I'm truly disappinted in the way Caster has been subjected to such abuse by the media. Questioning her gender on the grounds of good sportsmanship is one thing, but to nationalise the embarrassment and humiliation is totally unacceptable. Once it has been proven that she is a indeed a female, i think she deserves a public apololy and the IAAF should compensate her for the unnecessary slander and defarmation that she has been subjected to. Please let us not forget that She has just won a gold medal at international level, at the age of 18!
Ok so she looks a bit "butch" but most women athletes are! But its discracefull that the press and world media have treated her this way! This whole "gender testing" thing should have been kept very private, and certainly, should not have been made public. Forgoodness sake has no-one in the world thought of this young lady's feelings? She may indeed , have a hormone problam. And goodness knows I have had my fair share of hormone problams, like during my monthly I get a beard!!!!! unless I keep it in check. Also I get terrible PMT which manifest's its ugly head in the form of binge drinking! I dont get angry and throw things around, I just get pissed and fall asleep. Usually it stops when my pierod stops, but I am hopeless to control it, and this is all down to my having Polycystic overies! Probabaly the same reason I can't have kids. One bad one early on this year I went to the Doctor to see if she could suggest something to help me, and she advised "Agnus Castus" which is a herb that can help with hormonal mood swings, and it seems to be working a treat, and its not even expensive! But this is all due to my hormones being all over the place so I can well sympathises with Caster if she has a hormone problam.
We should not forget that Miss Semenya has just won gold in a major international event, and she is an athlete of supreem standard!!

*drowns self in own swimming pool*

OMG!! this is such a shame!!!!!! What the heck are ShowTime up too ending at season 4!

The Tudors has been fantastic!!!!
But I feel ShowTime are cutting their own heads off by ending at season 4! Its such a shame! Edward, Jane, Elizabeth, and Mary painted such a rich tapestry between them, and they were all TUDORS TOO!! What about Edwards untimely death? and him leaving his throne to 16 years old Jane Grey because he wanted to keep His Kingdom protestant? What about Mary who had poor Jane beheaded? Mary’s persecution of all prodestants and even throwing her own sister Elizabeth in the Tower? Mary’s phantom pregnancy which turned out to be cancer that killed her? What about Cathrine Parr and Thomas Seymore? Seymore tried to seduce the young Elizabeth, even at one point cutting her gown to shredds, and Cathrine Parr’s own death on the child bed? Elizabeth finally on the throne, and her heartbreaking romance with Robert Dudley, and her refusal to marry anyone because of the horrors she had seen as a child! Please give us our Virgin Queen, Showtime!!!!!!!!!!

The Tudors simply dose not end with the death of Henry, its so silly!! I am heartbroken!!

The first part was written by a fellow blogger and is NOT my work*******

a lassi is a tradtional indian yoghurt based drink, the main constituent of which is indian ‘curd’, which the rest of the world knows as ‘runny yoghurt’.

variants include-

plain lassi (runny yoghurt plaus nothing)
sweet lassi (runny yoghurt plus sugar)
salt lassi (runny yoghurt plus salt)
banana lassi (predictable)
mango lassi (i think you’ve already guessed).

‘bhang’ means grass. in hindustani culture they’ve been smoking dope since they invented it. in the himalayan vallies of kashmir and himachel pradesh especially, enormous swathes of closely packed annabiis plants grow as god intended, up to 7 or 8 feet in height. obviously just picking the leaves and smoking them is shite, so they invented charas. the traditonal method for collecting charas was to send a clean, naked boy running through the fields for an afternoon, and then rub the sticky resin off his smooth skin. nowadays, now that they have the internet for entertainment, people just rub the leaves with their hands. colllecting in this manner will harvest around six grammes a day.

however, smoking this charas is illegal to all except the holy men (or sadhus) under hindu religious law. your average indian local would think nothing of making a bit for the travelling ascete, who after all needs to be on a level with shiva, but would never dream of smoking it himself- alcohol and drugs carry the same sort of social stiugma in a small traditional indian community as knocking back anti-freeze or sniffing glue does in a pleasant surrey suburb. to bridge this social paradox, the govt. of india runs its own chains of shops in hoply cities to supply holy men with their wares, (opium and grass), to save the locals from the moral problem of supplying it themselves- sort of like ‘halfords’ does for teenagers.

however, when it comes to the fresh, wet, mushy, absolutely unsmokable, totally impotent leaves of a cannabis plant- well they’re fair game as far as the locals are concerned. anyone who’s ever tried smoking the regular leaves off an outdoor naturally grown unselected plant will attest to the fact that all you’ll get off them is a nasty cough. but what the cunning indian has learnt to do is stick a heroic dose, 10- 20 grams wet weight of the otherwise useless vegetable matter, in a blender with half a pint of yoghurt and a few spoons of sugar. and then drink it.

that, my dear, is a bhang lassi.

first time i ever had a bhang lassi i was in the (then) holy coastal town of gokarna in the state of karnataka- mother to three of the most beautiful unspoilt beaches on the konkan coast (not any more i’m afraid), surrounded by luscious and beautiful examples of nature’s work. the advice of my friends of the time was simple- if you’re going to take psychedelics, you’re better to do it in the morning and make a day of it in the beautufl environment.

keepng this in mind i headed down to the beach at 8am and had a bhang lassi for breakfast. 40 rupees, or about a dollar (twice the price of a regualr lassi). i thought it a clever strategic move to drop it down on an empty stomach, and had banana added to try and disguise the green taste of the thing. and then i sort of sat and waited.

when i suddenly noticed i had no idea how long i’d been there, i thought it best to pay the bill. when i found myself trying to pay the bill for the third time, i though it best to leave. when i found myself leaving, i also suddenly found myself unalbe to see properly. feeling myself quite out of my depth before lunch, i opted to try and get back to the safety and obscurity of the hotel, though in hindsight i’d have probably done better just to sit where i was.

there was only one respectable hotel in gokarna, the imaginatinvely named ‘hotel gokarna’ (500 rupess or so for a double with hot water and attached bathroom and balcony. very clean. claimed a few stars, but i think that might have been pushing it.). and there is only one street in gokarna, which was not very long, though in my defence it did turn left at the end. taking this information into account it should have probably taken less than an hour to find the place.

once located ‘hotel gokarna’ was not the easiest hotel to navigate, with a series of mezzanines, half floors and intermediarry staircases interlocking on two sides to form a sort of open courtyard around the main foyer. after the bhang lassi however, naviagation became nothing short of absolutely impossible. indeed, i couldn’t for the life of me find the room, and kept seeming to arrive back at reception. in the end i thought it best to ask the now interested management if they knew where my room was. my question was a simple one, and predicatalby drew an even simpler one from them. ‘which number is your room sir.’ it was now that is discovered that somewhere between the ‘bhang’ and the ‘lassi’, i had misplaced my room number.

‘318? no, 238? no, 183…?’ and so it went on. i explained that i was staying with a group of six acquaintences, a small group of drug dealers calling themselves ‘dj s’ and we had checked into two or three rooms on different floors late the night before. this didn’t seem to help the clueless management, who in turn, obviously not having tried a bhang lassi themselves before, demanded what my friend’s names might be, and found it ridiculous that i found the disclosure of this information outside of my powers.

disgusted by the inefficiency of the management to assist me in the simple task i had requested of them, i once more took matters into my own hands, relieving myself of their inadequate company i simply went round the hotel knocking on likely candidate doors, saying ‘sorry’ when the occupier answered- after a few rounds the occupier was without exception a mildly confused middle aged pot-bellied indian wrapped in a towel,

they say all roads lead to rome, but again i arrived back at reception, where the manager and his assistant, having consulted themselves, and having no recollection that i’d even signed in, also decided to take matters into their own hands and eject me from the premises. thankfully at that moment my friends, whom i was also starting to doubt ever existed, happened to be stepping through the door returning from breakfast. they knew their own names and everything, and had the keys in their pockets which was a great relief. without even a sniff of a fuss they informed the management of the terrible mistake, took me into their safe custody and escorted me to the room that i had been alloted to.

back in the room i was shown to a makeshift bed on the balcony and possibly undressed by the lovely lucy. for the next couple of hours she kindly gave me a number of reasons to help me remember her name into the future. when i came to take a shower to cool off, i discovered god had dealt me yet another heinous blow- no electricity- and the bathroom had no windows. being a resourceful chap, i found a candle and set it on the sink. my shower finished, i returned to the lucy on the mattrass on the balcony, and collapsed in a psychic whirl of dream-like not-sleep.

when i came to my senses in the late afternoon i was aware of a strange odour eminating from the bathroom. ‘not the usual nag champa’ i thought. the electricity was back on, but i soon wished it wasn’t. the candle had set fire to the plastic framed mirror, which in turn had charred the wall black to the ceiling. the floor was decorated with the smashed mirror, silvered shards of broken glass scattered hither and thither. the frame itself had part melted into the sink, whilst the candle had fallen onto the toilet seat, still lit, and made a brown ugly mess of it.

i think the seven years is up in about three weeks, or at least i hope it is.

(above work copied from an unknown blogger**)

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...and this realy took me back to the time when Derek and I were in India's holy city, Varanasi, backpacking.

One evening, just before a glowing sunset, we were both sat on the roof top restraunt of our hotel for a "Lassi" before dinner out at a smart restraunt across town. Now normal Lassi is just a cooling, gorgeous yogurt drink, fruit or salt flavored (Mango lassi is my favortie!) and needless to say totally harmless. What Derek ordered off the waiter was somthing totally alien to me, and called a Bhang or special lassi...this is the drink most favored by the Hindu God Shiva, and so is mostly drank at festivals.
"whats that then?" i asked him now more than a little bemused.
"Its a special Lassi that the locals drink so I thought I would try it!" Derek replied simply.
I shrugged my shoulders and ordered my Mango lassi, and got my nose stuck back in my Lonley Planet travel guide.
About 10 minuites later the waiter arrived back with our drinks, and Dereks lassi was GREEN!!!
It look absolutly ghastly, and was slightly frothy on top. It looked like it was somthing Dr Jekle would drink!! I eyed the thing with suspicion, half expecting a hidieous alien to leep out....and Derek was even grinning when he began to drink it. I felt my nose wrinkle up, in discust.
What followed was just as disturbing....
Slightly later we ordered a rickshaw form out side our hotel, to take us to the restraunt for our evening meal...and Derek mentioned quietly to me that he felt a "little woozy!" Derek had tried to pronounce the name of the restraunt and found that he couldent, so realy our driver had no idea where he was going. I tried to help in my awfull Hindi, but this only confused the driver more, so I showed him a map from my travel guide, he nodded and off we set.
Not long into our tinkling bell journey, my mild mannered, alcohol avoiding, University educated, Derek had turned into some one I dident recognise!! Derek suddenly started acting like he had, had 20 vodka's!
" ITS THAT WAY!!!!.....NO!! THE OTHER WAY...DOWN THIS STREET HERE!!" He began yelling at our poor, totally confused rickshaw driver.
"ok? ok?!" the driver asked and I just simply said. "He's had a bhang lassi, whatever they are" Presently the driver's shoulders began to shake almost uncontrolably and I soon realised he was in fits of hysterical laughter. Indignently, I sat back into my seat, telling Derek to shut up in the process!
What had been in that drink?? I questioned myself.
It was only by the powers of God that we eventually arrived at the restraunt!
We took a table for two and I ordered a Scotch and coke, and eyed the menu hungrily. The tradational Tandori Chicken sounded like a jolly good option when suddenly I heard Derek say quietly that he felt dreadfull. I looked up from the menu and eyed him, closley. His face was GREEN!!! and his eyes looked all boggly, and bulging!! I knew I had to get him back to our hotel as soon as possible, but I was sooooo hungry! Needless to say I got him back in a regular taxi, for swiftness, and my moaning and growning, partner in travel to bed and waited untill he slept. He nodded of just after 10:30pm. Leaving our room, I made my way back to the roof top restraunt, ordered a fanta (alcoholic drinks are not always available in Varanasi as it is a very holy city) to wash down a simple cheese omlette. After I had eaten and while paying I asked the waiter what a Bhang lassi was. The waiter grinned and tapped his nose "local secret ingrediant...is hashi"
I was totally horrified!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Derek was ill because he drank a glass of cannabis!!!!!!!! Silly sod!!!

Sorry folks for the long break on my blog but I thought I would have a break for the internet for a while...and I have had lots of computer problams over the summer months, so much so I could have not got onto the internet if I had tried. One of my worst hassles was my DC adaptor whent to Electronics heaven (it died, with a loud pop!!!) and I had to get a new one to the tune of £75!!...so apart from the horrid wet weather, I have not been a happy bunny over the summer.
Ok, on we go....
I have just joined Twitter, the social networking site, mainly out of cuirosity realy, just to see what all the fuss was all about! Its fairly easy to navigate and seems much simpler than facebook and myspace. Acctually myspace just seems to be full of bands at the moment, and I never get a "genuine" friend request anymore, so I have not used it recently. Hence I thought I would try somthing new!

So if your on there, give me a knock! I am on under my married name of Victoria Harrison.

See you soon x