So I went and had a spray tan…

I’m going on holiday to Rawa Island tonight with the boyfriend. This girl lives there. Apparently it is paradise. I believe her.

Sun, lots of sun. I love the sun.

Without a doubt the people there will tanned. I am very pasty. I decided this wouldn’t do. I am vain and I like to be adored. There is not a chance I’m hanging out on a beach filled with supermodel lookalikes in the popular red and white stripped look us Brits Abroad champion.

So I went and had a spray tan. It was weird.

Firstly, there’s the uncertainty when the young blonde girl in white asks you to take off your clothes before stepping onto the apparatus whether she means now or when she has left the room. Like with doctors. It has always puzzled me that it seems outrageously rude to watch someone undress (oh perverted hedonism, Sadé would applaud) but perfectly acceptable to prod them and, as it happens, spray them with a tanning hose (it would be funny if it wasn’t true) when they are in the buff.

So I tentatively tugged at my shirt until she walked out of the room promising to return when I was ready, I.E. naked but for a thong and standing on the apparatus.

It was about that time that I noticed the apparatus was opposite the door she had just walked through in order to return to the bustling salon. The bustling salon in which people sat being beautified in full view of the door and, I concluded, in full view of my pasty white flesh when blondie returned having, of course, to open the door wide enough to walk through it.

I tactically stood with my back to the door somehow, and childishly, concluding that if I couldn’t see their scorn it would make it slightly less true (I know; I’m self-centred). Standing there, I felt a little like a prisoner of war ready for my water-boarding and wondered if my position, in the circumstances and in such close proximity to the tanning hose, was a tad submissive.

The hose was hard and cold and I felt like I couldn’t breath, especially when she did my face. I giggled and wondered if I should enter the world of S&M.

Over the following eight hours I acquired an interesting colour, the nickname David (Dickenson) and a new dish cloth having stained my linen shirt. It was the only loose black clothing I had and those are the rules. Frankly I would have preferred to ruin my cheap white t-shirt, but ho-hum.

Finally I was allowed to shower to see the results. Brown. Even. Good, I thought. Though, a bit patchy around the frontal knickers area. Lace was possibly an unwise choice, I concluded. I look a bit like I’m still wearing them, except for instead of black they are now fleshy coloured with a hint of tangerine. Nice. Am thinking either lights off or knickers of the peep-hole variety until that fads. Nothing puts me off my stride like not at all contained hysterical laughter and finger pointing at my almost rude bits.

All packed and ready to go. See you in two weeks!

I am a ball of rage. I may be chemically unbalanced.

I haven’t blogged about periods yet. What kind of neurotic female blogger am I?

Recently having come off the pill I have had a longer gap then usual between periods. That’s fine by me (apart from the fear of god that goes with the waiting). However, what is beginning to dawn on me as the abdominal pains creep in three weeks late is that I am now going to have a “normal” reaction to my “normal” bodily functions, rather than gliding through “withdrawal bleeds” with ease and a smile. My body taunts me. This is a period, darling, it patronises, none of this pill-pretend bollocks for you. Pain, heartache and pure, undiluted anger will envelop you until I am done. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.

The reasons I suspect this is going to be the case are:

1. When my boyfriend joked that he washes up more than me (lie) last night I responded by throwing a pan on the floor, shouting “Fuck you then, I’ll fucking do it, I fucking hate you, you fucking dickwad piece of shit” before storming out of the kitchen, slamming the door and sitting down in front of “Pride of Britain” to sob noisily at injured child heroes.

2. When I woke up this morning and got up to do my job (today: write an article) and vacuum the house, I was filled with the most enormous rage that I had to do my job and vacuum, facts compounded by the fact that my boyfriend was asleep. I was furious. Blind furious. I was a barely contained ball of rage and even now I cannot quite think why. I had no objection to my vacuuming or to my writing my article, or to my boyfriend sleeping in on his morning off. It was my usual time to rise. There was no issue. But did that matter? Did it fuck. I slammed the door three times, switched the bedroom lights on and off and then failed to work out how to use the new vacuum without help from a half-asleep, naked, grumpy man. If I am in abject misery then, apparently, so will everyone else be.

3. “60-minute Hour Makeover”, where deserving plebs get their house made-over made me cry yesterday. As did This Morning and the adverts.

4. I am actually scared that I might throw the cat out of the window if it gives me that puppy-eyed “I’m so hungry, Mummy” look one more time.

5. I agreed to pay the NSPCC £5 a month for the rest of my life after reading their heartfelt letter, crying quietly all the time, a bit of snot landing of their Letter of Pain, as it shall now be known.

So, there it is. I’ve had my well-earned rest from the pill, and I can happily conclude that my body still works perfectly destroying my life and that of those around me for four days of each month.

I’m going back on the pill.

Things not to say to your boyfriend part 2

"I'm not proposing or owt, but do you want to marry me?"

"I might be pregnant"

“I might be pregnant.”
“Fuck.”
“I know.”

In this conversation there are no winners. While my boyfriend contemplated the benefits of selling a kidney, I tried to convince myself that nine months without wine and menthol cigarettes was something I could cope with. What would happen after that my mind simply wouldn’t accept as a reasonable topic for deliberation.

The process of discovering whether or not you are accidently with child is one mild embarrassment followed by another, concluded with the climatic urinating on one’s own hand.

Firstly there is the running to the bathroom every five minutes to check whether or not you have indeed got your monthly visit from some obscurely named, prim and proper aunt. Looking rather like you have contracted a urinary infection to anyone spending more than 10 minutes in your company, you start to wonder if even late developing teenage girls stare so intently so often at their knickers for a sign; any sign. I swear one on occasion I mistook the stars in my weird staring eyes for my period.

Then there is the agonising self-diagnosis complete with imaginary symptoms. First, do my breasts feel tender, my nipples sensitive? Hold on, oh wise internet forum, let me just give them a squeeze. Nothing? Hold on, let me just squeeze harder…just a bit harder. Yes, definitely some tenderness.

Second, do I feel tired and moody? Am I easily upset? Shit, I thought, I’ve been pregnant for fucking years.

Third, am I lightheaded, do I have backache, and am I peeing more often that usual? More importantly, I should have asked, can any of these symptoms be explained by my lack of sleep, computer-hunched day-long stance or my desire to check for Flo every five minutes?

The results of my self-diagnosis were “inconclusive”.

I moved onto the next stage of humiliation. Judging by the many, many internet forums full of women getting unwanted AFs (Aunt Flos) who are TTC (trying to conceive) and sending each other “baby dust” (seriously), nobody could possibly know that my queuing up to buy a pregnancy test in Morrison’s was anything but a happy and joyous occasion following a sensible “planning a family” meeting with my supportive husband.

However, somehow they all knew the truth. They knew that I didn’t really need toothpaste, grapes and a packet of Pringles. They could tell what hid beneath my baked beans on the conveyer belt. They knew I was another statistic waiting for my turn on Jeremy Kyle. “I take it you want a bag?” the check-out girl sympathetically asked.

And then there is the bit where you pee on a stick. By now, having convinced myself of the inappropriateness of my potential condition, feeling like a naughty teenager, I concentrated too hard on peeing right and splashed my hand, and the results window. Then I’d lost count – did I pee for more than five seconds? Whatever the test says now, I thought, it would almost certainly be wrong. If it said negative, it would be positive, and eight months later I’d give birth to a chain-smoking, drunk in a train station loo.

So to the shops I went to buy another test, unsure of whether I was now being judged more for failing to pee correctly or failing to use contraception.

Starting to care less what the result was so long as I never had to go to Morrison’s again, I retested.

The test was negative.

A sigh of relief was enjoyed by all, for about a minute until the fear crept in: why aren’t I pregnant? What’s wrong with me?

At least this neurosis can be soothed with a full-bodied Shiraz and a long menthol fag. Oh sweet life, welcome back!