For instance...

Matthew Norman. Probably looks like quite a normal bloke. Probably has a wife, kids, and even a dog. Probably has never lived in squalid love triangle with the wife of his first born and his first love, almost certainly has not published a body of poetry or indeed been responsible for A Child's Christmas in Wales being read out at every sodding Christmas concert. So why oh why does he have to sully his otherwise blamelessly boring reputation by giving The No 1 Cafe in Dalgarno Gardens 9/10 marks in his restaurant column in the Guardian? Why do that? What kind of restaurant critic wants to advertise our local restaurant to the socks and sandals brigade - the cheap socks and sandals brigade at that? Why spoil it for us?

Doesn't he realise that he is abusing his position of authority? I never did that when I wrote for the FT. No siree - I never recommended anywhere.

I see that Tim Dowling walking his son and his cute, loping dog round the Little Scrubs, I bet you he brought him into the area, showing off in his Guardianish ways, giving away the secret of our great little Thai restaurant right next to the dog toilet, within earshot of gunfire from the local Peabody estate and where you can always get a table, even if you don't book - possibly due to the fact that the failed tube bomber left his haversack dumped in the park outside, and was then found living in a flat a hundred yards away.

How charmed we were when in holiday in Italy to watch the seige at the end of our road.

All I can say is my friend Amanda once left her car open while she was decanting the Sainsbury's shop from the boot at her house nearby and between dropping her bags on the kitchen floor and returning, the car had been stolen by some home-grown 14 year old hoodies and taken on a joy-ride. So I guess the publicity will at least help the local economy. They can steal all the Guardian readers' cars and leave our car radios alone.

Don't blame me if you find your car on bricks when you finish your authentic Thai meal.

Name dropping

The bed has not proven to be quite the haven from the harsh world I had thought it would be despite the Hollywood pile of pillows into which I nestle with my laptop at night.

The truth is, it's incredibly uncomfortable. In fact it's so bloomng hard it's like sleeping on a steel mattress. Not so much of a boudoir as a East German Holding Cell.

All I need is a bucket in the corner.

In other news work has been massively exciting. Yesterday I had to find an optician so that Mr T could mend his night vision goggles, and then I had to change a fuse in the kettle. The world of publishing does indeed require a smorgasbord of technical skills. Unfortunately, the fuse did not solve the huge problem of the non-functioning kettle which had caused something of a coffee famine in the office and so I had to buy a new one. I did so from a mail-order catalogue and LO, it seems it's the most exciting thing I've done since I got here, and certainly the most commented on (though last night's date also got its fair share of interest).

'Marion, it's like something from Star Wars, 'said Editorial and indeed one of the very important high echelons on the company masthead was seen holding it upside down trying to figure out how to work the darn thing. It has a filter which seems to be causing the confusion.

Nevertheless chaps, it is just a kettle. You put water in it and it boils.

When not being a domestic engineer, I had a meeting at the Electric Bar with one of our authors who is writing a wonderfully witty book on the etiquette of international dining. Naturally, being the registered in-house foodie who once asked a very bored Franch waiter what the large scallop shaped instrument at the side of my place setting was for only to be told 'Modom, zat ees zee sauce spoon' (I didn't know there was alternative to just licking the damn plate) this is going to be an essential guide to the meals I no longer eat in the life I don't lead, and therefore will slot in nicely with the clothes I have for the formal parties that I don't go to, the lingerie for the sex life I don't have in the boudoir with the mattress that is the only damn hard thing in the bedroom.

I saw Henry Harris fresh from the kitchen of his restaurant Racine (well okay, not that fresh, he's been with the Electric group for a year) and did the whole luvvie, mwa, mwa, darling, as he searched for my name and managed to pull it out from the file marked unimportant people from the past just in time to offer it to his companion. I once reviewed his restaurant and he sent me the sweetest letter thanking me that still hangs on my study wall, perplexingly, quite unadorned by others of a similar nature. I wonder why? I expect it would have helped if I had been slightly less critical.

Moving swiftly on - the date.

Forget it. I'm saying nothing.

Afterwards I came home on the tube remarkably easily. Nobody mugged me. The trains arrived promptly. The car was where I had left it, unscathed and I was in just in time - oh joy - to catch the end of Big Brother.

I can't imagine how I would have coped with having missed it. (This is me being ironic and is what happens when you dare to go out - they annex the remote control)

I heard something emanating from the screen about 'Tim Teeman' and said to my daughter, oh I know him. He's on the Times - I've had dinner with him a couple of times.' I can't understand why he's on Big Brother - well I suppose Mark Lawson's got everything else sewn up.

I got about 1/2 a cool point for knowing someone on the television from No 2 Son son, and about minus 10 points for being so deeply uncool that just my knowing anyone took the 'essential viewing' shine off the program for No 2 Daughter, and she stomped off upstairs.

Result.

An ad featuring Marco Pierre White came on next.

'I know him too,' I shouted to her retreating back.

She was even less impressed.

Actually I don't think he would remember me unless I came accessorised with Alan Crompton Batt who has very sadly gone to the great High Table in the sky, so I don't think there is much chance of me mwa-mwaing him and I never gave him a great review either. Mind you I didn't give him any bad ones. Didn't dare to. Much too scared. The man used to go hunting. With a rifle. And Guy Ritchie.

Any one of those things is terrifying.

In the pink

Had lunch yesterday with the Ginger Pig lot today – Tim, walking into the office with the relaxed casualness of man who’s just stepped in from the milking shed, accessorized by his fiancé Sarah, and Mark, his agent (also loved up apparently, damn it – it’s like living in a middle aged ark with me standing on the quayside, helplessly scanning the horizon while the water creeps up over my knees).

We went round the corner to a restaurant in Lamb's Conduit St (very apt) and sat in an echoing restaurant that smelt of damp to be assailed immediately by a hatchet faced once beautiful blonde now edging into sixty with a scowl and a lot of make-up.

'Drinks?' she asked.

'Tap water is fine,' we said as one.

'No wine?'

'Tap water will be okay, thanks.'

'No coke or apple juice. Orange juice?' (Both of which you just know are going to be from concentrate and a tetrapack.

'No thanks, just the water.'

'Have you made up your minds what you want?' she continued insistently.

We had barely got our bums into the seat and not even glanced at the menu. We asked for five minutes. She scowled off like it was a sport and she was bloody good at it.

A scant five minutes later she was back with her order pad. We told her we still hadn't had a chance to look at the menu. 'Another five minutes?' I asked.

'Well, if you could be ready then, only I would like to tell the kitchen so that they can get on with it, just in case we get busy.' She looked at her watch as though that was going to tell her something like it was five minutes before a coach party arrived from Great Ormond Street on a tour of London's Hospitals.

We in the meantime looked around the room that was so empty there was tumbleweed running through it.

What was the kitchen doing that they needed our order in the next nanosecond? Getting ready to go home, probably.

'Oh if only I was still a restaurant critic,' I said thinking of the wonderful copy she had just given me as her back retreated stiffly off to warn the errant kitchen staff to be on their marks, ready, set, go

Obviously I waited till she was out of earshot - she looked like she could have eaten me and not even stopped to spit out the bones.

We had omelettes, which must have severely taxed them since it was the day's special and had no doubt meant a special trip round to Mr Shah's supermarket for another dozen eggs, then in between dry anecdotes about shepherds and Jamie Oliver standing 'in the queue outside t’ shop', Tim mentioned that they were just about to start haymaking on the farm.

'You should come up to Yorkshire this week for an overnighter and get the feel of the place,' he said.

Immediately I’m totally overcome with Cider with Rosie fantasies, despite the slight geographical discrepancy of location – Yorkshire Moors not Dorset Downs - thinking, oooooh lovely, haymaking, eeh by gum, grass-chewing one-man-and-his-dog, bucolic countryside, little lambs springing about like jack-in-the-boxes, cider/pints of ale, me in gingham in pigtails and then, before I could stop myself, I blurted out:

'No, I can't, because I have a date...'

I blushed. Imagine, the ridiculousness of a woman my age talking about having a date? I saw them look at me, not totally convinced that they had heard right.

'Oh it’s nothing,' I babbled, feverishly trying to backpedal. 'It’ll be over by the weekend – it’s just that I don’t go out much and… God knows when I’ll get asked again.'

It was like trying to get out of a ditch by revving your wheels and only digging yourself further into the mud.

They are still looking at me with interest, you know, like you would a two-headed cow.

'Really, honest, it’s just a meal out.'

'Where are you going?' Asked Mark.

By this point I’m beginning to wish I had been mute since birth.

'You’ll be married by next week,' said Tim.

'Well I’d have to get divorced first,' I replied. I mean, I might as well have issued a press release on my personal life under the heading ‘disaster’.

'Come up next week then, we’ve got lots of strapping farm lads for you if you’re single.'

Suffice to say I’m booked up on the train for next week. Cider with Rosie quickly banished in favour of a spot of Lady Chatterley.

I’m surprised at how much I’m looking forward to this whole cookery book venture. I’m going to go into the shops and spend an afternoon talking to the staff with Tim, and then spend a Saturday at their place in Borough Market. I’m even going to do the butchery course they run in Marylebone High Street. Me with a cleaver in my hand. Shiva of the Kitchen.

Finally, the pink bed arrives today.

I hope it's not a disappointment. Ditto the date, but I fear it's built into the event, like an air bag into a fast car - it might save your life but it still whacks you in the chest and hurts.

No 1 Son has been asked to kindly dismantle the old bed to make room for it and on the way home I shall pick up the 1001 (cleans a big, big carpet for less than half-a-crown) to scrub up the upholstery in order to transform the bedroom into a bordello. All I’ll need to do is drape a pair of stockings over the bottom of the bed and I’m all set.

Of course I would first have to buy a pair of stockings, but go with it, go with it - it’s just a pathetic fantasy. I know that the only thing draped over the end of the bed will be my teenage daughter, possibly with a dripping jar of nail polish and a demand for a fiver.

Still.

I’ve always wanted a tart's boudoir (I think it's the same way men Middle Aged men with comb-overs buy Porches but with no carbon footprint) and I feel the time is running out before it stops being ironic and starts being pathetic (and you can drop the eyebrows and leave me to languish in the lovely land of denial). I know I am not quite there yet but I am getting very close to Barbara Cartland territory. Another few years and it'll be me in a silk pegnoir holding a pair of matching pugs which I will give Italian names (Fabio and Massimo) while I eat bon-bons and watch the QVC shopping channel. My prospective date has had his house painted by a Chilean revolutionary who, discovering that revolution didn’t pay as much as house-painting, diversified and covered his walls in murals.

Just what I need to complete the scene. Cherubs perhaps? A satyr in a glade, playing pan pipes?

You think I’m kidding…?

Actually, the colour is auburn if you don't mind.

The latest excitement in my life is that I'm going to work on a book with the owner of a frightfully smart shop in Marylebone High Street for which we've just signed a contract at Pedantic Press. I'm very enthusiastic about the whole venture, my only slight reservation is the name. It's called The Ginger Pig, and you can just see the jokes flying thick and fast. Certainly I've started veering towards the Mid-Brown shades on the Clairol shelf just in case anyone thinks it's an autobiography. And no my hair isn't ginger, not remotely, it's just the way the sun shines on it sometimes. It's what happens when you do it yourself rather than spending 80 quid to talk about your holidays with a disinterested man holding scissors.

So for the next eight months, as well as hopefully getting my heroine Maggie out of the front garden of the house in Chelsea (she must be getting a bit cold by now - just sleep with him already, girl) I will be immersing myself in all things bovine, porcine and things that go quack in the night. I shall be simply obsessed by pigs, none of which will be sleeping beside me since my domestic porker has gone.

As a consolation I've ordered a new bed on e-Bay, a Louis XIV reproduction with scrolls and gilding and pink, oooooh yes, you heard right, pink plush upholstery. In preparation for the mythical, golden time when fifty really is the new forty and there are men under the age of seventy-seven who are interested in women my age for more than their housekeeping skills, the bedroom shall be resurrected.

But it may be some time.

No wonder poor Maggie is stranded in the front garden unable to consummate her great love affair with the limpid eyed Rent-an-Italian (nope, sorry, I just can't get excited about him at all - what chance do I have if even the writer doesn't fancy the hero - I keep seeing him as balding and tanned and Brian Eno-ish and then get slightly more enthusiastic but that doesn't fit the character...) She's as out of practice as I am. Maybe I should take this tack and advertise myself thus in a lonely hearts ad:

Novelist needs inspiration for male character - should own a house in Chelsea and a Famous Blue Raincoat. Italian an advantage.

Actually, flicking back to Brian, his daughters used to go to school with my youngest and occasionally they used to play together. Once Brian actually came to my house and sat on my sofa and admired my orange curtains (are you sensing a theme here vis a vis the colour scheme of casa mia. Vibrant must be springing to mind. Or garish, perhaps). I had always been a fan since I read his diary which Faber published probably a decade ago in which he was slightly pissy about the other parents at Sports' Day at the children's school - a sentiment I shared - horrible competitive dads turning up with their trainers in a bag so they could win the fathers' race, and all that people-like-us social climbing. It's a wonder they didn't arrive with crampons and ropes. He also confessed that he liked spending his time tinkering with Photoshop making women's bottoms larger.

Ah, bless, I thought, having once caught him looking at mine when, many years ago, it was thin enough to be clad in a leather skirt in which I had just bent to kiss my little girl goodbye one morning when I was only a Range Rover short of being a yummy mummy before the term was even coined. 

I had high hopes, then, that his then wife would be bottom-heavy curvy baby-got-back of voluptuous charms, only to be disappointed that she was a perfectly slim, pretty woman with absolutely no bloody bum.

Illusions.

Shattered.

Still I would much rather he was on the steps of the mews house in Chelsea preparing to seduce my poor, overlooked and unappreciated Maggie than the current drip who's waiting for her, but Maggie is a 36 year old woman. She's not ready to settle for a bald man yet.

Me on the other hand.

Bring it on.

Just don't make the mistake of calling me Ginger.

Starstruck

Only you would come to the theatre in a hat like that, said my friend Phill when he picked me up in the foyer after the Frenchman ‘ad gone to the Royal Court to queue for returns’. I was defensive. What’s wrong with it? The actress who played the female lead told me she loved it. What happened to my so-called sense of style?

Phill was in a Boston Red Socks’ sweatshirt, his garb of choice for sprinting across Whitehall with me holding on to my hat behind him en route to the pub. Gosh I felt starry. Look at me. In the pub with television comedians.

Okay, strictly speaking it was television comedian in the singular, but he’s large enough to count as a pair of comics all on his own. Helen Lederer was also there - I think she's a comedian. All I know is she used to be married to Roger Alton who I used to know a teeny, tiny bit when I wrote various columns for the Observer (Hi there Roge -remember me now you're on the Indie).

I nearly said: Oh I know your ex-husband but I didn't think that quite lived up to the standards of tact for which I'm known. She might have thought I knew him in the biblical sense and if anyone bounced up to me in a bar and tells me they have met my ex-husband I would probably smack them in the mouth with a large bag of peanuts.

So what do they want - a bloody round of applause? Marks out of ten?

I also met the person who had written the play and his companion, a glossy dark haired girl of voluptuous proportions who, when I asked if she also wrote, replied that she was just entering a story in a Waterstone's competition. ‘So if I win, then perhaps I will write a book and start looking for a publisher,’ she said. Oh the confidence of the unpublished amateur. I’ve never entered a competition in my life with even more than the tiniest glimmer of hope, let alone the breezy expectation, that I would win. I wouldn’t even have mentioned that I had entered. I told her she might want to rethink the whole ‘looking for a publisher’ thing and try looking for an agent instead.

You know, as opposed to waiting to see if she has talent.

‘How do I find one?’ she asked.

‘The Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook,’ I said – really, I should be charging for this - I should also be suggesting The Writers’ Market instead since I have written a piece for it called ‘Can I call myself a writer? but you see – I missed the self-promotion day at Kick-You-Down Academy for Low Achievers.

She looked at me blankly. Hadn’t heard of it. How can anyone who aspires to write anything, let alone win a writing competition NOT have heard of the Writers’ Bible which should be on your shelf along with your pot of sharpened pencils and your dictionary, none of which you ever use, but nevertheless are the props of your trade?

The annoying thing is that it really wouldn’t surprise me if she did win the bloody competition. Isn’t that just the way these things work?

An old boss admitted as much when we had lunch the other week. In between offering me tips for internet dating (she didn’t say lose two stone but I think it was pretty much taken as read while she sat and daintily ate a plate of sashimi and I had the deep fried tempura, rice, pickles, and half a ton of edamame) she said: ‘Darling, can I just tell you, the people who go far in this life are those who talk themselves up all the time and have a very high opinion of themselves’. I mumbled into my soup and nodded in agreement.

‘The number of people who just dropped me darling, cut me dead, when I wasn’t in a position to promote their career any more.’

I mumbled into my soup again, and agreed, not that I have ever been in a position to help anyone much with their career, but I was, for many years, the bestower of free lunches, and few of the recipients of those lunches, and you know who you are, ever got in touch with me when the expense account stopped.

‘Your restaurant column was wonderful, though,’ she said, flatteringly, at which point I took my face out of the soup bowl and glowed (possibly just because of the steam). ‘There’s nobody as good as you at the moment.’ Take note editors. Sadly there were no newpaper moguls eating sushi in Half Moon Street to hear this accolade but she then went on to offer me an interview for her magazine with the new chef at the Connaught Hélène Darroze, conducted after a suitably sumptuous slap-up meal during their preview week. I should start training now. It’s scheduled for the 9th of July which is Daughter No 2's 24th birthday. She will be in Vanuatu picking rat droppings out of rice but I’m sure she will be delighted to hear all about my meal by proxy which I will enjoy with extra relish, just for her.

I danced home happily intending to get straight down to work on the proofs which have been sitting on the dining room table waiting for attention for a week now, but then I turned the first page and saw my name which, in other circumstances, should have caused a thrill to run through me. My first real proper novel with my name on the front.

If only it hadn’t been followed by ‘lives in West London with her four children’.

I looked at it sadly and set it aside.

Not brief enough encounter

My friend recently joined Guardian Soulmates.  We sat in her office and she typed in 'men between 50-60' who live within a 10 mile radius of my postcode and up they came – the big, the bearded, the bald. I saw one guy who I am sure is a teacher from my son’s school. One man's profile says he is passionate about dogs. Not one for me then. Another man's profile says he cares massively about the planet as should we all but what does it mean. Does he want to do his and hers composting? Save bathwater? As a personality trait in a future lover, maybe it’s not top of my list. In any case I would have low expectations from the whole Internet Dating thing as in real life the people who seem to be attracted to me are usually candidates for care in the community.

They’ve all got that look. The intent stare that initially I take for interest and only realize is madness when they get close enough to come properly into focus.

Case study: I went to see Phill Jupitus in a comedy thing at the Trafalgar Studios. I know Phill from my days as a restaurant critic when he agreed to come out for a greasy spoon breakfast with me in Soufend and so when I saw he was starring in Life Coach, I begged a ticket. Saturday comes, as usual, after Friday and the weekend unfolds with a chore in every crease: Ikea for a bed for the teenager, assemble said bed, replace jammed light bulb in bathroom, fill up drawers vacated by husband with all my clothes (ie two t-shirts that fit and seven thousand that don’t) – just the general domestic stuff that pads my life likeKapok. In the midst of it, however, a visit to the theatre stands like a big sunflower with its face turned to the light. I put on one of the t shirts that doesn't fit, and an overdress thing that hides the shrinkage and I turned up alone, got my free ticket from the box office and stood there awkwardly waiting for the doors to open.

I spotted the man immediately. Tall, stooped, carrying a large briefcase with a great number of zips that I was soon to become intimately acquainted with. Our eyes locked for a second and then I flicked my gaze back down to the carpet.

But there he was, right beside me, his opening line that he loved the colour of my hat (orange with little flowers on it, Ginko since you ask, and if you are recoiling in horror, the untouched roots were no better, trust me). ‘E loved the coleur 'and then he greatly admired my 'sense of style' (always a worry and makes you wonder if the feather boa and the thigh high boots were a mistake). I thanked him demurely and pretended a huge interest in my feet as he settled himself against the wall and began prattling on about Scotland and Edinbourg and admitted, yes, that ‘e was Franch, surprised that I had guessed. Then after about - ooooh a thousand years, his hands shaking, his tongue running wild with all those French vowels and trippy consonants all about lovely Edinbourg and its lovely concert halls (who knew) the theatre doors finally opened. I was weak with relief but when I got to my seat - wouldn’t you know it, sod's law, he was bloody sitting next to me.

More Edinbourg. More rants about the Americans who are spoiling British Theatre because of all these musicals, until finally the lights went down and on came Phill. Much clapping, most of it mine and hysterical.

Then half way through the play the Frenchman had a coughing fit and had to open his bag Unzzzzzzzzzzzp (LOUDLY) and then not finding what he was looking for, open yet another compartment Unzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzip (LOUDLY) and then rustle rustle, take out
sweets (LOUDLY) which he unwrapped and returned (LOUDLY) Ziiiiiiip and then slurp, cough, slurp, cough, more compartments Unziiiiiiiiiip to reveal many papers (LOUDLY rifled through) and produced a bottle of water which he gulped water (LOUDLY) and then Ziiiiiiiiped the bag closed once again, and then with the distinct and unmistakeable spell of Pastis wafting my way,he whispered, not at all sotto voice:

Sorry for my  choke, throat clear... choke..... cough.

I swear the whole theatre almost stopped for a second while he finished his sentence. And they all thought he was with me.

Frankly, I just wanted to shoot him. If I could have done it quietly.

So.

Not a great sign being a match to me, but if any Guardian Soulmate out there would like to explore further, I do indeed have a great sense of style.

And I don’t always wear hats.

Home and Away

Home life: Water heater under the stairs burst, water gushing through hall ceiling, a metaphor as well as a bloody nuisance. Plumber comes at 6pm and is still there at midnight. He says we will have to demolish the whole cupboard to get the old water heater out and new one in. I want to weep. But what would be different about that? And the steady drip from the hall ceiling is doing quite enough blubbing.

I'd just had the cleaner in as well. I bet you even God after 7 days hard work would have been a little wrathful if the Pacific burst its banks after he'd just paid £50 to a nice girl from Brazil to tidy up the Americas.

Phone rings: Ria asking if I want to go with her to the Barbican. I remember the ballet (Munch, silent scream) and think of an excuse, fast, but there’s no need to invent one. It’s on Thursday and I have to be on house duty waiting for another plumber to arrive so can’t go out in the evening.

‘It’s Philip Glass,’ she says which in terms of a lure might be the same as a fly fisher offering a big shark with bared teeth to try and catch a salmon. I remember the night of Laurie Anderson at the Barbican and get that same feeling of dread that usually accompanies memories of being on a 7 hour flight during turbulence with a sleeping fat man next to you and an urgent need to pee. I’d rather go to the dentist. I’d rather stay home and try on clothes that don’t fit me until I cry which, come to think of me, is probably what I will be doing as summer seems to have decided to pay us a fleeting visit and I have nothing summery to wear except all my winter clothes minus the tights and the cardies.

Work life: It’s hot at work. Not hot, Jessica Rabbit, Brian Eno in a Jock strap hot, but too many people in too small a space with no fans hot. We open the window but all this does is allow the noise of building work from the block next door to assault our ears (currently the banging has stopped to be replaced by a drilling sound that reminds me of a cricket in the tropics. If someone stopped by my desk and asked to clean my sunglasses it wouldn’t surprise me.) and the smell of frying bacon from the Italian café downstairs. I begin to hallucinate – about gently lapping waves and drinks with umbrellas with a side order of full-English breakfasts when...

Phone rings: An agent. She wants to leave a message for one of the editors to call her back.

‘Go ahead,’ I say.

‘Do you have a pen?’ she asks, snottily.

No, I’m going to memorise it in sign language, tap it out in Morse Code and perform it later in Kabuki theatre. Of course I’ve got a bloody pen. I'm a receptionist not Derren freaking Brown.

I don't have a fan on my desk and I'm bacon crazed - don't ask stupid questions.

I rouse myself and pad around the office like it’s 1967 and I’ve just won the Eurovision Song Contest looking for air that isn't tainted by the smell of frying fat.

‘What do you mean by that?’ asks one of the girls.

‘I mean, like Sandie Shaw.’ She looks blank.

‘No shoes,’ I say pointing at my bare feet before launching into a rendition of Puppet on a String...

She looks at me as if I'm on crack. And then I remember that I am probably the most senior, junior member of staff in the entire history of publishing. This girl wasn’t even born in 1967. She wasn’t even born in 1977. She has no idea about Sandie Shaw and her stocking-footed singing. It is true to say that Pedantic Press is mostly populated by a host of young women who waft around being multilingual, beautiful, glamorous, mostly blonde and well under thirty. One really is a model. The others just look like them. I feel I should be singing ‘Memories’ from Cats, raddled old tabby that I am, 'alone with my memories of my days in the sun…’ Just now in the kitchen one of them told me she was happy her husband wasn’t a banker as she didn’t want to end up hating him and divorced at 35 when she would never find anyone else.

Ahem.

Fifty. Barefoot. About to be divorced. Fill in the rest of the sentence and be glad dear girl I’m not wearing really pointed shoes to kick your ankles.

The office is also hot on the talent front. Authors are positively flowing through the doors - it's a strain trying to keep all their books permanently displayed in pride of place in author appropriate order. Once upon a time I went to the so called Presidential residence in Gaza - really just a horrid breezeblock building with rooms the size of aircraft hangers where foreign dignitaries stayed when they visited, and Mrs Arafat was having the same trouble whipping down a picture of Tony and replacing it with Kofi Annan.

She went to the souq and bought the towels they dried their faces on by her very own fair hands, you'll be pleased to know.

I'm letting Damon Galgut, who is here from South Africa to launch The Imposter, use my desk which is almost as exciting as discussing household linen with Mrs Arafat. I'm being very sycophantic and asking him to sign a copy of the book which probably breaks all the cool rules of working in publishing, but I don't care. If our author Christopher Hope ever comes in, I'm going to get him to sign my t-shirt.

Anand Menon was in yesterday and Iain Stewart, a fellow Jock with a requisite Radio 4 soft accent and looking all cool and television presenter-ish, arrived half an hour ago with his agent.

If only I’d known, I could have put on a bit of lippy, or – you know – shoes.

I gave them all my sweetest smile, however, and then did what I do best:

‘Coffee, tea, water anyone?’

I put my shoes on to take it into the room, but who am I kidding, I might as well have walked in backwards - with all those blonde babes around, nobody is going to notice me unless I swim up from the bottom of their cup with a sugar lump between my teeth.

Other news

just in...

my agent accepted the offer from Harpy and in the autumn of next year my book will come out in the States.

Some resetting to be done and a slight rejig with the end but refuse to be daunted.

Ticker tape parade happening in my head. Marching band with twirling batons.

aka hangover (teeny one)

This morning the page proofs arrived from Penguin to check for mistakes.

The first line says:  The author lives in West London with her husband and four children.

Well that was the first mistake.

Easily rectified though.

Attention to detail

A couple of months ago I was going up to St Antony’s to meet with a man from my youth. Mysterious or what? Well, I may be overchipping the cookie as in fact he was merely the flat mate of my sometimes boyfriend Alex, and my only impression of him was as a small compact man whirling into the flat in a frenzy of activity, salsa dancing, and then whirling out again.

Okay, the salsa dancing may be my fantasy but there’s a distinct cha-cha-cha hands thing that I always associate with him.

The boyfriend has long gone to the great back bedroom of the past but weirdly, the flatmate is now a Professor at the same Oxford college where we all met. And he’s Colombian.

So? You’re asking. And I should be interested because…?

Well, despite he being the one and only Colombian, cha-cha-cha handed person I have ever met, albeit briefly, in my long, other-L word life, I nevertheless decided to make a character in my novel Colombian. This proved to be a problem when I realized that I might actually have to insert some relevant detail beyond throwing Bogota into the odd conversation, and you know, maybe a word or two of Spanish. Babel fish and Wikipedia, invaluable though they may well be for padding out the text, are not ideal. Unless you want your heroine calling someone a female dog instead of a bitch, and living in Farc Guerrilla country instead of on a coffee estate, it’s better not to rely on them.

With this in mind, I googled the old flat mate who invited me up to Oxford to meet him and said he would be delighted to help me.

As I left the office on the fateful day I asked Mr T for suggestions as to a book that I might give a Colombian academic.

Mmn, what about The Art of Political Murder by Francisco Goldman? He suggested. It’s about Guatemala, but it’s a very good book.

Indeed it is. This superb book recently won the Index on Censorship/TR Fyvel Book Award category and he has just been shortlisted for the Gold Dagger Non-Fiction category . Friends gasp when I mention that Francisco Goldman is one of our authors and repeat his other books like a mantra – 'Oooh Night of the White Chickens crooned my Very Rich New York Friend, and Wow, The Divine Husband - he's good!' (as though surprised that he would be happy to be on our list) said another literary friend, just before I whacked him.

Okay, so no I didn’t whack him, but I did tell him to sod off. With a smile to show I didn’t mean it. Though I did.

This is how I found myself with a copy of The Art of Political Murder proudly inside my handbag waiting for the great unveiling and attendant gasps, sitting in the same College canteen where I passed most of my twenties with various men I was sleeping with at various times, sometimes with more than one on the same table, asking banal questions about everyday Colombian life that embarrassed even me.

'I do a bit of writing myself,' he told me over the poached salmon. 'The problem is,' he added, 'that everyone thinks of Colombia in terms of cocaine and kidnapping but there’s a lot more to the country than that and I get so fed up with all the stereotypes. But nobody’s interested. It’s like everyone just lumps all the Latin American countries in together as if we were all the same place.'

Of course, I nodded gravely, pushing my handbag under the chair out of sight with the book on Guatemala I had been about to press on him on the grounds that, ahem, it was all Latin America so he would have been bound to be interested.

I brought it home and sent him Night Train to Lisbon instead. You know, Portuguese, Spanish, what’s the difference?

Post-partyum

So our book didn’t win. The seemingly effortlessly intelligent Rose Tremaine had that honour and apparently it was a star-studded event with impressive canapés and rivers of champagne. Gerry Halliwell was there as well the chap from How to Look Good Naked and em… Vanessa Feltz. I mean, hey, we’re talking serious glamour here.

So while the rest of the staff were chatting with the likes of Helena Kennedy, as anticipated, I stumbled flat-footed to The Portobello Gold and had a very large glass of wine which I necked like I was on a Club 18-30 holiday. It was an analgesic, believe me. Why did I think that Sex and the City would be fun? What’s fun about watching people get jilted and seeing their marriages fall apart because of a one night stand? Try a year and a half Miranda, and get off your self-righteous high horse and give the guy a break. No, it wasn’t exactly a cheery evening of escapism. I think we were supposed to gasp over the clothes and coo over the shoes as the four women tottered hither and thither in spikes and skimpy frocks, but, sorry, it just doesn’t resonate. I’m the same age as the Kim Cattrell character and while I can walk in heels like the rest of them, it’s unlikely that I would be able to lie on a table with sushi strategically placed across my body without eating it in the first five minutes. My own close friends idea of a night out is a BYO restaurant, a pair of Birkenstocks, big knickers and an heirloom bra.

Still I could have gone for the whole lying in the bed with the shutters drawn being drip fed vodka looking devastated. As it is, my devastation merely prompts people to tell me I’m looking tired.

So, yes, I needed that glass of wine. I needed another when the red-faced man began leering at us delightedly from the other end of the bar with his tattooed knuckles clutched around a pint of Strongbow. He smiled at me and raised his LOVE fisted glass to me revealing one large white tooth and a gap next to it.

Sadly, there’s a distinct dearth of Mr Bigs in the hostelries of Ladbroke Grove.

O-rage

The excitement, the joy, the thrill when you open up your email and see the magic word Orange in the subject line.

Mr T has sent me an email marked Orange Business.

I am beside myself with anticipation as I click on it.

And then I read:

"You’ll be delighted to know...

(oh gosh, delighted, did you see that! I have butterflies... the fairy godmother is waving a wand - maybe maybe maybe you shall go to the ball!)

...that you are now registered to contact Orange to change details, review tariffs, order handsets, etc.

Oh.

'Thrilled,' I type and then press send.

Well it is a terrific responsibility. I mean, come on, it's a position of trust. I can order handsets for the other people in the office who get company phones and quibble about their tariffs. That doesn't happen every day.

It's an honour really.

I really should have had an acceptance speech prepared.

And I needed to have the dress dry cleaned anyway - it's not like it's wasted.

Home on the Orange

The whole place has been Tangoed as Orange Fever spikes in the office.

‘I can’t believe we’re having a launch meeting at 9:30 the day after the Orange Prize,’ says one of my beleaguered colleagues from behind her partition. ‘We’ll all be hung over!’ she adds.

I cough piteously, or possibly annoyingly to those who find my Little Nell act is wearing a little thin, and point out that my Orange Wednesday is going to be somewhat different from those of the literary party goers. I’ve got a two for one ticket for Sex in the City.

There’s a silence from behind the partition and then she peeps round the side of her partition and asks me if I would like to come to her birthday bash (oh do I know how to turn the screw or what?) at which there will be Red Velvet Cup Cakes from the Hummingbird Café. As consolation prizes go, it isn’t a bad one though I feel I would turn up a bit like the maiden aunt you have to ask to Christmas lunch otherwise she's sitting at home eating baked beans with a sprig of holly stuck in the toast. I smile as would Cinderella on getting an invite to a bacon sandwich by a good-hearted bystander instead of the ball with a big engraved stiffie delivered by footmen. So I won’t be needing the carriage or the fancy dress or the singing mice and the sewing birds.

While the rest of the office are out with our author Nancy Huston with everything crossed, waiting and hoping for a gong for Fault Lines I’ll be sitting in the cinema with a Cornetto wondering if the man I was once introduced to as the real-life Mr Big who dated Candice Bushnell for years, was indeed the basis for the Chris Noth character.

Sigh.

Then my friend Nel and I will stop at the Portobello Gold for a glass of wine and steak and chips on the way home and I shall then tell her all about the night I was invited back to the purported Mr Big’s Shag Palace in Chelsea, with the knee high white carpeting and the dim-able lights and the soaring songs for swinging lovers and the leaping flames in the gas fire that all appeared at the flick of a switch.

Mind you, that was about as exciting as it got. Sexless in the City, I assure you. I wouldn’t be able to tell you if he lived up to his name.

Alice went to the readings for the Orange Prize last night at the Royal Festival Hall as a spare ticket came up at the last minute. I would have loved to have gone but couldn't bid for the place as I had a previous engagement with literary friend who shall remain nameless who possibly has the most piercing carrying voice in the whole of London. Indeed, I expect penguins in Antarctica heard all about her preference for a ‘cut cock’ as did every male in the pub where she made the announcement.

None brightened at the prospect, I may add - but we were in West London where I fear the feature is not ubiquitous.

I merely coughed and looked deep into my nuts.

Peanuts, I mean.

We then went to the S&M café, which is short for Sausage and Mash for the uninitiated and not a perversion or the name of a terrible column I once found myself writing, but there was one awful moment when the sausages arrived, and her mouth opened, that I wanted to duck under the table, fearful of what she was about to say.

Luckily she only wanted mustard.

Buddhist transport

I’m persevering with the Buddhist guide to Happiness which advises letting go of the ego and self-centredness. Goodness. I’d be stuck for things to talk about. Nevertheless, as instructed, I sit on the No 7 bus and do the exercises. I think of all the people who are worse off than me and send them silvery nectar thoughts of empathy floating on my outward breath, and draw all their pain into the white orb in my chest where, in theory it is released, and in practice merely lodges like indigestion. I soon get a sense of lightness in my head and begin to think I'm experiencing an out of body state of nirvana but then I realise I'm only hyperventilating. The man sitting next to me seems to think I am about to sneeze, and flinches away from me every time I exhale. He may also think I have lost my mind instead of vainly trying to hold on to it by practicing meditation techniques. He eventually scurries to the vacant seat on the other side of the bus and continues eating his Snack-a-jacks which is a result because the crunching was interfering with my Karma, and the vinegary smell was beginning to make me feel rather sick, especially since I was drawing it into my lungs with such concentrated effort. There was less of white orb of light over my heart than a chemical mix of monosodium glutamate and sodium.

If the less fortunate are to gain anything from this, I may have to kill the man first so I can concentrate.

I think perhaps it is time to try staring into space and let my thoughts run over my mind like a waterfall, but five minutes and the waterfall is springing through the eyelids. Self-pity Central. Alight here.

Obviously this is going to take a little more practice, but nevertheless, I feel a bit better.

Breathe. Compassion and empathy. Inhale. White orb of light. Dissolve.

But darn it, the only thing that’s dissolving is me. Bloody hell, I’m a narcissist. How do I chant my way out of this.

The man with the Snack-a-jacks, finishes the bag and crumples it up, shooting me another anxious glance. Then he starts on a pork pie. Huh, and he thinks I’ve got problems. At least I’m not full of additives, matey.

He sees me looking, and edges back against the window. I tell you, if I had a rucksack and a beard he would have called the Bomb Squad.

At work I am urged to find out the name of the Sales Manager of Bentley. I feel like a cold caller, the kind I hang up on, while I'm ringing and saying, excuse me, can you tell me the name of… so instead I trawl the web site. I go to the press office and scroll down the names, and there is a woman called Julia Marozzi who is Head of Lifestyle which sounds jolly good fun. I'd like to be Head of Lifestyle at Bentley - it must be all engraved hip flasks and fur lined lap rugs and men with double barreled names whose other car is a Land Cruiser, you know, for the dogs, darling while the wife has a little BMW sport's car for running up to town.

The name’s familiar and unusual both at the same time. The writer Justin Marozzi shares an agent with me, and he married my ex boss at the FT called Julia. Who would now be, , okay not exactly a clearing of clouds and the voice of God moment, but nevertheless it was rather amazing – duh! - Julia Marozzi.

And LO, this is she.

The woman who gave me my big break, now ruling the roost at Bentley. I ring her immediately and the years roll back, along with the kilos, until I was a mere slip of a forty-year old, less padded woman, walking along the Embankment to the FT to meet with her with my cuttings under my arm, repeating to myself over and over again another mantra, hoping that I might be in with a chance as her new restaurant columnist.

She wore rather alarmingly severe specs and examined me over the top of them, much as I do now, since I'm too mean to buy bifocals.

She’s taking me to lunch next week. I wonder if she has any nice, spare, Bentley owners knocking about who might be interested in self-centred egotistical lady novelist, one careless owner, but still very, very good runner in the right hands, who can type, reject manuscripts, cold call and cook dinner for 16 at thirty minutes notice.

I have a clean driving license and a dirty mind.

Okay, I suffer self-pity on buses, but in a Bentley, that could easily be a thing of the past.

I bet you Bentley owners don't eat Snack-a-jacks for a start