Long-term readers of this site may recall that at about this time of year, I usually go into a rant about boilers (yes, I talk about all the hot and exciting topics here) . In case you've missed such seat-grippingly exciting stuff, as a summary, once a year, my boiler tends to stop working, it takes over a week for the boiler-man to come round and fix it, and I spend a week shivering and bitching to anyone and everyone.
So, this year, I decided to get my boiler fixed *before* it went wrong. Or rather, at the point at which it started making scary sounding noises (which most commonly started at about 5am when I'd drifted off to sleep so that it could wake me up believing monsters had crawled under my bed. because my boiler has an evil sense of humour.) To ensure I still had heating in the meantime, I've been bleeding the radiators every two days which, even as a not-that-DIY-minded girl, I realise is probably more than radiators should need bleeding. So I arranged for the boiler-man to come round.
This morning, he arrived. He took one look at the boiler, said 'you need a new one', called my landlady and then went wandering round the house to look at all the radiators. I stood in the kitchen with a lingering feeling of dread as I realised that he was heading for:
a) The bedroom
b) The office
This may sound tangential, but I promise it's relevant. I'm approaching the deadline for issue four of Scarlet (go on, click on the link and subscribe. It makes a brilliant Christmas present for any woman.) One of the sections I write the reviews for is the sex toys page.
You can probably guess where this is going...
Last night, I was testing the Vido - a frankly rather astonishing new toy that buzzes more intensely the tighter you clench around it, along with pulsing and doing generally nice things to your bits. Even better, it's powered by charging it up mobile-phone style, so I finally have a mains-driven vibe, which is good for comedy value.
So, the thing that I realised, just at the point at which the boiler-man was heading towards my bedroom was that the Vido was still very obviously in the middle of my bed. It's cock-shaped. This particular model is mauve. It's not subtle. There was no way that he could miss it. And no way that I could catch him before he got into my room.
Which wouldn't have been so bad had I not just had a package of products to review from Sextoys.co.uk - all of which were scattered over the floor of the office - and most prominent of which was the I Like Doggie sex enhancer (a harness that you put under your hips and a man can then pull on to raise your hips higher and get deeper penetration.)
I may be a lairy bint but underneath it all, I'm still British. I went for the only option that I possibly could; feigning utter ignorance, staying in another room and doing everything other than cross my arms behind my back and whistle insouciantly to demonstrate my innocence.
Inside I'm blushing though.
Other than humiliating myself in front of boiler men, I've been having a pretty normal time for me: namely, working lots and sleeping very little. Issue three of the magazine went to press last week and because of Christmas, issue four goes to press this week so it's been a little manic. Not least because I also agreed to write another book by the end of this month (40,000 words) It may seem insane but I'm very aware of a tax bill looming in January and want to be able to afford to buy Christmas presents and pay my tax without selling any bodily organs. On the plus side, I've got nearly 30,000 words of it already written and have come up with 65 of the 68 sex games that form the body of the book (it's all about sex games you play with dice. But I've tried to make them actually useful rather than just games that you take one look at and go 'yeah, right. Let's just fuck instead of all this hassle.') I'm hoping to finish it off over the weekend so I can get back into Scarlet and then - hopefully - actually go to a Christmas party or two and have some semblance of life.
I've also been busily doing final proof amends to Brief Encounters: The women's guide to casual sex (the name's changed now - orders from the US publishers who've just bought the book) I'm dead excited because I had a call from the French publishers who've also bought it. Not only will there be a version of the book in French - so I'll have written something that I can't actually read (having only a C-grade GCSE in French from about 15 years ago) - but they want to do a launch party for it in Paris. And there are rumblings that the US publishers want to do a launch in New York too - so it looks like I'll get launch parties for my first book in three countries (and 'London, Paris, New York' sounds *so* glam. Or maybe I'm just a big kid)
Other than that, I've been doing the usual odds and sods of radio, and did a TV gig this week for a 'round up of the year in celebrity fights' show (credibility, me? Pft. It was good money for not much time) Got another one coming up next week about celeb sex scandals and am blathering to various people about trying to get a TV show of the casual sex book off the ground. Who knows what will happen but it's worth a go.
In the meantime, it's back to writing sex games.
Posted by emilyd at December 11, 2004 12:26 PM