Observed...

The lovely Graham Rawle's studio has been photographed for an article in the Observer Magazine this week. There it is in all its headless doll glory but how could they have lit the model of the Emerald City from above? It looks so beautiful glowing like kryptonite in the far corner of the room while this photograph made it look the way I do in a restaurant.

I was particularly taken by the Getting Your Own Graham Rawle Style Tips at the end of the article. Forget being an artist, lovingly collecting items from car boot sales - if you ever wanted a reclaimed, vintage, shop display unit, now you know where you can pick one up for a mere six hundred smackeroonies. Buy your quirky credentials at the Conran Shop with retro toys! And where do you go if you want a stack of old Beanos and a couple of broken dolls with the soundboxes exposed on their chests forlornly bleating 'Mama'? My attic, perhaps? It's stuffed full of all the casualties of my own offspring's childhood - toy zoos, wooden trains, lego and a thousand tiny cars, none of which they will allow me to throw out. But if a Graham Rawle groupie wants to make me an offer, I could be persuaded...

Though Graham and I are of the same generation, my childhood was obviously a lot more austere than his. Far from being populated by push along dogs, comics and painted wagons with ABC blocks, I had the Scottish version: Everyman classics, my sister's cast off pram (full size) a crib made by the blind (which should tell you something about how attractive it was) a doll's house without any furniture (all my miniature people slept in cast off Embassy Regal packets) and a Sindy with a duffel coat.

Other girls got tarty Barbie with the high heels and the frilly knickers, but no - I got the duffel coat.

But I'm not bitter.

My Sindy never wore pants at all.

Switched on

When Mr T said he was off to William Hill at lunch time and would need to cancel my annual review meeting, I did think it was a bit shabby of him to be sloping off to the bookies while I was wringing my hands in anxiety about keeping my job for another year.  And then I remembered from the congratulatory emails whizzing around the office that he was going to The William Hill prize for best Sports Book of the Year for which John Carlin, author of Playing the Enemy had been most deservedly nominated.   Grudgingly, I moved myself into a later slot in his diary, and shall live to fret another day.  It is, however, hard to see how the office could manage without me so perhaps I shall survive the cull.  Who else would arrange for the annual office clean up?  Who keeps us going in anti-bacterial hand soap?  What other women is brave enough to enter the dark cavern of the Ubereditor's office and approach his desk without protective clothing?

Why, just this morning the MD of our esteemed company looked up as I approached and his eyes widened in pleasure.  'Amazing,' he crowed.  And it's true, I was having a really good hair day, but still, I don't usually get quite such a joyous reception.  Our resident Fashionista was equally surprised until he qualified his delight:  'The light bulbs have arrived!' he said, gesturing towards my hands in which I held - yes, you've guessed it, a long Osram Dulux L light fitment.

God, you know you're getting old when men are only electrified by the fact that you've bought a box of ruddy light bulbs.

'He'll be hoping you're going to get on a ladder and screw it in for him,' said Fashionista. This is what it comes down to.  Sigh.  I met my husband by climbing up and down a stepladder in a library until he asked me to dinner.  But then look how that worked out...

Sadly, we didn't win the William Hill Prize, that honour went to former England batsman Marcus Trescothick  for his autobiography Coming Back to Me in which he talks about his struggle with depression.  Poor thing.  I thought cricket was only depressing when you had to watch it.

We have a second and third bite at the cherry this evening.  We are sharing a table with Cannongate at the Colman Getty PEN Quiz at the Cafe Royal which promises the winners a fistful of William Hill Betting Vouchers (there's just no getting away from these people - who knew bookies were so literary?)  Mr T sent round an email asking if any of us wanted to take a place at the table and a few of our number felt they were confident enough in their general knowledge - or very, very foolish - and volunteered.  I was not one of them.  I used to be a regular at a quiz held in the bowels of the Atlantic Bar (and there's another coincidence) made up of teams of hacks from various newspapers and hosted by Jeremy Beadle, but that was a no brainer.  For a start the team headed up by Jane Goldman, which usually included both David Baddiel and Frank Skinner, always won (though I have no idea what newspaper they were pretending to be from) and then, because we are talking about journalists here, second only to publishers in their fondness for alcohol, everyone was fairly drunk by the second round and didn't really give a damn about accuracy - much like the publications they worked for.  I did, however, develop an excellent I'm-thinking-really-hard-and- it's-on-the-tip-of-my-tongue intent expression which exploded into Eureka - got  it! relief when another person chipped in with the right answer.  It worked beautifully with a lot of plastered hacks but I don't see it getting past the gimlet-eyed Mr T and his band of merry smartalecs.

At the same time as the quiz, our third chance to win something comes at the reception for The John Llewellyn Rhys Prize which is being held at Century on Shaftsbury Avenue where Aravind is one of the six finalists. With Mr T and the other Chiefs sweating it out in the contest for Brainy Publisher of the Year,  this clears the way for the Indians to drink a glass of cava, and Lo, a miracle has occurred:  there is a spare invitation.

'Would you like to come?  Marion,' asks the holder of the golden ticket.  'Not being rude or anything, but you wouldn't get a chance to go if everyone else wasn't at the PEN Quiz.'

I know, I know, but damn it, I have to cook dinner.  And by the time I get home and go back again I will have lost two hours of work, and I have a pile of things waiting to be attended to and an article to write for the Sunday Times Style Section by Wednesday...  I just can't see how I could possibly...

'Absolutely, what time, where?' I said, though while everyone else is turning up in feathers, heels and lipstick (except the Ubereditor who doesn't usually bother with the lipstick), I'm going to have to settle for jeans and boots because I don't have time to go home and change.

It'll be Cinderella before the fairy godmother make-over - but hey - I can always just stick a lightbulb in each hand.

Smile, you're not on Candid Camera

I remember a friend who was married to a food writer complaining that since magazines shoot their December issue months ahead, they had already had four Christmases in their house, and it was still only August. I’m suffering for a small case of premature publication myself as because my book is out in February, I’m doing some articles for magazines that are going to press now but which won’t hit the newsstand until next year.

Compared to some of our authors here at Pedantic, however, I’m certainly not gobbling up the column inches like crisps at an office party. So, I was really excited when a magazine I’ve worked for occasionally in the past, got in touch and said they wanted me to write something to tie in with a plug for my book, but there was a catch.

‘You have to be a certain age, and I’m sure you’re not,’ said the editor.

She was being kind. I am. ‘So what do you want me to write about?’ I asked, thinking, so what if I'm old - dosh and a by-line is a win-win situation.

Her reply pinged back: ‘We’re asking some couples to review various sex manuals and write a short piece on how it worked out, and we want you to do the one that recommends not having sex as a means of boosting libido.’

Oh.

Why do you have to be over 49 to do that?

‘And we’ll need a picture of you and your husband.’

Well, this raises (or not as the case may be) a few problems. Though I am, unfortunately, old enough to pass the old crone test, a little hitch would be that I don’t, strictly speaking, have a husband any more since he left home six months ago.

And, though this might go some way to explaining how this sorry state of affairs came to pass, correct me if I’m wrong, but how is not having sex as a means of improving your sex life any different from the normal not having sex because you can’t be bothered?

So I had to decline. But not before laughing heartily at the idea of my very sober academic ex-husband agreeing to have his picture taken for an article about sex manuals. It was almost worth begging him to come back, just to see the expression on his face when I suggested it. Forget saving your marriage, it seemed like an almost perfect way to guarantee a divorce.

‘Well then, what about dating?’ suggested the editor, seamlessly, ‘ February is also the Valentine issue and we’re doing something on blind dates, would you write about that?’

Hackery, thy name is Marion, I agreed immediately and article written, I was summoned for a few days later for a photo shoot.

‘What dress size do you wear?’ asked the editor. I whispered the answer down the phone hoping that my colleagues at Pedantic Press thought it was the age of my teenage daughter who had miraculously become several years younger. I then realised that when I couldn’t fit into any of the clothes I was going to feel really stupid. And Fletzish. But would it matter? It would probably only be a snap. The Times photographer took two shots of my face in my garden and it was over. The Guardian had a sub-editor with a camera in a cupboard. And the last time I had a big byline picture taken I was standing next to a man in a pink suit wearing eyeliner and mascara and lipstick, all of which he had applied himself before leaving the house. Believe me, I could have grown antlers and nobody would have noticed me.

So off I went to a studio in North London to be met  by the Picture Editor, a photographer, her assistant, a hair and make-up person, a stylist, a rack of clothes, a row of shoes, lunch, polenta cake and a small child in a turban waving a palm frond – oh well, okay then – a wind machine.

Three hours later I was transformed from office drudge to drag queen at an S&M club, with a row of large bulldog clips clipped to my person (apparently they are used to people minimizing their size and always provide larger clothes) and smiling like I was on day release from the asylum.

Ah the glamorous world of print journalism.

Thank goodness for Photoshop.

I'm (not) your man

It's hardly surprising that there's a dearth of available single men in their fifties, or that those who do exist look lower down the age scale for a potential suitor, because we women of a similar age are daunting creatures. And god, we're fussy.

While one can live quite happily for years with a monosyllabic husband whose silences, you have convinced yourself, are thoughtful - how on earth do you switch to Mr Garrulous whose last less-than careful owner let him chatter over University Challenge - and then get all the answers wrong - where as your last car, I mean man, made Paxo look like he was a slow boy from the woodwork class? Recent criticisms I have heard from my friends about men they have met include: 'He sends me emails with weblinks in them.' 'He didn't drink.' 'He orders very expensive wine and then I have to split the bill.' 'He puts extra salt on everything he eats.'  'He calls the bathroom "the little boy's room"'.  'He wears an anorak.'  'He signs off his emails: "Cheers''', and 'he lives in Greenwich.' (Okay that last one was me.)

None of these seem like grounds for shunning, but nevertheless, shunned those men have been (well, look, It's an hour and a half's drive from my house to Greenwich without traffic - not gonna happen).  All men have their idiosyncrasies and all women nitpick.  I could make them into categories for match.com and they'd be a lot more bloody useful than whether they like Korean food, or "enjoy country walks"'.

So, perhaps it's understandable that those who are pairable cling to the first woman who doesn't contradict them when they voice an opinion. However, that shouldn't lull them into a pretty, young, sweetly accommodating sense of security, because no matter how old or how, apparently amenable, the woman is. She also talks.

To her friends.

Example: Last night in a staid, middle-aged bistro off Kensington Gore waiting for a night of nostalgic, melancholic bliss with Leonard Cohen which I unfortunately have to share with the rest of the Albert Hall. Sitting beside me is my recently single friend, Eva. She is fiddling with her cutlery looking awkward, as well she might.

Do you remember the Woody Allen Film, Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask? Well, this just about sums up Eva, except that she's not afraid.

I, on the other hand - at which she is looking very intently - am terrified. Based on her last question she seems to be expecting some sort of demonstration. I clench my fist and she sits up attentively, and I hurriedly sit on it instead. For too many seconds it appears she thinks that this is part of the show-and-tell and I can see the cogs turning in her confused brain until I shake my head.

I reach for the wine bottle to replenish my glass.

She sits up and gets out a mental notepad.

'No No, NO.' I say, taking a large gulp of wine as panic runs through my head like a naked guest in a burning hotel.

She's still looking at me expectantly.

'I'm not an expert,' I protest.

'But you did write that column,' she insists.

'Yes but I looked it all up on the internet.'

A little light bulb seems to go off behind her eyes. 'Ah, I didn't think about that,' she said. ' What should I type into Google?' She moves a little closer to me, to catch the answer mumbled into my risotto which is a little too tart for my taste (speaking of which...)

'Do you think anyone is listening?' she whispers, rather late in the day, as she glances at the table next to us where there's an old, red faced man with white facial hair but not a lot on his head and his slim, soft blonde daughter.

No, I don't think they can hear us.'

'How can you be sure?' Now, after half an hour of Ask Me I'm Anne Summers - suddenly - she's shy.

'Because if they were listening they'd be a lot quieter.'

I'm wondering what has prompted this sudden thirst for carnal knowledge but I daren't ask. I already know far, far too much about the man she is currently seeing. Things that make you go blind just thinking about them which I shall, continually, the next time I sit across the dinner table from him. Thank goodness it's time to wander up to the Albert Hall.

Half an hour later, Leonard Cohen is kneeling at my feet, albeit a mile away. His voice sounds like an underground explosion, his hand is cupped around the microphone, his cheeks are folded across his face like they've been in a drawer for a while, his eyes are closed. 'I'm your man', he sings.

There's a collective swoon across the auditorium, then the lights come up at the interval. In the row in front of us the old guy from the restaurant is running his hands over his daughter's back in a way that is not paternal.  Sugar and daddy spring to mind.  Next to me sits a chap with a flax of dyed black hair, wearing a leather jacket several sizes too big for Pavarotti. who smells strongly of stale cigarette smoke and has a cyst on his nose large enough to wear its own hat. He asks me if I'm enjoying myself. 

I am. Or I was.

He tells me this is his fifth Cohen concert and that the previous night he had been seated in a private box next next to Crimewatch's Nick Ross.

Probably no coincidence I'm thinking.  He was probably apprehended for a hold-up somewhere.  And then he looks into the middle distance above my head and starts to list the Cohen memorabilia he has acquired over recent weeks until, mercifully, Eva interrupts:

'He's so good looking for his age,' she sighs. 'I mean he's 74 - I'd still sleep with him. '

Not that much of an endorsement, Eva given your recent history. And anyway, so would most of the audience, including Zaphod Beeblebrox here.

'Men age so much better than women,' she adds.

'I disagree,' says another of our party. I went to a college reunion the other week and the women looked fabulous while the men were all a bit thrown together - crushed, crumpled, tired.' (This is a friend who recently paid a grand to a dating agency but never has enough time to go out on the dates.) 'The women had thrown a lot of cash at their appearance ,whereas the men looked as though they'd just sort of shambled up. Men get a lot harder as they get older... '

'Yeah,' says Eva, ruefully, '...except in anyway that's useful.'

'Oh by the way,' she asks, ' That Alain de Botton School of Life thing, they're having a lecture on Seduction. Do you want to come?'

'Ah...I think I'll pass.'  I said.

Table dancing

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.

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.

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.