lots of plans made last night... met up with W and had a couple of drinks and discussed doing a climbing course, the single pitch award (SPA) in Devon so we can get some surfing in, what festivals to go to... Surfstock will be a definite and the Isle of Wight looks like a good possibility.... climbing in the peak district and really getting to grips with lead climbing... how to deal with the teenagers at Mepal and I'm not talking the ones that come for the courses... and it was lovely! Oddly I have found a good friend, someone to do stuff with at last!!!


and today it's my birthday.... 30 years ago when I was 18 the Sex Discrimination Act came into being. I was excited, hopeful indeed that equality was truely just around the corner...........30 years on and i think the corner is even further away.. women are still raped and barristers question what they were wearing, how much they drank and their previous sexual history... women are still not paid at the same level... within households it is still women who maintain the house doing the majority of cleaning shopping and care.... what I find more insidiously scary though is what has happened to children's toys... toys were just toys when I was younger, I had a football and dolls... nobody thought or said anything of it... nowadays it is all about boys toys and girls toys... there's a fluffy pink girly aisle in Woolworths and a macho camoflage, metal one for boys... they are seperate, different and in fact world's apart... there are boy flicks and chick flicks ... it is all neatly packaged in very seperate boxes.... whereas what I had hoped for at 18 was the freedom to be whomsoever I wanted to be without recourse to stereotypical gender behaviour... maybe that's sort of how I have been... in that I am a climbing instructor... I like working with kids... have long hair but always wear the trousers and pink is one of my favourite colours ... but I do think I might be considered slightly odd by some.... I dont care now but how would I have coped as a child growing up in this boxed and dystopic world!! ??