Julie Burchill

When I was in hospital for almost half a year, learning how to face life as a ‘Halfling’ – a person in a wheelchair, patronised and petted – the thing I looked forward to most was a normal, some would say banal, event. I longed to be in my local Pizza Express, in Hove, reading Heat magazine to my husband as he ‘savoured’ his American Hot. To put it mildly, I am a far faster eater than Mr Raven, and rather than chatter to him and expect an answer, thus hindering his progress still further, I read to him. To add to the fun, I framed the problems of the Beckhams or the Sussexes as those of people we actually know, doing the appropriate voices, which rendered it delightfully bitchy.

Growing up, like a lot of English girls, I was what was known as a ‘dirty blonde’. (An evocative phrase, the Dirty Blondes are now variously a theatre troupe, a pop group and a restaurant.) In the summer, I would put lemon juice on my hair and watch in wonder as it bleached in the sun; I mainly did it to irritate my mother, who found overly blonde hair ‘tarty’. When I grew my impressive rack and shot up to 5ft 8in at 13, what I thought of as ‘The Bothering’ started – grown men attempting quite openly to pick me up, especially when I was wearing my school uniform. Blonde hair was the last thing I needed. Like many a dreamy teenager of the time – I’m not sure it still happens – I was drawn to the mythical beings of Hollywood.

When I read on the BBC website that ‘England will be the first country in the world to start vaccinating people against the sexually transmitted infection gonorrhoea’, I felt a flare of rare patriotism. We Brits, far from the no-sex-please-we’re-British libel which self-loathing Europhiles like to paste on us, have been known for our sexual generosity (some might say incontinence) since the dawn of cheap foreign travel, so it makes sense for us to take preventive measures. A tiny, immature bit of me even wanted to snigger, as when I was a young girl the idea of ‘the clap’ was a matter of some amusement on the part of my cohort. However, this is a serious business. It will not be available for everyone.

Cyclists. I’ve become a tolerant cove in my old age but if there’s one word certain to raise my dander, it’s cyclists. In Brighton they think they own the place, enabled by successive stupid councils, who have spent tens of thousands of pounds on cycle lanes and those eyesore e-bikes all over town. With a murderous version of droit de seigneur – at odds with their right-on, self-righteous self-image – cyclists appear to believe that walkers are a lower order who they are free to run over as they please. Cyclists in Brighton seem particularly fond of riding on pavements, where the most damage can be done. It’s like they see pedestrians as targets in some sort of video game – ten points for a man, 20 for a woman, 50 for a child.

Throughout my four months in hospitals, I dreamt above all of being home. This isn’t exceptional – it’s a very common desire – though I did meet one woman who complained that she’d find it too ‘quiet’ at home after the clatter of the ward. But for me the situation was extreme. I’m an only child; I live apart from my husband of 30 years because my desire for solitude is more persistent than it has ever been for any drug. I turned down a quarter of a million pounds to go on Celebrity Big Brother because even the idea of sleeping in a roomful of strangers for a few weeks made me feel murderous. In the hospital in Brighton and then in the rehabilitation centre in West Sussex, I wasn’t getting paid a six-figure sum to do the thing I most dreaded.

Seeing that photograph of J.K. Rowling, I reflected gleefully that her journey from mousey, play-nice moderate to unapologetically glam and flamboyantly defiant fox is complete. It’s not often that glamour and righteousness come along in one person – but when it occasionally happens, as her caption said, ‘I love it when a plan comes together.’ Many brave people – mostly women, but joined by a few exceptional men – have sacrificed much for the victory we finally took receipt of in the Supreme Court last week. They have been robbed of reputations, careers, relationships and – almost – sanity, as much of the world’s establishment and institutions went gender-woo gaga and told us that women could have penises, men could grow cervixes and giraffes are born without sex.

When I was a girl, around 13 or so, my mum started calling me, half-enviously, half-fondly, ‘The Camel’, due to my ability to retain water. Every Saturday morning we’d go shopping at the Bristol city centre department stores; she’d need the toilet maybe three times, but I wouldn’t need it at all. ‘Have you “been”?’ she’d ask me before we left the house. ‘No!’ I’d snicker, spitefully. When we got home after four hours out, I’d make a point of sprawling on the stairs, chugging Corona cherryade by the gallon and gossiping with a mate for around an hour before I finally ‘made my toilette’. It became part of the war of attrition which is so common between mothers and daughters.