Next Sunday, the 7th December, I’ll be contributing to the annual Celebration of Human Rights at the Unitarian Meeting House in Ipswich at 10.45. This year’s theme is Women’s Rights, but there is precious little to celebrate. Maybe that seems pessimistic of me, but I can’t help feeling that because the majority of women and girls in this country enjoy more freedom and independence than their great-grandmothers enjoyed, we’ve become complacent.

When I was in my teens I lived on Merseyside and worked in a bank, and when I didn’t have to work on a Saturday morning I used to go hiking around North Wales with my best friend for the weekend. Catching the ferry across the Mersey at tea-time on Fridays meant wading through a crowd of commuters all going to Birkenhead and beyond. Many of them spent the short time on the ferry walking around the deck in the same direction – clockwise.