HE THAT HATH NO BEARD IS LESS THAN A MAN

I'm doing this in the car. Bear with me. Hyperlinks will go in later: they're proving to be a f**king fanny on a Samsung Galaxy S4 mini. Any photographs I manage to upload are by Bertrand Vessier.

FIRST THINGS FIRST – THE FUND IS STILL OPEN, so if you want to donate you still can.  Let me remind you who you’re supporting: the two chosen charities of the British Beard and Moustche Championships, which are Dorothy House and Depression Alliance. I maintain that there is not a person in the UK right now who will not, at some point, need the services of one charity or the other; or have a loved one who will. Give some money at Mu's Big-Ass Charity Tattoo - if you give £25 I’ll send you the signed photo of my –

- Never mind. I’m getting to that. This is what happened.
Somehow (I know not how) I made the decision to get a tattoo. Not my first; though I may be forgiven the youthful foolishness which planted a marsupial on my backside like a little ass-hickie. No, this would be my first proper, serious, grown-up tattoo.

But I can’t tell you all that, either. Because I told it to the editor of Skin Deep Tattoo Magazine after I had the almighty front to send him an email containing the following - just days after being introduced to him at the Great British Tattoo Show:

“Let me get to the point: In a nutshell (deep breath), do you think [the magazine] would consider it a matter of sufficient interest to feature between its covers the occasion of my inking? I should simply adore it if you would.

Good God, I shock myself sometimes. If I thought it would sway you, I’d send you a picture of the proposed canvas; but fortunately, I actually do know when to wind it in. Sort of.”

Obviously, I’d explained about the charity fundraiser as well. So that makes it perfectly ok*.  But you can read the full story in Issue 241, out in September.

THE OUTCOME

• So far, £1820 donated to the cause. 
• A total of 7.5 hours of tattoo work by a woman I admire so very, very much – I hope I may be allowed to call her a friend. 
• Genuinely the worst pain I’ve ever felt, and I’ve had two children. 
• A nude photoshoot with a photographer I trust completely, and whose work I love. 
• Countless messages of love and support from all over the world.

This year has brought yet more wonderful people into my life, and I am constantly overwhelmed at the capacity of ordinary people to act kindly for others. Thank you, all of you, who have supported me in my hare-brained scheme to raise money and promote the Beard Championships. And yet it’s so much more than that: I feel as though I have a new friend. 

William Eight-Speare. He’s got my back.

*No it doesn’t. Siôn, I am so sorry. You didn’t deserve that, based on an hour’s acquaintance. Sorry. Sorry.

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.