FEMINISTS are putting on their pinnies, tugging on their Marigolds and getting back into the kitchen.

According to historian Maggie Andrews, who wrote a history of the WI, “elements of domesticity have become sexier, much more popular, an escape from the horrors of society. Feminism and the WI have sort of come together.”

By the “horrors of society” she might mean work, which isn’t always all it’s cracked up be. And the new version of domesticity is possibly more about making pretty cup cakes and cutting our your own amusing flower-patterned bunting, rather than getting down and cleaning the loo or letting down the hem on an outgrown school skirt.

But it’s a start. I’ve always thought the WI was a very feminist organisation in its way – practical skills and independence of thought always being a good combination.

Until now most feminists have concentrated on the world of work because that was where women were struggling to find their way and domestic skills were undervalued.

But most of us love to live in a well-run home with laundered clothes and appetising food. So why don’t we appreciate the skill and talent in achieving that as much as a job outside? Is pay our only way of valuing work?

By embracing domesticity – even the cutesie interesting, pretty bits – we are at last recognising that there are other ways of living and contributing to society, other than being a wage slave.

After all it all comes down to that great feminist slogan – a woman’s right to choose.

EASYJET is cracking down on those latecomers who cut it too fine when catching a plane. From now on, unless you’re there half an hour beforehand, the plane will go without you.

Good.

I am firmly from the White Rabbit school of time-keeping – so terrified of being late that I’m often ridiculously early.

When leaving for a flight, I allow for traffic jams, roadworks, delayed trains, diversions, cancellations, broken ticket machines, overflowing car parks, a dozen tractors on the road in front of me and an overhead fault just outside Peterborough.

Younger Son says I even allow for the risk of snow in July. But well, stranger things have happened… And, unlike my son, who believes that any single minute more than necessary waiting in an airport departure lounge is a minute of his life utterly wasted, at least I’ve never missed a plane.

So why should we, who make all necessary effort to be punctual, have to watch latecomers racing through security, skidding through the departure gate and collapsing in their seats with an air of triumph – and pity for the rest of us who’ve been kept waiting?

Close the gates and fly without them. Next time, they might make a bit more effort.

SOMETIMES even cynical old hacks need a break… That’s why I’ve been smiling soppily over the new Winnie the Pooh story, produced to celebrate the joint 90th birthdays of Her Majesty the Queen and the Bear of Very Little Brain.

Although produced by Disney, (www.Disney.co.uk/WinnieRoyalBirthday) the drawings are very much in the gentle EH Shepard style, rather than the brash cartoon version. Winnie the Pooh, and friends go to Buckingham Palace to present the Queen with a Pooh poem. And Piglet gives Prince George a balloon. Aaah.

“Nauseating!” – or words to that effect – exclaimed a chap at the swimming pool.

“Didn’t you read Winnie the Pooh when you were little?’ I asked.

“No! It was only for posh people. I stuck to comics.”

His loss.

But a generation or two ago, most book for children were “posh” ie written by middle class authors to reflect their world.

With the exception of The Family from One End Street, most fictional children lived in a world of boarding schools, big houses, nannies, cooks and maids. The working classes were usually there just as servants, for comic effect.

Sitting in my crowded Welsh primary class of 49 children, many of whom lived in cottages without indoor plumbing, I happily lapped up tales of boarding schools in Switzerland, talks of prep and ski-ing and relations who owned castles, islands and stately homes because that was pretty much all there was.

Not any more. One of the huge differences in the last 40 years has been the democratisation of children’s literature.

There was an equivalent of “kitchen sink” revolution in the 1960s when every book seemed set in slums. But after the first rebellious bit, children’s literature now is set anywhere and everywhere, including plenty of totally imagined worlds. It’s varied, anarchic, enrichening and mind-expanding.

Children’s literature – from picture books for babies to challenging novels for young adults – is one of our country’s greatest glories.

Whatever your background, whatever your prejudices, let’s give all our children their chance to share in all those treasures.

Yes, even including Winnie the Pooh.

PS: The BBC in its remake of the classic Swallows and Amazons has changed one of the girls’ names to Tatty from Titty – which was thought much too likely to cause sniggers.

Amazing, really, that Winnie the Pooh has survived generations of toddler sniggers.

TRAIN Ticket Madness cont. Two return tickets from Darlington to Fort William cost £203, with railcards. Book exactly the same trains but buy separate tickets from Darlington to Glasgow and Glasgow to Fort William and they cost just £111… SHHH… whisper it quietly. After a ten year experiment, Marks and Spencer have decided to give up on music in their stores. They’ve finally realised that either we don’t notice it or if we do, it just makes us cross. It certainly doesn’t make us want to spend more.

So it’s back to the sound of silence – apart from ringing tills.

Other stores, please note.

Meanwhile, in glorious sunshine in Edinburgh on Wednesday, a friend and I were sitting outside a café when a busker set up a few feet away from us. Not just a busker, but one with an electric guitar, amplifier and terrible voice, all hideously loud. No one at the tables could hear themselves speak.

While we all chuntered away to ourselves (because no one else could hear) one brave soul took action and rang the Environmental Health department claiming noise pollution.

As we left, someone was on their way and the busker was blissfully silent.

One to remember.

ACTRESS Amber Heard, currently in the process of divorcing Johnny Depp apparently earns $10,000 a month but claims she needs $44,000 for “basic expenses.”

Something tells me that her idea of “basic” isn’t quite as basic as ours….