A Book to Read When You're Back in The Game

Posted By Daisy

 

 

I WENT on a date the other night. Drinks at the National Portrait Gallery, nibbles in Wahaca, cocktails in a secret bar in Chinatown, and a tipsy smooch on Cecil Court cobbles, in front of a first edition Harry Potter and a signed copy of ‘Howl’, before running for the last tube.

It was nice to meet someone intelligent (he used ‘disabuse’ in the right context), gentlemanly (he took the uncomfortable corner seat at the bar) and non-conformist-but-reliable (he works in Westminster but has long hair, wears a green parka and is a guardian in an apartment block).

He’s not perfect, but then neither am I. We may or may not have a second date. But after a gap year from dating (once bitten, twice shy), it was a lovely way to begin again.

 

Leftovers by Stella Newman

 

At 36, Susie fills out one of those multiple-choice magazine quizzes and ends up being labelled a ‘Leftover’. She is newly-single, her jobs sucks and she often spends weekends trying in vain to catch up with her coupled-up friends.

Full of food descriptions (Susie’s always re-heating some homemade pasta sauce or Bolognese on weekday nights after work, and there are lovely recipes at the end of the book), Leftovers is well-written and funny, and ends in the opposite way to every chick-lit book I’ve ever read i.e. her happiness doesn’t equal the dream man, but something else entirely…

Just don’t be put off by the not-so-zingy front cover tag line:  ‘A novel about friendship, love and the power of pasta’.

A Book To Read When You Know You're Just Being Silly Now

Posted By Daisy

 

    

www.marcjohns.com

 

I’VE been up the walls recently. Freelance work is like that. Some weeks there’s nothing, and then all of a sudden your inbox pings with seven feature commissions. So the past few weekends have been spent either interviewing or writing. My kitchen has become a tedious office space, with scribbled papers spread all over the surface of the table, and Post-Its stuck randomly about, saying ‘Las or Los Angeles?’ or ‘Check what year the burning of Cork happened.’

But I knew I loved writing when, after spending twelve hours typing a glossy magazine feature (my first-yippee) one day, and sitting exhausted at midnight on Sunday, with my full time day job to go to the next day, I realised I’d actually do it for free as long as I was published.

Having worked steadily on Friday night and all day Saturday, I had a glint in my eye as I got ready to meet my friends in town on Saturday night. I had been too serious for the past few weeks, and needed to kick back, let loose, and have some fun.

So I kissed a man at a party in my friend’s house after the nightclub. And I now realise that I will be single for the rest of my life. Because I’m still irrevocably, immaturely attracted to bad boys and messers who make me laugh. He entertained us into the early hours, dancing and waltzing and jiving and just having good, clean fun. He made a stupid face in front of the camera when we were trying to take a nice girls-only photo, and insisted on playing such gems as the theme song from ‘China Beach’ (!) and ‘Something’ by the Beatles.

But I knew we were compatible when he held out his hand to silence us, reverentially pressed play on his iPod and ‘Lola’ by The Kinks came on. Lola, the song I played constantly on my Walkman during three weeks of summer camp when I was 15, walking around in my dyed purple flares and checked shirts and long chains and nose-ring. It's the only song (besides Bruce Springsteen’s 'The River') that I know all the words to. We sat delightedly facing each other across the coffee table, singing the words - ‘I met her in a club down in Otto-ho, where they drink champagne and it tastes just like Cherry Co-la’.

Twinkle-toeing it out the door of the party at 4:30am, he took my number. And two days later, he texted.

‘X here. How are you. Did you go out Sunday night.’

Even though I know he’s bad for me, I have been composing a witty reply in my head for the last few hours. Let the games begin.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Elevator Pitch: A doting wife disappears one day after moving to Missouri with her out-of-work husband to help care for his ageing parents. But nothing is as clear-cut as it seems.

It's 'Douglas Kennedy meets Fifty Shades of Grey.'

My friend gave me this book with the caveat that it was 'rubbish'. It took me a few weeks to open it, and I was immediately hooked. It's clever, and depressing and has a great twist. The portrayal of marriage is sad - Nick and Amy were so in love in the beginning and then it normality impedes and it all turns to dust. I liked reading about the beginning of their love, as sometimes I think I am addicted to the excitement at the start of a relationship, and run for the hills as soon as it all begins to fade.

A Book To Read When You're More-Or-Less-Single* near Valentine's Day

Posted By Daisy

FOR A WHILE, I was the go-to single person for the newspaper I write for. I did features on dating events and even went to Galway for a weekend because an American survey said it was the best place for single girls to find a man – it definitely wasn’t.

Below is a piece I wrote about 'Being Single on Valentine's Day' - and yes, I had to get a photo taken of me smiling inanely and holding a flower - I made sure I had a bouncy blowdry and nice make-up, because I could just imagine people saying 'No wonder she's single, look at the state of her.’

THIS Christmas, at the dinner table, my mother jokingly announced that ‘This year, we’re launching a rigorous campaign to find Daisy the man of her dreams’. My siblings and their respective partners sniggered into their turkey, whilst I agreed, laughed, and helped myself to more cranberry sauce.

Single for seven months, I’ve been through the depressive stages of a break-up, the late-night wine-drinking sessions with my flatmates, and the cat-lady predictions of my life ahead. And have emerged, rather surprisingly, happy as hell.

But I really shouldn’t be. According a recent cover of ‘Love It!’ magazine, lots of celebrities are, apparently, ‘Sad, Lonely and Loveless’. By rights, I should be sitting at home on Saturday nights, drinking tea in my shrunken flannel pyjamas reading ‘If I’m So Wonderful, Why Am I Still Single?’ or ‘Living Single: One Day At A Time’ or even, ‘Being Single On Noah’s Ark’.  

But I’m not, and neither are thousands of other singletons out there. We’re actually SALI (Single And Loving It – yes, I can’t believe there’s an acronym for it either) most of the time.

Single 30-something year-old women have two choices – be bubbly or be bitter. Having experienced the bitter type in the form of friends who break out the cigarettes and wine at the announcement of an engagement on Facebook, or cry when given ‘The Cookbook for the Single Woman’ on their birthdays, I decided to opt for bubbly. There’s nothing that confounds the stereotype of a lonely singleton than someone who is active, enthusiastic and loves life.

So what are the benefits of being single? For starters, the weight loss is dramatic. There are far less meals out, no more cosy breakfasts in bed with home-made croissants and hot chocolate made from melted slabs of ‘Green and Blacks’, no more Sunday morning trips to the Farmer’s Market to share a brie-and-bacon baguette, and no more DVD-and-Thai-takeaway’s on Saturday nights.

And nights out can also be more fun when you’re single. Whilst most couples are tucked up in bed by 2:30a.m.on a Saturday night, the singletons are in pursuit of more fun. We sit in kitchens talking rubbish to strangers, and creep out of smoky pubs at sunrise, our eyes squinting in the harsh dawn light. Untethered to anyone, we arrive home on a Sunday morning, kick off our diamante studded heels in the hall, and fall asleep smiling.

There are also fewer obligations when you’re single. I can read a book in a coffee shop for hours on end, without having to go to a partner’s family gathering. I can stay in with a pizza and a bottle of wine on a Friday night. I can stick a pin on a globe and head off to exotic destinations every year. I can watch reruns of ‘America’s Next Top Model’ for hours without having to switch over to ‘Dog the Bounty Hunter’ or ‘Bundesliga Football Highlights’. Of course, I don’t tend to take snowy walks in the woods with my girl friends, but I can make a snap decision on a Friday to take off on a girly weekend, without having to check with anyone else.

However, there is a danger that singletons can become selfish. My mother fender-bendered her car recently, and instead of consoling her, I preened myself in the hallway mirror and asked her opinion on my new bouncy blow dry.

I’m not single by choice, but nor am I going to settle for any random man. Like most singletons of my age, I am discerning. I tried internet dating, but had to pull the battery out of my laptop to rapidly shut it down when one guy ‘winked’ (like ‘poking’ on Facebook) at me. Eagerly I clicked on his profile photograph, only to see a wrinkly 65-year-old naked man rising out of a hot tub, his skin glistening with water droplets. However, I currently know of six couples who met via the internet. Just be careful out there. 

Never have the lives of Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte from ‘Sex and The City’ (more re-runs) seemed more relevant to me as they do now. As a single woman in my thirties, their problems have become mine. And their pleasures and achievements have also become mine. I’m far more confident now than I was in my twenties, and have more time now as a singleton to concentrate on pursuing my dream career.

I have more disposable income to buy sequinned tops and expensive night-cream on a whim. I have also become super-independent. I no longer have to put on a cute baby-voice to get what I want from a boyfriend. I just do it myself. Except when changing a punctured tyre on the side of a country road. You definitely need a man for that. Or an AA membership.

And yes, it can get lonely being single, at times. Everyone needs someone to talk to, someone with whom to share the minutiae of their daily life. The thing I miss most about being coupled-up are those early-morning, stuck-in-traffic phone calls on the way to work– who else would call you that early?

And the perceived predatory-aspect of the single women isn’t a plus either. One insecure married friend kept jumping clumsily into the conversation whilst I was talking to her husband at a dinner party. More recently, a drunken friend of mine leaned across the pub table and flicked the wedding ring of the man I was making small-talk with, saying ‘He’s married’. For the first time, I felt uncomfortable and slightly uncouth for being single. I avoided that man for the rest of the night, not because I was chatting him up, but because my best friend had perceived it that way.

And yes, it will be soul-destroying if you go out on a Saturday night actively seeking a man/husband. And men can spot the ‘crazy eyes’ anywhere – the swirling pupils of a bunny-boiler in a disco are like a sharp puff of breath to a dandelion clock. Best avoided. But if your aim is simple to have fun with your friends, then you can't go wrong.

 

The key to successful single living is to have lots of single friends. There’s nothing like a couple’s dinner party to make you feel slightly uncomfortable in your own skin. Although most of the couples I know are marvellous company. And even some of them have muttered darkly to me that ‘the grass is always greener.’

And sure, there comes a time when buying another ready-meal-for-one becomes a bit tiresome, but just remember, the odds are you probably won’t die alone being eaten by your cat. Singledom is generally not a permanent state. It fluctuates. So you may as well embrace it and quit worrying.

And, at the end of a long day, being single means that I can stretch out fully in my double-bed and not have to stare teeth-bared at someone snoring next to me at 4a.m. I can also go to bed whenever I want.

As for my mother’s/sisters/friends proposed set-up’s – I say ‘nothing ventured, nothing gained.’ I love the excitement of first dates; the dressing-up, the butterflies and the stomach-shuddering potential of it all. And after twenty failed blind dates, at least I’ll know for sure exactly what I don’t want in a man.

And whilst being single is fabulous, and ‘autonomous happiness’ is a new key word in my vocabulary, I feel obliged to add that if there are any tall, well-mannered and devastatingly attractive fellows out there, my number is 086……………

 

 

I’m currently re-reading this book and it’s still excellent.

It also contains one of the most unromantic scenes in a book, and lots of romantic scenes.

Unromantic: When Emma has an affair with Mr Godalming, the middle-aged headmaster of the school she works in, and they spend their afternoons rubbing up against each other on the scratchy carpet in his office.

Romantic: When she finally sees sense, resigns without too much thought, and moves to Paris to become a writer.  Hurray! And of course, her latter scenes with Dexter.

 

*I say more-or-less-single, as I have had 5 dates with a lovely guy with glasses. More on that soon!

 

 (Top illustration by Marc Johns www.marcjohns.com)

 

 

Books for the Newly-Single

Posted by Daisy

Vanhercke Christiaan copyrighted & licensed for further re-use

IT’S Saturday night and I’m sitting in watching ‘Sex and the City’ re-runs, eating beans on toast, and anything else I can find it the cupboards.

This day last week I was on a river cruise in the sun, dressed up in a fur coat and silk scarf for a Mad Men themed hen party, sipping vodka and elderflower cocktails. The weekend before that, I was singing ‘Going to the Chapel’ at another hen party in West Cork.

And the week before that, I was in Italy, on a two-week holiday with my boyfriend - people-watching and drinking vodka and coke from a kiosk for hours on the esplanade in Salerno, eating mussel and bean soup from a sunset balcony in Positano, and sampling balsamic vinegar and making pizza on a Foodie tour of Rome.

But somewhere near the end of the holiday, we had ‘The Chat’ and decided that we weren’t, in fact, compatible. The fact that I am six years older than him may have had something to do with it.

So I’m single again. A state I know inside out at this stage of my life. I couldn’t face the usual drama of tears and texts. So I decided to skip it. Like a dynamo, I organised lunches, visited all the friends-with-babies that I hadn’t seen in ages,  and had many nights out. I didn’t mention the break-up to anyone for three weeks. Until I was able to talk about it without crying. I watched soppy movies (e.g. The Vow/The Notebook) whenever I felt sad. And I re-read the books I always read after a break-up.

 

I’ve read it about five times and it always makes me feel better. The protagonist, Julie, lives in a horrible apartment in Brooklyn with her husband. Her job bores her. So she decides to cook her way through ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking'. This book comforts me in two ways – 1) Julie is hitting 30 and hasn’t figured out her life yet and 2) Reading about artichoke leaves dipped in butter, and potato soup, and cooking lobster, and extracting marrow from a cow’s bone makes me forget about my broken heart – while reading this book, I just feel hungry.

 

Unashamedly chick-lit, this book also makes me feel better about myself after a break-up. The Godmother has random one-night stands, most of her friends are married with kids, and she spends lots of time shopping or drinking with vapid friends of friends. Her feelings are my feelings sometimes.

 

Drought has come to a small town in America. The people are hot, restless and frightened of losing their homes and farms. The local banker, a woman in exile from another city, calls for the Rainmaker. His arrival brings upheaval and strange events begin to occur.

This is a comfort book, purely because the writing is so evocative that the pages of the book begin to smell damp and earthy while reading it. I’ve seen this book in lots of second hand shops, and I think it may have been free with a magazine. I love it.