INTERVIEW
beings we like some sort of order. If you
don’t queue, you’re always watching
out for yourself. If there are too many
queue-bargers, order breaks down.” Then,
grinning, she remembers once queuing for
a parking space and being cut up by a man
who drove a huge American show-off car.
Gay was so incensed that when she did
eventually park she found the car and, in
pink lipstick, wrote “WORM” all over his
windscreen.
For she is not straitjacketed by convention.
She has a delicious wryness, and a sense of
humour born of her incisive observation.
But she is the first to acknowledge that
it’s all very well for us to be chatting in
her comfortable lounge eating biscuits –
from a plate with a touch of irony. But
far from being exclusive, what Gay wants
is for everyone – everyone – to have
opportunities.
“When several generations of a family
haven’t flourished, they see themselves as
outside – and the rest of us is “them”. They
are disengaged. And if your grandmother’s
like that . . .”
Her answer is “generosity. It’s not about
giving people things, it’s about giving a
damn,” she says. Controversially she is
scathing about people who criticise the
‘treats for naughty boys’ approach to serious
dysfunctional behaviour and who criticise
the councils who give grants to allow people
to do what ‘decent people’s’ children can’t
afford. “Who said it’s a fair world?” If
that grandmother had been shown a bit of
generosity maybe she would be passing it on
to the boy who torched his school.
We’re back to those ripples. That warm
feeling that saying thank-you gives.
It is as well she will be staying away from
political issues: she gives unfashionably
short shrift to political correctness. Girls
shouldn’t join scouts because it puts off
the boys. Men should be able to exclude
women from their social clubs because they
need a bit of space. Young people, boys
particularly, should be allowed to experience
danger rather than be protected from it.
Words of hymns shouldn’t be watered down
to make them easy. “I think we can cope
with the odd ‘ye’ and ‘thou’, don’t you?”
She puts her ideals down in part to her
Christian faith, and is looking forward this
year to visiting as many different parishes as
she can. “I meet people I wouldn’t otherwise
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life
have got to – from high Anglicans to the
more relaxed and modern people. It’s great!”
She would love more involvement with the
Muslim community, and hopes they will
come to the Legal Service in the Minster.
What Gay is acutely conscious of is that
her tenure will end after a year: “The people
on the Pan Estate in Newport got fed up
being labelled as home of all miscreants. So
they did something about it for themselves,
and created Pan Together. Unlike me, only
doing it for a year, they keep on doing it.
Bloody marvellous!”
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