Clinical trials...

Louisa has another job in London - this time taking pictures for a diabetes charity in Haringey and we're regarding a gleaming empty plate with two forks poised on the rim, as yet another lemon tart becomes merely a memory of cream and sugar, washed down with guilt-infused tales of the link between diabetes and obesity. She's telling me that she had heard from the Norwegian.

'What Norwegian?'

'You know, the Norwegian I met at the clinic.'

'The clinic?' She has been threatening to go to a health farm - though as an impoverished photographer who I met when I was at art school in Camberwell (me matron, she graduate) I can't think how she can afford it. I wonder if she's slipped in a weekend away having water fired at her from a high pressure hose while I was at home watching dust motes drift through the air - a remarkably time-consuming activity.

'Yes, the clinic,' she repeats, dropping her voice lower than our waitresses jeans.

'Ah, the clinic.' This is starting to sound like Pinter, (the clinic, mmm, the ...pause.... clinic. Um, yes - the clinic.) but I shall spare her blushes by not explaining further...(not that she really is called Louisa, so this is not a traceable story... but move it to Brighton and make her 35 and French and you're getting warm.)

You met a Norwegian at the clinic and you spoke to him? For goodness sake Louisa, what are you - starring in a Daily Mail expose or something?'

'I didn't want to, but he struck up a conversation and I was embarrassed, I couldn't ignore 'im.'

I shook my head. This woman needs lessons in appropriate places to pick up men. 'Louisa, clinic waiting rooms are not the place to hook up. Clinic waiting rooms are places where you pretend that other people don't exist. You don't make eye contact, you do not, repeat not, chat. You keep your head down, you read a Hello magazine from 1978 and you keep dark glasses on at all times. A hijab would be even better.'

'I know, but 'e sat right next to me and started talking. And then he called me.'

'He called you?'

'Yes, on the phone at the office, and left a message...'

My head is now spinning around like a fishing reel with a Marlin on the end of the line. 'How in the name of Gonorr... I mean God, did he get your telephone number? At the office?'

'He asked for my card..'

'Louisa, dear, if a homeless crack addict stopped you on the street and asked to move into your lovely Leigh on Sea semi-detached (okay so it's not Brighton but closer to Southend) sea view bungalow, would you just nod your head and say "of course, and 'ere's my wallet?" Why on earth would you give him your card?' I'm beginning to see how she found herself sitting in this particular waiting room. She can't say no. Or even non.

'He's Norwegian. I've never been to Norway, it sounds lovely. 'e was interested in my work - I told him to pass by my studio.'

'Louisa, you met him at the Cla.. .' I couldn't speak. These continental women, they do it differently from we Presbyterians. We shake hands wearing oven gloves and don't speak to people after we've been living next door to them for a decade.

'Anyway, 'e rang.' She said, lighting an invisible cigarette and flicking invisible hair - hers is shorn above her ears like early Mia Farrow and she has ten studs up her ear. Her son learned to count by pointing to them one by one.

'And...'

'He wondered if I wanted to visit 'im in Norway.'

'But you're not going, are you..?'

'No, don't be silly. I met 'im at the clinic. Who knows what he 'ad.' She shuddered. 'I didn't even want to shake 'ands with him.'

There's something flawed in the logic here, but I'm darned if I can see what it is.

'Erm, pot calling...perhaps,'

'Don't be disgusting - I was there for work.'

I said nothing. If that's her excuse, then I'm not going to contradict her...

'Any anyway,' she said. 'it's cold in Norway now. Better to wait for the summer...'

Eating your heart out.

Louisa, who is reluctantly single at the moment, is sitting with me in the corner of Carluccio's listening to Mina sing Se Telefonando, which, given our conversation is particularly apt. Some divot she's been seeing has the habit of making arrangements with her then cancelling them at the last minute with a supermarket own range of ridiculous excuses that make 'the dog ate my homework' look credible.  The man has more migraines than a Victorian hysteric - and his latest coincided with a plan to come to her house for a meal that she had spent all day preparing.

'Why do you put up with it?' I ask, completely ignoring my own very poor form in the area of cancellitis.

'Well I like him when he does turn up,' she says, cutting the lemon tart that has been placed in front of her like a huge, friendly, yellow sun into four gooey quarters.

'He's using you to keep his options open,' I say ruthlessly. 'You should bin him.'

'I know. I just don't know why we let these losers toy with us,' she answers, spooning a sliver of golden custard into her mouth.

'Because nobody else wants to play with us, that's why?' I sigh, digging my own fork into my half.  We're sharing.  It's faintly pathetic that two grown, very grown, women can't even have a whole ruddy lemon tart to themselves.

I tell her that I've developed a new strategy that invokes an altar ego who is a cross between Marjorie Scardino and Mariella Frostrup - a sort of  SUPERMARION.  

SUPERMARION does not hide under the desk at Pedantic Press, but instead is a highly efficient executive who has been eagerly headhunted by a top city bank that still has some funds in the vault. (As opposed to real Marion who shops as Morrisons.)

SUPERMARION also drives a very expensive silver German car and always finds a parking place which beeps like a microwave when the M&S 'Count-on-us' cook chill is ready as she reverses seamlessly into the parking space that always appears miraculously just where she wants it, rather than driving to another postal district and simply waiting till she hears the clunk of the neighbouring car's fender before she brakes.  She has toned upper arms and can wear sleeveless shift dresses without the need for a cardie. Her feet are moulded like Barbie's into high-heel shapes. She can probably ride horses (in stiletto riding boots).  SUPERMARION is a natural sun-bleached blonde and always looks like she has just left the hairdressers and she never, ever has lipstick on her teeth or loses her sock in the legs of her jeans.  She has read the entire Orange longlist.  Already.  She probably has a ruddy book on it as well. Her fingers self-manicure.  She can speak in public without stammering and blushing.  She can, actually, just speak in sodding public and she definitely doesn't have a Scottish accent, though if she did she would sound soothing and sleepily seductive like Kirsty Young. SUPERMARION thinks hips are something you make tea out of, and even if she had them, their only use would be to balance perfect sprog no 2 on as she straps no 1 into the Merc, who she had (without pain relief) when my youngest was starting secondary school.

'In short, SUPERMARION is absolutely nothing, nada, niente, ma shi like real Marion,' I say, looking at Louisa pointedly.  'And there is no way she would sit around at home at night with a pheasant in the oven and a plate of home-made pistachio meringues that she's cooked for a man who just cancelled ten minutes earlier by text because "his grandmother-in-law has been taken to hospital" .  Nor does she simply shrug and say, "oh never mind, I like him," and give him another chance!'

Louisa looks unconvinced.  'But he's so interesting.  I always feel I can tell him anything when I see him.'

'So why don't you start by telling him he's an unreliable prat [I called around the office for alternatives to the noun I had originally chosen that is more often used to describe something you hold to open a door, but twit and wally were the best we could come up with] when you see him, and that he's not fit to wipe your Le Creuset casserole with?  Nobody should have to bother with this sort of nonsense.'

SUPERMARION, you see, she just wouldn't put up with that and you shouldn't either.  Do you think people don't return Caroline Michel's text messages?  Do you think people blow off Gail Rebuck for lunch without even calling on the basis that "well, she hadn't confirmed"?  Tell me, really, really, really, would Sam Taylor-Wood do internet dating and let fat men who describe themselves as "athletic' and "someone interested in all that London has to offer" flick past her picture?  Would Nigella sit for five minutes listening politely to a man who thinks listing his DVDs merits a conversation?'

'Yes, but I'm hardly...'  she begins her own list of her perceived imperfections.  I stop her.

'That's beside the point.  You have to put more value on yourself.'

'So, does it work?'

'What?'

'The whole SUPERMARION thing?'  She has the eager to hear the good news look on her face of a child who still believes that there are fairies who deliver coloured paper to your bedroom while you sleep (I know - it's odd, but nevertheless, my children were charmed by the paper elves until they were at least 19).

'Erm, well it's still in its infancy.' I confessed.  'It's a work in progress.  I spent the other evening listening to a monologue about what a guy did over the weekend in real time.  I put the phone down, poured a glass of wine and came back and he was still talking.  And he didn't ask me a single question about myself.  You know, it's only a theory as yet...'

'I wish I could wear sleeveless dresses,' she said wistfully, scraping the last drop of yellow custard from the plate.  'I'm thinking of going to a health farm.  SUPERLOUISA would be the kind of woman who worked out and still buys her clothes in the children's department.  I've been eating so much junk recently.  Karl (her five year old son) only eats fishfingers and there isn't anyone to cook for.'

'I had half a packet of chocolate chip cookies for supper last night.'  I confess.  I'm in no position to judge. 

'I had five pistachio meringues and a bar of chocolate.'  She said ruefully.

'So what are you having tonight?'  (We're scintillating conversationalists...Mariella watch your back).

'... oh leftover pheasant.'  she sighed wearily.  'I bet you SUPERLOUISA never eats leftovers.'

Face it girls.  SUPERLOUISA never eats.  Full stop.

phone silence

I was wondering aloud in the office about someone who had sent me several emails at the beginning of the week and then suggested we meet up for a drink one night after work. I replied saying yes and...

well nothing.

Not a peep.

No thing.

Was it something I said? I reread the email to see if I had unwittingly mentioned a membership for the National Front, but my reply seemed okay to me.

'Oh don't worry, he's probably just gone away on business,' said one. Yep, to a country where there is no internet access.

'Or he's busy.' How busy can he be - is he running UNESCO in his spare time?

'You don't go to the trouble of asking someone out and then just go quiet (Oh yes - in my world that's exactly what you do). Give him a chance.'

'It'll be fine.'

'Yes, it's fine.'

'Yeah, you'll hear from him.'

and then in unison: 'Well, unless he's read your book.'

If he has - he's the only ruddy one!

Fodder

Everybody's wading  into Julie Moanerson which can only bode well for her book sales.

Someone at the Standard rang me up and asked me if I wanted to don my wellies and jump into the shallows and  recount the terrible goings on of my own feral kids for a modest fee and a little plug for my book.

I used to read her Guardian weekend column the way some people enjoy porn – relishing the all-too familiar aspects of dysfunctional family life with a sense of horrified relief and schadenfreude, while guiltily acknowledging that other people were being exploited for my viewing pleasure.

But I still wouldn't want to enter into a kicking competition with her - frankly, I don't have a welly to stand on.  I have to sheepishly admit that I too have pimped out my family in print – but those days are long gone. At dinner the other night my youngest daughter fixed me with her gimlet, black-lined eyes and announced that people who write about their kids without telling them are disgusting.  I had a horrible suspicion she was talking about my Weekend Guardian Article which, gulp, I hadn’t actually mentioned .

'Don’t worry, you didn't say anything remotely Meyerson about the kids though,' my ex admitted, grudgingly - it was after all about the futility of trying to date as a single parent who lives with children - I don't think he feels it should be an option.  Idid try very hard not say anything that would be too humiliating for anyone concerned.  Unfortunately, I didn't reckon on the sub's idea of a supposed ironic headline.

So much for that, then.

Having a dig at your kids for profit or therapy is an  unequal fight and one in which the parent-as-hack can too easily become a bully to a child who has no voice and no platform and who has put you in a position of trust.   But it’s so tempting  As a writer –you hit the mother-lode when it comes to material – especially if you’re looking for black humour.

The family is supposed to be a safe place in which we learn about fairness and injustice and how to behave in the wider world – how to hate, how to love, how to forgive, and how to fit into society.  It seems a betrayal when this supposedly safe place becomes a stage on which our every foible is illuminated  It’s like living with the Stasi if everything we do is recorded and then, worse, relayed to the not-so great British Public. If  my parents had chosen to broadcast my own reckless adolescent behaviour I would have been mortified, and as a supposed adult with all my own hideous secrets and mistakes – I certainly wouldn’t like to be scrutinised in a column called Living with Crap Parents as written by my kids.

When I saw some or my ‘family sayings’ on my son’s Facebook page under the headline ‘Mother’s PC Moment’ I wanted to die of embarrassment.  I learned quickly – quotations work both ways.  I still itch to write about my teenage kids, but people in glass houses really should put up curtains and be careful when they open them. If I don’t want to read about my own less than textbook behaviour in a newspaper – why should they?   My eldest daughter has also two unpublished novels under her bed.  I really don’t want to be one of the characters.

In any case the Standard pulled the proposed story after the second shooting in Germany.

I can just imagine the next phone call.

‘Marion, I’m just wondering - do any of your kids have access to firearms?'

Absolutely not, but either way – if they did it seems like a jolly good reason not to write about them…

Sober words

Last Thursday saw me jetting up to Glasgow on National Book Day where I was due to meet with some book groups who had been reading my novel in Hillhead Library.  I was deathly afraid that nobody would come and it would be just me, the librarians, and a man in a bunnet asleep in the corner sheltering from the cauld.  Being Scotland there was, at least, a wide range of baked goods of the Mr Kipling variety being served with tea - which was probably a bigger draw than me - but I still kept counting the chairs anxiously, praying that someone would turn up.

A friend who lives nearby rolled and I became so excited I was chattering on as though I had been wound up and had to recite 10,000 words before the next crank, quickly filling her in on the events of the two years since we last met.  Babies (hers) were displayed on iPhones, husbands (mine) and their absence (yup, me again) were discussed,  and my nerves were further jangled by the addition of. caffeine in a frighteningly smart cafe that would rival Ottolenghi.

Thankfully a few other people did arrive - a very nice group of variously aged middle-class Glesgie women, a clutch of librarians (despite being one, I don't know what the collective noun is for the species - a carrel maybe, or a shelf?) who filled the chairs nicely and one man - who I eyed cautiously as, of the few men who have read the book and not married me (very small sample) most of them haven't liked it.

Then I had to read aloud.

I haven't read aloud since my kids were small and they weren't a very tough audience.  Mostly they were held captive under severely tucked in sheets and duvets (it's the Scottish way - you are pinned to submission under blankets, escape unwise due to the absence of  central heating) and were bored to somnolence within ten minutes - or pretended to be, just to get rid of me - even when I did the voices.  Especially when I did the voices, come to think of it.  I know the Scottish accent is supposed to be reassuring and ideal for call centres but it doesn't go down that well when you're doing bed-time stories and trying to sound Swiss for Heidi.  Two of my favourite books as a child were the very old fashioned Children of the New Forest and The Little White Horse (the latter having been made, or murdered, into a film called The Secret of Moonacre last year).  Oh God, the mangled vowels as I tried to sound English while my kids, who had books on tape dripped into their ears like warm almond oil from an early age narrated by actors with fully dramatised sound effects, and further handicapped by old fashioned language that they didn't understand:

'He was one of those who had joined the king's army with the other verderers and keepers.'

'Ma, what's a vederur?' 

'Why is he in an army?'

'What's he keeping?'

Sigh.  The expression on their faces was akin to those being tortured by Vogons.

Do you want to practice on me?' asked my film director friend who trains actors.  'Three words a second and don't speak for any longer than five minutes would be my advice.'

I passed on the free voice coaching, did the maths and chose a Scottish chapter, to make the diction easier.  At work I locked myself in the loo and muttered as I timed myself while people stood outside the door thinking that a homeless person had holed up inside with half a bottle of meths.  Now there's an idea...

At least with a home crowd they do speak the same language so an interpreter was not necessary, but I was still strangled with fear. After about two years I finally came to the end of the passage, eyeing the audience warily, hoping that none of them hated the book.  I was particularly worried about the man.

But we Scots do have manners and they gave me a polite round of applause and we all drank tea and ate Garibaldis.

It was difficult to know who was the more relieved.

Photo Shot

I'm having a day of  arts and crafts which was supposed soothe me and drag me away from the television that, as my friend Rosie says (and I have ripped this off from her) is beginning to mock me and so has lost the ability to comfort me, but then the darn paper won't stick and the end boards have warped and the guillotine has, like me, lost its edge and so I have ended up abandoning the project for the moment.

I had a photographer from the Guardian here yesterday morning taking a picture that's supposed to accompany an article they are publishing next week about the difficulties in 'dating' (God I hate that word) when you live with your kids.  It's not that it happens very often that I get the chance to say casually to someone: 'Oh why not come round for a drink.'  However, even when it does I'm never here alone, though I always seem to be here alone the rest of the time.  Or as good as.  The youngest rarely leaves her bedroom except to roll her eyes at me and maybe slam a door or two, but that doesn't mean that even if I had someone to drag into my own bedroom and lock the door that I could.    It's a moot point in any case.  Never going to happen.  Not even looking.  But it made a funny article.

So there's the photographer at 11am asking me if she can take a picture of me lying on my bed.

No.

I haven't made it.  It's pink and the sheets are orange, so No.  I am not Paula Yates.  And NO.

Okay then, apparently it's me posing at a table set for a romantic dinner for two looking glum.

A romantic dinner?  What you mean like the one I had at the Godfather's place last week with the champagne and the candles that was followed 8 days later with an email saying he was spending the weekend with his 'long-term squeeze'?  (I seem fated only to meet men who are already involved but like to keep their balls in the air anyway which, I can only assume, is the only way they seem to know they have any).

We set it up.  I got out the bottle of Bolly from the fridge where it will be vinegar before there's an occasion sufficiently celebratory to merit opening it, and I stood at the table looking glum.

Erm, you look too happy.

I modified my expression.

Now you look suicidal - can we go for something in the middle?

I tried again.

Nope, radiant.  She showed me the picture at the back of the camera - if I looked that nice in real life I would definitely be opening the Bolly.  It's a lovely picture.

Yeah, but it's not glum.  Try again.

Nope even more radiant - lovely supper in the oven and you're going to eat it all yourself, sod men, who wants them...  Try rueful.

How the * do you do rueful?  Acting is not my forte...  I thought about the missed weekend in the Cotswolds due to two tablespoons of snow.

Pissed off, really pissed off.  You want to try for glum but pretty.

I posed again.

Nope truly radiant, couldn't give a stuff that you're eating alone, perfectly happy, not a care in the world.

I started to laugh.

Now you just look delighted.

I couldn't keep a straight face and all subsequent pictures made me look deranged.

Let's have one final crack at it.  Think of something sad.

Plenty of choice there, so I did - the phone never rings.  I'm looking at another weekend sitting in the house with a teenager who hates me.  I have no life.  I have no money.  I have no cleaner (she quit two days earlier).  I have a hole in my ceiling.  My ex-father in law has been in town for a week and never expressed an interest in seeing me despite having been my family for 25 years. It's like the Wheel of Misfortune.

I think we've got it, she said, finally.

Do I look glum enough?

No, she said, You look wistful, but that'll have to do.

She packed up her camera and I drove her off to the tube station and I took myself off to work.

The minute I arrived in the office I took off my coat and hung it in it's usual place on the back of my chair.

'Oh, look at you in your red polka dot dress (new from LK Bennett on its first outing).  You look just like Minnie Mouse,' said Fran.

If only the photographer had been there to capture that moment.

Glum.  Definitely, absolutely, positively really, really glum...

Guys and Russian Dolls

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.