Silence from the John Snow pub

Just before the Easter weekend, a bunch of self-proclaimed "queers and allies" turned up at the John Snow pub in Soho for a second kiss-in to protest at the treatment of Jonathan Williams and James Bull. Although not everyone who'd said they were attending on Facebook actually showed up - by quite some margin! - there were still a lot of us hanging around outside the (closed) pub for three hours, sticking posters on the doors and speaking to anyone who'd listen. There was also far more actual kissing going on than in the previous week's media-fest, as you can see from Zefrog's photos of the event. This seemed to draw the attention of many passers-by and a lot of folk on Twitter, even if the newspapers now seem to be somewhat bored by the story.

There is still no word from the landlord or the brewery on this matter and so, understandably, people are finding new ways to try and elicit a response. The latest attempt involves an online petition, so please add your name if you feel that they should explain themselves and/or apologise. The pub seems to be perfectly happy to close and lose business whenever a kiss-in is organised though, so perhaps a few more of these events are required so that they feel the pinch? Much as I am a huge fan of kissing, I have to remind you that there is a serious point to all this so, alternatively, why not just boycott all Samuel Smith pubs? Spend a little more on your beer elsewhere people - you know it makes sense.

Images by @ladyuhuru, one of the event's organisers.

After Hours: Why you should all love my life

I arrived late at Horse Bar in glamorous Waterloo to discover that the effortlessly beautiful Betsy Bliss was already ordering drinks for the rest of The Rebel Rebels. "I'll have a Hendricks and tonic", I chirped, after embracing my good friend warmly and complimenting her on her gorgeous new Westwood frock. Then I rushed over to see the rest of the girls and catch up on all their news.

The five of us met a few years ago and, in no time at all, had vowed to wow the London burlesque scene with our unique comedic talents by forming a cabaret group and hosting our own shows. With five successful Rebel Rebels nights behind us, we were busily making plans for the sixth - a splendid summer seaside romp at one of our favourite venues. Betsy brought the drinks over to our booth and we began to plot.

Little Miss Naughty is the most organised member of the group and I really don't know what we'd do without her. Quicker than you could say 'my sugar daddy paid for this but I'm so not going to sleep with him', she whipped her MacBook Air out of her purple ostrich Birkin bag and started checking dates for rehearsals and emailing potential support acts. Despite the need for such things, I was also keen to catch up with what my dear friends had been doing since we last met, and so I enquired about Honey Schnapps latest gentleman friend.

"We had a wild night," she replied, with a naughty glint in her eye. "He's quite... alternative. Apparently he attends some rather naughty parties where he once saw a friend have a threesome with people she'd not even met before!" She stroked her Cartier pendant thoughtfully as she recalled the second-hand description of the x-rated event. "I wonder if he could get us an invite to the next one," I asked curiously, before the ever efficient Little Miss Naughty called our attention back to the task at hand. After all, this show wasn't going to plan itself and we could continue with the gossip once our tasty home-cooked Thai food arrived.

After much debate over the content of our next group act - which will definitely not be inspired by Honey's friend's shenanigans - More More Kensington rose to slink to the bar in her Louboutins and get us another round of drinks, asking us all to check if her fully-fashioned seams were straight as she stood. We may all lead outrageously exciting lives, but a girl can't forget the truly important things whilst she does so.

In case you're wondering, this (mostly fictional) piece is Miss Lolly Pops' tribute to Millicent Binks, the London Evening Standard's "sex columnist".

Bank Holiday Britain

Whatever you think about the impending Royal Wedding, it has happily led to rather of a lot of us here in Britain getting treated to an extra day off work. So, with two long weekends on the horizon, what is there to do that isn't packed with tourists? Well, rather pleasingly, my Easter weekend will be spent in a quiet corner of Suffolk with three lovely people, sunshine, steak and a hot tub. The wedding weekend, however, is currently less certain. One thing I do have planned is a burlesque performance in a Royal Wedding-themed cabaret that promises to be rather more fun than Wills 'n' Kate's special day (for me, at least - I'm sure they'll enjoy themselves!). On Thursday 28th April I shall be swooshing about on stage in a wedding dress of my own, which will undoubtedly be far less stylish and expensive than Ms Middleton's hotly anticipated frock.

If that's all far too daft and 'wedding-y' for you, there is a more serious option in London for that night too. The group of activists, creatives and academics called Mutiny, who regularly host the series of events called "...on Trial", will be putting Violence under their social microscope on Thurs 28th. They'll be asking why is so much violence still perpetrated within the home, and what’s behind the failure of police to get on top of this phenomenon? What has been the role of violence in the Tunisian, Egyptian and Libyan revolutions and where did it come from? With live music, performance poetry, and original live theatre, it's bound to be a good night for the political activist or feminist in you.

This makes me wonder if there will be any violence in London on the day of the wedding itself. Even if there isn't, I think staying away from central London will be a wise move as getting anywhere with the inevitable crowds of tourists in your way will be pretty much impossible!

Positive thinking

A friend told me on Friday about the time when she had an appraisal at work that didn't go so well. To counteract all the undeserved negativity that resulted, she decided to write about why she deserved a good review and told me that, although it is extremely hard to do, writing 2.5 pages on how great you are is a fantastic feeling and something that everyone should at least try to do. A bit like a spring clean for the mind, focusing only on positive things for a while is bound to do some good so I thought I'd try it and start with something small like a paragraph of a blog post.

However, this really isn't going to be as easy as I first thought. Right now, all I can think of is two words - friendly and caring - and nothing else springs to mind at all. I really can't think of anything to say about myself! I suppose it's a bit like going for an internal job interview as, because I feel you all know me, I reckon you'd see straight away if I was lying or using a bit of marketing speak to make myself sound better. Self promotion has always been a tricky thing for us Brits to do, so any tips on how to manage it effectively would be very much appreciated. How do you write about yourself? What are good things to consider and what sort of language do you use to make it sound sincere? I haven't even managed to revise my Twitter bio lately, so I think I think I really do need some help with this!

Image of the lovely @PullMyDaisy taken by @settoastonfire

Kiss-in Protest Against Homophobia

Strange things often happen in Soho but, as it's London's most open-minded and gay-friendly district, you would think that being asked to leave a pub for kissing your date wouldn't be one of them. Many people aren't keen on public displays of affection, but pubs like making money and... well, anything goes in Soho, right? That's why it was rather peculiar that a story entitled Gay couple 'kicked out of Soho pub for kissing' appeared over on So So Gay this morning:

"Two men say they were asked to leave a pub in Soho on Wednesday night for kissing while on a date. Despite protestations from other patrons at the John Snow pub, which is owned by the Samuel Smith brewery, the couple say they were manhandled and forcibly removed from the premises."

By lunch time, outraged friends of mine had already started planning a 'kiss-in' protest at The John Snow pub on Broadwick Street, and it now has its own Facebook event with all the details. If you're interested, in London and available on the evening of Thursday 21st April between 5 and 8pm, do join the protest and spread the word. All kissers welcome!

Image via William Hamon's Flickr photostream.

Glamour and good times

On Saturday I was thrilled to be able to attend the first 'Coquette' at Kettner's in Soho on behalf of BitchBuzz, so a review will be winging its way towards the internet some time this week. If you can't wait that long, I suggest you check out fabulous photographer Rosie Reed Gold's blog for a taste of what we all got up to. And, as if that wasn't enough glamour for one week, on Wednesday I'm off to see The Hurly Burly Show at the Garick Theatre. No doubt Miss Polly Rae and her Hurly Burly Girls will put every other woman in the shade with their sparkling costumes and effortless dance moves, but it certainly won't be hard to outshine me right now as I have a severe case of the sniffles looming. Still, Michael Billington in The Guardian described the show as "a rousing celebration of the female form", so that's bound to make me feel better. Well, that and a hot toddy!

UPDATE: My BitchBuzz review of Coquette is now online!

Image by Rosie Reed Gold.

Silk, lace and suspender clips

This year I have become slightly more involved with plans for my younger sister's impending wedding, due to my status as bridesmaid. There's nothing much I can really do to help out, as she has it all well under control, but I do like suggesting fun or vintage-style touches that she might want to add to her day. You can never have too much pretty stuff, right? So it was with all of this in mind that I showed up at yesterday's Playful Promises, Kiss Me Deadly and Ayten Gasson Lingerie press afternoon in the rather decadent surroundings of Volupté.

As I entered the room, I was greeted by the sight of extremely beautiful Ayten Gasson silk and lace lingerie in shades of cream, paired with a gorgeous selection of handmade one-off bridal garters. Each silk garter is trimmed with a selection of vintage Nottingham lace and hand tied bows, plus no two are the same so it's the perfect unique touch for a wedding outfit. I noted the details to pass on to my sister and moved on to the Kiss Me Deadly range of vampy vintage-inspired lingerie and shapewear. You might not thing there would be anything for a traditional wedding here, but you'd be wrong. As well as a camis, French knickers and teddies that look suitable for a sexy yet relaxed wedding night, there is the Vargas dress that would be splendidly smoothing under a wedding gown, plus more pale-coloured shapewear that is to follow later in the year. Finally, I delved into the delights that Playful Promises had to offer. The thing that stood out most for me here was a potential hen party idea... their gift sets would be ideal for a little pressie for all the girls staying in the hotel, and they even have one for the bride-to-be!

These three companies all offer something quite different and are well worth checking out if you are sick of wearing the same boring high street lingerie. The quality is excellent and the designs are superb, which is more than can be said for many more expensive lingerie brands! Of course, as well as looking for wedding-related items, I was also adding to my own wish list. It can't hurt, right?

Sex writing and the media

Yesterday I picked up a copy of the London Evening Standard and my attention was immediately drawn to the pretty girl staring at me from the masthead. "Introducing Millicent Binks" it said, "our new sex columnist". Ah, sex... one of my favourite topics of discussion! Whether it was an educational advice column or a titillating tale of scandalous behaviour, this sounded like it would be the perfect thing to get London talking and would add a little of what had been sorely missing from the Standard's Fashion Style & Sex section recently. I flicked straight to page 31 to see what she had to say and, after wading through all the photographs, must to admit to having to read the column twice before I managed to work out what point she was actually trying to get across. Not a great start.

Binks' first column for the paper was a story of an apparently good Friday evening. I'm sure she intended it to come across as an amusing story of a night out with other sexually liberated 20-something Shoreditch folk but, instead, it seemed more likely to alienate many of the people who would be reading it. Do swinging hipsters read the Evening Standard? Probably not, and it's just as well because the chap she mentioned as featuring in a threesome with her friends apparently didn't make the grade! Yes, it was a story about a threesome, but one that Binks herself was not part of and so no real insight could be provided. There was no angle on how easy - or not - these encounters are, no comments on the best way to go about it or how to avoid heartbreak if you're a couple inviting someone to join you. There was no useful information and also no real entertainment value either. It just left me cold. This was not merely due to the choice of subject matter either, because you only have to read Lucy Mangan in today's Stylist to see just how a good writer can make even the most bland topic seem entertaining.

I'm not saying that Millicent Binks' lack of journalistic training is to blame for my boredom - although she is billed as a burlesque star, radio DJ and Agent Provocateur model so I hope that someone gave her some writing tips to prepare her. The real problem is that newspapers don't really know what they want from sex. When you put it on the front page it grabs readers' attention, and no doubt increases circulation as a result, but sometimes celebrity adultery scandals are thin on the ground and so there's nothing to print. When that happens, a regular sex writer can easily allow you to bleat about naughtiness on the cover but, sadly, deciding on who to front that column and what content to put in it is not always left to the most informed people. What do they think sex is? Something that only glamorous people do and the rest of us simply aspire to? Newsflash: sex is messy, complicated, exhausting and a hell of a lot of fun... and pretty much everyone does it! Surely a better use of column inches in a newspaper would be to help us all find out how to get more, better, safer sex?

I wouldn't want you thinking that reading stories of other people's shenanigans can't be fun and also educational, because good writing can really be very insightful. It may be the case that the Evening Standard were hoping that details of Millicent Binks' evenings at swingers' parties would be as compelling as the writing of Zoe Margolis or Brooke Magnanti in their anonymous sex blogger days but, in taking this approach, they have most certainly missed a trick. It merely looks as if they have employed someone as a writer simply so they have an excuse to print lots of photographs of her looking glamorous, and that isn't really helping anyone. Sex is an important subject and media coverage of it is often shamefully poor. I really hope that the Standard works with their new recruit to put this column to better use in the future, and I shall be waiting patiently for some improvements.

The secret to good sleep

This morning I asked Twitter if anyone knew the secret to getting a good night's sleep and waking up feeling refreshed. Last night I had no trouble dropping off and I slept through, uninterrupted, until my alarm went off but felt no better for it. Surely if you sleep well, you should find getting up in the morning easy? People were quick to respond with tips, hints and requests that I share the secret if I found it! Phil told me he has a WakeMate on the way and will report back on whether it helps. A couple of people suggested that orgasms help you to sleep, as does the slightly more sedate option of a night time milky drink.

The ever-helpful Gert gave me a rather extensive list of things to assist the perfect eight hours of sleep: early night, no alcohol, low caffeine, unwind for an hour or two beforehand, make sure your bedroom's cool and your mattress isn't saggy, plus... you should ideally sleep alone. Hmm, well I can probably blame last night's cocktails for this morning's sleepiness, but I don't know if it's a list I'd be willing to adopt on a permanent basis! It seems the secret to good sleep often seems to be to have a bit less fun, but Pete offered me a very interesting explanation for the problem over on his Tumblr:

During the day, the colour temperature of the sunlight is between 5,000 and 6,500 K. These high numbers correspond to cool, bluish colours (which is initially a bit counter-intuitive, because one thinks of the sun as being a fairly hot thing, but bear with me). Once the sun sets, the light sources that we have typically surrounded ourselves with (moonlight at 4,100 K, candles and other flames at < 2,000 K) correspond to warmer colours - oranges and reds.

So we’ve evolved to respond to these colour temperatures in a totally sensible way, which is that cool colours wake us up, and warm colours relax us. We’re awake during the day, and sleepy at night. So you can imagine what happens when you bombard yourself with cool colours at night time. It keeps you awake, you take longer to get to sleep, and you wake up unrefreshed.

I can definitely understand how using a computer late at night can prevent me from sleeping well, but this explanation reveals a bit more. It seems that, although my Lumie is a great idea for getting off to sleep, its sunrise function probably uses the wrong light temperature to be fully useful in the morning. Perhaps I just need a butler or maid to wake me with a cup of tea and open the blinds for me in the morning? Sounds like I'm back in dream territory again!

Love the Garden

When I lived in Manchester, my house was dotted with potted plants. A peace lily that was a housewarming gift, spider plants, ivy... most windows or sets of shelves had some variety of living foliage. During my teenage years I always had at least one plant in my bedroom and would happily adopt new ones to add to the leafy feel of my personal space, so having an entire house to fill with plants was rather exciting. As a pale-skinned hayfever sufferer, the garden was never somewhere I completely enjoyed spending time and so my gardening efforts only extended as far as re-potting house plants and growing roots on cuttings. This is very satisfying though, and many a soothing moment was spent on weekends in my Manchester home looking after the plants I had accumulated during our time there. Sadly, a move to a property with far fewer window-ledges meant that I left all my plants behind and gradually forgot the pleasure of of a fresh bag of potting compost. These days, all I look after is the odd herb plant from the supermarket, which usually ends up devoid of its tasty leaves before it has a chance to get very big at all. However, the people over at Love the Garden reckon that growing your own leads to much bigger plants and it's even easier than you might think. As I expressed an interest the moment they mentioned growing something that could be eaten, they kindly sent me a box of goodies to help me cultivate my own 'basil bush'. I decided that my sunny office windowsill was the best place for this gardening adventure to take place - until there's enough there to cook with, of course! - and so today I planted the seeds and we're ready to go. Deciding to read no instructions whatsoever, as this was supposed to be easy, I'm now wondering if I'll manage to mess it up... but the pot is right in front of me five days a week so at least I won't forget to water it. I shall blog again as soon as there is something exciting to report.

UPDATE: 10 days in and I have photo evidence that I haven't messed it up yet!

Longer is better?

In the early 1990s, I was obsessed with long skirts. My (all girls) school allowed pupils in the sixth form to wear their own clothes but, in order to maintain some sort of lady-like decorum, we were forbidden from wearing trousers of any kind. However, this meant that we all fully embraced the oh-so-dainty alternatives of 'tiny skirt with thick tights and massive stompy boots' or 'ankle-length grungey hippy skirt', much to the frustration of the Head Teacher. I remember owning a wonderful floor-length patchwork circle skirt that I'd found in some Camden-esque store in our town, and a full tiered blue gingham skirt from River Island that I really wish I still had. For me, the entire 90s was filled with what are now ubiquitously called maxi-skirts. I loved them because they looked elegant, fully covered my pasty white legs, and allowed me to wear a skirt with flat shoes without looking frumpy. Once the decade ended, finding longer length skirts became increasingly tricky and so, eventually, I gave up.

Then I grew up. My style has evolved and the 70s-style maxis that can be found in every high street store this summer are just not my thing. The late 1940s to early 1960s, from where I draw much of my style inspiration, was more about the midi length and there are many of those sorts of skirts around at the moment too. However, midi is not something that flatters those of us with short frames and rounded calves. Maxi really is the only way if you aren't blessed with waif-like elegance, but that has its own problems, even if you find examples that eschew the 70s trend. "So why are all so suddenly flummoxed by the idea of wearing a longer skirt?" asks Imogen Fox in the Guardian this week. Er, because most shops make them way too long for anyone under 5' 7" to even consider, and because they kinda look a bit too summer-y and/or evening-y for the office on a cool spring day.

And don't even get me started on 'colour blocking'. Great look, but that phrase is as teeth-grindingly awful as 'bang on trend'.

Image via colodio's Flickr photostream.