Good evening if you are in London,

Another late one! Thank you for the stellar work on fem Friday for the last two weeks Saxey. I am off holiday and not fully in the swing of things, I hope you enjoy these articles though.

Here’s a long article about a Velva Darling, newspaper columnist of the 1920s, who built a career on (a) pretending to be young all the time and (b) writing a column that sounds really quite fun:

She could take a stupid problem (men’s concerns about women’s skirts), frame it in the stupidest way possible (“Are Girls’ Knees Immoral?”), and spin gold, beginning by pointing out how odd it is that people can be scandalized by women’s knees on the street but not much more flesh on a beach, and then concluding, “It is always the half-hidden, half-exposed things which cause catastrophe. In long skirts, a girl’s knees are not dangerous. Entirely without skirts they are equally as unimportant and as easily taken for granted. But with half a skirt—half-hidden and half-revealed—they are dynamite. And this applies not only to skirts but to every situation and truth and activity in human life. It is always uncertainty which does by far the greatest damage.”

http://pictorial.jezebel.com/forever-23-the-rapid-rise-and-sudden-disappearance-of-1786330859

DID YOU KNOW that the patron saint of the nervous, emotionally disturbed, mentally ill is St Dymphna? She had a short life but a dramatic one:

One tradition states that once settled in Geel, St. Dymphna built a hospice for the poor and sick of the region. However, it was through the use of her wealth that her father would eventually ascertain her whereabouts, as some of the coins used enabled her father to trace them to Belgium. Damon sent his agents to pursue his daughter and her companions. When their hiding place was discovered, Damon travelled to Geel to recover his daughter. Damon ordered his soldiers to kill Father Gerebernus and tried to force Dymphna to return with him to Ireland, but she resisted. Furious, Damon drew his sword and struck off his daughter's head.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dymphna

Alex.