Comin fae the Rye

@campervanwoman Worth having ear-plugs about your person?

I’m on the quiet coach on a train. The nice young man next to me is on his phone with headphones on ✅. The child in front of me is playing a loud game on his tablet with no headphones ❌. I want to strangle him, but I’m aware this would be frowned upon.

@amoozeboosh @ScotParl @NicolaSturgeon And she's been doing sterling work at @Burns_Ellisland

Great to see Joan looking so happy and well! She was one of the first women of the @ScotParl who listened to women's concerns. @NicolaSturgeon couldn't bear that and Joan lost her job.

@Mark1957 Tipping the velvet?

Golden Goodbye The Scottish Sun spots Nicola Sturgeon holding a retirement party in Glasgow's Merchant City Maybe spending some of the £75,000 golden goodbye payment she is due to receive for standing down as an MSP? A scandalous waste of public money thescottishsun.co.uk/news/16144341/…

@CatherineHume10 @TheAttagirls UK history - define please😂

@TheAttagirls What a silly and historically illiterate post. Women and men had the same rights for most of UK history. None. Men and women had equal rights. Men and women worked together on farms, down mines, in factories. Boys were taken out of school to work even if they were in school.

There is no Woman of the Day today. Instead, I want to explain why I do what I do. No one really knows who first said, “History is written by the victors” but I’d bet you any odds it was a man. Think of your schooldays and count the number of times you learned about the roles played by women in shaping history, other than regnant Queens and perhaps Marie Curie and Florence Nightingale. Yet women lived, worked, networked, debated, campaigned, organised, invented things and built them too - but you’d never know this if your lessons, like mine, were confined to history books. For a practical example, just look around you. Fridge, washing machine, dishwasher, ironing board, home security system, call waiting system, car heater and windscreen wipers, even the very first computer algorithm: all invented by women. Are you surprised? Confined to the house, denied access to higher education, barred from engineering, denied entry to all branches of science and the professions for centuries, those bright analytical minds turned their attention to their immediate surroundings and saw what was needed to free them from domestic drudgery. In return, history ignored women’s achievements, glossed over them or consigned them to dusty footnotes. If all else failed, their work was credited to - or stolen by - men, the phenomenon known as the Matilda Effect, first identified by feminist Matilda Joslyn Gage in 1870. In 1993, it was named for her by historian Margaret Rossiter who said, “It is important to note early that women’s historically subordinate ‘place’ in science was not a coincidence and was not due to any lack of merit on their part. It was due to the camouflage intentionally placed over their presence in science.” Once you see it, you cannot unsee it - the Matilda Effect is everywhere - but now substitute ‘history’ for ‘science’. The proposition still stands. What I try to do is to pierce holes in that camouflage by writing about the almost-invisible women of history who overcame manmade barriers and changed the world. As a Second Wave feminist, I thought we’d won all the big battles, that it was just a matter of mopping up the resisters and dragging them into the 20th century. I did my bit to redress the balance in an overwhelmingly male environment, but how had I managed to miss the barefaced theft of our words, our spaces and services, our sports? How had we suddenly been reduced to a walking collection of body parts? It was a wake-up call. Once I saw, I couldn’t unsee the terrible damage being done to girls and young women who did not conform to the offensive sexist stereotypes being imposed on them by men who mimic women and their inane female cheerleaders. It made me fearful for non-conforming girls: tomboys. They need to see strong women as role models, women who don’t care about performing femininity, women who defy convention and do things their way. If you can see it, you can be it. So I went digging around in those dusty footnotes, found a little gold and started from there. I found thrilling tales of women who were inventive, resourceful and brave. Then I started sharing what I found more widely, tied to the calendar as Women of the Day. How do I find them? Often by pure chance. I go looking for one woman, spot a couple more names along the way - women whose stories really resonate with me - and file them away for the right time. Women’s history had been right under my nose the whole time. I just hadn’t realised that you needed to dig a little. The rather unexpected bonus was that in giving them a voice, I found mine. I am a conspicuously law-abiding woman, a former prison governor, and if you had told me when I retired that one day, I’d be standing outside a police station in protest at the hounding of gender critical women and singing “Go catch some rapists” to the tune of Guantanamera, I’d have advised you to seek immediate medical attention for the effects of the bump to your head. But here I am, telling women’s stories, and behind the scenes, pursuing a second career as a women’s rights activist. I won’t ever fall asleep at the wheel again. Tomorrow, I’m off to Cardiff with my Women of Wessex sisters, to protest about @bphillipsonmp’s inexplicable decision to delay laying the EHRC Code of Practice before Parliament — and make no mistake about it. It IS a decision; one that is causing real harm and damage to the rights of women and the protection of children. Some of you come for the occasional stories of women in history hiding in plain sight, but I hope you stay because you care about fairness and safety for women. For now, I leave you with this thought from the 1949 memoirs of Somerset suffragette Nelly Crocker (1872-1962): “Modern young women seem unaware of the price paid for their political and social emancipation, and modern historians have greatly ignored the struggle”.

@TheAttagirls @CatherineHume10 Not UK. 🤦‍♀️

UK history has been recorded since before the Domesday Book. Men could be awarded university degrees in 1230. Cambridge finally capitulated and awarded degrees to women in 1948. Men first took seats in Parliament in 1265. Women had to wait till 1918. Men could vote in 1832. Women had to wait till 1918. Men were legally persons in their own right. Women were chattels (the property of fathers or husbands) until coverture was finally knocked on the head in 1991. That’s not a typo. 1991. It is true that one of us is certainly silly and historically illiterate. I leave it to serious historians to decide which…

@overlandertheb1 @AuntieSyzygy Good words. Define and discuss. 🤨

@AuntieSyzygy That is true they were good words.

Popped into my mind as soon as I'd filled in my two starter rows. Inspired, or obvious? idk. Discombobulating time of year when the weather is like this - still daylight when I go to bed, dark as pitch when i get up. Wordle 1,758 3/6 ⬜🟩🟨⬜⬜ ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@AuntieSyzygy Spooky, I'd say. Wordle 1,758 6/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨 ⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@ewangibbs @gem_ste @Moonbootica In the current circumstances it's a mystery why not. Have SNP themselves snuffed the flame?

@gem_ste @Moonbootica I also just don’t think there’s currently much public appetite for anything like that

I highly doubt it. Even if the SNP gain a majority and demand a referendum, when Westminster says no then what? The SNP simply doesn't have the chops to take the next necessary steps when faced with London's intransigence.

@AuntieSyzygy Phew ( echo...)

@FaetheRye I have chronic lifelong anxiety, but never had this weird combo until last November. Actually, seems to be passing off already, phew - was 5 days last time. 🤞

ooft, I have this (possibly thyroid related) Thing again - simultaneous Nausea and Hunger. It's so difficult to respond to and cope with, tho it sounds like nothing much. 🥴

@MattBecker82 @opento @AuntieSyzygy @overlandertheb1 @BarbaraNairn @Mislein @AbrazoHouse ... and Clara, and Fanny...

@opento @AuntieSyzygy @overlandertheb1 @BarbaraNairn Saturday #poem @Mislein @FaetheRye @AbrazoHouse

Dark sky, blustery wind, horizontal rain - autumn storms in springtime 🤨 Wordle 1,757 3/6 ⬜⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@AuntieSyzygy Watching the two gardeners, Arthur and Eve, no, not in the least. 😆

@FaetheRye Well done. Hope it didn't make your arm hurt.

@Mislein @AuntieSyzygy Scary as...

@AuntieSyzygy It's wider at the other side but you couldn't pay me to do it 🫣 I had to film it in case I was accused of pushing him off the cliffs 😂

ouch. Relieved to get there at all. Wordle 1,756 6/6 ⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨 🟨⬜🟨🟨⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@AuntieSyzygy @AbrazoHouse Refuk 🤣🤣🤣

@AbrazoHouse I'm surprised I missed the story in 2024. I'd never heard of her, and she seems to have offered no info publicly at all. Also looked up her computer firm, not much info on that either. Then a search found this cannibal thing. I suppose she might split the refuk vote?🤣

Just looking the candidate choice in the Aberdeen South and Kincardine constituency - SNP (Flynn), Tory (Kerr), Lab, LD, Refuk, and Iris Leask, standing as an independent. This is the only info I've found on her 👇

@AuntieSyzygy Wordle 1,756 5/6 ⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜ 🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜ ⬜🟨🟨🟨⬜ 🟨🟩⬜🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩😵‍💫half an hour it took me.

@WingsScotland What would be really cool would be if it was you! 😎

This is my mate Matt, and also THE COOLEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN.

Deer fences and access rights in the Cairngorms National Park (3) – Balavil update parkswatchscotland.co.uk/2026/04/09/dee…

@BarbaraNairn @gabel4scotland @AuntieSyzygy Lovely suncatchers! Primroses, lesser celandine, coltsfoot.😊

@gabel4scotland @AuntieSyzygy Yesterday's walk was along the coast from Gourdon to Inverbervie (nearly) I'd hoped to pick a bag of seaweed for plant food but Dave had cleared the beach. The flowers were mostly yellow with lots of daffodils and these

Had to delve deep into what the Guardian Quick Crossword folk call the "etui" for that one. Wordle 1,755 3/6 ⬜🟨🟨⬜🟩 ⬜⬜⬜🟩⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

@AuntieSyzygy That's the style!😘

@FaetheRye Green tea and a third breakfast in progress 👍

Been into town for more tests. Got a bit shaky after, so delayed return, finding my notifications a bit full. Apologies if I've missed any replies.