Lovely London Things #1: A Friday Photo of the Weird & Wonderful Things I See.

 

 

Flats in Baron's Court.

This Mona Lisa appears and disappears every week, depending on the whim of the owner.

Author Interview: Helen Fielding (sort of)

Posted By Daisy

 

BY NOW, everyone's sick of Bridget Jones and the countless articles written about her in recent weeks. Here's another one to add to the slush pile.

 

I went to see Helen Fielding speak in Primrose Hill on the night of her book launch and got a bit tipsy on one warm cup of wine. Which gave me the courage to ask her this (totally objective) question in front of 300 people...

 

'Do you think a 34-year-old singleton moving to London nowadays would have the same experience as Bridget, despite the fact that it's 17 years later and the internet now exists?'

 

She laughed when she realised I was writing down everything she said - but I had a 1200 word feature to write. And her answer was vague and non-committal and something about the internet having changed everything. I thought she'd say that people are the same everywhere, and that everyone's ultimately still looking for love no matter what year it is.

 

And afterwards, still elated from getting her autograph, we ate steak and blue cheese sauce and drank vodka and coke and I decided that I still loved London, despite the smelly old Tube and the fact that earlier on the Piccadilly line, a crumpled tissue fell out of a man's pocket onto my lap...shudder.

 

THERE are women everywhere. A glamorous elderly blond wearing a jaunty head scarf chats to her friends in the reserved seats in the front row, while another lady necks a plastic cup of red wine before taking off her coat and sitting down. A woman in leather trousers and a digital-print shirt opens her newly purchased hard-back with a squeak, while two men behind her joke that women outnumber men here and that they should have sold their tickets on the black market. At the back, a bookseller ties a few balloons to his stand, while an elderly gentleman arranges a motley assortment of wine bottles and some plastic cups on a desk.

On the evening of the publication of her first novel in ten years, and having already reached number one in the book charts as well as appearing on the One Show and the 6 o’clock radio news, Helen Fielding has shown up in this draughty hall in Primrose Hill to appear in conversation with veteran broadcaster, Sue MacGregor. Her goal is to raise money for her local Primrose Hill community library.

Initially panned by the critics as being inauthentic, anti-feminist and as presenting an unrealistic version of a now middle-aged Bridget, ‘Mad About the Boy’ is slowly beginning to receive positive reviews. Fielding’s long gold chain glitters, catching the light as she looks around smiling, seemingly unperturbed any negative reactions to the book.

After all, she dealt with criticism after the publication of Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996.

‘We’ve got to be able to have comic heroines without being so terribly anxious about what it says,’ she said after the publication of Bridget Jones’s Diary.

 

 

I loved the original book and films. At 17, I admired Bridget for her admirable lack of self-reflection, her guilelessness and for having the impetuosity to run outside in the snow in her jumper and leopard print knickers.

I enjoyed spending the weekend reading ‘Mad About The Boy.’ It’s still funny. Daniel Cleaver has become a parody of all the dreaded Uncle Geoffrey’s at parties, and the satirical view of over-zealous North London mothers and their offspring (Atticus or Luigi) and Bridget’s responses their frantic emails and organised lunches make me smile.

Her relationship with her younger boyfriend is humorous. He reads an article about toy-boys and the rise of the sinister cougar, and gets scared, while she sees a sign for an Over-50’s club (activities include Bingo and Tea Dancing), and gets Botox.

There are moments of poignancy, when Bridget sits at home alone on a Saturday night, or when she wishes Mark was there to accompany her and her two children to the school play, or when she remembers her much-loved father and wonders how he would have reacted to certain situations. Just as in previous novels, Bridget’s still searching for love, and being a klutz and over-eating (this time, it’s bags of grated cheese), and furiously chewing Nicorette gum.

There are a few clunkers in the book. At times the language feels a bit try-hard, like a grandmother trying to be hip. At one point, Bridget sees a young ‘iBabe’ in a bar, and later, one of the mothers threatens her children with ‘Don’t you dare touch that dustbin or I shall enter you in the HUNGER GAMES’. I’ve never heard anyone speak like this.

However, the major criticism of the novel has been about the ‘cruel’ death of Mark Darcy. Although I never understood the attraction to him at the time. He was just so deathly dull

‘I don’t think cruel is quite fair because we have to remember that he’s not actually a living person,’ laughs Fielding, referring to the screech of horror in online forums after the death of Darcy was revealed in the Sunday Times magazine prior to the book’s publication.

‘I wanted to make her be in that situation [a single mother], and I was also fascinated by the internet age. When I first wrote Bridget, there wasn’t even the internet. Daniel Cleaver’s messages [about the short skirt] was just the office messaging service.’

‘I nearly didn’t put in her age but it’s like the 30-something spinster – it’s like the idea that when you get to a certain age, you’re going to start knitting….although there’s nothing wrong with that…She does have to handle certain things she didn’t have to handle before, but she’s basically the same person,’ says Fielding, herself now a 55-year-old single mother of two.

Fielding’s talent lies in her ability to make the mundane funny.

‘What makes me laugh? Life,’ she says, joking that the long gap between books was because she had discovered the internet and had been ‘Googling for 16 years’.

Her previous attempts to write serious novels were unsuccessful.

‘I can only sort of write about what I know,’ says Fielding, although she is at pains to point out, with a grin, that she is not Bridget Jones.

But Fielding is not as flighty as she sometimes appears. She used to write for three hours every morning before going to work on the political desk at the London Independent. She says her first novel, ‘Cause Celeb’ was ‘unreadable’ but fails to mention that it actually garnered good critical reviews. And she’s apparently worth £30 million. Likewise, Bridget is not as stupid as she appears, despite texting her boyfriend during an important meeting about the publication of her screen play, and obsessively counting twitter followers. Jones has raised two children on her own, written a screenplay, and is described as a ‘genius’ by her erstwhile publisher. She’s not doing too badly at all.

It’s clear that many women still feel a kinship towards Bridget and her mishaps, as some women in the audience raise their hands and speak about their personal lives, something Fielding says happens to her regularly. We’ve all identified with Bridget at some point in our lives, be it as a single thirty-something year old, or a widowed 51-year-old.

A fifteen-year-old fan asks Fielding about the nature of friendships in the book, tripping out the names Shazza and Jude confidently, as if she knew these characters well. 

‘The measure of happiness isn’t the partner, it’s the wider group. People go through different phases in their lives but it’s really friends who carry you through,’ says Fielding, who mentions that her friend, film producer, Richard Curtis, is in the audience.

‘The thing I like about the character is that she does have this joie-de-vivre, she dusts herself off and gets going again,’ says Fielding.

‘If you’re ever feeling a big down, a mixture of a self-help book and a PG Wodehouse can’t be [beaten],’ says Fielding, who thought she had coined the term ‘singleton’ but later realised she had inadvertently borrowed it from Wodehouse.

It’s obvious how fortunate Fielding feels to have won success third time round.

‘It’s a wonderful thing to happen and you can’t complain about it,’ she says. ‘Honestly, for the first event in the evening, it’s been a really lovely way to start it off and keep [my] feet on the ground.’

Afterwards, a long queue of women snakes around the hall waiting for Fielding to sign their book.

When it’s my turn, I tell her I’m a 34-year-old singleton who’s recently moved to London and ask her write something heartening. She looks up at me for a moment while continuing to write before thrusting the book back at me. KBO, she’s written inside. Which I find out later is Bridget’s motto. Keep Buggering On.

 

It was also Winston Churchill's motto, apparently.

My Top quotes from ‘Mad About The Boy’.

Summer is here! Finally, the sun is out, the trees are in blossom and everything is marvellous. But oh no! My upper arms are not ready. (Bridget)

Better to die of Botox than die of loneliness because you’re so wrinkly. (Talitha)

He wants me to say things like ‘Lick the soles of my shoes, lick out the toilet bowl. I mean, it’s just not hygienic. (Jude)

Children are asleep and house is all dark and quiet. Oh God, I’M SO LONELY. Everyone else in London is out laughing uproariously with their friends in restaurants and then having sex. (Bridget)

Have a look on Goop….See what Gwyneth has to say about sex and French-style parenting. (Tom)

Oh, darling, this is what I always feared would happen. I’ll get trapped on a desert island where they have no hair-extension specialist or Botox aesthetician and all my artifice will drain away. (Talitha)

Maybe will go to yoga and become more flexible. Or maybe will go out with friends and get plastered. (Bridget)

Never pursue a man, it will only make you unhappy. Anjelica Huston never, ever called Jack Nicholson. (Bridget)

Mum and Una strode furiously towards us with mad bouffed hair and wearing identical pastel Kate Middleton’s mother coat-dress outfits. (Bridget)

I was just taking a slurp of wine and laughed in the middle, then choked with the wine still in my mouth, and sick started coming up my throat. (Bridget)

But surely it is not normal to be too vain to put on your reading glasses to nit-comb your toy boy? (Bridget)

 



A Book To Read When You're Ancient

Posted By Daisy

www.marcjohns.com

A FEW weeks ago, I had a moment of 'Oh my Lord, I'm a childless spinster sharing a bathroom with strangers in a new city- how did this happen? I should've just married John or Brian or Philburn or whichever one of my highly-unsuitable former boyfriends.'

It may have had something to do with the fact that I would shortly be turning 35.

So I rang my mum to run through The Script with me. Which goes like this:

ME: 'I'm feeling a bit down. Am I a loser for moving to London at 34? Do you think I'll be single forever?'

HER: 'Don't be so silly, sure you only look about 25. You're any man's fancy and you'll meet someone lovely. What's for you won't pass you....'

It's not true but it's comforting and I don't know what I'd do without my mum's script.

In the end, my birthday was utterly lovely. We drank Bucks Fizz with freshly-squeezed orange juice at brunch, watched wealthy ladies try on vintage Rolexes at an antiques fair in Berkeley Square, listened to the funny banter of an auctioneer trying to flog half price Persian carpets in a hotel on Gloucester Road, and ate chocolate cake for tea.

My friend sent me this text: "As Oscar Wilde says, 35 is the perfect age for a woman, so much so that many women have decided to adopt it for the rest of their lives.'

And I sent her this in reply:

(It was totally tongue-in-cheek - one of the downsides to moving to London was that I had to miss my lovely friend Dee's fabulous Spanish wedding)


To which she replied:

G's photographic representation of her current life as a stay-at-home-mum

At least us ancient ladies still have a sense of humour, I guess.


Of course, when my mum came to visit a week later, they all had a great laugh when she pointed to this picture in a magazine saying 'This is the question that Daisy must ask herself every day.'

Elevator Pitch: Two teenagers meet at a cancer support meeting and fall in love via smart banter, literature and a trip to Amsterdam.

It's Michelle Magorian's 'Back Home' meets the precocious teenagers from Dawson's Creek.

I really enjoyed it, but it is a children's book and the Dawson's Creek speak can get a bit annoying- Which of us ever spoke like this as teenagers?

A Book To Read When You Realise that a Change Is As Good As A Holiday

Posted By Daisy

YESTERDAY, I realised I’ve been smiling to myself lots since I moved to London. Smiling as I march through Kings Cross/St Pancras at 8 a.m. on the way to work, ever-present earphones jammed in my ears. Smiling at the huge crowds of commuters waiting to cross the ticket barriers, at the ads lining the walls on the way up the escalators, and at the two ladies wearing shiny, swishy, curtain-material-patterned prom-dresses, at the girl nonchalantly boarding the tube wearing a see-through dry-cleaning bag over her clothes, and at the gorgeous guy in the check shirt and jeans who I lock eyes with for a second before whoosh – he's gone.

                

Smiling at the punters sitting outside on a damp Upper Street, Islington, having cups of tea and cigarettes, and at the elderly lady in a jaunty suit boarding a bus to Battersea.

Smiling at my new colleague as we walk past the barbed wire at Pentonville Prison, and at the custard tarts in the café across the road from work that I’ve been craving since watching ‘The Great British Bake Off’ last week.  

Daisy pinkened slightly while taking a photo of the Match.com ad
but then realised this is London and no-one cares!

Smiling at the dog barking at the grey squirrels skittering over the headstones of the graveyard I walk through every morning, and the shoe shops on the King’s Road, and the French shops on Butte Street, and at the early-morning dog walkers on the river’s walk near Hammersmith Bridge, and the amazing book shop behind Putney Bridge tube station.

Smiling as I sit on a bench in South Kensington waiting for my sister, watching men and women in Porches, Maseratis, Range Rovers and vintage Rolls Royce's whooshing past. Or as we walk home through Chelsea, spying huge chandeliers through apartment windows, and crowds of people standing outside the Troubadour enjoying post-work pints.

Hmmm, which celebrity do I fancy seeing today?

Smiling as I realise how easy it is to just pop into the Lowry exhibition in the Tate (I loved the song ‘Matchstalk Men’ in primary school), or listen to Simon Baron-Cohen talk about kindness in an evening lecture at the Royal Geographic Society or hear Ellie Goulding play in the Hammersmith Apollo in November.

 

Dalston - where you can get your hair cut in a cool hairdressers at 10pm on a Friday night, if you so desire

Smiling as I sit in a crowded Dalston pub eating chilli chips and drinking beers with my new workmates on a Friday night, and have to take three trains and a taxi home in the rain afterwards, and smiling as I write with a new writing group in a café in Primrose Hill before heading off to a nearby cupcake shop.

Smiling as we eat cronuts and tartiflette in Herne Hill Market and watch strangers swing dance in the drizzle.

Smiling as I pop to Zara in Regent Street after work and walk past the Ritz sign on the way to the tube, and at the fruit and vegetable stall propped up against the far side wall of the hotel. Smiling even as I push my way through a sea of suits at the turnstiles and have to let two crammed-to-the-brim tubes pass me by.

I don’t think I knew how much I had craved novelty until now.

I've been reading this book on my daily commute. It’s not an easy book to read and I often find myself flicking backwards in the story. But I’m hooked.

Elevator Pitch: An old gangster has arrived back in Bohane after 25 years, and all around feathers are being ruffled and old feuds being resurrected.

It’s Charles Bukowski’s Post Office meets Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ (more specifically the scene with Mercutio and Romeo posturing by Venice Beach before the masked ball.)

And the writing is bring-a-lump-to-your-throat amazing.

‘She looked out at the night. A swirl of stars made cheap glamour of the sky above the bog plain.’

Barry lived and worked in Cork for years, and it’s apparent in his prose. Bohane is a melted, twisted, tarnished-Dali-clock version of Cork city. It’s the city seen through a Valley-of-the-Ashes haze. The language and descriptions are familiar ('norrie', 'gatch', 'pikey') and I smile when I realise Barry has immortalised a real-life Cork character.

‘The madwoman of Smoketown paraded in her white cowgirl suit, sequins aglitter, and directed the sky traffic of angry gulls.’

 I haven’t seen her in a decade, but I remember this lady, directing traffic outside the Capitol Cineplex, with white cowboy boots and shiny, over-pink cheeks.

‘City of Bohane’ also makes me happy that someone from Cork,  such a tiny city, can create something as beautiful and lyrical as Shakespeare.

A Book to Read When You're Flathunting

Posted By Daisy

www.imdb.com

 

MY CURRENT flatmate isn’t really working out. I haven’t know her for very long but she shares a place in Baron’s Court with three others, and they have a small spare room where I’ve been staying. But after a few weeks of putting up with her annoying habits, I’m tempted to start leaving yellow Post-It’s around the house, in the manner of a true psycho flatmate.

Her issues are many and varied:

·         She often drinks all the milk in the fridge and never replaces it.

·         She gets all the attention when we hit the town together.

·         I’m (admittedly) a bit jealous of her good looks – as my mum said admiringly when she met her: ‘She hasn’t a line or a wrinkle’.

·         She often passes out on her bed after drinking. And not just at weekends, either.

·         Sometimes I hear her vomiting in her en-suite after dinner.

·         She never cleans up after herself – when she’s finished eating, she just leaves the food lying around.

·         Some nights I hear her crying herself to sleep.

·         She starts making a racket every morning at 6:30 a.m.

·         She always has a piece of dried green snot stuck somewhere on her face.

Yup, my baby niece, L, has a lot to answer for. She celebrated her first birthday last week by vomiting up a warm river of chicken and carrot all over my new cream shirt and crying late into the night, before finally falling asleep beside me in my bed. However, when I felt a dimpled baby hand being flung across my face at 4 a.m.,  I had to squash my face into the pillow to stifle my laughter at the damn cuteness of it all.

www.annegeddes.com

 

Over the past few weeks, I’ve spent every evening trudging around London flatshares with my sister (in whose house I'm currently staying). She has a well-tuned weirdo-radar, which I lack.

Some flats were lovely, others less so. There was the fantastic shared 2-bed in Earl’s Court for £1300 per month. For that price, I’d have to sit in for the rest of the year. And the huge bedroom in a grand 3-bedroom house on Gloucester Road– the only problem was that there was no sitting room and just a microwave in the tiny, smaller-than-a-galley kitchen. The young live-in landlady told me ‘We don’t really see each other at all, but if you want to organise some sort of social get togethers, you could try it'– I pictured myself crying into my solitary macaroni and cheese every night, perched on the edge of my bed, trying not to drip melted cheese on the duvet.

There was a gorgeous en-suite double room at a great price in Earl’s Court, except it was located over a pungent recycling facility. I don’t think I wowed the two girls there anyway, as I got a case of verbal diarrhoea. As we walked back down the stairs to the exit, my sister asked me if I was feeling a bit nervous because I had told them my life story. Drop the Irish gombeen act, she advised, they don’t understand it here. After that, I kept my mouth shut.

Other places were itch-inducing – a filthy top floor flat with falling down wallpaper, a bare duvet flung over the back of the couch, and (incongruously) a pristine Ralph Lauren wearing flatmate.

But the worst was this ad:

‘Looking for someone to share a double bed with me in a one-bed flat in Putney. I could ask for twin beds but it’s doubtful I’ll get them. I have three rats and I also work late. Rent: $650 per month.’

Luckily, I had a second interview with the two (seemingly normal) tenants of a lovely apartment earlier tonight. I wore my heart on my sleeve, made my intentions clear, and asked them were they seeing anyone else. They simply sat on the corduroy couch, smiled non-committedly and told me they’d be in touch. Am I in or out? Fingers crossed – I’m jaded.

 

Sh*t My Dad Says by Justin Halpern

 

My brother-in-law loves non-fiction and so I’ve been reading lots of his books lately.

Elevator Pitch: This is a read-in-one-afternoon book based on the Twitter account of the same name, started by 28-year-old Halpern when he moved back in with his parents after breaking up with his girlfriend. His fathers' welcoming words are: 'All I ask is that you pick up your shit so you don't leave your bedroom looking like it was used for a gang bang. Also, sorry that your girlfriend dumped you.'

It’s Tuesday’s with Morrie meets South Park.

I love the shouty father, Sam, in the book – he’s so strict with his sons, yet is always trying to make them feel good about themselves.

'THERE’S NO ONE OUT OF YOUR LEAGUE’, he thunders, after one of his sons (who lives at home while working as a dish washer at Hooters) arrives home from a date with former model-turned-doctor, and announces that he thinks she’s too good for him.

 

 

 

A book to read after you've had an epiphany

Posted by Jenny

I had an epiphany last night. I realized that I had reached a milestone. Daisy and I went out to a lovely wine bar, because she’ll be leaving for London soon. By choice, I hasten to add! She’s taking a year out to do something different. I’m delighted for her, but I’ll miss her terribly….

Anyway. Wine bar! She had some sort of bubbly wine, which name I don’t know how to spell. Not that it matters because they wouldn’t pay me for the advertising if I got the name right. I drank cappuccino. I got a biscuit with it, that I ignored and we ordered a cheese platter. We hadn’t seen each other in a while, so it was lovely to catch up before she takes off.

Daisy doesn’t have kids. I do. So does her sister. This is where my epiphany lies. She was telling me about how her niece and nephew were doing. They’re a good bit smaller than mine and absolutely adorable. (I’ve never met them, but I’ve seen the photos) Incidentally she told me that her sister was due to go back to work and was looking forward to being able to have lunch BREAKS. And it hit me like a ton of bricks!

My hubby and I were recently able to take all three to the cinema without one of us having to leave half way through because number three wouldn’t stop vocalizing her displeasure for being expected to sit for longer than five minutes. Instead she enjoyed the experience!

I realized that I don’t feel like Mumzilla all the time anymore. I still do on occasion, but it is no longer a permanent state of being requiring constant suppression. I no longer blame my husband for him not being the one leaving the hospital with his private parts stitched together.

I am able to sometimes make blue pancakes because it’s fun. I no longer have to rely on Peppa Pig or Scooby Doo to be able to go to the toilet. Mind, I still at times have a screaming three year old trying to break down the door “MUUUUMMMMMYYYYY WHERE ARE YOU!!!!!” (she knows damn well!) My reply: “I’m on the moon.” Silence – a giggle: “No you’re not.” Then she makes a decision “You’re silly.” See! I can think outside the box again!

Conclusion? It gets better. Counting to ten gets easier! I remember realizing for the first time that I hadn’t had an imprint of a little mouth on my skirt in a while. Or that I didn’t have to return home in a panic because I forgot a spare soother.

I went home yesterday feeling a little elated. Although it could have been the two cappuccinos I had.

And on that note, I am not recommending a book. I am recommending a newspaper! I haven’t read a newspaper in a long time. I am going to sit in the living room on the couch. During the day. With a cup of tea. And I am going to make an effort to read the whole thing and finish my cuppa!

A Book to Read When You Realise that Writing Really is a Muscle

Posted by Daisy

 

I am a slow writer. Sometimes I would rather stick a needle in my eye than write. I love researching, meeting and interviewing people – it’s the scribing part that I find difficult.

After I broke up with Tall Guy with Glasses in April, I threw myself into work. I accepted every feature commission going, and spent at least twenty hours a week writing (on top of my day job).

However, as the months passed, something strange began to happen. One night, having faffed about all evening as usual – I had a nap, went jogging, ate dinner -  I finally sat down at 9 pm to begin to write a feature for a next day deadline. I fully expected to be bug-eyed at 3 a.m. tap-tapping away on my bed propped up by three pillows.

But two hours later, the piece was finished. Was I getting complacent? Maybe I hadn’t worked hard enough on it? Somehow, it didn’t seem as difficult as before. And my editor seemed to like it.

This began to happen with the next few features too. It simply became easier and faster to churn them out. And their quality was the same as if I’d spent ten hours writing instead of three.

 

The Revelation: Writing gets easier.

I never thought I’d see the day.

(However, having not written any features for the past few weeks, I’m assuming I’ll return to the 3am-blood-sweat-and-tears method with my next piece.)

 

'Me and You' by Claudia Carroll

 

Having spent the past week packing up my apartment, finding dirt that I’d never seen before, handing over the keys to my new tenant and moving back home (it’s actually lovely for the two nights I’ve been here so far – nice dinners every night, and chats with my mum over the papers, mugs of tea, Ready Brek and bananas every morning), I haven’t read anything in a while.

I bought 'Me and You' today and can’t wait to start it. I love Claudia Carroll’s books and recently had a great chat with her over the phone for this blog. However, the notes are now packed up with all the other journalist notebooks from the last six years, in the attic of my old apartment. Clever, huh? Claudia told me hilarious stories about online dating, gave great encouragement for beginning writers, and said she loves living near RTE in Dublin because her actor friends from ‘Fair City’ pop over for lunch whenever they’re free.

‘Me and You’ is about a best friend who vanishes. It looks great. Review to follow.