As a lady myself, I have fully functioning lady parts; well, some bits have conked out in recent years; as Mr B so thoughtfully put it ‘you’ve run out of eggs’. Indeed, like a supermarket shelf mid-COVID I have zero eggs available. This is a relief to me since it coincided with the number of fucks I had left to give, which has also reduced to zero. There is a direct correlation between the two phenomena.

Regular readers will know (thank you, I am eternally grateful) that I attend a gym. I don’t boast about it, post about it or shove it in your face, because that would be dull, I quietly get on with the job of heaving my sorry ass down there four times a week so perky women with far too much energy for their own good can shout instructions at me as I sweat like the menopausal woman I am and then feel smug about it afterwards. Whether it’s doing me any good or not, who knows.

This gym is attended by a few people I know. Edinburgh is a village and the only city I’m aware of where you bump into people you know in the heart of the city. Maybe the Nordic countries have a similar vibe, but you can bet your bottom dollar that when I feel adventurous and bravely go beyond Morningside on the number 11 bus or cycle on Svetlana (my sturdy electric bike), I’ll meet someone I know. The gym is the same, except the people I meet in the changing room are often naked.

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Perfectly acceptable attire for a chat

Thankfully, it’s a normal gym where only actual women are allowed in the women’s changing room (radical, I know!) so there’s no need to worry myself about viewing men’s dangly bits in there. Christ, even the thought of that makes me feel a bit sick. Anyway, there I am minding my own business, preparing for my half hour circuits class torture and I see Fiona in all her glory. She’s one of my dog walking friends and is obsessed with the gym. She goes everyday for at least an hour or two. She has no discernable expression as she gets the same injections Demi Moore has which leave both ladies in question looking permanently surprised with a shiny forehead. I’ve been watching Landman recently and I’m constantly astounded at Demi’s lack of emotions. In fact, it’s taken me until Season Two to realise it was Demi Moore playing the role of an oil baron’s wife, her face was so frozen solid. So, now I’ve seen her fake boobs (not Demi’s; Fiona’s) in real life and it’s not comforting, I can tell you. Where do you look when you’re having a chat with someone with their tits out? I have no idea, I had to keep focusing on twiddling my locker padlock to avoid seeing anything else.

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Then there was the larger than life woman who had thoughtfully showered and changed into her jeans, but for reasons only best known to herself had not put anything on her top half, including a bra. Is it too much to ask to keep your boobs to yourself when you’re blowing your hair dry? Last week Mrs Skinny Lady pranced about completely starkers as she weighed herself on the scales in the changing room. Firstly, why are there scales in the changing room? This is just cruel. Secondly, would putting on a pair of knickers (the considerate thing to do) whilst you weigh yourself going to make a blind bit of difference to the reading on the scale? Oh, no, Mrs Skinny Knickers is thinking to herself ’I’m half a gram over because of my teeny tiny g-string pants’, pants, which I might add would be welcome in a space rocket because they have zero weight or substance. I used to wear such teeny tiny pants and now I look at them and wince. I made a brief foray into grown up lady thongs last year and immediately regretted my decision. I don’t know what I was thinking, perhaps I’d overdone the HRT and was feeling youthful again, suffice to say these grown up lady knickers have remained in my drawer after their first few overly optimistic outings. The fidgeting, rearranging and general feeling of being sliced in two was too much to bear.

There’s a lawyer I know who uses the gym too. She has a proper, grown-up job with serious matters to attend to and she happens to be the mum of one of my kid’s friends. This gives me twice the discomfort when I see her naked in the changing rooms. Not only do I know her through business, but I’ve spent time with her and her husband socially (to be fair, it was only once because Mr B and I realised that watching films about climbing with them at a festival of climbing films was possibly the dullest thing we’ve ever experienced - I had to sit next to the enthusiastic couple and pretend I was enjoying myself, whilst Mr B had craftily managed to sit further away so they couldn’t see him yawning or muttering ‘this is shite’ under his breath). She’s there most Fridays, skipping about brandishing her tiny camping outdoorsy towel (so aligned with her climbing film obsession), which leaves nothing to the imagination. We chat about our kids, what they’re up to whilst she dries herself and I concentrate on keeping eye contact so I can’t see any of her bits. When I relayed this recently to Mr B, his response was ‘so you’ve seen Mandy’s mum’s minge?’ Thankfully, not, but I fear it’s only a matter of time.

Are men this funny about seeing their friend’s dangly bits? Do they check each other out in the gym changing room or are they equally embarrassed as I am? Do I feel this way because I’m over 55, a female (a genuine, bona fide one with actual XX chromosomes, not the other ones with beards and frocks) or is it because I’m British and we’re not great with nudity? On the beach in Spain this year, there were plenty of ladies going topless, happily bobbing along chatting to their pals without a care in the world. Mr B, myself and our youngest daughter even kayaked out (I know, can you imagine me kayaking?) to a nudist beach one year whilst we were on holiday in the Med. We didn’t know it was a nudist beach until we landed our kayaks (I can tell you’re impressed) on the shoreline and did our best Robinson Crusoe impression before spotting quite a few naked men, dangling away without a care in the world. We hop footed it back into our kayaks, paddling as fast as we could towards the safety of a clothed beach. Our daughter was about fifteen at the time, so you can imagine this was her worst nightmare. It’s not as if we’re French for goodness sake. My auntie and uncle are nudists, they holiday in France. The less said about that the better. I do not want that image in my head thank you very much indeed.

Please don’t think I’m a prude or a Puritan (their austere attire wouldn’t match my blingy nails); I went see a show called Cunt at the Edinburgh Fringe recently, so that’s not the problem. I’ve also seen nudity in adult circus and cabaret acts, again, no problem at all. They were all strangers though. I didn’t have to meet any of them afterwards and chat about Waitrose or our children. For me, there’s something disturbing about knowing what someone’s bits look like and making small talk with them the next day. How do doctors and nurses do it? How do the ladies who perform Brazilian waxes switch off at night? They’ve seen far too many fandangles in various states of repair to be able to sleep properly, surely?

The female form is beautiful. I appreciate art, photography and even the work of Tracy Emin which gets a bit technical in it’s foo foo detailing at times. It’s just when a pair of puppies or a knicker hamster is thrust in front of my face in real life that I get a bit awkward and embarrassed. I don’t know where to look or how to respond, especially when it’s someone I know and chat to in the outside world. Maybe it’s because I have such a visual memory, I cannot unsee what I’ve seen. I can’t watch horror films for this reason, the images stay with me for decades, unless I NLP myself, which I do if I’ve seen something by accident. Luckily, I know how to wipe the movie running in my head, maybe it’s time to do that with the naked ladies and their hairy clam shells, slash bosoms. Bless ‘em, it’s my issue, not theirs. Dangle your bits all you want, don’t mind me.

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Thank you for the two lovely people who pointed this fact out to, I’m delighted you did because I’d got to the age of 55, breastfed three children and hadn’t realised that female mammals produce milk for their young. Honestly, where would I be without such helpful souls on Substack?

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It seems that cow’s milk has become a hot potato of a subject. I was unaware that it was until I posted about a young woman (I think she and her friends work at a very well known business networking site as the coffee shop I was in was directly opposite it) declared to her chums as they wandered out with their chai latte, macchiato, puccino, cold milk, Amerciano macha’s that she no longer drank oat milk because it was ‘soooooooooo’ bad for the environment. I did not get this memo and said as such on my note on Substack, bravely suggesting that I detested the flavour and much prefer coo, as they say in Scotland.

I inherited this from my mum; she used to collect them. She was a Taurus, so I think that explains her obsession with cows.

I suspect it’s climate-related. You can guarantee four things in this crazy mixed-up world we live in that will get people’s knickers in a serious twist: these are, in no particular order, Trump/Democrats, Israel/Palestine, men pretending to be women and the climate heating, cooling, changing, being too dry, too wet or stormy (pick the one that’s currently trending). It seems as though the milk you drink has fallen foul of one of the secret laws of the universe, and if you aren’t aware of this particular secret law, you are deemed stupid or perhaps evil in some way.

I’ve got a confession to make at this point, so sharpen your pitchforks and light those torches; not only do I drink cow’s milk, heaven forbid, go and grab the nearest crucifix to save my poor, deluded soul, but I also use beef tallow on my skin. It’s something I’ve recently discovered, and it’s bloody marvellous. No, I don’t smell like a lardy chippy; the nice people in Perthshire, Scotland who produce it add honey and mandarin to it so it smells delicious. No doubt someone is going to tell me off for eating honey and explain to me, because I’m congenitally stupid, that bees make honey for themselves and not for people to spread on their toast or dry skin (I’ve been a sufferer of dry skin all my life and the menopause has made it a zillion times worse). If we’re going to play that game, I will ban bees stealing pollen from the flowers in my garden, and whilst we’re at it, put restraining orders on the birds who nick the worms.

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The other night, at a lovely Italian steak restaurant in London, I mopped up hot beef tallow with my ciabatta bread, and it was the most delicious thing I’ve eaten in a long time. I swiftly followed that with a slim slice of medium rare topside which had come from cows who lived in the Lake District. I’m passing the Lakes on the train right now; maybe I’ll be able to see one or two of them before they head to the abattoir. I eat veal; it’s delicious, and for the squeamish amongst you, it’s bred humanely in the UK and helps make the most of the useless bulls that are born. Finally, I have no less than two leather jackets and a variety of shoes which are all made out of cows. I possess a leather sofa at home and take two tablets full of bovine collagen each day. I also eat pork, lamb, venison, partridge, pheasant, wood pigeon and rabbit - I may as well get the entire list out in the open; better hung for a sheep than a lamb, as they say.

I can hear some of you cry ‘oh, but the farty cows are spoiling the planet!’ Yes, they probably are - don’t send me articles because I won’t read them. Our obsession with meat is destroying rainforests; probably. My milk drinking will bring on Armageddon; maybe it will, maybe it won’t. Who knows? Will your oat milk drinking bring about the end of the world? Maybe? None of us knows for sure. Will the goats and ewe’s milk feta cheese obsessed Greeks destroy the planet or perhaps it will be the Mongolian’s preference for Yak’s milk that will end it all. It’s funny how people across the globe use the nearest source of milk in their diets, isn’t it?

Do I care about Mother Nature? Yes, I literally hug trees (I’m a forest bathing practitioner) and share the joy of her delights with many people because I believe she is a source of healing. I also believe it’s our disconnection from Mother Nature that is the cause of most of our mental disorders.

Here’s what I believe about Mother Nature. She’s a great deal smarter than you or I. When I leave my garden alone for two minutes, she takes over; she creeps into every nook and cranny, planting seeds, bringing animals and filling the vacuums. It doesn’t take long for Mother Nature to take back what rightly belongs to her. Check out the hidden cities in the Amazon for further proof, and Danny Boyle’s masterpiece “28 Years Later”, which, for the enlightened, is not a zombie film, but rather a commentary on Mother Nature and how she will always win. Humans will eventually become extinct, a mere blip on the timeline of the universe, less than a millisecond in the grand scheme of things. We are animals, and one day, we will go the same way as the dinosaurs; it’s arrogant to think otherwise. Whether that’s by our own fuck whittery when we accidentally give the robots the keys to the red button or a natural process of decline (the global population is set to start falling very soon and already has in some countries) Mother Nature will breathe a sigh of relief and say to herself, ‘Well, that was a bit of a disaster wasn’t it, I won’t be trying that experiment again, I gave them a lovely green and blue planet to play in, and they massively spoiled it with their obsession with cow-based products. I'll stop at chimpanzees next time; at least they don’t get much further than using sticks to poke ants.’

Mother Nature is way bigger than us. She was around a very long time before we appeared and she will be around a very long time afterwards. Our existence on this planet is temporary and tenuous. She’s got this, whilst we, quite clearly, don’t have a clue about anything if we feel the need to argue about what milk a total stranger puts in their coffee. Whilst we sit about waiting for whatever comes next, can we please love each other no matter what milk we choose to drink? Don’t hate me for drinking cow’s milk; instead, hate me for driving a Tesla (that places me firmly in the 7th circle of hell), reading The Spectator, being a fan of Douglas Murray and voting Conservative (there are mitigating circumstances; neither my Labour MP nor my Lib Dem MP know what a woman is, so I couldn’t vote for them and I can’t vote SNP because they’re mad, which left me with Reform or the Tories, I chose the lesser of two evils). Not your usual tree-hugging, psychic, Tarot-reading type, am I? That’s my point. Judging people based on a single behaviour is silly. We’re all muddling through, doing the best we can with what we’ve got; let’s just hold hands and sing kumbaya.

Next week…..a pleasant trip to a new coffee shop in Bruntsfield, which is Morningside adjacent, so the rents are slightly cheaper.

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I saw this in a shop the other week and liked it immediately

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I don’t know about you, but I don’t know anyone who hasn’t at some point in their lives had a menty B of some kind or another. I know I’ve had several; some of them have been spectacular, leaving me rocking gently in the corner wondering why the world was so full of twats who insisted on inflicting their twattishness on me. It’s cost me an absolute fortune in flotation tanks, NLP, Transactional Analysis, Reiki, massage, cranial sacral healing, Tarot readings, psychics and now forest bathing to cope with life’s ups and downs, anything to avoid a tablet. Regular readers of my nonsense will know that my uncle Victor has had schizophrenia since his early twenties and has been sectioned several times in his life due to his major menty B episodes. He’s too old now to bother having psychotic episodes these days and prefers to sit in his chair in the care home, eating chocolate and watching the cricket.

The one thing that kept me going, my uncle going, and other people I know going was humour. It was never skirting round the issue, carefully selecting well-chosen words that may or may not offend; no it was being honest, open and up front about the shit show that was happening in their life then and giving them hugs, cups of tea, biscuits and a good laugh to take their mind off things whilst they sought out the help they needed. Not once did I wonder whether I should call the weather crazy, mental or deranged in their presence. In fact, saying things like ‘the sky looks a bit bonkers today, a bit like you in fact’ brought a smile to their faces and helped them realise that this too shall pass.

It’s terribly fashionable to have a late diagnosis of something with lots of letters in it or even a ‘tism if you’re Robbie Williams (how predictable - I think the entire world knew he was special before he paid someone a small fortune to tell him), I’ve decided to tell everyone I have a late diagnosis of halitosis, then sit back and watch the utter confusion on their concerned and or bemused faces. I once sat having a coffee with a thirty-something-year-old bloke who told me he had a test for ADHD coming up, so I asked him what he would do if he passed. He looked at me sideways, deciding whether he ought to be offended or to laugh. I asked him if passing the test meant he got extra time to sit his exams or a special laptop for the classroom? At this point he could tell I wasn’t taking the situation seriously enough and the coffee chat came to an abrupt end.

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Some of you might be wondering whether I’m a heartless cow-bag who lacks empathy, and some of you might have a point; however, Mr B has a nephew and great-nephew who both have severe autism and are non-verbal. This is serious stuff, which heavily impacts the quality of life for the lads and their families; it’s funny how you don’t see them plastering their condition all over socials, isn’t it? No, that’s because it’s life-altering in ways which you or I cannot possibly comprehend. I’m sure Mr Williams has had his moments, as have his family. He reminds me of the bloke who founded Brew Dog, James Whatshisname, who was outed as a twat by ex-employees (despite telling the world how amazing his company culture was), which then led to him announcing on LinkedIn that he had recently been diagnosed with ADHD, giving him massive himpathy points so we might forget he was actually just a plain, old-fashioned twat.

At the age of thirty, forty, fifty or sixty, what the hell are you going to do with your late diagnosis? The main thing that appears to happen is that, like James Whatshisname (he married that posh woman called Tofu or Toffee who is friends with Boris Johnson’s dad) proudly announced on LinkedIn so that the world now finally understands why you’re a pain in the arse and always late for everything, except that’s not what the comments say, is it? No, we must offer sympathy and love and never take the piss or mention schizoid cloud formations, for that would be offensive to cloud formations. If you’ve reached that stage in life and managed to hold down a job, set up home, maybe have a family and take some qualifications, then why does it matter that you’re ‘special’? You have clearly found ways to cope with your specialness; it might not have been easy, but you have done it. Here’s the thing: no one copes well with life. Life is an utter bastard at times; it’s really hard for so many reasons. We all forget stuff, double-book ourselves, turn up late, early, adjust pictures on the walls when we walk into strangers’ homes (that might just be me), hear colours, visualise stuff (or not), hear ourselves chatter nonsense, dream weird shit, insist on folding the toilet roll in a neat triangle and obsess about the quality of the lawn (this is Mr B’s favourite topic). We’re all loons in some way. I’m sorry to break it to you; none of us is that special.

My yomping outfit from my walk through the Cheviots, Mr B thinks I look special

I just can’t be arsed anymore. It was mildly interesting at first; now it’s just dull. We’re all fucked up in one way or another; take your pick….you can pretend to be a cat every third Tuesday of the month, and people will create a special flag for you. Jeff in IT can turn up to work one day in a brightly patterned mini-dress, navy blue court shoes, sporting a blond wig and a touch of pink lippy and none of us are supposed to say anything, we must accept his new identity and call him Daphne, but only on every other Wednesday because that’s when he feels more like Daphne than any other time of the week.

If Jeff wants to pretend to be Daphne, that’s his lookout; I’m genuinely happy for him. Thankfully, we live in a world (Western Liberal Democracies, obviously not the Middle East where Jeff and Simone would be brutally beaten, possibly killed or at the very least imprisoned) where Jeff is allowed to be Daphne and Simone is allowed to pretend to be a cat. I don’t care; it’s none of my business. What I am allowed to do is say that I think that’s weird because, quite frankly, it is bloody odd, so odd in fact that I wouldn’t leave either of them in charge of anything too important. Call me old-fashioned, call me a bigoted, nasty lady, or even a Karen, but I don’t think pretending to be a cat or part-time woman is a sign of stable mental health. I exaggerate for comic effect - I have to put that in because too many people take things literally these days - but you get my drift.

So, we come full circle. If Simone the part-time cat and Jeff, the part-time woman, could only laugh at themselves once in a while, have a little chuckle with their colleagues about the trials and tribulations of eating Dreamies for your tea or navigating a beard whilst applying foundation, then we’d all have a great deal more fun around the office. Instead, we have to describe the weather as stormy (does that upset people with anger issues?) with patches of sunshine. Imagine if we all complied with the nonsense, taking every word very seriously indeed? What a dull world that would be. Live and let live, have a laugh; if you can’t laugh at yourself, it’s a piss poor doo, and you need to have a word with yourself pronto.

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I once had the misfortune of reading the equality and diversity questions featured in the online application form for Cineworld. It was when my youngest daughter was applying for part-time jobs and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The list was extensive and included terms I’d never heard of, nor did I want to hear of them. To say the form was intrusive is an understatement, it was positively perverse, bordering on perverted. Can anyone tell me how being ‘Objectosexual’ relates to checking cinema tickets or serving popcorn?

Screenshot of the Cineworld application form

So when Mr B and I attended a stand up comedy show and the comedian correctly identified a polyamorous lady in the audience who then declared herself to be a demisexual, I was slightly more prepared than he was.

“What the fuck is that?” He enquired in his best indoor voice.

“It’s where you might be in a relationship with more than one person at the same time and they all know about it and are fine with it.” My explanation was as Gen X as I could make it since Mr B’s business doesn’t even have a website and he still uses a fax machine.

“Like if we brought in an extra pair of hands in a bedroom scenario?” He asked.

“Yes, something like that.” I replied, desperately trying to work out what a demisexual was because I knew what was coming next.

“What does the demisexual bit do?”

By this time, I’d Googled the term and was ready to explain.

“It’s when you’re not sexually attracted to someone until you have formed a very deep relationship with them first.” I don’t use Google, they know too much, my web browser of choice is Brave, which is marginally less evil and slightly less biased.

“Oh, like a normal person then.”

“Yes, pretty much.” My mind briefly drifted back to the Italian water polo player of my singleton years whose name I never learned as it occurred to me that I could definitely rule myself out of being demisexual.

“That’s how we met though. I’d known you for a few years and then we got together.” Mr B is such a keeper.

“Yes, it’s how most people end up in long term relationships.” I replied patiently.

“Why do they need a label for it?” He asked in all innocence.

My heart sank as I wondered how to tackle the modern phenomenon of labelling every tiny weeny aspect of human frailty so that something can be prescribed for it and everyone within a twenty mile radius can know about it.

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Human beings have been messing about with dressing up, dressing down, cross dressing, pretending, play acting, experimenting with different kinds of relationships and more since they were living in the forests. The youngsters at the comedy show were extremely proud of their labels though. I discovered later, through a mutual friend that they all had ADHD as well as being in a throuple whilst simultaneously being demisexual. How many points can you get in Gen Z Top Trumps for that little combo I wonder? What was fascinating was how many of their ADHD symptoms were synonymous with being a young, selfish, idealistic person with no responsibilities, children of their own, a mortgage or self-awareness. Some described how they were always late, disorganised, forgetful and prone to bouts of dark feelings, all of which pretty much summed up everyone I knew in my mid-20’s, including myself. Due to lack of prescription drugs available to me at that time, I resorted to masking my ‘symptoms’ with wine, overwork and marrying a complete twat, having two children, getting divorced and then getting my shit together. Strangely, most of the ‘symptoms’ disappeared, although I still double book myself, forget what day it is and turn up to things a week early.

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I’ve since been reflecting on the polyamorous bit. I felt sorry for the young woman in the throuple because she has two blokes to contend with. That’s two lots of explaining how the tumble dryer works, two lots of toilet seats to put down and two lots of egos to pretend to massage. My brain immediately had a million questions about who has sex with who and when. Do they do it all at once, form an orderly queue or draw straws? Do the men sleep with the men or is it all about the lady parts? Because I take my role here on Substack as a conduit for useful nonsense seriously, I asked the mutual friend of the throuple how it all works in practice.

Apparently, they started out as a normal heterosexual demisexual couple. So far so good. Then, somehow the other bloke found his way into their relationship and the throuple was born. I’m a bit sketchy on how that happened, but we’ll have to assume that bloke number one was totally cool with his long term girlfriend inviting an extra bloke into the bedroom arena. The woman and bloke number two are in the first exciting throws of a romantic relationship, so bloke number one is now sleeping in the spare room, presumably, unconcerned about the activities happening in the next room. Bloke number two looks like he’s the cat that got the cream and quite frankly, the woman looks exhausted.

I just couldn’t be arsed with two blokes. I don’t know many women who could. It’s hard enough finding one you want to spend time with, let alone two. Can you ask a fourth or fifth into the arrangement or is that frowned upon? Can you ask a lady to join? Do you always need an odd number? Who sleeps on the damp patch? So many questions that will never be fully explained.

At some point in time, hopefully in the not too distant future, all this labelling nonsense will cease and we can all return to being messy people with interesting habits. People are beautiful, wonderful creatures and I love pretty much all of them (except the twats) and I’d much prefer to call them by their name than use a label made up by psychologists to justify their existence and promoted by pharmaceutical companies so they can keep people on drugs indefinitely. We’re all basket cases who come in a variety of shapes and forms, let’s just accept that and crack on.

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Locals look upon them with pity.

Shitfaced Shakespeare are performing Hamlet this year

We know as soon as the luvvies arrive, the weather turns nasty. They will have come from the deserts of Essex, wearing shorts and t-shirts, perhaps even a cropped top, expecting glorious sunshine, blue skies and heat. What they will experience is the icy cold blast of the misty haar as it creeps slowly across the city from the Forth of the Firth, wrapping everything in a damp cloak of gloom. They will be lucky to see their hands in front of their faces, let alone the sun during a seven-night stay. What they don’t know is that when September arrives, the sun reappears and we are back to taps aff and BBQ’s in The Meadows.

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Morningside has been known to partake in the festivities from time to time. The Canny Man’s pub (see previous Substack Fur Coat and Nae Knickers) was once a Fringe Venue, which means random comedians turn up, do a set in the corner of the pub, get glared at by locals and sit down again before they start crying into their pints.

Not this year though, no, us Morningsiders will have to venture on the no. 11 bus all the way into town to watch the Lady Boys of Bangkok strut their funky stuff on the stage whilst miming gay anthems or witness the full frontal nudity beneath the circus tent in George Square at the adult circus which is held each year. Mr B and I have been a couple of times; it’s absolutely fascinating to watch adults parade about the stage half naked whilst eating fire. At what point in someone’s life do they go ‘I know what I’ll do for a living…..I’ll eat swords, whilst wearing a see-through leotard, dance round a pole, set fire to my nipples and live my life in dodgy hotel rooms with a troupe of gay men who like nothing more than taking all their clothes off on stage and wiggling their willies at 100’s of people every night. It’s an interesting life choice.

Then there are the media types. You can tell who they are immediately because they’re extremely loud. Everyone within a five-mile radius can hear them talk about themselves endlessly, right down to how many pieces of roasted tofu they’ve eaten that day. They’re from North London, which as we all know is a special kind of place, reserved for the twattishyly gifted. Occasionally, there is a Mancunian voice that can be detected amongst them, because someone from Media City in Salford has been put in charge of something ‘regional’ or ‘urban’ for the sake of diversity and inclusion. My heart would normally sing at the sound of a fellow Manc swearing their heads off, telling the poncy Londoners how things really are, but these media types have been carefully selected from a special breed of Mancunians who went to posh schools and read English at Cambridge. In other words, they’re still twattishly gifted, just with a different accent.

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Not to worry, the sales of kombucha in Edinburgh are about to go through the roof with vegan cafes busy rubbing their hands together with glee as they add another fiver to the overinflated price of a coffee made from damp moss and coconut matting. The luvvies adore that shit; they lap it up with gusto, exclaiming how provincial everything is, storing up little stories for their dinner parties later in the year when they’re safely back in their North London bubble away from people who speak funny.

Regular readers know that we have posh types in Edinburgh too. These people go to the actual festival. It took me decades to realise that when posh people in Edinburgh talk about going to see something at the festival, they mean a proper play or an opera, not just watching Jason Byrne have a mental breakdown on stage each year, which is what Mr B and I particularly enjoy. I was once collected by a posh woman (some of them like to collect interesting people and invite them for ‘supper’ so they can find out what life is like without a trust fund) who kindly invited me and a friend of mine (he was living in a van at the time, so she must have got extra points for adding him to her collection, he was also brought up in a council house by a disabled single mother, so she will have top trumped all her posh mates by adding him to her collection) to an interpretative dance show about endometriosis. Now, I don’t know about you, but the idea of watching endometriosis through the medium of dance is about as appealing as poking my eyes out with a hot stick. My mate and I looked at each other, grinned and decided since our adoptive posh lady was paying, we’d give it a shot. She’d just given her wayward adult son £100k to bail him out and was explaining to us how she simply wasn’t going to give him anymore money. Poppet.

It was a surprisingly good show. The Australian professional dancer who performed it was excellent. There was a lot of red fabric wafting about the stage, as you might imagine, but it was moving, sensitive and powerful. I felt like I’d been educated, as did my mate. That same year, I had also been added to another collection of interesting people by a different posh woman. She invited me to the Fanny Physio from Fife’s Show, performed by Gussie Grippers, AKA Elaine Miller. It was all about the vagina, and I learnt a lot, it seems, that even though I have one, there were mysteries to be unveiled. Elaine is hilarious and is a highly qualified physio who specialises in pelvic floor health for women, particularly after childbirth and during peri-menopause. She was the woman who stood up in Holyrood and flashed her merkin as the self-ID act was being debated. I adore her; she’s very, very funny. By the way, liking her is why I got blocked by someone this week on Substack. There’s nowt so queer as folk, as they say.

Elaine Miller, AKA Gussie Gripper, dressed up as a vagina for her Fringe Show

So far, Mr B and I only have Jason Byrne booked. I’m tempted with a show called Cvnty and of course Shitfaced Shakespeare; they’re doing Hamlet this year, which should be fun. If you haven’t seen Shitfaced Shakespeare, please go. One member of the cast has to get pissed whilst they’re performing, which leads to a lot of ad-libbing, falling over and general hilarity. The cast take turns to get drunk, so none of them ends up with alcohol poisoning at the end of the month.

I am about to cycle into town and discover what delights await me this year at the festival. Wish me luck.

Postscript: I was not disappointed. I encountered a quintet walking down Queen Street, carrying their instruments, dressed as trees and ants, complete with branches sticking out of their heads.

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The Cop and The Clough were my playgrounds. It was the 1970’s and I was living in a red brick terraced house in North Manchester with my older brother and my mum. Our back yard was a strip of concrete, with a single hydrangea growing in the darkest, dampest corner of the yard. Each summer, it would bloom showing off its gaudy bright blue showy flowers. Every time I opened the back door, I noticed it as I ran past, eager to meet my friends for a summer evening full of mischief.

We set fire to the grass, built dens out of sticks, jumped the untidy stream and spent hours wandering aimlessly, running, cycling and swinging from homemade rope swings in the trees. We dodged the ‘bad men’ who lurked in the bushes, we discovered a stash of beer and cider hiding under the bridge, which we stole and duly drank whilst playing on the neatly mown, sterile cricket field behind the huge Psychiatric Hospital.

I took the local wilderness for granted, until it was abruptly taken away from me. My days of playing out until it got dark, having freedom to roam, ride my bike to the next town and hang around the Cop were over. We moved to South Manchester when I was thirteen which took me away from everything that was familiar to me, everything that I loved. What I hadn’t known then, was that it cut me off from nature in ways I wasn’t aware of until recently.

My life shrunk to nothing. I had no friends to hang out with, nowhere to play or be free, I was stuck indoors, studying, frustrated that I had lost my freedom. It didn’t take long before I was sitting in people’s kitchens, drinking, smoking and taking drugs. Mild drugs, never hard drugs, but enough to find myself in dodgy pubs in Moss Side at sixteen scoring eighths of dope from Rastafarian men.

Books and a woman called Ann saved me. She was the mum of my long term boyfriend and she took me under her wing. We spent our weekends playing on the beach in Abersoch, walking along the sandy coves of North Wales and sitting outside in their beautiful garden, staring at the clear blue skies. It was a return to nature of sorts, her love healed the wounds of my teenage years, leaving deep scars from the battles with my own mother and the disassociation from my body.

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Joining the dots backwards, I can see now why I chose York for my university years. It was the only university I visited with a lush, green campus, student accommodation nestling around large human-made lakes full of geese, ducks and swans. I adored walking to tutorials whilst passing the birds, particularly in spring when they were nesting. A full blown breakdown at the end of my first year, told me for the first time that I wasn’t listening to my body. It decided to create a level of exhaustion within me that’s hard to explain. Every limb felt like lead, my breath was short and uneven and my head felt as woolly as the clouds. I retreated to my brother’s house, having nowhere else to call home and lay on his sofa for two weeks, staring out of the patio doors onto a tiny triangular piece of grass and a single sapling tree. I still hadn’t made the connection to my wellbeing and nature, so the grind continued.

The answer, I thought, was in working harder. Keeping going. Taking the next temp job, whilst studying, graduating, buying a house, moving in with my next boyfriend and starting a career all seemed like the logical next steps; until they weren’t. Things kept falling apart, I kept forging ahead; a new boyfriend, another promotion, a move to Edinburgh where I didn’t know a soul. A high pressure sales job in recruitment, my first management role with zero support and a bullying boss. I wondered why I would be laid low for a week at a time with strange viruses, completely exhausted and unable to go on. Yet, I went on. The flotation tank sessions helped get me through the worst of times, the occasional trip to the Botanic Gardens helped too. Finally, I got married, moved to the countryside and had children. My solace was pushing the pram along the quiet country lanes, picking ripe cherries in the summer, blackberries in the autumn and finally having a garden of my own. Something drew me to the soil. In quiet moments when my first daughter was sleeping in her pram, I’d wheel her outside whilst I tended to a tiny patch of ground I’d cleared of turf. I planted crocuses, daffodils and tulips, guarding them fiercely from the ravenous pigeons who love nothing more than crocus stamens as a snack. My hands felt good in the rich, dark soil. I often sat outside during the long summer evenings, listening to the birds, the small stream behind our house and watching the huge trees at the top of the grassy banks towering over our cottage, as they waved in the breeze. If only I had listened to nature, if only I had been connected to my body, the way I am now, I might have noticed the warning signs. My husband had only hit me once, it was early in our relationship, during those early months living in Edinburgh when I couldn’t stop crying, but didn’t know why. His strike was hard, I didn’t register it properly because I was so shocked and like all abusers, he apologised, showed great remorse and shortly afterwards asked me to marry him. At 24, I thought I probably should say ‘yes’ as no one else was likely to ask. When the children were 3 and 6, I escaped. He’d been drinking for years and his controlling behaviour had worsened. For the next three years, we lived in a tiny flat in Edinburgh, my bedroom overlooking a beautiful shared garden. The children played out, enjoying the freedom they hadn’t enjoyed in the countryside. They climbed the stone walls between each tenement’s garden, found other children in other tenements to play with and I found time to sit on the bench in the garden, watch the flowers grow, not yet feeling confident enough to help out with planting or weeding. I thought that was for other people, people who knew more than me.

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