tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52491242389096855152024-03-05T05:22:27.169+00:00Alice and the RabbitThe adventures and misadventures of a twenty-something. Also those of my friends, which they really appreciate.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.comBlogger27125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-67149917608991209712012-09-17T07:57:00.001+01:002012-09-17T07:57:50.046+01:00No BoJo, No!A recent YouGov poll showed that Mayor of London and flaxen-haired dubious heartthrob Boris Johnson is the voters’ choice to succeed Cameron as our next Prime Minister. 33% of Tory voters prefer him to any other prospective leader and 24% of all voters would elect for a Boris-led Conservative government, according to the Independent. With his re-election success as London Mayor and soaring popularity following the Olympics (if mine ears didst not deceive me there were actually cheers and chants of “Boris, Boris!” at the parade last Monday) it seems increasingly possible that he could be our next illustrious leader. Many are saying if anyone can save the Tories from being unelectable post-recession, as predicted by harbinger of doom Sir Mervyn King, it’s probably BoJo.<br />
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When Boris visited my university several years ago, my dad sternly warned me to be careful around him: “He’s a notorious womaniser!” he glowered over his newspaper. Having assured him that I strongly doubted Boris was coming north of the Watford gap with the sole intention of seducing me, I signed up. Being a person of sound mind and having dipped a toe in student politics, I was in the welcome party for him. He was charming and funny, wonderfully posh and very charismatic. He made love to us all (in the figurative sense, thankfully) and by the time he stood up to give his "why vote Tory" speech to the other few thousand students, we were all eating out of his palm. He spoke fluently and convincingly, and I found myself nodding along vigorously to god-knows-what dreadful anti-feminist policy, so spellbound were we all by his charms.<br />
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It is with this self-effacing, bumbling charisma that he wins over so many otherwise anti-Tory voters - the George Osborne boo-ers, the screaming anti-Thatcherites. It’s that mop of hair, ("It is, I fear, impossible to imitate, as it is a product of random and competing forces of nature”), the fact that he stole a cigar case from one of Saddam Hussain’s pals, his Dickensian turn of phrase, the numerous television appearances and his apparent disregard for the social norms of a Conservative politician. He makes us nostalgic for a bygone era, of vicars on bicycles, of saying “What-ho!” to strangers and re-adjusting one’s monocle as one chases down a brigand. (That happened. I’m sure you heard). However, we all know that bumbling Boris is no less of a swine for all his zip-line dangling and knight in shining bike helmet heroics. The man isn’t a buffoon – he’s a PR’s wet dream.<br />
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This puts the Tory party in a difficult position – internally he is said to be unpopular but he’s undeniably charismatic and well-liked by voters, which gives him the edge over every other politician to have walked the halls of Westminster since Screaming Lord Such shuffled off this mortal coil. A brief Wikipedia dig under the surface reveals a man who has been involved in nepotism, racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, expenses fiddling, extramarital affairs and fabricating evidence at select committees. Miraculously not much of this has stuck, and he has managed to retain his Wodehousian schoolboy scamp image despite the controversy and a less-than universally successful first term as Major of London (Olympics aside). Boris was reportedly widely disliked and unsuccessful during his stint in the House of Commons, mainly due to jealousy over his fame and disfavour in the party arising from his various Borisish antics. A Boris-led government would be divisive – his popularity, which would be unlikely to last with the public, is already thin on the ground in Westminster. Rumour has it that working with him is no picnic, particularly if you happen to be female.<br />
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Realistically though, he’d be a truly dreadful Prime Minister. Imagine him addressing foreign dignitaries as picaninnies (true story), or getting stuck in the lift in the Houses of Parliament. He can only just get away with this stuff as Mayor, and isn’t doing a great deal for the image of the Mayoral office. Being PM requires things like having people trust you to fix the economy without making a tits joke about it. He’s even more shifty when it comes to policies, since all anyone really knows is he disagrees with Cameron on, well, apparently everything. He’s all fur coat and no Y-fronts. Eurgh. What he actually stands for remains to be seen, which is probably the most concerning prospect since the Cuban Missile Crisis, given that the likelihood of his succeeding Dave ‘LOL’ Cameron is increasing with every zip line antic and successful sporting event.<br />
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Boris is currently happily cycling around ruining London with reckless abandon shouting “Tally ho!” and jousting with the Prime Minister over runways, but move him into number 10 and give him access to that red missile button, and the situation becomes a whole lot worse. The best thing he can do for his Queen and country now is to take some kind of ‘National Court Jester’ dignitary position to keep morale high while we leave the economy to be fixed by a boring sod in Whitehall with a short back and sides.<br />
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I fear we may be stuck with him for a while longer, Britain.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-39986475430227968092012-05-21T22:37:00.001+01:002012-05-21T23:42:39.784+01:00On Living AloneI 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. <br />
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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:<br />
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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).<br />
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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. <br />
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Wandering around naked; I have no curtains. The neighbours probably do not enjoy this but I am an exhibitionist. <br />
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Having an ongoing conversation with the TV. <br />
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Shocking my colleagues with the idea that I live alone, without a MAN to look after me or pay the bills. <br />
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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. <br />
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Goodbye little house. I'll miss you. <br />
Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-2600277907383673622012-05-08T20:46:00.000+01:002012-05-08T21:27:46.507+01:00Dear Foxy<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dear Foxy,</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">(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? </span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMd_uqm0oiAYlAm1cefxW_DIkInRk8l6eAvpz7qlxqL3YDHM9FdQjLuxQR3NBc6iUWoU_btDe2QkyZKFT3jc2tMGaQjkwCRZRxkhuh_741kEzzhw4Bizdd6yoJNFo147ZOuLPdWoSXPcc/s1600/Fox.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" dba="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMd_uqm0oiAYlAm1cefxW_DIkInRk8l6eAvpz7qlxqL3YDHM9FdQjLuxQR3NBc6iUWoU_btDe2QkyZKFT3jc2tMGaQjkwCRZRxkhuh_741kEzzhw4Bizdd6yoJNFo147ZOuLPdWoSXPcc/s1600/Fox.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">all</i> women there. Am I wrong? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">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 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">do</i> have female friends, right? DISCLAIMER! I HAVE SOME FEMALE FRIENDS WHO ARE OBVS THE ONLY EXCEPTIONS TO MY MASSIVE GENERALISATION! </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">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? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">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. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">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.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">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? </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Have a little think about it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Lots of love</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Alice x</span></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-89111511147681030202012-05-03T22:00:00.000+01:002012-05-03T22:00:23.169+01:00On being filthySometimes, when I fancy getting off on something really, really hot and well written, I go and read @girlonthenet's blog (<a href="http://www.girlonthenet.com/" target="_blank">here</a>). You should too, as long as you aren't easily offended or at work. It is graphic and gratuitous, gloriously filthy and wonderfully eloquent. <br />
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Every time I read it (pausing between paragraphs to masturbate furiously) I am shocked. I love being a bit shocked. You know that feeling when someone whispers something really, really dirty in your ear and it makes you gasp and the shock and the fire course through your veins, and it burns in your cheeks and in your loins. (Good word that, LOINS). Makes you so ridiculously horny you think you might just lose it, for a second? That? I love that.<br />
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Anyway so I read it and I ponder how freeing it would be to be this anonymous girl who fucks all these guys (and girls) and who prefers to fuck than be in a relationship. Bloody good on her. Mixed in with my gratuitous shock and borrowed pleasure is admiration, envy, and perhaps even insecurity. I love sex, and I'm not a prude between (or on/tangled up with/tied up by) the sheets. But the notches on my bedpost are very few, despite being single for quite a number of years. I've never had a one night stand, although I did once have casual sex with a friend for a few months. I find myself wondering why this is, when I am filthy as hell, constantly rampantly horny, a proudly liberated feminist, and frankly really quite depraved. I find myself strangely incongruous. I have decided that this odd dichotomy is due to one or more or all of the following reasons:<br />
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1. I am actually just a prude and slightly cowardly. I really like sex but I'm too scared to go and try it with loads of other people. <br />
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2. I have a secret latent prejudice towards people I perceive as being promiscuous and I don't want to be like them. However I'm still uncontrollably horny.<br />
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3. I haven't had the opportunity. I've lived in the north east for the last five years where, forgive me guys, but men tend all to be out looking for a Chezza replica in the Bigg Market in a neon bodycon dress on and dyed orange skin. That's er, not really my style. <br />
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4. I can't enjoy sex unless I feel safe, and I'm more likely to feel safe with a guy if I'm in a relationship with him.<br />
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5. I'm just a hypocrite who isn't really a sex pest at all, just pretends to be one. (It's not that, I am a sex pest).<br />
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6. I'm horrifically physically unattractive but I have such a winning, wonderful personality that you have to get past this to be able to have sex with me. (It's not that either, neither of those are true). <br />
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However;<br />
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7. I have concluded that it doesn't really matter. Have I missed out? Maybe. But the MASSIVE BONUS of feminism, guys, is that I can be whoever I want to be, enjoy sex in whatever capacity I like, shag a lot of people, shag nobody, engage in mild S&M (who said that?), be as damn well depraved as I want within the safe confines of a monogamous relationship, and its really ok. No-one can tell me or you or anyone else how to have sex and who with and what we should be doing and how often. Least of all me. <br />
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I'm off for a wank now.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-80151349563112483392012-04-24T22:04:00.001+01:002012-04-26T17:51:15.009+01:00Body Image and Sex: guest blog for LYYBBecoming a woman is a bit like becoming celebrity, only more traumatic. This is either a celebrity in the sense of Kate Middleton (desirable and constantly imitated), or a celebrity a la Rupert Murdoch (loathed and constantly criticised), depending on what you look like and how popular you are. You go from being an uninteresting skinny child, more or less left to your own devices, to suddenly being incredibly fascinating to everyone the moment your tits and hips start to appear.<br />
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Three months ago you were just a kid, blissfully unaware of the storm awaiting you with the onset of puberty. Nobody cared if you had hairy legs or short fingernails, chubby ankles or even if you were a girl or not, but now all of a sudden everyone has an opinion on you. From your split ends to your unpainted toenails and everything in between, suddenly everyone you know (and plenty of people you don’t) wants to tell you exactly what’s wrong with you. Magazines are full of pictures and articles and adverts of how you should look, your mother is tutting at your stretch marks, your aunts tell you how easy it will be for you to give birth with those hips, boys at school shout obscenities about your vagina across the playground. It’s all very stressful.<br />
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Then there are the body changes. Boys – a bit of extra hair and a deeper voice do not a dramatic pubescent transformation make. Try growing a pair of boobs (it hurts) and going home from school one day to discover your pants are full of blood (yeah, that hurts too). I think it took me about ten years to get used to the shock of getting an unrecognisably new body in the space of about three months. Granted, the transformation isn’t as a dramatic or fast for many girls. I was envious of my peers’ girlish bodies with their tiny pert breasts and slender hips, but perhaps they were jealous of mine too. I couldn’t do the things I used to do, like climb trees and dance and run about, without my new body getting in the way. It was like it had betrayed me.<br />
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It is against a background of all this drama and bleeding and trauma and pressure and tits and image and advertising and probably some awkward lights-out fumbling teenage sex that we emerge into our twenties. It is unsurprising then, that girls carry some insecurity into our relationships, specifically surrounding our bodies and exposing them to the critical eyes of others. I’m certainly not saying that guys don’t have insecurities too, but there isn’t quite that same intense pressure that we are under, to be perfect. Once the clothes come off and presumably there’s been some snogging, so many of us have this nagging feeling that we aren’t up to scratch. That scar, that spot, that stretch mark, that bit that wobbles a bit too much, that bit that doesn’t wobble enough…it’s a minefield.<br />
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And it can stop us from actually enjoying the experience - inhibition about our bodies gets in the way of good sex. Don’t you wish you could just laugh about the whole thing, not care anymore? Not that it isn’t easier said than done, it took me years to get over feeling inhibited and self-conscious about being naked in front of a guy. I’m certainly not all there yet either. But I’ve learned a valuable lesson along the way too, in that how you feel about yourself is what others see. People pick up on our carefully hidden insecurities.<br />
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Once you get over worrying about your flaws, you’ll realise no-one else really cares about them either. I once asked a male friend about whether guys are actually bothered about a bit of extra wobble, prominent ribs or boobs that are slightly different sizes whilst in the throes of passion – he said this: "Woman, we’re so stoked to be having sex with you at all, we couldn’t care less or even notice. All we’re thinking is – this girl wants to have sex with me, she has tits and a fanny – awesome."<br />
Not delicately put, but you get the idea.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-55913417234731099982012-04-04T22:45:00.001+01:002012-04-26T17:50:33.269+01:00The real cost of capitalismI've been thinking about capitalism. I'm not an economist or an expert in politics. However I never let lack of knowledge about the subject stop me from forming an opinion, so I have come to the following conclusions:<br />
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1. Capitalism is driven by greed and selfishness. The "I need to have more shit than the other guy" mentality. This is so important that bankers earn gazillions (roughly) and nurses earn much less (ish).<br />
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2. We are a prosperous nation but wealth isn't shared. (See 1.) Everything is based on getting more money, having a strong economy. So we trade shit and pay investment bankers a fuckload of cash so that they make more money out of the money they already have. Sometimes this is quite good. Sometimes this is Well Bad. (See: Global Recession).<br />
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3. Because we made money before, this perpetuates the need to make even more. Then we make bad decisions and everyone gets freaked out and normal people stop spending money and no-one can pay back their outrageous debts (see Global Recession).<br />
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4. I'm not sure where I'm going with this. <br />
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5. Oh yeah. So because money is scarce and we've become dependent on making more of it, everything not of immediate value gets cut out so that we can all get on with Making More Money. <br />
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6. This includes the arts, classical music, sports, academia, space exploration and a Shit Load of other good stuff. <br />
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7. Creativity and exploration and talent start disappearing because they have no direct monetary value. (But they have huge non financial value.) For example if you want to get a book published these days you have to have a business plan and an agent and a target audience and a pitch and shit. When The Hobbit was published the publisher read it to his grandchildren to see if they liked it. They did so he went ahead and published one of the greatest books ever written. <br />
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8. Where am I going with this? Not sure. <br />
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9. Oh yeah. So all the wonderful things about being part of the human race get forgotten about under a pile of marketing and target audiences and investment banks and equity and Market value and sales pitches. <br />
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10. This is awfully sad and the true cost of capitalism is a generation of lost philosophers, writers, thinkers, artists, musicians and explorers.<br />
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To summarise: 1+2+3+4+5+6x(7+8+9)=10. <br />
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The end. <br />
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Footnote: I did little to no research for this, motherfuckers. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGu5JNel6c1UMXOKat8gKlpgFMeiRXehzUFFQsDdSl_hVZ9LJP_vzl431tDsjNcNR1Wz7FbtwC0zk2HNYPEJpi9gcDcdzA4vfYtywYNbn2Gq43X_1yadDqKpzw_EGhfUecElHndPygJUk/s640/blogger-image--330780999.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGu5JNel6c1UMXOKat8gKlpgFMeiRXehzUFFQsDdSl_hVZ9LJP_vzl431tDsjNcNR1Wz7FbtwC0zk2HNYPEJpi9gcDcdzA4vfYtywYNbn2Gq43X_1yadDqKpzw_EGhfUecElHndPygJUk/s640/blogger-image--330780999.jpg" /></a></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-69167445604643484382012-04-03T13:26:00.002+01:002012-04-03T16:38:46.677+01:00On having a vagina<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXif1vX48_zWXZmgMBshVQytXNHJCGOlBCg7VgU79PED1unAyjb1mwEF_wJoC3oqu6_MuZnWY-Hz7PggEGM94NsmUzqiopQzhI8BoH8pIb8mQ_fIOziUjkj209wROZ91jsYCmpI9GWnsc/s1600/girls.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXif1vX48_zWXZmgMBshVQytXNHJCGOlBCg7VgU79PED1unAyjb1mwEF_wJoC3oqu6_MuZnWY-Hz7PggEGM94NsmUzqiopQzhI8BoH8pIb8mQ_fIOziUjkj209wROZ91jsYCmpI9GWnsc/s1600/girls.bmp" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Today I read an excellent blog piece (which you can read <a href="http://bdpworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/dear-samantha-brick.html?m=1" target="_blank">here</a> if you want to) on Samantha Brick-gate, the column by Grazia and Daily Mail "writer", where her self delusion reaches previously unattained levels when she claims she is just too beautiful for any women to want to be friends with her. Sob sob, ahem, yes we're all sure that's why women don't like you, love. The author of the blog explains just why this is so hilarious far better than I could, but something she says in the final paragraph particularly stuck with me. </div><a name='more'></a><br />
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"...'the sisterhood'? Yukkk! There's no such thing, love! Having a vagina doesn't automatically make you part of some 'team'!"<br />
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Having a vagina doesn't make you part of some team. It just doesn't. Last week The Vagenda came under some trolling from some of the delightful Grazia-cum-Femail-cum-Heat magazine crew on twitter. Now if you don't know who The Vagenda are, go and find out right now. They systematically deconstruct the utter bile produced by the Grazis with supreme wit and brilliance (for example, see the Daily Mail's delightful piece of advertising revenue arse-kissing tripe on how "National Cleavage Day empowers us all because cleavage, ladies, helps us to "get ahead" in the workplace, since we aren't blessed with intelligence or ambition like men are). Anyway, so Polly Vernon, the sometime Grazia columnist and another self-professed "other women hate me because I'm skinny" (and presumably because you can't find anything more interesting to write about love) whinger had the following tweet-off with the Vagenda girls:<br />
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Polly: "Ladies of twitter, what dress size would you like to be?"<br />
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Vagenda: "We couldn't give a rats ass." <br />
<br />
Polly: "omg, you guys are so cool...I really love and respect the way you slag off other women...cos that's feminism..."<br />
<br />
Hang on a second. (Ignore for a moment that impressive overreaction - paranoid much?) How is it not feminist? Where is it written in the Woman Contract we all sign at birth that we have betrayed our sisterhood if we express anything other than gushing admiration for another member of our sex? We aren't all one big happy family of kitten-cuddling cupcake-loving (but not eating) underwear-clad slumber party-goers. Fuck that. Some women are great. Some are total twats. Just like some men are great and some are total twats. We're all the human race, "the guys" if you like. Aside from the fact that this is a spectacular double standard from Ms Vernon, who makes a living from helping her readers feel shit about themselves, there is nothing anti feminist about disliking some women and what they do or say or stand for, and talking about it. In fact, it's 'anti-feminist' to treat all women like we're one big sisterhood, and by extension, essentially all the same. It isn't "us against all the men". Having a vagina doesn't make me part of some team. Fuck that.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-55741488896806350182012-04-02T17:31:00.001+01:002012-04-03T16:34:58.565+01:00Book Review: The Hunger Games<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">When I was little I didn't want to be a ballerina, or a princess, or a train driver when I grew up. (Ok I wanted to be a train driver a bit.) Instead I wanted, as I solemnly told my parents at the age of five, to be an author. I still do. I read voraciously everything I could get my hands on, Edith Nesbitt, Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, CS Lewis, Madeleine L’Engle, Tolkein. I loved fantasy, adventure, peril and heroism, and I spent much of my childhood living half in the real world and half in the world of dragons and battles and princesses and rebellions and epic journeys. And for as long as I can remember I wrote stories and poems and songs. I dreamed of adventures and put them on paper.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a></div><a href="" name="more"></a><br />
<div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"></span>Then when I was twelve I decided it was time to write my first book. I had just read the Tripods Trilogy and watched Star Wars for the first time at the cinema (we didn’t have a TV). I was in love with the idea of adventure, being a heroine, saving the world against the odds, rebellion against an empire, a life of romance and danger. But I was fed up with great books about bravery and winning and adventures and rebellion where there were no girls, or if there were, they were passive and pathetic and had to be saved by the boys. I wanted to be the hero.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">So I feverishly wrote a story about a girl who starts a rebellion against an evil alien government, hiding out in a rebel camp in the mountains. I was the protagonist, surrounded by my harem of boys, all of whom were, naturally, deeply in love with me. But I was the hero, the strategist, the brave one, the general, the dreamer, the idealist, and hence far too busy for the amorous attentions of my pack of male assistants. I lived it and dreamed it, and although half of it was probably heavily plagiarised from an amalgamation of all my favourite adventure stories, it was the book I wanted to read. </span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">A year or so later I threw it away in embarrassment, terrified that anyone would find it. When I went into mainstream education (I was homeschooled until the age of 13) I became acutely aware that independent girls, brave girls, adventurous girls just aren’t popular. Boys don’t like girls like me, I discovered. They don’t want me to be like that. I need to be petite and feminine and passively flirtatious. So I buried my heroine as I imagine a lot of teenager girls do when they realise society doesn’t want them to read books about independent girls. It wants them to read Cosmo Girl and Glamour and not to worry our pretty heads about things that aren’t make up and dieting.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtufegroMF0wYpe2u0htUIVSxb38SNT5rA9gXb98-CS_T3TZpkYEX0OKb2B4eey4aZSits6b4PXR6vLnGMGxNyH-GNZMzgpEFWAp2V7zdrvaLpObdOySlIERRj8QBHgUdfNkXraGZkXa4/s1600/katniss.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtufegroMF0wYpe2u0htUIVSxb38SNT5rA9gXb98-CS_T3TZpkYEX0OKb2B4eey4aZSits6b4PXR6vLnGMGxNyH-GNZMzgpEFWAp2V7zdrvaLpObdOySlIERRj8QBHgUdfNkXraGZkXa4/s1600/katniss.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">But reading The Hunger Games brought that girl I tried to bury right back. It is the book I tried to write, the heroine I tried to create. It isn't perfect - at times I found it a little clumsy and some of the plot twists too convenient - but it is relentlessly addictive, so, so exciting and so anti-twilight anti-Cosmo Girl and downright anti-patriarchy it made me punch the air. It taps into that teenage feeling most of us have forgotten in the daily grind of commuting and reality TV, one of constant peril and breathless drama, a desire for romance and heroism and adventure.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">Although this also accounts in part for the success of the Twilight series, where an ordinary mundane life gives way to a world of adventure, peril, romance (and chiefly being desired) everything Bella Swan - passive, unremarkable, inept and helpless - embodies; Katniss Everdeen isn’t. She is brave, capable, a provider, independent and strong - and this is what girls really want (and need) more of in our heroines. I know everyone has compared the Hunger Games to Twilight but inevitably these very different protagonists will end up being two pretty prominent influences on our teenage girls.</span></div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzLvx3zNchZkRLPWtp6fpWCkjzrMf9TjaFEzR71fbEbr37fLrcDI5V_tLkwJ1rTLyphZrVNxwHB9P5omzPTkD1GXSAuLaXqV66Rkm3fJnyUmnRmv-Y6JXHIFoC1XEysk4p6uXQfkoIRQM/s1600/bella.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" dea="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzLvx3zNchZkRLPWtp6fpWCkjzrMf9TjaFEzR71fbEbr37fLrcDI5V_tLkwJ1rTLyphZrVNxwHB9P5omzPTkD1GXSAuLaXqV66Rkm3fJnyUmnRmv-Y6JXHIFoC1XEysk4p6uXQfkoIRQM/s1600/bella.jpg" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoPlainText" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt;"><span style="font-family: "Calibri", "sans-serif"; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">I wish I'd written this book. I wish I'd had it to read when I was a teenager. Our teenage girls (and boys) need more books with heroines who kick ass and take names. If I ever have teenage daughters Bella won't get through the front door, but Katniss will. </span></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-48334309303372887072012-03-22T15:22:00.000+00:002012-03-22T15:22:52.440+00:00Unilad<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">If you have been living under a rock or as a sack-wearing hermit, you may still be unaware of uniladgate, the scandal surrounding online ‘Lad’s’ mag for presumably sexually incompetent male university students that endorsed rape on the grounds that most go unreported so its worth a try if a girl is reluctant to give it up. Subsequent twitter storm saw the filth-ridden Unilad brigade shut down the website, sadly depriving a generation of Fosters-swilling, socially inept Soccer AM addicts from a communal wank-fest in their shared kitchen. This vile piece of internet mud is now back with us, bringing us such delights as “If you want the gash, spend the cash”. FYI unilads, neither wearing £10 cream Primark chinos nor referring to young women as “gash” will get you anywhere near one. It more or less cements the fact that you will not have sex with anything other than your hand for many, many years. Still, their online poll “are you glad we’re back” pleasingly showed that 60% of their visitors were not, and their advertising space remains woefully empty. We can be grateful for small mercies.</span></div><a name='more'></a><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">When I went to university in 2005 I experienced first hand some of the culture that surrounds this hotbed of filth. People tell you university, especially first year, is the best experience of your life. Mine wasn’t, and I don’t think I’m alone. It was lonely, miserable, disruptive, unsupportive and seemed to be about everything except what I went there for – to learn. I got a lot of my drinking, drug-taking and hardcore partying out of the way as a teenager, so by the time I went to university I was bored of it and wanted to get the most out of racking up six grand a year of debt. I wanted to meet interesting people who had read Marx and played in a folk band. I wanted to campaign for womens rights, to find study partners, to have long intellectual discussions over coffee until the small hours. I wanted my lecturers to inspire and take an interest in me, I wanted to take up a niche hobby, I wanted to leave with my mind broadened by the people I’d met and the experiences I’d had. Instead I found predominantly a generation of immature, surprisingly unintelligent fledgling daily mail readers who were solely interested in drinking as much and as often as humanely possible and shagging as many of their STI-ridden fellow students as they could manage in a night.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was in a flat in first year, within a block of other student accommodation flats. My room was small and prison-like, with a high window onto a courtyard. There was no noise insulation, rarely any university staff on site and nowhere to go in the surrounding area. We were effectively isolated from any outside influence. There were three girls in my flat, and a flat of six boys above us and six below. None of them were interested in what they were studying. None of them wanted to do anything except get drunk and have sex. Suffice it to say we did not hit it off well and I became a social pariah within a few weeks when I showed little interest in the aforementioned drinking/shagging. Somehow, I don’t know how it started, but I became the victim of a prolonged bullying campaign by these people. I had to start locking my room when I left the flat because I knew they would go in there and go through my stuff. Worst of all at least four times a week the boys from both flats would go out on a drinking spree and come home at 2 or 3am, so drunk they could hardly make it up the stairs. First they would stand in the courtyard screaming insults at my window until I woke up. Then they would march up the stairs chanting unrepeatable football songs at me, ‘hilariously’ changing the words to be aimed at my physical attributes. Then they would stand on the stairs my room backed onto and bang on the wall, sometimes for hours at a time, shouting and singing and laughing, all in the name of banter. I can’t repeat a lot of what they did, because its genuinely just too painful to relive. This went on for almost eight months. I became permanently unable to sleep, constantly exhausted, justifiably paranoid and terrified to bump into one of them in the kitchen or a corridor. I stayed out late and left early or hid all day. I reported the abuse several times to the accommodation staff who brushed it off as ‘just boys being boys’, or told me I must have dreamt it because no-one else reported any noise. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I often wonder now why I put up with it for so long. Why I didn’t try to do more. I felt ashamed, helpless, isolated. I felt embarrassed that at 20 years old I was being bullied like a schoolchild. I would have had grounds to sue the university for breach of their duty of care. The perpetrators would certainly have been thrown out if the extent of what they did was known. But that’s what happens to abuse victims – I am a confident, outspoken woman. I am intelligent and creative and funny, I am tolerant and interesting. But in those circumstances I was a shadow. I was told ‘boys will be boys’. I was made to feel like it was my problem for not taking their abuse in the spirit it was apparently meant – as ‘banter’. I was unable to help myself and no-one spoke out for me. Eventually one night, laughing uproariously, these ‘lads’ took a baseball bat to my wall in an attempt to get a reaction out of me and knocked a hole in the wall. They were reprimanded, and told to apologise. That was it. A week later we all moved out for the summer holidays and I never saw them again.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Quite why they hated me so much I will never know, and I hope the extremity of my situation is rare. But the culture that surrounds banter, ‘lads’, and often bullying is not rare and in the name of it, I suffered months of trauma and frequently considered suicide as a possible escape. Its behind me now and no doubt my attackers are out in the world somewhere, behind a screen, leaving comments on feminist blogs and Daily Telegraph articles about what women deserve and wanking over their miserable existences, but that culture where violence against women is trivialised, accepted and even celebrated prevails amongst a whole generation of young men. Thanks unilad. Great job making the world a better place and setting good examples for young men leaving home for the first time. Great banter.</span></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-31915536120161076432012-03-08T13:53:00.004+00:002012-03-13T17:31:30.346+00:00In defence of Cunt<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"> <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsqPtOdWhNAko8sMIFMUYs0HsFDZwUN1wdF893a38h55eWtFO4sYftIH7lK5oe5PhTYgslrH1Jw3qLqTTXbKzKgaVbc5rL3LMRaccdvnZR7LSn3aATf1PZT5qQtlThU2U0f1T_zpHqyAs/s1600/180px-Chaucer_ellesmere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsqPtOdWhNAko8sMIFMUYs0HsFDZwUN1wdF893a38h55eWtFO4sYftIH7lK5oe5PhTYgslrH1Jw3qLqTTXbKzKgaVbc5rL3LMRaccdvnZR7LSn3aATf1PZT5qQtlThU2U0f1T_zpHqyAs/s320/180px-Chaucer_ellesmere.jpg" width="246px" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Millers Tale - a 14th century use of cunt <a name='more'></a></td></tr>
</tbody></table> <span style="font-family: inherit;">Cunt.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s quite a word isn’t it? Your reaction to reading that probably ranged somewhere between outraged and amused. Recently some people I used to be really good friends with stumbled across my blog and were apparently mortally offended by my use of the word cunt.</span></div></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it’s just a word right? What about it is so awful? I know plenty of people who say fuck every other sentence but would never drop the c bomb. Why are people so deeply offended by it? Hello. It just means vagina. </span></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"></div></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The word sounds harsh and wonderfully powerful. It is loud and brave, it makes no apologies, it is feminist and it always solicits a reaction. Germaine Greer has said we are too precious about it, that "it is one of the few remaining words in the English language with a genuine power to shock."</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The origin of the word is circa 1230, from the London street Gropecunt Lane, (Gropecunt!) and was in frequent use between the middle ages until 18<sup>th</sup> century. It seems to have resurfaced into popular use on twitter, where I see it used several times a day. Everytime I use it I lose a follower or two. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The marvellous @bookcunt recently wrote a post which you can read </span><a href="http://bookcunt.blogspot.com/2012/01/on-bookcunt.html" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: inherit;">here</span></a><span style="font-family: inherit;"> in response to a deeply outraged person who couldn’t understand why anyone would use ‘that word’. To paraphrase Caitlin Moran in How To Be a Woman (READ IT. NOW), not many words are really powerful when used to describe lady parts - vagina is too clinical, ‘pussy’ is horribly Ron-Jeremy-bad-porn, ‘hole’ is horrific and sounds like things might live in there, even ‘twat’ a little insulting and far too unsexy. On the other hand ‘minge’ (which according to CM sounds like a disgruntled cat), ‘foof’ (awfully fun) and ‘hoohah’ are rather more palatable. But cunt is powerful. It should be used with reverence.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘In a culture where nearly everything female is still seen as squeam-inducing and/or weak…I love that cunt stands on its own, as the supreme, unvanquishable word…I like how shocked people are when I say cunt. It’s like I have a nuclear bomb in my pants, or a mad tiger, or a gun.’ </i>(Caitlin Moran, How To Be a Woman)<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Why is a word (that means vagina) quite so horrifying? The people I offended seem to have forgotten that they damaged my teenage mind by reading to me from Urban Dictionary such delights as Wolf Bagging, Merkins and Felching (if you don’t know don’t ask), so I am intrigued as to why they were so personally offended. A word doesn’t do anything to you. It doesn’t hurt or physically damage you. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wouldn’t use the word cunt at work – because unless you have a very relaxed office, swearing at work is unprofessional. I wouldn’t use it in front of my parents because they would be upset and I respect them enough not to upset them. They would have no choice about hearing it. If I say cunt on twitter, nothing is making you read it. So why would purely the use of the word, non-specifically, directed at no-one, used in a mildly amusing sense, offend some people enough to actually fall out with me?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Actually this sort of attitude is a kind of lexical snobbery. People fear cunt. Claiming it offends you is a way of asserting your moral superiority over the user. A sort of “my ears are too good for your words, you inferior being. I must let you know that such words are beneath me”. A sort of profanity classism. Fuck that. I have a cunt. Its fucking lovely. You wish you had one. You wish you had the guts to say it too. I’m glad cunt still has the power to shock. It has gravity and presence. People fear it. Long may it be so.</span></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-28646663816567599492012-03-07T13:17:00.002+00:002012-03-08T17:20:23.658+00:00Why we still need the NHS<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZH2DNzar2ZhoiXvQK9moZdCbOa6yW32YXNPKnonoXtNiN35EhDZ6WorvSNYIDO2oF7KbE-GeApO8HGQmn_R1AiEc6G442VgIkHmEductxPXDpMR9UoheB1AjPfdb30fi412PV4oJvUOY/s1600/ANDREW_LANSLEY2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="145px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZH2DNzar2ZhoiXvQK9moZdCbOa6yW32YXNPKnonoXtNiN35EhDZ6WorvSNYIDO2oF7KbE-GeApO8HGQmn_R1AiEc6G442VgIkHmEductxPXDpMR9UoheB1AjPfdb30fi412PV4oJvUOY/s320/ANDREW_LANSLEY2.JPG" width="320px" yda="true" /></a>A few days ago I was rushed to hospital by ambulance with a suspected pulmonary embolism. I was in intense pain, the GP I saw first was brilliant, and the paramedics were superb. They were calm but concerned, they took me seriously, they asked me what pain I was in and what I relief I wanted. They apologised for taking 45 minutes to reach me - they said things were very stretched. They drove me carefully but quickly, one of them held my hand as we went over speed bumps because it hurt so much.</div><a name='more'></a><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">When I got to hospital it all changed; I was left trying not to cry in pain in a cold corridor for two hours, the nurses barely noticed when I fainted on the floor, I was left in the corridor again without a bra on after my chest xray, utterly embarrassed, no-one asked me how I was feeling, if I needed more painkillers, if anyone was with me (they weren't). The nurses seemed immunised, barely connecting, I hardly saw a single doctor. Finally someone took me into a room, handed me a prescription, and told me it was most likely pneumonia or pleurisy but there were no beds so I'd have to give the wheelchair back and go home. That was that.</div><br />
I'm not going to start on how failed I felt by everyone in that hospital because I think its fairly obvious. Its also obvious that most of those failures came from lack of resources, time and actual human compassion. I left scared, confused, alone and off my tits on morphine. Fortunately a really kind colleague picked me up in her car and drove me home via the pharmacy. Fortunately I have a doctor friend who is going to come over in a few days and check that the pneumonia isn't getting worse.<br />
<br />
However despite all those failings, thanks very much Andrew Lansley I blame you, yes actually YOU PERSONALLY for my misery right now, there was still a health service, albeit stretched to breaking point, to go to that got me to hospital and at least checked that I wasn't immediately at death's door. That gave me an xray and blood tests and provided me with an ambulance to get there and gave me antibiotics without me having to worry about paying for them.<br />
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Because if there wasn't an NHS I would probably not have gone for fear of not being able to pay. I have a job that pays me enough to afford to eat and heat my house and pay for prescriptions but there are plenty of people who are not in that position. There are people who out of fear of not being able to pay extra for treatment that they might need, or who couldn't afford insurance, might just not go if we didn't have a free national health service.<br />
<br />
I believe this government has empire nostalgia; they think what will make Britain great again will be a return to our position as a world superpower. What they have forgotten is that what actually makes Britain great is our compassion as a nation - we take care of our society's most vulnerable and marginalised through our welfare system, we stand up for what is right abroad, we welcome asylum seekers who face persecution in their home countries. Despite a vocal daily mail contingent, most immigrants reported finding British people polite and welcoming after moving here. We aren't perfect but I believe what makes Britain great is our tolerance, compassion and inclusion. Why can't we just be a Sweden - content not to be a superpower, content just to make sure our population has shared wealth, a good health service, looks after its disabled and struggling members, a good minumum wage, a good quality of life, tolerance, inclusion and compassion for others? <br />
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The current government is doing its best to stamp that out. We mustn't let them.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-45704805324354115072012-02-20T18:22:00.002+00:002012-03-08T17:33:39.987+00:00Friendship<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVtNLQEzhEpko65DJBU2ACxYgm2NRCEiqIONy3bf6H2puKvjBrJSnRgknorks13ZNmD37qIlnLfsv5xP6vOWXJMVtlTi0zWZ7ssU7unJAAdQItOpFrLKfLUzc0lBIs-YXHL0mQdmg9HE/s1600/bestfriends.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; cssfloat: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNVtNLQEzhEpko65DJBU2ACxYgm2NRCEiqIONy3bf6H2puKvjBrJSnRgknorks13ZNmD37qIlnLfsv5xP6vOWXJMVtlTi0zWZ7ssU7unJAAdQItOpFrLKfLUzc0lBIs-YXHL0mQdmg9HE/s320/bestfriends.jpg" width="250px" yda="true" /></a>I am currently at my friend's house in London feeling extremely poorly. Its just a nasty cold, because I've been working too much and its winter and I haven't eaten enough vegetables lately. So while she is at work in the city, I fester miserably on her sofa playing on iPhone 4 and catching up with my blogs. While browsing on her computer, I stumbled across her anonymous blog, so after some internal wrangling I read it. <br />
<a name='more'></a><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Should I have read it? I don't know. I'm just like that, I always take the blue pill. (Or is it the red one?) 18 months ago my world fell apart and she was involved in a small way. She too was going through her own crisis so I don't blame her. Life is way too short to hold grudges against the people who love us, but I found out things about her that surprised me. I still think of her as the person in the world who knows me best, who I talk to about everything. She is the only person who really understands how mental and damaging my family are. She's insightful, wise and sometimes reserved. I love her very much. But for all my open, unrestrained affection she can be reserved. I often assume that like me, she bares her soul, tells me everything. Today reading the blog, I was reminded. Its fascinating to know a person this well and to discover that actually, you both do and don't.</div>She talks a lot about guys, obviously, which I actually find boring because I know a lot of it already. What I found more interesting was reading the bits about me, or rather the lack thereof. Its an anonymous blog, and she states in her first post that she wants to be honest and if she can't talk about this stuff she'll scream. She talks about her move to London from where we lived, and she mentions me once. She talks about things she never mentions to me. She talks about other people in ways she never lets on. I suddenly feel empty but fascinated.<br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">How well do we truly know our friends? I sit here feeling slightly silly, imbalanced, like I'm sharing too much with a person who doesn't share back. I've always thought of her as being someone who trusts easily and me the other way round, but I realise I've been wrong all along. She doesn't really trust anyone, she holds more of herself back than I do and she successfully shares just enough of the self she wants to share in order be to be enormously liked and trusted. I am not enormously liked and trusted. Others do not crave being close to me like they do with her. I need their trust and love more than she does. She is the truly self-dependent person I wish I was - reserved, retaining a whole part of her thoughts, feelings, personality, experiences and opinions solely for herself. I deepy admire this.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">How much can we ever know anyone? And more importantly, how can we ever trust them? Does it matter? What do you think? Anyway I'm unwell and feeling a little crazy. Over and out.</div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-91857615368806096482012-02-11T17:19:00.003+00:002012-03-08T17:47:56.759+00:00Dos and Donts of First Dates <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyXN7MKtKVfQS5ETW1xkNu-xcAusnpRWx99YWTUF76R3QQhIYrG66eLjTyx8pgeO2s-O8vdPuaeGOc-W8YhchYOOeCbA3nylgUo1F7mdRAeplEcecEeNYJgD8nD9ly6wC1RZa3yuU3t8I/s1600/first_date.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="190px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyXN7MKtKVfQS5ETW1xkNu-xcAusnpRWx99YWTUF76R3QQhIYrG66eLjTyx8pgeO2s-O8vdPuaeGOc-W8YhchYOOeCbA3nylgUo1F7mdRAeplEcecEeNYJgD8nD9ly6wC1RZa3yuU3t8I/s320/first_date.jpg" width="320px" yda="true" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Lets get so trashed we don't remember this tomorrow darling!"</td></tr>
</tbody></table> <div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">It's not like I've been on a lot of dates. But I see everything as a learning opportunity and that's really all that some of them were, at best. I haven't had one in a long time. (Or a date, HA. You're welcome.)But I'm going on a really important first date soon, and lying in bed this morning contemplating how I can achieve being as little of a total dick as possible, the following rules of first dates came to mind. </div><a name='more'></a><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">1. Pick a location with as few embarrassment factors as possible, especially if you are as monumentally clumsy as I am. I once knocked a table over on a date. There was simply not enough room for my ass in that cafe. Along with all those wine glasses. Which brings me to my next point:</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">2. Judge carefully the amount of alcohol you consume on a date. Either drink too little and avoid any disastrous accidents, see above, or horrifyingly candid personal revelations, or far too much which will mean you won't remember either the aforementioned verbal diarrhoea or the drunken stranger sex you will inevitably have afterwards. </div><br />
<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">3. Ask a lot of questions. Not only will you appear interesting and engaged, but you need to distract your date as much as possible while you nick his wallet.</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">4. Choose a venue with a decent bathroom. You will be able to inspect your beautiful pre-Raphaelite form in the mirror at half time, and decent bathrooms usually have decent sized windows from which you will need to escape head-first if your date turns out to have a caved in forehead or penchant for taxidermy. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">5. Take a method of self defence in your handbag. Not only will this prove useful once he has started driving you out to the woods with his balaclava and four bore shotgun in tow, but should it occur, you can always jab a meat fork into his thigh during a lapse in conversation. It makes for excellent post-date banter. </div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;"><br />
</div>6. Finally, take photos of your parents with you. You eventually have to be honest about what you'll probably look like in ten years time, and now is as good a time as any to break it to your new romantic interest that your mother wrestles bears before breakfast or that your father's nose hair has been inextricably entangled with his moustache since the early 1980s.<br />
<div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none; clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-6714955159214945932012-02-06T19:47:00.003+00:002012-03-08T18:02:16.527+00:00Why being a writer is hard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRm7ELCDB-hIeueTohKBYDVy8QkpYQoEBPUHeOCCB0mZdZ9Ibe0__H3v_dW7ocGEAJk7WEO2ybENUK3a-WlxZ9MdlL9F8OJsJfE35eG0SB7OHqJI318of-_cZrQwlhRuyj24UYap8fN70/s1600/letter_writi_24714_md.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRm7ELCDB-hIeueTohKBYDVy8QkpYQoEBPUHeOCCB0mZdZ9Ibe0__H3v_dW7ocGEAJk7WEO2ybENUK3a-WlxZ9MdlL9F8OJsJfE35eG0SB7OHqJI318of-_cZrQwlhRuyj24UYap8fN70/s200/letter_writi_24714_md.gif" width="200px" yda="true" /></a></div><div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">Being a writer is not easy, in and of itself. First comes the question - who can categorise themselves as a writer? Do you have to be paid for it? Published? Read? Write with a certain regularity? Ability? In one sense I suppose we are all writers. But I am going to go ahead and work under the premise that writers are those of us who write for an audience.</div><a name='more'></a><br />
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<div style="border-bottom: medium none; border-left: medium none; border-right: medium none; border-top: medium none;">The hardest thing to do is say something original in an original way. That's what we're all doing isn't it? Trying to say something no-one has said before, in a way that no-one has managed to say it. Originality is the holy grail of writing. How many times have you written a sentence and deleted it because it's a cliché or you think you read it somewhere already? </div><br />
The truly unique is truly rare. Think about the interesting blogs and articles you read. They all have some unusual perspective or niche interest or style. We are all striving to be unique. It begs the question if any of us has had a single original thought in our lives at all. Or is everything we think and say a recycling of something someone else has thought and read? If that is the case, it becomes harder for humanity to be original as time goes by. Psychologists believe we never truly forget anything we see, hear, read, or experience. Everything is filed neatly somewhere in the unimaginably complex storehouse of the mind, most of it irretrievable but still definitely in there. <br />
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That is what is hard about being a writer. Its like standing in a crowded room filled with people all shouting words and hoping ours are different, interesting, worth hearing.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-28738334123901870482012-02-04T11:51:00.002+00:002012-03-02T13:03:06.336+00:00How not to have bad sex - vol 2So I told you I'd write a post about my friend who is sleeping with a boy who wears skirts. <br />
I would like to add that at the time when she told me, I was sleeping with a boy who has a life-size Alexandr the Meercat tattoo on his leg which he got for a bet, so despite my screeches of laughter, I didn't really have a leg to stand on. So to speak.<br />
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Anyway. My friend, who we shall call Steph for reasons of anonymity and her not having an aneurism when she reads this, had recently come out of a relationship with her first serious boyfriend. They'd been together since university, and consequently was the only guy she'd ever danced the horizontal tango with. She was starting to entertain the idea of other guys and a safe starter bet seemed to be a guy she met at Oxford, a highly intelligent nutter called David who described himself as "sex positive". This basically means you get fuck whoever you want whenever and wherever takes your fancy. So pretty much an excuse to be a total whorebag but make it into a social movement. <br />
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They had a lot of highly descriptive virtual sex on Facebook chat which she breathlessly described as being intense and beautiful but seemed to me to be extremely long-winded. (Example: "I want to take your top off but I'm nervous, so I just hold your hand and gaze deeply into your eyes" ad Infinitim). If it takes you six hours to achieve orgasm it's taking too long. Sorry Sting.<br />
<br />
At the time I was engaging in frequent, equally virtual but rather quicker text coitus with someone I usually refer to as "hot tattooed guy" on twitter. Steph and I lived together at the time and so frequent became our bleary eyed breakfast table stories of spending the previous night engaged in some kind of technologically foreplay that we began to refer to these as "HTS" (hot text sex) "HFS" (hot Facebook sex), "HPS" (hot phone sex, etc). <br />
<br />
Anyway Steph decided it was time to go and visit David at Oxford and sample the real thing. She'd met him before several times and she was quite happy to spend a weekend with him and visit other university friends. So I wished her well, told her to pack plenty of condoms and not do anything she didnt want to do.<br />
<br />
When she got back a few days later, she came straight into my room and sat on my bed.<br />
"So how was it?" I demanded immediately. She made a funny face and I could tell she was holding something in. <br />
"Um yeah it was great, I had a really good time. We did loads of fun stuff around Oxford and went out partying last night." <br />
"Whatever, did you get some?!" <br />
"Erm yeah, we did, it was really amazing (I mean he always made out he had a huge cock but WOW) but uh, afterwards we got up and started to get dressed and he um...put a skirt on."<br />
<br />
What. <br />
<br />
"A skirt? What kind of skirt??"<br />
"You know, just a normal, knee length denim skirt. And socks."<br />
"A skirt??!"<br />
"Yeah...he said it's because he finds them comfortable and refuses to be bound by social conventions."<br />
"Well what happened next?"<br />
"Then we went out for dinner. Me in a skirt. Him in a skirt."<br />
<br />
Gents. No matter how good the sex is, how big your knob is or how many orgasms you give her, if you put on a skirt afterwards, it renders the whole experience a little obsolete. Although she is still sleeping with him from time to time so it can't have been too off-putting, but I suspect she is just tolerant. And horny. <br />
<br />
Here endeth today's lesson.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-44582816626817906312012-01-28T20:38:00.002+00:002012-03-02T13:03:29.400+00:00Dates I have known vol 3: Metal GuyI know I said I'd blog about my friend who is sleeping with a boy who wears skirts, which I will get around to, but first I want to tell you the story of my first ever date. <br />
It was with Metal Guy. I'd completely forgotten this whole experience until my new friend Mike started talking about balaclavas and woods. This may be the reason why I wanted to block it out. <br />
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Anyway so I was 15, young, a little naive, very awkward, and I'd recently started getting a bit wild and partying with older guys. I was hanging out with a group of people who were at uni, much older, into music I'd never heard, drinking and smoking shit I'd never seen. School was the most fucking awful experience of my life and I was just getting used to having friends and doing teenage stuff. One of the guys, who was the ring leader of our little gang, decided to sort of adopt me. He introduced me to weed and (for some unknown reason) poppers, to getting drunk outdoors, to heavy metal which I tried and failed to like, and to lots of people who seemed inherently to like me just because he did. Metal guy wanted to be a famous metal guitarist.<br />
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One day he told me he wanted to take me out somewhere. Now I grew up in a large fen-edge village, a few miles outside a city but definitely in the country. He told me he wanted to go on a walk so I said that would be ok but I didn't really trust him because he was what my mother calls a 'winder'. <br />
<br />
So we went on a walk in the woods at night. "STRANGER DANGER!" I hear you quite rightly cry. These woods ended up being one of our regular haunts as a group, where we would gather and drink and play music and dance around a fire all night and cop off with each other to bed in the morning. I came to know them very well. But at 15, I didn't. We walked through the woods and talked about things I no longer remember, and looked up at the stars and held hands. <br />
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All of a sudden he got a wicked look on his face, said "I'll be right back" and promptly scampered away into the woods in the dark. What? I stood staring into the blackness. Fuck, I thought. I'm going to end up as front page news here. I figured it was better to keep moving than sit on a log waiting to be eaten by a bear or axe-murdered by a psychopath. So I wandered through the wood, strangely calm, wondering where my strange non-date non-boyfriend had gone to. About ten minutes after wandering in a circle clutching my house keys for defence against the bears, I almost had a spontaneous aneurism when he jumped out at me from behind a tree, roaring comedically. Obviously I screamed my head off and kicked him in the balls, which would have been a very sensible thing to do to had he been a bear or axe murderer, but instead he emitted a low moan and stumbled off into the darkness. <br />
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I ran after him squealing apologies and found him collapsed, face down on the ground, not moving. "James I'm so sorry!" I howled. He didn't move. "James?" I prodded him. He didn't move. I decided he must be fucking with me. "Come on James get up, I know you're fine." <br />
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Ten more minutes of this and I started to panic. He was a tall muscular man and I couldnt shift him. What if he was dead? I'd go to jail for killing my first date by whacking him in the nuts. Manslaughter surely? I saw myself sitting in the dock pleading my case. "Please your honour, I thought he was a bear!"<br />
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I decided it was time to phone 999, and informed his inert form of this. I was starting to shit myself that I'd done him some serious damage. I took my phone out of my pocket and began to dial. <br />
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He leapt from the ground and laughing uproariously, tackled me sideways, throwing me off balance onto a log. (Why do boys always think this shit's funny?)<br />
<br />
I could have happily killed him. I didn't, but it was a while before I went anywhere with him again. We went out for a few months after that. He now lives in New Orleans, is constantly off his tits on crystal meth, and works in a heavy metal bar.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-19225087656018000232012-01-26T15:22:00.004+00:002012-03-13T13:09:35.861+00:00What Bob Marley told me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52pZ4SJfgA-UwoffK4LwFXf_ClRvEyMcMvozEg5-NTCg2F6YXFgjVBLWPuAfpxGwUWsg6D69SDyB7bUovsydFq8H2uV22LyKbPPnOvScNdt3VCVZMh8Pb38sbPRng_YB3ZTwXK7RSFGM/s1600/rainy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi52pZ4SJfgA-UwoffK4LwFXf_ClRvEyMcMvozEg5-NTCg2F6YXFgjVBLWPuAfpxGwUWsg6D69SDyB7bUovsydFq8H2uV22LyKbPPnOvScNdt3VCVZMh8Pb38sbPRng_YB3ZTwXK7RSFGM/s1600/rainy.jpg" /></a></div>Have you ever had one of those experiences where you feel like the universe is speaking directly to you? I just did, today. I was sitting in a coffee shop and I looked up as someone came in, and got that feeling you do when you miss the step in the dark. I thought for a horrible second it was my ex boyfriend who I was horribly in love with then horribly heartbroken by. (I might have mentioned him, just once or twice). It wasn't him, but there was something about this man's face that really reminded me of him. <br />
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His bigness and the way his eyes always looked sad. I thought about what I would have done if it had been him. He promised we would stay friends after I forgave him for the horrible heartbreaking break up and then I never heard from him again. It's not like I'm still in love with him, I'm not. I do feel sad about the potential we had and how it ended, how what he did seemed to make a huge mockery of all the beautiful moments we had together. But there is something about a face isn't there? That makes you temporarily insane and brings back every emotion you ever attached to that face. <br />
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I remembered how after my only other major adult relationship with a man I worked with, which had ended in an oddly similar way, I had to see his face all the time. At first it was like experiencing the break up all over again every day, but then obviously I began to associate him with how life was now and it changed.<br />
<br />
Anyway so when I'd finished my cup of tea and walked out, it was bucketing down with rain and I stood in it for a second thinking. It was like, I knew it was time to move on. I had already decided after the disastrous end to last year to move away, start afresh and have some new adventures, but this just cemented it. It's time, the rain said. Enough now. Enough. And, I realise this sounds both unlikely and corny, but, at that very second, a busker's words floated through puddles and umbrellas. <br />
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"In this bright future you can forget your past, so dry your tears I say, everything's gonna be alright."Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-91344089437773046322012-01-24T20:24:00.003+00:002012-03-13T13:11:50.913+00:00A serious blog post about boobs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5gwfEXxGang-q0bkAwcfGHKlSdI7UBLouVRlipC_zQCqUe2MYOZ5orLuf9p_M8O7AnnupJSqkaovIGkD985HjrObrGRyKBzkUg0vp_k69QnIHT8yXaE6vFQdqmvzUQzmBZ0yyue6LPeE/s1600/boobs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; cssfloat: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img aea="true" border="0" height="200px" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5gwfEXxGang-q0bkAwcfGHKlSdI7UBLouVRlipC_zQCqUe2MYOZ5orLuf9p_M8O7AnnupJSqkaovIGkD985HjrObrGRyKBzkUg0vp_k69QnIHT8yXaE6vFQdqmvzUQzmBZ0yyue6LPeE/s200/boobs.jpg" width="143px" /></a></div>We all like boobs. Some of us are lucky enough to have them. <br />
This one is for the girls though, because I have lately noticed an alarmingly large number of women leaping around the gym/countryside with breasts swinging wildly asunder and I feel I must tell you all something Very Important.<br />
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Girls. When you exercise, and I don't just mean high impact stuff like horseriding or running, I mean pilates and netball and zumba and shit like that too, please follow this one almighty important unbreakable rule. <br />
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Wear. A. Sports. Bra. <br />
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You have a ligament that runs across the top of your tit called your Coopers ligament. It keeps your boobs pert and pretty and just the way you want them to be. The nature of ligaments, as those of you who have suffered such injuries will know, is that once stretched, they cannot be unstretched. (They can be shortened with surgery but no-one wants that.) Once you have stretched your Coopers ligament, IT WILL BE STRETCHED FOREVER. This means your boobs will lose their natural bouncy support and start to flop and sag. None of us want that. Not just G cups either, it also applies to nice little B handfuls too. Sorry. It's science and shit. <br />
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So for this reason, firstly please please please always wear a well-fitting bra. It will have the added benefit of fitting, looking hot and being comfortable. (Take this from me, as a 34F I wore a 36D for far too long in my teenage years.)<br />
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And even more importantly, when leaping around the village hall like a young gazelle to the Latino beats of Las Ketchup and the encouragement screeches of a tiny over-enthusiastic perma-tanned fitness instructor, please make sure you're wearing a decent sports bra. Preferably one that fits. (You will know, because when you try it on, jump up and down in the changing room and they won't move an inch). <br />
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Trust me, you will thank yourself when you're 80. That's all from me. Thank you and goodnight. <br />
<br />
http://m.totallyliving.co.uk/fitness/2011/05/05/top-reasons-why-you-should-be-wearing-sports-Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-28069841803927999122012-01-23T16:53:00.001+00:002012-02-08T17:43:31.184+00:00Ode to an iPhone 4Shall I compare thee to a MacBook pro?<br />
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Thou art more shiny and more versatile.<br />
Rough winds did shake the signal on my blackberry<br />
Whose 18 month lease had too long a date.<br />
Sometimes too pricey the monthly bill appears<br />
And oft my overdraft's upper limit stretched<br />
Fair to say the iPad's beauty is beyond repeal<br />
And samsung doth thy 4g software steal<br />
But thy eternal backlight shall not fade<br />
(Unless I dropest thou in the sink)<br />
Nor shall i back to nokia turn<br />
(Though I may forsake thee for an iPhone 5)<br />
<br />
But so long as men can text or twitter sidebar see<br />
So long lives apple, Steve Jobs' legacy gives software updates to thee.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-31632680203711312292012-01-22T20:31:00.001+00:002012-03-17T16:50:30.514+00:00Why I am a runnerWhen god made me, it was not running he had primarily in mind. Belly dancing, making love, having children, ridings horses, maybe even power gymnastics, yes. Athletics - not so much. I found sport at school indescribably tortuous, where leggy pre-adolescent peers (I hit puberty unreasonably early) sailed past me in both the literal and figurative sense. I was a bookworm, and sport, the domain of the male or the thin, was a world from which I was definitely excluded, and those who were in it let me know that. My failings in these areas I knew let others down too, on the hockey pitch or the circuit. So I welcomed with open arms the day I left school and turned my back on the sports field and the athletics track forever.<br />
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When I was in my third year of university, the crippling depression that had been hanging over me for most of my life finally gripped me in its icy fingers and pulled me under. I read things about depression all the time, but they never tell you what it actually feels like. Let me tell you. To me, it feels like slow, unending drowning. It is waking up in the morning and clinging to the first few seconds when you've forgotten anything is wrong, and the wave of despair when you remember everything is so wrong it can never be right again. It is rocking in the corner sobbing because the world looks so distorted by your own misery and hopelessness you don't recognise it. It is feeling utterly isolated from humanity and like eating anything or putting one foot in front of the other is physically impossible. Some days it is the cold absence of any feeling other than nausea. It is staring helplessly unable to communicate all this to the person telling you to pull yourself together. <br />
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I had episodes throughout the year, much of which I don't remember. I got a degree. I got a temp job which turned into a longer job which turned into a highly pressured, exciting full time job. Somehow from somewhere I pulled the ability to perform well at work. The depression subsided, then my job ended when we lost the campaign we were working to win, and I was pushed into an admin job. The depression found room to come back. I was angry and hopeless by turn, I would have regular crying breaks at work where I would sit in a bathroom cubicle and cry silently pools of tears onto the floor which threatened to drown me, like Alice. I had a tumultuous and destructive relationship. It ended, I found myself almost friendless and almost homeless, I had a miscarriage, I hit rock bottom.<br />
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I saw a doctor and she made me come back to see her twice a week, just to talk and talk. She prescribed me some medication. I was still frequently considering knocking at deaths door, begging for relief. One day for no particular reason I got onto the dreaded treadmill at the gym and ran for four minutes. It didn't feel nice. Later that week I ran six. Then ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Every extra minute became a milestone, a victory. I would get to the gym, put my headphones in, climb onto the treadmill and run away from my head. It was painful, it was hard. Like I said, I am not built for running. More than that, I would notice every day that my mood was better, that I felt almost happy sometimes for hours after running. <br />
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Gradually I persevered and week after week, month after month, the number went up until I was running for an hour at a time. Its totally addictive - once you start beating yourself, you have to do it again, and again, and again. You dream about the treadmill. You start looking at long, flat roads wistfully. It's weird. An hour probably doesn't seem that impressive to some of you. But to me it sounds like a hundred miles. Because I couldn't run five minutes when I started. Because it gave me some space from the screaming agony of my mind. Because on that treadmill I am another person - I am an athlete. <br />
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It gave me a reason to live, to get back on that treadmill and chase the miles, to feel the comforting beat of my feet on the rubber, the glorious ache in my thighs, the sweat that would run down my neck and the steady pump of my heart telling me I was still alive. I feel a great affection for my imperfect body at this point, for its strength and its endurance. I feel the rush of endorphins, of adrenaline, I feel my hear soar and take flight.<br />
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That's why I'm a runner. I'm not very fast or particularly good at it. But I never give up, I never compare myself and I never fail to win. Because every day I am still here, I'm still fighting for my life. Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-7797212815099170772012-01-19T13:56:00.003+00:002012-03-02T13:04:37.518+00:00How to cure your insomniaI spent years suffering from really bad insomnia, particularly as a student.<br />
It was horrible. You have not known loneliness if you haven't lain awake, night after night, sweating, dreaming of sleep, getting up again and again and again to try and convince your body it wants to go to bed. Watching the sun rise can be beautiful, but not under the circumstances of a) having been at work for two hours already or b) having seen it set recently without any sleep in-between. It is utterly isolating, and you find yourself spending night after night alternately masturbating then watching air disaster footage on YouTube. <br />
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Aside from the isolation, the physical and mental side effects of sleeping too little are numerous and unpleasant, paranoia, depression, and chronic fatigue being just a few. My lifestyle was not conducive to sleeping well at uni; I did English Lit and in my final year it was all research and writing my thesis, so I spent most of my time sitting in bed writing and reading. Living alone, having depression, being isolated from people was like one of those far side cartoons with the caption "Trouble brewing". <br />
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After years of suffering, sometimes for weeks at a time, I managed to cure my insomnia. It took a couple of years of trying stuff out, making radical life changes and reading a lot about it on the Internet, but I got there, and here are the things that worked for me:<br />
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1. Sort your bedroom out. It should be the calmest place you can imagine, no technology, no work, no distractions. Just for sleeping and sex. Invest in amazing bedding and good lighting. Think of it as your personal retreat. Don't spend all day in there. Make sure it's dark enough, cool enough, warm enough, smells good, looks good.<br />
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2. Stick to the tightest sleep routine you can. Get up at the same time every morning and go to bed at the same time every night. Don't nap during the day. Be strict. Be ruthless. <br />
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3. Dont drink caffeine after midday. And don't drink alcohol at all until your sleep is sorted. Sorry. Wine doesn't help. I swear by Clipper Sleep Tea before bed. It tastes yummy and makes me really sleepy. <br />
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4. Do exercise during the day (but not just before bed.) The problem with a non physical job/course is that it leaves your brain but not your body exhausted at the end of the day. Exercise will take care of that. It also combats stress and depression which is good news for everyone.<br />
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5. At the end of every day make a list of whatever's on your mind - whether it's things you have to do, things you're worried about, etc - as this will help convince your unconscious mind that it's ok to sleep now. <br />
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6. Learn to meditate. Five minutes of this before bed will work wonders - sit cross legged on your bed, close your eyes and breathe slowly and deeply. Concentrate on your breath going in and out. Everytime your mind wanders, consciously pull your thoughts back to your breathing again. It gets easier the more you do it and relaxes you wonderfully. <br />
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7. If there are noise distractions where you sleep, like the neighbours, a road, the dog, you could try earplugs if you like total silence. I like listening to the sound of the rain or wind or the sea so I got some apps that play nature sounds. Naturespace and Sleep Machine are the best. Whatever works for you.<br />
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8. I find it helpful to have my surroundings as tidy as possible. I'm not naturally tidy but I have noticed that when the washing up is done and my house is ordered, sleep comes much easier.<br />
9. I'm not an advocate of chemically induced sleep (not that I'm the fount of all knowledge obviously) so I've not used sleeping pills and people I know who have don't recommend them. What I did find quite useful was Bach's sleep remedy which you can buy in Boots for about a tenner. I dunno if it just works as a placebo but it helped me, and anyway it tastes like flowers. <br />
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10. And finally, if your sleep starts to slip again, come back to the list.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-88848500799830723042012-01-17T17:55:00.002+00:002012-03-02T13:05:02.923+00:00How not to have bad sexI've been fortunate not to have had much bad sex in my life. I have avoided one night stands and my bedpost notches are surprisingly few. (I'm picky, what can I say.) However I recently had some spectacularly bad sex, so bad that I feel I need to warn you all how not to have sex that bad. Ever. <br />
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It was with a guy I used to date and now sleep with occasionally when we see each other. This was the first time we'd seen each other since my horrible painful breakup and I was looking forward to some light-hearted horizontal stress relief. We sat in bed and played backgammon first, which is an internationally recognised foreplay technique, then did the whole "Oo I'm so tired, let's go to sleep thing". <br />
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Anyway so there was some actual foreplay (not enough, which was probably a clue that we should have just stopped there) then the fucking itself began. Now, I'd like it on record before I continue that when the following happened, he was actually, y'know, inside me, and I was still only about two months away from a horrible painful breakup with a man that I was trying to forget but was probably still a bit in love with. <br />
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Now I like to talk dirty during sex, so we were, and then mid-thrust he said this:<br />
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"Oo you dirty girl, I can't believe you haven't had sex since [insert name of ex boyfriend here]."<br />
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Erm.<br />
<br />
What?<br />
<br />
Men, just in case you were wondering, mentioning your companion's heartbreaker ex DURING sex is not an aphrodisiac. Never ever do it.<br />
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I went from 'totally in the mood' to 'never want to have sex again ever' in the space of about two and a half seconds. It ended there.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-40669587371613982262012-01-12T15:50:00.001+00:002012-02-08T17:44:31.213+00:00Dates I Have Known: vol 2<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Soldier guy</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I met Soldier Guy on a free dating website, the clientele of which tend to be less...washed.</span><br />
<a name='more'></a> He was the only person who could spell his own name correctly and didn’t have a picture of himself in his bathroom showing off his skinny naked torso and chav buzzcut, and was therefore the only guy I went on a date with from this particular website. He also didn’t called me ‘babes’, which was a pleasant change from the usual message. He was a soon-to-be ex-soldier who wanted to be a paramedic. Nice, I thought.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I met Soldier Guy after work one day for a drink in a bar by the station (quick getaway if necc). He was larger than life, with enormous ham-like hands, a bewildered childish grin permanently etched on his face and huge, battering ram shoulders. He made Builder Guy look small and delicate. He made me look child-sized, which was quite pleasing. He was very smiley, very exciteable, very willing to buy me drinks. We actually got on very well, he was funny and very talkative, probably not the sharpest tool in the shed but immediately likeable. We went for tapas and I managed to look incredibly intelligent when I had an entire conversation with the restaurant owner in Spanish. I think this was the highlight of my dating life so far.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">On the way back to the station he grasped my hand in his firmly and announced his intention to kiss me. We were down a dark alleyway and he was about four times my size so I squeaked assent and he picked me up, like Grawp the giant with Hermione in the Forbidden Forest, and kissed me for a good five minutes. It was an excellent kiss. He seemed very pleased with himself. “I like kissing” he announced, happily. He put me down and took me to the station.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We had another date a week later which he forgot to turn up to. I have a two strikes policy so I agreed to go on another one; I had enjoyed our last and he was relatively contrite. He seemed refreshingly straightforward and I have a thing for enormous men who take control. (Not a euphemism. Ok yes, a euphemism.) So we went out again – he was chiefly keen to kiss me as much as possible and seemed to have forgotten most of what I told him about me on our last date. He then spent the remainder of our time together staring around wildly looking for invisible flies and insisting we stopped nowhere for longer than three minutes (difficult when you have a coffee in hand). He also ranted excessively about his new non-soldiering job where he wandered around Sunderland high street (a place you would really only want to go should you wish to place a bet or buy something from Greggs) trying to sell insurance to unsuspecting passers-by. He was becoming less attractive by the minute. I concluded that he had severe ADHD. It was like being on a date with an overgrown four year old.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I have realised that I am attracted to enormous men (not a euphemism. Ok yes, a euphemism) physically, and I assume that they are also enormous on the inside (not a euphem- you get the idea). What I mean by this is that because they are physically large I expect them to be brave, and protective, and mature, and wise. This continually turns out not to be the case. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">We did a bit more kissing then arranged a further date. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;">I never heard from him again, but by that time I had met The Ex. </span></div>Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-61491598125412602372012-01-10T11:44:00.001+00:002012-02-08T17:44:46.619+00:00Dates I have known: vol 1I met my last boyfriend online dating. Until he went a bit nuts and broke my heart, it was a wonderful relationship. But I don't want to tell you about that - I'd much rather tell you about all the dates I had before I met him.<br />
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Online dating, if you've never done it, is a strange world, especially amongst the young (I think it's different for older people or divorcees, they have less shame and are more willing to pimp themselves out for a shag). Everyone is quite embarrassed about being there and a lot of the guys who do it seem to be looking for such a specific girl that they are unwilling to speak to anyone who isn't, for example, 5:4, exactly 8 stone, brunette, working in marketing, born in June under a full moon and an avid kite boarder. (I made that up). Anyway I did go on a few dates before I met Mental Guy and here are the stories of some of them.<br />
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Date one - Builder Guy <br />
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Builder guy is from Cumbria, he plays rugby and about as different to my last boyfriend as he could be. We meet in a town called Hexham between Newcastle and Carlisle, in a coffee shop. Builder Guy is very large and has a permanently grubby look about him even when he's clean. (It's ok, I quite like that). I cannot express to you how out of place Builder Guy looked in that coffee shop. He knocks over chairs, he drops a cup, he spills tea. This is good for me as I am prolifically clumsy, thus I have never felt so feminine or graceful. We talk, a lot. I understand approximately 20% of what he says.<br />
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Despite this we do get on really well. About 4pm I tell him I need to go as I'm heading into the wilds of Northumberland to stay with family who live on a farm there. Builder Guy offers to give me a lift and before I know it, I'm sitting in a white van surrounded by tools heading into the hills. (Ladies, this is not advisable for your first date with a stranger. Recounting this to my best friend later had her shrieking "STRANGER DANGER!!" at me in horrified tones.)<br />
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Anyway, I feel pretty safe with Builder Guy, and we eventually find ourselves at the farm. I have a very large, loud, opinionated family. My cousin has a firearms license. Two of my brothers, all four of my cousins, two of my sisters in law and my aunt and uncle all happen to be at the farm at the time, and when we pull up they are all peering at us out of the kitchen window. I wonder briefly whether they have the guns to hand. <br />
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Builder Guy ends up coming in and meeting my family, which is awkward for two reasons. Firstly because I barely know him, and the fascinated eyes of half of my large and frankly terrifying family are boring into us with barely concealed glee. Secondly, I am very attracted to Builder Guy and half an hour of intense sexual tension in his van in a potentially risky situation has left my loins on fire and my knickers completely soaking. This is not what you want when on your first date and suddenly find yourself surrounded by family members.<br />
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Eventually, to my enormous relief, because it is starting to snow in earnest, Builder Guy has to leave to drive back to Cumbria. I take him to the back door where we politely shake hands. He leans in and kisses me hard, digging his fingers into my waist. Then he turns around and gets back into his van. I have to take a moment before I go back into the house to a roomful of smirks and a barrage of questions. <br />
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Builder Guy texts me later to say he's home, had a good time and would I like a hand with moving house next week? We're still friends. <br />
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Next week - Soldier Guy.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5249124238909685515.post-73059149721427027982012-01-02T21:16:00.001+00:002012-02-08T17:45:08.142+00:00A short story about datingA good friend of mine, let us call her Sarah, has lately recovered from a broken heart (in fact, everyone I know seems to be recovering from a broken heart these days) and she is now venturing back into the world of dating. <br />
<a name='more'></a>Dating. Us Brits don't really do dating do we? Its very much an American thing. We're amateurs. We like the idea of dating but none of us really know how. We're awkward, we pretend it's not really a date, we avoid talking about why we're there, we get drunk, and either hop into bed or politely part ways.<br />
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Sarah met a guy in a cafe. He’s a waiter, he flirted, she flirted, he asked for her number, she gave it to him, texted back within a sensible, non-desperate time period, arranged to go out to dinner with him, made herself look pretty. When he came round, he came in, had a glass of wine, they talked, then he got naked and demanded a blow job. Naked! Demanding oral sex! Crazy naked blowjob man in her lounge! <br />
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Sarah is a girl with her own issues, but she’s trying to function and move on, and she succeeds most of the time (other than a rather odd dysfunctional friendship with her ex, the Heart Breaker himself, who calls her several times a day to discuss a funny cloud he just saw or some such nonsense, but doesn’t want to be with her, its just because he doesn’t have any other friends)...anyway for better or worse Sarah decides to give Crazy Naked Man what he wants, (she’s a liberated woman, right? she’s comfortable with herself and she likes sex) so she does, and he finishes, puts his clothes on, says “I have a girlfriend so we can’t do anything else” so she’s like, annoyed, obviously, but she says “ok well, how about we be friends?” and he says “no thanks I have enough friends”, and leaves.<br />
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We don't 'do' dating. We do random hook-ups which may or may not lead to more hook-ups, which may or may not lead to a relationship. Do you know what Sarah said to me at the end of this sad and sordid tale? She said “I was actually relieved, glad that it was all over in a few hours. Because that’s what all relationships boil down to, whether they last three hours, three months or three years. You withhold sex for as long as possible, because you’re essentially bribing him to get to know you in the hope that he’ll stay, then you give him what he wants, til eventually he’s satisfied and then feels free to act like a complete twat, puts his clothes on and leaves.”<br />
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Now there may have been some pointers that he wasn't a Good Sort - the inviting himself in, getting naked and asking for oral sex would be an indication - and I don't think hopping into bed together on date 1 was necessarily an ideal start to a relationship, so this is an extreme example. But it was her attitude of mildly unsurprised disappointment that shocked me. I have to believe in better than that, you know? I have to believe that some men are good, and kind, and honest, and have morals and don't use women or cheat on them. I just haven't met any yet. I think I shall shortly start dating again. (I met my last boyfriend online dating. As previously mentioned he turned out to be a cowardly swine. I am a glutton for punishment). When I do, I shall do so with far greater care for my heart than I had before. And I'll blog about it incessantly, natch.<br />
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Sarah is now going to give lesbianism a try. Seriously.Alicehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04858386131708572617noreply@blogger.com0