I returned to Northumberland with some of my writing buddies for another girly road trip. First time out, we visited Alnwick Castle. This time, inspired by more locations in the area drawn on a teatowel (don’t ask), we visited Hadrian’s Wall. (And how often do you think about the Roman Empire?)
I’d been there before, and knew that because we were all massive nerds, Sycamore Gap was the place to go; after all, it had featured in Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves and was one of the most familiar landmarks around. It would give us a chance to walk a short stretch of the wall (but a hilly one), and dress up for daft photos. I even went to a toy shop the evening before and got a tiny, dirt-cheap bow and arrow set.
Be there or be square! Oh… it’s a square…
The weather was decent, and the site was mobbed (a local charity group for disabled kids was also doing a promotional photo shoot there), so after our picnic lunch we had to arrange the camera in a way to hide all the other activities going on behind us.
I did the silly-bugger-version of Kevin Costner, my friend Karen opted for a somewhat Tolkein-ish Friar Tuck, and my friend Sarah dressed in black and wielded a spoon to play the Sheriff of Nottingham (and even agreed to have jam from her sandwich smeared across her cheek to mimic the facial scar).
Even though none of us resembled the original cast, passers-by recognised what we were doing instantly. One of them asked if we did this a lot? “No,” said Karen, “No,” said Sarah, “All the time!” said I…
Everything I do, I do it for you shits and giggles.
As I write, it’s still only a couple of days since the Sycamore tree that gave the gap its name was felled by a fuckwit with a chainsaw (currently thought to be a guy in his 60s who’d been evicted from a local farm; I might update this later once the truth is known).
It’s a sobering reminder that sometimes when you decide to postpone visiting a place “because it’ll always be there”, it ain’t always so. I’m just glad I got to take my friends there while it was still standing.
Left: an impressive bust. Right: If there’s chain links, I feign kinks.
Afterwards we headed to Vindolanda, a nearby museum with an outdoor cafe. We were greeted by a receptionist wearing a plethora of LGBT badges (and Tolkein stuff, and a Star Trek badge based on the newer series, not the good ones of old, but I kept my mouth shut about that). She was obviously delighted to see us (not sure how many crossdressers they get here) and I doubt we’ll ever meet a more helpful member of staff!
Infamy! Infamy! They’ve got it all in for me!
Vindolanda was a Roman border fort with a small support village attached. All that remains are the foundations and lower walls (and drains), but there’s a reconstruction of a wall and gate to allow experimental archaeologists to see how the soil and stones settle around the building works.
Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur
Veni, vidi, induebar veste muliebri
Vindolanda’s gardens and museum make for a thoroughly pleasant summer stroll (I’ll spare you those photos; that’s not what this blog is about!). And there were enough recreated statues around and about to have fun with…
Puellae cupiunt habere deliciam
Time filled up really quickly, between the journey to the wall, the walk, the picnic, and pottering around the museum and cafe. We had enough of the day left to enjoy the outdoor exhibits before they locked the gates. We also met that helpful receptionist again, on her way out after packing things up for the day.
If I was a scared nymph of the village, how would I decorate my temple?
On the way home, along narrow country roads, I drove with the expectation that I’d encounter a load of dangerous drivers, and I wasn’t disappointed. Why do we always have to drive considerately for the benefit of the inconsiderate ones? Anyway, my passengers soon got used to me singing “wankpanzers!” to the tune of “Ghostbusters!” whenever we encountered a car built too big for the roads, or sarcastically faking orgasms at anyone overtaking dangerously. Sometimes you just gotta provide your own entertainment, ya know?
[This is my 100th blog post here!]
The figures on that fresco look thoroughly unimpressed with me…
Writing a review of the new Barbie film also gives me an excuse to share some photos from a more recent shoot I did, based on the version of the character from Toy Story 3. The outfit answers the question of whether or not I floss.
I never played with Barbie dolls – my thing was Star Wars figures and Lego sets – but there are certain aspects of playing with doll-like figures which apply no matter if you were a boy or a girl. (For the record I never played with He-Man, Action Man, GI Joe, or any of the others like that.) So there are certainly playtime things which can be mined for comedy as per the Toy Story trilogy or The Lego Movie (that fourth Toy Story film never happened; shut your mouth; just shut your goddamn mouth).
This is pretty much what I was expecting from Barbie: jokes about playing with the dolls and making fun of ‘toy logic’. I figured it’d be an easy-going mood-lifter. Having seen it now: gurl, are you serious?!
A balanced sunrise photo
The film starts off that way, and I wondered how it was going to fill two hours with this. Surely the joke would be beaten to death within 90 minutes? Barbie-land is amazingly realised with vibrant sets and costumes and the logic of playtime and the Mattel-friendly corporate messaging of using dolls representing empowered career women to inspire girls (and there’s a Barbie played by a trans actress too!). And sometimes, when the dolls are played with a little too much, they go a bit weird (cue Kate McKinnon’s Barbie with scribbles on her face and unable to undo the splits). Joining the various Barbies are the dolls that should never have left Mattel’s drawing boards (the pregnant doll, or the one with inflating boobs), and various iterations of Ken, who in all cases is just an accessory and exists on the periphery of Barbie’s existence.
Ryan Gosling’s Ken has no particular qualifications or reasons to exist – and his love for Margot Robbie’s [stereotypical] Barbie goes unrequited. While this presumably reflects the girlhood experience of playing with the dolls, the script goes further and makes Barbie-land into a supposed inversion of our world: one sex does all the jobs and has all the agency, while the other is supposed to just sit about looking pretty and doting on the do-ers. Maybe this was truer in the time Barbie dolls were invented, but I don’t think it’s quite so clear-cut today. The film sometimes has to put in a major effort to stick to this conceit and the message it projects.
You could fairly say to me, “Twist, shut up and watch the damn film, it’s just a bit of fluff and not that deep!” but I would have to turn back and say “Oh, just you wait…”
Not the leg-over I had in mind.
Things go awry for Barbie when she starts having morbid thoughts and her magical toy experience goes wrong (her feet no longer fit into heels amongst other things) – it’s like she’s having a midlife crisis. The only way to figure out what’s happening is by going into the real world, and finding out what happened to the girl who plays with her. And Ken tags along for the ride.
In the real world, simple, vacuous Ken is immediately taken with all the representations of The Patriarchy: men driving oversized wankpanzers, going to the gym, doing all the manly things like construction and fighting fires, overanalysing superhero movies, belittling women in the office, and being in a boardroom full of middle-aged white men (led by Will Ferrell who was presumably the first and last choice for the role after Anchorman and The Lego Movie). Ken wants to bring some of this back to Barbie-land. (At the same time, he also encounters a woman doctor who tells him he can’t perform surgery ‘just because he’s a man’ – but this real-world character is quickly glossed over; hmmmm.)
Barbie finds that her colourful fashion sense is out of place, and girls only see her as representative of a feminine ideal they can never live up to; a figurehead of a corporation telling girls what they should be like and making money off them at the same time. Being denounced as a fascist by Sasha, a Californian middle-schooler, brings her to tears. It turns out the middle-schooler’s mother Gloria is the woman having the mid-life crisis that’s been afflicting Barbie back in her world.
Cheeky beach pose
By now, the film has Ken wanting to bring toxic masculinity to Barbie-land, the leaders of Mattel wanting to hide the fact that Barbie’s crossed over into the real world, and Barbie wanting to bring Sasha and Gloria to Barbie-land to inspire them.
Along the way (and via maybe one too many musical numbers), we are presented with Gloria’s midlife crisis and soapbox speech about 21st-century womanhood, Ken’s existential crisis (what is his purpose in Barbie-land? – which some middle-aged, male commenters, especially those who overanalyse superhero movies on Youtube, have taken to be a reflection of the film’s attitude towards men), and we’re also given Barbie’s existential crisis (what is she for, if she no longer inspires girls but is instead seen as an unattainable goal?).
If you’re going through your own midlife crisis this is some heavy shit to contend with. This isn’t family-friendly fare like Toy Story – in the UK it has a 12A rating and I suspect it’s not just because of the jokes about Barbie and Ken’s inability to have sex. The target audience appears to be jaded Millennial women (I was one of only two guys in my sold-out screening).
I don’t want to be fit, I just want to be slim. And body-shaping underwear will only go so far.
The film mashes up the toy-logic-meets-real-world comedy of Toy Story and The Lego Movie, with a script from any feminist blog (sometimes with sparkling wit, sometimes less so, and sometimes with soapbox speeches that could only come from an affluent Californian who works in Hollywood), and adds in a haunting existential crisis that mirrors the modern movie affliction of turning fun things into over-serious downers in an attempt to give them ‘meaning’. It feels like there’s about three or four competing films fighting for attention.
At my screening, when Ken sings about his crisis, Gloria does her speech, and Barbie ponders on the futility of it all, the audience fell utterly silent and the mood never recovered until the final punchline before the end credits. (That could just be an Edinburgh thing though – in Scotland we’re not really given over to whooping and hollering and clapping at the cinema…)
The knowing sense of humour and in-jokes do a lot of heavy lifting.
I could do this all day. But I didn’t; I really didn’t.
I saw the film’s Barbie-land as representative of girls’ experiences playing with the dolls rather than an inversion of ‘our world’ (or at least the US part of it) – using it as a metaphor can only go so far before it breaks down. I think the script took it right to the edge of what you could do with it (tonally, too). Barbie‘s purpose and targets are muddled and scattershot.
For me, the film was at its best in Barbie-land, where it managed to capture in live action the sort of charm found with Barbie and Ken in Toy Story 3.
Yes, I know I’m not doing this exercise properly!
Barbie is the best new film I’ve seen this year so far (but that’s not saying much), and certainly the most entertaining thing Ryan Gosling’s ever been in – but I wonder if it was trying to achieve too much in its two-hour run time?
The jokes are funny, but if you’re caught in the wrong mood you’ll spend the rest of the evening drinking red wine alone in a darkened room wondering if you’ve ever really known who the fuck you are.
(You can ignore the angry, male, right-wing, conservative reviews of this film, by the way. Which is true for any film. As long as they have Tom Cruise to look at they’ll be fine.)
The film’s making a ton of money, which suggests that original, stand-alone stories, and films aimed at female audiences are the way to go. Instead, it would appear the lesson Mattel’s taken is to try to turn all of their toys into separate film franchises. This is why modern film studios can’t have nice things.
The morning receptionists were probably glad I didn’t come in…
Enough about Barbie’s existential mid-life crisis! Let me tell you about mine instead! (Just kidding. That would take too long.)
The photos I’ve chucked in with this review were taken at Portobello Beach next to Edinburgh, and were a chance to test out some slightly-too-small, Barbie-inspired, shiny Lycra, and some definitely-too-small, body-shaping underwear. I’m in my mid-40s and starting to feel like I’m getting old for this shit. On the up-side, I lost any sense of public embarrassment years ago.
I confused the hell out of so many dog walkers on this beach.
I’ve got a few more girly road trips left in me, but I’m running out of new costume ideas and photoshoots to try out. I think I’ve mentioned before that I’ve pretty much achieved all the things I’d hoped to try out wayyy back when I started – hell, I’ve done more than I ever hoped I would!
Unlike Barbie, I don’t think I need to resolve my midlife crisis by becoming “a real woman”; like Ken, being Twist from time to time is “Kenough” for me…
I imagine there’s going to be a ton of disappointed people suckered in by the title of this entry…
“It’s a [thirst] trap!” – Put this blog entry down to sheer Force of personality…
This year I celebrate 40 years of crossdressing and HOLY FUCKNUTS WHAT THE WHAT NOW???
Well, I can certainly say it’s been 40 years since I first saw the thing that inspired me to start crossdressing: Return of the Jedi, specifically Carrie Fisher in that bikini, compelled me at the age of six to wait until my parents went to bed at night before crawling out of my own and trying to recapture that look using a rolled-up vest, a towel for a skirt, and welly boots.
Eh; it was a start…
I’m positively glowing in this makeup…
The last time I talked about this, in a bit more detail, was ten years ago here. I’ll spare you my opinions of the franchise – let’s just say I always found it a mixed bag [cough those two Ewok movies cough] and my nostalgia’s been doing more heavy lifting lately.
These days my crossdressing is fuelled by a lot more experience and a far more expansive wardrobe collection. I can do swimsuits, but bikinis elude me. And all this is still something I feel obliged to keep hidden from my parents (ho-hum).
“Shiny! Let’s be bad guys!”
I’ve done various bits of cross-dressed cosplay before – Star Trek, Wonder Woman, Tomb Raider amongst others – but hadn’t thought about Star Wars until after acquiring a pair of cheap lightsabers. And with a choice of going to the light side or the dark side, I could take two bites at this cherry.
The secret to doing this shit is pretending you know what you’re doing.
Trouble is, I’m a complete shameless tart, and Jedi tend towards modest robes. I think there was one blue-skinned background Jedi in the prequels who went around in a sports bra and leggings, but I had to find some other way to adapt the look into something a bit more my style: I bought a cheap-shit robe, cheap-shit tunic and cheap-shit shiny brown leggings online, and hoped for the best.
And when I say “I think there was one background character…” I know perfectly damn well what her name is, how she dies, her exotic accent (kinda French), and the game where you can play as her and cut down battle droids. I’m a massive fucking nerd, but I was trying to play it cool for a second.
I also use this pose when I’m getting tied up OH SHIT I DID NOT MEAN TO TYPE THAT
For playing a baddie, it’s much easier: black and shiny. Well, I’ve got the catsuit and boots already, but to get a bit more variety and texture I got some cheap-shit shiny lingerie to put over it. It seemed to do the business.
The bad girls in Star Wars are usually ‘Inquisitors’, with names along the lines of ‘the third/fourth/fifth sister’. I reckon I could dip into the namesake band one of my writing buddies named me after: my dark side character can be ‘the twisted sister’…
I named these ‘Woody’ and ‘Buzz’, the same names Andy’s mother in Toy Story gave her toys.
I figured it’d be good to get two contrasting locations for the two characters: Jedi are all about life, so a forest seemed the best place to illuminate. I found a quiet scrap of trees next to Edinburgh’s dry ski slope that would fit the bill.
Putting my own spin on things.
For the evil shots, I wanted some place that looked barren and rocky. There’s a spot at North Berwick where the sand and rocks look like a cheap film set from an old sci fi show, but I can assure you all that it’s a real place and it was bloody freezing too.
Lightsaber colours inspired by a flag I saw…
Playing a baddie is all about perfecting your “don’t fuck with me” look. You can practise this when negotiating Edinburgh’s streets during the summer festivals.
Naturally there were dozens of photos taken in order to get the handful that stood out (with the help of a very patient friend who’s also an excellent photographer), not to mention all the practice shots beforehand (I did these by myself to figure out practicalities).
I’m just glad I didn’t have to Photoshop anything: the settings and the colours from the blades were all I needed.
Have to say, I’m really happy with the way they turned out!
A surprise gust of wind adds a little robe action to this pose…
Moonlight and even Jupiter (on the right) make this perhaps the most epic photo I’ve appeared in?
So what do you talk about when someone’s tearing out your pubic hair? And every other follicle below your nostrils? And the ones inside your nostrils too? With thoroughness like that, you can be sure the conversation was thorough too.
First up, I just want to reassure all readers that there are no pics-or-it-didn’t-happen associated with this post.
Second, I should address the question, “Whyyyyyyyyyy???!”
This was just before spending three days non-stop in girly mode, and part of the weekend would involve plunging into Loch Morlich (detailed here). I figured it’d be better to wax my chest and legs at the very least, and my face too (I didn’t fancy the idea of trying to pass with five o’clock shadow in the Highlands; the last person to do that had tried overthrowing the British government in the 1740s…). Looking at the price list at Sin Waxing in Edinburgh, I figured what the hell, I might as well see what it’s like getting everything done. I mean, you only live once, right?
Sam, who also runs the place, started with my face because that’s the most difficult bit. I had the hot black gunk spread on my cheek, which she ripped off when it cooled and hardened. JESUS FUCK. But I didn’t yell; I just either grunted or hissed through clenched teeth.
Those who’ve had a waxing before will know that it’s not quite so nippy on the bony body parts (like your shins), but the fleshy and wobbly parts bring the pain.
I’d grown my beard out almost a centimetre (something I never do, even in boy-mode), and fuck me dead it was fascinating and horrific seeing the grey & white hairs with follicles sticking out of the strips of gunk. It looked like a flattened caterpillar. And it had to be done in sections all over my sideburns, jaw, chin, mouth, and neck. Ow ow ow. My face became very pink, but Sam applied Germoline (which is made of sorcery and really helps). I was glad to be rid of the beard, though.
The thing that really gave me an out-of-body experience was the nostrils. Not sure I’d do that again. I mean, removing hairs from the outside of your body is one thing, and a violent enough process as it is; removing hairs from inside your goddamn head is something else entirely. It was a sensation that put the rest of the waxing in context.
Sam has done this many hundreds of times to many hundreds of people, I’m sure, and she’s quite relaxed about seeing nekkid people – which, in itself, is kinda reassuring. I’m not a big fan of being nude in front of others, so inflicting this on myself was a big deal to get over.
Fortunately, she has a great sense of humour and we let the chat go where it led us.
What’s the deal with hairlessness? Why should it be attractive (or repulsive)? For me, I’ve never been a fan of my own body hair – I don’t see the point of it – and I guess I just have an aesthetic view similar to the Romans: I think human bodies tend to look better without. For myself, when I’ve shaved or waxed my chest and legs, I just feel somehow cleaner(?). It’s not a sex thing, it’s not a porn thing. Hell, for what it’s worth I’m not attracted to either Sean Connery or Arnold Schwarzenegger, but I reckon Arnie’s waxed chest looks better than Sean’s chest lawn. Your mileage may vary.
Apparently I was taking the pain pretty well – some customers respond a bit like Steve Carrell in The 40-Year-Old Virgin (or worse). I mentioned that I learnt not to show pain at school: an unenlightened boys-only education in the 1980s instils an ability to hide extreme physical discomfort, lest you fall victim to emotional and social pain as well. Sam was brought up in 70s/80s South Africa, and we shared tales of childhood that made us glad we were living in a modern time, and a modern place.
As an example of being in a (relatively) safe, modern, forward-thinking city, Sin Waxing seems to me like the best place to go – it also offers cosmetic services for cross-dressing and makeup too, as well as social get-togethers for anyone starting out but unsure how their immediate circle would react. Would I go along? I’m not sure – I’ve been crossdressing in public for a while, so I’d probably think in terms of reassurance or advice I could offer other crossdressers. But things are different now compared to when I started, so would I have anything to say that’s worth a damn?
I’ve mentioned a few times – even since the earliest days of this blog – that I’m probably not going to be Twist-ing forever. Sam suggested that if I was told tomorrow I’d never do my Twist thing ever again, I’d be quite sad about it surely? And yes – I would… but I wouldn’t be as sad tomorrow as I would have been five years ago, or ten years ago. A lot of the things I’ve wanted to do in cross-dressing mode, I’ve achieved (get your minds out of the gutter you filthy beasts!) – I’ve been out and about, I’ve socialised, I’ve worn casual stuff and fancy dress, I’ve found extra reasons to look after myself, I’ve occasionally helped or even inspired people. I’ve had a chance to pass on what I’ve learnt. I can look back on the past decade of this blog and know I’ve had fun. Whatever time I have left is simply a bonus (and if you’re lucky, that’s true of life in general).
Anyway, enough beating around the bush (so to speak) – for those who don’t already know, here’s what it’s like having the sack and crack waxed. The late Christopher Hitchens put it on a par with torture at Guantanamo Bay, and he volunteered to undergo waterboarding to see what it was like (out of journalistic curiosity).
Actions speak louder than words, and from the behaviour of my genitals, they were saying to me, “What the fuck is wrong with you? Seriously, why are you doing this to us? That’s it, we’re out of here!” and they retreated – scampered – back up into my body like coins trapped in the lining of a jacket. In bellybutton terms, ‘innies’, not ‘outies’. Sam compared the result to a newborn baby mouse, and honestly she wasn’t far wrong.
Modesty and pride have no place in this kind of situation.
The waxing itself was perhaps on a par with the facial waxing, pain-wise. It wasn’t that mind-buggering feeling I got from the nostril waxing, but it did give me a sharp intake of breath. The crack waxing wasn’t so bad, especially when the Germoline started working. As for my back, the last of the trifecta, I’m not quite that hirsute, so just a token rip across each shoulder and a bit on my spine was required.
And that was it: nary a follicle left from the nostrils down!
For the most part – face and body waxing – it lasted a good couple of weeks afterwards before I needed to start shaving again. Obviously, it’ll vary according to your hair type and how quickly it grows.
Would I recommend it? Well, if you’re after any kind of cosmetic service near Edinburgh, then I do strongly recommend Sin Waxing. But specifically, any part of your body you don’t intend to show others doesn’t need to be waxed if you’re wanting to go out with smooth limbs. Even if you just want to do it for yourself, there’s something oddly refreshing about getting rid of your tail feathers for a while!
Last autumn I gave myself the challenge of staying in Twist mode non-stop for three days. A couple of friends fancied a girly weekend in the Scottish Highlands, and invited me along. I could provide the transport; another had friends of her family who let out a grand house for visitors and we could stay there for free; the third was a foodie who could take care of our dining.
For the sake of anonymity, I’ll refer to us as the tree-hugger. the grave-hugger, and me (the silly bugger). Honestly, we’re a bunch of misfits. I’d been on trips with them before, but this was the first time we’d all been together.
Daaaaamn that’s an epic old house!
I’d already been growing my hair out for over a year and a half over the pandemic, so I dyed it to hide the grey and freed myself from the need to wear my wig all the time. Part of the plan was for the tree hugger and I to plunge into a nearby loch on Saturday morning, so in addition to waxing my neck, jaw, and chin, I went nuts and had the whole lot below my nostrils taken off. I’ll talk about this another time…
Happy Locktober to all who celebrate?
Friday was taken up with driving from Edinburgh to Kingussie, our home for the weekend. The house was grand, and filled with all sorts of antiques, curios and old, old books. It had a huge garden, and was surprisingly cosy.
In Kingussie itself, I’m pretty certain I was the first transvestite the town had seen. Most people were dressed comfortably and casually, or for hiking about the hills. And then there was me, dressed like… well, regular readers have seen how I dress. (I went into casual mode with a hoodie and leggings in the evening when we got back).
We pottered around the village and ventured into an art gallery where I bought a cushion for my living room from the artist herself (it really ties the room together). Then we chilled out with food, wine, reading, and an antique stereographic picture viewer.
Left: peeking at the past in 3D… Right: peekaboo!
There was some deliberation about which loch the tree-hugger and I should plunge into. Our best option was Loch Morlich, a short drive up the road. The weather wasn’t as sunny as we’d expected, and there was snow on the hills in the distance. The tree-hugger had been getting used to cold-water swimming as part of a long-term health kick. I… had not. The grave hugger was the only sensible one in our trio, and remained on shore taking photos.
The wind made the waters incredibly choppy. I’m glad I wasn’t wearing my wig, and I’d found – after 13 years – a more comfortable alternative to my joke shop boobies: soft, padded inserts that I could slip into pockets in my swimsuit (I bought two pairs, and slipped the second pair into my bra. So comfortable! Why hadn’t I done this before???)
Once I got over the pain of the cold water, I found it oddly energising, and actually missed it once we got out and back onto the sand. Even so, it was so cold my nuts made like a bad science paper and went for a complete retraction. (Too much info?)
Left: home sweet home until the late 19th century… Right: getting into my retro domestic groove…
Saturday afternoon was spent at the Highland Folk Museum at Newtonmore. Long-term readers will have picked up I’m a massive nerd and history is one of my interests. This place is amazing – recreations of homes and lifestyles going back through the centuries. It was quite busy, and there were still a few pandemic restrictions in place, but we got to see pretty good variety of what the place had to offer, and chatted with one of the guides at a recreation of the oldest-style homestead. (I’d recently finished reading Boswell and Johnson’s trip through Scotland in the 1700s, so it was interesting to see the sort of place they’d have stayed in.)
FOR SALE: Highland home, great views, well ventilated, real fixer-upper…
We had an evening walk to a nearby loch in the hills (because we hadn’t done enough already that day), before crashing out for the night.
We went to the Highland Wildlife Park on Sunday morning; the first time for me and the tree-hugger, but along-overdue revisit for the grave-hugger who’d been when she was a child. It was spectacularly autumnal – low sun lit the trees in a blaze of bright yellow and orange against dark, brooding clouds.
And that was it – just time for lunch and a quick tidy-up before heading back home.
On a personal level, I enjoyed hanging out with friends in girly mode. Most of my friends are women – part of me wonders if it has something to do with a childhood going to a boys-only school (I’m convinced thirteen years of single-sex education will fuck you up on some level). As I’ve noted before, Twist is just a cosmetic thing – and me going into ‘girly mode’ means making an effort.
Glad I made the effort – it was a bloody good weekend!
Miss Twist speaks her brains 