Christmas Breakdown...

Its that time of year when you end up curled in front of the dangerously tinsel-bedecked fire with three children with hacking coughs and streaming noses, in an approximation of a festive family Christmas.

For this reason, Singular Cake will be closing down for a week or two - re-opening in the new Year with thoughtful and profound insight, gained no doubt over the chocolate and brandies along with a few extra inches of waistline. Hey! You're lucky to be having a Christmas, ain'tcha - considering the state of half the planet.

Til then ...Happy Holidays, whether you're in a tent in Tibet or a commune in Catford...think on.

Why Lust is Good...

I've finally sussed it! Why we need lust as well as love in our lives... Its like this.
The Pattern of Lust
We discover Lust at puberty when we first fall for someone. It's all about being selfish and gratifying our desires. WHICH IS GOOD and essential to our development ! Teenagers have to learn what they want in order to work out how to get it. And normally that means something different from their parents so they can define themselves as distinct. All those sex-crazed teens watching Buffy or Smallville - they are doing their homework on Lust. THIS IS GOOD. Without this experience we do not know how to fulfill our bodies desires.
The Myth of Love
But we've been sold this myth that love and lust are the same. OH NO - THATS WHY WE GO WRONG! All those films showing the heroes IN LURVE suggest that the two forms of love are always found together. Not so...a time and a place for Love and/or Lust.
Real Love or Lust?
Once we've got a handle on teenage lust, and tried sex, we might grow into mature beings who can offer one another Real Love ie platonic selfless undemanding love. But what often happens is we have a series of lust based relationships (dump our friends and family and go sow our wild oats) and then meet THE ONE. We wanna hang on to him or her. We think this means we've found real love but at first it can only be Real Lust... We rarely feel the sort of love that demands nothing in return at this stage.
The Object of Lust
Sometimes all that lust creates a baby, and an important shift occurs. We have to care for this creature and create a good environment for it to grow. Here's our first glimpse of REAL LOVE when we put our wants on hold for the sake of this babe. Lucky parents discover they can be selfless and giving when they look into baby's trusting eyes... Not-so-lucky ones find that lust goes out the window and one of the couple strays looking for it. Not that surprising really, when Society tells us that Sex is Dirty and Nice Women don't want It. Sometimes the new mum becomes swallowed up in all that baby stuff and only offers her partner the same kind of platonic love.
Lost Lust
So the object of Lust is really motivating our species to procreate or satiate our urges - in the sense that we are driven by 'animal passion'. But Lust wanes temporarily as we concentrate on providing for a child. Through loving a child we find that Love can be as fulfilling and wonderful as Lust (but without the distraction of passion.) PROBLEM... As the man is often not as involved in child-rearing he may not feel this overwhelming love for his child at first. So he may revert to Lust to fulfill his needs. If his partner does not offer Lust - he may go elsewhere.
The Object of Love
But if both partners stick it out, Lust does rear its head once more - either to create Baby Two, or to fulfill the personal needs of the parents. And now we have the opportunity to put what we have learned about Love and Lust together. Bingo. Those weird couples who still fancy each other after all these years... now thats IT. Accepting someone with their human imperfections and still wanting to jump their bones...

So the key to it is remembering when we need Love and when it is really Lust we're after. We need both. If we cannot find Lust in our lives, we often stray into different experiences without realising that we're looking for replacement Lust. But pure Love and sincere Lust can and should go hand in hand.

First we only receive Love, then discover Lust, then discover Love and Lust combined, and only when our needs are satisfied do we have the capacity to give Love. Without the revitalizing power of Lust in our lives, we rarely have the awareness and self-control to give selfless Love. So don't relegate those feelings of Lust as unhelpful. Get horny, get satisfied and you'll be more likely to give real love in return.

Go GIRRRRLS !

I'm glad to say that the Anti-choice Bill was overwhelmingly defeated in the Commons this October.

Conservative MP Nadine Dorries' Bill to reduce the abortion time limit was defeated with 108 votes for and 187 votes against.

Christine McCafferty MP who spoke against the Bill correctly pointed out that it was ill thought out, cruel to women and not based on science.

She exposed the Bill as being part of an anti-choice campaign driven by extreme religious views from the US that were being imported to Britain.

See! When we stick together how strong and successful we are !

Urgent Information for All Women

Nadine Dorries MP begins a campaign to restrict abortion for women in the Chamber of the UK Houses of Parliament on Tuesday 31st October.

If the right to an abortion is decreased or removed from women in the UK, (as it is elsewhere across the globe), how will that be a step forward?

What misogynist hatred is this? You would condemn a woman to 9 months carrying an unwanted child, to which she must give birth? She will then be forced to raise the child, be expected to care for it, provide for it and educate it, until he/she can fend for him/herself? All the while the mother will be aware that she did not want this child, and that a 'civilized society' forced her to spend her life this way. We do not give life prison sentences to some rapists, but instead would force the 'victim' of rape to endure a life caring for any resulting child?

And the children? Babies born to unwilling mothers are put at greater risk of physical and mental distress. When a child keeps you awake screaming for nights on end with toothache, and you did not want that child, what likely outcome is there? Is this what 'society' wants?

The reason behind this thinking is that life is somehow sanctified. A foetus has miraculously been created (by some Higher Power) and who are we to deny it life? What just God would allow this poisonous logic? When we deliberately breed cattle for the table, do God-fearing Christians take up arms against our intention to create life? If a woman takes medication for a life-threatening condition and suffers an early-term miscarriage, is she to become a murderer? Women do not schedule abortions thoughtlessly. They are a necessary medical procedure made to protect womens' health, mental well-being and genetic vulnerability.

Life is what we make it. Every day, many spontaneous and planned actions result in the conception of a child or children. Many of these will naturally miscarry undetected. Others may be lost during pregnancy. Others may grow full-term and be born. There is no mysticism in this. We have an over-populated planet, and many common dangers affect the balance of human beings on this planet. But I, for one, have no desire to make mothers out of unwilling women for the sake of religious or theological argument.

Please contact your MP and give him/her short shrift if you agree.

I'll get off my soapbox now and return to inane blogging shortly.
Penny Clark Lapenna, mother of 3 daughters and 2 miscarried foetuses, who fervently believes in a woman's right to a safe abortion.

Things that I am afraid of

Is our fear of the Dark really a fear of that unknown disease lurking within, the unforeseen malevolent attacker, the unguessable moment of our own death?

What wakes you in the night in a cold sweat? Are adult fears just extensions of those childhood worries – is that a vampire, a witch, a lecherous neighbour? Does that translate into - will I amount to anything? Will I be found deficient in social graces and die alone? Will I achieve a significant something? Will I ever escape the daily threat of poverty?

Studying our human fears displays the underbelly of society, which most of us prefer remains hidden. And yet within the nugget of what torments us most is a core that hints at our best qualities – kindness to overcome fears, gentility in the face of man’s inhumanity, optimism that our best will be good enough if we believe it to be so.

Just a thought. Aren't we all supposed to face our own fears?