30 Sept 2008

Excerpts from the novel 'Me, Tim and my Quim'

My debut novel! Published by Random House, it's soon to be made into a film under the bastardised title 'Me Ted and my Head'. Even the potential casting of Matthew McConnaughy in the leading role may not be able to save their re-writing from shabby audience grabbing guff, so I've decided to treat you to extracts from the unpillaged original...

(pp.25-26)
A week had passed since my last meeting with Tim, a week of turning and twisting myself into knots in bed, of damp sheets wrapped around my insomniac legs like fabric worms or worse, snakes. In daylight hours paranoia overwhelmed me. I'd stopped speaking to my friends, my publisher; my answering machine was backed up with unheard messages like menstrual blood behind an unchanged tampon. The fridge was bare of all but a jar of capers, some Tesco Finest chutney, a microfilm bag full of cracked black pepper blinis and a soggy lettuce. The night before I went to see Ted, I ate the capers with the chutney and lettuce on the blinis and was very nearly sick.

That oh too familiar dawn light came seeping through my eyes many hours before I was to see him, dripping gulf streams of fear through my cavities. All I could see were his eyes, were they blue? Green? In this light (this light was my mind also) everything seemed grey, even my timid streaks of legs on the grey bed sheets (they really were grey, with blue sequins on, which seemed grey but were actually of course blue).

The room in which he saw his patients - sepia

Me - grey

The window behind his desk - opal

Me - grey

The coarse skin around his fingers - pink

Me - grey

His name his face his lips his brave hands oh Daddy - gold

My mystery my mystery my mystery my mystery

I had felt him touch me as he walked behind me in the consulation room, I felt him touch my neck (I think) and I should have been mad with rage And I was And I liked it.

25 Sept 2008

Sometimes I feel just like poor little Anne Bradstreet, America's First Lady Poet


In Honour of that High and Mighty Princess
Queen Elizabeth
OF HAPPY MEMORY.
The Proeme.

ALthough great Queen thou now in silence lye,
Yet thy loud Herald Fame doth to the sky
Thy wondrous worth proclaim in every Clime,
And so hath vow'd while there is world or time.
So great's thy glory and thine excellence,
The sound thereof rapts every humane sence,
That men account it no impiety,
To say thou wert a fleshly Diety.
Thousands bring offerings (though out of date)
Thy world of honours to accumulate,
'Mongst hundred Hecatombs of roaring verse,
Mine bleating stands before thy royal Herse.
Thou never didst nor canst thou now disdain
T' accept the tribute of a loyal brain.
Thy clemency did yerst esteem as much
The acclamations of the poor as rich,
Which makes me deem my rudeness is no wrong,
Though I resound thy praises 'mongst the throng.

16 Sept 2008

Posie Rider- Artist!


I took up painting in the hospital- what do you think?

A Womb of My Own

ok girlies. Now that I'm back in the land of the living, thrusting my know how back into the tender cup of feminism, I will mainly be using phallic language to express myself for why should the language of men be reserved for men?

And so, now that I am grasping my sexuality with a strength I was denied as a girl-child I'm going to tell you the real story of me and Tim.

You'll remember that the story of Tim and I is due to be made into a feature film by Paramount studios starring Matthew McConaughey (check out my earlier blogs to get the low-down). But now I'm going to tell you the truth, for the 'Tim' complex was the reason I was unable to reach a computer this summer, in case I tried to smash my head open on the VDU.

When I hired Tim as my sex therapist back in '02 I was a young innocent, just down from Cambridge. I loved riding horses and was suffering from a severe case of penis envy, to the point that I wanted to to marry a Nintendo GameCube.

My best friend Polly (who is incidentally to be played by Rosie McDonald in the film. I know! I thought she was dead too!) said "Enough is enough Posie! You need to get yourself to a sex-therapist fast!"

So, I did. There was something so special about Tim. He understood me so well. He was sensitive, kind, gentle, very much in touch with his feminine side.

We became good friends. We went on a Japanese cooking course together and I took him to see the Turner Prize, oh how we laughed. Tim taught me to love the woman inside and harness the power of my quim to achieve my ambitions in a patriarchal society. He taught me how to wear blusher and introduced me to padded bras.

I was so happy, I had found a true companion in Tim. But it was more than companionship, it was love! Finally, I had managed to find a man who wanted me for WHO I was not WHAT I was. I told him how I felt and we went on a weeked mini-break to Cork. But my happiness was short lived reader, for in Ireland I discovered that Tim had once been a woman.

I felt betrayed, crushed, like a little fruit fly savouring a mouldy lemon. Thirsty, tired, starving, tyring to drink its sweltering juice. I wasn't bothering anybody, I am just a little fly, a little icky icky speck. Was I bothering anybody? NO. But I'm still all sticky and dead! I mean No one else even wanted the lemon. The lemon was fucking mouldy! Just a silly mouldy lemon. Just a stupid fucking little crap mouldy lemon that was only going to be fucking thrown away why!!!??????!!!****"£()%^&*(%£%^!!

Sorry.

So, anyway, I felt betrayed by man (and female) kind. I sent a number of anonymous messages. Tim overreacted, took out a restraining order, that sort of thing. Of course my friends think Hollywood is interested because there was a brief hostage situation, but it's really to do with my subversive use of the stream of consciousness. I know because that's what the producer told me whe he called from LA in July when I was having the electroshock therapy.

Anyway, I left the country for a year or three to clear my head. I went to Tibet, where I met Brad Pitt. A HA HA HA HA HA. No, only joking. Paramount couldn't afford Brad Pitt.

But this summer, well, I was in a similar situation. I was betrayed by that demon of the skies- sexuality! It was a bit like the Tim story, I mean there was a restraining order and I'm back on the Prozac.

And YOU lucky readers are going to be the first ones to read about it! Yes, that's right- I'm serializing my novel right here for you on MY blog. It's going to be called 'A Womb of My Own'.

It's a working title and I'd really appreciate any feedback! Will keep you posted on my title ideas!!

So Paramount you better get ready for a follow-up, because the second installment of my sexual-psychosis coming your way!

10 Sept 2008

Fab new expo at the Women's Library




http://www.londonmet.ac.uk/thewomenslibrary/whats-on/exhibitions/whatwomenwant.cfm

Put down your sewing and get out your Women's Library Card!

I, glorious, return!

Good morning lady readers!

A metric-fuck tonne of apologies for my absence, but due to a rather unfortunate incident with a bottle of Martini Rosso, an argument with an ex boyfriend and the unfortunate presence of a disposable pink bic razor, I've been hospitalised for the majority of the summer. It was nothing too serious, just the sort of thing to be expected from a sensitive Lady writer such as myself, and really all that time sitting around in a white nightie getting pumped through with diazepam gave me time to think, write, compose, touch the windows, plait my hair and so forth. I haven't been so creative since mama left me in Poppins in Uxbridge that weekend with a bottomless coca cola and some crayola!

One of the best presents I was gifted with during my time in the Women's ward was not a Blackberry, which would have been helpful, nor the Bible which a group of bastard Gideons planted on my sleeping chest, I can only assume, when I was out cold that last week in July, but rather the fabulous Femmes of Power, a book about a lot of very well turned out lesbian Ladies (apologies if this isn't the correct term, I'm so useless with gender theory even though my Auntie invented it and really I wish we could all just get along!) in the most fabulous states of dress. I thoroughly enjoyed perusing this volume, made all the more sensational by the reaction of the facile Jackie in the bed next to mine whose awful grunting fiance insisted on visiting every afternoon and staying for the entire permitted visiting hour. I mean, how pathetic is that? They can't have been more that 23, and it came as an utter shock to me to find out they were engaged. I mean, it was all well and good in the past before women were liberated to get married young, they had precious little else to do! But now it just smacks of desperation. Jackie and I had a rather heated discussion on the subject when I felt obliged to point this out to her, and perhaps if I hadn't called her a foolish strumpet she might have listened to my advice a little closer, but needs must when the sexist thrives and besides, I simply can't be calm when I see a woman uselessly giving over he entire being to a man, let along a dope like this Keith!

However, I calmed myself by reasoning that in terms of the lifespan of individuals such as Jackie and Keith compared to the rest of us, it makes perfect sense for them to get married that young when they're clearly going to die much younger that we are, around 50 I expect. Like the peasants I learnt about in A Level history, before the death rate was practically halved by improved health care. I said to myself, Posie, if you were going to die at 50 I'm sure you'd have thought about getting married at 23!

Although, judging by the standards of the hospital, I can't be too sure! Of course it was a private clinic close to my home in North London but the media really should stop reporting on the state of NHS hospitals and draw attention to the fact that hygiene issues are not limited to public health facilities. Honestly at the rates we were paying I hardly think it's much to expect that the staff be clean.

Oh dear, I digress! The point I was hoping to make concerned this wonderful femme book, which appalled Jackie to no end. She seemed never to have met a lesbian, a feminist, or in fact any other woman unlike herself. This was remarkable, not least because the beautifully adorned women who featured in my book looked not a great deal unlike those Jackie poured over in her daily doses of Heat! magazine and the rest. Except of course mine were much, much, better.

This got me thinking: what is the thing that connects women as diverse and myself and Jackie? Surely not just our presence in a close observation psychotherapy ward! Perhaps it is rather how we look, or how we are seen not just by each other but by men and other Women. Is it that we both put on mascara everyday even though we were strapped into a hospital bed and dressed in fashion's equivalent of a white bin bag? Why is it that whatever Women do, they have to feel they look good while they're doing it?

Since I've been out of hospital and subjected to the gaze of North and North West Londoners alike, I've started to feel a little concerned with my appearance, but not in the way you might think! I've stopped wearing make up, I now tie my hair into a mundane pony tail and limit myself to the jeans-and-a-nice-top school of dressing. Awful! I'm not sure how long this will last, the reaction so far hasn't been particularly dramatic but perhaps the potentials are revolutionary, we shall see!

At least I'm comforted by the fact that that much time off solids means that I'm now really incredibly thin.
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