Project Back Rest

In June last year I decided to conduct an experiment. I was under the impression that my face was starting to look a bit too jowly for someone of 25 - perhaps an illusion triggered by my jaw line having a prominent dent in it on both sides (I don't know whether everyone has this but I'd really rather tell myself it's caused by a defective jaw than saggy skin) so I decided to embark on a not particularly fun experiment...

I sleep on my front and very occasionally on my side. I cannot get to sleep when lying on my back and so naturally I decided to start sleeping on, yes you've guessed it, my back to see if it would help the jowl issue. I also thought maybe it might make my boobs bigger as surely sleeping on top of them just crushes them into nothingness(?). This theory stemmed from when I was younger and a friend of mine who had bigger boobs than me always slept on her back. I often wondered if the two went hand in hand and now I was going to find out.

At the time I was sharing a room with one of my flatmates (she told me that I often laugh in my sleep and that once she heard me singing in it) and I asked her how she prefers to sleep. She was telling me that one of her favourite positions is where you're on your front but with one leg bent - imagine a rock-climbing position, if you will. I also think it looks a lot like a chalk drawing of a person who's been murdered which although a more aggressive comparison I feel it is in many ways a better one because death is a lot like sleeping but indefinitely. Hello, morbid. Anyway, I digress. My sleeping style was to start off face down with my legs straight but somehow the left leg would always creep up for some night time rock climbing action. I thought I was weird partaking in such a position so it was great to find someone who shared the same enjoyment.

A few days after beginning my experiment I went up to Archway for a gathering/announcement. On the train I was warned by the Metro that I only have ten years to have a baby and thanked it for reminding me that I have a lot of ground to cover before that happens. I got to the house of news and was informed by my friends Tom (who looks like a cross between Dane Bowers and Jake from Hollyoaks) and Andy (an accidental extra in Slumdog Millionaire) that Holly (Andy's girlfriend and my friend from uni) was pregnant. I could not believe it; that was now two people from my drama class at university who were contributing to keeping the human race alive. I started feeling her up and bombarding her with questions, the most important one being, "How do you sleep?" She said that she'd had to start sleeping on her back. I told her about my experiment and asked her how she used to sleep. She too was a front sleeper and a big fan of the rock-climbing/dead-man-chalk-drawing position. It made me happy to think so many (well, two) people had found love with such a great (not so great for the hips) sleeping style. It also felt good to be getting some sleeping on my back practice for potential future pregnancy.

After a week of not being able to sleep properly in this alien position I finally had no choice but to fall asleep because I was so tired. I then came to the conclusion that the main difficulty I have in falling asleep on my back is my relentlessly lolling head, which has caused much embarrassment in the past when falling asleep on public transport or in the passenger seat of a car. I worked out that if I slept right in the centre of a really puffy feather pillow each end of it would rise up either side of my face creating a sort of anti-lolling support structure and therefore the perfect conditions for successful back rest.

Eight months later: has it worked? In the last couple of months I've started to roll over onto my side but there's not a lot I can do about that, bar strapping myself to the bed, as I'm asleep when I do it. I'm thinking my face in general is looking a bit less wrinkly which makes sense as I'm sure spending eight hours lying on it doesn't do it any favours. I still notice the occasional bit of jowliness in photos but at least it hasn't got any worse and my boobs are feeling a bit fuller (which could be due to starting the pill shortly after the experiment began) so that in itself is worth an uncomfortable sleeping position. Now I'm just worried my bum is being flattened and there's nothing worse than a flat bum other than maybe jowls before one's time. So look out for my next experiment involving two single beds (see picture).*



*I will not be doing this.

The Unbalanced and Broody Babysitter

For some time now I have been quite broody and it seems babies are more frequently popping out of people I know, which is taking the broodiness to new heights.

In August last year the opportunity arose to look after one such child, the fruit of Victoria Thompson’s boss’s loins.

I was delighted, and a bit shocked, when I heard the news that he was including me in the babysitting duties because although he knows me quite well 'digitally' (his choice of word not mine) he’d only met me twice in real life – once when I brought him an ice-lolly because he was working late at the weekend (good impression) and the other time when I was having a mental breakdown on the grass outside his work (not so good) – but as the date came closer the fear set in…

I have a theory that babies, like cats and dogs, can sense evil. I am not saying that I am evil but just that I might be and don’t know it yet. This particular concern has been highlighted by the film Antichrist (I have a habit of taking films personally). Any logical person would have the same thoughts, no? Just me? Well anyway I was worried about meeting Luca because he had the potential to alert everyone in the vicinity that I am the devil.

When I explained this to Vic on the way there, doing my best to hold back the tears, she told me not to worry. She told me that I’m one of the nicest people she knows and I felt guilty so I told her I’d done some pretty mean things when I was little. (I didn't give her any examples but I'll give you one now... When I was seven I went to an all girls' boarding school and they started to introduce boys. The first one to move into our building came to the room I shared with my best friend to give her The Little Mermaid on video as a gift. I think I was threatened by him making the moves on her so I grabbed it and threw it on the floor exclaiming, "She already has this one!" I still feel bad about this especially as I don't think she did have the film.) Vic looked at me funnily and said that anything under the age of ten doesn’t count and that it was probably not a good idea to tell her boss and his girlfriend of my concerns given this was the first time they’d be leaving their three month old first born.

Despite her reassurance I kept my distance from the wee one until the parents had departed for their date, when I felt it was safer to test the water. Also I get embarrassed chatting to babies or young kids when grown-ups are around because I tend to talk to them like they’re adults, and occasionally in this weird voice that my high school boyfriend used to do when talking to his dog, and sometimes me.



Before they left they informed us that Luca only poos once a week. You can imagine I was quite upset by this - I wish they'd told me to sit down before delivering such bad news. However after his bottle he did do some tremendous farting that led us to believe a poo had been deposited. A special treat given the disappointment on hearing of his infrequent bowel movements. Nappy open, we saw it had been a trick played by a particularly stinky fart. It took about half an hour to work out how to get the sticky bits on the nappy to work and also to get the nappy to sit like he wasn’t a gangster with his crotch by his knees. I say we - most of the nappy work was being done by Vic - I was just hanging over the side of the bed dangling my magical necklace in his face to distract him from the indignity of it all.



Perhaps the chiming necklace I was wearing had distracted Luca from outing me because if he sensed any evil he didn't say anything about it. He did, however, mistake my body for a bed and my finger for a nipple. But as I've been mistaken for a prostitute on more than one occasion I'll take being mistaken for a bed and a nipple as a compliment.



After his nap and some food (milk for Luca, meatballs for us), and once we'd worked out which way round to put him in the pram, we took him for a walk in the park and felt how a proud lesbian couple must feel with Luca chatting away to himself in the way only babies that can't talk do. He soon fell asleep and I envied him. If I had someone to push me around in a pram maybe I'd get some decent sleep.

When the frantic parents returned we left them to do some serious catching up. As we walked to the station I text a guy I been on a few dates with telling him I'd been babysitting and "Please can you lend me some sperm so I can have one?" I am aware this is not the sort of thing you say to a guy if you want him to stick around but wait...

He replied straight back saying, "What you doing tonight?"

I have never know someone so keen to lend their seeds for an artificial insemination extravaganza. Maybe he just thought it was the modern way of asking for sex. If that was the case he didn't get what he wanted and neither did I.

I am still accepting donations so do get in touch.

My Offering to The London Paper

Thought I'd send The London Paper kids a rejigged note I once wrote on Facebook to see if they'd publish it as every day they have a reader columnist.

I have a feeling they won't as it isn't particularly relevant to anything going on at the moment so I'll just publish it myself. Had I sent it in around the time Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens were doing their rounds on the red carpet then perhaps it would have made the pages of the free paper. Who knows? Well, here you go...

I’m broody, something you would have known had you been in Kew Gardens the other week and overheard me whispering to my friend’s girlfriend who I’ve only met briefly once before, ‘I’m worried I might steal a child.’ Had you only seen her face then you may have just assumed I’d escaped from a mental asylum.

Although I want nothing more than to pop a little munchkin out I'm not sure I'm prepared to bring kids into the world we live in. A world where people won't recycle because, 'There's nothing we can do to make a difference, it’s too late.' We can try though, no? No, because they're too lazy even though all they have to do is just put their paper bits in a different bin that I have placed in front of their workstation. A world where you have to hold a door open for a man who doesn't even say thank you. A world where kids are penetrating each other with jibes and knives. What was wrong with penetrating each other with kindness and condom-clad genitalia? It worries me that there will be no world left by the time my hypothetical child grows up and so it's looking likely that I'll have to forego having children because it wouldn't be fair to bring them into such a mean, corrupt and deteriorating place.

BUT there is a glimmer of hope: there must still be manners lurking about and kids that only use knives to cut up their dinner and do you know what makes me think this? Well I'll tell you… High School Musical, a film that for those of you who haven't seen it and all its follow-ups is enough to empty the contents of one's stomach with its high content of twee-ness and enthusiasm. This sickly film has broken box-office records and that tells me the world isn’t so bad if the youth of today can't get enough of a film that has me teetering on the brink of wanting to stab, if not someone else, then myself. You could argue that maybe it is the cause of all the stabbings but I can't help believing that it's a genuine love these kids have for the films that has the potential to get the world turning on a more positive and wholesome axis rather than it's current skew-whiff one.

Perhaps my womb is not redundant just yet...