Followers of me on Twitter will know that I’ve been a regular on the Black Woman’s Hour podcast for the past two years. The anniversary of my debut on the pod has just passed. And you may recall, I joined as a guest on episode 3, and it’s nice to think we are still going and have hit the milestone of 50 episodes.
We did take a longer than planned hiatus last summer (it wasn’t just my blog that was on a break) due to life circumstances – new jobs, family commitments and generally adapting to the new normal following the Thanos snap, aka the pandemic. You have to admit the summer of 2022 wasn’t too bad, as we had Notting Hill Carnival for the first time in 3 years, as well as festival season returning.
A lot of other things happened on a macro level during the hiatus – we had the Platty Jubz (HM Queen Elizabeth II was the first British Monarch to have 70 years on the throne) three Prime Ministers (Johnson, Truss and Sunak), the first Black Chancellor of the Exchequer (Kwarteng),the death of HM the Queen Elizabeth II (who I swear held onto life as she didn’t want Johnson and his dishevelled self reading her eulogy and died two days after accepting Truss as her last PM – that time in office lasted 44 days) and the cost of living crisis, which has gripped most people in the UK, as inflation is rising, interest rates are increasing each month and every week another group of workers from the public sector goes on strike. This also means Prince Charles is now King Charles III, and his wife is now Queen Consort. The final big media story was anything to do with Prince Harry as the Netflix documentary dropped, and his long anticipated autobiography Spare came out. I have read it and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d definitely recommend you getting the audiobook as you hear Harry tell his story in his own words.
And the winter brought us the World Cup in Qatar, which was a really good competition. Messi of Argentina retired after sharing his World Cup win with Salt Bae. Morocco became the first African team to get to the semi finals. In domestic football, Arsenal started 2023 top of the table and there’s a buzz (despite our 0-1 loss to Everton on February 4).
We are really looking forward to what the next 50, 100, and however long we end up recording.
For those of you who have watched Ava, Ayisha and myself over the years on YouTube, THANK YOU. If you haven’t had the chance to watch us, but are interested in hearing what we have to say about on an array of topics, you can also find us wherever you normally find your podcasts as we are now, but not exclusively, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music and Audible.
The player below lists all our episodes.
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Elaine Adu-Poku 