15 July - pole dancing queens

Some jumbled up entry today… Finding it hard to focus as there’s always too much happening. In fact this is truly an eye opener in what constitutes a diary. There are many people/events I do not mention here at all, some are actually best friends or major time consuming activities and don’t get written about. Which must mean that when you read someone’s autobiography or blog, what you get is a really limited highlight. Necessarily so if you don’t want to read 85 volumes of something! I digress. So then… Notices on women’s toilets about not throwing sanitary towels/tampons down them, clogs up plumbing etc. I mean, how many years have we read these? Why won’t women remember to put the items in the bin provided? My guess is that a number of people out there can’t bear to touch the thing and just throw it straight down because it’s gross? Discuss. Then again, don’t.

This diary can be a bit boring I guess if we just wait for things to happen to me so am going to start relating more stories told me by friends. Here’s one about Ed losing his virginity and the time after that. He says that… oh, will have to save it for another time. One is funny, the other one is gross too so not in the mood. The third time he didn’t tell me about as we were having brunch and I couldn’t take it. Surprisingly though he seems a well rounded human being and his girlfriend seems happy enough to have let him finally move in (only to take half his possessions to a car boot sale the day after - wonder if he realised the regime he's let himself in for!)

Ok, here’s one instead from Alison who started a pole dancing class last week. We are a bunch of ‘almost first with the trends’ kind of friends me and mine, it has to be said. Maybe it’s a London thing but very often when we read about some new tribe/thing in the Style section of the Sunday Times, that’s us they are talking about. But of course once it’s in the paper it means it had already been brewing for weeks/months and is about to be a dead trend (journalists cannot get their editors to just agree to features that fast) by which I mean that none of my friends can be said to be the trend starters but then what do you expect at 40 plus?
Hey, scary thing I read about Saga readers (you know, the new affluent or not so affluent pensioners). The incidence of sexually transmitted diseases in their age group is on the increase! Which must mean that they do it… on those cruise holidays and solo exploring trips etc. which is great. Not the fact you get an infection obviously, but the fact that taking pole dancing lessons at 40 something means you can still do a routine for years to come. Do men prefer to watch strangers or do their partners turn them on if they do it in their living room? Back to Alison. In the general search for new fitness trends (the last one I know of is the exercise ball one so that’s a bit ancient) it seems you can now do pole dancing classes which are held variously in clubs or gyms. She wanted to go last Summer but couldn’t get it together so for all I know half of London is already doing this. Men included, there are classes for straight guys too. But, you get a studio with a few poles and a professional to teach and hey presto. Everyone has to wear high heels (the higher the platform are, the easier the tricks) and mmh, if you are inhibited in shorts well… don’t go, you have to have bare legs. So, her class was a mixture, but mostly v. young women (maybe these ones want to learn to actually work in the business?). I probably would have liked to learn in my 20’s but back then (oh dear, I said ‘back then’) it must have been just the usual seedy business and you only went there if you wanted a career in it. So, mostly young, mostly well proportioned but thankfully there were also some much larger sized women (that Dove advert has done wonders). All white though. An Australian 24 year old was teaching, extremely tall and long limbed. Basic rules are that you have to hold your arm pretty high up on the pole and to gain any momentum in the move you have to throw yourself away from it and totally exaggerate your movements. This obviously will not be easy to do till you act out the dis-inhibited part. To this end anyone with long hair was told to let it down. Hair flicking is of course a major distraction from you tripping up ungainly. Apparently it will take a year or two to do tricks up the pole. Great strength required. And even then you will get bruised by slamming into the pole with your not so soft parts (shins etc). But the teacher said she was a size 16 at some point and now obviously a size 10. This could make it into a top fitness activity then, promising weight loss is always a winner. Maybe in Oz you could get supersized pole dancers? What happens if you start as a size 8? Do you go down to Nancy Reagan proportions? That must be if you do it for hours on end though…hardly Alison’s case. She says some women definitely had a facility with the sexy facial expressions as well. I wonder if you can do it at all w/o adopting the 'come on you want me' expressions. You could end up looking totally stupid like Victoria Beckham in some video I saw her in, writhing about but failing to excite anyone I would think. I shall report back as Ali gets on with it.