Beer Bloggles

I am having a beer. It is Monday, and I am tentatively exploring the delights of beer after writhing about in only-slightly-exaggerated agony for the last few days due to what actually turned out to be quite a mild and short-lived cold.

I went to Edinburgh, to the Fringe! It was, as usual, a heady combination of the grubby and the glamorous, everyone experiencing the diurnal transition from arty drunk into a glowering hungover husk of humanity. Ben was doing a show as part of the Free Fringe, so lots of time was spent loitering grimly in dungeon-y pubs, clutching pints of Tennents and trying not to touch the walls. The show was great. People were great. It was great*.

(*I have become a luvvie! Albeit one with a very limited vocabulary.)

I did notice that I am becoming officially Too Old And Set In My Ways to party like I used to, though. I am quite sure that, ten(-ish) years ago when I came up with University, I could party properly. All night and all day if necessary, then do a show in the evening and start again. Nowadays 10.30pm has me glancing worriedly at my watch and anxiously pawing the ground, as I switch to chamomile tea and wonder when I am going to finish off that lovely needlepoint piece with the kittens on. Perhaps it is not that bad, not yet, but still. I am drinking a solitary beer on a Monday night and feeling a touch outrageous, so maybe there really is something amiss.

Also, we are moving house!

From house to flat, specifically. From a terraced house in Moss Side to mezzanine flat in Homes For Change, a housing co-operative in Hulme, even more specifically. It is really exciting, but we have only a few days to move all our stuff (although most of it belongs to Ben, really, I am a woman of little stuff). August is busy, we are performing at Shambala Festival this weekend and then going down south for some days. When we come back Ben is going away for another few days, leaving me and the cat to wander around the house aimlessly putting things/sitting in boxes until Ben gets back and does all the real work.

I am worried about how to tell the cat we are moving. He loves it here, although he pretends to be aloof and disinterested in life and all its forms. I don't know how he will adjust to all the changes. I'm not even sure he really knows what a mezzanine flat is, even though I have drawn him a few diagrams.

Tomorrow and the following day I am leading some Glee workshops that are taking place in Bolton. All day today I have been pretending to hate learning all the songs and acting like it's not my fault that I have to sing "Defying Gravity" along to a backing track at the top of my voice whilst dancing jerkily along into the bedroom mirror. Ben has totally fallen for it. Secretly I think it will be quite fun. I might even buy some leg-warmers on the way.

Anyway, my lone beer has sent me slightly delirious, so I will go and lie face down until I stop wanting to terrorize the cat with the words "just a small town girl". Mezzanine or no mezzanine I think he might make a break for it. Probably quite rightly.

Right. Beer = finished. Therefore, blog post also = finished.

Christina Explains It All

Idly leafing through the Internet the other day somehow I found myself reading this majestic pile of crap, written for Esquire Magazine by Christina Hendricks. Christina is the Celeb World's latest manifestation of the Every Woman, so-imagined because she has breasts and hips and doesn't resemble an overly made-up Skeletor. Ignoring the fact that she is at least eighteen thousand times more beautiful than most people, she is being lorded as an average woman who can speak for all the women in the whole world.

Those men reading Esquire will presumably be relieved to finally have our delicate, paisley psyches translated for them by the obviously-completely-normal Christina. I have cut and pasted some of the article below, but you can read the whole thing here.

(Christina's pearls of wisdom are in bold, mine are not.)

If we haven't smelled you for a day or two and then we suddenly are within inches of you, we swoon. We get light-headed. It's intoxicating. It's heady.

Oh, there is nothing we like more than to rush up to you when you walk through the door, push our faces into your glorious, manly armpits and inhale. If we haven't seen you for a few days, and in those few days you happen not to have showered, so much the better. You know us women, we love a good swoon. But remember, Esquire Men, with great power comes great responsibility! Do not unleash your pheromone powers on us when we are operating heavy machinery. We are not insured against Acts of God-like Men.

When you mention in passing that a certain woman is attractive...your comment goes into a steel box and it stays there forever. We will file the comment under "Women He Finds Attractive." It's about learning what you think is sexy and how we might be able to convey it. It's about keeping our man by knowing what he likes.

Yes! Yes, that's what "it" is all about. Thank goodness. I can stop pretending that inferior little me could possibly be good enough for a man, and instead focus my pretty little attention on the real task of attempting to become an amalgamation of every attractive woman in the whole world. Of course. That's what "it's" about. I will also be taking myself in for an x-ray in an attempt to find this "steel box" I am carrying around. I was wondering why my head felt so heavy all the time.

We also remember everything you say about our bodies, be it good or bad. Doesn't matter if it's a compliment. Could be just a comment. Those things you say are stored away in the steel box, and we remember these things verbatim. We remember what you were wearing and the street corner you were standing on when you said it.

That steel box sure is getting full. This is why I cannot get much else into my brain, because my steel box of Stuff You Say About Me Or Any Other Woman Ever takes up so much room. What with that and all that walking and breathing in and out I am forced to do all the time, it's not surprising that all I want to do the rest of the time is sitting about waiting for you to grace my nose with your armpit.


Never complain about our friends — even if we do. No matter how many times we say a friend of ours is driving us crazy, you are not to pile on. Not because it offends us. But because it adds to the weight that we carry around about her.

Do not add your opinions to the "weight" I carry around! Only talk about my friends if it is to compare my body/face with theirs and therefore give me something to add to my list of Ways I Can Be More Like Other Women So As To Be More Attractive To You.


We want you to order Scotch. It's the most impressive drink order. It's classic. It's sexy. Such a rich color. The glass, the smell. It's not watered down with fruit juice. It's Scotch. And you ordered it.

I don't care what you like to drink. No drink-tastes will be filed away in my steel box. Drink Scotch like a fucking MAN, you pansy. Fruit juice is for girls.

Stand up, open a door, offer a jacket. We talk about it with our friends after you do it. We say, "Can you believe he stood up when I approached the table?" It makes us feel important. And it makes you important because we talk about it.

Sometimes in the world I feel so unimportant. The universe is so big and I am so small, and nothing I do will ever change that. There is so much injustice and intolerance, how can I, one tiny, insignificant being, really make any diffe... Wait! OMG did you just open that door? I AM THE QUEEN OF THE GALAXY! Problem solved.

No man should be on Facebook. It's an invasion of everyone's privacy. I really cannot stand it.


But it's alright for women. We need something to do between all that swooning and steel box-maintenance.


You don't know this, but when we come back from a date, we feel awkward about that transition from our cute outfit into sexy lingerie. We don't know how to do this gracefully. It's embarrassing. We have to find a way to slip into another room, put on the outfit as if it all happened very easily, and then come out and it's: Look at me! Look at the sexy thing I've done! For you, it's the blink of an eye. It's all very embarrassing. Just so you know.

You don't know this, but it takes quite a lot of practice to make slipping into a clown costume look easy. As we shuffle awkwardly into the bedroom, trying not to trip over our massive shoes and smiling shyly out from behind our big red noses, we sometimes feel a pang of girly embarrassment. We do it for you. It's all for you. Just so you know.


Panties is a wonderful word. When did you stop saying "panties"? It's sexy. It's girlie. It's naughty. Say it more.

Job interview? Funeral? War crimes tribunal? You know the magic word!


There are better words than beautiful. Radiant, for instance. It's an underused word. It's a very special word. "You are radiant." Also, enchanting, smoldering, intoxicating, charming, fetching.

Better yet, lean in very close to me, stroke a stray wisp of hair from my simpering face, and scream the word PANTIES at me over and over again until my eyes bleed.

Marriage changes very little. The only things that will get a married man laid that won't get a single man laid are adultery and whores. Intelligence and humor (and your smell) are what get you laid. That's what got you laid when you were single. That's what gets you laid when you're married. Everything still works in marriage: especially intelligence and humor. Because the sexiest thing is to know you.


After the word panties, obviously.