Sexually Assualted in Hoxton!

That's right lady sisters, I was grasped, groped and grabbed as I was innocently ascending from the ladies loos in what I thought was an upmarket drinkery on Saturday night! I was demurely, even elegantly attired, wearing a nigh Dallas-esq shoulder padded cream blouse with strings of diamante baubles wound around my neck, trendy single stripe gentleman's dress trousers (the American choice I know, but I was in a hurry!) and sturdy leather walking boots - hardly an arousing combination for any but the most discerning fellow! But obviously my raging good looks spoke too, too loudly to be quieted by even the most humble attire. I was too tempting a filly for the vile, leather jacketed philanderer who passed me on the stairs to being able to avoid reaching out for a grope. That's what you get for going out in Hoxton, obviously.

Let me set the scene. I, Posie Rider, looking like a paid extra from such films as Brideshead Revisited, Gosford Park and Bright Young Things, am innocently exiting the ladies loos in a HOXTON BAR [which, may I add, had no mirrors. Now, I'm all in favour of women being given one less opportunity to stare at themselves, vanity being on the of the most deadly of the Deadly Sins and obsession with one's looks being obviously poisonous to the Modern Feminist (despite being constantly endorsed by those bloody Third Wavers) BUT when it has been raining, and when one's adorable masculine quiff, which one has spent the better part of half and hour and two Gin Fizzes crafting, has been utterly flummoxed, the presence of a mirror becomes more than a necessity. It becomes a RIGHT. I mean, how on earth is one to go forth for Women's Liberation with a bodged barnet? Have you ever seen a picture of a Suffragette? Now, those Sisters had style.]

I digress. So, attired as thus, I was ascending the stairs. Now, ahead of me was lolloping a much less wittily clothed young woman. Wearing a zebra print clingy 'thing', legs up to her eyebrows and teetering silver heels, this lady was clearly the lowest common denominator in terms of taste, and to all intents and purposes, a crowd-pleaser. So it was with disgust, although not with surprise, that I watched as an odious toad of a male descending the stairs reached out his vile mits, touched her shoulder and said in the most grotesque way possible "Alright darling, you're looking nice" followed by slurring and some obscenities I daren't repeat for risk of nutting the computer screen (which was quite expensive).

Now, all hail to the blond ahead of me, she shook him off and swore very righteously in his face. Hurrah! Thought I. She may be dressed like a slattern, but at least she knows how to deal with a man. BUT, this is when the really surprising thing happened. For as I was passing him on the stairs, rather than marking me for the high class sinorita I patently am, he addressed me in exactly the same terms! "Alright darling, pwoar looking nice" excetara ad nauseum ad a hand on my shoulder ad a shotgun.

Had I been in possession of a shotgun, I would have had no reservations about using it. Had I been prepared for such an attack I would undoubtedly have been able to respond in a fitting way, but you see I wasn't! How COULD I have been. And, Lady Readers, I'm rather ashamed. As all I could think to say in response, in sudden and spontaneous response, was a simple and rather hurried moniker, which was:

"You! Piss off now!"

Hardly fitting such a vicious attack, right? Now, as I rejoined my table (a group of far more enlightened fellows, and rather tough looking too, I'll add) I couldn't help but play out the various ways I'd have rather the scene had went.

And here's my question to you - would it have been so wrong for me to grab his tiny little head in my powerful hands, shake it from side to side to unbalance him, and then fling him headfirst down the stairs (they were sort of concretey, I mean I think it's pretty obvious he wouldn't have been altogether OK afterwards. Like more close to dead, really). I mean, that could pass as self-defense, right? Because if it happens again that's how I'm going to play it.

Answers on a postcard! My freedom depends on you, Lady Readers!

Terry update...

Girlies. Having doubts about Terry. I think he considers himself a bit of an 'alpha male' (probably compensating for something, no doubt) and I cast off the burden of the patriarch long ago.

I think I'm going to call it a day. Yesterday he explained the Reformation to me! To ME, Posie Bloody Rider. Like I don't know what the Lutheran Reformation is! PL-ease.

I was so annoyed it inspired Dead Bannana (see below).

Will let you know. Toodles xxxx

Robot Rapist! It still counts you know!

Can you believe this? This rapist jerk is sexually assualting this robot! He even said he built her (just for his raping pleasure!) I am disgusted. This is wrong. Why isn't anyone stopping him? Give the poor girl some pepper spray!

Refer to Donna Harroway, you Sexist Twat.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cyborg_Manifesto

Vagina Cake

Hi Gals! It's christmas time and as a little treat I'm sharing my special recipe for vagina cake! It was passed down through generations of the Rider family, I learnt it from my Aunt Lilly on the day I got my first period!



Posie's Recipe for Vagina Cake
Don't forget you need a Vagina to make these, else the recipe won't work (no boys allowed!)

Ingredients
110g (4oz) butter or margarine
110g (4oz) caster sugar
2 medium size eggs
75g (3oz) self-raising flour, sieved
2 – 3 drops Dr. Oetker Natural Vanilla Extract
Dr. Oetker Baking Cases

For the icing
75g (3oz) unsalted butter
175g (6oz) icing sugar
warm water

MIXED TOGETHER WITH 2 DROPS OF PINK FOOD COLOURING (this is very important lady readers!)

Vaginal Decoration
Sieved icing sugar
RED / PINK FOOD COLOURING

Pre-heat oven to 180ºC/350ºF/Gas Mark 4. Place the Baking Cases into a cupcake tin.
Well done - you've completed the first task (have a gin and fizz!)
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. (how cute!)
Gradually beat in the eggs and the buter and stuff, if the mixture starts to curdle, add a little flour.
Fold in the remaining flour with a metal spoon. Put in one drop of PINK FOOD COLOURING AND STIR. (yummy!)
Place spoonfuls of the mixture into the Baking Cases and bake for 15 - 20 minutes until well risen and firm to the touch. Remove from the oven and leave to cool on a cooling rack.
Take a sharp knife and cut a circle out of the top of each cake at an angle about 1cm (½ inch) from the edge.
Cut each circle in half and set aside.
Fill each cake with the butter and stuff. (Vagina City- here we come!) Place the butter AND TWO DROPS OF RED FOOD COLOURING in a bowl and beat until soft.
Gradually sift and beat in the icing sugar.
Mix in STRAWBERRY Extract and enough milk / water to make the icing fluffy and spreadable and use as above.
Place two half circles of cake on top to resemble THE LABIA.
Dust the top of each cake lightly with the sieved icing sugar.


Well done lady readers, or should I say chefs! you have created an authetic looking vagina that you can eat even if you're not a lesbian (or a man). LOVE YOURSELF and a merry Posie Christmas to each and every woman!

Dead Bannana: An Elegy

Dead Bannana, you are cut, you are my broken vein of yellow blood
(The wizard the wizard the wizard)
You broke my fucking road you bastard.
You are dead and I'm not wed
Same thing you said.
(patiarchy patriarchy patriarchy)
Left you rotting in ice-cream of servitude,
Lifted you out gave you a wash.
(Over and over an over)
No innocent smoothie
No pie
No more you fruit to rest my violets on my cunt, a feast:
Dead Bannana.

Blood soaked tampon et al - the movie

SOMEhow, Melody, Lara and I managed to find time in our hectic editorial schedule to produce this arthouse short - a filmic extension to my series blood soaked tampon et al.

It's got everything a film needs - action, tits and a LOT of blood, if you're interested.

xxx

I heart Andrea

Morning Lady Readers. I am researching for my latest publication 'I've lost my Arm, A Magazine' and have decided that the first issue 'New Wave Suffrage: This Time it's Personal'
(Spring 2009) will be dedicated to my militant sister Andrea Dworkin. This woman means business. If any of you can share any loving memories of Andrea please write in: you can do an opinion piece.

Here's a quote:

Sitting with Ricki, talking with Ricki, I made a vow to her: that I would use everything I knew, including from prostitution, to make the women's movement stronger and better; that I'd give my life to the movement and for the movement. I promised to be honor-bound to the well-being of women, to do anything necessary for that well-being. I promised to live and to die if need be for women. I made that vow some thirty years ago, and I have not betrayed it yet.

– Andrea Dworkin, Heartbreak: The Political Memoir of a Feminist Militant, 122.

Go Sister! Getting together with Melody Wittgenstein and some others from the editorial team this weekend So expect some more news here on MY blog (slash on the website too)

Hugs and Pugs xx

The working classes..

Very open minded singing along with the servants. A REAL WOMAN!

Sister Suffragettes! It's the sing along version!

Anorexic or FAKE-orexic?

I am utterly SICK, sick sick sick of fake-orexics! Or fanorexics, I can’t decide which meme to engender yet. I am as SICK of fanorexics as they are sick all over themselves. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to disparage those proper anorexics out there, you know, the frightening skeletal ones that you see wheeling suitcases around the underground and fear for their lives. Obviously this is a crippling disease which is depressingly endemic amongst young girls, and a symptom of untold external and internal pressures in this hideous thing we call society. But really, credit where credit’s due – if you’re going to go around telling everyone about your terrible eating disorder, you’re going to have to be really, exceptionally thin, that is if you don’t want to look like a complete idiot.

I’m not just talking out of the air: this is something I noticed just last night when I went to a canapes and nibbles reception with my ladyfriends, Melody Wittgenstein and Lara Buckerton.

It was the usual thing, glam literary types, authors, feminists like me and the girls – or so I thought! They were more than happy to swig at the free wine (very fattening, so I’ve heard), but everything fell apart when I moved swiftly towards the buffet.

‘Munch munch munch’, went Posie, eating her mini-quiche like a PROPER WOMAN. ‘This is species being!’ cried I, ‘this is liberation’. And down went another eight or nine mini-quiches (honestly the things were the size of chocolate buttons, it was like eating a packet of chocolate buttons). But not so for Melody and Lara.

First there were disapproving looks. Then there were raised eyebrows. Finally, they turned to one another and began the most heart-wrenching, attention destroying conversation I have ever heard in my life. Melody has very low self-esteem. She is very, very depressed. She thinks she’s fat and skips meals. If she ate a mini-quiche, even just the one (may I remind you they were the size of chocolate buttons) she would just hate herself. And, it turns out, Lara is bulemic. Buleeemic? She could have fooled me. Oh sure, everyone was bulemic in school (we went to school together, the usual thing: boarding, tartan, lax pitch, orchard) but then there was precious little else to DO. But now? Honestly, can anyone be that bored?

The problem with women like that is it’s never enough to be quietly, humbly pathological. It always has to become a public annoucement. This also includes getting a female friend drunk, waiting until she is good and drunk, and then boring her half to tears with emotional renditions of how you’re bodily dismorphed and instead of seeing a gorgeous, 20-something year old supermodel (that’s you Melody, Lara not so much) you see a big fat trout. This is especially unacceptable when the friend in whom you’re confiding a) is less attractive than you b) less thin than you and c) isn’t nearly as idiotic and vain as you are.

Being a bit depressed is fine, it can be extremely creative. When I was in hospital over the summer for self-harm with a bic disposable razor (shh, don’t tell Terry Blackteeth! I don’t want him to think I’m a psychopath – it’s our little secret) I was at my creative peak – writing the first 20 chapters of my novel Sally: An Independent Woman; A Fiction in only 2 months! Do you think Coleridge wasn’t depressed when he wrote the Prelude? Do you not think Blake was a little on the blue side of the mind when he wrote those funny little poems of his? How about Van Gogh? You see what I mean.

But unless you’re going to sublimate your melancholy into great works of art like me, which, let's face it, most of you aren’t, you really owe it to humanity to accept your position of utterly unearnt and undeserved social priviledge and opportunity and use it to do something useful. Talking about your ‘issues’ a) incessantly b) as if it hurt you to do so and c) as if there was something beautifully poignant about them only makes you look chronically self-obsessed and, yes I’m GOING to say it, vain.

So, here are my requests, oh women of the extra pound!: Don’t you make me valorise your vanity, and don’t you dare try to make me identify with you. I don’t. You are what is ruining women. I can’t remember the last time a manfriend (and admittedly I don’t have very many) commented negatively on a woman’s body. Most of them are utterly astonished if a woman so much as looks at them, and are far too grateful to concern themselves with whether said woman has ‘muffin tops’, flappy arms or thick ankles. ‘I don’t like flabby women’ says the chauvinist. ‘We don’t like you!’ the flabby woman should reply. Instead she cries, skips a meal, faints, cries, writes a blog post, tells her friends, reads Slyvia Plath, cries, wanders around in a stupor, etc ad nausea. If she can fit in time to binge-eat a pizza then vom it up, well that’s all to the good.

Or she sees a picture of a very pretty women. ‘Why is that not me?’ she asks. Because it is a picture. Of someone else. Not you. You may as well ask, ‘Why is that picture of a chair not me?’ Because it is not you. It is a chair. It is a discrete object. There are lots of discrete objects in the world. Not all of them can be you. Only one of them is you. You are it. Google Ontology. Have a read. Grow up.

And how, how have I have managed to keep my head, when all about me are loosing there’s? How have I managed to stay sane in a crazy mixed up world? How have I managed to keep slim and trim without skulking around gyms like a paedophile round a playground, complusive self-starvation or vomiting up my soup? Worthy questions, sisters. I’ll tell you: a positive mental attitude, a healthy, varied diet and a very fast metabolism. Those are the kinds of things that money can’t buy. Neither can shame.

(Some names have been kept the same in order to NAME AND SHAME)

Talking Vaginas

My new look blog!

What do you think of my new look web log, Ladies (and Gents - new look blog, new look Posie!)

I thought I was getting a little behind the times with all that drab old pink. I had a look at a counter culture magazine, some sort of anarchist thing, God only knows, the other day, and it occured to me - what a hideous front cover! Really, it was AWFUL? How on earth they think they're going to affect a world revolution with such a poor grasp of font I don't know! What I do know is, when the revolution comes, I'll be picking the side with the best wallpaper.

Anyway, here it is! Pretty pretty Posie Posty!

Vote below to let me know if you like the change, read 'Pankhurst' as 'Classic', 'de Beauvoir' as 'Hot hot hot' and 'Boycott' as a total load of 'Wank'. But then, you didn't need me to tell you that!

Terry Blackteeth

Went on my date. AWFUL art: photos of Transvestites drinking Capri Sun. I think you are right female readers: I must harness the power of my Quim once more and embrace his shortness, or rather my tallness.

He is a nice 'boy' and we are going to watch the film 'Body of Lies' starring Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio this Wednesday. I know, I know: I'm going to bring the latest Emmeline Pankhurst Biography with me.

Toodles and kisses x

Things to think about today...

This one's for the ladies...

Smoothies.
My hair.
Why am I so much more intelligent than everyone else?
My teeth.
How to avoid fats while still eating the same quantity of food.
Starch.
Camp X ray.
Picasso's blue period.
Whether tampax is sexist.
Whether the 'pax' in 'tampax' is sourced from the Latin 'pax' meaning 'peace', in which case what is the root of 'tam' and does it signify some sort of menstrual armistice?
Are women at war with their own bodies?
My legs - to wax or not to wax?
Does a hybrid art form (poetry and film, art and dance) demand that both disciplines justify themselves according to their own aesthetic or is it acceptable for them to be a bit rubbish and justify themselves through their novelty alone?
Is 'Dance without Words' a good title for a novel?
Gyms.
Should I join a gym?
Caterpillars.
Bonnie Langford.
Perms.
Writing, writing, writing!
What to write?
If Jane Austen was alive now would she be writing chick lit?
Am I the Jane Austen of the twenty first century????
Chris Hollins.
Genocide.
Aspartame - don' believe the hype.
If I'm going to lose weight, will it take more than drinking slimline tonic and semi-skimmed milk?
Base/superstructure.
That Baudrillard thing.
How short is TOO short?

Women - What NOW?

Last night I had the privilege of attending a debate on the future of Women's Rights at the British Library (followed by some Jaegermaister with Marxists at the London Student's Union - how subversive!). The panel, chaired by Polly Toynbee (hiss) consisted of the fabulous Nicola Brewer of the EHRC, novelist Tahmima Anam and some sort of student, Emily Beardsmore. The panel was one woman short, in that Helena Kennedy QC didn't turn up (probably doing something more important ‘in the House’). I think Polly took that rather well, although without Ms Kennedy the panel unfortunately consisted of 50% moron rather than a more conducive 40%. Thank God for the delightful Nicola and Tahmima. Polly and Emily are idiots.

Panellists were gifted with eight minutes of talk, followed by debate, followed by floor questions. Brewer glided effortlessly through a range of issues concerning equal pay, parental leave, affirmative action in employment and access to childcare. Anam described the situation of the women’s movement in Bangladesh, which is alive and well but meeting the frustrations of religious opposition. The she wooed us with excerpts from the delightful Sultana’s Dream (1905) by the Bangladeshi feminist, Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain. Acknowledged as the first literary depiction of a feminist Utopia, it depicts the scientifically sophisticated Ladyland in which men are locked away and Women rule through reason alone –

‘I became very curious to know where the men were. I met more than a hundred women while walking there, but not a single man.
'Where are the men?' I asked her.
'In their proper places, where they ought to be.'
'Pray let me know what you mean by "their proper places".'
'O, I see my mistake, you cannot know our customs, as you were never here before. We shut our men indoors.'
…
'But my dear Sister Sara, if we do everything by ourselves, what will the men do then?'
'They should not do anything, excuse me; they are fit for nothing. Only catch them and put them into the zenana.'

This was, of course, met with rapturous delight amongst the audience. Food for thought ladies.

Finally, and here is where the evening took a plunge towards the inane, the idiot Beardsley told us ‘wot da kidz fink’ about feminism (Lord knows how, she is 23, by which age I’d acquired a proper job in journalism and a coke habit to rival that of any college upstart).

Now, far be it from me to discourage a young woman to assert herself, or to scoff at her involvement in the Girl Guides (!!) which I'm sure is really 'right on' nowadays (Brown Owl...sitting on a oversized papier mache mushroom...jumping the broomstick...the 'Entertaining' badge which I REFUSED to accept, even though my table setting was by far the prettiest. You gotta make some sacrifices, ladies.)

But if I knew I was going to be partaking in a panel with PollybloodyToynbee from the Guardian, I'd make sure I had some facts on my side, or at least an opinion or two. Relating moronic anecdotes of how you "decided not to be rubbish like all the other girls," or how "a man told me I couldn't do something, gasp!" is as pathetic as it is unhelpful. I was on the Tube the other day and a guy looked at my breast 'area'.

And.

What?

Every woman has a rinky-dink story to share about the day 'when bigger boys came'. Moaning over our knitting only makes feminists look self-involved and dangerously unsystematic - which those in the camp Beardy are.

Now, as ever, thick is a feminist issue.

At one point, while the red faced Emily was avoiding answering yet another question from the floor concerning sex workers, religious fundamentalism or social welfare, by spouting nonsensical rhetoric about 'empowering young women' and 'education' and… um… 'empowering young women', Polly's eyes glazed over. As did her entire face. If it is possible for a person to glaze with their entire body, then that is what Polly would have done. And I knew what she was thinking, because it's what all of us were thinking, especially those of us who were involved in the Women's movement in the 90s (like myself), which was "If this is the future of feminism, we're screwed."

And why? Because Beardsmore’s wishy-washy, softly-softly brand of identity politics will never get Feminism anywhere. Nor will adopting a lamely quietist approach to such pathologies of culture as lap-dancing and the compulsory sexualisation of young women. Not being attractive is NOT an excuse to exempt yourself from arguments concerning the commoditisation of the body, nor is pointing out your own credentials as an ‘empowered young woman’ (find/replace “career-hungry-moraliser”) a recognisable political act. Occupying a position such as Ms Beardsleys (Head of some kind of Youth Club, I gather) must entail the responsibility of voicing difficult and outspoken opinions on the state of young women today, rather than limply condoning the kind of behaviour (lap-dancing, whoring, being a bit crap) that you find personally and theoretically reprehensible. Ms Beardsmore, however, clearly sees her position as a back-road into journalism, possibly imagining herself writing a column on her Vaio whilst supping on a Fair Trade Chai latte in a few years time. As such did little more than suck Polly Toynbee’s arse.

She was probably bullied at school. And because she was crap, not ‘different’.

After the lecture, when I rushed into the loo to look for the gloves I dropped during a clandestine pee when Polly was doing her introduction (Pink Leather Dents, size 8, if you found them please let me know!) something rather interesting happened. As a throng of ladies queued all the way out the door and into the halls, and the few menfolk who had bothered to attend cruised into the Gents in record time (nice work providing adequate facilities for the ladies, Brit Lib, or shall I say Brit No-Women’s-Lib-Thanks) I heard the voices of the crowd, speaking as if in one voice, to one another, over one another at times, and they were saying – "We should use the Gents! Let’s use the Gents, sisters! Why should we wait to pee any longer? That was a bloody long talk, and I drank a lot of water. I am absolutely desperate to pee. Now is our moment!"

And do you know what? Not one of them did.

I myself went to the loos in Euston.

Now, what do you think that means??
.

Too Short, or Not Too Short?

Oh ladies forgot to say- I am going on another date!

DATE
DATE
DATE
DATE
DATATATATATATATATA

His name is Terry Blackteeth. I know how weird... anyway he's taking me to an art opening this Friday. He's an art dealer and everything!

He is A LOT shorter than me though: is that cool?

Turner Prize? Turner Lies, you mean.

I quite agree with this:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2008/dec/03/turner-prize-female-winner

Why should some jumped up man win it just because he's from the North? Come on artists don;t you think we should be hurdling over those class divides? It's not their fault they are well turned out and he's a scag.

Maybe I will enter the Turner Prize next year- anyone know where I can get a form? My great friend Melody Wittgenstein had offered to do the filming for my new grapefruit video depicting the period: I shall call it 'Forbidden Fruit'. I think it's stands a good chance of winning!

I am also going to be launching a collection of still life shots: 'Fucking a Mango' and 'Peach Poof', exploring queer theory in the fruit bowl.

Watch this space...

Sexist jokes never got anyone anywhere

I was just in All Bar One and heard THE MOST SEXIST JOKE:

Q: Why are hurricanes normally named after women?
A: When they come they are wild and wet, when they go they take your house and car with them!

Don't laugh! How rude. If I were to tell such a joke it would run as follows:

Q: Why are tropical storms often named after men?
A: Because they kill people.

You see: feminists can be funny too.
.

Did someone say Prostitute?

Well hello there ladies.

I just found this article 'online' from the Independent: the writer called Sophie Morris, is accusing US of sponsoring prostitution. Now, I tell you straight up Miss Independent (up-your-self) journalist: WE do NOT encourage prostitution. You wouldn't catch me dead wearing a Playboy bunny t-shit. In fact I was one of the main campaigners in a key subsidiary of the 'Ban the Bunny' Campaign, known as 'Harrow the Hare'.

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2007/09/bin_the_bunny

Here are some of my thoughts on the article (which I would have written much much better than her):

1. "Victoria Andrews, 31, owns the lap-dancing club Aqua: Lounge in Southampton. She started dancing with friends when she was studying. "I went to audition with a group of housemates and we all got the job," she says. "It suddenly became more real, but we all made some cash on the first night and thought, 'Wow. This is great.'"

Posie Says: Do I really give a damn what Victoria thinks? She's a bloody prostitute for god's sake.

2. "Every sexual aid, every accoutrement, every raunchy negligée and multicoloured condom, has been freed from its restrictive hothouse and allowed to blossom in the open air. Sex is now on every high street, not just in the seedier areas of town. Have we reached sexual enlightenment? Categorically not. Deviant behaviour is as rampant as ever, and prostitution itself remains, in effect, illegal. But demand is on the up, out of control even. Do the people paying for it think that because we can talk about it pre-watershed, the moral arguments surrounding it have dissolved?"

Posie Says: Oh Fuck off Sophie! No one gives a shit what you think. Why are there so many question marks? It makes it look like you don't understand. Oh sorry, I forgot, YOU DON'T!

Men endorse this kind of behaviour, not women. And the women that do are too stupid to think about why they are doing it. That's why my brand of New Wave Suffrage shall be calling for a ban on sexual merchandise and castration for anyone consorting with sex workers (including women). Bin the Bunny? Why not Burn the Bunny?

3. "She (Sam) also has a theory about the people who use prostitutes. "Who's the punter? The punter is everyman. And why is it growing? Because they're disassociating from themselves sexually, and from their emotions. It's an expression of self-hate. Men who go to prostitutes, no matter how much they think they are functional, are people who can't be honest with themselves about who they are. When you scratch the surface and start to ask questions about their emotional relationship to their own sexuality, you find big dark holes."

Posie Says: Right on sister! I agree with you, you should know, you are friends with Emma Thompson (refer to article: click blog title for link).

I would go further to question exactly what men are trying to cover up here. I have a sneaky feeling that as society increasingly evolves men are starting to realise that in fact women are their intellectual superiors. Perhaps it is not only the uncontrollable male libido that is driving prostitution? If you follow this line of argument you might conclude that it is also fuelled by a male acceptance of immanent puerility?

4. Oh and the opinion of the 'lovable' Sebastian Horsley:

"Contrary to what those foul feminists will tell you, the prostitute is not a victim," he says. "If you talk to them, and I've met thousands (in what capacity, Sebastian? ) they don't often find themselves victimised and exploited, but the middle-class intellectuals who formulate their opinions for them tell them that they are (So, if the innocent, gentle middle-class intellectual is capable of forming the opinions of a zesty prostitute, who else is, Sebastian?). There's a whole rescue operation going on at the moment made up of social workers, community leaders and politicians, and it's in their interests to find suffering. There is exploitation, but there is exploitation in all industries."

Posie Says: I want you dead, Horsley. You. Have. Been. Noted.
cf. "I've met just thousands of them and they're really happy", well Sebastian, I've met 4 of them and they were miserable. We talked about the price of baked beans.

5. According to Samantha, there's now a growing number of women who hold down professional jobs and go on the game at the weekend. These women are not on the breadline, nor are they feeding a drug habit. No – their behaviour is a tragic indictment of obsessive consumerism. Whither a woman's sanctity when there's a new pair of Manolos and a trip to Chiva-Som in the offing?

Posie Says: Again I agree. These types of women are little more than spoons for the ladling of an almightily bitter soup, the foul blend of capitalism, poverty, poor education, sexism and inherent stupidity. Grab a gun and look for further details in first issue of I've Lost My Arm.

6. A summary of recommendations from the Home Office report "Tackling the demand for prostitution" (published 19 November):
* Make it an offence for people to pay for sex with someone who is controlled for another person's gain.
* Run a campaign aimed at sex buyers to raise awareness about trafficking for sexual exploitation.
* Amend the offences of kerb-crawling and persistent soliciting to allow prosecution for a first offence.
* Launch a national anti-kerb-crawling campaign and support forces in reducing street prostitution.
* Introduce closure powers for premises linked to sexual exploitation, allowing police to restrict access for up to three months.

Posie Says: Me and the New Wave Suffragettes will help you Ms Smith! And we'll knock off a few of those Belle de bloody Jour types too. Grasping wankers.

the number 214 Bus

Just a quick note to say "thanks soooo much" to the incredibly sweet girl on the number 214 bus travelling from Camden to Angel.

There was this awful man sitting behind moi. He had ketchup (blood?) pouring from his lip and was shouting the most offensive things at me. I was scared. Yes, that's right lady readers, even I, Posie, get scared on transport in the dark.

With his male gaze burning my brain, I panicked. My eyes caroused the bus and then I saw this lovely girl sitting right next to the driver (very sensible).

"Come and sit over here!" she mouthed to me.

The man kept shouting, but the girl kept insisting.

So I moved and I thank god I did because, if I had not, I daren't think what might have happened.

Charles de Gaulle once said that China is full of the Chinese, so I feel at liberty to declare that buses travelling at night are filled with perverted old men who want to shout at empowered young females like myself. It's just a shame for them that other empowered young females also travel on night buses and we are not ashamed to stick together!

...en guard!

Posie and Out.


P.S. Please join my period group on Facebook! It's called 'Blood soaked tampon et al"

I've Lost My Arm! A feminist magazine that shows other feminist magazines where to get off!

Sub-vexted and on the 'Verge' of tearing out my eyes (and my ovaries) in despair at the miserable quality of reading material available to the discerning feminist, I've done what any self-respecting lady writer with half a minute to spare would do, I've launched a magazine! Or, vagazine(!). I mean, it's not technically launched yet, the time for that will come when we're all lounging at the Groucho with a Pernod n' Rosso in one hand, a copy of I've Lost my Arm in another, a hammer tucked into a coat pocket.

In the meantime, I'm on the lookout for SUBMISSIONS from discerning lady writers - are you far too intelligent to pander to the pitiful standards of contemporary publishing? Are you disgusted with the screaming irony and so-called consumer 'choice' of post-feminism? Are you just a bit too old for so called 'third wave' feminism, does it make you go 'ooh, er'? Are you willing to save a post-feminist, even if it means killing them? Then this is the magazine for you.

I'm looking for challenging, articulate writing. I'm looking for women who would wield a weapon to fight for their rights. I'm looking for a massive Arts Council grant. Can you help?

The theme of the first issue will be: NEW WAVE SUFFRAGE - A MANIFESTO.

Check out the website (click post title!) it's up and running and will soon be unfurling with ideas and features like an attack flower.

Any thoughts, email me: posierider@gmail.com.

BBC Complaint Result!

Received this morning by email (!)

Seriously though, is this the best they can do?


"Dear Miss Rider

Thanks for your e-mail regarding our 'Breakfast' programme.

I understand that you have concerns over what you feel were sexist comments made towards Sian Williams on the programme. I acknowledge that you believe that the presenter in question, Chris Hollins, should be disciplined because of these remarks.

Although all of our presenters are aware for the need for professionalism at all times, there will be times when light hearted humour comes into play amongst colleagues. I'm sure that this comment was meant as such and not meant to be taken in an offensive way.

This is not to excuse your feelings on the subject and I can assure you that your complaint has been registered on our audience log. This is a daily report of audience feedback that's circulated to many BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive Board, channel controllers and other senior managers.

Thanks again for taking the time to contact us with your feedback.

Regards

Sarah Wilson
BBC Complaints"

Oh yeah, nice work getting a woman to respond, nice to hear from you 'Sarah'. Or should I say, Steven??

Subtext? Subvexed more like it!

I am fuming. Not only does the future of my Me, Tim and my Quim (aka Me Ted and my Head) hang in the balance but someone has thoroughly shat on my parade in the form of a little publication they call 'Subtext'.

Hummmmmmmmmmm.

After writing a delicious piece on feminism and fruit i was bitterly disappointed to find out it had been...rejected. The taste was not sweet, it was bitter.

Let me know what you think. Here is a review from all those lovely people at the F-word!

http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2006/08/subtext_magazin

Posie and Out.

Update

Still no news from the BBC.

Royal Mail Support Women's Rights at Bloomin' Last!

While the Beeb is blasted asunder, like a birthing womb, by the wave and maelstrom of righteous Feminist violence stirred up by Chris 'what a cockhead' Hollins, there is at least some Good News out there for ladies, and Lady Writers! (ie Ladies, right?)

Now you can send your Manuscripts, Submissions and Christmas Cards using only the snazziest, Ladiest Stamps!

Check out The Royal Mail's Women of Distinction Stamp collection, featuring such bastions of Femininity as Millitent Fawceps, Marie Stopes and Eleanor Rathbone.

Who said Women of the past secretly demonstrated their forebidden talent for writing in the socially acceptable form of the letter? Well, I say let's Politicise letters, Ladies! Let's take Women's Rights out of the Envelope and into the In-Tray!

A sample letter for your complaint

I have constructed a letter below for you to post to the Beeb website:http://www.bbc.co.uk/complaints/complaints_stage1.shtml


Dear Sir,

I say 'Sir' and not 'Sir/Madam' because it has recently been brought to my attention that your corporation is in fact extremely mysogynist towards women. I was shocked the other day (Tuesday, 4th November 2008) by the comments of a Mr Chris Hollins (BBC Sports presenter) who told the lovely Sian on Breakfast News that he, I quote had 'finally got her alone on the sofa".

Needless to say I find this kind of language highly offensive and urge you to discipline My Hollins straight away.

This behaviour is NOT ON. It is derogatory towards women and as a Feminist I feel it is my duty to protect women like Sian who are less intelligent than myself.

I look forward to seeing Mr Hollins behave himself in the future.

Goodbye SIR.

Spread the Word...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/breakfast/4370574.stm

I HATE you

Chris.

BBC: The Basically for Boys Corporation!

OR Chris Hollins, or why Sport is as Crap as the BBC

Forgot to say:

I spat out my scrambled eggs this morning after hearing the sly remark of Chris 'dickhead' Hollins (the 'S' stands for Sexism and Sports) Sports presenter for BBC Breakfast, who perversely cooed to the lovely Sian Williams 'Finally Sian, I get you alone on the sofa...'

Alone on the sofa? Aloooooone on the sooooofa? Who does this football hooligan think he is?

Oh Sian finally Mark's away covering the American election and I 'get you alone on the sofa'!

I'd like to get you alone in an incinerator Chris Hollins, I'd like to burn you into tiny pieces of ash and eat you. In fact I'd just like to get you AND the sofa, which inspires memories of 80s Nescafe adverts, full stop. Not only are you both chauvinists you are an out of date chauvinists which is the most unacceptable chauvinism of all.

So Posie being Me, and Me being Posie (yes I have been reading Hegel) called the BBC to let them know my thoughts. Yet it seems any offense against a woman bears little resonance with the fat cat bosses at the Basically Boys Corporation. Needless to say the bastards did not take my complaint seriously and told me I was overreacting. OVERREACTING, moi?

So I am appealing to all my lady readers to call up the Beeb and let their voices be heard!!

Poor Sian- someone has to help her! She is only a BBC newsreader, who doesn't even realise when she is being sexually harassed! Get on the phone, get online, DO something. If intelligent, accomplished women like you and I can't do something to help imbeciles like Sian, then what must we be thinking we have to do with ourselves?

Down with Chris, up with Satanic Sluts, down with Andrew Sachs, burn Russel Brand, eat Johnathan Ross, love Hillary Clinton!

(Hillary: you will always be the President of MY United States!)

Posie and out.

The Premonitions of A Lady

Here's the first scene of my play, it's almost completed - I've been writing it for 14 years! It's the tale of a modern woman who uncovers secrets about her past on the death of her Mother! It reminds me of Virginia Woolf and Ivy Compton Burnett - what do you think???


SCENE 1 INT. JUDITH’S FLAT. DAY
Light: Spot JUDITH. Spot CHARLIE.

CHARLIE:
Buy your goods here! Want stuff? I’ve got stuff! Good morning Lady Judith, don’t you look a picture this fine day!
JUDITH:
Do you have any milk Charlie?
CHARLIE:
Nah, nah milk.
JUDITH:
Well what about cotton?
CHARLIE:
Nah, none of that neither. Price of cotton’s sky-rocketed what with all them jeans factories opening up in the New World.

JUDITH:
(Narratorial) The year was 1934, and I, Judith Coalstream, all round modern woman, was sowing barley in my window box in Bloomsbury. Everything was changing so fast; it was a new age of hope, of opportunities for women.

JUDITH:
(Quiet) Do you have any disposable razors?
CHARLIE:
Milady! What’s a nice girl like you want with a disposable razor?
JUDITH:
Never mind that, have you got any?
CHARLIE:
I’ve got one left, but it’s going to cost you.
JUDITH:
See you at the tradesman’s entrance.

Telephone ringing

JUDITH:
Wait a moment Charlie, it’s my telephone.

JUDITH answers telephone, holding disposable razor.

JUDITH:
Hello?
CAPTAIN:
(On Telephone) Judith?
JUDITH:
Uncle, is that you?
CAPTAIN:
Yes Judith, it’s the Captain. You aren’t holding a disposable razor are you?
JUDITH:
Why no, of course not!
CAPTAIN:
Good. In that case I’ve got some terrible news. Your mother she’s…dead.
JUDITH:
Oh dear.
CAPTAIN:
Yes, as dead as your dead father. Her addiction to ethanol finally caught up with her. We found her dead, in bed, this morning and I thank God you’re not holding a disposable razor because if you were I dread to think what you might do with it.

SD: JUDITH looks meaningfully at the razor.

CAPTAIN:
Of course you must come from London at once. Can you bear to return home after all these years?

Light: Black out

Posie at the Movies!

Fear ye not lady readers! I have returned from my fearless mission! Now I know I said I was going to toss some barrels with the big boys but when I got there they were EXTREMELY big and they were on fire. In fact one man lost an arm and a small child perished in the flames.

I read about this in the local paper however, for I unfortunately didn't make it to the toss pot parade. My lovely friend George just makes the best mulled cider you see, and we WERE in Devon. One thing led to another and before I knew where I was, I was dancing on a haystack with a village local. Then black, maybe I fell? Don't remember much after that, except vague memories of snorting my H&B steroids...

Anyway posie projects posie projects posie projects: Posie's projects just keep coming, eh gals? I'm planning a move into movie reviewing, everyone's doing it and I met a nice lady at G2 who says they're always looking for experienced contributors to their pages, a far cry from the attitude they adopted when I was a humble work experience gal in the 1990s - "Oh no Posie, they said, you can't be a journalist, but you can be my PA if you like. Minimum wage? What's that? Oh no Posie, women's pay cuts aren't a 'story', not unless we can find a victim to profile. Can you find a victim Posie? We need a victim! We need a victim!"

Fucking hacks.

I was half tempted to tell them to stick it, especially seeing as Paul Pott, the bastard Junior Features ed. who I worked under, sometimes literally (yes gals, a budding journo's gotta do what a budding journo's etc ad nauseam) is now Head of Features, whatever that means. Fortunately the temptation to 'stick it to the man', via the use of, you guessed it, an expertly penned 'feature' plastered all over his precious Gbloody2 was too, too much.

So, here goes. Let me know what you think!

I've Loved you So Long (0ct 2008. French) Reviewed by Posie Rider.
Starring the inimitable Kristen Scott Thomas, this heartbreaking film charts the return to sanity of a woman who has been in prison for killing her son! Supported by her slightly wet sister, a professor of 'literature' at an unspecified French University, she rebuilds her life and starts doing proper things again, as for example when she leaves prison she looks very haggard, but by the middle of the film she's wearing earrings and make-up and smoking a lot less. Along the way she attracts a myriad of male suitors, some of whom kill themselves and others who are sensitive and like art - I know how you feel sister!

This film was particularly engrossing for one of two reasons. Firstly, Scott-Thomas is especially beautiful, whether she is looking haggard or not. I only just resisted the temptation to touch her face. I would have mostly liked to stroke her powdery eyelids.

Secondly, the portrayal of the relationship between the two main characters (who are WOMEN) is very strong, as they manage to talk for entire scenes without mentioning their husbands, children or sex lives. And, seeing as the film is about a woman who killed her child, this is far from easy.

The film was in French, although at one point a character, who was a bit mad, spoke in English, and do you know the remarkable thing was, I didn't even notice! And they had been speaking French the whole way through. I turned to my compatriots, terribly literary types who know about these sorts of things, and they had definitely noticed. I wonder why I didn't? Perhaps I am far more intelligent than I actually realised.

The plot dwindled, however, towards the end when we discovered why she had in fact killed her child - just when I was beginning to revel in the challenging Medea re-imagined undertones, it turns out the child was ill and she was just 'being kind'. Now, this was disappointing. Some slushy sentimentalists were sated by this, I'm sure, but it begs the question: is art house cinema (I assume this was art house, I mean it was in French although the sound track was a little Dawson's Creek) sorry, is art house cinema not brave enough to tackle an honest portrait of a female child-murderer? Would it not have been far more interesting to force us into sympathy with a character we knew was technically pathological? OBViously NOT. The rights to my own novel, Me Tim and My Quim, were recently acquired by Paramount, and the first thing they did was to scour my viciously acerbic psycho-lust psychological thriller of all of its challenging sexual elements: the rape of the gerbil, Rosie's botched suicide attempt with a Gillete Ladyshave, Tim's death at the hands of Rosie's friend Lucy who simply couldn't take Rosie talking about Tim any more. I know, right? Well, suffice to say, once Cameron Diaz has had her famous 'creative input', ie. grubby little fingers, all over it, it'll be as weak as a Starbuck's Chai Latte.

Anyway, I can't help but think that they softened this movie somewhat in translation. Perhaps the original script was far more edgy, and perhaps she killed her kid because she just didn't like him? Another criticism is there were an awful of redemptive scenes in which she made cakes and did the washing up - cue gushing music and lingering shots of her lovely puffy eyes.

I hope I'm not alone in saying I would rather have my tubes tied than spend a Saturday afternoon making scones.

Summary - 3 Stars.

***

Women can burn stuff too!

I am shocked. Today after deseeding my big pumpkin I received a call from my fabulous friend George Willow-Mochasian inviting me to a wonderful old pagan-esquire ceremony in Devon (I know!) that involves throwing tar barrels down a hill. I think fire must be involved somewhere... Anyhow. WOMEN CANNOT PARTICIPATE.

I. Know.

So we're not having any of that are we? I have hatched an acerbically planniscious plan to fool them all. I am strong, I've picked many apples in my time; I have carried sacks on them down the path from Aunt Lilly's orchid into the kitchen. I have made jam, I have made crumble, but damn it- I picked the apples!

I therefore shall be assuming the disguise of a man, I shall perform in the competition, win and then reveal my true identity shaming them all! And just in case you're thinking "She can't do it. She's is too weak. How? Impossible! A little woman against all those strong men?" Well readers I have one word for you: steroids.

You wait, you see I will have them ALL: the steroids and the barrels (maybe some men too)

And don;t worry they're not that dangerous- I got some herbal ones from Holland and Barrett.

So I've got my lovely warm jumper ready from good old Aunt Lilly and some sparklers- but most of all I cannot WAIT to toss some barrels. I will be just like Zena Warrior Princess! Well not really like her (awful third waver) I'd like to stick the (post-) in her feminism: Silly bitch.

Sorry. Anyway, here's the link check it out gals!! Will let you know how it goes...

http://www.tarbarrels.co.uk/

P.S. I think steroids might cure thrush, that or cranberry juice.

Silly me...

http://fwsa.org.uk/CFP211108.doc

almost forgot the link so you can all see how talented I am.

I am a writer. Here is the proof.

Award Winning Writer, Moi?

Hey chics! Bet you're wondering where I've been? Well I have joined a little something called Facebook. It's all the rage. Look me up and become my friend - there are lots of HILARIOUS photos up there and a very special one of the vagina cake I baked for my friend Germaine's birthday!

It's just me and all my young feminist contacts, hanging out, sharing thoughts and relflections. It seems that some people are a little too old for 'FB' (unlike moi), like my friends Melody Wittgenstein and Jackie from the hospital (who's still in the hospital. She was thick, but I was in dire need of self-gratification), who consider Facebook a childish endeavour. But not I!

ALSO you will never guess what has happened? I, me, Posie bloody Rider has been nominated for a FWSA book prize for the ground breaking set of essays "The Suffragettes- Why?"

It's so exciting and such a great testament to the strength of those incredible women. I hail ye all!

If I win I'm going to take the money to make a film about Mary Wollstonecraft and the artistic realisation of the period using grapefruit. I've been planning it for ages it could be the next big thing (I think...)

Love to you all and get online! Stop being such techno-slugs!

Posie and out.

Gerald, or Why I Hate Men

Do you remember Gerald readers? He was coming round for dinner to eat venison when Paramount called and I…well, I DID NOT cook the very expensive venison.

Gerald is a writer, only well, he’s not a writer because he’s never written any books. In fact the only things Gerald writes are Bob Dylan song lyrics on his bedroom wall when he’s sad.

Usually I would maintain silence, as with most things it speaks louder than words. It is far more dignified, but as you’ve probably guessed by now dignity and me are like chalk and cheese.*

No reader I am no pervert, but in order to write my recent collection of poems ‘Bloodsoaked Tampon et al’ (I have included some in the blog), I needed to do some serious ‘investigating’. I wanted to trace my sexum-ego back to the roots of my sexuality. That is why I embarked upon an affair with the 17 year old Gerald.

We dated for a few months, went to the cinema, Tate Modern, Pizza Hut that kind of thing. Condoms; you know. It only lasted for a few dates and, to be honest I didn’t care much for him, but I did manage to write some of the most breath taking poetry paper has ever known!

SO you can imagine my surprise when I yesterday discovered that Gerald is in fact 26 and works in brand management!

I KNOW. My work is wasted, all those poems are fake; just like him! So, I am now going to break him down to size, to un-craft the craftiness of his deception. And what a deception it was…

Gerald is an extremely tall teenager. In fact I was seduced by his spotless skin. But the truth of the matter is that Gerald is NOT a teenager. I KNOW; this makes him duplicitous.

Gerald would often cut himself, that’s how we met actually; we would meet up in the Sainsbury’s car park in Islington and stab pins into our bellies. But I soon began to realise that Gerald really was a tortured person (he wasn’t doing in the name of ‘character research’ as I was).

In fact he was almost obsessed with being tortured. This was probably what tricked me into assuming he was a teenager. (Come to think of it I never actually asked Gerald wht he did. I mean I just assumed that with apersonality like THIS he had to be a teenage... Anyway that's not the point!)

To continue...

Gerald would drink too much, take too may drugs and too many liberties with the people he was closest to. He would worship men who had fallen by the wayside, like Bret Easton Ellis and Jason Donovan, but these men were mavericks who managed to craft beautiful art from their suffering. I have a feeling he too thought he was maverick. But, unfortunately for Gerald, that just wasn’t the case.

This is all easily done. Gerald decided to go and live in a warehouse (not the shop, a real factory warehouse, but it was smart and they paid rent and were all Oxbridge educated, how else could I have coped?)

Come on Gerald! Anyone can take drugs and drink more, live in a shop and say bashful things in an askew attempt to be cutting; I personally use a razor. He thought he could achieve great things. But, unfortunately for Gerald, that just wasn’t the case.

You see the thing with torture readers, is that it infers there is some kind of mystery and within mystery lies great, untapped potential. Someone is only tortured because they prevent themselves from reaching their full potential. BUT it turns out Gerald has no real potential at all!
And do you want to know why reader? He would need incredible sensitivity. For a loser is not tortured, a shop assistant is not tortured, poets and artists are tortured. He seemed to assume he was one of the latter (a dreamer JUST LIKE A TEENAGER). But, unfortunately for Gerald, that just wasn’t the case.

He worked at Nickelodeon and had the sensitivity of dead processed fish.

He was astoundingly arrogant without any of the necessary intelligence to back it up. It was pitiful when he never relented in arguments, nor showed any curiosity in areas he didn’t understand, which were an awful lot of areas.

FYI (And when he did learn something from someone of superior mind, he had to dress it up in the framework of ‘having lessons’ like a little baby, so embarrassed he was by encountering a superior brain)

His obsession with seeming clever also materialised in his writing style, scrambling words so that it made no sense in the hope that people would assume their own stupidity had prevented them from understanding. But Gerald there is no excuse for bad grammar!

He would also shout and lot and talk like a chaffinch on heat. He thought that I, Posie le Rider, might fall for it? But unfortunately for Gerald, that just wasn’t the case.

I AM FAR MORE INTELLIGENT THAN HIM!

He was destructive and raucous, he demanded my constant attention, like baby (once gain, the duplicity comes in here).

All these things are unconscious of course. Gerald has no idea of them, but I have had too many cognitive therapy sessions not to understand all these signs.

Gerald often thought me unaffectionate and bossy, but I would rather be a demon through and through than sport the gloss of concern as he does.

The one small comfort I take with me is the knowledge that Gerald shall never be the great writer he dreams of being. Do you know why readers? One word: empathy.

A great writer breathes empathy; it’s her life-blood. It brings the world not only into her mind, but into her heart. A great writer needs a great heart filled with the complexities of fears unknown, loves unknown, pains unknown. She needs eyes that see more than people, ears that hear more than sounds and instincts that speak louder than thoughts.

Of course I too had to pretend to be 16. I bought glasses, wore leggings. But you cannot blame me for not being more than honest about my great writing ability. I am INDEED a talented author so I tell you this from experience: first and foremost a writer needs empathy. But unfortunately for Gerald, that just wasn’t the case.

*IN FACT it has always been my Aunt’s opinion that men are generally too small. Therefore it is morally unjustified for women to fight the insatiable anger they feel towards them. Just like chocolate.

Sally, or an Independent Woman Chapter 2

More treats for you! Writing is so theraputic, and important. Particularly when you've had the weekend from HELL like poor Posie! Enjoy!

****

“I found a really big moth in my wardrobe last night, only I didn’t know what to do with it!” Fran was crying into her skinny latte, “So I just put a big glass over it and watched it flapping around in there all alone…just like me!”

Lunch was nearly over and Sally sat fixated on her new shoes. They were fluffy and pink and far more interesting than Fran.

“And then I thought of David because he always used to catch the moths you see,” Then with panic surfacing in her eyes, struggling against the puddles of realisation she asked, “Whose going to catch the moths now Sally? I’m not! I hate moths!” Fran erupted into hysteria, banging her head against the table, spilling the bowl of balsamic vinegar and olive oil from the beginning of the meal all over her head.

“Calm down, you’re making a scene,” Sally said, trying to subtly mop up the grease.

“But whose going to catch the little moths?” Fran sobbed, “Who will release them into the wild?

“I’m sure David will move back in soon,” she threw down the browned napkin and wanted to give Fran a good slap round the face but decided against it.

“Why is she yapping on about moths?” Sally had no idea. Now it was silent and she would have to say something, again.

“Now Fran,” she tried to look serious by putting the palms of her hands together as if in prayer, “That woman is too old to have children. Now, all men want is food and children. They are all just like David Beckham- extremely simple. He’ll be home soon, you’ll see.”

Fran smiled and a little bit of olive oil trickled down her face.

Sally quickly added “I didn’t mean David Beckham was coming home of course, I meant the other David. Imagine: you with David Beckham!” Sally burst into a fit of laughter and starting beating her fist on the table. She had cracked a fine joke and would have given herself a pat on the back if she hadn’t been wearing such a bulbous gillet that day.

When the laughing was finally at an end, Sally dried her eyes and Fran pushed away her food. She was looking thin and Sally was jealous. “When was the last time you ate?” she asked, “You haven’t touched you’re nicoise salad.”

“David always said that it was bad to eat tuna,” she replied. “Now that he’s gone, well I thought I was strong enough to eat it but…I’m just not!” The tears came crashing back down onto the tablecloth and Sally seized the opportunity to start talking about herself.

“It’s my anniversary today. Aren’t you going to wish me a happy anniversary?”

“Hap-py anni-vers-ary Sally,” Fran sniffed.

“Well done. Now that wasn’t too hard was it? Kindness doesn’t cost you know, pleasantries don’t charge.”

Fran tied back the hair from her face and blew her nose. Deep black lines encircled her eyes and she had never been paler. She had to pull herself together; her life was less important than Sally’s. “How are you going to celebrate?” she muttered.

“He’s taking me to Le Gavroche!” Sally squeaked, “Look at my shoes, oh and look at the anniversary card Jenson made for us, isn’t it cute?”

Sally had taken out a piece of damp toilet paper about 5 ft long and was slowly unravelling it to reveal a series of pictures documenting her romance with Dominic. The scene was drawn badly in felt tip pen and the acidic ink had created large holes across the paper. It was shredded at the corners and slightly yellow.

“He’s been learning about the Bayeux Tapestry at school and thought he’d make one for his mummy and daddy. He’s very creative. Look, he’s drawn an arrow going through my eye here, just like King Harold.”

“Yes,” Fran replied apathetically. She was staring into her coffee.

“Christ Fran, you could at least pretend to be interested!” But Fran just kept staring at the lukewarm latte or the sugar bowl or the toothpicks or the handbag, at anything except the thing Sally was trying to show her. “Why isn’t she looking at the thing I’m trying to show her?” Sally thought to herself.

She decided to grab her friend’s attention by raising her voice, as if she were talking to a disabled person, “I said I think Jenson has a real talent for art, that he could even make a career out of it, that or history. Fran, hello?”

Silence. Fran was so selfish like that! Why did it always have to be about her? The two had met at Interior Design College in the early nineties. Fran studied curtains and Sally was taking a diploma in cushions. People said they got on like a house on fire; a popular irony because house fires were particularly bad for interior designers. Yet Sally always got the impression that Fran thought herself superior and would frequently claim that curtains were more important than cushions because they blocked out the light to help people sleep. But what about when you have a bad back? Never thought about that did she?

Fran, who was shaking and rocking forward and backwards, interrupted Sally’s musings. She was tightly twisting a napkin round her thumb until it turned white. Her eyes: vacant. Her cheeks: white. Her smile: vacant. She glared into the cold tuna and whispered; “Fly away little moth…fly away home…” Then looking out of the window she continued; “When a moth flies to a light bulb it thinks its flying to the moon, but it’s not Sally, no, it’s only a tiny light bulb,” she paused, then like the peaceful eeriness before a storm when the gentle wind pushes a child’s swing or spins the wheel on an upturned bicycle, there came the the most almightly racket, “But it never gives up!” Fran shouted, “Always pushing, always reaching upwards to something it can never touch! Poor, stupid, little moth!”

Her head came crashing down on the table once more leaving Sally irritated by her friend’s pointless display of melodrama. All that imagery was so unnecessary and besides this was her story. She quickly downed her cappuccino and when the bill was paid the two women set off down Westbourne Park, popping into Monsoon where Sally bought a glitter pencil and Fran got a new hat. “Why do you still buy that stupid stationary?” asked Fran. “You’re a grown woman Sally Pooper.”

“I know, but they’re just so cute. I still keep a diary you know. I write in it when I can and I only use my special pens.”

They turned the corner and reached Fran’s shop. Fran had set up her own curtain shop, Curly Curtains, two years ago. People could bring in photographs or pictures and she would print them onto curtains. That afternoon she was printing a photograph of Pat Sharp onto a blind for a downstairs loo.

“Well here’s where I leave you,” she said. “Have a great time tonight.”

“Thanks and you take care now.” Sally turned shook out her beautiful long blonde hair and started strutting down the street, but half way down she stopped and turned; Fran was calling after her. “Sally!” she cried, “I’m not going to let the moth go!”

Sally bit her lip; people were staring. “For god’s sake will you shut up about that bloody moth?”

She quickly ran back down the street to Fran who was glued to the shop doorframe. Sally pushed her inside. “It’s really embarrassing!” she whispered, “just get back inside the shop OK?” Fran started crying again, but Sally really couldn’t be bothered. “I’ll see you soon,” she said and made off down the street.

Desperate not to be recognised Sally held the shopping bag containing her new shoes in front of her face. “How humiliating!” she thought, “I mean what was all that moth nonsense about anyway? I’m Sally Pooper, what do I care about any stupid moths? What does a moth, trapped in a glass, trying to reach a light bulb it has unknowingly mistaken for a moon have to do with me?”

“Ouch!” She had walked straight into a phone box. Rubbing her head she looked up through the glass to see a familiar, yet slightly shocked, face staring right back at her. It was Sylvia Bloomingdale.

Sally, or an Independent Woman: A Fiction

OK readers! so, as promised, here' s my latest offering to my literary mistresses on high! It's a working title. I was thinking 'a womb of her own' but I'm not sure, don't you think it's quite sexist?

It's basically a pastiche of chick lit, a genre I totally subvert in this incredibly probing work.

So, this is the first chapter. Tune in soon for the next!

Sally, or an Independent Woman: A Fiction

Last night I dreamt I was back in Cork, before the famine killed all the little potatoes. I dreamt I was with Gim, my Irish boyfriend. Gim worked down the mines and in the night time we would pick potatoes together. But then the famine came.

It happened on a Sunday when I did start to bleed. But my Irish friends, who did not know what it was to be woman, thought me a witch and cast me out yonder.

But then the famine came. Thinking it be a curse to punish those who had wronged me so, the villagers came after me with pitchforks and sticks of fire. “Kill Shirley! Kill Shirley!” they yelled.

Oh, I was scared without Gim! But he was still down the mines! So with courage in my heart when they found me crouching in ditch, I stood up against the mob!

“Stop you fools!” cried I. “I am Shirley! Yes I bleed! I bleed as did Christ on his most holy of crosses. I give myself up to the mercy of the little baby Jesus, now, in the hour of my need. He shall hear me and all shall be well!”

But nay alas! With their pitchforks high in the air and fire consuming the sky the mob crept nearer and nearer towards me. The heat rose, my heart leapt, the blade hurtled towards my eye and then-

Sally woke up. It was a beautiful day in Notting Hill. The sun was shining and she could hear the gentle hum of city life outside her massive town house. She put out her hand to find that Dominic had already left for work. Dominic. He was in business.

Sally couldn’t stop thinking about her dream, nightmare, even. As a West London physiologist she was quite accustomed to over analysing and occasionally cutting herself. She pondered the meaning of Shirley.

“Irish? Well maybe its about music, or the colour green?” Sally concluded that yes, the dream must certainly symbolise the hope associated with the colour green; the colour of Ireland. Happily contemplating the good fortune her dream might bring the burning smell and hiss of the straightening irons let her know that she had finished doing her hair and after some more time putting on make up she was ready to start the day. Tuesday 23rd September 2007. It went something like this:

Fruit
Someone else take Jenson to school
Pilates
Shoe shopping (!)
Lunch with Fran
Appointments
Book Group
Dinner with Dominic…

Dominic! Could you believe it? Married for 13 years today. The arrival of little Jenson eight years ago made their family complete and now they had a Russian au pair, Александра, they were truly happy. Sally couldn’t resist creeping over to the wardrobe to have a peek at the GORGEOUS Amanda Wakley in her closet. Tonight was going to be so magical, Dominic said he had a surprise for her. What could it be?

But then Sally remembered Fran. Oh Fran, poor Fran. Fran, who had recently discovered that David had been shagging his secretary. To make matters worse the secretary was actually 18 years older than Fran. Not that it really made that much difference, “Fran is pretty ugly”, Sally thought to herself.

Poor Fran. Sally had done everything she could, she had even given her free physiology, but still the pain remained. Fran was a broken woman. It made Sally realise how lucky she was- Dominic would never cheat on her. No, Sally and Dominic would be the happiest, best, most amazing couple in the world, always! Sally was spinning round so much she fell over and wacked her head on the wardrobe. But just before that she thought: With a love that strong how could it not last forever?

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.

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.

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!

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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