Right now, sitting at my desk, I can hear people outside on the pavement, talking and laughing in a group of friends. I've always found it bizarre to think that these voices that I'm hearing now belong to a person with their own huge universe, their own friends and family and thoughts and emotions and memories, their life a huge map of where they've been and where they're going. and the likelihood is that I'll never know them, or even feature in a snapshot of their life.

do you read PostSecret? http://www.postsecret.com/  you should. it's updated every Sunday and shows secrets from anyone, or someone. there's always a secret that you could say is your secret too. it's a really uniting concept because it shows that everyone, really, is the same: we all have the same secret desires, pet hates, anxieties, the same love of flowers or the same need to reconnect with people you once knew. I save the ones I like and use them as desktop backgrounds or in my screensaver. This is an old one that popped up on my computer just now.

when I first saw this secret, I thought, that's really sad - how could you have sex with someone you wouldn't also be able to hold hands with? what sort of a woman is this that she'll allow men to sleep with her, knowing full well that the affection stops there? has she no dignity?

but then - what does dignity have to do with it? dignity is a dated concept, and it doesn't really seem to apply any more. anything goes. I fully believe that women are caught in a catch-22 whereby they can't sleep around without being labelled slags, but also have to avoid the other extreme: being called frigid. dignity is not a part of this equation. how on earth do you preserve it, when anything goes and so no boundaries have been set?  I'd always want to like and know the person I'm sleeping with. but I wouldn't have to be in a relationship with him, because, let's face it, no strings attached sex can be hot.

I'm a sceptic about men's motives. I always assume that they're only thinking about one thing, that they probably are using you for sex (even if they're kidding themselves that they're not), and that they're always imagining you naked. they can be forgiven for the last one. being naked is probably the best state to be in and they have my full support on that point. 

I don't really know what I'm aiming at here. I guess what I'm trying to say is that sex has superseded some of the littler, sweet things in life like having your hand held. we need to try and keep that.

someone once said, 'sex without smiling is as sickly and base as a gin and tonic without ice'. hear, hear.