OneTiredMum

Mum of four, baker director, housewife, procrastinater. Love food (cooking & eating) and it shows 😂

[Bettany Hughes💙 @bettanyhughes]

Everyone! This is what it feels like to hold the first ever #Viking sword found to date - unearthed in #Estonia! Incredible!!! Join me Saturday 8pm #Channel4 to reveal the #SecretsOfTheVikingShip - coming internationally soon, do share as we want lots to watch 🎉

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am a member of the Norwegian Nobel Committee.

There are five of us. Five people, appointed by a parliament most of the planet could not find on a map, who decide, once a year, which human being the world has agreed to call good.

I know. I know. I think about it on the tram.

We meet in a building on Henrik Ibsens gate, a street named after a man who wrote almost exclusively about people discovering they are frauds, which nobody on the committee finds funny except me. There is a room with a long table and the portraits of the dead laureates looking down, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, a great many earnest men in spectacles, and one portrait we do not discuss, which is Kissinger, 1973, awarded while the bombs were still falling, after which two of our predecessors resigned and the satirist Tom Lehrer said political satire was now obsolete. We keep him on the wall. A reminder. Every family has the uncle.

It is October in Oslo, which means the sun gives up around four in the afternoon like a civil servant, and it rains the particular Norwegian rain that isn’t quite falling, just hanging there, judging you. I arrive with wet shoes. I always arrive with wet shoes. There is coffee, because this is Norway and there is always coffee, we drink more of it per person than almost anyone alive, and someone’s wife has sent kanelboller, the cinnamon buns, and we sit, five Norwegians, damp, caffeinated, sugared, and we decide the moral standing of the entire species.

Let me tell you how it actually works, because the world imagines a cathedral and it is, I promise you, a book club with a mandate.

287 nominations this year. 208 people, 79 organizations. Anyone can nominate, that’s the secret nobody understands: a professor, a parliamentarian, a former laureate, so the “nominee” list is meaningless, it’s a suggestion box, and every autumn some congressman nominates his own golden retriever and the press writes “SHORTLISTED.” Nobody is shortlisted. There is no short list the public ever sees. There is us, and the coffee, and the rain, and the portraits, and a Norwegian stubbornness that is older than the prize itself.

We read reports. The institute’s advisers write them, thick dull documents, and we argue. Our chairman told the BBC once that in the final meeting “there is a high temperature.” High temperature, for a Norwegian, means someone slightly raised an eyebrow and then apologized for it. We don’t do high temperature. We do a long silence, and then Kristin says “well,” and everyone knows exactly what “well” meant, and it’s settled. That’s our shouting. “Well.” You’d have to be raised here to hear the violence in it.

Now. This year. I will not say the name, because we never say the name, but you know the name.

A certain head of state wanted this prize the way a child wants a thing in a shop window, which is to say loudly, and in public, and with the full belief that wanting it was itself the argument. He said he deserved it. He said he’d ended eight wars, a number that grew most times he said it, like a fish. He had other heads of state phone us. Israel’s prime minister posted it on the internet, “Give him the Nobel.” The leaders of Cambodia and Pakistan announced they’d nominated him, as though announcing it were part of it, as though we tally mentions. A man flew around the globe collecting endorsements for a Norwegian committee the way you’d collect signatures for a petition to the council about a noisy dog.

And here, uff da, is the detail I treasure, the one that makes me smile into my coffee. The nomination deadline is the 31st of January. He took office on the 20th. So for all the phone calls, all the posts, all the gilded lobbying, the only nominations that could possibly count for this year’s prize were filed in the first eleven days of his term, before he had, by his own arithmetic, ended a single one of the eight wars. He campaigned all year for a prize whose window had shut while he was still hanging up his coat. We didn’t have to reject him. The calendar did. We just watched. Norwegians are very good at watching. We have long winters.

People think we sit there weighing his deeds. We don’t. That’s the thing I can’t make the world understand. We’re not grading his homework. We don’t owe anyone the prize for a ceasefire, however real, however loud the announcement. “He made peace” is not a sentence that ends in a medal, the way he believes it does, the way he believes every good thing ends in his name on it. The will of a dead Swede says the prize goes to whoever did the most for fraternity between nations. A dead Swede, I should add, who made his entire fortune inventing dynamite and selling arms, and spent his last years horrified at his own obituary, which called him a merchant of death, and so bought his way to immortality as a man of peace. The whole prize is one guilty arms dealer’s attempt to launder his name. We are, all of us, administering a dead man’s public relations. I find this clarifying. It keeps me humble. It should keep everyone humble, and it keeps, by my count, no one humble at all.

So who did we give it to?

An eighty-five-year-old woman. A judge. Born in Durban, under apartheid, granddaughter of a Tamil man who came to South Africa as indentured labor, a bus driver’s daughter from the poor Indian quarter, who became the first non-white woman to run a law practice in her province, who defended Mandela’s people when defending them was dangerous, who sat on the Rwanda tribunal and the court at the Hague, and who, at eighty-five, is right now a judge weighing whether a genocide is a genocide. When we told the world, our chairman said the rule of law “underpins the system we have set up to ensure peace,” and that “peace requires justice.” She wasn’t even in Oslo. She was in Nuremberg. In courtroom 600. The actual room where they tried the Nazis. You cannot stage that. God staged that, and God, it turns out, is a better satirist than any of us.

She did not phone us. She did not post. No prime minister demanded it for her on the internet. She had, as far as our deliberations are concerned, the one qualification the loud man could never manufacture, which is that she wanted the work and not the medal. The medal finds those people. It flees the ones who chase it. This is not a rule we wrote. It’s just the only pattern the hundred-odd years of our mistakes has ever shown.

The reaction from across the ocean was immediate. His spokesman posted that we “place politics over peace.” Ja. Perhaps. We’re five damp pensioners in a rainy city; of course it’s political, it was always political, it was political when we gave it to a sitting American president nine months into his first term for the promise of things he had not yet done, and we have been quietly embarrassed about that one for fifteen years, so believe me, we had a particular reason this year to prefer a woman with fifty years of verdicts behind her over a man with eight wars in front of him and a deadline already behind him.

Here is what he will never understand, the thing I’d tell him on the tram if he ever took one. We are the one prize he cannot buy, cannot post his way to, cannot have a friendly dictator phone in for him. Not because we’re incorruptible, nei, we’re as vain and wrong and human as the portraits on our wall. But because the entire point of the thing, the only power a small cold country’s book club has ever held, is that it goes to the person not performing the wanting. The moment you demand it, you’ve proven you don’t understand what it’s for, and proving that is itself the disqualification. He ran the most expensive campaign in the history of the prize and the campaign was the reason. He was never losing to Navi Pillay. He was losing to the concept.

It’s dark now. Four o’clock dark. The buns are gone. Kristin said “well” an hour ago and we all went home. I’m on the tram with my wet shoes, and somewhere across the water a very powerful man is explaining to a camera that the prize is rigged, that we’re corrupt, that he’ll win it next year, and he genuinely might, we’re only five idiots and we’ve been wrong before, Kissinger is still on the wall.

But not this year. This year an old woman in Nuremberg, in the room where the law once stared down the exact kind of man who thinks wanting a thing loudly enough should make it his, got a phone call she didn’t ask for.

That’s the job. We don’t reward the man who ends the war and announces it.

We reward the woman who spent fifty years deciding what a war was.

He’ll never see the difference. That’s rather the whole point of him.

Takk for i dag. I have to change trams.

[Macklemore @macklemore]

What happened to me is bigger than one artist or one stage. When the billionaire class can decide which voices are allowed on stage and which ones are too dangerous to hear, everyone should be paying attention.

So we're going on tour. All proceeds will benefit organizations supporting the Palestinian people and movement.

Sign up at https://t.co/2na35y8pQ5

[RNLI @RNLI]

Our charity exists to save lives at sea. Our mission is to save every one. Our lifesavers are compelled to help those in need without judgement of how they came to be in the water. They have done so since the RNLI was founded in 1824 and this will always be our ethos.

[Supertanskiii @supertanskiii]

I make no secret of the fact that I found Anne Widdecombe’s views abhorrent, nor will I deny that I believe Reform UK incites division and hostility. But did she deserve to have every woman’s worst nightmare happen to her? No. She did not.

The key takeaway is this: you don’t stop male violence by encouraging more hatred and division. Once you normalise that, society itself begins to unravel. There was already an epidemic of male violence long before politicians started fanning the flames for political gain.

The leaders of Reform and Restore create unease and unrest because they profit from it. They point fingers. They deflect. They exploit despair and anger. Time and again, they have manipulated some of the poorest and most disadvantaged people in Britain. In doing so, they have contributed to an environment in which women, gay people, trans people and people of colour face greater hostility and, potentially, greater risk of violence.

Does that mean I think Anne Widdecombe was to blame for what happened to her? Again, no. No woman deserves to be brutally murdered by a man. It is one of the oldest, deepest fears carried by women, and tragically, it is not an irrational one.

I’ve received unspeakable threats despite not being a politician, simply for talking about politics. The police do nothing. The police are yet another institution women are forced to fear. Women are not safe anywhere, not even in our own home. I’ve lived alone. I know how vulnerable you can feel, simply because you’ve dared to have a voice as a woman. I’ve lain awake in bed wondering whether the noise downstairs was a man, radicalised by social media, fuelled by misogyny, entitlement and rage, finally acting on one of those threats. Anne would have likely done that countless times.

The price women pay simply for existing is fear, the price they pay for having a voice or agency is even higher.

While I found many of Anne’s views, particularly those regarding other women, abhorrent, that does not mean she asked for this. Men who inflict horrific violence on women rarely need an excuse. The fact that they can is often reason enough. Male violence is not limited to one culture, a political viewpoint, a particular religion or one race. It is endemic. No woman should have to die to prove this point but many more will unless action is taken.

Do I think Reform and Restore should be defenestrated? Absolutely. But at the ballot box. Because we’re not fucking animals. And because the working class should have more respect for itself than to let a handful of old Etonian pricks decide who we are.

The best revenge is to recognise who your real enemies are, then quietly leave them to their riches, their private jets and their mansions. The more irrelevant they become and the less divided we are, the less power they hold and the less money they make.

Two things are true:

No woman deserves what Anne Widdecombe endured.

The likelihood of women enduring male violence has markedly increased because of the hateful, violent and divisive rhetoric of figures like Farage or Lowe.

Reject them. They’re not on your side.

[Michael Rosen 💙💙🎓🎓 NICE 爷爷 @MichaelRosenYes]

As a tribute to the six Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza, here's the poem I wrote a few months ago:

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

So excited to have this beaut for a week, meet Jack aka Snorri Snorrson

#Frenchie #puplove #pupsitting #puponholiday

[Eve Ainsworth @EveAinsworth]

Just putting it out there in the universe

I suspect lots of young people will be wanting to read about girls football following the Lioness’ latest success. I have written lots of books in this genre

Also - for any editors interested, I would always love to write more 😂❤️

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@LucyBronze you are my girls hero this tournament!

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@EveAinsworth So proud!

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

So proud of our @Lionesses 🎉🎉

Watched the game with my girls, and I'm so grateful to everyone involved that my girls got to see this AGAIN!

#Lionessess #Euro2025 #europeanchampions #twotimewinners

[Eve Ainsworth @EveAinsworth]

Inspired by the #Lionesses?

Why not read about the Lightmore Lionesses? Perfect for budding football fans!

Come on England!!

#WEURO2025 #euros2025 #WomensFootball

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@DanielMays9 @netflix Watched the first part yesterday, absolutely gripping

[sebastian shemirani 🔄 @SebastianShemi]

My mother is the UK’s worst conspiracy theorist.
During covid she called for nurses and doctors to be hanged.
Last year she murdered my sister Paloma, by preventing her from getting medical treatment for her cancer.
My brother and I are now fighting for justice. Please help us.

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@lorrainemking From what I can tell, looking at the statutes, the difference is whether they were forced (trafficked) or went willingly (prostitued). The RICO charges were a stretch tbh. Either way its not justice.

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@EveAinsworth The Silent Patient by @AlexMichaelides

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

RIP Frederick Forsyth, halfway through Day of the Jackal for the umpteenth time & it remains an absolute powerhouse in thrillers
#frederickforsyth #dayofthejackal #booklife

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

Watching End Of Days (1999) and completely forgot that @Miriammargolyes kicked @Schwarzenegger butt! Some great faces in this film 🎥

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@BexBookaholic I've noticed this too!

[OneTiredMum @CraftyMummy2909]

@Lionesses Gutted, but wish her nothing but the best x