Happy Haircut To Me!

Before



After!



Yes, I've joined the Bob Club, thanks to The Lovely Dons and The Gorgeous Tat.



Queen for a day

The Hills Are Alive, With The Sound Of…

I’m absolutely kicking myself for having ruined a near-perfect evening.

I didn’t feel like going to ballet tonight: I was all achey and crampy, bloated and sore, not feeling sylph-like at all. But I knew that I would feel better if I did go, so I forced myself.

It was marvellous... I got out of the house on time, walked briskly in the crisp autumnal air through the quiet, deserted streets of my twilit little village. Perfectly solitary and perfectly happy.

There were no sounds but those of my dainty feet scuffling through fallen leaves. Admittedly I did give myself a near cardiac arrest when I stepped heavily on a hazelnut that had fallen from someone’s tree and it made such a shockingly loud CRACK! that I nearly screamed. However, the adrenaline pumping through my body soon subsided into a pleasant attack of the giggles.

The ballet lesson was hard, but rewarding. The teacher really pushed us and we stretched every damn muscle in our aching, perspiring bodies. The music was beautiful: invigorating and soothing by turn, and we finished with stretching and warming down exercises while lying gratefully on the floor.

However, by the end of the lesson, my inner muscles were nearly screaming from the strain of having held back vast quantities of noxious gases that were fermenting in my gut. Yes, it’s time for another

Top Tip from Antipo For Preserving One’s Air of Feminine Grace and International Woman of Mystery

- For God’s sake, always refrain - desist! - from eating cabbage soup before a ballet class.

I made it through the class without mishap, thank goodness, and walked home alone. But the once silent streets and alleyways, now thankfully darkened, rang with the sounds of my relief.

Foolish, foolish Antipo! I'll bet Margot Fonteyn never ate cabbage soup, curried eggs, or even Mexican takeaways before a performance. When will I learn?

The Book, The Book, THE BOOK!

The Book is called How To Be A Great Lover, written by Lou Paget. You can read some excerpts from it and reviews here.

It is more than just a collection of useful tips and techniques. The aspect I find extremely helpful, in my slightly pretentious, fascinated-by-the-scientific-explanations way, is that it describes some of the sensations men can experience in reaction to a certain movement or flicker of the tongue, lips, fingers, etc. It helps me to understand or guess at what certain things might feel like, if I had the necessary equipment. Gosh, now wouldn’t that be fun?!

More importantly, it gives an indication of certain movements and techniques best avoided. I’m really shocked and dismayed to learn that I have been doing some things wrong all these years!

For girls whose partners do not express themselves verbally EVER, beyond the occasional grunt, this book will be enormously helpful.

The tone and language are surprisingly refined. We are always referred to as ladies, and our partners as gentlemen. But it’s definitely not prissy!

Judging by the reactions the author gets from her seminars, the Number One most popular - ahem - manual technique is a two-handed, continuous upward motion with a twist, enhanced with copious amounts of slippery stuff, and christened Ode to Bryan.

If one partner is feeling frisky and the other is suffering a migraine and homicidal PMT, the Ode to Bryan can restore good humour to the entire household in a deeply satisfying, yet pleasantly rapid fashion.

The Lovely Ms. Mac and The Delightful Heather have been promised a demonstration on a cucumber during my forthcoming trip to Switzerland. Perhaps we should YouTube it?

Letter To Geena

Dear The Lovely Geena,

Your little pink book may well have saved my marriage and changed my life!

I must admit, I was expecting a book of naughty jokes, and not actual, serious tips and techniques...

I truly can't thank you enough.

Love and saucy kisses,

Antipo
xxx

A Post Which Barely Meets The Naughtiness Criteria

Poor Antipo is hobbling around today in an extremely inelegant parody of a pretty cowboy who has spent a little too much time on Brokeback recently. But the cause of my physical discomfort is really quite pure and innocent! After a two year break from ballet, I enrolled again at the local village ballet school and was reunited on Tuesday night with my old teacher and friends, to everybody's great delight.

Don't be too impressed with my exploits - please! We do not wear tutus and pointe shoes. We most certainly do not leap athletically yet gossamer-lightly across the stage like Anna Pavlova or Margot Fonteyn. (Although, in my mind I do, actually.) However, I suppose the grunts and groans we emit as we bend and stretch and try to lift our legs higher than our waists could be considered evocative of the death rattle of the Dying Swan.

Indeed, my class is informally known as the Tuesday Night Plump Housewives Nostalgically Attempting To Recreate Their Lost Youth class. We attend with almost as much enthusiasm as we write the hefty cheques to pay for our young and slender daughters' tuition in the afternoon classes.

Because it is, quite simply, a truly lovely way to get some exercise and unstiffen our elderly joints, all to the strains of beautiful classical music. Somehow it is a great deal more satisfying than simply leaping about in sweaty lycra in an aerobics or jazzercise class. There is a certain hallucinatory poetry (probably due to severe oxygen deprivation) about the whole business, and I love it!

Quicksilver

Goodness me, there's nothing like a spontaneous quickie at lunchtime to brighten up a deadly boring working day, now is there?

Of course you'll never know whether I'm referring to a Quickburger, a quick drink, or something else entirely...

But I'm wearing a bit of a glow, and it ain't ketchup, Baby!

In Which Antipo Gets All Excited About A Word Again

The Lovely Fluffy Bunny once bought me some very exclusive tea when she was travelling in the US. It was extraordinarily good, with a surprisingly rich taste.

In thanking her in my usual mealy-mouthed and tight-lipped manner, the best word I could think of to describe it was the French 'liquoreux'.

This does not mean simply like alchohol, or liquorice, but rather: rich, heavy, flavourful, syrupy and sinuous on the tongue.

Ah, I'm feeling so much better now that I've got that off my chest...

Depravity and Perversion

I may look like a nice mumsy housewife on the outside, but I'm boiling over with depraved and pervie thoughts today. I can't help wondering if it's because The Traiterous and Lovely Ms. Mac has up and left me for That Other Woman that my frustrations are lacking a specific target.

Normally I would unlock my most secret thoughts and unload them onto her - several times a day! We are nothing, if not prolific Soulies.

She knows my deepest, darkest and most foetid desires.

Perhaps it's time I started unloading into the void?

I Think I Need My Head Checked

Due to the current absence from my daily life of The Lovely Ms. Mac , who has just up and swanned off to bloody Ohio to have copious amounts of FUN! with That Ropey Old Bird Andi, I invited three lovely blogging ladies for lunch next weekend. They are all younger, cuter and funnier than me. I must be nuts!

My only consolation is that some of them may be bringing their equally cute and witty husbands, so I will almost inevitably end up suggesting a session of hubby-swapping. The fact that my own hubby might not be there is entirely irrelevant. The girls will just have to deal with it.

A Good Lay

When buying bread this morning I noticed a brand of potato chips called Lays.

This pleased me very much.

I started quietly giggling to myself as I thought 'I'm gonna get me some good Lays tonight!'

The Power of Boobies

The young daughter of a neighbour of mine has always been freakishly tall and very thin for her age, even as a six and seven year old. The poor thing has always been gawky and graceless, painfully shy, and constantly hunches over to try and disguise her height.

Well she's only around thirteen now, but today I saw her in the street and noticed that she's suddenly got bosoms! Not only that, but she was holding her head high, while giggling and talking to a boy!

It's amazing what bosoms, combined with height, can do for a girl's confidence. I'll have to keep a custodial eye out on her now. We all know what talking to boys can lead to...

Perhaps it's a good thing I was always so short and bosomly-challenged. That may be what has kept me so pure and innocent for all these long years.