Cougars - Hot or Not?

Today finds me guest blogging over at Mummy Diaries on the topic of Cougars. Do you get why some older women chase after much younger men? Is it a sexual thing or just about ego gratification? Or is it just a trend Samantha from Sex and the City started to make it look like it is great fun when it probably isn't all that apart from for a quick roll in the hay? Should the fantasy of making steamy love to a young buck stay inside the covers of romance novels or should older women act on these desires? Is there a double standard at work here, society frowns on older men with young girls because it's a bit perverted while frowning on older women with younger men because it's somehow indecent? So please do me a favour, pop over here and let's have a heated debate!!

I could have been a lesbian living in Sydney

What do I know about Australia? I know that some people call us Brits Whinging Poms - which I consider an entirely apt name. Apart from that, the answer is not much. I'm no expert, because I was only briefly there for three weeks in 1995 and apart from a stint to the divine Byron Bay to ogle surfer boys mostly lived in a house in Balmain, Sydney, full of Scottish and English people who smoked bongs all day and were crammed into this house to such an extent that there were curtains, yes, curtains, strung down the middle of the rooms to create private ‘quarters’, and consequently you could fit at least four people in a room. It was the kind of wholesome environment where people would end up having sex with whoever was beside them on the sofa at the end of the night. While I was there, one girl got pregnant. My English friend Louise was the only respectable person in this squat type situation. She had a job as a picture editor on a magazine, and I have no idea how she got up in the morning after all the degeneracy. I am quite a messy person, but the situation in one of the bathrooms was so bad that you had to wear shoes to go into it, because the floor was covered in….well, you get my drift.

Louise was there for about a year. Stupidly, she didn’t emigrate to Oz at the time, when she was under 27, and it would have been relatively easy. Instead she came back to England and got obsessed with emigrating and at one point after she was older than 27, wanted me to pretend to be her lesbian partner - for reasons that now escape me, it is easier to emigrate if you have a partner or spouse - and make an application to move there. I would have done it too, only I know I would have cocked up the immigration interview. Nevertheless, the years have passed and sometimes I can't help but wonder what might have happened if I had turned that corner. To think I could now be living with my 'lesbian lover' in Sydney eh? The mind boggles. Setting aside for a moment the fact that the officials would have seen through the charade what if we'd pulled it off?

It could have happened. We were both hacked off with men at the time, what if I'd segued into temporary lesbianism? I wonder whether if the earth had been slightly off kilter while we'd been having our drunken discussion in the pub when Louise had shrieked "I've got it - we'll pretend to be gay!" we'd have taken it all the way to Oz? Not terribly likely but still it's certainly funny to think about what I would be like if I was living in Australia. I have a feeling I'd be tan, lithe and fit because not only would I be a super surfer but they have all the nice fresh fish over there and the food is so healthy and delicious. But actually knowing me I would be 300lb and eating heaps of meat pies and Tim Tams not to mention glugging beer by the truckload to quench my thirst. What do you think...do you think I could have gone the Sapphic Antipodean route or am I clutching at eucalyptus leaves?

Well, anyway, until the day I can save enough to get to Oz for an extended vacation I hang around all the cool Aussie kids like Kathrine at Mummy Diaries who alerted me to the fact that "after 10 hours dancing on the podium, rubbing up against sweaty men and shaking your glow sticks, your pachanga will smell like road kill." I also adore Mrs Woog at Woogsworld who if you've got a mo needs urgent advice on dropping lose 20 kilos in 5 weeks without the use of tape worms. The Not Drowning Mother is a kindred spirit who likes to knock back absinthe-based cocktails with names like ‘Monkey Gland’ and ‘Sweaty Bollocks.’ And Fingers at Whine Guide is quite probably the funniest rudest guy on the planet (not for the faint hearted!)

So I am interested to know, where might you have ended up you'd given into some crazy whim or impulse or if, like George Michael put it you'd 'turn a different corner and we never would have met.' What might have happened if fate had taken a decisively different turn and you'd ended up living in a parallel universe like the one in the rather silly film Sliding Doors? Do tell all.

You're Jolly Well Joking aren't you?

Sacrilege: The new versions of The Famous Five Books. What next for the gang, piercings and Jedward haircuts?

It's not often I tackle serious issues on this blog but when I heard that one of the children's classics, the holy grail of kids' literature - namely Enid Blyton's Famous Five books - was being messed about with I got quite hot under the collar let me tell you. How can you mess with perfection I thought? But evidently publisher Hodder thought they could and have decided the books needed a revamp because they were turning off young readers. The result is a relaunch of the books with classic Blyton words and phrases relaunched in new politically correct versions. Outrage! I hear you cry and I'm right behind you!

Have we learnt nothing from communism I thought at first when I heard that such words as 'wizard!' 'jolly' 'guffaw' and 'pooh-hah' have been axed from the 'revised' texts.

Hodder says the classic editions with Blyton's original words will still be available alongside the new versions, and it is thought likely that the famous 'lashings and lashings of ginger beer' will stay in the new version. Thank God for small mercies!

I can't say I wasn't troubled by all this but in the end after sitting down to a picnic of bread, butter, cake, cheese, eggs, gingerbread, jam and lashings and lashings of ginger beer I had a long chat with the spirits of the Famous Five (Julian, George, Dick, Anne and Timmy the dog) who told me in no uncertain terms that while they were upset about the changes they realized it was the only way for their spiffing adventures to find new readers. And once I'd put away my ouija boad I realized they were absolutely correct.

Because I actually tried reading another Enid Blyton series to my kids called Hanni und Nanni which is the German version of the St. Clare's series. It features too supercute twins who go to boarding school. I bought about twenty of these books on eBay because my kids loved the first one I read about a couple of toffs at boarding school but after a while my kids were like 'Mum why are these girls at boarding school. I mean their mum doesn't even work.' Difficult one. 'Well in those days I believe in the fifties mums sort of felt like after they'd birthed the blighters they were on their own and they would have gotten underfoot at their bridge evenings and cocktail parties.' Then my kids started getting bored after Hanni and Nanni kept putting various spiders, toads and mice into the teachers' desks which often asphixiated or got squashed. 'I mean come on mum,' they said. 'Isn't this getting a bitrepetitive? Can't they think of anything else to do?' To which I replied 'I know it might be hard to understand but this was in the days before iPods and kids had to get their kicks from torturing woodland animals.'

But the most confusing thing for my daughters was when Hanni and Nanni kept having midnight feasts with their pals. 'Mum why would you want to eat tinned sardines and condensed milk with tinned liver sausage and chocolate cake until you vomited? I mean I'm thinking they were ill or something. In fact isn't it called bubilima and we learnt about it school.' To which I replied, 'Actually darlings it's bulimia and they didn't have it back in ye olden days. It was more about the fact that usually they had cabbage soup and bread and butter so believe it or not tinned sardines were a treat even when smothered in condensed milk.'

'Mum this doesn't make any sense' was the general consensus, so the books were put aside for a rainy day. I can see now that the Hanni und Nanni series might also need to be revamped just a tad so that the younger generation would have the foggiest idea of what the books are on about. So finally I gave Hodder my blessing to change the Famous Five outdated words from 'housemistress' to 'teacher', 'awful swotter' to 'bookworm', 'mother and father' to 'mum and dad', 'school tunic' to 'uniform' and 'tinker' to 'traveller.'

In the end I decided I had to let go of the past and look to the future on this topic even though on some level this is political correctness gone mad since The Famous Five books and the rest of Blighton's genre simply reflect a lost period in history that makes me feel all tearful and fuzzy inside. And what about you, have you come a cropper trying to read a beloved kids' story to your progeny only to have them yawn and say 'this is crap.' I'd love to know your views on this.

In other news our parenting humour book Cocktails at Natpime which will be published in Australia in October now has a website. It's a revolutionary parenting book in that it doesn't dole out any advice. To join the revolution go here or to join us on twitter pop over here.

A Hostage to Trifle

If anyone out there is wondering if I have disappeared off the face of the earth the answer is no I am still alive but find myself in a top secret place. I cannot reveal my whereabouts for reasons that I cannot reveal. But I will say I am in a somewhat rainy location being force fed huge amounts of black pudding, fried rashers and trifle. I am now the size of a small barn. Please don't be concerned about me - I am not being mistreated - but I am worried that I will soon be so fat I will have to take two airplane seats when I am eventually released and put on a plane. I am also staying in a hotel where the only room left was a handicapped one which was fine for me since I am not handicapped (if I were I would have been royally shafted). For example in the bathroom which is on one level without a shower cubicle there are a few accesibility issues i.e. the shower gel is stapled to the wall at a level where no wheelchair bound person could access it. Secondly the shower faucet is at a level where no wheelchair bound person can access it. Suffice to say I sprayed the entire room with the dangerously out of control shower head and flooded all my towels. So apart from being limp and sodden I find myself basically of sound mind and in this location indefinitely. Meanwhile I am contactable via email unless you a gravy PR person called Trisha whose missive I received today which said:

Hi there,

I am working with gravy brand XX on a new campaign to get families eating their evening meals together again. We would really value your input into the research phase of this campaign.

We would like to invite the UK’s top parent bloggers to an all expenses paid round table discussion in London in September on the subject of modern family mealtimes.

Your feedback would then play a crucial part in helping to develop a national survey, the results of which will be used in a report to be sent to the media – and of course yourself should you wish to feature it on your blog.

Please do let us know if you would like to get involved!

Best
Trisha

Look Trish, if you want someone like moi to brainstorm about gravy granules then it'll take more than a poxy flight to ring my bell ya know? How about doing an upscale version of Supermarket Sweep for example where I race around Harvey Nichols stuffing my trolley with expensive face creams and Jimmy Choo sandals? I'm just saying, you don't get access to this superbrain for nothing. I don't do gravy roundtables for a packet of salted peanuts and a squashed economy seat. I might not be quite up there with Naomi 'Strange men often give me their gifts swaddled in bags in the middle of the night' Campbell (I bet they do Naomi!) but I still don't get out of bed for under $10K.

And so.... taking all these clues into account....gravy granules ....trifle.....rain .....handicapped toilets ...Where the devil am I?

Answers on a postcard

hugs

Emma
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