5 Essentials For A Romantic Weekend Away

Image by นิธิ วีระสันติ from Pixabay 

Planning a romantic weekend away can be extremely exciting, yet incredibly stressful. With so many important things to consider before you set off on your weekend away, you need to be sure you’re being as organised as you can possibly be. From packing your suitcase to coming up with an itinerary of things to do, the more you plan in advance the better. With that in mind, here are 5 essentials for a romantic weekend away: 

- A Budget Set In Advance

One of the first things you need to do when planning a romantic weekend away is set yourself a budget in advance. Whether this means setting yourself a budget for your travel and accommodation or setting a spending money budget, you need to be sure you know exactly how much your trip is going to cost. For a guide to setting a budget for your vacation, you can visit this site here. 

- A Suitcase Filled With Clothes

Once you’ve set your budget and worked out where you’re going, you need to ensure you’re packing all of the essentials. From two-three day time outfits and toiletries to comfortable walking shoes and coats, it’s important you’re thinking of absolutely everything. If you’re unsure, you might want to consider finding a weekend packing list online. 

- Something Special For The Evenings

As you’re going to be going on a romantic getaway, you might want to pack something a little extra for the evenings. Whether that means packing some incredible sexy underwear or packing a stunning dress for a nice meal, you need to think about how you can make your romantic weekend away memorable. If you’re looking for incredible underwear for your trip, you can find sexy thongs and g strings here. 

- An Itinerary Of The Most Romantic Spots To Visit 

Another important thing to consider when it comes to your romantic weekend away is whether or not you have a plan of where you want to go. Although some people prefer to take things one day at a day, most people like to make a plan of the places they like to visit beforehand. Not only will this allow you to visit all of the most romantic places but it will also help ensure you don’t miss anything. For a guide to setting an itinerary for vacation, you can visit this site here. 

- A Sense Of Adventure

Finally, you need to be sure you have a sense of adventure. Although you’re heading away to spend time with your partner, you also want to ensure you’re exploring as much as you can. Whether this means spending the day wandering through a new city or booking yourself onto an incredible excursion, the more you experience on your trip the better. 

Are you heading on a romantic weekend away soon? What essentials do you need to ensure you're packing? Did we miss anything off the list? Let me know all of your thoughts and ideas in the comments section below.

Storing Your Life

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Whether you are the type of person who never throws anything away or you ruthlessly have a cull every few months, storage is something that is key to having a tidy life.  

Storage is an important part of family life, but what we often forget to do however is think outside of the box when it comes to solving the problem of where to store items that you don't want to throw away, but don't have the room for.  

Having a cull of items you don't have room for may end up with a tidier home, but if you are anything like me, inevitably you will discover soon after are things that you wanted to, or should have kept but didn't.  

Not just objects, but memories.  Treasures that you did not realise that you treasured, until they are at the tip or have been donated.

Books that you decided you would not read again and then miss.  Photographs of events from long past that you want to reminisce with, but have been thrown them.  Furniture that you didn't need in your old house, but would have worked perfectly in your new home.  Even things like those winter coats that are past their best and don't fit in your cupboard, but would have been perfect for walking the dog.

Your attic, if you have one, is one solution, but damp, moths and who knows what else always eventually take their toll.  So what to do?

One option and an option that I use on a regular basis is renting a storage unit.  Specifically for my locality, I use Shurgard Self-Storage Woolwich

The reason I chose Shurgard was firstly because of easy to use website.  You can choose the size of the unit that you want and reserve online, paying only a pound for the first month and then a fixed amount each month, depending on the size of the unit.  There is also no minimum contract.

Renting a storage unit can solve so many problems.  When renovating your home and you need to store your furniture or box up everything while you decorate, renting a secure place to keep them is ideal.

If you are the kind of person that regularly culls your home of items, a storage unit can be the place you put things until you make your final decision.  It gives you time rather than having to decide whether to throw something away in the spur of the moment.

A storage unit also gives you the option of long term storage.  If you are looking to upsize your home and want to buy pieces gradually for it, a storage unit can be the place where they can be ready and waiting for your new home.

You don't have to rent a large space, you can get a 15ft square unit for less than £14 a month to store things like necessary documents that have somehow filled a filing cabinet as well as the odds and ends that you have accumulated over the years that you don't want to throw away.  Your child's old toys for example that are no use to you when the child has outgrown them, but the memories are irreplaceable.  

Have you ever thrown anything away that you have regretted.  I bet, like me, you can think of many things.  This is a possible and workable solution at a reasonable rate.

Why not try it out?   

Man, You Do Not Feel Like A Woman

As a woman, I will never know
what it is to be a man.  How it feels to grow through
puberty as a boy, experience male teenage hormones; how their bodies change;
what it feels like to deal with all of that.   

Likewise, men will never know what
it is to be a woman.  To experience our lives and live as we do.

How it feels when our periods begin
and we start to grow breasts.  How it
feels when the world starts treating you differently because of it.  How our emotions run riot.

The experience of being a man or
woman can be described to you, but you will never truly know or understand,
because it was not your experience.  You
have not felt it.  Lived it.  So how can you truly know?

This is why I can talk about how
it feels to be a woman.   Because I am one. 

Yet now in 2019 we are told that
men can now be “actual born women”. 
Because they feel like or identify as a woman, they are now women.  How can you feel like something you have
never experienced?  That you have no true
knowledge of?

When a transgender woman gets breast augmentation, they see it as way to express their femininity.
Quite frankly though, it is nothing but fakery and bullshit.  Breasts have nothing to do with how feminine you are or feel.

The way that transgender women think about breasts, is how men see and think about breasts.  As sex objects.  They make them feel sexy.  They slap them on their bodies and pretend that this makes them a woman.  They have no idea.



Trans women will never know how it feels to grow breasts at twelve years old and suddenly men are ogling you in the street.  How growing breasts changed you to become something is now regarded as “available”.  On the market.  An object.  Except on the inside, you are still a child who doesn't understand why grown men are whistling and catcalling you in the street.



Trans women can never know or experience what it is like to be told "boys will be boys"when you are sexually assaulted.  In school. Daily.  At fifteen years old.



Trans women are nothing but parodies of what they think women are.  Fake breasts and clothes that look like they are living in a 1980s bordello. 



If trans women actually knew the way that women think, had lived our experiences and had had our bodies, they would not be waltzing into our bathrooms, our changing rooms, our hospital wards and our refuges.  They would understand the fear.  They would understand how unsafe this makes us feel.  Not just how unsafe we feel, but how unsafe we are when put in that situation.



But they don't.    Because they think like men.  They cannot understand that fear.  Because they have never lived it in the same way that women have.



What they are is narcassistic men, who only see what they want and trample over everyone and everything to get it.  All the while sporting a pair of plastic tits and calling themselves a "real woman".



Don't make me laugh.

Are We Being Played By The Patriarchy?

"The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist"

I am not one for conspiracy theories.  I laugh at the flat earthers and shake my head in disbelief at the people who don't believe that we landed on the moon.  

But something has been rolling around in my head for some time now and it has been building up momentum.  So here is what I have been thinking.

In keeping with the quote above from The Usual Suspects, I am starting to think that the greatest trick the patriarchy have or will ever pull, is convincing people that men can become women.  Because it suits their agenda perfectly. 

I believe that the patriarchy is neither left nor right wing.  It exists at a higher level than politics.  The patriarchy is ingrained in the way that people think and what they believe.  It is a state of mind and is a set of beliefs that is not easily changed.  For some, that way of living is what they are brought up with and know.  They still live in it and some women, sadly, embrace it.  For others, that way of living is something that we fight against still.

No matter where you live in the world the patriarchy is there.  Sometimes out in plain sight, sometimes lurking in the shadows.  This can be when they are most dangerous.

So what is it that they want?  Ultimately, they want control of women.  Specifically taking control back.  They cannot (yet) take the vote away from us.  They cannot (yet) take us out of the workplace.  Society cannot function without two incomes in a household and they therefore pick their battles wisely.  Mothers for example are both encouraged to work but are also derided for leaving their child.

So what battles can they win?  What control can they take away from us?  The first answer is that it has already started.  You just haven't noticed.  If you have, chances are that you are gender critical.

Transgender women are a gift, perhaps the largest gift that the patriarchal system has received in a very long time.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon from Pexels

Think about it.  I cannot think of another time in history where a minority has had such a quick rise to acceptance and normality.  Not just normality, for the first time, a taking over of one group's rights and taking them as their own.



Gender dysphoria is a real thing.  There have always been transgender people.  But what is happening today is not just about transgender people and their rights.  This is also about power.  Over the past few years this has no longer just been about acceptance of transgender people in society.  It is becoming a takeover.  Supported, I believe, massively, by the patriarchy.



In 2018 the UK government estimated that trans people made up between 0.35 and 1% of the population (source).  For those who say my source is biased, here is the Government link, page 82.  Stonewall's estimate is 1%.  So let's go for ease with 1%.  Around 600,000 people.



Of those 600,000 people, according again to Stonewall figures, less than 5000 people have the Gender Recognition certificate.  Less than 1%.  Three quarters of those people are transgender women.



According to statistics, only around 11% of trans women go on to have gender reassignment surgery and 12% of trans men.



So let's use those figures and compare.  Of the 600,000 people who identify as trans, using the top end figure, less than 1% go for the certificate.  11-12% of trans people have gender reassignment surgery.  So basically around 530,000 people of the trans group who neither apply for the GRC or go for surgery.



So please can someone explain to me why the Government, all of the political parties, the NHS, the left etc etc are going with the party line that trans women are women and visa versa?  Why are we being told that someone needs to do NOTHING MORE than identify as a woman in order to be one?



How did we get to a place where a bearded man in a skirt who claims he is a lesbian and is on zero medication, can be called a real actual woman?  How did we get to a place where lesbians are being called immoral bigots for not wanting to have sex with men with penises who decide they think like a woman and therefore "are women".  How did we get to a place where (some) men are advocating for this?  Who are threatening, doxing and harassing women who disagree (I'm looking at you woke bearded bros).



One of the answers for me is the patriarchy.  Trans people are benefiting from the aims and wants of the patriarchy.  They are the perfect vehicle to deny and take away the rights of women.

Just look at what women are losing.  Our changing rooms, our bathrooms, our refuges, our hospital wards, our prisons.  We are no longer being called women.  We are "non men", chestfeeders, front holes.  The consequences, vast and far reaching.



Because it is no longer real transexual people who can access these areas and places.  It is anyone who "identifies".  Woman are becoming less safe every day.



Trans rights activists did not achieve this on their own.  They did it, I believe, with the support of the patriarchal system that wants to roll back the rights of women and put us back in the home, in the kitchen, where they think we belong.



Prove me wrong.

Removing The Labels That Bind You

I took a long time to find my voice.  To become the having a thousand thoughts and opinions a day kind of person.  

Joining Twitter and starting to write my old blog were both an avenue and arena that I had never experienced before and were in part the catalyst for releasing my voice.  As a result, many thoughts and opinions began to form.  It took a bloody long while to get there, but one thing to know about me is that I can and never will be pushed.  I come to things in my own time.

When I finally found my voice, "the left" seemed to be a natural home for me.  I happily joined the camp of lefties and refused to listen to anyone with the slightest inclination of right leaning thought.  Feminism was another world where I felt at home.  Pro women, pro choice, an easy decision.

But what comes with finding your voice and having a thirst to learn more, is that you begin to question the worlds that you have chosen.  The boxes you have placed yourself in and the boxes that people have put you in.

If you had spoken to me in September last year, I would have described myself as a uber leftie.  An intersectional feminist.  Accepting of all.  The kool aid had been drunk and I was on the party message.

But then.   I began to question the rhetoric.  Ask questions.  Object.  Seeds of doubt about what I thought I believed were planted.



I wonder if Rachel McKinnon realises the amount of people that turned away from intersectionality as a result of them (yes I am being careful) winning that bike race.  The photograph of them standing on the top of the podium.  Clearly male bodied.  Clearly advantaged over the two women who came second and third.  That was the start.



From there, I was like Alice falling round the rabbit hole.  My fall was akin to falling off a cliff and while I grabbed at points of information along the way, by the time I found my feet again, I was a different person; again.



I became irritated by the left who seemed to be becoming more self righteous and controlling by the day.  As I have said in a previous blog post, the presumption of the public and the persona surrounding them has always been that the left are always on the moral side, the side of the people, the right side of history.  The right was always wrong.  So why did I become to feel so stifled?  So controlled?  Wasn't it the right that wanted to control us?



Feminism also began to irritate me.  Specifically the holier than thou way that some went about it.  I cared about women's safety, women's rights, not what a fucking sandwich was called or whether a man opened a door for me was a sign of the patriarchy.



I reached a point where I was no longer a leftie, I was a centrist.  I wasn't sure whether I was still a feminist.  I was gender critical.  That I was certain of.



So from last October when I first started to question everything to know, I was in a state of flux.  I became politically homeless as more and more parties swallowed and spouted out the line that trans women were women.  They are not.  They will never be.



I joined the club of being blocked by Owen Jones (we need a badge of pride I think at this point).



Whilst listening to and learning from many gender critical women, I was also told however that certain people within the movement were not to be listened to.  That they were extremists that would ally themselves to anyone.  But I wanted to listen and make up my own mind.



I was tired of the labels I had both chosen and had been given.  My voice was not being censored, but I was conscious that some of the things I thought were again, would not be acceptable.



I wanted so much to go to the Woman's Place meeting in London.  To see Sharron Davies who I think is fantastic and unafraid in what she says and thinks.  Unfortunately timing issues were not on my side.



But then I saw Make More Noise were holding an event in Manchester.  Talking about the elephant in the room of feminism.  What we did not talk about/enough.  Posie Parker was one of the speakers.  One of the people I had been told not to listen to.  But I wanted to make up my own damn mind.



I really enjoyed her speech.  I also loved the talk by Sarah Phillimore which I understood more from my line of work.



But I was scared to admit that I had attended a talk with Posie involved.  Then I got angry.  I am tired of limiting myself and my experiences.  Who I listen to.  What information I should take from people.



So today, I am removing my labels.  I am politically homeless. Not left, not right, not centrist.  I will viewpoints from all and discard what I don't agree with.  But only after I have listened.  Supporting women, their sex based rights and the rights to their own bodies will always be the line I will stand on.  But I'm taking off the word feminist too.



I am label free other than my biologically fact based description of being an adult human female.



I think I will end my (very long, sorry) blog post with a few things that I believe and all, are a hill I would stand up for and die on.

• Every person is entitled to the same human rights.  No person or group need or deserve more than that.  We don't (yet) live in the equivalent  of Animal Farm.


• Lesbians do not have penises.  


• Biological men do not belong in women's spaces.


• No one under the age of at least 18 should be on hormone altering medication or undergo gender altering surgery.  It is child abuse.


• The state should not be telling parents what sex their child is.


• If you think that you are circumgender trans, you need psychological help, not affirmation.


• If you believe that putting on a dress, having a beard and calling yourself a lesbian is right, again, you need psychological help, not affirmation.


• If you believe that a woman saying no is not allowed because it may hurt your chosen identity feelings, you can frankly, fuck off.

Think I had better stop here.  For now.  More posts to follow.  Thank you, if you got this far, for reading.

How Social Media Killed Innocence

I have heard it said, and in most parts it is true, that adults forget what it is like to be young.  That society moves on, technology evolves and teenagers grow more worldly by the hour. It isn't the same as in "your generation".



But while the generations before us have worried about bullying, underage sex, teenage pregnancies, getting drunk in the park and "falling in with the wrong crowd", the obstacles that teenagers face today can be far more dangerous.



I would not want to be a teenager today, particularly a teenage girl, if you paid me.

Image from Pexels

Let's focus for the subject matter of this conversation on 15/16 year old girls.

When I was this age, I was the chubby girl in high school, known for having large breasts.  That was my label.  Cones, the boys called me.  My best friend was naturally very slender and she had her own nickname, which isn't mine to share.

There was bullying, as goes on in every school in one form or another.  In my case, there was also sexual harassment, passed off by teachers as "boys will be boys, they have hormones" and "buy a bigger shirt Kitty".  But that is another story.  

Bullying when I was 15 was limited to school grounds and waiting outside at the bus stop.  It was not being invited to parties and being excluded from conversations.    You were made to be an outsider.  But, the bullying stopped when you entered your home. When you were not in the presence of your bullies, you had some respite.



Mobile phones for the mass market did not come along until around 5/6 years after I left school (this makes me sound 190 years old I realise).   Social media only really started to become popular when Facebook appeared and started to gain significant followers.



I for one am wholly grateful that my teenage years was pre social media.  Because I do not think I would have survived it.  I truly don't.  Because if you are bullied or fall out of favour, it never stops and there is no escape.



There is a clear parallel between the rise and popularity of social media and the rise of teenage depression and suicide.



It is more than just a coincidence that rates of depression in teenagers aged 14-17 has increased by more than 60% according to an American study. 

Unsplash image

These days I am addicted to Twitter, checking the site and messages many times a day, having continued and ever increasing conversations with many people.  There are internet trolls of course and people who can target you on your views, but the block button is your friend and you can remove yourself from conversations which give you stress or cause anxiety.



I regularly have anxiety and the fact that I can sign out, have a break and come back refreshed is something that I do regularly, though not as much as I should.



You do not get to do that as a teenager.  You lead as much of your life online as you do offline.  Probably more.



Telling a teenager to remove themselves from social media when they are being bullied or excluded is ridiculous.  It would take a very, very strong person not to want to know what their fellow pupils are saying about them and talking about them behind their back.



If you removed yourself from the multiple social media sites, many of which I probably haven't even heard of would only cause more bullying.  More worrying about what people are saying about you; and planning.



That is before you even consider what porn has done to teenagers.  With porn accessible with merely a click on the internet, the expectations of boys on teenager girls (not all boys, yes I know) are horrendous.



When I was that age, your first experiences of sex was generally two people who didn't really know what they were doing, but generally having a damn good time experimenting.  The thrill of an hour kissing session.  That look the first time your boyfriend felt/saw your breasts.  The first time of sex.



Now, teenage boys have had years to watch internet porn and their expectations of porn star women are projected on to their female peers.  Hairless vaginas, porn style blow jobs, anal sex.  The presumption that this is the norm.



The expectations on teenage girls to do and perform these acts is massive and peer pressure ways heavily.



While the internet and social media has given us many things, it has also taken away more.  A respite from bullying.  Safe spaces. Normal experimentation and most importantly, innocence.