Monday 21 May 2012

On Living Alone

I ended up living on my own by extreme necessity of the imminently homeless variety. Happily that never came to pass and after much begging down the phone to wealthy relatives, I scraped together a deposit and rented myself a teeny weeny unfurnished flat about 18 months ago.

Although foremost in my mind when moving in was the opportunity to bring men home to 'my place' a la Sex and the City and be rather grown-up and cas(ual) about the whole thing, otherwise I was somewhat trepidated about the prospect, but it ended up being the best thing I ever did. Soon however I am set to leave my life of occasional-debauchery-but-more-often-marathon-Grey's-Anatomy-seshes behind for the bright lights of London, where only a salary of gazillions or an extremely rich relative helpfully shuffling off the mortal whatsit will allow me the same privilege. Here are a few things I will miss about living alone:

Pretending to be batshit crazy cat lady and sometimes actually being batshit crazy cat lady. This includes talking to the cats, talking to myself, talking to the cats when they aren't actually there (not to be confused with talking to myself), shouting at neighbourhood children, smelling like wee. (Not the last one).

Drinking gin or tea in the bath with Bach on full volume and the cats sitting in the sink gazing at me in wide eyed horror.

Wandering around naked; I have no curtains. The neighbours probably do not enjoy this but I am an exhibitionist.

Having an ongoing conversation with the TV.

Shocking my colleagues with the idea that I live alone, without a MAN to look after me or pay the bills.

An immensely smug sense of satisfaction at having my own place, even if in practise it's only 12 square feet of books and cat hair.

Goodbye little house. I'll miss you.

Tuesday 8 May 2012

Dear Foxy

Dear Foxy,
(Can I call you Foxy? Thanks.) Oh Foxy. I read your godawful article for the Mirror last week and I’ve been pondering it ever since. What possessed you to pen such an atrocious, regressive piece of tripe?
Foxy, mostly I take issue with you whinging petulantly about women. Now, please don’t think I am all for some kind of sickly sisterhood. Just because we all have vaginas doesn’t mean we all have to be nice to each other. It’s not “us against all the men”. I take no issue with some girl on girl fighting. But I’m pretty sure you just made a sweeping sexist generalisation about all women there. Am I wrong?
You remind me of those girls at school who don’t have female friends, Foxy. They’re all “oh no, guys are so much EASIER to get on with. I’m WAY too cool for female friends, yah? I hang with the GUYS”. Fuck me, you’re cool. I wish I could be friends with the boys too. Oh wait, you do have female friends, right? DISCLAIMER! I HAVE SOME FEMALE FRIENDS WHO ARE OBVS THE ONLY EXCEPTIONS TO MY MASSIVE GENERALISATION!
It wasn’t awfully sporting of Amanda “personality-free” Holden and whatshernname off Strictly to share a video which most of the country has no interest in. It has shit all to do with them being women though. I don’t doubt plenty of men shared it too. So allow me to share something with you Foxy. Some people are twats. Some people are great. Some of the great people are men, some of them are women. Some of the twats, are men and guess what, some of them are women. Aren’t we all a bit sick of hearing this myth about women being nasty, Foxy? People are nasty. People get bored. Did we learn nothing from SamanthaBrickGate?
Ah, now we’re onto something Foxy. Just like the Daily Mail trolled us all with Samantha “all women hate me for being beautiful” Brick, have a rival red top struck gold with “all women are nasty cows out to get me”? Perhaps *whisper* you just aren’t a very nice person and that’s why you put people's backs up. Perhaps you’re paranoid. Perhaps you’re the paragon of charm and human kindness. I just don’t know. Anyway Foxy, I quite enjoyed some of your blogs. Some of them were quite good. You’re capable of rather more than a lazy, inaccurate, provocative column that you don’t seem to have an awful lot of conviction in defending.
And that’s it isn’t it Foxy? You didn’t really come up with that idea did you? I can just picture it now. You in the office with a sleazy editor, rubbing his thighs and growling “Yeah Foxy, your first column love. Let’s do something they’ll buy. Piss off the wimmin.” The Mirror wanted you to make a lovely big provocative splash that would sell them some papers. I’m sure you’ll claim that's not true, since it’s awfully exciting to have a regular column in a tabloid, but I suppose the Mirror wouldn’t have sold as many copies of “Amanda Holden and whatshername of Strictly are really mean.”
You can do better, Foxy. Making inaccurate sexist generalisations about womankind isn’t particularly helpful, is it? It isn’t hugely productive. It’s actually quite lazy and a bit of a sell-out. I don’t think you actually think women are held back by each other being jealous bitches, do you?
Have a little think about it.
Lots of love
Alice x

Thursday 3 May 2012

On being filthy

Sometimes, when I fancy getting off on something really, really hot and well written, I go and read @girlonthenet's blog (here). You should too, as long as you aren't easily offended or at work. It is graphic and gratuitous, gloriously filthy and wonderfully eloquent.