We almost had it all - but hey, that's what we go to school for.

-->

Did I mention I turned 30? I didn’t think I had. The thing with milestones is all your schoolmates hit them too, (let’s not mention the 'milestone moments' of six 2016 weddings or babies) but the age thing – we all get there at the same point. Last week my school friend Rae hit 30, and like every moment we look back and assess, with misty eyes and longing, it’s for Rae and I driving through Tunbridge Wells at 3am playing Busted as loud as my dad’s ford fiesta speakers would go. I’ll tell you – that's still loud enough to be embarrassing. 

I was going to now write a bit with Busted lyrics. But realised that was mental. So I popped some Adele on and gazed out the window for a minute or two. (Also mental.)

GOD – she ain’t a happy bunny huh? I mean, we’ve all been burnt love. But then again – Adele has made millions, selling more records than people who know what records ARE could actually buy. But you know, what’s wrong with a woman making so much out of a bad situation? I can’t tell you how much I’ve said yes to, how much has changed since my heart was broken. Since my breastbone was sliced down the centre from my neck to my belly button, my ribs broken out the way, and my vital organ pulled out and smashed through a mincer… (one of those old-fashioned ones that you work by hand for those asking.) Then the stringy mess roughly plopped back in and just left to heal – people around me variously and generously propping me up at those moments it failed me again.

But you know? Even if that level of pain is grossly underrated in the way it can change your life, ironically, for better, or worse, for richer, for poorer. I’d not change it now.

***

When I was 18 storming across a town I hated with a girl I loved, I knew those were moments that I would never forget.

Like Busted – and many, many angst ridden youths – for so long I have wondered where I fit. SO, it’s time. Allow me to channel a little of pop’s optimism. Hey – I could get with an air hostess if I wanted to. So. Imma sand down the edges, soften that glare and listen out. No more sighing over my scars – the only way they will heal is if I open myself up to someone else getting in there.

All I want really is to fall in love again. Cute huh. So maybe that’s what I should go to school for.

Parental guidance. Mimsplicit lyrics.

-->

So. Here’s the thing. This blog has never been about sex. I’m nae Carrie Bradshaw - and honestly, when I read any salacious sex bloggy stuff (not often) I’m aware of how well you have to write to smash out that shiz.

I’ve been single for a year and four months - there have been blogs about dates - and my interpretation of the semiotics of gender as a single straight female. But here are some of the things I have experienced in my nighttime adventures, and I hope I offend none of you but continue to make you chuckle and cringe.

In ten.

1. Yes you do need to wear a condom.

2. There is a fine line between you creeping and flattering when you can remember things about me that I don’t remember myself.

3. If you’re ‘seeing someone’ I do not want to sleep with you.

4. Don’t take jokes I do about other men / my body as an affront. I am allowed to do this. You’re not really allowed though - don’t do jokes about other women.

5. If you’ve read my blog maybe don’t try get off with me. I do not want my blog to be referenced while we’re getting it on.

(6. If you are one of the following men you can read my blog and then make out with / marry me : Jon Snow (worrying huh), Marlon Brando in the past,  Karl Drogo - any Dothraki men, Adam Driver, Adam Driver, Adam Driver... I'm going to stop this now.)

7. Please consider me as a human being, make me tea, accept my tea. Wake me up with cute quips and questions about super powers.

8. Don’t do anything that will make me sad.

9. One night stands don’t make me sad. You lying to me or being weird does.

10. Yes you DO need to wear a condom. It’s polite, boys, to not put me in a situation that could result in a baby shambles - or infection.

From all this one can’t help but wonder if I’ve had a bad run, or if I have too much sass to benefit from the perks of singledom. i.e - men being nice to me EVER. Ok ok ok they often are. I have had clean sheets and freshly poured gin prepared for me, I’ve had breakfasts and tea made. I’ve had moonlight snog walks home, adventure bike parties, I’ve had boys say such lovely things that I smile so hard I think my face may break. I’ve been told I’m beautiful, enigmatic and compelling. But I also have been popped up on a pedestal - one with a spring base that catapults me so high into the clouds that the fact that I have a heart is beyond forgotten.

I have been fan-boyed. I have had to remove my job from my tinder profile. I have been asked for a job in bed. Not kidding. I have also had the unfortunate problem of not being quite discerning enough when vetoing duvet adventures with people I know, and on several occasions now it has turned out that the excitement at ‘getting with miriam’ (I know right?) outweighs the ‘I have a girlfriend’ or ‘I’m literally just doing this to say to myself I slept with THAT girl’ - GUYS - I’M RIGHT HERE. With all my clothes off. I CAN HEAR YOU. I tell you what, it is weird to have a guy talk about me in the third person to my face. I don’t think I need to elaborate.

Final thought. You can see me just as a body. Or just that hot girl (personal opinion applies, LOLZ amirite). Or untouchably cool (seriously I’ve had that) or you can booty call me to ask for a job - but you’ll never be all the people I love and trust that I surround myself with. You’ll always be just that guy - if you treat me like ‘Just. That. Girl.’ And me and my actual guys and girls will be enjoying my anecdotes and shit blogs for longer than it took you to get a slutwhorewonderwoman like me into bed.

As women FULL STOP. We will have to keep being who we want to be and are.

-->

One of my dearest friends messaged me the other day on fb, pointing me to a status she’d posted about sometimes feeling ‘bulldozed by men’ – ‘getting frustrated for not being more ‘masculine’'  - and asked for my opinion.

In her reply to my response, considered but scrawled and typo-ridden as I rode to work on the bus – she thanked me for ‘articulating the historical and social context of feminism’ in a way she ‘struggles to'.

My response outlined how if we allow ourselves to change our instinctual reactions to situations based on a gender norm or a environmental push – then we will achieve less than if we push forward (yes push) but with our own agenda and moral code.

I have quite a considered opinion (yes, OPINION,) on what feminism is to me and what it means to be a woman smashing it – earning my own cash and choosing how I earn. Much of that is down to my personality – and a certain bullishness that I have now learnt not to apologise for. My bullishness is not aggressive but is unapologetic problem solving, if there was a problem, yo, I'll solve it, check out the hook while my DJ revolves it. Alongside this, I studied literary theory and am a wild over-thinker so I apply a lot of my own pop psychology and slip into that what I have learned from watching people, and reading about them.  I have confidence in my own thoughts and abilities that if they feel right to me, I roll with them – and you know what? That is traditionally the man’s right – to presume that how he feels is how he can act. That is his right while the women check themselves and slot in alongside.

Ironically, one of the reasons I have been able to get to this place – and see things clearly for myself – is as I can be forthright in the workplace. When emotionally, in relationships with boyfriends, friends, in the dating scene, with my family I can turn to useless, frustrated angry mush. If I allow myself to apply a little of ‘work me’ to a emotional situation, Mary Poppins style, spick spock, no nonsense, no emotion, no gossip, because I’m tired, unwell or just plain exhausted from fireworking energy 24/7 – I can get in trouble. Sometimes the response to my no-nonsense is presumed disinterest or my frustration is seen as unwarranted aggression.

I think the key thing I wanted to say to PSB – producer, business person, dancer, marketer, digital magician, a fiercely intelligent, beautiful, warm, funny, dirty, eyelashed-legend – was that whatever our background, reading, social and political awareness and knowledge of feminism or lack there of – as women full stop, we will have to keep being who we want to be and are. And whilst thanking all those that have helped us get to a point where our response is more likely to be rolling our eyes and gasping in frustration; than crying in the toilet at a hand thrust up our skirt – we still have a right to be frustrated and a right to express that whenever the fudge we like.