Buying sex toys - for friends of course

WARNING: frank sex toy talk ahead…

Okay, so blame @trailerbride for this post. 

Adrian was checking out hotels for a feature for The Times in Bath and I went along for the ride because, as he pointed out (again) I really needed to stop wandering around the astral and start wandering around something real, like shops.  I pointed out that nothing is real and the astral is a lot cheaper and he pointed out that that was exactly why I should go to Bath and that I still had a few vouchers left. I said he had a point and so off we went.   

Anyhow, I was looking at Twitter on my iPhone (cos, stone the crows, it works in Bath!) and there was a tweet from @trailerbride saying simply, apropos of feck knows what, *Vibrators and chainsaws*.  And I looked up and there, right in front of me, was Ann Summers, the sex shop.  And I remembered, with a sudden flash of guilt, that I had promised (months back) that I would pop in sometime and get a vibrator for a friend of mine who refuses point blank (lot of points in this blog eh?) to walk inside one (the shop, not the vibrator).  I had pointed out that she could order online but hey…

So in I walked, wincing at the ticky-tacky lingerie, stifling the urge to scratch my tits at the thought of all that nylon lace. Last time I’d been in Ann Summers they had the sex stuff tucked away in a room behind a curtain but now it had its own little carousel in the middle.  Times change eh?

‘Can I help you?’ I nearly jumped out of my skin. Why do shop assistants have to pounce like that?  

‘Yeah..well…I was just looking at the vibrators,’ I said. Self-evidently, as I had one in my hand.

And off she went, telling me about G-spot stimulation and so on, waving something that looked like a languistine at me.  I couldn’t help wincing. ‘No, no, no,’ I said. ‘It’s not for me…it’s for a friend.’ And then promptly snorted as I realised that she must hear that line about fifty times a day.  And fought the urge to explain but realised that would make it worse.

‘I mean…it’s not terribly aesthetic, is it?’

She gave me a puzzled frown. Oh god, what is the matter with me?  It’s a vibrator, for pity’s sake and I’m worrying about how it looks?  But, see, design matters to me. 

‘Well, there’s this one,’ she said, with the furrow still between her brows.  Take it off, love, you’ll need Botox if you’re not careful.

‘It’s pink,’ I said.

‘Well, yes. Most of them are. I suppose they think women like pink.’

Let’s just be clear here, we’re not talking skin tone, we’re talking bubble-gum, candyfloss, Barbie. Jeez, we spend an entire childhood swathed in pink and the torture continues when we’re grown-up, in the bedroom even? 

‘She hates pink.’  Oh god, there we go again, the pitying look.

‘Er…does she like leopard print?’ 

‘Feck no! She’s not Bet Lynch. Oh look, that one has little diamantes round the bottom! But no…it looks like Mr Blobby.’ 

The assistant looked a bit faint. ‘However…she does like blue.’ 

I reached over and picked up another.  Blue, blue, electric blue. 

‘Yup, that’ll do.’ 

She looked vaguely disappointed in me.  That I’d gone for something so…minimal.  Design over function. 

‘It isn’t multi-speed, you know,’ she tried gamely.  ‘And it isn’t flexible. For example, this one …’ She brandished a thing that was waving two fingers and came with a control panel that wouldn’t have looked out of place on the Enterprise. ‘… has four pulse patterns, three thrusting modes and three rotation speeds…and it’s waterproof.  Maybe she’d like that?’

Feck! Does it make the tea afterwards as well?

‘Nah,’ I shook my head. ‘She just wants something…straightforward.’

And she does.  She’d freak out over all the waving fronds.  We got to the counter and I reached for my credit card. But we weren’t done.

‘Would she like some Buzz Fresh?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Seems you need a particular specialist cleansing wipe for your sex toys.  Bloody hell, it’s like when you buy shoes and they try to flog you the polish.  Except, shit, this lot really have you in a bind, don’t they?  You can hardly say, “Nah, it’s okay…I’ll just rinse it off” or “Nah, you’re alright, love, I’ve already got tons left over from the last one.”

‘Okay, bung it in...’ I said, to coin a phrase.

‘We have the bullet on special offer…’ She said, clearly knowing she’d got me now. 

‘You what?’

And, oh my… A teeny tiny vibrator that looks for all the world like a lipstick.  Now that is clever.  

‘They’re on special offer with other purchases.’ 

‘Go on then. I’ll have one of those…for myself.’  Because the idea of having a dildo in my handbag just amuses the hell out of me.

She looked triumphant. ‘Gold, black, blue or pink?’

‘No silver?’

'Sorry. We sold out.' 

Anyhow. I walked out with a bag full of vibrators…and cleaning gunk...and a catalogue and feck knows what.  The catalogue will be...interesting...because, see, I’m not really up to speed on this stuff anymore.  Having tested them all out years ago, I found that electronic stimulation (while certainly a quick route to orgasm) results in (for me anyway) a slightly…what’s the word?... tinny experience.  It’s a bit crude.  As in there’s no subtlety about it.  And yes, I know that sounds a bit pretentious but while I’m not terribly connoisseurish about food, I’m a bit gourmet-ish about orgasms.  I mean, much as you might like steak and chips, you wouldn’t want it every day, would you?  Sometimes you’re just in the mood for a nice bog standard sandwich or even, if you’re in a hurry, a Big Mac.  But then again sometimes you crave something a bit more challenging, or even esoteric.  Ah, it’s complicated.  In fact, I’ve half-written two books on sex and maybe it’s time to go back to finishing them.. Maybe, come (sorry) to think about it, I should road-test the new models...

Adrian roared with laughter when I told him and we were still laughing as we got out the car and bumped into our next-door neighbour.

‘What’ve you two been up to then?’  he said jovially.

‘Oh, we're just back from Bath,’ said Adrian.  ‘I was checking out hotels.  Jane was shopping.’

He looked meaningfully at my one single (no logo) bag and winked at Adrian.

‘Wow…you got off lightly,’ he said.  

Why do men of a certain age always assume that women don’t buy their own stuff eh?  But that’s another post entirely.

‘Good things come in small packages,’ I said brightly, waving my bag, praying the damn things wouldn’t start off on their own accord. 

‘Gold eh?’ he said. How did he know? And then the cracker... 

‘Have fun, kids.’

Adrian and I just about made it inside before... dissolving into hysterical laughter. 

The Ashes

There’s something that’s been bothering me for the last…how long? Two and a half years probably.  My mother.  Well, more accurately, my mother’s ashes.  She died nearly three years’ ago and at first…well...  Her long cruel illness, her awful death…I simply couldn’t think about it.  I buried (except…but no...) all memory of it. 

She’s been residing at the funeral ‘home’ (Home? Really? Surely not?) Funeral 'parlour'? Interesting. An ‘audience chamber’ – where we talk with the dead? Anyhow. Whatever. It wasn’t right. I hated the idea of her there, sitting on some shelf with the rest of the dispossessed, like baked bean cans in the supermarket. 

My family is small and far-flung.  We got as far as deciding that we’d scatter (rest act) her at Cerne Abbas, where she’d lived as a child, on Giant Hill (which she loved). Which bit, exactly, we hadn’t decided. I rather favoured his erect knob (as that would have amused her).  But anyhow, we didn’t agree a date and months passed and then (time flies) years.  I started getting perturbed, a vague psychic wrongness. 

I asked Adrian if he would go to pick her up.  He said yes but forgot. Again and again and again.  

Why didn’t I go myself? Well, because the place gives me the willies.  I’m not squeamish, not remotely, and I don’t get spooked easily, but there’s something about the suburban banality, the tin-tacky denial of a funeral home/parlour that sends shivers down my spine. Anyhow, it had become a point of principle.  I don’t often ask Adrian to do stuff for me – I’m not the helpless type.  This was symbolic though.  A bit like the skirting board.  But that’s another story, from twenty years’ ago… Yeah, I have a long memory when it suits me. :-)

So you could have knocked me down with a feather yesterday.

‘I’m fetching your mother today.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve phoned them up. They’ll have her ready.’

Huh?

So he dropped me off at the health shop in town and reappeared twenty minutes later.  I had a large bag of muesli, soya yoghurt, tofu and a bar of Green and Black’s.  He had…nothing.

‘Where is she?’ I hissed as the guy behind the counter weighed the muesli.

‘Eh?’

‘My mother.’

‘Oh. In the car.’

The guy smiled benignly. 

‘What’s she in?’

The guy looked puzzled.

‘Huh?  Oh…don’t worry,’ said Adrian.  She’s in a bag.’

‘A bag??’  I held up the muesli.  ‘My mother’s in a bag?’

The guy hastily gave me my change and busied himself with re-arranging herbal cough pastilles.

‘Noooo.’  Adrian shook his head vehemently. ‘Not a bloody paper bag. It’s more of a pouch.’

A pouch? It was getting worse. I began to wish we’d never started this. 

‘Anyhow, if we’re going to watch James play rugby, we’d better go.  Look…’ He smiled reasonably. ‘…she’s coming too. She’d like that.’

I frowned. Was he really suggesting I stand at the touchline with my mother tucked under my arm…in a pouch?

Anyway.  We got home eventually and James sprinted off leaving Adrian and I to unpack the car.  Needless to say, neither of us had told our son that his grandmother was in the boot, in pieces, in a pouch.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘Are you going to look?’  He nudged his head towards the boot.

‘What?’

‘Your mother, for pity’s sake.’

Oh.  So I looked, eyes half-closed, squinting, wincing.  And there it was.  A sort of drawstring bag, a bit like one of those fabric doorstops.  Maroon. Velour. It looked vaguely Christmassy, in a sort of tacky way.  Who chose maroon, I wondered?  Is there a catalogue that funeral home/parlour people flick through, choosing colours, fabrics?  Could you get other choices?  Perky gingham? Jaunty Cath Kidston?  Conservative tweed? Why didn’t we get Timorous Beasties, FFS?

I picked it up. She weighed more than I would have suspected.  I undid the bow, opened it up like a present.  Inside sat a grey plastic container.  Like some kind of chemical container. Industrial.  Banal. That’s it?  A bald label. So you know you’ve got the right one, I suppose.

‘It’s not her, you know,’ said Adrian.

‘I know. Well…’

‘No,’ he repeated, firmly. ‘It’s not her. She’s up here…’ He pointed at his head.

‘What? She’s possessing…’  My eyes widened.  No.  Let’s not go there. My mother is most certainly not possessing my husband.

He frowned and shook his head. Dislodging the thought? Because, of course, you don’t need actually to speak the words for them to reach the psyche.  ‘I meant in our memories. By the way, do you still want her in the drinks cabinet?’

‘Absolutely. She’d like that. In amongst the spirits, of course.  Next to the gin, probably.  Up above the Knob Creek.’

And there she is.  In the Oak Room (made of pine).  By the fireside.  In the drinks cabinet with the weird carvings (which may be oak, come to think of it).  On the top shelf (of three – nearest to heaven?).  She’s living with me… as she always wanted.  And, you know what?  It feels good, it really does. 

Messages

I lost you all with the last post, didn’t I?  Truth to tell, I probably lost myself too.  I'm doing it again, thinking out loud. Let’s go back a step, huh?

Let’s go back to…what?  To when?  Maybe to about 4am. I was lying there, in the dark, thinking about the messages we are given. When We Were Very Young.  What beliefs did we pick up?  Which ‘truths’ did we buy into and take on board? Which realities did we choose?
I've been thinking about it because, time and time again, I can hear people bumping up against their childhood scripts, beating themselves up  because of them.
So I thought back.  Which were the voices of my childhood? What were their siren songs. Which phrases burrowed deep into my psyche and left their seed?  The good seeds and the bad…

·        Life’s tough - you have to fight every step of the way.

·        There are no silver spoons – you have to work your socks off.

·        Losing control is extremely dangerous – don’t do it.

·        You can’t always get what you want – make the best of what you’re given.

·        There is never enough money.

Some, of course, weren’t spoken aloud but seeped in by psychic osmosis.

·        Don’t love because the people you love may well leave you.

·        Don’t trust because people, even those closest to you, can betray you.

·        There are monsters.  Learn to jump.  Learn to hide.

·        There are secrets.  Keep them.   

That sounds grim but, to be honest, I got off lightly really. But, even so, those phrases had bitten deep, had left a lonely legacy. In my twenties I did a lot of work on them – with rebirthing, with affirmations; with positive thought, with hypnotherapy, with regression.  But you have to be careful.  You can’t just paper over the cracks, not when there is damp and decay underneath.  If you don’t understand your darkness, if you don’t look it straight in the eye and accept it, honour it even, it can become a fearsome shadow.  Those voices are still there and I am still shadow-fighting and sometimes it feels like I'm doing it eyes blindfolded, hands tied behind my back.

What voices do you hear when you close your eyes?  What are they whispering, or sneering, or shouting?  Maybe you’re one of the rare lucky ones and the voices are soothing or encouraging.
Somehow though, I suspect many of you are like me and the voices are not so kind.  For example, many women I know battle the voices that say 'Be nice'; 'Be a good girl'; 'Good girls don't do that or that or that'.  I was lucky in that I grew up in a family that didn't push women down.  Men have a whole other set of voices and beliefs that beat them.  They start with 'Boys don't cry' and then insist that men should be always strong and controlled; tough and powerful. That if you don't have the outer trappings of success, you are nothing.  Bullshit. 

But then… just because the voices are there, does that mean they’re right? Does that mean you have to listen to them?  You can challenge them, you know. You can tell them to shut the fuck up.  That you ain’t buying their bullshit no more. First you have to recognise the voice; find out who's telling you how to live your life; whose bullshit you're listening to. More often than not, it's a parent.  Then again, maybe a school teacher telling you you're not good enough, that you'll never make the grade. Or a school bully, or even a supposed friend.
But, you know, it's never too late.  You can change the script.  Just tell the voices to shut up; tell them they lie or that you simply don't want to listen any more.  You can change your reality, one thought at a time.

When life is shit...

Life feels intolerable sometimes.  It can feel like we’re being torn in half, ripped right down the middle.  No matter what we do, no matter how hard we try, nothing seems to go right. 

I dreamed a constant stream of blog posts last night, each one more convoluted than the last.  None of them helpful.  Shit, I am exhausted this morning, I truly am.  But then, curled up in my rocking chair, listening to music, I realised what's needed.  The Mandorla.  It’s been nudging me in dreams and visions for a while now but I haven’t paid it enough attention.

Cos, see, when we can’t keep the contradictions of life at bay, the mandorla offers a space to hold the opposites.  Cos we’re not superhuman; we can’t be.  We are divine but we're not superheroes. 

Do you know the mandorla?  It’s the almond-shaped segment that occurs when two circles partly overlap.  It signifies the overlap of opposites – the overlap of heaven and earth; ego and shadow; good and evil; dark and light; male and female. It's an inbetween place; a holding place; a threshold; a place of faith.

Read T.S. Eliot. Read Little Gidding.  Eliot knew.  The fire of transformation and the rose of rebirth are one and the same.  Poetry bridges the circles – it creates the mandorla. So too can music and dance and art.  When they are used properly, with truth and honesty.  ‘All good stories are mandorlas,’ says one of my favourite Jungian writers, Robert Johnson.  ‘We like to think that a story is based on the triumph of good over evil; but the deeper truth is that good and evil are superseded and the two become one.’

He says, and I feel he may be right, that when things become intolerable; when we say we can't stand things any more, that this is precisely the time when we have to possibility to shift. ‘When the unstoppable bullet hits the impenetrable wall, we find the religious experience. It is precisely here that one will grow.’ Or, as Jung said, ‘Find out what a person fears most and that is where he will develop next.’

Think of the bush and the fire; the bush that burned and burned and yet was not consumed: and the fire that would not damn well stop burning.  When the clash of opposites comes and neither will give way to the other then, oh then,  the numinous (call it ‘God’ or whatever you will) is present.   This is the liminal, the place that is neither this nor that…the shoreline inbetween tides, the space between one room and the next, between one world and another.  It's where we try - usually unsuccessfully of course - to hold the paradoxes.

‘Our own healing proceeds from that overlap of what we call good and evil, light and dark,’ says Johnson (yes, I re-read him on this this morning).  ‘It is not that the light element alone does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is where miracles arise. This middle place is the mandorla.’  And yes, Christ is the mandorla – not for nothing did the early Christians scratch out the fish symbol which is, really, yup…one of those…  
Christ?  Yup, Christ.  I’m not going to say this – I’m going to let Johnson take the rap… ‘One can view a human life as a mandorla and as the ground upon which the opposites find their reconciliation.  In this way every human being is a redeemer, and Christ is the prototype for this human task.’ 

Christ.  The divine alchemist.  Hmm.. Alchemy. Another of my preoccupations right now… Can’t go into it in huge detail but again it’s all about facing the shadow, recognising our projections, holding the opposites.  The major stages of the alchemical process:  the nigredo (the descent); the albedo (the brightening); the rubedo (the discovery of passion); the citrino (the golden warmth of the sun).  And finally?  The pavanis, the peacock’s tail, the rainbow bridge. 

Right.  That hasn’t made any sense at all, has it?  Never mind.  J  


Next post will be about dog food I promise. 
Next post will be about dog food I promise.  And yeah...that was what I said above, when my PC decided it would talk in symbols...WTF???  I tell ya, the world is weird, weird, weird. 

My life mapped in scars...

Scars interest me. Fate’s branding of the body.  Skin torn open, the wound exposing the flesh beneath; then closed but a fissure still remaining where the defences were breached.  A line.  Sometimes criss-crossed with stitches; sometimes knot.  Yes, scars interest me. They change a body forever; they mark it; shift it; alter it.  Tattoos?  Studs and bolts? Implants? Nah. Not so much. Because those alterations are man-made, voluntary, decided, chosen.  A tattoo says ‘This is me!’ but a scar says ‘This is what happened to me’. Scars are the mythic debris of archetypal wounds, rites of passage, life drawing on your skin. The gods scribbling. Yes, your choice maybe - but at a far deeper, unconscious level.  

When I was young I craved a ‘proper’ scar – one that zig-zagged down my face. Why? No idea. I thought it was romantic.  I had a strange idea of romance. *smile*  And there are scars and scars, of course, and some  make us shy away, as if we know the person who received them has been in a perilous place, one we fear we might visit by association. Foolish us...

My scars, however, are not seen by the world.  They are private wounds. Sometimes I look over my body and I examine them – to see if any have faded away, have integrated, been taken back inside.  And, for those that haven’t, I ride the memory-horse back to when they happened.  Can you map your life by scars?  Funny little snapshots of those moments when Fate (often combined with stupidity, has to be said) poked you in the…wherever…

Here are mine…

1.      It’s barely there now, the burn on my hand, my adult hand; that happened to my two-year old hand, pulling down a hot pan. Remembering my mother telling me of how guilty she had felt that she’d let it happen. A tiny link to her vast love, still here now she is gone.

2.      A small scar on the underside of my heel.  Dancing wildly in our front room, aged seven.  Treading on a needle which snapped off inside my heel. ‘It’ll work its way out,’ said the doctor. It didn’t. Instead it buried itself deep and had to be dug out. My Achilles’ heel. 

3.      The rose scars on my inner thighs.  Only the faintest traces of one or two remain, slim silver scythes.  Seventeen and vaulting over the rose bushes at school when a rogue bramble caught me and I fell into the thorny heart of the rose.  Taken to the school nurse with blood pouring down my thighs to have 33 thorns plucked out of my flesh – the virgin deflowered. J 

4.      The deep puncture wound on my finger joint where a dog bit me during a school holiday stint as a kennel maid.  Artemis bitten by her hound (in the shape of a miniature poodle).  I nearly lost the joint… Lesson: never trust a small dog.

5.      The deep ‘tick’ on my left forearm.  Drunk (again) as a student in Manchester, having an argument with my friend Mike. I swung a punch: he swung the door. The one with the glass panel.  Lesson: don’t punch when drunk.  *puzzled* why did I punch with my left hand when I’m right-handed?

6.      The scars of conflict that pucker my belly.  Thin skin stretched beyond its endurance by the growing life within. No matter how taut my muscles, no matter how much I work out and stretch and tone, my stomach will always remain a battleground. I struggled with the idea of motherhood, shrank from pregnancy (my tarot card was always the High Priestess, never The Empress) and my body reflected my fear and reticence.  It’s the part of me I love the least; that still makes me wince to look at, to touch.  But it is what it is…the outward sign of an old battle, of my mind at war with my body.

7.      The long slash across my pubic bone.  Not a C…a line, an El. Where once again, I shied away from motherhood, couldn’t embrace the birthing. Fourteen hours of labour and we got into dangerous waters, my boy and I.  We were nearly lost, nearly ran away together back to the void.  So they cut me open and realised, too late, that ours had been the impossible battle.  A 12.8lb baby was never going to fit through that narrow bony gate. 

Sooo….can you map your life through scars? Or are there other ways?  Inner scars, you say?  Ah, those are something entirely different…

Words drive me crazy...literally

Words by Eighty-3 at deviantart

Words. They drive me crazy. No matter how hard you try, no matter what you do, no matter how careful and precise you try to be, they slide away; they do their own thing.  Because what you can’t ever control is how another person will read them, will interpret them.  It’s why emoticons are so important in social media, on forums.  End it with a J  and it’s all okay (or not).  But, really, emoticons aren’t enough.  You can’t express tone when you write.  Sometimes I think we need to write as if we were writing novels… adding in the adverbs (against all advice to the contrary) *smiling wanly*. Do you know what I mean? *small sad voice pleadingly, brow furrowed*  

Music is purer, not so open to misinterpretation. *relatively certain tone* Or is it? *frowns* The listener can so easily pull out one lyric rather than another; what one person perceives as a positive note will be seen by another as a negation. It’s why one song can mean a myriad different things to each and every person who listens to it. 

What we really need is a way to beam emotion and intent straight to other people.  That can be done on a one-on-one basis, if both parties are attuned or understand other dimensional working (though I am not always entirely sure about that either nowadays *sad sigh again*). But expressing one's intent, one's feeling, to a mass audience isn't possible or *pause, ponders* probably desirable, come to think of it. Maybe other people need to put their own interpretations on things. Maybe there are reasons for misunderstandings, for missed communications?  Maybe the misunderstandings are there as mirrors? *really don't know, just stabbing in the dark here*. Maybe they help us grow?  And growing is good, right? *asking, not remotely telling* 

Anyhow *with small, not irritated, just sad, sigh; in resigned tone*. I thought I’d been gone long enough, been down deep enough. I thought I was done with the underworld for just a little while. *long pause while looks out of window at soft rain falling, mist over the valley, leaves turning yellow, ochre and copper, breathing consciously, feeling deep yet strangely good pain in heart*.

I tried being back in the world, tried to smile and talk and be normal but it felt like I was outside myself, watching a puppet moving jerkily, on strings. I really had nothing to say; I have nothing to say. Because, see/hear/feel, right now, I'm only half-cooked (or half-baked, yeah, yeah, I'll say it so you don't have to *smile, yes really, smile*). And that’s okay, really it is…*nods, trying to convince self as much as anyone else*.

This morning the path was slippery, slick. I felt like I could so easily fall.  The big field was no longer empty; cows stood watching.  The path was strewn with shit. Go figure *rueful smile*. A friend said she’d dreamed of me, twice…with shelves full of dust.  And so I took the books that had been gathering dust and started to read.  And the synchronicities started crashing in again, one after another, again and again and again and again. Just too too much. *awe, wonder, fear, trepidation, uncertain to the core*.  What the shit is going on? I don’t understand.

Whatever it is or isn’t, I realised, *big deep sigh* that I had come back too soon.  I have more I have to do.  Back to the crucible I go.  Honestly, don’t worry – it’s okay.  It is what it is. Byss; abyss. 

I am not a niche...sorry and all that...

pic by the beautiful and talented Solange Noir

We are what we are.  We may run away from ourselves; we may try to hide; we may put up a good façade; we may shelter behind an image – but ultimately, is there any point?  You look around and there you are.

My dear friend Sarah Dening used to say that we all need the persona, the outward ‘mask’ to function in society and she was right. In as far as our society is the way it is.  And today, on the loo, I read a piece about Joan Collins in Red magazine – about how she was in court as her normal self and was getting trodden all over and then someone said to her: ‘Be Alexis’ (if you are young, you won’t know, but this was her ‘mean as a rattler kickass bitch’ character in the TV show Dynasty) and she did and she won. 

I can still put on the mask if I need to.  I can (I think) still play at ‘professional journalist’ or ‘sensible author’ when I need to; but increasingly, and particularly outside work, I can’t be arsed with the masks.  And, above all, I can’t be arsed with masks when it comes to this blog. 

I keep reading stuff about ‘positioning your blog’; about ‘becoming a brand’; about ‘owning your niche’.  Shit, in the time it’s taken me to write this, I’ve had someone follow me on Twitter offering to help build my status, to make me an authority. Feck off, mate. Not interested.

Because, see, this blog is where I don’t have to worry about editors, about writing to a specific brief, in a certain style, to a demographic.  I have struggled for years over this question of Who I Am When I Blog (or when I do anything really).  And I have slowly come to the realisation that, actually, it is perfectly okay to be a weird contradiction, that’s it’s fine not to be ‘on message’ all the time, that – truly – one doesn’t have to be ‘niche’…if one doesn’t want to be. 

You don’t have to be a brand. 

For sure, if you’re courting a particular audience or want to blog for a particular market, then fine, brand yourself to kingdom come, find that  niche. It may feel nice and warm and cosy, in which case - great. It may feel a little uncomfortable, you might need to squish yourself into it - in which case, maybe have a ponder.  But for me (and, I suspect) a lot of people – it’s just about thinking out loud.  And, sorry, I don’t just think in one particular way.

So I can blog about being a mother, about that weird concept that is parenting.  And I can blog about ridiculous things like sexualising kitchen implements and trying out ludicrous control garments because, hey, sometimes stupid things amuse me.  And I can blog about books and gaming; about fitness and food; about shoes and breakfast cereals and nice aromatherapy oils.  I can blog about spirituality and religion and mysticism and weirdy beardy stuff.  All of it.  Any of it.  Cos, hey, it’s my blog.  And if you don’t like that, that’s fine – you don’t have to read it.  I won’t be offended.  And yeah, I know that means I won't get sponsorship deals or get sent on fancy trips (except...hmmm ) but hey, that's not why I do it.  

I know I lose people sometimes. Okay, a lot. J Some people like the funny stuff and wander off, twirling a finger around their heads, when I go mystical.  Or they love the spiritual stuff and freak out when I swear or talk about sex. But, hey, I happen to feel they’re all mixed up, muddled up, tangled up like cosmic spaghetti and to separate the sex from the spirituality, the humour from the hagiography (okay, struggling with my alliteration there) is to miss something rather important about God/Goddess/Whatever the Fuck you want to call It.  If you want a slightly more coherent take on this, you could add a few pennies to the coffers of the Bonkers House and buy my book, The Energy Secret, now available on wondrous Kindle, thanks to the stern goddess who is Kim Jewell.

Anyhow…that’s it really. 

Forgive me if I’m not quite coherent.  I’ve been off visiting strange places again and am still not quite fully back here in the normal world.  Normal service will be resumed, I promise…there will be breakfast cereal, and dog kibble and doubtless more general weirdness and hopefully some more sexy innuendo-laden kitchen appliances (dear gods of PR send me a toaster before I burn another bagel).  If you’re very good, there may even be a bed of nails…

Oh, and in the middle of my mad three days, I was sent an email which said: "Watch this…" and I did…and it’s really rather wonderful… and fits in rather delightfully with all this business of who we are and who we’re supposed to be…and what is important, and what isn’t… It's a film, btw...so you'll need some time...