Being single is a real eye-opener. I mean it. It's like watching traffic crawling past you on a jammed up motorway. You notice the little things that you wouldn't normally notice had you been flying along the M1 at 80 mph, lost in fogged up thoughts of tedium and nothing-ness. I feel the same about watching people from the water's edge, swimming about in their cosy little Worlds of love and lust, the 'completeness' they emanate from every pore of their bodies......and the false hope that their heightened state of euphoric togetherness will last until daisies are growing on their shared grave. I've a simple one-word answer to that.......bollocks.
Call me a cynic. I've been called far worse over the years, even a 'pessimist'! Me! Of all people! How very dare they. I'm just well observed and a frequent flier on the 'wit' passenger jet. But having experienced the single life for the past 2 years or so (apart from a couple of very short attempts at pre-marital bliss) I have come to embrace the solitude that is a result of spending endless evenings doing what I want, when I want and having complete jurisdiction over the remote control which is usually hitting the 'off' button. This hasn't always been the case. It took years and years of self reflection and hardening up to get to this point and with hindsight (oh how I love the 'H' word!) I have now come to the conclusion that my twenties were completely wasted on unsuitable men, spending night after night worrying about whether or not it would last, is so and so from his office better looking than me, where is he, why hasn't he rung, is he texting/emailing/phoning other women, are other women texting/emailing/phoning him, is he cheating, does he still fancy me, will he still like me if I accidentally drop one in front of him, how am I going to stay at his house for the weekend and have a dump without putting him off (and I know all you women reading this will be nodding your heads in recognition of that particular dilemma), does his Mother like me, etc.....etc. Seriously, I could have been doing something far more rewarding and worthwhile, like realising that it was all in vain and I could quite easily live my life without a man messing with my melon!
I will cast my mind back to when I was 21, and the last and only time I lived with a man (in the biblical sense). I hasten to add that I packed my bags and moved out again 6 months later. I didn't enjoy it. It wasn't entirely his fault, but I remember distinctly the first night I called his house my home, the overwhelming feeling that I really didn't want him to be the last and only person I slept with for the rest of my life. I knew from that moment on that I was in trouble. I found that domestic goddessing came naturally to me, too naturally, in fact, and as a result of my O.C.D I spent a large part of that 6 months forgetting I was still just a mere mortal and throwing myself into the daily chores with a scary amount of gusto and Mr Muscle. It frightened the living shit out of me and after engineering several fruitless arguments, some physically violent involving launching a heavy book at his head, I made a hasty retreat back to the Olds. That was it. I was scarred and desperately in need of constant drug induced clubbing to to try and erase the memory of marigolds, scrubbing brushes and clothes pegs.
The remainder of my twenties involved a marriage proposal which I sensibly knocked back, a few flings that I ended sharply due to some pathetic reason that they weren't the full ticket, a disastrous one-sided relationship that resulted in an affair with a man 8 years my junior which subsequently led to a 2 year relationship that ended as messily as it began. I repeated the same dating patterns over and over again and yet failed to learn my lesson. But sensible men just didn't do anything for me and so after years and years of pain, torment and frustration I was relieved when I turned 30 and met who I thought was the man I would marry and bear lots of little mini us's to. But sadly, and as the old saying (and as my personal favourite) goes, there was no polishing of turds to be had and the relationship ended 2 years later leaving a trail of dung behind it. I will never forget the feeling of complete devastation I experienced following that unfortunate event and vowed never to repeat it. They weren't quite famous or, indeed, my last words but of course I did repeat it once more and at that point the door had slammed on ever letting anyone in again.
But these days I can sniff out a player from twenty feet away. I know his moves, oh yes Sir. There are a few actions that set off the twat radar and from that moment on, the specimen in question should be either avoided at all costs should you be of a delicate disposition or looking for a Father to your future children, or enjoyed to the max if you are like me and you don't give a rat's arse about getting hooked up. For starters, if he keeps his phone locked he's clearly hiding something. Ok we all know that one but even if he doesn't there are the oddities that make him stick out as a filth bag, such as keeping his phone face down while you are there, putting it on flight mode or never actually taking it out of his pocket while you are around. Player will do a lot of 'sport' or watch a lot of football or even go away for 'lads' weekends and will make you feel incredibly guilty should you display any signs of suspicion or dismay at him leaving you alone for any length of time. I never trust a man who texts a lot either. I've adopted the belief that if he can't call you then he clearly can't talk for some reason, probably because he's cowering in a toilet somewhere whilst trying to juggle his many love interests!NEVER DATE A TEXTER! If he can't make the effort for facetime chat then he's clearly only after your downstairs jewels. But Player has a sixth sense and knows when he's been rumbled which both intrigues him but forces him to keep his distance. But he'll still try and fiddle with your mind waves so beware!
Thing is.........as much as I enjoy my own company, I often try and imagine myself slotting into the World of couply bliss with a like-minded, humorous and witty companion who 'gets' me and doesn't just consider me a cool hearted single mother, grateful for a sloppy poke from any old Tom because honestly, this is the type of feckless bum hole that I strive to avoid. I would rather watch Top Gear repeats and read old copies of Heat magazine than share my space with a freeloading twunt who thinks that' pressing the right buttons' means he can work the washing machine. But then I take a big wide lensed gander around me at the dramas and female psycho behaviour permeating my usually calm atmosphere and think, "Damn........I kinda miss the drama a bit...." and start to wonder what it would feel like to have those dreaded butterfly varmints messing up my insides again. Only this time 'cool' is key.
Ah, maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe I'm just taking a cockbandit holiday and soon enough I will be joining the long list of heartbroken females crying into their suave on a Friday night because he 'hasn't called or text in 3 hours'. Who knows. One thing I do know for sure........whatever happens, however loved up I may become in the future or let someone get closer to the juice that makes me tick.....I will never, ever throw away my beloved sheep collection. Nuff said.
Saturday, 5 March 2011
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
Spit inducing homosapiens
I'm not one to rant, well not regularly past the hour of 9pm, but now and again my rage against a few high profile individuals is ignited by thrashing hormones and a lack of chocolate in the house. Tonight is one of those nights. So without further ado, in reverse order are my top three most hated human beings and the reasons thereon:
3) Cheryl Cole - Ok, I don't actually 'hate' old bandy legs Tweedy but felt I had to sling her in as she irritates the bejesus out of me. Nuff said.
2) Boris Johnson - There are two things I hate about working in Holloway. One is that fecking great eyesore, the Emirates, home to the dirty red shirted, stinking Gooners and two, London's biggest white elephant and current Mayor of London resides there with his family. He has spawned four children (not counting the numerous 'love' children he has scattered around City Hall), his two daughters christened along the same cringe worthy lines as the Geldolfs and the Martins. Lara Lettice and Cassia Peaches. This man received over a million votes from you, the public, beating Ken Livingston to the post of Mayor of London, a huge reason I have lost faith in humanity . He crashes and stumbles through his political life making blunder after blunder, however, it's a sad fact of life that if you have mad hair and a posh accent this excuses you from the heinous crimes you've been committing as an upstanding member of society. I mean, take Hugh Grant for example, one of British cinema's 'darlings' and the recipient of illicit oral sex in the back of a car. Had anyone else been caught avec black prostitute with his trousers round his ankles, he would have been chastised as a pervert by the News of the World and black listed as a sex criminal. But the likes of old Granty and Johnno get away with it because they allegedly don't piss in the shower like the rest of us. He described his £250,000 per annum job as a columnist with the Daily Telegraph as paying, "Chicken feed" yet lives in one of the most deprived areas of London where most people who live there won't earn that in their lifetime. And then there was the occasion in 2009 when he walked out of the House of Commons midway through answering a question about whether or not heavy snowfall would affect the transport system, claiming that the 40 minutes that he allowed for this particular question and answer session had expired. Oh, and lets not forget the Franny Armstrong mugging incident whereby good old super Boris happened to be cycling past the documentary film maker and Ken Livingston follower just as she was being attacked by a 'group of girls'. He supposedly picked up an iron bar that happened to be lurking nearby, and chased after them on his bike shouting, "Oiks!!" What a bag of fictitious shit. But he has done some good things for London. Aside from the miles and miles of brightly coloured cycle lanes that are largely used for unloading vans and illegal parking, there was the self endorsed, 'Boris' Bikes' scheme which is excellent providing you don't actually go anywhere on it and return it to the same dock you picked it up from. Genius.
But lets not forget the introductory token gesture of the banning of alcohol on the tube. On the last evening that alcohol was permitted, hundreds of revellers descended upon London Underground resulting in several police officers being injured and 6 stations across the capital closed. In addition, a number of trains were damaged and subsequently withdrawn from service.Success!!!! Or not as the case may be. These days the general public opt for disguising their brew as fizzy pop or simply do what all piss-pots do and just bung it in a brown paper bag or better still, just get pissed before you stagger into the tube brandishing a stinky old kebab. Boris describes himself as a 'one-man melting pot' due to his Muslim/Christian/Jewish ancestry. I say cut off his hands, crucify him or throw him to the lions!
1) Leslie Ash - Last and most hated of all spit inducing human beings is the woman who went under the surgeon's knife for the benefit of her ex-footballer husband, Lee Chapman and ended up with the well documented, 'Trout Pout'. After being ridiculed on national TV she made a statement along the lines of, "If I'd lost a leg in a car crash, people wouldn't have felt able to take the mickey out of me so mercilessly....People don't laugh at Heather Mills because she lost a leg". Oh really, Leslie? That might be because Ms Mills didn't have her leg amputated so her husband wouldn't go out and shag better looking, younger women! In 2004 she was admitted to a Central London hospital with two cracked ribs, allegedly caused by her and Lee's violent love making. Yeah....pull the other one, Lezza! (A phrase that most definitely wouldn't wash with old Millsy) Even if Leslie and her husband, with a history of domestic violence, had have been playing a rougher than average game of 'Ladies and Gentlemen', why would you openly admit that to the press?? Surely, "I stumbled and fell flat on Lee's clenched fist", would suffice....maybe? Anyway, during her brief stay in the 'ozzie, she contracted a rather nasty bug which rendered her unable to walk and suffered loss of bladder control, so she took the NHS to court and was awarded the meagre sum of five million quid on the basis that nobody would employ her while she was bumbling around like Long John Silver on crutches. Of course, that was the reason she couldn't get any work, not because she looks like a post-partum vagina. As far as I know, Ash's millions have yet to wipe out the still virulent MRSA virus. Maybe she's taking a break from her one woman battle while she gets over her recent stint on the BBC's Holby City, which compels me to ask the question, "So, Les, as you have actually procured some acting work even though your face looks like a whore's fanny and you stagger along on sticks leaving a trail of piss behind you, I'm assuming that you're going to pay back some of that well deserved five million big ones into the cash starved NHS????" Hmmmmmm..............
3) Cheryl Cole - Ok, I don't actually 'hate' old bandy legs Tweedy but felt I had to sling her in as she irritates the bejesus out of me. Nuff said.
2) Boris Johnson - There are two things I hate about working in Holloway. One is that fecking great eyesore, the Emirates, home to the dirty red shirted, stinking Gooners and two, London's biggest white elephant and current Mayor of London resides there with his family. He has spawned four children (not counting the numerous 'love' children he has scattered around City Hall), his two daughters christened along the same cringe worthy lines as the Geldolfs and the Martins. Lara Lettice and Cassia Peaches. This man received over a million votes from you, the public, beating Ken Livingston to the post of Mayor of London, a huge reason I have lost faith in humanity . He crashes and stumbles through his political life making blunder after blunder, however, it's a sad fact of life that if you have mad hair and a posh accent this excuses you from the heinous crimes you've been committing as an upstanding member of society. I mean, take Hugh Grant for example, one of British cinema's 'darlings' and the recipient of illicit oral sex in the back of a car. Had anyone else been caught avec black prostitute with his trousers round his ankles, he would have been chastised as a pervert by the News of the World and black listed as a sex criminal. But the likes of old Granty and Johnno get away with it because they allegedly don't piss in the shower like the rest of us. He described his £250,000 per annum job as a columnist with the Daily Telegraph as paying, "Chicken feed" yet lives in one of the most deprived areas of London where most people who live there won't earn that in their lifetime. And then there was the occasion in 2009 when he walked out of the House of Commons midway through answering a question about whether or not heavy snowfall would affect the transport system, claiming that the 40 minutes that he allowed for this particular question and answer session had expired. Oh, and lets not forget the Franny Armstrong mugging incident whereby good old super Boris happened to be cycling past the documentary film maker and Ken Livingston follower just as she was being attacked by a 'group of girls'. He supposedly picked up an iron bar that happened to be lurking nearby, and chased after them on his bike shouting, "Oiks!!" What a bag of fictitious shit. But he has done some good things for London. Aside from the miles and miles of brightly coloured cycle lanes that are largely used for unloading vans and illegal parking, there was the self endorsed, 'Boris' Bikes' scheme which is excellent providing you don't actually go anywhere on it and return it to the same dock you picked it up from. Genius.
But lets not forget the introductory token gesture of the banning of alcohol on the tube. On the last evening that alcohol was permitted, hundreds of revellers descended upon London Underground resulting in several police officers being injured and 6 stations across the capital closed. In addition, a number of trains were damaged and subsequently withdrawn from service.Success!!!! Or not as the case may be. These days the general public opt for disguising their brew as fizzy pop or simply do what all piss-pots do and just bung it in a brown paper bag or better still, just get pissed before you stagger into the tube brandishing a stinky old kebab. Boris describes himself as a 'one-man melting pot' due to his Muslim/Christian/Jewish ancestry. I say cut off his hands, crucify him or throw him to the lions!
1) Leslie Ash - Last and most hated of all spit inducing human beings is the woman who went under the surgeon's knife for the benefit of her ex-footballer husband, Lee Chapman and ended up with the well documented, 'Trout Pout'. After being ridiculed on national TV she made a statement along the lines of, "If I'd lost a leg in a car crash, people wouldn't have felt able to take the mickey out of me so mercilessly....People don't laugh at Heather Mills because she lost a leg". Oh really, Leslie? That might be because Ms Mills didn't have her leg amputated so her husband wouldn't go out and shag better looking, younger women! In 2004 she was admitted to a Central London hospital with two cracked ribs, allegedly caused by her and Lee's violent love making. Yeah....pull the other one, Lezza! (A phrase that most definitely wouldn't wash with old Millsy) Even if Leslie and her husband, with a history of domestic violence, had have been playing a rougher than average game of 'Ladies and Gentlemen', why would you openly admit that to the press?? Surely, "I stumbled and fell flat on Lee's clenched fist", would suffice....maybe? Anyway, during her brief stay in the 'ozzie, she contracted a rather nasty bug which rendered her unable to walk and suffered loss of bladder control, so she took the NHS to court and was awarded the meagre sum of five million quid on the basis that nobody would employ her while she was bumbling around like Long John Silver on crutches. Of course, that was the reason she couldn't get any work, not because she looks like a post-partum vagina. As far as I know, Ash's millions have yet to wipe out the still virulent MRSA virus. Maybe she's taking a break from her one woman battle while she gets over her recent stint on the BBC's Holby City, which compels me to ask the question, "So, Les, as you have actually procured some acting work even though your face looks like a whore's fanny and you stagger along on sticks leaving a trail of piss behind you, I'm assuming that you're going to pay back some of that well deserved five million big ones into the cash starved NHS????" Hmmmmmm..............
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Body shock
About 13 years ago when I was a wee lassie of roughly twenty plus five hedonistic years, my clubbing nights (and occasional days) were coming to their natural end. It had to be. Laughter lines were beginning to appear, and not on me either. They were on the faces of younger, fitter and better looking fellow clubbers chortling unashamedly at my pathetic attempts to squeeze into an overpriced lycra handkerchief so I could blend in with the beautiful people and boogie the night away at some swanky Central London hang out. I wanted to look like a glamorous, sparkly happy person but instead I started to resemble a turd in a condom. Yes, the candle had well and truly burnt out and had dripped wax all over my BHS Christmas slippers. So, as my usual weekend workouts thrashing about to drum and bass had come to a halt I felt I needed to join a gym, something I swore I would never do. But when you're 21 and built for speed like a prize whippet, scoffing at people over 30 because it felt as though you were Peter Pan's twin sister, it's easy to look in a full length mirror and make ridiculous declarations. Bit like saying you're never going to get hooked on bad soap operas or spend your Saturday nights in watching Simon Cowell send unfortunate dream hungry wannabes rushing home to hit the gin and painkiller cabinet. I was that person and I turned into that person and it's not even ironic......it's life!
So after my good friend Desmond and I proceeded to work our ageing booties in front of sweaty palm marked mirrors I began to gain back a bit of body confidence. In a couple of months I had those carthorse legs back and abs you could grate cotton wool on. Things were looking up! I bagged myself a toyboy eight years my junior and started partying again but this time it was far more refined because I was too obsessed with looking after the body beautiful. But it had it's expiry date and after ten years the relationship started to show cracks (with the gym, that is...not the toyboy. I had set him free a long time before that!). We tired of each other and trying to organise our busy lives around each other melted into a vat of tedium and despair. I had passing flings with a few other sweat boxes, some wanky, some swanky, but all of them filled with the same predictable banter, muscle-bound machismo's and young girls wedged so far up their own arses you never knew whether they were singing or farting. I have mastered both simultaneously but that's a blog for another time.
With all the dicking around that ensued, the body was started to pay the price, and so was I. I started analysing what it was I actually did in the gym that I was paying so much for three times a week. I did twenty minutes on the treadmill, twenty minutes on another cardio machine of my choosing that worked the same muscle groups but just broke up the monotony a bit, some floor work (sit-ups, crunches, trying to pass off my flatulence as the girl's next to me etc, etc) and some resistance machines. The rest of the time was spent chatting to pretentious dickheads with dwarf like testicles and showering. What was I paying for that I could do for free? Of course......running!! So I spent about 2 years getting back into my running regime which I never really got very good at even though I was long distance champ at school (and ran barefoot which is why I have feet like the bottom a coral reef now) but I enjoyed it nonetheless. But then the old footie injuries started playing up, the shrapnel started shifting and my lungs were under constant attack from my ample bust so the enjoyment started to slowly ebb away. And then the unthinkable happened........I got pregnant!
As soon as I knew I stopped exercising. I couldn't see the point. I spent most of my time with my head stuck inside the toilet bowl and my breasts screamed in pain if anyone so much as breathed near them and I would have had to stop eventually anyway so I thought I would save all the separation anxiety by going cold turkey. When I see women running with great big straps across their tummy when they are eight months pregnant it makes me shudder and almost jealous that I couldn't even manage it at eight weeks!
I doubt it would have made any difference anyway. My stomach muscles were commended at many a late antenatal appointment and I managed to avoid the dreaded stretch marks that every woman fears and dreads before she decides to conceive. Let me tell you now......it's the least of your worries. Due to the surgeon having to tears a dirty great hole in my tummy to yank out that steadfast child of mine, I have been left with a sagging, protruding, shelf-like flap of skin to remind me of the twenty nine agonising hours of excruciating pain I went through before they decided to take a scimitar to my battered body and relieve me of seven and half pounds of mammal.
I tend to avoid mirrors now, namely when I'm starkers which doesn't happen very often as I do not wish to subject my daughter to such a disturbing image and scar her fragile, developing mind for life. My once sensuous and firm(ish) dirty pillows have been replaced with functional udders and my cesarean scar stares back at me, it's ragged stitchline contorted into an evil, knowing grin. When I went for my post natal check up at the doctors he said to me, "Have you thought about contraception at all as you know you can get pregnant whilst you're breast feeding?" I snorted petulantly and said, "With saddle bags like these I'd be hard pushed to get a root in a barrack full of bromide starved soldiers!" He left it there.
Anyway, I'm off to stuff my face with some designer lettuce.
So after my good friend Desmond and I proceeded to work our ageing booties in front of sweaty palm marked mirrors I began to gain back a bit of body confidence. In a couple of months I had those carthorse legs back and abs you could grate cotton wool on. Things were looking up! I bagged myself a toyboy eight years my junior and started partying again but this time it was far more refined because I was too obsessed with looking after the body beautiful. But it had it's expiry date and after ten years the relationship started to show cracks (with the gym, that is...not the toyboy. I had set him free a long time before that!). We tired of each other and trying to organise our busy lives around each other melted into a vat of tedium and despair. I had passing flings with a few other sweat boxes, some wanky, some swanky, but all of them filled with the same predictable banter, muscle-bound machismo's and young girls wedged so far up their own arses you never knew whether they were singing or farting. I have mastered both simultaneously but that's a blog for another time.
With all the dicking around that ensued, the body was started to pay the price, and so was I. I started analysing what it was I actually did in the gym that I was paying so much for three times a week. I did twenty minutes on the treadmill, twenty minutes on another cardio machine of my choosing that worked the same muscle groups but just broke up the monotony a bit, some floor work (sit-ups, crunches, trying to pass off my flatulence as the girl's next to me etc, etc) and some resistance machines. The rest of the time was spent chatting to pretentious dickheads with dwarf like testicles and showering. What was I paying for that I could do for free? Of course......running!! So I spent about 2 years getting back into my running regime which I never really got very good at even though I was long distance champ at school (and ran barefoot which is why I have feet like the bottom a coral reef now) but I enjoyed it nonetheless. But then the old footie injuries started playing up, the shrapnel started shifting and my lungs were under constant attack from my ample bust so the enjoyment started to slowly ebb away. And then the unthinkable happened........I got pregnant!
As soon as I knew I stopped exercising. I couldn't see the point. I spent most of my time with my head stuck inside the toilet bowl and my breasts screamed in pain if anyone so much as breathed near them and I would have had to stop eventually anyway so I thought I would save all the separation anxiety by going cold turkey. When I see women running with great big straps across their tummy when they are eight months pregnant it makes me shudder and almost jealous that I couldn't even manage it at eight weeks!
I doubt it would have made any difference anyway. My stomach muscles were commended at many a late antenatal appointment and I managed to avoid the dreaded stretch marks that every woman fears and dreads before she decides to conceive. Let me tell you now......it's the least of your worries. Due to the surgeon having to tears a dirty great hole in my tummy to yank out that steadfast child of mine, I have been left with a sagging, protruding, shelf-like flap of skin to remind me of the twenty nine agonising hours of excruciating pain I went through before they decided to take a scimitar to my battered body and relieve me of seven and half pounds of mammal.
I tend to avoid mirrors now, namely when I'm starkers which doesn't happen very often as I do not wish to subject my daughter to such a disturbing image and scar her fragile, developing mind for life. My once sensuous and firm(ish) dirty pillows have been replaced with functional udders and my cesarean scar stares back at me, it's ragged stitchline contorted into an evil, knowing grin. When I went for my post natal check up at the doctors he said to me, "Have you thought about contraception at all as you know you can get pregnant whilst you're breast feeding?" I snorted petulantly and said, "With saddle bags like these I'd be hard pushed to get a root in a barrack full of bromide starved soldiers!" He left it there.
Anyway, I'm off to stuff my face with some designer lettuce.
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