Back from the brink of marriage and alive - just!

Lady readers, I can only apologise for my absence. Yesterday was clearly the worst day of my life, but I awake renewed and refreshed for, thank god, I'm not married!

Things went from bad to slightly better to pretty bad again on Saturday, as Ann was placated by her pizza, but soon high and buzzing from the Cherry Coke I served her as an accompaniment. She came as close to being drunk on sugar and E numbers as any woman I have ever seen over the age of 12, reminiscent of a childhood summer I spent in Portugal trying to get drunk on Malibu ice cream, and then just Malibu. Attempts to entertain her were fruitless as she babbled half incomprehensible nonsense about her family and childhood and the difficulties she faced as a worshipper of Sappho (who she's never read, I ask you!) in the blustering North. It was all rather too moving for me, and I accidentally fell asleep picturesquely in my bio-form Habitat beanbag, to be unceremoniously awoken 7 hours later by Emmeline. Morning had come, and Ann was already in her dress.

Now, we'd kept our dresses a secret from one another so that it would be a lovely surprise. Just to clarify, mine was this one.

As a feminist bride, I'd thought long and hard about what to wear, critical as it is to uphold one's political principles while doing justice to one's admirable waist (cf. the Suffragettes with their great hats). Having decided that my virginity, soul, modesty and so forth were decidedly un-'white', in the bridal symbolic spectrum, I decided to opt for a revolutionary black. Obviously it had to be vast and puffy, and cinch the waist to the vanishing point. I mean I was bloody well getting married. You can't tell from this picture but I also wore an enormous boat shaped black hat based on a Elizabethan design after the defeat of the Spanish Armada. This represented feminism's defeat of patriarchy (and my love of QE1).

Anyway, knowing me just a little bit (enough to be my wife) I thought Ann would have picked up on my fierce, yet feminine, yet feminist, yet fashionable, tendencies, and swapped her frock for a frock coat, top-hat and little cane like the gorgeous Marlene Dietrich. How else would we achieve the desirable and chic gender-bending irono-androgene feminist-couplage I've always dreamed of? Sort of like...

The desire to flout gender conventions through revolutionary dress was clearly the last thing on Ann's mind. From nowhere, hundreds of bunches of white lilies had appeared and filled the house (symbolic of death, surely? Poor stupid Ann, she should've paid attention at the Waterhouse exhibition). White bows decked the staircase, sugared almonds in grotesque pink were boxed up and patterned with love hearts. LOVE HEARTS. There were love hearts everywhere, all over my potato stamped (U+26A2) symbol recycled crepe paper table cloths, filling up my mooncup shaped vases, and all the dead roses I'd put out in ironic reminiscence of the Miss Haversham bits from Great Expectation were destroyed. Ann thought they were depressing.

And her dress.

I don't know how to explain it, I don't have the words, or the stomach. I've looked all day for a picture that approximates its horror. This is the closest one I've found.

That really finished it off. I couldn't marry Ann. Ann was clearly a maniac. I mean, what's the point of marrying a feminist if you're going to wear a dress like that? Getting rid of Ann was harder than deciding not to marry her. At first she didn't understand, then she didn't believe me, then she wanted to kill me. As she came at me wielding the phallus shaped pinata I'd planned to destroy during our vows, I had little choice but to let Emmeline pounce. She's always very defensive of her mistress. There was blood everywhere, like in Carrie.

After the attack, I ordered Ann a cab. I was feeling generous and pretty guilty about everything, so I got it to take her to the National Express depot, not Megabus, which is pretty awful. I only hope she could afford the fare. She doesn't know London very well.

And what have I learnt? Perhaps that relationships, either with women, or men, are not my strong point. Perhaps, as Emmeline often advises me, I need to pursue the solitary course, concentrate on my writing, develop my many undeveloped talents. A woman's way is hard, but only alone can she enjoy the self-expanding freedoms of solitude.

And Ann, this is for you. Though you are uncultured, this may help you formulate your grief. I'm so so sorry!

I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead

When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me,

"This parting must be

endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy

but remember (you know well)

whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think

of our gifts to Aphrodite

and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras, braided rosebuds, dill and

crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head

and on soft mats girls with

all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted

choruses without ours,

no woodlot bloomed in spring without song..."

Really worried about Ann...

I've just managed to get away from Ann for a moment and readers, I must confess, I'm extremely uncomfortable. I had of course realised that Ann was something of a 'diamond in the rough' - I'm reminded of Moll Flanders, or the winkle-picker one from Tipping the Velvet - but her behaviour today has been less picaresque and more...dare I say...'pikey'.

Now that's a horrible term, I know, and I wouldn't dream of using it normally. The Riders, as I have mentioned, have a long socialist history - my Great Aunt Geraldine famously donated all but one of her five country estates to the National Trust (she kept Scotland, it was the biggest). I have read widely in Marx and really identified with Tess of the D'Urbevilles, poor duck. But Tess didn't have a Sony XBox. Or a Lacoste sleep suit. Or cold sores. And she probably knew what risotto was (Ann thought it was rice pudding).

I don't mean to complain, it's just the weekend's not going how I thought it was going to at all. Ann "wasn't hungry" this morning when I produced my celebrated Eggs Posie (Eggs Benedict but with garlic mayonnaise instead of Hollandaise - yum!). She wolfed down a Bloody Mary only to sick a little in her hand and scream at me for 'feeding her ketchup', and wasn't calmed until I made her a Nesquik from an old packet I once accidentally bought for Emmeline. And she was palpably uncomfortable at the J. W. Waterhouse exhibition I took her to this afternoon. She didn't even find all the little nymphs pretty - I'm worried we don't have anything in common!

What shall I do? She's busy playing Street Fighter now but she'll have finished this level soon (oh god, I can tell by the music, what's happening to me?) and will be coming out to see if her risotto-replacement pizza is ready. The wedding's tomorrow. Oh god...what if Melody was right?

Ann is here...

Ann is here and I must say I'd forgotten how 'boisterous' she is. Can you believe that she doesn't know what a artichoke is? She saw one in my organic vegetable box and thought it was a toy character from the film 'Alien'.

I've managed to steal away to my (non-pink, yet feminine) laptop to write this while Ann plays on her Sony X-box. She brought it with her, all the way down from the north on the Megabus via the M4. Not my chosen mode of transport, but the Riders have been noted for their socialist tendencies in the past so I shall not gripe.

Ahoy there!

Sorry for my absence for the last week gals. It's been no doubt lonely without Posie in your world and I haven't had an easy time either. Its been tough, but after much timely deliberation I have decided that I am in fact a lesbian.

I've been on this cruise you see:
http://news.varadinum.com/lesbians-save-the-world-one-cruise-at-a-time.html

"A lesbian eco-friendly cruise?" I hear you ask. Yes that's right. It all started when Melody (landscape gardener to the stars, who is at the moment tending to Gwyneth Paltrow's organic vegetable patch) who is EXTREMELY zen / eco-friendly / earth-mother, suggested we go on this amazing cruise which uses absolutely no carbon emissions whatsoever! So we did and on board soon realised the the ship was destined for Lesbos island!

On board I met Anne, an artist from Suffolk. She's by far my social inferior, but you know what they say readers: 'love knows no bounds'. We haven't done anything physical yet, and its quite difficult communicating by letter all day, but I think I might finally be happy.

Lesbianism- I can't believe I hadn't tried it sooner (except that time in 2002). It's brilliant! Anne and I would sit around plaiting each others hair and sharing period stories. Heaven...

Toodles x

PS Anne if you're reading - thank so much for my painting: I love orchids!

Glorious, I return!

Hail, readers and cohorts! And welcome to all my new American friends. I'm back and 'all up in the UK', complete with lots of new lingo and a huge boozy grin after having been reunited with my old friend Martini Rosso. I'm a little jet-lagged after having been travelling for 26 hours, all random and painful connections and mishaps included (I sort of missed a plane a little after I caught up a little too quickly with the M.R. at Philly. It turns out it doesn't mix well with the over-the-counter diazepam I picked up at Walmart. I was eventually found wandering the airport and was popped on a good old BA flight and sent on my way by a kind, though slightly patronising, staff-type person.

On board I met an attractive but gauche young 'grad' student (??? I don't know what that means either!) who started telling me how excited he was to go to England and about various other spiritual experiences gained on his many travels, so I quickly put him off scent by lecturing him on the virtues of staid community life, then explaining the plot of the sublime Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell to him (and no I didn't see the fucking TV adaptation, though I'm sure it was dreadful). After an hour or so's laborious retelling of what is really quite a short book, he was suitably lulled, so I quickly slipped in my headphones and watched Bride Wars (inexplicable dross - avoid) followed by He's Just Not That Into You, which conveys the timeless "he doesn't love you/maybe he loves you/you're a pathetic dolt/he's cheating/you have no judgement/omg he does love you now you can marry him" message with effortless grace. A sigh and back to Cranford.

BUT just an hour ago I received an email from this young star-traveller, whom I had left this morning in Gatwick with one of my cards and with the idea in his head of avoiding London in favour of the quaint pleasures of Knutford. Instead he set to writing a poem for me about this 'incredibly moving experience', detailing all the other things in his life that had taken about the same time as our little literary chat, and their absolute insignificance compared to unimaginable, life-defining hour and 23 minutes he spent talking to me. BOR-ing! I knew I had him pegged for a chauvinist on the plane (exhibit A: beads. B: a tattoo of a bird on his thumb), but this really took the biscuit. Because every time an attractive and young (I am both, of course) woman discourses competently on any subject, even an intentionally alienating and uninteresting one, does a man treat her as an intellectual equal, a fellow traveller in search of the truth, a worthy friend or adversary? Of course not! Instead he falls hopelessly in love with her, and becomes incapable of offering any stimulating responses to her conversation unless they're directed at her knickers, or her 'beautiful soul' (excuse me while I raze off my own corneas).

And what are intelligent women to do? Stop being so intelligent is the only thing that comes to mind. That, or quickly get yourself a boyfriend as the best guarantee of being completely ignored my men in conversation thereafter (the no-chance-of-lady-garden-access:no-beautiful-soul paradigm). The moral of the story, and the general content of the email I returned to the pathetic lad, was:

"Of course you find me interesting, I AM interesting. The fact you find this surprising/intriguing/fragile and rare only proves that you are a person with terribly dull friends and also a massive chauvinist. Do you think I found you interesting, or did you just take that for granted? Now begone!"

Lady readers, beware the advances of doe-eyed graduates with romantic notions, lest 'he's just not that into you' becomes 'he's completely obsessed with you and I think he's written a fucking poem about it'. Help!

JS Mill (pwoarr!) and Harriet Taylor

Uplifting thought of the day:

In addition to their marriage contract, JS Mill undertook 'a solemn promise never in any case or under any circumstances to use [the legal powers of a husband]' against his misses. He and Harriet disapproved of the existing marriage law because it 'confers on one party to the contract, legal power and control over the person, property and freedom of action of the other party, independent of her own wishes and will'. Harriet retained 'in all respects whatever the same absolute freedom of action and freedom of disposal of herself and of all that does or may at any time belong to her, as if no marriage had taken place; and I absolutely disclaim and repudiate all pretension to have acquired any such rights whatever by virtue of such marriage'.

Not that difficult, is it boys?

Yet More Sexism

So. this is just a taster of the overt sexism that exists today. I personally have been on the receiving end of this with Martin and his demon son, Josh. They took me out the other day to get some plastic bed sheets, because Josh kept pissing himself. Martin had gone to find a mop and Josh needed the loo (obv) and HE insisted on going into the ladies WITH ME! So us women are lesser than you then Josh- you little shit. You can just wonder into the ladies with your pants down flashing. But I'm allowed o where near the MEN'S loos.

I hate you Josh, hate you hate you. Death.

P.S Melody decided to abort.

Valentines Day NIGHTMARE

OMFG.
OMiiFG.
oMFinG.

All of the above.

Martin has a SON.

You heard it right, lady readers. A bloody 8 year old bouncy baby boy with bloody blond ringlets, a checked shirt and a bloody skateboard. His name is Jake. I haven't been this upset since Tim had me sectioned.

I'm writing this now because It's taken me this long to sober up. I tried to write a blog post yesterday but was so upset I had to get drunk immediately.

It all started innocently enough. He came to pick me up at my northlondonflat at 6.30 on Valentines Day. It seemed a little early, but I assumed he wanted to get me drunk before bowling, so went along without question. Little did I know it was in order to coincide with his EX WIFE dropping off the little urchin at the bowling alley. We'd barely arrived when he said "Wait a minute Posie," terribly casually, as if he had just dropped a pen or something or was going to fetch a bunch of flowers from the boot of his car. Then, in a flash, the boy appeared and was up in his arms, skateboard and all, being spun around. I assumed Martin was being attacked by a yob or something (do they still have yobs? Oh I don't know) so I clubbed the child with my handbag, which was really not the right thing to do at all. All the pieces fell into place as Martin was rubbing the bump on Jake's head, and as I turned to the car park I saw her (the ex) whizzing away on a bloody baby blue scooter, apparently to a date with her boyfriend. Martin's face contracted in a really bizarre way when he said this, and Jake just wouldn't stop crying, so I went inside for a touch up (touch eclat and a line) and waited for them.

Instead of wine we drank COCA COLA. Instead of the Indian Snacks Platter we had the American Diner Platter. So tasteless. Is this what happens when you have kids? Martin seemed so sophisticated and mature before, and there he was offering me pick and mix and helping Jake colour in! Jake's a little pest. He clearly has me marked out as some kind of fairy step-mother, he kept coming and nuzzling me and trying to 'involve me'. I thought step-kids were supposed to be really resentful of their parents' new lovers, and after clobbering him with my handbag I'd have expected him to have got the hint. Has nobody introduced this child to punk music, or whatever they have nowadays, emo?

For his birthday I'm going to buy him a copy of Catcher in the Rye, and if that doesn't work, some weed.

I will have Martin, with Jake...or without.

Valentines Day, Me and Martin and love to all Women

News just in! Martin and I are going on a special bowling trip for Valentines Day! It's SO exciting. He's so kooky like that. He called me up this morning, sounding all gravelly voiced like, sort of like he'd been smoking and drinking heavily actually, and just asked me...just like that! Will let you know all!

I'm trying to reposition my views on love, men etc. after the Tim debacle (real name Tom, I changed it for that absurd 'These characters are entirely fictitious thing' they wanted to put at the front of my book. They are not fictitious, they are me, Tom and my... oh you know the rest!)

I am an independent, modern woman. I can fulfill myself in countless ways ranging from sexual to personal. Like Ally McBeal, "I don't need a man, I want one!" But not like her of course, she was a bulimic madden, a talking turd, a boil-in-the-bag-bunny bitch-face.

Besides, I get the impression Martin's a bit of a feminist in the making. He's a music producer and he studied English Literature which means he's really sensitive. In fact we only met was because he stumbled upon my book 'The Suffragettes: Why?' while browsing on Amazon.co.uk

He even pointed out a couple of my favourite passages in The Golden Notebook which I had to hand on our first date! Clever Martin! There's definitely more to him than meets the eye.

Of course he has been married in the past, no doubt to some clingy post-feminist type. Well I shall never marry! Curses and horror! He'd better bring a bucket and some ice to our date if he's going to propose to me so I can put his head in it!

In fact two more of my lady friends got engaged in the last week (!) I am so bloody annoyed. I have maintained radio silence since I received Bryony's vile card and text from India at midnight (had he just proposed?) Within half an hour they'd changed their Facebook status to engaged. Shouldn't they have been copulating? Do you expect ME, Posie bloody Rider, feminist, activist and all round woman to congratulate you Bryony for finding some douche bag to cohabit with you silly bitch?

I am having a series of cards printed so I can deal with these sorts of events in the future. I call them Posie's sympathy cards. They have this image on the front.




The inside reads 'YOU'RE MAKING A MASSIVE MISTAKE."

And for any for all my lady readers who aren't shacking up with the first boy who weally weally likes ooo, here's a Valentine's Day card. Don't print it, save the trees!!

LOVE BLOWS. STAY HOME FOR VALENTINES DAY.

(AND TO ALL THOSE OF YOU WHO DO HAVE BOYFRIENDS (LIKE ME) GET OUT AND HAVE FUN!)

Love Posie xxx

PS I am SO happy!

Dangerous dates and leaping vaginas!

So....you're all wondering how my DATE went with Martin last night? Well it was..magical!

Martin told me all about himself: he's a music producer and has just finished producing Nelly Futaro's latest album 'I'm a Hoe Bag: Come Over Here', which is set to be released in June. He lives in Chalk Farm and drives an Audi TT. Overall he's a bit of catch. Not that I'm really into all that kind of stuff you realise, I mean I'm generally highly non-materialistic. When I grow up I want to live on a farm.

We went to this adorable Chinese in China Town and I was really enjoying my dim sum, reminiscing about the old times at Downing College, CAMBRIDGE, when all of a sudden there was a bad smell and I looked up to see Gerald (my ex) entering the room with some pubescent blond (wearing a backpack) on his arm. You can imagine my…ANGER!

I immediately feigned a headache and Martin and I left. But Gerald did not get away that easily- oh no.

I pretended I had left my scarf inside and when I returned I walked right up to Gerald’s table and tipped an entire bowl of prawn crackers all over his head, squishing some into his eyes. I then screamed:

“I hate you Gerald you wanker! The fact that you have the gall to show your measly, squirming face in a nice Chinese like this where people come to eat really does seal your fate as one of the cheapest people I have ever met! Just die you repulsive piece of shit!”

The blonde started to cry and a waiter grabbed my arm, I think someone called 999, but I just had to get it off my...my...chest.

So you can imagine my embarrassment when I turned round to see Martin standing right behind me, jaw dropped.

I explained, we had a DMC (deep meaningful conversation) and he really understands what I’m going through. It turns out Martin is actually divorced: he found his wife cheating on him. I didn’t want to pry, because I'm so sensitive, but it turns out that she was sleeping with her gynecologist: I KNOW.

So yes lady readers love might finally be blossoming for Posie... At the end of the night he walked me home and we kissed! But after only a couple of seconds of mouth to mouth Martin felt something wet on his left and I looked down to see Emmeline Pankhurst (my cat) pissing on his trousers. When I asked her what she was doing she told me to "piss off" and then proceeded to laugh at her own joke for about five minutes. I think she was drunk. She really is acting very strangely these days and I have a sneaky feeling that she doesn't like Martin, which is strange, because Martin is literally the nicest guy ever…

But on a more negative note check out this abysmal article (click below) in The Times by Zoe Lewis who wants to live in her kitchen and has abandoned her feminist roots (silly b***h). I am scheduled to go and see her awful play 'For the Very First Time' starring Sadie (yuk) Frost in a few weeks. I shall pack some mouldy tampons to throw at the rotten bunch.

http://women.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/women/article5662099.ece?Submitted=true

Plus check out this incredible (new, for once, I know, I am traditionally a traditionalist) book Wetlands by Charlotte Roche:

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article5614066.ece
Of course I have not been shaving my armpits long before her. I also think my art-short 'blood soaked tampon et al' (please see the subject headings >) goes much further to probe the underbelly of female vaginality, puberty and eventual corporeal determinationism.

A Lesbian Woman is going to be Prime Minister in Iceland and I Think I'm Falling in Love!

Cool! Me and my cat, Emmeline Pankhurst, are seriously excited!

http://www.thefword.org.uk/blog/2009/01/iceland_to_get

P.S. Have I ever told about Martin? I met I'm years ago at Cambridge when i was just a young English Literature student of the early 90s, reading Lise Jardine, drinking hot chocolate with marshmallows and wearing trainers. I hadn't seen him in years but suddenly the other day I bumped into him when I was watering the ivy growing alongside my window box in North London.

Martin (like my ivy) has come on very well, he's developed an incredibly good-looking face since I last saw him. But, alas, it was rather embarrassing for Emmeline Pankhurst was sitting on my shoulder while I was watering and when Martin, who was down on the street below, shouted:

"Why if it isn't the author of the world famous "The Suffragette's- Why?" Posie Rider! That book... it changed my life!"

it alarmed Emmeline somewhat and she jumped down to attack him. I was talking to her later that evening and she told me that her kitty powers had got the better of her and she just couldn't help herself- she did not trust him.

But while i was moping up the blood on Martin's face he sort of asked me out on a date! Will keep you posted....

Long live Lesbos!

XXXX

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

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

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?

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.

Posie's Appeal

Ok I've calmed down now with a bottle of gin and a horlics. But this can't go into production: its an entire misrepresentation of the very meaning of 'Me Tim and My Quim'! That novel was my life's work and if Paramount think I'm going to just take this lying down (like a Post Feminist) they are highly mistaken.

I've already called my solicitor friend Henry who works at Freshfields and apparently I don't stand a chance in hell of stopping production because I sold the rights. But I think Fred is slightly wounded by my rebuff: he proposed back in 1999 but, alas, I refused him. It would never have worked- he was a lawyer, I was a woman.

My friends still insist that he never actually offered to marry, that he was simply playing around with a Hola Hoop and I didn't have my glasses on. Oh but I was not so blind as to not see that look of love in his eyes. It's all to make Fred feel better (whoops did I say Fred? I meant Henry. My solicitor friend is definitely called Henry. One can never be too careful when it comes to privacy over the internet).

So I don't know if I can trust Fred. Does anyone out there have an idea aboout how I might 'sort this out'?

Dinner tonight!

So, I just got back from Borough Market, and I've bought this fabulous piece of venison. I'm going to cook it tonight for Gerald, a man I've sort of been seeing for a few weeks now (I've changed his name of course, he's actually called Robert) Being a Feminist and career woman, with the pressure of a two book deal and an upcoming movie starring (fingers crossed!) Matthew McConnaughy, it has been hard to find men who don't find my achievements somewhat intimidating. Par for the course! Robert seems like one of the enlightened, he works in Post-Production so is creative and sensitive - definitely my kind of guy.

Oooh also you'll be excited to hear that the draft screenplay for M, T& Q (Me, Tim & my Quim, abbreviated) has just come through the front door by COURIER. I'm going to put the venison in the larder and read it now; what with Hilary winning the primaries, Gerald coming round later for dinner and now the writing of a young Female writer being taken seriously by an international film company, I think I might be having the best day a gal could wish for!