Would it really have happened to Lisa Dingle?

I’ve just finished watching Emmerdale and can’t believe how ridiculous the storyline is about Lisa Dingle being raped by creepy Derek in the factory where they were working after hours.

The reason I’m shaking my head is because a woman with Lisa Dingle’s strength of character, who is no stranger to dealing with recalcitrant males (husband Zak is probably more scared of her than he is of any man, and for good reason) would have battered his melt in*.

* smashed his face in/battered him/ handed him his teeth on a plate.  

How many of us would have cheered if Derek had been sent packing with a bloody nose/a part of his anatomy missing? 

This storyline is yet another example of the way women are treated in fiction. They are either cunning whores who marry men for their money, or hapless victims of depraved crimes.

I know that women are raped and it’s a sickening crime, which should carry the death penalty in my opinion or lead to castration, but there are just as many women who fight off their would be attackers. I know this because I’ve done it myself and a straw poll of friends showed we have all had experiences of fending off unwanted advances – usually with a boot in the balls. 

I’m delighted that my first novel, which will be published this year by Pulp Press, will feature a thoroughly modern woman who is flesh and blood and more in keeping with today’s women – one who doesn’t take any nonsense from anyone.

Hell Week

This past seven days has been an absolute nightmare.  My dog was attacked and my publishers went bust. 

First to the dog attack - I’ll talk about my publisher hell in my next posting, after I’ve stopped sobbing.  I was out walking with my dog, when another dog (a German shepherd type) sprinted over and lunged at him as he was chewing away at a stick.  The dog was twice the size of my Benjy and as usual in cases like this, the dog was unaccompanied.  My Benjy managed to fight the dog off (although he was much smaller he is a muscle man, mainly because he loves diving through the air to catch his Frisbee) and I got between them and told the dog to get lost.

I thought that was it done and put Benjy on the lead and was heading home when the other dog attacked again.  This time I managed to get Benjy away.

Dogs fight, it’s a fact of life, but what shouldn’t be is dog owners like the silly bitch who owned this one and who knows her dog is violent (this is the first time in the year I have been seeing this dog that it has been off the lead), yet still thinks its perfectly okay to let her dog off the lead so he can run off an attack another dog and she’s too far away to stop it.

When she finally did appear (some five minutes after the first attack), despite witnessing the 2^nd one she didn’t even acknowledge anything had happened.  In fact, she looked right through me.  If it hadn’t been for the fact I wanted to get Benjy to safety I would have given her an earful.  People like her shouldn’t even have remote control dogs, never mind real ones. 

This attack brought back very bad memories.  When I first moved to this island of irresponsible dog owners, (since I moved here over five years ago, two Akitas (Japanese fighting dogs have attacked their owners and had to be put down, and a neighbour’s Weimeraner crushed a little girl’s throat as she played in her garden), my old dog Vic (a mixed breed dog the size of a German shepherd) was savaged by a giant Bull Mastiff.  The beast appeared out of nowhere and didn’t so much as growl at him before it’s teeth latched onto his throat.  Predictably, the owner was nowhere to be seen.  The dog had no collar on it either. 

If a passer-by had not come and started kicking the hell out of the dog that wouldn’t let go of Vic’s throat even as my boyfriend and I pounded away at it trying to get it off, our dog would have been killed.  Afterwards we took Vic to the Vet and he needed stitches in his neck.  The vet said that had it not been for his collar the dog would have killed him.