"So how come a nice girl like you is single?"

"Because fuck you, that's why."


As I rapidly approach my fortieth year, I realise that there is much to celebrate.  I have a nice apartment, I'm studying for my PhD - hellish as it can be, it's pretty interesting - I have great friends, a part-time job and I've achieved quite a lot of the things I wanted to achieve. I'm looking forward to finishing my doctorate and doing a bit more travel, I might actually get around to writing that novel I've been threatening to write since age 12, and hopefully, the economic climate and a nice academic job will mean that I can finally start driving and build my own place. So, all in all, I'm a relatively happy camper. Independent, enjoying my life, still crazy after all these years.

Still, the question I am most frequently asked is "So are you doing a line with anyone? No? Would you not get yourself a nice fella?" People who ask me this question are blissfully unaware of how insulting it is. They don't mean to be insulting, of course; they're asking without thinking so they can mentally slot me into a category they're familiar with. I'm and adult woman, therefore I must have one of these three things going on:

A) Have a boyfriend

B) Be married

C) Have children


I have realised that the polite way to answer this question is not the reply I have written above - no matter how much I want to say it. I'm usually frustrated enough to say that, because the truth is that the last three years of being single have been my happiest. Ever. When I realised that my long-term relationship was not going to work, I ended it, moved back home, found a new place to live and started applying for the PhD and the grant.  I reconnected with old friends and my family and danced with joy when my application to university was accepted. (PAH!! What a naive, trusting fool I was!) As difficult, financially, as that first year of living by myself was, I loved it. I woke up every day with Aretha Franklin in my bedroom doing jazz hands and singing "Freedoooom.....Freedoooooom, woah FREEEDOOOOOOMM" from Think. Candi Staton was in the kitchen singing "Young Hearts Run Free" and winking at me while I made toast and tea in my pyjamas.

There's a very strange assumption, usually made by people in couples (in my experience) that if you are single, there is something missing. If you're single and 37, you obviously must be tearing your hair out. I've been asked all manner of very personal questions by people, innocently trying to understand or ascertain why I'm single. I'm not alone; I have a few friends who are also single, and we constantly grumble about getting the worst seating at weddings. We get the Weird Table. You know the one, it was Table 13 in The Wedding Singer. We can't sit with all our friends who are in couples - and who are all laughing uproariously - while we get stuck talking to the weird uncle who's obviously still very much a virgin at 50, who keeps looking at our cleavage and being seriously inappropriate. The worst assumption is that if you're single, you must be desperate. If you go out with your friends and some kid who just learned to shave hits on you, and you completely ignore that, as any sane woman would, you're too picky. (This recently happened. I kid you not.) And if you spurn these advances enough - advances from guys that you'd think twice about saying "hello" to, never mind sleep with) then the "problem" of being single is yours, and you're being your own worst enemy.

Trying to explain that it is your choice to be single is rarely believed, either. I choose to be single until I meet someone whom I genuinely like. Who seems like good fun. Someone who's enjoying their life, has nice manners, likes Hammer Horror films and thinks that the British Museum is a really cool place to go. That's really it. I'm not waiting for some Mr. Darcy/James Bond/Prince Charming type of fictional character. That said, I'm also not going to waste any time on guys who I know from the get-go are not going to work out for me. I'm not going to ignore all I've learned for the sake of saying that I'm going out with somebody. Not even for a really kick-ass seat at a wedding.


Not everyone is suited to being single. It can be tough, having to fend for yourself. At times, I would certainly appreciate having another pair of hands around the house, to do the cooking/housework/washing/ while I tear my hair out over PhD rewrites. It would be great to have someone else take the time to pay the bills and do the food shopping. Especially when I'm sick. But even when I was in relationships, I never had all my needs met at the exact time that I had needs. It was hard work and compromise, if memory serves, not hearts and flowers and nurture all day.


 And I know this to be an inalienable truth - I was far more lonely in the wrong relationship than I have ever been, for any amount of time, in the single years.

The Alarming Rise of the Ultra-Fuck.


I love pop music as much (if not a little more) than the next person. I'm a music whore; I need it like water. It's one of my top pleasures of life, and it's not just pop music. I was part of the grunge generation. I turned 17 in 1992, when my best going-out outfit was a pair of drainpipe jeans that I bought in a second-hand shop, a cast-off, grey wool jumper that belonged to my brother before me and had holes in it, and a cheap, rip-off pair of oxblood Doc Marten shoes. I loved that outfit. The jumper reached my knees and made me feel tiny and girly. The jeans were tight, but served more as denim leggings under the enormous jumper. The shoes, unlike the real Docs, didn't weigh a ton and I could dance about in them until sun-up. It was heaven.

Being a part of that generation means that I was privy to the influences of the women that made music from the mid-seventies and beyond. Kate Bush was, and still is, a huge part of my life. My dad used to regale me with tales about my reaction to Wuthering Heights being played on the radio when I was in my cot. I used to stand up, ramrod-straight, gasp, and shush everyone so I could hear it. Kate made incredible albums stuffed with songs about commitment phobia, science, sex, adultery and the sky, and she did it intelligence, wit and genius.  Siouxsie Sioux sang about Pompeii, other countries and beauty queens, and looked like nothing I had ever seen before. All flapper dress and heavy eye make-up, you just knew by looking at her that she had some serious opinions and could cut great dance moves. Grace Jones released Island Life, and I desperately wanted to be French.


I am forever grateful that I grew up with these icons. I'm thrilled that I never had to be subjected to the level of cold eyed, joyless ultra fuck girls that dominate popular culture and the music industry. Oh, we had 'em back then, believe me, but not at the saturation point that we have now. Of these girls, Rihanna appears to be the ring-leader. She's what I call the Ultra-Fuck. Anytime, anywhere, come on give it to me baby gi-gi-give it to me baby. Do it. Do It To Me. I'll do whatever you want because I love sex. I love sex so much, I'll sing about it as if I'm describing what it's like to pluck a chicken. I won't interject my emotions, thoughts or opinions about sex, because I am the Ultra-Fuck. I don't have pesky emotions. I have a body and that's all you need, right?

Everything is being done to Rihanna and she'll apparently love it, no matter what it is. There is no examination of the act. This is not Symphony in Blue, by Kate Bush: "The more I think about sex, the better it gets/here we have a purpose of life/good for the blood circulation/good for releasing the tension/the root of all reincarnations." The lyrics of Rude Boy don't quite measure up. Kate writes about sex as something she enjoys, appreciates and hey! It's good for your health! She's engaging with it as a woman, not as a blank canvas from the world of porn - hairless, joyless and dead-eyed. When did sex become a one-way street? When did the joy of it get removed, to be replaced with this sad, paltry, soulless nonsense? Is it based on an assumption that this is what men want? "Men" being the homogenous, amalgamous mass of football-lovers-Zoo-readers-women-haters? I asked some male friends. They're about as sick of the Ultra-Fuck girls and their ringleader as I am. Some of them have daughters and they don't like the influence of hypersexualisation on little girls who haven't quite mastered the alphabet. Some of them are not into that type of music and wouldn't watch a Rihanna video if you paid them. And some of them are Kate Bush fans.

Rihanna is not responsible for the world's ills, or the hypersexual content of pop music videos and lyrics as a whole. I get it, I know that. I would be a happy camper if she wrote about what she actually thinks about sex, or fancying people, or how you can't catch your breath when you're sitting beside someone you really, really fancy and you haven't kissed yet.  If there was some sort of exchange going on, where you could evince some kind of emotion from the music, then cool! I know that sex sells, and that's the issue that really bugs me. Rihanna is selling the type of sexual behaviour that I find the most depressing - she's disengaged. She's a body, looking for another body to hump. Most of her back catalogue seems to be about really depressing sexual encounters, where she needs a guy to "work her over" or "give it to her" or compare her to "a ride as smooth as a limousine". Why depressing? Because that's all she says. It's as if she read a lad's mag and modeled her sexual repetoire on that. Or as if she rang up Katie Price and asked for tips on how to appeal to the sort of man you wouldn't leave the dog with.

The best songs about sex and love, from Kate to Jeff Buckley to Fleetwood Mac (Tango In The Night is a crazy sexy album) communicate the frisson, the wonder, the life-affirming joy of it all. Everybody Here Wants You, by Jeff Buckley, can stop anyone with a pulse in their tracks.  Van Morrison's Astral Weeks is another; all harmony, sensuality and anticipation. So I don't buy, not for one nanosecond, that Rihanna and her ilk are empowering themselves by singing about one-way sex while wearing nothing and staring at the camera with a hardened expression.  If your albums sound like you've had a series of one-night stands after a bout of heavy drinking, then there's something missing. If your demographic is under the age of 13, it's appalling.  Like it or not, the pop girls are role models. They just are, end of. They might not like it, but they don't get to choose. I've heard the arguments that all of this can be traced back to "Like A Virgin", and of course, the seeds for all this were sown while I was still in primary school. Is the origin of hypersexualisation so important? It's happening now, in more explicit ways that most of us could have guessed at. And my exposure to Madonna consisted of MTUSA, Top of the Pops, and Smash Hits magazine. That was it. Because we didn't have MTV, or the internet, or boundless other music stations, my exposure to Madge prancing about in a wedding dress with a dude in a lion mask was minimal. No facebook, no youtube, no social media. And there is no way in hell I would have been allowed out of the house dressed as Madonna. I think my mother would still take umbrage at that now. I'm 37.

I think that things are changing. I can feel it in my waters. We've got Florence Welch, we're bound to get more girls who write pop songs about stuff and things that happen to them and loads of other bits and pieces. Girls who put on whatever they feel like, and dance about, and express joy at being alive. I'll order two big fat helpings of that, please. I'll take ten of whatever female recording artists are producing that I would be happy to see a seven-year-old lepping about to, male or female. Let's just draw a veil over the sex-bots, shall we? Let's just remove that influence that "men" only want that kind of stuff and that "women" have to comply to get a man. Let's just look at it for what it really is and walk away laughing. And stick on a Kate Bush album.