My brain magic is evolving

by

to include such skills as predicting the future by the médium of dream.  FACT.

My Ikea +1 misplaced her scarf, the night we went out innocently for a burger and ended up clubbing in our jumpers.  I dreamt, very clearly, that she recovered the scarf and she actually did, in the very last place that she contacted.  Which was a good thing, because it was a gift from her BF from his recent trip to Thailand.  So the scarf was well-travelled and cherished and he was just a little miffed.  What are the chances? (of finding the scarf).  Chances of miffed BF – high.

It’s not the first time this has happened to me, so when I say evolved, maybe more accurately, has lain dormant until the recent brain magic kicked in to re-awaken the gift of foresight.

When I was in my early twenties, I used to work with the man who would become my husband/ex-husband, in popular high-street fashion chain, Next.  Nothing interesting there.  Apart from it was full of bitches.  And the man who would become my husband/ex-husband.

After I left that job, about six or seven months later, I had a very vivid dream of driving  as a passenger, down the wide avenue in my home town in Wales, with the man who would become my husband/ex-husband, in his Renault 5 Gordini Turbo (So flash. So nineties).   On the radio, in my dream, was a song I didn’t understand, “I Want to be a Dawd“, and in my dream I asked the man what a ‘dawd’ was.  End of dream.  I thought it so strange that I would dream about him and his super flashy nineties car and a song with an undecipherable title, that I told my cousin Lady F, about it.

Roughly a year later, I found myself driving as a passenger, down the wide avenue in my home town in Wales, with the man who would become my husband/ex-husband, in his Renault 5 Gordini Turbo (So flash. So nineties).   On the radio, was a song I didn’t understand, “I Want to be a Dawd“, and I asked the man what a ‘dawd’ was.  At that moment, the recollection of my dream hit me square in the head like a sledgehammer so hard, that I actually felt dizzy.   The song was, ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ by the Stone Roses.  ACTUALLY happened.

Sadly any physical evidence of the gift of foresight was lost when my cousin, during a very excited phone call from me after the event, said she had absolutely no recollection of the conversation.

But, I can assure you that, I possess actual real magic powers.

Off to concentrate on the Lotto (and achieving world peace).

One very happy PANK

by

OR: Sometimes life’s just like that.

Well, I’ll be damned.  In a little over 2 months, together we have started to grow a small, but perfectly formed, worldwide PANKy community of almost 250 followers and over 3200 page views.  Which quite honestly, has taken me a bit by surprise, firstly.  And secondly, has made this 40 something 39 year old, single woman, with no kids very, very happy indeed.

My favourite stats page. Hello far and wide, welcome. x

My favourite stats page. Hello far and wide, welcome. x

After I saw the first article about PANKs, at the end of last year,  and then read a glut of pieces which quickly followed connected to  being a childless woman, I felt a strange sense of relief.  Relief from what, I’m not exactly sure, I couldn’t say.  Maybe the necessity to justify me as a person, justify my existence as a childless woman of a certain age, in conversations which were starting to become relentless.  I think everyone elses clocks were ticking loudly on my behalf.  I was becoming really defensive against the  repetitive, ‘but whys?’ and the ‘never minds’ and the ‘there’s still times’.

Endlessly feeling like I had to explain away my situation, to those men and women who just cannot comprehend the idea of a woman who would choose to be childless, with ‘funny’ stories of countless f*ckwits and philanderers I’ve dated, and entertaining anecdotes of impetuous or drunken or reckless shenanigans that could never have happened if children were a factor in my life.  I was tiring of the “and what about you?  When you having kids?  why don’t you want them?” interrogation, (pretty ridiculous fucking question to ask a forty two year old single woman to be honest).  Imagine if I was desperate for children, there was not even a sniff of a baby-daddy on the horizon and my clock was clicking so loud, they could hear it in Australia.  Insensitive and thoughtless.  “Ooohh, strange you should ask, in about two hours actually“!!

Because, I’m sure all the mothers out there will back me up, that’s how  it happens, right?  I was beginning to be brutally honest and respond with “Because they’re heavy” and “I like to sleep“, two very valid reasons not to have kids as far as I’m concerned.  These were met with pitying looks or incredulity.

Truth is, having children has never ‘seriously’ crossed my mind.  There, I said it. And that’s OK.  I had the conversation once with my ex, but I’m very relieved it never came to fruition.

I like kids and I love my friends’ kids with all my heart, but I never, really wanted my own too much.  And maybe, as I said before, that simply boils down to the fact I never met anyone who provoked the feeling I would expect to have, if I were destined to have children.  No-one who inspired my tubes to twitch into that kind of action.  But honestly, I sincerely suspect not.

It just simply never happened and you know what?  Sometimes, life’s like that.

And so, surprisingly, it feels like I finally belong somewhere, I finally found my niche.   There’s a tiny corner of society tucked away where it’s OK to be me.  And that tiny corner is finally recognising me and the countless other women like me.  And we are growing in number.  We will of course continue to be an anomaly, a social pariah, a weirdo, for some time to come I feel, but at least we are no longer called bloody SPINSTERS!  It feels like we are slowly, but surely being allowed to come out of the closet.  ‘A woman in her forties without children!!’ ‘I mean, what’s that about?’  A woman in her forties without children and not bereft or feeling incomplete.  A woman in her forties with no children and no sense of desperation to have them in the next thirteen seconds after meeting a handsome man in a bar, before her tubes seize up.  A woman who never really even considered children to be a part of her life plan.  A woman, (in my case), who to be honest never ever, even had the ‘plan’.  It feels as if owning a ‘social category’, relieves me of the need for an explanation, an excuse, an apology if you will, and I have felt embarrassed and apologetic on occasion.   For possessing the gift of childbirth and not utilising it. 

Yes, I’m designed to have children, I’m healthy and have the ability, but I am also lucky enough to possess the privilege of choice.  And it is a privilege.

Funny thing is, I didn’t even realise that I was looking to belong.  To anything or anyone.  But when I read that first news article, I was inexplicably happy.  Here I was, I was finally identified and recognised and connected to something.  This person they were describing was me to a tee and I re-posted the article to my Facebook page and said, “This is ME!”  hurrah!  Finally.  (And, how exciting, we’ve got our own ACRONYM).  Praise be!

So, hello and thank you to everyone in every country who is reading The Secret Diary of Anne Pank for whatever reason, and whatever you get from it, you are welcome here any time.  Mostly, you will find that it is irreverent drivel, my tongue is always firmly in my cheek, but it comes from a very real place.

Visit more, say hello, tell me your stories and let’s be happy and comfortable with who we are and the choices we’ve made.
Have a great Monday,
Annie P. xx

Happy International Women’s Day!

by
We're laughing now, but give us another four hours on these bad boys....

We’re laughing now, but give us another four hours on these bad boys….

OR: Wimmin, as I like to say. So, our baps ROCK! This we’ve already established, and also that they are on a similar scale to nuclear weapons, but in a really good way, and because of this have the potential to save the world.  But is that really so impressive?  So tell me really, what else is so bloody great about womanhood, that we deserve our own day?

Before we proceed, I’d like us all to cup our puppies, hoik them proudly aloft and say out loud, “I love my t*ts!!  And all the other things that make me a woman (but mostly my t*ts).”

Look at these DIAMONDS! (And I could have your head cut off if I wanted)

Look at these DIAMONDS! (And I could have your head cut off if I wanted)

Being a woman is cool because women are the only people in the whole, wide world who can be queens.  OK wait, not the only people in the world, but the only people who can be actual ruling female monarchs of countries, and that’s pretty cool, no?  The reason this is so fabulous, is because queens get to wear all the best stuff at formal functions.   Take Queen Elizabeth II, current ruling head of my own fair land.  When she’s got somewhere to go, she pulls out all the stops and there is no holding back.  State opening of Parliament?  Yeah baby, “Spangle me up and hand me my sceptre and orb, I got important sh*t to do!”  It’s all in there, diamonds, pearls gold, silver, platinum, fur, silk, velvet and she totally knows how to work a twenty foot train.  Boys, you got some medals and chains.  Boo you.

Where Vogue/Glamour/Elle tell us, ‘less is more’, Lizzy says, “Chuck it all on there GURL!”  And being the queen of Blighty, she also gets to tell Prime Minister David Cameron he’s a ridiculous joke of a bumbling idiot –probably.  Being told you’re a tw*t by a lady pensioner in a tiara has got to smart.

Insults from women mean something and have more impact.  Because boys call each other *rseholes and d*ckheads for fun, you never know when it’s real or not and so you take no notice and continue to be a real life *rsehole or a d*ckhead.  It proves the ‘boy who cried wolf’ theory, correct.  But, if a woman says to you, “F*ck you you lying, cheating c*nt”, especially calmly and well pronounced, you really are going to go away and seriously think about what you’ve done.  Maybe for as many as fifteen years and maybe in a cave away from all civilisation.  Good.  You should.

We get to wear a dazzling array of really pretty shoes.  You have two choices, lace-up or slip-on in different shades of brown or black.  Unless you’re a hipster, and then you can get away with wearing red patent or blush pink suede, because you are so ironic.

A woman in a position of power seems to command more respect and is doubly as sexy as the man in the same position, because even now, it’s still kind of shocking or surprising to see it.  But when you do, you think, ‘Wow!  She must have massive cojones to be in that job’, because sadly, it’s still true, that she probably had to grow a pair, work four thousand times as hard to get there, forfeit a social life, maybe her marriage and even choose between a high-powered career and a family.  We salute you.

We have wonderful (mostly neat) sexy bits, 1. tucked away in a beautiful little package that needs unwrapping like a present and which are, in no way, a pee-dribbling inconvenience that needs constant jiggling, touching and re-adjustment.  A man’s bits are all blatant and dangly and in the way and in your face.  (Don’t get me wrong, I like them, I like them a lot.  I just don’t want to own one,  it would ruin the line of my sharp trousers).  We cup, men grab.  It’s a little like comparing a warm hug with a strangle.  (Unless strangling’s your thing), there’s no competition.

And we’ve come up with so many pretty names to reflect our beautiful bits: flower, twinkle, muff, tuppence, lady garden, quim, minnie, nonnie, fou fou, foof, falula, Lily, sugar bowl**, to name but a few.  I’d say most of the ugly names for the vagina were invented by men.  If you ever refer to my beautiful lady garden as beef curtains*, I will rip off your c*ck with my bare hands.  How do you like them apples?

I like to call it what it is, my vagina and of course there’s c*nt, made most famous by Germaine Greer, who published a magazine article entitled “Lady, Love Your Cunt.”  And I do, really do, love mine.  The earliest citation of this usage in the 1972 Oxford English Dictionary, c 1230, refers to the London street known as Gropecunt Lane.  I wonder what on earth happened on that Street? But there is no clear and agreed origin of the word, but connections to Latin cunnus are obvious and simply translate as vulva.  Not so gross, shocking or insulting now is it, you big vulva?

We don’t cause each other physical discomfort to illustrate our affection for each other.  We don’t slap each other hard on the upper arm or back, while saying, ‘Hey *rsehole, good to see you man!’, ‘You too d*ckhead.’  All the while guffawing and laughing gruffly in a manly way.

We are completely at ease hugging and kissing each other, because, strange though it may seem, we actually really like and love each other and that’s not something to be ashamed of.  Love is a beautiful thing brothers.

We can cry whenever we want to and not be embarrassed.  When we’re happy, when we’re sad, when we’re neither, when we see lovers, news reports, puppies and dead people.  At weddings, funerals, when we’re hammered and suddenly realise we are going to suffer for three and a half days weeks (and can also no longer walk), redundancy meetings.  In the street on the floor, the night before our fortieth birthdays.  True story.

We don’t have to bottle up our emotions because it’s a sign of weakness and indicates our emasculation.  This is how wars start menfolk.  So, I suggest, after we’ve collectively flashed our boobs and there’s a momentary worldwide ceasefire, you need to have a good old sobfest (rent Kramer vs Kramer or Amour), get it out of your system, hug it out and let’s get on with having a lovely peaceful life.

Happy International Women’s Day to everyone who is a woman, is in a relationship with a woman, has a mother, a sister, a daughter and amazing girlfriends who they love and admire.  Be nice and kind to women, give them an education, show them things that don’t involve any of the Kardashians, show them a little respect and they will do great things.

Footnotes: 1.  For information only, if you ever find yourself ‘diving for pearls’ (see, another beautiful metaphor), take note, please don’t try to rub our button right the way off.  We love it, it’s a great source of pleasure to us and is very, very delicate.  Be gentle and loving and kind and caress it.  Don’t bludgeon it. That’s yours for free.  No need to thank me, but you will want to if you take my advice.

*Happened once.  The outcome was not good.

**Thank you to all my girlfriends who shared their vagina names.

Take a moment please,

by

to think about what it means to you to be a woman.

Look at us all having so much fun being women

Look at us all having so much fun being women

Tomorrow* is International Women’s Day, (and yes, menfolk, we’re sorry we’ve got a special day, but only a little bit), and I want you to think about why you love being a woman.

1) What part of this feminine journey means the most to you? 

I’ll give you a starter for ten; we’ve got BOOBS and boobs are ace!  Not only do they look nice and feel nice, we could probably successfully use them as weapons of mass destruction** to bring about world peace.  I think we could probably sink battle ships with our puppies but wouldn’t (because we are, after all, the ‘fairer’ sex), and instead we would just flash them, en-masse, and all the evil war mongers would be so distracted, they’d forget to blow each other up.  If Helen can bring about the fall of Troy, because of her beautiful face, just think what we could achieve with our breasts………

2) Why wouldn’t you swap it for manhood in one million, trillion whole years? 

For me, it has to be the inconvenience of rigorously jiggling my penis after the loo to ensure all the pee pee has gone before packing it away again, and most often still not succeeding to come away without at least a little dribble out front.  One word.  WIPE.

More to follow tomorrow as we celebrate International Women’s Day together………  think on.

*Women are so smart, that we even put our day on a Saturday, so we can really celebrate.

**Probably now, somewhere out there, spies have intercepted my blog and the key words ‘mass destruction’ (even though crossed out) and will proceed surveillance.

NB. When I put ‘women laughing’ into Google Images, the first result was, “Woman, laughing alone with salad.”  I can assure you that there is nothing in the slightest bit funny about a salad and eating it alone.

I never, EVER want to go to the gym with my boyfriend

by

It’s where I sweat profusely because I’m working my t*tties off to try and stay in some kind of aceptable human shape and improve my stamina, so I don’t die walking up the stairs when the lift is out of order in my building.  (Which actually happened after I got back from Christmas).  It’s a biological FACT, I sweat, you sweat, we all sweat together.  We have sweat glands for a reason.  Do not get botox in your armpits, it’s just plain weird and you will die (of not sweating, not botox)*.  I huff and puff and go red and shiny and  I am most certainly not glowing.  That is a word applied only  to women in the gym, that we use to try and pretty up the harsh reality.  No man ever needs to come on that hour-long journey with me.

So, with that in mind, these are the things I’m sure I don’t want to experience at 9am in the gym:

Lovers.  OK, I understand that your love is the greatest love that ever was in all the world (but not according to the late, great Whitney Houston who said,

“I found the greatest love of all
Inside of me
The greatest love of all
Is easy to achieve
Learning to love yourself
It is the greatest love of all.”  And I’m kind of with her.)

Maybe your love keeps you thin, but seriously, are you conjoined somewhere, in some part of your body that does not allow you to be apart for even one millisecond?  You arrive conjoined, you mooch about the gym conjoined and you leave conjoined.  Please, stop holding hands while you cycle together, stop waiting for him to finish on the machine you don’t like to do – find something you do like to do (he’s not going to disappear into thin air if you don’t watch his every move) and stop loitering around my machine loving at each other a lot with all your hearts.  It really puts me off my stride.  Stop it, stop it, stop it.

The ‘La Mañana’ special about the menopause.  Apparently I am going to gain SEVEN f*cking, goddam kilos just because I’m getting a bit older.  To be exact, between the ages of 45-57.  I’m going to be 43 39 in two weeks.  This information about the inevitability of the female body made me sad in my heart and I’ve said it before, but I WILL say it again – you men have it easy!!

swooooon

Johnny Depp at Altafit today

Seeing stars and swooning, not because Johnny Depp just walked in to Altafit Diagonal dressed as Captain Jack.  No, because I didn’t consume enough to keep me going that extra 10 minutes.

Falling off the elliptical trainer because you are so self-consciously looking around to see who is watching, flicking your hair around, admiring your perfectly manicured nails and smoothing down your expensive gym kit.  Not me, I was too busy nearly dying on the machine next to the woman who did this.

Giving yourself a nosebleed from exertion.  Work it baby, but don’t burst a blood vessel!   Not me, I was too busy nearly dying on the other side of the room from the man who did this.

Walking around not realising your thong is on full view for all to see through your almost completely transparent leggings.

You can learn a lot about the world when you’re in the gym, most certainly about things you don’t want to experience, ever, and a lot about people.  So, I say; go there, watch people, learn stuff and love (but only a little bit and nowhere near me).

*James Bond films are an excellent educational tool.  Scene in Goldfinger where girl is dead from gold paint?  Yep, you guessed it, because she couldn’t sweat/breath through the paint in her pores. FACT (maybe).

I went clubbing in my jumper

by

with Amore on the front, flat boots, my reading glasses, just mascara and sick hair.  A cardinal sin for a Brit.  To put it in perspective, it usually takes me three days, four hours and a few minutes to prepare for a night out with notice.  That’s lady maintenence, toe-nails, fingernails, home spray tan buffing and body glitter.  Most people think I possess diamond skin in the fashion of R-Patz in Twighlight.  And when I say ‘sick’ hair, I don’t mean in a Dench, down-with-the-kids kind of ‘sick’, I mean sick as in ill as in ‘when I am sick, my hair gets sick’.  True story, clubbing in my jumper AND my poorly hair.

An early doors dinner, pre-dinner drink and catch up rolled into arriving home at four am and attempting to construct a breadless sandwich involving Welsh mature cheddar cheese, turkey salchichón and mayo.  Tasty.  I think.  I don’t remember too much after Pharrell Williams’ Happy and the weird pineapple mixer sans pineapple.  Confused?  I know I was.

My Ikea +1 is also my ‘random nights that start with good intentions, involve amAZing burgers and end up somewhere in Gracia talking to a giant chicken Walter White’ +1.

Interesting. night.