Now I know were all the men are.
I wonder, when I brave the tube in the morning at rush hour and see them, piling on to the Central Line in their dark suits clutching their bulging briefcases and then disappear back up the escalator to be disgorged into the world where they vanish until the return journey home. And then today my former boss from the FT invited me to lunch at Morton's in Berkeley Square and there they were - a whole matching set of them like a set of un-nested Russian dolls, perched on leather stools behind folded newspapers, in pairs and foursomes, distinguishable from each other only by their ties.
We had the Morton's Salad, served in a bowl which always makes me feel like the stork pecking away at the fox's dinner party, as my former boss, the only other woman in the room, began to quiz me on my personal life.
'You've got to get back out there you know.'
'I've been out, believe me, and now I'm coming back in.'
'What do you mean you've been out - have you tried the internet?'
I nodded wishing she would just lower her voice a tad as the man at the next table, medium sized Russian doll (yellow tie) had taken out his notebook and was writing things down in very small, neat handwriting. This is the sort of thing I do when I hear really good dialogue. Okay, this wouldn't qualify as really good dialogue but I'm sure his ears were twitching like television antenae, if indeed television antenae still twitched and we hadn't all switched to cable.
'Where did you try? I hear Match.com is supposed to be very good.'
'gnnnnnnnnnnn,' I mumbled.
'What?' she snapped.
'gnnnnnnnnnn.' I mumbed again, up one notch higher.
'I can't hear you darling.'
'The Guardian.' I whispered.
'Don't be ridiculous darling, you're not going to meet anyone worthwhile on The Guardian.' What kind of man reads the Guardian? Only the wet ones. And you want someone who isn't totally stony. You should try the Telegraph darling, or the FT.'
I nodded obediently. Russian doll was still scribbling away furiously.
'I think they're really looking for thin blonde bendy women more than me,' I said apologetically.
'They do single nights here you know. I brought one of my girlfriends along and she met a ridiculously wealthy Brazilian and now they're getting married. He even has a boat!' she crowed, then looked at me speculatively before adding: 'Though she does fall into the category you mentioned...thin and blonde. Possibly bendy.'
'Well, I could get blonder?' I offered tentatively.
'You should definitely get blonder, that goes without saying. You must get blonder....' and then her voice trailed off leaving the rest to my imagination and Weight Watchers.
I popped another lettuce leaf into my mouth and chewed slowly.
The Russian doll put away his notebook and clicked his briefcase closed. I risked a quick glance in his direction but he kept his eyes firmly downcast.
'Do you want pudding?' she asked as I chased the last pine nut around the bottom of the bowl.
'No,' I answered as though she'd offered me a couple of grams of smack. Pudding, after all, would sort of defeat the the object of the Mars Bar on the bus back to work
We sipped our compensatory coffees and talked about getting me to write something - a trip up to Elgin in a flash car with a spot of salmon fishing, whisky tasting and horse-riding thrown in. 'You can do a Back to my Roots piece, darling.'
'But my roots are in a council house in West Lothian between a high security prison and a wind farm... and they're definitely not blonde.'
'Details...details...' she waved away the working class, 'Then it'll be The Scotland I never knew - it'll be marvellous.
Indeed it will. But I fear I may have to reach for the Clairol first.
Thursday, 26 February 2009
Wednesday, 25 February 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Back seat reading
I was on a bus the other day at ten to seven in the morning with the other public transport people who I now know like old friends - you know, the sort of friends you don't much like and don't talk to any more but somehow you keep on seeing them anyway.
There's Muslim guy who obviously works at SOAS since he gets off there and who reads the Quran out loud as we traverse the streets of West and Central London, sounding like a particularly annoying bee buzzing in my ear. He always sits at the front which I consider my seat and sometimes I perch next to him which makes him visibly shift away from me with my blatantly uncovered hair and wanton Western cleavage. I do it just to unnerve him (it seems to be the only emotion I stir in men these days), though with all that chanting I'm usually the one who suffers.
Then there's make-up girl - a brittle, bottle blonde who almost knocks me out of the way to get on first, then from Ladbroke Grove to Paddington applies foundation, concealer, mascara and lipstick, and eventually swings her lurid mauve handbag (which has matching slingbag shoes) over her arm and leaves looking, if anything, plainer than when she boarded.
There's the chap who has long inky black hair with extensions which he wears in a Cure sweep across one heavily made-up eye (I assume the other is also made up but I've never seen it) and has beautiful lips covered in pink lipstick. He also has more painfully brutal piercings than I've seen up close in a while and wonderful S&M shoes with pointed toes and high stacked heels.
Then there's posh man who reads the Financial Times and who sometimes travels with his daughter who he drops off at Pembridge Hall in her pink candy-striped uniform on his way to work, but not before having those really irritating earnest conversations at a pitch just a tone higher than you would use to upbraid a servant that go:
'Daddy, is asparagus a vegetable?'
'Yes darling,'
'Does it grow on trees?'
'No darling it grows in the earth. (There follows a long botanical explanation that wouldn't be out of place on an A Level syllabus). You know granny has some in the country (implied small manor house), don't you remember seeing it last time we visited her?'
(Child yawning and wriggling) 'I don't like asparagus it's yucky.'
'Don't you? Have you ever tried it?'
'No, but it's green.'
This morning I was sitting behind posh Ginger Woman who wears Emma Hope velvet baseball boots and brings her breakfast (always brown toast) in a plastic bag and catches up with her reading on the journey. In my fantasies she is married to posh FT reader - believe me, there just can't be that many Middle Class people who live in Acton and use the bus. Anyway, after she had eaten her toast (no butter - posh and skinny), she got a pile of Sunday supplements out of her Mulberry bag and began reading, and over her shoulder I caught a headline that went something like 'Don't get therapy, volunteer instead'.
The thrust of the article was that we fortysomething (well, I was once fortysomething) women are suffering from higher rates of depression than before (not much higher though) and the solution put forward by the journalist for "those middle-aged women troubled by empty-nest syndrome, southbound tits or whatever" (speak for yourself dear) was to "ask themselves not what society can do for them, but what they can do for society. That is, voluntary work".
Dear God - I nearly knocked the toast out of Posh Ginger Woman's mouth straining to read the rest of the article. Who says we're sitting around on our bums just because we're depressed? Have we women not done enough for bloody society? We raise the children, tend our ageing parents, look after and manage our families, support our spouses, toil ourselves in all the undervalued, underpaid service industries as teaching assistants and care assistants and personal assistants (the clue here is in the word assistants) and make up almost a quarter of the part-time work force so that we can pack all our baggage into our lives and still carry it on and stow it away in the overhead locker. We nurse, we teach, we doctor (apparently applications to medical school from women now outnumber that of men) and then, then, if it all gets a bit much to deal with at times and we shuffle off to the GP, depressed and anxious, what should we "gutless ungrateful bitches" (she's a charmer this hack - I don't know why she assumes this to be the patients' socio-demographic, but I merely quote) do to remedy the situation? Why, don't plead for Prozac - do more, girls.
Volunteering does indeed make you feel worthwhile and offers a valuable perspective on what really constitutes a bad day as our wonderful witty author Seb Hunter describes engagingly and persuasively in his totally unsmug book How to be a Better Person. If you needed urging to go and offer your services for the greater good this book is going to shake a tin under your nose and speed you happily on your way. More importantly it's laugh out loud funny and a great read.
I don't, however, know anyone who does need urging as almost every one of my friends has been providing some kind of unpaid public service for as long as I can remember and of course, since most of them are breeders, they've already spent most of our adult lives being forceably volunteered in one way or another. Mystifyingly, even while they're liberally sloshing about the milk of human kindness, some of them are still depressed.
while others are just mightily pissed off.
There's Muslim guy who obviously works at SOAS since he gets off there and who reads the Quran out loud as we traverse the streets of West and Central London, sounding like a particularly annoying bee buzzing in my ear. He always sits at the front which I consider my seat and sometimes I perch next to him which makes him visibly shift away from me with my blatantly uncovered hair and wanton Western cleavage. I do it just to unnerve him (it seems to be the only emotion I stir in men these days), though with all that chanting I'm usually the one who suffers.
Then there's make-up girl - a brittle, bottle blonde who almost knocks me out of the way to get on first, then from Ladbroke Grove to Paddington applies foundation, concealer, mascara and lipstick, and eventually swings her lurid mauve handbag (which has matching slingbag shoes) over her arm and leaves looking, if anything, plainer than when she boarded.
There's the chap who has long inky black hair with extensions which he wears in a Cure sweep across one heavily made-up eye (I assume the other is also made up but I've never seen it) and has beautiful lips covered in pink lipstick. He also has more painfully brutal piercings than I've seen up close in a while and wonderful S&M shoes with pointed toes and high stacked heels.
Then there's posh man who reads the Financial Times and who sometimes travels with his daughter who he drops off at Pembridge Hall in her pink candy-striped uniform on his way to work, but not before having those really irritating earnest conversations at a pitch just a tone higher than you would use to upbraid a servant that go:
'Daddy, is asparagus a vegetable?'
'Yes darling,'
'Does it grow on trees?'
'No darling it grows in the earth. (There follows a long botanical explanation that wouldn't be out of place on an A Level syllabus). You know granny has some in the country (implied small manor house), don't you remember seeing it last time we visited her?'
(Child yawning and wriggling) 'I don't like asparagus it's yucky.'
'Don't you? Have you ever tried it?'
'No, but it's green.'
This morning I was sitting behind posh Ginger Woman who wears Emma Hope velvet baseball boots and brings her breakfast (always brown toast) in a plastic bag and catches up with her reading on the journey. In my fantasies she is married to posh FT reader - believe me, there just can't be that many Middle Class people who live in Acton and use the bus. Anyway, after she had eaten her toast (no butter - posh and skinny), she got a pile of Sunday supplements out of her Mulberry bag and began reading, and over her shoulder I caught a headline that went something like 'Don't get therapy, volunteer instead'.
The thrust of the article was that we fortysomething (well, I was once fortysomething) women are suffering from higher rates of depression than before (not much higher though) and the solution put forward by the journalist for "those middle-aged women troubled by empty-nest syndrome, southbound tits or whatever" (speak for yourself dear) was to "ask themselves not what society can do for them, but what they can do for society. That is, voluntary work".
Dear God - I nearly knocked the toast out of Posh Ginger Woman's mouth straining to read the rest of the article. Who says we're sitting around on our bums just because we're depressed? Have we women not done enough for bloody society? We raise the children, tend our ageing parents, look after and manage our families, support our spouses, toil ourselves in all the undervalued, underpaid service industries as teaching assistants and care assistants and personal assistants (the clue here is in the word assistants) and make up almost a quarter of the part-time work force so that we can pack all our baggage into our lives and still carry it on and stow it away in the overhead locker. We nurse, we teach, we doctor (apparently applications to medical school from women now outnumber that of men) and then, then, if it all gets a bit much to deal with at times and we shuffle off to the GP, depressed and anxious, what should we "gutless ungrateful bitches" (she's a charmer this hack - I don't know why she assumes this to be the patients' socio-demographic, but I merely quote) do to remedy the situation? Why, don't plead for Prozac - do more, girls.
Volunteering does indeed make you feel worthwhile and offers a valuable perspective on what really constitutes a bad day as our wonderful witty author Seb Hunter describes engagingly and persuasively in his totally unsmug book How to be a Better Person. If you needed urging to go and offer your services for the greater good this book is going to shake a tin under your nose and speed you happily on your way. More importantly it's laugh out loud funny and a great read.
I don't, however, know anyone who does need urging as almost every one of my friends has been providing some kind of unpaid public service for as long as I can remember and of course, since most of them are breeders, they've already spent most of our adult lives being forceably volunteered in one way or another. Mystifyingly, even while they're liberally sloshing about the milk of human kindness, some of them are still depressed.
while others are just mightily pissed off.
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Tweetie Pie
We've got this new very efficient and obliging intern in the office who "speaks a smattering of Chinese" and is the epitomy of sharp sixties edginess despite being born in about 1992. He's also hip with all the new social networking sites through which the young stalk their ex boy/girlfriends and the old look, frankly, ridiculous - and within a day of arriving in the office, complete with Passionfruit Buttercream Viennese Whirls and Pistachio Shortbreads (left in the usual place), he had us signed up to Twitter and Wikipedia and given us a crash course in the lingo.
Despite being a whiz on Dreamweaver, proficient in Flash and a blogger from way back when I was unemployed, it took me three days to set up a Facebook Page for Atlantic Books. So, needless to say, I felt somewhat extinct as I lumbered back to my end-of-Cretaceous-period-cave with several pages of instructions clenched under my withered forelimb (with possible third vestigial digit - sooo convenient those Wiki people) to lick the very few wounds I could reach with my massive, but clearly useless, skull.
The Facebook page is finally up and running but we now need a few fans, I told him.
'Then Twitter is ideal,' he announced. 'You can tweet about it and get people to fandango you...'
'F*** off!' I said, hotly.
Intern or no intern, nobody but my own children talk to me like that.
'No Marion, you don't understand - you tweet on Twitter - I tweet, you tweet, past tense twat.'
For someone who can swear like a sailor on shore leave who suddenly discovers all the whores have got religion, I was profoundly shocked. 'You cannot be serious!' I said, coming over all John McEnroe.
'He's teasing you,' said Mathilda, gently, reminding me of the time I drew on my daughter's arm in biro and had my 82 year old mother convinced it was a tattoo, God what a beatch, I was (see not bitch but beatch - I'm getting down with the street slang, now). 'It's tweeted,' she assured me.
I am relieved, albeit momentarily, before I realise that I am actually having a proper conversation which involves declining a verb previously applied to small yellow canaries.
'So what's a twit, apart from a person who actually wastes their time doing this? I can't see the point of it!' I'm practically wailing.
Oh, sad, sad, old person I can hear them all think.
'You just say what you're doing now,' says the intern and he clicks on the screen and Lo, it rolls up - our Twitter page.
'But who cares what I'm doing now. It's banal and stupid.'
'Why don't you send an update about your Facebook page.
'I'm not, absolutely and categorically not using the word fandango unless I'm in a Karaoke club doing Queen, and even then it needs to be a leaving party.'
'Okay, use fan then,' he instructs and I obey, slowly, like a child forming her first letters.
'It's done!' He is jubilant. I haven't felt so happy since I rode my bike without stablizers - for all of about two seconds before I see some of Atlantic's authors on there and discover that Kenan Malik is on Start The Week and George Monbiot is berating a Telegraph columnist. Somehow the announcement that
Despite being a whiz on Dreamweaver, proficient in Flash and a blogger from way back when I was unemployed, it took me three days to set up a Facebook Page for Atlantic Books. So, needless to say, I felt somewhat extinct as I lumbered back to my end-of-Cretaceous-period-cave with several pages of instructions clenched under my withered forelimb (with possible third vestigial digit - sooo convenient those Wiki people) to lick the very few wounds I could reach with my massive, but clearly useless, skull.
The Facebook page is finally up and running but we now need a few fans, I told him.
'Then Twitter is ideal,' he announced. 'You can tweet about it and get people to fandango you...'
'F*** off!' I said, hotly.
Intern or no intern, nobody but my own children talk to me like that.
'No Marion, you don't understand - you tweet on Twitter - I tweet, you tweet, past tense twat.'
For someone who can swear like a sailor on shore leave who suddenly discovers all the whores have got religion, I was profoundly shocked. 'You cannot be serious!' I said, coming over all John McEnroe.
'He's teasing you,' said Mathilda, gently, reminding me of the time I drew on my daughter's arm in biro and had my 82 year old mother convinced it was a tattoo, God what a beatch, I was (see not bitch but beatch - I'm getting down with the street slang, now). 'It's tweeted,' she assured me.
I am relieved, albeit momentarily, before I realise that I am actually having a proper conversation which involves declining a verb previously applied to small yellow canaries.
'So what's a twit, apart from a person who actually wastes their time doing this? I can't see the point of it!' I'm practically wailing.
Oh, sad, sad, old person I can hear them all think.
'You just say what you're doing now,' says the intern and he clicks on the screen and Lo, it rolls up - our Twitter page.
'But who cares what I'm doing now. It's banal and stupid.'
'Why don't you send an update about your Facebook page.
'I'm not, absolutely and categorically not using the word fandango unless I'm in a Karaoke club doing Queen, and even then it needs to be a leaving party.'
'Okay, use fan then,' he instructs and I obey, slowly, like a child forming her first letters.
'It's done!' He is jubilant. I haven't felt so happy since I rode my bike without stablizers - for all of about two seconds before I see some of Atlantic's authors on there and discover that Kenan Malik is on Start The Week and George Monbiot is berating a Telegraph columnist. Somehow the announcement that
'with these Viennese Whirls you are spoiling us'
doesn't have quite the same import.
'You're looking very smart today, do you have an interview,' I ask the intern, trying to draw attention away from how utterly vacuous my life is and the fact that I've just advertised it.
'No, I always dress like this. According to an article I read in the Guardian Style Section - the Sixties are really, super, super cool at the moment,' he said, fingering his long pencil thin tie, and throwing himself into the statement with a full body swerve.
The gesture came back to me later that night when checking my email and finding another of his admonishments to twitter. I logged on to the page: We've now been joined by the Guardian, New York Review of Books and Christopher Hitchins who are all our followers. What shall I type that could possibly interest Christopher Hitchins?
THe answer, Marion, is NOTHING, repeat NOTHING, and yet...
(Bear in mind it's very, very late. Bear in mind I have had a date with a very nice lawyer that involved a bottle of wine. And Brandy. Bear in mind that all critical faculties were switched off when I accepted the date from the very nice lawyer a day earlier and have not yet been switched back on.)
I typed:
The intern read in the Guardian style section that sixties fashion for men was suddenly really super, super cool.
Again.
Again.
quick as a flash, there was a response:
The intern has a name, Marion. And I believe I said 'hotnfresh'. :-P
He did, it's true, he did. And his name is Ian.
Note to self. Together with don't drink and dial, don't drink and text, there's a new caveat - don't drink and tweet.
In fact, don't tweet at all, seems to be a good, general rule.
Especially when the Ubereditor swans out of his office and says: 'Marion, I see you're a tw*t.'
(You see, I had to put an asterisk in there to stop myself recoiling with shame and Fifth Form mortification and then bursting into tears.) The only consolation in this slur is that this would make the Ubereditor, my senior in this company, the even bigger tw*t.
Just say no folks. Nobody cares what you're ruddy doing. Face it. You're (mostly) just not that interesting.
Monday, 16 February 2009
My Bloody Valentine
I'm in a dark stuffy room full, primarily, of men. Somewhere at the front there's a woman writhing and squealing like she's in pain.
'Are you hating this?' literary friend whispers in my ear as the man next to me, here alone, shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Another single man in army fatigues sits in front of me but he is rivetted and hasn't moved as much as a hair since we sat down. Not that I can be sure - I've had my hands over my eyes, wincing for the last five minutes. I just can't look. I feel vaguely sick but manage to shake my head without dislodging my self-imposed blindfold.
'No, I say, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad'
Yes, I've noticed this myself in Barcelona - the way you're just tripping over artists and poets in all those cafes in amongst the Australian backpackers and the stag parties from Billericay.
In fact I packed quite a lot in over the past few days. Nothing distracts from the end of a relationship like the potential for a new one, and as well as the three Cs - carbohydrates, chocolate and confessions (the last mostly mine, admittedly) with some women friends at my house, I had.dinner with a very nice lawyer and a set-up with my friend's Godfather. Bizarrely, I also spent the actual V day with my ex-husband, who, even more bizarrely, sent me an elaborate bouquet. I had a couple of missed calls that morning on my phone, itself an unusual event, and when I rang the number I got the answerphone for a flower shop in Holland Park.
'It must be about the bunch you sent me,' I told the ex over sushi and family gossip, and he nodded in agreement. Then a few minutes later he said: 'But I didn't give them your number, I wanted it to be a surprise' (a surprise that your abandoning spouse sends you flowers after he's left you, it certainly was). 'Maybe they're from somebody else?' he suggested, looking at me very closely.
'Could be,' I shrugged, mentally ticking through the list: Romantic Disinterest - no chance (though the anenomes he brought last week have outlasted the romance and still look beautiful); Lawyer - much too soon; Italian, who was in London for the weekend and called on Saturday morning - don't be ridiculous. I drew a blank and could only think that it was a wrong number but who doesn't like to think they have a secret admirer? Until I was at least fifteen I was convinced that someone had a crush on me as a card arrived in the post each year with the obligatory question mark in lieu of a signature. Only later did I realise the cards were from my dad.
'Are you hating this?' literary friend whispers in my ear as the man next to me, here alone, shifts uncomfortably in his seat. Another single man in army fatigues sits in front of me but he is rivetted and hasn't moved as much as a hair since we sat down. Not that I can be sure - I've had my hands over my eyes, wincing for the last five minutes. I just can't look. I feel vaguely sick but manage to shake my head without dislodging my self-imposed blindfold.
'No, I say, but I had no idea it was going to be this bad'
A collective groan runs through the audience, and there are more piercing female gasps. Literary friend slides down in her sead and grabs my arm.
And then finally through the chink between my fingers, Mickey Rourke staggers out of the ring with a row of staples up his back, blood streaming down his old lizard body, throws up and collapses in the changing room. I sigh with relief. He's had a bloody heart attack, thank God, no more fighting for at least an hour.
What a great thing to do on Valentine's day. A stroke of genius on the part of literary friend to drag me off to see a film where the only V is for Violence. It certainly knocks the Romance right out of the Hallmark Holiday sitting with a predominantly male audience watching two monster truck muscled men beat the crap out of each other on screen.
I also saw Vicky Cristina, Barcelona which was equally painful but for different reasons and, believe me, give me Mickey with his Goldie Hawn pout and Farah Fawcett hair in The Wrestler any day over Woody Allen's:
I also saw Vicky Cristina, Barcelona which was equally painful but for different reasons and, believe me, give me Mickey with his Goldie Hawn pout and Farah Fawcett hair in The Wrestler any day over Woody Allen's:
"He took her to lunch with his
friends who were poets and artists
and musicians".
Yes, I've noticed this myself in Barcelona - the way you're just tripping over artists and poets in all those cafes in amongst the Australian backpackers and the stag parties from Billericay.
In fact I packed quite a lot in over the past few days. Nothing distracts from the end of a relationship like the potential for a new one, and as well as the three Cs - carbohydrates, chocolate and confessions (the last mostly mine, admittedly) with some women friends at my house, I had.dinner with a very nice lawyer and a set-up with my friend's Godfather. Bizarrely, I also spent the actual V day with my ex-husband, who, even more bizarrely, sent me an elaborate bouquet. I had a couple of missed calls that morning on my phone, itself an unusual event, and when I rang the number I got the answerphone for a flower shop in Holland Park.
'It must be about the bunch you sent me,' I told the ex over sushi and family gossip, and he nodded in agreement. Then a few minutes later he said: 'But I didn't give them your number, I wanted it to be a surprise' (a surprise that your abandoning spouse sends you flowers after he's left you, it certainly was). 'Maybe they're from somebody else?' he suggested, looking at me very closely.
'Could be,' I shrugged, mentally ticking through the list: Romantic Disinterest - no chance (though the anenomes he brought last week have outlasted the romance and still look beautiful); Lawyer - much too soon; Italian, who was in London for the weekend and called on Saturday morning - don't be ridiculous. I drew a blank and could only think that it was a wrong number but who doesn't like to think they have a secret admirer? Until I was at least fifteen I was convinced that someone had a crush on me as a card arrived in the post each year with the obligatory question mark in lieu of a signature. Only later did I realise the cards were from my dad.
The Godfather
Ah, lovely literary friend: confidante, mentor, counsellor, pimp...
She's on the phone saying: Maz, do you remember that time you came round for supper and said that you thought the guy in the photograph was cute... You know, my godfather? The one whose flat I'm living in? Well, I told him all about you, everything (everything?) and so do you want to meet him?
Yes (look at me playing hard to get...)
Great well... there follows a long, breathless, descriptive passage during which she tells me everything she has told him about me (and apparently, brave man - it is everything) and then without conveying anything about him beyond the fact that he used to date her aunt 30 years ago, she asks me if she should continue in her role as pimp, or whether she should just give him my number.
Give him my number, I say. I think the man has had enough details.
Okay, right, you're sorted. Now remember, I deserve a big, big prize for this, in my next life I'm going to be showered with good things and you now owe me BIG time.
I do, I agree.
Right, lots of love, it'll be wonderful - he's amazing.
But, just...
Bye, then, mwa mwa.
No, wait!
drrrrrrrrrrrrrrr (that's the dialing tone) She's hung up.
I call her back.
Erm, darling... small detail.
Look, don't worry - I've already told you he's funny, charming, terrific company. What else do you want to know?
His name, maybe?
Wednesday, 11 February 2009
Launched into the world...
I've peaked, apparently, in all departments... Though the book hasn't even been out a week, I'm already slipping down the Amazon charts faster than a hooker's bra straps. Furthermore, the snow passed and so did Romantic Interest. As I had feared, our mutual recovery came even quicker than I had anticipated - a mere 24 hour bug when I was hoping for a lingering virus that would afflict us both deliriously for months. Sobered by recent events, I woke with that faint cringing, embarrassment that you get after a night on the lash where you've lost your dignity and shudder at the memory of what you said, and what you did, and wish you had been more cautious, more circumspect, and less - well... less of a drunken fool.
Except that, no, wait a minute, that's because I was that drunken fool. Drunk, not on love but on The Portobello Gold's finest screw top white, followed by several glasses of Pedantic champagne courtesy of the lovely Mr T and my friend Kimberly at E&O later augmented, I seem to remember, by Mr T's idea of a nightcap - tequila shots. Mine is Ovaltine, but the Tequila certainly numbs the pain of Romantic Disinterest more effectively than malted milk - as well as the lips.
As another of the guests, our lovely author Graham Rawle remarked:
The correct response to the suggestion of tequila as a nightcap is 'On top of champagne? You must be insane. It will give me a raging headache because tequila always does and I have to be up at 5.30. It is a very, very bad idea and I will not have any. No, thank you. No. No. No.'
So why do I hear myself saying, 'Oh, go on then'?
I wholeheartedly agree but readers, finally,
yeah... it came to pass...
I dressed up in my Jackie O does Weightwatchers, fuschia coloured Mad Men frock and a French roll, for once in my hair, not in my hand and didn't, after the first half hour, look at the door winsomely half hoping that those I knew were not coming, would come anyway.
Instead I was too delighted to see all those who did come... my kids, smiling and gorgeous, all the Pedants, en masse, which is like rent a crowd, but with enthusiasm, and many old friends, some of whom had schlepped a very long way at considerable effort. Books were sold, cheap plonk was imbibed and, inevitably, thanks to the insistence of my erstwhile Salsa partner, Mr Angie, speeches were made.
While I didn't quite do a Gwynneth Paltrow or a Kate Winslett, it is probably fair to say that the gift for public speaking is not one with which I have been blessed. Furthermore, only after the toast did I realise that my thanks were somewhat sketchy.
In my defence, alcohol and memory are known to be mutually exclusive, however there were some people I left out:
So here goes... Karen 'Fashionista' Duffy was the person who really saved me from the slush pile, or the large black hole of unsolicited manuscripts that sit on the floor behind Mr T's desk and to which, I imagine (since I didn't work there then) I was relegated when he unwisely offered to read my book.
I remember the day I came in to see him for the sort of 'cup of tea' I now arrange for others, when I sat at his little round table and said: 'but I want you to like it...'
Months passed...
until six of them later when I was on holiday and, due to the fact that Karen liked it. 'No, I mean really liked it,' stressed Mr T, he recommended me to an agent.
Karen read it not once, but three times in three different guises, and though Pedantic still had no room on their 'already overcrowded list' (is that a line familiar to any of you prospective writers out there?) without her enthusiasm it would simply have been another thing at the back of a drawer marked failed projects, and - believe me - I'm running out of drawer space. So HUGE thanks.
Next - step forward - the Pedants: All of you who read this stuffed into your little RSS feeds every morning and gobble it up like biscuits by franking machine, thanks for suffering the curse of the lost wife that has been me over the last year and for being such really nice people (and they are - you out there in less fortunate companies, my heart goes out to you). Lapsed Romantic Interest remarked that he didn't think he should come along to the launch as the book happened before him (erm, yes darling - I've had cheese in my fridge that lasted longer than you did) but if I excluded people on that basis, there would have been no party. Without all of you cheery souls - none of whom I knew a year ago, it would have been a truly miserable affair. The party, I mean, not the romance... sadly you can't do much about the love life.
And finally - My kids - who, as one of them felt moved to point out rather indignantly, I also failed to mention in the speech.
Sweet children. 'But , ahem - you didn't do anything.' Didn't read the book, don't read this blog, act like I'm trying to give you smallpox when I ask if you want to go to the cinema with so, yes, I realise the gesture is a bit wasted on you, but...
'We're your kids... I came all the way from university,' said the offended one. (£100 quid for the train, £20 for a taxi, £20 for booze and a kebab.. but you can't put a price on love.)
This is indeed true, and I should, of course, have mentioned the joy bestowing properties of parenthood.
Ahem: 'Parenting is such a joy.'
At some time after the excruciating speech was over, some local colour in the form of a tall disheveled and very drunk man (strangely enough, not a publisher) wandered in with his wife who looked like a Bassett Hound on Crack. I asked one of the Waddlers if we could get rid of him.
'Erm, he's drawing you a picture,' she said, with a sort of Nick Parks type expression and very wide plasticine eyes. This is Notting Hill, we have the Bohemian artist types here you know... Still... And then he bought a copy of the book and asked me to dedicate it to Poochie, his poodle. Well, it takes all sorts, I suppose. I did my duty and was just about to return to the real, invited guests when he handed me another copy of my own book which he hadn't paid for.
Thanks, I suppose, and then I opened up the fly leaf to discover a very, very detailed drawing of a great many poodles scampering across the title page.
'Oh my god,' says Eva, looking over my shoulder anxiously, 'Who is that strange man? He came into my gallery today and wouldn't leave and did exactly the same thing - left me a drawing of poodles...'
Obviously he likes dogs...
After my recent disappointments in love I'm becoming increasingly fond of the idea of a Labradoodle, in lieu of all the devotion I am now sorely missing.
I mean they're lavishly affectionate, always delighted to see you, they get up and run to you when you walk into a room, are undemanding, loving, and very, very loyal. Frankly, if you could teach them how to text..
vs 
Except that, no, wait a minute, that's because I was that drunken fool. Drunk, not on love but on The Portobello Gold's finest screw top white, followed by several glasses of Pedantic champagne courtesy of the lovely Mr T and my friend Kimberly at E&O later augmented, I seem to remember, by Mr T's idea of a nightcap - tequila shots. Mine is Ovaltine, but the Tequila certainly numbs the pain of Romantic Disinterest more effectively than malted milk - as well as the lips.
As another of the guests, our lovely author Graham Rawle remarked:
The correct response to the suggestion of tequila as a nightcap is 'On top of champagne? You must be insane. It will give me a raging headache because tequila always does and I have to be up at 5.30. It is a very, very bad idea and I will not have any. No, thank you. No. No. No.'
So why do I hear myself saying, 'Oh, go on then'?
I wholeheartedly agree but readers, finally,
yeah... it came to pass...
The Book Launch
I dressed up in my Jackie O does Weightwatchers, fuschia coloured Mad Men frock and a French roll, for once in my hair, not in my hand and didn't, after the first half hour, look at the door winsomely half hoping that those I knew were not coming, would come anyway.
Instead I was too delighted to see all those who did come... my kids, smiling and gorgeous, all the Pedants, en masse, which is like rent a crowd, but with enthusiasm, and many old friends, some of whom had schlepped a very long way at considerable effort. Books were sold, cheap plonk was imbibed and, inevitably, thanks to the insistence of my erstwhile Salsa partner, Mr Angie, speeches were made.
While I didn't quite do a Gwynneth Paltrow or a Kate Winslett, it is probably fair to say that the gift for public speaking is not one with which I have been blessed. Furthermore, only after the toast did I realise that my thanks were somewhat sketchy.
In my defence, alcohol and memory are known to be mutually exclusive, however there were some people I left out:
So here goes... Karen 'Fashionista' Duffy was the person who really saved me from the slush pile, or the large black hole of unsolicited manuscripts that sit on the floor behind Mr T's desk and to which, I imagine (since I didn't work there then) I was relegated when he unwisely offered to read my book.
I remember the day I came in to see him for the sort of 'cup of tea' I now arrange for others, when I sat at his little round table and said: 'but I want you to like it...'
Months passed...
until six of them later when I was on holiday and, due to the fact that Karen liked it. 'No, I mean really liked it,' stressed Mr T, he recommended me to an agent.
Karen read it not once, but three times in three different guises, and though Pedantic still had no room on their 'already overcrowded list' (is that a line familiar to any of you prospective writers out there?) without her enthusiasm it would simply have been another thing at the back of a drawer marked failed projects, and - believe me - I'm running out of drawer space. So HUGE thanks.
Next - step forward - the Pedants: All of you who read this stuffed into your little RSS feeds every morning and gobble it up like biscuits by franking machine, thanks for suffering the curse of the lost wife that has been me over the last year and for being such really nice people (and they are - you out there in less fortunate companies, my heart goes out to you). Lapsed Romantic Interest remarked that he didn't think he should come along to the launch as the book happened before him (erm, yes darling - I've had cheese in my fridge that lasted longer than you did) but if I excluded people on that basis, there would have been no party. Without all of you cheery souls - none of whom I knew a year ago, it would have been a truly miserable affair. The party, I mean, not the romance... sadly you can't do much about the love life.
And finally - My kids - who, as one of them felt moved to point out rather indignantly, I also failed to mention in the speech.
Sweet children. 'But , ahem - you didn't do anything.' Didn't read the book, don't read this blog, act like I'm trying to give you smallpox when I ask if you want to go to the cinema with so, yes, I realise the gesture is a bit wasted on you, but...
'We're your kids... I came all the way from university,' said the offended one. (£100 quid for the train, £20 for a taxi, £20 for booze and a kebab.. but you can't put a price on love.)
This is indeed true, and I should, of course, have mentioned the joy bestowing properties of parenthood.
Ahem: 'Parenting is such a joy.'
At some time after the excruciating speech was over, some local colour in the form of a tall disheveled and very drunk man (strangely enough, not a publisher) wandered in with his wife who looked like a Bassett Hound on Crack. I asked one of the Waddlers if we could get rid of him.
'Erm, he's drawing you a picture,' she said, with a sort of Nick Parks type expression and very wide plasticine eyes. This is Notting Hill, we have the Bohemian artist types here you know... Still... And then he bought a copy of the book and asked me to dedicate it to Poochie, his poodle. Well, it takes all sorts, I suppose. I did my duty and was just about to return to the real, invited guests when he handed me another copy of my own book which he hadn't paid for.
Thanks, I suppose, and then I opened up the fly leaf to discover a very, very detailed drawing of a great many poodles scampering across the title page.
'Oh my god,' says Eva, looking over my shoulder anxiously, 'Who is that strange man? He came into my gallery today and wouldn't leave and did exactly the same thing - left me a drawing of poodles...'
Obviously he likes dogs...
After my recent disappointments in love I'm becoming increasingly fond of the idea of a Labradoodle, in lieu of all the devotion I am now sorely missing.
I mean they're lavishly affectionate, always delighted to see you, they get up and run to you when you walk into a room, are undemanding, loving, and very, very loyal. Frankly, if you could teach them how to text..
vs 
there's not a lot in it...
Sunday, 8 February 2009
Not so far away day
In London the snow has turned to whipped egg whites floating through the sky and melting on the front window of the bus which announces, for the second time, that it has changed its destination.
I too have changed my destination as in the country the snow has frozen to meringues, peaks upon peaks of baked Alaska inside which is the cottage I'm supposed to be going to this evening, complete with Romantic Interest, and he can't get out. Nor, can I get in.
I slept late and rose early, throwing things into a bag that I might need, assembling the dual wardrobe for romantic walks across snowy fields and an evening in a cosy armchair with implied Red Setter in front of a log fire, as well as dressing for the annual office Away Day held in a hotel in Central London. At the last minute I slid through the slush in the front garden and threw the bottle of Bollinger I've been saving for a special occasion into the bag with two paperbacks, one of them his which I'm working through slowly, and an assortment of clothing that, let's put it this way - doesn't get out much.
By the time I arrived at the office at 8.30 after a journey of 1 hour 40 mins, two bus changes, and a tube ride, to set the answer-phone, schedule the lunch order to coincide with the timetable I had only just been given, change the SIM in my mobile phone which had helpfully stopped working, I knew it was all in vain. Romantic interest was in his own shaken snow-globe, looking at a blizzard, snowed under, the roads unploughed, the train service on his tiny rural line disrupted, and the only place I was going after a long day looking at flip charts was the hotel bar.
There are some things that a Belgian Chocolate covered biscuit and a selection of Marks & Spencer's sandwiches just don't touch. Disappointment being one of them.
I was as crushed as the said biscuits by the time I got to the packet. This feeling was not helped by Mr T's expansion plan for the coming year in which he hinted that he may employ a 'young, first-job receptionist to answer the phone, etc.' leaving me to wonder mutely what I would be doing when replaced by a younger model. Not even nuts helped.
At the end of a day of 'group activities' none of which involved car keys or Pictionary (dammit), onto which I was appended in my own special category of 'Marion', as in Finance, Press and Marion, or Editorial, Sales and Marion making me realise just how superfluous I am in the great publishing machine at Pedantic (I suspect reduntant might be fairly apt) I followed Angus to the bar. Angus had also struggled in that morning, but from a different part of the country and was still in country attire - waxed Barbour, cords and wellies. 'Grab the nuts and let's have a nice warming glass of red,' he said, settling himself into a dainty gilt armchair, crossing one wellied leg over another. I began to tell him that the first time I met my husband he was wearing wellies, and then stopped lest he think I was trying to draw parallels.
I bent to unzip my bag to put away my reading specs as Caroline passed by on her way to the white. 'My goodness, there's a bottle of Bolly in there...' she gasped, mercifully not mentioning the items of attire on which it nestled - I mean, long johns and thermal vests not what you want bandied around the office.
'Yes, well, I was supposed to be going out of town for the evening, but short of hiring a helicopter, there's no way I can get there.' I said tragically, like a crippled child deprived of Christmas. 'It'll be just my luck that by the time the snow melts he'll have gone off me and there will never be another chance.'
Angus patted me on the shoulder, the way you do an old horse, or a particularly favoured heifer. 'Never mind, if it's not meant to be, it's not worth the effort,' he said, and bent to fill up my glass.
'Are you mad?' Mr 'I married a sex goddess' living happily ever after in coital bliss in Cambridge? 'My relationships last about as long as a head cold and are usually about as pleasurable - in the words of Aerosmith (who needs John Donne - with whom I also had weekend plans) "I don't want to miss a thing." This could be as good as it gets.'
He laughed and murmured some vaguely bracing remark like 'buck up old girl, not horsemeat yet', and handed me the nuts.
So after whacking through a bottle of red with Angus, my romantic evening was take-away sushi with my ex-husband who had come round to spoil the teenage daughter's plans for a house party in my supposed absence, and stayed to watch Coronation Street - oh yes, we had an exciting marriage. He and my daughter sat on one sofa, she entwined around him like seaweed on a castaway, while I sat on the other making very polite conversation that did not involve the reading of any poetry whatsoever. However, he did bring me a bunch of flowers as a belated Congratulations on Publication Day, for which I was pathetically grateful. I told him I had gone up to the 5,500th most popular book on Amazon and he stoically pretended to think this was impressive. Meanwhile, I was flatter than a road through Nebraska, and so far, I'm still driving...
I too have changed my destination as in the country the snow has frozen to meringues, peaks upon peaks of baked Alaska inside which is the cottage I'm supposed to be going to this evening, complete with Romantic Interest, and he can't get out. Nor, can I get in.
I slept late and rose early, throwing things into a bag that I might need, assembling the dual wardrobe for romantic walks across snowy fields and an evening in a cosy armchair with implied Red Setter in front of a log fire, as well as dressing for the annual office Away Day held in a hotel in Central London. At the last minute I slid through the slush in the front garden and threw the bottle of Bollinger I've been saving for a special occasion into the bag with two paperbacks, one of them his which I'm working through slowly, and an assortment of clothing that, let's put it this way - doesn't get out much.
By the time I arrived at the office at 8.30 after a journey of 1 hour 40 mins, two bus changes, and a tube ride, to set the answer-phone, schedule the lunch order to coincide with the timetable I had only just been given, change the SIM in my mobile phone which had helpfully stopped working, I knew it was all in vain. Romantic interest was in his own shaken snow-globe, looking at a blizzard, snowed under, the roads unploughed, the train service on his tiny rural line disrupted, and the only place I was going after a long day looking at flip charts was the hotel bar.
There are some things that a Belgian Chocolate covered biscuit and a selection of Marks & Spencer's sandwiches just don't touch. Disappointment being one of them.
I was as crushed as the said biscuits by the time I got to the packet. This feeling was not helped by Mr T's expansion plan for the coming year in which he hinted that he may employ a 'young, first-job receptionist to answer the phone, etc.' leaving me to wonder mutely what I would be doing when replaced by a younger model. Not even nuts helped.
At the end of a day of 'group activities' none of which involved car keys or Pictionary (dammit), onto which I was appended in my own special category of 'Marion', as in Finance, Press and Marion, or Editorial, Sales and Marion making me realise just how superfluous I am in the great publishing machine at Pedantic (I suspect reduntant might be fairly apt) I followed Angus to the bar. Angus had also struggled in that morning, but from a different part of the country and was still in country attire - waxed Barbour, cords and wellies. 'Grab the nuts and let's have a nice warming glass of red,' he said, settling himself into a dainty gilt armchair, crossing one wellied leg over another. I began to tell him that the first time I met my husband he was wearing wellies, and then stopped lest he think I was trying to draw parallels.
I bent to unzip my bag to put away my reading specs as Caroline passed by on her way to the white. 'My goodness, there's a bottle of Bolly in there...' she gasped, mercifully not mentioning the items of attire on which it nestled - I mean, long johns and thermal vests not what you want bandied around the office.
'Yes, well, I was supposed to be going out of town for the evening, but short of hiring a helicopter, there's no way I can get there.' I said tragically, like a crippled child deprived of Christmas. 'It'll be just my luck that by the time the snow melts he'll have gone off me and there will never be another chance.'
Angus patted me on the shoulder, the way you do an old horse, or a particularly favoured heifer. 'Never mind, if it's not meant to be, it's not worth the effort,' he said, and bent to fill up my glass.
'Are you mad?' Mr 'I married a sex goddess' living happily ever after in coital bliss in Cambridge? 'My relationships last about as long as a head cold and are usually about as pleasurable - in the words of Aerosmith (who needs John Donne - with whom I also had weekend plans) "I don't want to miss a thing." This could be as good as it gets.'
He laughed and murmured some vaguely bracing remark like 'buck up old girl, not horsemeat yet', and handed me the nuts.
So after whacking through a bottle of red with Angus, my romantic evening was take-away sushi with my ex-husband who had come round to spoil the teenage daughter's plans for a house party in my supposed absence, and stayed to watch Coronation Street - oh yes, we had an exciting marriage. He and my daughter sat on one sofa, she entwined around him like seaweed on a castaway, while I sat on the other making very polite conversation that did not involve the reading of any poetry whatsoever. However, he did bring me a bunch of flowers as a belated Congratulations on Publication Day, for which I was pathetically grateful. I told him I had gone up to the 5,500th most popular book on Amazon and he stoically pretended to think this was impressive. Meanwhile, I was flatter than a road through Nebraska, and so far, I'm still driving...
Thursday, 5 February 2009
Nudge, nudge...
I'm having a little flirtation, though this might be a grave underestimate as I do have delusions of grandeur when it comes to height. Despite being a very modest five foot eight in my Wolfords, I'm convinced I'm an Amazonian, albeit with both headlights. This all stems from growing up in a place where most of the men, until at least the age of 17 (when I inconveniently left, just as some of them - only some of them, mind you - hit their growth spurt) dragged their knuckles on the ground and looked up to Alsatians. Usually the ones they were holding on leashes.
So in short, I'm not half as big as I think I am. Or rather, not half as tall. Big, sadly, I've probably got covered.
In my head, where regular readers of this Blog will know is where I spend most of my time, there lives a Seaside Postcard of a Woman. As I remarked to the romantic interest the other day: I never put on lipstick and eye-shadow without secretly worrying that I look like a drag queen. This anxiety is not entirely without basis. Several years ago I went to a drag show in a theatre in Hampstead where the drag queens in question who, sadly, were fooling nobody that they were girls, not even very big-boned girls, changed upstairs in an open space right outside the ladies bathroom. During a costume change I was unwise enough to go to the loo, only to return after the lights had dimmed and the music for a show tune had struck up to find myself making an entrance, only seconds ahead of the Diva herself.
And everyone clapped.
I've never been back since.
Romantic interest responded gallantly along the lines of: don't be ridiculous, I've never met anyone who looks less like a drag queen. And he wasn't even reading from the cue cards that I had so helpfully printed up. You can see why I'm interested... but Seaside Postcard Woman was back with a vengeance when the two of us met for a drink the other night in a nearby hostelry.
As you may or may not know, I live in the trendy area of Notting Hill Gate. Or to be absolutely accurate, I live somewhat north (think aurora borealis and Willesden) of the trendy area of Notting Hill Gate where there is a secret smoking pub run by an emaciated Greek man who also keeps a dismantled motor bike in the middle of the room (though to be fair, it's barely visible through the clouds of Marlborough Red), a friendly neighbourhood food outlet called Abdul's Chicken Palace, and a large colony of men with bolts through their necks who walk around with teams of Staffordshire Bull Terriers on reigns, like huskies - what with it being the North and all...
Suffice to say - I am not used to the finer things of life.
Romantic interest, however? - A wee bit different. He's definitely your Opera-going, friends in the cuntrey, E&O, Soho House, 192 (it's been gone a long time, but it lives on in the hearts of the literary locals) cashmere jumper, TLS sort of a chap. His books get quotes from the Literary Review - I get three stars in OK's HotList.
So we meet somewhere in the middle. An otherwise innocuous bar where we had been the last people to leave the restaurant a week before in suitably decadent, faux-gothic surroundings with a year's candlewax dripping over wrought iron chandeliers, bare planks on the floor and faded plush curtains. With fringes. Well, at least if they didn't have fringes, they ought to have had. And they must be blood red. Obviously.
He's sitting in a crushed leather sofa with the texture of a Cadbury's Flake when I arrive surrounded by fur and cashmere and Paul Smith stripes. Him that is, not me. I was in trainers, old jeans, a Dr Zhivago stole and my Stalin cap which always unnerves him.
I sit down, breathless with excitement, and the trek. There is a foot of snow outside which each of us have struggled through to get here.
As I said, it's a flirtation.
And then the locals arrived.
Three men from the Pogues squeeze into the sofa opposite us, one tooth between the three of them, and also sharing custody of a large, fat, sluglike Staffordshire Bull Terrier which they cuddled in turns while it slobbered.
My daughter's friend Lolita has one. It's called Prunella. My daughter and Lolita walk it and their piercings round the Scrubs as a way of bonding with the local fratelli on stolen pushbikes. Apart from the fact that I thought, naively, that you couldn't bring dogs into bars unless you were blind, I wasn't that perturbed. Okay, granted, nobody likes to see a man being kissed by a dog who then shares his lager, but I could tolerate it. I wasn't really looking at the dog anyway.
As I said - remember - it's a flirtation.
Romantic interest, however... not so thrilled.
'My god, they've got a pit bull,' he whispered, shrinking back into the corner of the sofa. The opposite corner.
No, it's only a Staff.
Nil points for knowing the breed. He glared at me: 'Whatever, it's horrible!'
Agreed, looks aren't its strong points, though to my mind it's a lot prettier than any of its owners who, now that I am looking at them, notice that they in turn are absolutely riveted by us. As is the dog.
Though only the dog is salivating.
'Don't you like dogs?' I asked (we're still in the discovery process - I don't know his favourite colour yet either, or his star sign).
'I don't mind a labrador or a poodle, but this isn't a dog, it's an animal.'
Shane MacGowan, sitting to my left with a pint of Guinness and a whisky chaser, is staring fixedly at Romantic Interest and his white wine spritzer with all the bemusement of a chimp with a mirror.
We attempt to carry one where we left off, but the sparkle has gone out the evening, at least for Romantic Interest who has gone colder than the circle line, and now both are suspended.
The Pogues, plus animal, are still watching us impassively, as though we're wearing grass skirts and about to sing hula-hula songs.
Outside it starts to snow again, and another long trudge home is imminent, something that suddenly seems like a very good idea. But I can still feel them staring at us as we don our various sweaters, hats and coats, adding 7 pounds with each additional layer. Though Shane managed a leer and a wink as I wrapped my scarf - a five foot long fake fox fur stole - around my head and followed Romantic Interest out the swinging door.
Seaside Postcard Woman walking.
Stupid ruddy scarf.
Swalk
My in box tells me that Julia Bunch wants me to message her when I get a second, while Julia Ross wants to chat and Julia McKinney suggests we get naked.
Well that sounds like fun but it's snowing outside, Ms McKinney,. Why on earth would one want to strip off in the middle of an otherwise uneventful morning at the office? Should we not have a nice cup of tea instead?
Dear God, do these women nor realise how busy I am? I don't have time to fiddle around all day on msn, chatting. Of course not. I'm much too busy checking my ranking on Amazon (24,002 as I speak) and checking my messages in the vain hope that the ex husband, to whom my 24,002nd most popular novel on the whole of Amazon is dedicated, might, just might, have remembered that today was P day, and called, texted or otherwise said 'well done'.
But nothing.
Of course, says the stern dominatrix in my head with a severe lash to the ego, what did you expect? That's where the 'ex' part comes in. You might have felt sentimental enough to have left the dedication in, but you can't really wonder that a man who's decided he doesn't want to live with you any more is going to be equally sentimental and spring for the celebratory lunch, or the bouquet of flowers, or even - apparently - even the friendly phone call. He's probably only relieved that the book is not more autobiographical.
However, there's always the next one.
But in the forlorn world of the single white published female, there are consolations. Julia Bryant loved my pics, and Julia Rinehart thinks she loves me. Julia Handy also thinks she loves me. Hey and Julia Green, Julia McKnight (who I'm sure had a brother called Eamon and went to my school), Julia Ellis , Julia Cartwright and even Julie Amherst - all in love with me. How wonderful to be so admired. I'm a lesbian legend in my own lunchtime. Who knew that I had this hidden following amonst women? Odd that they are all called Julia but, never mind. Thank God for Spam! Not only can I invest in Cahoots Bank and help my new friend Mr Zambogie in Nigeria to reclaim his fortune from an offshore account, but I can also get myself a brand new replica Tag Heuer with the proceeds.
On closer inspection my new found friends seem to be involved in some sort of Animal Rescue scheme and all want me to admire their cat later this evening on Yahoo Messengar (sic). I'm not much of a feline lover, but I appreciate the offer. It is rather sad when you get more affection from randomly generated email messages than you do from real life.
However, there's always the next one.
But in the forlorn world of the single white published female, there are consolations. Julia Bryant loved my pics, and Julia Rinehart thinks she loves me. Julia Handy also thinks she loves me. Hey and Julia Green, Julia McKnight (who I'm sure had a brother called Eamon and went to my school), Julia Ellis , Julia Cartwright and even Julie Amherst - all in love with me. How wonderful to be so admired. I'm a lesbian legend in my own lunchtime. Who knew that I had this hidden following amonst women? Odd that they are all called Julia but, never mind. Thank God for Spam! Not only can I invest in Cahoots Bank and help my new friend Mr Zambogie in Nigeria to reclaim his fortune from an offshore account, but I can also get myself a brand new replica Tag Heuer with the proceeds.
On closer inspection my new found friends seem to be involved in some sort of Animal Rescue scheme and all want me to admire their cat later this evening on Yahoo Messengar (sic). I'm not much of a feline lover, but I appreciate the offer. It is rather sad when you get more affection from randomly generated email messages than you do from real life.
Julia Ashford's message to me in this morning's enquiries mailbox begin's 'Hey Babe', where as the Italian used to just send smiley faces. Ironic really when his own was always so darn miserable.
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