To Throw Away Unopened

"Yes, she says, ‘Mum programmed me to fight, not to be walked over, never to give in.’ She says that we lived our mother’s unlived lives. My mother was a civil servant, but as soon as you got married, if you were a civil servant or a teacher, you had to give up work. That was the law. So she gave up work and then she had four children and she was definitely resentful and frustrated and bored. I have three sisters and I think we all felt, and lots of women of my generation say too, that they are aware that their mother was jealous of them. I think what was interesting about Viv’s mother is that it wasn’t so much that she was jealous of her, it was that she kept saying to her, ‘You’ve got to get out there and do it, do what you want, take risks.’ That was really very unusual for a woman in that era because my mother was all, ‘Be very careful’, ‘Be very careful what you wear.’ When my mother discovered I was on the Pill, she actually called me a prostitute. People were terrified that you’d get pregnant, and then in 1969, the year I went to university, was the first year that women, single women, could get the Pill. So I went on the Pill. And she searched all my things when I was out one day and found the Pill, and condemned me for being on it. So I really admired the way that Viv’s mother pushed her, and the fact that Viv became the most amazing woman, the absolute punk icon she was, the brain behind The Slits. The whole look that is such a common look now, they invented. Viv’s got a fantastic dress which she made out of a string, and then she hung black condoms on the bottom. Viv would go out dressed with her very heavy black makeup, very dark lipstick, wearing these absolutely amazing outfits. She was really one of the most daring women of our generation. And you can see that that came from her mother. In Testament of Youth too, Brittain is just refusing to conform. Viv is refusing, just absolutely refusing to conform. I could never have been as daring as she is. We’re about the same age, and we’re very good friends. I say to her, ‘In this era that I was wearing Laura Ashley dresses and pink lipstick, and nice little earrings, you were just such an amazing person.’ She’s still so daring. And she talks so openly about cancer, which people didn’t do. She talked about her cancer and talked about the horrific effects of the radiation on her body. Because what they did in the past, if a woman had advanced cervical cancer, is that they irradiated the whole pelvic area, to ensure it didn’t come back. The problem is your gastric system just doesn’t work properly afterwards. And no one, I mean no one, talks about things like that. Nobody would. I don’t know anybody else who would admit to having a physical fight with a member of their family over a deathbed."