ABSTRACT
When I feel as I do at the moment, I think of this as my Jesus year. That's not original - it's an in-joke with a friend who is also thirty-three (the traditional age of you-know-who at the crucifixion) but it's a clue to my tendency to grand doom-laden sulks. I look in the mirror and the shape of jolly, sensible single schoolteachers who I despised when I was fifteen settles on me like cold rice pudding. This after twelve years in the women's movement, fourteen since 'coming out' as a lesbian, and seven of (mostly) self-chosen celibacy. I must confess at the outset that yes, yes, I blossom and grow all over the place like a briar rose, I learn new hobbies, I have energy to spread around like jam, I am the solitary magic huntress in the forest, the wise spinster, the renewed virgin that meets the last unicorn, but damn it, I still feel like a failure.
