An anatomy lesson

A friend of mine came to stay and said she had something shocking to tell me. She told me that her doctor said that having sex actually makes your vagina bigger. In my house we call it a flowy. This is not some cute thing about flowers, it’s just that we had no idea what to go for when my daughter was little. I talked about it a lot and asked other people. Some mothers were actually going for ‘front bottom.’ No, really. Others had Tilda, Cuxmalux (my favourite) and, of course, everyone’s default – fanny. My Dad always went for the multi-denominational ‘winkle’, which applied to boys and girls. Feeling clueless and confused I eventually went with fanny. In the bath that night I decided to introduce the word to my son, who was two. His baby sister was being bathed with him and I told him I was washing her fanny. He said; ‘Her flowy?’ And it stuck. Anyway, there we were, me and my friend (who is a famous writer), sitting at the kitchen table with our vodka and tonics talking about our flowies, one of our all-time favourite subjects in any case. I’m not even going to tell you what our other favourite subject is. Oh, go on, have a guess. Anyway, that’s what she said. I wasn’t shocked at all. After all, I’ve had two children. Actually, I had two emergency Caesarians. I didn’t realise, until one day at family trampolining, what this meant in real terms. I know I’m seriously scarred (my son was a major emergency and the scar is huge) and I know my scar still hurts when I’m cold, but that was it. There I was bouncing up and down and this woman, standing on the sidelines, said; ‘Are those kids not yours then?’ I was offended at first. They look just like me and I am VERY proud of them. ‘They are! Why?’ I said. ‘You’re trampolining,’ she stated. ‘I couldn’t trampoline.’ She nodded over at her two bouncing kids. I realised what she meant. Oh my God. She meant she would wet herself if she jumped up and down. Jesus. ‘I had two Caesarians,’ I said. ‘Ah,’ she sighed, sadly. It is child-birth, not sex, that changes the shape of your body inside and out. Still, the fanecdote betrayed an interesting thought somehow. Feeling that it is a disaster to change. I think a lot of people feel that change, of whatever kind, might be catastrophic. They must, I decided, be happy people. If you have an idyllic life you are bound to be scared to change it, even if you’re only little. If things are a touch lack lustre, any change might seem positive in a nothing-to-lose-ish way. The trouble is, everything we do and say changes us, so unless we hide in a hole (and I know a lot of people do) we might as well embrace the inevitable. Being alive means changing. When I say ‘hide in a hole’ I do recognise that I’m talking about that first change – being born. Hiding in a hole is probably some effort to reverse even that catastrophic change, from nice dark safety to bright screaming light. Fair enough. Except then you’d miss out on all the fun trampolining that life has to offer. Never mind the sex and the childbirth.

So, I live up this mountain in Italy. I’m not a huge fan of Italian food. Carbs, carbs, roast meat and overboiled veg. We’ve got English telly and the X Factor was on. I wanted an Indian take-away so I got dynamic and cooked the food I’d have ordered. Chicken tikka, saag bhaji, chapatti and raita. I have all the spices and cook books and stuff and it was maybe even better than a London take-away. Anyway, I thought it would be a good idea for a cooking programme – seeing if people could cook what they’d ordered before the take-away arrived and then do a taste test to see which was nicer. You could do it with pizza, Chinese, Indian, anything. I bet it would nearly always be better (and possibly even quicker) to make it.