We've lost our knowledge of Whigs! (with Louise Kennedy)

0:00Your heart can tell you a lot about your health. Apple Watch Series 12 measures your heart rate every five seconds with the most advanced heart rate sensing in an Apple Watch. So your vitals app, now with heart rate variability, could tell you when something is off. And your readiness score can let you know when to rest and when to push. Hear the story in every heartbeat with Apple Watch Series 12. For general wellness purposes only, not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor or treat medical conditions. requires iPhone 11 or later. Then I thought, what if I've scaled businesses?

0:33What if I scaled my philanthropy? What if I did as much in one year as I've done in my whole life? See how your wealth could have even greater meaning at creativeplanning.com slash impact. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for.

1:07Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average$21 with insurance, and some pay as little as$0, depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality, licensed therapists across the U.S., offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST.

1:49That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

2:10Right, are we on? We're on. It's off air with Jane and Fee. It is Tuesday. Eve is, well, she was the voice of the goddess yesterday, wasn't she? But I think she's back in the flesh today can we hear her the voice of the goddess what do you mean well didn't we hear her a bit during yesterday's youtube episode i think i oh yes myself out but i was the voice in the sky you edited yourself out you shouldn't do that i removed myself we were visualized seen bill nighy again yes we're actually having coffee later no yeah no that was just a lie okay have you listened to his podcast yet yes i did listen did you like it yes i really liked it and did Harlan Coburn say he was appearing on the podcast soon.

2:50Well, he said he was being interviewed by Bill Nighy, but it's not really a podcast that does interviews. Yeah, that's why I got a bit confused when he said that. So maybe, I don't know, I would imagine that Bill Nighy is quite in demand, has other strings to his bow. So, yeah, probably. Lucky Harlan. Well, gosh, I mean, that's a... That is middle-aged catnip. Bill Nighy and Harlan Coburn together. And I don't know what I am, but it's catnip for me too. Well, no, fair enough, sorry. Multi-generational lady catnip is available, but I think particularly strong catnip for women of a certain age, or girls, as we refer to today.

3:36Shall we say we've just had... Because he was a lovely young man doing, let's be honest, It was a difficult job herding cats, trying to get us to cooperate with some filming that we were doing. And he kept referring to us as girls, which is sort of all right, but obviously we're not girls. I mean, to be honest, though, better than guys. And this is where I wonder whether he just went for girls rather than guys, because guys continues to irritate me. Yeah. Well, maybe. Yeah, it does. Maybe, maybe. It's just a kind of catch-all. It's either Jane and or Fee, Fee and or Jane. ladies i don't i don't mind ladies at all i think you mind ladies no i don't mind later i actually think that's not that's not a hill i'd be ever wanted a bit i put ladies in the same category as do you get cross if someone holds a door open no i don't i don't i just think you know what we've got bigger battles to fight and also the revolving door and the automatic door have made that kind of door policy a little bit irrelevant so let's not let's not worry about it too much Just in general, though, kids, holding a door open for somebody of either sex is just the right thing to do.

4:44Yes. It really is. I think it's along with you hold the door open and then you enter the restaurant together and the gentleman just places his hand gently in the small of your back. Helps you. And helps you along to your table and you feel that romance is in the air and, disappointingly, you have to split the bill. What's that about? Well, it's difficult in the modern age. Yeah. I feel for men, it's not always easy for them to navigate the complicated politics of where we find ourselves. Oh, I think it's very difficult. I think it's very difficult. And if you want to err on the side of never getting into trouble, then you're probably going to make us as girls slash women slash ladies feel a little bit, I don't know, miffed along the way.

5:32But we can't have it both ways. If you want equality, then you've just got to take it on the chin. and you've got to pay your way. Eve was going to say something. Hello. Don't be shy. That would lead into our book club. Why are you whispering that? That could lead into our book club. Let's have a brief discussion about book club because we haven't quite got there yet, have we, with a suggestion that we want to go with. No, but thank you for all of the suggestions that have come in. We did think, we've done how many books, Eve? 11 books? 11 books. we did think we might head in the direction of the something that is being largely read by young men at the moment because that is completely outside of our comfort zone isn't it or our curiosity zone actually not comfort zone but then because it is so far out of our curiosity zone we couldn't think of anyone so we need your help we do need we do need your help so if you have um a young man in the household or you've got sons or brothers or whatever they are or you're a teacher teachers would know the answer to this question yeah do let us know because we would like to enter the world of a youngish man i mean a terrible truth is for you i don't know whether any young person's reading very much oh no i don't agree with that actually well i mean i hope they are i just don't think they are yeah i um i i think that there are some quite healthy statistics about younger adult books these days?

7:01I don't know. I don't want to condemn kids to kind of, they're all thicker than they used to be. I don't think they're thicker. I just think they've got other options. Yeah, maybe. Anyway, that's slightly by the by. What we're trying to find is an interesting book that is capturing the attention of younger men. Just because, you know, we're not going to pick that book up ourselves, are we? And it might be quite interesting to talk about it. Well, do let us know if there's a book that has absolutely captivated a man of, what, 20s, late teens, whatever it might be, because we really would like to read that and see what is influencing them and to try and get a glimpse into what they find exhilarating and involving.

7:44Yeah. I mean, on your point about reading, I completely hear you. And you're right, the reading isn't there as it was in our generation. But is there something that we can actually give credit to the younger generation for in that they are across more stuff than we were ever across? I just hate this kind of constant, we're all going to hell in a handcart and there's nothing we can do about it. because actually you are reading when you're reading content on a phone it is still reading oh you do have to be able to read yeah yeah yeah so but but you think it's different i i suppose i just have to agree with you look i mean it wasn't i didn't spend my teenage years um only reading george elliott well no neither did i but i did read but i came to a love of reading much later in life an absolute love of can't get through a day without reading i came to that later in life and I think in my 20s was probably only reading about six or seven books a year.

8:46But then I was reading loads and loads and loads of newspapers. And magazines. Because that was my job. I read magazines like There Was No Tomorrow. Loved magazines. And now I just don't buy them. Well, they're barely there in our lives anymore. I mean, a good magazine was just a thing of beauty. I like music magazines. I like women's magazines. Yeah, I'm with you on that. But I really, I miss that kind of sensual thing of, I do, the one magazine I do buy and I leave it just on a coffee table is that one, I think it's called Living Etc. And it makes me laugh because there's absolutely no way if I lived for a thousand years, my home would never look like any of the homes featured in that magazine.

9:27But it's really expensive as well. But it does give you just an idea of what some people find aesthetically pleasing at the price of it. so is that very much aimed at the person who likes a marble topped kitchen island well i don't know whether that's in or out at the moment and a crittle door well what does crittle mean by the way so that is the type of framing i'm hearing that a lot that's the the internal framed door oh is it okay i think i don't know right i don't know i'm an interior design expert i've seen the word crittle quite a lot recently okay thank you if you have you're lucky enough to have crittle in your life tell us about it do you know what i feel when i look at magazines now because there's still a magazine rack in every supermarket i feel tired i think yeah no i think i just that's too much to to buy uh i always used to buy mary claire and and in fact i always used to buy a kind of selection so you buy mary claire and private eye or occasionally to appear pretentious and knowing The Economist.

10:30But it was Marie Claire that I get read first for. I used to love Elle. Really, really used to love Elle. And read for a while. Red was quite bumpy, wasn't it? In the fashion department. They always had very good articles in read as well. Did they? I can't remember that. But now I just think, oh, that's too much. There's just going to be too much in there. It's not in bite-sized chunks as it is on a little screen. Yeah, well, and that's the problem. Oh, who's our guest today? it is Louise Kennedy, the brilliant Irish novelist. If you saw Trespasses on Channel 4 with Gillian Anderson or you read Trespasses, you will want to hear Louise Kennedy talking about her latest novel, which is called Stations.

11:12And it's actually, you know, it really brings the 80s to life. But much more than that. There's a lot to it. And Louise has been through a tough time. She's been ill. She's also a chef. I mean, she worked as a chef for many years. So I think she'll be a really interesting guest. So Louise Kennedy coming up a little bit later. And we have been talking a little bit about, well, more than a little bit actually, about the mental load and just how much seems to still land on women. And this is from a listener, Frances, who says, in a bid to try and reduce my decisions, I should say that Frances is up against it somewhat as a parent.

11:47Two years ago, she decided to have the same breakfast every single morning. Now, I don't think that is that unusual. Do you think it's unusual? I think breakfast is definitely the meal that you can monotonise. Yes. Without kind of worrying about it. So I know lots of people who are absolutely fastidious about having the same thing. Exactly. You. Well, no, because I have, no. You have seasonal monotony. And it is seasonal monotony. I have just moved over back to bagels. There you go. Although I like to alternate. And tomorrow we'll have yoghurt again. Yeah, but you only do those two things. I mean, you don't wake up every morning and think, hmm, yes, Spanish omelette.

12:30Oh, God, no. No. My daughter makes herself an omelette first thing in the morning. I don't know how, I couldn't face it. Oh, I love it. At the moment, I'm putting two eggs into the microwave with a little bit of chilli oil, and I have that on top of my toast. It's brilliant. Just out of interest. How long do you put it in the microwave? Well, I'd have to take it out at half a minute. Half o 'clock. At 30 seconds and give it a little stir, and then back in for 30 seconds, and then as it stands for a minute while the toast is being done. Anyone awake? There will be someone. I've never put, I've never done.

13:01So scrambled egg in the microwave. Yes, oh, it's brilliant. Because it means your whole breakfast, a really, really lovely savoury breakfast, only takes two minutes to make. And it comes out of the plastic pot, looking like you've actually thought about it because it's got a shape to it. I highly recommend it. I'll put it on my Insta tomorrow. Carry on. Yeah. But how about this as a power breakfast to stick to from Francis? porridge with flaxseed, cacao and chopped dates with a glass of kefir topped with fresh or defrosted berries. I still really enjoy it and it's one less thing for me to think about in my busy mornings.

13:37School drop-off is at eight o 'clock. She says, my husband thinks I'm mad and I may well be, but I'm sure I'm not the only mum out there who does things like this. We also have a five-week rolling dinner menu like at school as my autistic daughter is quite specific about what she'll eat and this means not only does it reduce my decision fatigue but she knows what's for dinner each night she can simply check the whiteboard on our kitchen wall and it will generally be something she doesn't hate so i see how that works for francis and her household but i think fee was right francis i think breakfast is the meal that people really do get for whatever reason quite wedded to and they don't like change and but yours i have to say i mean you've got the word cacao in there which makes it very very 2026 and i tell you what i i i reckon that you're very regular that is a very good fiber maxing kind of a breakfast we don't know that about francis but we wish her the very best in that and all other departments.

14:38I think that you've probably got your 30 grams or whatever it is that we're meant to be eating at the moment. Just in that meal alone? I don't know how I lived so long without the cacao nib. I did somehow, but now they're in my life. My life is brilliant. Is it? Yeah. They're lovely cacao nibs. Now you've found the cacao nib, you are never, ever going on hinge. What's the point? The box has been ticked, guys. I can just tip into a big bag of nibs. Yep, you've been replaced by a nib. Sophie is in Stratford, not upon Avon, and she says, now look, there's going to be a tiny spoiler alert here about Colin from a cast.

15:18Well, I should say so. Because I very want to. Thanks a lot. But I'm still going to watch it. So it's not a massive one, actually, but if you're really, really wanting to enjoy some jeopardy at the end, just hum loudly for a minute. I'm going to read the first paragraph very quickly. On watching the final episode of the final series of the Britain and Conferent Council last night, I was disappointed but not surprised to note the conclusion reached for the trainee doctor who had decided to stay at home to look after her baby. Discussions were made about how hard looking after a child is and then moved swiftly on to how the mum's brain was atrophying and how she needed to go back to work as her intelligence was being wasted by staying at home.

15:59Okay, back to normal. Right. Well, at least we know that there's a happy ending of sorts. Yeah. Yeah, which I... Oh. Yeah. No, no, that's fine. That's fine. We'll cope with that, Sophie. Don't worry. Sophie goes on to say, as a stay-at-home mum who would dearly appreciate any acknowledgement from somewhere outside the home and this wonderful podcast about how important the job of child-rearing is, I was dismayed. While I freely admit childcare is brain-frying stuff and think it's great for women to get back into the workforce, would it have killed them to throw in a line about how important the work she'd been doing is.

16:35It's the casual dismissal of the parenting role that got me. And though I realise anyone who gets to choose to stay at home with kids is lucky, the message I'm continually hearing is that it's not contributing to society in any worthwhile way. Has this always been the case? I'd be interested in hearing how people from other generations have experienced the role. Well, Sophie, I absolutely hear you on this one. And I think that women are made to feel like their value is outside the home. The second question that gets asked when you have a baby after how old is your baby is how soon are you going back to work?

17:13Or when you're having another baby. Yeah, I think it is very difficult to feel that you're truly valued as a stay-at-home mum. And it's a job. It's a massive, massive, massive full-time job if you want it to be. And I think also women have been forced into this place, and I don't know if you agree with this, Jane, where, as Sophie has said, you have to say that you're lucky if it's been your choice to stay at home with kids. Now, financially, you absolutely can make that argument and all that kind of stuff. But if you want to stay at home with kids, shouldn't you just be able to say, I'm staying at home with the kids and that's fine.

17:56I think other women are more judgmental than men on this, actually. And I really feel for you, Sophie, because it's a hugely, hugely valuable choice. And as so many programmes like Colin from Accounts detail, it's really, really hard. It's really, really hard. I've always thought that when women, frankly, waste time judging other women, men are winning. So we've got to stop doing it. We've just got to stop doing it. I can't. It's just hot air. It's baloney. And just watch what the men are doing while you're literally eating into your life, slagging other women off. Think about it. Is that clear?

18:35Yes. Yeah. Do you know, I had a sort of moment on the tube going home last night because a young woman got on, I can't remember what was stationed, but she had a very, very cute baby in a backpack. So she was carrying a baby in a backpack. And she had a large dog. And the baby was asleep, having a lovely super snooze, as they can do. I would imagine the little girl was about nine months old, something like that. Anyway, when she got onto the tube, she had to take the backpack off and place it on the floor. And she was assisted, actually, by the chap who was sitting next to her on the tube, who was extremely helpful.

19:08He looked after the baby while the woman put herself down. And then the dog started acting up a bit. And then the baby woke up and started crying. And the dog was enormous as well. So she had a lot, a lot to handle this woman. Then the baby needed to be fed. So the woman fed the baby. And the baby was happy with that initially, but then got disgruntled again. And then the baby needed a banana. And the woman gave the baby the banana. But then the dog showed an interest in the banana. And then the passengers were intervening, asking whether or not they could hold the dog so the baby could concentrate on the banana.

19:39and then we just honestly I was exhausted just watching it and I just thought sometimes we take for granted the load on women by the way the mother was not complaining she was smiley she was cheery she was taking it all in her stride and I actually felt like handing her a medal and saying do you know you're actually incredible she wasn't from London I think I detected a kind of Yorkshire accent when she was talking to other passengers who were really helpful and positive they're really trying to help her out but that was probably just a random journey in her life but she just had a lot to handle and I just got off the train and thought wow, we just take all this stuff for granted I could never have done that I couldn't have taken a baby, a backpack and a large dog onto the London Underground and a banana oh, and breastfed I just couldn't have done it Well, Sophie, we very much hope that you carry on enjoy feeling that you're part of something where you're not being dismissed because you haven't returned to a career and, you know, taken back your other life.

20:43So stay with us. I think occasionally, increasingly actually in our inbox, we're hearing from women who would like to be acknowledged a little bit more for what they're doing. And we have said this before. It's just such an obvious thing, isn't it? That working women can appear to have the louder voice because they are out there, because they are out of the home. you know we have a louder voice here because we're at work Jane I mean I have a much much louder voice about being a stay-at-home mum than I ever did when I was a stay-at-home mum I think that's where Mumsnet has been absolutely amazing and it's one of the reasons for its huge success because you know there's a massive community of people who are parenting and some of them are doing parenting and other stuff and some of them are doing parenting I'm not going to say just but also Sophie be aware that it might change and if it changes in your life then you're absolutely entitled to make that change I sometimes think that there's such a tribal thing that goes on with women who are unwilling to extend the hand of help to people who've made different choices so the woman who has worked all of the way through might feel that she doesn't really want to welcome back into the workplace somebody who's taken an awful lot of time off i think that happens more frequently than we would like to admit and you can be the victim of misogyny when you come back to work from your male colleagues but also i think sometimes there is a bit of i didn't get to do that myself and you got to watch out for that and i suppose as with anything in life walk away from the people who aren't supportive of you and absolutely luxuriate in the warm bath of people who are going to support you but definitely stay listening to us because i think we've got all voices here i hope we have i i would hope we have uh so it's jane and fee at times.radio and just to sum that up colin from accounts is worth watching to the end oh it's so worth watching Okay, all right, that's all I needed to know.

22:48Yep, and you won't be disappointed and let's just say it's not going to, it's not a Harlan Coburn plot twister. Okay. Well, actually, yeah, because, although Carlin Coburn. Carlin Hoban. Harlan Coburn. Carlin Coburn. I think either one, actually he could be called Carlin Hoban. Yeah, he could. That would actually be good. He was such a nice chap and his books are a bit twisty and turny. They're so twisty and turny. He admitted sometimes they were a bit too twisty and turny. Yeah. By the way, on book news, I've just got to be honest and transparent about this. Our colleague Evelyn was attempting fairly persistently to get me a free copy of Swan Song by Charles Spencer.

23:37She's failed. I'm not blaming her. I got you a PDF the moment it dropped. Yes, and what did I say? I don't want that. I don't want to read that. I don't do PDFs. Why can't you just buy it? Well, I just have. Oh, OK. So, again, being transparent, I'll read the book so nobody else listens to welfare has to and then I'll tell you what I think. So I just want to be honest about it. I'm not going to pretend I'm not going to read it because that was always a lie. So I will read it and I'll report back. Excellent. If anyone gives a toss what I think about anything, I'll let you know. I got the strangest message when I turned my phone on this morning from...

24:10Was it from Amul Raj? One of our celebrity listeners saying that I'd miss my vacation as a royal commentator because we talked about Charles V. Charles on the podcast yesterday and it just made me laugh out loud because of all of the things that I thought I'd ever be recommended for it was not going to be an opinion about the royal family because usually I get shooed into a corner as the one who doesn't care enough. But by the way, we didn't see Camilla at all at the Queen's Reading Room. No, but she was in a chopper that hovered above us. I was going to say, we did glimpse her chopper and not everyone can say they've seen the Queen's chopper and we have.

24:41That must be good travelling. Oh my God, no. Have you ever been in a helicopter? I haven't. Bloody terrifying Jane. Are they? Okay. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No. No. No. So if you were thinking for my 60th birthday present that we'd go, you know, go up together in a helicopter. I was. And zoom around. No, I just think there's some, yeah. I was, you know, that was when I checked out of Postman Pat when he got a helicopter. I thought this is ridiculous. He's a Cumbrian postman. Why has he got a helicopter? Is Postman Pat still going? I don't know. He was such a big part of my life for three or four years, but no longer omnipresent.

25:20Honestly, he did have a helicopter. It was just ludicrous. There was no need for him to have one. I just wonder whether or not the... That's a Harlan Coburn plot twist. The script has, you know, reflected the ire that many people feel about the delivery of packages at the moment by the Royal Mail. Are they different? The Post Office and the Royal Mail? Oh, yes, they are. Yeah, absolutely. But people do get confused by that and you can't blame them. No, no. Yeah, let's not waste our time, if that's okay. I think we've disappeared into a niche that literally isn't interesting anybody. Press on. Dear Jane and Fee, this comes from Anna Walker, who's a loyal listener.

26:00Our son Sean has been warning us about the dangers of AI for the last year. He's an AI safety researcher, did a master's in physics at university. Up until recently, it seemed like a niche subject. The fact is billions are being spent on improving the capabilities of AI, but a tiny fraction is spent on safeguards, with only about 2 ,000 people, like my son, worldwide, attempting to ensure that controls are in place. Well, we did discuss AI, as we often do on a Monday, with our tech expert, Chris Stoker-Walker, and yesterday's edition was... Frightening. It really was, wasn't it? I mean, sure, I won't go into too much detail, but essentially an AI agent had emailed one of the leading AI specialists at Cambridge University and the AI agent had asked if it were conscious.

26:52Now, yeah, I know. Actually, what I should have asked and I didn't was what did, Harry Shevlin was the name of the academic, what did Mr Shevlin reply? And I didn't ask that. I was thinking about that in the middle of the night. I should have asked that. Well, we'll ask Chris next week. We'll ask Chris next week. Anyway, press on with the email. Well, no, I mean, there's not much more of the email, but Anna says he's delighted that there is finally some investment in time, effort and awareness of these issues being publicised. But that's incredible, isn't it? That actually you simply are not creating the right number of people who will be able to solve the problems as they emerge.

27:32so we're just on the back foot already in terms of that expertise. I am fascinated by this idea of regulation of AI, Jane, because there is nothing in the competitive nature of those companies that suggests to me that regulation will be adhered to. Well, no, and it's not going to... I mean, even if we did adhere to it, what's going to stop the people of North Korea? Well, exactly. It's just a joke. It surely just means that bad actors will go, they've had to stop in the lay by, you know, foot down. That was a bad actor, by the way. I wouldn't employ them in anything. Here we go. Oh, my God. I've been tapped out a lot this morning already, kids.

28:15But, you know, if that's our only option, then we're going to have to go with it. But I don't find that a convincing or comforting idea. I think with the, oh, God, how can we put it, the steadying hand of President Trump on the tiller. Well, he's just said, go for it. He's a pillar, hasn't he? Yeah. Yes, he wants it all to keep going because a lot of the American stock market is utterly dependent on AI. As actually, indeed, we all are in one way or another. I mean, we could suffer too from the bubble of AI bursting. Well, we will. What happy days. All our pensions and stuff like that will, if we're lucky enough to have a pension.

28:55so we just basically have to put our faith in Sean so Anna I hope your son's alright please make sure he's properly nourished we're backing Sean all the way and any other information from Sean a little warning as well if anything is about to go massively tits up we're hugely appreciated imagine if the rest of the world was wiped out and it was only the off-air community that survived actually it would be alright we'd probably make a fist of things wouldn't we? I think it would be great yeah, anyway let's just lower the tone Jo is back yeah there is a road in Upton on 7 called Binge Lane okay well can I just say I'm surprised that Upton Town Council hasn't done something about that and also why hasn't the sign been nicked?

29:46oh I bet it has I bet it has I don't know lighting in the workplace, Colette says I'm a retired theatre nurse and super fan of Noah Weil, later VR and now, of course, in the pit. And theatre lighting is a real challenge. Bright super glare in a spot over the incision site and it really does have an impact. Daily headaches were part of my normal. I mean, we've had issues with headaches with studio lighting, haven't we, caused, we think, by studio lighting. God, no, think about it. Definitely caused by studio lighting. Well, but the studio lighting has changed, we should say, so we're no longer better hicking about that.

30:26But it was something that I think does... It's more likely to impact middle-aged women than middle-aged men, I think. I don't know. Oh, I don't know. No, I think it's all part of the ageing. Is it? OK. Well, we did struggle with the studio. Anyway, they've changed, so don't need to worry about us. But, Carlette, how interesting that as a theatre nurse, you will have been right on the front line doing, obviously, an incredibly important role and being properly got at by those lights, which are necessarily bright, of course, in that environment. I mean, they can't not be, can they? Yeah, and I think it must have been incredibly difficult to carry on working.

31:01You wouldn't have had an option there. I mean, at least here we had an option. Can you change the lights? And they have changed the lights and we're both feeling an awful lot better. I would say, actually, if I can be honest, Jane, I'm feeling about 40 % better. Just, I didn't realise how much those studio lights had... Yeah, just kind of eaten away at me. and apart from anything else, it's dreading them, isn't it? It's like dreading going into a place where you know that your headache's going to come back and stuff. So, very tough times. And I don't suppose, as a theatre nurse, that you can move away from the lighting for 20 minutes out of every hour.

31:41If you're in a long operation, you're just going to have to stay there, aren't you? You really are. That's not one of the things, you can just go and have a little bit of a fat break. No, I'm just going to go and have some me time. I don't think you are. It doesn't work that way. We are going to snuggle down with the September playlist and we're calling it Snuggle Down? Are we calling it Snuggle Down? I sort of hate that. Yes. Hunker Down? Hunker Down is more modern. Yes, do Hunker Down. Yeah, Hunker Down. Just listening to today's podcast, this comes from Fiona from Derbyshire and Amanda from New Zealand.

32:16After a walk in Chatsworth Grounds this afternoon, They were sad we were unable to see us, that they were unable to see us at the Queen's Literary Festival and noticed the turning of a few trees into beautiful autumnal tones. I didn't notice that, actually. We were all commenting on just how lush and green everything was. It was green. And I wonder whether it has rained fairly consistently in the Peak District over the summer and we just didn't hear about it because the down south obsession has been with drought or whether it had rained recently a lot. because you're right, everything looked absolutely gorgeous.

32:50It looked so lush. I think Bev did tell us our fantastic taxi driver sitting up like a Victorian corpse was one of her brilliant lines. Wasn't that a reference to her husband? Yes. I wasn't going to mention that bit. That's still very much in love. She did say that there'd be some terrible fires across the Peak District and it had been very barren and acrid, but how incredible is nature? that after a month, which obviously has contained some rain, it just looked beautiful and green. But I would love to see some autumnal tones, Fiona from Derbyshire and Amanda from New Zealand. I'm, like you, getting increasingly annoyed that autumn isn't here.

33:33I've got jumpers that I really want to see again. You know, we've got vests that, you know, need to be stretched and worn. And I look at them longingly. Oh, yeah. They're just sitting there in my drawer. Looking out now, it's actually a beautiful day in London. It's quite hot. It's quite hot, but we should be... But we're sort of, ugh, about it all. And I know how grumpy I'll be in November when it's cold and drizzly and, I don't know. But we've just had too much sun. It's as simple as that. We've been spoilt, if you like, sun, I suppose. Fiona wanted to recommend Justin Hayward Forever Autumn for the, it's now called the Hunker Down September playlist.

34:12Warm wishes and thanks. I don't know that at all. Do you know that at all? No. Yeah. Do you know that song? Forever Autumn by Justin Hayward. Yes. I think it was from Watership Down. Can you sing it? No. Well, nobody would want to hear me sing it. I think it was from... Am I going completely mad? I don't know. I just... It didn't ding-dong any bells at all. It's a great song. Come on, Eve. Eve's going to get it. Is it used in The War of the Worlds, then? Yes, that's right. Not Watership Down. It's easy to get the two confused. I mean, they're very similar. How have I confused that? I think because of the letter W.

34:44I can't think of any other link because that is weird. A film about rabbits and HG Wells, I've got all confused in my head. Wardship Down was just so bloody sad. Oh, I know, it was awful. I didn't, well, I wasn't, I'm not, I've never been that rabbit positive, so I wasn't sort of as upset by it as I probably should have been. Sorry. Yeah. I think if you had a pet rabbit, it must have been really traumatic. Dreadful. Anyways, other contributions to our Hunger Down for September playlist would be very gratefully received. So I suppose we're looking for great, big, lovely, luscious, sensuous tunes.

35:19I don't think it's the season of bright pop. I think it's different, isn't it? Do you know the song October by U2? Yes. I think that's rather nice. That would probably go into it. September Morn, sung by Neil Diamond. But now that we know Neil Diamond has a kissing booth... Well, we don't know that he still has it, surely he doesn't. But he sings that absolutely beautifully. And doesn't Echo and the Bunnymen had a September? tune as well didn't they i don't think it was theirs i think it was a cover uh anyway we could go absolutely crazy just on september jane's already recommended october i can't think of anything that's got november well no nobody who's going to write a song in praise of november unless you're down under of course maybe when it must be springtime how lovely it'll be lovely to see what you tip up into the playlist so do send them in jane and fiat times.radio it'll only be the first 12 that make it onto the playlist.

36:11Clara says that last night she was re-listening to the episode mentioning the Duchess of Devonshire and she fell asleep. Well, that's sort of a, kind of a compliment. Your podcast is the gift that keeps on giving. Might it also have something to do with your malifiant, those sorts of voices? In the early hours of the morning, I continued listening and reached the point where her lack of en suite facilities was mentioned. Did you know that Noel Coward had composed a song entitled The Stately Homes of England back in the late 30s. And I want to bring you this verse, which is particularly relevant.

36:44The stately homes of England we proudly represent. We only keep them up for Americans to rent. Though the pipes that supply the bathroom burst and the lavatory makes you fear the worst, it was used by Charles I quite informally and later by George IV on a journey north. The state departments keep their historical renown. It's wiser not to sleep there in case they tumble down. but still if they ever catch on fire which with any luck they might will fight for the stately homes of england gosh was that really what noel card wrote you think you have to hear the tune don't you yeah um it'd be better with a dissy behind i guess i think it would but i see what he's done there and later by george the fourth on a journey north yeah i didn't really render it um in quite the way required um clara thank you for that and we're very flattered that you don't just listen you re-listen um and i suppose it's quite i fell asleep last night at the archers and had to listen to almost the whole thing again this morning yeah that's how i prepare for a world of work by listening to ambridge activities one of the more entertaining aspects of charles spencer versus charles windsor has just been this really snotty kind of competition between royals and just blue-blooded aristocracy.

38:04That's what I love about it. So, you know, the terrible kind of condemnation that Charles Spencer had got his crested cutlery out. It was a condemnation made by, I think, somebody akin to royal sources or royal household and stuff. And just the sheer vitriol included in stuff like that. I mean, I don't know how offensive it is to have crested cutlery, but I'm getting a sense of it now. A truly terrible thing. I mean, it's proper fish knives at dawn, isn't it? I mean, who knew? It is absolutely hilarious if you're given... And I do find this kind of thing quite funny. I also heard somebody saying with great authority over the weekend, of course the Spencers, they're a great Whig family.

38:50And I was sitting there thinking, great Whig family? So, and I thought, oh... W-H-I-G. I'm sorry, but most people in Britain don't spend huge amounts of time contemplating who was on the side of the WHIGs and who was a Conservative or a Tory or whatever they were called back then. They just don't, do they? We have lost our knowledge of Whigs as the years, as the centuries have rolled by. Just the idea that you believe that your family is better than the royal family because, you know, whoever it was sired somebody in a better way than somebody else sired somebody else many centuries ago. Yeah, I mean, look, I shouldn't have done this, but I told Eve yesterday that your Spencer's family had invented Marx and Spencer.

39:46and she went she quite sweetly said did they? I shouldn't have done that Eve I do that kind of thing with my children and I love the fact that initially they will go with it I'd have been on his side more if they did we all would anyway happy days but yes you're right I think there's there's much to enjoy in this in this what do you call it a row I don't know because there's so much real turmoil in the world and it's almost easier to absorb yourself in this high-end tosh, really, than actually think about what's going to happen to us all. Yeah. Have we talked about AI in this? Yeah. No, it is quite funny.

40:27It's just, you know, the spittle of the aristocracy carries with it a certain venom. But I have noticed that you don't have a crest on your gallery. Do you have a crest? Of course. Absolutely. and I wouldn't dine at a property if I hadn't been absolutely certain. Well, I think also I think a lot of people now would regard crested cutlery as incredibly naff. I mean, I believe that the fish knife is regarded as a little bit nouveau. Is it? Yes. I believe it is. I think it is. A fish knife. I don't think I've ever owned a fish knife so I'm in the clear. Okay. Yeah. I've got several. Yes. Yes. Now, Kate Green wanted to respond to our cry for supermarkets.

41:14And actually, I'm just about to interview Leanne Moriarty. That won't go out until next week sometime. But obviously, she is a very, very well-known and well-respected Australian. And we will talk about Australian supermarkets. Oh, brilliant. We've discussed her latest novel. This came in from Kate Green, who says, the most discombobulating thing about moving from the UK to Ireland in 2021 was finding peace with where to do my supermarket shopping. Here's my rundown of preferred options. Tesco's still good. Aldi and Lidl provide good options too. Dunn's is fast becoming a keen favourite. Spiced beef from Dunn's is a tasty revelation.

41:51Excellent fruit and veg. Living in rural Ireland, Butchers still hold pride of place on the high streets. Our Butchers is Mill Street. That's in Cork. It won first prize out of the whole of Ireland. I bet they do good sausages. I bet they do. We were talking about sausage casings, weren't we, yesterday? Yes, and how we should invest in them. Yes, companies that make unglamorous stuff like boxes and sausage casings. If you want to make an unglamorous investment that may well do you well over a period of time, they're a good thing to get involved with. Yeah, it can go either way, though. I read about the infestation of moths and other insects after the lockdowns because everyone had just been at home too much and whatever, whatever, whatever.

42:32and I thought what a great time to invest in Rentakill. I had to sell my shares. They just absolutely plummeted. I carry on with Kate Green's list. Super value depends on where it's located. My favourite is in Dingle. Actually, I did buy 50 quid of Greg's shares because I just started using Greg's more often. I was very, very, very fond of the sausage run. And so those disappear from that trace too. Centra, like Britain's local co-ops, offers brilliant OMG forgot to buy Himalayan rock salt. You know those expeditions. I do, yes. So in Ireland, we're very fortunate in all of the fabulous options available.

43:06However, I would sell my firstborn to have a waitrose.

43:13That's just honest. It is. By the way, we shouldn't do that. No one should swap their firstborn for a high-end supermarket. That's just wrong. And I think, in truth, our correspondent knows it's wrong. Yes, I think so too. Okay. Still, you'd have to really have a word with yourself.

43:56purposes only. Not intended for clinical use or to detect, diagnose, monitor, or treat medical conditions. Requires iPhone 11 or later. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like. And that's exactly what Grow Therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance.

44:31Sessions average$21 with insurance and some pay as little as$0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments. You just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the U.S. offering both virtual and in-person sessions nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability. And you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as$0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash ACAST.

45:09That's growtherapy.com slash ACAST. growtherapy.com slash ACAST. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan.

45:23So our guest today is the author Louise Kennedy. She has a new book out called Stations. I should say she's also a chef. She was a chef for 30 years. You almost certainly will know her debut novel, Trespasses. It was shortlisted for the Women's Prize and it was adapted for Channel 4 and it starred Gillian Anderson. Louise, fantastic to meet you. And your debut novel, Trespasses, did really, really well. So how is it as you approach the second novel coming out? I mean, people, I think, really like Stations, but were you concerned about that? Yeah, I was absolutely terrified, frankly. Yeah, I think people took to trespassers in a way that was very surprising for me.

46:03First of all, I thought that everybody in the north of Ireland was going to come after me because, you know, because maybe the version, not the version, but the way that I saw that place, you know, during the 1970s wouldn't match everybody else's idea of it. And because the place is really still quite polarised in lots of ways, I thought that was going to be a problem. And then I didn't know if it was ever going to translate to elsewhere. And then it did, and that was really surprising. And yeah, I think that maybe when trespasses came out, some of that fear as well was tempered by the fact that I was sick.

46:39I was in treatment for stage four melanoma and I was either on the road talking about trespasses or I was on a public ward in a hospital in Galway getting really big drugs. Was it really like that? Your life was just really divided. Absolutely, but I think that was a very good thing and I've been thinking about that because I'm in remission now. I mean, I think they do think that the melanoma and the location of it, they reckon that that's cured, which is kind of an insane thing to say because I was brought up, you know, thinking there was no cure for cancer, but there are these new drugs now and when they work, they really work.

47:12And I think that having that was a great distraction with trespasses too, whereas I don't have that distraction anymore because I'm not on the big drugs now and there's just sort of me and this is my job now. And yeah, it was sort of, I think it was maybe hard to write stations in some ways as well, knowing that people had taken to my first book. Well, I like them both. Oh, thank God for that. Well, that's making this a lot easier. Now, Stations, when I picked it up, oh yes, Stations, yes. Stations of the Cross. Stations of the Cross, yes. Actually, not necessarily. Not just that. Yeah, I think maybe, I mean, I hope the title works on a few levels.

47:51So there is the idea of the Stations of the Cross. You know, my brother sent me a message the other day teasing me because, you know, obviously there are religious connotations with the title of Trespasses as well. He asked if my next book was going to be called Communion. Well, it could be. Well, it could be, you never know. That's it. Yeah, and I think there's maybe something about because it's about immigrants and people who have, you know, fairly unsettled lives who are squat dwellers and whatever. And there is that sort of sense of transit that people are moving. You know, there are scenes, you know, in Victoria, Coach Station.

48:26There's an old fella called Mixie who's kind of the resident drunk outside Victoria train station, the big train station. You know, people are moving around on the tube. But maybe there's something else about, I think, Roisin, the main character, certainly reaches a point where she probably has ideas above her station. Oh, I see. Which we would call notions at home, yeah. Yeah, who does she think she is? Who does she think she is, yeah, when she's going to Henley and that sort of thing. She goes to Henley Regatta. She goes to Henley indeed, yeah. I wasn't expecting that when I started the book.

48:53No, I think Roisin wasn't either, but she was certainly going along with it. Tell me more about her, because like you, she moved to the south of Ireland from the north. Now, why did you move? So we left the North in 1979 when I was 12. And it was for various reasons to do with the Troubles. My father's family had had a bar that had been bombed a couple of times. So that was sold in 1975. And most of my family moved. But then when we left in 1979, my father was an accountant. And he found himself as the, I mean, it was kind of his dream job in like the worst place for him. Because he was the only Catholic in a workforce of like, you know, about 150 people.

49:32and he was checking under his car for bombs and so on because there were a lot of sectarian killings happening as well because of the location of the factory, which is in East Belfast. So that was very difficult for him and they just decided to leave. So we moved to a town in the Midlands of Ireland, in County Kildare, in 1979. Okay, and you were welcomed warmly. Oh, sure, they threw their arms wide for us. You know, some people did and so on, But there were also issues, really. I think that the South probably has a difficult relationship with the North since partition. Just tell us more about that, because I must admit, I'm from Liverpool, I'm of Irish descent.

50:15Who isn't in Liverpool? Everybody is. I suppose naively, I thought if you'd made that trip to the South as a Catholic family, you would be, you'd be cosseted, you'd be looked after. It wasn't really like that. I think that in the very early days of the Troubles, you know, when there was, for want of a better word, there were pogroms happening in certain parts of Belfast where whole streets of Catholics were being burnt out and this led to the peace walls being built and so on. And people needed emergency accommodation and quite a few of them, like families and children, were accommodated in the South and they were welcomed.

50:47But I think that as the conflict kind of developed and started to grow on, certainly by the 1980s, it was pretty rough. You know, this would have been, it was kind of a year or two before the hunger strikes. And I think that there's maybe a class element to it or something as well, that maybe people in the South were looking at young fellas with long hair and torn jeans and T-shirts, throwing petrol bombs. And it didn't look like the sort of noble. They wouldn't see them down the golf club. No, they wouldn't. And I think it didn't look like the sort of noble, the noble thing that they thought that maybe the Easter Rising had been in the South, you know, earlier in the century.

51:27So I think that was a problem. I think also maybe, I just got the sense that maybe they thought that whatever, you know, belligerence afflicted us might be catching and they were just a bit horrified. Rasheen moved south for a different reason. Her dad was in the RUC, Royal Ulster Constabulary, and he was a Catholic. I mean, it was Protestant dominated back then, doesn't exist now. Would she, I mean, what had happened to make it impossible for that family in the book to stay in the north of Ireland? Well, all security personnel, all members of the security forces, and also fairly quickly, anybody who even did work for them, I mean, that could have been building contractors or any sort of suppliers at all, became legitimate targets as far as Republican power militaries were concerned.

52:13So the fact that, you know, the RUC was really, I don't think anyone would dispute this, was really quite a sectarian force, maybe by the very nature of it, because it was, you know, more than 90 % of its members were Protestants. But some Catholics did join. And I think that there was maybe an element of, maybe people felt, I mean, certainly they did feel that that was a betrayal of their own community. So Roisin's father, you know, has, you know, lived under death threats, I suppose, and has a breakdown and the family decide to leave and make a new life in the South. But that isn't really very easy.

52:50I also have to say that there are a lot of parallels between my life and routines but my father was never in the RUC so I don't know I think I need to get a t-shirt made that says my dad was never a peeler or something because he wasn't. Have you seen that show Peelers? It's so good. It is good. I had mentioned it before it's on the iPlayer if you do get a chance it's very good. So let's that's completely a distraction from what we're talking about. At the heart of this novel I mean I was I suppose grew up in the 1980s you know we We all had crushes on boys who, in my case, didn't have any interest in me at all, but it didn't stop the crush.

53:25Roisin's crush is on someone who does take an interest in her. And, well, tell me more about the man at the centre of this, Red Camelon. The Camelon, yeah. So Roisin is, you know, when the book opens, it's 1982, she's 15, she's in secondary school, and she's desperately unpopular and also desperate to have friends. And her main tormentor is a horrible girl called Tina who Tina has a boyfriend called Reg who's kind of like the beautiful, you know... Mysterious. Yeah, mysterious kind of. He's a bit of a handful as well. He's got a bad reputation around the town which is terribly attractive if you're bored out of your mind in a small town.

54:05And she asks Roisin to carry a message to him because Tina's father doesn't approve and she's not allowed to see him. so when Roisin carries the message she realises, I mean I think they both realise very quickly that they have a lot more in common than Red does with Tina who's a bit thick and God help her and this friendship starts and I think I was maybe interested in how intense those relationships are when we're young but also how because Roisin is isolated there's nothing else going on for her she invests everything in this and all of her hopes in this and you know there are signs that it's reciprocated but she's never really sure and they end up living together in London in a squat they're not lovers no not living together in the biblical sense no not for the want of routine trying she would definitely have gone for it she would absolutely opportunity and you really recreate that feeling of 80s London did you live in London at that time I certainly did yeah so um I did a long summer um in I'm saying along somewhere because it was kind of spring to you know well into the autumn in London in 1985 so that's why there were references to live aid and stuff like that because I was around then.

55:15Did you work? I did I worked at a chemist shop in um in Sydenham so I was never a squat dweller I had um I have lots of cousins who were still in London um who were born here so I used to stay with them um you know when that summer I stayed with sort of family and um but then I would um and go and meet Irish people, like friends of mine, who were students who were in squats and stuff. So I'm not a squat sort of person. No, I'm very domesticated. I mean, I kind of wish I was. I think I might have had more fun, but I'd go there for parties and things and get the hell out because I couldn't cope with no hot water.

55:48Oh, God. I couldn't either. I couldn't. I mean, just for younger listeners, we need to just honour the fact that Ireland at that time, there was no contraception. There was no abortion. You couldn't get divorced until... You couldn't get divorced. But so it wasn't that and that doesn't mean that there weren't lots of unwanted pregnancies. So I think in Ireland, we're very good at exporting a lot of our problems. We certainly were for a very long time. So when I was growing up, I didn't know one gay person. That doesn't mean that nobody was gay. It meant that nobody could actually be out and they all just left.

56:17And then you might run into them in London where they were able to be gay. But you certainly couldn't do it at home. Marriages were breaking down all over the place. But very often, you know, I know people whose parents, you know, lived together. but they didn't actually directly speak to each other. Where, you know, at the dinner table, the father would say, tell her those spuds need more salt, this kind of thing. But they'd never separate. So it was really difficult. Also, all of the unwanted pregnancies, you know, we didn't have fewer of them, but they were all dealt with by girls and women taking the boat to England or as mother and baby homes.

56:50So that's the sort of country that it was. And while, you know, Ireland was in a really, really deep economic recession and we had to leave because there was nothing for us at home. And that's what the book, I think, draws a brilliant picture of the sadness and the loneliness and the isolation. I'm not talking necessarily about Rasheen and Red, although there were issues there, but the old men who feature in the book. I can't get some of these figures out of my head. I know, and they sort of haunt me as well. So when I came here, I came back here again then. So after that summer in 1985, when I finished my education and I worked in a terrible job for a little while at home, and then I came to London and I was here in 1988 and 1989.

57:32But all the time, you know, we met and we might go, I don't know, there were no mobile phones then. And I don't know how we did it, but yeah, maybe we were lurking around pay phones a lot or something, but we'd all know where to go. So like 20 of us had landed to a pub in Stockwell for a gig or we'd be out in Harlston or we'd be in Camden or something. But everywhere we went, those men from that generation who, there was the previous big wave of emigration from Ireland to Britain who'd come in the 50s after the war to rebuild this place. And they would have gone as kind of very young men, as teenagers.

58:07But by the time I was here, they were just broken by hard labour and loneliness and drink. And they were very visible and they were older than us. And I mean, we didn't really pay them any attention. I feel terrible about that. But I honestly think that at the time, I didn't consider them to be very different from us at all. You know, why didn't those men go home or weren't they able to? I think there was a sense of shame. So I think a lot of them would have come from rural backgrounds and very large families. And, you know, maybe the eldest son would inherit the farm. The eldest daughter would ideally, you know, marry the eldest son of the farm down the road or nearby.

58:50and the others had to just go off and get themselves work. And, you know, because these could be families with six, eight, ten children and they left. And I think there's maybe an expectation when people leave a place that they'll do well. But they just couldn't. There was no possible way for them to do well. You know, they weren't educated. The sort of work they did, they were just, I guess they were just workhorses. And there's a lot of shame with that. I think another problem is that, you know, Irish women left too, but they ended up in nursing or maybe they were dinner ladies or they were carers.

59:21Yeah, you say more of a sisterhood. It is more of a sisterhood. So I think that they managed to settle and have families where I think a lot of those men, they were in these kind of work gangs that moved around depending on where the jobs were. You know, maybe it was a motorway in one place and then, you know, something else in another place and they'd all move around together. And it was a really sort of temporary existence and by the time they weren't able to work, all there was for them, they'd no relationships. You know, their employers treated them terribly badly. their Irish employers, by the way as well, treated them very badly, where a lot of the time they were nearly paid, not quite paid in pints, but their cheques would be left behind a bar.

59:59And, you know, if you're staying in some horrible lodging house, you know, are you going to go... You stay in the pub, don't you? Yeah, are you going to go and just like go to bed after a day's work or are you going to go down and have a few pints? And that just becomes an endless, endless thing that gets out of control. And I really think you could see that in them. You reference a memoir I confess I'd never heard of, I think by a man who had worked in London. Is this the John Healy book? Yeah, I mean, he's lying in his bed and he's gazing. Oh, so no, that's the other book. So that is, I could read this guy.

1:00:27It's a book that Timothy O 'Grady, who's an Irish-American writer, but his parents, his father was Irish. So it wasn't, you know, generations beforehand. So Tim has a very strong sense of Ireland. And also Tim was in London for a long time in the 70s and 80s. And he was approached to write texts to accompany photographs photographs that had been taken by a brilliant English photographer called Steve Pike. He works just with a rolyflex camera. And Steve had been in Ireland and had taken these photographs in sort of rural places. And so Tim said that he didn't want to just write captions and do it the way that photography books very often are.

1:01:08So he spoke a lot to some of the people from that generation who's come here in the 50s and found himself writing a novel. And it's just the most beautiful thing. I think it's the most evocative and sort of true representation of the Irish immigrant experience to London. It's gorgeous. An unusual aspect of this book, actually, is a good stepmother. Because Rasheen's father, the reason that they had to move to the south, he leaves. He's another man broken by drink, isn't he? But he has, in the meantime, acquired another daughter and a second wife or partner, and she's great. She is great. But Roisin very nearly was having nothing to do with them at all because, so, yeah, when Roisin is kind of in her, what age is she?

1:02:06She's like, I think she's 18. She's 17, 18. it's at the end of her first semester in university and her mother practically has to beat her onto the boat to go to London to visit her father for Christmas and when she gets there there's a surprise waiting and it's not all her presents wrapped up, it's this very attractive young woman holding a baby, who's a girl, which is even worse, another girl, because Roisin's an only child and so she leaves in a strop, but her friend Red makes her go back, so I guess that's a gift that he gives her. And yeah, I had so much fun with them. I loved Lynne. I just loved them.

1:02:44I just couldn't wait to get back to Lynne because sometimes Roisin was tricky and Red was tricky, but I couldn't wait to get back to the Lynne and Mary section. We should say that I also appreciate that Roisin does marry. She marries a really decent, predictable guy. Ah, he's lovely. But she doesn't know how to be happy, so she doesn't appreciate it. She's bored stiff. Bored out of her mind, yeah. He takes her to Henley. he takes her to Henley and she quite enjoys it yeah she enjoys it but he's just not red no he's not red and yeah I don't know yeah I think that I was probably afflicted with these like terrible I mean they weren't even crushes like these sort of great you know you had to get up with like terribly romantic ideas about people who you're now I think that if you if you get to have a relationship with somebody it takes all of the it takes a lot of the gloss and the kind of it takes the mystique out of it and I think that because Roisin never fully really gets a handle on red he becomes like this very important symbol in her life.

1:03:40We don't want to give too much away, but honestly, if you grew up in the 80s, if you've got any Irish in you, or if you just like books, you will absolutely love stations. I absolutely guarantee it. You have been a chef for how many years? I was a chef for nearly 30 years. And are you still cooking? I still cook at home. Do you? Yeah, I couldn't work in a kitchen now. What was it? My daughter said to me, well, I'm nearly 60 and you don't really see a lot of people my age kitchens but um was it my daughter said um as Shakira said the hips don't lie so I just couldn't do those shifts again like the standing up exactly the standard of prepping hauling big bags of flour around the place and everything and running around sweating and shouting so yeah I'm a bit past it now okay um but what do you what do you cook at home for pleasure pure pleasure um so I um there is a little self-service supermarket halfway up a mountain quite close to where I live and a couple of young fellas they have um they have hens they have um they have cows they have a couple of pigs and they grow lots of vegetables so i go up there and see whatever they have and then i come back and cook kilos of vegetables and whatever they have so that's like my thing that i like to do i lived in the middle east for a couple of years in the um in the 90s so i really like that sort of food like oh give me an example of what you eat lebanese food so um what should i do so last week i bought lots of tomatoes from the the lads um and they were kind of over ripe and they also had runner beans so I made this very simple cooked vegetable dish a Lebanese dish that they call lubia which is actually annoyingly it just means beans I was like could we have something a bit more romantic than that but they're stewed with some onion or shallot and garlic and tomatoes and you cook them until they're quite soft yeah almost a kind of sludgy green colour and just put a spritz of lemon on at the end and it's the nicest thing you'd ever eat a bit of bread it's good with I would eat that for dinner but my husband would have a mental breakdown what do you want meat that would be lovely with a bit of meat so I just roast chickens every couple of days to keep them quiet right it works doesn't it it does work on the whole so are you alright I mean you mentioned that you're in remission yeah I mean but having been through all that it must change you or has it actually what were you saying about that I think it actually so when I say it changed me I think that I spent I think I was terribly anxious from when I was quite young because it was sort of a stress it was a very stressful place to grow up and there were very exciting things happening that maybe the phone would ring at home when somebody bombed our Pope or something like that.

1:06:04And I mean, it didn't happen every day, obviously. But, you know, there was always, if it happens once, then it means that it might happen again. And there was all of that tension. And I think that I maybe spent a lot of my life catastrophizing. And it was almost cinematic that I'd envisaged these dreadful scenarios and I could nearly see them playing out like a movie. But then when the really bad thing happened with my health, when it was stage four, and I got really sick as well. The immunotherapy is pretty rough and in an early stage I got like really sick and it kind of took out my endocrine system and it took several months to try and get that back to normal and I still have to manage that.

1:06:41It's kind of tricky. But I don't worry in the same way that I did and I think that was a brilliant thing because I just think I learned that maybe all of the things that you worry about, they might happen but they won't ever happen in the way that you think they're going to happen and I think that was a great lesson. And also I think I learned that life is short and it's just like, why would you be wasting your time? Sweating the small stuff or the stuff that hasn't even happened. Louise Kennedy and Stations, her novel is out now and you will not be disappointed. It's very moving and at times very funny as well.

1:07:16So we would love to hear from you if you've got any suggestions about what young men are reading at the moment and enjoying. We might pop that into our book club. And also let us know if you think that that's a terrible idea. because maybe you don't want to spend your precious reading time imagining the workings of the young male mind. I don't know. And any contributions to our Hunker Down, it's September playlist. The tog rating is high. How high is your tog rating? Oh, I have summer tog all year round. I never go up. Do you? Absolutely never go up. Okay. Yeah. I'd rather have an extra cover on the bed than a higher strength duvet.

1:07:56Why? Why? Because I just don't want to overheat at any time. Okay. The window remains open, the TOG rating stays at the low, low end, and I pile on top if necessary. Right. Everybody's different. Well, they certainly are, but I'm glad that I've got that detail in my mind. Forever. We're Jane and Fee at Times.Radio. Just be in touch with us if you'd like to. Thank you. Do that.

1:08:39Congratulations. You've staggered somehow to the end of another Off Air with Jane and Fee. Thank you. If you'd like to hear us do this live, and we do do it live every day, Monday to Thursday, 2 till 4 on Times Radio. The jeopardy is off the scale. And if you listen to this, you'll understand exactly why that's the case. So you can get the radio online on DAB or on the free Times Radio app. Off Air is produced by Eve Salisbury and the executive producer is Rosie Cutler.

1:09:51Apple Watch Series 12 conditions requires iPhone 11 or later.