Afternoon sex? Priceless.

An unexpected former love of Ms R's blew into town last week. The American, who'd been busy applying the law to various international matters was in London for the first time in two and half years. It was his constant presence in London that had started the affair and lack thereof that ended it, though of course it has never really ended. Sometimes there isn't an end. Just a long pause

Passing through for the day, a lunch in Knightsbridge was organised. Wine was drunk and sparks flew, indeed they had never gone away and Ms R and American man got to thinking it might be fun to spend a couple of hours in a hotel. Two well dressed grown ups. How difficult could it be? First up was the Berkeley hotel. The receptionist had that efficient but dull manner of many from Eastern Europe.

"I will ask for you."

A phone call and then, "Yes we can but it will be the full rate."

Sorry but this is ridiculous. The fact that the man in question could afford to pay the full rate was irrelevant to me: two hours in a room would not warrant that and there is a principle here. It was 3 pm. The check-in had passed and the room would not be rented. Why do the continentals get these things right while the English just can't manage it?

For the next hotel, The Mandarin, Ms R's friend checked availability on the internet. The hotel had loads of rooms. They should do a deal.

Again, a phone call needed. Again, "Sorry but we can only do it for the full rate."

"But you are not full and when we leave you still have time to sell the room to a walk in," pointed out Ms R whose mind was already in the room.

"Sorry," said the now predictable Eastern European girl on reception. "That is all we can offer."

At this point, it became a game, a challenge of sorts.

30 Pavilion Road: The girl had never heard of such things. (How can you work in the hotel industry and not know?)

The Knightsbridge: "Oh yes madam, we certainly do and we do special rates." A pause. A discussion and then "It will be the full rate."

And so on. The Beaufort, The Capital. Nobody seem to know or wanted to acknowledge that people had lunch, got horny and wanted to do what the French call a cinq a sept.

At this point Ms R received a phone call that she had to send something urgently from her computer so two horny people ended up sitting in a bar having while Ms R wrote. Time had slipped by however American man decided he'd better make a special trip to London soon so they could spend more quality time.

The exercise itself had been interesting: Is it London prudishness? It does add some fuel to the hypothesis we have here at Ms R Towers that the Brits can act sex but they cannot be sex. Sure the girls can put on a low cut dress, pout and posture but that isn't what sex is about. They can make jokes about Bunty and Toby at dinner parties but at the end of the night Bunty doesn't like doing it and Toby is terrified. Is it because hotels are staffed by young inexperienced staff, where once you might have been served by people with a knowing twinkle, like the hotel staff Ms R has met in France. They always gave the impression they had seen more of life than Ms R ever has.

Hotels and sex are natural partners, made for one another: Friday lunches and hotel sex even more so. Spontaneous hotel sex after a lovely lunch is rarely bettered.

If you can have it.

The currency of blow jobs.

Ms R is slightly alarmed to hear that apparently the blow job has assumed the status, once only bestowed upon the US dollar: it is a currency both easily exchanged and expected everywhere. In particular it is an essential component of today's teenage parties, demanded and delivered in a fashion that gives a whole new meaning to casual sex.

"Hey Oromelia.

"Ya?"

"Nice tits."

"Thanks Piers. Daddy says so too Now fuck orf."

"Want to suck my dick?"

"Oh ya ok."

Yes my dear over educated, privileged readers: it's your daughters that are doing it too. The long-term and devoted will know that Ms R believes the BJ is easily on a par with knitting a man a jumper or even a scarf. In other words it's like gold (on current price levels at least.)

Ms R has, on numerous occasions (mistake, there were only about two) turned her dark glare on men who have assumed that a BJ is part of the evening. This, when he has not even conclusively proved he is a world class kisser. In other words if you can't work with your mouth, I can't work with mine. Even then it should not be assumed a BJ is in the offing. Correct etiquette is to give the lady at least two examples of what you can do for her without asking what she can do for you. She may then feel close enough to give you something nice. You may suggest, but never, ever ask. And if you don't feel close enough to accept a knitted woollen item from the lady then maybe this shouldn't be happening at all? Just saying.

Need Ms R add, that any attempt to take a chiropractic stance and manipulate the head towards your lower parts while muttering "Down bitch" should not even be considered. Not even if you are paying for it. This is the behaviour that divides men into those who will get to BJ heaven and those who won't.

The blow job you want is the one you get without asking; where a woman is absolutely loving what she is doing because she likes you, a lot. These are the ones we want to give because they make us feel intimate and sexy, and they make you feel even better. And believe Ms R when she says that when we like it, we'll give very freely and you'll never ever have to ask.

That as they say, is blow job gold.

Any way but Fry'd please.

Ms R was going to discuss the joy of giving blowjobs to someone you really like but alas she has been overtaken by Stephen Fry going all huffy. Stephen is upset because a guy found it 'boring' and said so. Mr Fry would be the first to say it's a free country. And being very clever he would also understand the sentiment that keeps him aloft and has made him a supposedly 'national treasure'. It's the same sentiment that sees British women go silly over M&S's ('Marks' to the locals) ugly white cotton panties in packs of three.

Those who define their existence by Fry's twitters "OMG, Stephen scratched his bum" are apoplectic at this apparent evil being directed at the nation's most locquacious of intellectuals (Remember talking a lot doesn't make you the smartiest.) Not for a moment have they paused to think that the guy might in fact be boring. Irritating. Ubiquitous. Omnipresent. Not always right. Not always amusing. And, dare Ms R say it, just one of many reasonably bright people in this country of sixty odd million.

Hero worship is not just dull. It's dangerous. Just look at the opprobrium Fry's supporters (is their a collective word for sycophants living vicariously?) have directed at the poor bloke who dared to call their luvvie darling less than interesting. Now that's nasty. But Fry doesn't care about that. It's all about him.

Fry, a self-confessed geek, should know more than anyone that the internet is a lawless land where claims are being staked and challenged daily. Pretty much everyone who has a reasonably interesting blog has been attacked and most of us have been shot with words far worse than 'boring.' It does upset you and make you want to find a rabbit hole to run down and disappear. And the more high profile you are, the worse it often gets which is why Fry is frankly being stupid about all this. Most of us would gladly swap his 'boring' for some of the malignant and disgusting language we get in our email boxes. Just ask some of the sex or political bloggers about their comments.

Being a national treasure inevitably means that at some point people will come to bury you, not just to praise you as M&S knows all too well. Being a clever fellow, Fry should know it too.

It's a heartache. No, actually it's a bore

Now that our newspapers have all but formally become mouthpieces for reader confessionals (and narcissistic journalists but we'll come back to them soon enough) there is no escaping the avalanche of heartbreak endured by people you don't know and don't care about. Recently Ms R was bemused to read of a woman whose husband left her after six years. Seems the issue was not so much that he left but that she 'didn't expect it.'

The inference then is that it might have been somewhow ok if she had expected it. Perhaps he should have given a day's notice:

"Tomorrow I will be leaving you ok, just so you know."

Ms R would feel a LOT better in those circumstances. Wouldn't you? Fact is that women generally don't like things that are not scheduled into the calendar on the kitchen wall. Mark Ms R's words.In years to come this woman will have got over being dumped but she'll still be going on about he didn't put it in the calendar and it clashed with a coffee session and made her day just so damn busy what with the school run and all.

But first she has to experience the end of the world. The best thing about it is that due to simply being made up of woman biology you don't have to have been going out with someone for six years or even six months to feel the pain. In fact you don't even have to like them. It is not unknown for women to come over all dramatic after a cessation in messaging from a man they have only gone out with twice and have no intention of seeing again. There is nothing worse than being rejected by a man who you didn't care about.

Most men in a similar situation would not give it a second thought. Fact is that where men (mostly) regard the trials and errors of hooking up as a series of minor investments until such a time as they put their money down, women frequently put the bank on every single encounter. When it all goes wrong, men shrug and turn on the TV while women rip themselves to shreds, go to counselling and have major cosmetic surgery.

And then they bounce back. This usually means going out for several nights in a row to places they hate with a bunch of girls they haven't had drinks with for ten years.

Unless they're a celebrity. Then they have a magazine to help them heal.

And nobody does this better than Jenny Aniston, the patron saint of heartbreak. You gotta love a gal that just keeps bouncing back and moreover is happy to tell us she's going to come back Braver, Stronger and Hopefuller (I couldn't write More Hopeful it didn't work) And to share her pain with us she poses without clothes as all celebrity women do when they want to bare their souls.

Ms R is waiting for the day a male celebrity comes forth to tell us how his heart was ripped out and he cried for days but now he's got his life together and he's Looking Forward to Love Again. He has no malice toward the girl who dumped him he says. "We had different priorities and needs."

The text will be accompanied by a photo of him sitting up in bed all soft focus holding up a white fluffy towel to cover his chest. Another photo will feature him holding a teddy wearing a big white shirt and white cotton socks, sporting a cheeky new fringe haircut thing. The caption will say 'John is feeling positive, strong and looking forward to love again.' The comments at the bottom of the article (it must have comments otherwise it doesn't actually exist) will all be from very supportive men.

And that children, is why women who could rule the world, don't have time to.

Outraged? No, I don't give a f**k

Apologies for the absence but Ms R has been busy getting outraged. In case readers haven't noticed we are living amidst a major outrage epidemic. You can be outraged about mobile phones, school lunches, older women who are happy with themselves and wear mini skirts, parents who don't have 24 hour surveillance on their kids, CCTV cameras, the lack of the aforementioned, bananas, pillows - it matters not what you roar about, only that you roar.

By default you have opted in to the outrage industry simply by watching numerous television programmes about stupid people who got done like a dinner when they fell for a scam. The concept of whole televison programmes devoted to standing up for idiots who can't figure out that Nigerian millionaires do not write emails to strangers is unreal. Except it's not. Having expressed their outrage on behalf of the dumb and stupid, TV hosts then invite us to join in. We are now polled for the most spurious of reasons in a bid to whip a storm. Every news item on the internet, no matter how benign has potential outrageosity (TM).

Now it is 2009. So you'd think with everything we've seen and done that we'd be less bothered by things. Problem is that with so much bandwidth what can you fill it up with? You guessed it? Nothing turns into a TV show or newspaper article faster than outrage. One person's stormy ramblings can fuel that of hundreds of others - this is an industry that feeds off itself. And nothing feeds it better than Twitter. Twitter, like most social networking instruments is not designed to allow you to keep in contact with others: rather it is about making you feel left out if you don't. What's amazing about Twitter is discovering just how many people care about Iran elections - isn't it incredible that you've never noticed that spike in interest before? Or going green? And just to show the strength of their feelings, they're going to make special avatars. Oh yes.

Outrage is easy now because you don't have to take to the streets. You can do it from the comfort of your own home and you can do it anonymously. And you don't need to even back up your views with deep knowledge of your subject. Just buy the ticket and board the bus. Don't ask where it's going. After all, do you really care?

The revolution will not start with juggling

Ms R was vaguely idealistic once: she dreamed of a world where people would only wear clothes that suited them, a world where there were no tasselled loafers, Crocs, sequinned shrugs, Sting or Bono. None of this has come to fruition and so Ms R sits disillusioned with a society that promised so much and has let her down.

Nonetheless she can appreciate that there are those with rebellion in their hearts and lentils in their backpacks who strive for a better place. And so this week, Ms R has watched with interest and these folk set up climate camp in London. What was their plan? How would they get the authorities to notice? The buildup in the media promised some truly serious action. 

So what did we get? Juggling. You heard me. People juggling bean bags. How exactly is this going to save the world? Especially when they keep dropping them. Cue discussion between demonstrators.

"You going to climate camp?"

"Yeah man, it's gonna be big."

"What's your plan?"

"Juggling."

"Cool. If enough of us do it , I reckon we can really make an impact this year."

"Think we may have to do more though to convince them of the dangers of global warming."

"Like what?"

"Stilts man. I'm gonna walk on stilts."

"Fuck yeah. Smash the system! Way to go!"

"And there's something else.."

"You don't mean?"

"Yep. Face painting."

Perhaps Ms R is out of touch but could somebody please point out why the first requirement of any demonstration is a veritable circus troupe. Look, don't get me wrong, I think face painting is nice but when it comes to deposing the government nobody's going to listen to the man on stilts: he's more out of touch than Gordon Brown is. On top of that an alarming proportion of their number appear to be vegetarian which is a very time consuming activity. All that soaking of pulses and couscous means valuable time lost in plotting the downfall of capitalism.  In truth the best people qualified to demonstrate are the capitalist rulers themselves: single minded, ruthless, opportunistic and lacking in imagination they are unlikely to be interested in fire-eating. Sub-contract the whole thing out to them and you have the most perfect post-modern demonstration. 

Of shagging and forgetting

So anyway there it was in the inbox. RS had written to say, "Hi, do you remember four years ago?" But who was RS? And why was 2005 so important? Ms R worked out it was RS@menwho'vethankfullypassedintohistory.com. Or should have been.

Sometime around 1988 Ms R installed, in her curly head, an advanced elimination system especially for the purpose of not reminding her of her sexual experiments. It also meant her brain was freed up for a Higher Purpose. Unfortunately that too has been forgotten. But that is another story.

RS is not the only one. It is truly astonishing the number of men who've disappeared into the arms of girlfriends, wives or the night, who then re-emerge to remind you what they are missing

There was Knightsbridge banker/poet guy. He called up on a Wednesday morning out of the blue.

"Hello"

"Hi, remember we had a sexy night at my apartment a few years ago."

Never mind the apartment, what continent was he talking about? Ms R is a global woman.

"Err can you give me a grid reference at least so I can guess?"

Anyway he said he remembered what a fantastic night we had and did I think about it too. I told him I did not. At all. In an attempt to remind me of what I wasn't missing, he said that if I wanted to I could come over that same night. Now there's an offer surely designed to put the self into esteem.

"Girlfriend away is she?"

Silence then "err, yes."

There was the guy who called after six years! What sort of thought process is it that allows you to call a girl you saw once, maybe twice, after SIX YEARS and expect her to be overjoyed to hear from you. Has he visualised you still closing the door on him that frosty morning in 2003 and thought, "Gosh, she looked hurt? Maybe I should go back and make things better? Yes that's what I'll do. I'll email her and make her happy. She's probably still fantasising about me."

But she's not. Don't believe what they say about a woman never forgetting. We might not do it as quickly as a man, but once we do forget, we do it in spectacular fashion.

The 24 hour lockdown

Loyal and, by implication, highly discerning and attractive readers, will know that Ms R has already discoursed on the potentially dangerous combo of technology and relationships here and here. By making us accessible, technology permits us little room to be unavailable: to do so is to invite suspicion and concern. There is a whole new subtext to relationships and it's not an easy one to navigate. Especially for grown-ups.

Last night Ms R was with a friend who has been seeing a man for a few months. She likes him very much and they seem to have much to share. But all of a sudden he is not replying to her texts in a timely manner. This lady is old enough to know to ration her texts. She does not saturate the textosphere with messages to him. Even so, he appears to be ignoring them for hours at a time now and she is not pleased.

"He's changed all of a sudden. It's just another manifestation that he is taking me for granted" she announced. And then dramatically: "There is only one thing to do."

"And that is..."

"It's time to go into 24 hour lockdown."

As this friend is somewhat kinky Ms R enquired exactly what type of sexual practice this was. It wasn't.

"He last texted at 3.30pm. Therefore I will not even consider any contact by any form of technology until at least 3.30pm tomorrow."

We were having dinner. It was 7pm when she announced she'd had enough. By 9.30 pm he'd called. She didn't answer.

"I am in lockdown."

He texted. She smiled.

It was working. Or was it. At 5.30 today she finally called him. He didn't pick up. When they spoke he said he was confused and didn't want to play games. He did not know if he was coming or going. He had no idea that his recent behaviour had put her into the same position and forced her hand off the keyboard. She may well have satisfied that particular dating manual that tells you not to reply to them all the time but the gains made were dubious.

There was a time where if a man liked you he called you and came over. You did your chatting in person. If they really liked you, then you knew you'd see them at a certain time on certain days, after which they only called if they couldn't come. And if they didn't like you they stopped calling. That was it. If you didn't like them you stopped answering. Technology did not really get in the way of instinct.

Ms R wonders whether the need for 24 hour lockdown would exist if the technology did not. Far from being a facilitator, it appears that technology - and the insecurity of being human - has turned communication into a very complex strategic weapon to beat ourselves and others up with.

Want to get laid? Say you're leaving.

In this world of teen sexting and assorted vaginas and penises offered up without strings, there are some things that a woman can still marvel at. Like why it is when you say you're leaving a place, men will emerge from the woodwork wanting to fuck your brains out. For both sexes there is something about departing a workplace, city or country that brings out the shy, the ones who never paid attention to you and the one you always wanted but didn't get around to asking. 

Even when sex is not on the agenda, the come hither factor of imminent departure is still evident. When Ms R was in Grade Five at primary school she left for another school. When she told the class (these things were major announcements in those days) a blonde blue eyed boy, who may well have been the start of Ms R's weakness for men of that particular colourway, said he was sad she was leaving and wished she wasn't. That day is still in Ms R's memory for it was probably the first time she knew a boy had paid attention to her. 

Later on Ms R found out that the departure didn't have to involve luggage to invoke urgency. Indeed in her late teens and early twenties, the mere act of announcing she was leaving a party would suddenly produce men who wanted to shag her. Men whom she hadn't even previously seen at the party. One man had just arrived and was trying to get through the doorway as Ms R was thinking of getting out. When she told him he decided he'd come with her. 

But nowhere is this phenomenon more visible than in the workplace. You toil for years in the same building, sit in endless board meetings with them and nothing stirs. Then one day you say you're leaving to go to a new job and suddenly you are inundated with admirers and invitations. Frankly if you'd known you were that popular you'd have stayed. Your leaving drinks are a carnal cross-country course of whispers, kisses, a moment with an especially eager man in the loos at the bar perhaps  and the promise of at least three shags before you leave, including at least one that night. It is a veritable smorgasbord of suitors. 

As she writes Ms R is leaving her flat. She has already left her job - well it left her and went to America. There was nobody to shag since she worked remotely and she didn't fancy anyone anyway. Now as she packs up her flat and prints her ticket out for perhaps an extended visit to Australia it would be nice to know that at least there was evidence of the Law of Imminent Departure (TM). Sure, Ms R knows men she could shag easily but that's not the same of the surprise of the unknown. Of course it works the other way as well. Ms R's not feeling the urgency just yet but give it a week or two and you never know what she might trip over.