My relationship with my hair has shaped my life. 

I'm guessing that's not a particularly unusual statement. But I don't mean because I was the only redhead in my family and at my school. Or because of the styles I've chosen. I mean because I started pulling it out when I was a kid, and almost 20 years later it's a habit that still engulfs me.

I can't remember the first time I pulled out my hair. Or any of the early times really. I remember reading, and looking down and the pages of the book being covered with strands. I remember my mum brushing out my long hair and noticing the parting was wider. I vaguely remember how hotly embarrassed I was at the doctors, listening to my mum tell the GP I was pulling my own hair out. But not how it all began. 

Perhaps it will hit you while watching an old film from your teens. Or on the bus to work. Or listening to an old song. Maybe searching for an old song you know you had on tape and if you could just hear it you could remember the name of the singer and song and download it on iTunes dammit! Mayhap a young person will stop you on the street and ask what that piss box is on the street. As you explain the days of landlines and public 'teleophone boxes' you realise - huh, you don't see those any more... We have taken a trip down memory lane and come up with things you just don't see any more...

Quick! What does an ideal woman look like? I don't have time for your protestations about 'ideal' meaning different things to different people, or being a ridiculous notion to start with. There is an ideal out there and we're all failing to live up to it. Maybe it's the colour of your skin, your height, your bra size or the ink you paid for - there's definitely something getting in the way of you being truly beautiful, of obtaining perfection.

Isn't this the message most of us (increasingly men as well as women) have bludgeoned into us from an early age? One of my first memories of reading magazines is finding one with a recipe you could make up and apply to your face to bleach off freckles (I believe it included lemon juice but beyond that it's lost to time I'm afraid). And as a red-haired child who didn't know anyone else who wasn't brunette or blonde I always knew I couldn't be pretty and ginger. Update 20 years later: red hair is awesome. Just so you know.

Last weekend I did something I have not done in a while. I moshed. I went to see some grungy live bands with a load of people who wanted to party like it was 1992. Dancing at the back was fine, then the band launched into a cover of Lithium and I was carried to the front. 

Partly by the crowd all leaping forward in competitive recognition of the song, partly by my own pushing. When you're in a mosh pit you can't go back. Forward not back.

I got sweat soaked, greasy boy hair in my mouth, I got a beer poured over me, I got shoved, I got kicked. I Shoved, I kicked, I flicked my sweat soaked, greasy girl hair about. I yelled, I sang, I loved it.  

The phrase 'single parent' conjures up many thoughts, hardly any of them positive.  Google it and you'll see 'benefits', 'help and support', 'childcare issues', 'scraping by' - and the rest.  But I'm here to tell you that it’s not all bad.  And sometimes - most of the time - it's actually quite good.

I became a single parent a year ago, of my own volition.  Now, I admit, the fact that it was my choice to end my marriage has coloured my future life with my children. I was unhappy in my marriage to the point where I was clinically depressed and spiralling into a deepening hole, and I knew that I had to leave my partner in order to save my sanity.

Soon afterwards, I was alone with my kids.  And the relief was immense.

Summer is nearly over now for Sue, did she spend it student style? Half cut with her thong on show? Sort of...

I took my mum to Bournemouth for a few days; Spain is far too hot for her at this time of year. I booked our rooms via laterooms.com, and when we arrived I feared they had mistaken my booking for a stint in an old people's home. I was the youngest guest there! Reception was only manned until 7pm, thereafter any requirements had to be directed via the night porter. Breakfast stopped being served at 9am, and dinner was from 6 - 8.30pm sharp.

The speed with which the meals were delivered defied belief. I pictured a drink in the bar, a leisurely dinner, coffee in the lounge and then retiring for the night at the end of the evening.

The trains are suddenly full again. There are loads more cars on the roads. Facebook is full of photographs of people's children in new school uniforms, and twitter seems to be obsessed with the fog and 'autumnal' weather, even though it's currently 25 degrees and autumn doesn't technically start for another 15 days. Must be September.

People seem to be getting a downer about the upcoming change of season. TheBBC seem to be on a mission to make their commutes easier by making everyone else too depressed to leave the house (although some of us reckon the most depressing thing about that article is the assumption we've all had 2 weeks away on a sunny beach.) Even Greenday don't like September. Sniff. So we decided to ignore all the back to school blues and look at the upsides of Autumn...

Can you be a male and a feminist, or a male feminist, or a pro-feminist male? I think so. Can you be a man and start a feminist society. I suppose so. I mean... there's no law against it. It's probably not the optimum feminist environment for a group or men (group? Gang? Pod? Fistful? What's the collective term for men?) to be the founding members of a feminist society. It rather smacks of what some might call a manarchist movement.

Some feminist societies have certainly noticed men coming in trying to be supportive, but forgetting that space is required over suggestions or statements. Kelley Temple put it well saying: "Men who want to be feminists do not need to be given a space in feminism. They need to take the space they have in society and make it feminist."

Let's say you're a professional writer - a columnist with inches of ink to your name and maybe even a couple of books - and you want to write a book looking at something you have identified as a particular problem within your society. How might you go about that? Talking to the people who it affects seems like a good start, right? See what their conceptions are; gather their thoughts and experiences; then examine people's realities and devote some thought to where the worst problems lie and how you might go about tackling them (or suggestions for how others could do the same). 

Well. On that very basic premise, it seems like Julie Bindel and I might be on the same page. That would shock me, if it wasn't for the fact that very quickly it becomes apparent that in fact we are, as ever, in completely different books. On opposite shelves. In libraries built very far apart. 

I have a confession to make. I was a Mumsnet sceptic. I'm not a mum and often I feel as though I am not thought of by the general public as a woman because of this, just a non-mum. The media portrayal of the site as amusingly powerful and the Gordon Brown biscuitgate saga made me think it was a peculiar site. I thought the unspoken slogan for the site was 'speaking as a mother...' But this is not Mumsnet's fault, just the media and irksome government rhetoric for hardworking people like you and me. Innit.

Hannah Mudge wrote last week about the general uninformed attitude towards Mumsnet: "Everyone has an opinion about Mumsnet, particularly people who have never actually explored the site before. I seem to remember becoming aware of this around the time of the last general election, long before I knew much about it, in fact. A lot of mockery was going on: politicians trying to appeal to "Mumsnet types", having livechats and acting all interested in their concerns."