Freelance Mum

2012-01-25T14:33:00.001Z

So it’s the new year and I’ve already broken my number one resolution which is:

Stop making up arguments with people in your head where you cut the other person down to size with your incisive remarks and caustic truths.

And my number two resolution namely:

Stop projecting negative outcomes onto events that haven’t happened yet.

On the good side, writer David Bishop has invited me up to Edinburgh University to talk about abridging books for the BBC. I've just had a quick look at what's expected and am ~~horrified~~ thrilled and challenged to read it's the part of the module called Narrative Practice - Vocational Skillset. So I'll have to make abridging sound Extremely Difficult which it is of course ~~but only when the producer is a pain in the arse.~~

Read book.

Sigh

Slash through the subplot and the other subplot about hero’s inability to connect to his mother.

Cut the book into five episodes each of 2,500 words.

Read through to make sure it doesn’t have plot holes you can drive a truck through.

Collect massive cheque from the BBC.

(Now one of the above sentences isn't true. Guess which one!)

There have been other major changes too which is why I haven’t blogged for a while. More very very soon.

Harvey Nichols walk of shame ad

2011-12-11T16:49:00.001Z

Someone just asked me if I’d seen the Harvey Nicols ‘Walk of Shame’ advert in which several curvy girls in skimpy dresses are seen heading home in the cold early morning, clearly having Had Sex. The filthy trollops. Followed by a tall, skinny model with perfect makeup and expensive dress, walking with confidence and getting an admiring glance from the milkman.
What a nasty little ad. The ‘ordinary’ women are shot in a voyeuristic way, in cold grey light, pulling down their skirts, shoulders hunched, looking vulnerable. You can practically feel the collective lips of middle England pursing into a giant cat’s bum. Sluts. Whereas the rich skinny girl is bathed in a golden light and is heading towards a posh mansion block. Never mind that she might have spent the previous evening banging the entire City of London from end to end, her makeup and hair are perfect.
Shame on Harvey Nichols.

Penguin and Self-Publishing

2011-11-23T14:23:00.002Z

I haven’t blogged for a while because I’ve had tons of other work to do. Not that I’m moaning about it (she moans) but part of that work has been teaching creative writing, so I feel somewhat qualified to hold forth. Some people think creative writing can’t be taught at all, but I don’t agree. I think the craft of writing can be learned – viewpoint, voice, characterisation, the narrative arc all can be learned and improved upon. But learning technique won’t make an essentially mediocre writer into a good one. A good creative writing course will give you the tools to improve your writing but if you want to write professionally I think you need a basic zing about your writing – a feel for words, a sense for words. And the ability to work very hard. And accept constructive criticism.

But I’ve noticed that quite a few students seem to be far keener to get their work out there than they are to get their work to the highest standard. I followed a discussion once on the topic: why do you write? My favourite reply was a po-faced, ‘Because I have truths to tell’.

So when I read that Penguin have started a self-publishing service, I don’t think it will democratise publishing as so many yet unpublished writers argue, convinced that publishing is some sort of Masonic club. Instead it will persuade many writers to spend less time on making sure their work is of a high enough standard so that a traditional i.e. paying publisher will take a punt on it, and instead fork out to see their work in print. Not published – printed because the whole point of a book being published (traditional publisher) instead of printed (self-publishing) is the editorial input. Self-published writers often say that publishing their own work puts them in control as though having a copy editor fine comb your work to make it as good as it can be, and then marketed to sell as many copies as possible is some sort of artistic insult to the writer.

So in the spirit of ~~putting off work~~ research I browsed Authonomy, an online writers forum, where writers network and post their books, in the hope that enough people will read and review it, for the book to end up on the coveted Harper Collins editing list. Then the book is apparently read and given professional feedback although there’s been controversy over how useful this feedback is. The ultimate goal of course is for HC to offer the author a contract. The trouble with this is that it’s the self-publicists whose books rise to the top five that are then apparently sent to the HP editorial desk. And the only way of doing this is by being a consummate networker. Nothing wrong with that but not all writers are good at self-publicity – some are, but others are too busy ~~staring out the window~~ writing.

The other serious problem is that if the possibility of your book being read by a HC editor is down to support from your peers, very little feedback is actually honest and constructive so it’s worse than useless. I noticed page after page of glowing reviews for a book of poetry that the author wrote to ‘teach morals’. Unsurprisingly the poems were well intentioned but amateurish. So the writer then understandably thinks he has written a very good book and will be doubly confused and disappointed to meet as he inevitably will, with rejection.

If you go to the excellent Self-Publishing Review, you see book after book where Jane Smith stops reading after a few pages because the book is filled with the kind of errors that the writer should have frankly spent more time working on and ironing out before sending it out in public.

I have nothing against self-publishing but it means taking charge of the entire editorial and marketing process and being objective and clear eyed enough about your own work to ‘see’ it from their point of view. Not many writers can truly do this and see their writing as a product with the eagle eyed harshness it needs. I tell my students (and me too if I’m listening to myself) to go through the work, just like an editor looking for reasons to dump it. Not because editors are horrible people but they know what to look for. Also because that’s what happens in the real world.

Teaching at Wandsworth Prison

2011-10-27T12:00:00.004+01:00

So I went to Wandsworth Prison yesterday. It wasn’t an impulse visit – I was doing a face to face tutorial which is part of the work at the Open University. Some tutors choose not to actually go to the prison to see their students – his previous tutor hadn’t even given him her name! ‘How did you sign off with your marking?’ I asked. ‘Your Tutor,’ she replied sounding oddly like an educational stalker. I wanted to meet my prisoner, especially as he had gained a distinction on the previous OU course he was doing. ‘Suicide was a recurring theme on his work,’ said his previous tutor.

So as I drove the car through lush, peaceful Wandsworth and turned into the road, I wasn’t surprised to see trees almost but not quite, obscuring high wire fences with bundles of razor wire looped at the top. The air smelled damp and fresh and there were people standing outside the visitor centre chatting. I went up the steps into the visitors area which reminded me of the post office where you go to collect your too big parcels. I handed over my driver licence, my mobile and my ipod. Then I went through a sliding door into another waiting area. A prison officer wandered through with a massive bunch of keys dangling from his waist. The sound of jangling keys is a constant backdrop in prison, just like the opening credits in Porridge. I sat and waited. Several people jangled through the waiting area, so used to the routine they didn’t even have to look down at their key bundles. They would reach for the right one without breaking their stride and step through into the looking glass world.

Then the door opened and in came the education officer, Siobhan*. We walked across a prison exercise yard – wide and bare, topped with razor wire. In the corner was an aviary full of loudly shrieking canaries – doing their bird. I asked her how long she’d been working in prison. She said she’d been doing it for ten years and loved it but like everything else, the prison service were experiencing huge cutbacks. ‘And the illiteracy rate is about 50%’ she sighed. ‘And now we have a for profit company bidding to take over the education programme.’ ‘Which company?’ I asked. ‘A building firm,’ said Siobhan stoically. I looked at her and she shrugged. Yes – what possible reason could a building company have to take over the education programme in prison – except to make money? I expressed naïve amazement. ‘Yes’ she said sadly. ‘A for profit company is bidding to educate prisoners.' We discussed the shockingly high illiteracy rate in prison - (nearly 50% of all prisoners have a reading age of an 11 year old) and how this is going to go up and up. And how the rate for reoffending drops from 90% to 10% (yes!) if the prisoner has a job to go to. And how can they have a job if they have the reading ability of a child of 11? And how will they learn to read if for-profit companies take over the education sector of a prison? As we talked Siobbhan was briskly opening gates. The clatter of keys mingled with the chorus of canaries. A couple of prisoners swept the yard. We walked past a well kept garden. ‘That’s for the visitors,’ said Niamh as we went through yet another locked door and into the education centre. Gloom swept over me.
The first thing I noticed was the smell. A faintly unwashed sour smell. My prisoner, a small Glaswegian, neat and brisk, shook my hand. He and I and Siobhan sat in an office. We talked easily for a couple of hours, going over any issues he had with the course. I read a very good piece he had typed out. It was funny and well written. There were no typos and not a single spelling mistake. We discussed ideas for one of his assignments. He wanted to write about loneliness. I congratulated him on getting a distinction from his previous course. He had a pallid prison look about him but was obviously highly intelligent and genial. I remembered his previous tutor telling me that much of his work with her had a suicide theme. And just as I was wondering whether this recurring theme would be insensitive to bring up, he said that he was particularly surprised to get a distinction. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because I was going through a sex offender treatment programme,’ he said. I nodded I think – my face didn’t change. I hope it didn’t suddenly register: ‘you Nonce!’

He said that he was getting out in December and was counting down the days. I thought of those who (knowing nothing about a treatment programme for sex offenders) like to say it’s a ‘soft option’ but I can’t imagine anything harder than facing your behaviour squarely. I liked him. I admired the effort it must have taken to get through a degree course. I thought of how manipulative sex offenders are too.

As I walked back across the yard with Siobhan she asked if he was any good and I said he was. She said that she was surprised – as ‘most sex offenders though intelligent have a very narrow emotional range.’ I considered this and we talked briefly about the treatment programme. ‘Do you think he’s cured?’ ‘No’ said Siobhan. ‘They’re never cured.’
I left the prison and just walked for a long time feeling glad to be able to walk where I wanted and look up at the richly hued trees.

The Evening Standard have started a campaign to Get London Reading and it involves donating a few hours of your time to help a struggling child to read.

*Not her real name

Where Jane Root thinks good ideas come from

2011-10-24T16:14:00.001+01:00

There’s a very interesting piece by Jane Root (former head of BBC2) about where good ideas come from. It struck a chord because it’s both sincere and thoughtful and offers hope to anyone who has mulled, nurtured, developed and polished an idea. Ideas are not often Eureka moments but naggy scratchy murmurings that develop at their own pace, or suddenly go into hibernation, only to burst forth again at a later date.
I’ve had such an idea which rattled around in my head for a few years, before becoming an idea and then an idea for a series before it was unceremoniously dropped like a wasp infested pear. So I forgot about it. And now suddenly – someone is interested again, so I’ve dusted it off and am picking through it again. And ignoring Mr Paranoia on my shoulder who softly whispers: 'It's shite.'

The academic year at the Open University has started again too and I’ve been at pains to tell my students that in the words of F.Scott Fitzgerald, it’s good to get feedback 'but in the end you have to trust your own opinion.' Now I have to follow my own advice and I’ve only just realised how annoying it is.
Oh and I’m doing some prison teaching this year, so am off to brave the security requirements of Wandsworth Prison tomorrow morning. I’ll tell you all about it when I get back.

Critical feedback is like wheatgrass. You know it's good for you but it still tastes like shit.

2011-10-12T12:11:00.008+01:00

Critical feedback is like oral sex in that it’s better to receive than give. Some people are very good at gently pointing out the merits of your work, followed by a long list of what’s wrong with it, followed by something nicely positive that leaves you wanting to get on with it rather than kill yourself and go into a massive sulk. Others either offer a few blanditutes or occasionally rip your work to shreds, only pausing to say in a pained voice: I’m only being honest. I’ve been giving and receiving feedback for several years now. This is what I’ve learned:

Giving Feedback

At the moment I’m reading several manuscripts from would be children’s writers and it’s astonishing how few of them actually read what’s currently out there. How can you write for a particular genre if you don’t read from it?

I generally adopt the ‘shit sandwich’ technique – this is good, this is not so good and this is great. I also go through my feedback and remove any ‘demands’ I may have drafted. So no ‘do this or that’ but ‘I suggest’ or ‘perhaps you could try’. One of my writers usually responds to my suggestions that perhaps a heroic bunny might not appeal to the 8 – 11 age group by rephrasing my words in inverted commas. I don’t think it matters that a rabbit is not ‘appealing’ he says. Well I do and so will your reader. He also baulked at the idea of a title change just because it might ‘sell’ better. Such writers are the ones who bang on about editorial suggestions compromising their artistic integrity. To which one can only reply, ‘Grow the Fuck Up.’

Receiving Feedback

It’s all down to remembering that feedback is designed to make the writing better. It’s not a personal attack. Which is what I tell myself when my first draft is returned with copious notes and red pen. I suppose that’s why I get so irritated when would be professional writers get so arsey about my carefully phrased suggestions. How I wonder are they going to survive in a professional world where their baby is returned with stuff like: ‘Not Funny’ or WTF? Or I don’t believe it! – like Victor Meldrew. One writer in another group was so resistant to any kind of feedback other than grovelling that I finally asked her why she wanted to write in the first place. ‘Because I have great truths to tell’ she said. I thought she was joking. She wasn’t.

Red pen stings though. So I sit and sulk while my producer (as it happens) tells me how and why this or that doesn’t work. But while I’m sulking I write down what she says. Then I carry on sulking. Then I leave it and go back to the piece a few days later when the sulking has dropped to a more manageable level. I used to think everything I wrote was shite and if someone didn’t like it would flagellate myself thinking of course he’s right – I’m useless what am I thinking? I was perhaps too ready to hear something was rubbish. Now after the initial (silent) roar of Fuck off! What do you know!? I feel confident enough to take on board the detail of the criticism without hearing the criticism as a destructive attack on me.

Topshop creates an Avoid This Man tee shirt

2011-09-15T12:19:00.001+01:00

There's nothing I like more than a mindless wander round Topshop, fingering the dresses, pursing my lips over the rubbish hemming and getting vertigo from the heels. But yesterday I noticed some tee shirts in the Top Man section. If you can't read them, the one on the left says:I'm so sorry but:You provoked meI was drunkI was having a bad dayI hate youI didn't mean itI couldn't help itThe one on the right says:New Girlfriend?What breed is she?There has been an outcry and already most of the stock has been removed. But what's really depressing is if you go to the Topman Facebook site and look at the comments left by customers, presumably most of whom are young men, the utter lack of empathy is terrifying. Anyone who protests is apparently a 'humourless feminist' - yeah yeah boys. Can't you think of something more original to say? And I wonder what is the fucking point of having tons of money spent on advertising campaigns to help teenagers understand what abuse really is, when you can buy a tee shirt that cheerfully excuses cracked ribs and comparing your girlfriend to a farmyard animal? I wonder if women went round wearing a tee shirt that read: From here I can tell you're a loser with an exceptionally small penis how funny they would find that?One good thing though. A man who wears a tee shirt printed with this kind of joke is the best warning to Stay Away I can think of. Because he might as well be wearing a tee shirt that reads: I am a controlling and abusive loser who will both abuse and blame you for it. Run like the wind!

Maggie Goes on a Diet: Never mind the message - look at the content.

2011-09-12T15:37:00.003+01:00

There is a book out in October which is causing huge controversy – even more strange since it’s self published. The author is doing that authorial thing of protesting that he had no idea it would cause so much fuss – he only intended to educate children about healthy eating. That’s your first clue. A children’s author who sets out with A Message instead of wanting to write a great story is not going to write a good children’s book. Ok so the book is called Maggie Goes on a Diet and the reason many people are so cross with the author is because the clear message to young girls is that dieting is a good thing. And what with an explosion in eating disorders and an increasing unease that young girls are being sexualised too early, the idea that someone would bring out a book which shows that after Maggie goes on a diet her life is so much better (just like a diet ad in fact) is a bit offensive.What really surprises me though is not that a self published book about a child going on a diet is causing such a fuss, it’s that nobody seems to be objecting as to the actual quality of the book. Probably because it is self published and while there are honourable exceptions, a large proportion of self published children's books are shite. They are shite because they are aimed at the wrong age group, the artwork is amateur, the story is leaden, and there is a tiresome moral message. This one succeeds on all counts. The book is purportedly aimed at 6 – 8 years old but Maggie is fourteen. And the book is written in rhyme. How many teenagers do you know who read rhymes? Especially crudely illustrated ones? About a girl who is meant to be a teenager but has sticky up braids like Pippi Longstocking? Why is her hair sticking up? Is there some sort of Something About Mary thing going on? And as for the rhyme . . . .Maggie was teased just about every day at schoolShe was called Fatty and Chubby and other names that were just as cru-el.Searching the refrigerator in the hopes she would feel betterEating lots of bread and cheeses including some cheddar.Really trips off the tongue eh? So yeah - blogging about it – I’m giving it publicity. But I also know that however much publicity this book gets – it’s not going to get taken up by what self-publishers call ‘mainstream’ publishers and what everyone else calls publishers. Not just because it's a horrible idea, badly executed. After all there are plenty of equally horrible celebrity biographies out there. But also because the author himself is no stranger to the Krispy Kremes so ultimately this book is about a fat middle aged man who writes bad books trying to shame little girls into dieting. Sending the wrong message to girls? I'll say.

I Love Researching the 70s

2011-09-09T12:57:00.000+01:00

It’s so much more fun than work. I’m writing a play set in the seventies and as part of my ~~doing anything to avoid writing the next draft~~ research I’m looking at some of the terrifying public information films of the time. My God it was a scary time. Strikes, political dissent, and Donald Pleasance. You might not have heard of him but his voice struck terror into any child of the seventies. Here he is disguised as the Spirit of Dark and Lonely Water ready to trap the show off or the fool. And if you escaped Donald Pleasance you might end up buried alive inside a disused fridge. That'll learn you. Managed to dodge death by white goods? You might like to nip to the shops in your car. But soft! You ladies going to the shops and the launderette, smarmed Jimmy Saville (well this was before feminism) might not have the same face in the evening as you started out with, in the morning. What do you mean Jimmy Saville – yes you with the Lady Gaga hair and face like a melted welly. Of course! Because the lady doesn’t Clunk Clink on a short visit to the shops she is thrown through the car window! Well that’ll learn you – Mrs. Or Boris Karloff as you’re now known.Ok so you've survived deep water, abandoned fridges and you’ve Clunk Clicked. But you’re still not safe. There is the lurking menace of Stranger Danger – an absolute obsession in the seventies. Never mind that over 90% of child abuse is carried out by someone who should be taking care of the child. I watched a two part film featuring a robotic voice saying Say No to Strangers about the danger of getting into a car with Duncan Preston before he was enshrined as a comedy star on Victoria Wood. I watched this film all the way through and it’s genuinely terrifying. The ten year old girl, Teresa is persuaded that if she gets into Duncan’s car, they’ll probably meet her mum on the way. And he has a kitten. (That old one. Nowadays a weirdo in the car would be more likely to say he was a record producer and could make Teresa the next Brittany Spears. Mind you – most record producers are perverts anyway). So Teresa gets into the car and two seconds later mum rushes up in her high heels and career woman haircut. But it's too late! Luckily a smart black girl (and I mention that because again, this being the seventies – rife with open racism and programmes like Love Thy Neighbour i.e. Oh My God There’s A Black Man Living Next Door) has noticed the car and gives a good description to the police. Meanwhile Teresa’s mum is sitting on the sofa next to her husband Bernard (Yosser Hughes) Hill. But they only send a WPC round to Teresa’s mum’s house. One WPC. She’s played by Brenda Blethyn but still. Where are the police out making door to door enquiries? Or the police helicopters? She could be dead or in hospital! weeps mum, in a curious reversal of possibilities. I thought the first twenty four hours after an abduction were crucial. The message seems to be that if you get into a car with a stranger, you’ll only get a bored WPC writing ‘Blue Car driven by pervert – probably’ who then pats mum on the shoulder and says, I’m sure she’ll turn up. You can almost see the thought bubble where she adds, in a body bag. Part One ends with a shot of Duncan’s car as the light fades. Teresa is clearly in the house with him. Argggh! Nightmares!But in part two the film wimps out completely. Teresa is back with mum and the whole issue of her assault is smoothed over. He tried to kiss me and when I said no he did this she sobs showing a bruise on her arm. Oh dearie me, says a now clearly bored Brenda Blethyn probably thinking, When is Mike Leigh going to rescue me from a life of playing bored WPC's in Public Information Films? The message seems to be, if you get into a stranger’s car you’re asking for it. A bruised arm that is. But what amazed me was the lack of mobilising police effort. I know it was an information film but one WPC? Maybe they were all out framing suspects or taking bribes – another defining aspect of the seventies.It's always been dangerous being a child but I've never believed all that stuff about how bad it was before education for all and antibiotics and all that guff. Us kids who grew up in the seventies know better. We had to contend with The Grim Reaper with Donald Pleasance, disused fridges, killer escalators and Duncan Preston offering to show us his kittens. Now get back to you safe little computer game you overprotected fatso. And I'll get back to work. Oooh lunchtime . . . . !

I hate the word Humorous

2011-08-26T12:55:00.000+01:00

People usually inspire hatred in me. I make this point to illustrate that it’s not usually a word that makes me want to spit and throw something at the wall but that’s before I was reading a manuscript which features a synopsis which says – this issue is humorously tackled.

Neither concept is a good idea for a children's book. If you're going to have an issue in a children's book you'd better make sure it's as well hidden as a finely chopped onion in your onion hating child's spaghetti bolognaise. The other thing you don't need in a children's book or any book for that matter is the word HUMOROUS.

I hate the word humorous. It feels leaden, heavy, grannyish and most of all un-fucking-funny. This humorous tale always means ‘this tale is about as funny as being informed you have AIDS on the day your daughter announces she’s dropping out of school to live with the local heroin dealer.’

Go on - try it out:

Humorous pencils.

Humorous cards
You see? It doesn’t work. It's a smile that doesn't reach the eyes, a joke with no punchline, a tiresome anecdote told by someone who is oblivious to the strained smiles round the table. I have written a humorous story. No you haven’t. You have written a smug, bland, dreadful story.
Another word is hilarious. I’m not quite as vehement about it but it’s terribly overused. And like forcing rhubarb the word has a forced quality about it. And it's often used to push something that isn't very funny. ‘With hilarious consequences’ means I haven’t thought of them yet but they probably won’t be very funny.

Humorous is the worst though. The fustiest, crappest, leadenest worst. Cast it from the English language along with
Pleasant
Whatever
Paul
Daniels

2011-08-16T19:50:00.000+01:00

Michael Howard doesn't just have something of the night about him - he's a c**t. This morning on the Today programme it was reported that many of the non violent rioters were treated more roughly than had they committed the same offence alone. But because these courts have been set up to deal with the rioters, these first time offenders are being treated extremely harshly. Martin Nary then said he was worried that those youngsters on the fringes of the riot - those who had committed a non violent crime and had also expressed guilt, remorse and in many cases, the parents were involved and were just as shocked and determined that their child would not continue this behaviour; had these young people not being involved in the riots, the criminal justice system would give them a second chance. A boy during the riots, had stolen one pounds worth of chewing gum, his first ever crime and the desire for revenge and retribution had led to a swift conviction and criminal charges which would follow this boy through his life. Yes it was an offence but it was a very small and very petty one. Howard's response? 'I'm afraid they should have thought of those consequences before they engaged in those actions.' Pompous c**t.

I can't remember a similarly stern moral view expressed by Mr Howard when his fellow MPs were caught fiddling their expenses. Neither did Mr Howard propose that the bankers who waltzed off with millions of our money be sent to Broadmoor because according to him (remember?) 'prison works.'

And while I'm on the rant, I've just nipped to the shops to get some milk and saw the front cover of NOW magazine which 'celebrates' the '50 richest reality stars'. In the week in which we saw a furious explosion of greed, poverty, violence and despair, it seemed obscene to me to be celebrating someone like Imogen Thomas who is practically a millionaire for getting her tits out for lads mags or that perma bunch of twunts on The Only Way is Essex. I've nothing against them personally* but they represent a toxic, talentless part of our culture that offers wealth and attention in return for selling your soul and getting your pants off.

*Yes I do.

One in Four Women

2011-08-16T17:17:00.000+01:00

Occasionally I get strange emails from companies who say things like: Hey Jane I really am like your blog and read it most times before going on to breathlessly inform me that they wish to offer me a great online opportunity to make $2000000000 a day without even trying!

Or I get further stuttering emails along the lines of I read your blog freelance mum and thought that because of your interests your blog would be perfect to promote our new range of crotchless pants/makeup/eco-seaweed necklaces. (?!)

Today however I was chatting with a friend about Red Flags in relationships and how I want to make sure that when The Girl is dating, I tell her all about them because if I'd known what they were it would have saved me a heap of bother. For example, if a man phones you ten times in one evening because he's worried about you he's not worried, he's trying to control you. Or if he sulks because you want to spend time with your girlfriends, no it's not because he cares it's because he wants to cut you off from your friends. And if within a very short space of time he's talking about marriage and babies, it's not true love it's (all together now) control. All teenagers should know the red flags. I only really opened my eyes and saw my ex-boyfriend for the mentalist he clearly was when I wanted to go out to dinner with a girlfriend and he started to tear his shirt off in the middle of the street, like the Incredible Hulk. Luckily we were in public. I say lucky for me because I started laughing and he wasn't pleased. But when he started sobbing and gripping my hair and saying it was only because he 'loved me' even I couldn't ignore the flashing red light above his head saying: 'RUN RUN RUN'.

So after this chat with friend, I get home and there's an email from a company asking me to blog or tweet about the launch of a new APP 1in4women experience domestic violence at least once in their life. It's the first time I've agreed to promote something but I'm not being paid and it's important.

Greed in Italy

2011-08-03T12:52:00.000+01:00

So I’ve just returned from a week in Italy – Sienna, Lucca and Pisa since you ask and yes the weather was wonderful and yes, Italian men do sport brightly coloured trousers and ponytails without shame. I spent a lot of time shovelling pasta and ham so dark – no light could penetrate – into my mouth - while grabbing my dining companions and shouting: Oh my GOD you have to try this - hang on sorry, I've finished it. But in between my sweaty and piggy wanderings I noticed a few things.
Having been brought up a Catholic I find the gloomy theatricality of the religion both depressing and depressive – a constant attempt to romanticise misery. You only have to read about the lives of the saints as I did as a child to catch on pretty fast that the majority of female catholic saints were deeply disturbed young women or just barking mad. St Catherine of Sienna – anorexic who drank pus from the sores of a cancer patient. Yay! Let’s all copy that one girls. But – the churches in Italy are just staggeringly fabulous. Maybe their coolness and walls bursting with art are such a relief after the dazzling outdoor heat, but there is something so lush and loving about the curves and paint – it puts you under a spell. There’s no incense smell either – it’s more a soft orangey scent that permeates the churches. Signor Sheen probably but it’s deeply restful.

Italian families do this thing called the passeggiata which means they wander the streets in their best clothes taking up lots of room on the pavement and chattering. Then they all go out to eat and behold – the babies eat exactly the same food as the older family members. Not a breaded dinosaur shape in sight, just small children hovering up massive plates of pasta like tiny mop headed dust busters. The normality of this could also be down to the fact it’s illegal in Italy to serve deep fried food in school cafeterias.

So yes I loved Italy – even the Catholicism is sensuous and life affirming somehow. So coming back to this headline that girls as young as five are being treated for anorexia and are models to blame or celebrities or who is to blame – says the Daily Mail who love – oh how they love - to print pieces on why DO women hate their bodies? Gosh – I wonder too – and then you turn to the next page and it’s a picture of a woman who now looks older than she did thirty years ago. See? Isn’t that disgraceful? Next to the picture of the female celebrity with cellulite.
However, much as I’d love to see the DM go the way of the NoTW I sadly think that it comes down to us parents. All the distorted, airbrushed pictures of teeny tiny Cheryl Cole on her latest diet ‘to get Ashley back’ in the world are not going to have much of an effect if the child has a family life where food is not seen as The Enemy or has a massive amount of power – the power to make you feel shit because you ate A BISCUIT. This terrible mental illness seems to be a toxic stew of low self esteem, perfectionism, a desperate desire for some sort of control and a fundamental refusal to be an adult female because it seems so complicated and problematic with the curves and the flesh, blood sex and food.
And yet my own mother was on a diet for as long as I can remember. My sister and I would eat her wonderful homemade food while she picked on soups, shakes and on one occasion, what looked like a pile of twigs. She later said it was ‘The Cambridge Diet.’ And it worked for a while. As most diets do. Well wouldn’t anyone lose weight on a diet of twigs? She was reading something about Aktins when she had the accident that would kill her a few months later. So why didn’t my sister and I end up with food issues? Probably because we were both lucky enough to inherit a narrow frame, we ate very little processed food and we were both too greedy to diet anyway. And I mean greed in a good way. I loved the greed I saw in Italy – not the wretched tearing self hatred of being caught in a food compulsion, but proper licking bread wiping, dripping down the chin greed. Where you feel a teeny bit full after but a walk will sort that out and there’s a smile on your face. Really - that linguine with chilli prawns will stay in my heart forever.

Just once more . . . and some gossip

2011-07-17T21:11:00.001+01:00

I was knocking up some chicken stock tonight. One of my favorite dishes is risotto - a simple lemon one and it helps if you've got great stock. Anyway as I bunged some onion and carrot onto the carcass - a series of rambled thought occured:

My mother lives on through her chicken stock
In lemony bones her essence is distilled.
And when I find a jar of her dark sticky marmalade
She is here
When irritation rises at The Girl just being her
And answering back because she's clever
She is here
I linger by the coco pops and hear: There's more nourishment in the box
My hair is hers - thick and lush on good days
Effing Mick Hucknell frizz bonnet on bad ones
She is there and there
And always here.

On another note altogether I heard on very good authority that two days ago, Rupert Murdoch and Rebekah Brookes were informed there was no room in The Ledbury or The River Cafe! To which the only mature response is well it can't be as bad as being arrested. And if Ms Brookes gets sent to jail? How will she cope without Frizz Ease?*

*Only girls will get this.

I'm not Bikini Ready

2011-07-14T14:57:00.001+01:00

In a few weeks I'm going away for a few days and not only am I not bikini ready (I wish there was a sarcasm ) - I'm leaving the inevitable wax to the last minute, to give those little strips something to get hold of. But in the meantime I'm faintly alarmed by the profusion of sprouting hair. There's even one lone hair that twirls in singular splendour just below my belly button, saying 'Here I am!' What's that all about? Is it a nasal hair that lost its direction? Or some dark reminder of what might eventually happen if I left my bikini line to go Amazon Forest? Should I even be wearing a bikini? According to one of those surveys - you know the ones that the gleefully pounce on, women of forty six and over feel invisible. Fortunately there have been a few swift comebacks to the soul destroying idea that women of a certain age should nip off for a cauliflower perm, and a nice pair of Mary Whitehouse specs. Unfortunately Christine Odone's smart response in The Telegraph featured - as an example of mature womanhood, Nancy Del Olio whose self confidence not only borders but crosses way way past the delusional.

I do love the way (and when I say love I mean hate) from March onwards, magazines, features and Lorraine Kelly et al start going on about being 'bikini ready' as though the entire female population intend to spend the next six months lolling about in a string two piece. Instead, if we're lucky we might get a few days off to lie by the sea or the pool and all we're ready for by then is a large gin.

I'm still bothered about that bloody single hair though. It mocks me with its single twirliness.

2011-07-11T13:51:00.000+01:00

I got a message today from the lovely Gillian telling me in the nicest possible way to get orf my lazy arse and start writing again. So I am and thank you Gillian.

I then spent loads of time deliberating what to call my first post in nearly two months. In My Absence? Too pompous. What I've Been Doing? Well frankly who cares? No point in using the 'I've been soooo busy' line. We're all busy. So this is what's been happening.

I've finished teaching at the Open University for the year and am now supposed to be using the time productively to write a play for Radio 4. But something is stopping me. I think it's called Bone Idleness.

The Boy got through his first year of college and was so relieved he decided to buy a suit. I've no idea either.

It's been nearly a year since mum fell down the stairs and died - long enough for me not to choke up when I find old jars of her home made marmalade, and to think instead about her funny little habits. Like the way she would serve up rock hard avocado - I mean you could chip your teeth on them. 'Just let them ripen a bit,' I'd say but she'd have no truck with that. 'I'm writing to the supermarket to complain!' she'd announce like Boudicca, waving her slice of stone hard avocado like a sword. The thing is, she kept on buying rock hard avocados and she kept on writing to the supermarket to complain. Sometimes she got her money back and a whole load more of avocado.

She also wrote to the bank to complain about the location of the cash machine. 'The sunlight shines directly on it' she complained to the hapless spotty eighteen year old cashier. And after she died I found out that she was in the middle of what politicians call a 'frank and fearless' correspondence with Weatherspoons about their crap food. You'd think crap food at Weatherspoons would be a given but mum apparently wasn't taking their deep fried mushrooms lying down. She even put in her will that if we (her family) disobeyed her instructions and bought an expensive coffin she vowed to 'come back and haunt us.'

Dad is recovering from the nightmare revelation that if he wants a woman to continue to clean up and cook for him, he is going to have to pay her. I remember years ago reading Shirley Conran's Superwoman in which she said, if you want a good man grow your own. I wonder if it's a particularly Irish generational thing to have a grown man so utterly domestically incompetent. I know that mum infantilised dad but he went along with it. And even though he knows on one level that my sister and I work for a living and have better things to do than cook and clean for him - on another level that's all he really recognises women as doing. Which is very sad. But also incredibly annoying. When I left dad's house, hours later I would find endless missed calls from him. He was ringing to ask where the washing up liquid was. Or where I kept the milk (?) 'Ok dad - where would the milk be most likely to be? A - in the bathroom cabinet or B - in the fridge? 'Ok'. Five minutes later the phone rings again. 'Where did I leave my glasses?' It's thinking that the womb is a location device. It's not spending five minutes thinking about where the vacuum cleaner bags might be but immediately defaulting to the nearest person with a womb because she'll know. For his entire life dad has never had to consider anything domestic. So we've got hold of a company who are used to dealing with older people who will come and clean for dad and do small errands.

And I really don't want The Boy turning out anything like this. So he's got himself a job and by the end of this summer he's going to be cooking dinner a few days a week. That's The Boy, not dad. He'll be sitting in his chair shouting at the telly while the nice ladies from Home Instead vacuum round his feet. And then expect to be paid for it.

So now that dad has been sorted out, hopefully normal service will resume.

Sally Brampton: The Beginning

2011-05-14T12:24:00.000+01:00

One of my favorite writers, Sally Brampton has set up a blog. She suffered badly from depression and wrote about it in a very approachable and practical way: Shoot the Damn Dog.

Role Models for Girls

2011-05-09T14:25:00.000+01:00

A while ago I wrote a series for Radio 4 about girls comics. In the first episode which was about Girl comic and set in 1952, I learned that the comic editors wanted a story about a girl pilot. It was to be called Kitty Hawke and her All Girl Air Crew! Sounded fabulous, but their readers didn’t want girl pilots steering planes over mountainous ranges. So the story was changed to Angela the Air Hostess. Oh well. Twenty years later, the mighty Bunty magazine featured working class girls who had ambitions to go to grammar school – despite what their mean uncles and aunties had to say about it. ‘You’re getting ideas above your bleedin’ station!’ roared one particularly mean uncle to the plucky heroine who only wanted to wear the badge of St Plum in the Gob. My own favourite was Catch the Cat featuring a girl in occupied France who wore a very dodgy looking cat suit and went around foiling some seriously stupid Nazis. But scoff all you like – these were girls who did stuff. They didn’t just sit there looking pretty in between getting their kit off for men’s mags, crying on cue and occasionally beating up women in toilets did they Cheryl Cole? But hey – guess who The Girl wants to be when she grows up?

It’s hard to talk about this stuff without sounding all po-faced, but who has heard of Hermila Garcia Quinones? The female police chief of Meoqui, Mexico was gunned down on her way to work. A short while later another young girl, Marisol Valles called ‘the bravest woman in Mexico’ took the job. She was twenty! After several months and many more death threats she had to flee to the US, but who has heard of her? Let’s try someone else. Maria Bashir. When the Taliban banned girls from getting an education, she set up a school in her own living room and risked death every single day. Now she's the first female prosecutor in Afghanistan. I would imagine she’s got more to worry about than whether Heat will print a picture of her arse looking a bit fat.

I’ve just put an idea into Radio 4 for Women’s Hour, about Ida and Louise Cook. Never heard of them? Well, they were two ordinary young women in 1930s Wandsworth, who fell in love with opera, and saved up to travel across Europe to see their favourite opera stars. During this time they began to notice the persecution of the Jews. Meanwhile, to fund their operatic travels, Ida started writing for Mills & Boon. And the money she made enabled the sisters to provide sponsorship and a place to stay for some 29 desperate Jewish families. Ida and Louise smuggled these people out, under the noses of the border guards, priceless diamonds pinned to their scruffy cardies. They stayed in expensive hotels to show they had nothing to hide and once, Louise was chatted up by Joachim Von Ribbenthrop, Hitler's Foreign Minister. 'He thought I was just another admiring fool,'. They were named as Righteous Among the Nations in the sixties. I reckon the reason that nobody has really heard of these amazing sisters is because they were naturally self-effacing, from a time when women didn’t seek publicity for themselves but also because they weren’t particularly pretty. But if they had been – they would probably have gotten married and never had such extraordinary lives.

My producer doesn’t want to call it Ida and Louise because she thinks it recalls Thelma and Louise. But it’s stuck in my head and they were around before Thelma and Louise. And they don’t drive off a cliff at the end – they merely go back to Wandsworth.

So, I’m just saying that there’s room for Cheryl and that one from The Only Way is Essex, the models, the actresses and models, and other gorgeous girls who’ve got somewhere with their good looks. I’ve got no problem with that – just that they shouldn’t be the only role models for our daughters to look up to. After all, as Ida said once, ‘in the end, you are what you do.’

Empowerment - that bloody word again

2011-05-05T14:21:00.000+01:00

I really hate the word empowered. Like resting for actors, it’s a word that’s slipped its ken and is used as a stick to beat us. Any kind of dubious activity or product that involves the endless commoditisation of the female body – you just slap a variant of empowered on it and any protest reduces you to a hairy arsed feminist with no sense of humour. Pole dancing? So empowering. Playboy pencil cases for six year olds? Pre-teen empowerment. Abstinence only sex education for girls but not boys? No . . .not the swivel eyed lunacy of right wing fundamentalism, Nadine Dorries, but empowering girls.
Someone from a documentary company rang me the other day. BBC4 are exploring how ‘women see their bodies’ throughout all stages in life. 'It’s particularly relevant since the presenter has just had a baby so she’s talking to women – real women. And they would be interested in wondering how my attitudes to food and body image have affected The Girl. It would be quite (all together now!) empowering,' she says.
We have a little chat and of course it soon becomes apparent that what they really want is a woman who dislikes her body intensely, is obsessed with calorie counting and is passing this self loathing onto her daughter. How can that be empowering I ask? 'Because the woman would be aware of what she’s doing.' How marvellous.
I point out that a dinner lady at The Girl’s school told me that there’s a five year old girl who has to have her food separated on the plate. So peas can’t touch the potatoes which in turn have to be kept away from the chicken. An eating disorder in the making. At five. ‘Can you give me her number?’ the researcher asks, trying to keep the eagerness out of her voice. She is very disappointed when I tell her that I don’t have the number.
I put the phone down feeling depressed. Surely a better way would be to talk to women who don’t live their lives with the spectre of the scales looming – they are out there. Women who (whisper who dares) actually enjoy their food and who want their daughters to enjoy it too. Women who despite the billion pound industry which informs us that we are nothing without the impossibly sculpted waist, the fat free thighs, topped off by space hopper tits have actually managed to retain a sense of self. That would be really empowering.

Beetroot Ice Cream with Sweet Cheese

2011-05-04T17:34:00.000+01:00

It had all been going so well. I was sitting in one of those restaurants where the food is so expensive that faces dramatically drain of colour when the bill is presented. But never mind – what’s handing over three months wages to eat small puddles of dribble and blobs? With my companion, a gourmand, bon viveur psychologist, film maker and even more greedy than me, we were nibbling our way through a twelve course taster menu at L’Enclume in The Lake District.
L’Enclume nestling in the small village of Cartmel means anvil and refers to the fact that the oldest part of the building is a thirteenth century blacksmith. You can tell it’s a genuine medieval construct because anyone over five foot one spends their time shouting, ‘Ow my head!’ every time they enter the building.
I’d tried taster menus with my companion before and he always frets about not getting enough to eat. He’s actually on a diet but it’s Atkins and amazingly – he’s losing weight. Whenever we go out to lunch ‘to discuss projects' ie for him to remind me that I’m supposed to be writing a script for him, just before we start gossiping, he smugly eschews chips. Instead he orders steaks with great blobs of sauce and creamed spinach. And no – there is no history of heart failure in his family. Although this may change when we are presented with the bill from here.
He reminds me of the taster menu at Sketch, another restaurant of hushed food-is-religion where we hmmd, hawed and oohed our way through small artful piles of canapés and blobs. All wonderful and while I didn’t rise from the table groaning in stuffed shame, I was full. Not enough for him though. ‘Let’s have the twelve course one’ he says slapping the menu down. Because it’s that sort of restaurant, the lovely waitress adjusts the pebbles on our table (pebbles? When did they become fashionable) and laughs as though he’s said something hilarious.
Then we wait. There’s no bread to snarf down while waiting. ‘They probably don’t want us to fill up on it’ I grumble. So we eavesdrop on the next table instead. There’s a truly appalling man who we think is having dinner with his wife, son and the son’s stunningly beautiful girlfriend. All we can hear is the man’s voice going on and on like a particularly loud and obnoxious mosquito. ‘I hear you have a degree in flirting and she has a degree in nagging,’ he says loudly, nodding at his wife. I sneak a peak. He’s wearing a well pressed (by his wife I bet) casual blue shirt and chinos. He also has a bad combover. Exactly the kind of man who would gratuitously insult and then accuse the person of not having a sense of humour. At that moment, the kitchen doors swing open and a young waitress glides towards us with our first course: carrot sacks with juniper fried cake with cress. Yeah I know. But it tastes amazing! Sort of carroty exploding sharpness with lemony stuff and a bit of cake. (AA Gill would probably do this better). It’s far too posh a restaurant to lick the plate so we use our fingers. Meanwhile Combover Man is blah blahing away to the Sommelier about his extensive knowledge of wine. The Sommelier has a fixed smile on his face. I do hope they spit in his food.
Our plates disappear and there’s a wait of about five minutes before the next course comes. It blurs a bit after a while. Tiny little words of art – Kohlrabi, millet pudding, brassica . . . . bread. Bread! We can mop up the plate with it. Just then our latest course arrives. It’s about number seven and I’m beginning to get slight taster fatigue. ‘Vintage potatoes in ash with a touch of wood sorrel,’ says the waitress with a perfectly straight face while we both look nervously down at our plates in surprise. I think I’ve scraped some of this off the walls of the garden shed.
Combover man is on his way out and surprise! – he’s short! He does however look very clean and pressed with polished shoes and manicured fingernails. His wife has a defeated look on her face and her clothes are crumpled. You have a degree in flirting and she has a degree in nagging. ‘She should have divorced him for saying that’ says my companion. He’s right but you leave someone the first time they insult you like that. But this latest insult is probably only one in a long long line of digs, comments and pokes that maybe she hardly hears. Why do you stay with someone like that? ‘Cheer up’ says my companion. ‘Yes he’s a cunt but maybe he’ll have a heart attack and die and leave his wife a fortune.’ It’s nice to be with someone who has a really positive outlook.
We are now at course twelve – pudding, bypassing a trayful of cheese the size of a bed because I’m full. ‘You have some’ I say to my companion who is looking longingly at a lump of stilton the size of a wardrobe. ‘No I’m fine’ he says and twitching, turns back to a beautifully presented nugget of sorbet pink and a glowing white blob of loveliness nestling next to it. ‘Beetroot ice cream and sweet cheese!’
My brain is telling me it’s raspberry sorbet and pannacotta. My mouth is telling me it’s an abomination. Feeling my face settling into an unbecoming sulk I put my spoon down and do a convincing impersonation of Lou in ‘Little Britain’. ‘Don’t like it.’
But despite not being able to eat the final course I realise to my slight surprise that I’m very full. Annoyingly the old maxim about the brain taking a good fifteen minutes to register fullness is true.

Working for Free part two

2011-04-07T21:43:00.000+01:00

Thank you to the lovely Gillian for sending me this link. It's a flowchart designed by Jessica Hische and addresses all the bullshit reasons that ~~cheapskate tossers~~ would be employers throw at you, in order to persuade you to turn your brain inside out for free.

Writing for free - don't do it!

2011-04-07T13:06:00.000+01:00

So here's the skinny. I hear about this new website which says they will pay its writers £20 an hour. Yes I know - it does sound like bollocks doesn't it? But the idea of a regular gig sounds nice so I send off some writing samples and forget about it. A few weeks later I receive an email. It tells me that they've had such a fantastic response they can't make up their minds! And so would I mind writing not one but two travel articles because it's going to be some sort of travel website. That way they can decide who they really want.

And what do they get? They get a whole load of free work is what they get.

Now I know it's difficult when you're starting out as a writer, but I feel I've paid my dues and if someone doesn't like the way I write, when I've supplied them with a few samples, then fair do. But I don't think it's arrogant to assume - hey I know I can write and I've written professionally so if you expect me to write two free articles then you can stick it.

I have an issue with any company expecting free work anyway. And it's often got nothing to do with their financial situation - everyone in the world wants your services as cheaply as possible. If you go to the NUJ site, they have a section where writers anonymously post how much they've been paid for writing in some very prestigious newspapers and magazines. The sheer shitness of some rates will amaze you! There is also a very good section on copyright. I am deeply embarrassed to admit that when I recently had a new commission from Radio 4 I didn't actually know about streaming rights (where the writer is paid extra for their play to be available as a download or on iPlayer). I didn't know! The average writer in the UK makes about £10K a year which is crap. So we should be paid properly. Remember how the entire Hollywood industry ground to a total halt when the writers went on strike a couple of years ago? They were accused of being greedy just for wanting a bigger slice of the downloading and internet rights. It's not greed to be properly paid for your efforts and if you accept a rubbish rate, you're driving down the price for everyone else.

Abridging and Actors

2011-04-04T13:26:00.000+01:00

In my last post about abridging I wrote about the business of cutting a full length book down to five or ten episodes, each episode ending on a cliffhanger, and a good mix of prose and dialogue. Otherwise the poor actor is spouting And then . . . and then . . . and then, or (even worse) ‘So what did he say?’ ‘I don’t know’ ‘But surely you heard something?’ ‘No I didn’t’. A bad abridgement is like a plateful of gristly stew – hard for the listener to swallow and the poor actor choking on the words.
Of course like anything taking some skill, a real professional makes it look easy. Properly read, it’s like the actor is reading to one person – you. It turned out that Michael Maloney did the reading and he was astonishingly good. He made it sound so easy. There are several points of view in the book, and the central character is a woman. There are also many scenes where a whole host of police types have chewy conversations about murder. The actor has to subtly delineate between each voice but not in a silly high pitched way. A cock up costs studio time so the more seamless the reading, then the more the producer can get done in one take.
Michael Maloney does a lot of audio books and clearly he puts in some welly before he gets to the studio. He was brilliant and the whole book – all 22,500 words was in the can in one day. I also got to hear about a certain pop star whose management decided that pop star’s autobiography would sell much better if she read it herself! Oh what a good idea. Because how hard can it be to read a book eh? Especially one that you’ve ~~ghosted~~ written yourself – every word.
By the end of the first day, there were teeth marks in the recording booth from the sound engineer biting the table in frustration. The Producer resigned. It took six weeks to record twenty thousand words. Six weeks. Any profit that might have been made was swallowed up in the amount of studio time it took to record the book.
It’s not just pop stars with no experience of reading. Ever. Probably. It’s also about actors who show up, thinking it’s just reading a book. It’s not. It’s your brain working on about five different levels, elegantly pitching the line, eyes and brain scanning ahead for a bump in the road – pace, pause, knowing when to stop, knowing when a natural break occurs. All this going on at the same time. Getting the emphasis right. Subtle delineation between voices. We hear so much mockery of actors – some of it deserved – you know, actors blithering on about their political opinions – or the state of the world, that sometimes I forget there are some cracking actors out there who deserve every penny they get because they show up, on time, prepared, and they get on with it and do a brilliant job.

Oooh - posh face cream!

2011-04-01T14:50:00.000+01:00

After my last post’s transgression into something approaching intellectual rigour – you’ll be pleased to hear I’m back at my usual level of blogdom today. I bought some face cream! Only it’s not just any old face cream – it’s Clinique Superdefense (the skin care industry pays no heed to grammar or spelling) SP25. According to the folded up leaflet in 159 languages, it ‘arms skin to fight the visible effect of emotional stress’. As long as you ‘partner Superdefense with Super Rescue Antioxidant Night Cream.’ So moisturiser by the Ministry of Defence. Except that would mean my night time slap removal and wash routine would end up costing me upwards of fifty quid! So this stuff is going to be ‘partnered’ with Boots face wash and like it.
‘That’ll be £34.90’ said the lady at the counter with rusty streaks down her face and demon eyebrows. I smiled and tried to look as though I do this kind of thing ie pay mad sums for a product where the main ingredient is water, every day.

Yeah but you bought it. Yes I did. Well doesn't it look like it works? All shiny and gleamy and sciencey?! And with the full expectation of looking younger than The Girl who just turned seven, I’ll keep you posted.

The Subtle Art of Abridgement

2011-03-26T18:23:00.000Z

I’ve written about this before but it seems that abridging a book is a bit like ghost-writing – a subtle, almost Machiavellian art form, of finding the absolute plot – the core of a book and getting rid of everything that is not utterly essential to the forward movement of that plot.
If your average book is 80,000 words, then an abridger’s job is to squeeze it down to about 10,000 words. So if it’s being done on Radio 4, that means 2,500 words per 15 minutes. I’ve just abridged a book by Hassan Nekker for BBC7 or 4Extra as it’s about to known. It’s called Woman with Birthmark, and is the jolly tale of a man who is found shot. Twice above the belt and twice in the balls. The police can’t find anyone who has a motive for this crime. Although the lover of one of the police team is convinced the shot in the balls means the killer is a woman. A few weeks later another supposedly blameless citizen is found murdered in exactly the same way. Could there be a serial killer on the loose?
Five half hour episodes, each at about 4,500 words.
So how, I hear you yawn, do you abridge a book from 80,000 to 22,500 (4,500 per episode x 5 - each episode is half an hour.) Well firstly I read the book a couple of times. Especially if it’s a crime novel the plot tends to be quite complicated, and if it’s a good crime novel it will be intricate and the solving of the crime will be down to many little links. This makes the job of abridging harder because if you pull a thread, to reduce the word count, it can end up with the whole plot collapsing like a pack of cards. Suppose the plot is advanced because a character earlier in the book remembers something vital, but you’ve already cut the chapter where that character first appears because it’s part of a conversation that doesn’t contribute anything to the plot. That’s what I mean. Do you put in a bit of that earlier conversation and cut something else? If so does that now have a knock on effect? ( It’s considered bad form to add your own words to the abridgement if it can possibly be avoided).
So I go through the book and cut extraneous romance and subplot. I then divide what’s left into five episodes and try to make sure each episode ends with a cliff-hanger moment. Then I start to do the serious cutting. It’s important that you don’t end up with this happens then this then this then this, an endless series of happenings, or great swathes of prose followed by great swathes of dialogue. Light and shade. Remember the tone of the book.
I then manage to get each episode down to 4,500 words as my producer asked. My producer then rings and says each episode read out loud comes in at 27 minutes so could I add another 150 words to each episode. I agree, then put down the phone and curse my producer before going back to the full manuscript and adding in 150 words, very carefully.
Anyway it’s done. It’s a subtle art because I have to keep the essence of the story and I think the essence of the tone too. And in this case, it’s mordant Danish humour and occasional flashes of black wit.
And no it’s not very well paid. Nothing you do on radio usually is. But it’s nice to hear an actor read out the words and know that you decided which words he or she should speak.
Woman with Birthmark is on BBC7 from May 7th

I'm Pregnant!

2011-03-01T14:52:00.000Z

. . . and because I'm a celebrity my pregnancy is utterly fascinating and unlike any other book you may ever read about pregnancy and motherhood. Oh for fuck sake! Yet another celebrity is about to use pregnancy as a Marketing Device and write or pretend to write about her fascinating celebrity pregnancy.

I like Denise Van Outen. She seems like a woman's woman. But she's releasing a book in the next few days called Bumpalicious. It's 'much more than a pregnancy diary.' Right. It's a pregnancy diary with pictures! It should fit nicely onto the shelf next to Tess Daly's The Baby Diaries, (she was so emotional she threw cushions!) Myleene Van Klass's My Bump and Me (You will get bigger but don't worry!) and Jools Oliver's Minus Nine to One (Jamie's food made me sick!)

I don't know about the other two but Daly's book didn't sell. The DM with characteristic spite-disguised-as-concern said it might be because of her husband's unfortunate 'sexting' escapade which timed unhappily with publication. But - could the real reason have been that - women didn't want to buy yet another book about a highly paid celebrity blithering on about how 'ordinary' she is and throwing in a few references to farts or piles just to prove it, before skipping off to the Portland (which starts at £10K for a c-section.) You have nothing new to say and you don't say the unusual in an interesting or approachable way. So don't be surprised when despite your publicists paying about £40K to have your book displayed in Waterstones as 'bestseller' to see it in a few months, languishing in the remainders bin. The public are not quite as stupid as you think they are.

What are we going to have next? The Kerry Katona guide to parenting? Probably.

Let Me Spell That For You

2011-03-01T10:42:00.000Z

So it's The Girl's birthday soon and she's setting about organising her party with the social fervour of Paris Hilton.

'Oliver has to come.'

'Why?'

'Because he's my boyfriend mummy!' Cue rolling eyes.

And that's where it starts. I say she has to invite more than one boy or poor Oliver is going to feel a bit strange. So she suggests Mattheus as well.

'That's Mattheus with a 'z'.' A Z?!!! Where? It reminds me of a line in Sex and the City where a beautiful but particularly dim model introduces herself to Carrie. 'My name is Shaw. The Y is silent.'

And the list of unspellable names went on.

Anders. 'Is is short for Andrew?' 'NO Mummy don't be silly.' (More eye rolling)
Chianna
Aurania or Oranya. 'Is her surname Otang?' 'No mummy. I'm starting to get cross now.'

Tasmin. 'Do you mean Tamsin?' 'No I mean Tasmin.'
Ocean. 'Does she have a little brother called Puddle?' (Just the eye rolling now.)

I once wrote an article about people giving children slightly odd names to make them stand out. It's not a modern phenomena - the Puritans saddled their children with names like Be-Worthy and Repentance. But now, living in the individualistic culture that we do - many parents get Individual and Unique, confused with Barking Mad. And sometimes giving them a well known name but spelling it oddly - like Kaitlyn. There is an Institute of Naming Children Humanely who look at the business of giving children a bonkers name with stern disapproval. They say that

parents who choose names poorly create misleading labels for their children. These labels can cause their children to be mocked, stereotyped, or ostracized. Mocked, stereotyped, and ostracized children grow to become demented adults.

I'm not saying that any of my daughter's friends' names are demented but a few at least have a No - this is how you spell it vibe. And the IoNCH reckon that we say our names about a million times in a lifetime so the amount of time wasted saying, 'No you spell it K.A.I.T.L.Y.N' - adds up to about FIFTY wasted days which could be spent rollerblading, writing a novel or shopping.)

Maybe I'm just jealous. Perhaps if I were given a slightly mad but glamorous name like Ocean - I wouldn't have been the shy, introverted dweeb I was at school but a mysterious figure of depth. Like an Ocean in fact. Or maybe the way kids do - I'd have been called Wet or Sloppy (I wore glasses) or Sloppy Four Eyes.

Unusual names - what do you think? Do you grow into them or can they stunt you emotionally?

I hope I get run over by a bus

2011-02-15T15:54:00.000Z

And not spend my final days in hospital if this report is anything to go by. I've often thought that it would be a pretty shitty way to end your life - in a hospital ward, your last ocular experience being the smell of hospital tapioca. My mother spent her last night deep in a coma, with the fire alarm going off every ten minutes.

Perhaps it would be better to be hit by a bus than to literally lie in your own shit, hungry, thirsty and afraid to ask for help. It sounds so melodramatic doesn't it - almost Dickensian. But apparently that's what's happening in some of our hospitals. And fair enough, none of us want to look at it too closely because that might be us in twenty, thirty, forty years time.

One memory. Going into hospital to see mum and smelling that terrible institutional food. Reminding me of school dinners. You know how supermarkets pump out a chemical smell that tickles you nose seductively and makes you think of fresh baked bread? Even though you're telling yourself it's a chemical - it still smells sexy. Well every single hospital I've ever been into has that horrible food smell. Is that a chemical?

I couldn't believe that it was possible a person could starve on an NHS ward. Well it was a hot afternoon and there were six beds on mum's ward. Lunchtime. We had asked and asked that mum was encouraged to eat. I watched as a tired, dead eyed orderly stopped off at mum's bed and said: 'Do you want lunch?' Mum said nothing - she was unable to speak apart from rattling off little fragments of speech from her memory. The orderly started to move on. I stopped him and took some food off the trolley. Later on the doctor told me that the orderly knew that all patients on that ward were to be encouraged to eat. I got very used to hearing what the policy was. Everyone knew what the policy was and could quote it verbatim. It didn't mean the policy was being carried out though. We asked dad to come in every day at lunchtime to make sure she had at least one proper meal. She had a chart which I kicked up a huge fuss about and asked for it to be filled in every day. Then I realised that filling in the chart didn't mean squat. One spoonful of weetabix and half a piece of toast. I wondered if it was all made up because mum was losing weight at terrifying speed.

In another corner of the ward an elderly man lay, eyes bright in a sunken face, mouth wide open like a baby bird. His (hideous) meal was lying untouched on his tray. Nobody was feeding him and he was unable to move or speak, much less sit up and feed himself. Sometimes I fed him. He ate hungrily. Then the orderly took the tray away. I can't remember anyone else coming to see him. But every day the orderly brought food and then took it away again. I spoke to a nurse. The policy is that the patients are encouraged to eat. One day his bed was empty.

Mum died shortly after too - she had lost half her body weight. And that was with dad coming into hospital every single day to feed her. What happened if you didn't have a relative to do that? That's how you can starve to death on an NHS ward.

Sorry this is so grim. Why do we treat the elderly so badly in this country?

About death

2011-02-01T17:51:00.000Z

The Girl said yesterday: What happens if you're dead and it's your birthday?

My dad in conversation with his brother: 'Ould Jimmy'd dead. And he's dead. Is that right? She'd dead too? Ah shite. Oh and you know something else? Mr O'Reilly? Dead.' This jolly conversation continued for some time.

Without (self) promotion something terrible happens. Nothing!

2011-01-21T10:59:00.000Z

So said P.T Barnum, the US showman. I was thinking about this after reading an article in Jezebel about self-promotion for girls (without being a jerk). Americans are generally much better at self-promotion anyway. Possibly because they only get a lousy nine days annual leave per year. I remember reading about how David Hassellhoff, after Baywatch and before American Idol, was in the UK trying to relaunch his career, and after appearing on a daytime chat show, he handed out copies of his CV to the audience with a note: Thank you for taking an interest in my career.

Yuck!

On the other hand, a very good friend of mine who happens to be married to a television producer, said that during a party, a girl they knew slightly presented her television showreel to her slightly pissed husband, asking if he would give her some feedback, there and then. Equally yuck.

Without delving into the whole Self Esteem thing, in Blighty we seem to pride ourselves on career self-deprecation to the point of not just hiding our light under a bushel but burying it fifty miles underground. That book you wrote? Well . . .you don't want to boast because mum said that men don't like bluestockings. That script? So she wrote a script but have you seen the state of her kitchen cupboards . . .tsk tsk! An Oscar?! It's in the downstairs toilet! I'm ashamed to admit that just after a series I'd written received a good review, I was with my producer and he enthusiastically mentioned the review to a third party. I went red and mumbled something about 'not doing that much and it was down to casting.' Embarrassing because all I had to do was say, 'Yes I'm very proud.' What was I scared of? A person I'd just met over lunch might think me big headed?

Enough!

So many of us are freelance and we have to learn to get out there and promote our work, without pissing people off. It seems to boil down to a couple of rules.

1. Inform, don't brag. Say 'you've been interested in my work in the past so I thought you'd be interested in . . .'

2. Be clear about what you want in your own mind. 'I want a 10% raise. Here's why . . .'

3. Be low key. Facts and information rather than bluff and bravado.

4. Don't mix messages. Christmas and birthday cards which include work plugs are really irritating.

5. Use other people's words about you.

6. Be generous. Not in a creepy 'you scratch my back' way but if you get a tip off that you know could help someone else, do it. It takes a while but you do build up a bank of good will, especially if you don't expect an immediate return. This is very important with freelancing. I don't understand the attitude of there's only a finite amount of luck and goodwill to go round.

Oh and this good friend who is married to a television producer? She suggested keeping a Nice Things File. It sounds so simple and it is. You just write down every nice remark that anybody makes about your work, professional or friend. It's the equivalent of an electric blanket on a freezing night. Because I don't know about you but I often need a nudge to remember the kind words but all the nasty ones are burned into my memory.

Any other self promotion ideas?

*David Hasselhoff

Cheers to Miriam O'Reilly.

2011-01-12T11:09:00.000Z

The cult of the older women ie any woman over 35 is based on the 'well you would wouldn't you?' scenario, so what it really means is, do we still want to fuck her? I wonder if that's the secret measuring stick used by the BBC to justify their decision to replace ooh say Arlene Phillips with the blandoid Alesha Dixon who now sits between two desiccated old men, Bruce Forsythe and Len Goodman.

But anyway whether you 'would' or not, in a business where women are still valued primarily on their looks and 'fuckability' Miriam O'Reilly has won a landmark case and really really embarrassed all those short (they are) white, middle aged men who run the BBC. Miriam was let go from Countryfile but not before a series of ominous remarks were made about her wrinkles showing on high definition television. She was replaced by a younger woman, and (surprise!) all her ideas for further programmes which had been so enthusiastically received were suddenly dropped along with her. It would have taken a lot of courage to go to tribunal especially when it means making an enemy of a very powerful organisation.

Miriam interviewed me once, when she was standing in for Jenni Murray on Woman's Hour. I had just written a series about girls comics called 43 Years in the Third Form and we were talking about the wonderful old comics like Bunty and Jackie. When we'd finished recording we chatted more and she mentioned that she'd been brought up in Balbriggan, a once small suburb of Dublin, and where my dad was born. She told me that the nuns at her convent school placed little black lace mantillas on all the little girls heads as they went into church. Every little girl that is, but Miriam, who was made to wear a blue bobble hat. 'Why?' I asked. 'I never found out,' said Miriam, 'but my mum was the only mother who wore high heels and lipstick when she came to pick me up.' While I sat stunned at this example of contemptible cruelty, Miriam shrugged. 'At that point, I made up my mind to get out of there and come to England,' she said. Maybe a similar kind of grit has gotten her through the last fourteen months and to a resounding victory.

And one of the most interesting points raised by the tribunal is this:
The discrimination was not justified. The wish to appeal to a prime-time audience, including younger viewers, is a legitimate aim. However, we do not accept that it has been established that choosing younger presenters is required to appeal to such an audience

So the BBC (run by white, middle aged - short - that's very important - men) are obsessed with youth but their get-rid-of-the menopausal-old-bat-and-stick-a-pretty-face-in-there-instead formula doesn't get the audiences in. Julian Fellowes, the Oscar winning script writer, has said that television executives are 'obsessed with this mythical youth audience,' whereas the average age of the televison watcher is 52. Drama in particular is watched by older people, but ask any script writer and they will tell you the first words out of the executives' mouths will be: 'Can we cast young?' as though if you put a bunch of pretty people on screen, the audience won't notice the shoddy script. In fact what usually happens is give it enough of a push and the audience will tune in for one episode, but however young the cast - if it's rubbish they won't tune in for episode two or three or four.

Which reminds me. I haven't seen any of those ads for Build Your Own Set of Miniature Boer War Soldiers. Part One only £1.50 with part two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . .free! Or How to Stick Bits of Felt onto Stuff, part one only 0.75p with part two, three etc etc. Not one of these ads. So maybe this recession has a slight upside.

Fear + Hollywood + Money + Career =

2011-01-08T16:35:00.000Z

Arrrghhhh! Will you look at the rubberised face of the utterly beautiful Nicole Kidman? I said that I'd had my forehead botoxed in my last post and what with oddly blank, expresssionless celebs, or Jocelyn Wildenstein horror stories, our perception of botox seems to be wrapped up in a toxic stew of vanity, fear of ageing, too much money and deluded notions of holding back time. And by the way, while everyone had a horror stricken laugh at the poor woman's face, let's not forget she did it in an attempt to keep her relationship together. But I don't think botox is any more madly induldgent than spending a fortune on some dubious face cream, and at least it works. Also I know it's not going to stop me ageing but I do feel loads better having a nicely smooth forehead that still moves, and leaving the rest of my face alone. The other thing my chatty botox doctor mentioned, apart from leaving the eyes alone unless they are very lined, was that the frozen face sydrome is also caused by having the bottom half of your face botoxed (around the nose, mouth and neck) instead of just a little in the upper area - frown lines, glabella (between the eyes) and a teeeny weeeny bit round the eyes themselves. Oh and it does hurt a bit. Like you're being attacked by a very pissed off (and persistent) bee. You can get an anaesthetic but apparently they're not very effective because of the problem of needle on bone. But don't go into one of those high street salons that offer any needle related products - you want someone who is very very experienced, and a properly qualified doctor or nurse. Botox may not be permanent but too much of the stuff or improperly injected, and you can look like a stroke victim for a couple of months. Applied by a professional and a nervous beauty therapist who's just done a weekend course is the difference between an artist wielding a brush, and a dog with its tail dipped in a paint pot.

Although having said that, I'm sure the surgeon who worked on La Kidman was not an orange faced teenage therapist, but she still ended up looking like she'd been dipped in formaldehyde.

As for those who exhort younger actresses to 'embrace their wrinkles' (Yes I'm talking to you Jane Fonda - no stranger to the scalpel yourself missy)- funny how the people who witter on about loving their wrinkles are always the ones who have both the choice and the funds to minimise them?

It's January . . . .it's raining . . . and The Girl is . . . .

2011-01-07T13:05:00.000Z

. . . running round the house iPodded up, and tunelessly singing, Hey Hey You You! I wanna be your girlfriend! courtesy of Avril Lavigne. Avril wants to go out with this guy because his current girlfriend is like soooo whatever . . . and I was telling The Girl that 'like' shouldn't be used as a verb or when quoting someone or to approximate (He was like what are you doing and she was like none of your business and it turned out that he was like . . hairy). The Girl looked at me and I could see she was thinking: Like whatever.

First resolution. Try to communicate with fast growing daughter without sounding prissy or anything approximating a cat's bum mouth.

Second resolution. (This one is really embarrassing) Stop having imaginary conversations with people who have wronged me. Or even worse imaginary conversations about events that haven't happened yet. This is like a major waste of time.

Third resolution. One of the many crap things about getting older is your wrinkles start spreading like cracks on a windscreen. I've taken a stand against this, not by making friends with my wrinkles which is the sort of shit beauty editors come out with (and I should know - I worked in magazines) or buying ANYTHING from Space NK with phrases like science and beauty combined or vectin or NASA in the title. I'm still smarting from buying shampoo by Oribe at £35!!! Yes I am a fool. And even more so when I checked the ingredients online:

sodium laureth sulfate, TEA-lauryl sulfate, lauramidopropyl betaine, cocamide MEA, glyceryl cocoate and disodium laureth sulfosuccinate.

Then I checked the ingredients for Aussie Miracle Moist, my usual shampoo at £3.99 Hang on while I cut and paste:

Aqua, sodium laureth sulfate, TEA-lauryl sulfate, lauramidopropyl betaine, cocamide MEA, glyceryl cocoate and disodium laureth sulfosuccinate, Tetrasodium.
Aussie Miracle Moist has more water in it and something called Tetrasodium. Apart from that - same ingredients.

I'm still smarting in shame.

Anyway I massively digress. But the thing about wrinkles is they advance very slowwwwlly like Burnham Woods in Macbeth. Before you know it you're surrounded. So I had a Botox jab before Christmas. I'm sure some of you are raising your eyebrows in disapproval. (I wish I could). However, it was done properly by a trained doctor and not by an orange faced lady waving a needle about. And the doctor herself gave me some very sensible advice. Never get your eye wrinkles botoxed, she said, because it's ok to have a smooth forehead, but if you smile and your eyes don't crinkle up, it looks weird. Really weird.

Went home and Husband deliberately started a row just so he could piss himself laughing when I tried and failed to frown. Ah well. It's New Year and I'm better botoxed than detoxed.

I heart my Babyliss Big Hair

2010-12-17T11:01:00.000Z

I've spent years having hairdressers telling me 'your hair is a bit like that seventies cartoon girl . . . what's her name?' 'Crystal Tipps,' I'd reply dully, knowing that only the most determined professional could smooth my hair into the shiny swingy curtain I longed for. And the second a drop of rain hit my bonce, it would be transmogrified into a foaming Bet Lynch bonnet in seconds. My hair is wavy, thick and like a sulking teenager, only needs the slightest excuse to go ballistic. My sister who is much less cack handed than me, says that half an hour with a round brush and hairdryer keeps her similar hair in great nick till the next wash. I get that but I can never get the back bit right. So I've done what I can, and relied on a good blow dry for special occasions.

And then a few days ago I came across India Knight's Posterous site where she was enthusing over the Babyliss Big Hair Rotating Brush. I had a look at the reviews which are mostly ecstatic. So I chased one down and bought it - on eBay for £41.00. And I've just used it.

Gentle Reader, it's the Holy Grail of hair dryers if you have thick, wavy hair. Just section off bits of hair, and the rotating brush winds up your hair as tight as you like. You can release it automatically. If you close your eyes and say: 'We do a serum for stressed hair - only £25.99,' in a camp voice you could be in a hairdresser.

I'm not sure what it's like if you have very fine hair and want to create body, but if I can end up with salon smooth hair with no tears, swearing or four extra pairs of hands so can you.

Gillian's Masterplan Fails - World Sniggers

2010-11-24T14:04:00.000Z

I was phoned today at 7.20am by an earnest sounding young man from LBC. 'We understand you have a teenage son,' he said. 'We wondered whether he would be taking part in the protests today about raising university fees.' I thought of The Boy snoring in bed. 'Only if the protests take place after 2pm,' I said.

Now I know that the hike in fees is far more serious than my chosen subject, but I can't help myself. We all know that any celeb who appears on I'm a Celebrity . . . does so to raise a shrinking profile, although what they usually say is 'I want to show the public the real me!' Alas, Gillian McKeith has done so in spades. Big goji berried aduki bean covered spades! She has shown herself to be a Victorian fainting maiden a salt sneaker and generally as mean spirited as she appears on those horrible programmes of hers.

I've got no sympathy for her. She shouts at fat people on television and gives them impossible, Calvinistic diets to follow, she attacks anyone who politely disagrees with her batshit theories,namely Professor John Garrow (a real trained doctor and Professor of Human Nutrition at the University of London) and even when Dr Ben Goldacre eviscerated her in The Guardian, she described it all as 'lies'. All very good reasons to revel in a bit of schadenfreude. BUT, what amazes me is that Ms McKeith looks so pinched! So underfed! Apart from wanting to strangle her, you also want to feed her pies first. Or maybe that's just me. I will say that if you get the face you deserve at 50, does Gillian really deserve to have the face of a freeze dried ferret?

Oh yes.

Prince William 'affianced' . . .world stifles yawn.

2010-11-16T14:12:00.000Z

The Daily Mail today, took a break from what it does so well - latent misogyny loosely disguised as 'research' and suspicious looking foreigners (probably Benefit Thieves) receiving money for fussing about torture and illegal imprisonment - to announce minute-by-minute of the Engagement of William (he of the sadly receding hairline) and Katherine (nice looking girl but what does she do? Oooh quick Mr Dacre, didn't you do a mean spirited piece about that mother of hers? Looks like the pushy type - a few years ago? Well they're ENGAGED now so get rid of it.

So they're engaged. And it looks like a 'dream wedding' for no-longer Waity Kaity. In the ever deepening nastiness of this recession (a friend remarked that he's seriously thinking of telling his elder son to emigrate as there are going to be so few jobs around for young people starting out) us ordinary folk can doff our caps and cheer loudly as an attractive girl is sucked into that unpleasant archaic institution that like a bad tempered teenager, costs us a fortune to run and gives fuck all in return.

William and Katherine will be married next spring or summer - 2011, exactly 30 years since Lady/Princess Diana stood on the royal balcony and kissed that jug eared bloke, to roars of approval. I watched it on telly and tried to write an essay at the same time. I also watched astrologers twittering on about 'how well suited they are'. But 1981 was also a time of deep recession, thanks partly to the deregulation of the Banks, the savings and loan crisis and nearly three million unemployed (that particular 'record' was achieved in January 1982) - thank you Mrs Thatcher and Mr Reagan. Notably Reagan is now viewed as some sort of cuddly bear who made Americans proud to be Americans, and Thatcher's dismantling of Britain as some kind of gesture worthy of Elizabeth 1.

The Royal Wedding then in 1981 was a distraction - a brief one. And this will probably be a brief distraction too. I just wonder if our attitude towards it all has changed? Will we line Pall Mall doffing our caps? Or buy commemoration cups? Or this time will we just shrug?

Sayings of The Girl part 235

2010-11-05T16:03:00.000Z

We're in a shop, The Girl and I, spending twenty minutes quality time with a plastic shopping basket, me dully repeating 'no no no' to increasingly whiney requests for:

String cheese
fruit shoots
muffins the size of a child's head
magazines stuffed with plastic shit
fizzy drinks with 'added antioxidants'
doughnuts topped with penicillin pink icing

'But the TV says it's good for you!' cries The Girl with increasing frustration. Just as I'm running out of responses that don't involve swear words, we make it to the top of the queue to pay, and The Girl spies a charity box for the local hospice. And in a sudden about turn, she asks if she can put all her pocket money in the exciting little hole at the top. 'All of it?' I ask. She nods firmly. Even the lady at the till enquires, 'Are you sure you want to put all your pocket money in there love?' The Girl is firm. She takes her money, slots it in and I smile benignly (it probably comes across as smug though). 'Her grandmother died recently', I whisper to the till lady and we exchange smiles at the wonder, the purity, the generosity of children.

Alas, when she gets home, The Girl counts her piggy bank money and bursts into sobs. 'I thought I had five pounds!'

I am bewildered. 'But you gave this week's pocket money away.'

She cries even harder. 'I thought it was YOUR money!'

Dad drove me to be a Muslim

2010-11-01T13:25:00.001Z

The writer Lauren Booth has announced that she’s becoming a Muslim and has been roundly lambasted for it. Personally, as an ex-Catholic, another religion that regards Women with Opinions as deeply dangerous, I’m bemused. She was brought up in the Catholic faith, a religion where a nine year old rape victim was recently excommunicated for having an abortion. (Her stepfather who had also been accused of also raping the child's older handicapped sister was not excommunicated.) Not oppressive enough? Apparently not. How can she square ‘this shot of morphine, just absolute bliss and joy’ with a religion which has no qualms about stoning thirteen year old rape victims is beyond me. And yes, I know that there is a difference between the Koran and its interpretation. But to embrace a religion surely means you have to accept how it is practised? However, I feel a twinge of sympathy for her because around the same time she announced her new found beliefs, her father, the actor Tony Booth, blithely said in an interview that he doesn’t love her and is 'ashamed' of her. This 'character' has such a crass disregard for his children that he lauds his successful golden girl Cherie and forgets the names of his other seven daughters. Maybe it’s because I’ve recently lost my own mother but how can a parent say such a thing, loud and proud? Even if he feels it, to say it? And then to accuse her of trading on her relationship with her half-sister, Cherie Blair, when he himself has been doing exactly the same thing. You can only imagine the chaos he must have inflicted on his children. And yet, like so many utterly rotten parents he expects their support and loyalty. Which apparently Cherie gives and Lauren doesn't.

It struck me that what Catholicism and Islam have in common is a defined set of rules about what makes a ‘good’ woman. The Catholics hold up two types of women, the virgin mother and the reformed whore (Mary Magdalene) You don’t have to wear specific clothing but a good catholic woman eschews contraception, abhors abortion and considers her primary duty to bring up her children and make her family the centre of her life. Islam requires a woman to 'lower her gaze and guard her modesty'. It's always about the terrible power of female sexuality isn't it? Maybe it’s easier to think of yourself as ‘good’ if you follow a set of preordained rules, written by men, and view the world in black and white terms. But I think that it’s a mark of maturity to accept that the world is not black and white and perhaps you need a bedrock of self confidence to work out how to be good yourself without subscribing to a set of rules in order to do so.

I’ve never met LB but to have your father say such a vile thing about you, says far more about him than it does about her. Maybe it's not so strange that she has embraced the strictness of Islam to find some peace. But I'm wondering why isn’t he being criticised for such a wretched attitude about his children?

Giving up Smoking

2010-10-29T12:57:00.000+01:00

Oh God, I feel as sick and dizzy as a pissed granny at a sherry party. It's because I'm wearing a nicotine patch - a clear, sticky thing that sends nicotine coursing through my middle aged veins. It's Day Two of my not smoking, so Serve Me Right. I'd like to say that I stopped because I was worried about lung cancer. Well I am anyway, especially as my lung capacity is a bit rubbish anyway. I once had to breathe through one of those tubes which measure it and the monitor shifted about half a centimeter.

I once asked a friend why he had given up smoking and he said: 'Because I was tired of being a slave to the weed' which struck me as a very sensible thing to say. You are a slave to it. Many is the time I've lit up and felt an overwhelming sense of disgust. I would smoke outside in the cold, shivering, feeling pathetic and ashamed. It seems so ridiculous as well as monstrously dangerous. My wise friend also said: 'Don't wait until you really want to stop smoking because that day will never come.' Oh I know all those smokers out there, including me, will sometimes wake up, headachy, breathless and chock full of guilt at the sight of full ashtrays and the rank smell and vow there and then to Stop. But the addiction comes creeping back, overriding the self-loathing.

To be honest, the real reason I'm giving up is superficial vanity. I've noticed a few thread veins sliding out of my nose (oooh sexy) and think that if I keep this habit up I'll soon have a nose like W.C Fields.

So this is it. And maybe feeling like a sick granny is a small price to pay. Any tips or advice from former smokers out there?

I wish I'd never had children . . . .

2010-10-13T19:04:00.000+01:00

‘I wish I’d never had children!’ shrieked the ex wife of a friend of mine. Trouble was she shrieked it at her children. I don’t know what the situation was but suspect it was an end of her tether one and not something she bellowed at her kids to get them up in the morning. But her now ex husband occasionally repeats the phrase as though it’s a summation of her rubbish skills as a mother. ‘Can you imagine saying that to your children?’ Well pushed hard enough – possibly. I told him that once, years ago when The Boy was about five, he yelled ‘I hate you!’ at me, and instead of responding in a mature Penelope Leach like manner, I yelled back: ‘Yeah well I hate you too you little shit!’ He laughed but insisted that his ex wife's comment was a far worse thing to say because it was so damaging. I'm not sure about that. I think a one off horrible remark is less destructive than the drip drip of emotional abuse.

Parents, in particular mothers though, are not supposed to ever express the negative side of parenting, except in a jokey way. If they do they invite a landslide of hatred, usually in the form of ‘why did you bother to have children you selfish bitch?’ The writer Anna Pasternak once wrote a piece about how dull babies were and oh so many mothers wrote in to tell her a) what a crap mother she was and b) what stimulating company their own babies were. Yeah I remember discussing Wittgenstein with my babies and them dribbling in response. Happy days.

Shouting at your children that you wished you hadn't given birth to them is a pretty terrible thing to say, but I found myself feeling a twinge of sympathy. I don’t need to tell you parents out there that there a) there is a dark underbelly to parenting that sometimes comes out in flashes of hatred and fury and b) we all have days where the sheer endless never ending endlessness of it makes us want to step out in front of the nearest car. The people who are the most shocked and horrified by this dark underbelly are always those who haven’t spent much time around children themselves.

I’ve been thinking about all this because The Girl and I are currently staying with my dad as he’s not coping too well with bereavement, and it’s taken a while to get The Girl into a local school (an exciting tale I’ll bore you with another time) but in the meantime The Girl and I are spending a lot of time together. Most of it is fun but sometimes oh God . . . . .I wish there was an off button. I can’t get a minute to myself. And yes, I’m making sure she goes to interesting places, classes, new activities. It’s the endless stream of questions – the fact she says ‘Mum . . .mum . . .?’ before asking a question and will keep saying ‘mum . . . mum . . . .mum . . . ‘ whether I’m on the phone, on the toilet or with my head in a cupboard trying to locate the gas meter. No time off. No respite. And there's only one of her! Full time single mothers are heroines! How do they not go mad?

Today I took her to children’s yoga and had a whole forty five minutes to myself. And no I'm not being sarcastic. It was joyous. I paid a few bills online and listened to embarrassing music on my ipod. Bliss. Ah say the Experts, so why can’t you do that with your daughter around? Because the point of the child free space is the sheer luxury of being alone – you revel in it – stretch out in it like a warm bath. And you don’t need that much of it, to gather your fractured self back together again and return to the fray.

Sayings of The Girl part 234

2010-09-30T13:01:00.001+01:00

The Girl is spectacularly messy, which I try not to make a fuss about but I am beginning to insist she picks up after herself. It’s like pulling teeth. Yesterday she constructed a shanty town in the living room – consisting of huge piles of cardboard boxes and cushions. It wouldn’t matter so much except that she and I are currently staying in Broadstairs so I can keep an eye on dad. The house is small so I seem to spend most of my time picking stuff up off the floor.
After I admired the town I demanded she tidied up the living room floor. She sighed and said, ‘Do I have to?’ ‘Yes’ I said firmly and came back to check a little later to discover she’d done absolutely nothing. It would have been easier to pick it up myself but as we all know this starts a pattern and ends up with you asking your hulking teen to empty the dishwasher, only to be greeted with a shocked stare as though you’ve just ordered said teen to run naked down the High Street.
‘You’re so messy!’ I snapped helplessly at The Girl. She considered this. ‘Moles are messier.’
Moles? How did moles come into this?
‘Moles can’t see very well. So they never remember where they put stuff so their houses must be in a terrible mess.’
You can’t argue with logic.

Making a Meal of It

2010-09-09T16:32:00.000+01:00

Yesterday afternoon I heard shouting, swearing and crashing noises in the kitchen. Was Gordon Ramsay cooking for the Queen? Or Marco Pierre White gutting squid for a state dinner? No – it was The Boy making lunch: pasta with tomato sauce.

I found him in the kitchen, crashing about, ten saucepans littering the work surfaces, moaning and clutching his head. ‘What happened?’

‘I banged my head on the saucepan and slipped on an onion.’

It was difficult to see how he’d banged his head on a saucepan since they’re kept in cupboards at knee height. At my confused look he explained sheepishly that in frustration he had hit himself over the head with a saucepan. Ah right. ‘I’m trying to make tomato sauce’ he grumbled.

I suggested a can of tomatoes would be a good idea. He put on the pasta. He heated the tomatoes. Then he decided he’d give the onions another go and chopped them into large lumps. After a few seconds he started crying and swearing. ‘My eyes are watering and the lumps are too big. Why didn’t you tell me to fry the onions first!’

‘You didn’t ask’ I said tightly. He got out another saucepan and I showed him how to fry onions. I could hear Husband’s voice saying: ‘Don’t bloody do it for him.’ I ignored it – he was in a nice clean office with grown-ups and not a tantrummy teenager. ‘Do I have to keep stirring it?’ The Boy huffed. Then he decided to add some garlic and spent a good fifteen minutes trying to peel it but his nails weren’t long enough or something. Meanwhile the pasta was overcooked and clinging to the bottom of the saucepan like those rubber bands in massive bundles, collected by thrifty types. I snatched the garlic, pulled off the skin and showed him how to chop it.

‘Euggh! Now my fingers smell of garlic!’

Christ – this was turning into some Japanese endurance test. Taking a deep breath I told him to tip the garlic into the onions, stir and cook for five minutes, and then add it all to the tomato mixture, taste it and add salt and pepper.

‘Stop stop – you’re going too fast for me!’

Finally he tipped the tomato pasta mess into a dish. I was going to suggest he grated some Parmesan over it but was worried his brain might explode. How does he manage to get his trousers on in the morning?

The Funeral

2010-09-06T14:40:00.000+01:00

Twas the night before the funeral and all through the house
Relatives huddled to drink and to grouse
The suits and the dresses were hung up that night
While sis and I grumbled our hair looked like shite.

Yes - the night before the funeral, was a bit like a surreal version of Christmas – mum and dad’s small house heaving with relatives and children. Irish uncles were plonked in the living room exchanging ribald stories about ‘this feckin’ idiot’ and ‘she became a nun’ all fuelled by copious amounts of whisky. ‘They all look like Father Ted’ said Husband in wonder. The Boy looked like he’d been put through a car wash he was so fluffy and clean. 'Dad won’t let me wear his pants' he grumbled. The Girl was bathed and pj’d and she too was moaning that 'daddy brushed my hair TWICE.' Normally her hair looks as though she’s been brawling with a giant hedgehog.
The following morning sis and I rushed back from the hairdresser r (‘Going anywhere nice? To a funeral.’ SILENCE), the black car arrived and we all piled in to collect mum from the undertaker. Then dad panicked about not having flowers for mum’s coffin. I thought about a similar situation on my wedding day. I’d paid £15 for each corsage and within five minutes dad managed to sit on his. So on the way to the Registry Office dad rushed into a florist and had a rose plus a bit of greenery pinned to his suit – all for a fiver. Mum pursed her lips and contented herself with rolling her eyes and muttering ‘eejit’ under her breath. Now I was watching dad choosing roses for his wife’s coffin.
At the crematorium everyone was waiting. I saw my dearest friend who’d schlepped down from London, and took her hand to come in with the family. The service was short – I read a eulogy to mum and then sat down shakily. The Girl was weeping silently and I cuddled her and fussed with a tissue. ‘I’m crying like a grownup mummy’ she explained. ‘So water comes out of my eyes but I don’t make lots of noise.’ Then the blue curtains whisked shut and mum’s coffin slid silently into the crematorium. We were ushered outside to look at the flowers, and then my sister and I had to receive a line of guests. I started to feel seriously sorry for the Queen – what do you say? My level of conversation was reduced to: 'Are you coming to the wake? Yes it is a shame' and 'Who are you exactly?'
I had to shake slippery hands with several ageing representatives of the Legion of Mary. One elderly lady gripped my hand and said: 'I hope she’s in heaven before the devil knows she’s dead.' Er – me too. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw The Boy playing with The Girl who was telling everyone: ‘I have a granny but she’s dead.’
On we rolled to the wake where everyone was starving. I sat next to my motor mouth Auntie V. Kind, but obsessed with gossip and dieting, she started on me at once. ‘Do you have a diet sheet? I’m trying to get my daughter on one – she’s the size of a feckin house.’ I explained that I didn’t have a diet sheet and wondered how I could tell her politely that she was probably projecting her own body issues onto her daughter. Realised I couldn’t. And that I didn’t care. So I went and ate three sausage rolls instead. Auntie V looked at me with the amazement of someone who has always regarded food as though it were a pipe bomb.
I’m wearing mum’s pearl bracelet and one day I’ll pass it on to the Girl. Dad is surrounded by friends who have promised to keep an eye on him. Life goes on. But I’m still waiting for something to hit me.

The song is ended but the melody lingers on

2010-08-30T15:21:00.000+01:00

So said Irving Berlin. I'm trying to write a funeral eulogy for mum without using the phrase: 'She touched all our lives' or 'She will continue to live in all of us' (what - like herpes?) and I'm finding it very hard. How do you sum up someone's life? But what I really want to do is give an idea of her as an individual - not just 'wife of' or 'mother of'

Here's a picture of her looking serene while my sister and I (both going through a terrifying Axl Rose lookalike phase sit either side of her).

Meanwhile I've found a poem:

All Is Well

Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped into the next room
I am I and you are you
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.
Call me by my old familiar name,
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used
Put no difference in your tone,
Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow
Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together.
Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.
Let my name be ever the household word that it always was,
Let it be spoken without effect, without the trace of shadow on it.
Life means all that it ever meant.
It it the same as it ever was, there is unbroken continuity.
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am waiting for you, for an interval, somewhere very near,
Just around the corner.
All is well.

By Henry Scott Holland (1847-1918)

Death and shit poetry

2010-08-27T14:03:00.000+01:00

Well the funeral has been arranged for next Friday and I'm deep into arranging invitations and wondering who is going to provide a few dodgy sarnies and sausage rolls for the mourners to scoff afterwards. I've already mentioned the farcical moment when my sister and I realised we'd thrown away all mum's clothes, leaving nothing,literally nothing for her to be buried in. Apart from a swimsuit.

There have been other moments too. Like the deluge of shitty poetry we've been getting through the post. On pink swirly cards. The worst one so far has been:

We saw her fading like a flower
We could not make her stay
We tended her with love and care
Till the Lord God took her away.

'Gobshite' as dad muttered.

Nobody knows what to say. Well there's nothing you can say to make it better. The relatives and friends with brains have said that they're very sorry and left it at that. Others have come out with: 'You must be so pleased she's at peace.' Oh yeah - thrilled. And 'God wanted her in heaven.' He told you that did he? And 'Sorry I can't make it to the funeral - I have a dental appointment. You do understand don't you?' Of course. By the way - I hope the drill slips through your jaw.

I'm trying to write a tribute to mum and wondering what kind of poem to quote. Any ideas?

Death and Paperwork

2010-08-24T17:40:00.000+01:00

On Sunday in the middle of lunch with the in-laws I had a phone call from my mother's nursing home. 'She's very poorly with no pulse. I've called an ambulance.' I couldn't go straight away so my sister drove down and spent the night at the hospital, holding mum's hand while they tried to make her comfortable and wait for the inevitable.

The next day at 1pm she died from a stomach infection. I tore down the motorway and arrived at the ward. The curtains round her bed were closed and a nurse took my hand. 'I'm so sorry - your mother passed away ten minutes ago.' My sister was sitting next to her bed stroking her waxy limp hand. 'She wouldn't have recognised you. Her eyes were fixed and dilated all night.' I was too late. Dad had gone for a walk. He had to be doing things. I didn't blame him.

It was very quiet. My sister was red eyed and pale from her vigil. Mum was curled up on her side, one hand resting under her chin like a sleeping child. She was so thin. Still warm, but growing cooler. Skin buttery soft and waxy pale. Hands small with long fingers. A wedding ring that she said we could use oil or soap to pull off her finger. Neither of us wanted to do that. We left the ring on. One of us on either side of the bed, listening to voices, shuffling feet.

I could hear her voice. Her words in the will she made before having a hip operation. She wrote: 'Get a WRITTEN QUOTE or they will rip you off. And don't bother with an expensive casket - cardboard will be fine. If you waste money on my casket I'll come back and haunt you.'

I pulled a beef sandwich out of my bag for my sister - her favorite. She couldn't eat it. A young doctor arrived and pronounced her dead. He told us about how to get hold of the death certificate - the first in a blur of instructions about what to do next. We drove back home to find dad in the middle of a series of calls. 'No tears' he said. 'She's not in limbo anymore.'

Today in a frenzy of activity, we rang people, spoke to a funeral director and went through mum's clothes. Her engagement ring which I put on. My sister took the bracelet she wore on her wedding day. We packed up her clothes and took them to a local charity shop. We answered calls.

Then we realised we'd given all her clothes away leaving her nothing to be cremated in. The only things we hadn't given away were beach ware. Visions of mum in her coffin wearing a swimsuit floated in front of us and we began to laugh.

I haven't cried much yet. There's too much paperwork to do. I'm glad she's released from the limbo, the half life she was living. But the finality of it hasn't hit me yet.

Eat Pray Procrastinate

2010-08-19T11:30:00.001+01:00

It's me again - not working. So this morning I was allowing myself the usual faff time before settling down to wrestle with the script that I'm growing to HATE with every fibre of my being (it's supposed to be a comedy - it's not funny - or maybe I've just been looking at it for too long - I want to strangle myself etc) and I watched the trailer of Eat Pray Love. Now I love Julia Roberts. I think she's a really good actress as well as being gorgeous in an individual way. She brings a zingy freshness to her roles. And I admire how she took time to step back and bring up her family. Yes I know it's easy to do when you have tons of money but still, I admire her for stepping back while she was at the top.

But despite all this I think I'm going to hate Eat Pray Love. Based unreasonably on the trailer:

1. I hate it when Hollywood tries to understand women.
2. The brief scene when the heroine is in Italy and gasp - eats a plate of pasta. Oh I get it. She's so outrageous - she eats carbs! Wow that's really finding yourself.
3. And cake - she eats cake! Carbtastic!
4. On her journey across an astonishingly poverty free India and Bali, while eating carbs and finding herself she meets a rough hewn man. He doesn't shave and looks like he's no stranger to garlic. And he's Javier Bardem.

The End (I bet)

I'll probably still see it though.

The Girl doesn't stop talking!

2010-08-16T17:12:00.000+01:00

The Girl doesn’t stop talking. I really mean that. She’s six and from the moment she sidles into our bedroom in the morning and watches for the slightest eyelid flicker, to when she’s put to bed at night, she doesn’t stop talking. It’s a long stream of chatty fizzy high on life blither. What’s a wagina mummy? When you die what happens? Why is the sky? Is that lady fat or pregnant? Why should I shhh? But mummy I don’t want to go to sleep I’m not even a little bit zzzzzzzzzz . . . . .

Her chattering has become more intense recently and I think it’s because I’ve been running back and forth to see my mother, and working a lot. And in The Girl’s little group of friends at school, I’m the only mother who works.

Is that it? I asked her once if she minded that I worked and she said: But you don’t work mummy. You sit at home and write. That’s me told. But I do go into the school and take part in cookery lessons. I show up to assemblies. My involvement with the school isn’t as intense as some other parents but I am involved (she says defensively).

I’ve googled to find out what to do about a chatty child and on the US sites, the possibility of Autism and Aspergers comes up (hello medicalisation) and on the UK sites, the advice ranges from a shrug to gin and earplugs.

We all know at least one adult who suffers from verbal diarrhoea – the one whose conversation consists of a never-ending monologue of their day. If you do try to get a word in edgeways to say: Hey I’ve been diagnosed with an incurable disease, Verbal Diarrhoea will listen for 2.3 seconds until you pause for breath, and then dive back in with: Oh I know just how you feel. When I was diagnosed with flu I thought I was going to die too – I felt so bad and I was in bed didn’t eat anything but I did drink this lemon drink have you tried it very low in calories oh and it was so funny . . .

I have this theory that people who never listen and speak as though if they stop speaking they will literally stop existing, are those who were never listened to as children. Perhaps they were dismissed or half listened to. I think of this a lot with The Girl. I know I’ve been guilty of half-listening sometimes. So I’m trying to spend big lumps of time with her – just her and me. When she has a bath I sit with her, cutting my toenails. Gross I know but bless her she doesn’t mind. Then we have a girlie pedicure which consists of me wincing while she chooses toenail polish in Slaaaag Red and then manages to paint her entire foot and the carpet in it. And I remind her about not interrupting and praise her when she doesn’t interrupt.

Any ideas?

Confession Time

2010-08-13T10:38:00.000+01:00

Walking past Space NK yesterday (honestly even the name hints at pretentious – overpriced ness. Its full name is Space NK Apothecary. Apothecary! Like a combination of Witchcraft and early Harry Potter.) Still it’s no good me scorning since I invariably go in and admire the insanely overpriced produce. I’ve managed to resist for a long time. But yesterday I was feeling a bit frizzy and lumpen.

Any girls out there with wavy hair that goes all foamy in damp weather will know what I mean. We are forever in search of the Holy Grail - the product to calm the frizz into a tumble of luscious curls and we will pay practically anything to get it.

So Space NK had this little corner devoted to a New Product by ‘Living Proof’ which according to the saleslady was ‘flying off the shelves’ and salespeople never lie do they? So basically I paid £18 for a 4oz bottle of leave in conditioner. I’m an idiot.

Still it’s better than last time when buoyed up by a drunken lunch I bought a ‘lip plumper’ (I’m blushing as I type this) the price of which I’m not going to tell you because I’m so embarrassed. It made my lips sting like a bastard. It didn't make them plumper just really sore and scabby. I might as well have squashed an angry wasp over my mouth. At least it would have been cheaper.

Confession number two. I started smoking again. Yesterday I caught myself squashing out a cigarette then eating a nectarine. As though the toxins from the fag would be somehow nullified by eating a piece of fruit. But I am going to give up. I’ll be a frizzy haired clean lunged grumpy moo. Do you still fancy me? Thought not.

Manuscript evaluation - is it worth it?

2010-08-04T12:59:00.000+01:00

I’ve had a few emails recently from writers who have finished a book or script and want their baby professionally evaluated before sending it into the shark infested waters of publishing. And is it worth it?

One of the crappy things about sending out a manuscript is that even if it’s almost there and needs just a bit of work, editors don’t have time to respond individually, so the ‘almost there’ books tend to get the same short shrift as the ‘never in a million years’ books i.e. a form rejection. If you’re lucky, you might get a hand scribbled note on the rejection letter suggesting you send it somewhere else or offering a bit of advice. Don’t be offended by this – if the editor has taken the time to write a few words of encouragement it’s good. It’s hopeful.

But there you are with you rejection letter, feeling hurt, rejected, pissed off. Most importantly, not knowing why. Is it that the character you fell in love with may not be as loveable as you think? Bits of plot may not make enough sense? Overwriting? As a writer you are often so close to your work you can’t see the wood for the trees. It’s like having your nose pressed so close to the glass of the shop that everything is blurred and you can’t see the layout, the structure, the overall impression. This is where a good manuscript evaluation service can help – if you’re prepared to listen.

It’s my view that all good writers doubt their work. I don’t mean that they go around in a fug of despair, but criticism is taken on the chin and recognised for what it is; a tool to improve the writing.

I’ve been teaching creative writing for a couple of years and in every group I teach there is at least one person who has clearly signed up to the course for an audience or for validation. But not to learn anything. These are the students who are making the same errors at the end of the course as they are at the beginning. And no, I’m not saying I don’t get precious and fractious about my own work but I’m (hopefully) grown up enough to realise that flattering words don’t help me to improve as a writer. These students are likely to come out with the following:

You don’t understand what I’m trying to do. Well as a writer you don’t have the luxury of sitting next to you reader and saying – this bit here – I wrote it because I wanted to show how self-destructive she gets when a relationship goes wrong. If it’s not on the page it’s not there.

Publishing is a conspiracy to keep new writers out. No it’s not. New writers get published all the time – we only hear about it though, if the advance is spectacular.

The gatekeepers of publishing are an elite bunch of snobs. A few years ago with the advent of e-books and self-publishing like Lulu, there was a feeling across the blogsphere that publishing was now fully democratised, the reader would decide what they wanted, and no longer was publication in the gnarled hands of evil publishing gatekeepers. What has actually happened is the realisation that not only are there millions of e-books, novels, poetry and other creatives, a huge amount of this is really really bad. So the gatekeepers are not snobs – they may decide what they think will sell, and yes it’s a question of taste sometime, but without them – just look at some of the dross available out there.

It’s not what you know it’s who you know. It does help to get your manuscript read. I got my first break by having a friend suggest I send my script to someone he knew at Radio 4. But had the script been utter cack, would it have been commissioned? Er . . no.

Editors in commercial publishing spoil your work. This is an odd one and often cited by the determined self-publisher. Self-publishing is a possible route, for the determined, and those who are prepared to ruthlessly edit their own work and market it and sell it, literally door to door sometimes. Not to say that it can’t be done, but I doubt if any self-published writer would choose this route over a contract with a mainstream publishing house complete with their own marketing and sales division. Some SPA’s some oddly proclaim the fear that a mainstream editor would wreck their book, so the self-published author remains more in control. That’s news to me; the relationship between writer and editor is a partnership, not a Victorian Dad standing over the writer with a big stick.

If you go to the excellent Self Publishing Review run by Jane Smith, she will review a self published book and praise it generously if it’s good. But one of the common reasons she stops reading after fifteen pages is because of the numerous spelling and grammar mistakes. It may be your book, untinkered by an editor, but it’s a book littered with errors too.

I can totally understand why unpublished authors become angry at the amount of celebrity dross being published, often with stonking advances. I read the ‘autobiography’ of a certain pop star recently which comprised mainly of photos of him looking manly and sensitive. The opening paragraph read: 'I suppose you could say that my life has been a bit mad.'

Why would people buy this stuff? Well most of it is written by ghost-writers anyway, and publishers are finally beginning to realise that the public are not that stupid and don’t really want to read a ghost-written book about Grade Z celebrity ‘lifestyles’. The top selling celeb autobiography in 2007 was Peter Kay’s and he wrote it himself, so maybe the tide is changing. I hope so. But even so, I don’t think of that as real publishing but branding.

Back to the original question. How do you find a good manuscript evaluation service? What do you look for?

Look at their track record. Have they helped authors actually get published by real publishing houses? Beware of services which are tied to e-books or self-publishing companies.

If their banner line reads: Helping you to get published – or any guarantees like that – again, beware. There are no guarantees.

If you send in a novel you should get feedback from a published novelist in your genre. They should be looking at specific elements such as structure, plot, and characterisation and offer advice and suggestions as to how you can improve it. The word is specific. No vagaries. And if with your feedback there are further exhortations to put you in touch with a freelance editor they happen to know who could really get your book published – red flag. Unscrupulous evaluation services will encourage you to keep sending your novel to be tinkered with, edited, and polished (all for a fee of course). A good one will be straight and tell you exactly why your work is not quite ready to be sent out into the market.

I’ve done some reading for The Literary Consultancy several years ago and one of my stipulations was that I wasn’t going to encourage a writer whose book was not publishable, to keep sending it back for more changes. If your work is fundamentally flawed, no amount of tinkering will turn into a publishable book. You would be better to take the advice on board and use it to write a better book.

Victoria Strauss has some fantastic advice for anyone thinking of using a freelance editor or evaluation service.

Remember that time your husband tried to run a bath? And burned the house down?

2010-07-28T12:39:00.000+01:00

Says Father Ted to a middle age woman whose husband is domestically helpless. I’m thinking of this, because I’m currently staying with dad while mum is being settled into a nursing home. Dad is in his mid seventies. He enjoys his food and has been ‘spoiled’ (his words) by forty years of mum’s excellent home cooking. It’s always been her domain and he rightly points out that whenever he tried to help she would irritably shoo him away. Once when I mentioned that The Husband was away for a few days, mum sighed and said: ‘Isn’t it grand not to have to cook a dinner when they’re away?’ The idea of wanting to cook a nice dinner for yourself or even more radically, asking your partner to cook for both of you was unthinkable to her.

But despite knowing all this, I find the combination of learned helplessness and the unspoken expectation that because I’m female, I’ll take over the domestics, incredibly irritating. Yesterday when I suggested he cooked dinner for The Girl and myself, as I’d been working all day and racing round nursing homes, he looked shocked, before producing what looked like a plastic packet of cubed brown stuff from the fridge. ‘I could cook this,’ he said hopefully, waving the noxious bag under my nose. It smelled like curry coated poo. ‘How are you going to cook it?’ I asked.

‘Don’t know,’ said dad.

Years ago, I had a boyfriend who invited me round for dinner and produced two salmon steaks which he ‘hoped’ I could cook. I laughed but he was serious. Shortly after I left him with his salmon steaks. He didn’t understand why I was so annoyed.

But my dad is from another generation, so maybe I should be more patient. Yesterday I made his favourite pork chops with a mustard sauce and he stood in the kitchen, shuffling about, and hands behind his back like Prince Phillip, as the chops browned and I whisked them onto a warmed plate, poured a glass of wine into the sizzling juices, and added some mustard and a small spoon of cream. When I turned round to ask him to give it a stir, he was fumbling through the cutlery drawer cursing because he couldn’t find the forks. The forks were obviously hiding from him, purely to get at him. Like the plates yesterday. They were hiding too. Bastard things. His frustration at inanimate objects goes from 0 – 60 in ten seconds.

Later I typed out the recipe for him and suggested buying a simple cookbook. Jamie Oliver? No – he can’t stand Jamie Oliver. It’s the mockney accent. What does that have to do with cooking? Nothing – but he can’t stand Jamie Oliver. What about Two Fat Ladies? No – they’re fat. And fat women only appear on television to annoy him personally. I take a deep breath and mention that Robbie Coltrane is also very large but he doesn’t rail against him. Veering between compassion and the desire to throw something at dad, I finally suggest Delia Smith. He agrees.

Of course, dad can manage to feed himself – even if it’s just packaged stuff with the vegetables he grows in his allotment. But such is his fear of failure/trying anything new, coupled with a low tolerance of frustration that I fear he’ll give up too quickly at putting together nice meals for himself. Even if there’s nobody to witness his efforts much less eat them. But I do wish he’d try. He loves food and once he’s mastered a few recipes, he’ll grow in confidence. I tell him this and he kisses me and says he couldn’t have gotten through the last few months without me.

Buying clothes for The Boy

2010-07-21T11:39:00.000+01:00

It's The Boy's birthday on Saturday, so I popped (arggh - middle aged word) into a store called BENCH, which describes itself as an urban lifestyle brand, thus explaining why they charge £25 for a tee shirt. Was fingering a mud/poo coloured top that he might like when a spotty teen sales assistant shuffled over. We had the following conversation:

HIM: (IN HIGH PITCHED SQUEAKY 'MY VOICE IS BREAKING' VOICE) Can I help you wiv anyfink today Madam?

ME: I'm looking for a t-shirt for my son.

HIM: (IN A BURST OF INSPIRATION POINTING AT THE VERY TEE I'M FINGERING) Well what about that one Madam?

ME: Er right. I need it in a small.

HIM: I don't fink we have it in a small.

ME: (CHECKING THE LABEL) Yes you do.

HIM: Where?

ME: (SHOWING HIM THE LABEL) Here.

HIM: Oh. Please let me know if there is anyfink I can be of more assistant wiv?

ME: Thanks.

(PAUSE)

ME: You're in my way.

But it was worth it to see that momentary light of love appear in The Boy's eyes (or it might have been avarice but never mind). There were several anxious moments while he tried it on and said: 'This isn't a pyjama top is it?' and I assured him that it wasn't. He then nodded and said: 'Not bad mum. Thanks' before adding, 'Don't tell anyone you bought me this.' And then he gave me a hug and I felt his long bony chest against mine and remembered how when he was small I would say: 'Hold onto mummy like a monkey' and he would wrap his arms and legs round me as though he were trying to climb back inside me.

Fat Kids

2010-07-17T15:54:00.000+01:00

When I was about 9, there was one fat child in my class called Ellen. Or Ellen the Melon as she was known. She would stand next to me in cookery class and scream hysterically when we we were making sausage rolls because my mum gave me sausage meat with lots of garlic and herbs mashed into it. 'Eurrgh I hate garlic - Miiiissss!'

When I was invited to her party I asked mum for some chocolates as a present and she, with characteristic diplomacy spluttered: 'I'm not giving chocolates to that big heap!' But growing up, I don't remember even thinking about whether I was too fat or thin or even considering my body shape until well into my teens. The word 'slim' was used, not 'thin' and several relatives and teachers commented on the fact I was a 'bit too slim' even though I ate like a half starved gannet. Being thin was not a worthy goal.

It sure as hell is now. And The Girl, even though she's just six, and built like a twiglet is acutely aware of 'fat' being 'bad'. To be honest I'm anxious about her growing up in a world with so many toxic messages about acceptable body weight for girls. I've hidden my scales and she has never ever seen them. I don't use the word 'fat' at all, and I've threatened The Boy with death if he ever teases her about her weight. I've told my dear dad that the word 'buxom' is not acceptable. 'But buxom is great!' he says, bewildered, having grown up lusting after real women like Ava Gardner and Sophia Loren.

I was disturbed though to read that parents who fail to help their obese child, and ignore all advice could be considered guilty of neglect. Now come on - we've all seen the lumbering children pouring vast packets of monster munch down their faces as they heft along the street. And don't tell me you don't tighten your lips when you see a small child drinking some fizzy crap drink in their pushchair. Oh yes you do. Just before you check yourself for snobbery, a little part of you thinks: Coke!? For breakfast?! You bad bad parent.

The thing is, this proposal will target the very poor because the poorest sections of the population are the ones who feed the most processed food to their children. Add to this, the fact that we have a generation that seem unable to cook (doubly ironic when posh restaurants are serving up the cheaper cuts of meat our grannies would have knocked up in their kitchens blindfolded), and you have a generation of children less healthy than their parents. Remember that boy Connor McCreaddie, eight years old and weighing 14 stone who was briefly in the news because the council were considering taking him into care? Legions of middle class journos sped up to North Tyneside to lambast his mother. But I'd like to have seen any of them put together decent meals on benefits, with the nearest superstore two bus rides away and a fast food outlet on every corner. No greengrocers, no butchers - all driven out of business by the Superstore.

Sure there are parents you want to slap round the head (or maybe it's just me) and shout: 'You are condemning your child to a lifetime of obesity and health problems you drongo. Put that doughnut down!' But these initiatives seem to do nothing but stigmatise and blame the poorest people which is perhaps simpler than tackling the deeper malaise of obesity; the massive power of the Food Standards Agency, the fact that the likes of Tesco are driving small foodshops out of business and fast food is cheap and tastes good because it's so pumped up with fat and sugar, and teaching children to cook.

Actually teaching The Boy to cook was like pulling teeth until he realised that girls are impressed by a man who knows how to chop an onion.

Mel Gibson - a giant (racist and misogynistic) toddler

2010-07-15T16:45:00.000+01:00

I find it very funny when female celebs put their post-pregnancy body down to running round after the baby. Because one of the advantages of babies is a tendency to stay where you put them. It would be like saying, oh yeah I stay superfit by running round after my cat.
Even when babies turn into toddlers they waddle furiously, then plomp down on their bums, but still not fast enough for you not to be able to catch up in a couple of strides. Toddlers are exhausting though – maximum mobility, minimum sense, zero tolerance for frustration and a marked tendency to scream when they don’t get their own way. Add homophobia, racism, and misogyny to the mix and you’ve got Mel Gibson
If you’ve been living in a cave the past week, this story may have passed you by. Gibson has been taped by his ex partner Oksana Grigorieva while he tells her she deserves to be raped by a pack of ‘ni....s’ and he’s going to kill and bury her in the rose garden. And it’s all her fault . . . .she made him do it, the classic clarion call of the violent. Meanwhile, defender of powerful child rapists everywhere, Whoopi (it’s not ‘rape rape’) Goldberg jumped to Gibson’s defence saying that he wasn’t a racist because he’d spent time with her kids! Wow – so he didn’t march into her house and say, 'You didn't tell me your children are black too!' so he’s not a racist. But he is a ‘bonehead’. And Grigorieva is a ‘gold digger’ and shouldn’t have made the tapes in the first place. What a harpy. No wonder he threatened to burn her house down and punch her in the face while she was holding their baby. Maybe if he does break the restraining order Grigorieva has taken out and ends up killing her and burying her in the rose garden as he threatened, then Whoopi’s summation of his behaviour might be changed from bonehead to ‘jerk’.
How do you get to be like this? Gibson is a hugely successful actor and respected director. He is hermetically sealed off from day to day normality in a world where the only things that really matter are power and money. He is no doubt surrounded by lackeys who never say ‘no’ to him or ‘that’s a crap idea Mel’ or ‘pick it up yourself’ or ‘Don’t talk to me like that you shortarsed wanker’. His every whim is anticipated and attended to. It must be like being a Roman Emperor. And didn’t a large proportion of them go stark staring mad and ended up assassinated by their own soldiers?

After Gibson’s last rant where he was pulled over for drink driving and after calling the female police officer ‘sugar tits’ he said that the Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world, there was a collective intake of breath. But his film Apocalypto came out, went down a critical and commercial storm and the rant was forgotten. This time I would imagine he’ll stay in therapy, make a public statement of attrition, announce he’s stopped drinking and probably send a few cheques to everyone he’s offended. I really hope this doesn't happen. I hope Gibson is arrested. But I'm not holding my breath.

I can’t talk now. My daughter is sitting on the toilet dressed as a cat

2010-07-09T14:14:00.000+01:00

And The Boy is skumbling (a heady mixture of skulking and stumbling) around the bedroom mumbling: Where’s the hairdryer?

You’re holding it, I reply testily. Then I go back to the phone conversation I am trying to have with my sister about finding a suitable nursing home for mum. It’s 8.15am and I’m trying to get dressed and talk on the phone at the same time.

Wipe my bum mummy! The Girl is perched on the edge of the loo, cat ears askew, her costume unzipped and pooled round her ankles. The Boy stops loudly drying his hair and mumbles something at her. She yelps with feline rage.

I’m not licking my own bum! I’m not a cat. Oh. I am. I’m still not licking my bum. Muuuum he said I should lick my bum! The Boy shrugs. She’s supposed to be a cat! Where’s the hair stuff? The Boy needs products, lots of them, to achieve that carelessly tousled, just got out of bed look. The products that are Right in Front of Him. He’s supposed to be attending a college interview today, while Husband and I are dropping off Cat Girl at school, (It's Alice in Wonderland day) then dropping him off. I wipe Cat Girl’s bum and zip up her costume while she chatters away. But soft! In comes husband, red with rage because The Boy is Not Ready.

We’re going in eight minutes he shouts. Why can’t you get up earlier? Because my body won’t let me counters The Boy. Where’s the blue hair stuff mum?

Is my phone invisible?

I point out that I’m on the phone having a serious conversation. Husband points loudly (I don't know how he does this but he does) at his watch. The Boy considers for a second.

Yeah but where’s the blue stuff?

Meanwhile there’s a wail from The Girl and she holds up the tail she has managed to pull off. I struggle to keep my voice level. You’ll have to be a Manx cat.

My sister and I agree to talk later.

Mourning Mum

2010-07-08T14:02:00.000+01:00

The Girl is at primary school and regularly brings home books along with a parental notebook which is supposed to be filled in, to keep track of her reading. Myself or Husband, or occasionally The Boy listen to her picking through Camping Adventure, or Birthday Adventure and then fill in the book with comments like: Brilliant Reading or Read Well or in the case of The Boy, Rubbish.

I looked through the book yesterday. My mother had looked after the children while Husband and I were in Singapore. I saw mum’s handwriting: Exemplary reading from my clever granddaughterr. The day after she wrote that, she travelled home, and while standing at the top of her stairs, had a cerebral hemorrhage, fell down the stairs and sustained serious brain damage. She won’t write a word like exemplary again, or say it. She won’t sit up or walk or look at us and have a conversation. She won’t cook or snap at dad or send me cuttings from the newspaper about osteoporosis, cancer, or other illnesses to brighten my day.

Mum is being sent to a nursing home because there is nothing more the hospital say they can do. For the last couple of months, myself, my dad and my sister have been ringing, arguing, asking for a second opinion and trying to fight our way through NHS bureaucracy to get her the best possible treatment. It’s like knitting fog. Speaking to the same person twice in a row is almost impossible, so I’m used to hearing phrases like: Sorry I don’t have the notes – I wasn’t at the meeting – I’ve only just been assigned to this case – I don’t know – I don’t know – I don’t know. I ring the hospital switchboard and it has this bizarre system of you speaking the name of the department or person you want to talk to. It goes something like this:

Hello – you are through to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother switchboard. Which department or person would you like to speak to?

You say loudly and clearly,

Minster Ward

The machine replies,

Putting you through to Dr Klalid Abdullah

It’s funny the first time.

Mum isn’t technically dead but the woman who brought my sister and I up, fed us the home cooked food that has given us a lifetime of good health and stable weight, been a brilliant grandmother who sent parcels and letters to her grandchildren, and once asked: Is Freddie Mercury gay? (Is the Pope Catholic? replied dad) is gone for good.

I miss you mum.

Kathryn Blundell

2010-06-28T15:46:00.000+01:00

There are some things mothers are never supposed to say. That the idea of childbirth fills them with disgust and horror and they want to be either drugged off their tits or anaesthetised and c-sectioned. Odd because in every other area of medicine, the absence of pain is seen as a Good Thing. In childbirth though, it's generally seen as a cop out. My second labour was only eight hours long. I never felt in danger and the midwife was great. Unfortunately the epidural didn't work. I’d have taken a bullet the pain was so bad. No I didn’t feel empowered. You try splitting in half and feeling empowered about it.

Once the baby is born, the next taboo is mentioning that small babies are really really dull.
Anna Pasternak got it in the neck for saying just that. The debate ‘raged’ as women phoned radio stations to explain how rollercoasterly thrilling it was to have a small baby.

Kathryn Blundell deputy editor of Mother & Baby magazine is now in deep nappy doo after using the word ‘creepy’ in the context of breastfeeding. The deluge of rage in response centres entirely around the use of the word ‘creepy’. Oh and referring to her breasts as ‘funbags’ which is up there with Gok Wan’s ‘bangers’. But she says other things too – useful things like women should not be made to feel guilty if they can’t or don’t want to breastfeed. Her real crime was not prefacing her shameless formula feeding with lots of handwringing about how ‘guilty’ she felt, or that her nipples were cracked and bleeding after nights of desperate attempts to feed. If she had – then the comments would have been more of the saintly condescending variety. Oh what a shame. Poor thing. Maybe she should have tried just an itty bit harder? Needed more support etc etc. No, this rotten, evil mother decided she couldn’t be ‘fagged.’ The selfish, sociopathic, useless, vain monster. Yes, she’s been described as all those things.

The other comment that comes up again and again is the fear that ‘vulnerable’ new mothers might read her article and decide not to breastfeed! What a load of patronising crap. Like never using the word 'pain' in the context of childbirth in case it puts women off having babies. Oh hang on - the anti-drug birth bullies still do that. It's not pain - it's sensations. Or waves. Or an orgasm if you're Sheila Kitzinger.

It was probably ill advised to use the word ‘creepy’ about breastfeeding. But I don’t think one article is going to put new mothers off. And frankly, the utterly vitriolic, poisonous and self-righteous nastiness from the blogsphere is far far creepier.

There is a small section of militant mothers who seem more interested in policing other women's behaviour than trusting them to make the choice that's right for them and their child.

Suits You Sir

2010-06-22T12:20:00.000+01:00

A shaft of light pierces my Blog of Gloom, or rather a shaft of irritation since it involves The Boy, but hey, I'll take irritation over blank misery any day. It's nearly the end of term, the end of exams, and time for the School Prom. Husband tells me that in his day, you had to have a date, a car, and an expensive outfit so anyone who didn't have a date, or enough money to hire a ridiculous dress and flash car could celebrate getting through their exams by feeling ugly and unwelcome.

Over here though there seems to be more emphasis on having fun. The Boy's class are hiring a boat and there have been several stern letters about it being a No Booze Cruise to which The Boy smirks. But firstly we have to get him a suit. You'd think it would be quite easy - just measure and hire. You can even hire online and they deliver! But The Boy is currently ensconced in online Troll World and every time I point out that he needs to be measured he rolls his eyes and waves me away as though I'm a mosquito. I'm tempted to hire him a Gold Lame Gayboy suit or the t-shirt. That'll learn him.

Another catch-up

2010-06-03T15:39:00.000+01:00

Since April my mum has been confined to hospital following a fall, suffering from firstly a bleed on the brain, and suspected broken neck, then a flurry of infections, then a really nasty e-coli one and another UTI. During all this she has been shunted from hospital to hospital, so forgive me for being very remiss with the blog.

I used to read about elderly people dying from dehydration or starvation in hospitals and not believe it. Imagine – an elderly person lying stupefied from drugs and the £3.50 an hour orderly wheels a food trolley past their room. ‘Want dinner?’ he or she says. There is no reply because the elderly person is either asleep or doesn’t want much. So the orderly moves on. The nurses are supposed to keep a record of what the patients eat and most of the time they do. But if the elderly person doesn’t have an interested family to say: ‘Hang on I was here and there’s no way dad had a whole plate of spaghetti and a banana’ then that person can so easily slip quietly into malnutrition and. . . . .

I ring the hospital to ask what kind of medication she’s on and the nurse has usually ‘just come on duty so can’t tell me anything’ but ‘she’s looking very cheerful today’. At first that made my sister, my father and I feel a little better but now it just seems like bullshit. We are going down to the hospital tomorrow to see if they are still considering her for the physiotherapy ward where she might get a stab at getting her life back – with intensive physio and speech therapy. But it all depends on beds, and the longer she stays mouldering in hospital, the less ‘suitable’ as a physio patient she’ll be. It’s all very well talking about age discrimination but behind the scenes, decisions have to be made about who is more suitable. What my sister and I are not going to allow is for her to be shunted off to a nursing home without a fight.

I’m sorry – my sense of humour has gone a bit AWOL recently.

On another note, yesterday I had a glimpse of The Girl as a teenager after I asked her to brush her teeth. ‘What – ev –er’ she snapped.

Chin Up

2010-05-06T20:24:00.000+01:00

Not a good day. I’m still down in sunny Kent and I believe there is something going on called an election about which I couldn’t give a shit because my mother is still very ill, and not getting better. Although I did bark with laughter when I read that David Cameron had said: ‘Every time I go to Afghanistan or Iraq I’m blown away . . .’ It was also funny when he was doing his Man of the People bit and went to see the fishmongers whose livelihoods he will no doubt ruin if he gets into power, followed by a school where the first comment by one of the kids was: ‘You smell of fish.’ Oh and the description of him having a face like a single buttock with two eyes stamped on was highly amusing too.

In the middle of all this guffawing at Dave, I went to the local hospital where mum’s jewellery had been left behind (she’s now in Canterbury Hospital) and they asked me to sign a form reclaiming her stuff. At the top of the form it read: Relationship to Deceased. I winced. Matron looked apologetic. ‘I’m sorry it’s the only time it’s mentioned.’ I looked down the form: Name of Deceased, Relationship to Deceased, Cause of Death.

After I’d claimed the belongings of my still alive mother, dad, my sister and I drove to the hospital. Mum was lying still, milk white, her bottom dentures out. ‘Ooh she ate a good dinner!’ said the physiotherapist and added ‘bless her heart’ for good measure. ‘Doesn’t look her age does she?’ My sister looked like she wanted to punch her. Perhaps mum was pretending sleep to avoid this well meaning but asinine drivel? The physio went off beaming and my sister pointed out that it’s possible to have a good appetite when you’re practically brain dead.

Dad promptly went off to get us tea – too overwrought to engage. Mum stayed asleep.

Then we noticed that mum’s fingers and hands were encrusted with what looked like brown cake but turned out not to be. The nursing staff didn’t seem too bothered so my sister and I scrubbed and disinfected her hands before talking about whether we should make an official complaint and if that might affect mum’s care. Instead I marched off and tried to find a doctor. Nobody to be found.

The next day they told us that mum had contracted a urinary infection – 'very common when you have a catheter'. Probably quite common if you get shit all over your hands too. But a doctor was around and to be fair, very busy so I pinned him down for an appointment tomorrow – hopefully one fluff and bullshit free.

Drove home today feeling very glum. Then I noticed a young student marching down the road wearing a Nazi storm trooper leather coat, Tomorrow Belongs to Me shorts, ankle socks and a pork pie hat. He was singing ‘Are you Going to Scarborough Fair’ off-key. We all looked at him.

‘I suppose that’s what the students are wearing these days’ I said in the silence.

‘Yeah’ said dad, ‘The same ould utter shite that you two wore.’ My sister and I looked at each other remembering the spray on jeans and Axl Rose tribute hair.

‘Still’ said dad, in the words of Brendan Behan, ‘every dog has his own vomit.’

And on that philosophical note I’m off to watch the election.

Reasons to be cheerful

2010-04-29T19:02:00.000+01:00

My mum is currently in the ICU but will soon be moved to a neuro rehab unit to assess the long term damage. Today, I felt a great weariness overcome me - as life seems to currently consist of going into hospital, cooking, hanging up laundry, and trying to give a shit about work stuff. A few nice things have happened, however. I've been deeply properly humbled by the amazing staff at the ICU. Warm, friendly, inclusive, non-patronising, they gently encourage, cajole, lift, clean and treat my mother with utter tenderness. I arrived today to find her complaining that the weetabix was 'too sweet' although she managed to trough down a large portion of chocolate sponge without complaining. Worried that she had lost feeling in one hand, I placed a beaker of tea in her grip and asked her if the tea was hot or cold. 'What kind of a question is that?' she snapped, not unreasonably. I felt my heart lift a little.

Later I heard dad telling a friend that 'it's great that the kids are down,' and I thought well - it's a long time since anyone referred to me as a kid.

Dad is normally kept by mum on a low fat, low salt, low blood pressure diet for excellent reasons so he’s taking to my more nonchalant approach like a starving man. I made pork chops in a cider/mustard sauce last night - with chips. Chips! He had tears in his eyes! He practically ate the plate. I thought I was the only person with the disgusting habit of plate licking. Tonight it's asparagus risotto. Next step is teaching him how to cook the stuff.

One other nice thing. I wrote an adaptation of Lynne Reid Banks's Indian in the Cupboard earlier in the year and it's being broadcast on Radio 4 this Saturday 1st May at 2.30. I doubt if I'll be able to listen to it, so tell me what you think. I've managed to get one or two crap jokes in there and a poke at Kevin Costner.

Out of Nowhere

2010-04-27T22:39:00.000+01:00

We flew back from Singapore end of last week, just as restrictions were being lifted over Heathrow. Arrived home to find my parents who had been looking after The Boy and The Girl had scrubbed the house from top to bottom, made friends with all the neighbours and managed to lure The Boy out of his fetid pit of a room by constantly cooking his favorite food.

Home they go and I marvel particularly at the way my 76 year old mum is so zippy and fit despite the hip operation and is it down to her good diet or the vitamin pills she has taken all her life or or or . . . .

Two days later dad calls. Mum has fallen backwards down the stairs and is in the Intensive Care Unit with a fractured bone in the neck and bleeding on the brain. It's quite serious he says somewhat unnecessarily. My sister and I throw a few things into a suitcase and belt down to the coast.

The ICU is surprisingly noisy and very bright but staffed by lovely cheerful people who tell us the truth yet manage to keep an optimistic air. Mum is a mass of tubes and machinery, her head encased in gym mats to keep her neck still. The only broken bone is in her neck and it's a 'good break'. She may have been unconscious when she fell. It might have been a cerebral hemorrhage or a stroke. I think of those stairs, wooden and steep and shudder.

Dad keeps getting up to do things, arrange things, fetch things. We stroke mum's hand and speak to her loudly. It feels stupid and patronising. The nurses say she might be able to hear us. After a while we go back to the house for a few hours sleep. The next few days are taken up with sitting by her bed. I talk to one of the doctors about the crash trolley. They use plasters not big brick like defibrillators. We drink tea and burble to mum. I've brought my laptop and stare at it.

On day three, Rachel, one of the utterly brilliant nurses is trying to persuade mum to drink more juice and mum mumbles what we think is Feck off. This cheers us. Her first swear word! And mum hardly ever swears. Then they take her off for another head scan. Later we are told it could go either way. I long to put mum's dentures back in but they keep slipping out. And yet her face is smooth and baby soft. She looks so young. And I can't help thinking that after a lifetime of endless and unnecessary dieting she'd be so pleased to be losing pounds. The nurses are fretting about her lack of appetite but she would be delighted. If she knew where she was.

Happy Feet

2010-04-20T16:46:00.000+01:00

I'm stranded in Singapore in a nice hotel. Yes I know - it's terrible. I'm trying to be brave about it *sniff*. Actually if we don't get a flight within the next few days we'll be kicked out of the hotel and everywhere, even the local dog kennels are booked solid. One flight left today - going to Barcelona and it was jammed.

But what I really want to write about is the fabulousness of foot massage - once you get over the pain. This sounds a bit S&M but . . (ooh I must just tell you about the Fish. You can go to these spas in Singapore and sit with your feet - basically in a fish tank and they swarm around your feet and nibble away at the dead skin. A bit like aquatic maggots. Apparently they leave the healthy skin alone but since the fish haven't put that in writing we only have the spa owners word for it). No I haven't tried it - I've got ticklish feet. But I did have reflexology with the world's angriest therapist. He pushed and thumped at my feet snarling: You walk a lot! Foot stiff! I gritted my teeth which made him push harder. Crack crack. I watched as he twisted my feet into origami. I was too scared to protest. But afterwards my feet were like two pads of air.

And tomorrow I'll be telling you all about the durian - a fruit which smells like rotting flesh and which the Singaporians like to eat in pancakes.

In Singapore

2010-04-16T03:14:00.000+01:00

I’m in Singapore for a week, ostensibly working but on a short jolly with Husband who really is working. Currently in the hotel, I feel right at home because the skies are grey and it’s chucking it down outside. Later however, after doing some work I’ll step out into tropical heat and again, just like being in the UK, after five minutes, start moaning about the heat.

A rare treat – flew business class with Singapore Airlines which meant a whole spacious cubicle with a wide seat and lots of little buttons which opened up various nooks and cupboards. Despite the flat bed however, I didn’t sleep – never do on planes because just as I start to relax, the plane goes through a bit of minor turbulence and I’m jerked awake and the plane is plunging to a fiery doom. Also because of the fear of one of these cursed headaches, I stuck to water. Very British again. Would you like champagne on takeoff Madam? No thanks – I’ll have a nice cup of tea. Pathetic.

The sunrise though! Pulling up the shutters at 5am, as we headed over the Indian Ocean, I saw tongues of flame drifting across an azure sky and the sudden emergence of a fiery ball in the east.

Singapore is a well-ordered-to-the-point-of-bossy city. It starts when you walk through Arrivals, noting the lush plants and pristine glossy marble floor. Wandering over to Immigration you notice a Big Red Line and lots of Singaporeans in uniform. Going through UK immigration, they usually take a swift glance of your passport and wave you through. Here they scrutinise the photo and stare at you with their best Are you Bin Laden or even worse, Are you carrying chewing gum glare before suddenly smiling and waving you on. But if you’re waiting and bored and so much as put a toe over the red line, a Singaporean huffs up to you and points angrily which means – Get Your Fat Idle Arse Back Over That Line. It’s your first taste of a culture that strongly believes in rules and order. The fact that Singaporeans are short may not be unconnected to this.

It’s become popular to dismiss Singapore as a kind of Asia lite, bland, safe and almost militaristically ordered, where citizens are robbed of their freedom to chew gum and gob on the street. As though the poverty, danger and choking traffic fumes of Bangkok or Jakarta make the travel experience more real. So far, I’ve found Singapore to be a safe city, very clean, the food is fantastic, and the parks lushly dot the city landscape. And the food! As soon as it’s stopped raining and I’ve done some work, I’m nipping out to ~~stuff my face~~ explore the cultural diversity.

Attack of the Fifty Foot Parents

2010-04-13T17:49:00.000+01:00

I’m off to Singapore tomorrow and it will be a good flight because kind, lovely Husband (working out there) surprised me with a business class ticket. And it’s a single seat next to a window so for once in my aviation life I won’t be stuck next to someone who has just undergone bowel surgery and wants to tell me all about it. Slit me from front to back he did. Doctor said he’d never seen anything like it in forty years. Don’t snigger – it always happens. Either that or one of those people who just can’t take the hint that you don’t want to talk. You turn away, you snore loudly, you get up and bang on the emergency exit shouting Let me out! and they still don’t take the hint.

My parents are looking after The Girl and even though The Boy insists he doesn’t need looking after – him too. They are both quite religious though so there was a tricky moment when out of the blue – always always out of the blue – does she have some sort of controversy radar – The Girl said loudly: When Jesus was deaded did he come alive after three days?

Yes of course he did said my mother with all the conviction of someone who had she ever expressed a different opinion would be excommunicated and smacked round the head by a nun.

I don’t believe it says the Girl with equal conviction. I think when Jesus was deaded he stayed dead.

I wish I’d sent her to be auditioned for Outnumbered.

Off to pack. I’m bringing my laptop so I’ll tap away in the lounge and on the plane trying to look like I’m being important but in fact blogging and reporting any celebs or weirdoes on the journey with me. What do they call that? Bloggernecking?

Hinterland

2010-04-06T11:22:00.000+01:00

Weird things happen when you neglect your blog. Firstly, spam tumbleweed rolls by – a morass of dodgy grammar and strange requests. Like this:

The diameter can include often not the program, but too the bar of the guy above the making scale. Ozone machine health risk: applications are n't in the efforts of an torque, filing on the cyphacyphathe cell.

I mean – what??

The other thing that happens is life and blogging carries on perfectly well without you. It’s like being sick and hearing life chugging outside your window, with no regard for you lying in your bed, reeking but too ill to do anything about it. And that is a very poor link as to why I’ve been so neglectful of my blog. A bout of work followed by a kidney infection.

It happened like this. A minor bout of what I thought was cystitis, followed by a strange lethargy. Went to yoga class, came home, fell asleep for three hours. Next day, staggered out of bed and fell back into it, only to get up to be violently sick. And then the strange part. I had these psychedelic dreams, featuring Kelsey Grammer from Frasier. My head was spinning in my sleep. I rolled across great waves. Blood poisoning apparently. Husband said I would fall asleep in the middle of sentences. He got me antibiotics and checked on me every three or four hours. “I knew you weren’t dead because you changed position,” he chortled but he was worried. I ate nothing, drank nothing, could keep nothing down. One night he was checking on me and I rolled over. My face was thin and puckered from dehydration. “I had a glimpse of what you will look like when you’re seventy,” he said. Vaguely I thought of that birthday rhyme. You look like a monkey and you smell like one too. I did and I did. Amazing how quickly the carapace of respectability falls off. I was milk white with hair darkly greasy and black smudges under my eyes.

Hospital beckoned. But I stayed home because eventually I managed to get some liquids down. Husband changed my tee shirts and sheets, and placed a bath mat by the side of the toilet so when I was kneeling down hurling foam I wouldn’t get sore knees to add to my woes. What a nice man I thought as my stomach went into spasms for the umpteenth time. Then I crawled back to bed, listened to domestic noises from downstairs and amused myself by counting the veins on my wrist.

Husband brought The Girl to see me. Something odd happened to my sense of smell. Either it had sharpened or I’d turned into a werewolf. She smelled of sweet stuff and fresh air – I couldn’t bear it. I hugged her but felt a rush of nausea. It was terrible – I was revolted by the smell of my own daughter. The Boy nervously sat by my bed and rubbed my arm. He smelled of cheap aftershave. I dreaded to think what I smelled like.

Thank God for antibiotics. I took pills that looked like genetically modified bees, all stripy and huge, but they worked. I ate lots of protein, stopped drinking alcohol and began to put on the stone and a half I’d lost. Yeah I know – boo hoo. But I’m on the mend now just in time for Spring.

Marry him or be eaten by your cat!

2010-02-02T15:46:00.000Z

Another week another book that tells us that unless we get married we’ll be alone apart from excess chin hair and smelly cats. They seem to pop up at the rate of about one a year – these don’t be so fussy books – despite every single mental health study from the beginning of time rating single women as happier and healthier than married ones.

First we had The Rules which told us valuable husband choosing lessons like Never Accept A Date For Saturday After Wednesday, and Don’t Put Out Until He’s Spent Loads Of Money from two loud women one of whom is now divorced. It would take a heart of stone not to snigger. Then came If I’m So Wonderful Why Am I Single? Followed rapidly by Lori Gottlieb’s new tome of doom: Marry Him Or Be Eaten by Your Cat. Well that’s not exactly the title but Lori Gottlieb’s new book Marry Him! The Case For Mr Good Enough preaches that very message. Apparently if you’re a woman in say, your late thirties and unmarried you should be musing over whether you might have settled for that bloke with a ponytail who never stopped talking about himself and expected you to remember his mother’s birthday, or Barry who asked you to stop moving about during sex because it ‘put him off his stroke’ or that nice man who was so dull you’ve forgotten his name. You fussy bitch!

Here’s the really creepy thing. Lori Gottlieb is keen to hammer home the point that it’s not about being happy – it’s about being socially acceptable. Ms Gottlieb is a single mother at 40. Nothing wrong with that but she seems to have a curiously Victorian view of herself: 'After all, wouldn't it have been wiser to settle for a higher calibre of "not Mr. Right" while my marital value was at its peak?'

Marital value? Has she just stepped out of a Jane Austen novel?

But what really pisses me off is that you never get the equivalent books for men. It’s men who do better mentally out of marriage, so why aren’t we reading more books with titles like: Nobody Else Will Put up With Your Farts And Stupid Jokes and Guess What Mr Baldy Saggy Arse – You’re Not George Clooney(Even in a bad light)

Old and Beige

2010-01-19T10:43:00.000Z

There was a picture of Susan Sarandon in the Observer over the weekend. She was lounging against a wall, dressed in a fantastic jersey dress, soft red curls tumbling round her face. She looked stunning. She’s sixty bloody three. Yes, yes the lighting was good, the makeup and hair perfect and there was probably a teeny bit of photoshopping afterwards but even so. Gorgeous. Thing is, she doesn’t have that awful frozen at thirty five look, she just looks like a beautiful mature woman.

It’s not much fun getting old. Er. I’ve been in writing purdah for the past couple of months, juggling work for the Open University and struggling to write an adaptation at the same time. Yeah boo hoo. I dunno about you but when I’m really busy, appearance takes a bit of a back seat. Apart from the basics of personal hygiene. So I had a GOOD LOOK in an unflattering bathroom light the other day and noticed several bad things.

1. A proliferation of grey hair. This doesn’t matter so much if you have warm skin – grey can look silvery and sexy. When you’re a redhead with pale skin you just look like a beige blob.
2. Red veins round my nose, just to add a splash of colour. Not quite a W.C Fields alco nose but definitely red veins.
3. A WITCH HAIR sprouting from my cheek. Like a long pube curling outwards – shameless. It was practically shouting: ‘Here I am!’ I can’t believe I’m admitting this but I SHAVED IT OFF. I’m shaving. I know this because the Girl wandered into the bathroom (her timing is immaculate) and said: ‘Mummy I thought only daddies shaved their faces.’ She did redeem herself later on the way to school by saying: ‘Mummy when I’m a grown up I’m going to try and stay out of jail.’ A laudable ambition.

It didn’t help that when my sister and I visited my parents over the weekend, mum gave us our overdue Christmas presents, which included among other things, a bottle of sterilising hand gel (!?) and a pair of slippers that my sister says, are the kind that ‘105 year old ladies wear’. Sis has banned me from wearing them saying that if I do, it’s a slippery slope and before I know it, I’ll be considering a cauliflower perm - so very practical, or looking at beige leisure trousers and thinking oooh they look comfy. She’s right.

Although I think that doing what you love is the best anti-ageing device. That and a fuckload of hair dye and botox. So bugger ageing gracefully – I’m off to the hairdressers

Smacking for Success

2010-01-05T09:37:00.000Z

Once, in New York I saw a man wearing a t-shirt which proclaimed: Hit your kids! The Bible says it's ok! I thought of it when I read that studies have shown, (doesn't your heart sink at the phrase studies have shown . . .when I worked in magazines, that was tantamount to saying evidence for the spurious opinion I'm about to spout is very very thin so I'll say something vague about experts and opinions and hopefully nobody will double check)

Anyway. According to research at the University of Michigan, smacking a child before the age of six makes them perform better at school when they're teenagers. It's not clear how much better - I mean if you're going to create a frozen, frightened child who behaves well because they're living in fear of physical pain, humiliation, and rage I would at least be expecting a teenager heading for Oxbridge grades. And it was a study of 179 teenagers. Big deal.

I don't think parents who slap their child in a fit of rage are monsters - if your child runs into the road or has a massive tantrum in the supermarket, I totally understand why you might slap. But hitting a child is not imposing boundaries or discipline, it's you losing control. I've done it. I slapped The Boy when he rushed into the main road to pick up a ball. I yanked him back, inches away from being hit by a bus and whacked his bum. I certainly wasn't thinking hmmm maybe such a slap may produce braininess in my boy - I think my thoughts were more of the argggh bus death splat arrrrghh red mist kind

It's parents who talk about 'loving discipline' that really creep me out - the ghastly ritual of it - the deliberate fear. The parents who wait to punish their child - wait till your father/mother gets home types. They're the sadists. And as for the theory that slapping children produces brighter more well adjusted teens, perhaps a tour round our UK remand homes would prove otherwise. They are full of young men who were slapped, kicked and beaten regularly.

Good Will to All Men (Even The Boy)

2009-12-23T17:09:00.000Z

Like the soft, hopeless fool I am, I gave The Boy a bit of extra pocket money this month, partly for getting through his mocks without exploding, and partly because I Enjoy Making A Rod For My Own Back. Anyway, two days ago he sidled up to me, and asked if he could have a bit more money to buy me a Christmas present. Right I thundered as uselessly as an elephant with laryngitis, you're getting a job after Christmas. Definitely, he said. Now could I have some money please? I was in the middle of writing something reasonably coherent so gave him a tenner.

Two days later I was off up the shops when The Boy stuck his head over the banisters. As you're going to the shops anyway, if I give you the money could you . . .?

No! Get the presents yourself! Bloody cheek. So he huffed and groaned and set off to the shops to buy two bloody presents for Husband and I which I had given him money for. Did he have no shame?

Clearly not. Because ten minutes later he rang me, sounding very disgruntled.

Mum I'm in MSN.

Don't you mean M&S?

Yeah - whatever. What am I supposed to get dad?

I'd told him three times and written it down.

Hankies, I snapped.

What are they?

You know - things you blow your nose on. Like your sleeve but smaller. And square. And unlike you - not snotty.

But where am I supposed to get them? I swear to God he can open a fridge but unless what he wants to eat is Right In Front Of Him, it may as well be invisible.

Look at the sign in front of you which says Men's Clothes Third Floor. Go up the escalator. Then ask someone.

What sign?

I hung up.

And a wonderful Christmas to all my lovely mates in Blogland. Let's all reconvene with tales of drunken aunties and simmering family rows very soon!
xxx

Crap shoes

2009-12-04T08:55:00.000Z

A few weeks ago The Boy stomped home from school and barked that the soles of his school shoes were flapping in the wind. And it was raining. My fault on both counts. Especially the rain as it was making his hair stick up like a twat. Yes my flap shoed twatty haired son was Not Happy. And all because I’d bought him cheap school shoes.

The thing was he refused to come shopping with me to buy another pair so I had to guess the sort of shoes he might like. Alas the only pair available in his size were plain black with the words Boys World emblazoned on the inside sole. Not outside for the world to see but on the inside sole where his feet would be unless fashions have changed so much that he is supposed to wear shoes inside out.

As I unpacked the groceries he picked up the new shoes and regarded them as though I had presented him with a pair of freshly deposited dog turds with laces. Muuuuum. I mean are you kidding or what? No No No. He backed off and ran up the stairs as though I’d just suggested he wore ballet tights to school. I honestly couldn’t see what was wrong with them. How wrong can you go with plain black shoes?

Very wrong apparently. The next day I received a phone call from school. He is not allowed to wear trainers. I could hear The Boy in the background moaning But the shoes she got me are crap! Everyone’s been asking me why I’m wearing black cereal boxes on my feet! Then the teacher saying: I’m sorry but you can’t wear trainers. It’s a school rule. Even if your shoes are a bit . . did I hear the word crap?

Later that day he returned from school with a face like Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. I had to whip them off in games and quickly stuff them with socks in case anyone saw Boys World inside them he said mournfully. By this time I was so fed up that I promised to buy him another pair as long as he actually came with me and stopped bloody complaining. He was using the shoe trauma excuse to stop doing any of his chores. Post Traumatic Shoe Syndrome. Finally Husband snapped that if The Boy didn’t empty the damned bins he’d get a white marker pen and write Boys World on the outside of the shoes as well.

I thought this meant Husband was on my side. But later on as I was examining the hated objects and puzzling over what was quite so terrible about them, I caught Husband looking at me with a expression he usually wears when forced by me to watch Extreme Skinny Z list Celebrities. I’m sorry he said but they really are crap shoes.

Are they really that bad (she whines).

Just keep your gob shut Jane

2009-12-01T20:22:00.000Z

I really appreciate being freelance when I have to travel a lot on the tube. During the rush hour. While I listen, ear half cocked and an expression of grump as the loudspeaker mumbles something about the circle line . . . limited service . . . under train . . sorry for incon-bleugh, all the poor people who have to listen to this shite every day adopt an expression of blank stoicism. Or maybe it’s just despair. Move down the platform shouts someone official with a loudspeaker as all the passengers squash together four deep like commuter lemmings. So I finally stuff myself onto the tube, listen to another announcement telling us in the ancient language of Incomprehensible Mumble that the train will not be going to Leicester Square after all but will terminate at Earls Court. But no matter. Buses will be laid on which might take us somewhere. Scotland? Or possibly back to Earls Court. And London Transport apologises for the inconvenience. Oh that makes it all better!

Squashing down the kind of helpless rage that eventually turns into cancer, I watch idly as a commuter reads the paper. On the back is a big picture of Liam Gallagher looking sulky (does he have any other expression?) and a headline about how the rift would never be healed. My first thought - I wonder what he’s flogging? And my second - twat. Probably because I bet he never travels by tube. Unfortunately I think I said the second thought out loud, because the owner of the paper looks at me sharply and says: Who me? And jerked out of my tube coma, I say: Oh no no – not you. I meant Liam Gallagher.

He looks at me. Where?

So as well as feeling fed up, and full of repressed rage I'm also feeling foolish. Other normal commuters will look at me pityingly - the mad woman who rants about Mancunian rock stars who aren't actually there. Luckily, a young woman nearby saves the day by saying calmly: I met him once. He is a twat.

Accidental Boxing Class

2009-11-24T22:10:00.000Z

I've got a short term deal on a local gym so I'm making the most of it. Yesterday I stumbled into what was definitely referred to as a Fast Class. Which meant it would be over with fast. Hopefully. It was 8am and I staggered onto the gym floor. 'Ok where's the fast class?' I muttered to a sick makingly wide awake young man with bright eyes and a goatee, hoping for a classload of equally tired, grumpy people I could hide behind. 'Put these on,' he said, smiling, so before I realised what the hell was going on, I had shrugged into a pair of minging sweaty boxing gloves. Hang on! This wasn't a fast class! This was . . er . . .boxing? On my own? 'Yeah it's you and me,' said Elijah with the goatee. 'Where's everyone else?' I whimpered. He ignored me. 'Punch ten times both sides then we go down by two'. Eh? What? Counting and exercise? I feebly punched the wrong number. 'No - put your whole body into it!' shouted Elijah. It's very very hard to punch sulkily but I managed it. When I'd punched the wrong number and dislocated my spine ten times it was time for a 'rest'. 'Round the track!' snapped Elijah. I ran round the track, grumbling. Then I had to punch again. I tried pleading inability to breathe or stand up but Elijah wasn't having any of it. 'You punch like a girl!' he said. Finally I socked him a punch he was grudgingly pleased with. 'Come back tomorrow,' he said in a kind but butch voice. I kept thinking of that bit in Ben Hur when Charlton Heston is chained to the ship. 'Hate keeps a man alive Number Six'. Doesn't quite work as 'Sulking helps a girl to punch.' I've never been so glad when forty five minutes was up. All I can remember after that is slowly collapsing to the ground and whimpering. I'll never laugh at Rocky again.

A Nasty Lady Told off My Girl

2009-11-23T20:15:00.000Z

Recently, I took The Girl to a magical production of James and the Giant Peach at the Polka Theatre, Wimbledon. At one point, James thrust a giant, squashy peach coloured half blown up rubberised beach ball into the audience and we, the audience had to pass it back through the auditorium. Doesn't sound magical but it was. The atmosphere was as it should be, noisy and slightly chaotic. We sat at the back, so The Girl’s view was slightly inhibited by a family in front of us. The Girl asked the odd question and I whispered the answer in her ear. A few seats down, a boy shouted and shrieked with pleasure. And then just as Act Two was about to begin, The Girl asked what the safety curtain was and the lady in front of us turned round and said Shhh very loudly to her. I was so surprised I had a ‘no that didn’t actually happen’ moment. Then as we sat in silence the lady spun round again and snapped Be quiet! really angrily to my five year old child. For speaking before the curtain had gone up.

I was so shocked my throat stung. Don’t talk to my child like that, I snarled back. The show hasn’t even started yet. She spun round again, face a purple mask of anger-about-something-else-entirely. She TALKED in the first half so perhaps you might restrain her in the second!

So did half the theatre I said loudly. We're in a children's theatre remember? Rage was tearing through me. I would have happily punched her overly made up face with runway burgundy blusher streaks. She in turn looked at me with such hatred, I recoiled. The Girl took my hand, the lights went down and I sat in silence. The Girl was too nervous to ask any questions. I would have happily given five years of my life if the woman's head had exploded in front of me. I sat back in the darkening theatre trying not to cry. The Girl seemed fine. James and the Giant Bitch.

On the way home, I talked to The Girl about what had happened. That the Nasty Lady had no right to speak to my girl like that. She looked at me thoughtfully. And she was fat she said cheerfully.

Where the bloody hell had that come from? Among my many parental crimes and misdemeanors, sizeism is not one of them. I absolutely don't want The Girl to become infected with the horrible body fascism that defines our culture. Probably naive but you can make a start by not whining about your own weight or referring to it in other people. So I launched into my Guardian Lecture about how we were all different shapes and sizes and it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the lady had been rude and nasty.

She was fat repeated The Girl. I didn't laugh. But I did smirk. Then I changed the subject. What is it that money can't buy? Erm, love? Friends? Happiness?

The Girl thought for a minute. Leaves she said. I do love her.

Catchup

2009-11-18T12:21:00.000Z

First off I’m really sorry about the heinous length of my disappearance. Oh you haven’t noticed. Ok. That’s me humbled. I knew tumbleweed was blowing through my blog when I started getting anonymous emails telling me that I could bulk buy Viagra and a very strange ‘comment’ which I quote in full:

But placid, there are well known companies which deserve benefit words and created an distinguished get Cialis now reputation.

Er right. What?

So, quick catch-up. I’ve been ploughing through work and feeling grateful to have any since at least three of my friends have been made redundant recently. This alas is not much comfort when you get the ninth draft of a script back from your producer with the note ‘I preferred the eighth draft’.

Took The Boy round to a series of sixth form colleges last week. I tried to stay in the background, only to reappear whenever he needed to fling a witty comment in my direction, or to place an umbrella over his head. When did I morph into a butler? At one point as we were wandering round a school, lost, he hissed in my ear: ‘Why don’t you go and talk to the other mums?’ So I sidled up to another mum who was looking really fed up and asked her a few banal questions about her boy going to sixth form. Her boy doesn’t seem to be interested in anything, especially not his GCSEs. She looked at the prospectus. ‘Apparently if they get into this school they have to do a course called Critical Thinking’. I watched her boy and mine hunched, gloomy and wandering round the Art department. ‘Well, The Boy is pretty good at being critical’ I mumbled. ‘I’d be glad for any vestige of thinking’ she added. ‘Perhaps we could enter them as a duo’.

We found our way to the psychology department, where bright eyed students were on hand to answer questions. I mentioned that I’d have loved to have studied psychology at school. ‘Look Boy, they do criminal psychology!’ I chirped over eagerly then saw his face shut down and realised I’d committed the parental Cardinal Sin of Being Eager. ‘Muuuuuuum’ he snarled and moved away as though I had bad breath, BO and swine flu.

Later on as we sat in the taxi I said that I’d been hurt by his obvious contempt. And reminded him that when I was fourteen and deeply into the Grease soundtrack, complete with hairbrushes for microphones, and fights over who would be Sandy (God knows why – Rizzo is a far more interesting character) my dad would wander past my bedroom door and start whooping: ‘Wella wella wella ooh! Tell me more tell me more – now what’s that supposed to mean – doesn’t mean anything . . . ‘ and on and on in a Touretty rant until mum shouted from downstairs that Hawaii Five-O was on. Now that’s an embarrassing parent. The Boy’s mouth turned up slightly at the corner and he touched my hand very lightly. I’d forgive him anything. He’s my boy.

Five Obsessions

2009-10-16T16:13:00.000+01:00

Lovely Helen at Commission Me - has presented me with an award which stands for not Tragic Obsession with Big Hats and Small Dogs, but integrity, commitment to excellence and stubborn optimism. I'm very touched. And a bit guilty because I've been a bit lax on the blog front recently. And as a codicil I have to give you my five obsessions. Which are in no particular order:

1. Extremely mature cheddar. You can forget that namby pamby mild crap. Give me the sort of cheese that gives your gums an electric shock. Particularly good when a lump of it is eaten with a splodge of generic pickle.

2. The Boy's Height. It's really hard to tell someone off when you have to look up at them to do it. And their response is Chill mum in a really deep voice.

3. The Girl's developing confidence. I remember a mother once telling me: Once they go to school, they're gone and now I know what she means. She has a set of friends, influences, opinions and tastes of her own. Yesterday she insisted on wearing a tunic with clashing tee, odd socks and a beret. Fashion wise I think she's channelling Vivienne Westwood. Drunk.

4. Writing something good. And I've been telling my students at the OU to allow themselves to write rubbish, to break through that awful inertia that comes when you sit down and tell yourself you have to write something good. I've been teaching them a bit about freewriting - composting - where you give yourself the freedom to write whatever you like. It's like turning your psyche over and over until a little nugget emerges that you can do something with. It's all true. But the bottom line is while it's good to allow yourself to write rubbish, nobody wants to end up submitting rubbish.

5. Aveda Hair Products. I know - I know. Especially as when I went into the 'lifestyle salon' I picked up a few products - one a 'glosser' and the other a 'finishing paste' and asked what the difference was. One glosses zee hair and the other feeeneeshes eeet, said the very glossy assistant. Insulted and patronised like that the only thing I could do was buy some overpriced shampoo. And to my intense annoyance it worked fantastically well.

And now I pass on the nominations to:

Jane Smith at How Publishing Really Works

Kit at Kit Courteney Writes

The Daily Quail

Elle at Product Placement

Nicola Morgan at Help! I Need a Publisher

Hollywood is a funny old place

2009-10-01T09:51:00.000+01:00

Kanye West interrupts the acceptance speech of Taylor Swift (no, me neither) and gets slammed by stern moral arbiters like Donald Trump. "He couldn't care less about Beyonce - it was grandstanding to get attention," thunders Trump, a noted champion of young pretty women. (For those of you with lives, Mr West bounded on stage to point out that while he thought Taylor deserved her award, Beyonce's video was much better.) And as a result of this display of bad manners, petitions are being scribbled and we are being advised to boycott Kanye West's music. On the other hand, when a fugitive child rapist is brought to book for his crime decades later, Hollywood gets up a petition to protect him. According to Whoopi Goldberg it's not even "rape rape". I'm speechless.

Boy Trouble

2009-09-18T16:10:00.000+01:00

All you parents out there with Year 11 offspring – you have my sympathy. The Boy is doing his GCSEs this year and bitterly regrets choosing at least one. He doesn't like the teacher - he chose badly yadda yadda. I pointed out (sounding horribly like David Brent) that he can't go through life blaming other people for his poor performance. He promised to try harder. And then, a few nights ago he hovered outside my door a few nights ago, an anxious expression on his face that as parents of teenage boys know, means one of three things:

I’m in trouble at school
I’ve got a girl pregnant (yeah this little doozy of a thought pops up too)
I want something

So I was relieved when it turned out to be Number Three. Mum mum all my class are going to the Reading Festival tickets booked year in advance please please please pay you back work very hard pass my GCSEs . . . .
I hadn’t been proposed to with as much fervor. And it would be an incentive! No - not a bribe - an incentive! So I got him a ticket for the 2010 Reading Festival. I pointed out that the line up wasn't going to be announced for a while and if he was very unlucky he might end up listening to Chris de Burgh supported by The Krankies. But nothing could dim his ardour. He actually made me a cup of tea over the next two days and hugged me twice. Yes! A TEENAGER MADE ME A CUP OF TEA! I congratulated myself for understanding. I was providing a good incentive. Quite probably I was down with the kids as well. Why any day a publisher was likely to ring me up and suggest I write a book on Bringing Up Children with my light touch and ability to really get into a teenager's head.

Yeah yeah. I know. It's coming.

The next day I had a call from one of his teachers. He had an official detention for not doing an important piece of homework. I was on my way to the school for one of those Show Your Support For You Child In His/Her GCSE Year Meetings - I hadn't had my dinner and I was grumpy. I clicked off my phone and texted The Boy to tell him about the detention and he texted back saying that he didn't understand the question. But this was a total lie because teacher had already told me it was more a question of couldn't be arsed to do the work and he understood exactly what needed to be done. I was furious and felt ridiculously let down. I mean - the next day?! Husband and I grounded The Boy for a week which means he has to miss about 500 000 parties. Today The Boy sloped in from school and begged me to let him go to a particular friend's party. There's A Girl involved. I know he thinks I'm a soft touch and I said No. Not shouting or angry but if you say you're going to carry out a punishment you have to do it. Now he's next door kicking the shit out of his punchbag. I heard him thumping and crashing and thought I can't make him do anything and a tiny tiny whisper of . . . my son could hurt me if he hit me. Not that I think he ever would. But I found his rage and frustration shocking. And I feel angry and sad myself. But I can't give in. He was grounded for behaving badly and lying. I keep thinking . . boundries . . boundries . . over and over and . . I'm his mother not his mate . .

I don't know how single mothers cope. I take my hat off to all of you.

Final Draft

2009-09-16T14:32:00.000+01:00

There was once a sketch on Smack the Pony where a hapless temp sits in front of a computer screen, her finger tremblingly poised over the keyboard. Gathering up her courage she presses one key and the whole computer explodes.

Well that's how I feel confronted with the behemoth that is Final Draft. I know that once I'm up and running, it will make the script writing process so much easier. I know it does amazing formatting tricks. And that when you finally type The End, you can look over a polished, pristine script that reeks of professional. But for now, as a total beginner, it makes me feel as though I'm taking an exam on the inner workings of the Inland Revenue. It's so big! So confusing! It keeps asking me things! And I'm convinced that the tone of the questions FD asks me are becoming more and more exasperated. Do you really want to do this? Are you sure? Do you actually want to save this? So this is what I've done so far.

1. Read the tutorial. Skipped bits. Got confused. Sulked. Shut the tutorial and had a biscuit.
2. Taken myself in hand in a stern manner and gone back to read the tutorial Properly this time. Had another biscuit.
3. Tried typing bits to see if anything bad happens.
4. Gone back over my actual script littered with supportive notes like too expensive and be funnier and think of a way of doing The Great Fire of London on the cheap from my producer. Noticed sadly that a bad line typed in a professional format is still very much a bad line. Sulked more.
5. Typed the title page.
6. Sat back and looked at it admiringly. For a long time. Ate two more biscuits.

I know what's going to happen. By the time I've mastered FD, I'll have a decent script but will have to be cut out of my house by firemen using specialist equipment.

Pre-Holiday Blah

2009-08-12T15:35:00.000+01:00

I’m off on me holidays tomorrow so today has been taken up with those glamorous last minute jobs like:

Dropping off the cats to their eye-wateringly expensive cattery where each cat is housed in a two story chalet with litter tray and comfy cushions. Only we’re sticking the two in together because we’re cheap. There was a whole row of these chalets full of sullen cats, like those elderly people you see on British beaches, with blankets on their knees as the wind whistles by. We left Charlie having a poo and Lola glaring at us, nose pressed against the mesh. ‘It’s like the Paw-shank redemption’ said Husband wittily.

Clearing out the fridge – the liquefied vegetables, the brown lettuce, the limp carrots. Wiping stuff. Sniffing stuff. Quietly retching.

Asking The Boy to clean up his room before we go. A truly pointless exercise, even though his room smells like very old curry and sick. With a hint of death.

Deep breathing because I hate flying. I begged my doctor for a few sedatives, but his only concern was that I might be too out of it to ‘care for the children’. I decided not to say, ‘Yeah? So?’ but politely reassured him that Husband would be there too, while thinking ‘Wanker’. Surely being mildly out of it is better than getting bladdered? But even so, I keep thinking of the safety card in the back of the airline seat – the one that shows the plane floating on the sea. As Jack Dee said: ‘I don’t care if it floats. It’s supposed to fucking fly!’ I did find this useful set of hints though, by a Professor Robert Bor who is a psychologist and a qualified pilot which is oddly comforting. I'm still swallowing those sedatives though.

Ooh and sorting out my holiday reading. I’m bringing Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel because it’s so lovely to have a Booker nominee you actually want to read! And Lisa Jewell’s new book, The Truth About Melody Browne because I love her.

See you in a couple of weeks and happy holidays!

Abridging a book

2009-08-03T12:55:00.000+01:00

Over the last month, I’ve been slicing and dicing a book for Radio 4, from its original 70 thousand words down to 22 thousand which works out as ten episodes each with 2,200 words. At the same time I’ve been thinking about plotting a book, and during my ~~arsing about trying to avoid work~~ research I found this totally marvellous blog which gives very useful advice on how to write a tight synopsis. The writer’s name is Beth Anderson and she writes thrillers which I’m sure you know are driven by a watertight plot and fast pacing. Anyway, I’ve abridged several books now and it basically means taking out anything that doesn’t drive the narrative forward. Firstly you have to read the book a couple of times to get a feel for it. Then you go through cutting any sub plots or anything that doesn’t move the narrative forward, while retaining the basic story. Then you go through again, and this time you might have to make decisions about cutting bits of the main narrative. This will often lead to chopping scenes and then stitching it back together in a sort of Franken-book where you hope the bolt in the neck doesn’t show too much. My producer once told me that the better written a book, the harder it is to abridge because there is so little fat on it.

It takes a bit of confidence to abridge a book because you're like a really nasty editor with a red pen, slashing and cutting through whole chapters. But it really does make you think about what is essential in a book. Because having stripped back that much, with some books, the whole plot falls apart. This doesn’t mean it’s a bad book, but the one I’ve just abridged only succeeds because the main character is so compelling. But the actual plot has holes the size of a swiss cheese. I had to break the Abridging Rule which is you never add words of your own to stitch bits together unless it's absolutely utterly necessary. (If you add your words the work becomes an adaptation as opposed to an abridgment.)

So if abridging a book reveals the plot holes, Beth Anderson’s blogs shows you how to write a perfect tight synopsis – a selling tool - one you can build a whole watertight book from. Very basically she forces you to write one sentence summing up the whole book, with no fluff or curly bits. One sentence that determines exactly what your book is all about. Then another sentence describing the beginning. Finally one sentence describing the ending.

Then you go back and fill in the major roadblocks. It’s very hard work, so much so that I haven’t done it. But I have printed it off and written How To Write A Synopsis in big black letters on it. And having finished my abridgement, the writer of the book would have written a much tighter plot if he had read that blog too.

It's nearly four o'clock and I've done f*** all!

2009-07-27T15:36:00.000+01:00

This week I've booked The Girl into some nice kiddy kennels down the road where she can do all the stuff I'm too lazy/nasty/useless to do like potato prints and sloppy painting. 'Are you a bit nervous?' I said this morning as I hared around wiping, mopping and faffing. 'No' said The Girl. 'I just wish you'd hurry up.' (She's five). After I'd dropped her off with the kind of nice, sunny, cheerful carer I wish I could be occasionally, I had to go and get a set of keys cut, phone someone to redo our will (I'm leaving some money to Moorfields Eye Hospital after they saved my sight. Husband didn't look too pleased. 'How much?!' he asked. 'They saved my sight!' I snarled. 'And if I left it to you - you'd give them a cheque for £5.99.' A frosty silence ensued. Then I asked if he wanted to leave anything particular if he dies first. 'No' he replied sanctimoniously, 'I'm leaving everything to you.') Then after picking up the key, I rushed back home because Husband had gone on one of his Laundry Sprees where he checks that it's pissing with rain outside, then puts everything into the washing machine, before realising there is NOWHERE to hang it, except over every chair and radiator in the house, so the place looks like a doss house, knickers festooning every surface. Then I booked a train ticket. Then I poked around the fridge looking for lunch to jump out and shout: 'Here I am!' while feeling vaguely guilty about not doing something else.

The something else is that a producer has offered to option a script I wrote a while ago. I have to do some more work on it while he will try to flog it to a television company. As well as that I'm adapting a children's book for radio 4 at some point. So in the space of a few weeks there's suddenly shedloads of work, and yes, I'm very pleased but also a bit . . .I don't know. Is this what Lily Allen called The Fear? So - of course I'll get on with it. But while I'm running back and forth to meetings and taking notes, domestic life piles up and up and up. And that's with a very domesticated Husband. So that when I find myself at home with The Girl painting away in kennels and The Boy (well to be honest, I've no idea where he is) and I'm on my own and there's work to be done . . somehow I find myself doing domestic stuff instead. Right. Cup of tea then I'll really get down to it.

Ip Dip Doo

2009-07-17T11:49:00.000+01:00

Ok. There is no delicate way of putting this. Last night after dinner – my stomach started gurgling unpleasantly, like a distant drain, in the way that makes you know absolutely that farting would not be a good idea. Having just recovered from weeks of a nasty eye infection, I felt more irritated than anything. Went to bed feeling faintly nauseous but okayish. Poor Husband had been secretly worrying about having a grumpy one eyed wife so I didn’t want to bother him too much. Woke this morning, creaked out of bed lumpily, stood up, and felt a deep growling warning in the pit of my stomach. You know how people say there is nothing more undignified than giving birth? Probably true but knowing with utter clarity you are 1.3 seconds away from pooing yourself runs a very close second.

Anyway, I was sitting on the loo feeling like I’d swallowed a Semtex laxative. And in trotted The Girl. All parents of small children will understand that feeling of wanting just a few seconds to yourself in the morning before being assaulted by a stream of chirping consciousness. Many has been the morning I’ve crept to the bathroom, begging silently for The Girl to stay asleep. (The Boy being nearly fifteen could sleep through a nuclear explosion). It never happens. She’s at her most perky at 7am. Hello mummy I had a dream and my friend Molly said that I couldn’t play with her and I want a banana for breakfast and my teacher said I have to remember . . . . I sometimes feel mild irritation that she won’t even let me go to the loo in the morning without insisting on accompanying me. She normally sits on the side of the bath with her increasingly smelly soft toy Tigger, chirping away.

This morning was no different, despite my affliction. She sat there on the side of the bath holding Tigger. Only this time there was a more rancid aroma in the air than her favourite soft toy. I’m going to hold my nose mummy she announced in a matter of fact tone because it smells of poo. And she did. But she carried on chattering away while I sorted myself out. It occurred to me that even though I must have looked a right sight, and didn’t smell too clever either – she still wanted to sit with me, chatter to me, be with me. It was slightly humbling. And gave me a little glow. Which rapidly disappeared when feeling much better I took her to school and she tugged her teacher on the sleeve and announced piercingly loudly, Mummy just pooed herself.

Pain is good . . .yeah yeah

2009-07-14T10:11:00.000+01:00

Like about 2 billion other women I sat fuming at Denis Walsh’s notion that pain in childbirth is a good thing and helps (oh God here we go again) the ‘bonding experience.’ More guilt mongering cock. I have every respect for natural childbirth – having had an epidural that didn’t fucking work and thus having it forced on me. Did I feel more bonded? Nope. Just stunned relief she was out. I remember the Nigerian midwife yanking out the Girl in a flood of lubricating jelly and gunge while I sat, sweat dripping onto the bed. She asked me if I wanted to hold the baby and I shook my head vigorously. Because I wanted just a few seconds to catch my breath and get my body back. Husband held her while I sat crumpled, head spinning.

Here’s the thing. I knew I wasn’t in danger. I’d already had a baby so I also sort of knew what to expect. I did my breathing. Husband reminded me to breathe in fact (and was rewarded by a spurt of language a Docker would have blushed at). And I tried to think of the word ‘sensation’ instead of ‘pain’. And you know what? If someone had offered me a bullet at one point I would have taken it. Good on you if you want to have a drug free birth. But if you’re a man do not make moral pronouncements on a pain you will never experience. Not unless you’ve inserted a golfing umbrella up your arse, opened it and pushed it out again.

Eye Eye

2009-07-06T10:22:00.000+01:00

Haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks. Not because I’ve been on holiday although it felt like stepping out of the world (which to my annoyance carried on perfectly well without my participation – a lesson to us all). I developed a corneal ulcer and came within a whisker of losing the sight in one eye. Cue going back in time music and wobbly seventies screen effects . . . .

Monday night Husband and I had some friends over for dinner and I was rejoicing too much in the fact that my cherry cheesecake a) tasted nice and b) didn’t collapse into a mangled heap when removed from the tin, to notice that my right eye felt mildly uncomfortable. I took out my contacts, put on my specs and thought no more of it. Next day the eye felt more scratchy and sore. Now all of you lens wearers will know that it’s possible to scratch the cornea, and develop an infection in the scratch, although if you wear disposables, this is less likely. So I thought I’d scratched it and imagined it would just get better by itself. Alas, just like my mother I have an element of ‘don’t make a fuss’ when it comes to my health which I accept is deeply stupid. (If her leg was severed, my mum would hop to hospital with the other leg under her arm). I'm not quite so bad but there's a half way house between imagining every cough is lung cancer and the other extreme where you're scraping gangrene off your leg and soldiering on.

Wednesday I couldn’t sleep – a fork was jabbing my eye. Thursday, Husband took me to A&E who dripped a wonderful liquid I thought of as ‘eye heroin’ into my eye which removed the pain temporarily and packed me off to Moorfields Eye Hospital. It was a hot day and travelling on the tube, even with a companion was terrifying. I kept thinking I’d missed the step. I stumbled up the suddenly blurred escalators. People brushed past sweatily. Husband held my hand but I still felt jostled. My world was getting narrower and darker.

Moorfields diagnosed a Staphylococcus aureus, with fluffy edges which made it sound like some sort of Cbeebies infection. Specialists pried my eye open, and various experts kept nipping in to marvel at the fluffiness of the infection that was eating into my cornea. Most of the time they snapped from medical curiosity to genuine sympathy. Once a doctor mentioned prognosis and blindness in the same sentence. I burst into tears, picked up a tissue to wipe my eyes, and she literally knocked it out of my hand. 'You were going to wipe the good eye' she said. 'You don't want the infection to spread.' I managed to feel shock, horror and gratefulness in about three seconds. My eye seemed to be permanently rammed open. I began to feel like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. They gave me antibiotics and told me to come back the next day. I felt they weren’t telling me something. Husband and I went home. He took over everything. I couldn’t read, couldn’t watch tv and had a pounding headache. There was no worrying about deadlines – they were an impossibility. I cancelled everything and lay down in a darkened room with damp cotton wool over my eye. I wasn’t allowed to take any eye heroin with me (it reduced the effectiveness of the antibiotics) but one kind corneal specialist looked the other way while I slipped some into my bag. It was impossible to sleep without it.

Over the next week, I went back to Moorfields every day while they monitored my eye. I got to know the stifling heat of the waiting rooms and the rabbit warren corridors. I heard people complaining about being kept waiting for more than an hour. ‘I don’t mind but I’ve got things to do’ huffed one woman. ‘Like what?’ said her husband. ‘I was going up Sidcup for the bingo’ she whinged. I sat and listened to the hum of the few working fans and felt thankful that Moorfields and the NHS existed and all I had to pay for were the drugs that would (probably) make my eye better.

On the fourth day the corneal specialist told me that they were worried the infection might perforate the cornea and lead to permanent blindness. Being myopic anyway, I’d always made feeble jokes about ‘being blind’ but this was the real deal. If the drugs didn’t work . . .If I’d come in to the hospital one day later I would have lost the sight of my right eye. But they had caught it in time. My eye was responding.

Now after a week and a half, my right eye is still blurred but the infection is shrinking and I’m feeling much better. I’m not out of the woods yet but almost. And I’m more grateful to the skill and kindness of the staff at Moorfields than I can express.

Flesh eating bikini bugs!

2009-06-23T11:14:00.000+01:00

Never mind the crumbling economy, the Iranian elections, the fear of unemployment or the ever encroaching rampage of swine flu, it's summer and ladies - that means Are You Bikini Ready? That sentence is everywhere on Laydee News. You'd think that over the summer, British women forgo wearing clothes altogether and just mince about in string bikinis. Why here I am right now sitting in front of my computer wearing only a string bikini, feeling vaguely foolish and just hating the way my stomach sticks out. And even if you do cut out entire food groups or exist on cardboard cereal to lose weight, the Mail warns you could contract the dreaded flesh eating bikini bug!

Of course you could buy that new slimming pill that costs about £50 a month and causes your lower intestines to run out of your arse? Oooh sexy. Or you could pay a beauty therapist to rub micro anti-cellular gel with added liposomes onto your legs while you lie there wincing and tearing up fivers. I happened to switch on Lorraine Kelly this morning who was talking to a nice lady about whether the £400 cellulite treatment she had road tested had actually worked. And here's the before and after said Lorraine showing the pictures of the lady's before and after thighs. It's more important how you feel added Lorraine after the two seconds it took to realise that there was absolutely no difference whatsoever. I do feel more toned though said the lady obediently. Her eyes told a different story though. They said I am standing in a pink swimsuit on national television talking bollocks. . Here's my solution.

1. Go to Elizabeth Hurley Beachware. Look at the prices she charges. Pay particular attention to the strapless towelling beach 'dress' ie a towel with buttons which costs £105. Laugh very loudly. Feel better instantly.

2. Go and buy a cheap cotton kaftan.

3. Put it on over your swimming cozzie.

4. Have an ice cream.

Bang! There Go Your Eggs

2009-06-18T10:43:00.000+01:00

I've had two babies, one in my late twenties and the other in my late thirties. The second time I sat in a grubby antenatal clinic in a London hospital and stared at the chromosome chart on the opposite wall. After the age of 38 the line indicating the possibility of a chromosome disorder shoots up vertically, as though poked with an electrical stick. Whoooooo - up it goes - a salutary warning to anyone selfish enough to get pregnant after the allotted window of time (in between finding a father, your job, enough money) which seems to be between 20 and 25 ish. I was 39.

Later I spoke to a Man in a Suit. 'She's looking very well isn't she?' he said to the midwife. I was in the same room. And even later when he ascertained my advanced age and the fact I'd just had two miscarriages he added, 'I know it's not what you want to hear but the optimum time to have a baby is late teens or early twenties.' Transfixed by that chart I'd decided to have amniocentesis where a needle is injected into the womb to find out if your baby has Downs. 'But in my early twenties I was dating cold, critical arseholes' I bleated, deciding not to add, ' . . . just like you.'

They're at it again - the fertility timebomb. There is an epidemic of middle age pregnancy shrieks The Royal College of Obstetricians making it sound like a Pregnancy Plague. Yes I know you can't mess with biology. And yes some women (and men) are too cavalier about pregnancy and forget that it does get harder to get pregnant as you get older. BUT I also know how bad I was at parenting when I was in my twenties.

I had an easy pregnancy followed by a traumatic and terrible birth, two major operations and a period of post natal depression. In all the books I read, nobody told me that it really helps to have a secure sense of who you are before you start messing with another small, helpless life. My marriage crumbled under the stress of depression, and lack of money. Yes you can have a baby young but to be any kind of a parent you need stability, security, confidence.

I had my second baby after a couple of miscarriages. This time I was determined. I took my temperature, I knew when I would ovulate. Poor Husband was treated like a Porn Fluffer. 'Right - I'm ovulating! Get it up!' was the only foreplay he had. But I knew that I was running out of time. I also asked for and got Clomid a fertility drug that basically kicks your eggs up the arse. (Please don't ever order it on the Internet by the way and they won't give it to anyone with a history of ovarian cancer - it can overstimulate cells.)

Got pregnant ten years after the last one. Yes I was ten years older. But I was in a completely different place (uggh sorry about the LA jargon but it's true). I felt good, I was writing - we had more money - I had stopped smoking - did loads more exercise and most of all I felt CONFIDENT. And confidence is what makes for good parenting. I just ignored the advice and endless blah and got on with it.

To anyone who is over forty and wants to get pregnant, no it's not easy and my suggestion is - get your fertility checked out if you're thinking seriously about having a baby. You might have to get on with it on your own, but hey - if you want a baby that much, it's not the end of the world. There is help out there. And the women I know who want a baby a bit later - well they really really want one. It goes beyond a feeling that a baby is a right - it becomes a serious need. They really want to be a mother. And that can't be bad for a baby.

More Daft Band Names

2009-06-16T12:21:00.000+01:00

The Boy came waltzing home last night while Husband and I were eating dinner on our laps like the old farts we are. 'Oh man - I had such a great time. I was thrown about in the pit and had my head kicked in at least twice!' I tried not to wince. 'Did they play some nice tunes?' I asked sounding about 125.

The Boy floated up to his bedroom. 'Is he on drugs?' I hissed, now sounding 125 and a possible reader of the Daily Mail. Husband, having had a bit of a past drugs wise pointed out that The Boy didn't have dilated pupils, didn't smell of drink, and wasn't acting like he was off his head. 'He's just high on life'. Remember what that felt like?

Anyway today I'm sitting by my computer having sent off my script to nice producer, and thinking about weird band names. I though Enter Shikari and We Are the Ocean were bad enough but a friend of mine pointed out there was a band called Also the Trees. So we came up with a list of the top ten stupid band names. All are real:

1. One Day as a Lion
2. Half Man Half Biscuit
3. Butthole Surfers
4. Anal Sushi
5. Dogs Die in Hot Cars
6. And You Will Know Us By The Trail of Dead
7. Broken Social Scene
8. My Dad is Dead
9. This Bike is a Pipe Bomb
10.The Pains of Being Pure at Heart

I used to like Half Man Half Biscuit but at least they had a sense of humour! It reminded me of that silly boy who married Peaches Geldof for money. Who? you may ask. He's the long haired twit who thought that marrying another long haired twit would garner his band some much needed publicity. If you're at all interested his adolescent shenanigans can be read about here. The thing is, now he's known not for his music or whatever but as That Dickhead who paid Peaches Geldof to Marry Him. Maybe that's what he should rename his band . . . . .

Boy Bands

2009-06-15T17:39:00.001+01:00

The Boy is off to see a band tonight called Enter Shikari. They sound like some kind of Thai starter to me. 'Oooh I feel like a nice portion of Enter Shikari. With a side of crispy noodles.' Enter Shikari? Did bands always have such wankily pretentious names? The other one was We Are The Ocean. And what - you are a puddle presumably?

'So what songs do they write?' I asked over eagerly. The Boy looked at me in disgust and left the room. Two minutes later he was back. 'Can I borrow your hair straighteners?'

Inconsequentials

2009-06-09T16:46:00.000+01:00

No - not my granny's term for underwear but the sheer amount of brain clogging stuff I seem to wade through on the domestic front before during and after any proper work can be achieved. Last week I sat through the numbing spectacle of a classful of five year olds muttering something inaudible about Farmer Duck. Despite my utterly brilliant Girl saving the show by muttering inadibly with her usual star quality, I sat, mind racing with all the crap that had to be done that day. Inconsequential crap. That nobody would notice. Unless it wasn't done.

1. Buy a green t-shirt for The Girl's Sports Day.
2. Run very fast past the School Office in case the long clawed arm of the PTA suddenly shot out. Remember those bits in the Hammer films when Christopher Lee shouts: Don't look into the eyes! PTA is just like that. You stop for a five minute chat and two seconds later you've been seconded into baking 200 cakes, directing the school panto for the next five years and supervising the school trip to Beijing. Any feeble protests about a full time job don't get you off the hook either.
3. Pick up half eaten worms off the kitchen floor. The cats have given up on offering live frogs and now feel my tastes extend to decomposing worms instead.
5. Pick up Husband's dry cleaning. I go to the dry cleaner's so often he actually smiles at me. Maybe he likes me! Husband perks up. Maybe he'll give you a discount.
6. Water the tomatoes. Wonder why they're not growing faster. Go back upstairs to office and wonder what that terrible smell is emanating from The Boy's bedroom.
7. Discover that the pillowcase I deliberately stuffed with The Boy's half-eaten apples and sandwiches that he left by the side of the bed (deciding to Show Him The Consequences of His Actions) - he has been peacefully sleeping on for the past week and the contents of said pillow are now green and pulpy. He hasn't even noticed! Resist squealing like a girl.
8. Look out of window and see next door's cat trying to have a poo on my tomatoes. Shout in rage and shake fist ineffectively. Cat looks at me then strolls off tail in the air in that fuck you manner that cats have down pat.
9. Sit down at computer. Get writer's block.
10. Get biscuit to help with writer's block. Decide to water the plants again with hose. See next door's cat on the shed roof. Deliberately turn the hose on the little shitter. Feel better.
11. Writer's block gone. Hurrah! Do some work.
12. Hear loud knock at door. Peep out of window and recognise old bag from No 42 and owner of probably very wet cat. Think about confronting her with her cat's tomato crapping habit and my just revenge.
13. Hide under the desk instead till she goes away.
14. Lunchtime!

It's all my fault. And it will be better tomorrow. But it feels so foolish when Producer rings and asks when the draft of script will be ready. Life keeps getting in the way. It sounds so feeble. It is. But it does.

It's Kit Courteney!

2009-06-02T18:48:00.000+01:00

And not Kit Courtney. But the link did work. Sorry. And she has two dogs. Not one. I usually pride myself on good spelling and a modicum of accuracy so am now deeply pissed off at myself.
*starts writing Kit Courteney out a hundred times*

Ten Random Things

2009-06-01T13:06:00.000+01:00

Lovely Wife of Bold has given me an award so I'm going to go all Gwyneth Paltrow for a minute. So much love . . . sniff . . .blub . .goop . . . thank you . . .

What a delicious way to start the week now that ~~The Boy and The Girl have finally gone back to school after a week of driving me mad~~ I'm missing spending quality time with my lovely children. The deal is that a) I link to seven other blogs and b) talk about myself endlessly. No problem. After some thought here are my blog choices.

Kit Courtney (My first follower so y'know - a bit special. And she writes with fluidity and ease. And her dog is lovely!)

How Publishing Really Works (Just essential for every writer. Reminds you of where you are aiming as well as how to aim)

Product Placement (Lovely, friendly and loads of useful information about makeup and girl stuff. Could grow to be the UK version of Makeupalley.

Atheist Revolution (Not everyone's cuppa but a thoughtful passionate and necessary counterpoint to the frightening kind of Christian extremism that grips much of the US by the throat)

The Daily Quail (wonderful slap in the face to the Daily Mail)

Caution - Woman at Work! (Only just discovered this one but it's energetic, funny and honest)

Help! I Need a Publisher (I particularly like this site because Nicola Morgan deals mainly with children's books. She is passionate about writing and it really really shows. Her advice is invaluable)

Ten Random Things About Me

1. I once did a parachute jump from 12,000 feet. I've never felt fear like it, but once done it gave me a touchstone by which to measure other fears. As in Come on you lazy bint. You've jumped out of a plane - now get that script finished you hopeless twat and other exercises in self-love.

2. I think that people accept you the way you present yourself. So walk in with your head held high and nobody will guess you're a quivering insecure wreck.

3. I bitterly regret sleeping with two particular people. Not at the same time I hasten to add, but both times I slept with them for *cringe* validation. I was very young at the time but it's something I want to drum into my daughter. Never do this and never assume that if someone wants to go to bed with you, you are somehow obliged to reciprocate.

4. I don't understand why so many young women are embarrassed to be thought of as feminists. They do believe they should have equal pay, equal rights, support from the fathers of their children, not be subject to gropes and catcalls at work, and reproductive rights though. All things hard won by feminists! Be grateful you selfish minxes!

5. A week before 9/11 I took The Boy up to the top of the World Trade Centre. I remember thinking how cheerful and chatty the lift guy was, considering he took people up and down it all day long. 'I love my job ma'am' he said.

6. I can eat my own weight in cheese.

7. I've recently taken up running. This may be linked to point 6.

8. When I was a teenager my parents trusted me to attend a Catholic Sunday School. I snuck out and went to see The Clash at Brixton Academy instead. Because I looked so guilty when I returned home (default Catholic behaviour) my parents never questioned me.

9. I don't get Bo Selecta. I think he's spectacularly unfunny.

10. When I was small my uncle had this fabulous black labrador dog called Jake who was so well trained, he could be trusted to babysit me. No really. Jake knew he was not to let me out of the house. Then Jake was accused of sheep chasing and my uncle had to shoot him. A week later they found it was another dog. It broke my heart.

My body is a temple

2009-05-22T11:09:00.000+01:00

In other words there are bits falling off it, damp patches, strange lumps, and hairs sprouting in dark corners. Today, as the sun was shining for about three minutes I got to grips with my St Tropez and slapped it all over my legs. Then I put on a slutty short skirt and spent about ten minutes checking to see if any extra cellulite had grown during the night. The Girl watched me. 'Mummy I've got a hundred friends' she said. Just like a celebrity. Then realising we were late for school I dashed downstairs to find that The Boy's armpit stench had somehow permeated the living room where it hung like a plague miasma, even though he had left half an hour previously.

The Girl and I nipped off to school. They close the gates at 9am like The Shawshank Redemption, so any late parents suffer the shame of having to go in the Back Entrance, proclaiming their tardiness and ineptitude to the school. Only now they don't call it lateness anymore - it's A Lateness Outcome and we have to think of Punctuality Solutions. (Like not spending half the morning checking our arses for cellulite.) I dropped The Girl off at her class and she announced in a clear, keen voice: 'Mummy was late because she spent a lot of time looking at her bottom.'

I was going to buy her some sweets but she can think again. Happy Half Term!

2009-05-21T09:57:00.000+01:00

My Irish grandfather, (pictured left) was orphaned at the age of four. While his sisters were packed off to varying relatives, he and his elder brother were sent to the Christian Brothers. Granda left the Christian Brothers abruptly when he was in his late teens. Nobody could understand why; he was all set for a career as a teacher and everybody knew a boy was very lucky to get such a rounded education with the Christian Brothers. The ungrateful little heathen! And of course granda never spoke of why he left. Who would he talk to? So we never knew whether he witnessed abuse or suffered it himself.

Well it’s all come out now – the whole rotten story. Decades of systematic abuse carried out by nuns and priests, collusion by the State who stood by and let it happen and right at the top of the festering pile of rank hypocrisy, a Pope who lectures us on morality, while his own past demonstrates his own knowledge and deliberate collusion in this ongoing crime.

Back in 1962 - 47 years before this report was dragged kicking and screaming into the light, the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was writing a document called Crimen Solicitationis written in Latin (deliberately so fewer people could understand it). It was an explicit policy to cover up cases of abuse and gave advice how to control the problem. The rape of children was seen as a sin against chastity. Not a gross abuse of power, nor a crime. A sin against chastity. Most importantly, this document stated that anybody who spoke out about abuse was to be threatened with excommunication. Silence and secrecy - the perfect climate in which to hide abusers. Incidentally, for all his care in protecting abusive clery, Ratzinger had no suggestions on how to help the victims. There was nothing about that. Nothing. Even in 2001 when the abuse enquiry was underway, Ratzinger carried on obstructing progress quite deliberately - sending letters to Bishops ordering them to keep allegations secret.

This is the man who is now Pope and supposedly Christ’s representative on Earth.

I honestly don’t know how anyone can continue to be Catholic. And don’t give me the ‘few rotten apples’ malarkey. This was systematic, deliberate abuse carried out by many many ordinary priests and nuns. I blame the officials who for decades ignored the broken bones and malnourished children, the holy catholic mothers who sent their pregnant daughters to these hellholes, the relatives who hustled away the girls who complained of being molested by the parish priest, the nuns who took the babies of these girls and sent them abroad to good catholic families, the boys who were taken from their homes because they were being brought up by a single mother and were therefore in moral danger, and the little girls who worked as slaves in the Magdalene Laundries. And the apologists on all the catholic forums I’ve been visiting who bleat about how probably a lot of the victims made it up. You're all to blame. Shame on you. And shame on the Pope most of all. He is a wicked wicked man.

CBeebies Opportunity

2009-05-20T22:51:00.000+01:00

Thanks to Kim for the heads up on this. CBeebies are looking for half hour television scripts. You have to get them in by July 1st. The shortlisted scripts get mentored and £300 development fee. Try not to spend it all at once. And there doesn't seem to be anything concrete about an actual television commission. But if you do get one, for goodness sake, check the contract, and hang onto the copyright. Sorry - I've suddenly gone all sarcastic. It's just that the BBC are always saying how brilliant children's telly and radio is, and how it really should be nurtured while slashing their budgets at the same time.

No - ignore me. Write a brilliant script and send it to CBeebies. Just hang onto the copyright.

Burn the Working Mothers!

2009-05-18T10:41:00.000+01:00

I am really really fucked off. There's yet another article hot on the heels of a BBC programme on working mothers which has once more sparked off a debate on working mothers. Notably the BBC programme is entitled The Trouble With Working Women. Not The Trouble with a 17%and Growing to 20% Pay Gap or The Trouble With a Culture that Seeks to Punish Working Mothers. As usual it's us selfish bints wanting to Have it All.

What is wanting to Have it All exactly? It's bandied around so much but all it seems to mean is a woman who simply wants some sort of existence outside the domestic sphere. And for most of us that means paid work. Most women work not to buy luxuries but to pay bills. One of the most infuriating nonsense that gets spouted about working mothers is that if only we were prepared to give up 'luxury holidays' and 'designer trainers' (anti working mothers are obsessed with this idea that women's salaries pay for expensive footwear) and if we just stayed at home, our children would be happier and so secretly would our partners. Which reminds me. Where the fuck are our boyfriends and husbands? Because whenever this subject comes up, it's a given that the Husbands don't do much round the house. Why should that be? Is it true? Sigh sigh - I have to do everything at home. Is it true that most working women do the vast majority of the domestic work as what - punishment for working outside the home? If this is true - the problem isn't work - it's having a lazy arsed husband.

The woman cited in this programme is is Rosanna Omitowoju, a Cambridge fellow. She has four children, a happy marriage, (maybe for him) a fulfilling full-time job and no outside help. She wakes her children at 7am, gives them breakfast and delivers them to three different schools by bike. “The problem with having it all,” says Raworth in the voiceover, “is you have to do it all every day.”

So where's her bloody husband? Why is it all her problem? If they both work full time why can't they afford a bit of help? And why is the media image of the working mother presented as so relentlessly negative?

This is the problem with working women.
1. The pay gap between women and men is 17% rising to 20%
2. The pay gap between part time women and men is 28%
3. Being a father is about doing your share - not 'helping out' when you feel like it. Why is it accepted with a martyred shrug that a working mother is somehow expected to shoulder the entire domestic burden too?

The trouble is not with working women. The trouble is with a culture which seeks to punish and shame working mothers and distract them from the gross inequality of not paying them the same as a working man.

And one other thing. I'm a working mother and I don't feel guilty about it. And if The Boy wants designer trainers he can save up and buy them himself.

This is why I work (when I'm not ranting)

1. I like to earn my own money so I don't have to go to my husband like a little girl asking for pocket money.
2. Very few people have a job for life now. Having one person bear the full financial burden is a very heavy one. Especially now.
3. What happens if Husband gets ill? Or leaves me? Or dies? How does financial penury make for better parenting?
4. I like working. It makes me feel like me.

Please can someone do a programme on working mothers where mum comes home at the end of the day, and Husband has just put the kids to bed. Mum says: 'Oh I'm so glad you've got the babies to bed babe.' Dad says: 'Well they're my kids too. Oh and I put the washing on.' Mum says: 'Great. Let's get a takeaway and have hot sex on the sofa.' They both have a takeaway and then fall asleep snoring. Now that's what I call positive parenting. And not a jot of guilt in sight.

Waxing as Work Avoidance

2009-05-14T16:55:00.000+01:00

I've just rewritten a sitcom for the seventh time and it's sort of getting there, in the way that you stuff a duvet into a duvet case and after much pulling, tugging, shaking and swearing realise that it's sort of ending up with the corners matching but you're getting in a sweat about it and you won't know until you give it all a good shake and let it settle.

I've let it settle because I'm a believer in letting writing marinate a little and then going back to it when you've gained a little perspective. Sadly the perspective is often likely to be a crushing realisation that what you've written needs to be rewritten. So to avoid this pain, I decided to get a good waxing done. It was my birthday yesterday and Husband was in Hong Kong on business (huh - the things he does to avoid getting me a present) - and the children were at school so I nipped off to the local beauty salon.

"I don't know why people make such a fuss about this," I squeaked at the Australian girl who was slapping boiling wax over my tender parts. "Just one quick rip and I'll have all the hair off" she said cheerfully. Then she yanked and waited till I peeled myself off the ceiling. "Do you know you have a hair sticking out your belly button?" No I didn't. "We'll get that little beauty out then!" And she hauled that maverick bit of hair out too while I tried to catch up on all the orange celebrities explaining how the recently deceased Jade was their best friend and brought so much joy into everyone's life. It was difficult as my eyes kept filling up with tears (of pain). "Men don't have to go through this" I moaned. My waxer disagreed. "Oh they do. Some guys come in and they want it all off." What including the back bits? "No - I don't do arseholes" she said. I decided to leave the conversation there. Then I went home feeling very smooth and groomed if a year older, and had a few hours to myself before the children came home. After that a dear friend cooked me steak and chips with proper Bearnaise sauce, and poured the sort of red wine that has an old, slightly grubby aftertaste but in a good way. Just like me really.

Pets for Tea!

2009-05-12T10:21:00.000+01:00

Nobody does fake moral outrage like The Sun. Well maybe The Mail but they're infinitely more spiteful about it. The Sun is like a fat, drunken uncle rambling on in a xenophobic yet vaguely amusing manner while The Mail is a lemon lipped mean spirited auntie who hates everyone and writes poison pen letters on her day off.

ANYWAY - the Sun ran a story spluttering in outrage over Pets for Tea. Apparently a primary school which won an award for healthy eating is breeding animals and letting the children help run an organic farm to show children where their meat comes from. Sounds laudable to me. Then one day, the pet piggies disappeared, only to reappear as (gasp!) sausages at 3.25 a pack. One mother has suggested this might be insensitive. Meanwhile the Headmaster cheerfully admits that he ate the back leg of a pig named Ginger for Sunday lunch. And The Sun has turned it into Piggygate.

Personally I think children are far less squeamish than we give them credit for and it's brilliant that more schools are taking children to farms and trying to reconnect between animals and the shrink wrapped meat we pick up in supermarkets. And without being too hippy dippy about it, I wonder why we're so bothered teaching or even exposing children to the idea of death. I remember clearly being in floods of tears while we had out old cat put down, but The Girl stood by quite calmly. No we didn't eat the cat. The Husband is still complaining about back twinges after digging a hole big enough to bury his enormous furry body. And we left a little memorial reading:

Here lies Sydney, the favorite cat. He was old and very very fat.

(The Girl insisted on the second line) And then a few weeks later I overheard her saying to a neighbour: 'We have a cat called Sydney. But he's dead.' One day she'll say that about me, I thought. Or maybe by then I'll be turned into sausages too.

Those Precious Family Moments

2009-05-04T16:03:00.000+01:00

I am so lazy that I can't be bothered to go for a wee. Now that's lazy. Told you I was lazy. I will in a minute but first I have to tell you how we're spending our precious Bank Holiday Monday. Woke up and it was raining. Of course it was raining. It's Bank Holiday. Fretted about some work I have to do. Got up and found Husband cooking sausages. Checked to see that neither of our cats Charlie, nor Lola had brought in any more amphibians, like they did again last night. They've got a thing about offering us dead frogs as gifts. Charlie, the ginger one is a bit clumsy and awkward, scrambling up walls, while his would-be prey are always long gone (I swear I've seen squirrels giving him the finger) but Lola, his sister is an absolute stalking, silent killer. She's the feline version of the girl who has ariel fights, whisking through trees in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I know it's an act of cat love but I've made sure her neck bell is extra loud, to try and give the poor little creatures she stalks, a chance to get away.

Lola was getting all frisky and excited, and after a quick check we discovered another frog playing dead behind The Girl's toy box. Carrying out Frog Rescue was particularly annoying because Husband and I were watching Lust/Caution and we were waaaaay past the caution part and onto some majorly fierce sex scenes. 'He'd have to have a nine inch penis to get into that position' said Husband. I digress. We rescued the frog, put it outside and watched the rest of the film. It's brilliant by the way and makes you realise how oddly vanilla and blandy bland most mainstream Hollywood films are. They don't seem to use grown up people and any sex scenes always look like they've been directed for MTV by someone called Chuck who is 35 and wears a backwards baseball cap.

So today we promised The Girl we'd help her ride her bike. Took off the stabilisers and after some shrieking and comedy wobbling, she set off round the park, yelling and cycling. It was one of those seminal moments. Watching your child learn to ride a bike. Something we can look back on as a little glowing moment amidst the rows and boredom and washing up. Possibly excepting the part she ran over Husband's sandalled feet and he shouted "FUCK!" very loudly.

Back home and now The Girl is downstairs watching Husband play Grand Theft Sweary Auto. Yes, not good, but it's quite funny hearing The Girl piping 'You've just crashed that stolen car again daddy' and 'Why did you shooted that man when he didn't do nothing?' rapidly followed by 'You're dead daddy.' Like having a little Jiminy Cricket type conscience rattling away when all you want to do is play a nihilistic computer game set in a morally dead universe. Husband, fed up with her running commentary and wanting to get on with killing people has sent her upstairs to bother me now. She trotted in announcing that 'Daddy has been shot by a big ass pimp.' Followed by the question, 'What's a pimp?' I sent her back to Husband. He plays the game he can explain it.

Creme de bullshite

2009-04-30T10:52:00.001+01:00

It must be big news because The Husband mentioned it last night. 'Apparently there's this face cream by Boots that actually works' he said, stuffing chicken into his own face. It's called Protect and Perfect and not Le Creme de Beaute or Perfectione de Bollocks because as we all know, anti-ageing creams with french names work better, especially when modelled by fifteen year olds. But an english name is just the first surprise. The second is, the stuff seems to work. Dermatologists have given this stuff a grudging thumbs up because in a clinical study of 60 people (whoop-dee-do) 43% said it made their skin look better. As a result there has been a veritable bison like stampede to Boots. Zoe Williams makes the point that it's a bit pathetic really. We've been fed this line for years and years and the fact that out of 60 people, less than half thought it made their skin look a bit better is seen as some sort of dermatological breakthrough is pretty daft. After all, the dermatologists as opposed to the skin care companies have been saying, WEAR SUNBLOCK for years. That's what works. But here's the reason why such a fuss is being made of a fairly simple cream. Because most of the time, the information about very expensive anti-ageing creams is as I'm sure you know, a smoke and mirrors combination of PR, and utter shite. Take Creme de Mer, the most expensive face cream in the world, at £135 a 2oz pot. You may well spit out your coffee in horrified shock. Yes £135. And what do you get for your money? Why, the genius behind it, one Max Huber, who said he developed it from Pacific seaweed, as a NASA scientist to treat burns.

Ok. Except that as several dermatologists pointed out, if Creme de Mer treated burns so effectively, why wasn't it being used in hospitals? The manufacturers had no answer for this. Furthermore, when Time magazine conducted an investigation into Max Huber they found there was no record of him ever being employed by NASA. Time also conducted a scientific analysis of the ingredients in Creme de Mer. And found that the levels of the active ingredient of seaweed derivative or whatever was negligible, barely detectable. The concluded that 'creme de mer is a nice moisturiser' but that was it. A nice moisturiser? Selling at £135 a pot?

No wonder a cream tested on 60 people which makes you look marginally better is being hyped as a miracle. Personally, I'm just going to keep slapping on the sunblock.