What The Butler Saw

Let's hear it for the brides

2008-07-18T11:23:00.007+02:00

I expect most brides had a similar pang of sympathy as did Glenda Cooper on hearing of the furious women who were left without their wedding dresses by bridal dress shop owner Lisa Clarkson this week.

Glenda is absolutely spot on when she writes: 'Those Georgette Heyer heroines who found themselves socially excluded after having the vulgarity to dance the waltz are not a million miles away from a modern-day bride who might innocently mention that she was thinking of hiring a chocolate fountain for the reception, decides on money rather than a wedding list, or fails to refer to her fiancé as an H2B. With endless pressure to display good taste, is there any surprise many brides go mad?'

With six weeks to go until my own wedding, I look back on my nine-month engagement as a minefield of manners and morals. The problem is that everyone has their own notion of what is polite, yet one is, for once in life, allowed to do whatever you (never mind the groom) want and believe 'it is your day'.

Because you are given carte blanche to build the day up into 'the best day of your life', a huge amount of work goes into preparing a wonderful experience for the guests, and you can become very autocratic and imperious, not to mention stressed. Perhaps the reality is that some guests simply don't realise what a big deal a wedding invitation, or even a wedding itself, is to a bride. Yet people have so many expectations of a bride. To be modest, to be low-key and tasteful, to be polite, and yet to look stunning and have a perfect day.

I feel great sympathy for those brides deprived of their dresses by the shop owner because for many brides the wedding dress is the sign and signal of the whole day - in effect, the dress becomes the wedding, boiled down to one object. The moment of walking down the aisle when all the guests turn to see the bride in THE DRESS and of course the groom also sees THE DRESS for the first time can become the focal point of the day for the bride (perhaps because she believes this is the moment all the guests will make their first and lasting impression of her as a bride), and this causes a lot of excited, selfish expectation.

It's this expectation that has made me spend a small fortune on Estee Lauder make-up and miracle face serums, go to the gym religiously for the last six months, and festishise my dress. Choosing my wedding dress was the most fun I have had in years and I dreamed of lace and satin and embroidery for two weeks solid when I was in the thick of the process. To get my 'dream' dress, I drove a five-hour round trip to a godforsaken town in east Anglia where the very last existing dress I wanted was on sale in the wrong size in a random wedding dress shop. The bizarre thing is that any bride looks beautiful in a wedding dress, and yet to her, it has to be adjusted to fit that one inch tighter, because she wants to look beautiful.

How odd it is that while grooms tend to leave the planning to their fiancees, we brides wake in the night panicking about having enough time to arrange x or y, or whether we have forgotten some tiny detail, or who will stand where in the ceremony and whether all the people around us will support us or whether someone will do something rude and let us down. Planning a wedding, I've discovered such enormous kindness on the part of friends and family, but I've also discovered that weddings don't matter to some people, and that includes members of the wedding industry, like this wedding shop owner, who so evilly left these poor brides without dresses at the last minute. It's typical: brides discover that as soon as they have paid for their £1500 dress, the shop's ingratiating attitude often changes and becomes contemptuous.

We brides need everyone around us to let us be bridezillas for a few weeks, to realise the stress and pressure we are under (as well as the fun we are having being bossy) and allow us to be demanding. In return, the world around us gets a boost in the economy from all the products and services we indulge in, and our guests get a wedding from the bride's heart.

Is the tube sexist?

2008-06-29T12:08:00.005+02:00

I've decided it's time to restart my blog - so here goes.

I realised recently that the modern-style carriages on the tube must have been designed by men.

In the golden olden days, the seats on the tube all faced each other at right angles to the window like on a train, in groups of two people. Although tube trains on the Metropolitan, Victoria and District lines still have a few seats arranged this way, though, the typical seating plan on the tube is simply two long lines of seats along the length of the carriage.

Quite apart from anything else, I hate this way of sitting, because you have nowhere to look other than the row of people facing you, and they are all staring at you, too. It's like a panopticon, and the atmosphere that results is typical of the mass experience in modern life of having no privacy.

But my gripe today is that no woman would have invented this seating arrangment, either. Any woman who has sat on the tube in a skirt whose hem falls just above the knee (or higher) knows the irritation of having to keep her legs firmly together or strategically crossed to prevent the row of strangers facing her seeing the tops of her thighs.

If the seats were arranged in the traditional, old-fashioned way, you would be able to slant your legs so that the view up your skirt would be from an angle no-one could see. But in the modern tube carriage, your legs are seen from every angle to the right, left and centre.

On long journeys when you just want to sprawl with your legs hanging apart in an unladylike way, the need to keep them pressed together can genuinely be a massive pain.

Perhaps the problem is the average woman's body insecurity, which makes me, at least, want to cover as much of my thighs as possible in the harsh light of the underground. But even when as a teenager I had thighs as slim as cucumbers and wore miniskirts, I still had a self-conscious modesty which made me not want to flash my knickers to a carriage full of people.

Being on the tube must be so much more relaxing for men, whose trouser uniform, combined with an instinctive ability to take up space unashamedly, allows them to sit comfortably with their legs wide apart (not to mention their elbows halfway across the seats on either side of them, but that's a whole other annoyance).

So I say bring back the cosy old-style tube carriage seats, in which you can hide away from the world just a fraction. Either that, or let women sit with their legs open without getting a second glance - which, let's face it, is never going to happen.

ps

2007-05-29T11:41:00.001+02:00

In an update to the bra shopping, I visited a friend of a friend who's a celebrity psychic last week. She told me in her reading, 'The spirits are telling me you have to go to Rigby and Peller'. I said I had only just got myself measured. 'No,' she said, 'I know it sounds crazy, but the spirits are insisting you must go and get yourself measured again and at Rigby and Peller.' Will update again when have done so!

'Little angels'

2007-05-29T11:18:00.001+02:00

While ensconsed in the parental home this bank holiday weekend, soaking up the Londoner's monthly-odd dose of rural familial comfort, I was reminded how rude visitors can be.

I should preface this by saying that my parents were very sanguine about the experience and extremely forgiving and non-judgemental of the guest. It was me, sitting viewing the goings-on from my vantage point in the kitchen (what the butler saw, indeed), who got offended on their behalf!

My parents had a large lunch party and one guest they didn't know very well, who had been invited with his partner, decided it would be better to leave her behind and bring, in her place, their two children aged around five. I thought that was kind of impolite to start off with. He also insisted on my father picking them up and dropping them off at Oxford station rather than just getting a taxi or a bus. But the real issue was that he clearly wasn't bringing up his children to have any respect for other people. You can't bring two unruly small children to a grown-up party and just let them run wild. You either book a babysitter and leave them behind at home so you can mingle at the party, or you take them to the party and keep an eye on them at all times. This man basically just let his children run through the house into every room, where they caused carnage. He halfheartedly followed them intermittently but, and this is what really shocked me, just left the mess they had made, making no attempt to clear up or apologise.

Going upstairs, I found they had taken my mum's antique wooden sewing box from my parents' bedroom and the man had allowed his kids to scrawl on it with blue felt tip pen. They had also unravelled all the cotton in the box. The man saw this, but just stuffed the cotton reels back in it still trailing metres of thread and left the box open and graffitied on the floor. No apology or even acknowledgement. He had let them play in my parents' room and he saw that they had left it with the cover pulled off the sofa in there and the duvet partly off the bed, and he just left the room like that where I tidied it up and put the sewing box back and wound up the threads. But the felt tip pen has ruined the box.

He then gave the children my sister's old guitar to play with. What kind of parent gives a small child someone else's guitar as a toy? Of course, the next thing we knew, they had pulled out two of the strings. When the man saw it, he was overheard by my sister's boyfriend saying 'Oh it's just a guitar'. We couldn't believe he wasn't apologising profusely and offering to pay for the strings to be fixed.

This guy then had the cheek to get my dad to drive him back to the station without telling my parents about any of these goings-on.

I don't blame the children one bit - I was just shocked by this father. It wasn't just the way he didn't at any point say to the children 'This is someone else's house, please be careful of things'. You could see from the way his children were unable to communicate with adults politely that he has brought them up not to have any manners. I kept comparing them in my head to the way my friend J has brought up her beautifully polite 3-year-old son. He is able to respond politely to adults and plays quietly and nicely, and it's because she watches him every second and is very firm with him, in a hugely loving way.

As a child, I was all too strongly aware there were nice, well brought up children, and nasty, badly brought up ones. The whole experience on Sunday reminded me of how I used to hate it when I was little and my parents' friends brought badly brought up children to play with me while they had lunch or dinner. The little devils would stamp on all my things and scribble all over my books with pens while their parents glibly refused to tell them to stop.

Feminists in the media

2007-05-25T16:19:00.000+02:00

I've just been interviewed by a PhD student researching women's experiences of working in the media. She told me that many of the young women she has interviewed, especially those working on women's magazines, don't believe in feminism. Apparently women working in newspapers and women with children are more likely to call themselves feminists.

It makes me really sad to know I'm in the minority as a 20-something journalist and feminist. A lot of women my age seem to believe feminism is dead, or some kind of Spice Girls 'girl power' thing connected to going pole dancing, which is just depressing.

Sizes

2007-04-24T18:37:00.000+02:00

I wondered into Selfridge's lingerie department today along with lots of middle-aged women buying sensible beige bras, a Muslim woman in a burkha shopping with her husband, and a wealthy-looking foreign 'gentleman' purring into a mobile while handing piles of Agent Provocateur demi-cup bras and basques to a sales assistant.

Anyway, I had decided the time had finally come to get my bra size measured. I'd heard for years that 90% of women wear the wrong size bra, but have always assumed this somehow didn't apply to me. And I was completely shocked by what the fitter told me when she put away her tape measure. She declared me to be 2 cup sizes bigger than I have believed for my entire adult life, and 2 rib-measurement sizes (the 32/34/36/38 bit) smaller than I have always believed. I have therefore been wearing totally ill-fitting underwear for all these years.

Amazed, I tried on a load of bras in my 'new' size and they fitted perfectly! I realised that for years I have been living unnecessarily with bulges and gaps in all the wrong places and with far too little 'support'. It was a complete revelation. All I can say to any woman reading this who has not been measured is try it and you might have an excuse to buy yourself a whole new lingerie wardrobe!

Perforated stationery hell

2007-04-10T19:33:00.000+02:00

It has recently come to my attention that it is virtually no longer possible to go into WHSmith or Woolworths or Rymans or even Paperchase anymore and buy a nice notebook which does not have perforated pages.

It may seem a small and trivial gripe, but anyone who's ever wanted a notebook to be a notebook, as opposed to a notebook crossed with a pad of A4 rip-put paper, must sympathise with the level of my affront.

Message to stationery buyers: we do not want too-clever-by-half notebooks with pages which tear off by themselves when you turn them. We just want normal notebooks!

I spent about two hours last weekend searching for a nice unperforated notebook in all the shops on Finchley Road and South End Green, with increasing disbelief at the impossibility of the task. Of course, I eventually found what I was looking for: a beautiful selection of A4 hard and softcovered books with ruled pages and NO PERFORATED HOLES. Which shop was this beacon of wonder? The art shop, of course. The sweet little art shop on Finchley Road, with its shelves stacked with classic, well bound, European-made stationery. It is quite simply the last outpost of traditional stationery in Hampstead.

Summer!!

2007-04-02T20:03:00.000+02:00

I'm pleased to report to all my many foreign readers (err..ok, so I may not have any) that Britain is back to its post-global warming, al fresco, sunglasses and bare skin summertime vibe as of TODAY. All the people still in winter coats looked caught-out by the warm sunshine and were extra grumpy on the tube. The shops were packed with girls desperately searching for sandals not yet in stock. It's going to be a long, hot summer - you can feel it in the air.

In other news, with my friend, I'm starting a writers -artists- musicians etc collective..more on that soon. But in brief, the aim is to recreate in London today the creative buzz of 1970s San Francisco/New York! Together, we can do it. Artists unite!

Speaking of 70s San Fran, Aline Kominsky Crumb's been my inspiration this last week - her husband may have a reputation as not quite a feminist, but Aline's definitely a feminist. Her cartoons are just so honest and real. I absolutely adore them.

Poetry and a spa

2007-03-27T01:00:00.000+02:00

Went to our MA group's poetry reading tonight. There are some really good new poets out there! Rock on.

Tomorrow I'm off to Champneys Tring for a press day. Can't wait.

Comedy and castings

2007-03-20T11:47:00.000+01:00

We had our final creative writing workshop yesterday, and my teacher and fellow students told me they have concluded comedy is what I do best and where my real voice is. My recent work has been really serious, and they say it lacks something. So I am going back to writing absurd black comedy - hurrah. I realise this posting is not really very comic, in fact it's quite wooden and deadpan, but hey, that's how I feel this Tuesday morning with a feature to write, a case study to find and £1000 I haven't been paid by a very annoying company to recover.

Just a quick mention of Mansfield Park on ITV on Sunday though, and Becoming Jane, which I saw last week. How was it possible for the casting on these two latest Austenfests to go so badly, badly wrong? Billie as Fanny, laughing loudly and running around impetuously, with all that passion and heaving bosom, was just WEIRD. The character's meant to be the meekest, mildest, quietest mouse. And then Anne Hathaway as Jane herself - I know they had to pick somweone staggeringly beautiful, but Anne is just far too exotic, pouty, all-American and movie-starrish to play a solidly English writer who by all accounts was no better than average looking.

Why I never blog

2007-02-28T14:27:00.000+01:00

I do find it very difficult to come up with suitable subjects for my posts. As it's pretty public, I don't like to write anything at all personal, which cuts out the following topics: the ending of relationships (two break ups in six months and I haven't breathed a word till now!); friendships; the ins and outs of work; etc etc.

All I can really say at the moment is that living in Hampstead, as I am doing temporarily, has certain differences from living in Islington. In Hampstead,

- at the gym, you see guys reading the FT on the exercycles.
- drivers don't thank other drivers for letting them pass.
- hoodies are an endangered species as opposed to kings of the streets.
- the neighbours wear barbours and work in the city.
- there are no amazing restaurants but lots of pointless shops to buy things like executive aquariums.
- the Northern line is a living hell. 13 minutes can pass between trains! On a regular basis!

Hollywood lifestyle

2007-01-26T18:27:00.000+01:00

I recently came across a link to some ads my fellow Cambridge English student Zoe Green, now a film director, has been making in Hollywood - and they're so good I just had to post them here! I hear Zo-bo is also writing for the X-Men tv series and doing the rounds in H'wood with the sci-fi fantasy gang.

http://www.them.tv/green-work.html

For me, the first working month of 2007 has been a bizarre mixture of writing some books for children about forensic detective work, doing features for one women's mag involving researching libido-enhancing magnets and a total body makeover, choosing pics of my great grandparents for a feature I did on my family past for another magazine, plotting several feature ideas with friends and finding more ex couples for Observer Woman. In between this, I've been desperately keeping up with the 15-pages-every-3 weeks workshop sumbissions for my MA course, and reading nine books for it from Brett Easton Ellis to Annie Proulx. It's all a very random combination, I can tell you!

Last night I went to the launch for the MA's published book, Bedford Square. The launch, appropriately enough, began for every guest in Royal Holloway's Bedford Square HQ, where we were issued with a combination code for the door to the party in Gower Street. It was full of so excited they were dazed new authors and the publishers, John Murray, made a really sweet speech about how they liked publishing work from our MA. They have given one or two graduates book deals in the past year or so. It's all quite intimidating and exciting. People on my course keep moaning (along with everyone else I know) about how I never update my blog, so I'll write about them! We're all completely different, lead wildly contrasting lives and write in polar-opposite styles, but all get on SO well and it would be worth doing this course just to have met them. I love you guys!!

And the good...

2007-01-15T11:18:00.000+01:00

Well, feeling a little kinder towards HMRC today after managing to log on last night in the end and file my tax return worryingly easily on my own.

And in the spirit of praise, it's only fair to flag up my 5 best companies too..

5. Vodaphone. Wouldn't say they're good exactly, but they are OK, which is good compared to some rubbish competition.

2. HSBC. Banked with them most of my life and they've never messed up on anything. You don't have to hold for ages to get through and they're always competent and polite.

(To be filled in at later date - should be working!!)

Frickin' Taxes

2007-01-14T21:04:00.000+01:00

Been trying to log onto Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (aka the Inland Revenue) for the last half hour to file my tax return, which is stressful enough given I'm planning to do it all on my own with no accountant and only a fluke GCSE in maths, a subject with which I've since had no contact. Massive confusion over 11-letter/number combination activation pins, passwords and IDs, followed by total inability to log on. Called the helpdesk to be told this problem has been going on all day and there is nothing they can do - there are just too many people trying to do their self assessment online. She essentially suggested I try in the middle of the night, before dawn...Sorry to sound like a Daily Mail columnist, but it beggars belief. You'd think they'd design a website that could, conceivably, cope with thousands of people all, how very surprising, wanting to do a tax return in January. But, in that terribly English way, such foresight would just be too damn clever. Honestly - you'd think they didn't want you to pay your taxes. Why not stop spending on adverts urging you that time is running out and start implementing a system that actually allows you to - yes! that's right! - pay the taxes?!

It's inspired me to come up with my top (or should I say bottom) five annoying companies for customer service based on harrowing experiences all in the last 12 months. Prepare for a heck of a moan.

5. Royal Mail. For some reason they seem incapable of ringing the doorbell when they have a parcel that won't fit through the letterbox. Or as a fun alternative, they ring the doorbell and then are off halfway down the street before I can answer it. Instead, they push one of those red cards through with a note asking me to collect said parcel. With a phone number on it that can only be answered between 10am and 12, on alternating days, after 48 hours have elapsed since the failed delivery. Which when you call, rings forever with no answer.

4. Elephant Insurance and their loss recoverers, Albany Assistance. It's been 14 months since a foreign lorry drove into me on the M25, and Elephant still haven't managed to reclaim my excess from the third party. They say they're going to call you and they don't. I wouldn't say they're the worst, and I think they do kind of try to help, but they're basically pretty bad at recovering money owed you in my experience.

3. Network Rail. Last night, the tree surgeons turned up at midnight, finally, after 10 months of trying to get Network Rail to let us cut down the subsidence-causing trees and 2 months' delays from Network Rail promising to allow it this weekend, then the next and then the next weekend, then never showing up or bothering to let us know. Guess what - this morning, the trees are still there! Apparently some dufus at NR forgot to turn off the overhead power cables on the railway line. FFS...How much more can we residents take...

2. Plus Net ISP. God am I mad about this one! When I signed up with Plus Net in 2004, they were a great little company. You could call customer services and get through within minutes, and there were never any technical problems. About 9 months ago, I believe the company was bought out. At any rate, things have gone right downhill. Among other fandangos, they not infrequently lose your mail into black holes in cyberspace and when it happens, it's virtually impossible to get through to them to ask about it. You're forced to log into their website and post a question, to which invariably you get some inane response that absolutely fails to address any of your concerns. I could go on but I'm stirring myself up and getting mad!

1. (worst). Sterling House bike mail order company. All I can say is OK, it was stupid ever to buy from them. The guy in my local bike shop nearly died laughing when I admitted to him that's where I paid good money for a pile of barely rotating, skewed wheels and mashed up mechanical randomness that I even had to put together myself like something from Ikea. They lied to me, sent goods that didn't match what I had bought or what was advertised, sent goods way later than their promised catalogue timescales, and basically gave me the distinct impression of being..weell..it has to be said -the kind of company that should be on Watchdog, basically. Six months later, I threw the bike away (it barely worked) and spent more money on a proper one.

Nine writers blog launches

2006-12-14T15:48:00.000+01:00

I've just started a new blog at www.ninewriters.blogspot.com for my MA in creative writing (fiction) class at the Uni of London, Royal Holloway. We'll all be writing a group fiction experiment together there...watch this space!

Mean woman in Sainsbury's shock!

2006-12-13T16:03:00.000+01:00

So, I was tootling around being a freelancer and going to Sainsbury's in the middle of the day today. I walked all over the large Angel, Islington store collecting a single basket of groceries and arrayed them all on the conveyor belt at a checkout. There were two customers in front of me - an elderly lady at the front who was taking ages to count out her money and a man with a basketful of purchases behind her. OK, it was the teensiest bit naughty, but rather than wait I thought 'Why not take the opportunity to dash down the aisle and grab a bottle of sunflower oil and a bottle of sesame oil?' (I'm having an oil deficit at home).

I went triple quick and was back with my two bottles of oil within, I would guess, two minutes. As I approached the checkout the man in front of me was just paying and I sighed with relief not to have anyone waiting for me. An older woman had materialised behind me in the queue and as I rushed back to my place I said to her, in a hearty, friendly voice, 'Sorry'. To which she replied emphatically, 'Fine'.

My groceries were swiped, I bagged them up, paid and walked out of the store. It was only then that I realised my bags weren't stuffed with the two newspapers and magazine I had just purchased. I wasn't quite sure, but looking at the bags I couldn't see those awkward square corners and overspill of goods you normally get when you've got newspapers in your shopping bag. I walked, confused, back to the till and stood there for a moment checking my bags and realising I definitely didn't have my papers before interrupting the checkout guy, now swiping the lady behind me's shopping, to tell him some of my purchases were - well - mysteriously not there!

'Oh,' he said unpeturbed, 'This lady [he nodded at the woman who had been behind me in the queue] told the woman over there [he pointed to a Sainsbury's staff woman in the distance] to take your papers and things off the conveyor belt when you went to get your oil.'

Eh?

The woman who'd been behind me in the queue nodded and confirmed this was what she had done. I noticed now she was one of those people in macs with smug, disapproving looks on their faces.

I found the Sainsbury's staff worker who had removed my papers from the conveyor belt and she showed me she had taken not just my papers and magazine but also some other things I thought I had just bought and put them in a basket to be put back on the shelves. I somehow hadn't noticed at the time I actually paid for the goods that so much was missing - I had just assumed it was all there and let my mind drift, as you do. So I then had to queue up all over again to buy these things.

I just can't believe how mean it was of that woman behind me in the queue to do that! Clearly she was annoyed that I had stretched the queue rule by running to grab something else off a shelf, but I was only gone for two minutes and didn't delay anything as I was back by the time my turn in line had come. And then once I had come back to the queue and even apologised politely to her, why on earth couldn't she have admitted to me that she'd had some of my shopping removed?

By the time I'd paid for my goods, I was fuming, but luckily for the woman she was long gone by that time...

Hallowe'en terror

2006-11-06T20:48:00.000+01:00

I was escorted home by a policeman this Hallowe'en. I was walking from the tube to my flat that evening after a day on shifts, having forgotten completely what day it was, and idly wondered why there were so many groups of youths wandering around menacingly. Then I realised they were wearing masks with their hoodies and remembered it was Hallowe'en. It was dark and as I made my way through the sprawling estate near Caledonian road, I saw the door of one house open and an old man cowering inside while his middle aged son leapt out and half-heartedly chased one of the gangs of hooded boys, then gave up. I wondered what exactly the gang had done to the old man and his son in their house? I was now alone walking up a dark street with the gang just ahead of me - about seven 16-year old males with hoodies and scary masks and a 'definitely not joking' air about them. Suddenly two of them peeled off from the group and started walking back towards me at pace, pulling their hoods close to their faces. I instinctively sensed I was in danger and turned around and started walking briskly back where I had come from. I heard them pursue me and they shouted 'Running away, ya fucking cunt'. I FREAKED and started running! Suddenly, like a mirage, I saw a policeman right there, on the other side of the main road. I have never ever ever seen a police officer anywhere on the estate before in the two years I've lived in the area. But when I needed one, he appeared, like a miracle. I sprinted towards him in tears and he said he'd thought the boys were shouting at him. He was wonderfully calm in that almost patronising way police officers do so well, where they talk to you as if you're two years old, and said 'Let's just walk up the street together then shall we - you and me, eh?' And so we did. The boys shouted at us some more from an alleyway, at which the policeman laughed in his jocular way, 'They're such big lads aren't they?' At the corner of my street, where the estate ends and the nice Islington townhouses start, I said I would be fine and he went on his way. Finding the policeman was wonderful in the same way sighting a rare breed of lion is exciting. It's not something you ever see, basically, and then when you do, it's like discovering some rare and powerful creature you've only heard about but never seen really does exist.

M&S mashed potato

2006-11-06T20:43:00.000+01:00

M&S's new organic parsley mash, much vaunted on TV, is my new addiction.

Pete Doherty and my mum

2006-10-18T12:11:00.000+02:00

What, you might ask, could Pete Doherty and a 60-something literary biographer who hates pop music possibly have in common?

The answer, I have discovered, is that poetry is now cool.

When I read in the Guardian a few weeks ago that Pete Doherty was a big fan of 'fuckin' hardcore' poet Emily Dickinson, I sent a link of the article to my mother, an Oxford academic who is currently writing a biography of Dickinson. In the article, Doherty explains he has borrowed lines from Dickinson's poetry for his songs: '"Aargh, she's outrageous man! She's fuckin' hardcore! Can't ignore her." What did he pinch? "I took one draught of life, paid only the market price," he quotes from his At the Flophouse. "I added, 'and now I'm estranged.'" He sings, "Wow, wow, wow - oh, look around it's so true," impersonating first an electric guitar and then Lou Reed. "I took one draught of life, paid only the market price, now I'm estranged." '

I thought Doherty's interest in poetry and literature in general boded well for authors of literary biographies. It's hard to get publishers really excited about classic literature and those who write about it, as opposed to commercial fiction.

And I was intrigued as to the reaction of my mother, who doesn't know the difference between Pete Doherty and the Spice Girls, and has barely heard of rap or hip-hop, Madonna or Michael Jackson, let alone ever listened to them (she says the 'rhythms' of pop/rock music go against her own inner grain).

So yesterday I was delighted when mum told me she was herself quite excited about Doherty's love of Dickinson. 'Poetry is dying on the page,' she said, 'But as a spoken form I understand there's quite a buzz about it. Musicians are using poetry. I'd like to know more about this Pete Doherty.'

She was also admiring of Doherty's admission to stealing a copy of Crime and Punishment from the prison library. 'I think it's quite the right thing to do,' she said, in a rare moment of anarchism.

So perhaps there will be a new wave of romanticism in which young, rebellious musicians and artists take over poetry and reinvent it. Perhaps it's already happening. And perhaps that will help literary biographers rule the world at last.

Life continues

2006-10-13T10:54:00.000+02:00

I felt so sorry for the PRs at the press party I went to last night. They had to try to sell the idea of a feature on a catheter for stress urinary incontinence to me and about 50 others. Pointing to the catheter, the PR tried to be serious but I couldn't help recoiling very slightly as I reached out to touch it and we all laughed.

On the upside though, I got a test to see how bad my skin's sun damage is. Ever since I started getting wrinkles a couple of years ago, the horrific realisation of just what I did to my skin as a teenager has dawned...the many days spent age sixteen ladling cooking oil over my flesh and lying in the South African sun trying to burn because that is the only way freckly people like me get a smooth tan rather than more freckles. So I was expecting to be told my skin is beyond saving. But I was very pleasantly surprised to find out that the damage is not too bad in my case - 4 out of 10 where 0 is zero damage and 10 is severe. I am sure there has been a mistake!

These musings were interrupted by a terrible conversation with Network Rail. We have been waiting for months for them to consent to us cutting down the trees causing subsidence to our home. Just now I was rung by someone I have spoken to before when I chased this up about a month ago, but he had no memory of me. His entire function seemed to be to drown the whole project in years of bureaucracy. There was no question of any work being arranged, of course not.

No, instead he proposed he writes a letter to our insurers' agents, in which he would ask them to tell him who their clients are. I said, 'But we are the clients, can I not just tell you that right now? Why do you need to write a letter when my neighbour's flat is growing cracks every day and she's scared there's going to be a gas explosion from the pipes under so much pressure from the tree roots?'

'We are quite busy, I don't have much time to spend on this today,' he whined.

No, I 'm not busy either, I thought. And we've only been chasing you guys for the last two months just asking if it's OK to cut down a few trees, how bloody hard can it be for you to put an agreement in place?

We went round in circles for about fifteen pointless minutes until I got him to agree to put us in touch with an administrator for Network Rail's treecutters, since he doesn't seem to be too pleased with the plans submitted several months ago by the treecutters our insurers put on the project (but of course, he had done nothing about this).

I have no idea how we ended up in this situation where we, the landowners, pay rent to Network Rail to lease a tiny strip of land that is actually part of our own garden and contains basically a line of trees by the railway. Our lease's absurd terms state that although NW owns the trees, we are responsible for maintaining them and thus, now they need removing, we have to pay for it!

Luckily, our building is made up of a lovely sprinkling of professionals - a city lawyer, three journalists, a corporate accountant and two engineers by my last count - and so we might think of legally challenging the lease.

The worst bit is he is insisting there needs to be a railway possession to cut the trees safely, which will cost us thousands....aaargh....

A stitch in time

2006-10-04T12:01:00.000+02:00

Oh dear, my life as a blogger seems to have fallen by the wayside in recent weeks. First I spent a week in Lithuania for a travel feature, and then I have had to get to grips with starting my part-time MA on top of my usual work as a journalist. The MA is brilliant and I know I should give it my all. The bare minimum required involves writing 15 pages every three weeks, plus regular presentations, reading, essays and a dissertation.

Having so much to do is threatening to paralyse me. Every moment I should be (a)meeting journalism deadlines, (b)selling more journalism to keep money coming in, (c)writing my 15 pages for three weeks' time and doing associated reading, (d)sorting out all the endless household and car rubbish like taking the car for its MOT and buying toothpaste and orange juice, and (e)working out at the gym. But all I am doing is short spurts of work, heavily interspersed with surfing Journobiz, emailing and now, writing this. And typically, the still-grinding ear-shattering screech of the chainsaw on the building site outside my study is seeping under my skin. I just can't seem to focus.

It's not really that I have too much to do, because I tend to work quickly and never miss deadlines (too scared of failure). I just keep thinking there is too much to do, and the factI am not getting on with it, calmly ticking off task by task, but rather oversleeping and changing into pyjamas before sunset, is getting me more and more grumpy.

Pride comes before a fall...

2006-09-14T17:06:00.000+02:00

Ever since my post yesterday, I have felt a bit cringeworthy. Pride comes before a fall...and when I work out how much money I am making, it STILL isn't as much as I'd like (enough for me to go on a carefree shopping spree on home furnishings or clothes every once in a while). Also, as soon as I realise I am doing well, I start worrying about what will start going wrong.

Today has been one of those blah days when you just don't feel like working! Most mornings I look forward to sitting down at my desk, because I really do love my work, but today I feel flat and dull.

Good follows bad

2006-09-13T20:22:00.000+02:00

Been too busy to post lately, which for me is good because it means I have been making some much-needed money. Not vast amounts, obviously, but there has been enough work to snow me under. Hurrah!

In July/August I started broadening my client base. It felt scary at the time to test new waters, but in the last few weeks, my hard work's really started to pay off as interesting commissions from new editors have rolled in. Every single person I have worked with has been incredibly friendly and nice, and I've realised how many truly lovely people there are in the UK media!

PRs have bombarded me with invites (yay!) and I've just met with a talented photographer to discuss working on a big, creative feature together. Let me never say again that being a freelance journalist is not one of the most exciting and rewarding jobs in the world!

And the insurance company have been lovely and agreed to keep insuring us. And Network Rail say we don't have to pay £6k after all.

Now, typically, I am just worried that things can't stay this good for long...

Aaargh...world falling apart around ears

2006-08-31T19:05:00.000+02:00

This has been one of those weeks where all the most boring practical elements that support life have got in a muddle. First it was the saga of the Sky engineer, and really that was rather minor compared to all the other stuff that has followed.

We had an email from our building insurers about cutting down a sycamore tree in our garden which is causing terrible subsidence through our house. The insurers said it will cost £6000 (yes, thousand) to cut it down (because the tree is technically owned by Network Rail, who have to oversee the tree surgeons as we live by a railway line). They also said our insurance may not cover this cost. And they said any costs they do pick up, we have to pay for upfront anyway. Oh, and then they told us they won't be insuring us anymore in future (could this have anything to do with the fact we have dared to claim on our subsidence policy?) Calling to explain that it is seriously impossible for us to pay £6000, whether or not it is covered and reimbursed, to have a tree cut down (and unfair, because we are meant to be covered for subsidence), I was told our insurance contact is on holiday for two weeks! So we and our neighbours are all quietly panicking.

But even that is nothing compared to the nightmare I've had as a customer of the ISP PlusNet this week. I stopped receiving emails on Monday and, although I am now seemingly almost back to normal, some emails are still taking hours to days to arrive and my email keeps timing out. This is obviously catastrophic when you've got important and urgent emails coming through.

You'd think that in this situation PlusNet would be 'all hands on deck' supporting and reassuring its customers, but, well, that's not what I've experienced. I've spent about an hour and a half trying to get through to someone there on the phone, and either found myself in interminable queues, or led through a maze of pre-recorded options and then brusquely cut off by some implacable women's voice telling me to logon to their website. As if I haven't been monitoring the website's service status information every ten minutes for the last two days! As if I haven't sent online questions to the technical support team which have gone resoundingly unanswered (typical response: Dear Ms G., Please refer to our website's service status information, Regards, XX').

It's like, fine, PlusNet, leave your customers with no email for two days, no problem. Don't bother apologising to them, answering your phones or responding fairly to their queries. No email? No human being you can get through to? What's the problem!

I just want my lost emails back and then I'm gonna probably leave PlusNet for good. They used to be a really good ISP with reasonable customer service, but recently it's gone so downhill.

Apart from this, everything's dandy though.

Arghh... SKY

2006-08-29T11:45:00.000+02:00

As I write this I'm on hold. Can't get on with writing up the interview I'm working on. We are having Sky installed (supposedly) and the engineer who was supposed to call us to make an appointment has not done so. Presumably, I am supposed to wait at home in eager anticipation in case he arrives at any time from 8am till 6pm. I wouldn't be that bothered, but I've been on hold trying to sort this out for 15 minutes or so now, and the 'customer care' person says he cannot call customers back - no, one has to hold on the phone - when they were supposed to call us in the first place. What kind of customer service is that?

OH MY GOD! I have just been cut off with no warning! The Vivaldi suddenly turned to bleep as the dial tone filled my furious ear.

What to do now? Try again? Call the press office?

Let's see, I'll try again...

"If it's HD choose 2...for SKY Plus hit 3.." Eh? Why have this stupid chirpy nonsense?

"Your call should be answered in under..." electronic pause... "seven minutes".

Oh, well that's fine then!

Now I'm being mercilessly bombarded by adverts. Do they think their customers are so stupid they want to have this pap pumped into their ears?

Come to think of it, I've never liked SKY as a brand, never seen myself as a SKY person. Always thought in my bourgeois way that having satellite TV was somehow morally suspect. Now, we have finally given in (Dave wanted more sports..), but I'm getting REALLY bad vibes.

OK, it's now 15 minutes later, and I have now have put the phone down, having just been informed by someone called Robert that "the job's not going ahead". No-one is coming today, the engineer is ill. Nobody bothered to tell us of course, but hey.

Oh, and Robert says this means we have been rescheduled for the 6th September. "I can only tell you what's happening on the system," he explained.

Right, I've now wasted about an hour on this and I'm fuming. I'm writing a letter of complaint! Update coming...

11.45am Update: Having written my complaint letter, I just got a call from some other random department in the SKY empire saying the engineer is stuck in traffic or some other totally meaningless excuse. They had no record of any ill engineer and said they will send another engineer over tomorrow. So why was I told the engineer is ill?

5.30pm Update: All is now well again. At 5pm, there was a ring at the door. It was a SKY engineer. I don't know how or why he came out of the blue, but I was rather pleased.

Missing things from the 80s

2006-08-17T19:12:00.000+02:00

Here's a list of things from the 80s I miss:

Come and Praise (I am not sure, but think that was what it was called - can anyone remember?)
A slim blue C of E hymnbook with a montage picture of a group of faces on the cover. Contained all my favourite primary school hymns like 'Autumn days when the grass is jewelled' and 'Lord of the Dance'. It vanished into the mists of time in my parents' house, along with so many other childhood artefacts.

Happy Families card game
It had the cutest illustrations. All the families were woodland animals, eg the hedgehog family!

Stamp collection that would today be worth thousands
When I was about six, some kind person (I don't recall who) gave me their grown-up child's stamp collection so I could take it forward through the 1980s. It was already a highly developed album containing many 1950s-1970s stamps. For some reason, I never realised it could be valuable one day, and neglected to take care of it. I probably gave it to charity. I just hope someone somewhere has made a mint out of it.

80s ice cream flavours
Seems bizarrely old fashioned today, but remember when raspberry ripple was THE taste sensation? As fresh and exciting then as Haagen Dazs cookies and cream was in 1991....ooh, and there was also mint- choc-chip, and neopolitan. And M&S's popular puddings were things like apricot roly poly.

Twinkle magazine
I used to read this lying on my bedroom floor popping those white milk sweets into my mouth. Have no memories about what the magazine contained today, I just remember being rather addicted to it. Then I moved onto Bunty, then Girl, then my older sister's old Jackies (they had the best photostories) and from then on it was a long descent into the NME and Just 17.

Merlin's Castle
I would still play this obsessively today if I got the chance, but sadly for me, the BBC text adventure games that were the be all and end all of 80s and early 90s computer lessons are now technologically beyond a joke. How much better was MC and the Lost Frog than the bam bam you're dead stuff children play today? Tons, if you ask me.

Bod, Pigeon Street, Bagpuss, The Flumps, Henry's Cat, Knightmare, Bad Boyes, We are the Champions (oh how I wanted to be on it and dive in the pool at the end)...oh, this list could go on for pages.
Bring them back for the grown-up generation! (Though when I did manage to watch an old episode of The Flumps a few years ago, I was very disappointed. Bagpuss is still good when you're grown -up though.)

That's actually it for now, but sure more things will pop into my head later!

Poetry

2006-08-16T18:37:00.000+02:00

I never got around to writing about my experience at Bennington College, Vermont, in June. Bennington is a college where you can get a degree in pretty much any arts subject, including dance, drama, literature and writing. Its creative writing MFA, run by TS Eliot fanatic Liam Rector, is very popular. My mother, a biographer, has been a visiting member of faculty at the MFA's summer term for a few years, and this year I was invited to join her to read from my book and talk about mothers and daughters who both write.

I could write so much about how idyllic the rural campus is, with its waving meadows of wildflowers in the total peace of the green mountains of Vermont, and how interesting I found all the kindly faculty and staff, but what I don't think I'll ever forget is how by living surrounded by people passionate about language and poetry for just five days affected me. Every night there were two readings of either poetry or prose, and the days were filled with workshops, lectures and, everywhere, constant discussion of words.

I didn't realise how heady this pure, poetic atmosphere was until my last night, when the American Poet Laureate Donald Hall gave his reading to a rapt, thrilled audience.

I don't know how old Mr Hall is, but he met TS Eliot as a young man, and his collected poems runs from 1946. I had never read anything he'd written, nor, as an ignorant Brit, had I heard of him till that day, but I guess I was expecting just another poetry reading.

The audience hushed, the grey-haired man, dressed casually in a baggy shirt and trousers, raised unusually twinkling eyes from the microphone.

'I thought a poem about poetry readings might be appropriate,' he smiled, and began.

To a Waterfowl

Women with hats like the rear ends of pink ducks
applauded you, my poems.
These are the women whose husbands I meet on airplanes,
who close their briefcases and ask, "What are you in?"
I look in their eyes, I tell them I am in poetry,
and their eyes fill with anxiety, and with little tears.
"Oh, yeah?" they say, developing an interest in clouds.
"My wife, she likes that sort of thing? Hah-hah?
I guess maybe I'd better watch my grammar, huh?"
I leave them in airports, watching their grammar,

and take a limousine to the Women's Goodness Club
where I drink Harvey's Bristol Cream with their wives,
and eat chicken salad with capers, with little tomato wedges,
and I read them "The Erotic Crocodile," and "Eating You."
...
And what about you? You, laughing? You, in the bluejeans,
laughing at your mother who wears hats, and at your father
who rides airplanes with a briefcase watching his grammar?
Will you ever be old and dumb, like your creepy parents?
Not you, not you, not you, not you, not you, not you.

As he read the final lines, he was speaking directly to the young students laughing in the auditorium. Pointing, he said intimately to six of them in turn, 'Not you'.

There was a crescendo of laughter and foot-stamping applause. I found myself surprised by how much this man's poems had made me smile ruefully and feel closer to the audience around me.

The poems continued, each a masterpiece of intimacy, simplicity, honesty, humour and tenderness. It became clear to me that the poet's wife had died tragically, since many of the poems were grieving for her. Hall found it hard at times to keep the tears from his eyes and I found tears welling in my eyes too and in those of everyone around me as we listened and watched his painful pauses when grief apparently overwhelmed him. Then, this poem took my breath away:

Summer Kitchen

In June's high light she stood at the sink
With a glass of wine,
And listened for the bobolink,
And crushed garlic in late sunshine.

I watched her cooking, from my chair.
She pressed her lips
Together, reached for kitchenware,
And tasted sauce from her fingertips.

"It's ready now. Come on," she said.
"You light the candle."
We ate, and talked, and went to bed,
And slept. It was a miracle.

It was like he'd spoken thoughts out loud: just a simple wonder at life, and love. As the reading ended, everyone seemed tearful, overwhelmed and stirred full of emotion. Unable to face anyone with my tears welling so strongly, I went outside and sat alone on a swing in a big garden, overlooking a lake where frogs called to one another.

I couldn't stop crying, as if the days of being constantly read poetry, culminating in this final emotion-filled performance, had brought me to a massively heightened sensitivity. I felt supremely aware, strengthened, peaceful, intense, vulnerable and poetic, and I suddenly remembered how as a 14-16 year-old who wrote poetry, I had felt this way and then lost it somehow as an adult.

A middle aged woman in a long summer shift walked through the long grass towards me, and I really wished she wouldn't see me crying, because I was embarrassed and wanted to be alone. I knew she could see me crying, but instead of turning back, she kept approaching. When she reached me, she said: 'I know how you feel - I'm feeling it too.'

I dried my face, breathed deeply and smiled at her. Then we went to her house and had berries and cream and champagne.

Terror plot

2006-08-10T20:02:00.000+02:00

Ok, I'm going to 'come out' here. A few days ago, I posted about how anti-semitism is threatening British Jews; I thought it was safer at the time not to be open about my own Jewish ethnicity. But having considered it, although it's disturbing that in this country a Jew still feels scared to publicly declare that they are Jewish in case they become the target of some kind of attack, I have decided this is no time to pander to such fears.

The thing I keep thinking as the latest 'Al Quaeda' terror plot emerges is how really Muslims and Jews are culturally very similar, and how bizarre it is that the world's current epicentres of war centre on conflict between our two religions. Once Muslims and Jews were part of the same biblical family; both religions place similar cultural value on ideals like family, education, hard work, ambition, respect, prayer, and doing good deeds. As a Jew, when I see the richness of the Islamic community in London, I don't feel remotely threatened; rather I feel close to it, at home with it, because I feel their warm Middle Eastern culture of family and education is akin to my warm Middle Eastern culture of family and education. In my relationships with Muslim friends, there's never once been the slightest hint of political conflict, so close are the shared values. Israeli music has a lot in common with Arabic music; religious Jewish women cover their hair as do religious Muslim women; even the food of the two cultures is similar. When I watch the news in Israel/Lebanon, the dark hair and olive skin common to both the Israelis and Lebanese makes them almost indistinguishable. It really is brothers and sisters killing one another.

Obviously I'm not talking about fundamentalists on either side, just about ordinary people.

So it is strange that a few ignorant people on both sides wage wars and hate all Jews or all Muslims.

The horror, the horror!

2006-08-08T19:26:00.000+02:00

As I sit here listening to Kylie Minogue's Turn it into Love after another day of pitching, chasing, research, etc, my thoughts inevitably turn to something that has been weighing heavily on my mind for several years now and seems to irritate me more every day.

Bad grammar.

It's absolutely EVERYWHERE. We all know about greengrocers' apostrophe issues, but recently I've been reading cringe-inducing bloopers in national 'broadsheet' papers and in massive advertising campaigns from FTSE-100 companies you'd have thought would get someone to proofread their copy before spending millions disseminating the bloody stuff.

And when I say cringe-inducing, I'm only too aware that it's me cringing, not the people who've written and published the errors. I suspect in most cases they have no idea what educated people think of their mistakes and how counter-productive this is. There is a tiny army of us who will boycott buying anything from companies who can't tell where an apostrophe should go.

But how can an advertisement with a heart-stopping, critical grammar malfunction still be running if the advertisers know about it? I can only assume that no-one has told them; and if this is the case, it must be because hardly anyone has the education to notice. Similarly, the plonkers writing the bad copy are so ubiquitous that one can only deduce that there is now a whole multi-generational society of people under 30 who neither know nor care what a comma is, let alone the subjunctive.

I'm trying very hard here not to name any names, but some of the kind of mistakes I've read recently in the highest levels of the mainstream media include:

- Palate for palette ('The painter's rich palate of hues')

- 'This lovely contemporary house' (Contemporary of what - 1500? Contemporary does not mean modern!)

- 'Celeb hairdresser XX does wonderful girl's haircuts' (How difficult is it to distinguish between singular and plural exactly?)

-'It didn't phase me' (Hello, faze as opposed to phase, anyone? Anyone?)

-'The tiger was grinning, it's teeth beared.' (Two shockers here...)

'The tiger bared its teeth, the tiger then started moving towards me.' (Ever heard of semi-colons or full-stops? Why do so many people insist on starting sentences after commas?)

I know from personal experience that a lot of people my age (27) were never taught any grammar at school. My education was unusual in that (a) growing up, I read classic books by great writers with dedication and out of choice, (b) I was taught English, Latin, French and Spanish grammar at a school where you were considered a failure if you didn't get an A star at GCSE, and (c) I loved words and delighted in learning new ones.

But the real reason people no longer seem to know basic vocab and grammar must be because they do not read and rarely have. Whether or not you are taught Latin and English grammar and all that at school, so long as you read good books and are reasonably bright, you pick up words and how to use them.

This is what comes of a dumbed-down culture where schoolchildren no longer have to read pre-20th century texts. Instead, they watch the DVD or, more likely, simply get taught a totally 'easy', undemanding novel written in the last 10 years. Anything to let them off the terrible expectation that they could be capable of grasping 'big words' and 'complicated grammar rules'.

I despair over this - I truly do.

Rereading Virginia Andrews

2006-08-02T16:16:00.000+02:00

Last week, while visiting my parents, I found my old copy of Virginia Andrews' Flowers in the Attic and reread it for the first time since my original Andrews marathon at the age of 12-13. I realised VA really is a very strange phenomenon.

If you ask a man if they have heard of this writer, they will probably say no. The books, technically written for adults, are in fact the sole preserve of adolescent teenage girls (and of grown women who haven't quite grown up and still like to induge teen fantasies of beautiful, innocent 13-year-old heroines, vast wealth, precious ballgowns and men in tuxedos).

I first heard of the VA sagas when, age 12 and in my second year at secondary school, I saw a much-thumbed copy of the classic VA, Heaven, in the desk of the wildest girl in the class. (I knew she was wild because she'd had boys visit her in her bedroom at home.)

The book was passed around the class and we devoured the bizarre story of the young heroine Heaven Leigh, who grows up the most poor and beautiful girl in the Kentucky mountains, and gets sold by her father, before finding out she is descended from a vastly wealthy family, setting the stage for a 5-book saga of family secrets and lies.

Soon I was reading the final installment, the prequel Web of Dreams, in which tour de force Heaven Leigh's descendent discovers Heaven's mother's story of why she ran away from her luxurious mansion home.

I'll never forget reading that book at just that age. VA, for all her vulgarity and trashiness, had a special ability to tap into the 12-year-old female heart.

After reading the Heaven series, I ended up devouring VA's Dollenganger series (which starts with Flowers in the Attic and ends with prequel Garden of Shadows) and the standalone My Sweet Audrina. I was so entranced that I drew family trees of the characters in my diary. Years later, at Cambridge, I dipped into the ghostwriter 'The New Virginia Andrews', in between Coleridge and Swift. The 'new' ghostwritten books were entertaining, but a pale imitation of the real thing.

But on rereading Flowers in the Attic as an adult for the first time last week, I realised there really is something odd about these books. Basically, they're mainly about incestuous love! I don't really know how VA got away with romanticising such a massive taboo: her books are bestsellers all over the world.

I've also discovered there is a huge web community of VA fans who are frighteningly knowledgeable about her work and even role-play the plots of her novels online to strict timetables (like, 'Joanne, you're playing Tony Tatterton, so you need to be online at 7pm EST on Sunday!')

As young teenagers, it was the fantasy of being unspeakably wealthy, beautiful, virtuous and glamorous that my friends and I loved about VA's heroines. I'm still fascinated today by 13-year-old girls, as they always seem so romantic and full of potential, as I once felt.

I feel naughty even writing about VA, because she's such a trashy writer and the kind of person one doesn't like to admit to liking, but I think I'll always be a fan.

Kind regards

2006-07-21T10:15:00.000+02:00

Is it just me, or is there something of a furtive put-down in the email sign-off 'Kind regards'?

When someone uses these words, are they really saying: 'I'm not going to send you my 'Best regards' because you don't deserve them'?

'Kind regards' is something people write when they want to convey a certain formality and qualification of warmth. It's unimpeachably courteous so they can't be accused of rudeness, yet it only seems to crop up occasionally, and then in emails where there is a hint of unresolved tension.

Then of course you can go one step further and end with a curt 'Regards'.

If I get an email signed just 'Regards' I definitely feel insulted, or at least wonder if the person who wrote to me is lacking in social graces.

So, in my own emails I don't use these two endings at all, except, very occasionally, as a subtle way of distancing myself from my recipient in some way because they've been incredibly rude or unhelpful.

The worst is when someone you thought you were quite friendly with suddenly starts using frosty 'Kind regards'. You know then you've done something to really piss them off!

My standard end greeting is 'Best wishes', 'All the best,' or if I need to be more formal, 'Best regards'. (I avoid plain 'Best' as I think it can read as 'I can't be bothered to find an extra second to type 'wishes' so you're not worth much of my time'. But then again, people are busy and I don't think 'Best' on its own is anything like as cold as 'Kind regards'.)

'Kindest regards' I put in a far higher category than 'Kind regards'. It is very polite, in my opinion.

My favourite is 'Warm regards' or 'Warmly' but I am a little hesitant about these since they can come across as over-friendly, I fear.

Then there is the practice of ending with one to three kisses after your name. I don't know how common this is in other industries, but in the UK media it's very normal, at least between women, to send kisses to someone you've never met or spoken to, someone you've only emailed back and forth a few times in business. I know a lot of people refuse to jump on this bandwagon, but I admit to using kisses a lot because they are a way of signalling real friendliness. When an editor signs an email to me with kisses I always feel happy!

The only time email kisses can freak me out is when a man I'm not friends with sends them, because you have to stop and wonder if they're being flirtatious, but it's almost always just them being friendly.

Warmest regards,

Olivia xxx

The swimming pool

2006-07-20T18:29:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, Dave persuaded me to accompany him for a refreshing dip after work at our local public swimming pool, known as 'The Cally Pool' because of its location on grimy/up and coming Caledonian Road near King's Cross.

It took him quite a long time to persuade me, because I am a member of Esporta Islington, which has a wonderful, clean, quiet, peaceful, adult-only pool. I felt sure Dave could have come along there with me for a free trial. But Dave insisted he could not bear the thought of the hard sell from the gym staff, and I could understand that.

I suggested we go to Hampstead Heath to swim in the ponds for free, but Dave said he wouldn't swim anywhere 'you can't see the bottom'.

I STILL had my reservations about Cally Pool, because the last time I'd been to a public swimming pool (the one at Highbury Corner) the dirt and discomfort of the whole place was really quite appalling!

I kept thinking, don't children wee in the water in these places? Don't hairy men with fungal infections leave grime everywhere? Aren't the changing rooms full of screaming out of control toddlers (God love 'em)?

But yesterday was the hottest July day since 1911 and darn it, it really wasn't worth getting in a squeamish, snooty flap about the possible infections one might pick up in a public pool.

After all, I was being a total snob about this. Growing up in Oxford I went regularly to swim at the local Ferry Centre Pool and it was fine - spacious and clean. Just because I am now used to a private adults-only pool does not mean there is anything wrong with ones open to the public.

So off we went. I'm sure you know where this story's heading.

Cally Pool was HORRIFIC.

Beyond belief in a first world country. It was the kind of pool you'd have expected to find in Communist Romania.

Stepping off the 35c street into the reception area, we found some clever Council bod had had the brilliant idea of turning the reception into a steam room. I'd forgotten what midday in Singapore felt like until that moment.

The ladies' changing room was heated at a similar breathtaking humidity, but what really made me flinch with discomfort was the utter filth of the place! There were grey puddles of water and heaps of black dirt all over the floor and all the surfaces. The layout of the room was extremely narrow, so that the changers had to squeeze past one another, or, too embarrassed to do so, simply had to queue in single file to get from one area (the lockers, say) to another (the shower). I REALLY didn't want to take off my sandals to leave them in the locker as the level of dirt on the floor was so disgusting.

Heading to the pool I found Dave smiling in the water, totally relaxed. Meanwhile I was feeling unhinged by the dirt everywhere - it really was enough to make your skin creep. There was only ONE LANE available to swim in because the other two were occupied by splashing children. Don't get me wrong, I love children, but they really didn't make the pool very tranquil. The lane was so packed we could hardly move without some hairy guy kicking our faces, and it was so shallow the water only came up to my hips (I'm 5 ft 3!)

I managed 4 lengths before realising I simply was not enjoying myself, in fact that this was hell on earth. Dave very gamely tried to make the best of the place and stayed in the pool but I had a hissy fit and stomped off to the changing room vowing never to swim in a public pool again.

Back in the changing room I found that in keeping with the Soviet theme, there were no private shower cubicles or curtains so that everyone had to strip off in public. It was the kind of place where little boys are running around in the women's changing rooms and husbands are poking their noses in the door and I just couldn't go naked, so I had to shower with my swimsuit on, which is gross.

I felt so dirty after that shower, but at least I could put my sandals back on and get my feet off that hairy, mushy, dusty floor.

Finally, insult of insults, I went to dry my hair and found you have to insert a 20p coin to use a hairdryer!

It was so humid my hair was already drying and by now I was enraged with the feeling of being dirty, so I just went back to wait for Dave in reception. Now I recalled how we'd paid £6.80 for the two of us. If you went swimming three times a week at this place it would only cost half as much as if you joined a private gym, and I understand many people can't afford to pay more, but still for the level of provision I think £6.80 extortionate. 80p per person would be more appropriate.

Finally we left, me ranting and raving, unable to believe how terrible it had been, Dave telling me I'm a rampant snob and to stop being so ridiculous. Back home I had to have another shower to get the 'athlete's foot' sensation off me!

I would much rather go swimming in Hampstead Ponds than Cally Road any day, and if I had children I'd never let them set barefoot in one of those changing rooms. I really don't think anything could match the depressing nature of that pool.

Then again, blighty's not so bad

2006-07-06T17:06:00.000+02:00

Somehow when I was in America, I thought back to Britain as a really depressing, antisocial country about 50% full of yobs.

This is a skewed, cynical impression that tends to build up in me living in Islington, London, where someone tries to break into our car or burgle our flat every few months. Dave and I live in what looks a very nice street of Victorian houses - and indeed is a relatively nice street - on the border of a beautiful and expensive neighbourhood and an ugly and impoverished one. It was certainly not a cheap place to buy in London. But the crime levels do seem very high, so that we were surprised but not all that sceptical to read earlier this year that Islington officially ranks as the most crime-ridden London borough. In eighteen months living here, our house has had three attempted burglaries, our car boot has been broken into, someone has stolen our windscreen wipers and on another occasion, someone has broken our car aeriel. I've seen drug deals go on on the street outside our front door and watched gangs of up to 20 teenagers set on cars, intimidate passersby, knock a cyclist off his bike by hitting him on the head with a football, throw rocks at buses, trespass menacingly on people's doorsteps and have screaming fights.

It all sounds terrible, yet it's so normal that I feel the tiny ball of anxiety in my chest that London gives me is just me being silly. Most of the people in our neighbourhood are decent and most of the time this is just another charming Islington enclave.

Anyway, so this was how I looked back on London from America, where, as a tourist, I saw only nice places.

So coming back to this great city in our early-morning taxi ride through the streets of earnest, sweating cyclists in shorts or summer skirts, I was surprised to experience a city of industriousness, cosy Victorian terraces, cosmopolitan chic, people talking with intelligence, warm politeness, acumen and sensitivity. I suddenly remembered how friendly, how human Londoners can be.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder

2006-07-05T17:02:00.000+02:00

Just back from nearly three weeks in the USA (Boston-Vermont-NYC-Florida) and going to get back to my blog baby!

I'd like to start by posing this seminal question. In a world of science where people can fly to the moon and be operated on through a pinhole, how can it be that no-one has yet invented soundless powertools for builders?

I currently effectively live on a big building site. Across the street from our flat is a huge 3-year project to deck over a railway bridge with a public garden and build some flats. Out the back is a council estate (which I lovingly survey as I type) where there is often scaffolding and workmen with chainsaws. The level of noise is beyond belief. From 7.30am-5.30pm (and sometimes all night too on the railway project) there is manic drilling and grinding, combined with screeching, whirring, hammering, searing, smashing, and crashing. It sounds like the earth is being blasted into shreds.

If I could eliminate just one of modern life's irritants, it would be noise. The building work is necessary, I know, but I get so wound up at times I just want to scream out of our windows 'SHUT UP!!!!!!!!!!!' Not that the builders would hear me anyway underneath the roar of their mechanical noise machines.

I ask again: why on earth is it not possible to invent silent drills and chainsaws? If ever there was a gap in the market, this is it.

Anyway, now about America. I'm sure many America-despising Brits would call me naive, but I love it over there, love the American way of life and belief system with its go-getting optimism and relative lack of snobbery and fat-free icecream everywhere you go.

There are, however, a few important things America doesn't have as we do in Britain.

1. Marmite. What's the point of breakfast toast without it?
2. Ginger and spring onion with meat as a Chinese restaurant staple.
3. A great number and variety of newspapers and magazines. They seem to have only about five women's magazines, and a distinct lack of national newspapers.
4. Good television. My god, I wonder how Americans put up with all the adverts on their screens, which seem to come in a ratio of 5 mins of ads to every 2 mins of programme. I didn't see any documentaries either - no equivalent of Dispatches or Panorama. And as for their version of Newsnight - pah - where oh where were the biting sarcastic interrogations Paxman puts our politicians through this side of the pond?
5. Enough Indian restaurants.
6. People who say 'Sorry' when they accidently bump into you on the street.
7. Enough roads with pavements.

I have to say though, that in almost every other respect I think Americans have a better way of life than we Brits. They have more exciting and consistent weather, prettier and bigger houses, better music on their radio and jovial folks who stop to help lost-looking tourists without you even needing to ask. I want to go live there!

How things change

2006-06-12T12:32:00.000+02:00

I must admit that I wrote the last post about bolshiness when I was having one of those 'powerless' days most freelancers experience. But, of course, 24 hours later things were going well again - and when you're feeling reasonably successful, bolshiness becomes so yesterday.

This weekend I learned:
-that Dave is a better and faster cleaner than me. He did the top floor and all the stairs of our flat (scrubbing, hoovering, dusting) within a single hour, while it took me three hours to cover the same cleaning distance last time. Unable to believe he could have done a good job in this time, I ran my fingers along the skirting boards and found them sparking. I admit defeat.

-that there is a world outside London and the rat-race. I saw a friend from Cambridge for the first time in three years. She has spent those years surfing and busking all over Europe, writing a novel and being taken skiing by sexy doctors in the Alps. Out of everyone I went to university with, she was the only one to defy London's gravitational pull - and she rocks.

-that I am very scared of violent people. This sweltering Saturday afternoon, a friend and I were strolling innocently up Regent Street, dodging naked cyclists and remarking how pleasant London was with all the usual yobbish types safely indoors watching the World Cup. Then behind us we heard the unmistakable sound of pub doors opening, and then the all-too-familiar shouts and cheers of the fans getting closer and closer. As a group of three teenage bare-chested hooligans chanting (nay, screaming) aggressively at the crowds came past us, my friend, who does not suffer fools gladly, said to them authoritatively, 'Shhh!' They then turned on us, dancing around us very close and screaming in our ears. My friend was entirely unpeturbed and just laughed at them, but I was convinced they were about to assault us. We ran into Habitat where it took me a full twenty minutes of browsing among the picnicware and taffeta curtains to regain my calm. I am still feeling slightly shell-shocked.

-Zara Home - wow! The best shop I have been in in ages. All Spanish and embroidered. I have resolved to have my wedding list there (when I get proposed to, that is.)

Why I'm not so bolshy anymore

2006-06-08T10:44:00.000+02:00

I am by nature a bolshy person, not politically, but in the way I always find myself getting indignant about any kind of injustice. Translated into a professional, office-bound middle-class life in London, this meant I spent my first working years in a state of perpetual fury with my employers at the kind of rubbish their workers were having to put up with. Fury at Human Resources dictating how people dressed, fury at bosses who wouldn't let people talk or eat at their desks, fury at the absurd hierarchies that meant if a graduate trainee dared to smile at an editor, they would be met with blank, frosty indifference.

It took about four years of working life to stamp my bolshiness out of me. Years in which I learnt the hard way that the employee at the bottom of the ladder can never win against a mean boss. And years in which I found journalism was the ideal profession for someone as indignant as me. By the time I took my last office-based job in 2005, on a women's magazine, I had moved up the ladder enough to be working for a decent employer who treated their staff in a relaxed and mutually respectful way. And by that time, I was a mild-mannered, accommodating employee, so much so the managing director once told me off for being not assertive enough, which shocked me.

These days as a freelance, relationships with editors are paramount and I always do my best to be totally accommodating of their occasional whims (though, to date, the vast majority of editors I've worked with freelance have been truly lovely, and I have never had a serious problem with receiving payment due to me). I would draw the line at not being paid, but I don't think it's worth losing the relationship I have with an editor over a small irritation every now and then - I am sure I make oversights that annoy them, after all.

But I do feel sad that freelancers - and all employees who are as powerless as freelancers - are in this position where they are at an employer's mercy, however nice most of those employers are. As a freelance, you can feel very vulnerable.

And I guess even posting here about all this shows I do actually still have a bolshy streak somewhere.

2006-06-06T19:00:00.000+02:00

I've been too busy to post for the last week or so - spent last week working shifts on a women's weekly then rushing home in the evenings to chase up several urgent freelance stories. This week I'm writing five features...freelancing is like waiting for a bus. One week work seems to go quiet, then the next week several contacts suddenly want stories written for a deadline of yesterday.

One of the stories I've been working on was that of Marie Fatayi Williams, who lost her son Anthony in the 7/7 bombings. She's written a very moving book about the need for peace, For the Love of Anthony, which is coming out soon. I interviewed her yesterday for a women's magazine and felt terrible at times asking her questions which must have been painful. She has the passion and potential to really change the world, I think. An amazing woman.

Eleanor Brent-Dyer vs. Enid Blyton

2006-05-24T12:01:00.000+02:00

Thank you for being the first visitors to my blog, ladies, and leaving such fabulous comments! This blogging thing is such a lark.

Chloe, I'm impressed and inspired by your indepth Chalet School knowledge! Here's a trivia quiz I've just thought up about Malory Towers. (Oh Lord, I'm meant to be calling nutritionists for a feature on superfoods - but it'll have to wait!)

First person to answer it correctly wins...a lot of prestige. (Please someone have a go, I will be mortified if noone tries it!)

1. What were the names of the two French teachers, and which was nice and which severe? (2 points - one for correctly identifying each)
2. Darrell boarded in which of the four towers?
3. What was the name and nickname of the horsiest girl in the school? (2 points)
4. Why did Gwendolyn fall out with her father in Last Term at Malory Towers?
5. Which university did Darrell and Sally go to after Malory Towers?
6. What was so special about the school's swimming pool?

Fake tan hell

2006-05-23T17:51:00.000+02:00

I'm not going to start this first ever blog post in the most intellectual way. Right now, what I want to express is simply how utterly dreadful Boots' Soltan fake tan is - in my opinion of course - this is fair comment and not libel, right?

Not that I really shelled out on the 'shimmering' brown gunge. If I had, I would probably have chosen something a little more midmarket - Johnsons or Nivea both get good reviews, for example. No, the Soltan cost me £1 at a women's magazine's beauty sale many months ago, along with £10 worth of other random beauty products I bought for the bargain.

Anyway, my only previous experiences with fake tan have been my teenage experiments with a product called Duotan, which you never see nowadays, but was actually rather good.

So, the evening before last, I happily rubbed the Soltan into my pasty white British flesh which has barely seen the sun for years. As soon as the deed was done, of course, Dave openly confessed he has a strong aversion to fake tan. 'It's disgusting,' he said. 'It's on your skin, urgh!' He refused to go near me again until I had showered most of it off.

I breezily disregarded his archaic attitude. I am too sick of that embarrassed feeling you get when you expose your goosepimpled bright white legs under the harsh lights of a London underground carriage to care what my boyfriend thinks, frankly.

But then, as the colour emerged, I found that I was a kind of streaky technicolour orange. I literally looked like I'd been Tango'd (NB, by the way, believe me, I have no sympathy with anything to do with those adverts). To make matters worse, my skin was covered in gold glitter, of the kind I haven't worn since I was an undergraduate. The tan gave off a chemical afterscent which was so bad that night neither Dave nor I could sleep for hours! And, final insult of insults, despite me washing my hands thoroughly after applying the tan, the bloody stuff has left dark brown stains around my fingernails which no amount of scrubbing and washing has been able to remove.

I'm looking down at my hands now as they type and they look like I have dipped my fingertips in marmite. In shops I am having to clench my fists so the people at the tills don't get frightened.

I fear this post will in fact be symptomatic. I love moaning about consumer issues.