Following on from yesterday’s post, who the fuck would have thought terminal velocity would invert the human mammary?

Not I and yet the evidence is plain to see.

Enjoy.

A good friend of mine is a freelance features writer for the glossies. She navigates the extreme bitching and narcissism that are rife in women’s mag publishing unscathed and with admirable aplomb.

No easy task and so I say hats off to her. Which is ironic given that her next assignment is three days at a nudist resort.

Cue lunchtime hilarity as the following topics were aired:

1) Appropriate topiary.

2) Artful use of tit tape in the absence of one’s bra.

3) What not to wear in the event of rain.

4) Wanger watch: keep the eye contact!

5) ‘Flaps’.

She is a braver lady than I.

Today I swallowed my gargantuan fear of all things ‘finance’ and did a spring clean on the old Ladyshambles books.

The story begins with this one, simple truth: at school, I was utter bobbins at mathematics. This was compounded by the fact I was saddled with a startling array of fucking awful maths teachers. They ranged from the pitiably incompetent, through to those who were arguably belched forth from the bowels of hell by Beelzebub himself. (Especially you, Mr Ian White, especially you.)

Even today, the mere mention of an improper fraction is enough to make me come out in a flesh-eating, icy cold sweat. And what the hell is one of those anyway? Why is it ‘improper’? Perhaps it arrives to a dinner party half cut, touches up the host’s wife and declares the beef uncommonly tough, while sliding off its chair and spilling vintage port all over the Axminster.

Fast forward more than a decade and I’ve only just trained myself into opening my bank statements the day they arrive.

Top tip: I reward myself. For example, open the bank statement (the donkey) and you are allowed a glass of wine (the carrot). Simple, yet effective.

So it was with heavy heart, and the rare appearance of adult responsibility, that I hit the figures with the kind of force only a 34E bra and a bull-in-a-china-shop attitude can deliver.

And would you Adam and Eve it: I’m not going to die of poverty (although that ending does hold a certain misguided romantic appeal). The comings are regular and the goings don’t exceed them.

Now I feel positively vindicated in drinking a whole bottle of something red and fruity.

And it ain’t Robinson’s Apple & Blackcurrant.

I write to you today, viewing the world from a slightly different angle than previously.

Let me explain.

There are certain things that you know you will experience. Preferably in this order:

1) Sex
2) Taxes
3) Death

There are certain things you hope you will experience. In no particular order:

1) True love
2) Tax rebates
3) Lifelong sanity

And then there are those things that you never ever thought you’d see. In fact, it probably didn’t even entered your head, cluttered as it is with confusing thoughts about sex and mental health and what your accountant is going to say/bill you when he sees the state of your records. (Oh, just me then?)

Well, thanks to Empress Stah, neo-burlesque artist, last night I witnessed one of those ‘never even entered my head’ things.

She began with some bog standard fire eating. I say bog standard because it was only with small candles, and she didn’t put one out properly and it nearly burned the table cloth. Anyway, then she moved on to a bizarre mime sequence involving a kitchen knife and a stuffed santa. By this point, some guests were looking pointedly at the exit.

But this is when it got good. Down comes a hoop (the size of the kind you’d do hoola with) and she proceeded to wow us all with such feats of gymnastic strength and dexterity, that all thoughts of making a beeline for the last tube home were banished.

So I’m all agog with wonder and thinking of retraining as a gymnast, when the leotard starts to come off. What with all the aerial acrobatics, I’d forgotten about the burlesque bit. Leotard dispensed with, she sticks three silver stars on the important bits and sort of nonses about being naked and stuff.

Then out of nowhere, she reaches down and pulls a string of pearls out of her punani.

*Collective gasp*

And straight after that she turned around, bent over and shoved a bloody great big diamond up her bum.

*Eyes water*

Certainly a novel way to keep your Crown Jewels safe, wouldn’t you say?

Today’s topic: Various.

There was a woman on the tube this morning who, at the top of her rasping 20-a-day voice, took it upon herself to delight and entertain her friend (and thereby all of us) with details of last night’s taudry bedroom antics. And she had Weetabix breath. I hate public transport.

On a lighter note, I realised something. Amy Doghouse might be looking increasingly more unhinged when she pops to the 24 hour garage for fags, Haribo and chilli flavoured Walker’s Sensations, but she’s always got her face on. Which given her lifestyle, leads me to believe the eyeliner is tattooed on. Either that or she’s got a make up artist stashed in her flat, ready to leap in for a touch up inbetween the crack pipe and the syringe.

Glad to see Posh has sorted those tits of hers out. Fuck me, they could have had someone’s eye out. Now all you have to do it plaster a smile on it, love, and the gutter press might just turn down the heat on the daily drubbing. Or not. Best job in the world being a gossip hack. Those c’lebs just hand it to you on a plate.

This weekend The German and I are heading to Kent for a weekend with the outlaws. My parents are entertaining his ever fragrant stepmother and The German Senior, who despite being of diminutive height, can’t half put it away. And fair fucks, cos I’m right behind him. Highlight of the weekend: a protracted trip to the bottle bank.

But at least I can stave off the liver damage panics on Sunday night with the corsets and bonnets in Cranford. That combined with a bit of Top Gear and a Chinese take away is the best antidote to the Sunday night FEAR.

Possibly ever.

Meandering round the interweb the other day, I stumbled across this.

Skinny Bitch, written by an ex-model and a model booker, is ‘A no-nonsense, tough-love guide for savvy girls who want to stop eating crap and start looking fabulous!’

Pass me the sick bucket. After I’ve binged on chocolate digestives, of course.

With a call to arms that screeches, ‘Stop being a moron and start getting skinny!’, we are left in doubt that all that is good in this world is rake thin and shuns dairy as if it came - not from a cow - but from the nipples of Beelzebub himself.

I loathe shit like this. Especially when the authors, Rory and Kim, are quite clearly a) self-satisfied, finger-wagging hags, b) out to make a fast buck and c) are doing so by riding off the back of the airbrushed bunkum we are peddled on a daily basis.

It’s worth noting that Rory and Kim are both from LA. This is a place where unless you’re into minus figures on your dress size, you’re shunned as a fatty boom boom outcast (unless you’re Beth Ditto or a Brit).

I used to be ’skinny’. Like, proper skinny. Like gangly skinny. And I hated it. Six foot and barely packing out a size eight isn’t pretty when it’s not dressed up to the nines and shoved behind a camera lense. And teenage boys simply aren’t interested when you make a couple of bee stings look like Lolo Ferrari. They’re all too concerned with the business of pinging the bra straps of girls who can fill one.

Ten years on I’ve got tits and hips and everything that comes with it, and fuck me, I ain’t giving them up for nobody. (And neither would you if you’d spent nights repeatedly pressing your palms together, in the vain hope it would kick start a growth spurt, while chanting, ‘I must, I must, I must increase my bust.’)

I’m all for healthy eating, taking exercise and glugging water. I eat my five a day and go to the gym three or four times a week. But I also like to fall spectacularly off the health wagon on occasion. That usually means cosying up to Monsieur Merlot and flirting outrageously with Mr Murg Masala before devouring him whole. You see, I always thought the watch word of the moment should be moderation.

This book chats regimented crap. The opening gambit of ‘Stop being a moron and start getting skinny!’ sets out its store of reinforcing the stereotypes that make so many women feel like utter bobbins. Like the one where looking like an emaciated husk of a girl-woman equates to success. Oh and my favourite, where size is inversely proportionate to brains.

“Help me! My brain is withering because I ate a Jaffa cake!”

Some fuck ups will love this book. If you’re one of them, then go right ahead and get reducing. See how you like it when your tits shrink faster than Ben Fogle’s balls when he rowed the Atlantic naked.

Besides, with you lot all sans scaffolding, I do believe I’m owed some long overdue bra strap-pinging…