Inspired by a friend I recently started doing daily crossword puzzles. Despite loving reading and writing, I’ve never been great at crosswords, but I think that actually makes it an even better challenge for me.
I consistently rank near the bottom in time taken to complete my online puzzle of choice, but that’s ok – I will improve!
So yesterday I was thinking about how crossword puzzles are created… There must be some online tools to help make them these days right? Well yes there are! A little googling gave me an option that looked good so I dove in.
Here’s the result – a crossword puzzle that’s all about sex work and sexy things!
Now, while many words should be easy enough, some are hard! Partly because making a dense crossword with lots of crossing words is difficult. Also because when you choose a specific subject and can’t just put in words that fit it becomes a lot harder to make the puzzle compact with lots of intrinsic clues. However! With sex, sexuality, and sex work at the front of your mind you should be able to work it all out.
If you need a clue, drop me a comment below. Hope you have a little sexy new year fun!
Christmas is done, the new year is nearly here, 2025 is nearly finished.
If I’m being honest – I will not miss 2025. I had to move out of my apartment in Olympic Park in July, a place that had been my home for thirteen years.
One of my earthmoving machines blew two hydraulic hoses and had a fuel supply problem – all of which I had to fix myself.
I spent three days in hospital fighting off an infection in my arm just before Christmas.
And plenty of more minor things across the year.
I do have to say though – 2025 has had some wonderful moments too, like laying on a beach in Sweden on a dark, cold night watching an amazing display of the northern lights dance over a perfectly still lake.
Visiting the Eiffel Tower, or listening to Irish folk tales in the basement of a pub in Dublin.
Or catching a wave on a surfboard and riding it all the way to the beach for the first time.
Sitting in a steaming outdoor bath while looking out over the Snowy Mountains on a cold day.
Or the reward of building a solar powered pump system to replace an old and broken petrol water pump to supply water to the garden here on the farm.
Or any one of a dozen great meals that I’ve been lucky enough to share with friends and clients.
It can be hard to keep life in perspective. The bad parts weigh us down. While the good parts seem to fade so much quicker.
But this I will say – sex work and most importantly the generosity of my clients have and continue to make the good times great and the hard times possible to bear.
Thank you. To you all who have been part of my journey in 2025.
I hope that you have had a joyful Christmas and that you have a fun New Year’s Eve!
So the last time I posted here it was all the way back in (checks notes) Early August! Well. That’s very slack of me and I’m sorry for being so tardy. In my defence I had to move out of the apartment that I had lived in for over thirteen years in July (I moved in to my apartment on March 24th, 2012 and oh boy has a lot of water passed under the bridge since then!).
So, the last several months have been a slow process of getting myself set up again and finding a new routine (not to mention the joy of unpacking boxes!) and unfortunately writing blog posts here has been very low down my list. I intend to change that going forward!
One of the things that is becoming part of the new routine is working on improving my diet and losing some of the weight that inevitably creeps on as we get older. To that end I generally try to maintain a low to zero carb diet these days and when combined with intermittent fasting (for eighteen to twenty hours per day) then I find that I can lose weight effectively.
One of the things that I have been doing in aid of that diet is making cauliflower soup. Now that may not immediately appeal to everyone, but after seeing it on a menu recently then making my own I have to say, I’m really enjoying it! This is my recipe:
Ingredients:
2 large heads of cauliflower
2 full heads of garlic
2 large onions
Five large sticks of celery (including leaves)
500ml liquid stock (vegetable, or chicken) or equivalent
2 tablespoons spoons soy sauce
200ml cream
Butter
Olive oil
Pepper (I prefer fresh cracked)
Additional ingredients to serve:
Grated hard cheese (I prefer Romano, but any strong flavoured hard cheese will do)
Sour cream or natural yoghurt
Pepper and salt
Sour dough bread
Instructions:
Heat the oven to 170 degrees C
Trim the leaves from the cauliflower heads and place them whole in a large baking dish
Add the whole heads of garlic to the baking dish as well
Cover cauliflower and garlic with olive oil, salt, and pepper
Place in oven and cook uncovered for approximately one hour or until soft (you should be able to break it up with a spoon easily)
Check every 15 minutes to make sure that cauliflower doesn’t burn – it should brown though! Apply more olive oil, or baste with drippings in the pan to help brown the cauliflower
While the cauliflower is baking, chop the onion and celery small, not fine
Heat a large pot on medium heat
Add approximately 100 grams of butter and a generous amount of olive oil to the pot, allow butter to melt
Add celery and onion to the pot, stir, then cover and allow to cook until soft
Remove pot from heat
Add stock, soy sauce, to the pot with the celery and onion
Break up the cauliflower and add to the pot – don’t forget to include any scrapings and the olive oil from the baking tray!
Chop the tops off the garlic heads to expose the tops of the cloves, then squeeze the roasted garlic out of the head into the pot with the other ingredients
Add the cream to the pot
Purée the ingredients in the pot with a stick blender. If you don’t have a stick blender you can use a potatoe masher to mash the ingredients roughly to combine them, then transfer them in batches to a regular blender. Blend until smooth
Add water to reach the desired consistency. I like a thicker soup, but it can be thinned with water to your preference
Serving:
Finely grate your hard cheese of choice
Toast the bread and butter it generously while hot!
Ladel the soup into bowls
Add a dollop of sour cream, or natural yoghurt
Top with grated cheese and cracked pepper then serve with the toast on the side
This recipe gives eight to ten generous serves. I like to let the soup stand in the fridge overnight to allow the flavours to integrate fully before eating it, but it’s fine straight off the stove. I usually keep four serves in the fridge and put the rest in the freezer.
Netflix recently released season two of the animated television series Arcane. It may not be to your taste as it is based on the computer game League of Legends, however it absolutely transcends those origins. It has truly excellent story telling, in a detailed world, with complex compelling characters who grow and change throughout the story.
This image from Arcane is copyright Riot Games
It really is a remarkable achievement in these days of risk averse studios and writing/editing by committee.
I came across this quote while watching the last episode of season two from one of the main characters:
“We build our own prisons. Bars forged of oaths, codes, and commitments. Walls of self doubt and accepted limitation. We inhabit these cells, these identities, and call them ‘us’.”
Silco – Arcane, Season 2, Episode 8
This quote really touched me. In context it was extremely powerful, exposing the inner conflict of one of the protagonists. But it also well describes the lives that many of us live – lives that we may mistakenly interpret as being representative of who we literally are.
But we are not these things. Our oaths, codes, and commitments are choices that we make, often without understanding their significance, or how they will effect us. Self doubt and the failure to imagine that we can be more, do more, keep us tied to lives that may ultimately be unrewarding or unhappy.
However – all it takes to change our lives and to discover who we are is to examine those things and to question the assumptions that they are built on.
I have re-invented my life and my career many times in my life. Mostly it has been through necessity. Sometimes through curiosity and choice. Every time it was more or less difficult and scary. But I have learned a lot about myself in that time by examining my failures and my successes and searching for what brought actual happiness to me through all of that.
I know: that I can adapt. That I can work hard. That I can find solutions when things get difficult.
Most of all though I have discovered that who I am – “me” – is not about money, or status, or what I own. What really matters – what is really the heart of “me” is freedom, creativity, building, creating, learning, and challenging myself.
What I know is that when my life is arranged in such a way that I can pursue those things then I can be happy and fulfilled.
I often meet women who are living in a situation where their relationships or their lives don’t bring them the intimacy and physical pleasure that they want and need. Taking the step of visiting a male escort like myself to fill that need may bring you up against the “bars” and “walls” of Silco’s quote. And they are certainly difficult to move past. But if we can start to identify them – question them, then we are one step closer to stepping past them and creating the life that we really want to lead.
So here we are – it’s 2025! And I find myself having Chinese food for dinner in Narrandera in Southern NSW, where I’m staying overnight before picking up a tractor that I have just bought, and I’ve gotten to thinking about the year ahead…
Now the world may not have the certainty that we would like, but this year, like every year, will be what we make of it. I’m not one for “new years resolution” as such, but I do like to think about priorities and goals for the new year.
So the things that I have in mind this year…
I definitely want to do more photography. I have some travel with clients coming up this year, so I’m looking forward to more wildlife and northern lights photos. But I’d also like to take more photos here in Australia, be that self portraits (building on this!). Birds and other wildlife – I’d really like to take more photos of our native animals and birds especially. That will fit in well with my next point below as well as landscape images. Photography has been and is a big part of my life and my identity and I haven’t been making enough time for it, which I plan to change this year.
Touring within Australia. While I love overseas travel there is so, SO much to see here in Australia. Back in February 2020 I spent five days at Lake Mungo in south west New South Wales. It was an amazing experience and one that I really want to repeat (both there and other places).
When I drove back from Victoria after Christmas I took a more inland route (via Narrandera). It was a fantastic drive – no pressure to be anywhere and an opportunity to see a part of the country that I haven’t seen before. I would have liked to take more time to explore the Murray and Murrumbigee Rivers.
My car is currently having “work done”, but once I have it back I will be able to travel in more remote and rough places more easily, as well as camping rather than having to stay in motels. So that will give me more opportunities to do photography which I really look forward to.
Film making. This one is harder, as film making – especially the erotic kind – is difficult to do on your own (although I do have at least one idea in that regard!). I am going to keep thinking about it though and hopefully opportunities may present themselves this year.
Scuba diving. I haven’t been in the water diving in over a year. I had a couple of incidents with claustrophobia the last time I went diving (at Lord Howe Island) that put me off it a bit, but I think that it’s time for me to get back in the water and put that behind me. It’s very much a matter of mindfulness and relaxation, not letting the situation overpower me. I know that I can do it and more practice will help with that. I also really want to see cool underwater stuff! I have a friend who wants to get his diving certificate, so I might have a talk with him about it and see if we can do some diving together. Having a good diving buddy makes it a lot easier and safer.
Diving is also a chance for both photography and film making and I would really like to do more of that. Underwater photography is a very challenging form of the art that I would like to work on and improve my skills in.
So there are a few things that will be on my list this year! I hope you have fun and productive things on your list too – who knows, you might even decide to include me on your list! And if you do I promise to do my very best to make it a fantastic experience.
Post covid I haven’t been travelling as much and Christmas especially. I find flying at Christmas uniquely unpleasant (as I’m sure many people do). This year however I decided to make the trip to see family in Victoria. I drove down from Sydney though to avoid the aforementioned air travel pain!
The drive there was uneventful (the best possible outcome when travelling the Hume Highway) and Christmas with family was fun.
I also had the pleasure of a booking in Melbourne before I headed home to Sydney.
Southbank Melbourne at sunset. It’s not Venice, but Melbourne on the Yarra has its own charm
Entrance to the Museum of Desire in Collingwood
Now one thing I had thought would be fun to see was The Museum Of Desire in Collingwood (which I talked about previously). It turned out to be a fun, lighthearted look at sex and sexuality and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for an hour or two of quirky entertainment in inner Melbourne.
I rather liked the “interactive” nature of many of the exhibits – from a giant “couch thing” that told erotic stories, to the game that required you to match faces to genitals to cars and hand bags! Not to mention the phallic ring toss, and the butt-putt mini-golf…
There was also static art, film, and an interactive sound scape installation. It was fun and worth the investment of a little time.
Faces, genitals, hand bags, and cars – which belongs to whom?Choose a camera, strike a pose (more or less clothed!), and take the photo – it will then be displayed along with many others on the screens outside the boothThis photocopier has clearly seen some things!Break the laser beams with your hand to interact with the sound scape!
So thank you Museum of Desire, you provided a fun and lighthearted diversion on a muggy Melbourne afternoon!
I just wanted to say merry Christmas and thank you to everyone. To my clients this year, thank you for your support – I really appreciate it and I look forward to seeing you again in the new year.
I’ve been following a keto diet now for over a year (with intermittent fasting), so I tend to eat a lot of salad. One of the tenets of a keto diet is that you should be eating more protein (and fat). I was given this product a while back and had never gotten around to trying it until recently (BTW – I have no interest in “paleo” diets and “superfoods”, I’m not endorsing this brand or ideas, I just enjoy this thing). It’s a mix of seeds, so it adds fats and protein to my salad. It also adds a nice gentle crunch texture, which I really enjoy.
My dieting has so far resulted in nine kilograms of weight loss (despite waffles in Norway), which I’m quite please with!
