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 Oh the confidence of the unpublished amateur.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.
