The Daily Telegraph - 06.08.2019

18 ***^ Tuesday 6 August 2019 The Daily Telegraph

�elia alden

Angry young men

shouldn’t be free to

buy machine guns

n the days, weeks and

months after we lose

someone from “natural

causes”, we often reach a

point where there’s

nothing left to be said.

We’ve exhausted the platitudes,

uncovered any “silver linings” that

might be useful in blunting the jagged

edges of our grief, tried to reshape our

loss into something we could

conceivably live with, and reached a

kind of acceptance. Death is death;

what can you do?

Americans reached that point of

silent fatalistic acceptance on gun

atrocities some time ago. Only there’s

nothing natural about the mass losses

they endure: the 29 dead and 53

injured in dual gun massacres that took

place in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton,

Ohio, less than 15 hours apart over the

weekend – less than a week after the

last mass shooting. And it’s hard to

think of a more unnatural number than

the total number of people killed with

guns every year in the US: more than

35,000. But in the end, what is there to

say? So at some point between

December 14 2012 – when Adam Lanza

went on the rampage at Sandy Hook

Elementary School and shot 20

children dead, along with six staff

members – and the last mass shooting

(at time of writing), many of the

Americans I know stopped saying

anything at all.

Watching the El Paso fatality

numbers rise on the TVs in my local LA

supermarket on Saturday afternoon, I

expected to overhear snippets of my

fellow shoppers’ horror, breath being

sucked in through teeth. After eight

years out here and countless mass

shootings, I suppose I still expected the

acknowledgement of horror that

would occur between strangers after

far lesser national tragedies in the UK,

when we all become grimly united. But

nothing. Nobody mentioned El Paso or

Ohio at the gym or the drinks I went to

on Sunday night. Not because they

don’t care or have become immune to

the pain caused by gun violence but

because they have been inured to it.

Only on TV and in the media are the

voices still loud, shrill and endlessly

repetitive – in a way that makes you

understand how easy it would be to

become inured. From Trump’s

condemnations of the latest act (always

denounced as “hateful” and

“cowardly”) and reassurances that we

are all “sharing in the pain and

suffering” to the empty pomp and

circumstance of flags being lowered;

from God being called upon to “bless

the people” to assurances the Lord will

give Americans “the strength” they will

need in the face of all those deranged

young men free to express their anger

with legally bought machine guns.

The AK-like high-capacity weapon

used by 24-year-old Connor Betts in

Ohio is praised on gun websites for

being “so sharp and powerful, bullets

will go through the body [of a deer] and

I

Do the Loco-Motion: the Australian pop princess performed an impromptu show in Scarborough

Online telegraph.co.uk/opinion Email [email protected] Instagram @celia.walden

N

ot long ago, I was

invited to a Malibu

dinner party at which

all the guests were asked to

don aprons, head into the

kitchen and help the chef to

prepare supper. The

experience, people cooed,

was “so grounding!”

Although, quite honestly,

I failed to see the novelty

value in preparing my

own meal.

As it turns out, that

Malibu supper was the

start of a stronger

movement detailed in The

Hollywood Reporter this

week: “Reinvention of the

ego” dinners.

In an effort to ground

the Hollywood high-flyers

to whom most of us are

mere pinpricks, supper

clubs have started seating

“real people” next to these

titans: you might get a

lowly crew member next to

an actor, or an estate agent

next to a top executive.

Sometimes – in a form of

culinary sadomasochism –

those who really need

taking down a peg or two

can be “a servant” in the

kitchen. What larks! And if

that hasn’t ground them

right into the floor, they’re

always welcome to do a

“reinvention of the ego”

boot camp at mine.

Because if anything

can set these people

right, it’s scouring the

scorched egg residue off

my frying pans.

out the other end”. The AK47 used by

21-year-old Patrick Crusius in that El

Paso shopping mall is able to shoot 100

bullets a minute and, therefore, kill 100

people a minute. So although the

fatalities could have been 10 times

what they were on Saturday morning,

the 25-year-old mother who died

shielding her two-month-old from a

hail of bullets never stood a chance.

The divine powers being called

upon across America don’t lie with

God now but lawmakers like Trump,

and anyone able to push political will

towards banning assault weapons.

Along with many Americans, Trump

must quietly know that the Second

Amendment is no more than a

filibuster, that “the right of the people

to keep and bear arms” never meant

this; that you don’t need a State Militia

when you have a Federal Militia; and

that far from being “well regulated”,

guns are one of the worst regulated

things in America. He knows, too, that

when Clinton banned assault weapons

in 1994, mass shootings halved.

Aware of how shamefully repetitive

the gun debate has become, the US

media are embarking on tangents. It’s

all Trump’s fault: his inflammatory

rhetoric “is creating a culture and an

environment in which this stuff keeps

happening”, one CNN pundit insists,

while another blames the rise of white

nationalism and social media. Over on

Fox News, a third asks whether violent

films are not behind all these deaths?

Meanwhile, the president himself

always finds safe ground in “mental

illness”, apparently disregarding the

question: why would you hand a

mentally ill person a machine gun?

It has reached a point now where the

second most important “why” – why

did the shooters shoot? – is of little

importance to me. There’s a reason

angry young men are a trope; it’s how

they vent that anger that matters. And

if that angry young man “stalking

children” at Tate Modern on Sunday

had had a gun, how many lives might

have been lost?

So when that single phrase, repeated

on a loop by US politicians, pundits and

the clergy, is once again trotted out, I’d

urge them to stop “trying to make

sense of this” and actually draw sense

from it instead.

WALDEN’S

WORLD

Hollywood reinvents

the ego dinner

At least Kylie has always

been on the right track

I

f you need any more

reasons to love Kylie

Minogue, check out

footage of the Australian

singer “doing the Loco-

Motion” on a miniature

steam train in Scarborough

last Thursday.

Unlike so many music

stars, the 51-year-old has

never turned away,

red-faced, from the songs

that made her famous,

rather choosing to embrace

them. Despite her breast

cancer battle, Kylie

has remained one

of the only

celebrities who

has refused to

accept

victimhood

• one of the
  highest
  “honours” in
  her industry
  right now.
  So if her
  determination to
  appear at

Brighton’s Pride in the

Park on Saturday

night, some 14 years

after she was forced

to cancel all her

commitments due

to the disease,

isn’t enough

for you, and

her ability to

bust out into a

set of 1988

dance moves

leaves you

cold, consider

this: in her

downtime,

this superstar

chose to visit a

1931 miniature

railway.

SWNS; WIREIMAGE

When Clinton

banned assault rifles

in 1994, US mass

shootings halved

‘Still blindsided by hot flushes,

I’d be the first in the queue for it’

later date to stave off the menopause

for some 20 years. But, knowing what

I know now, having experienced the

worst of it and come through the other

side, I honestly wouldn’t bother.

As Kristin Scott Thomas’s character

said in Fleabag, when Phoebe

Waller-Bridge said she’d been told the

menopause was horrendous: “It is

horrendous, but then it’s magnificent.

Something to look forward to.”

Of course it’s not horrendous for

everyone. Some women sail through

with neither a hot flush nor a night

sweat; no brain fog, no depression

and no terrible bleeding. Others, who

are not so lucky, get the lot and feel

middle aged and utterly miserable. I

remember catching sight of myself in

a shop window and seeing my

grandmother – thickening waist,

specs and slightly sagging chin. I

couldn’t believe it was me.

But the symptoms of the

perimenopause – the one to two years

before your periods stop and you are

menopausal – don’t last forever. And

then you’re free. No more PMT, no

more costly sanitary products and you

are never, ever going to have to worry

again about getting pregnant.

And then, even if you delay the

menopause, it will strike eventually.

My mother took HRT until she was 70

and had a truly horrendous time

when she stopped. If I’d

had the chance of

the surgery in my

40s I’d be

menopausal

now. No, no,

no!

As I wrote in

my book Is It Me

or Is It Hot in

Here?, many of us

will live a third of

our lives after the

menopause:

“Women’s

Liberation

proper begins

here!”

Linda Kelsey, former

editor of Cosmopolitan

From the perspective of being 67, with

a decade of post-menopausal

experience behind me (though even

now I can get blindsided by the

occasional hot flush), I’d be first in the

queue for this procedure. I’m not one

who takes operations lightly, having

had far too many necessary medical

interventions to make me blasé about

having my ovaries interfered with,

however small a sliver it involves

removing. But if I were to know at 30

what I could gain by delaying the

menopause until my 70s, this is an op

I’d certainly opt for.

Today, women in their 50s are

reaching their career peak, something

that few in previous generations

experienced. But for many, the

exhaustion and brain fog that

accompanies the build-up to the

menopause can make soldiering on an

absolute nightmare. If you haven’t

experienced the humiliation of

flushing red from head to

toe and breaking out

in a sweat that drips

down your forehead

and stains your

underarms, while

trying to chair an

important

meeting, you

Makes sense: Linda Kelsey would welcome the procedure with open arms

CLARA MOLDEN FOR THE TELEGRAPH; GETTY

‘The symptoms

don’t last forever.

And then you’re free.

No more PMT’

haven’t been through the menopause.

Then there’s the anxiety, the

depression, the loss of libido and the

effect of that on your relationship.

And all the bits that ache that never

did before. Did I mention

osteoporosis? Or the dry, slack, thin

skin when oestrogen deserts you? To

experience all this in your 50s, when

today you might live almost as long

after your menopause as before it,

feels like a cynical trick of nature.

Given, too, how many women find

themselves dating again in their 50s,

staving off the menopause would

make a lot of sense. Unfortunately,

unless they’re pumped up with HRT,

which carries risks as well as not

suiting everyone, women tend to feel

disadvantaged in seeking new love.

If we’re going to hang on to 90 or

100, I think it would be great to make

the menopause wait. Then, we’d at

least have the time to look after

ourselves and take it easy.

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 17

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