We arrived at the house. It was completely familiar and yet completely unknown. A house 200 yards from the house in which I had grown up. The bleak, rain swept journey from the crematorium only compounding the sense of gloom and shock. The drive from that building will never be anything other than hushed, almost a liminal time between the reality of your own grief and societies expectation for you, to hold your head up and carry on as if nothing had happened, or perhaps it is still so unusual for many in our South Wales community to have women at the crematorium, we should all be at home doing the tea. Of course something had happened, how can you ignore the death of a parent. My cousin was  struggling with societies notion of coping, however much I reassured her that it was ok to cry she was desperately trying to hold things together eventually succumbing to her bedroom, fortunately, the women did what women do and carried on serving welsh cakes and tea.

My Aunt died 15months ago, the last direct connection to my Mother.

Reflecting on that day, as with my own Mothers death it was a complete shock, the terrifying thought crossed my mind that only by small steps of fate, I could be living on the same council estate, I could be living my cousin’s life, however, mine would’ve been very different. To be constrained in such a small world, such a small box, just the very thought fills my soul with dread and foreboding. My own cerebral coffin. Because, I dance naked.

Reading The Beauty Myth and Scum Manifesto only confirmed my fearful wanderings. There would’ve been a very strong possibility, I’m sure, that my options for progression financially would’ve involved selling more than homemade welsh cakes on a market stall. This route of feminist reading progressed to early second wave plays, Cloud Nine, Portrait of Dora,  previous feminist reading of works by Spender and MacKinnon  and earlier works such as, The Yellow Wallpaper and of course Franca Rame, and finally to wear red patent shoes.