I have a friend. (I don’t really have a friend – this is a thought experiment, and who wants to be friends with the kind of bore who runs around making up thought experiments?) Anyway, this friend (who doesn’t exist) has a baby. A tiny, squirmy, scrunch-faced, made-up baby. My friend does not want the baby. She is so serious about not wanting the baby, that she decides she is going to kill the baby. She says this quite directly: “I am going to kill this baby.” Continue reading
Sarah Ditum
Freelance writer and journalist
After the aftermath
In this special exclusive extract from her controversial and emotionally searing new memoir, Leah Tusk explains how it’s feminism’s fault that her perfect marriage was destroyed by her freeloading husband’s completely unjustified hatred towards her.
Recently my husband and I separated, and over the course of a few weeks, the life we made fell apart into splinter-edged bits, like a self-assembly bookcase that collapses under the weight of several volumes of artfully constructed and very clever memoirs (such as How I Went To Italy Like One Of Those Romantic Poets So My Extreme Cleverness Could Find Full Expression, and I Know All About Motherhood Because I Read It In A Penguin Classic). Continue reading
A death in Bideford
Christianity is over. Finished. Done for. Born in Bethlehem, died in Bideford. It seems strange that a belief system can survive the shocks of knowledge and philosophy over several centuries, only to choke at a small harbour town’s county council, but that is the awesome power of local government for you. Turns out, it’s not legal to formally summon councilors to prayer – and a faith that can’t be forced on someone else is no faith at all.
Scapegoating disabled people to justify cuts
When charities warn that abuse of disabled people is getting worse, it’s worth remembering how low the starting point was. In 2007, Fiona Pilkington killed herself and her severely disabled 18-year-old daughter Francesca Hardwick: it was the end of seven years of harassment, inflicted on a vulnerable family and never adequately addressed by the police or social services. Flour, eggs and stones were thrown at their house. Insults were yelled at them. The family didn’t dare to use their own garden.
Keep it buttoned, ladies
Ladies! Check your frontages! We’ve been searching for decades to discover just why it’s so damn hard for woman to advance in parliament or the media. Why are there just five women in the cabinet? Still, with 21% of posts, female politicians are only doing slightly worse that female journalists, who racked up 22% of articles; compared to the Today programme (where a measly 16% of reporters and guests were women), the House of Commons is a full-skirted matriarchy. The good news, though, is that Anne McElvoy has figured it out, and the answer is right under your nose. The answer is boobs. Continue reading
Flex some consumer muscle
The gym contract is a swindle. Once you’ve paid your money and signed the papers, you’re not that likely to go back. Instead, a mixture of indolence and guilt means you keep on letting the direct debits trickle out of your account while you tell yourself that, yes, last month you failed but this month will be different. You’ll be the mayor of the NordicTrack cross trainer! You’ll trudge along on that treadmill with the noble dedication of an ultramarathoner! Other gym users will look at you with an awed sort of slant, and murmer, “Hey, you really seem to know your way around!” Continue reading
[Guest post] Marky Mark talks the most marvellous shit
Mhairi McFarlane has bangs like a mofo and you can glean more of her awesomeness on Twitter.
It’s confident indeed to say the Talking The Most Marvellous Shit 2012 trophy has been taken already, but by jove, it’s January – and I think Mark Wahlberg might have done it. I didn’t mean to become Sarah’s sometime-correspondent on thespian hubris, but they say write what you know and I know I can’t get over how thrillingly mental this is: he’s claimed that he would’ve landed hijacked planes safely on 9/11. Continue reading
Supersize fibs
Of all the bullshit that is bullshitted, some of the sloppiest, stickiest nonsense is the stuff about diets and exercise, and there’s more of it around in January than at any other time of year. Well, apart from the bikini diets in June, the Christmas party body blitzes, the Easter eggs-ercise routines and, for all I bloody know, the Ascension Day ass-sculpting. The point is, this stuff just goes on and on, accompanied by the low whine of concern about the obesity crisis as journalists wibble on about how the nation got so fat (and meanwhile, picture editors wibble on about how they didn’t get into this business to source endless footage of broad, trembling backsides shuffling down highstreets). Continue reading
[Guest post] The ultimate celebrity interview!
Mhairi McFarlane is a kirby-grip strewing angel of vengeance and you should follow her on Twitter if you’ve got any smarts at all.
I am so sick of reading this interview. You read it all the time, constantly, year in, year out, in every glossy magazine and Sunday supplement. It’s founded on the twin principles that A) people who act are the most fascinating beings on the planet, and B) that we, the readers are totally credulous, awed plebians. The dumbstruck interviewer acts only as a conduit to divinity, drinking in their shuddering magnificence and recording their sub-adolescent witterings as if it’s brainy gold. We’re now at the stage where an actor or actress would have to take a shit on the reporter’s notebook to get a less-than-howlingly-sycophantic write-up. (Or maybe not. HE’S WHERE IT’S SCAT!) I’m convinced by now there’s a template. It goes like this.
Silicone sympathies
News that thousands of women have received breast implants containing mattress filler seemed to incite a competitive streak. Who’s going to show the most ostentatious contempt for the affected parties? Way out in front, of course, you’ve got Jean-Claude Mas, founder of PIP – the company that made the implants. Mas has admitted that he both ordered the use of the non-surgical-grade silicone, and deliberately concealed this from inspectors, although “admits” is a big word to use of a man who has no sense of guilt or feeling of responsibility to the women affected.
