In Bed With Lord Byron

mean cold. We mean things are good, y’know, hip. Hip, by the way, is quite similar to cool. In 1813, you would have
defined hip.’
    ‘Oh.’
    ‘A lot of words have come from rap music. Like the word blinging. It means flashy jewellery, kind of gangster gear, very over the top.’ At least, I thought it did.
    ‘Blinging,’ said Byron thoughtfully, rolling the word round in his mouth like a sweet. ‘I see.
Bu-ling-ing.
Blinging.’
    ‘OK, here’s another modern expression for you. Girl power. It was invented by the Spice Girls.’
    ‘The Spice Girls?’
    ‘They were a group of very cool girls who wore sexy clothes and were idolised all over the world. They all had names which were based on various spices.’
    ‘What, like cardamom, and ginger?’
    ‘No, no! Well, there was a Ginger. But they weren’t trying to promote cookery classes, if that’s what you’re thinking. Anyway, they were feminists, of a kind, and they
invented girl power.’ I paused wickedly, unable to resist getting him back after my Anthony disaster. ‘And life mirrored art. The politicians took note. Girl power is now law –
the law of the land. Men have to do
everything
that women tell them. Men are our slaves! And if a man defies a woman, he can be arrested and thrown in jail.’ I improvised wildly.
‘Basically, we rule the world now. Which means you have to behave yourself and do whatever I say.’
    Byron went quite white. He breathed out deeply.
    ‘You mock me.’
    ‘I do not.’ I picked up a ruler and waved it at him. Unfortunately, he rose to the challenge and picked up a kitchen knife.
    ‘A duel we shall fight!’ he cried. ‘I shall represent my sex, you the feebler.’
    Oops, I thought. My experience at fencing was clashing knives at the table with Adam. Byron’s father, meanwhile, was infamous for killing a poor innocent man in a pub brawl, and I had a
feeling Byron could definitely follow in the family tradition. And I had plastic, whilst he had steel. Before I could cry that this was most unfair, he lunged at me and I squealed, jumping behind
the sofa.
    ‘How have women come to rule the world when men clearly have the greater physical strength?’ He lunged again and the knife plunged into the sofa: yet more damage to my
possessions.
    ‘You brute!’ I cried, waving my ruler back. ‘All right, men may have the physical advantage . . . but hey, actually, maybe not. The gap between male and female runners, for
example, is closing – scientists are even predicting that in a few years’ time women will be able to run faster than men. We’ll break every one of your records. You see, women
have always been as strong as men, but we’ve just never had a chance to show our potential. Now, finally, it’s emerging.’ I slashed forward and rapped Byron on the wrist; he
flushed purple with shame.
    ‘You lie! This is poppycock! For one thing, how can a woman race in a ballgown!’
    ‘We no longer wear bloody ballgowns. Bloody doesn’t mean bloody, by the way – it means “damned”. Anyway,’ I held my ruler erect again, ‘in this century,
women wear the trousers – literally. One of the greatest prime ministers of the last century was a woman called Margaret Thatcher.’
    ‘A woman! Running the country! I’ve never heard such cant in all my life!’ Byron broke off from our swordplay to howl with laughter. ‘You must be jesting, you – you
blinging vixen.’
    ‘I jest not! Girls now get better results than boys in school exams! Year in, year out!’
    Byron, incensed, watched me jump on to the dining-room table. I had been hoping for a height advantage but, in a most ungentlemanly fashion, he followed me. We stood at opposite ends of the
table, buffered by a box of Kleenex and a small pile of
Vogue
. Lyra, who was sitting on the window ledge, looked at us as though we were completely bonkers.
    ‘It was a gradual victory,’ I told him sweetly. ‘It began during the war. The men went off to be stupid and get themselves killed. The women, when they weren’t bandaging
the men up, did useful, sensible things, like driving buses and building bridges. So in a funny sort of way, the Second World War—’
    ‘There was a
world
war?’ Byron cried.
    ‘Don’t try to change the subject. Basically, things came to a head in the seventies when Germaine Greer published
The Female Eunuch.
It was an amazing book that empowered
women. It made the point that women can be proactive about sex, that we