SEVENTH WAVE

Feminism: The Way Forward? As featured in neglected classic In the Madness of Time

Funny how Edinburgh plays with the concept of time. I recently had a weird experience during next year’s fringe.

I was making my way down a narrow wynd off Cockburn Street. Interesting wynd. Historic, it goes without saying. Everything about Edinburgh is historic. Except for the new stuff.

The wynd – back to the wynd – was totally out of the sun. A narrow pathway descending between centuries-old buildings. Darkness. A sense of foreboding. Was that the haar in from the sea, the bitter sea beneath the lowering sky?

I was about to build on this image when a deranged-looking man with electrified hair came charging up the wynd towards me. He screeched to a halt by a massive oak door and grabbed it by the knob. ‘Excellent news,’ he roared. ‘I’ve just invented and cured schizophrenia in collaboration with myself!!!’

‘Delighted to hear it,’ I said. ‘Just give me a bloody flyer.’ Bit testy, but I’d been inundated with publicity leaflets along the Royal Mile. I had hoped for a brief respite from the relentless self-publicity of the fringe.

He paused for a demented second and fixed me with both mad, swirling eyes. ‘You’re delusional, laddie. The word flyer does not presently exist in any lexicon of note.’ He grabbed the knob with renewed intsensity. ‘Hector McGregor, Doctor of Lunacy. Struck off in the year of Our Lord 1873 for reasons of insanity, but we won’t go into that. You’ll have read my weightless tome, Snap Out Of It, Man! Every mental illness cured in a sentence!!!’ He smirked with uncontrollable glee. ‘Available, I need hardly add, in all the best bookshops. Well, bookshop singular.’ An ear-splitting roar. ‘The Divided Shelf.’

With that, he whipped a blood-stained meat cleaver from the folds of his morning coat, and leaned closer on the strangely deserted wynd. ‘Meet Eugene!’ he leered, glancing around as if to check no-one else could hear. ‘The world is a madhouse, laddie. Why? Philosophers through the ages have waxed lyrical on the subject, but here’s my theory.’ He moved closer still and dropped his voice to a bellow. ‘Ladies,’ he confided, ‘control the means of reproduction. Some mistake there by a non-existent deity I would have thought. A dropped ‘d’ on the instruction kit is my best bet. For Ladies read Laddies.’ He grabbed me with his free hand. ‘Eugene’s job? To rectify matters.’

I backed against the wall and felt its icy cold seep through my jacket. McGregor smirked triumphantly. ‘What, I conjecture, if ladies were laddies and laddies were laddies too? Revolutionary, I grant you, but thanks to Eugene, a great wrong will be redressed!’

Eugene? What? As in Eugenics? He seemed to read my thoughts, and emitted a deranged cackle. ‘The word hasn’t been invented yet, but Yes, laddie! Yes!!!’

Best, I thought, to humour the man. ‘I see,’ I said. ‘So you’ll be one of those Seventh Wave feminists?’ *

He quailed visibly, as if I’d brandished a crucifix. ‘The F-word, laddie, doesn’t enter the Queen’s Gibberish for aeons. Its sole purpose? To dismantle what we lovingly call The Patriarchy.’ He raised Eugene to eye level. ‘Our job? To remantle it. Next stop? The Master Race!’

From inside the building, I heard the plaintive cry of a small child. ‘Hel-l-l-p!’

‘Methinks the lassie doth protest too much!’ roared the good doctor. ‘A few slight rearrangements on the torso front and he’ll be back on his stumps in no time. Come, Eugene! There’s work to be done!’ He sheathed the cleaver, yanked the doorknob, and with a final ‘Only the mad are truly insane!’ he was gone. Moments later a muffled roar from within. ‘Put me down this instant, nurse! I’m affianced!’

Then? Silence and, on closer inspection, no door. A stunned pause while I processed the above. Real life? Hallucination? Was he a vision or a waking nightmare? This was Edinburgh. Difficult to tell.

* Motto: ‘One day all women will be men.’