Council tax and bra burning

The council have annoyed, nay - riled, me. Yes, the tax is extortionate and okay, sometimes they leave the bins un-emptied, but that’s not it. They've reminded me that it’s 2013 and women are not equal to men.

In my home, I deal with the bills. I set up the accounts, organise the direct debits and pay the blasted things. So why, dear reader, will the council only write to The Boyfriend?

I call them up.

“Hi, I’d like to update the details you have on my account.”

“Okay.”

“I think you just have my partner’s details.”

Checks.

“Oh no, you’re down too.”

“Oh right, well could you possibly use my name on the correspondence, just because I sort the bills?"

“Oh I’m sorry it’ll just go to him by default.”

“Okay. Well could you override the default and send the bills to me please?”

“We have you on record.”

“Yes, but the letters are going to him, and it would be helpful if they were addressed to me.”

“Sorry, I can’t change that.”

I asked if he thought this wasn’t utterly ridiculous. He thought I was a raving lunatic.

“Your bills are going to the right address though aren’t they?” he added, as if this was the point.

And so it is that everyday sexism continues.

Now, don’t get me wrong,  thanks to the efforts of those who have gone before us, women and men in Britain have equal voting rights, freedom of speech, property rights, access to education and health care equality. Super news indeed. But are men and women equal? Are they heck.

Men outnumber women four to one in parliament. How many women lead powerful countries? It’s a lonely and exclusive group. Just 13% of FTSE 100 corporate board members are female. And British women are paid 83p for every pound our male counterparts earn.

And so it is that I am a feminist in 2013. Feminism is not about hating men or bra-burning, it’s about equality. 

Which given that I can’t even get the council to send me (helpless woman am I) the bill, is clearly something that we all still need.

The things we do

 I have signed up for boot camp. This is wholeheartedly out of character for 3 main reasons.

1.       I do not like being told what to do.

2.       I do not like being shouted at.

3.       I do not agree with group punishment.

And group punishment this is. We assemble in a local park. White van men yell helpful encouragement such as ‘left-right-left right’ through their windows as they drive past. We run, squat, lunge and burpee – all hideously painful torture techniques designed to make women realise that the perfect body is definitely not worth this level of effort.

We leap up and down. I watch women’s bottoms wobble furiously and jump higher. Because it is damp, we are inadvertently ‘bringing up the worms’ in a kind of mad exercise worm -dance.

We must now ‘drop and give him 20.’ I am horrified that I am paying good money to be given this kind of instruction, but not quite as horrified as when I find I have my hands and face in wormy wet grass.

I am now rolling around in mud. Actually rolling - as I do a press up, and then flail around on the ground until repeating. My hoodie has grass stains on the elbows. I am inhaling grass and wondering if we have any Vanish stain remover left under the sink.

Oh shit, I’m going to be sick.

That would be really embarrassing. Luckily someone has already thrown up by the tree. But she is hard-core and has now resumed the jumping squat. I would have to go home, and never return.

I am not sick.

I do not like burpees. No-one has ever looked back on their life and thought ‘I wish I’d done more burpees.’ I think wars might have started over enforced burpees.

And then it is over. I limp home – damp, yet victorious.

I walk in the flat and am so hungry that I eat an entire lump of cheese straight out the fridge. I have walked wet muddy grass all over the carpet and created a damp patch from my large wet bottom on the sofa.

If only I had energy left to clean.