It’s ghost month in Singapore. People start fires and burn incense in the streets and leave offerings of food. The purpose of all this fire-raising is to help the wandering souls who have been released from hell in this hungry ghost month by burning money and paper replicas of material goods such as cars to send to them. This is to placate those who have died without the proper tribute being paid to them, and to stop them bringing misfortune on their descendants. No real money is actually burned, as fake notes printed just for the ritual are readily available. What ghost month means for ex-pats working in Singapore - is that it’s not a good month for business transactions of any kind. Singaporeans of Chinese origin are notoriously superstitious and believe that it’s not auspicious for money-making in ghost month so they avoid signing new contracts at this time.
Honouring the ancestors
Back in London, a group of women led by feminist Caroline Criado-Perez, have been trying to honour their female ancestors by campaigning to ensure that at least one female face (apart from Queen Elizabeth’s) appears on British bank notes. The plan to replace the image of Elizabeth Fry, the social reformer, with the image of Winston Churchill, the aristo Tory leader, would have meant an absence of women on the nation’s geld. Were these women calling for equality on the nation’s bank notes? No, nothing so radical. They simply asked that one of the several notes celebrated a famous woman’s achievements and they put forward a sensible list of contenders. They successfully lobbied to get Jane Austen onto the new £10 note. Austen’s books have earned millions for the British economy with all the TV, radio and film spin-offs as well as the tourists who flock to visit her former house in Hampshire.
For their trouble, the campaigners received rape and death threats via Twitter from anonymous trolls – vicious cyber bullies hiding behind their cloak of invisibility. Are these trolls all embittered ugly old men? While it seems that most of the bullies are male, they are surprisingly ordinary and of all ages. But not all women are as subtle in their criticism as Jane Austen; there have been occasions of women using this underhand method of attacking another person too, as seen in some of the cases which have been brought to court.
Jane Austen wrote about women’s pursuit of love and money – the aim being to secure both simultaneously, if a young woman were handsome and smart enough to land herself a Darcy. Marriage was the primary goal of young women in Austen’s day, and a good marriage into a wealthy family by the eldest daughter, helped to attract other high calibre suitors to the younger siblings. Jane Austen herself opted to remain single, keenly observing the marriage trade from the side-lines and giving us her gently satirical view of it.
"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."
"It is always incomprehensible to a man that a woman should ever refuse an offer of marriage."
Jane Austen
Wedding bells
Love will find a way to bring people together and Thailand is the place to party. So it was that we went to Pranburi near Hua Hin in Thailand for a wedding on the beach. As it’s the rainy season we were nervous that the weather would disrupt festivities and although the rain held off, the wind was blowing a gale on the morning of the big day. The marquee on the beach looked as though it might take off. But miraculously, by the afternoon, the wind had died down and the weather was perfect.
| Preparing the flowers |
The genial celebrant was a friend with a background in marketing who set a relaxed, light-hearted tone and the readings were touching and not over-long. All that was left was to party on the beach! Have you ever tried dancing in sand? Not easy…. also sand flies have a nasty bite…. but the fire lanterns were magical as they drifted off into the night sky and the happy couple danced and sang and were surrounded by dozens of friends and family who’d all made the long trip to Thailand, to celebrate their special day.
