I was lucky enough to have a week’s holiday in August, seeing very dear friends.
Then I was at a festival at the end of the summer. There’s nothing quite like being reduced to the basics of eating, sleeping (barely), dancing, laughing and repeating to a) make you appreciate your house like you don’t the rest of the year (it has a roof and flushing toilets!) and b) restoring your faith in humanity and teaching us to say every day, no matter what is going on, “I LOVE today!” Copyright: Rob Auton, a fantastic poet and comedian who made us laugh and cry on the Sunday morning. We were all feeling a bit tired and emotional.
Work-wise there’s a really busy autumn ahead with the Warm Welcome winter launch, planning for Warm Welcome Week in January; lots going on with Good Faith who are organising a reception at the Labour Party conference at the end of the month and various interfaith events and projects.
I’m doing a bit for Winchester Cathedral in my spare time and volunteering for the Chartered Institute of PR Wessex committee. I take on too much…
One student daughter is (finally) going back to uni… she’s been home since April! Life is just SO cushy at home, she didn’t want to go back to her student digs for her two (online) exams in the summer term.
The other student daughter continues her OU studies from home.
Naturally, I’m delighted by the company of my offspring. Although I do look forward to a time when it’s just me and one or two cats milling about the house. If that day ever comes.
In other news
This was so interesting, about the Vagina Museum having to alter its imagery as it’s flagged as adult content and caught up in the ID verification of the Online Safety Act.
Porn has been in the news recently, with Channel 4 airing the Bonnie Blue documentary. This isn’t really the place to share my views on porn, I should write to Jane Garvey and Fi Glover’s Off Air podcast about those (a podcast I absolutely adore). Suffice to say, from my experience, plenty of men don’t give two effs about what some others think about porn and its possible implications for violence against women, they just consume it anyway. And lots of women are joining them. Perhaps respectful porn is the way forward.
My friend Ros Wynne-Jones posted about Russell T Davies’ TV drama Years and Years and Kemi Badenoch’s proposals about immigration in the summer. Ros is right – the programme was meant to be a warning, not a manifesto.
Along those lines, this is worrying: the Reform led council in Nottingham banning councillors from engaging with the local paper The Nottingham Post. A colleague in my CIPR Wessex group posted a link to the story on LinkedIn and it sparked a discussion about communicating in an increasingly polarised society, which we hope to follow with an event, possibly before the new year. Watch this space for details.
That’s enough for this month. See you next month. Things are going to be busy in the meanwhile.
Lucy Rouse PR Blog 