We're All Going To IBESHA: Last minute budget holiday fun for 30s TTC. Pack your string bikini and your oversized shades and get on board.

[Saladbomb]

Last call for flight SWI101 to Shagaluff. Sangria laced with folic acid on tape. Fake tanned Club reps will be dishing out the 2 for 1 cocktails, dressed in nothing but the most miniscule budgie smugglers. The pit will be manned by sleazy but virile Spanish waiters to provide your every need. Lets see the summer out in BESHley style, IE: starting a bar fight, drinking the place dry and falling over in a heap at the end of the night.

Sorry RieRie, I was just there for the day, visiting friend for her birfday. I baked her a cake too... any excuse. Not sure I will be doing it again - 2 hrs to Newquay, and two hours back, with child refusing to sleep and pretty much whining at me constantly. I was tempted to stop and buy in-car dvd thingy just to shut her up but I am too tight against such modern fripperies. A clothespeg dolly and a skipping rope should last her well into her teens I reckon. I am sure baybeeRie will be fine in a drawer, or a sling, leaving you hands free and multitasking like a good 'un. Sorted.

Now, what is the plan for tonight? Bikini tops and arse skimming shorts? Blue WKD? Lets not bother with food, just head to club and get kebab on way home at 6am?

I thought I might wear my glass stilettos too Poll, along with my tres, tres chic jointed clown pendant...

Can I ask a question? The whole SWI thang - now, me and Mr S do fairly regular weekend SECS, but how am I to get him to changez le pattern to include the odd weekend jaunt, as if my calculations are correct I will now be ovulating bang smack in the middle of the week. He does not react well to instructions such as 'get me diffed or I'm going to shag a spanish waiter'

I need to get me diffed asap so I can deal with any slippery womb syndrome this side of 40...to add to the whole Droid/holiday combo it was also my 36th birthday....aargh...

anyhow...mememememe
Thoughts, BESHies?

Well...tis a tricky one Salts. Men are very set in their ways about such things. I guess the trick is to make it as sexy and fun as possible. Quite possibly I'm the last person who should be doling out advice on the subject. Ask Laurie - she seems to get loads . 36 is no age. None at all. There are lots of PESHes who are 36 and our gorgeous Pol and Cho are 38 I believe.

I just spoke to my dad. He and Ma have been up to That Lunnon to adore new grandson and she is so smitten she has stayed another week because she is so loving being a granny and pushing a pram and rocking a wailing bubs etc. Sis is grateful for the help apparently. Father described all these grandparently duties so enthusiastically my voice broke and I had to end the conversation. Now he'll think I'm horrible :(

Oh Aries luvva, that stuff is so hard . Well done for not having a full-scale mankul breakdown on the phone. It WILL be you before long...

Salts, though I am not zigackly expert in getting laid at the drop of me knickers, I do find that keeping the OM fully involved in it all does help (totally counter-intuitively). So if he knows when I'll be laying an egg, he sort of gets on with it in a cheerily workmanlike fashion. Now, given that I first joined the BESHes because I thought i'd be the only woman alive to be barren because her husband wouldn't touch her with someone else's , this is a MAZIN' turn of events, and just goes to show that things can change for the better. So, erm, yes: being really frank about it all is what helped us. (Without being mental and obsessive- pretty tricky line to tread, that one!)

Oh RieRie that's a tough convo to have. Pliz to not think you are horrible. You are lovely, and it is hard, man....here, you can look at my buzzwams if you like

If I was sexy and fun on a school night I think Mr S would have me sectioned. Or just turn over and go to sleep so I'd feel rejected AND barren!!

Laurie where are you-hoo need some help!!

On that note, Pencil I'm dead chuffed you and MrHB have become so shag happy. "Is that Head-bury-her-in-a-Y-shaped-coffin- Banger?"

We keep crossing Salts. Speaking personally, MrA sulks if he thinks I'm using him for sperm, so it is a tricky one. We need some advice wiser in the ways of BESH than we.

Fanks Aries . Was not an easy thing to tackle. (TACKLE! ). Menz are as complicated as wimminz, you know... Love from H 'Goes like the privy door when the plague's in town' B

Hmnnn...interesting Headgirl Veeeeryyyy interesting....

Frank, like, this week I will mainly be gusset checking on account of egg laying? Or frank like, here's a list of dates for the next 6 months...

I guess I'm anxious about scaring off the last remaining vestiges of spontaneous romance!!

OK, so, basically it goes a bit like this (the OM is in the emergency services on bonkers shift patterns, which only adds spice and interest to the proceedings, obvs):

Me: Hey sweetie - what are your shifts like next week?

Him: Off Friday and Saturday. Hoopla!

Me: Hoopla indeed! Oooo by curious coincidence I reckon I'll be wet as a haddock's swimming costume by then - any chance of a shag?

Him: Hmph, interesting. Yup, count me in!

Then on the day there may be the reminder, cheerily delivered, first thing in the morning: Oh hey aren't we supposed to be getting it orn today, Mr HB? Jolly times! Boom chicka-wow-wow etc. etc.

If push comes to shove I resort to Things Likely To Make Him Happy, ie food, beer, and laughing at things together on the sofa.

Not sure if that helps other than to say I try really hard not to sort of look at the calender and go, by Jove, the 12th already, drop your kecks, sperm boy! Because the OM is a very sensitive and loving sort and any sniff of that and his auld fella would disappear permanently inside . A mixture of a) fair warning so neither of us make plans to be out till midnight that day, b) joking about it, and c) romance in the sense of actually spending time together and having fun and therefore feeling like a shag, seems to work.

It HAS taken since January to get to this stage, mind!

Note to self: must remember not to call MrA "Sperm Boy"

My advice, Salty is that SWI on a weekday has to happen at about 7/8pm, before dinner while you've still got energy and before you go to bed. Have a quickie on the sofa and then enjoy the rest of the evening in the knowledge that as soon as you get into bed you can sleep.

I usually tell the other half that we need to SWI lots between e.g. Monday and Friday next week but that is about as much detail as I give him and it seems to work for us. Luckily he doesn't seem to mind that 90% of the secks we have is for sperm gathering purposes, I guess after 11 years he'll just take it whenever he can!

Morning fellow hags. How are the 2wooflers doing today? Any more symptoms Lorry?

Salty I found that too much info was a turn-off for TG, but a bit of forward planning did the trick. I'd usually warn him about 5 days before and bless him, he rarely failed me. SWI is a pain in the arse though innit... after nearly two years of it, it has killed our sexlife stone dead. Of course, it could be the hormones but whatever it is, I would happily never have sex again.

Morning lovelies.

Arielgrill that sounds dreadful :(

salty I share your pain. This morning would have been, by my calculations, the absolute optimum time for the Sechs. However, Mr 'Shoes refused to put his bloody comic down so that's probably game over for this month. I am so bored of trying to guesstimate how long the previous swimmers might last and when the last possible shag-time is so I can panic about it.

I might try the whole saucy underwear full-on assault this evening just on the faint off-chance but in all honesty I am knackered and it's going to be a right faff.

Headgirl and Twinkle your strategies sound impressive and I might try those next month when this month I have the inevitable baybeefail.

Morning haglets. Oo one other thing, FYI Salts and OwlSandals: a lovely pal has given me her magickal CBFM (got her diffed first time after I think 15 babyfail cycles and 2 mmcs), and I think that has made the OM more involved ebcause it is a special computery gadgetty thing, and they like that biz. Also removes all guesswork from the equation. Obvs I can't say yet if it works for me - this is the first time I've tried it! - but definitely it's helped with planning SWI and getting the OM involved a bit.

Where's Lozza? I want a 2WOOFL bulletin, stat!

I am commencing the 2WOOFL but it's far too early for symptom spotting. I do permanently need a wee, but that is because I am trying not to be such a gigantic auld heifer and am thus swilling down pots of green tea instead of eating bread & cheese. Mmmmmmmmm, bread & cheese

Qu'est que c'est la CBFM?? Pliz to explain...

Morning Hags! Thoughts for the day anyone?

Clear Blue Fertility Monitor...

Do you think I should get one? I'm too tired and feeble minded today to make a decision. Someone will have to issue me with an instruction. It would have to be secret from MrA though.

Oooo, clearly it is a magic CBFM (clever baybee fail-preventing machine?)

We should make it a little shrine with BESHcandles and stuff.

Yes, where the f is Lozza ? I demand gratuitous symptom spotting.

Now pass me that cheese if you're not having it, mmm cheese. I've had wine as well this month. YES, WINE.

Aries chick, it's definitely worth at least researching it - there are shedloads of reviews online, largely very enthusiastic. Like I say, waaaaaay to early for me to know if the majicks have worked for me - but it gave me two wonderfully emphatic days of peak fertility, and they were a bit later than I had thought going by calenders etc.. It's just nice to know that you're definitely ovulating. I hated taking a poke in the dark

They're also not even slightly difficult to use. Not cheap though that's the only thing...

We had a BBQ last night with both cheese and wine (and beer too). As soon as it was lit it started to rain of course. In fact a few people on the beach scowled at us and openly blamed us for bringing on the rain by lighting the BBQ. Bloody tourists.

Right I'm doing it. I Will Get One (unless one of the lovely PEH differs takes pity on me and sends me their now useless one).

Aries, I think you should ask the PESHes if anyone has a spare knocking about. Partly for thrift purposes and partly because it'd be nice to use a charmed one!

I'm SHY!

you don't have to ask here...