Will Hodgkinson - The House is Full of Yogis

Mum’s brand of second-wave feminism was in keeping with the 1980s: individualistic and money-based. She argued, inarguably, that there was no reason why her earnings shouldn’t match that of a man doing a similar job, and that girls had not only a right but also a duty to get the best education they could. Given that she entered Fleet Street at a time in the 1970s when it was entirely male-dominated save for the fashion and food pages, you can see why she became so strident. Until recently a woman could not buy anything on hire purchase without a male signatory; an unmarried woman could not get a mortgage; it was not possible to rent a flat with a man unless she was married. On our boat trip Mum was bridling at the choices she had made when she was too young to know better: changing her name, getting married, having children, becoming secondary, in the eyes of the law at least, to a man.

Now she had got to the point in her career where, because Nev was working at the Daily Mail and she was doing big celebrity interviews and lifestyle features for the then more populist Sunday People , she was earning a lot more money than him. Fleet Street was at the height of its powers, with over ten million people reading the Sunday People and the Daily Mirror . Mirror Group’s all-powerful printers’ union demanded high pay to keep the presses rolling and journalists’ wages fell in line accordingly. Cushioned and given confidence by a very good salary, Mum felt that certain inequalities needed to be addressed.

Margaret Thatcher was a role model as far as she was concerned: a working-class woman who had got ahead through her own will and intelligence and put the emphasis on material improvement and self-reliance. Mum also took anything associated with the traditional role of the mother as a sign of weakness. Cooking was subjugation, which is why we lived on a diet of frozen pizzas. Getting involved in our schools – beyond screeching at me when I got a D in maths – was for less intelligent, more mundane women, which meant that she acted with outrage when the PTA asked her to bake a cake for the school fête (after calming down, she offered to buy them one from Marks & Spencer’s). And when she stayed out in the evening and matched the men in her office drink for drink and cutting barb for cutting barb, she was doing it for the cause.

One of the most confusing aspects of Mum’s declarations of feminism was that it was other women who were the most frequent source of her wrath. They were the agents of their own misfortune, apparently. Nev, Uncle Richard, her own father and most other men may not have been up to much, but as Mum told it even they were less pitiable than the old school-friend of hers who had been the cleverest girl in the class, only to get married at eighteen to a man in wire-framed glasses who made the family say grace before every meal and clothed his terrified daughters in matching dresses buttoned up to the neck. As for higher profile feminists, Germaine Greer was only bearable if you agreed with everything she said and Andrea Dworkin was a brilliant and brave pioneer, but wrong in one fatal regard: she equated feminism with hairy armpits. Any sensible modern woman knew that taking care of your appearance with fashionable clothes, matching colour schemes and high-end beauty products does not suggest sexual availability but self-worth. A decent wage and a trip to the salon whenever you felt like it: those were the rightful spoils of the women’s liberation movement.

Will and I tortured no more insects that evening. Dominic didn’t mention Madame Tussauds. Tom stopped reading, even. It was dark by the time we were back on the boat, and we took it in turns to clean our teeth in the tiny washbasin before Mum and Nev said goodnight and closed the door of their cabin. We heard the sound of things crashing and breaking, followed by shrieks of laughter, followed by snoring.

Will and I climbed up onto the roof of the boat and lay on our backs, and listened to the grasshoppers harmonize under the stars. For a while there, it did seem like we were a reasonably functioning family.

It turned out to be a brief glimpse of Eden in what proved otherwise to be a descent into Hell. The following morning, Mum stomped off into whatever town we were near to buy the papers while Nev moored the boat and cooked sausages on a camping stove. She came back holding up a copy of the Sunday People , crumpling in the wind and turned to a page with her article on it. Its headline was: How to Fight the Flab and Look Totally Fab. It had a picture of our mother in a purple velour tracksuit, attempting to jump in the air and smile at the same time. Nev also had a much smaller piece in the Daily Mail . It was about a pioneering, morally complex and potentially revolutionary research programme of isolating embryonic stem cells. It didn’t come with a photo byline.

We continued our pointless journey down the river. When she eventually tired of reading her own article, Mum, back in her folding chair, shouted at Nev, ‘I hope you don’t expect me to play the Little Lady, doing all the ironing and cleaning and cooking. You’re bloody lucky I’m here at all. I should be out writing a feature. Do you know how in demand I am?’

Nev, who was steering the boat, replied: ‘Why don’t you go off and write your feature then? You could even fight the flab if you walked the thirty miles or so back to London.’

‘Don’t be silly. Do you think that just because you’re a man you’ve got a right to tell me what to do?’ She grabbed her captain’s hat and stomped towards the steering wheel. ‘Get off. It’s my turn.’

After a brief tussle, Nev shrugged and handed it over. ‘Just try not to run aground this time.’

We came up to a lock. There was a shriek. ‘Nev! What do I do?’

‘Take your foot off the power,’ he shouted, and she did – but not in time. We hit the brick wall of the lock with a loud crunch.

‘Tell your wife to put the boat into neutral,’ shouted the lock keeper as the boat whined and juddered helplessly against the side of the lock, and Will and I helped Nev tie the ropes. Mum raised her nose in a westerly direction. Nev took over once more and told Mum to get away from the wheel and stay out of harm’s way.

‘That was your fault,’ she yelped. ‘You didn’t tell me how to stop it.’

‘Oh, shut up, you hideous bat. There can only be one captain of this ship and that’s me. Once we get through this lock I’m going to have to assess the damage.’

While we waited for the lock to fill up, Mum decided to tell Dominic and Will why they shouldn’t mistake her for the kind of mum who helps her children with their homework or cheers them on at the school sports day. ‘You’re more likely to find me in a glamorous bar, interviewing a famous celebrity,’ she said, pushing up her hat and leaning against the side of the lock. ‘My career is far more important for me to do all those things silly women do. Anyone can bake a cake. I’m part of an exclusive club which holds the media power in London.’

‘Tower of London?’ said Dominic, hopefully.

‘It’s a miracle we’re not mentally deranged,’ said Tom, lackadaisically. He was sitting on the bank, reading. ‘I’m going to have to spend a significant portion of the money left to me in your will on psychiatric fees.’

‘I just don’t see the point in pretending to be something I’m not.’

Despite this, she did then pretend to be something she wasn’t: a bridge. Once through the lock, we all climbed back on the boat. Mum was the last one on. She pushed the boat off from the side, but being in the middle of a tirade about why on earth working-class people had to walk around with so few clothes on the moment the sun came out, she failed to notice that her feet were going in one direction and her hands, which were raised against a pillar, were going in the other.