Episode 106: Helen Pankhurst

Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor

Kat Rulach

Kids & Family, Arts, Music, Parenting

4.8 • 527 Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Helen Pankhurst is a writer and a scholar who works for women's rights.

Her grandmother Sylvia and her great grandmother Emmeline were both suffragette leaders, and Helen carries her family name with pride. We talked about how Helen kept her family name of Pankhurst when she married, and about how she and her husband shared both their surnames with their children, in a clever way theat I've not heard before.

I first met Helen when we were involved in a podcast for Care International, where we were lucky enough to talk with women from all around the world, many in crisis, but still finding joy in each other's stories, and sharing many of the same worries and issues, despite living in vastly different circumstances from each other.

We also discussed the parallels being drawn between the direct action of the suffragettes, and the current Just Stop Oil protestors.

We agreed how important it is for every one of us to use our vote 'to keep your piece in the jigsaw' as Helen beautifully put it. She also talked about the current campaign to bring the voting age down in this country, to include 16-18 year olds.

I absolutely love how Helen has brought her children up with her personal motto of 'fun and purpose', and I can really see how that has helped her achieve her goal of leading a decent, fun life with her family around her.

And by the way, all accidentally recorded on Emmeline's birthday!

Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellis-Bextor, produced by Claire Jones and post-production by Richard Jones

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Sophia Lysbexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to
0:09.6	to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work.
0:14.0	I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years,
0:20.2	so I spin a few plates myself. Being a
0:22.6	mother can be the most amazing thing, but can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own
0:27.2	ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to spinning plates.
0:37.3	Hello, listen to the sound of silence because my kids are back at school.
0:48.6	This is very exciting.
0:52.0	Yep, we've managed to start off the new term thank goodness uh it was really
0:59.0	making me a bit tense actually i think it's quite hard isn't it when you've got like every time
1:04.3	you get to start a new school stage i had one starting secondary for example and it just brought
1:10.5	back all the memories of starting secondary and the thing thing is, when they say, oh, I'm a bit nervous about it, and I don't know where I'm supposed to be going, and I haven't made any friends yet, it's like, well, yeah, that's exactly what happened to me. And you remember it, don't you? Oof, that feeling. Do you remember that feeling of being at school and thinking, I can't remember what room I'm supposed to be in or whereabouts is the, I don't know, the loo or whatever? Just, oh, it's so overwhelming. To be honest, even as an adult, I don't like going into new situations where I don't know anyone and haven't worked out the building. It's like a confidence trick, isn't it? I'm not sure I've actually really got a handle on all that stuff even now.
1:45.2	Like, walking into a room for people I don't know. Oh my goodness. No thanks. Try and actively
1:51.3	avoid that kind of stuff. Although, actually, I did have a moment yesterday of, I think the
2:00.0	absolute benefit that you get when you reach middle age, because I am 44 now,
2:06.3	and you've gained this sort of authority with younger people.
2:11.4	When I say younger, I mean, it's probably a guy in like his late 20s,
2:15.0	and I just spoke to him in a way that I would never have done when I was younger so this is what
2:19.5	happened I was with my mum we were going on the tube I go down the escalator and as we go to the top of
2:26.3	the escalator there's a lady there with a toddler in her arms and an empty buggy by her side and she was
2:31.4	clearly waiting to see if somebody would help her take the buggy downstairs so i said
2:35.9	oh i'll help you with the buggy so i take the buggy on the escalator and then when we get to the bottom i'm going
	...

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