Festive Season Sanity Challenges:
1/ Trying to get Mariah Carey's 'All I Want for Christmas is Yooooooooo-oo-oo (Baby)' off the permanent loop in my brain from 1st December onwards.
2/ Trying not to explode with rage when a schoolchum that I haven't seen more often than about 6 times in the last 20 years insists on still sending me her annual Christmas card. This doesn't even feature 'To Alex' at the top, and contains nothing other than whatever pre-printed greeting came on the card, and a list of her family's names.
I now know that she's had a son since she sent me this maddening waste of time and money last year, but only because there's a new name on the listing. What. Is. The. Point? Much as I think the dreadful annual catch up round robins, detailing every trivial fact of family life over the last year, are the work of solipsistic maniacs, at least they're making the effort. To have no message at all, not even 'hope to see you next year', or 'hope you're well' just makes a mockery of the idea that you're 'keeping in touch via Christmas cards'. I almost feel like crossing out their names, adding mine in and sending it back to her. Through my office post room, so it doesn't even have a proper stamp on it.
3/ Going shopping down Oxford Street on the Saturday in December when they've pedestrianised the whole thing. I was nearly reduced to rocking in a corner in John Lewis, whispering, 'The horror, the horror' like a Christmas Kurtz after one particularly traumatic queueing incident. The only bright spot was seeing a whole bunch of Chinese people dressed in Santa outfits (no idea why) and knowing I've got a long weekend off so I didn't have to blitz the whole thing in one day. How on earth the 95% of men who do all their shopping on Christmas Eve manage without having a breakdown is anyone's guess. Why they'd do it more than once is surely a subject for our nation's top boffins.
4/ Coping with the idea that you must see all your friends before Christmas. What's wrong with a get together in January? January is a hopelessly dull month. No-one has any money, (this year we're being paid on the 18th December. The 18th! How long is January going to feel, when we don't get paid till the 26th!)
I'm a firm believer in keeping most of my friends entirely separate, an idea fostered when I first moved to London and only knew three people, so had to eke out social occasions in a very miserly fashion. I combine this with a strict regime of telly watching at home on my own (at the moment, nothing gets in the way of me watching Spooks and True Blood on a Wednesday. I don't have any sort of recording device - heck, I hardly even have a TV - so 'appointment to view' it must remain). This idea that my diary must suddenly be rammed with social gatherings for the entirety of December causes me to develop near-agoraphobia and engenders a strong desire to spend as much of the weekend as possible under the duvet, with the electric blanket on, surrounded by books, magazines and newspapers with only the occasional foray outside for a cup of coffee and some bacon for a bacon sarnie.
I love my friends, I'd just rather see most of them in January, when I'm no longer straining under the weight of sausage rolls, mince pies and far too much chocolate and slurring my way through my fourth glass of mulled wine. And there's nothing on the telly. So don't be offended if I refuse an invite - I'll actually be much better company after Christmas. And really, no Christmas cards. I gave up sending them years ago, under a cloak of 'eco-friendliness' (aka 'chronic idleness'), so I'll be more than happy with an email. Or a text. Or just the idea that if we're friends, then we know that we both wish for a very happy Christmas for each other.
Wednesday 9 December 2009
Friday 20 November 2009
Scent of a Woman
This week saw me at fabulous cocktailerie The East Room for a wine tasting in conjunction with perfumier Miller Harris, of whom I'm a huge fan (those beautiful bottles! The lovely names! The fact that they don't even advertise at all, therefore can never have simpery Keira Knightley trying to flog me their wares!) Seemed like a bit of an odd tie-up, but actually it worked very well. It seemed to work better as the evening went on, largely because I hadn't had much lunch, there wasn't any food on offer (what with it being a wine tasting evening an' all), throwing it away seemed wasteful (a current obsession) and so I got fairly hammered.
High points of the evening - the friend who'd invited me meeting me at Old Street station, having been to Selfridges and annointed herself with a large spritz of rival perfume maven Jo Malone's fabulously saucy Pomegranate Noir. And brandishing a massive, very distinctive bag of said product, which luckily all the Miller Harris staffers were too polite to mention. Then having the MH perfume that I usually wear described by one of their reps as being 'buttoned-up sexy', which elicited a huge laugh from both my friend and I, before we both agreed that it was an entirely accurate description of me. I promptly ordered another bottle, and plotted how to make the specs-and-cardi librarian look the most desirable thing since the Jimmy Choo collection for H&M during 2010.
High points of the evening - the friend who'd invited me meeting me at Old Street station, having been to Selfridges and annointed herself with a large spritz of rival perfume maven Jo Malone's fabulously saucy Pomegranate Noir. And brandishing a massive, very distinctive bag of said product, which luckily all the Miller Harris staffers were too polite to mention. Then having the MH perfume that I usually wear described by one of their reps as being 'buttoned-up sexy', which elicited a huge laugh from both my friend and I, before we both agreed that it was an entirely accurate description of me. I promptly ordered another bottle, and plotted how to make the specs-and-cardi librarian look the most desirable thing since the Jimmy Choo collection for H&M during 2010.
Thursday 19 November 2009
Modern Conundrums
There are, of course, important things going on in the world which I should care about (war, famine, the question of why my windows have sounded as though they're going to get blown in at about 5am every day for the last fortnight), but these are not the things that keep me awake at night. Well, apart from the force 10 gales, if you still count 5am as 'night', but that's a side issue.
No, here are the conundrums that are currently fuddling my wee brain:
1/ Why have all ad execs seemingly decided that Kevin Spacey is the most effective person at convincing us to buy stuff? He's not. I know he's doing Sterling Work for British Theatre and all that (though personally, I haven't seen a single production of his in all the time he's been in charge of the Old Vic), but do none of his clients do a vox pop round their office before signing him up for undoubtedly sky-high fees and ask, 'Do you find Kevin Spacey a tiny bit creepy?'
It's because most of his best performances have been playing creeps. Tremendously convincingly. I'm sure he's a very nice man, but I don't know him, so I'm left with his film performances, which often revolve around him either killing people, wanting to kill people or making you think that he should have been in a film in which he killed people. (He would have been awesome in Con Air, for example). So next time you've got a fairly pricey, upmarket item to shill, please ask another A-lister to do it. I don't approve of George Clooney doing those Nespresso ads (N'Espresso? Nes'Presso? Feels like it needs an idiotic apostrophe in there, to go with their monumentally moronic scripts), but at least I'm not left feeling like he'd come round my house and torture me in six different ways using only dental floss if I don't buy one of the eco-murdering machines.
2/ Why has Gordon Ramsay decided that he's suddenly going to start pronouncing the word restaurant, 'rest'runt'? It annoys me every time I watch The F-Word. As does him ending every sentence with 'yeah?' and that maddening jiggly thing he does when he's introducing the dishes he's demoing in his kitchen. Stop bouncing up and down, Gordon, yeah? You're making me want to twat you over the head with a frying pan just to make you stand still. If you need to burn off some energy, then go and run another marathon or something. Or take your kids to the park. They probably haven't seen you since 2007 and could do with the quality time.
3/ While we're on the subject of cuisine, when did it become mandatory for TV to treat cooking, and specifically being/trying to be a chef, as though it's more hardcore than a six-month tour of Helmand? 'COOKING DOESN'T GET ANY TOUGHER THAN THIS!' bellows over-toothed billiard ball Gregg Wallace on Masterchef, in an effort to distract attention from the fact he has no opinions and merely describes the ingredients of any dish proferred. Contestants get sent off for a day-long tour of duty in some poncey eatery, the aim of which seems to be to break their spirits and reduce them to a puddle of neurotic jus as rapidly as possible.
In one episode, the wannabes weren't allowed to either time what they were cooking or test it in any way other than by squeezing it to judge whether it was rare, medium rare or totally screwed. Which meant that a lot of quails, pigeons and other small bits of fowl were chucked straight in the bin, turning me into the sort of person who gets all huffy in the Daily Mail. I failed to see what any diner was getting out of this approach, other than being horrified by the waste and realising that was what was pushing the cost up, if they'd been allowed to go backstage in the theatre of war of cooking. Perhaps for the next series, Masterchef could combine the two and remake M*A*S*H. Arf.
4/ When did telly become so self-important? The Voice of God pronouncements on X-Factor ('IT'S OLLY MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURS!'), the status of Simon Cowell as more important than Gordon Brown and the cultural implications of Dannii Minogue's hairstyle are now going head to head with I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. I saw a trail before the series started, which boldly declared, 'Watch history in the making!' I must've missed the episode where Katie and Peter dismantled the Berlin Wall before tucking into a delicious supper of kangaroo's 'nads and deep fried black widow spiders.
It's a shame, really, that watching most of these shows is a requirement of my job (no, honestly, it is) and thus I feel as though I'm morphing into a member of the baying hordes, throwing verbal cabbages at the screen in recognition of The X-Factor as the modern equivalent of the stocks, unable to offer a meaningful opinion on the current political landscape, but an instant expert on all things singing, dancing, cooking and anything else you can vote on.
I've stopped short of actually voting thus far, but I can't help feeling it's only a matter of time. At which point it's probably a good idea to apply for the last series of Big Brother and become a poacher-turned-gamekeeper Z-list celeb myself - complete with lucrative book deal, spin-off series about opening up a pet shop in Chelsea and the obligatory News of the World spread about how I've had a romp with Russell Brand. Which at least sounds more glamorous than a phone interview with Woman and Home, which was what a colleague was trying to persuade me to do yesterday. Woman and Home? I'm still raging against the dying of the light by listening to Radio 1 and reading Heat - please don't tell me I'm now the target market for Woman and bloody Home. Bugger Big Brother, it might have to be Simon and his 'Overs' that I throw myself at next year...
No, here are the conundrums that are currently fuddling my wee brain:
1/ Why have all ad execs seemingly decided that Kevin Spacey is the most effective person at convincing us to buy stuff? He's not. I know he's doing Sterling Work for British Theatre and all that (though personally, I haven't seen a single production of his in all the time he's been in charge of the Old Vic), but do none of his clients do a vox pop round their office before signing him up for undoubtedly sky-high fees and ask, 'Do you find Kevin Spacey a tiny bit creepy?'
It's because most of his best performances have been playing creeps. Tremendously convincingly. I'm sure he's a very nice man, but I don't know him, so I'm left with his film performances, which often revolve around him either killing people, wanting to kill people or making you think that he should have been in a film in which he killed people. (He would have been awesome in Con Air, for example). So next time you've got a fairly pricey, upmarket item to shill, please ask another A-lister to do it. I don't approve of George Clooney doing those Nespresso ads (N'Espresso? Nes'Presso? Feels like it needs an idiotic apostrophe in there, to go with their monumentally moronic scripts), but at least I'm not left feeling like he'd come round my house and torture me in six different ways using only dental floss if I don't buy one of the eco-murdering machines.
2/ Why has Gordon Ramsay decided that he's suddenly going to start pronouncing the word restaurant, 'rest'runt'? It annoys me every time I watch The F-Word. As does him ending every sentence with 'yeah?' and that maddening jiggly thing he does when he's introducing the dishes he's demoing in his kitchen. Stop bouncing up and down, Gordon, yeah? You're making me want to twat you over the head with a frying pan just to make you stand still. If you need to burn off some energy, then go and run another marathon or something. Or take your kids to the park. They probably haven't seen you since 2007 and could do with the quality time.
3/ While we're on the subject of cuisine, when did it become mandatory for TV to treat cooking, and specifically being/trying to be a chef, as though it's more hardcore than a six-month tour of Helmand? 'COOKING DOESN'T GET ANY TOUGHER THAN THIS!' bellows over-toothed billiard ball Gregg Wallace on Masterchef, in an effort to distract attention from the fact he has no opinions and merely describes the ingredients of any dish proferred. Contestants get sent off for a day-long tour of duty in some poncey eatery, the aim of which seems to be to break their spirits and reduce them to a puddle of neurotic jus as rapidly as possible.
In one episode, the wannabes weren't allowed to either time what they were cooking or test it in any way other than by squeezing it to judge whether it was rare, medium rare or totally screwed. Which meant that a lot of quails, pigeons and other small bits of fowl were chucked straight in the bin, turning me into the sort of person who gets all huffy in the Daily Mail. I failed to see what any diner was getting out of this approach, other than being horrified by the waste and realising that was what was pushing the cost up, if they'd been allowed to go backstage in the theatre of war of cooking. Perhaps for the next series, Masterchef could combine the two and remake M*A*S*H. Arf.
4/ When did telly become so self-important? The Voice of God pronouncements on X-Factor ('IT'S OLLY MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURS!'), the status of Simon Cowell as more important than Gordon Brown and the cultural implications of Dannii Minogue's hairstyle are now going head to head with I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here. I saw a trail before the series started, which boldly declared, 'Watch history in the making!' I must've missed the episode where Katie and Peter dismantled the Berlin Wall before tucking into a delicious supper of kangaroo's 'nads and deep fried black widow spiders.
It's a shame, really, that watching most of these shows is a requirement of my job (no, honestly, it is) and thus I feel as though I'm morphing into a member of the baying hordes, throwing verbal cabbages at the screen in recognition of The X-Factor as the modern equivalent of the stocks, unable to offer a meaningful opinion on the current political landscape, but an instant expert on all things singing, dancing, cooking and anything else you can vote on.
I've stopped short of actually voting thus far, but I can't help feeling it's only a matter of time. At which point it's probably a good idea to apply for the last series of Big Brother and become a poacher-turned-gamekeeper Z-list celeb myself - complete with lucrative book deal, spin-off series about opening up a pet shop in Chelsea and the obligatory News of the World spread about how I've had a romp with Russell Brand. Which at least sounds more glamorous than a phone interview with Woman and Home, which was what a colleague was trying to persuade me to do yesterday. Woman and Home? I'm still raging against the dying of the light by listening to Radio 1 and reading Heat - please don't tell me I'm now the target market for Woman and bloody Home. Bugger Big Brother, it might have to be Simon and his 'Overs' that I throw myself at next year...
Thursday 29 October 2009
Age Before Beauty
So, in true Carrie style, 'I got to thinking...' (when plastered on a bottle of red the other night, obviously - usually I never think of anything much, other than what to have for lunch - please say it's macaroni cheese day in the canteen; what excuse I should afford myself for not going to the gym and whether or not going out with a vampire is a good idea when you work in a bar and he can only go out after dark, thus affording you few opportunities to hang out much together - yes, True Blood is my new guilty pleasure TV).
Back to the point (I'll endeavour not to sprinkle this diatribe with too many tortured metaphors and similes, a la Ms Bradshaw) - my drunken thoughts turned to age. Is it just a number? Maybe it is. Maybe you can define whoever you are and whatever age you're at these days with a blithe shrug. But I think, as a woman, you can't actually. There are a whole set of prejudices that come along with your late 30s if you're female. Look at all the dating sites if you don't believe me. You'll see legions of men approaching 40 with not-very-much-of-their-own-hair left (best not look to see if they have their own teeth), professing to like 'going out as much as they like staying in', declaring that they want to go out/stay in (remember, they really like doing both! Wow, imagine finding someone like that! They sound absolutely unique!) with women who're between 20 and 30. Because presumably they think 20-30 year old women haven't heard the alarming, Big Ben-style ticking of the biological clock and therefore aren't thinking about marriage, babies, commitment and all those other curtailing-of-your-bachelor-lifestyle things. And these women would simply love to go out with a (probably) balding man who's (undoubtedly) lied about his height and has so little imagination that he thinks that declaring that he spends his time oscillating between the twin excitements of going out and staying in qualifies him as having some sort of character or personality.
I've got to question whether they're even telling the truth on this most basic of points. Because I might be going to the wrong bars (it's not beyond the realms of possibility - my usual haunts being the gloriously cheesy Be@1 in Balham, with occasional forays to The Loft in Clapham), but I never meet any men who are over 28 in these places. Really, you'd think there was some sort of age limit enforced by doormen in London bars. Where are all the over-30s blokes? Where do they all hang out? Are they in some men-only bunker, laughing at how they're denying 30+ women an opportunity to meet them? Guffawing at their own bachelor ingenuity? Because they're not out in any kind of 'talking to available women over 30' way that I can ascertain.
I haven't been chatted up by a man over the age of 28 in about the last three years. And the last one who did (41), I've been emailing on an almost daily basis since I met him in January, we've been on three outings which may or may not have qualified as dates (the first one definitely did, the latter two were very vague on that front) and he still hasn't so much as raised an eyebrow at me. And yes, as far as I know, he's single, straight, thinks I'm funny, clever and pretty enough not to get a job as a witch (long story), but is clearly hell bent on being very platonic friends.
Back to the question - is age important? I've got female friends who are in a panic about turning 30 (they're 28). I'd kill to have my 30s again; I never thought of 30 as a terrifying signpost that, once reached, defined you as either 'On the Road to Pastville' or 'Turning Left for Desperate Town' . There wasn't anything, personally or career-wise, that I thought I should have achieved. I certainly didn't feel in any way old until this birthday. This year, I'm properly staring 40 in the face. I've got a year till I'm officially going to be middle aged - if I assume I'll make it to 80. I'm lucky in that I never wanted or felt that I had to get married or have kids (I've always believed I'll get married at 80, in a nursing home, and have 18 blissful months with a man named Harry before he shuffles off this mortal coil - as men die earlier than women - leaving me back with my cat again until I cark it).
So, there's no biological imperative to get anything done, and no social pressure to get hitched. Far from it - lots of my most long-standing female friends are part of the army of long-term singles running to the loo every time it comes to the 'throwing the bouquet' moment at the cavalcade of weddings they have to attend. On their own, because we 'understand that numbers are tight'. Have you met Sarah's boyfriend of three months? Either of you? No, thought not, and yet, there he is, taking up one of the famously hard-won spots at your nuptials. Sometimes a platonic plus one, for much-needed support, would be a very generous gesture to a singleton with no hope whatsoever of copping off at a wedding.
I suddenly feel that if you're a woman and you're 40 (even if you don't look or feel it), it's vastly different going out and being (or saying you're) 35, or 37. You can look 'amazing for your age', or even just a straightforward 'hot' (get drunk, don't divulge your age to 27 year old men, choose bars with dim lighting and 'ironic' 80s soundtracks. They think it's hilarious that you know all the words to 'Don't You Want Me Baby', you think, 'Oh God, that was my early relationships'.) At 40, you spend a lot of time doing the maths. 'I could properly be your Mum', you think, as you're snogging a bloke and debating the pros and cons of taking him home. (Although actually this has already happened to me - three years ago at a party, when I found myself snogging a 20 year old. I told him how old I was, and he professed not to care. I really don't know how Demi Moore does it, mind. I felt like at any moment a reporter from the Daily Mail was going to shop me for being a pervert).
Is it unnecessary to feel a tiny bit desperate when you're at parties with all these 20-somethings (with girls who all seem to be unfeasibly tall, with amazing hair and legs that go on for days, in their teetery heels and with an air of insouciant confidence) and you're hoping someone might fancy you? 'I can pay for a taxi!' you shout into a young man's ear, proving what an independent woman you are (certainly this is the approach to take if you want to conform to the popular stereotype of that predatory female the Cougar). But I'm not a Cougar. God no. My favourite item of clothing is a cardigan. Cougars wouldn't be seen dead in a cardigan. I've got friends who've been on those Cougar websites - they said that all the 20-something men were really handsome, with impeccable manners. But I can't shake the inequality of it. The feeling that they're going to ask you about the 'good old days', when people had to arrange to be somewhere without the aid of a mobile phone and when businesses thought the height of modernity was a smudgy fax. It's like being an artefact on Time Team.
I've come to the conclusion that what I'm after is a 30-something chap unburdened by divorce courts, alimony payments or overly-bacheloric mates, who doesn't think I'm desperate for babies (for which just read 'desperate') or massively inferior to some lithe 25 year old. In short (probably very short - men seem to have shrunk these days on top of everything else), I think I want the 21st century equivalent of Julia Child's husband, Paul, as played by Stanley Tucci in Julie and Julia. Julia Child was, by her own admission, somewhat of a galumpher, being 6' 2", a truly massive woman with, if one's to believe Meryl Streep's performance in the film, and why wouldn't you, she's Meryl frickin' Streep, accents are what she does, a swoopily weird voice and an eccentrically huge personality to match her giant stature.
She got married pretty late for a woman in the 1940s (she was 34) and managed to find a man who clearly adored, supported and indulged her, no matter how loopy she appeared to the rest of the world. When Paul toasted her at one party as 'the butter on my bread' in the film, you could feel a whole cinema-full of women going, 'Ahh'. Perhaps I need to stop making cupcakes and perfect my duck a l'orange after all.
Back to the point (I'll endeavour not to sprinkle this diatribe with too many tortured metaphors and similes, a la Ms Bradshaw) - my drunken thoughts turned to age. Is it just a number? Maybe it is. Maybe you can define whoever you are and whatever age you're at these days with a blithe shrug. But I think, as a woman, you can't actually. There are a whole set of prejudices that come along with your late 30s if you're female. Look at all the dating sites if you don't believe me. You'll see legions of men approaching 40 with not-very-much-of-their-own-hair left (best not look to see if they have their own teeth), professing to like 'going out as much as they like staying in', declaring that they want to go out/stay in (remember, they really like doing both! Wow, imagine finding someone like that! They sound absolutely unique!) with women who're between 20 and 30. Because presumably they think 20-30 year old women haven't heard the alarming, Big Ben-style ticking of the biological clock and therefore aren't thinking about marriage, babies, commitment and all those other curtailing-of-your-bachelor-lifestyle things. And these women would simply love to go out with a (probably) balding man who's (undoubtedly) lied about his height and has so little imagination that he thinks that declaring that he spends his time oscillating between the twin excitements of going out and staying in qualifies him as having some sort of character or personality.
I've got to question whether they're even telling the truth on this most basic of points. Because I might be going to the wrong bars (it's not beyond the realms of possibility - my usual haunts being the gloriously cheesy Be@1 in Balham, with occasional forays to The Loft in Clapham), but I never meet any men who are over 28 in these places. Really, you'd think there was some sort of age limit enforced by doormen in London bars. Where are all the over-30s blokes? Where do they all hang out? Are they in some men-only bunker, laughing at how they're denying 30+ women an opportunity to meet them? Guffawing at their own bachelor ingenuity? Because they're not out in any kind of 'talking to available women over 30' way that I can ascertain.
I haven't been chatted up by a man over the age of 28 in about the last three years. And the last one who did (41), I've been emailing on an almost daily basis since I met him in January, we've been on three outings which may or may not have qualified as dates (the first one definitely did, the latter two were very vague on that front) and he still hasn't so much as raised an eyebrow at me. And yes, as far as I know, he's single, straight, thinks I'm funny, clever and pretty enough not to get a job as a witch (long story), but is clearly hell bent on being very platonic friends.
Back to the question - is age important? I've got female friends who are in a panic about turning 30 (they're 28). I'd kill to have my 30s again; I never thought of 30 as a terrifying signpost that, once reached, defined you as either 'On the Road to Pastville' or 'Turning Left for Desperate Town' . There wasn't anything, personally or career-wise, that I thought I should have achieved. I certainly didn't feel in any way old until this birthday. This year, I'm properly staring 40 in the face. I've got a year till I'm officially going to be middle aged - if I assume I'll make it to 80. I'm lucky in that I never wanted or felt that I had to get married or have kids (I've always believed I'll get married at 80, in a nursing home, and have 18 blissful months with a man named Harry before he shuffles off this mortal coil - as men die earlier than women - leaving me back with my cat again until I cark it).
So, there's no biological imperative to get anything done, and no social pressure to get hitched. Far from it - lots of my most long-standing female friends are part of the army of long-term singles running to the loo every time it comes to the 'throwing the bouquet' moment at the cavalcade of weddings they have to attend. On their own, because we 'understand that numbers are tight'. Have you met Sarah's boyfriend of three months? Either of you? No, thought not, and yet, there he is, taking up one of the famously hard-won spots at your nuptials. Sometimes a platonic plus one, for much-needed support, would be a very generous gesture to a singleton with no hope whatsoever of copping off at a wedding.
I suddenly feel that if you're a woman and you're 40 (even if you don't look or feel it), it's vastly different going out and being (or saying you're) 35, or 37. You can look 'amazing for your age', or even just a straightforward 'hot' (get drunk, don't divulge your age to 27 year old men, choose bars with dim lighting and 'ironic' 80s soundtracks. They think it's hilarious that you know all the words to 'Don't You Want Me Baby', you think, 'Oh God, that was my early relationships'.) At 40, you spend a lot of time doing the maths. 'I could properly be your Mum', you think, as you're snogging a bloke and debating the pros and cons of taking him home. (Although actually this has already happened to me - three years ago at a party, when I found myself snogging a 20 year old. I told him how old I was, and he professed not to care. I really don't know how Demi Moore does it, mind. I felt like at any moment a reporter from the Daily Mail was going to shop me for being a pervert).
Is it unnecessary to feel a tiny bit desperate when you're at parties with all these 20-somethings (with girls who all seem to be unfeasibly tall, with amazing hair and legs that go on for days, in their teetery heels and with an air of insouciant confidence) and you're hoping someone might fancy you? 'I can pay for a taxi!' you shout into a young man's ear, proving what an independent woman you are (certainly this is the approach to take if you want to conform to the popular stereotype of that predatory female the Cougar). But I'm not a Cougar. God no. My favourite item of clothing is a cardigan. Cougars wouldn't be seen dead in a cardigan. I've got friends who've been on those Cougar websites - they said that all the 20-something men were really handsome, with impeccable manners. But I can't shake the inequality of it. The feeling that they're going to ask you about the 'good old days', when people had to arrange to be somewhere without the aid of a mobile phone and when businesses thought the height of modernity was a smudgy fax. It's like being an artefact on Time Team.
I've come to the conclusion that what I'm after is a 30-something chap unburdened by divorce courts, alimony payments or overly-bacheloric mates, who doesn't think I'm desperate for babies (for which just read 'desperate') or massively inferior to some lithe 25 year old. In short (probably very short - men seem to have shrunk these days on top of everything else), I think I want the 21st century equivalent of Julia Child's husband, Paul, as played by Stanley Tucci in Julie and Julia. Julia Child was, by her own admission, somewhat of a galumpher, being 6' 2", a truly massive woman with, if one's to believe Meryl Streep's performance in the film, and why wouldn't you, she's Meryl frickin' Streep, accents are what she does, a swoopily weird voice and an eccentrically huge personality to match her giant stature.
She got married pretty late for a woman in the 1940s (she was 34) and managed to find a man who clearly adored, supported and indulged her, no matter how loopy she appeared to the rest of the world. When Paul toasted her at one party as 'the butter on my bread' in the film, you could feel a whole cinema-full of women going, 'Ahh'. Perhaps I need to stop making cupcakes and perfect my duck a l'orange after all.
Tuesday 29 September 2009
Choral Tributes
I learned not long ago that the music master at my old school had died. I remember Jack Hindmarsh with huge fondness - he was a massive Father Christmas of a man who used to run the choir at Haileybury. Pretty much everyone at the school was a member of the choir, regardless of singing ability (you didn't have to audition, which helped massively), from the Aled Jones-a-like 13 year olds up to sixth form blokes who were built like outhouses and spent most of the rest of their time beating each other up on rugby pitches. Everyone loved Jack - he always seemed to be smiling, was hugely enthusiastic and encouraging and rehearsals for school concerts constituted some of the few good times I had in my two years there.
Watching the BBC's The Choir made me think how lucky I was to have had such an inspiring person encouraging me to sing - and how many people will never have the chance to experience how amazing it feels to sing with a big gathering of other people, largely because they think, 'It's not for the likes of us'. I'd missed the previous series that Gareth Malone was on (I think it was encouraging dissafected teenaged boys to sing), but having watched the series, I think I might want to see him on TV at least once a week till the end of time.
The series didn't start out looking promising - after his previous efforts, Gareth had predictably received loads of letters asking him to come and help people to start up their own choirs. The one that caught his eye (for which read the producer's, but that's fine) was from a lady vicar called Pam, who was despairing about her run down and depressed-sounding community, South Oxhey. Off went Gareth and the film crew to check it out. It really did look rubbish - empty precinct in the centre of town, nothing much to do, people wandering around looking gloomy. Gareth's idea of starting up a community choir looked, to say the least, like a massive challenge.
Gareth, I think it's fair to say, looks like David Tennant's auburn-haired fifteen year old cousin attending a Harry Potter convention. Slight and posh, he's the kind of man whose jeans will always be indigo and well pressed, and who wears jackets and coats made of proper fibres like wool and tweed. Despite looking like he'd lose a fight to a bantamweight within the first twenty seconds, he's clearly made of stern stuff. He wanted this town to have something to be proud of, and a choir was it.
Off he went round the town, on his own, flyering like a madman and enquiring poshly of everyone he met if they liked to sing. 'No', appeared to be the most popular answer, followed by a look that suggested poor Gareth had taken leave of his senses to even ask. At the appointed hour for the inaugural meeting of the community choir in a hall somewhere in the town, tons of chairs had been optimistically laid out. I was worried twenty people were going to turn up and Gareth was going to cry (I spent most of the subsequent episodes worrying that no-one was going to turn up for things and that Gareth was going to cry; this possibly says more about the things that I've tried to organise in the past than it does about the denizens of South Oxhey. Or Gareth.) Something like 175 people turned up. 'Christ!' I shouted at the telly, 'that's fucking amazing!' Gareth looked stunned. Most people looked like they weren't entirely sure why they were there, but heck, they might get on the telly, and then they needn't bother coming back next week.
Gareth got them all singing a pop song. They seemed to like it. They still thought he was a posh nutter, but most of them were smiling shyly. I got a bit teary when recently widowed, and obviously cripplingly lonely, Fred said it was the best night he'd had for ages and he'd met some nice people. Gareth said he wanted them all to do a gig in the precinct, to involve the whole community in what they were doing. Predictably, there was a lot of muttering about how no-one would turn up and it would all fail dismally. But the brilliant thing was that nearly all of them turned up for rehearsal the next week - and kept on going. Fired up by a minor success in the precinct ('Nothing like this has ever happened in South Oxhey before!', which was to become a sort of motto for the show), Gareth unleashed his next plan: singing something classical, tricky, without any accompaniment, over six minutes long - and in Latin. More muttering (what is it about the British that makes them automatically assume they a/ can't do things and b/ if they try, it'll be shit, even when they've just been successful at something?), but Gareth was away. 'If I didn't think you could do it, I wouldn't have suggested it', he insisted. They had a few weeks and then they were going to do a proper concert - and in the meantime they were going to do their homework.
This involved Gareth going house to house with a portable keyboard and not only teaching people to sing, but giving them a few Latin lessons at the same time. Needless to say, they managed to pull it off and rebuilt their community in the process. New friendships had been established; single mothers had got closer to their daughters and felt that there was something in South Oxhey for them; Fred the lonely widower met a foxy lady who'd lost her husband and they went ballroom dancing - the whole thing had me reduced to messy floods of tears every week. It was bloody lovely. Gareth got a choir of school kids together. He managed to get Matty, a local boxer who dropped out of the choir after the first rehearsal, to gather together a group of burly blokes to come to the pub. He really, really wanted them to sing. They all look nonplussed, despite the fact I bet they'd all sing for 90 minutes solid if they went to a football match. They clearly thought it was gay. But somehow soon they were singing Oasis, and by the end of the episode they'd gone round a load of local pubs singing, and were fully signed up members of the Gareth Appreciation Society.
The final episode involved Gareth getting the choir a recording gig at Abbey Road and then organsing a festival - at which he'd bring the choir, the kids' choir and Matty's burly blokes together for a massive sing song. Now that was bloody incredible. Defying cynicism and the belief that loads of towns must have that 'nothing good ever happens here', they pulled it off - everyone, I suspect, having gone from trying hard because they wanted to please Gareth because he said he believed in them, to trying and working hard because they finally believed in themselves and they really wanted it to be bloody great.
What I found myself wondering when I was watching this was, in a community, do you need an outsider to inspire you and bring you together? Because if they were the same as you, why should you believe them - who the hell do they reckon they are to think that they can lead you? It made me sad that there must be loads of people trying to get local initiatives off the ground, which would have exactly this effect of bringing people together and making them feel positive about where they live (the old notion of 'civic pride', if you will) and failing because of our default setting of grumbling, whingeing gloom.
And then I thought, 'this is lovely, but what happens when Gareth goes back home? What are they going to do then? The choir will fall apart and they'll go back to how they were'. The council said they'd put in a choir master for a bit. But the choir didn't want that, they wanted Gareth - he knew them, he knew what they could do, and more important, they knew him. No one would be as good as him. A hundred and fifty people signed a petition to ask him to stay on - which finally reduced Gareth to tears. And he did decide to stay on. They're very lucky to have him and I think the BBC should start a cloning programme so that every major town can have a Gareth. Screw watching X-Factor, we should all be in a church hall, putting together a jazzy version of Walking on Sunshine - Britain would be a much better place.
Watching the BBC's The Choir made me think how lucky I was to have had such an inspiring person encouraging me to sing - and how many people will never have the chance to experience how amazing it feels to sing with a big gathering of other people, largely because they think, 'It's not for the likes of us'. I'd missed the previous series that Gareth Malone was on (I think it was encouraging dissafected teenaged boys to sing), but having watched the series, I think I might want to see him on TV at least once a week till the end of time.
The series didn't start out looking promising - after his previous efforts, Gareth had predictably received loads of letters asking him to come and help people to start up their own choirs. The one that caught his eye (for which read the producer's, but that's fine) was from a lady vicar called Pam, who was despairing about her run down and depressed-sounding community, South Oxhey. Off went Gareth and the film crew to check it out. It really did look rubbish - empty precinct in the centre of town, nothing much to do, people wandering around looking gloomy. Gareth's idea of starting up a community choir looked, to say the least, like a massive challenge.
Gareth, I think it's fair to say, looks like David Tennant's auburn-haired fifteen year old cousin attending a Harry Potter convention. Slight and posh, he's the kind of man whose jeans will always be indigo and well pressed, and who wears jackets and coats made of proper fibres like wool and tweed. Despite looking like he'd lose a fight to a bantamweight within the first twenty seconds, he's clearly made of stern stuff. He wanted this town to have something to be proud of, and a choir was it.
Off he went round the town, on his own, flyering like a madman and enquiring poshly of everyone he met if they liked to sing. 'No', appeared to be the most popular answer, followed by a look that suggested poor Gareth had taken leave of his senses to even ask. At the appointed hour for the inaugural meeting of the community choir in a hall somewhere in the town, tons of chairs had been optimistically laid out. I was worried twenty people were going to turn up and Gareth was going to cry (I spent most of the subsequent episodes worrying that no-one was going to turn up for things and that Gareth was going to cry; this possibly says more about the things that I've tried to organise in the past than it does about the denizens of South Oxhey. Or Gareth.) Something like 175 people turned up. 'Christ!' I shouted at the telly, 'that's fucking amazing!' Gareth looked stunned. Most people looked like they weren't entirely sure why they were there, but heck, they might get on the telly, and then they needn't bother coming back next week.
Gareth got them all singing a pop song. They seemed to like it. They still thought he was a posh nutter, but most of them were smiling shyly. I got a bit teary when recently widowed, and obviously cripplingly lonely, Fred said it was the best night he'd had for ages and he'd met some nice people. Gareth said he wanted them all to do a gig in the precinct, to involve the whole community in what they were doing. Predictably, there was a lot of muttering about how no-one would turn up and it would all fail dismally. But the brilliant thing was that nearly all of them turned up for rehearsal the next week - and kept on going. Fired up by a minor success in the precinct ('Nothing like this has ever happened in South Oxhey before!', which was to become a sort of motto for the show), Gareth unleashed his next plan: singing something classical, tricky, without any accompaniment, over six minutes long - and in Latin. More muttering (what is it about the British that makes them automatically assume they a/ can't do things and b/ if they try, it'll be shit, even when they've just been successful at something?), but Gareth was away. 'If I didn't think you could do it, I wouldn't have suggested it', he insisted. They had a few weeks and then they were going to do a proper concert - and in the meantime they were going to do their homework.
This involved Gareth going house to house with a portable keyboard and not only teaching people to sing, but giving them a few Latin lessons at the same time. Needless to say, they managed to pull it off and rebuilt their community in the process. New friendships had been established; single mothers had got closer to their daughters and felt that there was something in South Oxhey for them; Fred the lonely widower met a foxy lady who'd lost her husband and they went ballroom dancing - the whole thing had me reduced to messy floods of tears every week. It was bloody lovely. Gareth got a choir of school kids together. He managed to get Matty, a local boxer who dropped out of the choir after the first rehearsal, to gather together a group of burly blokes to come to the pub. He really, really wanted them to sing. They all look nonplussed, despite the fact I bet they'd all sing for 90 minutes solid if they went to a football match. They clearly thought it was gay. But somehow soon they were singing Oasis, and by the end of the episode they'd gone round a load of local pubs singing, and were fully signed up members of the Gareth Appreciation Society.
The final episode involved Gareth getting the choir a recording gig at Abbey Road and then organsing a festival - at which he'd bring the choir, the kids' choir and Matty's burly blokes together for a massive sing song. Now that was bloody incredible. Defying cynicism and the belief that loads of towns must have that 'nothing good ever happens here', they pulled it off - everyone, I suspect, having gone from trying hard because they wanted to please Gareth because he said he believed in them, to trying and working hard because they finally believed in themselves and they really wanted it to be bloody great.
What I found myself wondering when I was watching this was, in a community, do you need an outsider to inspire you and bring you together? Because if they were the same as you, why should you believe them - who the hell do they reckon they are to think that they can lead you? It made me sad that there must be loads of people trying to get local initiatives off the ground, which would have exactly this effect of bringing people together and making them feel positive about where they live (the old notion of 'civic pride', if you will) and failing because of our default setting of grumbling, whingeing gloom.
And then I thought, 'this is lovely, but what happens when Gareth goes back home? What are they going to do then? The choir will fall apart and they'll go back to how they were'. The council said they'd put in a choir master for a bit. But the choir didn't want that, they wanted Gareth - he knew them, he knew what they could do, and more important, they knew him. No one would be as good as him. A hundred and fifty people signed a petition to ask him to stay on - which finally reduced Gareth to tears. And he did decide to stay on. They're very lucky to have him and I think the BBC should start a cloning programme so that every major town can have a Gareth. Screw watching X-Factor, we should all be in a church hall, putting together a jazzy version of Walking on Sunshine - Britain would be a much better place.
Tuesday 1 September 2009
Momentous Occasion No. 2
I found my first grey hair. GAAAAAAAAAAAAH. Despite the fact I've been dyeing my hair ever since I left home, a grey hair has battled its way through. And not just one! I found two! So there it is, I'm now definitively old. This is horrible. Now I shall have to start bleating, 'But will it cover my little bit of grey?' every time I go to Boots for hair dye, like Davina's neurotic, unseen telephone mum on the Garnier ads. And someone with fewer grey hairs than me will have to laugh in a jolly, patronising way, and go, 'Yes, of course it will!' whilst swishing their shiny YOUNG hair at me. People from Garnier are paid to do that in Boots, it's just I've never seen them before. They only appear when you go grey.
Momentous Occasion No. 1
So, various momentous things have been happening at Purple Towers recently (sadly, this does not include me having built a time machine, travelled backwards and made a much better, wittier and more impressionful impression on David Mitchell at the book launch. Can't have everything). But the first is of a romantic nature.
It was a night much like any other. I and my friend were haring off on the Tube to go to a book event in Wood Green. Neither of us had ever been to Wood Green before (it won't surprise you to find out that it's neither green nor wooded) and were not well served by our Google Map. First of all, we headed downhill from the tube station towards a shopping centre. After 10 minutes' speed-walking, we looked at our Google Map. 'Curses!' we shouted, 'we've gone the WRONG WAY'. We set off back up the hill at quite a lick, chuntering at our bad judgement. After a fifteen minute walk which had landed us in the middle of a council estate, we decided that even though the bookshop address was 'Unit 1', which seemed to denote an industrial estate, it wasn't very likely to be here. Various locals looked a bit, well, muggery wouldn't be too outrageous a word to use. Especially when we asked them in Idiot Posh Girl voices if they knew where the book shop was. When we got as far as the police station, we thought we might do the sensible thing, and phone up the book shop to ask them where they were located. They had no idea where we were, but merrily said we should've gone down hill from the tube station.
Down hill we went, again, cursing some more. Fucking Google Maps. I mean really, the point of a MAP, Google, is to have the names of the streets on it, so you can tell where you're ruddy well going. Not, as you seem to want to do, you room full of lazy wankpots, to put some of the names on and leave the rest as some sort of exciting, cartographic game, wherein you fill in the names as you pass them. It turned out that we'd done our U-turn at almost exactly where the book shop was. If we'd been on the right side of the street and the book shop's sign had been right by the entrance to said street, we'd have been there first time round. 'Yes, we're late', we thought, 'and a bit puffed out and sweaty, but we can probably sneak in at the back. No one will be any the wiser'. Hmm, not to be on that front either. We had to tap surrepticiously on the shop's door to be granted entry. At which point we realised that the audience for the book event consisted of three people. Two of whom worked in the shop. Ah. Still, two's company, three's a crowd, eh? We sat down and put our listening faces on. And our 'yes, I'll volunteer!' faces on too, as the author, Richard, was demonstrating how con jobs work, as that's what his very excellent book, Conman, is all about.
Luckily, we are chums of Richard's, so the whole thing wasn't too awkward. Well, it wasn't too awkward for us, I'm not sure how Richard felt about it. Especially when I managed to reveal at the end that I also knew the other audience member. I'd been telling my sister, the film producer, that she should option Richard's book, and that coming along to the event would be the ideal way to get a flavour of it. She'd phoned earlier that afternoon, saying that she was going to be inconvenienced by meetings, but would send an emissary called Jamie along in her stead. When a question from Richard elicited the information that the young man sitting next to us worked in films, I thought it likely that this was Jamie. For some reason, he seemed somewhat surprised when I revealed who I was. Perhaps he was method acting 'being an unknown punter at a book event' and didn't like having his cover blown. I don't know. Anyway, The Book Shop Boys (the more literary side project of The Pet Shop Boys) made us all exceptionally welcome, and we had an impromtu lock-in. Much wine was drunk, and fun times were had, taking the piss out of some of the shop's offerings, including a tome entitled 'Why Men Love Bitches' (From Doormat to Dreamgirl - A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship).
The book shop had to shut. 'More booze!' we cried, racing off to the nearest tube station with one of the BSBs in tow. As it was quite late, we settled on Finsbury Park, as that was Jamie's manor, and he could find us a nice hostelry. We sat down with a variety of pints, glasses of wine, and a selection of crisps (referred to as 'bar salad' by my friend, which is genius and everyone must start referring to it as that). We engaged in more banter. We were all getting along terrifically well. 'I'm so glad I came out tonight!' I thought, as Richard and I got stuck into a very un-PC conversation about the Marchioness disaster (there'd been an article about it in the Observer). We were being quite vitriolic about bankers and 'beautiful people' (I know, I know, it's not their fault they had a lot of money and were trendy - it was properly horrific. I am a bad person.) I stopped, probably to have a bit of a laugh about my own awfulness. Then, and this is the momentous bit, the BSB looked me dead in the eye from across the table and solemly declared, 'I love you'. Not, 'Ha ha, I think I love you!' or 'Oh, did you write that book on why men love bitches, because, seemingly, I love you?' No. A proper, no messing about, 'I love you'.
The table descended into shouty turmoil. 'What? Why do you love me?' I shrieked. 'What did she say? WHAT DID SHE SAY?' demanded my friend. ('What did you say?' she asked me. 'I've no idea!', I replied.) Jamie was hooting with laughter. It'd been quite an odd evening for him already and this was upping the ante quite considerably. The BSB remained mute (with adoration? Or confusion that he'd said it out loud? It was hard to tell). He wouldn't give up his secrets.
'It's a bit of a shame', I thought, 'that the first man ever to say this to me is so catatonically drunk that he's just literally fallen off his chair.'
It was a night much like any other. I and my friend were haring off on the Tube to go to a book event in Wood Green. Neither of us had ever been to Wood Green before (it won't surprise you to find out that it's neither green nor wooded) and were not well served by our Google Map. First of all, we headed downhill from the tube station towards a shopping centre. After 10 minutes' speed-walking, we looked at our Google Map. 'Curses!' we shouted, 'we've gone the WRONG WAY'. We set off back up the hill at quite a lick, chuntering at our bad judgement. After a fifteen minute walk which had landed us in the middle of a council estate, we decided that even though the bookshop address was 'Unit 1', which seemed to denote an industrial estate, it wasn't very likely to be here. Various locals looked a bit, well, muggery wouldn't be too outrageous a word to use. Especially when we asked them in Idiot Posh Girl voices if they knew where the book shop was. When we got as far as the police station, we thought we might do the sensible thing, and phone up the book shop to ask them where they were located. They had no idea where we were, but merrily said we should've gone down hill from the tube station.
Down hill we went, again, cursing some more. Fucking Google Maps. I mean really, the point of a MAP, Google, is to have the names of the streets on it, so you can tell where you're ruddy well going. Not, as you seem to want to do, you room full of lazy wankpots, to put some of the names on and leave the rest as some sort of exciting, cartographic game, wherein you fill in the names as you pass them. It turned out that we'd done our U-turn at almost exactly where the book shop was. If we'd been on the right side of the street and the book shop's sign had been right by the entrance to said street, we'd have been there first time round. 'Yes, we're late', we thought, 'and a bit puffed out and sweaty, but we can probably sneak in at the back. No one will be any the wiser'. Hmm, not to be on that front either. We had to tap surrepticiously on the shop's door to be granted entry. At which point we realised that the audience for the book event consisted of three people. Two of whom worked in the shop. Ah. Still, two's company, three's a crowd, eh? We sat down and put our listening faces on. And our 'yes, I'll volunteer!' faces on too, as the author, Richard, was demonstrating how con jobs work, as that's what his very excellent book, Conman, is all about.
Luckily, we are chums of Richard's, so the whole thing wasn't too awkward. Well, it wasn't too awkward for us, I'm not sure how Richard felt about it. Especially when I managed to reveal at the end that I also knew the other audience member. I'd been telling my sister, the film producer, that she should option Richard's book, and that coming along to the event would be the ideal way to get a flavour of it. She'd phoned earlier that afternoon, saying that she was going to be inconvenienced by meetings, but would send an emissary called Jamie along in her stead. When a question from Richard elicited the information that the young man sitting next to us worked in films, I thought it likely that this was Jamie. For some reason, he seemed somewhat surprised when I revealed who I was. Perhaps he was method acting 'being an unknown punter at a book event' and didn't like having his cover blown. I don't know. Anyway, The Book Shop Boys (the more literary side project of The Pet Shop Boys) made us all exceptionally welcome, and we had an impromtu lock-in. Much wine was drunk, and fun times were had, taking the piss out of some of the shop's offerings, including a tome entitled 'Why Men Love Bitches' (From Doormat to Dreamgirl - A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship).
The book shop had to shut. 'More booze!' we cried, racing off to the nearest tube station with one of the BSBs in tow. As it was quite late, we settled on Finsbury Park, as that was Jamie's manor, and he could find us a nice hostelry. We sat down with a variety of pints, glasses of wine, and a selection of crisps (referred to as 'bar salad' by my friend, which is genius and everyone must start referring to it as that). We engaged in more banter. We were all getting along terrifically well. 'I'm so glad I came out tonight!' I thought, as Richard and I got stuck into a very un-PC conversation about the Marchioness disaster (there'd been an article about it in the Observer). We were being quite vitriolic about bankers and 'beautiful people' (I know, I know, it's not their fault they had a lot of money and were trendy - it was properly horrific. I am a bad person.) I stopped, probably to have a bit of a laugh about my own awfulness. Then, and this is the momentous bit, the BSB looked me dead in the eye from across the table and solemly declared, 'I love you'. Not, 'Ha ha, I think I love you!' or 'Oh, did you write that book on why men love bitches, because, seemingly, I love you?' No. A proper, no messing about, 'I love you'.
The table descended into shouty turmoil. 'What? Why do you love me?' I shrieked. 'What did she say? WHAT DID SHE SAY?' demanded my friend. ('What did you say?' she asked me. 'I've no idea!', I replied.) Jamie was hooting with laughter. It'd been quite an odd evening for him already and this was upping the ante quite considerably. The BSB remained mute (with adoration? Or confusion that he'd said it out loud? It was hard to tell). He wouldn't give up his secrets.
'It's a bit of a shame', I thought, 'that the first man ever to say this to me is so catatonically drunk that he's just literally fallen off his chair.'
Monday 17 August 2009
My weekend, or at least my Saturday, was a bit like that episode of Sex and the City when the unlikely quartet of friends hoofs off to the suburbs to see a friend who's had a baby. And are surrounded by Other Women With Babies. And there's a bit where someone puts a baby on a sofa next to Samantha, who merrily lets it slide off the sofa and clunk onto the floor. I spent years feeling like Samantha in this respect (certainly not in any other respect - imagine having that much sex, it'd be exhausting). I was totally phobic about babies - and they felt the same way about me. People would always be thrusting babies at me, assuming that because I'm female, and don't have any of my own, I'm desperate to 'have a cuddle'. The option was to take hold of the baby or let it drop on the floor (I found the latter didn't go down very well), so I'd grab it under the armpits, at which point the baby would scream its head off and I'd hand it back.
People refused to believe me when I said I was phobic about them (what if their neck snaps and their head falls off?), didn't like children and didn't want any. I don't know why people find this so hard to believe. Babies are boring. They are noise machines who also dispense noxious fluids. I'm sure it's lovely if you've had one, and congrats on that (current newspaper articles would seem to suggest that it's a miracle if you're over 35 and you've managed to successfully procreate), but it'd be great if I didn't have to interact with them till they can speak. I make an honorable exception for Sonny, the baby from the barge trip, who was a delight. A smiley little fellow, he was easily amused by A/ rocking about in his baby chair and kicking his legs like a footballer with epilepsy - I found I could rock the chair with my foot, whilst also reading the paper, which was a good start; B/ having faces made at him, or waving; C/ burbling any old nonsense at him in a googly voice. I monitored his mood by keeping a careful eye on the angle of his eyebrows: up or level was fine, but if they started to dip down in the middle, urgent action had to be taken - really intense faces and some manic burbling, or an appeal to his mum to come and fix him.
Saturday's selection of babies held no such joys - after a morning of unsuccessful burbling with one friend's baby, I moved onto a barbecue at which there was a selection of ankle biters. One baby bore an alarming resemblance to the baby in Trainspotting, that crawls across the ceiling when Renton is hallucinating. It had a disconcertingly massive head. It wasn't a good look. I tried to rescue it as it crawled through a selection of nuts, bolts, screws and washers that were lying around on the floor as various guests tried to actually assemble the barbecue in the sitting room. 'Don't want you swallowing any of those!' I thought (babies bring out my inner Disaster Monitor) and picked him up. He screamed like a malfunctioning car alarm. I hastily put him down. Luckily his mother appeared, and reassured me that he was 'a complete mummy's boy' and would scream if anyone went near him other than her, which, for the next two hours, proved to be irritatingly and ear-shatteringly true. I left suburbia later that night thanking God I could rush back to the city and my lovely, silent flat.
Sunday's children were much better. A few of us convened in a pub garden to belatedly celebrate my sister's birthday, as she's back from France for the weekend. Sonny was there - someone else was holding him, so I just had to tickle his feet. I was then ambushed by a pair of twins, who must've been about two and a half and appeared from nowhere. They were blonde and cherubic little boys, who offered me a shard of plastic that looked like part of a disposable fork, and an empty raisin box. I'll confess, I'm shameful when it comes to children: if they're pretty, cute and chatty, I like them. (Repeated exposure to children now most of my friends have them has mellowed me). Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that as a child I was chronically shy and looked like a bag of potatoes, I can't get along with the unchatty, lumpy ones. This is mainly because I've discovered that with small children, the key to engaging with them is just to ask them loads of questions. You start off with the easy stuff, like what's your name, and how old are you, and then you just ask them what they're doing, or how their toy works, or if their teddy has a name, and what their teddy likes doing. And then you carry on till one of you gets bored (it's generally them - they come to the conclusion that you're an idiot who doesn't know anything).
The boys decided the buttons on my cardigan needed sewing on with the plastic shard. Good start! I tried sewing on the buttons on one of their T-shirts (one was sporting a T-shirt with a campervan on it, the other some sort of skull with writing; at two and a half, they were more fashionable than I've ever been). The other one got a bit upset that he didn't have any buttons to sew on. 'Life's not all about buttons, kid', I told him. He looked bemused, and offered me a cigarette butt from the ground. I declined his kind gift, at which point his brother offered me one as well. I distracted them by giving them packets of sugar. Not a great gift, but then they had only given me a broken piece of plastic, a very small empty cardboard box, and two fag butts. I then caught sight of a drain with a perforated cast iron cover over it, ideal for posting leaves and other detritus down. Their father came by just as I was suggesting that they find things to offer to 'the drain god'. 'The drain god?!' he asked. 'Yes, the drain god', I replied, not to be deterred, making a scary face and going 'RAAAAR' at one of the boys. 'RAAAR' the boy replied, hitting me in the face. I realised I didn't really have anywhere else to go with that. It was starting to get a bit complex. Luckily at that point they decided they had urgent business elsewhere and ran off, possibly to converse with people who weren't going to make up complicated theological systems located in London's sewage networks.
Their mum wheeled them round in a double buggy to say goodbye when they left and I was kind of sad to see them go. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a two and a half year old and a lot more fun. After all, it's not every man who's going to go along with you when you suggest making sacrifices to underground deities you've randomly made up, more's the pity.
People refused to believe me when I said I was phobic about them (what if their neck snaps and their head falls off?), didn't like children and didn't want any. I don't know why people find this so hard to believe. Babies are boring. They are noise machines who also dispense noxious fluids. I'm sure it's lovely if you've had one, and congrats on that (current newspaper articles would seem to suggest that it's a miracle if you're over 35 and you've managed to successfully procreate), but it'd be great if I didn't have to interact with them till they can speak. I make an honorable exception for Sonny, the baby from the barge trip, who was a delight. A smiley little fellow, he was easily amused by A/ rocking about in his baby chair and kicking his legs like a footballer with epilepsy - I found I could rock the chair with my foot, whilst also reading the paper, which was a good start; B/ having faces made at him, or waving; C/ burbling any old nonsense at him in a googly voice. I monitored his mood by keeping a careful eye on the angle of his eyebrows: up or level was fine, but if they started to dip down in the middle, urgent action had to be taken - really intense faces and some manic burbling, or an appeal to his mum to come and fix him.
Saturday's selection of babies held no such joys - after a morning of unsuccessful burbling with one friend's baby, I moved onto a barbecue at which there was a selection of ankle biters. One baby bore an alarming resemblance to the baby in Trainspotting, that crawls across the ceiling when Renton is hallucinating. It had a disconcertingly massive head. It wasn't a good look. I tried to rescue it as it crawled through a selection of nuts, bolts, screws and washers that were lying around on the floor as various guests tried to actually assemble the barbecue in the sitting room. 'Don't want you swallowing any of those!' I thought (babies bring out my inner Disaster Monitor) and picked him up. He screamed like a malfunctioning car alarm. I hastily put him down. Luckily his mother appeared, and reassured me that he was 'a complete mummy's boy' and would scream if anyone went near him other than her, which, for the next two hours, proved to be irritatingly and ear-shatteringly true. I left suburbia later that night thanking God I could rush back to the city and my lovely, silent flat.
Sunday's children were much better. A few of us convened in a pub garden to belatedly celebrate my sister's birthday, as she's back from France for the weekend. Sonny was there - someone else was holding him, so I just had to tickle his feet. I was then ambushed by a pair of twins, who must've been about two and a half and appeared from nowhere. They were blonde and cherubic little boys, who offered me a shard of plastic that looked like part of a disposable fork, and an empty raisin box. I'll confess, I'm shameful when it comes to children: if they're pretty, cute and chatty, I like them. (Repeated exposure to children now most of my friends have them has mellowed me). Despite, or maybe because of, the fact that as a child I was chronically shy and looked like a bag of potatoes, I can't get along with the unchatty, lumpy ones. This is mainly because I've discovered that with small children, the key to engaging with them is just to ask them loads of questions. You start off with the easy stuff, like what's your name, and how old are you, and then you just ask them what they're doing, or how their toy works, or if their teddy has a name, and what their teddy likes doing. And then you carry on till one of you gets bored (it's generally them - they come to the conclusion that you're an idiot who doesn't know anything).
The boys decided the buttons on my cardigan needed sewing on with the plastic shard. Good start! I tried sewing on the buttons on one of their T-shirts (one was sporting a T-shirt with a campervan on it, the other some sort of skull with writing; at two and a half, they were more fashionable than I've ever been). The other one got a bit upset that he didn't have any buttons to sew on. 'Life's not all about buttons, kid', I told him. He looked bemused, and offered me a cigarette butt from the ground. I declined his kind gift, at which point his brother offered me one as well. I distracted them by giving them packets of sugar. Not a great gift, but then they had only given me a broken piece of plastic, a very small empty cardboard box, and two fag butts. I then caught sight of a drain with a perforated cast iron cover over it, ideal for posting leaves and other detritus down. Their father came by just as I was suggesting that they find things to offer to 'the drain god'. 'The drain god?!' he asked. 'Yes, the drain god', I replied, not to be deterred, making a scary face and going 'RAAAAR' at one of the boys. 'RAAAR' the boy replied, hitting me in the face. I realised I didn't really have anywhere else to go with that. It was starting to get a bit complex. Luckily at that point they decided they had urgent business elsewhere and ran off, possibly to converse with people who weren't going to make up complicated theological systems located in London's sewage networks.
Their mum wheeled them round in a double buggy to say goodbye when they left and I was kind of sad to see them go. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a two and a half year old and a lot more fun. After all, it's not every man who's going to go along with you when you suggest making sacrifices to underground deities you've randomly made up, more's the pity.
Neptune, whom Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge, informs me is the God of Water (my classical education's not up to much), has been attacking me repeatedly lately, despite me offering myself to him and his aqueous minions on the barge the other week (almost literally). Not only did the watery deity choose to shut off my shower just when I should've been sprucing up in order to try to snag myself a husband, but he also decided to hit me where it really hurts by breaking my loo.
A day and a night without water you can just about cope with (although when I found there was still no water when I returned, having failed to alter my spinster status, after my evening at the book launch, I was, I confess, reduced to tears of frustration and impotent rage). But a broken loo is really annoying, because it means you have to call out a plumber. Unless it's merely blocked, in which case you can try improvising a plunger with a deconstructed wire coathanger, which is what I once did when I was at uni. The other three girls I lived with squealed with horror, but I saved us the call out charge just by refusing to be totally squeamish, and was feted accordingly.
I suppose I could've dismantled my concealed cistern (turns out that the cistern is in no way as fancy as this suggests - it's just a normal cistern, but with the top taken off it, and a box built round it) and seen if I could fix the loo's flush system myself. But would I know what I was looking for? No, I would not. And of course I don't know any handy men who might know what was wrong with it, and how to fix it without paying £85, either. So, after a tip off from my colleagues that Rated People was the place to find a good plumber, I posted a request and sat back to wait for a Rated Person to contact me. This seemed a better option than phoning any of the frankly rubbish selection of personnel who've done things to my flat so far. (I have to put a cup under the pipework for the shower, as it's still leaking, despite two sets of builders/plumbers telling me it's fixed. The second lot jammed the bath panel back on, probably without even trying to fix the problem thinking that, what, all the water would just flood straight through the floorboards into the flat below, and I'd never find out till I suddenly crashed through the ceiling whilst mid-ablutions, like something out of a Benny Hill sketch?)
By some sort of miracle, having posted the ad on a Friday afternoon, on Saturday morning a man called Dave phoned me to see if he could come over right away (well, after he'd eaten a bacon sarnie his wife had made him - this insight into his domestic arrangements automatically made me like him) to price up the job. Within the hour, there he was, ready to quote. And he could come round on Friday afternoon. I sent a prayer of thanks to the interweb, and resigned myself to chucking buckets of water down the loo for a week. It's not that much of a hardship, but it makes you appreciate sanitation when you can effortlessly flush a loo. In these recessionary times, one should be pleased with any free pleasures, no matter how seemingly small.
Friday afternoon saw Dave arrive, fresh from a job in Blackheath. 'I've just had the most amazing 24 hours of my life', he announced as he tried to connect a fiddly pipe to my gas meter, to ensure I didn't have any leaks. (I'd taken the opportunity of getting him to connect my hob, which has been sitting there, unconnected and gathering dust because ANOTHER BLOODY BUILDER NEGLECTED TO DO WHAT HE SAID HE'D DO AND THEN DISAPPEARED for... well, let's say it's been a significant amount of time). 'Blimey', I thought, 'that's quite a claim'. 'Why, what's happened?' I asked. 'Well', he replied, 'I've got a daughter that I haven't seen since she was eight. And now she's 30. I've been looking for her for years. And I found her last night on Facebook. And I'm going to see her tonight!' Bloody hell! Imagine that! And they say the internet's no good for anything except porn! I somehow felt he should be telling everyone else in his family, and all of his friends, rather than me, a random stranger whose loo he was about to fix.
'Yeah,' he continued, 'I'm feeling a bit all over the place' (good to tell me this, just as he was about to start messing about with gas pipes). 'I've only ever cried four times in my life - once when my mum and dad died, once when my dog died and last night.' People reveal odd stuff to you sometimes, don't they? I kind of wanted to ask loads of questions, but it all felt too personal, so I left it, other than wishing him the best of luck when he left to go off and meet her. He said that she'd been looking for him too, which made me hopeful that the outcome would be positive and that she hadn't thought he'd just abandoned her, didn't care and that she never wanted to see him again. He disappeared in a flurry of winks, and told me he'd come back soon to fix my shower. For free.
Ha! In your face, Neptune.
A day and a night without water you can just about cope with (although when I found there was still no water when I returned, having failed to alter my spinster status, after my evening at the book launch, I was, I confess, reduced to tears of frustration and impotent rage). But a broken loo is really annoying, because it means you have to call out a plumber. Unless it's merely blocked, in which case you can try improvising a plunger with a deconstructed wire coathanger, which is what I once did when I was at uni. The other three girls I lived with squealed with horror, but I saved us the call out charge just by refusing to be totally squeamish, and was feted accordingly.
I suppose I could've dismantled my concealed cistern (turns out that the cistern is in no way as fancy as this suggests - it's just a normal cistern, but with the top taken off it, and a box built round it) and seen if I could fix the loo's flush system myself. But would I know what I was looking for? No, I would not. And of course I don't know any handy men who might know what was wrong with it, and how to fix it without paying £85, either. So, after a tip off from my colleagues that Rated People was the place to find a good plumber, I posted a request and sat back to wait for a Rated Person to contact me. This seemed a better option than phoning any of the frankly rubbish selection of personnel who've done things to my flat so far. (I have to put a cup under the pipework for the shower, as it's still leaking, despite two sets of builders/plumbers telling me it's fixed. The second lot jammed the bath panel back on, probably without even trying to fix the problem thinking that, what, all the water would just flood straight through the floorboards into the flat below, and I'd never find out till I suddenly crashed through the ceiling whilst mid-ablutions, like something out of a Benny Hill sketch?)
By some sort of miracle, having posted the ad on a Friday afternoon, on Saturday morning a man called Dave phoned me to see if he could come over right away (well, after he'd eaten a bacon sarnie his wife had made him - this insight into his domestic arrangements automatically made me like him) to price up the job. Within the hour, there he was, ready to quote. And he could come round on Friday afternoon. I sent a prayer of thanks to the interweb, and resigned myself to chucking buckets of water down the loo for a week. It's not that much of a hardship, but it makes you appreciate sanitation when you can effortlessly flush a loo. In these recessionary times, one should be pleased with any free pleasures, no matter how seemingly small.
Friday afternoon saw Dave arrive, fresh from a job in Blackheath. 'I've just had the most amazing 24 hours of my life', he announced as he tried to connect a fiddly pipe to my gas meter, to ensure I didn't have any leaks. (I'd taken the opportunity of getting him to connect my hob, which has been sitting there, unconnected and gathering dust because ANOTHER BLOODY BUILDER NEGLECTED TO DO WHAT HE SAID HE'D DO AND THEN DISAPPEARED for... well, let's say it's been a significant amount of time). 'Blimey', I thought, 'that's quite a claim'. 'Why, what's happened?' I asked. 'Well', he replied, 'I've got a daughter that I haven't seen since she was eight. And now she's 30. I've been looking for her for years. And I found her last night on Facebook. And I'm going to see her tonight!' Bloody hell! Imagine that! And they say the internet's no good for anything except porn! I somehow felt he should be telling everyone else in his family, and all of his friends, rather than me, a random stranger whose loo he was about to fix.
'Yeah,' he continued, 'I'm feeling a bit all over the place' (good to tell me this, just as he was about to start messing about with gas pipes). 'I've only ever cried four times in my life - once when my mum and dad died, once when my dog died and last night.' People reveal odd stuff to you sometimes, don't they? I kind of wanted to ask loads of questions, but it all felt too personal, so I left it, other than wishing him the best of luck when he left to go off and meet her. He said that she'd been looking for him too, which made me hopeful that the outcome would be positive and that she hadn't thought he'd just abandoned her, didn't care and that she never wanted to see him again. He disappeared in a flurry of winks, and told me he'd come back soon to fix my shower. For free.
Ha! In your face, Neptune.
Friday 7 August 2009
Not such a Homeric Odyssey after all...
Well, well, well - clearly I'm going to have to start believing in The Secret, or somesuch, because no sooner have I asked the Universe to deliver me David Mitchell, than the Universe... delivers me David Mitchell. I forwarded my friend Mary the Caitlin Moran article about what an uphill battle it is being a single girl about town when you're in your 30s. 'I met David Mitchell, for he is the flatmate of Robbie, who was at the drinks on Thursday [Mary had a birthday do in a pub, which I went to last week]. DM is a lot of fun – he should totally be your husband!', she replied. WHAT? How is that possible? That I am so few degrees of separation from D. Mitchell Esq? Extraordinary. She then went on to say that Robbie was having a book launch on Thursday, which DM was bound to be at, so did I want to go?
Much twittering (no, not that kind) in the office and discussion about whether this was 'stalky' or not. It was decided not. (Of course.) Perfectly reasonable that I should turn up to a launch party, be introduced by a mutual friend and then get on famously with the object of my affections. As long as I didn't get drunk and accidentally tell him I'd written a number of blogs about him, all would be fine.
The day, however, did not start auspiciously. I got up, thinking that I would spend some time crafting both hair and make-up in order to Look My Best (see Rule 3.4 of Being Single). I wandered casually into the bathroom and put on the shower. Splutter. Cough. Distinct lack of water. Eh? I tried the sink. Nada. The kitchen sink? Drier than the Kalahari. Oh God, what manner of fuckery was this? Had our water supply been shut off for some reason and no-one had told me? Were the Bachelor Gods smiting me in advance for the temerity I was showing in gate-crashing a party specifically to try to talk to one of their subjects? Gah. I unleashed some choice swearwords, and prepared to hit the gym for the first time in many months. Just to use the showers, mind.
I arrived at work to a barrage of questions: was I going to change my shoes before the party (yes, although God knows, men never notice your shoes unless they're gay); what was my opening line going to be (umm, 'They're not really going to close down The Observer, are they? It's the only decent Sunday paper available!' would probably go down OK? Topical and could segue into 'I really love your column!', etc); was I going to try to snog him (no! NO. God, no - how quickly would that make him totally head for the hills? Also, being that drunk would be a very bad idea indeed and would doubtless result in me falling over and taking half the rest of the bar with me, given the slightly perilous heels I was planning on wearing. Not a good first impression.)
My main worry was that I was going to get introduced to him, throw a glass of wine down his front and then turn into the female equivalent of Hugh Grant, swear profusely, blush madly and then tell him I’d written a blog about him, then run away crying. Leaving him thinking, ‘Who’s that mental girl? I’m glad I never have to see her again’.
So, with not a small amount of trepidation, I set off, fully frocked-and-heeled up, into yet another monsoon of biblical proportions. I had an umbrella, but had foolishly not brought a jacket. Curse these British 'summers'! Mary and I managed to get to the party without looking too much like drowned rats. The venue was very packed and very noisy. We established ourselves at the bar, and got introduced to two blokes by the author’s extremely enthusiastic agent. One of them immediately did a runner. The other took a shine to Mary, which was unfortunate, as he looked like the kind of man you wouldn't even want to share a bus stop with, let alone a drink (still wearing what can only be described as ‘a windcheater’, despite the fact that the bar was about 100 degrees; sweaty; comb-over hair; dodgy specs) and was one of those men who invades your personal space, then bores you to a slow death. We eventually shook him off. We drank several drinks, whilst keeping an eager eye out for DM. Eventually, we had news that he was at the other end of the bar. We were off!
We stationed ourselves carefully within his eyeline, and waited for him to come within range, much like a pair of hungry lionesses eyeing up a baby antelope. Finally, he was on his own! ‘GO!’ I shouted at Mary, who sprung into action, tapping him on the arm and engaging him in conversation. She was a pro. After much advice from all my friends to 'be yourself', and even 'be your wonderful, beautiful self' from my old flatmate (aww!), I sadly decided that the self that I would present was in fact my 18 year-old one: gauche, smiling like a simpleton and not really saying anything. It’s kind of difficult when the bar is so loud that most of the conversation involves one person saying, ‘What? Sorry?’, you repeat yourself three times and then the situation is reversed.
So, on the strength of this encounter, I won’t be marrying David Mitchell. He seems perfectly nice, and was quite smiley (although his look of abject horror when I asked for a glass of water when he offered me a drink led me to think that strategic teetotalism wasn't perhaps my wisest move after all), but Mary was finding it hard work trying to keep a conversation going with him, despite the fact that she's brilliantly funny, very cool and incredibly pretty. So he’s either not good at parties, not good with people he doesn’t really know, or just not good at conversation full stop. Oh well, I achieved my aim of speaking to him, rather than hiding in a corner and repeatedly wibbling, 'Oh God, I can't', so on that front it was a success. But equally, I'm rather sad that my Odyssey has ended so quickly, and with a somewhat damp squib-ish result (and with me having a total personality failure). On the plus side, if it's that easy to get the Universe to deliver celebrity men to your door, who can I target next? Suggestions on the back of a Peep Show script.
Much twittering (no, not that kind) in the office and discussion about whether this was 'stalky' or not. It was decided not. (Of course.) Perfectly reasonable that I should turn up to a launch party, be introduced by a mutual friend and then get on famously with the object of my affections. As long as I didn't get drunk and accidentally tell him I'd written a number of blogs about him, all would be fine.
The day, however, did not start auspiciously. I got up, thinking that I would spend some time crafting both hair and make-up in order to Look My Best (see Rule 3.4 of Being Single). I wandered casually into the bathroom and put on the shower. Splutter. Cough. Distinct lack of water. Eh? I tried the sink. Nada. The kitchen sink? Drier than the Kalahari. Oh God, what manner of fuckery was this? Had our water supply been shut off for some reason and no-one had told me? Were the Bachelor Gods smiting me in advance for the temerity I was showing in gate-crashing a party specifically to try to talk to one of their subjects? Gah. I unleashed some choice swearwords, and prepared to hit the gym for the first time in many months. Just to use the showers, mind.
I arrived at work to a barrage of questions: was I going to change my shoes before the party (yes, although God knows, men never notice your shoes unless they're gay); what was my opening line going to be (umm, 'They're not really going to close down The Observer, are they? It's the only decent Sunday paper available!' would probably go down OK? Topical and could segue into 'I really love your column!', etc); was I going to try to snog him (no! NO. God, no - how quickly would that make him totally head for the hills? Also, being that drunk would be a very bad idea indeed and would doubtless result in me falling over and taking half the rest of the bar with me, given the slightly perilous heels I was planning on wearing. Not a good first impression.)
My main worry was that I was going to get introduced to him, throw a glass of wine down his front and then turn into the female equivalent of Hugh Grant, swear profusely, blush madly and then tell him I’d written a blog about him, then run away crying. Leaving him thinking, ‘Who’s that mental girl? I’m glad I never have to see her again’.
So, with not a small amount of trepidation, I set off, fully frocked-and-heeled up, into yet another monsoon of biblical proportions. I had an umbrella, but had foolishly not brought a jacket. Curse these British 'summers'! Mary and I managed to get to the party without looking too much like drowned rats. The venue was very packed and very noisy. We established ourselves at the bar, and got introduced to two blokes by the author’s extremely enthusiastic agent. One of them immediately did a runner. The other took a shine to Mary, which was unfortunate, as he looked like the kind of man you wouldn't even want to share a bus stop with, let alone a drink (still wearing what can only be described as ‘a windcheater’, despite the fact that the bar was about 100 degrees; sweaty; comb-over hair; dodgy specs) and was one of those men who invades your personal space, then bores you to a slow death. We eventually shook him off. We drank several drinks, whilst keeping an eager eye out for DM. Eventually, we had news that he was at the other end of the bar. We were off!
We stationed ourselves carefully within his eyeline, and waited for him to come within range, much like a pair of hungry lionesses eyeing up a baby antelope. Finally, he was on his own! ‘GO!’ I shouted at Mary, who sprung into action, tapping him on the arm and engaging him in conversation. She was a pro. After much advice from all my friends to 'be yourself', and even 'be your wonderful, beautiful self' from my old flatmate (aww!), I sadly decided that the self that I would present was in fact my 18 year-old one: gauche, smiling like a simpleton and not really saying anything. It’s kind of difficult when the bar is so loud that most of the conversation involves one person saying, ‘What? Sorry?’, you repeat yourself three times and then the situation is reversed.
So, on the strength of this encounter, I won’t be marrying David Mitchell. He seems perfectly nice, and was quite smiley (although his look of abject horror when I asked for a glass of water when he offered me a drink led me to think that strategic teetotalism wasn't perhaps my wisest move after all), but Mary was finding it hard work trying to keep a conversation going with him, despite the fact that she's brilliantly funny, very cool and incredibly pretty. So he’s either not good at parties, not good with people he doesn’t really know, or just not good at conversation full stop. Oh well, I achieved my aim of speaking to him, rather than hiding in a corner and repeatedly wibbling, 'Oh God, I can't', so on that front it was a success. But equally, I'm rather sad that my Odyssey has ended so quickly, and with a somewhat damp squib-ish result (and with me having a total personality failure). On the plus side, if it's that easy to get the Universe to deliver celebrity men to your door, who can I target next? Suggestions on the back of a Peep Show script.
Tuesday 4 August 2009
More Toad of Toad Hall than Ratty...
It's hard to believe, but after only two and a half days on a barge, (the top speed for which, in case you don't know, is a mighty four miles an hour), and a day and a half off it, I still feel as though I'm tilting from side to side, which is most disconcerting. It feels rather like a hangover, but minus the attendant Fear that you've done something dreadful, which you can't remember, but you know that other people can, or said something offensive, which you equally have no recollection of, but which a vengeful 'friend' is going to post onto your Facebook wall for everyone to see. Although as I have about 2.4 friends on Facebook, that wouldn't necessarily bring my reputation crashing down around my ears.
The barge trip was with four other girls and was in honour of my sister's birthday. Although, carrying on the tradition of disastrous boating holidays undertaken by my family (of which more in a moment), my sister didn't actually make it aboard. She was summoned two days beforehand to France, where she is producing a film, in order to try to Sort Things Out. (Such is the lot of a producer). The film has thus far been blighted in myriad ways, the most impressive of which have been their lead actress pulling out two weeks before shooting was due to begin; half of the crew having to apply for Irish citizenship because of complicated funding issues; one of their leads getting swine flu just as he was about to fly out to France and their location, a wood full of well-established trees in full and glorious leaf, being reduced to a less aesthetically pleasing collection of stumps, with no warning, last month. I receive a text from her as we're handing the barge back on the Monday morning saying, 'I'm in an area of oustanding national boredom. It is pissing down with rain. I've eaten something that I've had an allergic reaction to, and I'm now wandering around with a face that looks like Raging Bull'. Poor thing!
So, yes, back to the boat. Much like Emma Kennedy's brilliant and pant-wettingly hysterical The Tent, The Bucket And Me, which details her family's disastrous attempts to go camping in the 70s, my family has quite a varied history with disastrous boating holidays in the 80s. We tried a motor boat on the Norfolk Broads, and a couple of barges round Oxfordshire. Our mishaps, in no particular order, included:
1/ Taking possession of the boat, driving out of the boatyard and then deciding to moor up about an hour and a half later. None of the four adults on board (including my dad and my uncle, both of whom had reached senior positions in the army) could work out how to turn off the engine. As this was pre-mobile phones, we thus had to spend an hour and a half motoring back to the boatyard. Where a despairing man rolled his eyes extravagantly, pushed a button somewhere on the boat's dashboard and our motor stopped.
2/ Finding a lovely spot to moor up and my uncle inadvertently hammering the mooring post into an underground wasps' nest. Much stinging of all aboard, including Daisy the spaniel who'd come on holiday with us. This caused her to have the runs all over the boat once we'd all gone to bed. My sister, naturally, had no idea of this until she ventured to the loo, in the dark, without any slippers on...
3/ Getting rope tangled round the propeller. My uncle did what is still referred to by the whole family as A Very Brave Thing and disappeared into the murky depths clutching a bread knife between his teeth to try to cut us free. He failed, and we had to call out an emergency frogman, in full wetsuit, flippers and snorkel garb.
4/ Nearly killing our French exchange boy. My uncle and cousin took him out in a dinghy, which promptly capsized, trapping him under the sail. He really nearly drowned.
5/ Going under a very low bridge, and knocking all the deckchairs that we'd balanced on the back of the boat straight into the canal, never to be seen again.
6/ Crossing a very choppy stretch of water, and smashing half the glasses and crockery in the boat's sink.
7/ Taking a tin of maggots on board, because someone thought we might do some fishing (to my knowledge, no-one in my family had ever fished before, nor have they since). Putting said maggots in the fridge, because the cold would... I've no idea what the reasoning was. Managing to leave the tin lid ever so slightly ajar (so they didn't suffocate? Maybe). Realising, when awoken by small wriggly things dropping into your hair from the ceiling whilst you were lying in bed, that the maggots had escaped the tin, the fridge and the kitchen area as a whole, and were, lemming-like, all making for one end of the boat. Panicking. Waking up the other adults, and trying your best to sweep all the maggots off the side of the boat and into the water with a broom, without waking up the children. Going into the children's rooms, flicking on the lights and frantically checking for maggoty activity, whilst telling the youngsters that there was a swarm of mosquitoes on board, and they wanted to make sure there weren't any in here. Reassuring them that everything was fine, absolutely fine, yes, go back to sleep, no need to worry. Realising in the morning that the spag bol that you'd made for next day's lunch, for 8 people, and that you'd left in the fridge, was somewhat tarnished by having maggots rampaging through it, building themselves up for The Big Push. Throwing the spag bol promptly over the side, thus affording the local fish the biggest free lunch they'd had in many a year.
So, it's fair to say that I was a bit apprehensive about getting on a boat again, especially when the girls merrily declared that I was the expert, as I'd house-sat for my friend Jess when she lived on a barge (that, I was swift to point out, was entirely stationary, and the only challenge I'd faced was trying to get a pill down her cat every day). Yes, I'd been out on Jess's barge a couple of times, but it was a long time ago, and I was never allowed near the steering mechanism. Plus, you know, there'd been men aboard, so I'd left most of the tricky stuff to them. The boatyard man giving us the lesson on steering, locks and how to turn the boat around looked a bit worried. It might have had something to do with the fact that one of us was wearing Strictly Come Dancing-style silver sandals, and one was holding a four month-old baby. We looked like some sort of Channel 4 reality show on dim-witted city dwellers who'd decided to downsize in search of a life filled with bucolic charm.
He took us through starting the engine, stopping the engine and where to fill up with water. He showed us how to flush the loos. He pointed out the fridge, the cooker and the 12-volt hairdryer. He gave us a pair of windlasses for cranking lock gates, and a mallet and a couple of mooring pegs. We started the engine, cranked our way through a lock, turned the boat around and came back through the lock. He told us you have to steer the opposite way to the way you want to go, and that it was best to stick in the middle of the canal, as it's very shallow and it's not the easiest thing in the world to move 15 tons of metal when your propeller is jammed in the mud. He told us that you can only turn around at certain places and roughly where that would be on our trip. And that was it. We were off!
I promptly refused to do any steering, volunteering for lock and chain-bridge action (there are quite a lot of these - basically you have to pull a big chain, it goes up like Tower Bridge, you and a friend sit on either side of it like a see-saw to keep it up, then let it go crashing down and jump back on the boat), throwing of ropes and getting of glasses of wine. I knew it couldn't last, but I was determined to avoid crashing into things for as long as possible. Sadly, when there are only five of you aboard, and one of them has to spend quite a lot of time breastfeeding a baby, you eventually have to take a turn at steering.
I managed to avoid it till about lunchtime on Saturday, by which time it was pissing it down with rain in an almost biblical way. We'd moored up for lunch, then discovered halfway through that we were drifting backwards at quite a rate, having come totally unmoored. (Good job that hadn't happened at night). So I was already feeling a bit nervous. 'Come on', I thought, 'can't be that tricky, you've just got to concentrate'. I rapidly remembered why I gave up any attempt to learn how to drive at 18, as I steered totally the wrong way, panicked, and drove straight into a tree, in full view of an angler and his son. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to untangle the boat, whilst the angler helpfully told us that it was shallow at the sides, and deeper in the middle of the canal. I tried to shimmy down the side of the boat (there's a running board that's about two inches wide) to get the big pole that was on the top of the boat, that I could gondolier us off the bank with. And promptly got attacked by a swan that'd sidled up next to us. It hissed at me in that famous, 'I'm going to break your arm!' way that they have. I shrieked and leapt back into the boat. I screamed at it to fuck off, and told it that I didn't give a toss if it belonged to the Queen, I'd kill it and roast it if it didn't leave me alone. It hissed some more and followed us for three miles, in a quietly menacing fashion.
I managed to steer for about three minutes at a time, if I concentrated really really hard, and moved at the slowest pace possible (my constant cry every time I was required to take the tiller was, 'Can you make it go any slower?!', as someone else had to do the gears for me.) Going round corners utterly defeated me, as did any sort of 'getting the boat near to the bank so that someone can get off and do a lock' manoeuvre. If I couldn't park my mum's Renault when I was 18, there was no way I was going to be able to park 50-foot of cast iron, steering the opposite way to that in which you wish to go. It's a total headfuck. We were passed by a boatload of men wearing Hawaiian shirts on a stag do. We were passed by another boatload of blokes all dressed as pirates. The girls at the front of the boat beamed at them. 'Do you need rescuing?' they chortled cheekily. I panicked as their boat came past us with four foot to spare and drove us straight into another bank.
Anyone who thinks that life aboard a barge is all 'messing about on the river' should really try it. Your shoulders end up in agony because you're reaching behind you to steer, constantly correcting the boat and it's really bloody heavy. Plus if you're not that tall, you have to stand on tiptoes to see over the end of the boat to try to ascertain where you're going and if you're in a straight line. Cranking open the sluice gates on the locks requires some pretty serious biceps and then you have to give the gates a huge shove to get them open and closed. Then you have to contend with the fact that the sleeping arrangements are somewhat challenging. I spent the first night trying to sleep in the top bunk, which I only realised once I was wedged into it was quite a tight fit for an undernourished eight year-old, let alone an overnourished 38 year-old. Like an aquatic Goldilocks, I decided to try out the lower bunk for the other two nights, which was marginally wider, but did have a bit of a coffiny feel to it.
Still, it is good fun. You meet a lot of very smiley people. You also, if you're mean types like us, laugh at the barge pros, who all look like characters in a Mike Leigh film. The women all have big droopy boobs and look like they should be called Maureen. The men are either entirely spherical, with Captain Birdseye beards, or weedy, henpecked sorts who look like Nigels. Every time we started to get a bit misty-eyed about how lovely it was to move at such a slow speed, and really take in everything around us (fields, ducks, trees, cute cottages with thatched roofs), we'd shriek, 'Yes, but think of how DROOPY YOUR BOOBS WOULD BE if you lived on a barge!', cackle wildly and go back to talking about property prices and having to attend church in order to get your kids into the right school. I got confused by a sudden outbreak of sunshine on Sunday, and managed to get a hopelessly chavvy cleavage sunburn because I hadn't put on any suncream, having spent all of the previous day under a mammoth golf umbrella, wearing a huge waterproof coat and barely being able to see through the driving rain.
The British countryside really is beautiful. We stopped off at a village to have tea and to buy sausages for supper. I saw the most idyllic cottage, which had hollyhocks and a plethora of other flowers in the garden, as well as a thatched roof. 'Look at this, it's gorgeous!' I said. 'Hmm, this place is a bit Midsomer Murders, if you ask me', said one of the other girls darkly, alarmed by the village's manicured perfection. Well, I liked it.
We managed to return the boat to the yard unscathed. We hadn't dropped the baby over the side. We'd only broken two wine glasses, and we hadn't been attacked by maggots. We'd played two games of Trivial Pursuit from 1980 (that's quite confusing, when there are vaguely 'topical' questions, by the way). We'd turned the boat round with help from a lovely Captain Birdseye. We'd laughed our heads off at a family that included a granny sporting a minidress and cycling shorts and a bouffant hairpiece, who had clearly been an early adopter when it came to facelifts. I had been a kind of Tourette's version of Rosie and Jim, swearing every time I had to negotiate a row of parked barges, a bridge, a speed of more than half a mile an hour or a particularly moody swan. I'd also narrowly avoided falling in and being crushed by Helen driving the barge straight at me. I had extravagantly weird dreams, probably caused by claustrophobia. I'm hoping that when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will have stopped gently rocking and gradually morphing into Alison Steadman.
The barge trip was with four other girls and was in honour of my sister's birthday. Although, carrying on the tradition of disastrous boating holidays undertaken by my family (of which more in a moment), my sister didn't actually make it aboard. She was summoned two days beforehand to France, where she is producing a film, in order to try to Sort Things Out. (Such is the lot of a producer). The film has thus far been blighted in myriad ways, the most impressive of which have been their lead actress pulling out two weeks before shooting was due to begin; half of the crew having to apply for Irish citizenship because of complicated funding issues; one of their leads getting swine flu just as he was about to fly out to France and their location, a wood full of well-established trees in full and glorious leaf, being reduced to a less aesthetically pleasing collection of stumps, with no warning, last month. I receive a text from her as we're handing the barge back on the Monday morning saying, 'I'm in an area of oustanding national boredom. It is pissing down with rain. I've eaten something that I've had an allergic reaction to, and I'm now wandering around with a face that looks like Raging Bull'. Poor thing!
So, yes, back to the boat. Much like Emma Kennedy's brilliant and pant-wettingly hysterical The Tent, The Bucket And Me, which details her family's disastrous attempts to go camping in the 70s, my family has quite a varied history with disastrous boating holidays in the 80s. We tried a motor boat on the Norfolk Broads, and a couple of barges round Oxfordshire. Our mishaps, in no particular order, included:
1/ Taking possession of the boat, driving out of the boatyard and then deciding to moor up about an hour and a half later. None of the four adults on board (including my dad and my uncle, both of whom had reached senior positions in the army) could work out how to turn off the engine. As this was pre-mobile phones, we thus had to spend an hour and a half motoring back to the boatyard. Where a despairing man rolled his eyes extravagantly, pushed a button somewhere on the boat's dashboard and our motor stopped.
2/ Finding a lovely spot to moor up and my uncle inadvertently hammering the mooring post into an underground wasps' nest. Much stinging of all aboard, including Daisy the spaniel who'd come on holiday with us. This caused her to have the runs all over the boat once we'd all gone to bed. My sister, naturally, had no idea of this until she ventured to the loo, in the dark, without any slippers on...
3/ Getting rope tangled round the propeller. My uncle did what is still referred to by the whole family as A Very Brave Thing and disappeared into the murky depths clutching a bread knife between his teeth to try to cut us free. He failed, and we had to call out an emergency frogman, in full wetsuit, flippers and snorkel garb.
4/ Nearly killing our French exchange boy. My uncle and cousin took him out in a dinghy, which promptly capsized, trapping him under the sail. He really nearly drowned.
5/ Going under a very low bridge, and knocking all the deckchairs that we'd balanced on the back of the boat straight into the canal, never to be seen again.
6/ Crossing a very choppy stretch of water, and smashing half the glasses and crockery in the boat's sink.
7/ Taking a tin of maggots on board, because someone thought we might do some fishing (to my knowledge, no-one in my family had ever fished before, nor have they since). Putting said maggots in the fridge, because the cold would... I've no idea what the reasoning was. Managing to leave the tin lid ever so slightly ajar (so they didn't suffocate? Maybe). Realising, when awoken by small wriggly things dropping into your hair from the ceiling whilst you were lying in bed, that the maggots had escaped the tin, the fridge and the kitchen area as a whole, and were, lemming-like, all making for one end of the boat. Panicking. Waking up the other adults, and trying your best to sweep all the maggots off the side of the boat and into the water with a broom, without waking up the children. Going into the children's rooms, flicking on the lights and frantically checking for maggoty activity, whilst telling the youngsters that there was a swarm of mosquitoes on board, and they wanted to make sure there weren't any in here. Reassuring them that everything was fine, absolutely fine, yes, go back to sleep, no need to worry. Realising in the morning that the spag bol that you'd made for next day's lunch, for 8 people, and that you'd left in the fridge, was somewhat tarnished by having maggots rampaging through it, building themselves up for The Big Push. Throwing the spag bol promptly over the side, thus affording the local fish the biggest free lunch they'd had in many a year.
So, it's fair to say that I was a bit apprehensive about getting on a boat again, especially when the girls merrily declared that I was the expert, as I'd house-sat for my friend Jess when she lived on a barge (that, I was swift to point out, was entirely stationary, and the only challenge I'd faced was trying to get a pill down her cat every day). Yes, I'd been out on Jess's barge a couple of times, but it was a long time ago, and I was never allowed near the steering mechanism. Plus, you know, there'd been men aboard, so I'd left most of the tricky stuff to them. The boatyard man giving us the lesson on steering, locks and how to turn the boat around looked a bit worried. It might have had something to do with the fact that one of us was wearing Strictly Come Dancing-style silver sandals, and one was holding a four month-old baby. We looked like some sort of Channel 4 reality show on dim-witted city dwellers who'd decided to downsize in search of a life filled with bucolic charm.
He took us through starting the engine, stopping the engine and where to fill up with water. He showed us how to flush the loos. He pointed out the fridge, the cooker and the 12-volt hairdryer. He gave us a pair of windlasses for cranking lock gates, and a mallet and a couple of mooring pegs. We started the engine, cranked our way through a lock, turned the boat around and came back through the lock. He told us you have to steer the opposite way to the way you want to go, and that it was best to stick in the middle of the canal, as it's very shallow and it's not the easiest thing in the world to move 15 tons of metal when your propeller is jammed in the mud. He told us that you can only turn around at certain places and roughly where that would be on our trip. And that was it. We were off!
I promptly refused to do any steering, volunteering for lock and chain-bridge action (there are quite a lot of these - basically you have to pull a big chain, it goes up like Tower Bridge, you and a friend sit on either side of it like a see-saw to keep it up, then let it go crashing down and jump back on the boat), throwing of ropes and getting of glasses of wine. I knew it couldn't last, but I was determined to avoid crashing into things for as long as possible. Sadly, when there are only five of you aboard, and one of them has to spend quite a lot of time breastfeeding a baby, you eventually have to take a turn at steering.
I managed to avoid it till about lunchtime on Saturday, by which time it was pissing it down with rain in an almost biblical way. We'd moored up for lunch, then discovered halfway through that we were drifting backwards at quite a rate, having come totally unmoored. (Good job that hadn't happened at night). So I was already feeling a bit nervous. 'Come on', I thought, 'can't be that tricky, you've just got to concentrate'. I rapidly remembered why I gave up any attempt to learn how to drive at 18, as I steered totally the wrong way, panicked, and drove straight into a tree, in full view of an angler and his son. We spent the next 15 minutes trying to untangle the boat, whilst the angler helpfully told us that it was shallow at the sides, and deeper in the middle of the canal. I tried to shimmy down the side of the boat (there's a running board that's about two inches wide) to get the big pole that was on the top of the boat, that I could gondolier us off the bank with. And promptly got attacked by a swan that'd sidled up next to us. It hissed at me in that famous, 'I'm going to break your arm!' way that they have. I shrieked and leapt back into the boat. I screamed at it to fuck off, and told it that I didn't give a toss if it belonged to the Queen, I'd kill it and roast it if it didn't leave me alone. It hissed some more and followed us for three miles, in a quietly menacing fashion.
I managed to steer for about three minutes at a time, if I concentrated really really hard, and moved at the slowest pace possible (my constant cry every time I was required to take the tiller was, 'Can you make it go any slower?!', as someone else had to do the gears for me.) Going round corners utterly defeated me, as did any sort of 'getting the boat near to the bank so that someone can get off and do a lock' manoeuvre. If I couldn't park my mum's Renault when I was 18, there was no way I was going to be able to park 50-foot of cast iron, steering the opposite way to that in which you wish to go. It's a total headfuck. We were passed by a boatload of men wearing Hawaiian shirts on a stag do. We were passed by another boatload of blokes all dressed as pirates. The girls at the front of the boat beamed at them. 'Do you need rescuing?' they chortled cheekily. I panicked as their boat came past us with four foot to spare and drove us straight into another bank.
Anyone who thinks that life aboard a barge is all 'messing about on the river' should really try it. Your shoulders end up in agony because you're reaching behind you to steer, constantly correcting the boat and it's really bloody heavy. Plus if you're not that tall, you have to stand on tiptoes to see over the end of the boat to try to ascertain where you're going and if you're in a straight line. Cranking open the sluice gates on the locks requires some pretty serious biceps and then you have to give the gates a huge shove to get them open and closed. Then you have to contend with the fact that the sleeping arrangements are somewhat challenging. I spent the first night trying to sleep in the top bunk, which I only realised once I was wedged into it was quite a tight fit for an undernourished eight year-old, let alone an overnourished 38 year-old. Like an aquatic Goldilocks, I decided to try out the lower bunk for the other two nights, which was marginally wider, but did have a bit of a coffiny feel to it.
Still, it is good fun. You meet a lot of very smiley people. You also, if you're mean types like us, laugh at the barge pros, who all look like characters in a Mike Leigh film. The women all have big droopy boobs and look like they should be called Maureen. The men are either entirely spherical, with Captain Birdseye beards, or weedy, henpecked sorts who look like Nigels. Every time we started to get a bit misty-eyed about how lovely it was to move at such a slow speed, and really take in everything around us (fields, ducks, trees, cute cottages with thatched roofs), we'd shriek, 'Yes, but think of how DROOPY YOUR BOOBS WOULD BE if you lived on a barge!', cackle wildly and go back to talking about property prices and having to attend church in order to get your kids into the right school. I got confused by a sudden outbreak of sunshine on Sunday, and managed to get a hopelessly chavvy cleavage sunburn because I hadn't put on any suncream, having spent all of the previous day under a mammoth golf umbrella, wearing a huge waterproof coat and barely being able to see through the driving rain.
The British countryside really is beautiful. We stopped off at a village to have tea and to buy sausages for supper. I saw the most idyllic cottage, which had hollyhocks and a plethora of other flowers in the garden, as well as a thatched roof. 'Look at this, it's gorgeous!' I said. 'Hmm, this place is a bit Midsomer Murders, if you ask me', said one of the other girls darkly, alarmed by the village's manicured perfection. Well, I liked it.
We managed to return the boat to the yard unscathed. We hadn't dropped the baby over the side. We'd only broken two wine glasses, and we hadn't been attacked by maggots. We'd played two games of Trivial Pursuit from 1980 (that's quite confusing, when there are vaguely 'topical' questions, by the way). We'd turned the boat round with help from a lovely Captain Birdseye. We'd laughed our heads off at a family that included a granny sporting a minidress and cycling shorts and a bouffant hairpiece, who had clearly been an early adopter when it came to facelifts. I had been a kind of Tourette's version of Rosie and Jim, swearing every time I had to negotiate a row of parked barges, a bridge, a speed of more than half a mile an hour or a particularly moody swan. I'd also narrowly avoided falling in and being crushed by Helen driving the barge straight at me. I had extravagantly weird dreams, probably caused by claustrophobia. I'm hoping that when I wake up tomorrow morning, I will have stopped gently rocking and gradually morphing into Alison Steadman.
Wednesday 29 July 2009
My favourite guilty pleasure at the moment has to be the BBC's attempt at reducing high art to the lowest common denominator with Desperate Romantics. Despite the fact that most people now view the Pre-Raphaelites as a big bunch of wets with a fondness for foliage and a giant thing for gingers, at the time, they were as scandalous as the YBAs, with saucy sex lives to match.
But of course today's audiences couldn't possibly be expected to find blokes opaquely challenging the morals of the day via the medium of lilies, irises and pansies at all intriguing. I suspect that the book this was based on was being read by a producer who was watching the DVD of David Tennant's Casanova at the same time. The result is a costume drama for the Facebook generation, involving good looking, kind of familiar actors, a lot of running around, rapid editing and bonkers music.
The soundtrack is the sort of hectic, hurdy-gurdy, twiddly, tinkly circus music that makes it feel as though the whole programme is winking at you like an epileptic with a tic for an hour. Rossetti seems to have unearthed Sylvester McCoy's entirely unlamented costume from his stint as Doctor Who in the 80s. Poor Aidan Turner (who's very good, and totally fanciable in Being Human), appears to have been told to play Dante Gabriel as if he were Robbie Williams in his Take That days: superficially good looking and charming, but increasingly riven with jealousy as he realises that his talent is a very mediocre one indeed when viewed along the same bit of wall as Millais' (the Pre-Raphs' equivalent of Gary Barlow). In short, he's a desperately irritating twat, who spends most of his time hanging out in suspiciously clean and smoke-free taverns, blagging booze off his hapless mate.
Naturally, Lizzie Siddal proves that the world of modelling hasn't changed much since the 1850s by promptly falling for him. Lizzie has been cast as the original supermodel, cannily refusing to get out of bed and back into a bath for less than £30. The girls' part in Desperate Romantics is largely to take part in top notch reality show The Victorians' Next Top Model. They valiantly hold chronically uncomfortable poses, are asked to convey a variety of conflicting emotions that would give ANTM's Mr Jay a run for his money, solely via the medium of their hair and an upturned gaze and prove that in order to create great art and lasting fame as a model you have to really suffer. I suspect Lizzie was less than thrilled to discover that the gig which was billed as 'frolicking around in a hot tub' actually translated into, 'pretending to drown in a bath heated by guttering candles for 10 days'.
She manages to go one better than Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista by nearly dying of pneumonia. This at least means that the RA snobs can stop thinking of her as one up from a prostitute for five minutes, while they ask her what she thinks of the resulting Ophelia. No such luck for Holman Hunt's model Annie Miller, who clearly is a whore because she's got really violently curly hair. Oh, and she's doing Holman Hunt and you'd have to be paid to do that. Even the BBC have painted him as a delusional, slack-jawed twonk.
I keep expecting Ruskin to end each episode faced with a brace of hopeful girls as he declares, 'I only have one portrait in my hands...'
The titian stunners will presumably soon have competition in the shape of gorgeous pouting brunette Jane Morris, and of course the Brotherhood will be racked by scandal when mild mannered Mr Millais does a bunk with desperate housewife Effie Ruskin. Was Ruskin really hiding in the closet with a pencil-drawn porn stash? It's as likely as the RA letting prostitutes stand proudly in front of the paintings they'd modelled for at private views, I suppose.
Still, I await next week's episode, complete with dream sequences, bonking and random casting (Mark Heap as Charles Dickens? I guess Simon Callow was too expensive or gave the script more than a cursory once over...) with eager anticipation. And I might do double culture this week by going to see the Waterhouse exhibition at the RA. I'll put some curlers in and see if any thrusting young artists want to depict me as an obscure Shakespearean heroine or a fallen woman. I don't get out of the bath for less than a tenner, mind.
But of course today's audiences couldn't possibly be expected to find blokes opaquely challenging the morals of the day via the medium of lilies, irises and pansies at all intriguing. I suspect that the book this was based on was being read by a producer who was watching the DVD of David Tennant's Casanova at the same time. The result is a costume drama for the Facebook generation, involving good looking, kind of familiar actors, a lot of running around, rapid editing and bonkers music.
The soundtrack is the sort of hectic, hurdy-gurdy, twiddly, tinkly circus music that makes it feel as though the whole programme is winking at you like an epileptic with a tic for an hour. Rossetti seems to have unearthed Sylvester McCoy's entirely unlamented costume from his stint as Doctor Who in the 80s. Poor Aidan Turner (who's very good, and totally fanciable in Being Human), appears to have been told to play Dante Gabriel as if he were Robbie Williams in his Take That days: superficially good looking and charming, but increasingly riven with jealousy as he realises that his talent is a very mediocre one indeed when viewed along the same bit of wall as Millais' (the Pre-Raphs' equivalent of Gary Barlow). In short, he's a desperately irritating twat, who spends most of his time hanging out in suspiciously clean and smoke-free taverns, blagging booze off his hapless mate.
Naturally, Lizzie Siddal proves that the world of modelling hasn't changed much since the 1850s by promptly falling for him. Lizzie has been cast as the original supermodel, cannily refusing to get out of bed and back into a bath for less than £30. The girls' part in Desperate Romantics is largely to take part in top notch reality show The Victorians' Next Top Model. They valiantly hold chronically uncomfortable poses, are asked to convey a variety of conflicting emotions that would give ANTM's Mr Jay a run for his money, solely via the medium of their hair and an upturned gaze and prove that in order to create great art and lasting fame as a model you have to really suffer. I suspect Lizzie was less than thrilled to discover that the gig which was billed as 'frolicking around in a hot tub' actually translated into, 'pretending to drown in a bath heated by guttering candles for 10 days'.
She manages to go one better than Kate Moss, Claudia Schiffer and Linda Evangelista by nearly dying of pneumonia. This at least means that the RA snobs can stop thinking of her as one up from a prostitute for five minutes, while they ask her what she thinks of the resulting Ophelia. No such luck for Holman Hunt's model Annie Miller, who clearly is a whore because she's got really violently curly hair. Oh, and she's doing Holman Hunt and you'd have to be paid to do that. Even the BBC have painted him as a delusional, slack-jawed twonk.
I keep expecting Ruskin to end each episode faced with a brace of hopeful girls as he declares, 'I only have one portrait in my hands...'
The titian stunners will presumably soon have competition in the shape of gorgeous pouting brunette Jane Morris, and of course the Brotherhood will be racked by scandal when mild mannered Mr Millais does a bunk with desperate housewife Effie Ruskin. Was Ruskin really hiding in the closet with a pencil-drawn porn stash? It's as likely as the RA letting prostitutes stand proudly in front of the paintings they'd modelled for at private views, I suppose.
Still, I await next week's episode, complete with dream sequences, bonking and random casting (Mark Heap as Charles Dickens? I guess Simon Callow was too expensive or gave the script more than a cursory once over...) with eager anticipation. And I might do double culture this week by going to see the Waterhouse exhibition at the RA. I'll put some curlers in and see if any thrusting young artists want to depict me as an obscure Shakespearean heroine or a fallen woman. I don't get out of the bath for less than a tenner, mind.
Tuesday 28 July 2009
Why have I still not got swine flu, pig colds, hog pox or similar? Why? At first I thought swine flu was going to be like every other 'pandemic' that's been dangled in front of us, threatening to wipe out billions worldwide over the last few years. SARS was going to turn us all into zombies! 'QUICK! PUT ON A FACE MASK! DON'T LEAVE THE HOUSE! CRY EVERY TIME YOU HAVE TO GET ON A TUBE FULL OF DISEASE-RIDDEN MANIACS!' Oh, hang on, no-one seems to be the slightest bit ill. Avian flu was going to rain death from the skies via every bird from wrens up: 'PANIC! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!! SHOOT THAT SWAN!!!' Oh, hang on, it's gone away.
Swine flu was going to not only affect everyone in the world ever, but was, in an improvement on 28 Days Later/that BBC drama that was on not long ago which I can't remember the name of, going to herald, at last, Animal Farm crossed with zombies! Egypt decided to go the whole hog (sorry) and kill all their pigs, just to reinforce the fact that two legs were still good and four legs were bad. Very bad. They're probably still eating bacon sarnies now. We were promised loads of helpful government leaflets, which have still not arrived. 'Oh, business as usual, then', I thought, as the nation remained untroubled by pig-faced zombies. But then, as if by magic, two people I knew succumbed in a week. One of them sits literally about two foot away from me! I started practising Sarah Lancashire/Julie Graham expressions for the ensuing drama.
How bad was it going to be, though? Would my colleague have to be in a special plastic bubble in intensive care for a week? Would there be an army helicopter, trying to deliver Tamiflu to her flat, without her being able to open either the front door or a window (cue hazmatted men bursting through the skylights)? What if she were gathered up with all the other zombies, and sent off as an offering to the aliens, like in Torchwood? Turns out I've been watching too much telly and swine flu is basically just flu, but in the summer and with a fancy name. Yes, it's a good idea not to leave the house for a week, but that's really because you feel pretty shitty and wandering around central London groggily, looking like a club kid who's had too much ketamine, might get you arrested. And apparently you're not even given Tamiflu unless you're in charge of 30 children, or you've only got half a lung that's working usually or something, because it makes you feel 10 times worse than you would if you just sat in front of Loose Women with a Lemsip. God, why do I even pay taxes?
Despite these drawbacks (and a brilliantly patronising notice in our staff kitchen, with photos and text instructing me on how to wash my hands), I still feel like I want to get swine flu. I've missed out on nearly all of the cultural happenings of about the past two decades. I never went to the infamous Sensation exhibition at the RA, because I thought it was a load of pretentious wank and I didn't want to go all Daily Mail about being 'outraged by 'art'. This made it very difficult to have any reaction other than 'Oh', when I finally saw Damien Hirst's shark (by that time looking sadly baggy and a bit rubbish) at the Saatchi gallery about a decade later. I never went to Glastonbury, muddy or otherwise. I didn't go to raves in fields, I avoided ecstasy. I've only ever seen the last 15 minutes of Reservoir Dogs. I refused to read American Psycho (I don't care how ironic/satiric it was, I didn't want to read about a man drilling someone's skull and shoving rats where the sun don't shine for kicks). I even refused to watch the first series of Big Brother on some sort of spurious moral grounds. (No recollection of what those were now - I've long since got over any qualms re: watching total crap on the telly).
So now I want to be a part of it! I want swine flu! I want to say I was there, in the summer of 2009, that I was part of the statistics! But mainly I want a week off work, and am hoping I might lose my appetite, thus creating a free detox wherein I just sup green tea and lose half a stone and everyone tells me I look amazing afterwards. It's pathetic, but it's true.
Swine flu was going to not only affect everyone in the world ever, but was, in an improvement on 28 Days Later/that BBC drama that was on not long ago which I can't remember the name of, going to herald, at last, Animal Farm crossed with zombies! Egypt decided to go the whole hog (sorry) and kill all their pigs, just to reinforce the fact that two legs were still good and four legs were bad. Very bad. They're probably still eating bacon sarnies now. We were promised loads of helpful government leaflets, which have still not arrived. 'Oh, business as usual, then', I thought, as the nation remained untroubled by pig-faced zombies. But then, as if by magic, two people I knew succumbed in a week. One of them sits literally about two foot away from me! I started practising Sarah Lancashire/Julie Graham expressions for the ensuing drama.
How bad was it going to be, though? Would my colleague have to be in a special plastic bubble in intensive care for a week? Would there be an army helicopter, trying to deliver Tamiflu to her flat, without her being able to open either the front door or a window (cue hazmatted men bursting through the skylights)? What if she were gathered up with all the other zombies, and sent off as an offering to the aliens, like in Torchwood? Turns out I've been watching too much telly and swine flu is basically just flu, but in the summer and with a fancy name. Yes, it's a good idea not to leave the house for a week, but that's really because you feel pretty shitty and wandering around central London groggily, looking like a club kid who's had too much ketamine, might get you arrested. And apparently you're not even given Tamiflu unless you're in charge of 30 children, or you've only got half a lung that's working usually or something, because it makes you feel 10 times worse than you would if you just sat in front of Loose Women with a Lemsip. God, why do I even pay taxes?
Despite these drawbacks (and a brilliantly patronising notice in our staff kitchen, with photos and text instructing me on how to wash my hands), I still feel like I want to get swine flu. I've missed out on nearly all of the cultural happenings of about the past two decades. I never went to the infamous Sensation exhibition at the RA, because I thought it was a load of pretentious wank and I didn't want to go all Daily Mail about being 'outraged by 'art'. This made it very difficult to have any reaction other than 'Oh', when I finally saw Damien Hirst's shark (by that time looking sadly baggy and a bit rubbish) at the Saatchi gallery about a decade later. I never went to Glastonbury, muddy or otherwise. I didn't go to raves in fields, I avoided ecstasy. I've only ever seen the last 15 minutes of Reservoir Dogs. I refused to read American Psycho (I don't care how ironic/satiric it was, I didn't want to read about a man drilling someone's skull and shoving rats where the sun don't shine for kicks). I even refused to watch the first series of Big Brother on some sort of spurious moral grounds. (No recollection of what those were now - I've long since got over any qualms re: watching total crap on the telly).
So now I want to be a part of it! I want swine flu! I want to say I was there, in the summer of 2009, that I was part of the statistics! But mainly I want a week off work, and am hoping I might lose my appetite, thus creating a free detox wherein I just sup green tea and lose half a stone and everyone tells me I look amazing afterwards. It's pathetic, but it's true.
Monday 27 July 2009
I have a shameful confession. I have developed a massive crush on a man who is not David Mitchell. David! Forgive me! But then, as we're not going out anyway, it's hardly as though I am the last word in wanton adultery. And it's definitely not going to progress from unrequited to requited, because I broke Rule 3.4 of Being A Successful Singleton, which is 'Always dress to impress. Yes, even if you're only popping out to the corner shop, because it is Sod's Law that that is where you will meet someone handsome, funny and clever whilst you are buying an Observer and a loaf of bread'.
It was a Friday morning. As we do summer hours in my office (work a bit extra Monday-Thursday and you can knock off at 1.00pm on a Friday, thus making every weekend feel like a Bank Holiday - result), everyone treats it as an opportunity to dress down even more than usual. If you're only going to be in work for three and a half hours, you might as well be comfy. Besides, nothing ever happens on a Friday, right? Wrong! On this particular Friday, I get half an hour's notice that I am to attend a meeting with two comedy writers. 'That's OK', I think, 'all comedy writers are scruffy men who look like they live in a skip eating just-past-their-sell-by-date pies. No need to impress on the sartorial front, merely on the 'I could do you a perfectly good marketing campaign' front.'
But naturally, God enjoys laughing at me, and supplies me with a comedy writer who is artfully scruffy and has a dazzling smile. I am just scruffy. Gaaaah. There is much irony in the fact that my Friday afternoon is to be spent beautifying myself for a wedding I'm going to - I'm booked in for a facial; to have my eyebrows threaded (I've been avoiding the temptation to pluck them for a whole month, so the upper part of my face now looks like I'm auditioning for the part of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz - so attractive! So polished!) and to have my hair blow-dried (my hair is thus on day 3 post-wash, and looking, well, skanky wouldn't be too strong a word). I laugh over-loudly at the comedy writer's jokes (even if they're not jokes, just stuff he's saying - mortifying), gaze at his dazzling smile and curse Rule 3.4 as I contemplate my choice of my least flattering or stylish pair of jeans, my most shapeless black top and my navy Converse, which don't really go with either item, but which are... comfy.
Damn you, Rule 3.4, for being right! Is there any way I can email the Comedy Writer a photo of me taken at the wedding, sporting the kind of makeover that makes family members cry with joy on Ten Years Younger, with the message, 'This is what I usually look like, by the way, I was just trying to put you at ease when you came in for our meeting'? Yes, that's a great idea, if I want him to think of me as deranged, as well as a girl who's been cross-bred with a Hobbit...
It was a Friday morning. As we do summer hours in my office (work a bit extra Monday-Thursday and you can knock off at 1.00pm on a Friday, thus making every weekend feel like a Bank Holiday - result), everyone treats it as an opportunity to dress down even more than usual. If you're only going to be in work for three and a half hours, you might as well be comfy. Besides, nothing ever happens on a Friday, right? Wrong! On this particular Friday, I get half an hour's notice that I am to attend a meeting with two comedy writers. 'That's OK', I think, 'all comedy writers are scruffy men who look like they live in a skip eating just-past-their-sell-by-date pies. No need to impress on the sartorial front, merely on the 'I could do you a perfectly good marketing campaign' front.'
But naturally, God enjoys laughing at me, and supplies me with a comedy writer who is artfully scruffy and has a dazzling smile. I am just scruffy. Gaaaah. There is much irony in the fact that my Friday afternoon is to be spent beautifying myself for a wedding I'm going to - I'm booked in for a facial; to have my eyebrows threaded (I've been avoiding the temptation to pluck them for a whole month, so the upper part of my face now looks like I'm auditioning for the part of the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz - so attractive! So polished!) and to have my hair blow-dried (my hair is thus on day 3 post-wash, and looking, well, skanky wouldn't be too strong a word). I laugh over-loudly at the comedy writer's jokes (even if they're not jokes, just stuff he's saying - mortifying), gaze at his dazzling smile and curse Rule 3.4 as I contemplate my choice of my least flattering or stylish pair of jeans, my most shapeless black top and my navy Converse, which don't really go with either item, but which are... comfy.
Damn you, Rule 3.4, for being right! Is there any way I can email the Comedy Writer a photo of me taken at the wedding, sporting the kind of makeover that makes family members cry with joy on Ten Years Younger, with the message, 'This is what I usually look like, by the way, I was just trying to put you at ease when you came in for our meeting'? Yes, that's a great idea, if I want him to think of me as deranged, as well as a girl who's been cross-bred with a Hobbit...
Thursday 16 July 2009
I have received excellent news with regard to my Odyssey In Search of David Mitchell. Apparently, he's been on Who Do You Think You Are, http://bit.ly/TvsR3 and has found out that his antecedents were... drum roll... sheep farmers. In Scotland. Hurrah! He is thus as thoroughly down to earth as I assumed he was. Hopefully this means that the manipulative producers of the show will not have managed to make him cry (impoverished sheep farmers - not that tragic?), which seems largely to be their aim each episode. Sometimes I wonder if they choose celebs for WDYTYA purely on the strength of whether people want to see them cry or not (Jeremy Paxman, Chris Moyles - it's a shame Margaret Thatcher's too far gone; she'd be ideal).
The exciting thing from David's point of view, is that, if he were to marry me, he could automatically raise the Mitchell clan several rungs up the society ladder because my antecedents include... drum roll... Joan of Arc. Joan of bloody Arc! I know - seems like the kind of thing that would come out of regression therapy, but I've seen the family tree with my own eyes - in the very dim and distant past, my family dates back to Joanie d's brother. It's long been a nugget of crazy family lore, which we often bring out to amuse and astound, but I was never quite sure if I believed it. However, when I was at home about a year ago, we dug through the giant desk that resides in the corner of the posh sitting room (my parents' house contains both a 'TV room' and a 'drawing room') which is the filing cabinet for all Important Family Paperwork. And there it was, as if by magic. Well, unless someone in the family nicked it a couple of generations back, from a visiting French dignitary, when they were impoverished potato farmers in Ireland.
The exciting thing from David's point of view, is that, if he were to marry me, he could automatically raise the Mitchell clan several rungs up the society ladder because my antecedents include... drum roll... Joan of Arc. Joan of bloody Arc! I know - seems like the kind of thing that would come out of regression therapy, but I've seen the family tree with my own eyes - in the very dim and distant past, my family dates back to Joanie d's brother. It's long been a nugget of crazy family lore, which we often bring out to amuse and astound, but I was never quite sure if I believed it. However, when I was at home about a year ago, we dug through the giant desk that resides in the corner of the posh sitting room (my parents' house contains both a 'TV room' and a 'drawing room') which is the filing cabinet for all Important Family Paperwork. And there it was, as if by magic. Well, unless someone in the family nicked it a couple of generations back, from a visiting French dignitary, when they were impoverished potato farmers in Ireland.
Monday 13 July 2009
The Picture of Doreen Gray
So, my weekend got off to a cracking start - I was purchasing wine in Thresher's pre- going to a friend's for dinner. I was about to pay for my bottles of Merlot (the nice fellow in the shop had upsold me two bottles for £8 - bargain), when said fellow says to me, 'Oh, just to check, you are over 18, aren't you?' I collapse in a gale of laughter. He is not raising so much as an eyebrow, much less a storm of matey, 'Ha ha, I'm trying to chat you up by flattering you' guffaws. He is looking totally serious.
'What, for real?' I say, still thinking this is an elaborate joke. He points behind him at the sign which declares, 'If you're lucky enough to look under 25, we might ask for ID' or whatever it says. Which I've always found perplexing anyway - if you only have to be 18 to buy booze, then why do they have to ask you how old you are if you look 25 or under? Makes no sense. By this stage, I'm getting a bit concerned that I am the subject of some sort of Punk'd/hidden camera feature (especially as I don't have any ID that proves my age - nobody has ever asked me if I'm old enough to buy booze, as I was a late developer and only started drinking when I was in my mid-twenties). I bellow, 'Jesus Christ, I'm 38!' at him.
'Well, I don't believe that' he says. 'What year were you born?' This is getting ridiculous. Quick as a flash, I reply, '1970', which shocks him somewhat (what, more than someone who might be 17 randomly adding a full 20+ years onto their age? I've known people who had a crisis about ageing when they turned 25; you're rarely going to be in a position where it seems like a great idea to pretend to be rocketing towards 40.) Thankfully, this stops him in his tracks (probably whilst he tries to do the maths to see if 1970 taken away from 2009 results in an age of 38). 'Oh. Well. Right. Um, I'm still not sure I believe you,' he says, 'but it's nice to meet someone who was born in the same decade as me'.
WHAT? The guy's in his 30s as well? This is nuts. I'd assumed he must be in his early 20s, so he couldn't imagine anyone being over the age of 30. Or perhaps he really couldn't see what I looked like - it was unfortunate that he had those eyes which, as my cousin says, look as though one's gone to the shops and the other's come back with the change. I decided to avoid having to try to prove my age by getting him to check my teeth (like you do with horses) or something, and just segued neatly into how infuriating it was dealing with 80s Babies who don't know the lyrics to Duran Duran songs, and how wrong it is that I now find myself regularly having to deal with work experience people who were born after 1990 (subtext: see, I have a job, I am definitely old enough to buy Merlot. Besides, if I were under age, wouldn't I be buying WKD, or Chardonnay, or something?)
This seemed to do the trick. I had my booze. He had an evening of wondering why any woman would (apparently) pretend to be 20 years older than she was. I had a very good laugh and skipped down the street (well, as much as you can skip anywhere when you're 38), delighting in the fact that the grey hoodie I was wearing, which I'd been cursing 5 minutes beforehand for being alarmingly casual, clearly marks me out as a Young Person. Who'd have thought it: hoodies, the elixir of youth. Bin the Botox and get yourself down to Gap for a cheap bit of jersey fabric with a zip. Quick, easy, and means that you can still frown if someone inadvertently goes the other way and guesses your age at five years older than you actually are...
So, my weekend got off to a cracking start - I was purchasing wine in Thresher's pre- going to a friend's for dinner. I was about to pay for my bottles of Merlot (the nice fellow in the shop had upsold me two bottles for £8 - bargain), when said fellow says to me, 'Oh, just to check, you are over 18, aren't you?' I collapse in a gale of laughter. He is not raising so much as an eyebrow, much less a storm of matey, 'Ha ha, I'm trying to chat you up by flattering you' guffaws. He is looking totally serious.
'What, for real?' I say, still thinking this is an elaborate joke. He points behind him at the sign which declares, 'If you're lucky enough to look under 25, we might ask for ID' or whatever it says. Which I've always found perplexing anyway - if you only have to be 18 to buy booze, then why do they have to ask you how old you are if you look 25 or under? Makes no sense. By this stage, I'm getting a bit concerned that I am the subject of some sort of Punk'd/hidden camera feature (especially as I don't have any ID that proves my age - nobody has ever asked me if I'm old enough to buy booze, as I was a late developer and only started drinking when I was in my mid-twenties). I bellow, 'Jesus Christ, I'm 38!' at him.
'Well, I don't believe that' he says. 'What year were you born?' This is getting ridiculous. Quick as a flash, I reply, '1970', which shocks him somewhat (what, more than someone who might be 17 randomly adding a full 20+ years onto their age? I've known people who had a crisis about ageing when they turned 25; you're rarely going to be in a position where it seems like a great idea to pretend to be rocketing towards 40.) Thankfully, this stops him in his tracks (probably whilst he tries to do the maths to see if 1970 taken away from 2009 results in an age of 38). 'Oh. Well. Right. Um, I'm still not sure I believe you,' he says, 'but it's nice to meet someone who was born in the same decade as me'.
WHAT? The guy's in his 30s as well? This is nuts. I'd assumed he must be in his early 20s, so he couldn't imagine anyone being over the age of 30. Or perhaps he really couldn't see what I looked like - it was unfortunate that he had those eyes which, as my cousin says, look as though one's gone to the shops and the other's come back with the change. I decided to avoid having to try to prove my age by getting him to check my teeth (like you do with horses) or something, and just segued neatly into how infuriating it was dealing with 80s Babies who don't know the lyrics to Duran Duran songs, and how wrong it is that I now find myself regularly having to deal with work experience people who were born after 1990 (subtext: see, I have a job, I am definitely old enough to buy Merlot. Besides, if I were under age, wouldn't I be buying WKD, or Chardonnay, or something?)
This seemed to do the trick. I had my booze. He had an evening of wondering why any woman would (apparently) pretend to be 20 years older than she was. I had a very good laugh and skipped down the street (well, as much as you can skip anywhere when you're 38), delighting in the fact that the grey hoodie I was wearing, which I'd been cursing 5 minutes beforehand for being alarmingly casual, clearly marks me out as a Young Person. Who'd have thought it: hoodies, the elixir of youth. Bin the Botox and get yourself down to Gap for a cheap bit of jersey fabric with a zip. Quick, easy, and means that you can still frown if someone inadvertently goes the other way and guesses your age at five years older than you actually are...
Friday 10 July 2009
Bride and Gloom
As a long-term singleton who's had my fair share of disastrous attendances at wedding receptions*, I took a somewhat evil delight in this article on brides who sink into a mire of despair after their Big Day (which they've probably spent a year planning) is over: http://bit.ly/YkTIf
For a start, imagine spending £20-25k on one day - a day that's largely spent having a meal (chicken or salmon?), listening to a few ropey speeches and dancing to Abba. (I swear, if I have to go to one more wedding and have to pretend I'm having a good time whilst dancing to Dancing Queen, I will punch someone). Jesus, if I had a spare £25k knocking around, I'd be able to upgrade my flat to one with a garden and finally get the cat I've always dreamed of. Cat and I could live happily ever after, with none of the 'grim sort of life-is-at-an-end, jail-doors-closing claustrophobia that nearly always hits post nuptials'. (Well, Cat would never suffer from such claustrophobia, as he'd have a cat flap to escape through and could go and investigate next door's garden; for me the claustrophobia would depend on the size of the flat. But then I live in London, where the world is your Oystercard, so one need never feel overly hemmed-in).
Then there's all this mad guff about being 'a princess for a day'. Personally, I blame Princess Diana - her gigantic dress and rise from normal, Sloane obscurity to front page ubiquity because she'd managed to 'bag a Prince' (rather than bagging Prince, which would've been much more interesting in the long term), set my generation off on a quest to be the ultimate Bridezilla. The tragedies of basing your wedding dreams on a woman whose marriage was legendarily unhappy, and whose demise was untimely and horrifying, are myriad.
But why would any modern woman want to be a princess for a day? It's such a ridiculous, twee notion. You might as well say you want to be a fairy for the day. I mean, I'm as keen on a swishy frock as the next girl, but the idea of miles of duchesse satin, a veil and a tiara gives me the shudders. Trying to look all demure whilst high as a kite on stress and the fact that you haven't eaten for a week in a last-ditch attempt to look 'the best you've ever done' is a recipe for disaster. I'd be swearing like a Sex Pistol and in a heap of bad tempered tears before the vows were out.
But at least now I'm armed with defences next time I go to a wedding and, on finding out I'm there On My Own, some faux sympathetic moron gives me the, 'aww, poor you, you haven't found anyone special yet' head tilt that coupley people at weddings seem to exult in. I can print this off, whip it out of my bag, shove it at them and make them read it, whilst repeatedly poking them in the chest, bellowing, 'BEING SINGLE ISN'T A DISEASE, YOU KNOW. UNLIKE DEPRESSION'.
* The best one was the wedding I was invited to in Cornwall, by a girl whom I was at school with. Despite only being invited to the evening do (I was coming from London, mind you, which necessitated a 2-night stay at a B&B), I dutifully went along, thinking that there would be lots of old school chums to have a natter with. Me, my old school friend Lucy, her partner Peter and their son Joe spent a pleasant day by the seaside killing time before the evening. We then got ourselves spangled up in our frocks and finery, and got a taxi over to the reception, arriving in time to hear the usual speeches involving people we didn't know, and raucous antics we'd had no part in. We managed to secure a glass of champagne, but it looked like the food had already been eaten. We, needless to say, had not eaten since lunch.
Post-speeches, we caught up with the bride and groom. I'd never met the groom (why is this the case at so many weddings, that you don't actually know 50% of the main players?), so the bride introduced me as her old school friend. 'Ah, Alex', said he, 'I've heard a lot about you.' 'Oh, have you?' said I, wondering which of my many attributes the bride had told him of. 'Yes', he said, 'are you the one who's a lesbian?'
What. The. F*ck? Who the HELL asks a question like that of someone they've never met before? If I were a lesbian, is that really the first thing that anyone in their right mind would ask? It's astonishingly rude. For once I was totally stumped for words, and just muttered, 'No, no I'm not'. So much for wearing a pretty frock and doing my hair and make-up all nice and, you know, making an effort. It was after this that I found out that it was a pay bar, and none of us had any money, as we'd assumed it would be free (pretty much the only money we had needed to be saved for the taxi back to the B&B). So I couldn't even get drunk!
Matters were compounded by the fact that the only other girl who was there from school was one whom I'd never liked. Having had her third child literally about two weeks previously, she bounded over to me and immediately said, 'Alex! How are you? Married? Children?' God almighty - half the wedding thinks I'm a lesbian, the other half is sure that by my advanced years I must've done the decent thing and got married then popped out a couple of sprogs. So that was another short conversation.
I was then subjected to a truly terrible live band, and bravely hopped about with a sea of six year olds, 'hanging onto my smile' (as my mum says when she's trapped in apocalyptically bad social situations, yet doesn't want to throw a JLo-style hissy fit because she's too polite and is a trouper). I thought at least I could dance to a few rubbish disco tracks and get some exercise. But no - the band and the six year olds it was. Sustained only by a few bits of pork in a bap (there was a hog roast, which always sounds like the height of medieval decadence but is, after all, just a very large Sunday roast, but without any of the attendant trimmings) and a dwindling vodka and tonic, I was desperate to leave, but had to wait for everyone else as a/ we only had enough for one cab and b/ we were in the middle of the countryside, so there was probably only one cab every 100 miles anyway.
When I got home, I ordered a present off the wedding list (God knows why I felt obliged to do that), and chose a carving knife, in the hopes that the bride might one day stick it into her horrible, rude husband's chest.
As a long-term singleton who's had my fair share of disastrous attendances at wedding receptions*, I took a somewhat evil delight in this article on brides who sink into a mire of despair after their Big Day (which they've probably spent a year planning) is over: http://bit.ly/YkTIf
For a start, imagine spending £20-25k on one day - a day that's largely spent having a meal (chicken or salmon?), listening to a few ropey speeches and dancing to Abba. (I swear, if I have to go to one more wedding and have to pretend I'm having a good time whilst dancing to Dancing Queen, I will punch someone). Jesus, if I had a spare £25k knocking around, I'd be able to upgrade my flat to one with a garden and finally get the cat I've always dreamed of. Cat and I could live happily ever after, with none of the 'grim sort of life-is-at-an-end, jail-doors-closing claustrophobia that nearly always hits post nuptials'. (Well, Cat would never suffer from such claustrophobia, as he'd have a cat flap to escape through and could go and investigate next door's garden; for me the claustrophobia would depend on the size of the flat. But then I live in London, where the world is your Oystercard, so one need never feel overly hemmed-in).
Then there's all this mad guff about being 'a princess for a day'. Personally, I blame Princess Diana - her gigantic dress and rise from normal, Sloane obscurity to front page ubiquity because she'd managed to 'bag a Prince' (rather than bagging Prince, which would've been much more interesting in the long term), set my generation off on a quest to be the ultimate Bridezilla. The tragedies of basing your wedding dreams on a woman whose marriage was legendarily unhappy, and whose demise was untimely and horrifying, are myriad.
But why would any modern woman want to be a princess for a day? It's such a ridiculous, twee notion. You might as well say you want to be a fairy for the day. I mean, I'm as keen on a swishy frock as the next girl, but the idea of miles of duchesse satin, a veil and a tiara gives me the shudders. Trying to look all demure whilst high as a kite on stress and the fact that you haven't eaten for a week in a last-ditch attempt to look 'the best you've ever done' is a recipe for disaster. I'd be swearing like a Sex Pistol and in a heap of bad tempered tears before the vows were out.
But at least now I'm armed with defences next time I go to a wedding and, on finding out I'm there On My Own, some faux sympathetic moron gives me the, 'aww, poor you, you haven't found anyone special yet' head tilt that coupley people at weddings seem to exult in. I can print this off, whip it out of my bag, shove it at them and make them read it, whilst repeatedly poking them in the chest, bellowing, 'BEING SINGLE ISN'T A DISEASE, YOU KNOW. UNLIKE DEPRESSION'.
* The best one was the wedding I was invited to in Cornwall, by a girl whom I was at school with. Despite only being invited to the evening do (I was coming from London, mind you, which necessitated a 2-night stay at a B&B), I dutifully went along, thinking that there would be lots of old school chums to have a natter with. Me, my old school friend Lucy, her partner Peter and their son Joe spent a pleasant day by the seaside killing time before the evening. We then got ourselves spangled up in our frocks and finery, and got a taxi over to the reception, arriving in time to hear the usual speeches involving people we didn't know, and raucous antics we'd had no part in. We managed to secure a glass of champagne, but it looked like the food had already been eaten. We, needless to say, had not eaten since lunch.
Post-speeches, we caught up with the bride and groom. I'd never met the groom (why is this the case at so many weddings, that you don't actually know 50% of the main players?), so the bride introduced me as her old school friend. 'Ah, Alex', said he, 'I've heard a lot about you.' 'Oh, have you?' said I, wondering which of my many attributes the bride had told him of. 'Yes', he said, 'are you the one who's a lesbian?'
What. The. F*ck? Who the HELL asks a question like that of someone they've never met before? If I were a lesbian, is that really the first thing that anyone in their right mind would ask? It's astonishingly rude. For once I was totally stumped for words, and just muttered, 'No, no I'm not'. So much for wearing a pretty frock and doing my hair and make-up all nice and, you know, making an effort. It was after this that I found out that it was a pay bar, and none of us had any money, as we'd assumed it would be free (pretty much the only money we had needed to be saved for the taxi back to the B&B). So I couldn't even get drunk!
Matters were compounded by the fact that the only other girl who was there from school was one whom I'd never liked. Having had her third child literally about two weeks previously, she bounded over to me and immediately said, 'Alex! How are you? Married? Children?' God almighty - half the wedding thinks I'm a lesbian, the other half is sure that by my advanced years I must've done the decent thing and got married then popped out a couple of sprogs. So that was another short conversation.
I was then subjected to a truly terrible live band, and bravely hopped about with a sea of six year olds, 'hanging onto my smile' (as my mum says when she's trapped in apocalyptically bad social situations, yet doesn't want to throw a JLo-style hissy fit because she's too polite and is a trouper). I thought at least I could dance to a few rubbish disco tracks and get some exercise. But no - the band and the six year olds it was. Sustained only by a few bits of pork in a bap (there was a hog roast, which always sounds like the height of medieval decadence but is, after all, just a very large Sunday roast, but without any of the attendant trimmings) and a dwindling vodka and tonic, I was desperate to leave, but had to wait for everyone else as a/ we only had enough for one cab and b/ we were in the middle of the countryside, so there was probably only one cab every 100 miles anyway.
When I got home, I ordered a present off the wedding list (God knows why I felt obliged to do that), and chose a carving knife, in the hopes that the bride might one day stick it into her horrible, rude husband's chest.
Thursday 9 July 2009
'All the single ladies! Put your hands up!’ – this article struck several chords and is rather funny… http://bit.ly/fcNpI
It sums up my life exactly. The one time I did go to a singles party, which was organised by some quite well connected people (who worked in films, telly and the like), it was a disaster. It was the usual thing of men skulking in corners, and then regarding you with extreme suspicion if you dared to reverse the natural order and go over and talk to them. All us girls who’d gone along, full of hope, ended up screaming with frustration.
What is wrong with men? Why do they treat you like you're a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Atila the Hun if you try to initiate a conversation with them? You'd think they'd like it - saves them having to make the effort and risk being shot down in flames, but no, they back into corners, give you a look as though you're about to drag them down a sperm bank and demand immediate insemination and then run away, desperate to find an unchallenging 25 year old to chat up instead.
I am, however, finally tempted to do internet dating, as I'm so bored of my entire life at the moment, that even going on rubbish dates might make things more interesting. Just baulking at the idea of a/ writing a profile b/ choosing a photo and c/ worrying that my ego will get dented by nutso blokes who seem good on paper, but less so in person. So I have come up with a top solution: I shall just marry David Mitchell. He seems nice, clever, funny, and is as horrified by the idea of dating as I am. Plus he's been single for 7 years, which is about the length of time since I last tried going out with someone (it's too depressing to work out how long it actually is - plus it's another big tick on the 'pro' side on the 'why David Mitchell should go out with me' list).
The last two blind dates I went on were disastrous. The first guy said he had to leave early (despite our numerous emails pre-date, he'd failed to mention this), because he had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day to go on a hedge-laying course. He claimed he’d already been on a dry stone walling course. I tried to tease him about the fact that he obviously liked to put a lot of barriers up in his life, and he didn’t go for it at all. He wouldn’t even walk me to the tube station! Rude man.
Then I went on one with a guy who’d been married, but his wife had died. That was going fine, till we started talking about the rubbish ‘new generation’ Star Wars films. I went on an extended rant about the final one, saying, ‘I mean, what on earth was the impetus for Anakin Skywalker to go over to the dark side? I mean, God, his girlfriend died, but really’. I realised as it was coming out of my mouth that I should just get my coat and go. I pretended, however, that I didn’t know his wife had died till he made some reference to it later. Needless to say, I didn't hear from him again.
So, David Mitchell. Yes, he looks a bit like a potato, but all men end up looking like that eventually – might as well know what you’re getting from the off. (I, of course, am no Elle MacPherson - I'd say I'm around a 6.5 on a good day.) Plus he’s a posho and my parents would like him, even if he does write for a vaguely leftie paper. Although, I suspect that this whole 'I've given up on dating' thing is a ruse by DM - much like in those Restoration plays, where lotharios were endlessly pretending to be gay so that they weren’t seen as a threat to single or married ladies, and then copped off with all of them, I imagine that poor David now has every woman over the age of 35 throwing herself at him, via Twitter, Facebook, his Observer column's online comments section and every time he nips to the corner shop for a pint of milk and some cheese. (I also imagine that DM has a touch of the Alan Bennetts and spends the time he's not on panel shows and writing comedy sitting at home eating cheese and biscuits).
So here starts my official Odyssey In Search Of David Mitchell. Someone out there must know him - please put me in touch! I'm very happy to have a virtual relationship via email, with very little actual 'dating' at all, thus minimising the pain for both of us. I can finally get my mum to stop worrying about me being single, and you can stop at least half of those women throwing themselves at you by squeaking, 'But I've got a girlfriend!' Everyone's a winner.
It sums up my life exactly. The one time I did go to a singles party, which was organised by some quite well connected people (who worked in films, telly and the like), it was a disaster. It was the usual thing of men skulking in corners, and then regarding you with extreme suspicion if you dared to reverse the natural order and go over and talk to them. All us girls who’d gone along, full of hope, ended up screaming with frustration.
What is wrong with men? Why do they treat you like you're a cross between Margaret Thatcher and Atila the Hun if you try to initiate a conversation with them? You'd think they'd like it - saves them having to make the effort and risk being shot down in flames, but no, they back into corners, give you a look as though you're about to drag them down a sperm bank and demand immediate insemination and then run away, desperate to find an unchallenging 25 year old to chat up instead.
I am, however, finally tempted to do internet dating, as I'm so bored of my entire life at the moment, that even going on rubbish dates might make things more interesting. Just baulking at the idea of a/ writing a profile b/ choosing a photo and c/ worrying that my ego will get dented by nutso blokes who seem good on paper, but less so in person. So I have come up with a top solution: I shall just marry David Mitchell. He seems nice, clever, funny, and is as horrified by the idea of dating as I am. Plus he's been single for 7 years, which is about the length of time since I last tried going out with someone (it's too depressing to work out how long it actually is - plus it's another big tick on the 'pro' side on the 'why David Mitchell should go out with me' list).
The last two blind dates I went on were disastrous. The first guy said he had to leave early (despite our numerous emails pre-date, he'd failed to mention this), because he had to get up at the crack of dawn the next day to go on a hedge-laying course. He claimed he’d already been on a dry stone walling course. I tried to tease him about the fact that he obviously liked to put a lot of barriers up in his life, and he didn’t go for it at all. He wouldn’t even walk me to the tube station! Rude man.
Then I went on one with a guy who’d been married, but his wife had died. That was going fine, till we started talking about the rubbish ‘new generation’ Star Wars films. I went on an extended rant about the final one, saying, ‘I mean, what on earth was the impetus for Anakin Skywalker to go over to the dark side? I mean, God, his girlfriend died, but really’. I realised as it was coming out of my mouth that I should just get my coat and go. I pretended, however, that I didn’t know his wife had died till he made some reference to it later. Needless to say, I didn't hear from him again.
So, David Mitchell. Yes, he looks a bit like a potato, but all men end up looking like that eventually – might as well know what you’re getting from the off. (I, of course, am no Elle MacPherson - I'd say I'm around a 6.5 on a good day.) Plus he’s a posho and my parents would like him, even if he does write for a vaguely leftie paper. Although, I suspect that this whole 'I've given up on dating' thing is a ruse by DM - much like in those Restoration plays, where lotharios were endlessly pretending to be gay so that they weren’t seen as a threat to single or married ladies, and then copped off with all of them, I imagine that poor David now has every woman over the age of 35 throwing herself at him, via Twitter, Facebook, his Observer column's online comments section and every time he nips to the corner shop for a pint of milk and some cheese. (I also imagine that DM has a touch of the Alan Bennetts and spends the time he's not on panel shows and writing comedy sitting at home eating cheese and biscuits).
So here starts my official Odyssey In Search Of David Mitchell. Someone out there must know him - please put me in touch! I'm very happy to have a virtual relationship via email, with very little actual 'dating' at all, thus minimising the pain for both of us. I can finally get my mum to stop worrying about me being single, and you can stop at least half of those women throwing themselves at you by squeaking, 'But I've got a girlfriend!' Everyone's a winner.
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