Alternate Reality

 

And so another week into Brexit World and still there is no semblance of a plan by our politicians.  I can't write anymore than that or the ranting will start again.  Instead, some thoughts on the future. 

 

When I was an A level student, I wanted to join the European Civil Service.  I did French 'A' Level and had a university place for European Studies.  Unfortunately, despite doing all five French 'A' Level papers, the exam board claimed I was absent.  My name was mixed up with someone who had been absent and there was no sign of my papers or marks.  I lost my university place.  Me being me, I refused to retake because I felt I should not have to and thus language degrees were out.  Instead, I went to Sheffield a year late.  To do History, Philosophy and Politics. 

 

My life now is totally shaped by that moment of not receiving my French result.  I am married to the man I met at Sheffield for a start.  As for my 'career', well I never really found any professional path after the idea of the civil service.  I went from job to job, moving on according to merit and experience and changing sector every few years.  Until I ended up as a stay-at-home parent, which in general I have loved.

 

Whilst at Sheffield, we were very keen on Red Dwarf, a comedy set in space in the future.  Many episodes revolve around ideas of parallel universes, alternate realities, unexpected time travel.  For example, a parallel universe where the male leads' counterparts turned out to be female.  All except the creature who had evolved from the starship's cat.  His opposite, to his disgust, was a dog.

 

This week, I have been reading On Writing by Stephen King.  He says his story starting points are most often from a 'what-if question'.  I also read a very poignant article about Brexit - I'm afraid I can't recall the source - talking of the 'lost marriages, lost friendships' etc of the future thanks to withdrawal from Europe.

 

It seems to me that Brexit is like a massive time bend.  We all have our own personal turning points, our 'what-ifs' throughout our lives.  But Brexit is a huge shared experience of that.  For the thousands who voted Leave without really understanding what the EU does for their lives (as discussed in my post last week), there isn't the sense of fear and loss which the Remain voters are feeling so immediately.  Leavers think they have won.  But their lives will turn.  Funding withdrawn from thousands of projects, businesses closing, cheap travel opportunities gone, employment rights whittled away.  And they will have to find a new bogeyman to blame because it won't be the EU.

 

It will take at least ten years after the Brexit for pro-Europe people to feel like they have control of their own destinies again.  At least that long for an EU-less world to feel real and not like a weird parallel universe.  Maybe one day, humans will access an alternate reality where Brexit was rejected and future generations of Brits will meet their counterparts, all still living as part of the EU.  Let's just hope the reality chosen by Leave voters will measure up when our time traveller descendants are comparing notes. 

The Understanding Divide

I have tried really hard to thing of how to write a post this morning.  The obvious topic for a UK blogger is, of course, the vote for the UK to leave the EU.  However, since Friday morning, all anyone has talked about, all anyone has reported, has been the consequences of this vote and I am not sure I can add anything to such a massive debate.  I have felt heartsick since four in the morning on Friday.

 

So, inspired by an Irish friend who wrote very eloquently on Facebook about how she, as a UK resident of twenty years, feels after the vote, I decided to try to give some more personal perspectives rather than historical ones.

 

On Saturday night, I held a party in aid of the Macmillan cancer charity.  Night of Lights, a nationwide effort.  It had been a while in the planning and it brought together a group of people whom I have known for over ten years.  They include a judge, research scientists, a public art consultant, a planning officer, housewives, an employee of a multinational manufacturer, a railway engineer, a financial services director, civil servants.  You get the idea.  A group of well educated people.  All with children.  All voted Remain.  Even those who usually disagree politically did agree on this one issue.

 

I did tell them I would be charging for every mention of the referendum, on behalf of the charity pot.  But as you can imagine, especially after alcohol, that was impossible.  The most fascinating - and disturbing thing - though was the stories from everyone of how this decision is likely to affect their professions and their lives.  Legislative changes and rights now at risk.  Research projects wholly funded by the EU - in the environment, health, etc.  Changes to anti-flood funding and insurance rights.  The multinational employee, about to leave on an international job placement, saying their family may just not return to the UK.  Transport funding.  Pension concerns.  Work in Scotland maybe needing a passport in the future.  Waiting on a mortgage application.

 

Much has been said about the North/South and young/old vote divides, amongst other statistics.  Part of me wanted to write today about an education divide.  Then you remember that most of the Leave campaign's most prominent people were public school-educated!  But there is a huge divide in understanding.  If all you read is the Daily Mail or The Sun, for example, and if those papers are all your peer group quotes or writes about on Facebook or wherever, how could you possibly understand what you were voting for?  You thought you were voting to stop immigration and to get more money for the NHS.  You have been consistently told that all your woes are caused by unelected faceless people in Europe.

 

Setting aside, but not by any means ignoring, the fact that so many people have revealed themselves to be racist, both sides of the campaign must take responsibility for such a nasty negative approach.  No-one explained to the mass of voters about what the EU actually does for them.  No-one tried to reach the sink estates and say 'we know it is bad for you but please understand that the EU is not the cause of your problems.  Look at all the things it funds and protects.'

 

As for educated people who believe they made a considered decision to vote Leave, I have fought for democracy and transparency all my life.  I respect your right to your opinion.  But I do strongly believe that you are in a minority and that without the votes of desperate, usually disenfranchised people, you would not have won.  I hope you can live with yourselves when you see your children and grandchildren taking the consequences of your actions on 23 June 2016.

The Space Future

 

 

 

In the face of the almost overwhelmingly hideous news from the last week - hate crimes, murders,  football violence, the list goes on - it seems to me that one amazing piece of news has been overlooked.  Well, not overlooked.  Just hasn't received the coverage it deserved.  The return of Tim Peake to Earth after six months on the International Space Station.  It was reported, of course.  But some of the articles were pretty derogatory.  Along the lines of 'what has he been doing up there anyway because he seems always to have been on TV award shows' and so on.

 

What these type of comments fail to recognise is the need for visibility for space exploration.  Think of the hours and hours of media coverage for fake space travel - Star Wars, Star Trek, etc etc.  But kids need to be inspired by the real thing.  If future generations are ever going to get beyond our conflict-ridden planet, they need to believe it might be possible and to aspire to 'make it so' (one for the Trekkies there).

 

Tim Peake and his team have brilliantly used social media and popular TV and radio programmes to extend awareness of the mission.  The aerial photographs on Facebook and Instagram every day have been beyond beautiful (see the UK above).  I am actually going to miss them.  But I don't think they were really aimed at people like me.  I hope they were aimed at younger people, specifically children.  Because if we are going to make progress, children need to believe it is possible.  They need to want nothing more than to be astronauts, like Tim Peake.  He got the job out of 10,000 applicants.  That alone is a fact worth repeating to children, regardless of the profession they want to enter.  It is worth aiming high.  Even into space.

 

To comedians it may seem funny that Tim Peake has popped up on all sorts of programmes.  To columnists, it might seem like a giant waste of time and money.  But to children in their classrooms, able to talk to someone in space?  Not so much.  It has been brilliant.  And they are the ones who will push our families' stories forward.

 

In these times of terrible hatred and awful crimes, Tim Peake has, with a bit of luck, caused a good proportion of the children who have followed his journey to want to push Earth's boundaries themselves.  While we adults are arguing over Earthbound, self imposed borders, hopefully the next generation are thinking about 'boldly going where no one has gone before' (sorry, sorry, another Trek reference but I couldn't resist it... probably shows my age too...)

Live Long and Prosper - wherever you are

Today I did consider the Orlando mass shooting as a blog subject but whichever way I attempted to approach this awful event, I felt unqualified to write about it.  Suffice to say, it was, and is, horrible seeing the details unfold and I send condolences to all.

 

Instead then, this weekend I finished reading The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell.  I am very late to this book - it won the Costa prize in 2010 - but since Maggie O'Farrell's seventh novel, This Must Be The Place, has just been released to very good reviews, I thought I should read some of her earlier work, in an attempt to look at her progression as a novelist (now doesn't that sounds grown up?!) when I read the new book.

 

I was not prepared for the effect The Hand That First Held Mine had on me.  I gather from a recent profile in Writing magazine that Ms O'Farrell does have young children but her writing about the immediate aftermath of bringing a baby home touched me very deeply.  One of the main characters has had an emergency caesarean section and is completely disorientated once at home alone with the baby.  I found it very very poignant.  In fact, as I was reading some passages, I felt as if I was once again standing in the dark hallway of the house to which we brought our eldest home.  So sleepless I was basically hallucinating.  No idea what I was doing but very aware of having to keep another human being alive (my only previous 'live responsibility' having been a hamster).  It was like the author had delved into my head and taken my deepest, darkest thoughts.  I remember, for example, being obsessed with hearing one of the emergency surgeons referring to it being the end of their shift while they were sewing me up.  I became convinced I had been 'deprived' of a natural birth because they were in a hurry.  Not because they were saving my child's life obviously.

 

What kept me going through those confusing months was friends, a plethora of 'what to do with babies' books and the then fledgling internet resources like Mumsnet.  I am still close to some of the friends I made as I dragged my hugely pregnant and then just completely knackered self around our new home city.  Looking back, Eldest was actually not that difficult a baby either...

 

And how on earth did women manage before NCT groups, playgroups, self-help books, Mumsnet, etc.  As children, my brother and I used to laugh at my mother's reliance on her Dr Spock for diagnosing illnesses.  Now I can see that there was very little else available.  She did not live round the corner from either of our grandmothers and frankly, I am not sure what use they would have been anyway.  We had a neighbour who actually saved my brother' life when he had convulsions.  She also had older children so had been there, done that.  But it was not exactly a meeting of minds for my mother, to say the least.

 

Parenting is the hardest job I have ever, without question, done.  I have worked with politicians, TV people, investment bankers, all sorts.  But I am into my thirteenth year of parenting now and although it changes constantly, it does not get easier.  Yes, I am now one of those who looks at a new baby and hands it back saying 'just you wait, this is the easy part'.

 

However, in countries like the UK, when we look back over our family history, we can see, mostly, the progressions in ante- and post-natal health.  In contraception.  In life expectancy.  There are still far too many countries in the world, though, where parenting of the type I have attempted to describe is a complete luxury.  Daily survival, hand-to-mouth, is the priority in these places.  If your child is lucky enough to survive to its teens, you will have been expecting them to have been paying their own way for a long time.

 

Of course, poverty, neglect etc can be found everywhere in the world.  But as I read The Hand That First Held Mine and was transported back to my own personal battles - which still continue as far as depression is concerned - I wondered how so many parents but women especially manage to keep mind and body together in physical circumstances far beyond our imagining.  From war zones and refugees to drug addictions and slavery to 'just' lack of what we consider basic resources.  They are all amazing.  And they deserve our help.

 

[If you would like to help with such issues, my suggested charity would be http://www.oxfam.org.uk/what-we-do/issues-we-work-on but there are many others if you google.]

Decades

Very little, other than loss, focuses the mind on the passing of time like a birthday.  Especially your child's birthday.  Youngest was ten this week  and ten years seem to have flashed by like the click of my fingers.  I have written previously about how easy it is to gloss over decades when doing family history.  Because you only have snapshot resources for most ancestors.

However, the passing of a decade is immense, if the following are anything to go by.  For example...

2006 was the year of:

• Daniel Craig's first Bond film, Casino Royale (a rare post baby outing for this);
• Take That's return (I was over seven months pregnant at their first gig and my friend announced I was on my own if I had an emergency - she would not be leaving the venue...);
• Top Gear's Clarkson/Hammond/May line-up on its eighth series.  But it was the year that Richard Hammond nearly died in a crash, pushing up viewing figures (don't try this at home, Chris Evans/Matt LeBlanc);
• Donald Trump's mortgage company.  He said it was a great time to do so as the housing market looked firm for some time to come.  The markets crashed in 2008 along with Trump's company (no comment or I will be here for a while);
• Victoria Beckham at the Germany World Cup with the other WAGs, wearing very small shorts and t-shirts.  She now makes a fortune from persuading us all into massive culottes and polo neck tops;
• Defector Alexander Litvinenko dying of polonium poisoning in London, apparently at the hands of the Russians.  The public enquiry only concluded in 2016.  Really?  Ten years?
• Tony Blair and George W.Bush still in situ.  Not long to go though.  Blair went in June 2007 and Bush at the end of 2008;
• The last regular Top of the Pops.  Meaning I would never fulfil my childhood ambition of dancing in its studio.

(I looked at books for 2006 but it was all a bit of a mystery.  I was only capable of picking up gossip magazines for most of it, clearly.  And television passed me by too, although I have since caught up on Life On Mars and The IT Crowd amongst other 2006 hits!)

Some things we did not have in 2006:

• iPhones (launched January 2007)
• ISIS (proclaimed 2014)
• iPlayer, TV streaming in general
• Wi-Fi, although it seems to have existed - the article I read was very technical!
• The Kardashians - at least thankfully not really famous then
• Arab Spring - began 2011
• Twitter - introduced 2006
• sleep - well, that was just me

Of course, these have and have not lists are endless.  The people lost, the babies born.  The technology used, the stuff not yet invented.  But I think these examples do show how we take so much for granted very quickly.  In the same way that you can't imagine how you will fit a child into your life.  Or how you will fit a second child in once you can just about cope with the first.  We should all take the time to stop and look around us once in a while.  In another ten years, I will be an empty nester with, fingers crossed, two kids rampaging (quite literally for Youngest, we fear) around universities somewhere.  I really hope the coming decade will slow down a bit.

Passports for Aliens

Late posting this week, sorry - although looking at the (very early) time, it might still be Monday somewhere.  This could be a bit of a rant.  However, in an effort to steer myself onto safer ground, I have done a little research, don't panic.

Last week, I tried to renew a passport via the Post Office.  It started badly.  I had to go to the city - no local post offices do 'check and send'.  I stood in a queue labelled 'Travel Services' only to be told that a) I needed an appointment and b) travel services was only money and insurance anyway.  Finally at the correct window, I handed over my - if I may say so - immaculate application and photos.  I have had trouble with these in the past, I had thought, triple checking before attempting 'check and send'.  And lo and behold, my application was returned to me.  'Can't send that, it'll come back,' said the assistant.  'Has to be in biro.'

The form had nothing wrong with it other than this.  I had not used a fountain pen.  I had used a black pen of some kind.  But not a biro.  And this was enough to reject my application.  The Post Office maintained they'd had forms returned for nothing more than this and they would not take the risk of me blaming their 'service'.

I'm afraid I did protest rather loudly at this point.  I insisted on a second opinion.  I think quite a lot of the queue behind me were well informed about the issue.  But really, did you ever hear the like?

In trying to rationalise this, I can find no decent reason why a non-biro black pen should be a problem.  Someone I told about it wondered if biro ink was less likely to smudge if wet.  But what are they doing to the forms in that case?  Leaving them stacked up in the toilets?  Letting people put their coffee down on them?  The mind boggles.

Anyway, given how many times I have posted about the refugee crisis, I thought I'd use my passport travails to look at why we have these increasingly sophisticated pieces of ID in the first place.  Unsurprisingly, the history of the passport has been driven by war and conflict.  'Safe conduct' documents issued by monarchs to their diplomats.  The first formal records of travellers during the French Revolution.  Eventually, an Act of Parliament introducing mandatory passports.  The British Nationality and Status of Aliens Act 1914.  Date looking familiar?

My own first passport was as shown above.  Standard from 1920 until the late 1980s, when the red EU passports appeared.  I do remember, though, having a paper 'visitor passport' which you could collect from the Post Office (!) and lasted for the duration of a holiday.  I was also on a 'family passport' of my dad's.  In true 1970s style, he could travel alone on it but none of the rest of us, including my mother, could use it without him in tow.

Last year, we went to Florida.  It was my first time in in the US in nearly twenty years.  I am so used to travelling within Europe (or to places like Thailand where they look you up and down and then put a lovely stamp in your passport), the US entry procedures were quite a shock.  I won't go into it now other than to say it added hours to our journey.  But apparently, a return trip to the States should be easier because they are allowed to keep all my data on record!

Unless I next visit when Trump is President.  Then they may have introduced at least four more stages.  And I may have a completely different passport too, if we 'Brexit' from Europe after the referendum.  Maybe what we go through to enter the US will become standard for Brits entering the EU and for any 'aliens' entering the UK.  Prime Minister Johnson (worrying but Gove would be worse) may start using the term 'aliens' again in everyday language to refer to refugees and others wishing to enter the UK. 

Why would we want this?  Surely freedom of movement is one of the main benefits of the EU.  Yes, it does make it easier for non-EU nationals as well but think what we will lose in return for trying to restrict refugees.  If the Passport Office is lairy of non-biro completed applications pre-Brexit, think what they will put us through if we leave.  And what other countries will be entitled to put us through upon arrival.  We will be aliens.

As a final thought, I wonder if anyone has planned for immigration when we finally get teleporting systems up and running.  Maybe they will make you carry a biro, just in case.

Lessons from Hadrian

This weekend, I spent far too much time ironing.  The only saving grace for this was being able to catch up on Mary Beard's Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limits on BBC iPlayer.  A fantastic series and for me, a real eye opener.  I was brought up on school days-style Roman history.  All buildings and legions, swarthy Italian invaders and European rulers.  This series has given me a far more 'grown-up' view of Roman history.  And by the time I had reached episode four yesterday afternoon, my head was bursting, spurred on by receiving my DNA Family Finder results last week and finally realising what the 'Mediterranean' portion of that might refer to.

By part four, Mary Beard looks at the reasons for the collapse of the Roman empire.  One of the things which she focussed on throughout was the idea of Roman citizenship being desirable.  She believes Roman inclusivity of people was the key to the empire's success.  They did use slave labour, they did fight the indigenous people but once in charge, they spread their ideas, incorporated local customs, used cultural events/fashion/etc to win people over.  And there was also free movement of people to a large extent.  Their army and administrative legions included people from all over the Roman world.  Syria, Greece, Algeria, France, Spain.  There are Roman Syrian skeletons here in York, for example.

Ms Beard believes the collapse began when the Romans began to 'map' the edges of their dominions. For example, the magnificent Hadrian's Wall across Northumberland in England, as pictured above.  the wall did not just keep marauding tribes out, it drew a physical distinction between who was out and who was in.  No longer did it seem possible to imagine getting on within the Roman world if you found yourself on the wrong side of the wall.  And within the walls, the Romans guarded their resources, technology and culture.

Any of this sounding familiar?  We in the West have permeated the rest of the world with our culture and technology.  (Coca Cola signs in rural India anyone?  Mobile phones everywhere?)  Capitalism has made it seem desirable to be like us.  We have maintained relative peace so it seems safe and, for the most part, the majority have enough to eat, clean water, shelter.  But now there are perceived to be mass threats on our borders, we want to build walls again.  Quite literally if one looks at the barriers to refugees in Europe, Trump's proposed Mexican wall in the USA, the Israeli wall in Palestine - to name a few.  The Communists attempted to maintain their East European 'walls' by convincing people that the West was corrupt.  All they succeeded in doing was making their citizens desperate for access to Western culture and technology, freedom to travel and self-aggrandisement opportunities.  China has done a slightly better job of giving to its people whilst maintaining its walls.  But only through repression and censorship.  Political and cultural firewalls.

My DNA test shows that I am only 46% British Isles.  There is the expected Indian percentage from my father but there are strong points in central Europe, the Mediterranean plus Afghanistan and towards Myanmar/Thailand.   A tiny indication of the movements of the peoples of this Earth over thousands of years.

Walls do not improve our situation.  Isolationism is not the answer.  If we DNA tested every person in the West, we would be extremely hard pushed to find anyone who has not benefitted from human migration.  The art, as the Romans proved for so long (but ultimately not long enough0, is to embrace diversity and work for common goals.

[Mary Beard's latest book, SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome, is now also available.]

Work Together

 
I had been preparing another post on the refugee crisis after watching a report on last night's evening news.  It focussed on some of the Syrian women trapped on Lesbos with their small children.  I was horrified by the imagery which was conjured by their words.  One woman told of how she made it to land from a terrifying dinghy voyage only to find that her husband had been crushed to death in the bottom of the overcrowded vessel.  She was young and had three children.  She had nothing of her husband's to remember him by and she had no idea what was going to happen to her.  I have said it before on this blog but I will say it again:  how desperate do you have to be to risk such a journey with small children?  How can any of us in the West really imagine what it must feel like?  None of our histories are immune from people migrations throughout the ages.  We all have a responsibility to help.

Then, as I was driving today, I happened upon the speech being made by Angelina Jolie Pitt on the BBC today.  It was part of a series of programmes for World On The Move Day and she expressed very eloquently exactly what I would have hoped to say.  Her speech and knowledge in the question sessions afterwards were very impressive.

 

I highly recommend listening to the programme. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36303688 for the article on the news page and http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07bqjgq to listen.

There is also an excellent series on The World At One on BBC Radio 4.  I have listened to it as often as possible and it really brings home the realities of life as a refugee.  A correspondent has been following the Dhnie family  for some time and reports regularly on their progress.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p037lrj7/episodes/downloads

 

Access Required

 

Once again I find myself blogging about the importance of history's details.  The need to look at the bigger picture.  This morning, there is an article on the BBC news website about the Women's Voluntary Service.  It is called The Army Hitler Forgot and it relates to the archives of said service (now the Royal Voluntary Service or RVS).

 

Set up in 1938, the volunteers undertook a huge range of tasks to keep the country going during the war.  From knitting with dog hair (!) to organising new homes for those bombed out to teaching mending to the Army. 

 

There is now a project called The Hidden Histories of a Million Wartime Women which aims to digitise the 300,000 diary entries in the archive's collection.  This archive, according to UNESCO is comparable to Charles I's death warrant or the Doomsday Book.  How amazing is that?

 

But as ever, cash is needed to continue the project and give public access.  Many of our smaller genealogical archives are being digitised by companies such as Ancestry and whilst these are excellent services, they are not a) cheap or b) freely available to all as something like this absolutely should be.

 

The RVS need to raise at least £25,000 for digital access to progress.  There are so many worthy causes in the world.  Too many.  But in terms of the amounts spent on weapons, insane fashions or cars, private jets or rare paintings, £25,000 is a relatively small amount, isn't it? 

 

A quick Google, reveals that in recent years a number of paintings have sold for over $150 million each.  The most expensive was a Gauguin at $300 million.  So that's one person or company.  Buying one item.  For them alone to enjoy.  For $300 million.

 

There is a crowd funding account on Kickstarter for this project.  If you can donate, brilliant.  But more than that, please share this blog or the BBC article and question why someone cannot sacrifice a couple of couture gowns or a portion of a week's crazy salary to ensure this archive is saved. 

 

Memories like those contained in these diaries are irreplaceable.  More than that, though, everyone should be able to see them and to realise what these women did.

Express Yourself?

 

This morning Twitter, Facebook, the papers, the TV are full of pictures from the 'Met Ball' in New York. As with the Oscars, this so-called ball appears to be a large and commercial catwalk and very little else.  I can't imagine what the pressure over outfit choice must be like, especially for those lower down the celebrity pecking order and hoping to be noticed for all the right reasons.

 

So I am confused as to what to think about Madonna's Met Ball get-up last night.  Madonna has always gone out to shock and I suppose her garb was nothing new. It's just that I am worryingly uncomfortable with someone of her age dressing like that.  I say worrying because I firmly believe in a person's right to be how they want, dress how they want etc.

 

 



However, between the weirdness (to say the least) of the outfit and the contortions of her strangely altered face, one could not help wishing that she was not a little more willing to head a little more into 'elder statesperson' territory and have a little more dignity.  She has surely nothing left to prove to anyone.  And given the apparent rift between her and her son, you can't imagine she has done much for her son's frame of mind.  Teenagers do not like to be embarrassed by their parents.  They don't even like you to dance in public let alone get your bottom out for the world's press.

I would believe the same about any star who behaved like this.  Male or female.  But I suppose the sad fact is that it is fine for the Rolling Stones and other males to carry on with craggy faces and slack necks.  Women feel they have to continually prove their bodies remain unchanged.  I got so sick of the word 'showcasing' being used in tabloids describing some female celebrity out and about in a low top or a short skirt.  But when I thought about this, really isn't that what these people are doing?  They want to make a living from looking good.  They may want to be good actors but Hollywood will not let them just act.  They have to be like models, to compete with models' for product endorsements and to defy both age and gravity with their faces and their bodies.  The same goes for ageing popstars (see Kylie's permanently surprised expression).

Wouldn't it be far more radical, therefore, for Madonna and others to embrace their ages?  To dress well and to not care what others think rather than treading water, frantically trying to remain 'edgy' and 'shocking'?  Wouldn't that be a better example?  Saying, I don't have to dress like a twenty year old to make music still.

I guess there isn't much of a family history link with this post.  But one thing from history - after the French Revolution, a number of the most famous women in Paris took to going to the opera and theatre completely topless except for a diamond necklaces.  So Madonna and others have a way to go yet...