Cheers!

I was all ready for Beaujolais night in The Madrid -then I remembered what happened last time . Here's an excerpt from Surf Mama....


"When I woke up that morning I didn’t feel great. In fact I was hoping I was still asleep, and having a nightmare about the worst hangover in the world. It was the morning after the Beaujolais night party in the village. Nobody ever drinks Beaujolais Nouveau on any other night of the year except the night the new vintage is released, for the simple reason that it’s not very nice. That’s why we feel obliged to drink a whole year’s ration in one go, to keep the grape pickers and vineyard owners in business. It takes about 364 days to get over the hangover, then we do it all over again the following year.

I was finding it hard to accept that a person of my age and maturity could be stupid enough to make themselves feel so ill, so I was lying in bed looking for someone or something else to blame. Perhaps I’d been drugged, or it was the sulphates in the wine. Maybe I’d had an allergic reaction to the colouring in the one slice of chorizo I’d eaten during the evening. Perhaps it was the fault of the twenty-something-year-old longboarder who had insisted on buying me one for the road.

Then the phone rang. It was Johanna telling me that she and the Mamas Surf Club were heading down to the bay of Saint-Jean for a surf. I could hear the waves from my window, half a mile inland, which could have been a warning sign for anyone in the mood to listen. But I was remembering the theory that fresh air and salt water are a perfect hangover cure,. I was too hungover to paint anyway. Actually I was too hungover to drink a cup of tea, which (if I wasn’t suffering from surf addiction) might also have told me something.

For the second time in twelve hours I gave into temptation. (Not the third, just for the record.) I couldn’t feel any worse, I thought optimistically as I went into the garden to get my wetsuit,which was damp and slightly rigid with frost.

But it’s always a mistake to think you can’t feel any worse. OK, maybe technically I didn’t feel any worse. Maybe I felt exactly the same, except that instead of being in bed I was about a mile out to sea with two-metre waves breaking all around me and a gale-force wind blowing me out towards the sea wall. It hit me about half an hour too late that when the world is spinning around you, your head is about to explode and drinking water makes you feel queasy, it might be a good idea to be lying under your duvet with an Alka-Seltzer and a phone beside you with SOS Médecins on speed dial. It might not be quite such a good idea to be sitting in the ocean like a shipwreck survivor on a nine-foot piece of fibre glass, attached to your leg by a strip of Velcro. I’ve never thought Velcro was much good as a fastening for a gym slip or a hospital gown, and now I was relying on it to get me home in one piece.

I was no longer able to justify my behaviour by thinking I’m a surfer. I started thinking I’m completely mad.

It was a very dramatic and beautiful scene. One side of the sky was bright blue, the other piled up with black storm clouds. The candy-pink casinos and hotels of Saint-Jean-de-Luz curved round the bay with snow-covered mountains behind. The waves rolled in from the Bay of Biscay, crashing over the sea wall and sending plumes of spray into the sky as they made their way towards me. I kept paddling further and further from the impact zone, until I could no longer hear my cheerful healthy surf buddies laughing and yelling, ‘Paddle harder, Wilma.’ I’d given up on the idea of catching a wave long ago, I was just hoping to get through the session without embarrassing myself by throwing up in the water or dying.

The icing on the cake was the guilt trip I was putting myself through wondering what would

happen if I did die of alcohol poisoning out here. I would leave three motherless children to fend for themselves in a harsh world, just because I got carried away chatting up a Californian longboarder half my age. I could see the headlines in the local paper: ‘Englishwoman Wins Posthumous Bad Parenting Award’, ‘Selfish Cougar Lost at Sea’.

The swell was building and I didn’t seem to be able to find a calm spot. When I almost got hit by a dead cormorant I decided it was time to call it a day and paddled into the beach. It’s a bit of a cop out to go in without even trying to take a wave, but sometimes its better to cop out than cop it. I made it back on to dry land, but I was so cold and weak that I couldn’t get my wetsuit off and I had to ask the Mamas for help, which was a bit pathetic and humiliating. I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a bubble bath so much; it was a bit like a back-to-front Badedas ad.

But the surf cure worked, even if it was a bit extreme, because a few hours later I felt energetic enough to go to a Zumba class. And of course the next time I had a hangover, I did exactly the same thing and I was fine, so now I’m thinking that perhaps it was the additives in the wine after all.

Surf Mama on Tour

Old Fashioned Daisy with Hello Kitty

The first event on the Surf Mama official book tour was Port Eliot literary festival in Cornwall. A river runs through the grounds of the Port Eliot, and I was appearing in the Idler tent on the riverbank, so I couldn’t resist the idea of arriving on a surfboard. I know I was bitching about the tough life of an aspiring bikini model in my last blog, but it did seem like a good opportunity to show off out my new improved swimwear selection.  I asked  Old Fashioned Daisy, my beloved daughter, to come along and sing La Mer as I paddled up the estuary. Its a lovely old french song written by Charles Trenet on a train in 1946 on SNCF toilet paper.

It had been a long time since Daisy and I had been camping together, and it brought back memories of her childhood, when we travelled round Europe in a rusting camper van.

The idea of a camper van as I understand it, is that you throw in your surfboard, a six pack of beer, and a tube of insect repellent and head for the freedom of the open road.

I don’t like to talk about my ex-husband for personal and legal reasons, but I don’t think he can sue me for saying that he wasn’t great at travelling light...

Of course we started with the beer, the jungle formula and the surfboards - his not mine as I was still a surf widow and an earthmother at the time. But he was easily bored on dry land, so we also had to pack a huge plastic trunk full of diving gear to keep him happy during flat spells, which took up most of the floor space of the van. But this was only the beginning - the starting point for the trip was usually an exhibition in some foreign port, so we also had to fit about twenty paintings in the van. Then of course there were the three kids, mattresses, airbeds, sleeping bags, several tents, the inbuilt cooker and the kitchen sink. Any idea of stopping spontaneously at a deserted beach and leaving nothing but footprints was out of the question. It was more like the circus coming to town, with awnings and a variety of extra tents for the children, the paintings and the extreme sports equipment.

These trips were not exactly the jolly family holidays you might be imagining - we did a lot of our splitting up in campsites round France and Spain. It was more as if an Enid Blyton book had fallen accidentally into the hands of Werner Herzog, or some other dark and twisted film director. The soundtrack would be the vans ancient cassette machine crackling out Tom Waites Bourbon soaked drawl, or Ledbelly and his chain-gang chorus singing the blues. This would be interspersed with my ridiculous attempts at home schooling the kids in Gaelic - a language I could neither understand or pronounce. I ploughed my way through ‘Mici and Ruarc go for a Picnic’ as if it was an epic irish poem - but at least my hilarious accent provided the kids with a bit of light relief - a distraction from their parents swilling back vast quantities of wine, pastis and sinister Basque liqueurs and chucking the plastic dinner service round the awning.

So our trip to Port Eliot was a cathartic experience. As we were going to Port Eliot by train, we had to leave behind not only the emotional baggage but a lot of the other baggage as well.

Choices had to be made -we left the air mattresses in favour of Daisy’s make-up case, and took three litres of mineral water instead of sleeping bags, as if Cornwall might have fallen victim to sudden desertification. Travelling with water is one of my vices, it makes travelling light almost impossible, but I am not a good traveling companion when I’m thirsty, in fact I am not a good person at all. 

One thing we couldn’t leave behind was the Hello Kitty tent. You’re probably thinking this was a family heirloom dating back to Daisy’s childhood and those original camping trips, but in fact I had bought it off the internet the day before. The irony was lost on my daughter - “Maybe a bit close to home mum,” she muttered darkly, “Remember its not quite such a long time since I was a child as you.” 

lets get our  heels on and go to the bouncy castle

It was a bit of an impulse buy, I admit. After a couple of hours on the internet, wading through pages and pages of khaki and RAF blue tents, I was beginning to wonder if I would accidentally signed up to the armed forces if I ticked the wrong box. So when the flash of bubble gum pink flickered onto the screen, with the magic words seventy percent off written underneath, I gave in to girly temptation.

The journey down was a nightmare as the train was full to bursting and the only place to sit was on the floor outside the toilet - I suggested to Daisy that she could right a song, but we both agreed that British Rail toilet paper lacked glamour. When we arrived at the festival with the tent and not much else, Daisy and I realised that we had forgotten anything we ever knew about pitching camp. Perhaps it was some sort of repressed memory syndrome.

It should have been simple, in fact it should have been child’s play - there was warning sticker on the tent stating “This is Not a Toy”, but I rather think it was. After some bad experiences on Brownsea Island with Chaffinch patrol, I had avoided sending Daisy to Girl Guides, but I slightly regretted this as I watched her wielding a mallet in her high heels.

As we tripped over the guy ropes, a good looking young surfer in a panama hat stopped, and having overheard our conversation, joined in firmly on her side.

“Oh God, what are you trying to do to your daughter?” George Stoy laughed, “Make her revert to childhood because you can’t cope with the idea of her being a grown woman?”

“No, really, it was 70% off at Argos, ” I protested, hoping he hadn’t struck on a disturbing truth.

“Come on, Daisy lets get a beer, ” I said as we finished, to prove that I saw her as an equal, “…..and afterwards I’ll take you to find the bouncy castle.”

I decided to give my Juanita wetsuit another chance, and it did stay on better without waves.

air beds are for wimps

These may look like easy surf conditions to those of you used to photos of Hawaii or Teahupoo, but believe me it was very hard to land without running aground on a mud bank and arriving at the Idler Academy looking like I’d just written a book on naked mud-wrestling.

It was rather chilly when I got out of the water, so I slung on the coat Daisy was wearing, which happened to be a vintage fur fabric coats from my youth.  I made them for the Neo Naturists to avoid us catching cold or getting arrested after cabarets, but worked equally well for après surf, and I was very pleased with the way my outfit fitted in with the story of my book, which is all about my transformation from performance artist to surfer. I wasn’t wearing anything from the earthmother years in between - probably a good thing thinking back to my mumsy wardrobe of nursing bras, baggy shirts and leggings- but this period of my life was represented by Daisy singing La Mer in her angelic voice as I walked in. You wouldn’t necessarily guess that she had been brought up in an Irish farmhouse on organic vegetables - she looked more as if she’d been brought up in the Chelsea Hotel or a 20s Speakeasy. I was full of maternal pride -although it had been a rather uncomfortable night, I saw that it had definitely been the right decision to bring the make-up case instead of the air mattress.

Daisy wondered if Surf Mama would ever grow up

a restorative jug of Pimms after the paddle

To be continued.…….

My Baywatch Life

What was I worried about? At least I didn't have a squid on my head 

It’s been a long time since my last blog - this is because I’ve been finishing my book Surf Mama. This has meant that on the very rare occasions when I wasn’t working or asleep, the last thing I felt like doing was writing, and also I would have had very little to blog about anyway …..I used to think that thing about reclusive writers was a bit of a myth, but this winter I’ve felt like Howard Hughes without the chequebook.

 I felt obliged to go surfing occasionally, to live up to the title of the book. But I only went out at night about three times, spending my evenings trying out different flavours of herb tea, watching Grey’s Anatomy and Gossip Girl to remind myself of the dangers of leaving the house. When I did venture out after dark I behaved like an explorer who has been lost in the Sahara and suddenly stumbles on an oasis. I drank everything in sight and woke up feeling it had been a mistake to leave the safety of my bedroom.

When I finally finished the book, it was a bit of a shock to find out that I had to undergo a complete character transformation to become extrovert, well-spoken, and photogenic for the ‘book tour’. 

Colette - hotter than Pammy 

I decided that I needed a literary muse, and I was just trying to decide whether to style myself on Charlotte Bronte or Colette when the phone rang.

It was the Mail on Sunday - I’d written an article for them and they were ringing to tell me that they were sending over a photographer. I was to meet him next morning on the Grand Plage with a ‘selection of swimwear’.

It was a bit like an anxiety nightmare. Here I was emerging from my hermits cave, like a bear in springtime blinking in the sunlight, and I was expected to turn into a bikini model overnight. 
I quickly changed my literary muse to Pamela Anderson. It was a bit short notice to have silicon implants or perfect my slow motion run across the sand, but I felt I owed it to my role model to try and make my body as smooth and hairless as a Barbie doll. I leafed frantically through the Writers Yearbook for advice on emergency Brazilian waxing, but found it very unhelpful, so I ran down to Petit Casino and bought a razor called Venus Goddess, which sounded promising. But I couldn’t help wondering whether I had abandoned my youthful ideals as I remembered the days when I was young and angry, and I thought I could change the world by not shaving my armpits.

Then I went into Biarritz to improve my ‘selection of swim wear’ which consisted of bikini top, bikini bottom and slightly ripped swimsuit for the pool. I panic bought the kind of vintage black swimsuit which all women over size 0 go for, because we think it makes us looks like  fifties movie stars.

By the look on the photographers face I guess that he doesn’t agree.… maybe I look more like a Sicilian widow on a day trip to Palermo.

“Oh God no! you can’t wear a black swimsuit … it’s a summer story.… you know happy...fun.…colourful”

I try to insist, selling him the slimming and timeless quality of the little black swimsuit.

“There’s no point me even getting my camera out if you wear black,” he laughs, “they’ll never print it.” Black on the beach is apparently too gothic, too subversive or too The Godmother for a cheerful summer story about a housewife trading in her baking tray for a bar of Sex Wax.  I skip around obligingly in my pink bikini and tourquoise rash vest, trying to keep my smile looking natural by looking at the houses on the cliff above the beach and deciding which one to buy when my book becomes a bestseller.

We have another slight difference of opinion about which order to do the pictures. I try to convince him to let me surf first and frolic in the foam afterwards, because the waves are perfect now, if a bit on the big side and I can see its going to get out of control later. He points out that we have to do dry hair first and wet hair after, because neither of us have had the presence of mind to bring a hairdryer to the beach. 

Again, he wins the argument I must be getting a bit submissive in my old age. The next bit is one of those ‘dreams come true and turn into nightmares’ scenarios.…. 

Every surfer’s fantasy of being one of the privileged people who are ‘ paid to be on the beach.”, pro surfers who fly around the world from one palm fringed beach to the next with their job being to go for a surf with a photographer in tow.

The difference between me and them of course is that I’m not a pro surfer, and surfing on command is a lot harder than I’d thought. I was right about the timing, the wind has gone onshore and now I’m looking out at the windswept shorebreak crashing onto a sand bar, wondering how the hell I’m going to get through it when the photographer says … “Oh, don’t forget to look at the camera and smile.”

I risk my life paddling out and take a heroic wave, only to be told that his zoom isn’t big enough, and can I have to surf closer in. Which means surfing in the mousse slaloming through kids in the surf school, swimmers and rocks and trying to stay on the board, smile and hold my tummy in all at the same time.

Linda looking ok in black togs

The last is a bit pointless as my brand new neoprene swimsuit is taking on water, either because it’s designed for posing not surfing or because it was the last one in the shop and its three sizes too small. It’s called “Juanita”, so I’m obviously meant to look like a hot Latina surf chick, but with a balloon of water round my waist I feel more like a pregnant sea mammal.

“This one’s not bad .…. except you’re not smiling,” he says like an exasperated school teacher .

And I look like I’m just about to give birth to an adorable big eyed seal pup, I think to myself. I don’t say it aloud, because he’s one of those silver haired photographer types who hang out in war zones that I’ve always thought I should date. I never have, probably because I try not to hang out in war zones myself, but it still doesn’t seem like a good idea to put the pregnant seal image in his head. 

It’s usually hard to get me out of the water, but its getting harder to smile by the minute so I’m quite relieved when he says “I think this ones okay..….”

I’m surfing like crap, but he’s already told me the readers won’t be surfers.

“Can you photoshop my tummy?”

We decide to call it a day and go to lunch, where he tells me about his white knuckle experiences on the front line and I tell him about my white knuckle experiences with the Mamas surf club.

By the end of the day I have a new respect for bikini models,  but it’s bloody hard work, and I’m not surprised that they don’t get out of bed for less than ten grand, as supermodel Linda Evangelista famously said.

Surf Mama

Surf Mama is out now, published by Beautiful Books.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Surf-Mama-Wilma-Johnson/dp/1907616217

Smile

It was an exciting moment when a package of catalogues arrived from Beautiful Books with my book Surf Mama in them. But I had to take a tea break when I saw that Anthony Burgess was on the same page as me. It felt like the literary equivalent of what happened to me on the beach the other day.….

When I described my local beach as being a place where you could “shoot the swimwear issue of Sports Illustrated without hiring models.” I thought it gave a good idea of the atmosphere, but I didn’t mean it literally.… 

Then a few weeks ago I got a call from my friend Maia who was over on a surf trip. We go back to neo-naturist days, but our backgrounds are a bit different . She’s a classic Californian surf babe - while I was hanging round the crouch end Lido waiting for the invention of the wave machine, she was a bodysurfing champion in Orange County. She also has her own deluxe sportswear line, Mother of Pearl , so I don’t try to keep up with her apres surf style either.

She called me to tell me there were some nice waves in the bay, and why didn’t I come and join her and the girls.…..?

I was working in the studio, but I find the muse tends to leave me pretty quickly when I hear the words ‘nice waves.’ It’s like telling an alcoholic there’s a nice bottle of Malt whiskey on the table next door. I can keep going through the motions, but my mind is elsewhere.

As I said, I don’t try to compete. My motto is  If you can’t beat them, don’t waste energy trying, so I go for a 90s grunge revival look - I check my face for paint stains, and leave without changing, luckily I notice just as I leave that my hair is tied up with an old sock. I don’t even bother to raid Daisy’s make-up case for waterproof mascara - it’s a break you surf about half a mile out and I don’t think anyone will be able to check out my eyelashes from that distance.

But it turns out that what Maia really meant to say was, “Why don’t you come down and meet me and the supermodels?“

She’s waiting for me with two Hawaiian surfers who have both featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimwear Issue. They’re the sort of women who make those lists you read in Hello! magazine in the doctors waiting room.... The World’s Most Beautiful Women, Sexiest, Best Dressed, Best Undressed. The sort of women who get paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to be photographed in bikinis.

I’ve had my moments - I was Miss St. Martins one year, in a very fetching mermaid tail and tourquoise bodypaint, and I once entered the hallowed portal of the Sun Page Three studio. Again in was in the name of performance art.….. The neo-naturists were invited for a whacky women type photoshoot, and accepted, thinking we could destroy the system from the inside. But we ended up arguing with the photographer because he wanted us to keep our knickers on and we refused on principle. Luckily it was before the days of photoshop, otherwise they’d have cut and pasted some saucy lace thongs on, and we’d have had a legal battle on our hands proving that we were in fact naked.….

I’m not going to put myself down, I still look okay in the right light - about 25 watts. If I was in the Crouch End lido over fifties swimsuit parade, I might have a shot at a place on the podium …. but I’m a bit out of my league here.  I hadn’t even started the Zumba classes, so I wasn’t sure if was necessary for Maia to get out a camera as I struggled into my body firming neoprene babygro as quickly as I could.

Even so, I was coping, my ego was down but not out.  Then a surfer I’d had a crush on for a while came over, ostensibly to take a picture of us all together.

“Where are you girls from?” He asked smoothly.

Why did Hawaii that sound so much more glamourous than Highgate suddenly? The North Shore so much more hardcore than North London?

“I live just up the road, I met you at that party on the beach....” His eyed flicker over for a split second of faint recognition.

“Oh yeah,” he says quickly, before turning back to the others. “So.….. where are you girls from again?”

Then he points the camera towards us and says “Smile”. I see then that it wouldn’t have worked out anyway, he’s obviously not very smart … I mean smile? What do I have to smile about standing here between Miss September and Miss February in my studio underwear?

No, he’d have to have given me something more concrete to smile about than that.

I know, I know. I was being hypersensitive.… I mean it’s not all about how we look in our bikinis is it? Of course not! I thought afterwards, next time I see him, I’ll tell him that I’m really good at drawing, because I know that’s important to men too.…..

Off the Road

Beer in Normandy

Someone just reminded me that it’s been six weeks since I last posted a blog, leaving me in meltdown in Montmartre. You probably think I’m stuck on an endless loop round the Paris  ring road, especially if you’ve ever seen me trying to read a map. It did come quite close to happening.…. I thought at one point that if I passed the Last Exit to Versailles one more time, I might have to turn off and take tea in the Trianon with the headless ghost of Marie Antoinette. I could see a big four poster waiting for me with a sheperdhess outfit laid out on the counterpane and a bottle of champagne on the bedside table. But that might have been the cortisone talking.

I did finally escape the chic-est burbs in the world, and one day I’ll tell you the whole story of my Grand Tour of the ringroads and service stations of France. But for the moment let’s just say that I got home four days later with the feeling that I might have a nervous breakdown if I ever had to drive on a French motorway or listen to Willie Nelsons Greatest Hits again.…..

The real reason I haven’t had time to write much more exciting ……. I’ve finally got a publisher for my book Surf Mama, and I’ve been busy finishing it. 

It’s even more exciting because it had been rejected 21 times. Of course I know that you should never give up, but I’m a Pisces girl, and there are moments when we get tempted to swim downstream. Everyone tells you that lot of bestsellers have had their fair share of rejection - 21 times is exactly the same as the Dubliners, Gone with the Wind was rejected 38 times and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance 121 times. But a tiny little logical corner of my brain was telling me that there are a lot of other books that have been rejected 21 times, which you’ve never heard of for the simple reason that they never got published.

I found my dog eating the Writers Year Book this morning, and had a bit of a laugh at my systematic, highlighted attack on the UK Agents section. I was working my way through them in order - starting with ones who mentioned a specific interest in women surfing and bodypainted performance art and working my way down.

By the end of the year there were margin notes reading . Rewrite as fiction? Rewrite as historical novel? Rewrite as cookbook? Become glamour model and re-write? Marry footballer and re-write?

Then I moved on to those sites telling you that your cover letter is The Most Important Thing you’ll ever write, and you start obsessing with the idea that a comma in the right place, the perfect envelope, the right mixture of confidence and grovelling desperation will change your life forever . You see yourself as the new J.K Rowling and take a coffee break to plan which records you’ll choose for Desert Island Discs.

Cocktails in Mayfair

Then you find another site that tells you that whoever had the time to waste writing ‘How to write the perfect cover letter’ must have been an unpublished author, so you shouldn’t listen to them. Then you wonder who had the time to write this, and you start getting a headache. You see a future of embittered boredom stretching out in front of you, delete “Cover letter #37” and go for a surf.

So here’s how it happened in the end. Looking back I see a scary Sliding Doors scenario where this so easily could never have happened and I’d be on Cover letter #786 by now…..

There’s a moral in there somewhere... something like never give up on a party.

I was London and I had a rendez-vous with Sophie Parking for cocktails in Jermyn Street followed by a party in Picadilly . But I’d forgotten write down the number,  so I walked up and down the street for a while hoping to bump into her or hear the sound of ice-cubes chinking through an open window. So many men asked me if I’d got the time that I started thinking someone could make a bit of money setting up a watch shop round here. Then it clicked that I was in Mayfair wearing a low-cut red shirt and high heels. I wasn’t sure whether to be insulted to be taken for a hooker or flattered to be offered the best rates in London. I got out my notebook and wrote under Plan C. Watch shop in Jermyn Street? Prostitute?

I was about to give up and go home, but I passed by the Colony Rooms on the way to the tube and stopped in for a cup of Horlicks. As Dick stirred some marshmallows into my cup and got out the digestive biscuits, a kind stranger at the bar got out his phone and tracked Sophie down to the Embassy Club, at a party hosted by the legendary nightclub host Robert Pereno.

I’ve never met Robert before, but I could see where he’d got his reputation as a perfect host and homme fatal. He greeted me with a glass of champagne and an invitation to come downstairs and see the Burlesque strip show. I accepted the champagne, but passed on the strippers as I live on a naturist beach.

Twist my arm

We’ve been friends since that night, and the evening before my fiftieth birthday he called me up. I was in the middle of an existential crisis, to party or not to party was the question that had been driving my children crazy for the last few weeks - or years according to them. I was trying to decide what to buy myself as a present.….. champagne and tapas, or a pot of anti-wrinkle cream and a bottle of Greican 2000. It was another Pisces upstream/downstream choice I guess.

“I’m working at a publishing company called Beautiful Books. I’m handing the phone to my boss Simon Petherick. Sell him him your book.”

“Not now Robert! I’m trying to decide whether to spend my last fifty euros on Veuve Cliquot or pro-youth everlasting youth serum.”

“Here he is.”

Anyone who knows me will know that I’m the worlds worst salesman, I couldn’t sell a bottle of Perrier in the Sahara desert, but I really outdid myself this time.…. 

I shared my party dilemma with him, and then said something along the lines of;  “I’m not sure whether I should send it - I’m thinking of marrying a footballer and rewriting it in the chick-lit thriller genre to make it more commercial.….”

He said, “Have the party and send me the book.”

Surf Mama comes out next June.

Houston We Have A Problem

Icelandic volcanoes have had a bad press recently, and when Europe was plunged into chaos by the eruption of Eyjafjallajoekull last month, I joined in the general anti-volcano mood

But I’m secretly a big fan of Icelandic volcanoes, and it brought back happy memories of my past life as an amateur vulcanologist and my first attempt at the ‘circumnavigation of Iceland’ in 1983 - the highlight of my career as a hitch hiker.

I used to hitch to Scotland a lot with my friend Mo. We went further and further north into the highlands, and one day we decided to follow the arrow pointing off the top of our map which said “To Reykjavik.’

We didn’t know much about Iceland, and we’d never met anyone who’d been there, so we had no idea what to expect. I did a bit of reading before I left, but I’m not a very practical traveller, so I stuck to Norse legends and medieval Icelandic sagas. Hitching across the North Sea has never been easy, and since the Cod War it’s impossible, so we got as far Glasgow and took a cheap flight. 

Arriving in Keflavik airport was like landing on the moon. There was no vegetation and no sign of habitation, just endless lava fields stretching from one horizon to another. After a while you get to appreciate the volcanic plains - the landscape of surrealists from Salvador Dali to Frida Kahlo. But as we drove from the airport it looked like a vast expanse of brown rubble.

It was May and it never got darker than dusk, but there was snow on the ground and I was glad to be wearing a floor length fur fabric coat I’d run up for the expedition. Mo was a fashion designer and was wearing a slightly more chic version she’d bought in a shop.

Some people reach for a cup of tea in a crisis, others reach for a beer. I find tannin keeps me awake at night, so we headed into the city centre looking for a bar. The only sign of life was a hot-dog stand, so we sat beside it looking over a frozen lake, drinking beer and wondering where the Viking warriors hung out.

I drank one can and opened another, but it didn’t seem to be hitting the spot. I wasn’t asking much - I wasn’t looking for third eye vision, cosmic trances or sweet oblivion. I just wanted something to take the edge of the fact that I’d just spent all the money from my first London show coming on holiday to a frozen lunar wasteland. I studied the beer can, as you do when you’re a bit depressed - and realised that it was non-alcoholic. I went back to the hot-dog stand.

“There’s a problem with this beer - it has no alcohol in it.”

“All beer in Icelandic is non-alcoholic” the man laughed, as if I was a bit of a half-wit. “Beer is illegal.”

Prohibition in the land of Vikings? They can’t have done all that rape and pillage, and discovered America on lemonade.

No, he explains, only beer is illegal. Hard alcohol is legal.….Vodka, Whiskey, Gin, and the local spirit-Black Death brinnivin.

“Okay, I’ll start with a shot of Black Death, please.”

But here’s the catch - there are only seven off licenses in the country and they’re closed for the week-end. 

Houston we have a problem.….. we’ve landed on the moon and there’s no beer.

If drinking was complicated, hitch-hiking looked fairly straight forward, as there was only one main road, which circled the island. The only decision we had to make was whether to take it clockwise or anti-clockwise. We headed South, reasoning that it might be a bit warmer, as it was slightly further from the arctic circle.

But although it was marked as a main road the tarmac ran out at Reykjavik city limits. It gave way to a dirt track, which took us through multi coloured lava fields, purple, black, orange, brown, some covered with velvety green moss, some dusted with snow. Now and then we’d go through a ‘town’ - a strip of tarmac, and a garage where locals congregate to eat hot dogs and drink alcohol free beer. 

We got as far as a place called Vik. If you like uncrowded beaches this could be your ideal holiday destination, with miles of long black pumice beaches, which are completely deserted apart from colonies of vicious arctic skuas which dive bomb you if you get too near their nests. I think they might have mistaken us for aggressive predators in our fur coats and it became a bit like an art house remake of The Birds.

We were keen to move on, but the road seemed very empty even by wilderness standards. Eventually a farmer in a pick-up truck stopped.

“Where are you going?”

“Anywhere, really.”

“There’s nowhere to go - the road will be closed for months.”

“Why?”

“The skafatfjell glacier is up ahead - it’s the third biggest ice mass in the world. It melts in spring and the road will be impassable for months.”

We’re not easily put off, but even the best prepared travellers sometimes have to admit defeat.

Feeling a bit like Shakleton in Antarctica, we abandoned the circumnavigation of the island, bought another hot-dog and headed back to Reykjavik.

The next morning we set out round the Hringvegur anti-clockwise. We got a bit further this time, past the northern city of Akureyri and the waterfall of the Gods, and on to the shores of lake Myvatn. 

We had plenty of time to admire the extraordinary volcanic landscape, as we stood at a junction in the road for most of the day. People stopped to talk, and give us pieces of dried cod to chew on, or pour a medicinal cocktail from the boot of their car. We were conveniently placed next to a hot spring which we warm our hands on in the long gaps between cars, which lowered the risk of frostbite.

Then in the late afternoon an old white van stopped and a group of men in white lab and horn rimmed glasses got out.

“Where are you going? Don’t you know the road is closed until August?”

We should have guessed, but it seemed strange that no-one had bothered to tell us. Maybe they thought we made added a decorative element to their village, like a couple of glamourous garden gnomes, and they’d just leave us there till summer.

“We’re on our way to the research centre. Get in the van and we’ll take you over the hill. ”

“I’m not sure if we want to go over the hill.”

“You have to go over the hill.” They said, bundling us into the back of the van, which was full of test tubes, bunsen burners and other chemistry-set paraphernalia.

When Irish monks discovered Iceland in the sixth century, they thought they’d reached the ‘edge of hell’ and turned back without landing their curraghs. You can see where their picturesque vision of the underworld came from.…..

It was as if they’d said, “We’re only going as far as the fiery gates of Hell, is that any good to you?”

The left us on a volcanic desert, ringed by mountains streaked with yellow sulphur. There were pyramids of sulphur all around us hissing out columns of evil smelling steam - it the smell of rotten eggs which the monks recognized as the devil’s after shave. There were lakes of boiling black mud, and cracks in the ground oozing with molten lava from the centre of the earth. In the distance the moon was rising over a huge black crater.

Except that it was far too beautiful for hell. As I said before, more like landing on the moon -I found out later that the astronauts from Apollo 11 came here to practise their moonwalks.

We walked around for an hour or two and picked up some bits of lava and sulphur as souvenirs. But we weren’t as well equipped as the Apollo team, and when we noticed the soles of our shoes were melting, we thought we’d better return to civilization. Having decided to treat ourselves to a night in the hotel and a meal that wasn’t a hot dog, we walked back over the mountain dreaming of fermented shark meat and stuffed puffin.