3 for 2! My editor at Waddling Duck just rang with the news that I have made it onto the 3 for 2 table at Waterstone's. I'm ecstatic. I'm going to have a sticker! It's really happening.
'They'll probably slap it right over your name, though,' says one of the Pedants, helpfully - I think, but since nobody can pronounce my name surely that can only be a good thing.
I call a friend to enthuse: 'Guess what! '
'What?' (She's not very enthusiastic.)
'I got a 3 for 2.'
'So what did you buy?'
'No, I didn't buy anything, it's for my book. It's going to be on the table at Waterstone's .'
'What book? Is it out?' (A friend, did I say?)
'No, not till February.'
'And it's already doing badly?'
'No - I just told you, it isn't even out yet.' (Defensively, as ego deflates like old Hallowe'en party balloon still hanging from the kitchen ceiling at Christmas.)
'I thought they only slung the books that weren't doing well on those tables, you know to get rid of the slow ones.'(Heart on table, knife through it.)
'Actually, no, it's very hard to get a sticker. It's a really, really good thing.' (It is, isn't it?)
'Well if you say so.' (I hate this person.)
'It is, look, when you go into a bookshop, where do you go to find a book?'
'I don't. Buy books, I mean. Hardly ever go into a bookshop. I use Amazon.' (I really hate this person.)
'But when you do...?'
(Reluctantly) '...I go to the tables.'
'You see! And so there I'll be, 3 for 2!'
'But I always get annoyed when I see that because I don't want 3 for 2, I just want one.'
'And I only read non fiction.'
I give up. Somehow I don't think that my book was ever going to bought by this person. I only hope she isn't representative of my 3 and 1/2 friends . I'm going to be lucky to be the make-up the numbers book - the third you pick up after half an hour reading the back of all the others. I know that feeling. I am that person. I love the 3 for 2 and I do chose a book by its cover. I'm averse to anything with a cartoon handbag, don't much like the heroine to be Scottish (competition) or Irish (look - some people can't tell the difference) and am particularly fond of the whole dock stretching out into a calm blue expanse of water, sand dunes, high reeds, New England seascape, lake in Maine, Seattle, outer banks, 'Mary-Lou/Taylor/Alice is a woman with a secret in her past' sort of thing.
And, dear God, isn't the world of fiction simply flooded with secrets not-so-buried in the past? Are there really that many ruddy secrets? Who can keep their mouth shut that long? I am the mother who told her children there was no Santa before they'd even worked it out for themselves.
My book, of course is nothing like that. No sea. No dock. No North Carolina shore. And the heroine? Running from a secret in her past?
Positively sprinting, darling.
Monday, 17 November 2008
It's that time of year again - the pre-Christmas rush of party invitations, or in my case the pre-Christmas foot-dragging dawdle.
Perhaps not totally unsurprisingly - gold-edged stiffies, or indeed even stiffies that have not been gilded attractively around the edges, are always in short supply in my house. Every day I open Mr T's invitations to events as diverse as The Rugby International and The Sunday Times Book Page Party, and my only thrill is recording them in his diary. At home, it's no better. My mantlepiece contains only the month-old invitation to a friend's gallery opening which consisted of me, the four artists who were exhibiting, their children, a few blood relatives, three gallery staff and maybe ten potential customers of whom two just happened to be passing and saw the wine glasses set out on a tray by the door. And all except the passers by were women. It was a sparkling occasion.
This year, however, my social life threatens to dwindle to new microscopic lows as once mutual friends take sides in the marriage break-up and then decide that to perfectly fair, they should probably invite neither of us. I can deal with that. It's much worse having to speak to the people who ring up and then have to be told that there is no longer a Mr with the Mrs on the front of the envelope. This is particularly difficult when some of those people are his first cousins or, as was the case up until only a few months ago, his sister. I'm thinking of putting it as a recorded message on the telephone.
Of course, everyone is embarrassed and as a kindness I should probably say nothing and then just turn up without him. This is what I usually did even when we were married, so what's the difference?
But then the phone rings. It's a friend that I haven't seen since I was part of a couple.
'I know it's very short notice,' she gushes before I've even said hello, 'But do you want to come to dinner tonight? We have a single man.'
I was driving along the embankment at the time, and I almost crashed the car.
'A single man!' (Forget that we haven't spoken in months and she suddenly calls out of the blue because she needs a spare woman.)
'Yes, Palestinian, though - sorry - but rich. Can you come?'
'I can't.'
'Go on, he's quite handsome,' she said, grudgingly, though I've seen the man she married and I'm not sure our tastes are similar.
'I really can't, I'm on my way out.'
'Where.'
'Herbie Hancock.'
'Oh I didn't know you were seeing someone already.'
'I'm not, I'm just going to a concert at the South Bank.'
'Is he nice?'
'Who?'
'The man - what did you say his name was - Herbie?'
'No, I'm going to see him. He's a jazz musician.'
'Really, how interesting, how on earth did you meet him?'
I gave up.
And then I arrived at the bar at the NFT to discover that instead of another thrilling night with three divorced women and a small speck of a man on a distant stage, Eva had brought along a man she met on the internet who came up to my waist and had such a strong handshake that I couldn't wiggle my fingers for the next hour. That would have been fine if the other divorcee hadn't remembered half way through the concert that she hated jazz and left. This is how I found myself sitting at the end of a row on my own next to a spare seat while Eva and her internet date sat on the other side.
Around me everyone was stroking their imaginary beards and looking thoughtful. Damn it - fifty quid to be a gooseberry when I could have been in North London having dinner with a spare man! And of course the hostess will never, ever ask me again because now she thinks I'm dating a small, black, sixty-eight year-old, musical genius called Herbie Hancock.
I wonder if he's busy on the 13th of December - my friend is having another gallery opening.
Perhaps not totally unsurprisingly - gold-edged stiffies, or indeed even stiffies that have not been gilded attractively around the edges, are always in short supply in my house. Every day I open Mr T's invitations to events as diverse as The Rugby International and The Sunday Times Book Page Party, and my only thrill is recording them in his diary. At home, it's no better. My mantlepiece contains only the month-old invitation to a friend's gallery opening which consisted of me, the four artists who were exhibiting, their children, a few blood relatives, three gallery staff and maybe ten potential customers of whom two just happened to be passing and saw the wine glasses set out on a tray by the door. And all except the passers by were women. It was a sparkling occasion.
This year, however, my social life threatens to dwindle to new microscopic lows as once mutual friends take sides in the marriage break-up and then decide that to perfectly fair, they should probably invite neither of us. I can deal with that. It's much worse having to speak to the people who ring up and then have to be told that there is no longer a Mr with the Mrs on the front of the envelope. This is particularly difficult when some of those people are his first cousins or, as was the case up until only a few months ago, his sister. I'm thinking of putting it as a recorded message on the telephone.
Of course, everyone is embarrassed and as a kindness I should probably say nothing and then just turn up without him. This is what I usually did even when we were married, so what's the difference?
But then the phone rings. It's a friend that I haven't seen since I was part of a couple.
'I know it's very short notice,' she gushes before I've even said hello, 'But do you want to come to dinner tonight? We have a single man.'
I was driving along the embankment at the time, and I almost crashed the car.
'A single man!' (Forget that we haven't spoken in months and she suddenly calls out of the blue because she needs a spare woman.)
'Yes, Palestinian, though - sorry - but rich. Can you come?'
'I can't.'
'Go on, he's quite handsome,' she said, grudgingly, though I've seen the man she married and I'm not sure our tastes are similar.
'I really can't, I'm on my way out.'
'Where.'
'Herbie Hancock.'
'Oh I didn't know you were seeing someone already.'
'I'm not, I'm just going to a concert at the South Bank.'
'Is he nice?'
'Who?'
'The man - what did you say his name was - Herbie?'
'No, I'm going to see him. He's a jazz musician.'
'Really, how interesting, how on earth did you meet him?'
I gave up.
And then I arrived at the bar at the NFT to discover that instead of another thrilling night with three divorced women and a small speck of a man on a distant stage, Eva had brought along a man she met on the internet who came up to my waist and had such a strong handshake that I couldn't wiggle my fingers for the next hour. That would have been fine if the other divorcee hadn't remembered half way through the concert that she hated jazz and left. This is how I found myself sitting at the end of a row on my own next to a spare seat while Eva and her internet date sat on the other side.
Around me everyone was stroking their imaginary beards and looking thoughtful. Damn it - fifty quid to be a gooseberry when I could have been in North London having dinner with a spare man! And of course the hostess will never, ever ask me again because now she thinks I'm dating a small, black, sixty-eight year-old, musical genius called Herbie Hancock.
I wonder if he's busy on the 13th of December - my friend is having another gallery opening.
Thursday, 13 November 2008
Hunger
I can't eat. This is something I would not normally complain about, but all I want to do is eat. It's just that I can't.
Over the last few days my entire culinary world has been turned upside down:
A British Rail bacon sandwich on the way up to visit the Ginger Pig Poultry Farm? Not happening.
A chicken fajita wrap from the sandwich bar on the corner? Can't face it.
A walk round the supermarket whose shelves are simply heaving with products from ready meals to neatly packed sausages, all in a row in the chill cabinet? Walk on by.
Instead I peer at the vacuum packed meats examining the flesh. I check the steaks for bruising and the lamb chops for red pin pricks - both signs of a stressed animal (I must look as though I have the measles) - and even though I find neither, I still return the packages to the shelf.
'Is it because you're writing a book about meat? ' A friend asked, imagining that I had grown squeamish all of a sudden because of the brutality of the butcher's block. This would be a fair guess given that last Thursday I walked through a field with mud the colour of toffee coming well over my ankles while around me milled a flock of snow white honking geese doing skittish comedy waddling with outstretched wings like fat men trying to balance themselves, and another swarming flock of dark bronze turkeys, screeching like fishwives - all of which were going to end up head down in a plastic funnel before getting the chop, just in time for Christmas. But no, I did the whole tour of the farm, fighting my way through the turkeys and the geese who surveyed each other warily like the Jets and the Sharks from their own corner of the field, visiting everything from the 3 day old chicks under sun lamps thinking that life is just one long spa treatment with tanning beds, to the abattoir where 41 days later they are hung and drawn (but not quartered) without feeling anything but twinge of nostalgia for all those fairy tales I read as a child about the little Goose Girl. It's not at all off-putting. It's proper farming. The birds seem to be doing what birds do and look well cared for, and if you plan to eat poultry this is definitely the kind of poultry you should be eating. The Ginger Pig Farm is an equally qualm free enterprise and would put no omnivore off his or her Sunday Roast. On the contrary, it's the other farming practices that have turned me against eating meat.
Where does the chicken in your Club Sandwich come from? What about the bacon in a BLT? Has it ever stood in a field in its life? Does the beef in your pie come from Botswana? Or Brazil? How long has it been in that vacuum pack? What part of the animal are you eating? And don't even get me started on sausages...
But modern life has become so much about convenience and I'm as guilty as the next person of picking up a loin of pork in a hermetically sealed package without asking or caring where it came from beyond aisle 10 of the supermarket, or cutting up a chicken breast for a stir fry without caring that it wasn't free range. Knowing now that it might have come from China has taken the edge of my appetite. I'm also Scottish - our whole cuisine (and yes, I use the term loosely) is based on mince... What can I cook now that the only minced meat I ever intend to eat will have to have been ground in my own kitchen? That takes time. I don't have time. I have a microwave. But after spending hours with a tape recorder talking about beef I'll never be able to buy another box of ravioli with meat stuffing without shuddering and wondering what's inside it.
And yes, I can and do (on occasion) make my own pasta and stuff it with my own ragout - but I am not an Italian housewife from the 1950s. I'm a woman who eats crispbread because it doesn't get mouldy as quickly as bread. The main reason I eat meat is because I don't have to think about it and it feeds a lot of people. Every night I have to provide a meal for 4 adults. One hates meat but has no moral objection to it so will happily eat the roast potatoes cooked in the fat, one won't eat pork, another won't eat anything on any given day that she has contentedly eaten on the previous one. So, I want certainties. You bung a leg of lamb in the oven, surround it with vegetables and go off and leave it for an hour and a half, come back and instantly you're mama Walton, slapping the big dish on the table - listen, you can hear that Bisto tune playing in my head. But now the lamb is in a vacuum pack from one of those countries that allows sheep to wear lipstick and it may very well not have come from a happy lamb.
I could, of course, shop responsibly and buy all my meat from a proper organic producer but frankly, I can't afford to - not unless I choose the cheap cuts and they, like everything else in my house, including me, need time and attention that is in short supply. The local farmers' market is fantastic, but it's only on once a week and I need something now. Right now!
So I'm hungry. There's nothing I can buy to eat with my vegetables except cheese: until I start to think too hard about the horrors of dairy farming which puts me off my cheddar. So, I shop for an hour and leave the supermarket with a trolley full of healthy green stuff, pulses, tofu, and a huge bottle of vodka.
I might not be able to have a cheap hamburger, but I can still get plastered.
Over the last few days my entire culinary world has been turned upside down:
A British Rail bacon sandwich on the way up to visit the Ginger Pig Poultry Farm? Not happening.
A chicken fajita wrap from the sandwich bar on the corner? Can't face it.
A walk round the supermarket whose shelves are simply heaving with products from ready meals to neatly packed sausages, all in a row in the chill cabinet? Walk on by.
Instead I peer at the vacuum packed meats examining the flesh. I check the steaks for bruising and the lamb chops for red pin pricks - both signs of a stressed animal (I must look as though I have the measles) - and even though I find neither, I still return the packages to the shelf.
'Is it because you're writing a book about meat? ' A friend asked, imagining that I had grown squeamish all of a sudden because of the brutality of the butcher's block. This would be a fair guess given that last Thursday I walked through a field with mud the colour of toffee coming well over my ankles while around me milled a flock of snow white honking geese doing skittish comedy waddling with outstretched wings like fat men trying to balance themselves, and another swarming flock of dark bronze turkeys, screeching like fishwives - all of which were going to end up head down in a plastic funnel before getting the chop, just in time for Christmas. But no, I did the whole tour of the farm, fighting my way through the turkeys and the geese who surveyed each other warily like the Jets and the Sharks from their own corner of the field, visiting everything from the 3 day old chicks under sun lamps thinking that life is just one long spa treatment with tanning beds, to the abattoir where 41 days later they are hung and drawn (but not quartered) without feeling anything but twinge of nostalgia for all those fairy tales I read as a child about the little Goose Girl. It's not at all off-putting. It's proper farming. The birds seem to be doing what birds do and look well cared for, and if you plan to eat poultry this is definitely the kind of poultry you should be eating. The Ginger Pig Farm is an equally qualm free enterprise and would put no omnivore off his or her Sunday Roast. On the contrary, it's the other farming practices that have turned me against eating meat.
Where does the chicken in your Club Sandwich come from? What about the bacon in a BLT? Has it ever stood in a field in its life? Does the beef in your pie come from Botswana? Or Brazil? How long has it been in that vacuum pack? What part of the animal are you eating? And don't even get me started on sausages...
But modern life has become so much about convenience and I'm as guilty as the next person of picking up a loin of pork in a hermetically sealed package without asking or caring where it came from beyond aisle 10 of the supermarket, or cutting up a chicken breast for a stir fry without caring that it wasn't free range. Knowing now that it might have come from China has taken the edge of my appetite. I'm also Scottish - our whole cuisine (and yes, I use the term loosely) is based on mince... What can I cook now that the only minced meat I ever intend to eat will have to have been ground in my own kitchen? That takes time. I don't have time. I have a microwave. But after spending hours with a tape recorder talking about beef I'll never be able to buy another box of ravioli with meat stuffing without shuddering and wondering what's inside it.
And yes, I can and do (on occasion) make my own pasta and stuff it with my own ragout - but I am not an Italian housewife from the 1950s. I'm a woman who eats crispbread because it doesn't get mouldy as quickly as bread. The main reason I eat meat is because I don't have to think about it and it feeds a lot of people. Every night I have to provide a meal for 4 adults. One hates meat but has no moral objection to it so will happily eat the roast potatoes cooked in the fat, one won't eat pork, another won't eat anything on any given day that she has contentedly eaten on the previous one. So, I want certainties. You bung a leg of lamb in the oven, surround it with vegetables and go off and leave it for an hour and a half, come back and instantly you're mama Walton, slapping the big dish on the table - listen, you can hear that Bisto tune playing in my head. But now the lamb is in a vacuum pack from one of those countries that allows sheep to wear lipstick and it may very well not have come from a happy lamb.
I could, of course, shop responsibly and buy all my meat from a proper organic producer but frankly, I can't afford to - not unless I choose the cheap cuts and they, like everything else in my house, including me, need time and attention that is in short supply. The local farmers' market is fantastic, but it's only on once a week and I need something now. Right now!
So I'm hungry. There's nothing I can buy to eat with my vegetables except cheese: until I start to think too hard about the horrors of dairy farming which puts me off my cheddar. So, I shop for an hour and leave the supermarket with a trolley full of healthy green stuff, pulses, tofu, and a huge bottle of vodka.
I might not be able to have a cheap hamburger, but I can still get plastered.
Saturday, 8 November 2008
sub-text
One of our authors was in town and going out to have lunch with Mr T on Friday. I booked the restaurant and confirmed the lunch by email, and then had his novel sitting on my desk for a week, waiting for him to sign it for me. But then I spent the morning packing White Tigers into a box in another office, followed by a meeting for the Ginger Pig, and when I looked at my watch it was five past one and the author had been and gone.
Damn it. This author lives in France, goodness knows when I would get the chance to see him again.
I wondered - for all of about point five of a second - if I could accidentally wander round to Cigala in Lamb's Conduit Street, and be uncool enough to be just passing with - oh look what I have here, what a coincidence - a copy of the book in my hand, and then sat down wearily at my desk. The first time Mr T took me out to lunch many years ago, in a land of restaurant critic popularity far, far and FT away, it was to Cigala. The last time it was to ASK pizza. I wasn't going anywhere.
Sigh.
I sat at my desk forlornly running through the upcoming weekend: dinner with glamorous friend Sarah in the evening which I would be cooking in my less than glamorous kitchen, then work: Ginger Pig. Ginger Pig. Ginger Pig. And just for a change, on Sunday, Ginger Pig. I supposed I could hang at the office on long enough to see whether Mr T brought him back after lunch and get the book signed then. I decided to text him and ask if this was likely.
I'm not gifted with the art of text. For a start I can't see. My kids always know when the message is from me simply because it's garbled and incomprehensible. I'm slow and clumsy and think it's the worst medium for communication in the world for all but the most cursory of messages when a telephone call would be too intrusive. People who would be embarrassed to call you and say they were canceling an appointment at the last minute think nothing of sending you a text. Friends have been dumped by text. It's the medium of the hurried, cowardly and rude.
Recently a friend sent a message asking when I was free to meet her. (Well I use the term friend loosely. Since I lost a husband she seems to be afraid divorce it's catching and hasn't been in touch except by the scintillatingly non-emotive and very occasional text to ask me how I am. Really. How do you *ing think I am? And how much do you really care if all you can do is text me twice in five months? Not that I'm bitter or anything...) After I had found my glasses, dropped the phone, pressed several wrong buttons and sent a blank message back, I read that she wanted me to arrange a meeting and offer her alternative dates. By text? Dear God, I'd rather sort out the Palestinians and the Israelis. By the time I had tapped that lot out I would be 106. So, I asked her to call me instead. She didn't. She had been in touch - her duty was done without once hearing my voice.
So frankly, I try to avoid texting whenever possible. This is particularly important to remember when drunk. However, in the middle of the day at the office, inebriation (for me at least) wasn't a problem, so I took a deep breath and picked up the phone, squinted, and tapped out the letters very, very slowly and painstakingly.
I scrolled down and picked out T from my address book, and pressed send, then waited for around ten minutes to see if he would answer .
He didn't.
So, I left.
Twenty minutes later I was slumped sadly at the top of the No 7 bus when the phone chirruped.
Oh! Despite my reluctance to send texts I do like getting them providing they are not from Orange telling me that I can get a two for one cinema ticket on Wednesdays (rub it in, why don't you - where do I find the second person Orange?) or that I'm eligible for 'lucky numbers' so I can call all those friends I don't have at a lower rate. I live in perpetual hope that it's someone I really want to hear from. Even the Italian, now firmly in the past tense, occasionally sends me a message to see if we can meet. (So far we can't.) I reached for the phone. It was from Mr T and said:
What on earth did he mean by all the question marks - what possible ambiguity could there be in the message I sent him?
And then, before I could answer, the phone sang again and as I read the second message, which I will not reproduce here I was flooded (bright red) by a horrible realisation. I know two Mr Ts, and only one of them is in the contacts on my phone.
And it isn't the one I work for.
Had the mix up been the other way round I would have been very much more embarrassed, and only one of the reasons why I should only be allowed to operate a small hand-held devise even when sober. Another reason would be how the second Mr T managed to get into my address book in the first place.
But that story is for another day.
Damn it. This author lives in France, goodness knows when I would get the chance to see him again.
I wondered - for all of about point five of a second - if I could accidentally wander round to Cigala in Lamb's Conduit Street, and be uncool enough to be just passing with - oh look what I have here, what a coincidence - a copy of the book in my hand, and then sat down wearily at my desk. The first time Mr T took me out to lunch many years ago, in a land of restaurant critic popularity far, far and FT away, it was to Cigala. The last time it was to ASK pizza. I wasn't going anywhere.
Sigh.
I sat at my desk forlornly running through the upcoming weekend: dinner with glamorous friend Sarah in the evening which I would be cooking in my less than glamorous kitchen, then work: Ginger Pig. Ginger Pig. Ginger Pig. And just for a change, on Sunday, Ginger Pig. I supposed I could hang at the office on long enough to see whether Mr T brought him back after lunch and get the book signed then. I decided to text him and ask if this was likely.
I'm not gifted with the art of text. For a start I can't see. My kids always know when the message is from me simply because it's garbled and incomprehensible. I'm slow and clumsy and think it's the worst medium for communication in the world for all but the most cursory of messages when a telephone call would be too intrusive. People who would be embarrassed to call you and say they were canceling an appointment at the last minute think nothing of sending you a text. Friends have been dumped by text. It's the medium of the hurried, cowardly and rude.
Recently a friend sent a message asking when I was free to meet her. (Well I use the term friend loosely. Since I lost a husband she seems to be afraid divorce it's catching and hasn't been in touch except by the scintillatingly non-emotive and very occasional text to ask me how I am. Really. How do you *ing think I am? And how much do you really care if all you can do is text me twice in five months? Not that I'm bitter or anything...) After I had found my glasses, dropped the phone, pressed several wrong buttons and sent a blank message back, I read that she wanted me to arrange a meeting and offer her alternative dates. By text? Dear God, I'd rather sort out the Palestinians and the Israelis. By the time I had tapped that lot out I would be 106. So, I asked her to call me instead. She didn't. She had been in touch - her duty was done without once hearing my voice.
So frankly, I try to avoid texting whenever possible. This is particularly important to remember when drunk. However, in the middle of the day at the office, inebriation (for me at least) wasn't a problem, so I took a deep breath and picked up the phone, squinted, and tapped out the letters very, very slowly and painstakingly.
Are you bringing author
back to office. He so foot (damn that predictive text)
forget to get my book
signed, x (we're very affectionate at Pedantic Press)
I scrolled down and picked out T from my address book, and pressed send, then waited for around ten minutes to see if he would answer .
He didn't.
So, I left.
Twenty minutes later I was slumped sadly at the top of the No 7 bus when the phone chirruped.
Oh! Despite my reluctance to send texts I do like getting them providing they are not from Orange telling me that I can get a two for one cinema ticket on Wednesdays (rub it in, why don't you - where do I find the second person Orange?) or that I'm eligible for 'lucky numbers' so I can call all those friends I don't have at a lower rate. I live in perpetual hope that it's someone I really want to hear from. Even the Italian, now firmly in the past tense, occasionally sends me a message to see if we can meet. (So far we can't.) I reached for the phone. It was from Mr T and said:
? ? ? T x
What on earth did he mean by all the question marks - what possible ambiguity could there be in the message I sent him?
And then, before I could answer, the phone sang again and as I read the second message, which I will not reproduce here I was flooded (bright red) by a horrible realisation. I know two Mr Ts, and only one of them is in the contacts on my phone.
And it isn't the one I work for.
Had the mix up been the other way round I would have been very much more embarrassed, and only one of the reasons why I should only be allowed to operate a small hand-held devise even when sober. Another reason would be how the second Mr T managed to get into my address book in the first place.
But that story is for another day.
Thursday, 6 November 2008
The last cut is the deepest
I'm in early Pig with delivery of the first phase of my manuscript for the Cookery Book in a couple of weeks' time. Suddenly all my notes look like jigsaw pieces from the wrong puzzle and I rapidly need to find some edges. A good place to beef up the framework seemed to be the Ginger Pig shop in Moxon Street so I thought I would trot along, meet some of the staff and pick their bones...
I fear there's going to be a lot of meat puns.
And also, apparently, an awful lot of men.
I've done a great many evening classes in my time: Italian, Salsa, Life Drawing, Cooking, Etching, Wine Tasting; Psychology - the whole gamut middle class pursuits and I can tell you from experience that adult education is a great place to meet men if you like women.
Men I have met at evening classes:
Italian? One pervert looking for a reserve mistress to the mistress and a widow called Brian.
Life Drawing? Naked man on a plinth with piercings you don't want to think about and one sexually ambiguous painter.
Cooking, Etching, Wine Tasting? Sexually ambiguous painter (carried forward from above) and many, many bores..
Salsa? Short, very short or gay men, bridegrooms (of which the last two categories have the advantage in that they use deodorant). Phil from Brentford who does ballroom on Mondays, and my friend Andrew, who I took with me, so doesn't really count. Thing in common: they all sweat.
Psychology: come one...do you really need to ask?
Women I have met at evening classes: Concert violinist, Turkish journalist, Slow food campaigner, Ceramicist, Graphic Designer, Human Rights Lawyer, Divorce Lawyer (very, very useful), Weapon Designer (ditto), Conference Organiser, Banker, Caroline Waldegrave and Pru Leith (we're not friends but we still met), Australian Dentist, Architect, many brides (they do the salsa so they can dance at their weddings) and one sexually ambiguous painter (I'm not sure quite which category s/he comes into).
So that brings me back to the Ginger Pig. It turns out a butcher's shop is a great place to meet men.
Who would have thought it?
Nevertheless, in the evening, the shop is full of them. Tall men. Young men. Silver foxes. Some even have hair. All are wearing white coats and interested expressions which makes them look a little like the guys on toothpaste ads who are trying to convince you they are scientists, or as though they might be about to sell you cosmetics on the Clinique counter in Selfridges. But no - they are here to learn the gentle art of butchery on the course run by the two Ginger Pig butchers, three times a week.
Just what you want - a man who knows how to handle a hacksaw and a cleaver and can cut you up into freezer joints before you've even been properly introduced. Not a category I've seen on Match.com.
Yet.
Though surely only a matter of time? Especially when you see how many of them come from City Banks... Just what you do after a hard day's credit crunching... cut up a carcass.
I look around the room for wedding rings as Perry (from the Marylebone shop) deftly cuts up a lamb, addressing the assembled throng with the confidence of a chat show host, to the soft lulling hum of bones being sawn, and Borat (from the branch in Hackney, and known locally, so I'm told by members of the staff, as the Slovenian Sex God) shows me his own, totally ring-free hands.
'But you're too young,' I say as he twirls his filleting knife and slots it back into his holster (okay, I made that up, but it wouldn't have surprised me.'
'Oh 'e likes 'em really really pretty and gorgeous and slim,' said one of the female members of staff (who until that moment I was beginning to think of as a friend) and possibly, she seemed to be implying, not old enough to be his mother.
A man would need to have a cleaver in his hands to chop his way into my house through my three, ever-present, non-sleeping, disapproving teenagers, so it's academic that he's only 12 and I'm 76. Instead, I have to content myself with a glass of wine (red of course) and quiet contemplation of the scarred butcher's block on which a sheep is slowly becoming legs, breast and best end.
'So what do we call this,' Perry asks the assembled (creepily concentrated and silent) group of men standing around him in their lab coats paying rapt attention to the saw going through the spine then snapping off. He slams down an indeterminate hunk of bones with a resounding thump.
'Scrag end,' says someone, helpfully.
Yep.
Precisely.
I fear there's going to be a lot of meat puns.
And also, apparently, an awful lot of men.
I've done a great many evening classes in my time: Italian, Salsa, Life Drawing, Cooking, Etching, Wine Tasting; Psychology - the whole gamut middle class pursuits and I can tell you from experience that adult education is a great place to meet men if you like women.
Men I have met at evening classes:
Italian? One pervert looking for a reserve mistress to the mistress and a widow called Brian.
Life Drawing? Naked man on a plinth with piercings you don't want to think about and one sexually ambiguous painter.
Cooking, Etching, Wine Tasting? Sexually ambiguous painter (carried forward from above) and many, many bores..
Salsa? Short, very short or gay men, bridegrooms (of which the last two categories have the advantage in that they use deodorant). Phil from Brentford who does ballroom on Mondays, and my friend Andrew, who I took with me, so doesn't really count. Thing in common: they all sweat.
Psychology: come one...do you really need to ask?
Women I have met at evening classes: Concert violinist, Turkish journalist, Slow food campaigner, Ceramicist, Graphic Designer, Human Rights Lawyer, Divorce Lawyer (very, very useful), Weapon Designer (ditto), Conference Organiser, Banker, Caroline Waldegrave and Pru Leith (we're not friends but we still met), Australian Dentist, Architect, many brides (they do the salsa so they can dance at their weddings) and one sexually ambiguous painter (I'm not sure quite which category s/he comes into).
So that brings me back to the Ginger Pig. It turns out a butcher's shop is a great place to meet men.
Who would have thought it?
Nevertheless, in the evening, the shop is full of them. Tall men. Young men. Silver foxes. Some even have hair. All are wearing white coats and interested expressions which makes them look a little like the guys on toothpaste ads who are trying to convince you they are scientists, or as though they might be about to sell you cosmetics on the Clinique counter in Selfridges. But no - they are here to learn the gentle art of butchery on the course run by the two Ginger Pig butchers, three times a week.
Just what you want - a man who knows how to handle a hacksaw and a cleaver and can cut you up into freezer joints before you've even been properly introduced. Not a category I've seen on Match.com.
Yet.
Though surely only a matter of time? Especially when you see how many of them come from City Banks... Just what you do after a hard day's credit crunching... cut up a carcass.
I look around the room for wedding rings as Perry (from the Marylebone shop) deftly cuts up a lamb, addressing the assembled throng with the confidence of a chat show host, to the soft lulling hum of bones being sawn, and Borat (from the branch in Hackney, and known locally, so I'm told by members of the staff, as the Slovenian Sex God) shows me his own, totally ring-free hands.
'But you're too young,' I say as he twirls his filleting knife and slots it back into his holster (okay, I made that up, but it wouldn't have surprised me.'
'Oh 'e likes 'em really really pretty and gorgeous and slim,' said one of the female members of staff (who until that moment I was beginning to think of as a friend) and possibly, she seemed to be implying, not old enough to be his mother.
A man would need to have a cleaver in his hands to chop his way into my house through my three, ever-present, non-sleeping, disapproving teenagers, so it's academic that he's only 12 and I'm 76. Instead, I have to content myself with a glass of wine (red of course) and quiet contemplation of the scarred butcher's block on which a sheep is slowly becoming legs, breast and best end.
'So what do we call this,' Perry asks the assembled (creepily concentrated and silent) group of men standing around him in their lab coats paying rapt attention to the saw going through the spine then snapping off. He slams down an indeterminate hunk of bones with a resounding thump.
'Scrag end,' says someone, helpfully.
Yep.
Precisely.
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
From Fran at the New York Office
We're walking down the street at 1.30am. Ahead someone is shouting 'give me an O, give me a B' and rippling down the street goes the cry O B A M A... Cyclists are whooping, motorists are beeping, and everyone else is stumbling home gripping each other, tired, hoarse, and happy.
We arrived at Amy's apartment for the first results, clutching our election bingo forms (courtesy of the Guardian), pens poised, ready to tick off the states as they're called and add up the electoral college votes aiming for the magic number: 270. By 7.30 the projections are already starting to come in - we mark off one fat lady in McCain's column, 3 in Obama's. I need a drink.
By the time we head to a bar it's 9.30 and the columns are filling up - Obama's line is looking healthy, the bigger numbers are with him, but I'm still feeling hugely superstitious - I keep knocking on wood, or in the absence of wood, my head. I'm aware that this looks a bit bonkers, but I can't stop myself. We get in line for the bar, there are huge crowds of Brooklyn hipsters outside - it's one in, one out -- 'let me put it this way' says the doorman 'if you were inside with a drink watching the results on a big screen, would you leave?'. Okay, we get his point, but we're here now and it's amazing to be surrounded by all these people, so we do what Brits do best. We queue.
As we near the door we can hear screams from inside. 'WHAT??? ' 'Nooo'.... 'WHAT...' 'Can you believe it?' 'WHAT!' Bloody hell, this is frustrating. WHAT has happened? Then it starts getting passed down. He's won Ohio. Holy crap, even I know this is big. About a minute later a girl shouts 'hey guys my sister just said he's got Ohio'. Everyone looks at her. Err, alright love - we heard already.
We consider starting a Chinese whisper about Texas...
Once inside and onto the 4th vodka (drinks here are kind of like electoral college votes - they have an arbitrary relationship to the volume of spirits they actually contain) we start to acclimatise. We're in the 'back room', which is a big as Brixton Academy. Your favourite band is playing. All your friends are here. But everyone is staring at the biggest TV you've ever seen. As we get closer to the 'top of the hour' people start counting down with the clock and it goes eerily quiet. Colours flash on screen and numbers appear. Boos, cheers, cheers, boos, screams, hand clapping and dancing. I'm still nervous. I knock my head ('Fan, do you have tourette's?)
New Mexico for Obama. Wow.
The polls are closing in the West. I think we're reaching 11pm though I'm losing track. The countdown starts and they're going to announce Virginia, or Florida perhaps, but then it comes on the screen. They are calling it for Obama. He is the next president of the United States. So soon? I thought we were going to be here 'til 5 in the morning but no, people are yelling, jumping up and down, punching the air. We are hugging each other and kissing strangers. Amy throws her drink over everyone, forgetting that vodka doesn't have the same effervescent quality as champagne. 'Signed, sealed, delivered' comes blasting out of the huge speakers and we're all dancing. 'I don't know this song,' says my American Boy, Chris, as I try to whirl him around. I think he's worse than the girl outside.
As McCain comes out to concede the crowd again is quiet. A couple of people boo but generally we are respectful, clapping - some even commenting that if this is how he'd conducted himself during the race, he may have stood a better chance. Palin gets a big boo, and no respect - from the crowd gathered here, anyway.
And then it's time for Him - and you know the rest.
written by Frances Owen, Publicity Manager currently on sabbatical at Grove/Atlantic New York
Sunday, 2 November 2008
Maya Fiennes. Kundalini Yoga Workshop.
Sixty middle aged women in various stages of preservation from good to very good, and one from Pedantic Press.
Me.
Originally six of us had planned to attend the workshop since we are soon to publish Maya's book, but only two of the young bendies made it in the end, and I roped in my friend Nel for solidarity.
Naturally we sat at the back.
I’ve done Yoga before. It’s the exercise of choice for anyone who isn’t otherwise athletic. But Maya’s Yoga for Life isn’t quite like anything I’ve done before. Instead of inelegant postures, holding positions for a long time, and lots of deep breathing imagining yourself putting roots down into the earth – obviously a dawdle for me given my gravitational affinity with the ground, Kundalini Yoga, on first acquaintance anyway, involves fast, concentrated breathing, simple rapid and repetitive movements and lots of singing and chanting.
Easy, I thought when we began. A billion breaths later I was hyperventilating and the inside of my nose felt like I had been snorting chlorine in a swimming pool. Who knew breathing was so hard?
This was a de-stress class. Ideal for many of we Pedants; especially designed even. As the class progressed and after I had, in Maya’s words, ‘broken through the pain barrier,’ pushing my palms out to the side a million and a half times, it got easier and the breathing began to feel energising.
And I couldn't feel my fingers, my shoulders or indeed anything much above the waist, which obviously helped, especially when we began rolling around the floor from side to side like hippos.
Then suddenly my friend Nel put her hands over her eyes. Poor thing, it’s getting too much for her. I reached across to pat her back consolingly. I thought she was weeping at first, and then I saw her shoulders shake and realised she was indeed crying, but with laughter.
'I’m sorry,' she gasped, I just can’t help it. I can’t stop looking at the man with the giant harp – a series of steel wires strung the length of the room, which was of concert hall proportions, which he was stroking earnestly making the room reverberate to Eastern music while sixty loud London women sang 'Harr', like fairly aggressive pirates as they stared fixedly at the space between the outstretched thumb and fingers of their right hands.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that Nel is quite deaf and couldn’t hear any of the instructions that Maya was issuing prettily from a sound system far, far away, so she really didn't have a clue what she was doing.
Next we sang and chanted five words over and over interspersed with the chorus “I bow to you, again and again.’ At which Nel took issue. She bows to nobody. She can bow to nobody – too much belly fat.
Then we rested, breathing gently.
And the harpists mobile phone went off to the tune of Woody Woodpecker.
I didn't even dare glance at Nel. But being deaf, she hadn't heard it. She was still laughing though.
'Do you want to get a drink?' I asked one of the bendies as we left the workshop.
'Marion, that was supposed to be all about cleansing your system and strengthening your kidneys!' she said sternly. 'And anyway, I can't. I'm on a detox.'
'Okay then,' I mumbled, much chastened as Nel skipped off like a newborn lamb to go and sign up for a yoga holiday, bought a yoga mat, a yoga seat, and some incense.
'I tell you what though, let's go outside and get some fresh air.' said the Bendy. 'I could really do with a fag.'
Me.
Originally six of us had planned to attend the workshop since we are soon to publish Maya's book, but only two of the young bendies made it in the end, and I roped in my friend Nel for solidarity.
Naturally we sat at the back.
I’ve done Yoga before. It’s the exercise of choice for anyone who isn’t otherwise athletic. But Maya’s Yoga for Life isn’t quite like anything I’ve done before. Instead of inelegant postures, holding positions for a long time, and lots of deep breathing imagining yourself putting roots down into the earth – obviously a dawdle for me given my gravitational affinity with the ground, Kundalini Yoga, on first acquaintance anyway, involves fast, concentrated breathing, simple rapid and repetitive movements and lots of singing and chanting.
Easy, I thought when we began. A billion breaths later I was hyperventilating and the inside of my nose felt like I had been snorting chlorine in a swimming pool. Who knew breathing was so hard?
This was a de-stress class. Ideal for many of we Pedants; especially designed even. As the class progressed and after I had, in Maya’s words, ‘broken through the pain barrier,’ pushing my palms out to the side a million and a half times, it got easier and the breathing began to feel energising.
And I couldn't feel my fingers, my shoulders or indeed anything much above the waist, which obviously helped, especially when we began rolling around the floor from side to side like hippos.
Then suddenly my friend Nel put her hands over her eyes. Poor thing, it’s getting too much for her. I reached across to pat her back consolingly. I thought she was weeping at first, and then I saw her shoulders shake and realised she was indeed crying, but with laughter.
'I’m sorry,' she gasped, I just can’t help it. I can’t stop looking at the man with the giant harp – a series of steel wires strung the length of the room, which was of concert hall proportions, which he was stroking earnestly making the room reverberate to Eastern music while sixty loud London women sang 'Harr', like fairly aggressive pirates as they stared fixedly at the space between the outstretched thumb and fingers of their right hands.
It wasn’t helped by the fact that Nel is quite deaf and couldn’t hear any of the instructions that Maya was issuing prettily from a sound system far, far away, so she really didn't have a clue what she was doing.
Next we sang and chanted five words over and over interspersed with the chorus “I bow to you, again and again.’ At which Nel took issue. She bows to nobody. She can bow to nobody – too much belly fat.
Then we rested, breathing gently.
And the harpists mobile phone went off to the tune of Woody Woodpecker.
I didn't even dare glance at Nel. But being deaf, she hadn't heard it. She was still laughing though.
'Do you want to get a drink?' I asked one of the bendies as we left the workshop.
'Marion, that was supposed to be all about cleansing your system and strengthening your kidneys!' she said sternly. 'And anyway, I can't. I'm on a detox.'
'Okay then,' I mumbled, much chastened as Nel skipped off like a newborn lamb to go and sign up for a yoga holiday, bought a yoga mat, a yoga seat, and some incense.
'I tell you what though, let's go outside and get some fresh air.' said the Bendy. 'I could really do with a fag.'
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