This Fish Smells Rather Peculiar, Darling

In the book I Don't - A Contrarian View of Marriage, Susan Squire gives a mind boggling history about how crazy the church has been over time in trying to stop people feeling pleasure during sex. Pleasure during sex, I know, disgusting isn't it?

She writes that in the 11th Century there were religious wierdos known as penitents who wrote long rule books about every single sex act possible and the corresponding punishment you should incure for doing it. Gratian in 1140 in the Decretum sets out that the punishment for either oral or anal sex is generally equal to that for murder, that is, seven years but could be double that or more, fifteen years to life!

And what of aphrodisiacs? Trying to turn your man on in ye olden dayes could be punishable by long stays in the clink. Here's a quiz for you. Another penitent, Burchard, Bishop of Worms put together a formula for aphrodisiacs created by wives. Can you match the aphrodisiac to his suggested sentence for each heinous crime?

Aphrodisiacs:

A. Wife mixes her menstrual blood into husband's food or drink.

B. Wife suffocates a fish in her vagina, roasts it and serves it to hubby.

C. Wife has a servant knead the daily bread on her bare backside before baking it.

D. Wife mixes husband's semen into his meal.

Prison Sentences:

1. Seven years
2. Two years
3. Two year
4. Five years

Answers to quiz: A4, D1, B2, C3 - who got full points??

So what gets you in the mood for lurve (apart from your wife's famous Baked Fish)?

Also, I've just had a request from my dear Scottish pal Misssy M, also known as "The North East's funniest woman." She's doing research for a talk she's giving at The Word Festival in Aberdeen about blogging and would love to hear from writers who blog as well as all the hobby bloggers. If you're a narcissistic blogger who wants to talk about why you blog please go here.

It hurts so bad

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

I was just wondering if I have ever had sex this bad. I think I have but I don't think I have ever had someone who could just go three minutes. The more typical problem is someone who keeps going and going like the Little Engine That Could until your whole body has gone numb.


Now, nothing against Australians - I want to say straight off the bat that I have only ever slept with one Aussie so am not going to tar you all with the same brush - but the worst shag I think I ever had was with an Australian accountant who actually pursued me for quite a while who I wrote to here when I was doing a post listing the most idiotic guys I ever dated.

Dear Dave,

You were an Australian accountant living in London. We met at a German conversation class, where, you said, you were learning German so that you could converse with your German girlfriend. Did that girlfriend ever exist, Dave? I’ll never know. At the end of each evening class we would all go to the pub and have a bit of a laugh. You were very amusing, for an accountant, and although you wore glasses and your hair was kinky, you were geek-sexy. I realized you were fairly immature when, after everyone had gone home one night, you said you had missed your last train and could you stay at my flat? Okay I said, and put you in the spare room. I suppose I should have realized you were a dick when you came into my room twice during the night and said you were scared of sleeping on your own and could you get in with me? I told you to piss off and then, weeks after the German class ended, you kept phoning me up asking me out. So, in the end I thought, okay fine, and we went out on a date and got blind drunk and had some rather functional sex, like I was a prostitute you’d paid for the night and you’d better get your monies worth. Like, you’d wake me up every hour and just get on top. By the morning I was sober, not to mention a little sore.

When I saw you in the cold light of day, I made the mistake of laughing at your very hairy chest and started rubbing it for fun. And you said, “Can you please stop doing that, you’re creating static electricity.” I thought it was funny that I was generating static electricity, but you’d lost your sense of humor. You were dying to get out of there, even though I’d made it quite clear I thought of you as nothing but a (rather poor) one night stand. Thank you for teaching me, that while there may be twenty-three go rounds, for you, there is only one position in a one night stand. Your ‘girlfriend’ is welcome to you.

So what about you dear readers? Have you ever had sex this bad?

Don't Cry for me Argentina

I spent my 38th birthday drinking with my friend Tasha. Well, I say she's a friend but why would she send me this photograph today where I look like a rollicking old drunk and she looks immaculate? Ho hum. I'll just put it up because I think there are some of you who believe that I only put good photos of myself up and this is to prove that I really can look like an old dog.


Tasha is the adventurous sort and we were actually planning this big European trip in the summer but now I'm not so sure. She's all about "let's share a bunk bed in a youth hostel. It'll be fun." Now she is forty and I am thirty eight and my first thought was, no to the bunk beds. I need a bit of luxury in my old age.

I really prefer to do my travelling these days while drinking a beer and watching the Travel Channel. I love watching those shows about people who buy International Properties - where you can get these huge villas in, say, Buenos Aires with a pool and full time gardener for something ridiculous like $250,000. As soon as I have the cash, I'm off. All I'll require is a full time 'pool boy' to service the, er, pool.

So all we did was get sozzled while I embraced getting old and the thought that I would probably never again stay in a youth hostel which has run out of toilet paper the moment you get the shits. I do have vague recollections of the youth hostel bunk bed days when you'd be awoken by some smelly German trying to get into your bunk in the middle of the night just because he was drunk and didn't know your bosom wasn't actually a pillow. And trying to sleep against the permeating stench of foot cheese. No. I can't do it. Sorry Tasha you are too much for me.

Or, never say never? Do you consider that although you are an 'old person' you still have the iron stomach and ability to shower once a week, not to mention stamina to enjoy one of those devil may care backpacking holidays?

Porn Bailout

Tremors were throbbing through the Oval Office yesterday as Obama responded to a desperate letter penned by Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Girls Gone Wild chief executive Joe Francis who told him that 'the bottom had fallen out of the porn market.' Obama immediately responded to the crisis, agreeing to shell out$5 billion to bail out the porn industry which has taken an economic pounding.

In an urgent meeting Obama told Hillary Clinton that, "Adult DVD sales and rentals have gone down 22 per cent during the past year. We desperately need this erotic stimulus package."

"Absolutely! That porn sales are down means some people are missing out," Hillary countered. "Surely it's the basic right of every American to consume as much porn as is humanly possible?"

"Of course it is. This is a humanitarian crisis," said Obama. "People who used to shell out an arm and a leg for their masturbatory pleasure are increasingly turning to pirated copies and YouTube-like Web sites that stream clips for free."

Moved to tears, Hillary said, "Additionally, who are we to deny these adult performers from carrying out a trade that brings happiness to millions and has a huge impact on the economy?"

Porn star Jennifer Juggs said, "The bailout will be most welcome. Sales being down isn't affecting our clothing budget since most of us work in our birthday suits but some female stars were at their wits end wondering if they would be able to afford their annual breast and butt implants. This bailout has literally saved our butts."

And what about you? Are you finding that the credit crunch has shrivelled your porn budget? And how are you coping?

A Prisoner of Fame

Moi - thirty three years ago

The tributes are coming in thick and fast and I'm knee deep in bouquets here. It's my birthday on Saturday and some of my legions of fans have been sleeping outside my front door for days now - no doubt vying to be the first to play 'happy birthday' on a set of saucepans while tooting a tin whistle on Saturday morning when I officially turn 38.


The current view from my house. "Thanks for your enthusiasm lads but could you piss off now!"





I've even emptied my chamber pot over them a couple of times, but what can I say, they will not be moved. So now I'm paying the high price of fame and have been locked in my house for days, subsisting on Pot Noodle and listening to my old vinyls.

Now, I'm trying not to get too sad about turning thirty eight because my husband, bless him, says that "you get better looking every year," and I'm going to choose to believe him.

So, let's go back to the night of my birth for a moment, to that wintry night thirty eight years ago when my mother was barefoot and pregnant and my father was under a bed somewhere trying to pretend it all wasn't happening. Now, mum is a very slim woman and claims that no one (save my father) knew she was pregnant. She had a job in a pub and didn't want to be sacked for being pregnant apparently and often wore a big coat to cover up the bump. Well, she had a French flatmate called Aimee (who mum thinks might have known she was preggers but wasn't sure), who was out at work when my mum went into labour with me. And before walking round to the hospital, mum wrote a note to Aimee saying: 'I have gone to hospital because of the baby,' and a few days later when mum got back from the hospital Aimee got the shock of her life when she saw me because apparently she'd thought the note meant mum was off to have an abortion!

Amazing isn't it, that from such inauspicious beginnings I have now become one of the brightest flames in the blogosphere? So please dear ones, please send me gifts. And if you want to write a tribute, do go ahead, it can be as sentimental or mental as you like. Tell me how and in what way I have touched you (!) And serenade me if you like. Video tributes are also welcome from those with a lot of time on their hands, like this tribute to my famous namesake:

Old Soak

I recently found out that a friend of mine, Ed, who lives in London, just died of lung cancer aged 45. Now this guy was an ex-alcoholic and lived a healthy life. I think he might have smoked in his youth but crikey, lung cancer? No one gets lung cancer at 45, do they? My first two (un-Christian) thoughts were:

1. He may as well have stayed an old soak and had a good crack if he was going to croak at 45.

2. Maybe that stuff they tell you about London being so polluted it is the same as smoking ten fags a day is true and he literally choked on the smoke.

Ex-alcoholics are a funny bunch aren't they? I had a friend while I lived in London, Alice, and we had many a drunken shenanigan together, dancing half dressed on bar tops to Abba etc. Then she disappeared for a while and when she phoned me she said, "Sorry I haven't been in touch for two years but I'm an alcoholic." I wondered what she was on about since she'd been the sort to have a sniff of whisky and be drunk but she claimed that she'd got to the point where she'd drink every day after work - only three cans of beer, mind - and had stopped answering the phone. I didn't consider this to be alcoholism but horses for courses, she did. So she went to AA and met this guy who has since popped it, Ed, and they hung out with lots of AA people and I met them all several times. They kept telling me I was an alcoholic but I said it was unlikely because if I am home and fancy a drink and there is no booze I will never go out and buy some (chocolate is another matter).

Anyway, I went to an AA meeting once for a crack. Except it wasn't really. When I arrived a famous actor from Eastenders welcomed me with open arms. I said, "Er, I'm not an alcoholic, I've just come along with Ed and Alice." He nodded sagely as if to say, "Denial, oh yes, we've all been there."

One of the major problems with ex alcoholics is that they are always dying for a drink and pretending they're absolutely fine with an apple juice mixed with soda water. I once went to a New Years Eve party full of AA people where there was no booze. Longest five hours of my life. Another time I went to an AA party at a pub (oh the irony) with Ed and Alice and was the only one who got bladdered. I was chatting up this ex-alkie hot guy and took him home and almost got him through my front door - at which point he declared, "I think you're drunk." I said, "So what?" To which he replied, "I am making this decision for both of us: you are too drunk to know what you are doing," and departed. Here's the rub to this story (or rather the lack of a rub): there is no possibility of casual sex with an AA person. That was it. The final cocktail umbrella in the coffin. I never hung out with AA people again.

My opinion of AA, NA and all the rest is that it's mainly about getting someone to listen to your ramblings and if you have an officially sanctioned 'addiction' so much the better. Psychotherapists are pretty expensive and generally a total waste of time.

Do you think that 'addicts' are basically all just attention addicts or that some of them really have some er, gene that makes them susceptible to sitting in large stinking rooms where everyone chains smokes and drinks instant coffee and talks about how mum never loved them etc?

Also, is London really that polluted?