Hero(ine)s

These people should get as much recognition as possible for their courage.

1) Sameem Ali, a woman brought up partially in care and partially in an abusive home, forced into a "marriage" at 13 which she escaped for the sake of her son, and now a councillor in her home town of Manchester - of course, this was managed with no formal qualifications.

2) Father Louis Braxton - yes, I know that men of the cloth ought to intervene to protect the vulnerable like this priest did, but it's not exactly an everyday occurrence.

In lighter news, scroll down here and you'll find a photo of my maternal parent in an unfortunate outfit. If my grandma could, she'd still force us both to dress like that.

Now I come to think about it, if you leave a delicate garment in my parents' or grandparents' house for any length of time over thirty seconds, it is returned to you nice and clean by a beaming grandmother... approximately one-third of its original size, with no trace of its original colour or pattern.

By "delicate" I mean not constructed out of reinforced concrete.

It's a war of attrition against my masculine wardrobe and my mother's perfectly ordinary clothes, the kind that might be worn by a perfectly ordinary person (as opposed to flowery monstrosities).

At 13 and 14, I used to wear my (then long) hair in pigtails sometimes. I thought the look was obviously ironic, because the rest of me was swathed in black and spikes. It wasn't ironic enough for my grandmother. It was just *adorable*.