On the one hand, I feel for retailers.  I really do.  After all, they are manned by people like you and me.  They are run by people like you and me.  They aren’t doing anything wrong.  But there’s too many of them.  Simple as that.  Chains and chains as long as your arm.  Chains and chains that wrap around the world and make it less globally interesting and more high street.  You have to be clever to run a company and make it work, especially so in these tormented times.  But you don’t have to be a great brain to manage a shop.

 

Then again, who wants a brainiac to manage a shop.  Most times I don’t want a salesgirl to ask me if they can help me.  I can generally help myself and generally the shop won’t have what I want.  It is nice of course that they ask and I’m sure they don’t like asking me anymore than I want to be asked.  They will have been told they have to keep the customer interested and yet the girls so often look quite uninterested and just as often don’t have a clue what it is you want, even when you tell them.  They aren’t trained to steer a customer into something different that he/she will love as much as the thing they wanted.  It doesn’t matter anyway.  As our debt has proved, we don’t care what we buy.  As long as we can appease our inner ragged fashionista self, which hides our general unhappiness, we will buy anything.

 

Many, many retail companies are going to go under.  If Woolies can do it, so can, well, anyone really.  The pre and post Christmas sales show that people are still out there spending the money that they don’t have.  Credit card companies are perhaps the one kind of lending that hasn’t yet been asked to reduce their interest rates.  Why is this?  Why are banks and mortgage lenders being asked to do so, yet credit companies are not?  This country, like Australia and the USA, has personal debts rising into the trillions.  Personal debt is largely supplied by credit cards.  If you want it, you can have it.  Natwest said so in their advertising at the height of the breathless me me me I want it now malaise.  What to do?  Ask the Government.

 

I wonder if gimmickry is the key to success?  Not small tacky ones.  Big ones like FCUK in its hey day.  An inventor of the OTT statement.  OTT statements like using Dame Edna Everage as the face of MAC cosmetics.  Fantastic.  There can be no greater glorifying of woman surely than Dame Edna.  A man who wants to dress up as a woman, lilac coloured hair and pert cat glasses is a man who believes in women.  Either that or he is being ironic.  Is he?  Are we femmes the butt of a massive joke?  One that has lasted 50 years?  Crikey, I hope not, possums.  It would be embarrassing to say the least.  After all, we have all laughed our guts up at the Dame’s pokes at PC society and famous bods.  I dread the day she no longer glides on stage, her arms full of glads.

 

Just heard on the radio that strapline ad (for something) that is going around where the guy says that his new year resolution is to never fall in love again.  Man!  He must have got it in the neck during 2008.  Poor bugger.  Feel for him.  Hope a nice girl or boy comes along and mends that broken heart of his.

 

Until next year, children, au revoir.

 

Lulu x

Pussy Look Out

Anyone else feeling like me?  Champagned and turkeyed out?  Oh for a few draughts of water and some cooling slices of watermelon.  Add to that a few dozing days by the sea and you have my idea of heaven.  Right now that is.  A few days of water, fruit and a sunburned beach and I’ll be screaming for the finer things of civilisation.

I am on the lookout for a pussy.  A furry black one or a pretty blue.  Not dyed, shaved, or otherwise modified.  Not docked or clipped.  A gently handled, and relatively unused pussy would be ideal.  If you know of one for sale, do let me know. 

And this is all for now.  The Champagne has, I’m sorry to say, affected me much more than I had realised.

To all, I bid you a fond adieu.  I must away to the Land of Nod.  Or a little doze in front of the fire.

L. xx

to love or not to love – seriously

Why do we love those who knowingly (on both sides) break our hearts instead of waiting for the one who will love us and never shatter us into pieces?  Of course, there are many people who will never love that hard and for them I say perhaps you are the lucky ones.  People say it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, but that’s a cliche and usually pronounced when one is in one’s cups sobbing over the heartless one.  In a brighter, smarter moment, one gets a grip and remembers that love is for losers really.  Ok, it doesn’t have to be for losers, it could be for winners and so say all the Mills and Boons and all the romantic fictionalised movies that end with the sun rising on a new day and a new life for our protagonists. 

My friend, a woman who could have many a man or woman and all at the same time without even trying, would rather have sex with the man who has hurt her heart, confidence and emotions countless times because it is wonderful sex, than wait for the man who will give her wonderful sex and not fracture her. 

We don’t really want to wait do we?  But why not?  Why not wait a year which in the scheme of a long life is only a day and see what wonderful and powerful creature explodes upon our senses and breathes life back into the grimness we have lived with for so long?  Why not nurture our goodness and our beauty and hold it in the palm of our hands until the one who deserves it waltzes onto our path and dances into our eternity? 

Why not sit back and contemplate our navels and clean out the lint and consider the brightness of our pierced stomachs and the interesting tattoo that weaves a vision around the belly dip that once gave us life?  Life for life.  Our mothers wanted so much for us.  Even if they have left us (through no fault of their own), they watch us in wonder and in awe and sometimes in sorrow.  They want us to have everything but not at the expense of us.

We can be bigger and better versions of all the women who have gone before us, who wanted us to be all that they were and all that we can be.  We shouldn’t give that up for wonderful sex with a man or woman who couldn’t give a monkey’s about the person we are when we aren’t in their bed.

Meeting Place

Met my girlfriend and her little daughter at St Pancras yesterday.  She was an hour late, Easy Jet doing its usual tardy thing.  Therefore I had plenty of time to walk around and enjoy the shopping experience.  I like to diversify in my shopping and every shop is worth dipping into.  Oliver Bonas for fuschia coloured leather gloves, a couple of books from WHSmith, cufflinks from Pink, handcream from Rituals.  Ah, yes, a little something for everyone.  The WHSmith was very small, very sad, rather tawdry.  Cramming too much into too small a space.  It seems strange to me that a popular shop for travellers would be so badly organised.  And no room at all for people with their luggage.  Still, one manages.

The building is simply beautiful, elegant and breathtaking in its appearance of simplicity though I have no doubt up close to that beautiful curving roof one would find intricacies beyond measure.  For me, one of the most glorious things is Paul Day’s sculpture Meeting Place.  It’s made out of bronze but to the untrammelled eye it looks like chocolate.  I wanted to reach up and run my finger across the high heel of the 20 foot woman.  The little girl with me was as convinced as I that it was chocolate, the kind of milky chocolate that Easter bunnies are made out of.  I didn’t want to disappoint her and test it.  How disappointed would she have been (as would I) if the heel didn’t come away in my hand!

A chocolate statue would survive in St Pancras.  It’s as cold as hell in there.  That was the downside of waiting for an hour.  On the one hand, lots of very nice shops.  On the other, my breath frosted in front of me.  Maybe that’s why they keep the place frigid.  A conspiracy on behalf of landlords and retailers to ensure that people will buy, if not out of desire, at least out of desperation!

Still, as a central place to meet someone you can’t find much better.  The longest Champagne bar in Europe, what looks like a jolly nice place to dine (The Grand), several cosy what I call croissant and tea joints, and a number of decent shops for those amongst us who like something a little different.  If they could just keep the doors closed against the freezing outside world, I could be as happy as a pig in mud.

Revenge

They say revenge is best eaten cold.  Is this because you can plan the path your revenge will take with better accuity?  Or because, in the heat of the moment, you might slip up and therefore get caught?  I have just finished reading a short story by Stella Duffy about this.  The husband, a gambler and a liar, kills himself because he has been running up huge debts.  The wife discovers this when the creditors come knocking on her door.  So she proceeds to somehow affect (ie, by arson, by having an affair with the bank manager and letting his wife find out, by many different means and ways) dire consequences for those people who allowed her husband to get himself into the state he did which caused him to take his life, leaving her bereft of the man who best helped her to sleep.  You see, it’s mainly because she can’t sleep anymore that she decides to hurt those who effectively hurt him and, and as a by product, her.  But the kicker is, because she was the last one to find out, the wife who had let him down by not being worthy of him telling her what was going on, she tops herself too!  To me, that’s taking revenge just a tad too far.

What is Gordon Ramsay’s wife Tana going to do?  She probably doesn’t need him anymore anyway so is it worth avenging herself?  I’d say not.  It’s a tricky situation though.  A public marriage is contaminated by a public affair.  And of course will the media or we sticky beaks allow them to sort themselves out without giving our two cents worth?  Probably not.  Because everyone loves a revenge story and everyone is keen to see someone go under the knife, metaphorically speaking.  At the very least, it makes us feel less impotent if we can talk about someone else’s misfortune because it’s easier to do that than talk about our own.  So many people these days go through similar situations, it’s become just another messy part of our daily tapestries.  Not very interesting really, except to those who are deeply and hurtfully affected by it.

A sojourn on the Isle of Write

Having just returned from the Isle of Wight where I have spent the past couple of days in semi writing bliss, I thought I would just jot a few lines down in order to help my poor brain remember what and where it’s been lately.  As I am also doing a writing module at Birkbeck I get a tad confused at times.

I stayed at The Grange in Shanklin which is probably the best part of Shanklin apart from the cluster of rather darling pubs in one corner of the village – The Crab and the Village Inn are two of these and a lovely meal was had at the Village Inn last night.  Visiting Shanklin is like visiting the 1950s.  It has an air of uncaredfor-ness about it.  Yet, despite that, the people are charming, happy and warm.  One of the things I thought slightly scary was the fact that the newly resident tatooist is suffering from hate mail from one or perhaps even several of the villagers to the point that he has posted one of the letters in his shop window along with his response which is very kind I must say, considering that it appears he is getting nasty mail on a regular basis.  Having spoken with other people who live in surrounding villages, the Isle of Wight is rather set in its ways and not keen to make any change.  Perhaps this is a good thing but it’s never good to be too blinkered I feel.

Back to the writing – the course was called Literotica: writing erotic fiction and was held by Mitzi Szereto.  A frail, fragile looking lady, she is quietly fiesty and nicely interesting.  She carries her bear around with her and I noted from her own blog that her bear has a facebook page which is slightly bonkers to a normal readership I would think but, on the other hand, bears have feelings and they never let you down.

She has written a lot of books in the erotic genre and they all carry titles that make you want to dive in and start reading immediately: Tales of Revenge, stories about real life women’s fantasies, Erotic Fairy Tales which I should think any woman would be intrigued to read.  For myself, I can remember in my teens being deeply turned on by a Grimms Brothers’ character who lived in a pool.  He was very very big and that’s all I can remember…..

The people on the course were enormous fun, and we laughed a lot during our readouts.  What was really nice about it was the fact that we obviously felt quite comfortable together, although of course you can’t go on a writing course unless you are prepared to read out loud and be prepared to have some feed back.  It is a bit scary but once you realise the group is good fun and without mean agendas, suddenly you feel quite released and ready to jump in and be counted.

The Grange is a gorgeous manor type house and is the perfect place for peace and solitude.  I went to bed and didn’t wake until my alarm went off (the first morning I overslept as I hadn’t set my alarm thinking that I would waken early as I always do in London).   Despite my evil cold, I felt all the goodness of serenity and peacefulness seep into me.  There was no pressure to do or be anything other than myself.

Added to the fact that I love to write and will use any excuse to do so (time permitting), I have returned to London refreshed (ok, so the cold still hangs low upon me) and ready to take up pen again.

Today is a day like any other – or is it?

I was in the supermarket today and I noticed a particularly attractive woman ahead of me.  She was tall and lithe, with a curtain of blond hair that swung gracefully against her back.  She was dressed in a severe black suit of skirt and jacket.  She wore high heeled black shoes and light black stockings with a seam that ran up her long legs.  Even I was intrigued.  How often do you see a well dressed woman in the streets, let alone a supermarket?  I agree – not very often.  Women hide their light under a barbaric dress sense, have no respect for the back of their hair, forgetting to comb or brush the bits they can’t see, and slop along in flat shoes or flip flops.  There is nothing that won’t put a particular man off a woman quicker than slatternly feet, peeling toenail polish, unbuffed heels.  Yet, here was woman personified.  Glorious.  A mistress if ever I saw one.  And…

Not far behind was a man who had the same interest in her as I.  Well, perhaps not the same.  Mine was to write about her, his was to lie at her feet, to adore said feet, to cover her in oils and creams, feed her chocolate and champagne and….but I digress.  Indeed, I digress a lot because the truth is I don’t know what was inside his head when he espied our Mistress.  What I do know is that he was boredly turning over the spinach and beets in the vegetable section, looking at everyone and everything except the job in hand – selecting veggies for his dinner.  Well, who wouldn’t be bored doing that?  It takes no great strain on the brain to figure out that our Mistress was going to captivate any straight thinking man, especially one bored with selecting the plumpest and ripest tomatoes and non wilting greens.  Straightaway he jumps to attention, dinner forgotten.  Mistress saunters away down the fish aisle and our man in stripes (business suit stripes!) matches her pace with a slightly quicker one of his own.  I, being the nosy broad that I am and interested in all things of the senses and the sensual, race off down the meat aisle to come to a skidding end at the fish counter.  I turn my back on the fishman and turn my gaze to the fish aisle.  To be honest, I hate the smell of fish so I also had to turn my nose off which means not breathing.  Yes, you can go a bit dizzy so I don’t recommend it unless you are upwind of a story.  Continue…

Mr Stripes follows Mistress at a reasonable distance, not close enough to smell her tantalising perfume but close enough to man-ogle those pins.  At some point she became aware he was following – I don’t know how she knew but she did – women have a sense for this kind of thing.  Probably the fact he had an empty shopping basket in his hand and that he stopped whenever she did yet never selected anything. 

Up one aisle and down another they tripped.  Until finally, in cereals and breakfast bars, she came to a stop.  She put down her basket and undid one of her stilettos.  She stood in front of a box of cereal, pretending to read it as she massaged her foot.  Mr Stripes was salivating - I saw him so I know.  He walked up to her (I applaud his chutzpah) and said a few words which, sadly, I was not privy to (not being close enough!).  Whatever he said worked.  He kneeled and took her foot on his suited thigh and proceeded to massage her toes and ball of foot through her stockings.  She continued to read the cereal box.  In fact, as I watched, she read about seven boxes of different cereal.  He caressed and loved her other foot too.  And finally, when he was done or she was bored, he helped slide her feet into her killer heels, buckled them and stepped back.  She held out her hand in a most definitely Mistress-y way – limp wristed so that he kissed her hand rather than shook it.  She then made a little shooing sign and he walked away, not dejected looking as one would expect but like a man, an alpha male - upright, head held high, a little bounce in his step.  A happy man, indeed, perhaps a deliriously happy man.  She, on the other hand, slung a box of muesli into her basket, turned to me, winked and, with terrific imperiousness, glided away as though on a sea of oil to find yet another man whose life she would enrich even if for just a short period of time.

Ladies, sit down and have your feet adored.  Forget sex – a well loved foot is at the heart of every great love affair.  Don’t forget, a love affair need not be physical or long lasting – it just needs to be remembered – forever.

Lulu

Red Velvet

I was struck by the gorgeousness of a long red velvet dress.  It was a halter neck, scoop necked, long waisted, with a slight train.  Glorious.  Very much something every woman would want to wear.  Accompanying this paragon was a pair of 40s peep toe shoes, red, mais bien sur!, high heeled.  Erotic.  My heart palpitated, my tongue languished lushly in my mouth, its tip pinkly poking out.  I could taste that dress, those shoes.  I imagined my legs being licked up and down, the licker trying not to be distracted by those shoes.  Carefully, I raised my head to the heady heights of, well, the head of the woman wearing this creation.  Attractive, older, dark haired.  Sadly, she then opened her mouth and sang.  It was a tragedy in two acts.  Yes, she can sing but no, she can’t sing in this musical.  For one thing, the musical director had not changed the notes to accommodate her range, secondly, it was trite.  I did wonder if perhaps age was leaving her voice behind.  After all, it has happened to ONJ.  I prefer of course to think that it was the musical.  Older woman in love triangle with her toy boy lover and her partner who is really a kind of sugar daddy although he is her age.  Ok, it’s a stage show and one must suspend disbelief but please, the said toy boy fell in love with her after one song!  Obsessively, passionately.   He had heard her sing four years before and he’d become interested.  That’s still a far cry from falling deeply in love with someone just because they open their mouths and let sing a rather silly song which of course precursed her future.  The musical was a farce really.  Not a funny one.  It was really quite pathetic and although I left at the interval, I hardly think it would have improved at all.  I presume young lover is killed, the other man leaves her, she is thrown on a heap.  The young lover appeared to be young, til he stepped into the front lights and you realised he was probably her age!  And he spat all the time as he sang.  Big stringy gobs of spit.  Every time she kissed him I imagined her chin being coated liberally.  Quite disgusting.  And very off putting.  I couldn’t suspend my disbelief any longer!

On a bright note, the set was fabulous….Three cheers to the designer, the builder and the stage hands who moved it around throughout the show.

I would really though rather see Cabaret….

Lulu x

Hello world!

Dear All,

You may or may not know me but here I ith, as the child in me would say.  Obviously, with some kind of little lisp. 

I will be advising on all kinds of small issues such as face our world.  Some of this advice may be obvious, may be dull, may be a little gloating or even just a bit full of itself.  You take the bits you like and you push the rest away.

For now, be good, be brave, be clever.  You never know who’s watching.

Au revoir,

Lulu