I have a confession to make. When I started at secondary school after an incident with the clique I was in I became 'indie'. The only people who would speak to me were some boys in the year above on my bus. They made me rock mix tapes, for which I would feign appreciation, then go home and listen to Now! CDs. Loudly. If you asked me who I liked I'd list the bands on the tapes, omitting a list of hip hop and pop. My tastes did lean towards the scruffier ends of the charts and when I discovered riot grrrl, punk and The Smiths (what? It's a natural trifecta) I stopped wondering what the hitmakers that be called music, now.

That doesn't mean I don't have a lingering affection for the RnB and hip hop music of the 90s and early 2000s. It does mean I'm reasonably well versed in these genres to note that there is a common trend. Misogynist lyrics. 

We like to think of ourselves as a lifestyle site. A feminist lifestyle one. Which means occasionally we should probably show you how to do stuff. That helps you with your life. Style. And a lifestyle usually involves sharing it with other people. But how to get other people involved in your life? And when we say other people, we mean other people to do the crossword with in bed, a steaming cafetiere on the reclaimed wood bedside table. Perhaps later you will decoupage this piece of furniture with Penguin Classics covers... A lifestyle is usually better when shared. Decoupaging, for instance, is not to be taken on alone.

We have put our heads together and come up with our best chat up lines for you to hit the Guardian Weekend recommended bars with...

So the gates have opened and people are pouring in. Crates of beer loaded onto trollies; wellies already starting to rub. Yup, Glastonbury is open for business and the papers' picture desks are out in force to capture those defining, never-to-be-repeated moments: posh girls pouting in sunnies; hippie girls wearing bandanas and body paint; girls who have been picked up by the wellington boot and dipped in mud; pretty girls perched on someone's shoulders, pointing at the band and mouthing the lyrics.

There's an Eddie Izzard joke about the C of E's famous/infamous wetness. The image of a rather dreary organisation in which no-one quite knows what they are doing, they just know it is the thing they are supposed to be doing, whether or not they have muscles in their arms. It's just what they do every Sunday morning and, come Tuesday evening or whatever, their daughters go to Brownies. Just as they went to Brownies and their mothers went to Brownies. 

This is how I felt about Brownies. Actually with swimming, piano and ballet classes after school I was always glad I didn't have to go to Brownies. Until I turned 7 and discovered I'd been enrolled in 1st Studley  Brownies. 

Writing about pick up artists Ally Fogg noted that the art of pick uptry might have its roots in a fondness of the children’s cartoon Transformers. Perhaps the Atari or Nintendo are to blame for the popular notion among a number of men that there is some form of code to women.

"I blame Transformers. Many of my fellow heterosexual men appear to approach potential romantic partners as if they were those complicated robotic toys with a special hidden feature. All you need to do is turn her head just enough, raise her eyebrows, utter the secret password and woop woop woop: a siren sounds, her nipples start flashing and she instantly transforms into your own personal sex machine - Bonktamus Prime."

It's one of the oldest professions in the world and somehow, we never got round to properly regulating it. Some people enter it because they need the money, some are forced into it and some simply can't imagine doing another job that they'd love so much. The sex industry. All these reasons make people who don't ever engage (or not publicly) in such a world squeamish. They'd rather pretend it doesn't exist than, say, make it a safer environment to operate in. 

I want to be clear now, for this piece I am not dealing with the terrible crime of trafficking here. For this I am concerned only with those who have used their own agency to enter into sex work. It seems no matter what leads a person to sex work it's more convenient for us to lump them in the same category. If we don't want to think of them as perverts we sympathetically talk about how 'damaged' they are. Which gives us an excuse to ignore any issues brought up by sex workers. 

Remember when you used to go round to friend's houses as a kid and their rooms would be in varying states of tidiness? If they were messy, resentment would be experienced at the thought of all the times you tidied your room for their arrival. If their room was incredibly tidy there was a risk of them being brought up at an example you should follow next time your bed wasn't made. Their house might smell funny, or they had coloured loo roll, or plastic lining to save the furniture/carpet which is impossible to appear relaxed sitting or standing on. 'I will never/always do that when I have my own place' you would think. Eventually you became an adult (this is adults only, get out of here children reading this!) and have your own abode to clean or not clean, cook or not cook in. As you get older - as we all are - you will find certain things you thought as a child you may not bother with (cleaning) suddenly seem not just a good way to spend your time, but pleasurable (in a Cif clean way, you are filthy). Here are the things that make us feel domesticated. Like proper adults, not pets.  

"It's a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I'd be a drag queen." Dolly Parton

It stands to reason that Elizabeth I is the subject of many an unorthodox myth. After an unsteady start - dead mother, dead mother who died at the hands of her father, step-mums coming out of her ears, sister locking her in a tower - at the ripe old age of twenty-five, she nabbed the throne and became one of the most charismatic, unique and headstrong women in royal history. Four hundred years later and there's still loads we don't know about Liz, and so much of what we assume to know is interpretation rather than fact. She clearly valued her privacy, which is probably one of the biggest points of intrigue; how did she manage to have (if you believe all the gossip, which I so do) as salacious and unprecedented independent life as she did, in the public eye? At a time when a queen would have had been told how and when to do everything from go to war to wipe her arse, she lived radically and without apology. Love her or hate her, the girl is a sixteenth century pioneer.

In one of my professional lives I work for a motoring organisation.  I can (now) drive. My Dad is a car engineer, so I have pretty good car history knowledge. One of our Squeamish writers, F1 Kate, gives any male F1 reporter a run for their money and I don't think I need to tell you it's 2013. 

Yet google women drivers and you will get (in 0.80 seconds or so) and you will get a host of hilarious videos of women parking and articles declaring that it's a FACT women can't drive. I expect that's why women driver's insurance is so low compared men's. Their average driving record is so good because they spend more time parking than on the actual road - AMIRIGHT FELLAS?!

There seems to be a lot of pointless and lazy women driver hostility out there. So we would like to make a big deal today that it is the First Lady of Drag Racing Shirley Muldowney's birthday! 

Exam time is over for Squeamish Sue! And, although her sneaky plan to do her second year reading done in advance has been thwarted, she managed to attend a course on Trans* issues at Warwick. Next door's cat is so proud he's left her a present. 

Several of my peers and contemporaries in recent weeks have reached that magic age that is the new 50, and my son played and sang for some of them at various venues around and about. It's a demonstration of how word gets around; he is pretty good at what he does and it has had a knock on effect, as more and more people have asked him to play.

This has encouraged him to try open mic sessions a bit further afield, spurred on by a friend who has an entrepreneurial eye and ear for what's out there. It's all very well his mummy saying he's good, but I doubt that carries much weight as I might be considered just a touch biased!