Colin Sheridan: I admire the way Meghan Markle stands up to the English press
Meghan Markle threatens everything, or so the British press thinks anyway. File photo: Aaron Chown/PA
They say a picture can paint a thousand words, but, in my experience, no picture can compare to the encyclopaedia of weighted critique woven into phrases only mothers use.
The remarks in question usually contain few words but have multiple meanings. Such is their disguise it's almost impossible to challenge them in real time. Instead, they linger like dirt underneath the fingernail.
Some are more flagrant in their meaning than others.
“Isn’t it well for you” is something that's usually said after your mother hears from a troublemaking sibling of yours that you're going skiing, because, let's face it, you'd never tell her yourself.
But it could also apply to something as rudimentary as the buying of a new pair of runners, or her calling to your house and finding an online delivery from ASOS on your doorstep.
Skiing holidays in Davos and a new pair of Converse — though on different points of the scale — represent the same thing to most mothers: notions.
And profligacy. Licentious or dissolute behaviour and prepare to be told t'was far from that you were reared.
"Isn't it well for you" has a first cousin, the equally damming “I hope it lasts for you” which infers a betrayal of your humble origins, as if austerity was an aspiration, not a consequence of circumstance. The hope here is that whatever good fortune has visited you does not, in fact, last, and normal miserable service will soon resume.
This maternal fatwa is usually issued after a series of “isn't it wells”, meaning whatever extravagant behaviour you've engaged in — eating in restaurants, getting takeaways, paying for a cleaner — has become a worrying pattern. You never hear a second “I hope it lasts for you”. You either cop on, or are written off as a unserious person, forever.
These two phrases, in particular, make me wish mothers went on LinkedIn, only to publicly admonish their adult children for talking such utter shite about themselves. It would cleanse the entire self-promotion landscape in no time, because it's only OK for mothers to tell the world their Johnny or Mary is doing a PhD or an MBA.
Announcing it about yourself is very much "I hope it lasts" territory and, were they aware it was happening, they'd shut it down quicker than they could tell you about the neighbour's cancer.
There are others, less damning but just as potent in the timing and tempo of their deployment.
A personal favourite “That's neither here nor there”, suggests a point in the conversation has been reached beyond which no good can come, so it's time to wrap it up or change direction lest your opinion — which, to your credit, you had the courage to express — prove to be correct or decisive.
It's a rather brilliant negotiating technique that reclaims the upper hand and asserts authority without ever having to concede defeat. It's a motherly reminder of the chain of command.
There is one, however, that, to me, beats all others. Someone being “well able to go”. It came to mind this week as the English press struggled to find new verbiage to express their distrust and dislike of Meghan Markle.
If only their columnists were aware of the phrase “She is well able to go”, they could cut their word count in half and sell the rest of the page for advertising, as that one statement contains multitudes. I, for one, do not think Meghan is well able to go any more than she stands up for herself.
That she makes millions showing us how to repackage dried fruits is no more egregious to me than Marie Kondo lining her (very neat) pockets by telling the world to empty the dishwasher.
Kondo is not well able to go, however, not by the mother metric, because she is unthreatening. Conversely, Markle threatens everything. She married a prince — the good one — and stole him away. She already worked for a living. She may well have already been married (I don't care, so didn't check).
Long before she sought the trappings of royalty after having the temerity to disassociate herself from the supposed “responsibility” of it, Meghan was in prime "well able to go" territory. If anything, I admire her for leaning into the hate rather than trying to win an unwinnable war of redemption.
Men, incidentally, are rarely "well able to go", but that's for another column/series of lectures at the Iona Institute. Personally speaking, I hope it lasts for Meghan. Except, I hope it actually lasts.
