Bip… Bip… Bip…

Checkout Chick: “Ginger? What you want all that ginger for? What you gonna do with it?”

Ladyshambles: “Er, I cut it up and make tea with it.”

CC: “Oooohhhh, I getcha.”

She pauses. Bip… bip… goes the scanner. Eggs, blueberries and loo roll whizzes through. Then she looks up conspiratorially. I draw closer.

CC: “You know in my country, women crush the ginger up like this.” She grinds her fist into her palm, mimicking the action of a pestle and mortar.

LS: “Umm, yeeees…?”

CC: “And then they put it up… there.” Her handmade pestle and mortar morphs effortlessly into the gesture of a lady shoveling fresh ginger up her bajingo. For dramatic effect, Checkout Chick’s eyebrows hit her hairline and I can see the whites of her eyes all the way round.

LS: “Oh good God, really?” I swallow hard. And blink furiously. “Where are you from?”

CC: “Ghana. That’s what the women do there. It stings like hell, but it’s good. Medicinal.” Up shoot those eyebrows again.

LS: “I did not know that. And I will just be making tea. No DIY gynaecology for me!”

CC: “Ah now, sure you go on and do what y’like with that ginger. But if you need any maintenance down there, you know what to do. Enter your PIN please.”

You heard it here first. They’ll be peddling that little gem in Grazia magazine before the year is out.

At six foot tall and with a gob rivalling Janet Street Porter’s, you could hardly call me vulnerable.

However, some creep invading your space on the tube platform and telling you he wants to have sex with you, is bound to put the most Amazonian of us on the back foot.

I might have told him to piss off and then marched off to the other end of the platform with a ‘don’t fuck with me’ scowl on my face, but now all I want is a hug.

And perhaps a big stick to beat the eejit with.

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?