As a massive hedonist, I want you to find your joy. No one else in your life can ever have your happiness as their top priority (which is right – only you can truly know all the things that will bring you pleasure), so it probably needs to be a high priority for you. Around this time of year, some of you will likely have broken – or be about to break – one or more of the punitive resolutions you set yourself on the first of January. Restricting pleasure or causing yourself pain in the name of self improvement. I’m not qualified to tell you how to live a healthy or virtuous life, but if you want to make resolutions you can stick to, I have a few tips from the hedonist gutter that might help you set ones you’re less inclined to break.

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Usually when I split up with someone, I’ll wallow in wistful nostalgia and take a little time to say goodbye. I’ll be gutted, of course, but sadness is familiar and life has helpfully taught me that it will pass. This time it’s different: I’ve found myself frightened and destabilised – turning fear and despair inwards till the panic of it starts to choke me. Life goes on, though! Unfortunately, it kind of has to! Despite my most fervent wishes, I am not allowed to just shut down all my organs and give up the ghost! This is partly because my lovely friends won’t let me. Here are eight things I have been offered by kind people who want to comfort me in the darkness.

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Is it that time again already? It comes round quicker with each year that passes and there is literally science to prove that I’m right. Whatever. It’s nearly Christmas, so if you’re looking to pick up something sexy for someone in your life who has a penchant for pervery, I have spent a happy afternoon browsing around the websites of the lovely companies who are kind enough to sponsor this blog so I can nudge you in the direction of a few things you might consider buying. Here’s a Christmas gift guide for kinky people…

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When I was young, my family used to be big followers of soaps: Neighbours, Eastenders, Coronation Street. I can’t remember what else there was to do on evenings in the nineties besides yell things at the telly as ludicrous fictional characters cocked up their lives in ever more creative ways. Perhaps this is testament to how my Mum raised me, but when I watched soaps, the thing that got me most irate was how terrible people were at just fucking talking to each other. 

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There’s never a bad time to hear this, right? You deserve to be loved. I don’t mean, in a basic way, that you as an individual are entitled to romantic love, or sex or companionship or whatever: those things can only be given freely, if other individuals choose. I mean that you deserve to be treated with love, by those who say they feel it. You deserve to be loved by them in practice, not just words.

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