I realised a relationship was doomed when I had a pregnancy scare. I was overjoyed when I got my period, and he told me he was sad. The man already had 3 kids by 3 different women, none of whom he saw, and I was like wtf how does he think I’d have a kid with him?? We broke up not long after. And every time I see him around town I thank my lucky stars I didn’t get stuck with him, as well as embarrassment I was with him in the first place.

It’s not just tourists that need to worry about that stuff. I have friends with Somali heritage and they don’t want to go there either, even with having family there.

I am a huge tea drinker and also like the Tiger tea like that, just with oat milk not cow juice.

Yes. I’d just say “you know how the Courts have the power to do X, and decide Y? Well the government decided to devolve those powers to an independent office, so that people didn’t have to pay for lawyers and deal with complicated legal processes. I work in that office making the Y decisions.”

Wool ball filled cushion pads. They’re really plump, and just the right level of firmness, so much nicer than synthetic or feather. Each pay day I’m ordering a couple, and gradually my sofa is turning into a cosy nest.

If you mean the floating lanterns they’re usually made with wire and are a hazard to wildlife and domestic animals, as well as creating litter.

Also I want to share that when I searched online for Palestinian NGOs, I got hundreds of results from an organisation called ‘NGO Monitor’ who claim to give unbiased information on NGOs. A lot of the information on their pages seemed quite emotive and unbaly, and did some digging. In reality they are a right wing Israeli organisation that just focuses on listing allegations of terrorism funding / sympathies against charities and NGOs that works in Palestine, they don’t back up allegations with good sources and they don’t give any other information on what the organisation does. So be mindful of that if you do any online research, they seem to have made sure searches for certain topics throw up loads of their pages, and they have a definite bias and reason for existence.

Medical Aid for Palestinians seem to be one of the few UK registered charities who are managing to get work done on the ground. Israel and Egypt are still (afaik) blocking a lot of aid getting through.

Fried trout fillets, potatoes, broccoli and green beans, with lemon, butter and some hot sauce. Chestnuts for afters. And half a bottle of Baileys.

That doesn’t stop an absolute fuck ton of people believing in it. One of my friends is quite deeply into it, she’s in FB groups about it, and decides what everyone’s type is upon meeting them. According to her I only think it’s nonsense because I’ve only done the free online tests, not the proper one. She wouldn’t listen the other day when I tried to put her right about flouride in the water, either.

Myers Briggs is posh astrology.

So most contraception is a combo of oestrogen and progesterone (but there’s also oestrogen only and progesterone only). Oestrogen is also the main hormone used to alleviate the symptoms of menopause, but you have to have progesterone on top of that to protect you from womb cancer (if you still have a womb).

Interestingly I struggled all my adult life trying to find hormonal contraception that didn’t make my emotions out of control and spiral into destructive depression, and I gave up in the end. It happened again on my first go on HRT. After getting some professional advice I discovered that that’s a known effect of the type of progesterone used in the most widely prescribed (ie cheapest) contraception and HRT. As soon as I was switched onto the micronised bio-identical progesterone it was like a dream, I felt normal. Not one doctor in all those years of trying different forms of contraception mentioned it could be the progesterone - maybe they didn’t know? There definitely seems to be a scary lack of understanding about hormones that’s for sure.

Testosterone in the UK isn’t widely prescribed, on the NHS you can only get it through a specialist clinic, or you have to go private like I did (it cost me £185 for the appointment, and £90 for the prescription for 6 months).

The hormone doses that are prescribed in HRT are not the same amount as our natural levels have dropped by, really the ‘R’ in HRT is misleading as what is prescribed doesn’t replace what we’ve lost, it just gives a little top up to lessen the symptoms.

Testosterone

I’d tried a few different combinations of HRT (for menopause), and was doing ok ish on oestrogen patches and micronised progesterone capsules. But I still felt like a shadow of myself, a barely functioning husk. I ended up paying privately to see a menopause specialist (after finding out the waiting time for the NHS clinic I was referred to was at least a year and a half - just for my referral to get looked at), and she prescribed ne testosterone. Within 48 hours I noticed a huge difference, I felt like I’d recovered a huge chunk of my energy and my personality. It makes me furious that it’s so hard to get. I’m not sure what state my mental health would be in if I hadn’t been able to get it. I was definitely looking at having to cut hours in work to be able to cope, and that would have had a big financial impact on me. And so many people I speak to - including women - are confused about why testosterone would help, there’s so much misunderstanding about hormones, they don’t know that women have testosterone and men have oestrogen. My aunt asked me whether it would reverse the menopause and I was just like er what… How would that even work?

Military / weapons, police, bailiffs, pyramid scheme grifts, wellness grifts, petrochemicals, mining, financial services (unless it was something like a credit union)

I use Bandcamp instead of Spotify now, because that’s what most of my musician friends use to sell their music and recommend as the best way of supporting artists directly, and some of my favourite current artists are active on there. Yeah I can’t just stream and make playlists of whatever I want, and it’s more for new music than older stuff, but I can scroll through and play the suggested tracks which are far more interesting and diverse than anything Spotify would suggest to me, and then I can buy the stuff I really like. I’m slowly building up enough stuff that way to have an interesting collection on my phone to listen to, and it’s also introduced me to some really cool music that I wouldn’t have heard about from Spotify.

I had a duck egg containing a baby duck in HCM. It was ok. I stopped when it got crunchy.

I think some instances remove swear words so you just see ‘removed’

Is that the guy that Adam Curtis talked about in Hypernormalisation?

Twin Peaks, the original run. I watched each episode twice a week when it first aired, then several times once I had it on VHS (including a 24hr marathon with my friends), and then I’ve watched it about 3 or 4 times on DVD. However this has involved fast forwarding through some of the storylines I don’t like in the 2nd season (mostly James & Evelyn,little Nicky, and a lot of the Nadine and Mike stuff). I’ve only watched the 3rd season once so far, it’s long, and quite intense, and I haven’t had the head space and time I would like to dedicate to it when I go back into it again.

Just think, there’s a kid out there that’ll tell people about the story of how they were born, and how glad their parents were that random strangers came to their aid and helped bring them into the world.