Lara is so techno!

My good friend Lara Buckerton produced this amusing summary of me, which I thought I'd share with you. It seems to be some sort of website which assesses the words and tone of your blog and pronounces judgment on your age, sex and mood via the use of a complex algorithm no doubt - I don't know where Lara finds these things, she's so techno! I do of course take exception to a couple of points, well a number in fact:

a) it tells me I am a woman, but of course I reject all claims to the existence of a 'female' writing, whether that 'female' is located in a male/female/intersex/other body, although how they guessed in my case is beyond me;

b) it states that I am between the ages of 66 and 100 (gasp!) and though I refuse to make any complaint, seeing the discourse of 'women not wanting to age' as inherently sexist, I would like to point out that I am as yet in my early thirties and suspect that they assumed I was wise beyond my years due to my ability to spell and punctuate (often lacking in the young) and my delicious sentence structure - a clear consequence of having no formal schooling until the age of 8 and having learnt to read by pouring over Elizabeth Gaskell. In which case, please note me as a female of around 170 years of age and do me some credit;

c) my style is personal and not academic?? Have at you!;

d) it tells me that I am happy most of the time. This, I assure you, is not the case;

Click here and see for yourself!

Psycho(self)analyst

Well, the first few weeks (weeks? has it been longer? Massive delirium) of my self-analysis have been fraught with mishaps and misdiagnosis.

At first, it seemed my ego had formed a pathological identification of itself with a lost-loved object, later I seemed to have returned to a stage of anal-narcissism, for a little while I was concerned that I was cathecting purely onto imaginary unconscious objects (thus treating my own body as the object of the beloved) and most scarily of all I seemed to have ceased object-cathexis altogether and be floating in a state of schizophrenic bliss, converting latent thoughts to 'real objects'.

I ruled a father complex out at once because Daddy was such a dear, and besides he died when I was only three on the River Thames at Marlowe. Aunt Lily may of course have brought me up all wrong, but with Showalter I'm inclined to disregard Freud's thoughts on the narcissism and neurosis of homosexuality as just plain behind the times. Surely homosexual thoughts can't be evidence that I fancy myself? I nearly married Ann and she was nothing like me: much less attractive and rather stupid to boot.

I wish I could diagnose myself as an hysteric - feminists go crazy for the early divas of female hysteria, and Helene Cixous thought they were heroes, valiantly and quite reasonably responding to patriarchy's oppression. There's some wonderful stuff about Obsessional Neurotics in Freud and their strong reactions to the repression of ambivalent thoughts about loved ones (all the boyfriends I've secretly hated) but it doesn't fit - I'm too messy to have an OCD. It's a shame, as other hysterias are mostly caused by confused object-cathexis as a result of a faulty Oedipal repression (after the infant realises they're not going to have their wicked way with the mother/father, they quickly put it out of their mind at once and form an ideal image of the parents (Super-Ego) to act as a conscience against any other silly incestuous thoughts). Pathologies can apparently be caused by incomplete repression - Freud describes animal phobias in this way (eg. Wolf Man) as well as hysteric ticks or convulsions, which are the unconscious' way of expressing the chafing repression, which the conscious mind resists. I have been known sometimes to lash out at strangers or swear suddenly, but I'm not sure this qualifies as le grande hysterie. But, I'm disinclined to believe I got the Oedipal stuff wrong: it's so elementary. It would be embarrassing.

All that's left is psychosis, which is supposed to be brought about by the foreclosure of a primordial signifier, the Name-of-the-Father: a nice and complicated theoretical type condition, which also rejects universal patriarchal signifiers, a massive plus and very much up my street. Also, there's a withdrawal of libidinal energy from the outside world, which fits as my love life is dead at the moment. The delusional formulation (libido turned inward to ego and fantasy objects) makes an awful lot of sense as I can be a little self-involved, and Emmeline (my cat) tells me I live in a dream-world, which I always thought is absolutely essential for a great writer, like Tolstoy. I have cause to reflect on the period in which I wrote Me, Tim and my Quim (which was once to be made into a major Hollywood film, before the recession hit etc) and in all honesty I can say I must have been suffering from some pretty severe delusions: in the novel, I have a passionate and highly literary love affair with my psycho-sexual counsellor, while in reality I did not have any kind of affair with my psycho-sexual counsellor, though not for want of trying.

Unfortunately, psychosis is a rather indistinct condition, basically quite a lot like neurosis, and its existence has been contested. I don't want to be neurotic, as it reeks of desperation, and if it comes to that I'll just diagnose myself as perfectly sane and perhaps a little under-stretched intellectually in my current employment. That's the beauty of being a Lady Psychologist, readers!

xxx

Self-Medication, Dr Freud

SO I've been a little patchy recently in le blog as I've been having a psychotic episode. Or two. Or twenty seven. Probably since I've last web-logged there have been as many episodes of Hollyoaks as I've had psychic traumas, and that's including the Sunday round up and taking each portion of it as a stand alone episode, so probably about six in all I guess. And I don't even watch Hollyoaks.

Recently, you see, I've been writing my memoirs for publication on the divine Women's Parliamentary Radio, entitled A Year Off the Ward, which is an account of my admirable mental health in the last twelve months or so, and how through positive thinking, creative sublimation and vigorous self-medication I have managed to avoid a) suicide, b) self harm (sort of), c) stalking (again, sort of), d) violence, aggression towards the young, petty theft and arson (all except arson have been a little patchy I admit). Most importantly, I have avoided being sectioned since June 2007 and, like a repeat offender recently released from prison, the fact that I haven't been sent straight back within the month certainly calls for a celebration of the diazepam-and-white-wine-spritzer kind.

However, writing my memoirs seems to have plunged me into a relapse. Now I know what you're thinking lady readers, this should have sent me running to my blog, or encouraged me to compose a series of Mental Health Tweets, which would probably have me lambasted like the poor dear who wrote very sensibly about her miscarriage (did you see it? if not she said:

I'm in a board meeting. Having a miscarriage. Thank goodness, because
there's a fucked-up three-week hoop-jump to have an abortion in Wisconsin.

Wonderful says Posie! I couldn't have put it better myself.) God knows what the modern middle class neurotic would do were it not for the ready opportunities to monetise one's disturbances. However, I thought that, with the book coming out, I'd keep my material 'fresh' as it were, and try to sublimate furiously through a series of monoprints of female saints castrating dragons figured as menstrual hallucinations (coming soon).

That having failed, I turned to my trusty Freud, the beloathed Father, to do a little self-therapy. I have, you see, run a little slow on the trust fund this season and, with no Christmas shopping done to speak of, need to prioritise my outgoings in order to buy those Jo Malone candles for Emmeline, and Aunt Lily's yearly kilo of Laduree fig macaroons. A therapist, therefore is out of the question, and as feminist critic Sally R. Munt rightly termed such bourgeois femmes as myself 'consumers of therapy', who pay £40 a week so that someone can tell us our thoughts are valid, I am happy to sacrifice this luxury for the greater good.

So, having briskly skimmed through Mourning and Melancholia, Totem etc & Freud's entire case notes on Hysteria (supplemented by readings in Elaine Showalter, the darling, so that I don't get too carried away). I am now to proceed with psycho-analysing myself. Keep updated for next installment! Emmeline is going to hypnotise me now.

Another 'latest bloody study about women' reels its ugly head once more...

Hi gals! Just when you thought science had unearthed every possible truth about women, another ugly American lab rat reels its ugly head to correct you. Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind rats and I actually love science (I got an A at GCSE!) however, one has to ask the timely question: do these people have a f**king clue what they're talking about?

Point in case: the latest research has shown that women who are optimistic have a 9% lower risk of developing heart disease and a 14% lower risk of dying from any cause after more than eight years of follow-up.

In comparison, cynical women who harbour hostile thoughts about others or are generally mistrusting of others were 16% more likely to die over the same time-scale.

First, what the hell does 'follow-up' mean? Is that a form of malnutrition? Second, I know exactly what category I fall into. Since my break up with Martin earlier this year I've been feeling so happy and content with myself that I think I might live until I'm 102! Ha ha ha hahaha. Yes. However, I also know how it feels to want to stab strangers, especially when walking down the street on a Tuesday morning in the rain with a stonking hang over, wearing no shoes having just woken up by a canal in the suburbs of Manchester next to a tramp with his trousers down. That certainly didn't do my life line any favours at all!

Also has science ever given any thought to what might happen to the lovely optimistic women when they're 'hostile' sisters run at them with nothing but a big grudge and a carving knife? They wouldn't live so long THEN would they smarty-pant science?

Everyone have fun! Love you gals!

Hugs and pugs x

And Finally...

Two great reasons to remind me why I'm leaving the country and leaving the lot of you in this sink hole...

Melanie Phillips of the Daily Male in "The collapse of sexual norms has destroyed the bulwarks around marriage. And the gay rights agenda is very much part of that process." scandal! The Harpie thinks:

A liberal society should be tolerant of gay people. It is good that social attitudes are now far more relaxed. People's sexuality should be an entirely private matter and should not be the cause of prejudice or, worse still, aggression towards homosexuals.

But is the gay rights agenda really about tolerance, or is it about trying to stop heterosexuality being the behavioural norm?

Posie Rider slits her wrists in newspaper bigotry depression scandal. Read the full article at their website if you, like me, no longer want to live in this country.

Also, Emma Morton of The Sun warns that chaps are doomed because boffings have managed to culture little spermies in petri dishes for baby-grabbing women to harvest instead of putting up with years of tedious, soul-snatching 'bonding' with a man (aka sperm in a stick) before you can convince him to impregnate you.

Morton warns that this sort of madcap science could soon make men 'redundant'. Ha ha! I say sod off boys! I never liked them anyway.

Feminist Poster competition!

It's a poster competition for feminists! click on the above title to access the website and vote for your favourite tribute to the great Mother of Social Movements. I have to say I would never normally engage in this kind of 'street art', however I shall make an exception in this case.

I'm designing one right now... so watch this space!

Voting will begin for this poster theme at midnight, 22 Jun 2009.

Why not submit your own poster?

Meow!

Look there's even my trusted friend, the old Bic razor...
If you're going to self harm at least do it like a feminist.

Wallpaper

ALERT ALERT! I am finding it extremely difficult to locate some of my old friend (see left) stateside.

Oscar Wilde once said that America was a violent country because its wallpaper was so ugly. Well I say it's because they don't have the sweet nectar the colour of my womb. AND I might add that there is another book also about wallpaper MR WILDE which I suggest you consult, 'tis called The Yellow Wallpaper (by Charlotte Perkins Gilman) and it is about female depression and psychosis. The tale is actually based on the life of my great great grandmother, Beatrice Rider, who accidentally shot herself in 1889. The body was found by my great Aunt Lilly who now has a severe aversion to wallpaper, especially of the yellow variety.

The hunt continues... Not that I need Martini Rosso you understand, I mean I am totally over my break up with Martin. You might think it strange that I'm addicted to a drink that starts with his name, but reality is a social construct and that is your opinion.

Saw this and thought of you all!

By the way- do you know Martini Rosso only contains 7 calories a gram?


Toodles!

Aphorisms for my ex - hot new poem in the Poesie Rider series!

Aphorisms for M.H.

Do you realise that I
am making the sound
of writing so that I can
look over your shoulder?

I am the cleft in the cold
recesses of your flesh. I
am like a flesh-jar.

Can you see me when you
Are looking the other way?
I am out the window.

Do you know that I read
your emails when you are
asleep? I think they are
dull.

You never introduced me to
your mother but I don’t think
she would have liked me.

I am working my fingers
into your scattered lines, I am
keeping myself busy now.

Today I called your house so
you would answer and so I
could check that you were in.
I hung up, like a serial killer.

I am prickled all over at the
thought of the moths in the blanket.

I am treating your smile like
an upturned dog. Restful.
Deceased.

I am the leaves settling on your
limbs and becoming damp.

I am the thrusting of green
shoots through soil. I am pacific.

I am waiting 40 seconds
between each ring now.

I am looking at pictures of your
ex wife once or twice a day now.
I think I am in love with her.

I cloy morosely. I cool myself
with spittle.

I cherish your admin. I retrieve
your deleted cookies.

I am elevating the ordinary
to an art form out of contempt.

I am devilling your eggs
(like a woman)

There is a peach famine and
I am employing sanctions.

You asked me how I was
doing and what I was up to.
I hate you, please die now.

Dog Woman, or the Story of My Life

Hi gals, don;t you feel like this sometimes? The above is called Dog Woman, it's by one of my favourite artists Paul Rego. It really captures how I' feeling right now (summers coming, I'm alone, addicted to Martini Rosso, the filming of Me, Tim and My Quim has been put on hold).

It's part of a series of paintingsdepicting women posing as dogs. I often get in this position and cry.

How cruel is man?

You know things haven't been going too well with me and Martin recently? Well I found this awesome blog post from a feminist mum justifying raising boys. No I'm all pro-abortion of course but I do think the idea of flushing yourself out just because it has a phallus is a little excessive. However, that doesn't mean you can't try your best to loose the little scallywag when it pops out.

Feminist Mums on Raising Male Children

So I sent the link to Martin and look at the email he sent me:

Posie,

I really can't take this anymore. Please, leave me and my son alone.

Martin.

Can you believe it? He's basically trying to side step the issue, big time. We spoke about it last night and he got rather angry again, in fact he threw a glass on the floor and ran out. I spoke to Melody and she thinks I'm pushing him over the edge, like last time.

I love this man; I have to save him from the ugly beast named chauvinism!

Too happy? You might have a serious medical problem...

Look what i found on the v cool wesbite 'feminist philosophers'....

http://feministphilosophers.wordpress.com/2009/03/16/if-you-are-happy-these-days-you-may-have-a-serious-medical-problem/

It's a funny video! Emmeline Pankhurst is laughing so much she just wet herself! We are going out for lunch-time muffins in Primrose Hill now. Toodles x

Anorexia, anyone?

Another one of my peers has made the national press (if you can call a features pull-out in the Groiniad such a thing) with this article charting her terrible teenage experience of Anorexia.

Laurie Penny, who I encountered in Oxford on a short course in avante-garde poetry (dire) stays in my memory for having asked Will Self at a lecture:

"Will, do fucked up people write better poetry?"

To which Will replied:

"That depends how fucked up they are. If they're really fucked up, they wouldn't even be able to leave the house to buy a pen.".

So, no, to his mind. This didn't put Laurie off. Instead she interpreted this as "Fucked up people mightn't write better poetry, but they certainly will be able to peddle probing articles about their terrible past for the rest of eternity, at least until they've found a nice niche as a freelance features journalist."

cf. her article. Honestly, I'd feel sorry for her if she wasn't such a shameless self-promoter. This stuff doesn't do women any favours!

About half way down - Sam, now in her 20s, comments, "I went to my GP quite early on and told her that I couldn't eat because I was scared of gaining weight, but she just told me to eat more nuts and gave me some vegetarian recipes. My overriding memory of that time was of being trapped in an endless black nightmare, with no visible way out."

I AM THAT SAM! Ok, I used a pseudonym, I am POSIE. Laurie asked me for a quote because she remembered me from Oxford and how wonderfully thin I was. Ok, so I never had anorexia, but notice how I never actually SAID I had anorexia. I am naturally very beautiful and thin, but hey, if it's going in the Guardian, giveaneffinshit! Next week buy a copy to see me talking in gory and shocking detail about how I used to do 200 sit ups on a Sunday evening in front of Return to River Cottage and cry when Hugh killed the geese. They were fat like me!!

Posie Competition!
Do you think that when she finishes truly rinsing her 18 months of teenage angst in various pull-out features sections she'll:

a) Need to develop another mental illness pretty fast. Multiple personality disorder? Or something really glamorous like narcolepsy?
b) Give up and write a low cal recipe book.
c) Break into misery lit and while away her thirties making up new renditions of her tortured youth, maybe rejuvinating the genre by adding in quirky Bridget Jones-esq details, eg Monday, 40 cals, v. bad, Mummy cut me, bad Mummy! etc.

Scratch your answers into your thigh with a compass!

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)

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.

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!

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.
.