Saturday 30 April 2022 The Guardian •
National^39
Emma Brockes
New York diaryKevlar umbrellas of
Cherbourg foil attack
of the killer tomatoes
Monday
A collective sigh of relief as news
is confi rmed that Emmanuel
Macron has been re-elected
president of France, seeing off
a threat of from the hard-right
Marine Le Pen, and, shortly
afterwards, tomato-throwing
crowds in a suburb of Paris.
Macron took his fi rst walkabout
post-election and was met with
a barrage of squishy missiles ,
causing his security detail to
unleash an Inspector Gadget-
style device, after squealing the
heads-up : “Projectile!” (It might
not have been a squeal.)
The whole thing could’ve
been a scene from James Bond,
remarked commentators,
although deployment of the
death brolly has more of a
Mr Bean ring to it. The gadget,
named the ParaPactum and
manufactured in France by Le
Parapluie de Cherbourg, was
invented in 2011 and is intended,
in the words of its makers,
for the “protection des hautes
personnalités”, including the
president of the Republic. It
weighs more than twice a regular
umbrella, is made of Kevlar, costs
€10,000 (£8,400) , and when
brandished can ward off knife,
dog, acid and fruit attacks. It’s
also waterproof.
Outside of France, the
ParaPactum has been seen in
the hands of protection offi cers
walking alongside Vladimir Putin,
and lest an umbrella should seeman insuffi ciently rugged piece of
kit, comes in a special case that
looks like it was made for a sniper.
Pure jingoism, this, but given the
long, almost spiritual relationship
between the British people and
their umbrellas, one imagines no
modern technology is necessary
for the average British protection
offi cer to weaponise a standard-
issue model with a wooden handle- cracked over-the-head, Grandma
Giles-style.
Tuesday
Girls don’t like physics because it
entails “ hard maths ” is a statement
I fi nd simultaneously appalling and
also identify with. I don’t like hard
maths, or any maths, but that is
not, obviously, because I’m a girl.
Midweek, the government’s social
mobility commissioner chose to
frame the low numbers of girls
relative to boys taking physics
A-Level in terms available onlyto those who’ve given the matter
exactly seven minutes thought.
Appearing before the Commons
science and technology committee,
Katharine Birbalsingh pulled words
from her brain to the eff ect that,
“physics isn’t something that girls
tend to fancy. They don’t want to
do it, they don’t like it.” Birbalsingh
is headteacher at a school in
Wembley, north London, where
girls take physics A- level at an
even lower rate than the national
average. Pressed to expand on her
point, she took up a bigger shovel
and resumed digging, continuing :
“I just think they don’t like it.
There’s a lot of hard maths in there
that I think they would rather not
do. The research generally ... just
says that’s a natural thing.” Per
Birbalsingh’s example, a facility for
evolutionary biology is not a girl’s
best friend, either.Wednesday
On the other hand, Brownies
are learning to code , which is
great, although it won’t rescue
me from the chill of my Brownie
pack memories. The acquisition
of badges left me so defeated
I graduated from Wendover
Second pack with a single badge
(the hostess badge). Even then,
I never met the target of learning
to make a cup of tea – my mother,
scandalously, signing the form
to say she’d witnessed the event
when she’d done no such thing.
I hated Brownies, the uniform; the
singing; the “mission”, whatever
that was; the feral pack from Milton
Keynes with whom we were made
to go on camp. And although I rose
to the heady height of seconder inG nomes, it never gave me any joy.
You’d think it would be impossible
to fail a Brownie badge, but I did,
over-reaching one Thursday night
in the direction of the collectors
badge. Other Brownies brought in
shells, dolls and rocks. I brought
in my collection of lolly sticks,
washed and dried, and the look on
the face of Tawny Owl has never
fully left me. Twist me and turn
me and show me the elf.Thursday
Two touching stories of the ultra-
elderly this week : one about the
French nun Sister Andrew, who
became, at 118, the oldest person
alive after the death earlier in
the week of 119-year-old Kane
Tanaka from Japan. Andrew lived
through the Spanish fl u of 1918 and
in January last year became the
oldest known survivor of Covid-19.
She told reporters this week she
drinks a glass of wine every day,
while Tanaka, shortly before her
death, cheerfully told visitors that
she ascribed her great longevity
to “being myself ”, and her love
of eating chocolate and drinking
Coke. Given the mould these
stories tend to take, it’s amazing
neither of them smoked 40 a day or
lived exclusively on a diet of bacon.
Fascination inspired by the
extremely old may lessen as their
numbers increase. Japan has the
oldest population in the world,
depending on the metric, with an
average life span of 87.7 for women
and 81.6 for men, and has 86,000people over 100. The thought of
carrying on for 110-plus years,
even in the apparently sprightly
guise of Sister Andrew and the late
Tanaka, fi lls one with existential
dread, particularly in the U S where
the logistics of funding a 30-plus-
year retirement are truly terrifying.
If 50 is the new 40, and 70 the
new 60, one awaits, with weary
resignation, the advent of 90-plus
as a marketing demographic, with
all the attendant expectations of
jauntiness.Friday
In the old days, it was BMW drivers
who were reliably the worst
on the road. Times change. We
have a rental car this week and
it’s noticeable that every time
someone cuts in front, carves us
up, or glides up the hard shoulder
to jump the queue, it’s more often
than not the same car. Mercedes
drivers are arrogant but rule-
abiding. The gentle sorts in a
Subaru always give way. A Honda
Accord might drift over its lane-
markings, but won’t give you any
serious trouble. It’s Tesla drivers- on the road, on the internet, in
real and in notional form – who are
the horror show, a brand affi liation
that, no one needs reminding this
week, goes all the way to the top.
PHOTOGRAPHS:
KIRSTY O’CONNOR/PA;
HANNAH MCKAY/AFP
VIA GETTY IMAGESA month in
Ambridge
Grey Gables
takes the
P&O Ferries
approach
Charlotte HigginsM
any questions
lingered in the air
this month. For
example: does
Ruth Archer go on
about slurry? Or
so she herself pettishly inquired.
Answer: no more so than I would
like to imagine necessary to soften
us up for her husband David’s
drowning in a pit of effl uent, a
development for which I have long
hankered. Sadly this now seems
unlikely, as Brookfi eld is investing
in a cover for its slurry store.
Do most listeners mentally,
if not actually, tune out during
these patently dull “farming bits”the Ministry of Agriculture once
levered into proceedings? Back in
the day, they were the pedagogical
pill for which the rural adultery,
mutual loathing, etc, were merely
the sweeteners. I admit I fi nd them
marvellously soothing.
The real story of The Archers ,
however, may be about the
characters’ relentless pursuit of
sugary baked goods: faced with
Natasha’s gestational diabetes,
her parents -in -law, Tony and
Pat, have decided to “have an
aff air” with puddings, setting
forth for secret cheesecake in the
Orangery at Lower Loxley and
clandestine sticky toff ee pudding
at the Feathers. “The world’s
our rum baba,” claimed Tony,
inaccurately: as we all know, there’s
a mystery forcefi eld preventing
him from leaving Borsetshire at
all. When someone asked Kathy
Perks whether you can get Radio
Borsetshire in Hereford, the answera statutory consultation period.
It had to happen: the fabled gables
were increasingly, well, grey and, by
the sounds of it, peeling. It seems
it’s going to be renovated for a year
and reopened as a slightly less
terrible hotel. I would have thought
a diff erent business might provide
more plot opportunities. Nuclear
power station, à la Springfi eld?
Young off enders’ unit? Asylum
seekers’ “reception centre”? That
would be nicely topical, what with
the real-life plans to establish
“ Guantánamo-on-Ouse ” in a
bucolic Yorkshire village.
Ruairi has come back from
university – in an eyebrow-raisingly
implausible twist – on the game,
or at least being kept in expensive
booze and holiday fl ats by one
Julianne, a loaded older woman.
Vince Casey, on the other hand, has
spent a lot of time this month dying
for a pee. Prostate problems? You
heard it here fi rst.should have been a resounding
no, just like you can’t get Radio
Brigadoon in Perth.
Yes, Kathy Perks! After years
of silence, the manager of Grey
Gables is audible again – revealed
as the mystery wearer of the Easter
bunny costume who, face it, was
never going to be Rob Titchener
returned in disguise to abduct little
Jack, though that would have been
quite exciting. She’s reappeared
just in time for Oliver and his new
business partner, Adil, to pull a P&O
and make the entire workforce of
Grey Gables redundant withoutI admit I fi nd these
dull ‘farming bits’
marvellously soothingThe Archers
BBC Radio 4I’d be thrilled
to meet us,
too!Sajid Javid
distracts the
opposition
with his
fl oury baps