152. Birthday girl

Traipsing around Covent Garden we had finally given in and headed to TGI Fridays, my birthday being only a week away giving us full merit to insist on round after round of free shots in exchange for a truly shameless display of flirting with those men in jazzy striped tops covered in badges - or flair as I have since been informed. By the end of the evening I was drunk and, after a fairly standard candle and cake affair, had completed the x rated happy birthday (which involves a banana and whipped cream) and was insisting a waiter known only as "the Canadian" kiss me before my driver arrived. 

My actual birthday celebrations have since been a far more grown up affair (although I am not going to lie, the Jack Daniels sauce was sorely missed) with champagne and making eyes at boys in suits and a pair of beautiful shoes. I thought 25 would be when I would settle down and think about children, 24 would be the year I saved for both. I imagined success would mean long mermaid hair (tick, well, technically it is all mine. I did pay for it) a miniature dog in a Juicy Couture handbag and a boyfriend who looked like a Ken doll and had lots of horses. What can I say, Paris Hilton and The Saddle Club were pretty big when I was young. 

So what does success really look like, what have I achieved in these 24 (yewoch) years?

1. I can walk in high heels, even those towering 11inch Kurt Geiger beauties. 

2. From my beautiful navy Osprey handbag to my Chanel 2.55, I have a clutch of handbags most women would swap husbands for. NB if you would like to swap your husband then get in touch. Please include a photo. 

3. I have an incredible career ahead of me, even if right now it's stressful and chaotic and I feel like the village idiot every time I try to explain my rationale for things. 

4. I have loved and I'm quite sure I will love again. 

5. I'm independent, I run my tiny flat and pay my (not so tiny) bills and even if there is only pesto in the cupboard and wine in the fridge it is mine and I am proud. 

6. I have an incredible family around me. I can't even begin to describe how wonderful they are.  

7. And friends. Friends who, unlike their teen counterparts, don't try to hold me down or back or at arms length.
8. I am truly spectacular at Street Fighter 

9. I think I'm a nice enough person, I mean I'm considerate to take my heels off when I get in the door so I don't wake up the family downstairs. 

10. Despite several offers I still haven't succumbed to appearing on 'reality' tv. 

11. I have kissed a few frogs in the last couple of years but I haven't been caught with any real toads yet. 

12. Once I made fetch happen.
13. I have UGG boots, my 16 year old counterpart would be beyond jealous. 

14. More importantly, I HAVE BOOBS, "minimuffins" who? 

15. I get free chocolate with work. Lots. 

16. And although I do feel bigger I still only weigh 8 stone and a bit. 

17. I don't have a puppy in a Prada bag but I do have a whole collection of animals at home. And our dog is so much cooler than a little yappy mutt.  

18. I've walked the red carpet for a premiere. Twice. 

19. Despite being asked not to participate in home economics class many years ago I am in fact able to feed myself and others quite happily now. My pulled pork often leads to marriage proposals. 

20. Sometimes I get asked out on dates. Wahey!  

21. Cake and wine for dinner isn't a dream, it's a reality whenever I want. 

22. Even for breakfast. 

23. I don't have any grey hairs yet.  

24. I think I'm happy every day, not all day, but happy and settled and functioning every single day nonetheless. 

Last week I spent an hour searching for a phone case that would turn my mobile into the Pokedex, a manicure is a chore not a standard and I haven't even come close to having a boyfriend in two years now, let alone one with a horse. The real successes are nowhere near as settled and glamorous and grown up as I thought they would be but what did I know at 16, and who even wear Juicy Couture anyway?! 

151. The F word

The day before mother’s day I found myself sat in the back of my own mum’s brand new car, toasty bottomed from the heated seats and nodding fervently along to the episode of Woman’s hour playing on the radio. Sat with my mum, her mum, and with the grey road stretched out before us we were listening to feminists battle it out over well, other feminists. Feminists are weird, everyone seems to think so, by the sounds of things they can’t even decide between themselves what they stand for. It should all boil down to “I have lady bits and I want you to accept this and then treat me no differently” you know, on t-shirts and mouse mats and stuff.

My mum, her mum, they both worked and achieved. My mum has only ever wanted independence for me, she has taught me to work hard for everything I want in life, she inspires because she has the lifestyle I could only ever achieve if I do. I don’t want to have to rely on a man, but I’d quite like a boyfriend. I like buying myself flowers, a lot of what I own is pink, I chose the most beautiful pair of Kurt Geiger shoes for my birthday and I like my long mermaid hair because it makes me feel a bit like a secret Disney Princess. I like wearing dresses and low cut tops, I bloody love cocktails and flirting and expensive handbags. I pay my way on every date, I pay my own rent, I have a tool kit, I have my own Ltd company. I think I’m a feminist, albeit a lightly wonky one, I mean I can’t believe in this day and age women still don’t have the same wage, same opportunities as men. I can’t believe it is still OK for men to talk to us the way they do sometimes. 

On my first week in the new office I had ventured out one lunch time to find a Boots, girl needs foundation after all, I was stood patiently at the side of a busy road which was moving slowly even though the lights were green. All of a sudden I heard a horn, one beep, two beeps, one head out of the window shouting “GET OVER THEN!” he was looking in my direction and in a panic I started to cross. He was puce in the face and still screaming at me for being a “Slow f*cking idiot” and when, dazed, I walked into someone he screamed “Just look at what you’re f*cking doing you stupid woman.” I had never been spoken to, screamed at like that in the street for something I hadn’t even done wrong, flustered I screamed back “I WAS OK WAITING AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD”

“I WAS OK WAITING AT THE SIDE OF THE ROAD YOU DICKHEAD.” To be precise.

He could have been shouting at anyone, and I tried to convince myself that he could have been shouting at anyone until a guy on the opposite side of the road uttered those three little words no woman wants to hear “Cheer up love.” It was an extreme, but not altogether isolated experience.

Like perhaps, the guy serving me who wouldn’t complete my order until I smiled – I was grieving and it was a Monday afternoon and he didn’t offer my equally po-faced male colleague this humiliation. The man who “tripped” and landed hands first onto my chest, the guys who sneered and said they wouldn’t touch me if I begged them when I crossed the road on the way home on a dark night. The packed tube where he groped my backside, 15 minutes of the same circular motion and not being able to move an inch. The group of men who make me cross the road every single morning to avoid one of their cat calls, the guy who sends me graphic sexual messages on a weekly basis even though I haven’t responded to a single one yet.  I can’t be sure us dolls even earn the same as each other let alone our male counter parts in the office, that’s the least of my worries, I’d like to sleep safely knowing I won’t have to take another route or wear another fake smile all day just to coexist with certain men.

Certain men. My dad was a builder when I was little, a lorry driver, and the most lovely man you will meet (a strong contender for Mr Middle Class 2013). Once I waited for a meeting to begin while a colleague made jokes about me sunbathing topless on holiday. So you see I refuse to believe it is work, class, race related. 

It doesn't take a feminist to realise there's something very wrong about this, it will probably take more than an army of feminists to put it right. I don't know if I even count as one, or whether the proper feminists would have me hung drawn and quartered before posting me home in my Chanel 2.55. But, while #everydaysexism is a hashtag and a project and an outlet of humiliation and grievances for thousands (3.6k to be exact) of women in this day and age I think we could all do with spreading the F word a little more. 

150. Sex in this city?

A bottle of wine was slowly but surely disappearing and I was telling them about the second date from several weeks back. There had been a lot of chemistry; he had made his intentions for the rest of the night pretty clear.

“And...”

“And I said no, I was drunk and I’m not that kind of girl”

I winced at their collective groan.

“I hadn’t shaved my legs though, and who even has sex on the second date these days?”

More scoffing, it was sex not a joint tenancy or a facial tattoo after all but I sat there flummoxed. When did the third date become the second and was I really respecting myself by not leaping into bed with good looking boys, or just frigid? Weeks later he still hadn’t been in touch so I could only assume the latter, and while there was always going to be that element of what if I had proven my doubts right and avoided any emotional hurt, awkward attachments, unrequited, embarrassed feelings and leaping out of someone else’s bed at 7 am the morning after.

See stubbled legs aside, I simply don’t have the bare cheeked confidence to let just anyone see me in the nude these days – I don’t even look at myself naked and I need more than a glass of wine for bravery to let anyone else take a peek. Is it really so twee and old fashioned to want to have at least sorted nice pants and smooth legs before bounding into the bedroom? While part of me wishes I did have the confidence of my peers to embrace each and every passion filled, knicker dropping chance I know that I have kissed too many frogs in the past to be swimming laps in that particular pond. And maybe that’s where the problem lies. Years of being single and cautious and perhaps I am so wary and closed off for fear of being hurt that maybe I’m missing out after all. Maybe kissing frogs has its merits, or maybe I’m just giving into peer, media, sexual pressure after all. A quick glance of the news and you'd be forgiven for thinking that I owed him for dinner in one minute but could never call myself a feminist again for even considering taking him home in the other. The rules have changed, the goal posts have moved and I am left just as clueless and clumsy and naive as my 16 year old counter part facing a game of sexual cat and mouse for the very first time. Only no cringe inducing James Blunt playing in the background this time, please?

Apparently the average female has sex between two and three times a week. I for one would like to know who this woman is

I do like sex, love sex,  don’t get me wrong I don’t wear barbed wire knickers or feign headaches if the right opportunity arises. I just know what I like. I like my ears being nibbled and passion and being the big spoon. I like to be respected, feel respected, I like knowing that I’m not the second option for the third time. Who’s to say that next time I won’t skip home with a first date without a second thought, unadulterated lust is a funny thing. It’s like what they say about the best jokes. It’s all about......

Timing.

In case you were wondering, he got in touch after all. And just when I think I've mastered the game the rules have changed and we all switch seats all over again. .