Issue #15. I am Crone Hear Me Roar!
CroneLines 2025 review. Part 1/3 Crone Spoken word performances including Sheffield's Vicky Morris, Leicestershire's Cathi Rae and Manchester's Joy France AKA the Rap-Battle Nanan.
It’s the early hours of Sunday morning and I wake up with a blinder of a headache and a growling empty stomach. I drag my sorry/not sorry-peri-menopausal-aching-limbs out of bed and stagger downstairs in search of something edible, when something on the bottom step stops me in my tracks.
It’s what looks like a horses head, with glassy, dead eyes and blood smeared all around its mouth.
But this is not a message from Don Corleone.
This is the Unicorn head of Manchester’s Rap-Battle-Nanan, Joy France.
And this is the morning after CroneLines 2025 - Crone Club’s first afternoon disco (with spoken word) for women in peri-menopause and beyond.
Here’s part 1 of how the day went down…
6.30am. This is it! The culmination of three month’s hard graft, many sleepless nights and the occasional Carling at 11.30am after being trolled.
But that’s a story for another time.
The event is sold out! 100 women in midlife and beyond are congregating from all over the UK at the uber cool 99 Mary Street in Sheffield to celebrate each other and our transition into our third act of ‘becoming a crone.’
After braving a cold shower, I pull on my Crone Dress made by @Twisted Twee from their collection of ‘crone and hag wear’. It’s been made from two vintage dresses ‘Frankensteined’ together, with the word ‘crone’ emblazened in gold across the front of it.
Although the label says size 12, in our January meet up at the Maker Shed in Hillsborough Park, volunteer Crone Katie told me that a 12 in a vintage dress is more like an 8 for the body shape of a modern day woman. 😅 She then spent the next three hours dismantling the dress, then re-assambling it to accommodate my modern ‘swimmer’s back’.
It’s just what crones do for each other, innit.
It’s now 8.30am and I have a quick interview on BBC Radio Sheffield before heading out to the venue (🙏 Crone Kate Linderholm and Sarah!). Crone Kitty is there on time of course, and we start lifting in all the decks and P.A system from her car, which has been packed with dad-like precision.
“I used to carry this stuff up and down four flights of stairs in Stag Works in my 20s, no problem” says Kit. We both smile, vaguely remembering ‘Society’ raves, with Kitty on the decks into the early hours.
Now we’ve both wipe our sweaty foreheads with the back of our hands.
”Bloody menopause!” we say in unison, then laugh. After all, it’s the not-so-bloody-menopause that has brought this incredible group of amazing women together today.
Speaking of which, photographer Laura Page arrives with a car packed full of fabulous, framed photographs from her award-winning positive ageing exhibition, Hidden Depths, shortly followed by my old mate Crone Lisa. They work together effortlessly like they’ve known each other for years, and in under an hour, they have the whole exhibition on the walls, as well as the crone-sweary-bunting made by Crone Kath Wilson at our January meet up.
The rest of the set up crew start to arrive, including my sister’s mate Elie and her friend, who, on a previous night out, had gamely offered to help out with the ‘ballaching’ bits of the event. She’s got an official-looking red folder with her, and a face that says she’s not afraid to use it.
It’s now 12.30 and the Crone DJs start arriving to test out their equipment with Kitty. Crone Lyn and myself also sneak in a quick lesson with the calm and patient Kitty on how to use the CDJ’s. It’s been years since I last DJ’d and for Crone Lyn, it’s her first time. She’s going to be playing a crone indie-punk-new wave set that I can’t wait to hear.
Meanwhile, outside the crone crowd is starting to muster. On OMG what a cool crowd of croneage if ever I did see one!
There are old friends from school, old work pals, some vaguely familiar faces I recognise from 30 years in the creative industries, some from Crone Club meet ups, the Disco Choir, and many I don’t recognise at all - real-life, bonedfide paying punters! As one crone comments later in a social media post:
“Hats off to you for bringing together all those inspiring women. I kept looking round the room and was in awe at the talent, knowledge, expertise and experience of the women there - and that’s just the ones I know. Just what I needed to see at this point!”
I spot a familiar face. It’s Crone Ann with the Brighton Crones. We connected on Instagram over a year ago, and she’s made the trip up from Brighton with two of her best crone pals. We’ve since worked together on some Tits to the Wind articles and she’s been a source of great support, but it’s the first time we’ve met ‘in real life’. Like many of the out-of-town crones who have travelled from far and wide, they’re making a weekend of it!
And they aren’t the only Crones to travel to Sheffield from Crone Lands far, far away! There are Crones from Bristol, Derby, London, Manchester, Scotland, North East and one who had even flown in from Dingle in the Ireland of Ireland! Two Crones I’d met at the Durham Miner’s Gala the previous year came up from London for the weekend too!
It’s now 2.30pm and it’s time for the official start and the playing of the ‘Crone Anthem’ - ‘I Am Woman’ by Helen Reddy. Some older crones climb onto chairs and are waving their arms back at me as we sing along: “I am woman! Hear me Roar! In numbers too big to ignore! And I know too much to go back and pretend…”
For those not familiar, this track was adopted by the ‘women’s movement’ in the 1970s. Some who played a part in that movement are in the room today and it feels like a fitting way to honour them. These are the women who fought tirelessly for the rights of every single one of us. The right to get a mortgage without a husband. The right to a legal abortion. The right for equal pay.
Brighton Crone Ann says in her Instagram post:
”Walking into a room full of older women, all belting out Helen Reddy’s ‘I am woman’, watching the most beautifully curated performances, tearing up the dance floor and bond with a bunch of truly excellent women including my own homie croneies… it was just magical. Please let’s do it again. Then let’s take over the world.”
Younger women are moved too. DJ Clare from Sheffield’s Disco Choir tells me later, she also had a tear in her eye, as her mum (RIP) was a feminist and Helen Reddy was the soundtrack of her childhood.
To get us into the spoken word section, we kicked off with Maya Angelou performing ‘Phenomenal Women’ which had been one of the many sources of inspiration for the event.
And then came the live spoken word performances! 😮
First up, was my Neurodiverse Crone Sista, Vicky Morris, founder of Hive Young Writers and responsible for nurturing the young talent of the crones of the future, (often at the detriment of her own personal health).
This day was not only to celebrate our own transition to cronehood, but to honour ALL the women who have influenced us in our lives. Some had sent pictures to include in the video which was projected onto the wall as we danced.
Vic started with a poem she’d written called ‘Adult Assessment’ about our neurodiversity diagnoses that we both got in our 40s. She then sets the tone for the day beautifully reading a much-shared Crone Club classic by Mary Oliver, ‘Wild Geese.’
“Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.”
Next up is Crone Cathi Rae, the Instagram body positivity model, poet and campaigner against ageism in the world of fashion.
She’s pissed off when she arrives from Leicestershire, as she’s been fined by the clean air act and is rightly raging at the cost of parking. She’s a poet and a model, but like many working class, creative women ‘of a certain age’, she has to do shit loads of other jobs just to pay the bills.
It’s not surprising then, that one of the pamphlets she brings is entitled: ‘Your Cleaner hates you.’ (You can buy it here or DM her at CathiRae on Insta to buy this and other collections).
Cathi wears her age and style with a pride that can only come with the fierce crone acceptance of your ‘third act’, and she’s a wonderful spoken word performer too.
She delivers a fantastic set that bring the house down. “Fearless and so honest, and great to see such a stylish older woman, defying stereotypes.” said Miranda afterwards. “I found her dry wit super inspiring.” said another. “Beautiful, moving poetry that really captured the joy and the struggle of womanhood.”
The cheering from the crowd moves even this strong and feisty crone to tears.
Cathi says in an Insta post later:
“I realised how rarely I’m in a public space where there are so many women my age and older… in a space where all the performers were older too… quite often, I’m the oldest person on the stage, but yesterday, I felt amongst my tribe… a beacon of light in a world that says at our age we should be quiet and take up less space. And a huge thanks to possibly the nicest audience I’ve ever had… so many of you bought books and supported an older creative.”
She ends her post summing up the joy of CroneLines: “You’ve got to love an event where when you say you can’t stay on into the evening because you don’t drive in the dark, everyone just nods with recognition and empathy.”
Next up is Crone Joy France, all the way from the wrong side of the Pennines. I loved how she’d slipped into the room with the unremarkable invisibility that ‘nanans’ have, but then after her set, was pursued by a constant trail of adoring fans.
With a warm Lancastrian voice and that Manc-mastery of telling a tall tale with ease and mischief, Joy starts to explain how she got into the often misogynistic underground world of battle rap, ten years ago.
“I used to have a room at Afflecks Palace in Manchester, and these two little lads came in. One of them said ‘I write poetry but I’ve never shared it with anyone!’ Then a few minutes later he got his phone out and read his poem in front of me and his friend.
So in return I said, I’ll do a poem for you! At the end of it, they both laughed and said, ‘That's not poetry, that's rap. You should do rap!’ Then the other one laughed and looked at me, and said: ‘No, she should do BATTLE RAP.’
The resulting years of her Battle Rap experiences have recently been captured by Northern Heart Films in ‘Joy Uncensored.’ You can watch it on You Tube here. (Warning, includes darkly misogynistic content from some of her male opponents).
To sign off for part 1 of the CroneLines review, here’s a taste from her set live at CroneLines, a poem dedicated to the owner of Bic Biros, on the ingenious creation of a pink pen with a delicate shaft, specifically for the ladies. This is a treat for paid subscribers only! We now have 1k subscribers which is amazing! But only 100 of these are paid subscribers which will make it difficult to carry on.
If you want to see more events like CroneLines, upgrade to paid below to support the crone movement keep this going!🙏
See you in Part 2 where we’ll be covering the Manchester Crone Music Legend, Una Baines; Angelina Abel and Kom from Mulembas D’Africa and all our wonderful DJ’s. Plus official dancing pics from Laura Page. 😘