The Woman Surgeon and the Pea

It's just a question, really. Does any one of you artistic souls out there have an idea for the logo of the new women in surgery committee of the royal college of surgeons of england? I can't face capitalising them all as is their due, but the WinS committee goes like that and is going to be a new dynamic force for equality in surgery. Possibly. No, definitely! Only logos are a bit of a debatable issue, post-Olympics. In fact, for women in surgery or women generally, how do you get a defining image of a woman that is not also insulting or reductionist? Well, answers on a post card in a week... They have tried an initial one: a woman's eyes looking over what appears to be the top of a mask on top of the "W" like a lid (I'd love to copy it but would be breaking a few rules) . When shown to some great and good at the college, it was said to look like a woman with fangs, or screaming. Perhaps this describes better the male surgeon's fear of women in the job?

This has been a welcome distraction from the organising of kids and the freezer and the dry cleaning of suits in mothballs (I wish they had been in mothballs - a chosen few eaten happily by generations of the little buggers since I last donned a suit and tried to look serious) which have been my lot of the last few weeks. Going back to work coincides neatly with school and the "Back to School" cheery adverts in shop windows have the same day-dulling effect on me as they did in school days. As they do indeed on my son. Is it no coincidence that they have created an academic year that starts as the nights draw in, the last hopes for summer fade, and we bed down for a long, wet winter. Do they enjoy school more in Australia?

The distraction of suits and summer's last days has in turn helped me avoid the concept of actually revising some facts after my long sojourn in mummy-land. Well, have arrived at the concept but not really acquired any of the facts. So I have persuaded myself that only option is to treat this with more retail therapy - buy some books with the fast-dwindling capital and somehow sleeping with them under my pillow will give me confidence to face out my first day at work. Perhaps.

A logo for the women surgeons? A princess and the pea-like image but with the woman sleeping soundly on a great pile of books and surgical instruments under the mattresses.