Wilmaworld

Cheers!

2011-11-16T06:08:00.001-08:00

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 Ididn’t feel great. In fact I was hoping I was still asleep, and having anightmare about the worst hangover in the world. It was the morning after theBeaujolais night party in the village. Nobody ever drinks Beaujolais Nouveau onany other night of the year except the night the new vintage is released, forthe simple reason that it’s not very nice. That’s why we feel obliged to drinka whole year’s ration in one go, to keep the grape pickers and vineyard ownersin business. It takes about 364 days to get over the hangover, then we do itall over again the following year.

I was finding it hard to acceptthat a person of my age and maturity could be stupid enough to make themselvesfeel so ill, so I was lying in bed looking for someone or something else toblame. Perhaps I’d been drugged, or it was the sulphates in the wine. Maybe I’dhad an allergic reaction to the colouring in the one slice of chorizo I’d eatenduring the evening. Perhaps it was the fault of the twenty-something-year-oldlongboarder who had insisted on buying me one for the road.

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

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

But it’s always a mistake tothink 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 abouta mile out to sea with two-metre waves breaking all around me and a gale-forcewind blowing me out towards the sea wall. It hit me about half an hour too latethat when the world is spinning around you, your head is about to explode anddrinking water makes you feel queasy, it might be a good idea to be lying underyour duvet with an Alka-Seltzer and a phone beside you with SOS Médecins onspeed dial. It might not be quite such a good idea to be sitting in theocean like a shipwreck survivor on a nine-foot piece of fibre glass, attachedto your leg by a strip of Velcro. I’ve never thought Velcro was much good as afastening for a gym slip or a hospital gown, and now I was relying on it to getme home in one piece.

I was no longer able to justifymy behaviour by thinking I’m a surfer. I started thinking I’mcompletely mad.

It was a very dramatic andbeautiful scene. One side of the sky was bright blue, the other piled up withblack storm clouds. The candy-pink casinos and hotels of Saint-Jean-de-Luzcurved round the bay with snow-covered mountains behind. The waves rolled infrom the Bay of Biscay, crashing over the sea wall and sending plumes of sprayinto the sky as they made their way towards me. I kept paddling further and furtherfrom the impact zone, until I could no longer hear my cheerful healthy surfbuddies laughing and yelling, ‘Paddle harder, Wilma.’ I’d given up on the ideaof catching a wave long ago, I was just hoping to get through the sessionwithout embarrassing myself by throwing up in the water or dying.

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

happen if I did die of alcoholpoisoning out here. I would leave three motherless children to fend forthemselves in a harsh world, just because I got carried away chatting up aCalifornian longboarder half my age. I could see the headlines in the localpaper: ‘Englishwoman Wins Posthumous Bad Parenting Award’, ‘Selfish Cougar Lostat Sea’.

The swell was building and Ididn’t seem to be able to find a calm spot. When I almost got hit by a deadcormorant 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, butsometimes its better to cop out than cop it. I made it back on to dry land, butI was so cold and weak that I couldn’t get my wetsuit off and I had to ask theMamas for help, which was a bit pathetic and humiliating. I don’t think I’veever appreciated a bubble bath so much; it was a bit like a back-to-frontBadedas 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. Andof course the next time I had a hangover, I did exactly the same thing and Iwas fine, so now I’m thinking that perhaps it was the additives in thewine after all.

Surf Mama on Tour

2011-09-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-24T03:08:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-08T03:30:00.000-07:00

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

Smile

2010-11-12T08:59:00.000-08:00

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

2010-10-26T04:47:00.000-07:00

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

2010-07-01T04:19:00.000-07:00

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.

The Last Taboo

2010-03-13T05:56:00.000-08:00

I was pretty cool, calm and collected about turning fifty. Apart from a few occasions when I became morose after a glass or two of rosé, and remembered all my unachieved ambitions and shattered dreams.

“Oh my God, can you believe I’m FIFTY and I’m still not a millionaire, and I’ve never even seen the water go down the plughole the wrong way?” I ask anyone willing to listen.

The dog slinks away quickly, recognising this as a queue for me to turn on her screaming, “Its all right for you, you’re still young, you’ve got your whole life in front of you.…..”

Alice decides on direct action - she gets a wooden spoon and goes over to the sink.

“Hang on, I’m sure I can do that for you.” She says, splashing dishwater around the kitchen while she tries to defy the laws of nature.

I laugh. “That’s not the point, honey. What I’m saying is that is that I’ve never crossed the equator… I’ve never been to the southern hemisphere. I’ve never seen Australia, Tierra del Fuego, Pitcairn Island or the South Pole.”

“Oh God, stop whining. You’ve been to the Northernmost town in the world and Iceland, and you used to live in Mexico. We’re the ones who should be whining - when did you last take us on holiday?” Nat joins in.

I’m not in a sympathetic mood. “You live in a goddamn holiday resort, you spoilt brats.”

“So do you.”

Oh yes. That shuts me up. I stop worrying about the plughole thing and the lack of noughts on my bank account - or the lack of numbers in front of the noughts- and start stressing about the party instead.

Guethary or London is my main dilemna.…. bringing on the usual split personality issues -surf chick or art star?

“Are you sure you want to make a big fuss about it anyway?” A male friend asks me when he gets caught in the psychologists chair. “Are you sure it’s not one you’d rather.... forget?”

What does he mean? I’m quite ready to accept my new maturity....and he must be mad if he thinks I’m missing out on cake, sweets, fizz and PRESENTS!

“Hang on, you celebrated your fiftieth last year didn’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s different.… you’re a woman.”

Of course, I’d forgotten the difference between Older Men and Older Women. Older men are suave and sophisticated. They have a lot to offer a younger partner - life experience, financial security, Galerie Lafayette storecards, and cars with underseat bum-heaters. An older woman, on the other hand, is probably too busy making jam to bother about sex. Unless she’s a deranged sexual predator, a slave to her unbalanced hormones.……

I see where he’s coming from. What we’re talking about- or not talking about is The Last Taboo. There’s an unspoken question hanging in the air.

“Had any hot flushes yet?”

There are some words you just don’t say. You don’t say ‘Macbeth’ in theatrical circles, you never call Lord Voldemort by name at Hogwarts, and in the rest of the world you don’t mention the menopause.

Or The Change as it’s ominously nicknamed. Sometime during the next ten years I’ll wake up one morning ‘changed’. I’ll look in the mirror and wonder who that old crone staring back at me is. I’ll start drinking sherry, knitting cardigans for my cats and picking up teenage boys at the Unicorn disco in Bidart.

The difference between me and this man turning fifty is that he could still have a whole new family if he wanted, but I couldn’t. On the other hand, I have three children already. And as anyone who was in the Sol y Sombra tapas bar in Fuenterabbia last Sunday will confirm, that’s already more than I can handle sometimes.

(Sorry darlings, I didn’t mean it. Je ne regrette rien. And you were right, it was a dodgy looking flight-snack of a tapas - but you didn’t have to shout at me, I didn’t invent Russian salad.)

I’m not big on conspiracy theories, but isn’t there a bit of a ‘women know your place’ agenda here? I have an image from a nature documentary I watched years ago stuck in my head. There’s an old female chimp sitting in the long grass alone. David Attenborough’s post-menopausal yet still seductive voice tells us, “ The dominant male silverback has moved on to new, younger mates. But this rather mangy unattractive creature has been confined to the margins of chimpanzee society now she is past breeding age. She tries to make herself useful by grooming other female’s offspring.” She picks a flea off a baby chimp and eats it. Is there a subliminal message going out to the masses?

Off course we don’t fall for this any more.... especially not with all those fabulous at fifty role models. We say, “I wouldn’t mind looking like Jerry Hall when I’m fifty three,” conveniently forgetting the fact that we didn’t look like her in the first place.

“None of us are getting any younger.” My friend hasn’t finished yet. “My doctor told me the other day that until your fifty, you’re young. Then suddenly, you’re old.”

Oh god, maybe he’s right. I ring my mother to check at exactly what time on thursday 4th March I can expect the transformation. Then I check my list of Things To Do when I’m Fifty, to see if I’m being reasonable. Hang Ten. That’s surfing with all ten toes over the front of your board. Hmm maybe that is a tiny bit ambitious. I change it to Hang Five. But later in the day I add Surf in Iceland, to balance it up a bit. Reasonable was never one of my strong points.

And what about the party? Should I invite my friends from London over here and try to teach them to surf, eat foie gras and take rosé seriously in one weekend?

I ask Daisy Tea for her opinion.

“Are you ready for the collision of your two universes?”

Put like that, maybe not.

I decide on two parties, to be on the safe side. The first in Guethary on my real birthday, and an ‘official birthday’ party in June. The theme is ‘Mutton Dressed as Lamb’. Get out your belly tops girls, it’s time to overthrow the system.

Farewell Morticia

2010-02-19T05:57:00.000-08:00

Last week I left the Addams Family Mansion for good, and moved to a nice little semi in Guethary Central.
Moving house is classed as either the second or third most traumatic experience you can go through, after bereavement, fighting with divorce for the silver and bronze medal position. The exact order is academic to me, as I’m doing both this month. But I can’t help thinking that whoever came up with that statistic must have done their research in some pretty cosy, sheltered part of the world. The Surrey commuter belt maybe. What came fourth? Getting your mortgage application rejected? being refused membership to the local golf club?

On the other hand, moving house might be the second most boring thing you’ll ever do, and right now I can't think of the first. Okay, I had the odd flashes of excitement.…. finding the lost teletubby tapes, discovering a euro coin down the back of the sofa, throwing away my ironing board.

But the rest was extreme, mind-numbing boredom - it makes you think seriously about the consumer society. When you buy mass-produced plastic junk, don’t just worry about slave labour, greenhouse gases and the end of the world. Remember that one day you'll spend weeks of your life when you could have been surfing sorting it all out, boxing it up and rehousing it.

So I was pretty happy when I’d emptied the house of the last Barbie shoe, paperclip, and toenail clipping, and it was time to give back the keys. It was a sociable affair - the estate agent, the owner and her bailiff arrived as I cleaned out the grate with cobwebs in my hair. I felt like Cinderella without a date.

But the house wasn’t completely empty after all. Just as we were leaving, the estate agent pulled a roll of paper out of the back of a cupboard.

“Hang on, what’s this?”

It was a huge collage called Hula that took me about four months to make, at the time it seemed like a work of staggering genius, the best thing I'd ever done.

“Oh my God,” I laughed, “That’s the sort of thing that gets discovered in an attic and sold on the Antiques Roadshow for millions!”

“Ze Antiques Roadshow?” he looked confused.

“Suffice it to say, it’s a priceless masterpiece.” I said as I stuffed it in the back of the car.

But is it? I wondered as I drove away ….. or is it just one more thing I have to find a place for?

It’s always hard to judge your own work objectively, and in this case my artistic judgement has been further complicated by cat pee. With all the grubby little corners of the attic they could have chosen, it beats me why the cats had to pick this exact spot as an alternative litter when the gravel ran out.

Maybe they chose it because of the interesting smell of the glue, or the beach combed objets trouvés. It still looks okay, but it smells way beyond interesting now.

I think I’m going to have to chuck it out, so it’s a stroke of luck that my moving house coincides with the opening of Michael Landy's Art Bin.

For those of you who don’t live in the rarified atmosphere of the London art world, I’ll explain. Art Bin is the hottest, hippest new exhibition in London. Michael Landy is famous for throwing things away. In 2001 he destroyed all 7006 of his possessions as an art work, which not only did a great deal for his career, but must have made it really easy for him to move house. (I know I’m being a bit neo-naturist and puritanical here, but having gone that far, I would have liked him to put his clothes in the shredder and leave the gallery naked.)

In his new show, he’s moved on to destroying other peoples things. He’s created an enormous bin in the South London gallery into which you can throw your failed art works.... ‘A monument to creative failure.’

Only here’s the catch - not just any old person can throw away their work. Unless you’re one of the celebrity artists who’s been invited to bin stuff, you have to go through a selection process. It’s the modern, cutting-edge version of entering a painting for the Royal Academy Summer show. You get no money, and your work really will be smashed to pieces and transported to a landfill. Nothing can be rescued or resold ….. although I think it’s just a matter of time before the landfill is dug up and sold in plastic souvenir bags. Like holy relics, or the rubble of the Berlin wall, only with a tiny bit less historical significance maybe.

So why would anyone do it? This is the sad part - artists are queuing up to join in, Michael suspects some are even making work specially for the bin. We're so desperate for a bit of recognition that we’re willing to throw away our work, just on the off-chance that it gets noticed on the way to the landfill. Maybe if you’re lucky enough to get binned just after a Damien Hirst a corner of your work will appear in a photo the press. You’ll get noticed like Pamela Anderson in the crowd of a football match, and rocketed to stardom.

So what are my chances of getting picked?

In my favour I know Michael Landy. He came to stay with me in Ireland once with a mutual friend. When he told me he was an artist, I was so used to the Dingle Local Art scene that I said something like, “What do you paint, dolphins or fishermen?”

There was an awkward silence, but we got over it. We barbecued a salmon then went down TPs bar in Ballydavid and danced to accordion music. So he must owe me something ….. but the end of the evening is a bit of a blur and I’m not sure if it’s a shot at art-stardom or a pint of Guinness and a packet of pork scratchings.

And can I afford to take the gamble and pay for the shipping? Okay ‘there’s no heirarchy once they’re in the bin.’, as Michael says, but before? Are my connections good enough to get me into the most A-class landfill in town. And if not, could I cope with the ultimate rejection of being told my work is not good enough to throw away?

In the end I decide to be subversive and bypass the art establishment.… I go to the dump at Cenitz, where the selection process is a lot simpler. It doesn’t matter what art school you went to, which private collectors buy your work, or which curator your sleeping with. It’s just plastic, paper, glass or metal. And it’s right by the beach so I get a chance to check the swell at the same time.

“Paper?” The guy at the dump asks.

“Yes, paper.” Finest quality, acid-free Arches watercolour paper, with oil pastel, gouache, sequins, feathers, 24 carat gold leaf. And cat pee.

Possessed

2010-01-03T10:14:00.000-08:00

The other day I was explaining the Jekyll and Hyde syndrome to Alice in the supermarket carpark. I couldn’t quite remember the plot, but I explained that the book was about fight between good and evil, and the duality of human nature. I was using the literary reference to explain why a sweet, mild-mannered person like myself could turn into an abusive psychopath behind the wheel of a car. I was hoping to get out of putting 37 euros in the swear box after an incident with an old lady in a deux chevaux. I probably don’t need to tell you that the swear box wasn’t my idea, it was a cynical invention of my children, who wind me up until I’m forced to swear, then take the money to buy South Park CDs. The Jekyll and Hyde story got me a dispensation ‘while the engine is running’

It also set me off thinking about the concept of being possessed by another persona.... a few days later, by an eerie coincidence, it happened to me.

It was the winter solstice. We were sitting round the fireside in the Addams family mansion, and I was telling the children the Christmas Story, a family tradition going back through the mists of time. When I got to the end, they looked up at me with their little faces full of wonder.

“Why is Father Christmas a toadstool again, Mummy?”

“He was invented by the Sami people in Lappland, sweetie, after drinking reindeer pee laced with hallucinogenic substances from fly agaric toadstools that the reindeer had eaten. They saw reindeer flying across the fly and a mystical figure dressed in red and white, the same colour as the toadstools. He became Santa Claus, and when you think about it, he’s the human embodiment of a fly agaric.”

“Oh yes, of course.…. and do the reindeer see flying humans when they eat the mushrooms?”

As a parent I am meant to be omniscient, and I do my best. But there are times when I have to admit defeat. Is there a God? Where do babies come from? What is a quadratic equation? What do reindeer see when they hallucinate?

I went into the kitchen to try and work this one out. I was just getting ready to put on my holly crown and perform a Saturnalia ritual welcoming the rebirth of the year, when I stopped still, a glass of frozen reindeer pee half way to my lips.

A voice which seemed to be coming from slightly outside my body said, “I think I’ll start the gravy.” And that’s when I realised that I had been possessed by the spirit of Martha Stewart.

(For those of you still living in the darkness, Martha is a high ranking domestic goddess and homemaking guru, the author of timeless classics like the the Martha Stewart Living Omnipedia and the Hors D’ouvres Handbook - the Creation and Presentation of Fabulous Finger Food. )

There was a stunned silence round the room.

“But, mum, it’s four days till Christmas,…...and you don’t make gravy.”

I hardly even heard Daisy speak, I was too busy slicing onions to put in the quail stock.

Daisy was worried. She started shaking a daquiri.

“Oh no, don’t we have any eggnog?”

By this time I had the magimix out and was making crumbs for the bread sauce, “It’s so much better to start early, I’ll freeze this and microwave it on the day.”

“Oh my God! Who are you and what have you done with my mother?” she gasped, forcing the medicinal daquiri to my lips.

But it was too late, I was on a roll. My family were coming over from London on Christmas Eve, and by the time they arrived the house had been totally re-styled. There were scented candles on the mantle piece, and scented pine cones on the tree: I had stencilled holly leaves onto the driveway with fake snow. I found myself stressing out about the napkins clashing with the side plates, and asking the children things like,

“Do these place mats match the walls in the dining room?“

”We don’t have a dining room, mum.”

Perhaps the fact that this was going to be the first time I’d ever cooked Christmas dinner for my family might explain my bizzarre behaviour.

To quote my guru, ‘What happens when the family is waiting at table for a delicious meal, and you find that your gravy falls short of expectations?’

If you're Martha Stewart, you probably have a minor breakdown, then write a book called Perfect Gravy, make another few million and cheer up. I don’t know where the pressure was coming from - if my mother has ever made gravy, it must have been before I was born. Although my parents like good food, but they wouldn’t really have minded if I’d served chicken nuggets and oven chips, as long as I had ketchup and a nice bottle of Sancerre to go with it.….

This went for a week, but I suppose I knew deep down that I could never compete with a woman who has 175 different recipes for cupcakes.

Just as I was about to change the title of my book from Surf Mama to ‘52 ways with Vol-au-vents’, my family left, and the wind changed. It didn’t just change, it went offshore.….

So I went for a surf, and stopped at the frozen food store for some TV dinners on the way home. I’m in France, so this is not frozen food as you know it. You can buy Guinea Fowl stuffed with truffles, whole foie gras, salmon en croute, and champagne sorbet. I’m not saying I did, but I could have.

I got home, had a couple of beers and put the spring rolls in the oven. Then I went upstairs to check out Rock Band, the computer game Santa had stuffed down the chimney for Nat. I got a bit carried away playing the virtual drums on Eye of the Tiger, and the TV dinners came out of the oven a little crunchy and charred round the edges.

“You can come downstairs now, Nat. That other woman’s gone and Mum’s back,” Alice shouted up the stairs.

“Yes, Martha Stewart has left the building.…. shall we microwave some popcorn for supper?”

PR is the New Sex

2009-06-24T02:27:00.001-07:00

It's seven o’clock on a Sunday morning. I'm in a fishing village in Norfolk which seems like a funny setting for a power breakfast, but here I am sitting opposite Robert Pereno over a chintz table cloth and a toastrack. He’s telling me that “PR is everything.”
Right now, I’m feeling like Alka Seltzer might be everything …. it’s the morning after Sophie Parkin’s wedding, and I was maid of honour. It was the kind of perfect wedding you usually see in movies, in a ruined manor house, fluffy spring lambs skipping around in the meadows, champagne flowing and a whole hog roasting on the spit. Sophie got married in vintage white crepe, pearls and a diamond tiara in a chapel. It made me slightly regret getting married in Wood green registry office in a dress from Topshop. But I think I carried out my bridesmaid’s duties pretty well, arranging the veil, carrying the train, signing the register, then getting totally smashed and practicing my Dirty Dancing moves on the dancefloor until the early hours .
So this morning I’m suffering for my devotion to duty, sipping on weak tea, nibbling a piece of dry toast and regretting the 7 oclock taxi call to Stansted. Robert, on the other hand, isn’t drinking. So while I am a shadow of my former self, he is fresh as a daisy.
Or even fresher maybe. Daisy Tea wanders in ..... she sang a tear jerking rendition of Edith Piaf’s Hymne d’Amour last night.
“Sorry, am I looking a bit Holywood Babylon this morning?”
I’m not sure, her eyemake-up looks a bit smudged, but that might just be a bit of residual double vision from last night.
“PR is everything, take a look at Perenoworld.” Yes, I have Wilmaworld and he has Perenoworld, and we’re sitting here in a B&B in Cromer in our parallel universes. Our separate solar systems are orbiting round the gravitational force of our egos.
By the time our taxi arrives I have the message firmly implanted in what's left of my brain. PR is the new sex.
Daisy Tea and I mull this over on the journey home, along with plans to join the Biarritz chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous. Of course this doesn’t exist because French people believe that Wine is Good for You. It’s one of those unshakable convictions there’s no point arguing against, like French food is the best food in the world, French men are the best lovers in the world, Napoleon is a goody and Johnny Halliday is hardcore.
You might try, you might say, “You know I felt a bit rough the other morning after the party....are you sure wine is good for you?”
“Of course. You must have mixed your drinks - so Anglo Saxon.” They will reply disdainfully.
“But I didn’t, I was on red wine all night.” You protest.
“Aah, you must have mixed your grapes.”
So I drop the AA idea around six o’clock in favour of a cold beer on the beach. But the PR idea sticks, and I have the ideal opportunity to put it into practise at the Art Car Boot Fair the following Sunday. It's pretty much what it sounds like - a group of artists selling stuff out of car boots in the old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane, one of the chicest carparks in London. I have to do the return journey twice in a week, which might sound quite jet set to anyone who has never flown with Ryanair.
I spend the week turning myself into a product. I put my paintings on to matchboxes, badges, cushion covers and shopping bags. I even design myself a logo. I’ve no idea what to do with it, I think maybe my ego is getting out of control....but that’s soon sorted out when I get to the car boot fair.
The atmosphere is quite like a village fête - town cryers and palm readers, home baked cookies and fairy cakes. Except that it’s probably a limited edition 'art fairy cake' to be kept in the safe until the artist pops their clogs and it’s value goes through the roof. You can see a dreamy look in the eyes of the customers, comparing the bargains they’ve snapped up, imagining themselves on the antiques roadshow in years to come...
“I bought this cookie at the art car boot fair back in 2009 for just £3”
“That’s incredible, it’s now worth £30,000, except, oh no, I’m sorry it’s crumbled to dust in my hands.”
You can buy a jar of kisses or an ironic garden gnome, or leave your emotional baggage in the cloakroom. You can buy a copy of the Dark Times or go to the Pure Evil stall. And if PR is the new sex, offal is the new tofu, and the air is thick with the smell of barbequeing ox-hearts and blood pudding.
On the stall opposite mine, the Fashion Police are pulling people out of the crowd and arresting them for sartorial crimes. Vivienne Westwood’s son Joe Corre gets nicked for ‘too much Westwood’. He’s a bit of alright, and I’m kind of disappointed they don’t confiscate the offending garments on the spot - it would be a welcome diversion from watching the queues of art tourists waiting to buy Peter Blake’s signature, or Gavin Turks footprints. I’m wedged between the two and I can’t say it’s doing much for my ego. If there was ever a moment to go back to Naturism and auction off signed bodyprints, this would be it.
But it’s too late to change tack, so I launch into selling my products. The trouble is that it seems to take almost as much energy to sell a badge or a box of matches as a painting, but you only end up with a pound.
“It’s lovely, I’ll come back with my husband,” one potential customer says.
What? It’s only 99p if he doesn’t like it, divorce him.
By mid-afternoon my stall is looking a bit less professional than I would have liked. My mum and dad have arrived with sandwiches and the Sunday papers. They’ve settled down on the loungers under my pink Pina Colada umbrella along with my sister, my brother, my nephew and niece, and various men I’ve drunkenly chatted up during my PR offensive . After a few pitchers of ale I think I get the message a bit mixed up.
Every now and then I come across one of the badges that Alice, my eleven year-old daughter has made with locks of her hair on them. Although she’s said I can sell them, and they’re pretty cutting edge and conceptual, I think it might come back to me when she writes her Momie Dearest memoirs.
“My mother sold my hair to pay for drinks.”
I'm conveniently placed a couple of stalls down from Swedish Blonde Vanessa’s Casanova bar. By six o’clock I’ve abandoned my dreams of glory and turned to drink.
“How did it go today?” a friend asks.
“I don’t know, it seemed a bit like hard work this year.”
“Really?” he laughs.
It’s hard to convince people you’re working your arse off when your sitting on the bonnet of a vintage Rolls Royce drinking proseco.…….

Acting Normal

2009-05-26T04:30:00.001-07:00

As a parent there are times when you feel the pressure to Act Normal, it’s a drag but it happens. Like last week when I had an 11 year-old exchange student from Valladolid to stay.
It wasn’t my idea needless to say, I know my limits. I do Hallowe’en parties, I do surf lessons, I do art galleries and I can get my kids gigs at the Roundhouse. But I don’t do PTA meetings, I don’t do school fêtes and I don’t do exchanges.
So I was kind of surprised when my ex-husband said to me, “Don’t forget that you’ve got that Spanish boy arriving on Wednesday.”
“I beg to differ, I believe you have that Spanish boy arriving on Wednesday. I made it quite clear that I was not involved.”
“Oh, I don’t think so, and .... Ooh la la! I’m just looking at my diary and I’ll be in Paris all week.”
My surprise was turning into mild annoyance, or to put it another way, I felt like I might be about to prove the theory of spontaneous combustion.
But I seemed to have two choices, to take the kid or leave him at the station for four days, which would have made Alice look bad in front of her friends. So I now I’m faced with the task of re-looking my house in Spanish Suburban style to make him feel at home.
At the moment it’s more like the Addam’s family mansion. It’s a turreted Belle Epoque villa which is literally falling apart, ivy grows over the walls, inside and out. The doors creak, the light bulbs flicker and from time to time they explode. I’ve installed my psychotic hound who howls like a werewolf at full moon and and a kitten which wanders around all night crying “Mamaaaa, Mamaaa,“ like a demented changeling child. Despite the fact that I spend every waking hour scouring the house with my feather duster in a French maid’s outfit, the cobwebs spread like triffids as soon as I turn my back to bake a tray of madeleines.
“Oh, and you’re quite like Morticia, aren’t you?” a friend says. Which is strange, because I’m blondish and tanned and generally pretty wholesome. I keep my dark side well hidden, and I rarely tango, although I love it when I do.
My Hallowe’en party has become an annual fixture in the Guethary social season. I’ve tried to stop it but every year everyone in the village arrives spontaneously in costume, along with a few gatecrashers who no-one can place, who never take off their masks and only seem interested in the black pudding on the buffet table.….
“So, what’s his house like Alice?”
“Tidy. Normal ….. but it’s okay, I can say that you broke your leg, maybe you could get the crutches out again. Nat, he does a lot of ballet so DON’T tease him. And Daisy, DON’T scare him, alright?” Alice is too young to know about reverse psychology.….
Personally, I think I might scare him more, limping around with cobwebs in my hair.
But by Wednesday I have the situation in hand, I’ve cleaned the house and Alice is doing the car.
There are usually an assortment of old clothes in the boot that I’ve been meaning to take to recycling, but I find they come in handy if the weather changes, or you need a quick makeover. There’s always a spare towel and enough food and drink to keep you going for a day or two if you get stuck in a snow drift or a cross border lorry blockade.
It works for me, but he might not appreciate it.
When I come out she’s got a bucket of soapy water and she’s washing the car with a sponge.
“Oh, I don’t think you have to wash the outside of the car darling, we’re only going to the station.”
“You haven’t seen his car, mum.” She says sternly.
“Oh.” My feelings of inadequacy come flooding back. “Shall we tell him it’s our Vintage car and the real one’s in the garage?”
We pick him up and the car comes through for me by not breaking down on the way to Hendaye. As we pull into the drive Alice says, “This is our house, and by the way.…. it’s NOT haunted.”
I’m just waiting for her to say, “This is my Mum, and by the way, she’s NOT a vampire.…”
He seems like a sweet kid, although he walks around the house in fifth position and doesn’t seem to speak. I do my best. I’ve filled the fridge with frozen pizza because Alice has told me that’s what he eats. I’m not pretending it’s the first time the inside of my fridge has seen a frozen pizza, but you get the idea, I don’t insist on him eating Cornish pasties, fish and chips, and jellied eels . I also resist the temptation take him to Heteroclito because Taryn reminds me that this time last year we took her exchange kid there and he ate nothing at all. He thought the food was weird which we found amusing because her son had eaten pig’s ears at his house.
I remember it well, because we sat there looking at the plate of food, asking each other, “Do you think he even touched it?” We were dying to eat it, but everyone knows that it may be okay to eat your own kids leftovers, but eating other kids leftovers is a bit tacky.… we were acting normal.
But after all this effort I realise that sometimes you just can’t overcome cultural differences.
Alice is on the way to surf club, the social highlight of the Guethary kids week, and she runs out in a panic.
“Mum, it’s Ivan... you’ve got to help me! All my friends are going to be there....”
“What’s he done darling?”
She explains. It’s always a bad Parenting Moment when you have to admit that you are not, after all omnipotent, and you just can’t help your child when they need you.
“I’m sorry sweetheart, but I really don’t think there’s anything I can do about the fact that he’s wearing socks with his board shorts.”

La Vie en Rose

2009-05-11T14:59:00.000-07:00

Last week-end I was in London for Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World. I competed a couple of times in the eighties, but this time I’m here in my new role as Stage Mom. Andrew likes the idea of continuing the tradition down through the generations, so he’s asked my daughter Daisy Tea to sing.
“Will she mind opening the show? Is it too much pressure?”
“No, she loves pressure.” I tell him confidently.
But she is a little nervous beforehand.
“Don’t worry, it’s only the roundhouse.”
This is a joke between us. Bob Dylan did a concert here last week, and it’s been a cult venue since the sixties, when Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and the Doors all played here. In the seventies I used to come and hear punk bands like the Clash and the Stranglers.
But my first trip to the Roundhouse was way back in 1970 when my parents brought me to a hippy circus event. I’d brought a school friend along, and as far as I remember I was quite enjoying it.…...until a man wearing nothing except for a hairnet over his bits jumped off the stage and started climbing through the audience.
It was one of those born-again moments when you discover religion in a blinding flash.
“Please God, I will believe in you for the rest of my life and join the heavenly chorus when I die, if you will just keep this naked man away from me and Ingrid Darracott.”
Luckily, I got over my fear of semi naked men in the intervening years, if I hadn’t the swimsuit parade of the Alternative Miss World might brought me out in a religious frenzy.….
The event is sometimes billed as a drag ball, but it’s more like a surreal carnival parade. Anyone one can enter, some contestants are men, some are women, and some are sitting on the fence. Andrew usually hosts the show as half man half woman, with a costume split down the chakra line. This year he is one third man, one third woman , one third constructivist sculpture.
Backstage is a sea of sequins, feathers, flowery head-dresses and balloons...props include an inflatable pony thirty foot high, a canon and a twenty foot high silver crinoline. A group of girls in satin bridesmaids dresses are dancing round a maypole while the sound checks go on.
The idea is that Daisy Tea opens the show singing La Vie en Rose with a single spotlight and no accompaniment - to confuse the audience into thinking they’ve come to the wrong place….an Edith Piaf tribute night or something. Then the carnival begins.
She’s wearing a little black dress and gold stillettos, and the confusion starts backstage.
“When are you going to get your costume on?” People keep asking.
“I’m ready.” She smiles calmly. “Oh except, mum, I’ve laddered my tights on my Gibson, and I forgot my false eyelashes.… I don’t suppose you could nip out.”
I’m quite glad for an opportunity to get out, the smell of bodypaint is whisking me off into nostalgic sentimentality like Proust with his Magdaleines, so I head out into Camden lock before I feel obliged to write a 30 volume memoir. But it’s not really as much of a change of scene as I thought. Camden High Street on a Saturday afternoon is a bit like a watered down version of what’s going on inside, blue and pink hair, tatoos and piercings two for the price of one. The false eyelashes are easy, within about thirty seconds I’m standing in front of a wall of them, fluorescent, diamanté, ultra violet and rainbow coloured. But the tights take about an hour - after all, why would you wear plain black tights when you could wear fuschia fishnet stockings?
Yes, I take my job as a stage mom very seriously. I even suffer from stage fright by proxy.
“But didn’t you do this sort of thing all the time when you were a neo-naturist?”Daisy asks me.
Perhaps, but the difference was that we were always trying to do things badly, so if we did fuck up and do it well accidentally, we usually got away with it.
Last time I came to support her I got so drunk she had to put me in a taxi home, so this time I’ve brought my camera to give me something to do with my hands apart from lifting glasses. Unfortunately I’m too distracted by maternal pride to remember to turn the flash on, but I get some nice shots of slow-moving contestants.
I’m allowed in to the press enclosure to take photos.
“What magazine are you from?”The professionals ask.
“None …..actually my daughter’s playing first.” I think something about my sappy demeanor leaves them expecting some kind of Little Miss Sunshine figure to appear from the wings.
But by the time she goes off, they’re all telling me how amazing she is and congratulating me on being “Daisy Tea’s Mother.” And as usual people want to know if she gets her voice from me.
“Oh, I don’t know...” I say modestly. Let’s put it like this, my children tell me not to bother to join in with Happy Birthday if I’m not feeling up to it.
Then the show kicks off. At first I think I may have been on planet surf too long, and I’m suffering from culture shock. But Ruby Wax, Andrew’s co-presenter who hasn’t led a sheltered life, sums it up. “I’ve taken a lot of drugs in my life, but I’ve never seen anything quite as weird as backstage tonight!”
To give you an idea of the ambience.…. Andrew says , “The theme for this costume is Mexico City.”
In most beauty contests it would be a shiny bikini, a sombrero and maybe a mexican flag draped coquettishly over one shoulder. In the Alternative Miss World the contestant is wearing a 30 foot cardboard favela with a cloud of toxic smog made of rubbish sacks suspended above it.
Other contestants come as tea-cups, dead geisha girls and sperm, they do morris dancing, they attack each other, and give birth on stage. They have names like Miss No Sign of Civilization Whatsoever, Miss Trailer Trasher, or Miss I Killed the Marie Celeste. The silver crinoline is Miss Fancy Chance’s winning finale…. she is hoisted out of it by her hair and swirled around in the air like a circus performer, then deposited in front of Ruby Wax for her interview.
“Wow, that was incredible.… I’m speechless. Have you got anything to say?”
“That really hurt,” she says rubbing her hair with her hand as if to check that it’s still attached to her scalp.
“And what would you do if you won?”
“Go and buy some scalp oil I think. Sorry I’m in so much pain I can’t really speak.” But it was worth it - her commitment to suffering for her beauty wins her the crown.

Feeling Girly

2009-04-26T06:12:00.000-07:00

When I get back from my ski holiday, with a fracture in a bone I didn’t even know I had, I realise that at least this is a genuine Sports Injury, which gives me a bit of credibility round here. My last injury was a sprained ankle I got falling downstairs on the way to a bar in Spain, which got a few laughs, but not much respect. I also try to drop it into the conversation that I did it while ski-ing with a freestyle pro. I don’t exactly say that I was going down a vertical couloir carving S-bends in the epic powder snow, but I don’t deny it either. I let it hang in the air as a possibility.…
I certainly don’t say that she was giving me style tips on the beginners piste.
“It’s a great opportunity to do things you never get a chance to do, write a diary, read some good books, do some painting.…” people tell me.
But I spend most of my life doing that anyway, and my diary is a little on the slow side. I’m just lying in bed all day, making the occasional excursion to the kitchen for an ice pack, or a snack that can be prepared with one leg and no hands. I feel like I have some insight into what it would be like to be very very old or very very lazy.
Apart from that, my brain seems to have atrophied along with my thigh, so I do something else I never get a chance to do - watch a lot of soap operas on TV. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to pick a hospital drama - after 17 episodes of Gray’s Anatomy, I’m back in the emergency room with a suspected blood clot. The episode where the woman comes in with hiccups and leaves in a body bag is running through my head.
“You can’t expect it to be full of hot surgeons like on TV,” Daisy tells me. But this is Biarritz, and I can. There are several doctors I’d drag into the on-call room if I was a steamy young nurse. But I’m just a 50-year-old woman with a red lump on my leg and a daytime TV habit, and they only seem interested in my knees, and the red thing which turns out not to be a blood clot after all. it’s either a burst blood vessel or a bruise
After my initial relief that I’m not about to die, I’m a bit worried that I’m developing Munchausen syndrome. Have I really just come into the ER with a bruise?
But when I get home there’s an e-mail from my friend who’s a nurse saying it sounds like a thromboflibitus, which sounds a lot more glamorous.

The crutches have their uses, apart from the obvious one of being able to walk on one leg. They’re handy for queue jumping, illegal parking and bringing out the nurturing, “we’re from Venus too” side in men.
This is something I usually find it hard to tap into. On the inside I’m as soft and gooey as a milk chocolate strawberry cream. This is because I’m a Pisces Woman. This quote from an astrology website sums it up; ‘Pisces woman is full of womanly charms - totally vulnerable, very different from the modern liberated girl of today. The warmth of her personality makes men relax in an instant and bask in the glory of their manhood.’
But let’s face it, it can get a bit irritating when men bask too much in the glory of their manhood, so sometimes I feel the need to turn to Chinese astrology, where I get to be a Metal Rat. We’re obstinate, determined and ‘make good world leaders’. Hmm, I was looking for a new career direction, I was thinking of surf photographer, but you have to be open-minded.
I like to project this side of my personality to compensate for the soft-focus, Mateus Rosé side, but as a result men never seem too keen on looking after me.
Until now. Doors swing open as I approach, men carry my shopping out of the supermarket for me, and give up their barstools without a fight. One day I go into a surf shop to buy some orthopedic flip flops. There’s a press conference for a Hawaiian surf company going on.
“Oh no, what happened to you?” Someone asks as I hop up to the counter.
“Sports Injury, fractured tibial spine with a touch of thromboflibitus, suspected rupture of the posterior cross ligament.” Okay, back to Desperate Housewives next week.
“Were you ski-ing or snowboarding?” Oh, cool, I can’t believe anyone thinks I’m young enough, hip enough or fit enough to snowboard. Or once was.
“Carving S-bends in the epic powder over in Verbier. With my friend who’s a stunt skier.” Come on, there’s no snow around here, no-one will ever know. But hang on, maybe I should have pretended I slipped on a leaf while arranging flowers, or tripped on my apron strings while baking a sponge cake.
Never mind, they invite us to a party later.
“Wow, you scrub up nicely.” The man who invited me says when I limp into the bar.
I’m not sure whether to take this as a compliment or not . What did I look like before? But I forgive him when he sits me down and brings me a plate of sushi and a pitcher of beer. I make a mental note to keep the crutches afterwards.
“I thought the glasses looked a bit pathetic.” I’m with him on this, beer comes in small or large size down here. Large is a demi, which is less than half a pint, and small is a bock, which translates as a sip.
This guy has the most hardcore surf history you could get. His father closed up his doctors surgery in California in 1958 and took his wife and nine children on an Endless Summer surf odyssey throughout the sixties. The kids surfed all day long and never went to school.
I’m quite fascinated, partly because I tried my own small scale version of this. One problem was the lack of wilderness in Europe. Just when you thought you’d found the road to nowhere, you’d end up in a campsite called Playa Tropicana, full of old age pensioners on their way to or from Marbella. A strange tribe of people in quilted dressing gowns and plastic slippers who like to bring the kitchen sink on holiday with them. Of course they have every right to do it, but it kind of spoilt the last frontier vibe for us.
Another problem was the home schooling. I didn’t surf, so I was the one who got left in the campsite with the kids, while their dad rode the wild wave half a mile off shore. It should have been easy enough, it was only primary school reading and maths... except that it was in irish gaelic. So I’d be stuck in the twilight zone reading through long division questions that sounded like epic Celtic poems, and were just as incomprehensible to me.
In the end I put them back in school and learned to surf, but it’s interesting to meet someone who’s lived the dream.
So it's hard to understand why my friend Kenny, who brought me here, decides to change the subject .... to my kitchen. Maybe it was the story Jonathan was telling us about falling of his board into the Hudson river and getting poisoned by septic rats.
"Well, Wilma might scrub up nicely," he says, "but her kitchen certainly doesn't."
What?
"Here, look at these pictures I took while she was fetching her crutches tonight."
What??? I can't believe it. I mean I'm not housewife of the year, I never said I was, but I'm injured, what does he expect?
"Have you ever tried doing housework on crutches?" My son has, I made him clear the table with them when I thought he was a bit short on sympathy.
"Yes, but I saw your kitchen before you broke your knee." He's got a point, my kitchen always looks like an eartquake hit it, it's just gone up a few points on the Richter scale recently. There might be moments when it would be appropriate to bring it up - if we were just about to move in together maybe- but half way through the first beer? It seems pretty unfair to be sitting in a roomful of surf dudes examining the contents of my dustpan... "Oh yes, that's half a cornichon I think, and some cocktail sticks..."
When he says he finds it quite attractive, I'm not sure whether to give him my phone number or the phone number of a good psychiatrist.
“It’s strange,” he says as I finish my second pitcher of beer, “the crutches are attractive too, they make you seem all girly and vulnerable.”
It’s an awkward moment... how can I tell him that beneath the soft Pisces exterior lurks a metal rat bent on world domination?

Le Ski Extreme

2009-04-06T04:07:00.001-07:00

I’ve promised myself that one day I’ll go on a holiday where I sit around in the pool on a lip shaped lilo, drinking pina coladas from inflatable cocktail glasses. But the moment hasn’t yet arrived. Instead I go to Verbier with my friend Johanna, a Swedish freestyle ski champion, and Nordic Amazon woman, if that doesn’t sound too geographically fucked up.
Verbier is everything you’d expect from a chic Swiss ski resort, giant icicles hanging off the roofs of the billionaires chalets, stuffed bears and moose heads on the porches, chocolate and cuckoo clocks, hot cheese and cold beer. It’s a jet set world of hardcore skiers and hardcore Swiss bank accounts, from the trophy blondes in Dior ski-suits, furs and blood diamonds, to the Finnish ski-bums straight from Lord of the Rings. Usually I’d be at the bottom of the social scale, because I’m not much good at ski-ing and I’m crap at being rich. But being here with a glamourous blonde stunt skier raises my status a bit.
I’m in the chalet with her, her one-year-old daughter and my English surf buddy Jo, who is helping with the babysitting. Despite having been through it three times, I have conveniently forgotten which end of the baby you put the nappy on. Having done my ten years as an earth mother, I’m here to re-invent myself as an extreme sports heroine, but I have to admit it’s exhausting.
Even the apres-ski is a bit beyond me.…. I thought this was meant to be something to do with hot wine, hot jacuzzis, and hot men in anoraks. How wrong was I?
Johanna comes back from five hours of off piste powder ski-ing, I come back from five hours practising my turns on beginner rated blue runs.
“Shall we go for a little walk?”
Sure, where’s the nearest bar?
“I’m going to skin up, you take the sledge.” As you might have guessed, she’s not about to roll a joint and relax on the balcony. ‘Skinning up’ in this case means attaching synthetic reindeer skins to her skis, putting the baby in a backpack, and ski-ing uphill for a couple of hours. I follow behind with a little plastic sledge, wishing I hadn’t been so naïve as to tell her I’d ‘been sledging before’. I was brought up in the London suburbs, not on a Swedish mountainside - I was talking about a twenty yard run in the local park, nothing to prepare me for this luge run down an icy track with a precipice on one side.
When we reach the mountain top bar, I don’t even dare have a drink. But even without performance impairing substances , my sledging is so bad that the baby screams every time she loses sight of me on the way down. Cute, but humiliating.
Sometimes when I feel inadequate, I have to remind myself that we all have different talents, and I can draw better that Johanna. I know it doesn’t count for much up here - I’m not famous enough to swap doodles on napkins for fondue in the Millionaires Club yet- but it means something at sea level.

Just when I feel like I’m getting somewhere, it all goes horribly wrong.….. I fall over.
One minute I’m a 007 extra following Bond Girl down the piste, next thing I know I’m sitting on the balcony watching my knee shape-shift into a cauliflower, and contemplating the nature of destiny.
I wish my yoga teacher was here to go over that ‘everything happens for a reason’ theory again. It would also be handy because he’s a nice strong man, and he might be able to help me up the 86 steps which separate me from civilization .… and alcohol. I reckon now I can’t ski, there is only apres-ski.
This might not sound like the sort of thing a yoga teacher would approve of, but remember I live in Biarritz. As my guru explained to a surprised class one night, he likes a good Bordeaux, and an after dinner cigar and Cognac.
Some of them look alarmed - what happened to tofu burgers and herb tea? “You have to understand, we all have a different path to enlightenment. Abstinence is not my path.”

The girls come in from the slopes.
“Do you want anything from the supermarket?”
“Beer. Wine. Cognac. Cigars.”
“Oh, no. Alcohol isn’t good for the swelling.” Johanna's right I’m sure. But who cares?
“Abstintence is not on my path.”
But apparently it is tonight. “Sorry, I’m not your mother but.…..”
This is obvious, apart from anything else, my mother would have been up on the piste with a gin and tonic before the rescue heroes even got there. I give it one last try.
“I’d really like a can of beer. I think it’s cheaper to buy the six pack.” It’s never a good idea to tell non-drinkers you need a drink, it brings out the salvation army drum majorette in them. And of course I don’t need a drink, I just want one almost enough to take the 86 icy steps on one leg. I guess it's the 'almost' that makes me a social drinker not a dependent drinker. I go to bed with a tofu burger and a cup of herb tea, regretting my last minute decision to take the bottle of Absolut vodka out of my case to make room for babyfood.

I hop off to the doctor next morning. This isn't much fun, Jo is helping me but she has the baby in a buggy. By step 15 I'm making more noise than the baby, and by step 30 she's persuaded some German tourists to come and carry me up. I'm hoping the doctor tell me it’s quite normal for my knee to look like a cauliflower, it’s the altitude or a beer deficiency or something. First she asks me if I’ve already got a plaster under my trousers, then she mutters something depressing about splintered bones, ruptured ligaments and operations. She gives me a leg brace and crutches, slaps a special piece of Swiss mud on it and tells me to get home to a hospital as soon as possible.
My flight home is the next day anyway. When I get to the airport I find that one nice thing about being on crutches is that people feel obliged to be really nice to you. With a few unfortunate exceptions - like Easyjet flight stewardesses.
As I said earlier, I’m crap at being rich. Through a series of unfortunate life choices, I’ve ended up in Geneva airport with €2.07 and a defunct credit card. I’m not stupid, I know you should always carry a bit of extra money for emergencies when travelling. I just sometimes underestimate the amount. I once hitch-hiked from Venice to London with 50p.
At check-in I’m told to use a machine. When I get to the gate I follow another woman on crutches to the front of the queue.
The other passengers are fine with it, but he stewardess looks at me in disgust. “Why didn’t you tell them you were on crutches at check-in?”
Wasn’t it obvious? “They told me to use the machine.”
“Well, why didn’t you mention the crutches when you booked the ticket?” Who the hell would go ski-ing if they’d already broken their leg? Maybe she didn’t know I’d been ski-ing, but this is Geneva and do I look like the sort of person who would wear a ski-jacket as daywear?
I think I’ve proved my point, the Swiss officials are trying to take me through, but then she sees the brace.
“Can you fully bend that leg? Because if not, you’ll have to buy two extra tickets.”
Well, that’s fine as long as they cost less than €1.04 each. For a moment I see my life turning into that terrible Tom Hanks movie Terminal, where he plays the idiot savant - Forrest Gump with a silly accent- whose country is wiped off the face of the earth while he has a Mochaccino in Starbucks. He ends up living in the airport for years, spreading love and multi racial harmony all around him. It was mind-blowingly boring just watching Tom go through it for a couple of hours. What would it be like without the hope of an Oscar, a million dollar paycheck or a shag from Catherine Zeta Jones to look forward to?
Can I bend my leg? I can do the full lotus standing on my head.
By this time the scene at the gate is quite like a Tom Hanks movie. the crowd are going , “Run, Wilma, run.” And I’m going, “How the hell do you expect me to run , you idiots, I’m on crutches.”
But luckily at this point the Swiss airport official abandons his neutrality, tells her to stop bitching, and whisks me away in a wheelchair, saving me from a life of Hollywood schmaltz.