, who is at University reading engineering, gets a brush and a barrow and does her holiday job. She sweeps our streets.
The plain common sense of small-town men and women and the natural ease they feel with each other means that they would never dream of saying such sentences as: “That is no sort of work for a woman!”
Or: “Disgraceful! Bare legs and bending over like that – and in the High Street!” Or, at the other end of things: “But that’s what they’re for, women. Sweeping up.” Or: “Just look at the legs on that! Bet she’s a goer!”
No. We respect our Susannahs. Most women and men know what they are and they like what the other ones are and they rub along together.
Rubbing along together does, of course, produce some friction sometimes. There is indeed a long history of conflict.
But there is also a long history, very much longer, of men and women actually liking and looking after each other.

They will rub along, friction and all. Women and men do do. There is the nine-year old woman whom I’ve known very well over the years and, whenever she is asked what she is going to be when she grows up by condescending people, she puts the old hands on the hips and stamps the old foot, as a spirited woman should do. “I’m going to be a proper little madam!”
Our Susannah has spirit. She is her own man. She knows what she is and so does the chap from Mirfield whom she’s going to marry next year when they both graduate.
They will be engineers. They will rub along together, friction and all.
Here is a tale from Follifoot, near Harrogate, about sexual equality and good marriage between a spirited women and a spirited man.
On holiday in Hungary the lady was cornered in a wood by a big male pig with tusks on.
“Whatever can we do to help,” said the other tourists to her husband.
“Nowt,” said the happily married Yorkshireman.
“He got himsen into it. He can get himsen out.”
Now then, there is real sex for you.

People are not always who they seem to be. Inside anybody there is always somebody else. Often lots of somebody elses.

These days, me, I am mostly me. But sometimes I am Professor Karl Popper, Django Reinhardt or Sir Leonard Hutton: the wise philosopher, the master guitar player or the prince of cricketers.

It depends on what I am reading, what music I’m listening to or if I am striding to the crease to bat No.11 for the fourth team.

Sometimes I am Delia Smith, though not for long. Saturday, coming out of the bookies I am Carson, Eddery or, recently, Piggott.

Sunday, coming out of church, I am of course Cardinal Basil Hume. Wednesday nights after M*A*S*H my wife finds Hawkeye Pierce or Corporal Klinger climbing into bed with her. And once, memorably, Colonel Potter.
I’ve never been John Wayne or Denis Thatcher, but when I was young I was always John “The Gentle Giant” Charles.

Any one person has it in them to be, briefly, other persons.

We all know this about ourselves and about other people’s selves and we get along with each other.

Or, rather, with each other’s each others. See what I mean? No? Well, cop this.

In Oshkesh, Wisconsin, Mark Peterson – “shy, bespectacled ex-supermarket storeman” invited Jennifer “20-years-old, fun-loving ex-waitress” to go out with him.

They went to a coffee shop for cappuccinos, burgers and carrot cake. “I wanted to give her a fling!” Mark, 29, told the court.

On the way home he asked Marjorie (yes, she’s Marjorie now, aged 17 – keep track of this; I can’t) if it would be “at all possible for us to, er, well, make love? Sure thing!” said Caroline, aged 25. “I thought he meant we were going dancing,” said Shirley – Ann, aged 19.

Mark takes off his spectacles and makes love, as agreed. To Joanne, aged 14. When Emily aged five, told the police that Mark had molested her he got slung in the slammer with $100,000 bail needed and 10 years bird likely.

This is the statutory sentence in Wisconsin State for taking advantage of a mentally disturbed person – and quite right too.

The poor creature was multi-schizophrenic. She was 46 different personalities.

The judge so far has heard eight of her giving evidence – all different voices, mannerisms, ages, eight selves down, 38 to come.

One very sick woman, one bewildered man, one baffled judiciary. It raises a question that is common to us all – who the heck are we? I tell you all this because of two things that happened yesterday morning.

First I heard Prof. Anthony Clare on Radio 4 explaining that some mild drug for colds and flu can induce hallucinations to such a point that one patient, a sane man, who had taken too many tablets, came into a doctor’s waiting room convinced that he was Terry Wogan and interviewed everybody.

The other thing happened to me in Gateways. My face and voice are often recognised and while I find it embarrassing and unnerving it is my own fault, isn’t it? After all, if I make a living by putting my face about on television and the stage and the middle page of a national newspaper, well it served me right if people in the chip shop or the library come and say: “Hey! I know you! You’re off the telly! You’re…hang on, I’ll get it…you’re wottsissname! You’re a personality!”

Well, I learn how to deal with it. “Yes,” I say, “I’m wottsissname.” But yesterday in the supermarket a little girl stopped my trolley and stared up at me. “Mister do you know who you are?” she said.

Who indeed?