ITV 2 – Fridays 8pm

Would you date my vegetable?

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5 sets of desperate parents are placed in a cage with 20 ‘Zoo’ and ‘Nuts’ readers from ffice:smarttags" />Luton. Their challenge: to find a mate for their comatose daughters.  This week, Emma and Steve from Dulwich drag their daughter’s limp, naked body to the strongest of the males, begging him to feel the quality of her tits.

I have just been inspired by a fervent wish expressed in Beso's blog. She simply and poignantly says, ‘I want to know what it's like to pee standing up.’  This ties in nicely, I believe, with the numerous recent discussions regarding the female right to vote on other blogs, namely hjb's and Norah's. Why shouldn’t we feel the power of remaining upright whilst ridding ourselves of bodily fluids? This is the 21^st century, how is it we are still shackled by our biology? The suffrage fought hard for our rights and yet here we are, still subjecting ourselves to cold and sometimes piss-covered public toilet seats. Why? Why? Why?fficeffice" />

Fret no more, ladies. I’ve done it and so can you. How, you cry? Well, my friends, with this. The P-Mate.

I was first introduced to this remarkable piece of cardboard at a festival a couple of years ago. As my friend and I queued for the stinking, toilet-roll-free loos, a couple of young ladies made their way down the line ushering certain brave souls off to an enclosed area to the right. Sara and I decided, lemming-like, that we must find out what was happening. Upon turning the corner, a small piece of cardboard was thrust into our grubby little mitts and a quick demo was given. Basically, the cardboard folds out to form a funnel. The idea is that the lady unzips her fly and places the wide hole at the top of the funnel under her, erm, womanhood. Being careful to direct the stream (and to never, never cross the streams – wise Ghostbusters), the waste product will flow down the funnel into a lady urinal, which is essentially the same as a male urinal but contained in a booth for more privacy.

That is the theory. The practice is very, very different. I believe to this day that the sight that my eyes beheld as I approached the urinal area was one of the funniest I’ve ever had the privilege to see. Nearly all the women trying out the P-Mate had missed the point and pulled their trousers and knickers down to their knees. All I could see before me, while the air filled with shrieks, giggles and cries of ‘I can’t do it!’, was a sea of asses poking with little or no dignity out of the urinal booths.  I found an empty cubicle and soon discovered why everyone else was unable to just casually unzip their fly and let fly, as it were. Womens’ jeans are simply not designed to fit a cardboard tube into the crotch area. So I added my ass to the general melee and positioned my funnel. And I couldn’t do it.

You have to understand that peeing standing up throws into chaos thousands of years of imprinting. Every fibre of our beings believe that urinating should be done in the sedentary position. When this struggle between what is right and what is necessary occurs, an impasse is reached. So I stood there. And I stood there. And I pushed, I swore, I imagined waterfalls. Nothing. I hissed to my friend in the next booth that nothing was happening, and with relief, she also admitted her failure. We gave up and went to the filthy loos instead. But I couldn’t let it go there. I went back to the P-Mate area THREE times, and yep, third time lucky.  I was drunk enough and familiar enough with the idea by then to actually use my funnel (I got a new one, by the way – I’m not filthy). And so I peed standing up.

Oh, the liberation. The sweet, sweet freedom. The knowledge that I could swing around and aim at a mate in a jovial way coursed through me. Maybe, with practice, one day I could even write my name in snow.

And I knew then that the future belonged to Woman.

Me. Beckett. My brother. My mate.

May 8th. Odeon Leicester Square.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

Thank you, little baby Jesus.

My mind has turned to the subject of exercise this morning having perused random blogs on this site and found the usual mundane collection of drunken weekend tales. Indeed ‘Chelle has also regaled me with interesting anecdotes that mainly feature the phrase, ‘I can’t even remember’. Why tell me then, dear?  Don’t get me wrong, a drunken tale well told is a beautiful thing – see Norah's drunken cheesy chip rage, for example, but on the whole, they suck. In the spirit of the blog that begins, ‘This morning I ate…’ or ‘I think I’ll wear…’ - the suicide-inducing ‘stream of consciousness’ blog, if you will - I suppose it’s not surprising that even potentially amusing scenarios (Bonnie’s alcoholic father: and let’s face it, kids, alcohol makes everything funny. Ed. – Shut up, Dad) are recounted with as much verve as those god-awful questionnaires that people will insist on posting.fficeffice" />

What are you listening to now? – lol robie Williams – grrrr mmmmm

Who are your best blog friends? – snappygurrl, choochoo and Necrolubejoy. Love you guys. *hugs and snogs*

Where is your finger? – up my ass *giggle*

Etc

But I digress. My purpose here is not to denigrate the humble ‘shit blog’, as I like to call it, but to explain the reason that drunken weekend tales have brought exercise to mind. It is simply because this weekend I abstained from the booze (mostly) and I exercised and interestingly enough, I don’t feel the slightest bit better for it.  This aggrieves me.  I was under the impression that a healthy lifestyle made Monday mornings bearable, that one would spring out of bed with a gleam in the eye and a song on the lips and tumble to work with a glad nod for the postman on the way. But no, I still awoke bleary-eyed, depressed about going to work and full of resentment towards the warm body that shares my bed and doesn’t have to get up when I do because he’s a god-damned, shit-sucking student. Because of this, I have decided to never abstain from binge drinking again.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to maintain the exercise.  My body is locked into running every other day, but it’s entirely out of guilt and fear of 30-something rotundity. I fucking hate it. I hate every miserable, sweaty horrible soul-destroying second of it. Running makes me feel like dying, and so, in turn, I loathe people who get that fanatical gleam in their eyes and tell you  of that moment when they cross their own pain barrier, get their second wind and feel the blood pumping through their veins, the wind in their hair and their muscles strong and true. Fuck THEM.  (Incidentally, this is most often the moment before the runner shits themselves. It’s true. ffice:smarttags" />Marathon runners crap in their pants all the time. Serves ‘em right.)

I once made the mistake of going for a run with a very good friend of mine, who just so happens to be built like a gazelle, formed for the sole purpose of flying swiftly across the savannah, or in this case, the running track at Tooting Bec. I lost count of the times her 5’ 10” willowy frame dashed elegantly past my poor 5’ 3∕” form, but I do know that it sapped my strength like poison. I run solo now. Like a renegade pilot, you know, like Maverick, that prick from Top Gun. Man, I hate that film and I loved it when Goose fell out of the plane. Clumsy twat.

Anyway, I have therefore resolved not to give up exercise, but to punch in the face anyone who professes enjoyment of it. I don’t want to hear how good you feel afterwards, I just want to see the pain…

Who should I vote for?

Your expected outcome:

Your actual outcome:

Labour -20
Conservative -33
	Liberal Democrat 54
	UK Independence Party 6
	Green 38

The LibDems take a strong stand against tax cuts and a strong one in favour of public services: they would make long-term residential care for the elderly free across the UK, and scrap university tuition fees. They are in favour of a ban on smoking in public places, but would relax laws on cannabis. They propose to change vehicle taxation to be based on usage rather than ownership.

Take the test at Who Should You Vote For

And it always sucks being in work on your birthday. As a result, I have spent some time this morning trying to work out what I could buy myself.

1. The Jeeves and Wooster DVD box set - every delicious episode. If you get it from ebay, like a fool you'll pay at least £120, but I've found it on a secret Canadian website for the equivalent of £55. God bless the exchange rate.

2. A nice new bag to replace the one stolen from me the other week. I was thinking of a nice tasteful Radley bag or some such, but have discovered the bag that just screams 'me'.

3. A Barry Gibb.  Let me explain.  My first ever crush (apart from the one Freud will insist I had on my father, of course) was on the Gibb. So as a 7 year old, I became obsessed with bearded men. My father had a huge mountain man of a fellow called Norm who used to come and help on the farm we had in the States. I followed him around, doe-eyed and flushed with little girl love.  We went on a whale watch in Boston - the guy running it was bearded. I took pictures of him. I still have them.

The whole thing came to a head when we got a new dog and, following the traditional naming squabbles, my parents decided that the fair thing to do would be for all of us to place our choice of name in a hat, and for the name to be picked by an independent ajudicator. My choice of name was, naturally, Barry Gibb. I thought it had a nice ring to it. "Here, Barry Gibb, heel. Good Barry Gibb".  My parents didn't agree, and funnily enough, 'Max' was picked from the hat by my 'independent ajudicator' mother. This early exposure to the injustice of the world plunged me into my first depression, which lasted for 2 hours and left a bad taste in my mouth as regards the Gibb (though I'm sure he's done that to thousands of women) and beards in general.

Nevertheless, I'd like a Barry Gibb for my birthday. Even if it's a dog.