To See Ourselves As Others See Us

It is a wonderful and rare gift to see ourselves as others see us, and a wonderful and rare friend who will speak freely and in kindness.

I guess that's why I like Doris so much. Pop over to this post, and you'll see what I mean.

Creative, considerate and tactful to the Nth degree when it matters, Doris is the sort of person you would want to come and tell you if the poop had hit the fan big time and I am a fan of her people skills, so for a moment such frankness took me by surprise. Its an honour, just a surprising one.

She is quite right, I can be outspoken and in fact thats her wonderful tact coming into play again, she could just as well have said confrontational and I would still agree. I know I can be downright evil when the spirit moves me; generally when I feel there is an injustice, and then I click into some kind of flag waving battleaxe mode.

Maybe its the training from my first marriage - all those times I was convinced I was going to end up dead, until I got used to it and thought "Sod you mate, you're coming with me."

Maybe its just that I am going to eventually become one of those dreadful pensioners that 'run things' and terrorise people.

I hope its not the second one, even though I am rather fond of Endora - she had no time for fools. Her standards may have been off the wall, but she knew who she was and at a time when the Singer Sewing machine company were still proclaiming their machines as responsible for women's liberation, and Shredded Wheat were targetting the female shoppers with a song about giving 'the best' to the men in your life (!), well, she was my first encounter with feminism beyond my mother, because mum never trained me to expect a role, I was allowed to be me.

Perhaps now is not the best time to mention that all my most favourite female role models turned out to be lesbians - Jean Marsh who played Rose in Upstairs Downstairs, Sandy Toksvig on the kids TV show 'Number 73'.

Because of the introspection those discoveries caused, I am certain I am straight, I simply gravitated toward women unfettered by propriety - who would call a spade a spade or a plonker a plonker.

I call that good company.