I have the unfortunate pleasure of being the bearer of half hoarder, half OCD genes. My mum comes from a family with the mindset of “keep it, just in case” where everything is kept for a rainy day, no matter what, and cleaning was never much of a priority. My dad’s family are much more clean and tidy, fastidiously so, and while they are prone to hoarding a Beanie Baby or 500, they at least keep them in a cabinet.

There was always such a juxtaposition between living with my mum and with my dad. My mum’s house was chaotic, cluttered and dirty and made me feel anxious, whereas my dad’s house was clean, sparse, tastefully decorated, and everything had a place. Of course, my dad’s house made me feel anxious too but for different reasons. I was scared of making a mess.

Of all the houses I have lived in, I have the best memories of my grandma’s house. I felt at home among all the books and stuff and things to do, but even then I hated how sticky and covered in cat hair everything was, which I guess is the parts of my dad that live in me.

My life has forever been a battle between two polarities. I can be either messy or tidy, depending on my surroundings and who I live with. I prefer everything to be neat and tidy - and I could never live anywhere that was dirty - but I can accumulate a lot of stuff. In the past I tended to cart it around with me, wherever I might go, because I was scared that if I lost any of it I would lose my memories or forget things.

But then, after my grandma died, and we had to go to her house and clear out all her things, I saw how overwhelming that much stuff is to those that are left behind. What an insurmountable mess it is, one that just compounds the grief of losing someone.

Looking at what was left of her life covered in dust and mould was heartbreaking because I couldn’t really keep anything. Nothing had been looked after and everything had been left to rot. After that, I started to look at my own clutter in a different way.

When a marriage ends, especially a long one, you are left with a lot of clutter - physical and emotional. For the first time since my grandma died I don’t want to keep any of it. I don’t want the remnants of a life that never was… so the past year has been a slow process of getting rid of everything. I started with the big things - anniversary gifts, clothing, anything that reminded me of him. Some memories aren’t worth being kept.

And I suppose the place where we have the most clutter nowadays is in our phones and my 29,000 pictures and videos will attest to that. This week I bought a memory stick to give it a spring clean. I should have done it ages ago, but looking at him makes me feel sick so it’s taken a while for me to feel ready.

The hardest part has been getting rid of family memories, especially a particular trip to Durdle Door where we looked like the perfect image of a happy family. I remember my daughter taking one of the pictures into Reception so she wouldn’t get homesick, and I was so proud that she had both of her parents and that we all looked so happy and contented together. It was everything I had ever wanted for her.

There is a sense of failure in not being able to give that to her for longer, but I know it’s not my fault. I gave myself to the marriage wholeheartedly and had no idea that things weren’t how they were being presented to be. It’s not the marriage ending that has been so hard to get over, I can live with that, but the lies and the betrayal. Of being fed a version of your partner that turns out not to be true at all.

But after going through everything, one of the things that struck me was how many memories me and my daughter had made on our own. I thought by deleting everything there would be nothing left but I had forgotten just how much time we’ve spent together, and how much fun we’ve had. I’ve been such a hands-on mum with her and that is something I will forever be proud of.

I still have a way to go. I still haven’t decided what to do with my wedding dress and the wedding album. I did think about burning both as I find it all so hard to look at. I loved our wedding, it was so fun and unique, but it was a day built on lies.

I never finished the wedding album. I bought all the photos and started it, but I fell out with my dad halfway through so never returned to it. I thought there was plenty of time, that it would be something to keep in the family for generations, and treated it as such. It was meant to be treasured, not burnt, so I don’t quite know what to do with it.

At the moment things are good and my house is the tidiest it has ever been. My friend and I both pull our own weight and clean up after each other, which is something my ex would rarely do. My friend Ellie comes over regularly to help me tackle the piles of stuff in the loft and for a year I’ve lived in a house full of kindness and support and love, and I don’t know what I would have done without it.

Over time I’ve realised that there is no point having lots of stuff, all it does is create a burden - a physical and mental presence that I find quite suffocating. Every time I get rid of something I feel a sense of relief, like the air is clearing and I can finally start to breathe again.

Alex x

The night my husband left he went out with his friends and switched his phone off. In the twelve years we had been together he had never done that before.

We had been arguing all week. First because he had put uncovered reptile eggs in the freezer where all of my pre-prepared baking kiosk goodies were being stored - which meant I had to throw everything away as reptile eggs carry salmonella. I lost days of work and hundreds of handmade cakes that I’d made and had to shut the kiosk. I was absolutely fuming.

The next day he looked at me with a dark look on his face and told me he didn’t think my phobia was really getting better, I was just getting better at hiding it, which totally destroyed me. I had been working so hard for months to overcome my phobia and it really was getting better. The only person not to notice or acknowledge that fact was him.

I wasn’t one to text excessively unless we were arguing, which wasn’t very often. One of the things that characterised our marriage is that emotions weren’t allowed. Nobody in the house was allowed to get angry or upset or sad, he said they were “base emotions” and anger was a weakness.

So we kept it all in and made ourselves miserable instead.

I'm an anxious person and I've always had a fear of abandonment - I later learned it was the source of my phobia - but for most of my adult life it didn't affect me too much. I mean, in my twenties I was a nightmare, but over time I had mellowed. I wasn't someone who panicked when a message went unanswered or needed constant reassurance from the person I was with. I could give people space. I could tolerate distance. My husband worked nights FFS.

That changed after my marriage ended.

Which brings us back to the night he left and the switched off phone. It sounds like such a small thing written down. People turn their phones off every day.

But in twelve years he had never done it. I spent that day and night not knowing where my husband was or what was happening to my marriage. He seemed angry and distant, and I didn’t want to confront what was happening, or who he was with, so I mostly tried not to think about it. But somewhere in those hours, an old terror I'd spent most of my adult life trying to contain came roaring back.

And I texted and texted, and didn’t stop.

When I was eight years old my dad cheated with a girl at work and left the family home. Now the person who knew that story better than anybody was doing exactly the same thing… so I understand now why silence currently frightens me so much. It isn't because I believe everybody owes me constant access to them. It is because that night, silence preceded something terrible… and it’s caused me to sometimes reenter a place I like to call The Cringe Hole.

Now, I know I’ve had a fascination with holes of late but The Cringe Hole isn't somewhere I'm used to visiting. In fact, until that night, I hadn't been there for a very long time.

But now, occasionally, something happens that drops me straight back into it. Someone goes quiet and all of that adult knowledge temporarily leaves my body. Suddenly I'm eight years old again and instead of thinking, they're busy, they'll reply when they reply, something in me becomes absolutely convinced I am being abandoned.

So I text. Then I text again. I explain what I meant. I explain why I explained what I meant. I notice they've been online. I delete something. I send something else to explain why I deleted it. I become hyper-aware of every tiny change in tone, every missing kiss, every hour that passes. All the while there's usually a perfectly functional adult part of my brain standing somewhere in the background screaming, FOR FUCK'S SAKE, STOP.

It is excruciatingly embarrassing.

There is nothing sexy about the Cringe Hole. Nothing mysterious or aloof or independent. I can practically feel myself becoming less attractive with every message I send, which of course makes me panic more, because now I'm not only frightened someone is leaving, I'm frightened I'm actively making them leave.

I'm trying to notice when it happens. I’m trying to teach myself that an unanswered message isn't abandonment. A switched-off phone isn't always someone leaving. Somebody needing space isn't necessarily punishment.

But then… experience has taught me that sometimes people really do withdraw instead of communicate, and sometimes my behaviour can make it ten times worse.

That’s the bit I have to own.

The horrible irony of abandonment anxiety is that the behaviours you use to try to stop somebody disappearing can make them want to get further away. You chase connection so hard that the other person feels crowded. They withdraw, you panic because they've withdrawn, you chase harder, and suddenly you're both acting out exactly the thing you were frightened of in the first place.

I hate that version of myself. Or perhaps more accurately, I'm embarrassed by her. But I also have empathy, because I understand where she came from. She’s not trying to manipulate anyone or control them. She's fucking terrified.

She's just a little kid, sat on the other end of a switched-off phone, waiting for somebody to come home.

But I'm 44 now. I can't hand 8-year-old me the phone every time somebody doesn't answer.

It’s time for 44-year-old me to cut that shit out and switch her own bloody phone off 🤣

Alex x

I watched Voicemails For Isabelle the other day and it was such a heartwarming film about love and grief and everything in between. I guess you could say I am in my rom-com era. My housemate will watch nothing else, and I’m finally in a place where I can watch them without getting angry, although I still can’t watch Office Romance for obvious personal reasons.

I’ve always been a big fan of the Robyn song that accompanies the film. It’s a song about grief, but also resilience. About standing at the edge of the dance floor watching the person you love kiss someone else. A feeling of being close enough to touch them, yet somehow never the one they choose.

It’s a feeling I know well.

Vividly, in fact.

For most of my life I have lived with the ghost of being unchosen. Looking in from the outside, convinced that if I were funnier, smarter or prettier things might have been different… only to discover it was never really about any of those things at all.

Having said that, I don’t really know what it’s like to be fully on my own. I spent a long time married and before that the longest I’d been single was about a year. At last count I’ve had six relationships. Three involved cheating, two I rarely talk about, and one I can’t even remember the surname of.

Strangely, though, some of the relationships that shaped me the most weren’t really relationships at all but people I met only briefly, who seemed to see parts of me I'd spent a lifetime hiding.

The two-month fling with a rockstar that left me pregnant.

The first love I never admitted to until twenty years later.

The almosts.

The what ifs.

There is something about love that never quite arrives which has a habit of living rent free in your head. Maybe because there was never an ending that made sense. Maybe because hope doesn’t die as neatly as reality does.

I think that’s why some goodbyes feel different. They aren’t just about losing another person. They’re about losing the place where, for a little while, you felt safest. You find yourself chasing one more conversation, one more ordinary moment, one more memory that felt “like us”, as though it might somehow soften the ending.

Looking back, I don’t think I was trying to change the outcome as much as I was trying to make peace with it. Of course I wanted the ending to be different, but I also wanted it to reflect everything that came before it, rather than letting one painful chapter become the whole story. The love was real. The safety was real too. That’s why letting go felt like grieving them both.

This past year taught me that safety isn’t something another person can permanently give me. It’s something I have to learn to keep hold of even when someone walks away.

Maybe that’s what dancing on my own really is. Not standing on the sidelines hoping someone finally notices me. It’s trusting that I can still be whole when the music carries on, even if I’m the only one left on the dance floor.

Alex x

I lived with a really debilitating phobia for most of my life.

It started as a childhood safety-seeking behaviour that helped me feel safe when I was little, but over time it grew into something much bigger.

During my marriage it gradually took over my whole life. It made my world smaller and pushed away the people I loved most, including my ex-husband and my daughter. It was an incredibly painful and frightening way to live. My life became a list of all the things I couldn’t do rather than a list of the things I could.

What I didn’t know at the time was that my ex had recognised quite early in our relationship that he could use my fear to control me and keep me at home. He subtly reinforced the thoughts I already had about myself, telling me I was broken, incapable and would never change.

He told me I couldn’t have more children because my phobia was infectious, that it would destroy me and hurt the people I loved.

Believing that made me want to die.

At the time, I felt really hopeless and alone. Because my ex-husband was having an affair, his family had started to push me out in favour of his new supply. By this point I had been isolated, controlled and undermined for years so I was very weak and unable to stand up for myself.

I felt like I was being pushed into decisions that were very unlike me and couldn’t see a way out, until somehow, out of nowhere, a little bit of the old me reemerged and started a very embarrassing GoFundMe as a cry for help.

It didn’t quite get me the treatment I was told by my ex that I needed - he wanted to section me - but it did raise awareness and got a lot of publicity (including the NY Post!) which prevented him from doing that. The money raised enabled me to afford my first couple of months of therapy with my current therapist, which I will forever be grateful for.

Therapy quite literally saved my life, alongside a programme called Thrive.

I’d actually tried Thrive once before in 2023, but I wasn’t supported, got scared and stopped. Something in me hadn’t completely given up hope, so I tried again last year. Combined with therapy, the Thrive podcast and a lot of uncomfortable practice, something finally shifted.

What I learned changed far more than my phobia.

I learned that sometimes the things we do to avoid our biggest fears are the very things that end up creating them.

I learned that some things matter enough to be worth risking fear for.

Not because fear disappears.

Because the life you want is usually waiting on the other side of it.

I wouldn’t have my daughter if I’d let fear make every decision for me, and she is the one thing in my life that I am most proud of.

I’ve had to learn that safety doesn’t come from avoiding everything that frightens me, it comes from trusting that I can cope.

Every day I do things that scare me.

Every day I challenge the thoughts that tell me I’m not enough, that I’m not capable, or that I’ll inevitably hurt the people I love.

Those thoughts still exist sometimes.

I just don’t believe them anymore.

In this past year I have done so many things that I never thought would be possible: I’ve eaten at Chinese buffets, I’ve gone in the sea and to waterparks, I’ve drank more than three alcoholic drinks, I’ve travelled so much by train that any fear I had has well and truly disappeared. I WENT TO LAS VEGAS.

Because I’ve learned that courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s building enough trust in yourself that you’re willing to move towards the life you want anyway.

And despite everything I’ve been through, I’m still willing to love despite the possibility of pain.

Because it isn’t pain that scares me anymore.

It’s the possibility of reaching the end of my life and realising fear made too many of my decisions.

Alex x

I always want to write at the most inopportune moments, usually when I have much more pressing matters to attend to and a million other things to do. Brian tends to counteract by playing “Mama” by the Spice Girls at full blast until I relent.

I find the song simultaneously comforting and annoying. I always fixate on the line:

A love that’s true and guaranteed

And think… that’s not my experience of love, from my mum or anyone. It makes me sad because it’s the kind of love I give, but rarely the kind I receive.

After my husband left I started to doubt whether I believed in love at all. Having been with someone that lied to me so convincingly for 12 years, I found it difficult to trust my instincts, to know who is telling the truth, and what is real and what is fantasy. And it’s funny because my gut instincts didn’t disappear, they were just repeatedly overridden.

I’ve always been a secret lover girl. When I fall, I fall hard, but I never used to show it. I felt like showing my feelings would mean I’d get hurt, and what I am learning now is that I will probably get hurt either way. I’m not necessarily afraid of that, although it does wear you down.

It’s strange because I’m actually very guarded about who I let in. Dating has always been a bit of a shit show for me, but even more so now with the apps where everyone is treated like they are disposable, and that the next best thing is just a swipe away. It’s bullshit, obviously. I don’t think humans were designed to treat each other as infinitely replaceable.

Letting people in is hard. It is a risk, and there are no guarantees. The people you love the most can also hurt you the most; it comes with the territory. As I’ve learned the hard way, the people who know where to stick the knife also know exactly where the knives are kept. Despite that, I still have hope.

I think I have developed a certain resilience. Nothing can hurt me quite as much as my marriage did, and there’s a strange fearlessness that comes with that. But I also need to learn how to protect myself better. I am so open-hearted that I always think of the Roger Sanchez video where the woman’s heart physically grows bigger and bigger. The larger mine gets, the faster men seem to run away.

I’m not actively dating. I’ve tried, but it isn’t really for me. There’s something about apps that feels desperate in a way I can’t quite explain. I don’t find the men on them very attractive, even when they objectively are, and I don’t think I’m going to find love there. I also think men massively underestimate how overwhelming dating apps can be for women. What a cattle market it all is.

I’ve felt like a commodity for most of my life, so the whole experience just feels jarring. Yes, I get a lot of attention, but it’s not always worthwhile.

Added to that, I’m probably not the most attractive prospect. I never thought I would be a single mum on Universal Credit in my forties, but here we are. I’m working hard to change that, but for a girl who thought being pregnant and working at McDonald’s in my thirties was my rock bottom, this has been a rude shock.

Life is looking up now in some ways, but it isn’t easy. While my career opportunities are growing, I’m still about to lose my home and I regularly have to choose between buying food or putting £10 on the electric, which seems like such a cliche that no one really understands until it’s you doing it.

I’ve been to food banks. I struggle to pay the mountains of bills and debts that have accumulated over the years from trying to live beyond our means while married. All of my clothes are cheap, polyester, and from Primark. I’ve had to sell everything nice.

Nobody gets married to get divorced, and nobody tells you how fucking long and expensive it is. Or maybe they do and you just don’t listen.

I was sold a dream that turned out to be a lie and it fucking sucks but I’m slowly rebuilding myself and learning how to do things on my own.

Last week I even bought a drill! It’s a shit one (it’s green), but it’s a step in the right direction.

I don’t know what the future holds, but for the first time in a long time it feels like it belongs to me. Even if I have absolutely no idea how to use a drill.

Alex x

P.S. After reading this blog aloud to my housemate I realised something significant. I do have the love that I seek. I've spent so long looking for guaranteed love in romantic relationships that I overlooked the fact that some of it was already here, quietly waiting for me at home - with my daughter and my housemate and best friend.

My therapist’s biggest complaint is that I don’t talk about myself enough, which strikes me as an odd criticism for someone who has spent years taking their clothes off for a living.

I’ve written magazine columns about myself, appeared on television, spent years answering deeply personal questions from complete strangers and have enough diaries to keep several future archaeologists occupied (or at least amused) for decades. If anything, I would have assumed the problem was the opposite.

Apparently not.

According to my therapist, whenever something significant happens in my life, I have an unfortunate tendency to disappear from my own story, like I don’t exist at all. In an average session I spend 90% of it talking about other people, usually men.

It becomes an analysis of:

Why did they do that?

What does it mean?

What happened in their childhood?

Should we get a whiteboard?

At the end of the hour I will have constructed an elaborate psychological profile of a man who once dumped me in 2009, while somehow failing to mention whether I was upset about it.

This is, apparently, not normal.

But the more I think about it, the more I realise my therapist has a point. Most of my conversations ARE about other people. Not because I’m particularly selfless, but because I’ve spent so long trying to understand everyone else that I rarely stop to consider myself.

And it got me thinking… where the fuck did that come from?

Growing up in an unpredictable environment I got adept at predicting others’ needs. If I could work out what someone was feeling, whether they were happy or angry or sad, I could navigate the situation and keep myself safe. The downside was learning that my needs were largely irrelevant, which is a pretty shitty lesson to learn as an 8-year-old, but here we are.

Thing is, that hyper vigilant part of me has never fully left. It manifests as recurrent automatic behaviours like people pleasing, obsessive thoughts, and phobias that during my marriage got worse, because… well. The less said about that the better.

And here is the rub of therapy - it’s great, but they can’t tell you what to do and they can’t fix things. They’re not a fucking life coach - probably a good thing.

But how do you prioritise yourself when nobody taught you how? It’s all well and good telling me to talk about myself more, but what if I don’t know how to do that? Where do you even start?

Thing is, change is not impossible. This past year I have managed to challenge and almost erase the repetitive intrusive thoughts that fuelled the majority of my sick phobia, which is something I never thought I would be able to do. By giving Brian (my brain) a new record and committing to doing something every day that scared me, it actually changed pretty quickly.

But talking about real feelings and emotions to my therapist? Nah, mate. I dunno about that.

Obviously I appreciate the irony.

Alex x

I’m struggling to write a bit at the moment because my ancient decrepit laptop finally died and I can’t afford to replace it right now, so I’m downstairs on the big computer like I’ve been consigned to the computer room and it’s 2001, which isn’t ideal as I prefer writing in bed, at 2am… usually covered in crumbs.

Do you believe in magical people? I ask not out of some kind of mania but because I just watched the Kylie documentary and I fully believe she is some kind of rare magical person… and I’m trying to think of what I mean by that, but I think Nick Cave explained it best in that some people are just full of light. And whether that light is joy, creativity, confidence, kindness, or some combination of our more positive qualities, it’s something that people are drawn to, like moths. Maybe it’s energy, I don’t know. Everything is energy.

As I write my memoir I have been thinking a lot about the multitude of famous women who have made me who I am, all the Britney’s and J-Lo’s and Pamela Anderson’s who I looked up to and tried to emulate, and there is no bigger influence on me than Kylie. Her pictures have always been central to my mood board, because throughout my life and beyond all the feminist criticism that told me being sexy was wrong, I just love looking at beautiful women and always have done. I feel inspired by it. Especially Kylie. She has been the star of my inner world since I was seven-years-old at my childminders house, watching her get married to Jason Donovan in Neighbours. It’s the only wedding I have ever been remotely interested in - apart from the one in Euphoria. Sorry Posh and Becks.

I think I liked Kylie initially because she was pale and petite. Growing up in the 90s there weren’t a lot of sexy women in the public eye who were pale and small like I was. I remember cutting her pictures out of magazines and sticking them on my walls and text books, especially during her “Deconstruction” era. Kylie has always been so incredibly expressive and photogenic and I think they really captured that in the documentary. What a chameleon she is, how playful and innocent yet sexual she has always been. I find it endlessly fascinating.

I suppose when you grow up insecure it can go one of either two ways. You either hate everyone that is prettier than you and shrivel and dry up like a prune, or you marvel and appreciate and learn how to recreate a little bit of that beauty for yourself. I started young and awkward, but bit-by-bit I studied how to be pretty, which sounds weird, but it is 100% what I did. I wanted to be pretty so much that I think I manifested it. I’m autistic so I learn by copying things, so I would copy the makeup and the hair… and later the outfits, poses and facial expressions of celebrities that I looked up to. Not trying to BE them, but to be my own approximation, my own version. And in a lot of ways that is where I got the confidence to be a model, because that is all that modelling is - makeup and hair… and outfits, poses and facial expressions.

Having modelled in the early 00s, when beauty was strict and regimented, where women were encouraged to be ridiculously thin, big-boobed, perma-tanned, and aesthetically pleasing (i.e., never ever age), I won’t lie and say that it didn’t have an effect on me. I was never that bothered about my weight, but I really didn’t want to get old and I quit modelling when I was thirty because I was scared of looking different and embarrassing myself. I am still very hard on myself as a result of those years, but actually, women like Kylie were an inspiration because she was always older, beautiful and relevant.

Obviously I am aware that there is more to life than just looks, and when I describe people having a light, I’m not actually describing the way that they look. It is something that comes from inside - a “joie de vivre” so to say. It’s tenacity and determination, an ability to overcome struggles and still look to the world with joy, kindness and generosity. I see beauty in all of my close friends, and it’s because their light - something about them that makes them special and unique - makes them more beautiful to me than someone who doesn’t have it.

Over time and after a lot of inner work I realised that I have that same light too. Probably not to the extent of Kylie, but it’s there. People are drawn to me and when I am in a positive space good things happen. It’s sad to think about now, because I feel like my light was dimmed for a really long time, but in these past few months it has started to come back again and things are looking up. I’ve been taken on by my old model agency and have been booked on my first shoot as a professional model (again) at 44-years-old. I also start recording a podcast next month where I interview the glamorous women I worked with in my youth to hear their stories and experiences, so I am excited for what the future holds.

As women we are told so much by the media that we have an expiration date, that our looks will run out, that people won’t want us when we are old. I should be so lucky to live in a time where older women like Kylie, J-Lo, and Pamela Anderson are proving that mindset completely wrong, by showing the world that the power combo of inner light and outer beauty is timeless.

Alex x

It was recently suggested to me that I should revisit some of my old shoots and go over the stories behind them, as it were, and the first one that came to mind was my Juiced commercial, as it is my main shoot that seems to live forever on the internet.

Without fail, every year someone will post it on Reddit, where it will get upvoted to death and I will get a boost of new interest, and every year I will have to explain to a bunch of new followers that no, it’s not a real TV commercial as it was never shown on TV. It was actually one of the first online videos of its sort that was designed to go viral - all the way back in 2005, when YouTube was just a baby.

My feelings about it are mixed, at best.

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I hadn’t been to Las Vegas since I was nine. My grandparents took me on a massive mega holiday to America while my parents were separating and while it wasn’t the highlight (Disneyland was), it was memorable - mainly because it was a completely unsuitable place for kids. I’d never really thought about returning. Vegas would get mentioned sometimes in passing and I would always think it sounded like a cool place to go, but as my memories of it were not positive it wasn’t top of my list. In hindsight this is madness as it is the most “me” place in the world. It’s basically an adult Disneyland crossed with Showgirls - my favourite film of all time.

I got invited on a bit of a whim. A whim that most of my friends said I should say no to - but who turns down a free holiday to Vegas!? That would be another level of madness. I knew my dad would be out there if anything went tits up so it seemed like a safe bet to me. Plus, it would be a year exactly since my ex-husband left so I didn’t want to spend that week lolling around in the doldrums. One of the things I vowed to myself at the beginning of the year was that I would take more risks, have more fun, and travel more, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to do that.

My travel buddy told me to plan whatever I wanted to do and they would take care of it - so we went to see Ru Paul’s Drag Race, Wet Leg, and Pauly D DJ. We went to an American strip club - which was fun but slightly jarring - and to video game arcades, old casinos, and fast food joints. I loved the colours and the noise and the attention to detail. Everything was simultaneously smaller and larger than life; fancy and seedy at the same time.

Needless to say, I had a brilliant time. Genuinely a trip of a lifetime. And while I am thoroughly depressed to be back on UK soil it has given me a bit of positivity for the future. That the old me is still in there, that I am still fun, and that I can still go on adventures. Part of what I miss most about my modelling and TV work is the opportunity to travel. I love exploring new places and foreign environments and while taking a walk north of The Strat was probably pushing the limits of that (there was a shooting there a few days later) it was the first time in a while that I had felt truly free.

To spend time by the pool in the sunshine, doing fun things, and looking the fittest and healthiest I have done in years… it was just such a relief. I find it hard to get too sad now. To know that people care enough to offer me something like that and to have a week that was focused almost solely on my enjoyment - I don’t know if anyone has ever done that for me before. Not to the same level. I really appreciated it.

As a mother you sacrifice a lot. Life becomes more about other people than yourself, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I am a lifelong people pleaser so I think maybe I took it too far. With my whole heart I just wanted to be a good mum. I wanted to prove that I could do a good job. My daughter is amazing and I love her so much, but I am starting to realise how important it is to look after myself too, for both of us. To be my own person and not just a mum.

There’s still so much stuff in Vegas that I would like to do, but the highlight of the trip for me was eating in Martha Stewart’s restaurant in the hotel. I didn’t realise she had a presence there until we checked in and the room key had her picture on it, but Martha Stewart is a massive hero of mine since reading her books as a child at my grandma’s. I always wondered what her food would taste like and what her house would look like - and her restaurant (The Bedford) is based on her own interiors and home cooking.

Funnily enough, my nickname among the other mums is “Martha” because of the parties I used to throw and how good I am at entertaining, and that was something I massively retreated into while my marriage went south. I became way more focused on baking, mad colour schemes, and crazy wallpaper because everything else made me feel numb and invisible. I thought that if I could make the house perfect and be more like Martha - someone I see as powerful and fun and self-sufficient - I could somehow overcome my own problems, the same way she did. Because her life has been tough too - even before the prison sentence. But life doesn’t always work out that way and it is best to be yourself, as I am discovering.

Sat in Martha Stewart’s restaurant listening to Dr Dre, I absolutely lost my mind (in a good way). It was just everything I hoped it would be. So thank you Vegas, it was a blast.

Alex x

I’ve been writing a lot recently - not so much on here, but as part of the memoir I am writing (god, I hate that word, it sounds so pretentious). It’s actually coming together nicely and I am already on Chapter 6 out of 16, which is unheard of as I am rarely able to do longform writing. I have the attention span of a gnat. I won’t share it here just yet as it has gone through a lot of rewrites since the blog version I posted a month or so back. It has a strong and unique narrative and it is something I am really proud of.

What has been cathartic is that it’s made me realise a lot of things about myself. Mostly about how I’ve prioritised incredibly destructive relationships throughout my life, with friends, family, and the opposite sex. None of my relationships have been very healthy. Currently the healthiest relationship I have is the one I have with my dad, which is a sentence I never saw myself writing in a million years, but here we are. It’s taken 40 years but finally we seem to be getting somewhere. After all that time I just wanted an apology, and I got one - a surprisingly sincere one - last year.

There is a bit in my book that I had been putting off writing about because it’s probably one of the worst things that ever happened to me and it completely changed me as a person. A betrayal from a best friend who later died so I never got any closure. At the time I didn’t react. I went back to the person the next day and acted like everything was fine. It was so incredibly hard to write about, but I am glad that I did because it has made me see my pattern clearly.

I’ve spent a lot of my life being very good at adapting by reading the room, smoothing things over… making things make sense even when they don’t. Staying when something feels off because leaving feels bigger, louder, more final. And I don’t think I realised until recently how automatic that is for me. Not because I am weak, or naive, or don’t see what’s happening - I do see it, I always have. I just… override it.

I’ll tell myself a slightly softer version of reality. One where things are probably fine, or will be fine, or could be fine if I just handle it right. I think I learned that quite early on. And it worked, in a way. It kept things going. It kept people close. It kept the peace… but it also meant I lost mine. I got very used to ignoring the moment where something in me goes “this doesn’t feel right” so I’m trying to get better at listening to that part now.

Not dramatically, not perfectly, just… noticing it. Not rushing to fix it. Not immediately bending around it. It’s uncomfortable, if I’m honest. There’s a bit of a gap where I would normally do something - say something, smooth something, reach out - and now I’m just sitting in it.

But it also feels a bit like relief. Like maybe I don’t have to work quite so hard to make things okay all the time.

Maybe I can just notice when they’re not.

Alex x

Sorry I’ve been slack on the old writing front - I’ve been balls deep in Brian writing my memoir. I’ve somehow managed to (ass)crack Chapter 2 (a previously unfeasible feat) so that is going well and I am excited to see where it leads… which, knowing Brian, could be anywhere.

Today I’m going to write about something that is close to my heart and that is what it’s like to date when you have autism. I thought it would be interesting to write about, especially as autistic women are currently a common niche interest on a lot of dating apps, with more and more manosphere dickheads now listing us in their dating profile “would like to meet”. It took me a while to realise that this is because they seem to think that a “slightly autistic woman” is easier to manipulate than a neurotypical one. Pretty bleak when you think about it. OBVIOUSLY I learned this from personal experience when I matched with a guy last year who had this in his bio. I thought it was cute at first and arranged to meet, then I saw another profile with it, and another… and realised that it was this whole toxic thing, so I blocked the guy and deleted the app. Sucks being the new manic pixie dream girl.

But you know, autism has its pros and cons, which I am sure will differ for everyone as the spectrum is wide and vast and full of many colours, so I can only speak from my own experience. I was diagnosed relatively recently, but it is something I was well aware that I might have for a while. I put diagnosis off because there’s nothing major you can do with it - you don’t get any cool drugs or anything like that - but I sought it out in the end for my own peace of mind. Because I always knew I was a bit different inside and wanted to find out why. Finding out I have it has been eye-opening and like finding the corner piece in a very complicated jigsaw.

I don’t hate having autism. Like I said, it has its benefits and it’s part of what makes me fun, creative, loyal, and kind. Contrary to popular belief, autism isn’t something you can just switch on and off though, and just because other people might not notice it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. As a conventionally attractive woman I have been socially conditioned to… well… NOT have autism, so as a 44-year-old my non-autistic mask is pretty strong. I have learned over time how to fit in, at great hidden personal effort and cost to my sanity. As I’ve gotten older I’ve tended to let the mask slip more, but that does come with its own problems. I do feel like a novelty act sometimes, I burn out easily, and it can be hard to get people to understand that I don’t mean any harm. I find it very difficult to lie and a lot of neurotypical communication revolves around doing just that, so my bluntness can be a bit much sometimes. Most people find my quirks or special interests funny at first, until I overshare or say something that inadvertently hits an insecurity or a core wound and then I am fucked - suddenly I’ve gone from charming to too much. There aren’t many situations where I feel like I can be fully myself unless I am with other people with ADHD or autism, but I think that is a pretty common experience for a lot of people on the spectrum.

One of my guilty pleasures is watching Love On The Spectrum. There is a girl on it, Madison Marilla, who is basically exactly what I would be like if I felt that I could be fully myself. It makes me cry sometimes to watch it, because I really understand how hard it is to be cherished and accepted for who you are. Sometimes I wonder if I should go on a show like that, but as my autism is not super obvious I don’t know how well I would fit in. It’s interesting, because while I know that I am technically disabled and that my autism can make me vulnerable, I don’t really see it that way. I haven’t succeeded in life despite my autism, I’ve succeeded in life BECAUSE of it.

When it comes to dating, I have noticed that a lot of neurotypical dating relies on flirting, subtext, implication, and unspoken rules, whereas autistic communication relies on direct explicit clarity with no hidden meaning. As a result I am not a good flirt, I’m slow to detect jokes or sarcasm, and my main dating stumbling blocks are being overly literal, completely missing subtext, and being slow to recognise and process emotions. I don’t feel emotions in real time. I feel them later. This raises issues because sometimes I will do things without fully thinking them through, or without having the full information that I would need, because I don’t know how to ask for it. Communication for me needs to be explicit and clear, I can’t do grey areas or half in, half out. I’m all in or nothing.

Added to the mix is the fact that I am demisexual - I can only feel physical attraction towards someone that I know - so that pretty much rules out most dating apps for me. I can’t judge if I will like someone by a picture or through a text (least of all a dick pic) and I generally only know if I will like someone by meeting them in real life… but doing that can sometimes leave me open to coercion or manipulation. I learned the hard way last year that it’s not always safe. Don’t get me wrong, I have had good dates, but they are either with people I already know or with new people who are open and communicative and don’t rush anything… which narrows the dating pool somewhat.

So as you can see, dating can be pretty terrifying for me, and because of that I haven’t done a lot of it, but here are my 5 tips for dating an autistic person:

1. EMBRACE THE QUIRKS

Whether it’s ticks or spasms or oversharing, there will be obvious things about us that single us out as being different. These are not necessarily things we can control - and they may even be things that we have been bullied for - so it’s best to roll with the punches and embrace them.

2. DON’T TAKE BLUNTNESS PERSONALLY

We are famously blunt, it comes with the territory. You are going to need a thick skin, because I can guarantee that the bluntness is not meant maliciously. On the flipside, any compliment you get will be 100% genuine, because we can’t give fake ones.

3. EXPECT DIRECT QUESTIONS (THEY’RE HOW WE FEEL SAFE)

Direct questions aren’t for everyone and they can come across as aggressive or rude but they are not intended that way. They are how we seek clarity and clarity is what helps us feel safe. What I have learned is that if a direct question creates conflict, the issue isn’t usually the question.

4. NURTURE SPECIAL INTERESTS

I get it, our special interests may not be yours but they mean a lot to us and are how we bond with other people.

5. BE CLEAR WITH WORDS AND ACTIONS

Again, clarity is key with autism and the more your words and actions match, the safer your favourite autistic person will feel. We track patterns and we know when things don’t add up, so the usual fake ass dating bullshit won’t wash.

And finally… being autistic doesn’t mean I am difficult to love, it just means I need a different kind of love. One that isn’t built on guessing games, mixed signals, or emotional hide and seek. One that is clear, kind, and honest. And if that narrows the dating pool? Good. It means the people left in it are the right ones.

Alex x

This is the third and final part of Chapter 1 - I didn’t get any further than that as the next chapter (1993-1998) was a difficult time and I found it hard to write about, so I kind of gave up. It’s something I would like to return to at some point though.

Also, apologies for the gap in posting last week, I had a lot on, so I have made this post non-paywall to make up for it, and will post something extra for paid subscribers over the weekend.

Normal blogging will resume next Thursday - let me know your thoughts on my blogs so far in the meantime.

Alex x

MICKLETON ROAD

To avoid the fallout of my parent’s inevitable split, my dad’s parents decided to take me away to America for three weeks for my ninth birthday, in November 1990. So we went and had an amazing time, travelling to California, Palm Springs, San Diego and Nevada. We went to Disneyland and Las Vegas and I was spoiled rotten with ridiculous amounts of toys… only to come home to a completely new (much smaller) house and my dad gone. I remember the only explanation for my dad’s disappearance was a note on top of the gas heater, it was ripped out of a lined spiral bound notepad with his distinctive angular handwriting and the message was short, like he had just gone out to the shops and would be back soon. It said “look after Mum for me… oh, and Maxine called round.” Maxine was my new friend from school who I had been on a camping trip with in the summer.

Thus began my mum’s zombie period where all she would do was sit on the sofa staring into space, intermittently crying, and binge eating individual M&S puddings to the soundtrack of Chris Issak and Patsy Cline. As a 9-year-old it was an absolutely harrowing thing to witness, and I tried - I really tried - to look after my mum, but she just wasn’t there anymore, not the mum that I knew or remembered. She was like a ghost - this person that would float in from work and never acknowledge me - so I felt like a ghost too. Looking back it was such a horrible thing to experience and I think in a lot of ways it really scarred me. I was too young to understand what she was going through. I didn’t know what to do. As she worked a lot I spent a lot of time on my own and started to retreat into myself, reading lots of books and dreaming of the day that I could go back to America, where everything was cool and all of my problems would just go away.

When your parents separate, it’s such a weird kind of heartbreak. One that as a kid you don’t fully understand with words. You just sense and feel everything without the ability to properly talk to anyone about it. My parents didn’t talk to me at all about what was happening - I didn’t find out my dad had cheated until I was older - so at the time I blamed myself and felt like it was my fault, because I had been playing up at school and was always getting in trouble. I didn’t know it back then but those feelings of self-blame never truly went away and they became part of who I am. A constant source of insecurity. A feeling that I was never good enough…

BECAUSE IF YOU HAD OF BEEN THEN YOUR DAD WOULDN’T HAVE LEFT YOU!

It’s not as simple as that Brian.

About six months after my dad left he came back and moved in to Mickleton Road. My mum got a new short haircut and we went on a make or break holiday to Barcelona where I finally saw my mum smile again, but it wasn’t meant to be. My parents broke up again a couple of months later and my dad moved back in with his Polish girlfriend.

When my dad left for the second time my mum’s depression came back tenfold. She withdrew from me completely and would be gone from 7am until 7pm, working all the extra hours she could to make sure all of the bills were paid. The house quickly fell into disarray as she didn’t have time to do any housework and it got so dirty that at one point my friends would refuse to come round. I vividly remember the house always smelling of dust, mildew, and cat shit, and my clothes were always smelly and covered in cat hair. I grew to hate the cats, even though I once loved them. My mum kept them in the tiny kitchen while she was at work and they would shit, piss, and vomit on the countertops while we were gone, leading me to refuse to eat anything that had been made in the kitchen because by this point I had developed a pretty hefty sick phobia and nothing in the house ever felt clean. For five solid years - basically the entire time I lived at my mums - I lived off of toast, chocolate bars, and ready meals.

One time, my friend Emily helped me to tidy and clean the living room after school to surprise my mum. We must have been about ten or eleven and I think she felt a bit sorry for me as she was one of my only friends who would come inside my house. We spent ages cleaning, hoovering, and dusting, and while the living room didn’t look amazing after we were finished, it looked a lot better. We both sat in the living room proud of our work, waiting until 7pm for my mum to come home… but she didn’t come home until much later. By the time my mum got back it was dark and we were both half asleep. My mum walked through the door and went straight up to bed and didn’t even acknowledge us let alone comment on or notice how tidy the living room was. I remember us both being absolutely crestfallen.

Having now been through my mum’s experience myself, I do get it. I get why she fell apart, but it’s something I have tried my absolute hardest not to do, if not for my sake but for my daughter’s. I am super aware of her experience throughout it all and while my daughter is a bit older and a lot more emotionally aware and articulate than I was, I’ve learned the hard way that I can’t protect her from everything, least of all my worst childhood experience. One thing I won’t do is bring her up in a dirty house though, and we have a great relationship where we can talk about absolutely anything, but I’m not going to lie, it’s been absolutely brutal reliving the trauma through her eyes.

TWIN PEAKS

It was at Mickleton Road and around this time that I started watching Twin Peaks. My parents were both big fans of the TV show when it was first broadcast, and while I wasn’t allowed to watch it I would lie flat at the top of the stairs in the old house and stare intently down the stairs, across the hall and through the crack in the door to watch parts of it when they thought I was asleep. I found it absolutely mesmerising and I loved the music even though I thought it was a bit scary. Upon hearing that they were fans my uncle (who at this point was working for Smash Hits magazine) had given my parents a VHS tape of the pilot episode, which had been made into a feature-length film in the UK. I used to watch that VHS every single day after school while my mum was out, sometimes with my friend Emily but mostly on my own. I became fascinated with the world that David Lynch had created and it wasn’t long before I found The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer book in my mum’s cupboard and started secretly reading that too. It was written by David Lynch’s daughter and had a totally different vibe to the show. The book was a lot more graphic - to the point where I thought I shouldn’t be reading it - so I took it into primary school to show Gavin, Lloyd and Tammy and we would read it in the corner of the playground under our coats as it had sex in it! And in it Laura Palmer wasn’t that much older than we were! She actually reminded me a lot of Tammy, but I never told her that.

I WONDER WHY?

I don’t know Brian, I guess because they’re both very pretty girls with a lot of secrets.

YOU’VE GOT A LOT OF SECRETS

No I don’t! Not as many as you…

WELL, I AM WORKING ON GETTING THEM ALL OUT… MIGHT TAKE A WHILE… I’M NOT A MACHINE.

No… you’re a bit of a helmet though.

I’LL TAKE THAT AS A COMPLIMENT. WHAT DO YOU WANT NEXT?

Let’s go with Maxine.

MAXINE

The aforementioned Maxine was a new friend I had made at primary school in Year 5. She was a gregarious Jamaican girl who had moved to our school from South London and she had glasses and this wild laugh that sounded like a goose honking. She wore her hair in short braids and was really tall for her age and wore bright, colourful clothes. She always smelled like cocoa butter and I liked hanging around with her because she was so funny and loud and she made me laugh a lot, although on the summer camping trip we briefly fell out because I accused her of weeing herself laughing in our tent one night, and she denied it, and whether she did or not remains one of life’s unanswered questions. In year 6 she moved back to Lewisham and I was absolutely devastated but we stayed pen pals and I did go and visit her a couple of times. Her family were really lovely.

THERESA

Theresa was my dad’s Polish girlfriend. They had met at work when they both worked for [REDACTED - thanks Brian], meeting up for trysts after squash. She had a big semi-detached house in Coundon and drove a burgundy Volkswagen Polo. She was petite with short dyed reddish hair, big boobs, and smelly feet that she hid under a cushion when she sat on the sofa. She always had cystitis. She had actually married her husband while seeing my dad on the side (while he was with my mum) so it was all very messy and complicated, and I think her husband actually wanted to kill my dad at one point. She could be nice sometimes and I remember once she taught me how to make ice cream, but it was pretty clear that she didn’t like or want kids. She wasn’t maternal at all, except maybe towards her miserable cat Kipper.

I would stay at Theresa’s house a couple of nights a week. I always got the distinct impression that she didn’t really like me very much and I used to hear her and my dad arguing about me when they thought I was asleep. I had an IKEA camp bed in her spare room with a purple and yellow floral cover and I used to stay up late reading Sweet Valley Twins books wishing that I could be just like them, rather than the unwanted inconvenience that I felt like I was. I had become completely obsessed with anything American at this point.

Theresa had a Sega Mega Drive in her living room that her husband had left behind and I used to play on it all the time with my dad. Our favourite games were Toejam and Earl, Sonic the Hedgehog, Ecco the Dolphin, and Shining in the Darkness. For the last game, a dungeon crawler, we made our own maps out of graph paper and I just thought it was the best thing ever, a rare chance to bond with my dad that wasn’t boxing, comedy or football.

However, it was at Theresa’s that my dad got really into betting on horse racing, even betting my pocket money on horses sometimes. He always boasted that he never spent loads of money on it, just small amounts, but it felt pretty shit watching my pocket money go around the track. All I could see was a fiver on a horse, and when the horse lost that was it - pocket money gone. Apparently it was a “life lesson”.

We also started riding actual horses with Theresa as she was really into it. We all went on a pony trekking holiday in Wales together and it was quite fun, even though I fell off a few times. My dad is one of those who gets REALLY into a new hobby, buys all the gear, does it for a year and gets bored, so while horse riding was fun and I really liked it, after Dad got bored and stopped doing it I couldn’t continue to do it because the riding school was out of town and I couldn’t get there. He did this with bowling, skiing, hobby planes, and a bunch of other stuff. It was really annoying.

THE COFFIN

Nana and Grandad is what I call my dad’s mum and dad. They lived in a 1980s new build house on the other side of Coventry and loved collecting stuff, like Disney VHS tapes and Beanie Babies. Their favourite thing ever, of all time maybe, is closing down “going out of business” sales. They go absolutely nuts for a bargain. So this one time, there was a big closing down sale at a pine factory that they had been bugging my dad for ages to go to. He really couldn’t give a shit, but they wouldn’t shut up about it so he went. While there he spied a full-sized pine coffin in the corner and asked how much it was. It was ten pounds, so my dad bought it and spent the next couple of months lovingly painting and varnishing it black and doing up the interior with padded purple velvet in Theresa’s dining room. The original idea was to turn it into a bed for me so he could “put the lid on it if you wake up crying in the night” but he was scared of social services and it wasn’t really big enough so instead he turned it into a coffee table. Theresa fucking hated it. When they eventually broke up, the last image me and my dad had of her was her desperately dragging this coffin out of her front door in order to try and throw it at him. I think she smashed it right up, but we didn’t stick around to find out.

MARION

Marion was my last childminder that I had from around age 8 to 11. She was a single mum who lived alone at the bottom of Broomfield Rd with her daughter Samantha. Her husband had walked out on her when Samantha was a baby and she was a very tragic, bittersweet, broken character with a limp brown curly perm and a hangdog jowly face that reminded me of Droopy Dog. She was always telling me how men were ‘good for nothing” and what a bastard her ex was. She would get in these absolutely raging slanging matches with her ex husband whenever he came round to see Samantha, which wasn’t very often. She was funny though, and the kind of woman who upon seeing a massive long queue in the public toilets in town, would jump up and piss in the sink. I kind of loved her for that, she just didn’t give a shit.

Even though she was heavily asthmatic, it didn’t stop Marion chain smoking Richmond cigarettes all day, every day, which she would alternate with puffs on a giant asthma spacer. She wore white high heels that would go click click click when we walked down the street past all the billboards outside the Albany pub for Silk Cut and Superkings. She fed her kid broken biscuits from the Happy Shopper and had a sideline in royal iced wedding and birthday cakes that she would bake and ice for cash under the table. Her daughter was very strange. Samantha was six when I first started going round and used to play with her own piss, dipping her dolls heads in the always full potty in her bedroom, then using the dolls piss-soaked hair to paint the walls. She looked like a doll herself and wore her waist-length hair in a long plait and had a full fringe and chipmunk cheeks. Samantha was being bullied by a girl in her class called Laura, a girl who used to be her best friend but then took to thumping Samantha in the stomach every day until she was hospitalised with a hernia. I remember that being a really big deal, for obvious reasons. Marion was devastated.

Marion’s best friend was a horror show middle-aged B-movie-looking cougar called Margaret. A Scouser with an unnatural-looking dyed black permed afro that you could see her scalp through, Margaret wore pedal pushers, pink lipstick (with yellow teeth), bobble jumpers and stiletto mules. She must have been in her 40s or 50s. She had a toy boy mechanic boyfriend who looked like Inigo Montoya if he were a 1970s footballer, 90% mullet and moustache. Her daughter Clare was the same age as Samantha and was a stoic tomboy with pigtails and eczema who smelt like Alsatians. Clare had a Nintendo console that she would never let you play on, instead we just had to sit and watch her while she did, because she was an absolute sadist. I think I got ill and threw up at Margaret and Clare’s house once, which then became the beginnings of my sick phobia. I was convinced I had gotten ill from a McDonald’s Big Mac and became a vegetarian for the next 5 years.

Marion’s house was rented and had damp. There was black mould all over her salmon pink bathroom, to the point where I didn’t like using the toilet because the seat was always cold and wet with condensation. The living room was all brown and there were bin bags full of old clothes everywhere, all over her house, and we had to climb over about 6 foot of bin bags to get into the “top shop” - Samantha’s play room on the top floor that was full of old Barbies. Mostly when I went round I would sit on the brown velvet sofa in a cloud of cigarette smoke watching The Real Ghostbusters, Bucky O’Hare, Pole Position, Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It and Round the Twist while making massive lists of all the things that I wanted out of the Grattan catalogue (one of the early signs that I was Autistic). Sometimes, for a bit of fresh air, me and Samantha would sit in the front room with her rarely cleaned out budgie waiting for the pop man to come round for our fix of cherryade and cream soda, impatiently eating sticky boiled sweets left over from Christmas (in the middle of July, so they tasted a bit dodgy). Samantha had a record player with one 7” record, Elton John’s “Sacrifice”, which I always thought was bizarrely fitting to their weird home set up. The amount of times I heard that song is beyond ridiculous. Sometimes we would go up to the top shop and play “married couples” and pretend to have sex. Other times we would get the bus to Willenhall to go and see Marion’s morbidly obese sister we all called “Fat Pat”, who lived in a flat with Marion’s elderly mum. I didn’t enjoy those trips very much. Their flat smelt like skin infection. Whatever we did I’d always come home from Marion’s stinking of piss or fags. Sometimes both!

Despite it all, I liked Marion. She’d had a tough paper round, and I couldn’t help but feel like a lot of her troubles weren’t really her own fault (aside from the smoking). She was just unlucky and a victim of circumstance, like Mandy from Brookside or Aileen Wuornos. She told me loads of great stories about the flat above the Happy Shopper and how it had been turned into “a fucking brothel”. One morning she’d seen a naked man hanging out of the window and you could tell she just absolutely loved the drama of it.

Eventually I didn’t need a childminder at all and graduated to getting my own key to the house at 11-years-old. I still wonder about what happened to Marion though and whether her life improved any. I hope she’s not dead.

BUT WHAT DID WE LEARN FROM THIS SIM?

Well now Brian, looking back on my childhood like this, all laid out in order, it’s pretty clear why I became such a chameleon. I was constantly being moved around between different families and different people and forced to adapt just to fit in and get along.

YEAH MAN, SUCKS. BUT WAIT… WAIT… WHY IS COVENTRY A SHITHOLE!?

Have you even been listening Brian?

SORRY I FELL ASLEEP!

Typical…

BUT FROM WHAT I DID HEAR, COVENTRY DIDN’T SOUND THAT BAD!

Trust me, in the next chapter it will…

So, Brian, how do you think we are getting on?

I DUNNO MATE, IT’S ALL A BIT BORING ISN’T IT? WHEN DO WE GET TO THE JUICY STUFF?

What juicy stuff!?

YOU KNOW, PLAYBOY, FHM, PAGE 3…

That comes in chapter 5 or 6.

I WANNA SEE SOME TITS.

You always want to see some tits Brian.

DID YOU KNOW THAT MELINDA MESSENGER WAS BORN ON THE 21ST FEBRUARY 1971 AND GOT HER START IN A WINDOW ADVERT FOR GLEVUM WINDOWS IN GLOUCESTER? THAT SHE APPEARED IN THE DAILY STAR ON THE 28TH JANUARY 1997 AND THEN MADE HER FIRST PAGE 3 APPEARANCE FOR THE SUN THE VERY NEXT DAY ON 29TH JANUARY 1997?

I did not know that.

SHE HAD A CRACKING PAIR OF TITS.

Indeed she did. But do you not think that’s inappropriate to point out seeing as we are currently talking about my early childhood?

HEY! I’M NOT A NONCE!

I know that Brian, it’s just sometimes you come out with some random shit. I wonder what Gladys would say?

FUCK ALL! SHE BINNED ME OFF YEARS AGO.

And why was that?

I DON’T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT.

Sorry, I can tell that’s a touchy subject…

she said i was too loud and too complicated and she hurt my feelings

What was that?

SHE WAS A TOTAL CUNT!

Anyway, moving on! What do you remember about this next bit?

NOT A LOT.

Did you even listen to the playlist?

NO I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO SCATMAN’S WORLD BY SCATMAN JOHN.

That wasn’t the required listening.

BA BO BEY!

Brian…

BOBADDABOP BA BA BA BABABEDEE…

This is not helpful!

BA BO BEY…

Stop it Brian!

CAN’T TELL ME IT’S NOT A BANGER THOUGH!

Hmm… what’s that on your foot?

WHAT! WHERE!?

Looks like a boil or some kind of infection.

WHAT IS IT? DOES IT LOOK BAD? AM I DYING?

I’m just winding you up.

YOU BITCH.

Put your headphones on.

NO.

C’mon, we’ve got stuff to do.

I’VE LOST THEM, I DON’T KNOW WHERE THEY ARE.

You were just listening to Scatman John!?

NO THAT WAS IN MY HEAD ALREADY.

This is like pulling teeth.

OH HANG ON…

What is it?

…I THINK I’VE FOUND THEM.

Great!! Where were they?

THEY WERE DOWN THE SIDE OF MY COMFY CHAIR.

Classic.

I FOUND AN ORANGE TIC TAC N’ALL… DUNNO HOW LONG IT’S BEEN THERE. SHOULD I EAT IT?

Eww, no.

TOO LATE!

Press play Brian.

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BRIAN

Before we begin, let me just introduce you to my brain, Brian. It saves me having to explain a whole bunch later. Brian is… different. He’d prefer it if I called him special, but he’s not that special really. Lots of people have varying degrees of Brian…

VARYING DEGREES OF BRIAN - GREAT BAND NAME!

Err, thanks Brian.

I like to imagine Brian as a balding middle-aged man with a paunch and a baby face. One of those kind of guys who always shuffles round in a duffle coat with an empty Tesco carrier bag. In fact, I imagine him looking a lot like Mr Tumble or Barry from Eastenders…

FUCK OFF! I’M WELL SEXIER THAN THEMS!

(He’s really not).

I don’t know why my brain is a man BTW, he just is. He is supposed to work in conjunction with Gladys, my filter, but she walked out on him a long time ago.

THAT FUCKING BITCH!

So it’s just Brian, all alone on the La-Z-Boy sofa that is my mind, flicking through the thoughts and memories and synapses like a petulant schoolboy trying to find the cable porn previews.

HANG ON… I THINK I JUST SAW A TIT!

Brian is belligerent, dissociative, and occasionally brilliant… but living with Brian is a constant battle as he is So. Fucking. NOISY.

NO I’M NOT!

Brian talks in caps and exclamation points.

AS IF!!!!

He flicks and chatters constantly, mostly when I am trying to sleep.

OR HAVE SEX! HAHAHAHAHAHA!

You see, Brian gets distracted VERY easily. He gets fixated on tiny details. Tiny sounds. Tiny thoughts. He likes to know things. Weird things. Secret things. Any thing, it doesn’t matter, because Brian is a MASSIVE lurker. He LOVES conspiracy theories.

PRINCESS DIANA! LIZARDS! JILL DANDO WAS AN INSIDE JOB!

He consumes words, pictures, private information… all the while listening to the same song on repeat for weeks and months over and over again, like an absolute psycho.

ASS! TITTIES! ASS & TITTIES! ASS ASS TITTIES TITTIES! ASS & TITTIES!

On a good day, Brian’s capacity for knowledge and rapid fire thinking can be immensely beneficial and he is the source of my random sense of humour (among other things). He makes word association, academic tests and comical bullshittery easy. When he gets going he’s like a fucking bullet train, getting from A to Z in the blink of an eye… but before I know it I’m…

STRANDED IN BASINGSTOKE HANGING AROUND WITH ACTUAL GYPSYS!

He’s not the best at thinking things through.

YES I AM! I FUCKING PLANNED THAT!

On a bad day Brian finds himself easily overwhelmed by the most random, basic shit, such as crowds, bright colours, or the ridiculous amount of choice in a supermarket.

HOW MANY DIFFERENT TYPES OF BAKED BEAN DOES ANYBODY NEED!?

When this happens he mentally checks out and fucks off. I find him hours later curled up somewhere weird sucking his thumb like a big fat baby, bemoaning some old Alva skateboard that he lost from his childhood, that he didn’t even use anyway (I think it’s his Rosebud).

SOZ!

He is prone to anxiety and massive meltdowns. His catalogue of phobias is one of the things that keeps him (and me) up all night. They include:

WHAT IF I’M GOING TO DIE RIGHT NOW AND THIS IS IT?

MY FOOT IS HURTING. WHY IS MY FOOT HURTING?

TODAY I HAVEN’T BEEN SICK BUT ONE DAY I WILL BE SICK AND I AM SCARED OF THIS!

THAT TIME I SMILED EARLIER WAS A BAD THING AND EVERYONE IS LAUGHING AT ME!

DID I SAY SOMETHING WRONG IN THAT TEXT CONVERSATION? LET ME READ IT TEN THOUSAND TIMES TO MAKE SURE.

AM I IN A SIMULATION? I’M DEFINITELY IN A SIMULATION!

In order to quieten Brian I have to placate him with lists, and schedules, and Wikipedia, IMDB, or even (god forbid) the Mail Online… which is like his crack… otherwise he goes completely out of control. He wants to know:

WHY? WHO? WHAT IS GOING ON? WHY ARE THEY LIKE THAT? HOW OLD ARE THEY? WHY IS HE ALL WEIRD? WHATS UP WITH HER HAIR? WHO DID THEY SHAG? WHERE ARE THEY BURIED AND HOW DID THEY DIE?

(That last one is actually a book that I bought him.)

To be fair, Brian is the ultimate source of pub quiz knowledge so I can’t hate him too much.

THANKS MATE!

Only thing is, Brian doesn’t remember a lot about my childhood.

BECAUSE IT’S BORING!

For whatever reason my childhood memories are not easy to access as he is more interested in hoarding Super Mario cheat codes or jingles from early nineties Smarties adverts.

HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEWS ABOUT SMARTIES TUBES? THEY’VE GOT COOL BLUE SMARTIES, WEARING SHADES!

Brian has filled my brain with so much junk that it is hard to get the important stuff out. HOWEVER, I have discovered that music fills in some of the blanks and helps to coax him out of his hole.

DON’T CALL ME A HOLE I RESENT THAT!

With Brian in mind I have compiled a Spotify playlist to accompany each chapter to help him be a bit more… forthcoming. I’ll be doing it for every chapter and I recommend that you, dear reader, multitask and listen to each playlist while you read the corresponding chapter for the full immersive experience.

Okay Brian?

OKAY!

Are you ready?

NO!

AH… FFS. HAVE WE REALLY GOT TO DO THIS!?

Yes! It’s important!

ALRIGHT, ALRIGHT… I’LL SEE WHAT I CAN DO!

Press play Brian.

To read the FULL excerpt (and accompanying playlist) please subscribe to my PAID tier for MORE :)

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17th February 2017

I met Vixen in 2002 at a strip club in Docklands called Majingos. It was run by this weird old dude called Alan who was obsessed with cowboy jackets and copper bracelets and we all had to wear these ridiculous beaded and sequinned showgirl gowns that didn’t fit properly and dented our skin. The dresses used to rustle like beaded shop curtains when we danced, which made me laugh as the place tried to sell itself as classy and Art Deco… but the dresses made it sound like a car wash. I remember we were all filmed and interviewed for a Channel 5 documentary when it opened and my takeaway quote was me sitting there looking fat and young (I was 20) with bad teeth, saying “I just love the attention” which I got ribbed for no end by my Uni housemates when the documentary was released.

Vixen was Australian and worked at Majingos with a few (very loud) Australian friends who I found deeply intimidating. It wasn’t until we were summoned together for a group party that we spoke and all I remember about it was that she was extremely friendly and she was wearing a black and white zebra print dress. Back then her stripper name was Storm, which my Dad still calls her (I think he saw her as a bad influence but he always spoke of her fondly). She was the first stripper that I had met who wasn’t the typical cliche. She was intelligent, outgoing and… well, a bit of a hipster. She lived in Bethnal Green with the other Australians and spent her nights off at warehouse parties in Hackney.

I wasn’t exactly new to stripping, I’d started the Summer before while on a break from University (I’d told my Dad I was working at Starbucks) but I was still quite shy. Vixen took a shine to me and suggested that I change my stripper name (previously Amber) to ‘Bambi’ because I couldn’t walk in my stripper heels, which everyone thought was hilarious. She confided in me that she thought the club was “a pile of crap” as none of us were making much money and it wasn’t very long before the whole thing went downhill and the owner started withholding our cash. I just looked the club up and I’m surprised to see the place still exists as it was a bit of a disaster with not many customers.

Disillusioned by the car wash vibes we all moved back to working at Secrets on the Finchley Road. I had worked there before with my friend Nadia and the money was pretty good although competition to get in the Champagne Room was high, especially from the mental “Russian twins” Misha and Sasha, who both looked like subtly differing versions of an emaciated Reese Witherspoon. My stand out memory is that they used to stand back to back in the mirrored corridor that lead onto the main floor mouthing “Fuck me” over and over again to themselves. They were very odd and over-the-top but the punters loved it. They did a lot of porn. Our other main competition was a middle aged lady (I say middle-aged, she was probably about 30 or something but I was so young everyone over 25 was middle-aged to me) called Magda who had the longest labia I had ever seen, it used to hang out the side of her thongs. Again, the punters loved it. She used to jiggle it when she gave lap dances and dangle it by their mouths (which was not allowed, but she always seemed to get away with it).

To enter the Champagne Room punters had to spend at least £100 on a bottle of champagne to get a private booth on the second floor. In all the time that I had worked at Secrets I had never been up there. I was too shy and awkward and the clients that liked me were cheap. When I finally made it to the hallowed second floor as part of a double with one of the Australians (not Vixen) I was absolutely traumatised. Chris Rock may have sang ‘No Sex in the Champagne Room’ but from what I saw, there was A LOT of sex in the Champagne Room, or at least a lot of blow jobs. I was very drunk, so all I remember from being up there was looking around and wondering why all the girls were bobbing their heads, before doing a double dance and being shocked when the girl I was with tried to finger me. I ran out crying and never went up there ever again. I think I left pretty soon after and so did Vixen.

Like all stripper friends our talk mostly revolved around what other clubs were good and where we could go to make the most money ever without having to do anything disgusting and Vixen said she had heard Paris was good. Lap dancing clubs had only just opened over there and there was a weird law (at the time) where they were not allowed to employ French or Eastern European girls as lap dancers. We started to formulate a plan but at the time it seemed pretty impossible. Paris seemed so far away. At the end of the Summer I went back to University and my gig at a local Norwich strip club called Devil’s Advocate, which was crap and not very glamourous but small enough where we could all make a decent amount of money.

I was desperately unhappy at University. I had managed to acquire a bizarre level of infamy where guys wanted to fuck me, girls wanted to claw my eyes out and nobody really wanted to be my friend, when friendship was all I really wanted. I was very chaste back then, in my own strange way. I didn’t sleep with normal people (let alone customers) and was celibate for the whole of my first year, despite being single and having plenty of opportunity… yet everyone at University still assumed I was a slut because of the way I acted and the way that I dressed. Which looking back is ridiculous. I found that if ‘they’ (the marauding horde of University gossip-mongers - mainly the student paper and bored bar staff) couldn’t find actual people that I had slept with they would just make people up. It was something I had struggled with since my first year and obviously then going on to become a stripper in my second year didn’t help my cause, but by then I had given up trying to impress anyone or fight it. I had a rep and that was that. I knew who I was (and who I had slept with - to the point where I had to make a list as ‘proof’ that it wasn’t that many) and all the narrow-minded cunts who delighted in picking me apart could go fuck themselves.

I was always open about working as a stripper, I even had my birthday party at Devil’s Advocate while I was working. I figured that if I tried to hide it, it would give people even more ammo against me, but it did nothing for my social life. Everyone on campus knew who I was but I was never popular, just well known. Having been the nerdy comedic sidekick at school, this new level of attention really confused me. I thought that by reinventing myself as sexy and ‘knowable’ that I would make loads of friends at Uni, but it actually worked against me. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have any friends at all… and the friends that I did have were actually very good ones, but all the public infamy did me in. Guys would leer and sexually assault me, girls would just shout and heckle me for no reason, I was always getting in fights… it was just shit. So I ran away.

I decided to go to Paris for New Years Eve with Vixen, which for some reason really upset my Dad (we fell out for 7 years because of it). By then he had figured out that I wasn’t working at Starbucks and while initially supportive he didn’t want me stripping anymore, especially not in Paris. He remained unconvinced that we were actually going to Paris with legitimate reasons, for a much-needed holiday with one of Vixen’s friends who wasn’t a stripper (another very loud Australian called Megan). We bossed on over on the Eurostar and stayed in bunkbeds in a youth hostel for 20 Euros a night and spent our days sight-seeing. It was great. Then on New Years Eve we ended up in the Hustler Club as all the bars and clubs were full. Vixen worked her magic… and got us jobs starting the next day with full accommodation paid for and everything, which was great as we had ran out of money. So the next day, Megan goes home back to London or wherever she was living and we moved into our new apartment in Balarde. And it was an actual apartment! With a separate living room and kitchen and everything. Pierre et Vacance or some shit.

Every evening a mini bus would come at 7.30pm to pick us up and take us to work in the centre of Paris where we would remain very safe and well protected. The club itself was epic, all purple and red velvet padded walls, pool tables and split level glass stages. It was just off the Champs Elysee and no expense was spared. It looked like what I imagined a strip club should. Garish and opulent with a hint of red light seediness. The first two hours of our shift were spent getting ready in the stripper’s locker room, which is where our house mum would sit. She was a crazy Dutch girl who looked like Bjork and would go out and buy us food while we were dancing. We had showers, lockers, a hair and makeup artist, a masseuse and a massive light up dressing room with those bulbs around the mirrors. It was ace.

The dynamic of the club was such that it really worked to Vixen and I’s advantage. It was mostly British and American girls that worked there which meant that none of the girls (except us!) could speak French and while the French punters didn’t exactly LOVE British girls they hated American girls more and they loved it that we made the effort to speak French so we were very popular. I can’t really remember loads of the day to day of working there, except for the long hours, and I don’t remember any of the private dances (lots of looking at walls) although I do remember quite a lot of the stage dances we did as we would practise them during the day or in the club downstairs when it was quiet.

We danced for Beaver Bucks which patrons had to buy on their way in, they came in 1, 10 and 20 Euro denominations. At cash up the house would take a cut (20%) which they said paid for our accommodation. We were always busy and I have literally never earned that much money from stripping in my life. We were making 3000 Euros a week easy. We worked long hours - 5 days a week 8pm until 6am - and lost our apartment if we missed more than one or two shifts, prostituted ourselves, or turned up too drunk to function. We had zero outgoings, and were living on a diet of bread, cheese and crab sticks, so everything we made we pretty much spunked on Von Dutch trucker hats and stupid outfits. One night me and Vixen decided to dress like Christina Aguilera ‘Dirrty’ twins and hand made our own miniscule outfits (we even bought kneepads). The next night we’d be dressed up as the schoolgirls from the Tatu video with choreographed routines for the dual stages as we danced opposite each other. I don’t think the club knew what to make of us. We had so much fun making our outfits though.

I was very shy and Vixen was extremely outgoing so we made a good team. We were such different people, such opposites, but we made it work to our advantage by playing up to it and becoming exaggerations of ourselves. Vixen was the dark, sultry girl in slutty thigh high boots and I was her ‘good girl’ counterpart in white frills. Sometimes we would swap roles for fun, but I was never very good at being domineering.

Being a lap dancer was an art, one that I struggled to be good at. There was one girl there, Rhiannon, a pretty English rose type whose feature dance was to Coldplay’s Clocks and she just had IT. She wasn’t stunningly beautiful or anything and she didn’t have the big boobs and illuminous tan look that was popular then but she had a way about her that seemed to hypnotise everyone who came into contact with her. All the customers fell in love and we were always trying to figure out what it was that she did or said that made them spend so much money, to the point where we would hover around her while she was working to try and listen in. She talked so quietly that we never found out. She was such an enigma.

I always think that I would be so good at stripping if I ever went back (for which I have no plans to!) because it’s not the dancing that you have to be good at to make money, but the chat. Back then I was too sweet and naive, I was playing at being sexy. In reality I didn’t have a clue about any of it and I think once guys sat me down to talk my innocence was immediately apparent and I actually lost a lot of dances for being ‘too sweet’ or ‘too much like my little sister’. Of course it didn’t help that I looked young and most of my outfits made me look like a child - a look that only seemed to be popular back home with handsy Indian businessmen, much to my distress - but Bambi was my ‘thing’ and I was sticking with it. And in Paris it actually seemed to work! I had a pink cherry print bikini that I wore all the time and whenever I walked past the regulars they would tell me to ‘bounce Bambi bounce!’ and I would jiggle my boobs and usually get a dance right there on the spot.

The music at Hustler Club was so good. It became a bit of a hipster hot spot while we worked there and we hosted fashion shows and after parties for Christian Dior and Andre the graffiti artist. I met Daft Punk, fell in love with French House and my enduring memory of the club is sitting alone on one of the velvet couches, smoking and surveying the club listening to Phoenix’s If I Ever Feel Better and Telepopmusik’s Breathe.

It was aroundabout that same time that electro got big so on our nights off we’d bust on over to Montmartre with Clement the club DJ to some dingy dancehall to dance to literally the best music ever. Our days were spent shopping around Chatelet and Etienne Marcel with our new found French friends John, Leticia and Lenny, whom we’d met at an after hours restaurant called L’Aubrac. My favourite daytime treat was a tomato, basil and mozzarella salad at a cafe in Etienne Marcel, whose decor looked straight out of Clockwork Orange. We must have eaten there on all of our days off! Plus, thanks to Vixen being almost fluent in French, we never spoke to our French friends in English. I still can’t get over that.

Of course Vixen was sleeping with just about all of our friends, as for me - forever the puritan - I was saving myself for a boy back home who actually became my first ever boyfriend, although I did develop a crush on a guy that worked at Energie who looked like Enrique Inglesias, but I was too shy to talk to him.

Back in London, Vixen was ‘dating’ (in the loosest sense of the term) a guy called Wade who at the time was an up-and-coming male model, one of the grungy indie looking ones who was a regular at Trash. He was effortlessly cool (much like Vixen) and very charismatic but to her chagrin they were never a proper couple. I think he might have even had a girlfriend, I can’t remember, but he got us into lots of cool fashion parties, which Vixen loved. I found him extremely intimidating, even though in all my experiences of him he couldn’t have been nicer. He even looked after me when I passed out from flu at Trash and was super sweet. I will always remember Vixen had a picture of him wearing see thru ladies panties on her fridge and I was just so so shocked by it. You could see his knob and everything! God, I was so sheltered back then…

I used to love going out with Vixen as I never knew where we’d end up. She had a knack of getting backstage and knowing what was going to be the next big thing (she wore Ugg boots before anyone had even heard of them and she once had a threesome with TWO of the Kings of Leon brothers before they got massive). She moved to Brick Lane, to a modern apartment with Georgie (another Australian stripper who reminded me of Anna Faris) before moving into an actual circus warehouse or something in the middle of nowhere. We would listen to Peaches ‘Fuck the Pain Away’ before we went out and she would always get me to wear the most incredibly weird outfits. She works in fashion now, which is really not surprising!

I love looking back on those days because they were so insanely innocent and care free. Occasionally our jobs would suck and we’d have a shit day (or week) but for the most part we just did what we wanted, made tons of cash and had so much fun doing it. We had our own little gang, our own little safety net to protect us from all the horrors of the stripping underworld and there was a camaraderie that I’d never really had before (or since). It was such an antidote to the horrible time I was having at University, where girls would regularly spit on me on my way to campus. I honestly did not want to leave Paris but in the end my friend Rose convinced me to return to Uni, and in a way I am glad I did as I finished my education, but I would have quite happily stayed in Paris living like that forever.

It’s the little things I miss, like sneaking in to the Sofitel at 7am after a shift with a bunch of the American girls for the posh all you can eat buffet breakfast and stuffing half of it in our handbags, counting out the vouchers from my garter belt on a good day, the way I would get delirious on the minibus ride home and make everyone laugh, the music… oh god, the music! Even ‘Tree’ the Spanish girl, who got her name because she stomped around the pole like she was a wooden tree.

I miss Tree a lot.

But mostly I miss the feeling that together, Bambi and Vixen could take over the world. Because back then we fucking could have done. We fucking could.

Alex x

I said to myself I would write more this year, which is difficult given the circumstances… but not impossible. I just have to watch my words a little and not go on so much about B.V. and blowjobs, which is hard because those are my specialist subjects. HOWEVER, I won’t be deterred by my current constraints! I have gotten my (crappy, dying) laptop out from storage and I’m back in my favourite writing spot (my bed) ready to spew some “wise words” to hark back to the days of old.

I still have most of my old writing, and I was going to repost some of it but a lot of it is quite painful to read as it is quite clear, in hindsight, that I was living in captivity like some kind of caged animal. A totally oblivious one, but a caged animal all the same. 2025 was… a lot. Things happened that I never thought would and every day felt a bit like some nightmarish version of Groundhog Day except instead of waking up each day to begrudgingly celebrate groundhogs I had to wake up and climb a slippery shit mountain that had been personally tailored to all my worst fears and nightmares… and then wake up the next day and do it all again. It’s made me realise how strong I am, but it was absolutely not my favourite activity of all time. They say 2025 was the year of the snake, all about shedding skins and things that do not serve us, but to me it felt like those big gusts of wind that come out of nowhere and suck out all the air from your lungs.

But I am still here and I am (almost) on the other side. I’m sure at some point I will go into the perils of narcissists, but mid-divorce is probably not the one. What I will say is that I had absolutely no idea. None at all. Their mask was strong, the lies undetectable, and the control so insidiously disguised as care that I never saw any of it. All I knew was the dread and deep seated unease I felt. Years of struggle where everything was apparently my fault, despite me spending every waking hour trying to paper the cracks and keep everything running. I had no idea of the power of the vacuum that I was up against and it feels very freeing to not have to live with that anymore.

It’s only when I look at my old life that I can really see what was lost. How my personality was gradually erased, sanded down over time like the furniture to be more palatable. How small and quiet and housebound I became. How anyone can look at the before and after of that and not see something wrong, I don’t know, but then I guess nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors.

My life now is surprisingly pedestrian. After years of jet setting and modelling shoots I now work long hours in a boring job in a town I never really wanted to call home. It served a purpose while my daughter was small, but now I find it claustrophobic. I think deep down I always did, which I’m guessing is why the personality erasure was so necessary. Everything here is so small: dreams, minds, opportunities, the whole lot… and I am not ungrateful for it - I’ve made some amazing friends here and it has given my daughter the best childhood - but it has never felt like where I belonged.

Today marked a big step towards the future though in that I went back to college and started a new course, and after years of false starts I think I might have found my calling. What makes it sad is that it’s a really obvious choice. The more I learn about it the more I see that I should have done this years ago, but I don’t think I was in the right place. My mind was so checked out and tired and full of fear. I guess divorce and shit jobs serve a purpose sometimes, by releasing extra bandwidth so that you can start to dream again.

Mostly I dream of having fun. Last year there were moments, on hen do’s and dates and nights out, where I started to remember who I was. So I hope to discover more of that person this year. I want to travel and see my friends more and experience life. I used to travel so much when I was younger. I was so fearless and brave and open to adventure, and I lived an incredible life as a result. I look back on those times a lot and wonder how the fuck I did it, but the truth is I was probably still scared I just did all that stuff anyway. So I want to get back to that. Every day I try and do something that scares me, and I truly believe it’s the only way to live… or at least the only way to get over any kind of longterm phobia or anxiety.

As an FYI, my phobia has basically gone now. I still don’t love sick but the obsessive thoughts I had surrounding it have gone. I touch lift buttons and hand rails, I go on the tube, I travel alone, I eat things other people have made, heck, I even regularly eat takeout from a 4* hygiene-rated Chinese. If you had told me that a year ago I wouldn’t have believed you, I genuinely thought that I was stuck with it for life. So there is hope!

I know that 2025 was a bad year for a lot of us, so I think it’s wise (lol) to look at the positives. For me, I worked hard, overcame my phobia, made up with my dad, hit the gym like a demon, and started to get back some of my spark.

Most importantly I showed my daughter how to overcome the worst days with compassion and care. There is no-one more proud of me overcoming the past year than my daughter and our relationship has flourished as a result.

Alex x

I filmed and edited the video myself and I remember it being a very nerve-wracking experience, especially as there were a lot of famous models there like Kate Moss and Helena Christensen. I was dressed very badly and distinctly remember wearing a fake fur cardi from the Grattan catalogue and chunky beige FILA trainers to the event as I didn’t really know what to wear. I filmed 3 catwalk shows (not really sure of the designers, but one was Clements Ribeiro) and my favourite model was one called Chrystelle, who I put on the cover of the video box.

When I showed everyone this video back at school in Coventry, everyone was very impressed! I used to love fashion so much and editing is something I am still very good at.

What a flashback!

Alex x

It reminded me of my daughter’s first day of reception. When I went to pick her up, I could see her little face through the window before she could see me and she had that same look across her face that this boy had, of fear and uncertainty and panic… and I remember panicking too. In an instant I had been transported to when I was the same age, feeling those very feelings, and I got this pang where I remembered how devastating it had felt at the time, because for me, no-one close to me was ever there. Both my parents worked and I was raised by childminders, which was okay I suppose, but I never really comprehended the emotional damage that it did. That when my eyes scanned the playground for someone that I loved it was Tracy, or Karen, or Marion instead - not my own mum or dad. I can’t blame them for it because it was the 80s and we were poor and that’s what working families did. But it made me see how these tiny moments build a bigger picture of safety.

When our eyes met and my daughter’s face relaxed and she smiled and waved… I just… can’t. It’s probably my most formative memory of being a mother, because unlike giving birth (which I don’t really remember), it was the time where I vowed that I never wanted her to feel those bad feelings because of me. I always wanted to be there for her, no matter what I was going through. She’s in Year 6 now and I have kept that promise the best that I can.

And you know, I’m writing this not really knowing where it’s going. Aside from the spectre of divorce, I’ve spent almost the whole of this year overcoming a massive phobia and rebuilding the relationship I have with my parents. Things are going great with both… but I am sad that it has taken me forty years to get here. Obviously there are significant external factors that have influenced the discord, but it wasn’t until my life mirrored my own parents’ that I really started to understand it all.

Before, I prided myself on breaking the chain and doing things differently, and the relationship I have with my daughter is testament to that, but it doesn’t mean it has been easy. I think the secret to being a parent is that everyone tries their hardest. We’re all just out here doing the best we can with what we’ve got. And sometimes what you’ve got isn’t a lot. Sometimes it is just the shittest cards and multiple lifetimes of generational trauma, passed down over and over, like you can feel your great-great-grandma’s aneurism kicking you in the back of your head.

These past twelve years have been the hardest of my life, but I treasure the time with my daughter beyond words. I love seeing her grow and develop into her own person. I love our little chats when we walk to and from school, and I love seeing the intelligent, kind, and confident person she has become.

Today, while preparing for a trip to the cinema with her school she expressed excitement that she would be walking past her house and a wish for me to wave at her from the top window, like I always do. So today I sat upstairs and did some work and waited, before hearing the nervous thunder of three hundred kids making their way up the road. As I saw her, just like reception, I noticed her eyes scan anxiously at the upstairs window to see if I would be there, then her overwhelming relief that I was. The smile and wave I got from her when she saw me waving back made everything I’ve been experiencing recently worthwhile. It absolutely melted my heart.

Being a mother has come at great sacrifice - to my body, to my career, and sometimes my mental health - but keeping that promise to always be there for my daughter is my greatest gift to her.

What You Waiting For? - Gwen Stefani

What You Waiting For? by Gwen Stefani came out over 20 years ago, a fact that in itself I find completely mad because that time has passed so very quickly.

I still remember hearing the song for the first time and how excited the song (and it’s video!) made me feel, and later, how our love for the song was one of the things that bonded me to my best friend Von. We both loved Gwen Stefani and in those early years she seemed like her twin. Von still has the same vibrant kinetic energy.

The song came out just as Stefani was leaving No Doubt and embarking on a solo career and its inner monologue lyrics spoke so openly about her various anxieties about doing so. It has always been such a unique song because it honestly addressed all of the confusion and doubt and misogyny she faced, at a time when female pop stars didn’t often do that. I love the song’s back and forth between the various positive/negative internal voices that accurately portrays what it’s like to be wracked by indecision. There are many songs about anxiety and writers block, but I always think What You Waiting For? is the most creative one.

My favourite version of it is the Jacques Lu Cont remix:

What You Waiting For? - Jacques Lu Cont TWD Remix

Recently, I found out this remix is a mirror of Stevie Nicks’ “Stand Back”. It was completely by accident as I was watching Fire Aid and Stefani introduced Nicks and Stand Back started playing and for a split second I got my hopes up and thought they were going to perform this particular remix before realising it was actually one of Stevie Nicks’ songs. Such a weird coincidence as I LOVE Stevie Nicks, but had never heard this song!

Stand Back - Stevie Nicks

If you remember, Jacques Lu Cont was the pseudonym of Stuart Price, aka Thin White Duke or Les Rhythmes Digitales. I was always a big listener of his (especially Darkdancer) but I remember heavily getting into his remixes around 2006 when I was living in some ridiculously hipster warehouse flat in Shoreditch. I would put his What You Waiting For? remix on full blast while speed walking to castings wearing a bowler hat and braces or some shit. I really genuinely thought I was in A Clockwork Orange in those days.

Back then, the song was one of anticipation and hope, the soundtrack to my dogged rise up the ranks of the modelling industry of old. I was so set in my goal, so motivated, and the moody baseline provided atmosphere while the lyrics spurred me on. The only other song I played more was La Ritournelle by Sebastian Tellier.

The constant ticking clock in the song was a reminder to make the most of my moment while I had it, because life is short! It really is. As you grow older, life just gets faster and faster. Ask anyone who has a child and they will tell you it’s like pressing life’s fast forward button. One minute they’re a baby, and suddenly they are ten, its an absolute mindfuck.

Recently I’ve felt like life has gotten a bit TOO fast and because the meaning of the song can really depend on what mood I’m in, What You Waiting For? has become a bit of a dangerous song to listen to. It can be a call to arms but sometimes, if I am feeling weak, it can feel like a goad or a taunt. In recent weeks and months I have had to stop listening to it, which makes me sad.

I thought I would talk about it because when your mental health is bad, it takes away the things you love and warps them. Instead of seeing the light in something, you see the dark. All of these things that used to give you pleasure bring you pain and cause you to spiral further and it is such a horrible place to be in. A feeling mirrored by the song!

I’m doing a lot better at the moment. I still can’t really write so much - or at least not as much as I would like to - and I am still quite up and down. I’m in therapy and receiving help. When I am a bit better I will write some more about the causes of my current turmoil and what I am doing to challenge my negative thought patterns, which is what a lot of this is.

I am learning that anxiety is negative thought patterns (“like an echo pedal you’re repeating yourself”), while depression is dwelling so much on the past that you can’t see the present. I’m doing a lot better on the dwelling and I have found the best way (so far) to challenge the negative thought patterns is just to say “NO” to them, funnily enough. It really seems to work!

At the weekend I managed to go to my first gig in years without feeling anxiety and it felt so good! I think it helped that it was Limp Bizkit (16-year-old me’s favourite band) and that they were really good. 10/10 experience. I know it is cool to hate on Limp Bizkit but they will always be cool to me.

The reason I mention all this is because the thing that got me through the terror of being on the tube and the big crowds and the strange food and having a few drinks was a line from this song:

”Life is short, you’re capable.”

And you know what? I’m starting to feel like maybe I am.

Alex x

I quit my job last year to open a cake kiosk. If I’m honest I didn’t give it a massive amount of thought, I just needed to get out of what I was doing and the kiosk was close and seemed pretty low risk.

Since opening last summer I would estimate I have had 2 or 3 autistic meltdowns a week, which is an all time record for me, although they have slowed down slightly of late. While I enjoy my job, it is not the easiest thing for an AuDHD perimenopausal woman in their 40s to attempt with no previous experience and it is fucking hard work.

Every day that I am open I wake up at 5am to hand bake the cakes and pastries for the day, only to sit for hours sometimes not selling anything. That’s a lie, I always sell something. There has only been one day since I opened where I sold nothing at all and that was when I opened during a yellow weather warning. It is humbling to go from earning £300 a day to £300 a week (if I’m lucky), but it gets me outside and interacting with people.

Previously I worked solely online and found it lonely and isolating. It has been nice doing something that contributes towards the local community and I’ve been surprised by how quickly everyone has adopted my kiosk into their daily routine. Since I opened I have gotten to know lots of new people and many regular faces. Because the kiosk opens straight onto the main road, it can be a bit of an oddball magnet and I still have to learn how to stem the people who turn up and want to talk for hours about light switches or their love life, but I don’t really mind talking as long as they buy something.

I see my kiosk as a little window onto the life of an average run down UK high street. This end of town is the rough part and is overrun with what I would call “street dwellers” as the majority are not homeless, but alcoholics and drug addicts who like to hang out in the street. They remind me of the gangs of teenagers I hung out with in my youth, troublemakers with nowhere to go, shouting and drinking on benches, puking and groaning and grunting.

I would estimate there are 30 or 40 street dwellers who hang out around my end of the high street regularly. Over the past 6 months I’ve gotten to know a lot of them either through chatting or observing. In my head I’ve given them all nicknames.

Let me introduce…

Happy/Sad Michael - an elderly longterm alcoholic who can either be the happiest or the angriest man in the world, depending on if he has had his medication. Always tells people I make “the best cakes in the world” when he walks by - that’s how I know he’s Happy Michael.

Noisy Nigel - an old school raver who shouts a lot and espouses peace and love, broke his ankle in a “glow stick incident” and is now a drug addict. Can get a bit unpredictable and handsy, is one of the ones I have to be careful of.

Ponytail Man - always carries a 2 litre bottle of Caffeine Free Coke which he pukes up at random, and appears at the kiosk whispering Britney Spears lyrics while being generally very terrifying.

Kieran - a youngish lad who claims he is homeless “by choice” but has a history of mental health problems. Loves Exe coffee and is allergic to cinnamon. Wants to be a chef.

Bareback Carpark Meets - is a bit of a sad one, I’ve never spoken to her but I once saw her on Adultwork selling “bareback carpark meets” in the Wilko carpark when she looked underage. She’s in her early 20’s now and a hardcore junkie who overdoses on the high street quite regularly. Everyone is very concerned about her.

To all of them the high street is their social spot, their place to catch up over a Tennants and a pinch of spice, maybe some brown if they are feeling flush - which I see them do in the alley opposite the kiosk, or sometimes on the steps outside the bank.

Unless they are stood outside my kiosk shouting FUCK OFF at each other all day (which happens) I don’t have a problem with them, they existed here before I had the kiosk and their presence was something I anticipated before I opened. I help them out where I can and there’s only a couple that make me feel unsafe - the rest are quite friendly and will say hello. A lot of them buy my cakes! Which was a pleasant surprise and something I didn’t anticipate. They are all very complimentary about my cakes and honestly their kind words make my day sometimes.

I’m probably weird in that I don’t see drug addiction as a personal failing, I see it as a failing of society as a whole. Where I grew up was rough and my main takeaway from it is that even the scariest people are looking for a friendly face. Sometimes people get dealt shit cards and we can never know what another person is truly going through. A scary exterior is often just a defence mechanism, and from my vantage point I can see that a lot of these people are just massively struggling with their mental health and doing whatever they can to cope.

The fact that all of our towns have so many people who struggle with drugs is a huge indication that our current society is failing. These are the people who fall through the cracks when mental health funding is cut. They are the ones with no safety net and the reason I am kind is because I know that we are not so different, I’m just lucky to have more of a support system.

People love to slag off the top of town, especially online, but not many people spend that much time here. I’ve actually met some really nice people working here and there are so many people actively trying to make this area better. I like my little window and I like the people it looks out on, so far they have all been very kind.

Sim x