There is a dominatrix who has invaded London with a desire to compartmentalize and rate the Mistresses in this town. I keep receiving group emails from her. Initially, I had the impression that her plans were to have some sort of business forum, where Mistresses could bitch openly about their clientele, in particular their 'time wasters'. I'm not really concerned by these 'time wasters'. Of course, there are loads of jerks out there who want to call up and hiss various obscenities down the phone. But, I tend to be fairly unflappable as I've heard it all before. (If I start to get pissed off, I just don't answer calls.) If one has a good system in place regarding the confirmation of bookings - well there's no such thing as time wasters. Anyway, apparently the dream isn't this magic forum of bitching, but a way to rate Mistresses, taking into account their skills and quality of premises. The whole concept makes my stomach turn. All hyperbole aside, this woman is obviously a succubus. Ok, she's not. But, who is going to be judging the quality of Mistresses and what kind of grading system is going to be applied to their premises? For instance: no rubber hood, minus one point. Extraordinary collection of Mistress excrement samples stored under the stairs, plus five points. Not enough clean towels, minus two points. Black painted walls and a room full of bondage furniture that looks suspiciously like gym equipment, plus twenty points. It's not like she's handing out Michelin stars, now is it?

Dungeons. I hate them. Who ever decided that this was sexy? It's just wipe clean gone mad.

I decided, in the end, to take an official week off. This means I leave a message on my voice mail, alerting everyone to the fact that I've disappeared down a rabbit hole. Then, I hide in bed for a week, being served biscuits by my husband. It feels good, if poverty stricken.