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At home for the next fortnight, now. Shoulders hurting from dragging an overstuffed suitcase around the stations and terminals that comprise a frighteningly large part of my environment these days, and looking forward to something nice to eat, or at the very least a smile from a very worthwhile individual or two. It occurs to me the last year has passed in no time at all - I know, I know, everyone always says that, and yes, typing the words does make me feel old, thankyouverymuch - but just the same, I really think about this time last year as if was last week.
Yes, in case you were wondering - my job does afford me rather a lot of time off.
vendredi, septembre 22
Going up:
Shell jewellery. Rocking the seasonally-inappropriate is so my bag, baby: wool in summer, grockle-shop crap and flip-flops as the weather cools down. You know you love it.
The air-dry. Suddenly, the hairdryer seems a superfluous addition to my day, and to be honest, I’m not sure anyone has noticed the difference. (the ghd, however, remains.)
Instant soup in a packet (tomato and basil, or minestrone). If I have one more cup of tea, I may very well turn into tannin. This provides an alternative excuse to visit the kettle. When I was a kid, it was all about Bovril and Marmite (or sucking on undiluted stock cubes, actually). Whatever happened to hot savoury drinks?
The current shoe moment. My preferred style of shoe (patent leather, round-toed, extremely high) is now seemingly everywhere. Seriously. The petrol station is giving away cute shoes with every top wash. What shoe diet?
Going down:
Watches. The repairs on my preferred personal chronometer all but require a mortgage (I stupidly left it in the shower at the gym, where it appears to have been flushed, kicked, and used to nail up a few walls). I’ll be wearing the emergency backup Oyster for a while, then. Le sigh.
Lipstick. The amount of tea I drink, I probably digest about half a tube of Stila a day.
Pop socks. After ‘herpes lesion’, the most horrifying two words known to (wo)mankind. I can not even begin to explain what happened, except that M&S was involved… with the pop socks I mean. Not herpes.
The commute. Ugh, how do people live through this? Oh how I miss taxis. With luck, for me, it will only be a few more weeks.
mardi, septembre 19
Finally, the promised Beau bra arrived (for security reasons, post addressed to Belle-me passes through about five hundred hands before it reaches my door… publisher, agent, overland to Marrakesh, passenger pigeon to Taipei etc.), and it fits perfectly.
Not that it shouldn’t. The matter of bra sizing is, in an ideal world, standard (although, having a bra size that is not so unusual that I have to shop from those desperately awful mail-order catalogues featuring torpedo-breasted ladies in industrial strength nursing bras, yet not so common that I can easily find it anywhere apart from M&S or online – which I suspect is a conspiracy by Marks to measure you up for bras that only they among all high street vendors can supply, and thereby be obliged to spend far too much on what amounts to a very plain, very itchy, altogether dissatisfying offering from their stock… and while any of their bras labelled ‘balconette’ is usually acceptable, the ‘padded plunge’ does nothing, nothing, nothing for my figure… damn it, why couldn’t I have been a 34C?)
(When I worked as a call girl, I found that the agency was prone to exaggerating the girls’ profiles. A cup added here, a band size shaved there. So imagine my - and probably a few clients’ - surprise to see myself listed as a 30DD. That’s not only wrong, it would have taken a bucketful of Photoshop and not a few chicken fillets for me to even approximate such a size. I appreciate as much as the next girl the power of gentle exaggeration in the matter of one’s figure, but that’s going too far.)
The bottom half, however, is another kettle of fish. I said I was a size 10, but women’s sizes are notoriously open to interpretation, and where bottoms come in small, medium or large, where does that leave me? And will they fit?
The boyfriend pawed the goods in their bag. ‘These look nice,’ he said.
‘You think so?’ I held up the knickers and peered at them. ‘I don’t think my arse is that big.’ I checked the label. Medium. And what looked to be a generous Medium, at that.
Let me emphasise that there is nothing wrong with Medium. Medium implies normal, usual, neither gifted with built-in thigh panniers nor a bottom that may be mistaken for a boy’s. Medium is good… and yet, there is a tiny voice inside me that will always prefer Small. Small implies cute, toned, not quite so heavy-handed with the butter at mealtimes.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said.
I tried them on. Perfect fit. Damn, my arse is that large. Ho-hum.
They look pretty swish, though, if I do say so myself. Cheers guys.
Not that it shouldn’t. The matter of bra sizing is, in an ideal world, standard (although, having a bra size that is not so unusual that I have to shop from those desperately awful mail-order catalogues featuring torpedo-breasted ladies in industrial strength nursing bras, yet not so common that I can easily find it anywhere apart from M&S or online – which I suspect is a conspiracy by Marks to measure you up for bras that only they among all high street vendors can supply, and thereby be obliged to spend far too much on what amounts to a very plain, very itchy, altogether dissatisfying offering from their stock… and while any of their bras labelled ‘balconette’ is usually acceptable, the ‘padded plunge’ does nothing, nothing, nothing for my figure… damn it, why couldn’t I have been a 34C?)
(When I worked as a call girl, I found that the agency was prone to exaggerating the girls’ profiles. A cup added here, a band size shaved there. So imagine my - and probably a few clients’ - surprise to see myself listed as a 30DD. That’s not only wrong, it would have taken a bucketful of Photoshop and not a few chicken fillets for me to even approximate such a size. I appreciate as much as the next girl the power of gentle exaggeration in the matter of one’s figure, but that’s going too far.)
The bottom half, however, is another kettle of fish. I said I was a size 10, but women’s sizes are notoriously open to interpretation, and where bottoms come in small, medium or large, where does that leave me? And will they fit?
The boyfriend pawed the goods in their bag. ‘These look nice,’ he said.
‘You think so?’ I held up the knickers and peered at them. ‘I don’t think my arse is that big.’ I checked the label. Medium. And what looked to be a generous Medium, at that.
Let me emphasise that there is nothing wrong with Medium. Medium implies normal, usual, neither gifted with built-in thigh panniers nor a bottom that may be mistaken for a boy’s. Medium is good… and yet, there is a tiny voice inside me that will always prefer Small. Small implies cute, toned, not quite so heavy-handed with the butter at mealtimes.
‘There’s only one way to find out,’ he said.
I tried them on. Perfect fit. Damn, my arse is that large. Ho-hum.
They look pretty swish, though, if I do say so myself. Cheers guys.
vendredi, septembre 15
On Columnists
“How are you?” my boyfriend asked. “I know it’s been a big day.”
“I gave one interview, but apart from that, it’s been quiet.” The second book was released in the UK yesterday, but so far things have been thankfully rather less hectic than last time round.
“Did you see the piece in the Telegraph the other day?” Now, as a habit I don’t read the Telegraph – after my unceremonious dumping at the Sunday Tele, I see little reason why their sister publication should get my money. But my boyfriend, for reasons related to his job, reads a lot of newspapers, so is generally more clued up about things – including (but not limited to) mentions of BdJ in the press – than I am.
“Missed that one.”
“Eh, just a columnist writing about sex bloggers,” he said. “Mentioned you, of course, bashed that other one, asked why people do it anonymously.”
I rolled my eyes. “That is so typical. So-called journalists find it easy to criticise people who do things they’ve never done.”
“Mmm.” His profession involves a surprisingly large amount of exactly that (the being criticised bit, not the criticising).
“I mean, think about the history of women’s sexual literature. Most of it has been written anonymously. Catherine M*, Pauline Reage**. Does anyone in the popular press stop to examine why? Of course not. The journalists can only see as far as the last new thing.” Marguerite Duras did not write anonymously, but she is one of a very few, and notable for the fact that she had little to protect in the way of family and non-writing career.
And had balls the size of Jupiter.
Do you wonder what it would take for women to be ‘empowered’ to ‘write under their real names’ (as the columnist so sloppily put it in the tacked-on feminist agenda of her final sentence)?
It would take fewer columns like hers for a start. It would take women’s writing being on an equal par with men’s – after all, Philip Roth can turn out an entire oeuvre about his masturbation habits and is feted as a giant of literature, while books by and for women are wrapped in brightly-coloured covers and published in paperback first (something I was appalled to see Abby Lee’s publisher had opted for, though in retrospect I bet they would choose differently).
It would take experienced, nuanced writers like Jenny Diski attracting more readers than whatever twentysomething male world-weariness (I’m looking at you, Bret Easton Ellis, Paul Auster and Alan Hollinghurst) happens to make it onto a page while people stand around applauding the author’s genius without ever making him work on his craft.
It would take the success and intellectual heft of Zadie Smith being the rule, not the exception. It would take women being feted by the media because they’re good writers, not because they look good. In short, it would take books like mine and Abby’s being a footnote, not the zeitgeist.
I’m not going to link to the column, because it’s the usual trash. There have been a hundred like it in the last year and will probably be a hundred more; I’m amazed people still earn money writing this crap. But really, someone who uses ‘had worked’ for ‘worked’ and ‘which’ for ‘that’ and starts a paragraph ‘so far, so (gerund)’ needs a good editor, as well as a sentimental education.
* - do you know what I love about my relationship with this man? It’s that now, because of me, he knows about Rufus Wainwright and The Story of O. (And because of him, I know about World of Warcraft and that I should leave cooking eggy bread to the experts.)
** - does it surpise anyone else that Reage wrote O because her lover commented that women were incapable of writing erotic novels... in 1954??? It was really that recently?
“How are you?” my boyfriend asked. “I know it’s been a big day.”
“I gave one interview, but apart from that, it’s been quiet.” The second book was released in the UK yesterday, but so far things have been thankfully rather less hectic than last time round.
“Did you see the piece in the Telegraph the other day?” Now, as a habit I don’t read the Telegraph – after my unceremonious dumping at the Sunday Tele, I see little reason why their sister publication should get my money. But my boyfriend, for reasons related to his job, reads a lot of newspapers, so is generally more clued up about things – including (but not limited to) mentions of BdJ in the press – than I am.
“Missed that one.”
“Eh, just a columnist writing about sex bloggers,” he said. “Mentioned you, of course, bashed that other one, asked why people do it anonymously.”
I rolled my eyes. “That is so typical. So-called journalists find it easy to criticise people who do things they’ve never done.”
“Mmm.” His profession involves a surprisingly large amount of exactly that (the being criticised bit, not the criticising).
“I mean, think about the history of women’s sexual literature. Most of it has been written anonymously. Catherine M*, Pauline Reage**. Does anyone in the popular press stop to examine why? Of course not. The journalists can only see as far as the last new thing.” Marguerite Duras did not write anonymously, but she is one of a very few, and notable for the fact that she had little to protect in the way of family and non-writing career.
And had balls the size of Jupiter.
Do you wonder what it would take for women to be ‘empowered’ to ‘write under their real names’ (as the columnist so sloppily put it in the tacked-on feminist agenda of her final sentence)?
It would take fewer columns like hers for a start. It would take women’s writing being on an equal par with men’s – after all, Philip Roth can turn out an entire oeuvre about his masturbation habits and is feted as a giant of literature, while books by and for women are wrapped in brightly-coloured covers and published in paperback first (something I was appalled to see Abby Lee’s publisher had opted for, though in retrospect I bet they would choose differently).
It would take experienced, nuanced writers like Jenny Diski attracting more readers than whatever twentysomething male world-weariness (I’m looking at you, Bret Easton Ellis, Paul Auster and Alan Hollinghurst) happens to make it onto a page while people stand around applauding the author’s genius without ever making him work on his craft.
It would take the success and intellectual heft of Zadie Smith being the rule, not the exception. It would take women being feted by the media because they’re good writers, not because they look good. In short, it would take books like mine and Abby’s being a footnote, not the zeitgeist.
I’m not going to link to the column, because it’s the usual trash. There have been a hundred like it in the last year and will probably be a hundred more; I’m amazed people still earn money writing this crap. But really, someone who uses ‘had worked’ for ‘worked’ and ‘which’ for ‘that’ and starts a paragraph ‘so far, so (gerund)’ needs a good editor, as well as a sentimental education.
* - do you know what I love about my relationship with this man? It’s that now, because of me, he knows about Rufus Wainwright and The Story of O. (And because of him, I know about World of Warcraft and that I should leave cooking eggy bread to the experts.)
** - does it surpise anyone else that Reage wrote O because her lover commented that women were incapable of writing erotic novels... in 1954??? It was really that recently?
jeudi, septembre 14
Five things I have, but don’t want:
Three spare beds. Don’t ask.
Every note and handout and book from my degree, ever. It’s not as if I look at them or anything, or they are remotely relevant to what I do now... just that they might be someday.
An entire cupboard filled with vacuum-packed and freeze-dried food (plus water purification tablets and stormproof matches). For camping. You know, for all the times I go and do that.
A gmail account. I am slightly suspicious of Google; also, can not be bothered to transfer contacts etc.
The ability to detect aspartame at homeopathic-level concentrations. I don’t care if you put vanilla, lime and a whole goddamn fruiterer in your soda. It still tastes crap to me. Doesn’t mean I won’t drink it, though.
Five things I want, but don’t have:
A storage space devoted to spare duvets, pillows, sheets and so forth (see above, re: spare beds. Note to self, could poss put where camping crap lives now?)
A sensible system for organising makeup and various other jars of girlystuff that is space-efficient, easy to dust, will fit on a smallish shelf and is both not pink and not made of f*!&ing seagrass.
More time in the morning, without the trouble of actually having to get up earlier. Half seven! That is the absolute limit and I will go no lower!
Someone who can turn my sale-bought Liberty fabrics into Roman blinds.
The ability to fly
Five things I don’t have and don’t want:
A husband. While the general course of my life makes me think it is perhaps inevitable, I will be dragged to the altar kicking and screaming.
Fine china, though I did buy a set of crystal champagne flutes. They have never been used, and currently reside in a box under the kitchen sink, next to the bleach.
A family member who is also my ‘best friend’.
A ‘signature scent’ (unless you count ‘mildly sweaty’).
A kitten
mercredi, septembre 13
lundi, septembre 11
Why I love my friends, number 54,807 in an infinite series of texts:
Ah Waitrose, so cool inside. Now would madam like cucumber, large cucumber or torpedo???
jeudi, septembre 7
I see by the numbers over on Amazon that my book is ranked something like 2 to the power of a hundred in US sales (for non-maths types, that's a very, very big number, and for pedants, a dramatic over-estimate for the sake of hyperbole.) Now I may be new to all of this but I believe that is an effort which has, to borrow the lingo, 'tanked.'
So I dashed a little note to the US publishers, suggesting perhaps a small investment in website advertising, on the sort of sites I enjoy reading (such as the ones in my links list, plus a few others). After all, if I'm not the target market here, who is? And websites charge far less than their print counterparts.
What cam back was an amazingly humourless response from the States, in which my request to delay the book launch (by a few weeks, and does not account for the fact that it was released 7 months after their original date) and reluctance to appear on Good Morning America (sorry, but what part of 'anonymous' do they not understand?) were named as the major factors in the book's poor performance.
I think the book's crap re-title, the sexy-for-idiots cover (I never, ever would wear fishnets to work. What am I, a fucking Rockette?) and the lack of visible marketing might be more of an influence, but hey, what do I know?
I was then presented a list of publicity that was done for the book, which so far as I could see consisted of notices on industry websites and little else. Oh, and of course the scathing, brief note in Entertainment Weekly (sort of like Heat for the North American set, I gather, but more deferential) which gave my efforts a D+. In short, the publishers felt they had done their part, and were giving up.
Frankly, I don't see why I should care about the opinions of a country where people think 'presently' means 'right now' and Starbucks is a national treasure. I can't really argue with the opinion of a reviewer who gave my book such an appalling score, but rates In Her Shoes as a B. So I don't have a story arc. My tale does not have a lesson (apart from, perhaps, if someone asks you to write a book, don't say no). I am not Oprah-ready and primed for interview by dazzlingly white-toothed news actors. I am meant to appear Good Morning America like coconut is meant to appear on pizza*. One reviewer didn't see Jesus on that one. Not a big deal. But someone, somewhere, would probably like the book well enough to buy it, and probably in reasonable numbers; after all, Jessica Cutler isn't exactly starving, is she? She appeared in Playboy, not on some toothless housewife morning show. That, friends, is how a sex blogger should be sold.You know, to people who like sex first thing in the morning, not stories about miracle twins.
* Although you can be sure that somewhere, someone has put coconut on pizza, and it is probably in America.
Anyway. I think the US publisher's response is rubbish. My people here soldiered on bravely in the face of endless critical rubbishing, and the book managed to shift a respectable number of copies, because truly when your fifteen minutes are numbered there is no such thing as bad publicity. My relentless representative on this front, Emma at W&N, literally nags people until they cave (myself included). She is the dog's bollocks.
My corresponding canine anatomical analysis of the US publisher will have to be left to your imagination.
So I dashed a little note to the US publishers, suggesting perhaps a small investment in website advertising, on the sort of sites I enjoy reading (such as the ones in my links list, plus a few others). After all, if I'm not the target market here, who is? And websites charge far less than their print counterparts.
What cam back was an amazingly humourless response from the States, in which my request to delay the book launch (by a few weeks, and does not account for the fact that it was released 7 months after their original date) and reluctance to appear on Good Morning America (sorry, but what part of 'anonymous' do they not understand?) were named as the major factors in the book's poor performance.
I think the book's crap re-title, the sexy-for-idiots cover (I never, ever would wear fishnets to work. What am I, a fucking Rockette?) and the lack of visible marketing might be more of an influence, but hey, what do I know?
I was then presented a list of publicity that was done for the book, which so far as I could see consisted of notices on industry websites and little else. Oh, and of course the scathing, brief note in Entertainment Weekly (sort of like Heat for the North American set, I gather, but more deferential) which gave my efforts a D+. In short, the publishers felt they had done their part, and were giving up.
Frankly, I don't see why I should care about the opinions of a country where people think 'presently' means 'right now' and Starbucks is a national treasure. I can't really argue with the opinion of a reviewer who gave my book such an appalling score, but rates In Her Shoes as a B. So I don't have a story arc. My tale does not have a lesson (apart from, perhaps, if someone asks you to write a book, don't say no). I am not Oprah-ready and primed for interview by dazzlingly white-toothed news actors. I am meant to appear Good Morning America like coconut is meant to appear on pizza*. One reviewer didn't see Jesus on that one. Not a big deal. But someone, somewhere, would probably like the book well enough to buy it, and probably in reasonable numbers; after all, Jessica Cutler isn't exactly starving, is she? She appeared in Playboy, not on some toothless housewife morning show. That, friends, is how a sex blogger should be sold.You know, to people who like sex first thing in the morning, not stories about miracle twins.
* Although you can be sure that somewhere, someone has put coconut on pizza, and it is probably in America.
Anyway. I think the US publisher's response is rubbish. My people here soldiered on bravely in the face of endless critical rubbishing, and the book managed to shift a respectable number of copies, because truly when your fifteen minutes are numbered there is no such thing as bad publicity. My relentless representative on this front, Emma at W&N, literally nags people until they cave (myself included). She is the dog's bollocks.
My corresponding canine anatomical analysis of the US publisher will have to be left to your imagination.
mardi, septembre 5
It's that time again... the pre-book-launch, nail-biting, stomach-churning, panic-ridden time.
This time around, I have no illusions of what to expect. No one will give the book a good review, apart perhaps from the odd positive notice in a glossy mag (dear Company magazine: I love you guys). No one will believe I'm a woman (think about it, people - if I was fantasising, don't you think I'd make myself more orgasmic? I come, like, once every three times I have sex, tops,that's one reason why I don't tolerate low frequency of sex very well; and the average is a lot less if you count the work-related screws). If you look on Amazon at the reader reviews for the last book, that's typical of people's reactions - five stars, or one. Love it or hate it. And I have never been, will never be,the darling of the bloggers... if the Times turn up unexpectedly on my doorstep one morning, you can bet folding money that they will not be having a whip-round in my support. It'll be all smug 'well she had it coming' and 'serves her right'.
I can't win hearts and minds here, I know that. When I decided not to write about the book deal, bloggers were critical, claiming it was proof this was all a scam. When I did, people said it was cynical drum-beating to pump up sales. Whatever.
In preparation for the book launch, and as a little treat for myself, I've shot town for the duration. Am staying in a b&b in another city, keeping my head down, just in case. The odds are that this time around few people will be bothered; however, you can never be too careful.
I've packed jeans, t-shirts, a few skirts, trainers, and a ridiculous pair of heels that should never see the light ofcity streets, much less cobbled ones. A cashmere jumper or two and a new jacket that treads, I think, the fine line between practical and cute. A new handbag. An effing huge pair of sunglasses. The obligatory late-summer brolly.
The b&b is nice. Not too twee, not too shabby (but justshabby enough). Good bed, dark at night, quiet. There's an Alsatian mix which sitsin the garden out front - this morning he was there, regally ignoring the rain. I love dogs. It's not home, but it's not bad.
Plus, it's nice to have someone else doing the laundry for a change.
This time around, I have no illusions of what to expect. No one will give the book a good review, apart perhaps from the odd positive notice in a glossy mag (dear Company magazine: I love you guys). No one will believe I'm a woman (think about it, people - if I was fantasising, don't you think I'd make myself more orgasmic? I come, like, once every three times I have sex, tops,that's one reason why I don't tolerate low frequency of sex very well; and the average is a lot less if you count the work-related screws). If you look on Amazon at the reader reviews for the last book, that's typical of people's reactions - five stars, or one. Love it or hate it. And I have never been, will never be,the darling of the bloggers... if the Times turn up unexpectedly on my doorstep one morning, you can bet folding money that they will not be having a whip-round in my support. It'll be all smug 'well she had it coming' and 'serves her right'.
I can't win hearts and minds here, I know that. When I decided not to write about the book deal, bloggers were critical, claiming it was proof this was all a scam. When I did, people said it was cynical drum-beating to pump up sales. Whatever.
In preparation for the book launch, and as a little treat for myself, I've shot town for the duration. Am staying in a b&b in another city, keeping my head down, just in case. The odds are that this time around few people will be bothered; however, you can never be too careful.
I've packed jeans, t-shirts, a few skirts, trainers, and a ridiculous pair of heels that should never see the light ofcity streets, much less cobbled ones. A cashmere jumper or two and a new jacket that treads, I think, the fine line between practical and cute. A new handbag. An effing huge pair of sunglasses. The obligatory late-summer brolly.
The b&b is nice. Not too twee, not too shabby (but justshabby enough). Good bed, dark at night, quiet. There's an Alsatian mix which sitsin the garden out front - this morning he was there, regally ignoring the rain. I love dogs. It's not home, but it's not bad.
Plus, it's nice to have someone else doing the laundry for a change.
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