The house is resounding to the sound of loud guitars again which is great. You get to miss widdly widdly after a while and though I love (most of) the stuff F does as a composer/producer (and definitely welcome the cheques it brings), I can’t really get my head around all this dance/trance/garage/techno/pop stuff and classical (with the exception of the fucking miserable Russian violinists whose name I can’t spell and Wagner - for the timpani’s and women in metal bra’s) tends to leave me cold. Nah…give me a Gibson ( Les Paul Standard 1959 - go look isn’t it gorgeous) or a fender strat (red of course), ladle on the flange, add soupcon of wah wah, stick in a middle eight that sounds like a freight train to Kashmir, turn it up loud and I’m happy. My rock chick tendencies do tend to upset F who’s a lot more eclectic than me and likes any and all good music (which definition also includes anything that’s been well recorded) and despairs of the fact that my musical tastes tend to span 1968 -74 (stones not beatles) with a brief reprise during the LA scene circa 83-86 (but not including Warrant, Bon Jovi, Europe, or grunge), but he can’t really complain as I don’t tend to tell him to turn it down when he plays guitar.

Anyway the reason for the riffin’ is simple. Now that the webcams set up again we’re back in contact with London. Which means many of the ne’er do well degenerate musicians and producers (who seem to be doing quite nicely now thank-you) we knew down there are in the flat. Admittedly they’re sharing space on the monitor rather then lounging around, pitching their tent in the loft or putting the unwashed dishes in the back garden ( now that’s being organic) but you can’t have everything. Apparently F is able to work with them in real time (forget latency-this is broad band) rather than just recording and then emailing the tracks or ftp’ing things all over the known universe. It beats the limitations on file size. Or at least I think that’s what he said - I could have got it all wrong cos when he starts getting into technical stuff about what he does I tend to glaze over. I can open his programmes - I know the basics of how they work but one abortive attempt to make a dance remix version of the devil went down to georgia using the drum solo from van halens hot for teacher and one of Bill Hick’s monologues, fatboy slim does not me make.

I’m kinda ambivalent about this webcam thingy though. While I admit that on the one hand its great to see the people who otherwise I wouldn’t see except for a biannual visit (and Jgirl your looking tired - you aren’t eating properly are you?) and it does make me feel a bit like I’m in Bladerunner, on the other hand I fucking hate the web cam. OK, I’ve just switched from ambivalence to dislike but really there isn’t much difference between the two- if your ambivalent towards anything it’s because your gut instinct is hatred and you’re just too polite to say so.

The reason for this hatred though isn’t because of the musicians, nor the fact that even with the computer switched off, the monitor covered in a dark cloth and the camera unplugged and hidden under the mattress, Bill Gates can still monitor your every move. If I was worried about people seeing into my home I’d have curtains. It’s because I’m vain. In fact I’m inordinately vain.

Its a genetic thing. A hereditary illness. The symptoms manifests itself in various ways, Mum doesn’t ever have her photo taken. Dad’s fatherly advice to his kids consisted of telling us that there were only two things in life you had to watch out for - the tax man and gravity and that there were loopholes you could use against both, while my brother has a fascination with his own image which means that getting him past any reflective surface is like trying to peel a barnacle off a rock. My thing is camera’s. It’s a family joke. Show me a camera and you can’t get me down with a gun. The merest suspicion of a lens will cause me to drop a hip, bend a knee, incline my head slightly to the left (the best shaped eyebrow and my beauty spots that side too), tilt my body slightly to the right, suck in my stomach, tighten my ass and angle my arms so that my waist looks non-existent, flash a smile and widen my eyes. (I can do it in the time it takes to press auto focus)

Which would make you think that I would love web cams. But I don’t. It’s too disconcerting to have to hold a conversation while watching the other person and your reaction to what that person’s saying. You don’t believe me - next time you’re on the phone put a mirror in front of you. You see - you stop having a conversation and start watching yourself having a conversation. Extremely ironic and post-modern don’t you think? No matter how hard I try, my attention is hijacked by my image and it doesn’t make for scintillating conversation. I bet Wilde never had to produce his immortal epigrams while trying to decipher whether or not his cheekbones were well enough defined and Saki certainly never delivered satire while attempting to determine whether his skin looked blotchy. It’s OK for F “I eat once a week whether I need to or not”P and J “I look like a 30’s starlet even on a bad day”girl…With the sort of cheekbones you usually find chopping breakfast on a mirror, there’s no such thing as bad lighting for them. If its bright they look good if its dim they look like Nostradamus - but since I know for a fact that it takes two tungsten’s and an overhead spot to define my face properly then what chance do I have with a web cam and a table lamp.

I know I shouldn’t be. I know that it’s what’s inside that counts, I know that women have thrown themselves in front of horses, chained themselves to railings, gone on hunger strikes and burnt their bra’s in order that women aren’t judged by appearance but I can’t help it. I’m vain and I’m proud of it. I don’t think that I’m the most beautiful person in the world - I honestly believe that everybody is beautiful-but I’m certainly not going to be ashamed of liking the way I look and since once you hit 45 ( unless you run 13 miles a day) everything goes south then I’ll be damned if I don’t make the most of what I got while I still have it. Does your brain disintegrate if you wear make-up - well that’s a chance I’ll have to take - but I haven’t noticed that it does. Do I mind being thought of as attractive by guy’s. Well not as much as I’d mind being blanked by them. Does playing a helpless female demean me? Not if it means I get what I want.

If feminism is about reclaiming the power of women then lets be radical - let’s propose that loving ourselves (and no I certainly don’t mean that in any touchy-feely workshop way - cos lets face it some things are just better shared) and wanting to look our best is a big part of reclaiming ascendency instead of hypothesising that letting ourselves go means that in some twisted parallel universe we’re actually being true to the sisterhood. I mean do you think any one would have taken any notice of Germaine Greer if she hadn’t been gorgeous, rebellious and clever.

Lets be honest. The feminist movement was the worst thing that ever happened to women. (I can hear the boo hisses from here) Sorry (well not really) but it was. I ask you? Instead of being (as clever women were) the power behind the scenes which is much the best way to be - all of the power and none of the responsibility- feminism just meant that we won the right to slog out our guts in a day job, come home and do the cleaning and obsess about the fact that we don’t have a significant other in our lives. Whinging, self obsessed lightweights like Bridget Jones and the characters in Sex in the City have replaced role models like Madam de Pompadour, Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, the Bronte sisters, Colette (and you know what, I wouldn’t mind if F locked me in the bedroom if I produced prose like hers) Emily Dickinson… The list goes on and on and on. (Most) men no longer open doors for us, give up their seats on buses, hand over their pay packets, feel that they need to support us and their children which we bring up, respect us enough to marry, let us run the household (do you realise that in the past the housewife was the undisputed ruler of the home because she and only she had the keys to the spice cupboard and spices were worth more than gold - after all New Amsterdam now known as New York was given to the English in return for an island that had nutmeg trees on it). But no. In a feminists eyes - being equal to men is vastly superior to being…well to being superior to them. Before you start the backlash I know, (and all together now…) before feminism women were exploited, patronised and forced to stay in loveless marriages of convenience, they were treated as chattels and society was not set up to protect them or their rights. Things have definitely changed haven’t they? Women are still not paid as much as men but men no longer feel the need to subsidise our income. I don’t notice domestic violence decreasing since feminism took over, in fact I’d hazard a guess that since we emasculated them, men are more violent towards women than before and as far as loveless marriages go - well you’re right staying with someone you don’t really love but will treat you with respect or at the very least cold courtesy is way better than living in some dingy council flat with screaming brats and a host of casual lovers who will fuck you but won;t respect you enough to make a financial or emotional commitment. Women definitely have parity now- C’mon girls, look up your pay schedule and check. Can you tell me where the liberation is in that? We conveniently forgot that men are ruled by their dicks and gifted them with brains and they certainly wouldn’t have thought of themselves as oppressors of women if we hadn’t put the notion in their pretty little heads first.

Women don’t like other women. There I’ve said it. Another one of the secret myths of femininity shattered. It’s not going to win me any friends but I don’t care. Christ if I cared about having friends then I’d have ended it all a long time ago. Actually I’ll qualify that last statement. If I cared about having women friends then I’d have ended it a long time ago.

I do have a handful of friends who happen to women but they happened more or less by accident and the fact that they’re women is secondary to the fact that they’re friends. The reason for this is very simple. I realised very early on that the vast majority of women are the sort that have given other women a bad name. I’m not talking about reputation here…you can screw as many people in as many positions as many times as you like - I don’t give a damn. I’m not even talking about brain power. If you’re a bimbo and you’re happy, clap your hands ( mind you don’t chip your nail varnish). I’m talking about the fact that when push comes to shove a women can be guaranteed to administer the final prod. Or to put it another way - when you’re up shit creek without a paddle it’ll be a women who’ll sell you down the river - earning herself a nice whack of commission to boot.

No matter how enduring the friendship, given a chance to put the boot in a women will swap her Manolos for a pair of steel capped boots and take aim. It might be more subtle than a kick up the ass - how many times have you proffered a told you so under the guise of advice? Or given advice that was a character assassination under the guise of ‘I’m only telling you because I’m your friend.’ Have you ever been less than honest about whether her bum looks big in that, her choice of partner or what she wants out of her career? It not that you want to rain on your friends parade, constant drizzle is much more subtle and means that there’s a strong chance that the parade won’t ever get to the start line.

If I’m ever in a real crisis - of any sort, then my male friends are my first port of call. They won’t listen to me drone on for hours over a bottle of cheap wine overanalysing my problem until I’ve turned into a neurotic alcoholic. They won’t make my problem their conversation piece until the next poor fucker lands in the shit. They cut to the chase, tell it like it is and then offer some suggestions. They won’t say ( in a sweet whisper of voice that suggests you’re retarded or dying or both) ‘I thought so at the time but I didn’t like to say’. Well…if you thought it was bad idea, and you’re my friend why the fuck didn’t you tell me in words of one syllable? Men will say ‘I told you that was fucking stupid thing to do.’ Because they did - but having ignored their initial advice they don’t get huffy - they offer a solution. I might not like their advice but I don’t have to worry about gagging on the sickly sweet marzipan taste of the cyanide.

Forget sisters under the skin, (have you ever seen sisters together ?) I defy all of you to deny that at one point in your life a friends misfortune gave you an uncomfortably warm feeling. A ‘ha well that’s put her in her place …who does she think she is’ sort of feeling. Yell if you never once said anything bitchy about a woman friend. (Its very quiet) I’ll make it easier for you. Yell if you’ve been bitchy about a friend less than ten times. ( It’s still awfully quiet here.) Women are crabs in a bucket - as soon as one looks like they’re going to climb out, the others will try to pull it back.

It’s not all about appearance either although that’s one of the most obvious ways we do it. What about the search for a mate. Cast your mind back to school - didn’t the girl with a boyfriend have an air of smug superiority that you just wanted to strangle her for? You weren’t interested in the spotty faced git she had hanging off her arm, but you’d have married him just to get up her nose.

What about the one that was extremely good at hockey - didn’t you want to brain her with the stick or at the very least whack her ankles hard a few times.

What about that quiet one - who had the perfectly neat handwriting. She might not ever had said anything interesting in her essays but at least you could read them. Ever felt like ripping up her exercisebook.

They (we) can’t help it. It’s nature red in tooth and claw. We’re genetically programmed to be this way. There we go, perfumed, polished and doing the peacock strut. We’d have our teeth bared if we weren’t scared we have lipstick on them. It’s all about survival. We need to survive and in order to do so we need to eliminate the competition and what’s that? You got it - now all together… Other women. Forget all this civilised crap. At our most basic level we’re programmed to eat, sleep, shit and procreate and no matter how we dress it up in the trappings of the psyche the animal remains.