In the newspaper business, August is known as the “silly season”. My plan for this week’s column was to go easy, while taking a few small steps into the subject of equal rights for women.

I was going to illustrate the Venus/Mars gender difference via a spectacle I saw on Lyme Regis seafront involving troupes of all-female and all-male Morris dancers. With ankle bells jangling, the women’s outfit danced as if they were ballerinas. Nimble of foot, some decent aerial work thrown in, lace hankies in their hands, their performance looked as jolly and comforting as a Maypole routine.

A few minutes later, on came the all-male troupe. They won the same generous applause but with a very different approach. They were less Maypole and more like the Japanese martial art of Kendo, clobbering each other heartily with their wooden sticks. I can’t say sparks actually flew, but with their red faces and dripping with perspiration from under their black hats, they seemed to be exorcising some inner turmoil. The dragon, when he came along, did not stand a chance.

And there it was in a nutshell. Women and men who had arrived on the same coach, taking part in the same competition, but with completely different styles. Of course, a man could have taken the balletic route and a woman the Kendo, but they chose not to. And vive la difference.

So, that was to be the jolly peg on which I was to hang a few serious points about the hard-won equality between the sexes. I was going to point out that in the UK women only had the vote on equal terms in 1928, that they could not usually obtain a mortgage without a male guarantor until well into the 1970s, that they had to resign from working at the Foreign Office if they married (the marriage bar) until 1973.

That voting rights for women in Northern Ireland (in the UK, of course) were only equalised in 1974, and finally that the Church of England only allowed women to be priests on 12th March 1994. My final flourish was to be that even now in 2021 my own parish council in Colyton still only has 2 out of 13 women councillors. Not prevented of course, but for some reason women don’t fancy it… which should give the men concerned some pause for thought.

That was my article, until the horrific news of this week, which showed that for women matters are as urgent as they ever have been. In Plymouth, Jake Davidson was inspired by a vile misogynist organisation, Incel, to murder five people with a gun he should never have had. The region’s policing authorities will have to account for that in due course.

And in Afghanistan we are seeing the endgame of our catastrophic intervention 20 years ago post the World Trade Centre attacks. I have a friend who lost his leg in action there, and am very mindful of the brave service given by Devon forces and the terrible load their families have had to bear. But now we have pulled out, and apart from all the many other grave issues, the women of Afghanistan are once again under the yoke of seventh century inspired male bigots.

Modern women are having to hide within burqas, terrified that any progressive reputation they have will now be held against them. I cannot help but wonder if the most senior figures involved in both the UK and US governments had been women whether we would have made this retreat at all, and it is no surprise that it began with the “deal” done with the Taliban by the Orange Peril, Donald Trump.

It was only yesterday, historically, that women in the UK found greater equality. Out of this disaster, the best we can now do is support their unfortunate sisters in Afghanistan with all our might.