writing our way whole: 22 at home resisting

I’m standing firm in the sunshine in Grantchester village hall, arms out ahead of me, palm to palm with a partner . Pushing against his hands, using my body strength to match his, to resist his. To exercise my boundary-keeping.

Or, I’m standing, slightly slouching in a lanky, pre-teen way (“all bones and elbows” said my big sister), in a confectionery shop, spoilt for choice at all the enticing coloours, the array of shapes. There is a pervading fragrance of caramelised sugar, a heaviness of saturated pastry (this is 1965), a subtlety of baked almonds. How can anyone resist? How can I choose?

Or, I’m sitting across a desk from two suited men, on a dampish morning in January. I’ve just had a cup of milky coffee and a sausage roll in the Institute canteen, a pre-interview treat from an unsuited and unsuitable man. He has recognised me from the choir in which I sing alto, and where he (lustily) sings bass. I am wearing my alluring damson coloured maxi-coat and the PVC boots (this is 1971) that will split soon after.

The man who is interviewing me (and who’ll soon move away north to take up a professorship, abandoning me before I even take up the studentship) is Dr Gordon Russell is in the middle of the second-to back row. We don’t meet until 21 years after this photo is taken.

He explains that they are interested in finding the mechanism by which a particular variety of wheat, bred in Cambridge in the 1900s, has somehow maintained a resistance to yellow rust disease. This is a serious cereal pathogen, but Little Joss shows a durable, lasting resistance. That’s despite other, more productive varieties’ susceptibility to rapidly-evolving strains of the fungus. The other man, whose jacket is much lighter than his trousers, chews the end of his specs and tilts back his chair, scrutinising me as I plant the case for my suitability, nay desirability, for the project. He becomes a friend, albeit at a much more senior rank, and on at least one occasion in his frustration at my obstinate temperament bursts out with “You’re a little buggar aren’t you?”

Or, a friend shares with me a deep unease about a significant relationship. I feel for her, a heaviness lodging itself in my chest, like an obstacle that resists any attempt to push it away. She’s facing an immovability, a resistance, to moving on. And together we recognise an inner resistance to change, and it’s called fear.

Four versions of resisting. Or at least, striving to investigate resistance in four of its manifestations.

Which is what we are going to do today:

Of course there are other ways that Resistance can be used…

including as a means of subterfuge in warfare, as in the French Resistance movement during World War 2.

Many books have been written about that, some of which you may have read, or watched in film adaptations . You can list some of those below, or follow the link above to access Literature and Culture, section 8.3 and Popular Culture, section 10 in the Wikipedia article.

And please don’t forget to count your blessings before you go to bed, up to at least three: