1001 Fallopian Nights: The BESH-Harem Opens for 30s TTCs & their silk pyjamas. Sherbert on tap. Baklava made by doe-eyed boys freely available. Kelims provided for SWI. Hookahs optional but welcome.

[Headbanger]

Scented silken tent opens its flaps* for business. Nubile veiled houris available for deep tissue sandalwood massage for that pre-droidal unease. Starlit pit tended by gleam-eyed sheiks proffering rum-soaked dates on golden platters. Goatskin rugs laid beneath hanging brass lamps for the un-PC BESH to frolic in furs. Intriguingly tarnished lantern housing benevolent Zita-Genie buried beneath piles of embroidered cushions. Don your curl-toed slippers & coin-fringed skirt, and I'll see you in the corner with a young Omar Sharif and ice cubes made from Tanqueray laced with desert honey and no you can't talk to him he's mine...

Goodness it's M'dear!

Apparently I may not be allowed to do the food shopping anymore either. Bought stuff for tea on way home...mind was blank and was all nauseous and mental...

Bought some innocent veg pots, some random savoury pastries, a bottle of sprite, breadsticks and some (amaaaaazing) fizzy jelly worms. Oh and some pomegranate. This has not impressed the Man who Cooks as, well, it's a bit rubbish as far as tea goes...

Gin think of the possibilities. You could top the veg pots with pomegranate and fizzy worms. Or glaze the savoury pastries with Sprite. Just make The Man exercise his creativity.

Or order in...

Gaaaaaaaaah! (since when do I say "gah"?)

This week is SWI week and MrA if you remember promised to impregnate me this month. He promised. And now we have my dad arriving on Sunday for three days and his parents coming for the three days after that. As if things weren't difficult enough at the moment, what with finding the energy and all . That's the worst of living in an enviable area. "Oh it's August. Let's go and visit the Arieses. I'm sure they'd love to have us." I don't want to sound inhospitable but it means cleaning the bathroom and cooking and everything, as well as everything else and as for the SWI - bye bye

Farkinell, I thought I could natter, but you lot take the - in a good way Too many things already said for me to be able to comment on without breaking the internet, but is it too late on a Friday for to het a good lezzing?

Am escaping going home tomorrow thank Charlie Mouse. TYF's cousins snuck me away to where they're staying (holiday home TYF's parents have created on their land) to ask me if I too find his parents - but speshly his Mum - really mental, skanky and weird! Am so glad it wasn't just me being precious or nitpicking or neurotic nor nuffink! Was a real eye-opener to get loads more info about the family and TYF in past and to hear other people saying things like 'I can't believe she doesn't even try to cook something you can have but won't let you cook for yourself!' and 'they just have zero interest in anyone, do they? No wonder TYF and his brothers are all so subdued - they've never been expected to have a personality or allowed one!' and 'they make no efforts whatsoever to make you part of the family, do they, Scorps? We've been feeling so sorry for you'. And lots more besides.

Anyway, that's my waffle. I've not been moaning or bitching to TYF, as he knows my complaints and feelings and I've bitten my tongue so he can have a lovely time (although now have metaphorical tongue the size of Cuba, ho ho).

Think I Oved today - CD16 - but TYF's had a banging headache all day so no go. Last time we made a rude was Wed., so hopefully that could be good enough (I have a paranoia that I HAVE to have sex on the very day of Ov as TCOYF says that older wimminz can have fertile window of only a few hours - I realise I am a menkul, okay?).

Mmmm, fizzy pop pasties. Gin and Drom are clearly the successors to Heston Blumenthal's crown

Love you guys! Normal service (ie obsessive internet-surfing and chatter) will resume as of tomorrow night. Wait, why are you crying?

"A few hours"? See above post.

I find that a few well judged looks and raised eyebrows to fellow female relatives really open up the floodgates about MsIL. It's how my SILIL (geddit?) initially bonded. Now all we can do is bitch about how bonkers our joint MIL is.

RieRie, I think TCOYF was on about wimminz over 40, but I don't let actual facts stand in the way of a good menkul

Yep, you are so right about the eyebrow-waggling thang - last night we looked like Roger Moore impersonators with epilepsy there was so much going on. Another reason to never get Botox

Can't wait to get home and do nowt but catch up on all the telly I've missed (ie mainly trashy BBC3 progs about preggo teens and kiddie beauty pageants ), eat my own food, swear like a trooper and sleep in my own bed. There will be flavour and personality and opinions and hygiene and many, many glossy mags to read, spread-eagled on my own lovely big squishy red sofa :)

PS I asked TYF what has been his fave bit of our break - he said 'you'. Awwww/spew!

ExCORiating!!!

Ah, 'tis always nice when you discover you're not alone in thinking someone's mad as cheese. Hope that made you feel loads better. Plus also, nothing like discovering shared horror in someone else's hygiene habits to cement new friendships . Disclaimer: I am a Domestic Slattern.

Didn't I read in Zita (Peace Be Upon Her*) that shagging before Ov is better because the spermicles hang about a bit, and that it's better doing it early than on the day 'cos then there's more chance of missing the window (and by window I mean enormous sliding patio doors obviously)? Clearly you knew all that, but whatevs...

Ho hum. Must get on with some work. I have A WEEK OFF and intend to GET THIS SILLY STORY FINISHED for the erm, fourth time.

Stinky you auld reprobate, if you're reading this, hurrah for today not being yesterday, and tomorrow being even further away, and the day after that further still. Onward BESHly Soldiers! And er, I think you're MAZIN'. That is all. What? I'M ALLOWED TO BE NICE SOMETIMES!

In other news, I had to do my first PIAP for my new CBFM this morning. No idea if it will assist with getting a win, but there's something beautifully comforting about gadgets, and counters, and feeling in control. FAO my PESHly friend, who will be reading this : THANK YOU DEAREST.

*Hm, which Narnia novel has a despot whose name must always be followed by 'Peace Be Upon Him'? Is it The Last Battle? This isn't a quiz question, I genuinely can't remember...

Morning all,

Scorpelina so glad you got a bit of a break from the ILs and a bit of a bitch sesh moral support from the cousins. Sounds like this trip wasn't as bad as previous ones then? And as to the TYF? Thats really really lovely

RieRie I feel you about miss-timed visitors. I forgot I am due to OV next weekend and have invited some friends to stay, oops. Alternating between wondering if I can get out of it somehow and feeling utterly wretched that I am arranging my social life around the antics of my fecking ovaries.

Had an interesting night last night, was nice in the end. Felt much better after a curry, headache must just have been hunger. I showed my chef friend the semen recipe cook book and she posted in on her face book page. Haha how to commit professional suicide in one easy step :o Also found out one of our friends is updiffed, she's in between residences in 2 different countries, has been seeing the father for about 3 months and she 'thinks' she is 'probably' going to keep it. :( I am trying not to be sensitive about these things but that does seem a little unfair. Can't even talk to the boy about it as chef friend wasn't sposed to tell me, but she thought I already knew and had let on before she realised I didn't. She knows we are having trouble TTC so not really sure why she raised the subject tbh.

I am really lucky in my MIL, she it a super sweetie and has her hands full with the boys nightmare older sister, so think she is just glad to see we are ok. Plus they live 5 mins round the corner so we actually see them in fairly infrequent short doses.

stinkiepixiehaircut think you should go for it. always quite liked winona ryders when she first had it short. I'm too ginger/flyaway for that, think it needs quite thick dark hair to work.

salty think my jar of Saltys Super CM (TM) has gone missing in the post. Do you have an AWB no for tracking purposes?

cross posts HB Good morning. I think it IS the Last Battle. Its the Ape that wears a dead lion skin and pretends to be Aslan isnt it? I can go and check if you like?

Good luck with the CBFM, I am still on cervix watch over here.... Also have a very ickle bit of EWMC so on the SWI case this week ramping up to predicted OV end of next week.

sorry end of 'the' week I mean.

Morning Rocket! (see what I did there?). yes, that's the one - the ape makes the donkey wear the lion skin. And the ape goes to hell and the donkey doesn't. I think that was the part when the vague allegory all got a bit preachy! Although...the PBUH bit...are we sure that's not the one set in the casually racist Middle-Eastern type setting??

So are you checking it for signs of fertility? 'Cos I read on some frankly alarming American fertility site that it goes all low and spongy or similar.

Are you not thinking of Islam, rather than Narnia, though I wouldn't put it past CS Lewis to have thrown in some bigotry (was I the only person not to spot the Christian allegories when reading it as a child?)

Scorp, glad you are on your way home, and that you have some people to confide in.

Got it! It's from The Horse And His Boy, and it's not PBUH, it's "May He Live Forever", when you speak of the Tisroc. It's obvs a version of the Islamic thing, because the Tisroc is a naughty Middle-Eastern-type ruler.

Phew! Got there in the end.

I did loads of cervix checking . I could genuinely tell roughly where I was in my cycle by how my cervix felt. It almost disappears around ovulation because it's soft & high, then comes back.

Is very weird, but also made me feel like a fertility guru. Mind you, am not about to deal with other people's ceviche. And you have to remember that I'm hippy-dippy enough to use a mooncup.

Having said that, I was reading up about perineal massage this morning and it made me go a bit green and sicky.

Medway I totally missed the allegories on the bank of the Narnia as a kid, having grown up in an atheist household. Haven't been able to reread them as a grown-up because of the betrayal. And the casual misogyny. And because Tolkein and Lewis singlehandedly created a really fucked-up version of the dark/middle ages. Gah.

I went to Sunday school, but otherwise was pretty atheist, so am a bit annoyed with myself that I missed the allegories. Might re-read them some day, I think my parents still have all my old children's books.

"Ceviche"!

I still think they're wondrous but then have always insisted, not always effectively, that authorial intent has bugger-all to do with the reader's experience. I used to know what the proper word was for that .

Absoluement agree re: authorial intent. But knowledge of the intent alters the experience - even if I deliberately ignore it, is still part of the reading experience. Which makes me sad.

Did anyone else read The Dark Is Rising? I loved this books!

this those. Sausage fingers.

Oh yeah Lewis was notorious for pushing his Christian beliefs through thinly veiled allegory. The end of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader is totally transparent (Lamb transforms into Aslan then transcends) Didn't work on me tho as I was blithely ignorant of it as a child and then just ignored it after noticing it as a teen. Still love the books tho although I think its a shame the Magicians Nephew gets so over looked as its my favourite. Lewis was a bit of a rip of merchant really, if it wasn't the bible it was Jason and the Argonauts...

HB yes cervix is still lowish and nose like, although it is getting harder to reach so I'm guessing its heading north in preparation for jizz reception. Don't worry I will happily feed your obsession with daily reports. :o

Drom I also use a mooncup, so am not adverse to having a rummage up there. I don't know about hippy dippy but its certainly more practical. I can't imagine what 4 months of traveling would have been like without it, apart from expensive, uncomfortable and inconvenient.

Yes Drom I loved Susan Cooper, was all over that kind of thing as a child and will still reread them, Also LLoyd Alexanders Prydain series, Ursula Le Guin etc etc. Was VERY disappointed in the film version tho :( DO you remember the Box of Delights? Sure it was sort of based on those books as it was very similar.

I remember finding the 'fantasy' section in the school library and pretty much reading it from end to end. Happy days...

I used to read the C S Lewis books when I was a kid and think he was trying to show how terrible religion and sexism were (my kerazy lefty Atheist parents must've been so proud!)! 'Cos I thought no-one could be making them look that obviously bad and be supporting them.

AryanNation, so sorry to hear about ILs descending at The Magic Time. Can you not, like, do it anyway? I mean, I presume they're not going to sleep in the same room as you or be in your presence 24-7? Sounds like quickies are your only hope (not Obi-Wan Kenobe).

Drom, why does perineal massage make you feel so vom? Am I being horribly naive in thinking it's just a bit or rubbing your inbetween area and inside the lovehole? [innocence]

Yay, will be setting off in about an hour and a half! Thanks for the support and yep, it has been a much better stay than usual, ie I only want to kill a few people instead of going on a crazed rampage with flamethrowers, etc. And HB, you say you're a slattern, but so am I - it's just that I can't handle MIL touching raw meat with hands so filthy they're black and then not washing them afterwards. I actually - politely - told her off about it last night and she sheepishly went and washed 'em AND the cutlery she'd just put out with chicken juices still dripping off her hands Sorry, I realise my mild OCD is perhaps not as fascinating for others as it is to me

Free at last, free at last, Good Zita Almighty, we are free at last!

Salad - about your carefree-differ pal. Just remember the most bitter of all BESH mantras: 'They only do it to mock us' - 'it' being getting pregnant. I've been surrounded by kiddiwinks everywhere I've been this hols and have, at times, put serious thought as to how I could hand myself with my own fallopian tubes. We feel your pain

I loved the David Eddings books when I was about 13, my whole family were reading them and we used to moan that whoever was a book ahead was reading too slowly!

It's a shame they got so repetitive in the end. I quite fancy getting the first ones to read again now. I could do with some comfort reading.

scorps have a safe journey home, bet you can't wait!! thanks for the kind words, tbh I am not so upset about the diffed pal as that of course is going to happen and frequently. but a bit by the way chef friend told me. It was sort of thrown into conversation when I was talking about another friend who has just dropped, and it was obvious from the start I didn't know what she was talking about, she could have back peddled and said nothing but sort of did that 'oh I've said too much, I'll HAVE to tell you now' Plus diffed freind is close with her but not as close with me so its unlikely she would confide in me early doors esp if she is not sure and I havent seen her face to face. I am prob being totally over sensitive but it was almost like she wanted to see how i would react. Or maybe she just wanted to gossip and didnt think, anyway doesnt matter (me, me, me)

Muser i haven't read those, would the be good to get into now or 'too young'?