Thiscouldbearadioshow

Just watched the programme featuring Fearne Cotton meeting Paris Hilton. Have to say I chose it over Mister Utter baffoon being part of the very serious/important to watch BBC question time very consciously. I have no doubt over the result of this other programme - useless anyway and unlikely to change any mind.
So Fearne is different from Paris and kind of overwhelmed at first but is still quite realistic about the experience. Surprise surprise Paris is a real person and she is actually human... and nice and sweet and down to earth... Really!!! More likeable than expected. Well, ok then. She works hard and she has a real hard time with paparazzi. Hello! She cannot possibly complain for this attention: this is what made her, what makes her! I am not feeling bad for her.
Fearne is very apologetic with her but what the heck, this person lives fromn the attention. How could she possibly complain about it.
If I was to aim at this kind of exposure and revenue and honestly understand this is a curse I have to cope with.

No question no discussion. This is all I can say.
What do you think?

And I choose to shut up for once. Won't happen again for sure. I am just looking, reading and making my mind up. You better provide me with good reading, just warning you.

I will be back soon, opinionated and feisty as usual. Just taking a break....

I am a late follower of the Wire. I have bought all the series and watched them quite recently to understand what the fuss was about.
Well I have to say I do understand now.
The Wire is amazing. It might nit strike you immediately but it will if you give it some time and get passed the confusing amount of characters and the Baltimore slang. I am not English mothertongue and therefore used to miss out on what is going on. I therefore always watch movies with subtitles with the excuse that it makes me learn vocabulary (it does work). Strangeky enough I got along well with the Baltimore slang after a few episodes. Equally I managed with the many characters after only a few episodes. The first series got me wondering: had I just watched some kind of experimental fiction or was I up for a full lenghth story? I am glad I picked up on it when the full series had been broadcasted. Thank you HBO for having supported quality and allowed the makers of the Wire to fulfill what they had intented to do.
So I have watched it all and I feel like I have been educated about what it is to survive, live, support, rule, try to educate and report about a city in the USA. I got attached to many characters along the story, some easy to like and some that would have been easier to dislike, some I did dislike but not in such an easy way. I feel thta I have seen enough to understnd whay shit happens although there are still ways to make it better.
I have started to care about something rather remote though with very much similarities to what I have got at home. Belive me or not I wrote a letter to Obama and asked him to watch the Wire, this is how much it stroke me.

Believe me or not I belive that anyone in charge should watch these series. I want Britain to get better, I want London to be better. The five seasons of the Wire show us how shit hits the fan. I live to hope that we can watch and learn. It is possible. Watch the Wire and make where you live different: it is possible but only up to you and your vote.

xxxxxxxxxx

Hi,

haven't been around for some time... Feel a bit bad about it actually. Not that I am thinking that my absense had a massive impact on my readers... but just because I realise that when my life gets a bit more intense my need to discuss or talk about it becomes less of a need.

Life is good. It is actually really good. Not sure how it could get better... Maybe with a winning lottery ticket (need to remember about buying lottery tickets). Maybe with more holidays for me and my friends. Maybe with brilliant health for all my friends and aquaintances. And no one killed by malaria anymore, especially when you think it is down to silly cheap nets. Oh and no one starving either. And actually no one suffering from any kind of illness. By the way let's add no kids in a situation in which they cannot enjoy being children. Which reminds me no women being beaten or bullied in any way. To be fair let's add no dads being deprived from taking care of their children when they want to do it.

I realise I am drawing a world that could be almost perfect... If so then I have to add a few other things:
- make sure girls and boys are aware of the consequenses of having sex and therefore choose parenthood instead of having to cope with it
- organise a world in which anyone in the worst case scenario is taken care of
- teach people how to be happy and make sure they can be for the length of their life
- say hello to your neighbours and risk the odd occasion of them asking you for a little bit of sugar or milk
- nurture the bad behaving teens in the bus and tell them that behaving by the rules is not against their freedom but contributing to it
- smile and say hello to old people in the street - they usually smile back and it does make your day

This is not an exhaustive list but it does work for me so far. Happy to take over any additional suggestion over what could make my world better.

Love to you all xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

I am serene. I love and feel loved. Yes I could be questioning it all but no need. My love is universal and I am happy to receive whatever is directed at me.
xxxxxxxxxxxxx

I have been a woman for a long time. Sounds pretty obvious but what I mean is that I got the sense of being a woman and it being a condition opposed to being a man quite early in my life.
To be honest with you I also started enjoying it quite early together with discovering how womanhood was also still placing me in a minority if not in numbers at least in treatment. But as much as I was aware of it and how it affected women before me or women around me I didn't have to face discrimination so much until I reached adulthood and working life.
Of course I could spot differences of treatment (my younger brother didn't have to fight at all for going out or bringing a girlfriend home and spending the night with her at my parents which were all no nos for me. My self education as a girl was to understand that before I would become a woman I would have to deal with the fact that my image was carrying much more inuendo much before I would be aware of it and would have to deal with it. I had my bottom felt up in a bus for the first time at 13 with no signs of being anything else than a child and wearing no make up or enticing clothes. That time I felt more ashamed than angry which is wrong and probably due to the fact that I didn't understand it, wan't prepared for it and also didn't have anyone to talk about it. Somehow I built up a response and for the next years of having my bottom touched (or any other areas) I managed to never again feel ashamed or angry. (Tip for you all: if someone is touching you there is always this doubt over it being deliberate or just caused by a crowded area... Well 2 things to do in this case: 1) raise your leg and then target the foot of the potential agressor with yours (heels are welcome at this point): if he shouts loudly he might have been an innocent victim and you can apologise but if he tries to keep the expression of his pain as low as possible then you know he knows he was wrong. 2)grab the hand that is on your bottom and hold ot in the air shouting "who's hand is this that was grabbing my bottom?" - humiliation ensured for the disgusting frustrated guy who was betting on your being to ill at ease to react - i bet he will think twice next time... So yes becoming a woman meant having my bottom to be grabbed a few times and as much as it is not nice it didn't traumatise me. I was lucky to meet lots of interesting and respectful boys/men during this time and they were themselves ashamed by the behaviour of some of their kind.
At university I felt very much valued by my pairs and never felt treated any differently than my male fellow students.
I then started working. Moreso in a quite masculine environment. Well I actually did feel valued as a woman in that environment. I made progress in my career and started managing people. And more people even, mainly men and usually men older than me. I can remember showing up in meetings for the first time and probably been identified as someone's assistant at first sight but it worked for me as my potential to impress would then be bigger.
Many years after and I find myself for the first time having to think about the fact that I am a woman. The topic comes up all the time and I am not the one raising it.
In my personal life I am chased about my production of babies: when, how, when, anytime soon, when? I am 33 and I am for the first time of my life in a relationship that I deem worth sticking to for ever or as long as possible at least. I do love children and I have become a stepmother which I do really enjoy. I think that I would really like to have children of my own and have a partner who is keen. So yes potentially I could just start production.
The thing is that I do really value parenthood a lot. I don't think that I have hasd the perfect parents but I do believe that my parents made the prefect effort to raise me and I will always respect this to the most. If I was to be a mother I would like to do it in the best way to my children and would like them to be proud of their parents - this would be my commitment and I don't want to compromise in anyway about this.
So how come am I not with child yet?
Good question I would argue. To be honest since I passed 33 there is hardly any day that goes without me pondering about it. And there is a lot to ponder according to me... But let me explain and therefore go back into history...mine really.
As a little girl I never did the girly stuff and I can remember my mum questionning my attitude towards dolls and relating it immediately to my lack of motherly aptitude. My mistake was that I never held dolls in the way a mum would but instead would grab them by their hair and carry them behind me. I didn't really enjoy playing house and instead traded my doll to cars that my brother was eager to give away for my doll (!) and was incredibly imaginative about building circuits from scratch for those cars to ultimately finish into our walls, the only alternative to this being me reading any book of the household or after the public library with an appetite of an obese reader. No need to say that by my 6th birthday my mum gave up on my future skills or interest to ever be a mother.
The thing is that I was never raised as someone who would aim at being a mother as forst priority. My mum was a mother before anything else, much before! But fpr unknown reasons had decided to become a feminist after she got into not working anymore, rely on my father for financial resources and be a full time (with a lot of overtime) mother for me and my brother. I was raised by this very clever woman who was encouraging me strongly to learn a lot if I could enjoy it and carry on doing so if I had the abilities to do so as long as I couldn't be able to commit to get into a job I would commit to for my whole life. Well school turned out to be easy for me. Moreover it was something I did actually enjoy. I liked to lear, and loved to hear stories. I didn't even need to focus or listen: things said in the classroom seemed to be recorded in my brains. I never struggled with learning or being tested about it. I enjoyed proving my mastery and didn't listening to teachers. Obviously I wasn't that good at dealing with brak time or anything associated and therefore really struggled with the socialising aspect of school. But I dealt with it in my way. Which means that I never discussed it with my mother or father or anyone else (who anyway?!). I found another way. I escaped through books and movies. And it worked for a very long time. I read anything and everything. I started with what was at home. Then got the books of the neighbours (yes, these were other times), then signed up for the public library which consisted in a bus coming to our area every week and combined it with the school library. Once I finished reading what was available in the bus I made my mum take me to the city centre every week and get me a special pass for big readers so that I could borrow more books than allowd for my age group. I would read about anything. I just felt that anything I was reading about was taking me one step forward. I liked all genres and would never discriminate anything. Sometimes I would just go for one section and alphabetically go through it. Sometimes I would use the references I got from books or magazines and borrow those. Sometimes I would just randomly pick a pretty looking cover and discover after what it was about. With this technique I got to read a few books that I didn't understand at first but it would be knowingly and would make notes about it and research before I would read them again to fully understand tham or so I thought then.
My realtionship with movies followed a similar path although internet was not there yet and instead of being able to reaserch those I would have to think and relate anything I would feel or want to question to my exiating culture or put it on hold until I would build enough knowledge and experience to understand what I was seeing.
I was raised as the daughter of a reformed femisnist who was still not acting as one and I was myself craving for information and being raised by books and movies in order to be a woman of my time which I enjoyed very much so but still didn't manage to make me feel happy or gave me any tools to be able to interact with others. For you to understand my frustration I need to give you this clue: by the age of 9 I had read about friendship and love, about passiona nd decline of feelings, I had been able to understand those books but I still wasn't able to talk even in a mundaine way to the people of my classroom. This is sad, actually very sad but outstanding in a way. If you think about it I did have more theoretical knowledge about life, history, feelings, reality of life by 9 than my fellow classmates when they reached 15. As much as it could be qualified of outstanding by myself I have to sahy that I felt pretty miserable for all these years. I wish I could have had this enormous knowledge of stories and history combined together with all the fiction I read about and still had had tyhe confidence to relate to other people of my age.
Somehow I managed ot catch up. It is a long story but I will make it short here for the purpose of the story ( I will tell you at another time in full details trust me). There was no fairy godmother or makeover involved. There was just strong will and probably despair that made me take a different perspective. I didn't change. I just managed to find a different way to express myself and it worked for me.
I realise this has been a long thread and I meant to talk about motherhood but didn't even manage to get there yet.
I should therefore keep it for the next episode...

Thanks for reading my blabber Lots of love to you allxxxxxxxx

I have a mum and she is not ideal but funnily enough she remains the response to the question of who is my role model.
I just thought it would be interesting for me to describe my ideal mother considering that my actual one doesn't fit the criteria according to my standards... Strangely the prospect of writing about this makes me feel sad and guilty but this is not about criticising my mother moreso about defining what my aim should be as a mother. So let's get on with it.

The ideal mother has to be complete and happy. She has to have made choices in life that were aiming at enjoying herself and becoming her own master. She would have to be unashamed about her failures and proud of whatever she learnt out of those. She should empowered about her successes and able to recognise them and use them forward. She should be a woman who chose the man who made her happy and made sure he would be happy with her. She might have found it and still find it difficult to manage life as a couple but she believes it worth working on a relationsship once you have chosen a partner you love. She has chosen a man who chose her too and they both have plans for the future that involve them being a team whatever happens. She is together with a man who values her for many things and also wants to have children with her and agrees that in the worst case scenario they would stick to putting their potential children before anything and would enforce for these children to be in touch with both parents as much as possible.
#My ideal mother would be tender and loving but she also would make sure that her children understand what is acceptable and what is not and what is expected and what is not.
My ideal mother would create a loving environment for her partner and children and would involve them in her life and emotions. She would be able to change her mind whenever compeling arguments would be brought up. She would be showing her children that she is making mistakes sometimes but that she acknowkedges them and that she is keen to change her mind or at least consider an alternative point.
She is a woman of the world and enjoys it but always puts forward the happiness of her kids. She is open for discussion whenever she disagrees and will try to take on board any comment or disagreeing.

I realise already thta this a lot of work for a mum.

I want my ideal mum to be proud to be a mum without forgetting to be a woman and someone's partner.
I wnat her to feel pretty, desired and most of all clever and in charge of her destiny.

My ideal mother is working in a job she enjoys and has chosen. She feels that by working she is fulfilling herself and has a purpose in life. She is proud of her job and hopes that her children will do as god as she does or better interms of how they enjoy their worklife.

My ideal mum is happy to go to work but she is equally happy to think that her children will do at least as good and will enjoy it. She enjoys picking them up from school and feels comfortable about their father enjoying it as much as her.

She loves talking to her children and is happy to openly talk about life. She is not ashamed tto tell her children about her failures and will try to understand what they are going through. She wants her children to be happy and doen't fail to tell them. She avoids making them guilty about anything and tries to inspire them about what is available for them out there.

She invites them to share failures and will console them in these circumstances. She will try and guide them in life and will make sure they build a strong friends force. She will understand that she might not always be involved and accept the fact that her children are growing up and chosing other sources of advice.
She will be available but in a way that is not offensive. She will trust her children to always feel that they can talk to her in a non-judgemental way.

She will make sure that she is happy in life whatever happens to her children but will always be available for them for life advices.

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To be honest with you I am not sure I have seen such a mum so far but this is the one mum I would like to be. I have no children so far but I have a step daughter and I would even more so like to be as good as I can be for her.
I have written down what I wan t to be so now it is about me doing it - let's see if I can mae it....

Just feeling a bit hopeless and wondering if the choices I have made over the past 3 years were the right ones...
In the past three years my life changed dramatically and it was all the result of my decisions.
So far I felt really good about those decisions but I am suddenly doubting.
I see myself as a clever person with quite some experience in many fields. I do enjoy sharing my experience and never feel as satisfied as when I am able to help someone with a chat or advice based on what I have experienced in life. I do get a lot of recognition for it and that already used to happened before I moved to London.
When I moved to London my life completely changed in many ways. The most changing event was me falling in love in a way I had never experienced before. Since I drove my life with my love interest in first place which was a first for me.
The feelings I had when it happened were surreal for me as they were for my partner. I realised how you could suddenly get so crazy about someone that your head or your rationality would never even get involved. I was shocked to be feeling like that. My world was shaken. I began to believe into fate and started questionning my former beliefs. My lover felt the same. We were both feeling like victims of fate and as much as we were trying to fight our attraction we fell for it. And we started a realationship. We started the best relationship on earth. Love was at the center and communication was not a medium but just the thing we loved most. We both thought we had met our soulmate and felt happy beyond anything.
Two years after all I can say is that I am in a relationship with an amazing man. He is not perfect (but I am not either, from far) but he is able to reflect on his actions and be quite realistic about his mistakes. He accepts most of my shortcomings rather well and is understanding whenever I get into crazy moods. I think that I am making lots of efforts in order to be part of his life and really thrive to adapt. But it is more than 2 years since "fate" made us meet and falll in love and then get into a relationship. Then I used to be number one or at least number two in his life. Then I used to be more desirable than anything existing in the world. Whatever the way I looked, whatever I would be wearing, Whatever I would say, whatever would have happened in the day, he would be completely interested and aroused by me. And the same would happened for me.
A bit more than 2 years from that and here we are leaving together. I do really love him and don't doubt about his love for me. BUT. And there is always a BUT, isn't it?! It is not the same anymore. Everydays life has taken over and desire has declined... There are so many reasons for us to be tired... so many reaons to choose cuddling over sex. If I was to really go for it I know he would be game. If he was to really go for it I have no doubt that he knows I would be game for it. But most of the time we both don't do it and feel quite like the other one should have done it and go to sleep with a little bit of contempt.
Icannot blame him and he cannor blame me but is this what we changed our lifes for? No!
I feel very disappointed. About myself, about him, and about life in general. He saved my life by giving me a purpose but I now feel like I might not be up for the challenge of having a realtionship past the passion. I feel loved and I am very impressed by my bf's behaviours. I am now questionning my abilities to live past passionand wonder if my fate is to actually live by miself with lots of friends around and meaningless lovers instead of a life-long lover/boyfriend/husband.
I know I have been for a long time keeping m y love life to a minimum but I used to love it. Falling in love the way I did was uncalled for. I wasn't even prepared to it. It made me extremely happy and when I got a sight of what I was then in position to realise I was losing I hurt like never before.
My story then had a happy ending in the way that what I was never even hoping for happened. Talk about sleping beuty and snow white! I got something even better than what they got!

I know that everyday's life is supposed to take over. Well it is not enough for me. Iwould rather be on my own than be nhappy with my man who would rather sleep than show me passion.
This is not what I signed for. I am completely cray or should I stick for passionate love?
Shall I break upwith my soulmate who became too muchof a friend or shall I stick to the closest soulmate I ever met....
You tell me - I need advice from your experience.
x

I started my sex life enjoying sex but still thinking that everything I had heard or seen before then was overrated. My appreciation gradually increased but I still thought sex was a nice to have but definitely still enjoyed more the before and hated the after. With some experience I started to value partners with intensity and motivation and the before that I liked so much became only worth if the during was worth it.
I am a nerd, if you read my blogs before you should know! So as a nerd I do only take interest into things that can be analysed and then offer the possibility to be mastered (+if there is any chance to be recognised for it, I am in!). As a girl nerd who got the rudimentary understanding of how easy it is to perform in public as a woman in the way it is expected but not valued in any other way than the sexual one at least at first, my life was and is definitely easier than the one of a boy nerd. Lots of boys are easy, it is a fact. Not all of them and not usually the best ones amongst the male population. But again the ones that are easy are the most likely for you to meet when you are looking for that kind of target - easily to demonstrate scientifically...
Although it is easy to be complacent and stick to an image of men that is that they are all silly basic and easy, I would recommend to step up a level and go for the less obvious the more difficult and also the more challenging. And this is only to describe the before sex stage. To be honest this stage is worth contemplating and enjoying for itself. How fantastic is it to meet interesting men: priceless!
I have stopped there for some time and realiused I had to learn a few things. I enjoyed being put on the spot and feeling I had to up my game to enjoy the discussion. Not only that but also that I had to be cleverer to actually get the attention of those guys I found clever and it did actually made me feel quite good.
And then tadahhhhh! Oh my god: sex with someone you value and have a connection!!!! I got it after all: what people were talking about, this incredible feeling! Maybe I needed to be older, maybe I needed to be cleverer or maybe it was a self estime thing... Ultimately I don't know. What I know is that it just happens sometime and that for me some could argue it was late... I don't care. It happened sometime and it made me rethink everything. It was worth taking the time to get there...
More than anything I love the fact that I discovered real interesting men that got my respect for just being themselves and respecting themselves. There is a lot of blabber about bimbos but I think that there is a growing category of men who bring shame of their kind. Time to act, men of the world!

Miss World singleton - me just had her boyfriend moving in.
Yes. It is done and there is no way moving back.
Miss world singleton is feeling quite happy about it though. Hurray. This is the hurray of my parents and family - so yes at last I am doing the thing. This is the hurray of my friends - after all she is "normal".
I am miss world singleton. God knows I actually liked this title... I am sure though that neither my relatives or friends would think so. Hell yes in a way I liked being different. But different might have been something more difficult to carry for my parents and friends than it has been for me, I am not sure...
Let's be very forward here and say some things I would never say in front of a concrete audience: I am a good looking girl and moreso I happen to be a clever one, not just at Trivial Pursuit (I am good at that too, f*cking good!) but also at life and banking it without too much effort so far. Oh and I do like boys, men. Well I guess the only issue here is that I am 33. With my credentials I should have been married. Well it didn't turn this way. To be completely honest I wouldn't have seen anything wrong with meeting a wonderful man when I was a teenager and marrying him after or during university and having started a family years ago. I think that this is a very good plan. Avery good plan if you are sure, if he is sure and if you have enough information for you to believe that this good plan is sustainable in all its components for you to commit to it when you are at the beginning of your life. Well done for those who did it then and are still finding it a good plan.
By the time I had finished university I didn't feel I had ever met someone who could be part of this good plan. I had met lots of people and they all participated to my growing into the person I am. I am very glad I met them all, for the good ones and the bad ones. And more than anything I was very lucky to meet those who are now my friends.
Even for my friends I realise that at the time I might have been some kind of imposition. Let's not even talk about the odd numbers at restaurant tables but it recently was mentionned to me how my girlfriends had to fight the assumptions of me being around their couples and be seen as a potential threat for their boyfriends. Honestly it never occured to me and it seems it didn't to my friends until they were faced with the duty of defending me. I never lusted after any of my friends boyfriends and actually felt I was naturally linked to them as no ambiguity would ever show in these circumstances and would therefore feel quite at ease with these guys to the contrary of "civilians" (understand boys who wouldn't be linked to my gfs). Well it seems and so have I been told now that my gfs were facing lots of scrutinity by others about my ease and presence.As much as I never realised it then, Ido understand what they must have been facing then and feel bad about it. Of course I would never want any of my loved oned=s to face any struggle because of me...
But hey so I was, single, happy about it and surrounded by singletons or couples who made me feel loved and wanted. I was sometimes feeling a little bit of electricity and it wouldn't usually last long but it made me happy and all in all conforted me in my singleton ways. I still believed in love but had decided I would only commit to love with a big L. it hadn't happened yet. I wasn't finished hoping but what I had was good enough still. no way I would commit to good enough.
And then I moved countries and got into the big smoke. I didn't move to find love. I don't really know why I did it when I did it. Since then there are quite a few reasons I can find though but I will tell you in a different post.
So here I am in a different country and unsure about what I would find, a bit scared and a bit excited. It is easy though because I know I can come back just as easy as I moved over.
My life was all settled and I find myself to start it all again without any assurance that I can do it agian there in London. And it works! In less than a week I am lucky enough to meet amazing people. In less than a week I get enough hints that I can make it. And guess what I get to do it. with the bonus that all the people I left behind are still there for me. And they come to see me in my new life. Honestly how could it get better? I wasn't asking for more.
Well more was on the menu for me... I meet this man. and not only do I meet him but he meets me and both of us are thrilled.
We are both far from perfect but equally unperfect.
There is so much I could tell you about it but I won't. Not now. 2 Years after meeting we are living together. We are in love. Life is wonderful. It is tough but wonderful. tell you more next time.