RUN FAT GIRL, RUN !!

Good evening, I am just popping in to do a quick update before I go forth and drape my thong over a gentleman's table side lamp. I know this is short notice, but as Amanda would say, "suck it up cupcakes", (she really is most uncouth at the best of times).

Next Sunday the 3rd of June, I am doing the Race For Life in our very own Glasgae. Last year I managed to raise an amazing £500 due to the generosity of you lovely people. This year I am doing something a little different.

ALL of us at SCOT-PEP work our backsides to the bone to ensure that your rights as a sex worker or as a patron of ladies of negotiable virtue remain intact and the work involved can be time consuming and labour intensive. Now, more than ever, we need your support to fight the proposed legislative changes which are afoot with specific mention to Rhoda Grant's endeavours.

SCOT-PEP is a registered charity and has a PayPal donation facility on it's website, you will find the link here. Now, if I can get off my fa curvy backside and do a 5k run on a Sunday morning, all I am asking of you is that you make a donation to SCOT-PEP and it really doesn't matter how small. Please mark any donation with the reference "RFL" so we can keep track of how I'm doing. It goes without saying that all donations are completely confidential.

I will also have a sponsorship sheet with me when I'm on the tour trail but that will be for cancer research, not SCOT-PEP, it is absolutely your prerogative to choose which one (if any) you will donate to. (That is indeed the correct spelling of prerogative, email me at your peril, pedants.)

Next year I will do it for the IUSW, just let me get through this one alive firstly.

So, wish me luck. If I don't make it to Belfast on the 4th of June, then the chances are I'm in an oxygen tent or Glasgow Royal Infirmary in which case all donations of chocolate will be very gratefully received.

LL xx

A Feminist Whore ? Surely not ....

Am I a feminist ? Absofeckinlutely, but here's the thing, I am what you might call a traditional feminist. To me that means that as women, we are equal to men, not superior. Oh sure, we carry the can when it comes to childcare etc, but don't we expect a lot of our menfolk too ? If you subscribe to the age old stereotype then man should be the hunter, slaying a mammoth for dinner or at the very least beating up the guy next door because he peered at "his woman" over the geraniums. These days, and in times of recession then it's whoever has a job hangs onto it for dear life, conforming to stereotypes for the sake of it can lead to poverty, relationship breakdowns and a serious compromise to the welfare of the children, that's a fact.

A long time ago and in a doctor's waiting room far away, I was busying myself by reading the gardening section of a Sunday Times magazine, (I hate gardening). I was praying to anyone who would listen that the very elderly lady beside me wouldn't try and strike up a conversation. (I know, but I was in a dreadful mood and really not in the humour for a conversation around the useful properties of figs in the treatment of constipation.) As it turns out, I'm very glad she did strike up a conversation because we ended up so lost in our exchange that the receptionist had to bellow my name to get my attention. Eunice (not her real name, not that it matters) told me that as a young girl she worked for a number of years in a factory, before falling in love with a dubious cad who went on to become her husband of some 40 years. (He was a bastard apparently, but she still missed him every day.) Eunice became the first woman to successfully challenge the rule in that factory that all married women had to give up their jobs to become home makers. This was in a time where the woman's place was very definitely in the kitchen, as a matter of fact under Irish law, until relatively recently, a woman was considered a "chattel", no better than furniture, and there was no such thing as marital rape. I'll just say that again. THERE WAS NO SUCH THING AS MARITAL RAPE, once you were married you were automatically deemed to have given consent, ergo, your husband could do as he liked and there was nothing you could do about it.

Further, I can remember when the proposed legislative change to the divorce laws in Ireland came up for consideration. Night after night we sat watching RTE broadcasts of Catholic priests urging us to consider our faith and our pledges in marriage, to divorce was to fly in the face of The Vatican and those who sought a divorce would surely burn in the fires of hell. So, if your husband broke your jaw, or regularly beat your children to within an inch of their lives, tough. You were married for better or worse, brush that hair and be sure to be at Mass at 10am on Sunday, in case the neighbours talked.

When it comes to feminism, I don't believe that I should burn my bra, aside from anything else, have you ANY idea how much that cost ? Also, I don't think throwing myself beneath a horse or chaining myself to the railings of Holyrood will achieve much either, well it would certainly get press coverage for whatever cause it is I'm proposing to champion, but ultimately, I think I would look pretty foolish. I wouldn't consider myself a "radical" feminist either, quite obviously I don't believe that every time I allow a client to have sex with me it is rape and I am letting down "The Sisterhood". It's been an age since I've looked at actus reus or mens rea but I'm pretty sure that the burden of proof rests upon a lack of consent. As a sex worker, when I have finally untied a submissive male and as a "reward", allow him to have some sexual favours with me then to be honest I'm struggling to see who is consenting in that situation.

As I have declared myself a feminist, you'd be forgiven for thinking that I probably should and have read "The Female Eunuch". The answer to that would be a resounding 'no', because I have no great desire to taste my own menstrual blood and further, given my own curly mop then I resent, yes I said RESENT, Greer's pop at Suzanne Moore for her back combed hair, (sigh). See I'm not a selective feminist either, I don't subscribe to the notion that there is an elite group of women who are entitled to give themselves the title of feminist and to hell with everyone else. Either you support ALL women in their given choices or you don't, it's that simple.

So what do I believe in then, as a feminist in the very old fashioned "I have so reclaimed this word" kinda way ? It's very simple really. Like Eunice, I believe I have the choice to work, quite legally, without fear and the overhanging threat of intimidation, and stigma. That's all.

I don't ask you to place me on a pedestal, I don't ask you to declare me as superior to the male sex, I don't ask for any "special" treatment whatsoever. I simply ask you to respect my right to work as a sex worker, to make the informed choices that I make every day, without recourse to a "nanny state" which seeks to impose sanction on me, or my client.

In that regard, I ask my readers to consider the latest proposals from Rhoda Grant which will be tabled shortly in Holyrood. Ms. Grant is seeking to have a bill approved which will make it illegal for my clients to come to me as a perfectly willing and happy provider, and pay for my services.

The link is here, and I will write on it further as it develops.

LL xx

Quick update

Due to family circumstances I will be unavailable for the next week or so, profuse apologies but I will be back as soon as I can.

Laura x

Land of Saints and Scholars - part two

J and I left Dublin for the beautiful South Coast and arrived in Waterford, not exactly a buzzing metropolis I'll grant you, but very beautiful to stroll around and our hotel was just as the doctor ordered. Who knew Waterford has a sex shop now ? Ye Gods, it's a far cry from my memories of buckets and spades on Tramore beach. Actually, what tickled me was not so much the sex shop but the "booth" therein, where a passing gent could spend a couple of Euros to indulge in a quick spot of porn and erm ... relief. Soho has finally reached the South coast of Ireland, well I never.

The hotel itself was deathly quiet when we checked in and I did wonder if it was conducive to kicking J up and down a corner suite with his pitiful cries going un-noticed. Happily, on our return from dinner, the population of the hotel had swelled on foot of a clapped out tour bus carrying the geriatric version of Club 18 - 30. For want of a better word, they were being "entertained" in the bar by Finbar* (*names changed to protect the completely inadequate) with his keyboard and a right foot which operated rather like a flipper, thrashing away at a drum machine at least two beats behind each note of the song being murdered.

"Quelle horreur!" I thought.

This was a crime against music and no mistake. As an aside, one of the people I most greatly admire from a musical point of view is Les Dawson, yes I said LES DAWSON. If you recall, he had the most marvellous ability to play any song just one semi-tone off key throughout, resulting in anyone with even half a musical ear fighting to control their rattling teeth. In actual fact, it takes a person who is very musical in the first place to be able to pull that off, and it used to make me howl with laughter. In fact, I've just found this wonderful clip of him singing "Feelings", click here. RIP. :(

Anyway, back to the bar; things went from bad to worse when Finbar announced he was taking requests, and there was a veritable stampede of hush puppies and other sensible shoes to the stage. There's always one, isn't there ? One very elderly man who does Elvis to varying degrees of success, in this case he was actually fantastic and sang a couple of his classic hits, I'm sure I saw several embroidered hankies being used to quell feverish brows when he swung his hips to "Suspicious Minds". I couldn't let the opportunity go and wrestled with my conscience as to what to sing. For a fleeting moment I entertained the idea of that dreadful song by Samantha Fox - "Touch me", but thought better of it, and in the end I went for a safe bet - "Crazy", by Patsy Cline. It went down a storm and I had lots of hugs, an offer of marriage and a slap on the back that nearly sent me into reception, (Irish farmers just don't know their own strength). Having secured several bookings for a 21st, a Christening and a hurriedly arranged wedding, Finbar was packing up his one man orchestra and J and I decided to call it a night, when the magic happened. It was pre-empted by the usual declaration -

"WILL YIZ SHURRUP ? MICK IS SINGIN', G'WAN MICK."

A hush descended on the bar and from the corner of the room, "Mick" began to sing in a mournful, soulful and truly moving way about his inevitable demise to Greenland with dolphins, and so it went on. Song after song from misty-eyed patriots who in all honesty, had never set foot in "The Fields of Athenry" in their lives, let alone fought in the "Great Fallen of 1916". It was all I could do to stop myself reminding one gentleman who was mourning his beautiful Motherland that actually, he lived in the bungalow, first turn on the right. I think I would have been thumped for that offence.

As I tried to explain to J in hushed tones, this is the way things are done in Ireland. When someone dies, everyone gets together for the "tórraimh", or the "wake" and remembers the person, and rather than mourn they laugh at the good memories they have of them, then they get absolutely rat arsed and sing. Following on from that is the funeral, where everyone dresses in black, pays their respects, and then they get rat arsed and sing. Come to think of it, there aren't many occasions when my country folk don't get rat arsed and sing.

Given his (ahem) Etonian accent, by now J was positively panicked, because THAT stage of the evening had begun where the songs had adopted a staunch "rebel" theme, so much so that he refused point blank to open his mouth for fear of being lynched, so we called it a night, for real this time.

You know, whenever I go back to Ireland to visit my clan, it's always really hard to leave them, and if I'm honest I usually have a howl on the way back to Scotland, but for the first time I realised that it is the people and the culture I miss too, I sat amongst those warm, wonderful people and for the first time in many years, I realised I was very, very homesick.

LL xx

Land of Saints and Scholars - part one.

Good afternoon and greetings from LL towers, where I have finally arrived home after an exceptionally enjoyable week away, to a rapturous welcome from the zoo. Firstly let me apologise again for the (albeit temporary) outburst yesterday. Sometimes we all have to release what I call my "inner fishwife", I don't like doing it, it's not befitting the person that I am but hey, when pushed far enough it's in all of us.

If the truth be known, that's twice I've had to do it this week, allow me to explain. J and I arrived in Dublin and checked into our beautiful five star hotel, situated as it was not too far from Grafton Street (which is where the posh shops are, innit) but also just a stone's throw away from some of the grottiest tenement flats in Dublin's inner city. So if you turned left, you could indulge yourself with your credit card, but if you turned right, you could be met with the traditional Irish welcome of a needle to the neck and a stamp to the head, thereafter someone else could indulge themselves with your credit card.

Come the late evening, I stood outside the front door of the hotel to admire the passing shiny tracksuits when I saw what can only be described as an advertisement for rehab, trying desperately to steal some bikes from across the street. When he couldn't free them from their stands, he proceeded to start to kick the crap out of their frames. I deplore anyone who wilfully destroys the property of other hard working people, it drives me mad. Dublin's answer to Tristan Smedley Smythe was beside me, on his Blackberry. He said that he was going to call "The Guards". Now I knew that was never going to work, the only way to get the Irish police to respond is to tell them that shots have been fired or that a perfectly happy and independent escort is working in an apartment, (whoops, did I say that out loud) ?

I will (again) apologise for the ensuing filthy language here, I'm just glad J didn't hear me because I think it would have frightened him to death, being the genteel soul that he is. I should also point out that real inner city Dubliners drop every 'd' and 'h' available to them, if you're not familiar with the dialect then you can view our own Mrs. Brown
here. So, I took a deep breath, moved towards what we Irish lovingly refer to as the "scumbag" and shrieked -

"OI !! GET DEFUCK AWAY FROM DEM BIKES ROITE NOW YE SCUMBAG, I'M AFTER CALLIN DE GUARDS. G'WAN YE KNACKER, AFORE I LOSE ME BLEEDIN TEMPER."

I'm delighted to say that seemed to have the desired effect and he scampered off, presumably to see if any of his esteemed friends had any Tesco value weed to spare.

Tristan Smedley Smythe was flabbergasted.

"I say, bloody well done. Did you go to theatre school?"

"Something like that, yes".

Wearing a large grin, I went back to join J for dinner.

I will pop back later in the week to finish my holiday tale, in the meantime I'm off to launch the Spanish inquisition, whilst I was away some fecker ate my Double Decker Easter egg, and they needn't bother blaming the cat this time, heads are going to roll.

LL xx

Inverness, Intimations and Ireland

Good evening from a very quiet LL towers. Boy cat is snoring and farting gently on the footstool beside me and La Princess is at a sleepover, (I did suggest some diazepam for the parents concerned but was met with a weak smile, I know the feeling.) I've had quite a mixed week really, firstly I was in Inverness for a couple of days and my hairy Highlanders didn't let me down, I had a whale of a time. From there I had to arise at 6am on Wednesday, (I have witnesses) to scoot down the A82 to meet S. When I say scoot, it was a four hour drive fuelled by lucozade and some very dodgy looking own-brand caffeine tablets, but I made it to Kennacraig, from where we left for Islay. It was my first visit there and I thought it was simply beautiful. The picture above was taken from the boat and is of Jura, when we sailed by.


Also this week, Dr. Brooke Magnanti, did a rather brilliant interview with The Telegraph, link here. I loved this quote -
"Her new book, The Sex Myth, fuses her personae as research scientist and sex worker. And it’s good: powerful in its exposé of knee-jerk reactions and shoddy science, social or otherwise. The chapters challenging feminist assumptions about pornography and the sex trade look likely to prove constructively controversial." Good, because that is exactly what is needed, an intelligent and well thought out challenging of society's accepted norms from an academic who can underpin and substantiate her work with real statistics.

Interestingly, the journalist concerned spoke to Dr. Magnanti about a lady who was "outed" insofar as she was exposed as having accepted cash for sex, although in fact she was underage, so it was actually rape. She had this to say - "Her exposure a couple of years later provoked an animal savagery among her peers and she felt forced to leave. I think of her often, appalled by the loss of potential that I hope she has been able to confound." Could there be anything more appalling than ostracising and casting out a child victim of rape, whether or not money changed hands ? I don't think so.

Dr. Magnanti had this response for the journalist -

“So be an ally. In terms of how you’re treated by the law and how you’re seen by society, there’s a lot of similarity between being a sex worker now and being gay 20 years ago. And what really changed that was family, friends, members of the public coming to know people who were gay. We need people like you who say: 'I myself am not a sex worker, but I do not object to their existence’.”
“If you want to identify a population that has been consistently discriminated against, it is up there with racism, with religion. There is the assumption that, once you have crossed this line, you never go back and that it says something about you as a person and your ability to do other things.”

Well said, that lady.

I'm off to Ireland with J for a week come Monday, it will feel very strange travelling around Southern Ireland without visiting family, but I don't think The Mother would appreciate meeting for afternoon tea when I have J on a lead and in full gimp regalia. Actually, I think she'd find it kind of fascinating, it would be more about what other people would think, which reminds me of that rather brilliant quote from Fr. Ted -

"DOWN WITH THAT SORT OF THING."

LL xx

Positivity and Pythons

Good afternoon and greetings from home where I am gathering my frillies for Edinburgh.

Lots of good tidings this week, firstly I found this article in the Australian news which talks in very positive and incontrovertible terms about sex work in New South Wales, in fact NSW is described as the best place in the world to work if you are in the sex industry. The article goes on to say -

The decriminalisation of sex work in NSW has resulted in the world's the healthiest sex industry, the research released today found.

"Jurisdictions that try to ban or license sex work always lose track as most of the industry slides into the shadows," the report's lead author, Professor Basil Donovan from the University of NSW's Kirby Institute, said in a statement.

"In NSW, by contrast, health and community workers have comprehensive access to and surveillance of the sex industry.

"This has resulted in the healthiest sex industry ever documented."

The report, prepared for the NSW government, found there were at least 101 brothels within 20 kilometres of Sydney's CBD and estimated that between 3000 to 4500 sex workers operated in the region in any one year.

On the whole, sex workers surveyed also reported being "well adjusted and comfortable with their occupation".

Hurrah, further support for what we have been campaigning for for so long.
In the interests of proffering a fair and balanced discourse, I should say that the report also said -

"While most of the 201 sex workers surveyed by The Law and Sexworker Health (LASH) team reported good mental health, 10 per cent had high scores of psychological distress."

However, we are not to know what the root cause of that distress is, it might be completely unrelated to the fact that they are sex workers. After all, we know that a small proportion of doctors self medicate, but that shouldn't give rise to a moral panic and an attempt to criminalise ALL doctors, should it ?

The next piece of positivity was the debate on BBC1 this morning which featured Catherine Stephens of the IUSW and Charlie Daniels to name but a few. The question being asked was whether raising the legal age of prostitution to 21 would in any way protect more vulnerable entrants to the industry. The link to the debate is here, it's about half an hour long and begins at about 33 minutes into the program, presented by Nicky Campbell. I thought that both Catherine and Charlie came across illustriously. :)

Also this week I got a new review from one of my Belfast guys here. Thank you very much Sir, I certainly did enjoy pushing those boundaries. ;)

Finally,(and on a lighter note), from this Monday onwards, I will be charging admission to LL towers, enough is enough. "Gypsy" the corn snake arrives this evening. Now, I was going to wax lyrical about how it's standing room only at this point and there is more food in the feckin' fridge for the animals than there is for us mere humanoids when I came across this rather brilliant post from a lady on an animal forum. I visit there from time to time and lurk, hoping to pick up some pointers on snakes in particular. Anyway, here it is - enjoy.

So today it's my day off, and I'd arranged to go and collect a (to me at least) rather expensive new snake which I've been dreaming about for some years.

Picked up the snake no problem after a 1.5 hour drive to the other side of London. Sellotaped it into its Braplast tub, and drove home again.

On arrival at my flat I excitedly got my camera ready for pictures, made sure his new faun was ready, opened the tub and was greeted by..... nothing. Snake was gone.

Legged it back to my car and carefully start sorting through all the assorted rubbish that's in there (mainly horse riding gear and empty Dr Pepper bottles) whilst cursing my way through the Oxford Dictionary of swear words.

In my panic, I hadn't realised that my ever-useful Honda, Harold, had locked the doors whilst the car was open, meaning that when I shut the passenger door to go to the drivers side, I was locked out, with my car and flat keys locked in...

Ran to the local locksmith to beg them to break into my flat, which they did, grabbed my phone and rang the RAC, only to be told I'm no longer a member because I no longer live at home.

15 minutes and £203 later, I'm a member again, and they were even kind enough to boost me to top priority because an animal was involved.

Went to stand by my car and await the arrival of my knight in shining RAC van. Whilst trying to kill myself with cigarettes, I'm approached by a friendly Asian man who asks what's wrong with me. I give him a quick debrief and whilst peering through my windows he makes a joke that my car is so muddy it looks like I've been farming in it. I explain that I work on a farm as a horse riding instructor and he then proceeds to tell me that he is an actor and he needs riding lessons, then asks if I'll give him a discount if he "makes me his girlfriend", an offer which I politely declined.

He then tells me that his brother was recently murdered, having been lured from right outside my flat late at night, and was then buried in a flower bed by the murderer and his accomplice. Wondering why he is telling me this, he explains that he is on his way to the hospital with his toenail, which came off last night, to have his feet checked for fungus. Nice.

Anyway, the RAC man turned up, followed by my somewhat bemused boyfriend, and got me into the car within about 10 minutes, before running back to his van and shouting "Good luck!" at me as he sped off.

So now, here I am, sat in my car with some Jaffa Cakes and a Red Bull, trying to lure out said snake with a nice fuzzy.

FML.

LL xx