I Never Said It. He Did. Ok, I Did Too. But More People Heard Him

I’ve Entered The ‘Niche Years’ Now. Boy, Are You In Trouble

TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY.  
But you all know that – I’ve dropped enough hints.

A cake. I made it.

I will be busy enjoying Champagne and good company tomorrow night, so naturally I will be far too busy to publish a birthday blog. That will have to wait,because I shall be straight off to host a Burns’ Night Charity Fundraiser on Saturday, then home for tea and cake with my gorgeous girl-friends on Sunday.

I’ve had so much to share with you, and yet my blog posts are pitifully few… though neither are my readers’ numbers multitudinous – I’ve checked my stats and it took a lovely big painting of a lady’s lady-parts to boost my views to 500 in a day! Pffft. You people, you’re terrible. Here are some highlights, then, of the last year…

DID I MENTION THAT I AM MISS JANUARY? Well, I am. I came in with the most votes in the photo competition, and there I am, all over it (and all over some of my gentleman-friends too, apparently, the dirty buggers).  

   

Some of your walls are graced by the Whiskerinas’ Calendar this year, and you get me all month – my birthday month. Lucky you.  I thought I’d share the email I sent to lovely Jodi, who organised the Calendar Contest and has done so much to support the Give The Kids The World Foundation. Here it is:
“ Jodi, I'm sorry to 'spill' on you but there's something I'd like to share with you. I got the news about the Calendar this morning, I went about my business, I dropped my children at their schools; then I cried all the way to work. As you know, it's my birthday in January: I shall be 40. Three years ago I couldn't bear to look at myself in a mirror. Five years ago I sort of hoped I might get hit by a truck as it would take a lot of complicated decisions out of my hands. Then I began creative writing. Then Poetry. Then performance. Then Burlesque. Then Bearding. It's been quite a journey, and it's not over. But I wanted to give you an idea of what it represents, for me, to be 'Miss January', during the month of my 40th birthday, after what I went through. It's a big fucking deal, is what I'm trying to say, and - well, thank you. Beard On, Sister! Love, Mu”

That's not my bottom. For a change

That’s all. So if this all seems a bit ‘Me-Me-Me’, and if you’re getting a teensy bit bored of me posting pictures of my arse all over the place, do you know what? I give no fucks about that. I’m enjoying being me, and I’m loving being 40. I’ve entered the ‘Niche Years’ now, Baby, and it’s taken me this long to begin to work out who I am. Thank you to all the incredible, inspirational, beautiful, crazy people who’ve shared this journey so far. Ooh – tearing up. Stop it. Here are some photos.

Written by a young person with Autism, after I visited his school for a poetry workshop on National Poetry Day

Treasured moment with FergalMcElherron at Shakespeare's Globe last summer

Deadly Is The Female, 5th Birthday celebration

This should happen to every girl at least once

Chatting with Sir Terry - what a privilege

Me and the dear Professor, way back in, ooh, 2238 A.D.

Something I invented this year

My most popular post - with almost 6000 shares!

The darling Wife

Some of my less rude cakes. You should have seen the others

Ah, Captain. Such adventures!

WORLD Champion (Silver). Stuttgart. I know.

Happy times with truly wonderful people

*I’ll tell you something else, too. For the first time in fifteen years, I own a full-length mirror – bought it last week. Perhaps, this year – just perhaps – I’ll even take it out of its wrapping.

Oh, Godddd... She's At It Again

Thank Goodness I'm Pope

Jesus didn’t look like Jesus. I think we’re all grown-up enough to admit that now. So why does Jesus look the way he does?  Perhaps we can put that down to the early European artists who wanted European (that is, white) Christians to have a figure they could identify with. Look at the pictures above. Yes, go on – treat yourself. Any or all of them would attract comments of ‘he looks like Jesus’. I dare say they’d attract other comments, too, but I have a separate Beard Porn board on Pinterest for that (by the way – here it is. Well worth a look. For, like, half an hour). 

I do have experience of this phenomenon, as I am married to a man who fits the long-brown-hair-blue-eyes-nice-beard profile and gets very tired of kids mumbling look, it’s Jesus when he walks down the road. The image is powerful enough to reach teenagers who can’t see past their own Wii, and so enduring that no-one has successfully sought to update it for a thousand years. Though it might be fair to say that that is usually The Way Of Things when it comes to religious matters. 

In short, if you’ll forgive me – when did Jesus get hot? 

We were mulling this over, the girls and I… it stands to reason that an attractive and charismatic Messiah will fare better than an awkward and bumbling one (Oh, is that you, Russell Brand? Wait, who do you remind me of? No - no, it’s gone). 

 And we concluded this: 

"Go to Church! Free Wine – Hot Guys!"*

  

I thank you. Now, here is an entirely gratuitous photo of me with Trygve Seim. Because Trygve Seim.

© Ash Springle Photography for Captain Fawcett

 *Note to the Offended: Why are you even here? Did you not see my last two blogs? Have a look, there are pictures of minge on them! Oh, just go and look at Tea and Kittens, or something. Really. Pfffft.

Her Royal Popelyness Issues A Decree

FOR GOODNESS' SAKE, PEOPLE.

A dear friend of mine shared the link to my last blog on Facebook. It just so happened that the thumbnail defaulted to the most glorious close-up of Courbet's L'Origine du Monde. She was banned for 24 hours and made to tick a box confirming she'd read the FB terms and conditions.

Ah, Facebook. Thou art indeed the Moral Compass by which we steer our path through pages such as 'Hot Cars And Sexy Girls', 'Spank time', and the staggeringly erudite 'Letting A C**t Know They're A C**t By Shouting C**t At The C**t' (actually, that's quite funny). Thank Goodness thou art here to chastise us for sharing an 1866 masterpiece; without thy guidance, where would we be?  

Fuck knows.

I'm glad to say that, following her ban, she resolutely remained on the subject and posted a delightful status to say that she'd discovered a new expression - "Scutties' Nest" - meaning 'a little neat fluffy minge'.  So this song* is for her, and for all of you, in celebration of all things womanly, and the earthly pleasures to be found in being one. Or firkyfoodling with one.

Happy New Year.  Love, Mu xx

 *'The Cuckoo's Nest', traditional folk song, performed in this clip at the Globe Theatre, Bankside, London, in the 2012 production of Taming of the Shrew.

A

If You Are Shocked, You Have Missed The Point. But Jane Austen Invented Minge Topiary

WARNING: IF YOU SCROLL DOWN THROUGH THIS BLOG YOU WILL SEE EXPLICIT PICTURES**.

One is l'Origine du Monde, by Gustave Courbet, 1866; the other is Le Sommeil, also Courbet, 1866. They’re worth seeing. Unless intimate female nudity and/or mildly homosexual activity offend you; in which case, Go Away. Go away now: you’re reading the wrong blog. There’s another blog just over there about kittens, or prejudice, or something. You’ll like that one better.

Meanwhile, for the rest of us…

A Collection of Musings on the Entirely Imaginary Rude Bits in the Novels of Jane Austen

Chapter One: Mansfield Park

My name, if needs I must become a Lady of the Night

Would be not Belle du Jour, mais non, but rather, Fanny Price

© Muriel Lavender, Summer 2013 

Jane Austen invented Minge Topiary.

Regency Ladies. Genteel.

The clues are everywhere in her work. From Mr Bingley’s home in Pride & Prejudice – Netherfield – to Marianne Dashwood’s exclamation in Sense & Sensibility, ‘I can barely keep my hands warm even in my muff!’ I could go on; but Mansfield Park is the champion. It’s stuffed with minge jokes. No? Well, here you are – these are quotes:

"My Fanny, indeed, at this very time, I have the satisfaction of knowing, must have been happy in spite of everything"

"William… more than once tried to make his father think of Fanny"

And my personal favourite,

"Come, mother, you have hardly looked at your own dear Fanny yet"

The novel was itself named after a particular 18th-Century fashion in minge topiary.  Capability Brown may have started out as a landscape gardener, but after he collaborated with Austen, he found considerable success amongst the fashionable ladies of society as a LadyGardener.  For evidence, there’s the letter Austen famously wrote to her sister Cassandra from Bath, in 1802:

“I have an appointment on Thursday next, to have my grounds laid out by an improver [see?]. Miss Perkins favours the Brazilian, but I do not care for these Colonial fashions. I shall get a Mansfield Park, as I always do.”

She wrote thus, while staying in Queen Square – which is, incidentally, another style she could have gone for.  Or a Trim Street. Or a South Parade. Or a – [that’s enough, Mu]

Austen scholars debate the potential rude bits endlessly – did she mean this, was she talking about that; from the 'well-hung curtains' of Persuasion, to the 'Rears and Vices' again of Mansfield Park. They have all overlooked the filthiest joke of them all, which also occurs in Mansfield Park. Considering how desperate some factions seem to be to prove that Jane Austen was engaged in an incestuous Lesbian affair with Cassandra*– considering how much they like to say it, I’m surprised no-one seems to have noticed this particular little pleasure but me. I don’t agree with them; but I wrote this anyway. I call it  ‘Love and Freindship’, because I consider that to be an appropriately provocative title.

A delicious fact, to me

From Gray’s Anatomy:

The soft cup in front 

Of which sits 

The clitoris

Is quaintly named;

Jane Austen writes

Of the delightful

“Sight of Miss Fanny Price

Dripping with wet

In the vestibule…”

Scholars long to imbue

Miss Austen’s works with a Sapphic hue

Perhaps a very gentle blue

Forgive me

But it’s true

© Muriel Lavender

July 2012 - November 2013

Le Sommeil, Gustave Courbet, 1866

l'Origine du Monde, Gustave Courbet, 1866

 *Seriously? Because she never married? Oh, of course that makes her a Lesbian. I believe there is a certain variety of internet meme wherein such a statement would be followed up with the phrase, ‘Bitch Please’

**Incidentally, do you know how hard it is to find pictures of Regency ladies getting it on?  You know, without having to search for a particular kind of niche porn? I am grateful to Mr L who spent some time searching for suitable artwork with with to illustrate this blog entry; I’m delighted with those he found. I love Courbet. And footnotes.