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None of us were keen on Thatcher, to put it mildly. When we were touring the UK during the early days, things were tough. Some of us had only just come off the dole, and the situation across the country seemed tragic. Most working class people we knew hated her. She was a target. Someone to blame Britain's troubles on. Then one day, I came across a book that would enhance our life more than we could have imagined. Flowers. We could bring joy to people through sharing our land with flowers. Now in our fifth year, we're gearing up to have more blooms than ever before as we continue to learn and grow on the farm. A wonderful, flowing prose with a sparkling intelligence; this is a talented writer. His world is brought to life as his message is conveyed. Where they’re unnecessary, the details aren’t dwelt upon. The story of a life moves with an interesting pace, every moment is of great importance, stimulating sympathy and reflection, and often shining with a warm sense of humour. Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes meets Billy Elliot, Maggie & Me is a unique, tender, and witty memoir of surviving the tough streets of small town Scotland during the Thatcher years. Me is the object pronoun, used as the object (or receiver) of the action of the verb, as in these examples:
I am not a fan of the misery memoir, mostly because I get slightly annoyed with the 'triumph of the human spirit' cliche, but this book changed my mind. Because it's not all misery, and it's not all overcoming obstacles. See, Damian was a fighter from the beginning. He was ambitious, he knew he could be more than the usual product of such harrowing surroundings. My job interview with her was quite bizarre. She knew me a bit from the election campaigns of 1983 and 1987, when I was a sort of travelling researcher. I was summoned for a half-hour meeting, during which she spent 20 minutes talking about the problems of the world, and she said, 'So, you're coming to work for me.' So much of what I was writing about felt shameful – finding 50ps to feed the meter, pulling cuffs down over too-thin wrists, calling the police to break up another "domestic". I could hear my granny warning me not to air my dirty linen and yet I had to. I was fretting about all of this when I got the invitation to return to Motherwell library. Would these people show up? Would they shout at me? Throw more than just insults?
BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week, Winner of the Stonewall Award and The Sunday Times Memoir of the Year. Ideal for fans of Shuggie Bain and It's A Sin Billy and me like a good beer buzz early in the morning” → “Me like a good beer buzz early in the morning” ❌ Big nope! Billy and I like a good beer buzz early in the morning” → “I like a good beer buzz early in the morning” ✅ Looks good! Cover up the other name in the sentence and the word “and,” and you’ll be able to tell right away which formulation makes good grammatical sense. We love comfort, quality and spoiling our customers,” Mancini said. “When you shop here, you can expect head-to-toe service, and we cater to all ages. We send out old-fashioned postcards to our customers on their birthdays and for in-house events.”
Damien's childhood is an amalgamation of abuse, struggle, love, friendship, survival and ultimately triumphant, coming out in a straight world. The irrational guilt which Damien spent his childhood drowning in breaks your heart and the toxic environment surrounding his upbringing. Yet a warm, loving and intelligent child who deeply cares and is protective of his mum and sister Teenie. A loyal friend to Mark and Heather and eventually a successful journalist revisiting his place of upbringing in the end. Maggie and Me is a fashion-forward coastal boutique that specializes in casual clothes for women, girls, tweens, toddlers, and infant girls and boys. The store is also known for beautiful gifts and gift wrapping. Me and I are both first-person personal pronouns. A personal pronoun is a word that’s substituted for an individual’s name. My math teacher encouraged me to come for extra help after school. ( Me is the object of encouraged.) I have 35 years in the retail business,” Mancini said. “For 15 years, I was opening, running, and buying for others, and for the past 20, I have had my own store. I feel so unbelievably thankful to have a positive story coming out of the pandemic. Our Lowcountry customers truly helped me keep the Ohio boutique alive. We all need to be reminded that there are blessings during this trying time, and we want people to know that Maggie and Me is one of those blessings.”
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For the 1979 general election campaign, Thatcher employed Lord Tim Bell, then managing director of advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi, to manage her publicity. The company delivered the famous slogan "Labour isn't working". He went on to help her win two subsequent general elections. I am a huge fan of Damian Barr's The Literary Salon podcast (link below) and have been looking forward to this book for ages. Excerpts from Maggie & Me featured on a recent episode and I laughed out loud and shed a tear from sadness whilst on a Melbourne train, all in the span of a few minutes. Barr nails the voice; of course he does, it's a memoir, but not for a moment did I feel I was being told a story. I was living it, alongside a young Damian. At events people always ask: "What does your family think?" My dad rarely reads but saw the extract in the Mail and says he's proud and that's the best review. My mum's "read bits but it's hard". It is. My wee sister, now not wee, says "I was there, I remember, you're too nice." In 1982 Eddy Shah, then the owner of six local newspapers in Cheshire, became the first proprietor to take on the country's powerful print unions and win. He invoked Thatcher's newly-created industrial laws which gave employers greater protection against the unions, forcing his employees to the bargaining table. He later founded the national newspaper 'Today'. There are plenty of grammar books that get into the nuts and bolts of all this. But the easiest way to figure out whether you want “and me” or “and I” is to cover up, cross out, or mentally delete the other name and the word “and” from the sentence, then see if it still makes sense.
My customers are moms, grand moms, daughters and granddaughters,” Mancini said. “I just really enjoy shopping for girls—it is a niche that I truly love—and I have decided to allow my customers take my Bluffton store where they want it to go.” And yet, I longed to. Because who doesn't want to go home? Especially when you didn't feel welcome there in the first place. When we bought our house on over 2 acres of dirt in 2007, we were committed to sharing our land. First that was with our children and the many 4-H and FFA animals we fostered. After they flew the nest (we still enjoy many homecomings and grandchildren galivanting around), it was time for our next adventure. Now, if you're asking yourself, "what were they thinking starting a flower farm later in life?" - not to worry, we had a plan...well sort of. Being from a mining village myself (albeit 10 years later) I did resonate with much of what Damian mentions in this story. Despite this though it was still truly individual and insightful. I found it sometimes very uncomfortable to read with many acts of domestic violence, child abuse, bullying, homophobia and just sheer heartache. But these things made the book what it was.
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She won in the Falklands, but I didn't even know where that was. I thought it was near Scotland. I dare say the people there feel British, but it's a long way to go to hang on to it. Thatcher oversaw the militarisation and politicisation of the police force as never before. At Greenham, in Northern Ireland and later in the miners' strike we saw the police used in far more political roles than before. She believed that that if she could outdo the men on toughness, including war-mongering and aggressive posturing, she could retain her position of power in the UK. Though she benefited from feminism, Thatcher was profoundly anti-feminist. She demonstrated that the issue is not biology, but power structure, values and ways of working. If the political system is structured so that a single woman gets to the top via a patriarchal structure where men retain the essential power, she will have to constantly prove that she is tougher than the men, and that she can promote their power and their interests even more aggressively than they can." Mancini’s Ohio location recently celebrated its 20-year anniversary, and on Nov. 13, her Maggie and Me Bluffton store will be one year old. Customers old and new can expect a birthday celebration the entire week of Nov. 13, when Mancini and her staff will express their gratitude to the Town of Bluffton for contributing to the success of this new endeavor. I've also co-written two plays for Radio 4 and written a short after play for their Fact to Fiction slot. In Spitting Image, Mrs Thatcher was the central villain of the whole piece. We had her like Churchill smoking cigars, and at the urinals peeing with the men. We mistreated her terribly.
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